12.1 Nowhere. There is no inside and outside.
12.2 Just purely physically, literally, I mean. There is no atom in my body that didn't originally come from somewhere else. And as I breathe in and breathe out, as I eat and eliminate wastes, as I drink and perspire, as I am invaded by pathogens and fight them off, as my skin cells slough off and grow back, as my eyes react to the brilliance of the sun, as I scratch myself on the brambles in the blooming buzzing meadow and bleed -- as I do all this, there is a constant interchange of matter and energy between "me" and "the world," "inside" and "outside," "self" and "other."
12. 3 So also as, in Time, I come into being, grow up, grow old, and die.
12.4 There is no "me" apart from the billions, trillions of patterns and rhythms that my body continually enacts and embodies and is. I am those patterns -- what else is there? Nothing. So, I am my body. And (see 11.2), there is no body apart from its mitochondria, microbes and environment. Therefore, I am my mitochondria, microbes and environment.
12.5 Which, I suppose, is just another way of saying "it's all one." But now I've proven it.
12.6 So, all this talk about "I" as something distinct from the rest of Nature is, strictly speaking, nonsense. But it's convenient. It's shorthand. It's pragmatic. It's workable, to a point.
12.7 And don't get me wrong -- there's no denying the reality of individual selves. Let's just not get all superstitious or metaphysical about them, OK? The glory of selves is the glory of Nature: they are the same.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
11. It's Really Complex Out There ...
11.1 Lest hubris set in, recall that where "life on Earth" is concerned, microbes run the show -- always have and probably always will. It's that simple.
11.2 Our bodies -- the fantastically complex machinery involved with being human (and its complexity is commonly underestimated) -- have no existence apart from complex networks of molecular metabolic pathways that link us directly to the microbial world -- the world of bacteria, viruses, and other "primitive" life forms that scientific taxonomists struggle to classify.
11.2 Our bodies -- the fantastically complex machinery involved with being human (and its complexity is commonly underestimated) -- have no existence apart from complex networks of molecular metabolic pathways that link us directly to the microbial world -- the world of bacteria, viruses, and other "primitive" life forms that scientific taxonomists struggle to classify.
10. Life
10.1 The title of this blog is Time and Consciousness. So, a definition of Life is a special bonus.
10.2 Definition of Life: if it replicates and evolves, it's alive. You need a population of things that not only create copies of themselves but whose self-copying "programs" or "instructions" evolve in the population as a whole based on what individuals are encountering in their environment. And, for really advanced evolution of living forms (like on planet Earth), you need many populations (millions of species) of interacting, sometimes competing, sometimes cooperating replicators.
10.3 When you put together the principles of replication and interacting populations of replicators, a suitable environment, natural selection, and a time scale of billions of years, you get evolution, you get Life, you get us.
10.4 But still: when, precisely, did Intentionality enter the universe?
10.2 Definition of Life: if it replicates and evolves, it's alive. You need a population of things that not only create copies of themselves but whose self-copying "programs" or "instructions" evolve in the population as a whole based on what individuals are encountering in their environment. And, for really advanced evolution of living forms (like on planet Earth), you need many populations (millions of species) of interacting, sometimes competing, sometimes cooperating replicators.
10.3 When you put together the principles of replication and interacting populations of replicators, a suitable environment, natural selection, and a time scale of billions of years, you get evolution, you get Life, you get us.
10.4 But still: when, precisely, did Intentionality enter the universe?
9. Being and Nothingness
9.1 Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, "Nothingness lies coiled like a worm in the heart of Being."
9.2 Is it possible that Sartre's Nothingness is what I have spoken of as Intentionality, and that his Being is my Nature?
9.3 Consider something complex and coiled, like the fern you see poking its fresh green head out of the decaying pine needles and growing, fractalizing into its full form. Consider the fern's coiled intentionality as dread nothingness, as "having to be" -- taking place against the backdrop, or "in the heart of" the pure unbroken oneness of Being (all that is, all at once), or of Nature (all that is, lives, evolves, endlessly differentiates and grows more complex in time as we know it).
