Dawkins' Atheist Bus

[poetix]

Yes, but what does this if accepted tell us about the inherent or latent properties of the universe?

Would there be a problem if the answer was "nothing"? What sort of problem would it be?

 

[IdleRich]

"Regarding the question of magic (and you know Arthur C. Clarke's aphorism about technology and magic), can a functional distinction really be made between an unpredictable emergent high order phenomenon and a miracle or a divine act?"

Again down to this question. I think it is conceivable that there could be a functional distinction drawn between an unpredictable emergent high order function and a divine act.

 

[waffle]

Asks a bunch of pixels on a computer screen.

They've replied with a "No!" in spite of their language skills, as they are unable to instantiate anything.

Why capitalize purpose? It isn't magic; I'm not interested in talking about it as if it is.

It is that you appear to be (re)defining it in a way that both attempts to avoid teleology while also confirming it.

 

[IdleRich]

Forgot to say

"Regarding the question of magic (and you know Arthur C. Clarke's aphorism about technology and magic)"

I always took this to implicitly mean it looks like magic to those who can't understand it (eg our phones would appear magic to a man from the middle ages). Presumably to those who use it and understand it it wouldn't seem like magic at all.

 

[jambo]

Would there be a problem if the answer was "nothing"? What sort of problem would it be?

Not a case of problems. I think at the very least accepting that agency can arise as an emergent property would tell us that the universe is inherently or latently capable of supporting the emergence of a property such as agency*, or that some kind of agency was always present I don't think that's nothing, I think it's very interesting.

* Of course there are other apparent emergent phenomena in nature, but isn't agency on another order in that it becomes a self reflexive force in the universe?

 

[jambo]

I always took this to implicitly mean it looks like magic to those who can't understand it (eg our phones would appear magic to a man from the middle ages). Presumably to those who use it and understand it it wouldn't seem like magic at all.

Yes, it's phenomenologically the same. He's saying that magic is the name for something that happens by means you don't understand or don't understand yet.

So that parallels with making a distinction between agency or awareness emerging spontaneously into the universe and a miracle or a divine act, they are ideas describing the same event divided by snobbery and dogma. Of course we might prefer to use the modern scientific framework but I think it's useful to see the equivalence.

 

[poetix]

They've replied with a "No!" in spite of their language skills, as they are unable to instantiate anything.

They don't have to; they just have to govern a process that instantiates them; for example, someone reading what's on their computer screen.

 

[poetix]

I think at the very least accepting that agency can arise as an emergent property would tell us that the universe is inherently or latently capable of supporting the emergence of a property such as agency, or that some kind of agency was always present

What I'm getting at, I suppose, is that one wouldn't find it particularly interesting to speculate that the existence of pulsars meant that the universe was inherently or latently capable of supporting the existence of pulsars: the existence of pulsars tells us nothing very special about the universe, or nothing that couldn't be deduced from the existence of a whole lot of other things. Whereas it seems that you think the existence of agency does tell us something special about the universe, that could not be deduced from the existence of other things. Can you say why that is?

 

[IdleRich]

"Yes, it's phenomenologically the same. He's saying that magic is the name for something that happens by means you don't understand or don't understand yet."

Which includes things that you can conceivably understand and which will then cease to be magic. I thought that that was the opposite of what you were saying about the dawn of free-will. I thought you were speculating that we might never understand it in a way that made it cease to be magic.

 

[poetix]

Another question: what work might the word "higher" be doing in the expression "higher purpose"?

Compare: "nothing that happens happens to any purpose" (not obviously true), "nothing that happens happens to any higher purpose" (not obviously false).

 

[poetix]

I take it that the assumption that "purpose" depends on "higher purpose" is crypto-theological, a variant of "life without God has no meaning".

 

[josef k.]

Joseph K, it's not "the system" that tells you to enjoy things, it's the Superego.

But something has to generate and sustain this jouissance-thirsty Superego, and the claim on the table here is that it is the consumer society...

 

[waffle]

They don't have to; they just have to govern a process that instantiates them; for example, someone reading what's on their computer screen.

That's a very good insight, yes, a cyber-virtual version (instantiation via computer pixel mapping on to actual human neural firings) of the equivalent way that a virus can lie dormant for long periods and then instantiate 'itself' when the surrounding material environment delivers up a suitable host in which it can replicate. [You're equating an abstract mapping with a 'representation'', whereas I meant by representation that it is a misleading term, something other than what it is].

 

[jambo]

I thought you were speculating that we might never understand it in a way that made it cease to be magic.

