Using the scientifically derived and open knowledge that includes the “latest advances in neuroscience, biology, evolution and pre-history” we can easily surmise that people caring about each other is a natural product of our evolution and cultural developments. There is nothing illogical about that. Imo, it is patently obvious.
That’s kind of what I said Tim. Except I didn’t go so far as to say that combining several complex disciplines is “obvious”.
Well it’s obvious to me.
Well it’s obvious to me. --TimB
So, let’s say tomorrow something new comes out, a book on the level of Frans de Waal’s work with bonobos or a new theory of something like pheromones. You have to adjust your understanding wouldn’t you?
Yes it is logical.
In very early human experience it was possible to hunt and gather a lifetime without seeing a stranger. But, it is our tribalism that helped us to survive until now. Conversely it is our modern tribalism that threatens our future
we are still living in the geographic time of the Holoscene epoch that is sometimes called the Anthroposcene Epoch because the primary characteristics of global changes is mainly caused by human activity early in the Holoscene Epoch we hunted to extinction of flora and fauna today we have turned on the planet to satisfy human greed.
we absolutely need each other and our planet for our species to survive, all previous predecessors are extinct. We are the only extant species of humans.
Well said.
people caring about each otherI suggest people care about things, including other people, gods, animals, nature and activities, only to the extent that those things offer some benefit or present some threat. We appear to look at our surroundings, including all the things I noted, from the point of view of self-interest. Basically, we seem to value things for what we get from them.
I accept that one benefit, perhaps not commonly recognized, is how some of our actions make us feel “good.” The usual example is the idea that the giver gets “more” from giving than the recipient. I suggest our reaction to what we perceive as beauty, even (or especially) if it is something we produced, is similar.
Why people want children doesn’t appear to be logical unless we hope our children will take care of us when we are no longer able to care for ourselves. Children consume much and provide little for years. Why we would care whether people continue after we die does not seem logical in terms of self-interest; I suspect our hopes for their future are another thing that makes us feel good.
Why we would want the competition of other individuals and the restrictions required of any society is similarly illogical unless we some benefit in others cooperating with us. I suppose one could argue that societies fail when we no longer see the benefits outweighing the restrictions. We’ve all heard the “house divided” idea.
Thanks for the recent comments. I found an On Being podcast on my phone the other and that also got me thinking about this. It’s a conversation with a physicist/writer and a novelist. Marilynne Robinson and Marcelo Gleiser — The Mystery We Are | The On Being Project
I bought the physics guy’s book but haven’t read it yet. They are pretty agreeable, this isn’t a debate. It explores the limits of what we know. This is from Robinson, she is saying it doesn’t make sense to simply dismiss the culture and art of asking the “why” questions.
And that’s a lovely, you know, that is the authority of science for me. The fact that we cannot be articulate about ourselves — and I think that’s deeply true. I think that the arts are our effort to articulate the experience of self and mind and so on that is inaccessible to scientific description — that that deep yearning that is as ancient as the desire to know where we came from and the rest of it has been disallowed as the legitimate part of the human record and the human conversation. And this seems to me to be completely arbitrary. And along with, of course, other forms of the profound self-exploration of human inwardness is the rejection of religion, which is also put out of account. There’s nothing really more universal, I think, in human cultures than the impulse to religion.
From the link you gave:
And so the question is always if it’s teleology who’s in control?I'm not so sure I understand this question. What is your take on it?
I’m not as interested in Marilyn’s questions. Gleiser says there are too many traps in teleogy.
When I read that I thought they both were getting around to more or less the same idea that there was some sort of something pushing us towards the same discoveries. That seemed sort of mystical to me. I wondered if it was some recognition - suspicion may be a better word - by both that there may be one universal truth we are finding. I don’t seem to be able to express my questions about what they were getting to and that’s why I asked you. I wonder if what they are feeling is more related to our thought processes in discovery rather than what we are concluding about the discoveries.