9.2 Is it possible that Sartre's Nothingness is what I have spoken of as Intentionality, and that his Being is my Nature?
9.3 Consider something complex and coiled, like the fern you see poking its fresh green head out of the decaying pine needles and growing, fractalizing into its full form. Consider the fern's coiled intentionality as dread nothingness, as "having to be" -- taking place against the backdrop, or "in the heart of" the pure unbroken oneness of Being (all that is, all at once), or of Nature (all that is, lives, evolves, endlessly differentiates and grows more complex in time as we know it).
8. Design, Intentionality, Life, Nature
8.1 Nature (evolution) is a blind watchmaker and does not "consciously" "design" anything.
8.2 We (specimens of the homo sapiens species) have eyes to see, ears to hear, and minds to understand. We are percievers. And we do "consciously" "design" lots of things, from nice beds to go to sleep in to unspoken social contracts to supercomputers.
8.3 Nature's blind designs serve no purpose. No purpose that we can ever hope to discern, at any rate. (Compare 3.3: "... We suffer existence because of the biological imperative of replication ..." -- is replication its own "purpose"? We shall return to this ...)
8.4 Our intentional designs do serve a purpose: we wish them to do something to help us survive or to make our lives better. ("Survival" has at least two meanings: One, I survive as an individual organism, putting off death as long as I can; Two, the human race as a whole survives, putting off extinction of the species for as long as it can.)
8.5 Thus, something new has entered the universe: intentionality. Maybe that's a fancy way of saying that somebody or something now has a stake in it all: we do -- don't we? It "matters" to us whether we continue to exist or not -- both on an individual level and a larger group level.
8.6 We have our intentions; we have our understanding and design skills. Soon, we will be designing life forms from raw molecules and snippets of DNA both "found" in Nature and newly invented by us. Technically, we already are.
8.7 When did intentionality enter the universe?
8.2 We (specimens of the homo sapiens species) have eyes to see, ears to hear, and minds to understand. We are percievers. And we do "consciously" "design" lots of things, from nice beds to go to sleep in to unspoken social contracts to supercomputers.
8.3 Nature's blind designs serve no purpose. No purpose that we can ever hope to discern, at any rate. (Compare 3.3: "... We suffer existence because of the biological imperative of replication ..." -- is replication its own "purpose"? We shall return to this ...)
8.4 Our intentional designs do serve a purpose: we wish them to do something to help us survive or to make our lives better. ("Survival" has at least two meanings: One, I survive as an individual organism, putting off death as long as I can; Two, the human race as a whole survives, putting off extinction of the species for as long as it can.)
8.5 Thus, something new has entered the universe: intentionality. Maybe that's a fancy way of saying that somebody or something now has a stake in it all: we do -- don't we? It "matters" to us whether we continue to exist or not -- both on an individual level and a larger group level.
8.6 We have our intentions; we have our understanding and design skills. Soon, we will be designing life forms from raw molecules and snippets of DNA both "found" in Nature and newly invented by us. Technically, we already are.
8.7 When did intentionality enter the universe?
Thursday, November 5, 2009
7. The Mystical Tradition
7.1 A reader of this blog sends this gem from the 13th-century German mystic Meister Eckhart:
"Time is the worst obstacle to union with the Infinite."
"Time is the worst obstacle to union with the Infinite."
Thursday, September 10, 2009
6. What it's like ...
6.1 Thomas Nagel, professor of philosophy and law at New York University, argues that it is impossible to know what it's like to be a bat.
6.2 Tom Petty, rock musician, writes, "You don't know how it feels / You don't know how it feels / No, you don't know how it feels / To be me."
6.3 Can one know "what it's like" to be another person -- or animal? I say: of course you can. But within certain limits.
6.2 Tom Petty, rock musician, writes, "You don't know how it feels / You don't know how it feels / No, you don't know how it feels / To be me."
6.3 Can one know "what it's like" to be another person -- or animal? I say: of course you can. But within certain limits.
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