Mind and Cosmos by Thomas Nagel
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Shijing said:
Thanks for sharing the Hologenome entry - very interesting stuff. Yeah, there's absolutely no reason to draw an arbitrary line at an organism and its microbiota and exuded scaffolding (whether that's a calcium carbonate exoskeleton or a flint-tipped spear) and its external environment. Reminds me of the Strong Gaia Theory, which says that life alters the environment in order to make more life possible.
I'm not really convinced that living systems violate the second law of thermodynamics.
The second law of thermodynamics is that entropy always increases in closed systems. Within closed systems you can still find reductions of entropy in local areas of the system. This doesn't violate the law because the reduction is compensated for by an increase in entropy in other localities of the system, causing the closed system on the whole have a net increase in entropy. So a self-organizing, living system like the Earth's biosphere that is exchanging energy/information with other celestial objects in the solar system and galaxy is STILL within the laws of thermodynamics. We just don't get to see the entropy increasing faster elsewhere in the solar system, or at least not as easily.
I sort of see the cosmos as two currents washing over our attention/consciousness, with the future firing bits of information/organization back into the past, and the past mechanically increasing entropy in the future deterministically. Maybe at the future end is the being thought-center and at the past end is the non-being thought center, making time sort of like a loop? That, at least, is the impression I got from all of my readings here of Laura and others' work. Nonetheless, there's SOOOO much more to learn and understand. It feels like we're just scratching the surface of so many deeper connections... which is exciting!
obyvatel
The Living Force
Shijing said:
The concern that I have with the above bolded position is whether this is essentially a rephrased version of the "do good and you will be rewarded (by God); do bad and you will suffer (or God will punish you)" thinking - and if this view is objective. If STS and STO are equally legitimate arms of overall creation, then why would a predominantly 3D STS situation on earth cause destruction? Does it imply that other STS habitats suffer the same fate?
Another position is to consider the situation in terms of evolution to a higher level of complexity (4D) with the accompanying struggle - which was my understanding from the Wave series. Hence my question could increased human depravity at such times be a result of struggles at higher levels which has other manifestations like cataclysms and comets at our level.
In other words, could human issues and comets/cataclysmic weather both be synchronistic (acausally connected) epiphenomena of higher level cosmic events? The destruction of human civilization due to cataclysms could then be like a colony of ants dying in a controlled fire whose purpose may be to get rid of some unwanted flammable material in a forest.
These questions may not be significant in a practical sense. Following the ant analogy, our goal is to be like the ants which somehow figure out that the mountain of dry leaves is a dangerous area to be in and move out. Still thought that I would get these questions off my chest.
Buddy
The Living Force
whitecoast said:
I'm not convinced yet either, but I'm a big fan of the case for it. In fact, with Ho's work within biological systems, one can intuit two fundamental views of reality and each correct for its context. From the view of classical physics, your point is valid because the systems you mentioned are considered axiomatically closed, but from the view that reality is quantum (example: linguistically, 'omni' could replace 'di' as a prefix for many words like 'direction'), there are no closed systems--certainly not reality per se. Another example: a classical "circle" is really quantumly a spiral as seen from one fixed perspective. :) Try it!
In quantum reality qua quantum, most classical logic falls apart along with Maxwell's inviolate 'laws' and one can profitably argue that reality is posentropic, negentropic, mixentropic and whatever remains, depending on point of view and in what connection the observation is being made--just like how Gurdjieff describes and qualifies "objective language" in ISOTM.
At least these are my current thoughts!
John G
The Living Force
Approaching Infinity said:
As Laura's volume 2 and volume 3 excerpts mention, it's information theory and it shows up at different levels. It's most fundamental for the cosmos but those fire-earth;air-water;fixed-mutable;introvert-extravert dualities (aka Cl(8) Clifford Algebra basis vectors) are for larger scale things too as in the graphic below I came across yesterday.
_http://personalitycafe.com/critical-thinking-philosophy/132788-philosophy-personality-universe-you-2.html
You can relate it to the physics of the universe too:
_http://vixra.org/pdf/0910.0023v3.pdf
http://www.tony5m17h.net/E8physics2011.pdf
Since all the information preexists there can be all sorts of correlatated paths and the information in minds could certainly be a huge part of that. Yes there's a low entropy to high entropy thermodynamic arrow of time but that's kind of just the random path for when no one is handling the reins very well. There's also probably some information conservation at the begin/end point for universes but you don't have to linearly go there.
