Posted on 07/05/2003 4:20:08 PM PDT by betty boop
I am sure that they do indeed understand what an organism is and that consciousness only occurs in life. That is why they and Grandpierre postulate that consciousness is beyond the material of classical physics and chemistry. The higher consciousness of humans, in spite of much research has not been explained by science. Their proposition is that the reason for it is that it is being looked at in the wrong way. Now you may disagree with what they say, but clearly the present approach, the materialist approach, has not been fruitful.
You are confusing two expressions of the waveform here. If you limit yourself to sine waves (as in Fourier) analysis, you need an infinite set of such waves. On the other hand, you still need an infinite number of digits to describ the value at a point. These are only two different descriptions of the same object.
Yes, RightWhale -- well, at least the "natural" part. However, Bauer's biological principle, which Grandpierre (rather humorously) refers to the as Aikido principle of life, is not consciousness of the epiphenomenal type, which is far-lower order, and essentially random. Epiphenomenal consciousness does not have a principle by which it can modify its own internal states, in sensitive adjustment to changes in exterior and interior conditions. There is nothing to show that epiphenomenal consciousness has a principle by which it can grasp that it is alive as an organic biological whole, or develop a sense of identity (of experience of itself), let alone self-identity.
Epiphenomenal consciousness may be a feature of inorganic nature. But for biological life, it appears woefully insufficient to explain the consciousness of the higher forms of biological life, through animals and up to man. It has been noted that even E. coli appears to generate a kind of primitive "brain" organization. By what principle can this be an epiphenomenal activity? It appears to me to be distinctly a phenomenal one. Here we see the tension between the structural and the phenomenological -- "the integrative science" of these three theorists.
Too magical for me, BB.
Readers might be also be interested in Grandpierre's comments on punk music.
A mechanism?!
Do you really mean a mechanism? Because, see, a mechanism has no free-will; it is at best chaotic.
It "processes" input? According to some algorithm? If the processing follows an algorithm, it is not free. If it uses no algorithm, it is random (chaotic). In either case it is not "free".
Now try again, without mechanisms, processing, whatever.
--Boris
What a bunch of horsesh*t. If you can't see the monumental differences, both conceptually and physically, between the two approaches then you've gulped down far too much of the purple QM Koolaid. Ok, fine. You have your religion and I have mine. See ya!
No, it's called reestablishing the proper role of science (one would hope, including a repentence to the realization of what the Scientific Method is, for what we call "science") in the overall interpretation (macrointerpretation) of existence. SM having its limitations, that does not somehow magically impose limitations upon our regard for reality, nor our very need to regard the reality we haven't scientifically demonstrated, for our very survival. See "importance."
Junk science is claiming scientific validity where there is no explanation arrived via the scientific method. Examples include any use of scientific fact in order to oxymoronically allude to any naturalistic or materialistic dogma.
Conceptualize what you will, but reality is still reality, just as reality is, whatever humans understand or misunderstand of it. You need reality, however it is not demonstrable that reality will eventually have any need of you.
Very well, and only reasonably (and intuitively) put.
Computer science has become our latest lazy idol in the alchemist's imagination of the hubristic mastery of life. The wild overextension of the effects of man's wannabe mastery of the Universe is very common, when a scientific or noetic study is in its infancy. Remember Frankenstein -- and SciFi stories and movies about virtually any technology, from Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, to "scientologist" L. Ron Hubbard.
I know I sure was, Nebullis!!! I see you took my advice and did a Google search.... (I take it what you found there gives you a "plausible excuse" to simply dismiss Grandpierre as someone you don't need to take seriously. I've seen this strategem before: If you don't want to engage the "message," the best thing to do is "kill the messenger.")
For others who have not gone to Google, I'll spare you the trip. Attila Grandpierre for 25 years was the "lead howler" (i.e., lead singer) of a Hungarian "shamam-punk" rock band called VHK -- the acronym of the Hungarian name, "Vagtazo Holottkemik," which translates as the Galloping Coroners. In the bad old days of the Soviet bloc, the band was supressed, "made illegal" in Hungary. Still, it was wildly popular, famous throughout Europe. There was a huge rock festival in Amsterdam back in 1988, and VHK was invited to attend. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands had to personally intercede with the Hungarian authorities in order for them to appear.
BTW, the reason VHK was "supressed," if you haven't figured it out by now, is there was just a tad too much freedom, too much liberty in their lyrics and style. Too dangerous for the dictators, you see. (They continued to play, however, getting around the ban by appearing anonymously, or sitting in unannounced with other people's bands.)
Anyhoot, Grandpierre's musical past (he's also a poet, and has witten a book -- The Book of the Living Universe -- that has yet to be translated into English) isn't something that the pure science divisions of NATO or the UN (among other organizations) holds against him. He has chaired their science conferences, and is a frequent keynote speaker. You may wish to "dismiss him." Clearly, they don't.
Regarding your refusal to engage in the line of theorization of these three thinkers evokes Lewontin's comment at the top of the thread. Not for nothing did Grandpierre "takes pains to point out" that Lewontin is a Marxist. (Understandably, for Grandpierre this is hardly a term of praise, given his life in a communist system.)
Lewontin's thought process is typically Marxist. Remember, Marx was the guy who created a totally abstract system that bore no close resemblance to the world of actual reality (in fact, it was constructed so as to avoid that issue entirely), and then he prohibited all questioning about it. One was simply not allowed to "challenge it" in any way, shape, or form -- say, by citing evidence contrary to its fundamental holding. Which was/is wholly artificial, through and through.
If you like keeping company with such an intellectual swindler, well all I can say is sometimes there's no accounting for people's tastes....
Thankfully, the world is full of options. Rejection of the mystical magic doesn't throw me into the arms of Lewontin. I'm just a regular science type.
Right now, I'm busy diagnosing a disease in one of my lovely maple trees. Is it verticillium wilt, anthracnose or something else? Hmm...
All very well and good, but please respond to the logical trail.
1. Boris says that asserting free will is asserting that "my outputs are not functions of my inputs."
2. To which "Xm177e2" responds that there is a "mechanism" (a black box) which "processes" other things--things other than inputs.
3. To which Boris replies that those other things look suspiciously like "inputs"--for else how would the "mechanism" "process" them? Here we have a mechanism that processes something other than inputs; exceeding strange.
4. Boris adds that either the "mechanism" operates by rules (an 'algorithm' for brevity) or it does not. If it does, it cannot be free. If it does not, it cannot be free because it is random (unruled).
So the ball is back in your corner.
--Boris
This tends to be where the devotee of Information Theory as Ontological Essence Dogma posits that all is randomness, somehow formed by an unexplained presence of energy and divergence, out of uniformity and somehow then formulating itself into patterns, that we call "behavior."
That's certainly not a belief that I share. I doubt you'll find many epileptics who do, either.
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