Who (or what) created the creator?

[Tricky]

Dear Tricky,

Regard an image of the Mona Lisa, and ask yourself what you can say she is doing, beyond all doubt. Ascertain that first, then get back to me.

Cpl Ferro

Umm... She's sitting for a portrait. I think that much is beyond all doubt. You can imagine anything else you like.

 

[Tricky]

It's easy to misrepresent me since I'm just kind of putting thoughts down as we move along. Of course you probably are aware that I don't really subscribe to much of this in any real sense.

We all tend to shoot from the hip here. That's why threads wander so much.

I just learned last night while nosing around for more info that there is a whole philosophy out there that embraces some of it in a much more serious way:

transhumanism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism

I like the Huxley clan. I was a big fan of Aldous, especially "Brave New World." I suspect that there is much to be learned about how humans react in these modern times when there is so much to be learned. I'll have to look into it more.

A geologist? That's cool. I'd love to hear your take on Dolomite sometime. Have you read Ian Hacking's article, "The Social Construction of Rocks?"

Dolomite is carbonate rock where some calcium has been post-depositonally replaced by magnesium. As best I remember from class, the mechanism is poorly understood and may vary a lot from place to place. I haven't read the article.

At any rate, I guess I'm quite "anthropocentric" in the scheme of things. A hunk of Tipler's thought is rooted in the Weak Anthropic principle:

Weak anthropic principle (WAP): "The observed values of all physical and cosmological quantities are not equally probable but they take on values restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based life can evolve and by the requirements that the Universe be old enough for it to have already done so."

***

The weak version has been criticized as an argument by lack of imagination for assuming no other forms of life are possible (sometimes called "carbon chauvinism", see also alternative biochemistry). Furthermore, the range of constants allowing evolution of carbon-based life may be much less restricted than proposed (Stenger, "Timeless Reality"). The weak anthropic principle has also been cited by both critics and supporters as a tautology. The strong version is also criticized as being neither testable nor falsifiable, and unnecessary. The final version is discussed in more detail under final anthropic principle; Barrow and Tipler state that, although it is a physical statement, it is nevertheless "closely connected with moral values".

It sounds like the anthropic principle (weak or strong) is little more than a way of trying to understand things in human terms. Valuable for understanding, perhaps, but it seems to me to be skewed by our own perceptions so much as to possibly lose real information.

I disagree, I guess by matter of definition. I'm not sure that unnatural and supernatural are equivalent. But I'm sure my disagreement is only a matter of degree, not outright disagreeing.

It is a matter of definition i suppose, but a lot of people use "unnatural" to mean "abnormal". Yet things can be abnormal and not unnatural. Homosexuality is a good example. It is certainly not normal, in that a small percentage of people are homosexual, but it is quite natural, in that it occurs across cultural, geographic, and even species lines. So my point is that humans cannot do anything that is not within the possibility of a natural world. However unlikely, it is still possible. To truly go beyond the bounds of what is natural, you would have to do something impossible by the laws of nature.

For me, it is due to the reality of technology, while all of it is natural, that's true, the sum of all natural manipulation is greater than its comprising parts. Suppose that the wayward ideology of "good luck" in human beings forced us to pick so many four-leaf clovers that we consciously selected them out of existence. (Far-fetched I know. I don't even know if four-leaf clovers are a product of genetics, I'm assuming they are.) Still consciousness in this case while still natural is affecting the natural world in a way unconsciousness would never affect it.

Human-caused extinctions are fairly common, though I doubt that four-leaf clovers are endangered. But extinctions have been caused by other creatures too, if it is no more than a species being driven to extinction by another better adapted species, or by a predator species that hunts a certain kind of prey to extinction.

Consider the dodo. It became extinct when men came to its habitat, but it was dogs that did most of the killing. Yes, they were (originally) domestic dogs, but the likelihood that dodos would have encountered ground-dwelling predators eventually was quite high. They had no defense against them.

Should technology increase at the current rate, our ability to allow our ideologies to affect nature will rapidly increase as well, making what we do somewhat out of proportion with what the rest of unconscious nature does.

Unconscious nature is capable of sending a large asteroid or comet to wipe out 90% of the species on earth. It has done it before. This does not mean we shouldn't try to understand and live within nature's balance. But it does mean that we shouldn't be too proud or to guilty, about our manipulation of nature. Other things have manipulated it more.

Again, while natural sure, should we manipulate natural laws to a great extreme as conscious beings, we begin shaping that which unconscious in permanent ways.

The reason we should be careful how we manipulate natural laws is because it could wind up wiping us out. The biosphere is actually pretty stable and it will recover (one way or another) from pretty much anything we can do. But I don't want humans to be wiped out. I'm rather fond of them and their genes. I prefer to learn what we are doing so that we can stay around longer.

