just a quick re: to Rogering Me's debunk from a few weeks ago. RM, it took me a while to recollect what I was aiming for, and then sieving through that, I think I've cut to the quick: thermodynamism is disobeyed by the existence of life in general.. how can you have more than the sum of the parts? the famous phrase, 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny' is a fascinating concept, every stage of development within an organism resembles prior evolutionary stages (even down to 1 1/2 year olds learning to walk, then speaking at 2-ish, kinda still harmonious with epochs in human development, millions of years captured within the space of a few years) but what is the ontology of that ontogeny? and what is the initatiating principle? you can't get energy from nothing, as much as you can't destroy it. but the 'big bang' concept is basically giving creationism a false moustache, in fact, without the mathematical schema in place to describe it, it IS creationism. Therein, how is consciousness initated, each and every single time? Let us say even say consciousness is a metabolic by-product, what then ignited the metabolism? Without recourse to reductionism (eventually, the question must be answered, down to the smallest organelle..), how can consciousness (recognition of itself as life: '"i am", therefore i think') exist according to thermodynamics? there's just no accounting for it.
i had also wondered about entopy as being significant, but i think more as a 'wow, crazy that my body is as attracted to itself as it so as i don't fall apart' kinda way. yay life. thanks for engaging that house of mirrors of a post.
3 comments:
i don’t know, but one of the first things steve and i ever had a conversation about was why the universe exists. steve offered two theories, one of which was that the universe exists to observe itself. if that were the case, then ‘i think therefore i am’ might be translated ‘the universe thinks, therefore it is’. so neither consciousness nor thermodynamics would be a subset of the other. and hume’s question, if a tree falls in the forest, and there’s noone there to hear it, does it make a sound, would be answered: if there was noone around to hear it, a tree wouldn’t fall in the forest. and i don’t remember the other theory steve offered.
but i guess that means that neither the chicken nor the egg came first which is kind of difficult to wrap my head around. i just picture this hen staring at an egg, both of them just having popped into their pooping existence. well the egg would eventually be a pooper so long as the hen decided to sit on the egg. so how did the hen know to sit on the egg? intuition. and what is that and where did it come from?
i think this ultimately boils down (sorry to reduce) to faith and whether or not one believes in god. and whether or not one believes the self to be god. o boy. that again. thanks for the mental exercise.
I think that if we are the universe observing itself, then if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to observe it, than how do you know that a tree fell in the first place?
i am almost awe shucksing for being ten days late on this one, but then, what is time? (and i've been busy enjoying that rampant email floating around with the "black man's" cell phone $0.08 headset...). i'll preface my response to your response with the following: this is like, just my opinion man.
the reason for the preface is noone. apparently (s)he's the missing link that pagno has identified as the (wo)man in the forest when the hypothetical tree fell and david hume changed subjects to metaphysically demoralizing the rising of the sun. i am suspect that she knows this for sure, as the grammar doesn't follow either.
interesting that you brought up the ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny tomb of developmental biology, also known as Haeckel's biogenetic law, which alas, no one really likes to bring up anymore because, it's, um, completely wrong and muddled with a history of falsified embryologic pictures. the fact that a variety of embryonic stages look similar has more to do with phylogenetic homology and the shape of the womb than anything else...but we never have gills or beaver teeth despite your swampbitions. but alas, that's clearly not your point...just FYI. Your point was that thermodynamics is disobeyed by life. My point was: no, it's not. It's that easy, and, sorry, but I'm right (see preface...and I just had a very good friend travel 4000 km to visit and his covert goal was to get me drunk and then hit me with the following: "you just think you have it all figured out, don't you". Well, no, but unless you're going to go spiripsychideviant on me (Living the Serious Dream), the data I've seen is pretty consistent. this isn't a conspiracy, unfortunately, it's just physical and biological reality that isn't necessarily constrained by enlightenment reductionistic snobbism. Why can't conciousness, spirituality, religion, and al qaeda all exist within the framework of physical reality? If you immerse yourself in the thermodynamic and kinetic principles of chemical reactions you can not escape the conclusion that they do not antagonize any aspect of the living organism. And this need not make any difference to the layers of consciousness that ARE mysterious and inspiring and imprisoning us all...
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