"Apparently" you guys never intend to get "real" about the OP, so bye-bye. :flowers:

kenneth:

Is the evolutionary process that has, as is your position, led to the appearance of human minds purely accidental in nature?

kenneth:

Is the evolutionary process that has, as is your position, led to the appearance of human minds purely accidental in nature?

Aha. So is natural selection, as Jacques Monod insisted, purely the outcome of chance and necessity? And, if so, how can this be reconciled with the concept of 'lawfulness'? Are all our faculties purely the outcome of adaptive necessity? These are the kinds of questions I think could be considered.

Aha. So is natural selection, as Jacques Monod insisted, purely the outcome of chance and necessity? And, if so, how can this be reconciled with the concept of 'lawfulness'? Are all our faculties purely the outcome of adaptive necessity? These are the kinds of questions I think could be considered.

Natural selection does not require that anything survives. If the world changed drastically, nothing currently existing may be able to be "naturally selected".

I see competition between species evolving into competition inside of species. Mating rituals and fights over a mate serve as a built in selection pressure, what an amazing thing! From the competition for resources, to competition between species, to competition within species... it is quite a thing to grasp, and no wonder it is so hard to consider the result of mere chance and "adaptive necessity".

But (not to embarrass you) what about the Logos? Did you forget the Logos?

Drats I did forget the Logos... do you have any handy? Maybe a hint of lime to go with it?

No. There are, no doubt laws of nature according to which it operates. Like natural selection.

Are these 'laws' a mode of organism themselves or are they wholly void of life?

If they are void, then human minds are also void, since they are the causes of human minds.


For, if the natural order or 'laws' are unrelated and objective then they would remain in a sense, unintelligible. Unless, of course, human minds themselves are also void of 'intelligence' as we currently understand it.

I mean that the criteria for intelligibility requires relatedness between the 'laws' and human minds. So, if the 'laws' are sheerly objective and unmediated, then human minds are types of physical objects. Then in that case, we must reevaluate our ideas of human intelligence to fit them in such an objective scheme.

Are these 'laws' a mode of organism themselves or are they wholly void of life?

If they are void, then human minds are also void, since they are the causes of human minds.


For, if the natural order or 'laws' are unrelated and objective then they would remain in a sense, unintelligible. Unless, of course, human minds themselves are also void of 'intelligence' as we currently understand it.

I mean that the criteria for intelligibility requires relatedness between the 'laws' and human minds. So, if the 'laws' are sheerly objective and unmediated, then human minds are types of physical objects. Then in that case, we must reevaluate our ideas of human intelligence to fit them in such an objective scheme.

I think science is way ahead of you here. There are many good arguments that human intelligence is the result of physical causes. A lot of simple ones too. One being that we start as little fetuses with no brains at all. Everything that is required for us to be conscious would seem to be shown step by step through other species and embryology. We certainly do not understand it all, but I see no real line between a conscious thing and a non-conscious thing... we place a line there because it is what distinguishes us from other animals, but what is to stop them from evolving consciousness?

"we are a part of the whole of nature, whose order we follow." Spinoza.

Never forget the Logos.

"we are a part of the whole of nature, whose order we follow." Spinoza.

How can a scientific law have life? We understand Galileo's law of falling bodies. 1/2gt2. What is not intelligible about it?

kenneth:

Is the evolutionary process that has, as is your position, led to the appearance of human minds purely accidental in nature?

I would think the important question to be what would lead us to think otherwise?

You changed the subject. I asked you whether or not evolution leading up to human minds was accidental and you said that it was not accidental. You then said that there are 'laws' of nature. I am asking you for an account of human minds. How do you account for the "laws of nature" (your words)? There is an opposition between "laws" that lead to human minds on the one hand and pure accident on the other hand.

Why don't you be more honest and just retract your statement about 'laws of nature' instead of changing the subject? You are avoiding rational discourse. I wonder why?

6.362 What can be described can happen too: and what the law of
causality is meant to exclude cannot even be described.


6.363 The procedure of induction consists in accepting as true the
simplest law that can be reconciled with our experiences.


6.3631 This procedure, however, has no logical justification but only a
psychological one. It is clear that there are no grounds for believing
that the simplest eventuality will in fact be realized.


6.36311 It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this
means that we do not know whether it will rise.


6.37 There is no compulsion making one thing happen because another has
happened. The only necessity that exists is logical necessity.


6.371 The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the
illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of
natural phenomena.


6.372 Thus people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as
something inviolable, just as God and Fate were treated in past ages.
And in fact both are right and both wrong: though the view of the
ancients is clearer in so far as they have a clear and acknowledged
terminus, while the modern system tries to make it look as if everything
were explained.

"we are a part of the whole of nature, whose order we follow." Spinoza.