No, that's really outside of the scope of anything I've been speaking on here. I do think that a belief in emergence without precedent and not founded on preconditions might be equivalent to a belief in miracles though.

 

[Mr. Tea]

That is the same as saying it can't come into existence and it never existed.

Not necessarily, all it's saying is that anything that has evolved *in* the universe cannot have true agency: agency could still exist within the universe if it were a property of a God which exists to some extent independently of the universe or a Spinozian radical immanence which somehow *is* the universe. Neither of which is a position I hold, of course.

 

[jambo]

What I'm getting at, I suppose, is that one wouldn't find it particularly interesting to speculate that the existence of pulsars meant that the universe was inherently or latently capable of supporting the existence of pulsars: the existence of pulsars tells us nothing very special about the universe, or nothing that couldn't be deduced from the existence of a whole lot of other things. Whereas it seems that you think the existence of agency does tell us something special about the universe, that could not be deduced from the existence of other things. Can you say why that is?

Well I'm thinking about the implications of that belief rather than what I believe. For instance if you believe it happened then you believe it could have happened and that the universe is capable of 'spontaneously' acquiring unpredictable attributes.

Would you say for instance that all phenomena are emergent in the same unpredictable sense of late arrival into a seemingly well developed universe?

I think that if you knew the beginning conditions of the universe and laws of the universe as we now understand them you could quite readily mathematically predict the subsequent appearance of pulsars. You might even be able to pedict self-replicating entities. You can't at present say the same about agency or awareness. Perhaps you might argue that this means that the model is inadequate but wouldn't the missing variables in themselves then be of interest?

 

[jambo]

Not necessarily, all it's saying is that anything that has evolved *in* the universe cannot have true agency: agency could still exist within the universe if it were a property of a God which exists to some extent independently of the universe or a Spinozian radical immanence which somehow *is* the universe. Neither of which is a position I hold, of course.

I think 'never' and 'existed' cover all eventualities quite well tbf. There's no specified limitation on which universes or outsides are covered and what constitutes existing.

But if this were an insurance policy perhaps we should be more careful as you suggest and make allowances for an agency that does not exist and never did.

If you accept that agency cannot come into being what are the other possibilities other than it never existed and it always existed?

I'm sure waffle will have a line on this but I don't think Spinoza's idea of a radical immanence strictly speaking allows for agency?

The idea of agency originating outside this universe is intriguing though.

 

[waffle]

I take it that the assumption that "purpose" depends on "higher purpose" is crypto-theological, a variant of "life without God has no meaning".

Dawkins uses both terms in the quote upthread, the purpose of evolution being gene replication, the higher purpose being humans' 'evolved brains': "Life without Dawkins has no meaning."

I'm still intrigued as to why you need purpose, rather than determinism, in your scheme, along with 'governing' rather than mapping.

 

[IdleRich]

In response to me saying this:

"I thought you were speculating that we might never understand it (that is the emergence of agency) in a way that made it cease to be magic."

You replied:

"No, that's really outside of the scope of anything I've been speaking on here."

So when you said this what did you mean?

"I suspect that when science comes up with a description of how agency/will (not simply intelligence) arises in the universe it will look a lot like a metaphysical or religious description just with rebranded metaphors"

You are saying that you have no opinion on whether science will understand the way agency has arisen (assuming it has) sufficiently to show to us that it is not magic, but even if it does then this arousal (for want of a better word) will still appear as a miracle? It will be a miracle but not necessarily magic - are you making some distinction between magic and miraculous that I'm not getting?

 

[IdleRich]

"Dawkins uses both terms in the quote upthread, the purpose of evolution being gene replication, the higher purpose being humans' 'evolved brains': "Life without Dawkins has no meaning.""

Once again, that's a complete distortion of what he said:

"If you read The Selfish Gene, you will find that the purpose of life certainly has NOTHING to do with the survival of the species. If anything, it is the passing on of genes (which is a very different matter), but in any case the language of purpose can mislead -- as it has misled you. Really there is NO purpose. It is simply that those genes that DO survive are the ones that we see, and whose manifestations we see, in the life that we see. That is all there is to it. There is no higher purpose to evolution. The only higher purposes in the universe are to be found in evolved brains, such as our own when we have a conscious purpose to achieve some goal. And our brains are so accustomed to this that they falsely -- as in your case -- ascribe purpose where it doesn't belong."

He says there is NO purpose to evolution.
He says that the ONLY higher purposes in the universe are to be found in human brains, not that human brains are the purpose of evolution.
What is the point of writing twenty pages of drivel based on a lie that everyone can see?