Chapter 4 - Cognition
4.1
Even though the most primitive forms of sensory consciousness (subjective experience) pose a problem, the human faculties of "thought, reasoning, and evaluation" pose an even bigger one. They allow humans to "transcend the perspective of the immediate life-world given to us by our senses and instincts, and to explore the larger objective reality of nature and value." Nagel assumes such faculties rely on consciousness (e.g., only a conscious being can reason). Our very capacity to "transcend subjectivity and to discover what is objectively the case" is what creates the problem.
We naturally see ourselves as able to form true beliefs about the world, logic, maths, the right thing to do. Even if we acknowledge that they're not infallible, our mental faculties can still give us knowledge. And the way we acquire that knowledge is with certain ways of thinking (norms of thought). We know that there is a correct answer to "3+5=" and that an apple is not an orange. When we come to such conclusions, we are following norms of thought, responding to values and reasons that we apprehend. In other words, the world seems actually real, and correct conclusions seem true. Either this is all an illusion (nothing is true, 3+5 only seems to equal 8) or we have to conceive of how this came to be--how we are able to think beyond the starting points of mere sensation, perception, and emotion.
Evolution may be able to explain these starting points (however difficult this may be, but for the sake of argument let's take it as given and assume we can explain the origin of consciousness)--simply as habits that help us survive, with some sufficient level of accuracy. Animals can survive based on this "world of appearances" (eat food, avoid predators, etc.) but without any idea of a more objective reality. The ability to arrive at truth beyond the raw data we get from our senses, "or even to think about it, requires explanation." Language--"a system of concepts that enables us to understand reality"--is part of this problem. (1) Is it likely that natural selection should select for abilities to discover truth with reason, extending "vastly beyond the initial appearances"--theoretical pursuits that were unimaginable in the prehistoric past? (2) How can reason be understood naturalistically?
4.2
If there is no real 'reality,' there's no problem. "The 'worlds' in question are all just human construction"--including laws of physics and chemistry, logic, ethics. (We would still have to explain their internal coherence, however.) This is easier done for morality than science. Morals can easily be seen as dependent on subjective or social factors, but it seems extreme to abandon all realism--we'd end up having to abandon evolutionary theory along with everything else.
So, accepting realism, evolutionary theory would have to explain the success of our cognition. How did we become adapted for "true theories about a law-governed natural order that there was no adaptive need to understand earlier"? In the wild, it's adaptive to generalize from experience and let experience confirm or disconfirm those generalizations. This disposes organisms to "maintain logical consistency in belief." It's also adaptive to correct one's own perceptions with those of others, thus disposing organisms to recognize other minds. Language would greatly expand these abilities, so we can share knowledge, bounce ideas off each other, decide based on their consistency. Complex scientific theories are mere extensions of this ability to learn from experience--"our own and that of others." It's still difficult to account for language (or "the capacity for nonperceptual representation through language, resulting in the ability to grasp logically complex abstract structures"), but perhaps not impossible.
Even accepting moral realism (the objective existence of moral truths), evolutionary theory might be able to account for our ability to recognize moral truth. Innate desires and aversions would dispose organisms (along with avoidance of inconsistency) to a larger domain of practical reason, values based on principles. Organisms would generalize to future experiences, identifying those objective values by use of reason, even if they are not innate, like the laws of physics. So, the initial capacities of both (morals and reality-detection) may be adaptive, but allow us to transcend them independent of whether or not they enhance of survival fitness. Nagel finds this too far-fetched: the idea that genetic variations and mutations should account for "phenomenology, desire and aversion, awareness of other minds, symbolic representations, and logical consistency, all having essential roles in the production of behavior."