 

[CplFerro]

Umm... She's sitting for a portrait. I think that much is beyond all doubt. You can imagine anything else you like.

Dear Tricky,

She might be standing for the portrait, so your suggestion is in doubt. Further, she might not even have been present, the artist may have been drawing from memory, from fantasy, or from looking into a mirror and feminising the features he saw.

Try looking at her face and consider what is undeniable about.

Cpl Ferro

 

[Tricky]

Dear Tricky,

She might be standing for the portrait, so your suggestion is in doubt.

Actually, "sitting for a portrait" does not mean that she was actually sitting down. It is a common term that means one is being still while being painted. They may be sitting, standing, reclining, or any other pose. So my statement is not in doubt. She is posing for a portrait.

Further, she might not even have been present, the artist may have been drawing from memory, from fantasy, or from looking into a mirror and feminising the features he saw.

There was a model though. This is almost universally accepted. DaVinci may have added to or modified her looks, but it is based on a real person. But even this activity does not make the painting a metaphor. If it did, then the metaphor should be identifiable, yet it is not. People see different things in the painting.

But the point is moot. My meaning was that you cannot call a thing a metaphor just because you think it is. If in your own mind it is a metaphor, fine. For it to be universally accepted as one, the metaphor must be clear and unambiguous. This is not the case with much "classical" art. Much of it is just pictures. Well done pictures to be sure, but just pictures. Even Sigmund Freud, who saw hidden meaning in practically everything, even admitted, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

Try looking at her face and consider what is undeniable about.

I have looked at it many times, and there is nothing about it that is "undeniable". Give it what meaning you wish, and I will give it mine. They are probably not the same.

Metaphor is highly interpretive, CplF. It is not a means for establishing truth. Cusa can be metaphorical as all git-out, but that in no way establishes Cusa's statements or philosophy as truth. Truth is objective and verifiable. Metaphor is not.

 

[Iacchus]

Metaphor is all we have.

 

[stamenflicker]

We all tend to shoot from the hip here. That's why threads wander so much.

I like Walt Whitman a great deal. One of my favorite quotes is "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes."

It seems to me that a failure to wander, or a failure to risk wandering, smacks of intellectual arrogance. While certainly there is a logical limit to mental exploration and its accompanying linguistic representation, most of us are probably a hodge-podge assemby of viewpoints that we are trying to order into a whole. Personally, I think the more viewpoints one can accurately represent, the better he or she ends up representing their own point of view.

Constrast that with some of the extremeness presented from both the hard right and the hard left... it can get ugly sometimes.

It sounds like the anthropic principle (weak or strong) is little more than a way of trying to understand things in human terms. Valuable for understanding, perhaps, but it seems to me to be skewed by our own perceptions so much as to possibly lose real information.

It is. And like the entry states, it is more or less a tautology. The universe is intelligible because we are intelligent. The Hawking chapter I linked to gives an excellent suggestion as to why that is so. However, cosmology would suggest that being anthropocentric isn't just a philosophical shortcoming, it is "natural."

Human-caused extinctions are fairly common, though I doubt that four-leaf clovers are endangered. But extinctions have been caused by other creatures too, if it is no more than a species being driven to extinction by another better adapted species, or by a predator species that hunts a certain kind of prey to extinction.

Unconscious nature is capable of sending a large asteroid or comet to wipe out 90% of the species on earth. It has done it before. This does not mean we shouldn't try to understand and live within nature's balance. But it does mean that we shouldn't be too proud or to guilty, about our manipulation of nature. Other things have manipulated it more.

You written this in a way that helps me better articulate the difference that I see and it pretty much centers on the notion of intent. Nature doesn't really "send" astroids, at least I don't suppose it does. Astroids just happen to be around. Humans however can intend to inflict their will on astroids though. Again, it may be natural, but it is natural "once removed." Likewise, extinctions may be somewhat "natural" in the scheme of things, but what seems "unnatural" is any that human beings intend to create.

Further, the four-leaf clover analogy to me is an attempt to show how conscious ideologies could end up affecting nature in ways that just unconcious survival would not.

The idea that unnatural constitutes the inability to "break nature's laws" doesn't quite fit for me. For example, suppose we are able to genetically re-generate prehistoric life through preserved DNA... it's the stuff of Hollywood I realize, but not outside our current ability to research and plan for. If in fact, we are able to say create a T-Rex from mosquito blood encased in amber, then how "natural" is that really? It's not supernatural, but it certainly isn't natural.

Nature selected the T-Rex from existence. We re-introduce it while not having broken any real natural law. We intend or choose to do X, Y, Z. It seems something like photosynthesis is necessitated by natural laws, while much of what we do is not. This intention of ours will grow stronger and more compentent as time progresses, provided we don't kill ourselves off first.