I’m pretty sure they were steering away from universal truth. Teleology is about purpose, not cause anyway.
you cannot understand an organism without also understanding the environment within which it exists.Is this compatible?
you cannot understand an organism without also understanding the environment within which it exists. Is this compatible?The anthropic principle is a philosophical consideration that any data we collect about the universe is filtered by the fact that, in order for it to be observable in the first place, it must be compatible with the conscious and sapient life that observes it.[1] Proponents of the anthropic principle reason that it explains why this universe has the age and the fundamental physical constants necessary to accommodate conscious life. As a result, outside the narrow range thought to be compatible with life it would seem impossible that life (in particular, intelligent life) could develop.[2] The strong anthropic principle (SAP), as explained by John D. Barrow and Frank Tipler, states that this is all the case because the universe is in some sense compelled to eventually have conscious and sapient life emerge within it. Some critics of the SAP argue in favor of a weak anthropic principle (WAP) similar to the one defined by Brandon Carter, which states that the universe’s ostensible fine tuning is the result of selection bias (specifically survivorship bias): i.e., only in a universe capable of eventually supporting life will there be living beings capable of observing and reflecting on the matter. Most often such arguments draw upon some notion of the multiverse for there to be a statistical population of universes to select from and from which selection bias (our observance of only this universe, compatible with our life) could occur.
Okay, I read that. I’m curious, now can you explain what the heck all that Anthropic Principle actually means?
Me, I see all that up there the product of people who never really thought through the significance of the distinction between our Human Mindscape and the Physical Reality that created it - it’s muddled and doesn’t actually say much, if anything. Though I’m open to elucidation.
as explained by John D. Barrow and Frank Tipler, states that this is all the case because the universe is in some sense compelled to eventually have conscious and sapient life emerge within it.In a poet sense I love this idea and can totally relate, but it's religion, not science. {lyrics}
you cannot understand an organism without also understanding the environment within which it exists. Is this compatible?wikipedia-org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
The anthropic principle is a philosophical consideration that any data we collect about the universe is filtered by the fact that, in order for it to be observable in the first place, it must be compatible with the conscious and sapient life that observes it.[1] Proponents of the anthropic principle reason that it explains why this universe has the age and the fundamental physical constants necessary to accommodate conscious life. As a result, outside the narrow range thought to be compatible with life it would seem impossible that life (in particular, intelligent life) could develop.[2] The strong anthropic principle (SAP), as explained by John D. Barrow and Frank Tipler, states that this is all the case because the universe is in some sense compelled to eventually have conscious and sapient life emerge within it. Some critics of the SAP argue in favor of a weak anthropic principle (WAP) similar to the one defined by Brandon Carter, which states that the universe’s ostensible fine tuning is the result of selection bias (specifically survivorship bias): i.e., only in a universe capable of eventually supporting life will there be living beings capable of observing and reflecting on the matter. Most often such arguments draw upon some notion of the multiverse for there to be a statistical population of universes to select from and from which selection bias (our observance of only this universe, compatible with our life) could occur.
Okay, I read that. I’m curious, now can you explain what the heck all that Anthropic Principle actually means?
Me, I see all that up there the product of people who never really thought through the significance of the distinction between our Human Mindscape and the Physical Reality that created it - it’s muddled and doesn’t actually say much, if anything. Though I’m open to elucidation.
as explained by John D. Barrow and Frank Tipler, states that this is all the case because the universe is in some sense compelled to eventually have conscious and sapient life emerge within it.In a poet sense I love this idea and can totally relate, but it's religion, not science. {lyrics}
I’ve always taken the Anthropic Principle to be, essentially, “the universe is the way it is because if it were any different we wouldn’t be here to see it the way it is.”
What always bugged me was the word ‘because’. That implies there is a causal connection between us and the way the universe is. I don’t subscribe to any mechanism that works in that direction.
The only thing that makes sense to me is that we’re here observing the universe because the universe is the way it is, which is the exact opposite of the Anthropic Principle.