4.3
Assuming evolution can account for consciousness, compare our attitude toward our reasoning to that of our perception and instincts. With vision, we know it responds to stimuli that were important to our ancestors' survival (e.g., fast-flying objects, snakes, etc.). We know we can rely on our vision for this, but also that it can give "misleading, selective, or distorted" information. Same with our intuition about probabilities and some value judgments (e.g., for revenge). "We may come to understand those intuitions as rough but useful unreflective responses shaped by natural selection to a fitness-enhancing form in the circumstances in which our forebears lived and died." They sometimes need correction or inhibition. In other words, we're observing parts of ourselves in a detached way, with a part of ourselves that we DON'T observe in a detached way, e.g. probability calculations, moral reasoning, etc. We justify our conclusions not based on the authority of biology (or even by culture), but of systematic reasons. Biology gave us the ability to judge distance, but we can also measure that distance (and correct or refine our initial guess); biology (or culture) may incite us to avenge the death of a loved one, but we can also check our feelings to confirm or deny the guilt of the accused.
We immediately rely on both our vision and reason. We see a tree and know it's a tree; we come to a logical conclusion and know it's true. With vision, even though we can second-guess ourselves, we are reasonably justified in trusting our sight, because evolution has shaped it to be more or less accurate. But with reason, we grasp the truth directly. We can't pull back and reconfirm it based on the reliability that our thought processes are correct, because evolution shaped them to be more or less accurate. If we could, it wouldn't be logic at all--logic can't be true with such qualifications or doubts. So if evolution tries to account for reason, it can't do so without presupposing reason's validity in the first place. Eventually, we have to come to something "without which the evolutionary understanding would not be possible": reason itself. Biology can't explain how we come to conclusions that are not biologically based.
Evolutionary theory can explain why we come to more or less accurate conclusions about the world, through inheritance of the necessary innate dispositions, "but if I am right to think that we can't regard [our capacities] merely as further instinctive dispositions, some other explanation is needed of what these capacities are." Reason can't be seen just as an extension of mere consciousness. "Reason can take us beyond the appearances because it has completely general validity, rather than mere local utility" (which is all that biology might be able to account for). It can't be confirmed or disconfirmed by any external view of itself (Descartes' insight).
4.4
So, what is the faculty that allows us to "escape the world of appearance … into the world of objective reality," and how can biology make sense of that faculty? Sense perception connects us with reality indirectly (and passively); reason connects us with the truth directly (and actively). When I see a tree, it's more accurate to say that my visual system passively becomes aware of it (and that helps me to survive in the world). But when I "see" a contradiction in my beliefs (e.g., I'm driving south and the sun rises to my right), I grasp this truth directly. We don't reject the contradiction because of some "logical phobias and instincts," but simply because "we see that it is impossible, and we accept a logical entailment just because we see that it is necessarily true."
"In ordinary perception, we are like mechanisms governed by a (roughly) truth-preserving algorithm. But when we reason, we are like a mechanism that can see that the algorithm it follows is truth-preserving." "We have to start by regarding our pre-reflective impressions as a partial and perspectival view of the world, but we are then able to use reason and imagination to construct candidates for a larger conception that can contain and account for that part. … This process is highly fallible, but it could not even be attempted without this hard core of self-evidence, on which all less certain reasoning depends." So, we see a tree with our vision (an aspect of our base, sensory consciousness), but we see that it is fake (e.g., it has leaves in winter) with our reason. To understand human reason in the natural order, we have to explain this: "the conscious control of belief and conduct in response to the awareness of reasons--the avoidance of inconsistency, the subsumption of particular cases under general principles, the confirmation or disconfirmation of general principles by particular observations, and so forth." (This can't be a real tree because leaves fall off in winter.) "This is what is to allow oneself to be guided by the objective truth, rather than just by one's impressions."
Like consciousness seems to be a development of biology, reason seems to be a development of consciousness. "The great cognitive shift is an expansion of consciousness from the perspectival form contained in the lives of particular creatures to an objective, world-encompassing form that exists both individually and intersubjectively. It was originally a biological evolutionary process, and in our species it has become a collective cultural process as well. Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself."
4.5
"This, then, is what a theory of everything has to explain: not only the emergence from a lifeless universe of reproducing organisms and their development by evolution to greater and greater functional complexity; not only the consciousness of some of those organisms and its central role in their lives; but also the development of consciousness into an instrument of transcendence that can grasp objective reality and objective value."