To me, this places us in a different place of natural order than say the dog or the dodo bird.

 

[CplFerro]

...There was a model though. This is almost universally accepted...

Dear Tricky,

"Almost universally accepted" does not equal the truth. Truth is not a popularity contest.

The one undeniable thing that she is doing, is that she is thinking something. But, at this point, you're so cognitively blocked it's painful, so I doubt any further discussions of the significance of classical Art (as in why they bothered to paint these marvellous paintings in the first place), will matter to you.

Good day,

Cpl Ferro

 

[Tricky]

Dear Tricky,

"Almost universally accepted" does not equal the truth. Truth is not a popularity contest.

We're not talking about the general populace here, but art scholars who believe this. Also, it is quite rare for an artist to paint a portrait without a model.

The one undeniable thing that she is doing, is that she is thinking something.

You know, that's not such big deal. Most people are thinking something in every waking moment. Of course, you are free to imagine what she is thinking. That's what makes art fun. It doesn't make it a metaphor.

But, at this point, you're so cognitively blocked it's painful, so I doubt any further discussions of the significance of classical Art (as in why they bothered to paint these marvellous paintings in the first place), will matter to you.

I gave you several topics of conversation. You chose to reply to only one with a minor nitpick.

And while am not an art student, I have some appreciation of classical art, enough so that I can detect pretentious arrogance about art when I hear it.

Good day to you sir.

 

[Tricky]

I like Walt Whitman a great deal. One of my favorite quotes is "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes."

I'm not a big Whitman fan. He always seemed so focused on Walt Whitman. But he's done some pretty good stuff.

It is. And like the entry states, it is more or less a tautology. The universe is intelligible because we are intelligent. The Hawking chapter I linked to gives an excellent suggestion as to why that is so. However, cosmology would suggest that being anthropocentric isn't just a philosophical shortcoming, it is "natural."

Certainly it is natural to perceive things in... well... the way your species perceives things. I'm reminded of another poet, Rupert Brooke

You written this in a way that helps me better articulate the difference that I see and it pretty much centers on the notion of intent. Nature doesn't really "send" asteroids, at least I don't suppose it does. Asteroids just happen to be around. Humans however can intend to inflict their will on asteroids though. Again, it may be natural, but it is natural "once removed." Likewise, extinctions may be somewhat "natural" in the scheme of things, but what seems "unnatural" is any that human beings intend to create.

I doubt seriously that humans "intend" to harm nature. They simply want to manipulate it for the benefit of humans. But all creatures do this even if unintelligently.

Are humans careless? Certainly. But they are a great deal more careful than any other creature that I am aware of. It may not be enough to save themselves, but it is highly unlikely that they will destroy the world. Even nuclear war wouldn't do that.

Further, the four-leaf clover analogy to me is an attempt to show how conscious ideologies could end up affecting nature in ways that just unconscious survival would not.

But low-intelligence things exert selective pressure too. A plant species might die because insects found a different species of plant more palatable. If for example, four leaf-clovers were a different species from three-leaf clovers, it is possible that bees would only go to three-leaf clovers (because they spent more energy on pollen than on leaves perhaps?) thereby driving four-leafers to extinction.

The idea that unnatural constitutes the inability to "break nature's laws" doesn't quite fit for me. For example, suppose we are able to genetically re-generate prehistoric life through preserved DNA... it's the stuff of Hollywood I realize, but not outside our current ability to research and plan for. If in fact, we are able to say create a T-Rex from mosquito blood encased in amber, then how "natural" is that really? It's not supernatural, but it certainly isn't natural.

How is it any different from the seeds of a seemingly extinct plant being enclosed in a glacier and then germinating to reestablish the species when the glacier melted? I'm not saying this has happened, but it is certainly no more far-fetched than Jurassic Park.

But of course, I understand what you mean. Humans are able to do, in a short time, what is so unlikely as to be virtually impossible without human presence. Look at all the new species we've engineered. It is not normal, in that such power doesn't happen often. I still hesitate to call it unnatural. I find it well within the realms of possibility that another intelligent species has evolved in some distant solar system. Could they do the same things, and greater, that we do? Why not?

Nature selected the T-Rex from existence. We re-introduce it while not having broken any real natural law. We intend or choose to do X, Y, Z. It seems something like photosynthesis is necessitated by natural laws, while much of what we do is not. This intention of ours will grow stronger and more competent as time progresses, provided we don't kill ourselves off first.

To me, this places us in a different place of natural order than say the dog or the dodo bird.

It cannot be shown that intelligence and rapid manipulation of nature is not occurring elsewhere. Perhaps it is even a natural consequence of increasing complexity. It is even conceivable that humans will become so powerful that we will someday look back on these times when we couldn't even do something so simple as clone ourselves, with the same disdain that modern humans view troglodytes.