As tautologies go, it’s the one that confuses the most people because, although it isn’t profound, it sounds profound.
It should come as no surprise that I put no stock in the clumsy and needlessly confusing concept labeled ‘Anthropic Principle’. (If I have my definition wrong, I’ll gladly change my opinion, so please let me know if I’ve been wrong all these years.)
The easiest thing to digest from the wikipedia link is “only in a universe capable of eventually supporting life will there be living beings capable of observing and reflecting on the matter.” It’s as simple as, we’re here because we can be. It doesn’t answer what “we” are or “why”, but it doesn’t ask that either. It’s humbling really, because it puts us in our place. Even though we can peer in to the vastness of the universe, we are merely a product of it. We can’t be more than it, even if you created a whole new universe, we’d just be a part of that.
I don’t like the SAP, I don’t see what this “compelling” force is.
any data we collect about the universe is filtered by the fact that, in order for it to be observable in the first place, it must be compatible with the conscious and sapient life that observes itIt seems to me to be one side of a sort of "chicken and egg" thing. The SAP seems to put "the conscious and sapient life" ahead of the "data we collect". By "ahead" I mean that it sets the production of life as the "why" the universe exists and what is observable as existing to support that life.
To me, the WAP seems to set the existence of the universe as without cause or purpose and life as resulting only because the universe is capable of producing it. The WAP leaves us with the question of why the universe is capable of producing life.
It seems the only answer we have ever found as to “why” is because some agency (some one, some thing or some system) made it that way and the notion that it was “made” carries the notion of intent with it.
CC-v.3 said: Okay, I read that. I’m curious, now can you explain what the heck all that Anthropic Principle actually means?I believe it means that the properties of the universe and the earth specifically made it necessary that biological live would emerge.
Consider that an abundant presence and properties of hydrogen and oxygen makes it necessary that H2O would form and that this type process extended to so many different evolutionary processes required for the emergence of biological life, that it became necessary for life to emerge as a logical extension of these processes.
I believe there is a law in logic which posits “necessity and sufficiency” .
In logic and mathematics, necessity and sufficiency are terms used to describe a conditional or implicational relationship between two statements.In general, a necessary condition is one which must be present in order for another condition to occur, while a sufficient condition is one which produces the said condition.[4] The assertion that a statement is a “necessary and sufficient” condition of another means that the former statement is true if and only if the latter is true.[5] That is, the two statements must be either simultaneously true, or simultaneously false
If bacteria already can chemically communicate with each other via “quorum sensing”, why is it surprising that this chemical ability should evolve into ever more sophisticated communication languages? That is the very essence of evolution from simple to complex patterns. Bonnie Bassler proposes that all communication is ultimately traceable to bacterial ability for chemical communication.
And as Anil Seth observes, if Life itself can evolve from ever increasing purely chemical complexity, why should “consciousness” not be possible. How many species other than humans are conscious and have a sense of self-awareness? I know of more than I can name off-hand.
There is nothing exra-ordinary about both Life and Consciousness. It is to us, because we have to unravel 13 billion years of evolutionary processes, before we can believe this very natural mathematical tendency for developing into complex patterns can result in self-awareness and ultimately into intelligence .
A mathematical universe already works via “quasi-intelligent” mathematical processing of relative values, which gave rise to the evolution and natural selection of all the wondrous variety of survival techniques. Think about it, its truly astounding how natur al evolution can direct living organisms to find ways to adapt to their environment.
A Lemur has the exact mathematical sence of “quantity” as humans. They don’t count 1.2.3.4…, but they can certainly tell the difference between “more” from “less”. This may seem trivial, but it is in effect an ability to count. And that ability offers a survival advantage.
And this ability is already present in the “quorum sensing” of bacteria, albeit in an even more more rudimentary form. If you follow the chronology, it becomes clear that human and most likely other animal intelligence is just a result of evolutionary processes.