The existence of reason implies certain things. First, objective, mind-independent truths; factual truths about the world (e.g., scientific laws); eternal and necessary truths (e.g., logic and maths); evaluative and moral truths. Second, the ability to collectively come to beliefs about these truths (though not infallibly). Third, those beliefs can influence what we do. Fourth, these mental processes are inseparable from biological processes.
Something about the cosmos must explain how such beings came to be--some possibilities "latent in the nature of things" that make it not just an accident. Again, we need constitutive and historical explanations. But a reductive account (i.e., protomental bits) of reason is even more difficult to imagine than that of consciousness (try to imagine "mini-rationality"). And the 'mind as computer' metaphor ignores content, action, and understanding. An emergent account seems more likely, where reason is an irreducible faculty of a conscious mind.
For the historical question, again, it would have to explain why exactly that form of reason appeared in complex beings, unless we're willing to accept that reason was a fluke
4.6
We shouldn't assume that a theory that can't explain the later states (i.e., development of reason) can account for the earlier stages. A teleological explanation, on the other hand, makes sense, as it's natural "to speculate that some tendencies in this direction [development of reason] have been at work all along."
Roger White argues that the reason scientists are so busy searching for a materialistic account of evolution that isn't just random is probably because life really looks like a product of intentional design. And because intentional design is 'unscientific,' they conclude that there MUST be a rational physical explanation, something that makes life likely and not just chance. But, their logic is bad. The fact that an intentional account seems better able explain how life arose, possibly ruling out chance, does NOT mean that a non-intentional account is at all likely. According to White, life is no more likely to have come from a non-intentional bias than by chance, because a non-intentional bias can go in any direction, thus making the appearance of life no more likely than anything else.
To avoid this error, the teleological alternative "would have to be restrictive in what it makes likely, but without depending on intentions or motives." And the particular goals--the particular higher forms of organization in the world--would probably have more value, which is why they would qualify as telos (ultimate aims). In other words, the laws of nature are "biased toward the marvellous." But this means that some natural laws operate over periods of time throughout history, unlike the laws of physics, which are assumed to be universal over time and space (a scientific mafia no-no).
Natural teleology requires two things: (1) "that the nonteleological and timeless laws of physics … are not fully deterministic. Given the physical state of the universe at any moment, the laws of physics would have to leave open a range of alternative successor states, presumably with a probability distribution over them." (2) Some possible futures will be more eligible than others, namely the ones that lead to more complex systems. "Teleological laws would assign higher probability to steps on paths in state space that have a higher 'velocity' toward certain outcomes." These intermediate stages don't necessarily have more intrinsic value than others, but are preferred by virtue of their relation to the future goal.
4.7
The alternatives leave much wanting, e.g., the causal historical version is too accidental, and the theistic historical version (divine intervention in creating life and perhaps guiding natural selection) "pushes teleology outside of the natural order." Just like airplanes, "the laws of nature entail their possibility, but they do not explain their actuality." Nagel prefers "an immanent, natural explanation … congruent with [his] atheism."
4.1
Even though the most primitive forms of sensory consciousness (subjective experience) pose a problem, the human faculties of "thought, reasoning, and evaluation" pose an even bigger one. They allow humans to "transcend the perspective of the immediate life-world given to us by our senses and instincts, and to explore the larger objective reality of nature and value." Nagel assumes such faculties rely on consciousness (e.g., only a conscious being can reason). Our very capacity to "transcend subjectivity and to discover what is objectively the case" is what creates the problem.
We naturally see ourselves as able to form true beliefs about the world, logic, maths, the right thing to do. Even if we acknowledge that they're not infallible, our mental faculties can still give us knowledge. And the way we acquire that knowledge is with certain ways of thinking (norms of thought). We know that there is a correct answer to "3+5=" and that an apple is not an orange. When we come to such conclusions, we are following norms of thought, responding to values and reasons that we apprehend. In other words, the world seems actually real, and correct conclusions seem true. Either this is all an illusion (nothing is true, 3+5 only seems to equal 8) or we have to conceive of how this came to be--how we are able to think beyond the starting points of mere sensation, perception, and emotion.
Evolution may be able to explain these starting points (however difficult this may be, but for the sake of argument let's take it as given and assume we can explain the origin of consciousness)--simply as habits that help us survive, with some sufficient level of accuracy. Animals can survive based on this "world of appearances" (eat food, avoid predators, etc.) but without any idea of a more objective reality. The ability to arrive at truth beyond the raw data we get from our senses, "or even to think about it, requires explanation." Language--"a system of concepts that enables us to understand reality"--is part of this problem. (1) Is it likely that natural selection should select for abilities to discover truth with reason, extending "vastly beyond the initial appearances"--theoretical pursuits that were unimaginable in the prehistoric past? (2) How can reason be understood naturalistically?
4.2
If there is no real 'reality,' there's no problem. "The 'worlds' in question are all just human construction"--including laws of physics and chemistry, logic, ethics. (We would still have to explain their internal coherence, however.) This is easier done for morality than science. Morals can easily be seen as dependent on subjective or social factors, but it seems extreme to abandon all realism--we'd end up having to abandon evolutionary theory along with everything else.
So, accepting realism, evolutionary theory would have to explain the success of our cognition. How did we become adapted for "true theories about a law-governed natural order that there was no adaptive need to understand earlier"? In the wild, it's adaptive to generalize from experience and let experience confirm or disconfirm those generalizations. This disposes organisms to "maintain logical consistency in belief." It's also adaptive to correct one's own perceptions with those of others, thus disposing organisms to recognize other minds. Language would greatly expand these abilities, so we can share knowledge, bounce ideas off each other, decide based on their consistency. Complex scientific theories are mere extensions of this ability to learn from experience--"our own and that of others." It's still difficult to account for language (or "the capacity for nonperceptual representation through language, resulting in the ability to grasp logically complex abstract structures"), but perhaps not impossible.
Even accepting moral realism (the objective existence of moral truths), evolutionary theory might be able to account for our ability to recognize moral truth. Innate desires and aversions would dispose organisms (along with avoidance of inconsistency) to a larger domain of practical reason, values based on principles. Organisms would generalize to future experiences, identifying those objective values by use of reason, even if they are not innate, like the laws of physics. So, the initial capacities of both (morals and reality-detection) may be adaptive, but allow us to transcend them independent of whether or not they enhance of survival fitness. Nagel finds this too far-fetched: the idea that genetic variations and mutations should account for "phenomenology, desire and aversion, awareness of other minds, symbolic representations, and logical consistency, all having essential roles in the production of behavior."
4.3
Assuming evolution can account for consciousness, compare our attitude toward our reasoning to that of our perception and instincts. With vision, we know it responds to stimuli that were important to our ancestors' survival (e.g., fast-flying objects, snakes, etc.). We know we can rely on our vision for this, but also that it can give "misleading, selective, or distorted" information. Same with our intuition about probabilities and some value judgments (e.g., for revenge). "We may come to understand those intuitions as rough but useful unreflective responses shaped by natural selection to a fitness-enhancing form in the circumstances in which our forebears lived and died." They sometimes need correction or inhibition. In other words, we're observing parts of ourselves in a detached way, with a part of ourselves that we DON'T observe in a detached way, e.g. probability calculations, moral reasoning, etc. We justify our conclusions not based on the authority of biology (or even by culture), but of systematic reasons. Biology gave us the ability to judge distance, but we can also measure that distance (and correct or refine our initial guess); biology (or culture) may incite us to avenge the death of a loved one, but we can also check our feelings to confirm or deny the guilt of the accused.
We immediately rely on both our vision and reason. We see a tree and know it's a tree; we come to a logical conclusion and know it's true. With vision, even though we can second-guess ourselves, we are reasonably justified in trusting our sight, because evolution has shaped it to be more or less accurate. But with reason, we grasp the truth directly. We can't pull back and reconfirm it based on the reliability that our thought processes are correct, because evolution shaped them to be more or less accurate. If we could, it wouldn't be logic at all--logic can't be true with such qualifications or doubts. So if evolution tries to account for reason, it can't do so without presupposing reason's validity in the first place. Eventually, we have to come to something "without which the evolutionary understanding would not be possible": reason itself. Biology can't explain how we come to conclusions that are not biologically based.
Evolutionary theory can explain why we come to more or less accurate conclusions about the world, through inheritance of the necessary innate dispositions, "but if I am right to think that we can't regard [our capacities] merely as further instinctive dispositions, some other explanation is needed of what these capacities are." Reason can't be seen just as an extension of mere consciousness. "Reason can take us beyond the appearances because it has completely general validity, rather than mere local utility" (which is all that biology might be able to account for). It can't be confirmed or disconfirmed by any external view of itself (Descartes' insight).
4.4
So, what is the faculty that allows us to "escape the world of appearance … into the world of objective reality," and how can biology make sense of that faculty? Sense perception connects us with reality indirectly (and passively); reason connects us with the truth directly (and actively). When I see a tree, it's more accurate to say that my visual system passively becomes aware of it (and that helps me to survive in the world). But when I "see" a contradiction in my beliefs (e.g., I'm driving south and the sun rises to my right), I grasp this truth directly. We don't reject the contradiction because of some "logical phobias and instincts," but simply because "we see that it is impossible, and we accept a logical entailment just because we see that it is necessarily true."
"In ordinary perception, we are like mechanisms governed by a (roughly) truth-preserving algorithm. But when we reason, we are like a mechanism that can see that the algorithm it follows is truth-preserving." "We have to start by regarding our pre-reflective impressions as a partial and perspectival view of the world, but we are then able to use reason and imagination to construct candidates for a larger conception that can contain and account for that part. … This process is highly fallible, but it could not even be attempted without this hard core of self-evidence, on which all less certain reasoning depends." So, we see a tree with our vision (an aspect of our base, sensory consciousness), but we see that it is fake (e.g., it has leaves in winter) with our reason. To understand human reason in the natural order, we have to explain this: "the conscious control of belief and conduct in response to the awareness of reasons--the avoidance of inconsistency, the subsumption of particular cases under general principles, the confirmation or disconfirmation of general principles by particular observations, and so forth." (This can't be a real tree because leaves fall off in winter.) "This is what is to allow oneself to be guided by the objective truth, rather than just by one's impressions."
Like consciousness seems to be a development of biology, reason seems to be a development of consciousness. "The great cognitive shift is an expansion of consciousness from the perspectival form contained in the lives of particular creatures to an objective, world-encompassing form that exists both individually and intersubjectively. It was originally a biological evolutionary process, and in our species it has become a collective cultural process as well. Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself."
4.5
"This, then, is what a theory of everything has to explain: not only the emergence from a lifeless universe of reproducing organisms and their development by evolution to greater and greater functional complexity; not only the consciousness of some of those organisms and its central role in their lives; but also the development of consciousness into an instrument of transcendence that can grasp objective reality and objective value."
The existence of reason implies certain things. First, objective, mind-independent truths; factual truths about the world (e.g., scientific laws); eternal and necessary truths (e.g., logic and maths); evaluative and moral truths. Second, the ability to collectively come to beliefs about these truths (though not infallibly). Third, those beliefs can influence what we do. Fourth, these mental processes are inseparable from biological processes.
Something about the cosmos must explain how such beings came to be--some possibilities "latent in the nature of things" that make it not just an accident. Again, we need constitutive and historical explanations. But a reductive account (i.e., protomental bits) of reason is even more difficult to imagine than that of consciousness (try to imagine "mini-rationality"). And the 'mind as computer' metaphor ignores content, action, and understanding. An emergent account seems more likely, where reason is an irreducible faculty of a conscious mind.
For the historical question, again, it would have to explain why exactly that form of reason appeared in complex beings, unless we're willing to accept that reason was a fluke
4.6
We shouldn't assume that a theory that can't explain the later states (i.e., development of reason) can account for the earlier stages. A teleological explanation, on the other hand, makes sense, as it's natural "to speculate that some tendencies in this direction [development of reason] have been at work all along."
Roger White argues that the reason scientists are so busy searching for a materialistic account of evolution that isn't just random is probably because life really looks like a product of intentional design. And because intentional design is 'unscientific,' they conclude that there MUST be a rational physical explanation, something that makes life likely and not just chance. But, their logic is bad. The fact that an intentional account seems better able explain how life arose, possibly ruling out chance, does NOT mean that a non-intentional account is at all likely. According to White, life is no more likely to have come from a non-intentional bias than by chance, because a non-intentional bias can go in any direction, thus making the appearance of life no more likely than anything else.
To avoid this error, the teleological alternative "would have to be restrictive in what it makes likely, but without depending on intentions or motives." And the particular goals--the particular higher forms of organization in the world--would probably have more value, which is why they would qualify as telos (ultimate aims). In other words, the laws of nature are "biased toward the marvellous." But this means that some natural laws operate over periods of time throughout history, unlike the laws of physics, which are assumed to be universal over time and space (a scientific mafia no-no).
Natural teleology requires two things: (1) "that the nonteleological and timeless laws of physics … are not fully deterministic. Given the physical state of the universe at any moment, the laws of physics would have to leave open a range of alternative successor states, presumably with a probability distribution over them." (2) Some possible futures will be more eligible than others, namely the ones that lead to more complex systems. "Teleological laws would assign higher probability to steps on paths in state space that have a higher 'velocity' toward certain outcomes." These intermediate stages don't necessarily have more intrinsic value than others, but are preferred by virtue of their relation to the future goal.
4.7
The alternatives leave much wanting, e.g., the causal historical version is too accidental, and the theistic historical version (divine intervention in creating life and perhaps guiding natural selection) "pushes teleology outside of the natural order." Just like airplanes, "the laws of nature entail their possibility, but they do not explain their actuality." Nagel prefers "an immanent, natural explanation … congruent with [his] atheism."
1peacelover
Jedi Master
As usual, Thank you for posting this very thought provoking information.
Would these signals include thinking about someone and they call you or you "bump" into them in your travels? How about your 1st mind pointing something out to you and when you don't follow it, you get mad because you were given other direction? Or, saying something out of the blue and taking the words right out of another's mouth? The signals are there and it is my belief that nature and consciousness play a bigger part in human affairs than we know.
Laura said:
Would these signals include thinking about someone and they call you or you "bump" into them in your travels? How about your 1st mind pointing something out to you and when you don't follow it, you get mad because you were given other direction? Or, saying something out of the blue and taking the words right out of another's mouth? The signals are there and it is my belief that nature and consciousness play a bigger part in human affairs than we know.
Thank you very much, Approaching Infinity, for the enormous amount of work you are doing. 
John G
The Living Force
Laura said:
Yeah for physics the geometry would be something associated with Lie Algebras derived from Clifford Algebras and from an above the Planck energy view (for Tony Smith) there actually is just Clifford Algebra no Lie Algebra (or its associated geometry). It's kind of just eternal numbers most fundamentally but then there's why and how are there numbers out there and how do numbers result in/match up to all that is?.
Buddy
The Living Force
Bluelamp said:
Another possibility: The 'data' of 'external' quanta or quanta itself are equivalent to "visual words" to the inputs of a human biological system. Visual words are elements of a "primal sketch" for the very low level processors of the nervous system in a data-driven bottom-up view of information processing. The "primal sketch" serve as constituent parts of a scaffolding for what eventually becomes higher level 'information' as processing continues up to the threshold of consciousness.
At the threshold, mind can be thought of like a duality consisting of part as a self-organizing network (SON) that can organize and make sense of the chaos of dots in a stereo-gram image (no conscious effort needed other than to stay out of the way while just looking or staring until the picture appears), and a part that can be consciously controlled and consequently used or misused by the individual human.
Aside: I've often thought these visual words of the primal sketch relate to the biblical story of the basic "naming of things" done by Adam in the garden of Eden.
The above mix of thoughts are partly inspired by John P. Frisby's Seeing - Illusion, Brain and Mind. I've been wondering if Nagel has read that one.
psychegram
The Living Force
Thank you for keeping this up, AI! This is quite fascinating reading ... and the copy at my local university library is checked out already :P
1peacelover said:
I think you may have gone astray here and missed my point about the environment. While it is probably true that people who are able to "pick up signals" of some sort from family, friends and associates may have the "right stuff" for reading the environment, many, if not most, of them tend to have such an extremely narrow focus that such talents are made useless in the larger scheme of things.