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Offlinemaddad
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Re: Alive but not living? [Re: fiddle]
    #19198028 - 11/27/13 07:45 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

fiddle said:
Quote:

maddad said:
It didn't just come out of nowhere.




You don't know that. But then again, neither do I.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence




If you want to base your opinion on that then I would say that we aren't conscious either. Just chemicals reacting to other chemicals, nothing more. But then again how can we prove we aren't?


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Invisible4HO-DMT
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Re: Alive but not living? [Re: maddad]
    #19198039 - 11/27/13 07:47 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

I'm playing a mental game of deduction, so bear with me.  Is it true that: where there is mass, there is energy, and where there is energy, mass can be found?  These are accepted as truths under the principals of conservation of mass and energy.  In a similar fashion, where there is motion (momentum), mass and energy also reside. This falls under the principal of conservation of momentum. There are other conservation principals as well.

So..., here is where I start to philos: Is it true that: where life is found, energy and mass are also found? Is the converse true: where energy and mass are found, is there also life? And furthermore, is consciousness correlated with life?

I don't claim to know the answer to these questions, but I like to ponder them.  I'm working out a physical model that involves conservation of life, and conservation of consciousness.  It is slow working though as I wouldn't know the first place to look for funding for this type of theory.

I'm not saying that anybody is wrong in this thread, just putting my ideas out there. Interpret as you will.


Edited by 4HO-DMT (11/27/13 07:50 PM)


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Invisiblefiddle
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Re: Alive but not living? [Re: 4HO-DMT]
    #19198068 - 11/27/13 07:57 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

The hard part is defining these terms. People have been debating definitions of life and consciousness for hundreds of years and have come no closer to a definition that is accurate and widely applicable. Basically, what it comes down to is whether or not there is some system by which life and consciousness can be accurately broken down and described. If such a system exists it may be used to enhance existing definitions of life so as to make them more accurate. If such a system does not exist then defining life and consciousness will essentially be a personal affair. That is, your definition will be no more correct than my own, as it is specific to you, just as my own would be specific to me.

Fun stuff to think about, nevertheless.


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Offlinemaddad
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Re: Alive but not living? [Re: fiddle]
    #19198114 - 11/27/13 08:10 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Indeed it is, thank you all for participating!


--------------------
I live in an aura of hope because I live in a twilight world of my own self-generated, cannabinated fantasy, and I forget that not everyone is so fortunate. - Terence McKenna


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Invisible4HO-DMT
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Re: Alive but not living? [Re: fiddle]
    #19198167 - 11/27/13 08:23 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

That is a good point. It is hard to pin down a definition that is widely accepted, especially with consciousness. At least with life, it is easy to deduce that it has a starting point and an end point in time.  What happens before or after those points in time is debatable.  But, in the sense that all mammals slide into the world at one time and zip back out at a later time, life is finite in time.  What happens at these two points is the bazillion dollar question, right? 

I think that, for these two variables to be consistent with other observable physical quantities, they must be conserved.  Thus, life must transfer to another form at birth and death for conservation.  For instance, when life leaves a body, the temperature of the body cools to the temperature of the environment. This is a transfer of energy in the form of heat, and this energy is conserved.  So, if we think about life as some form of energy, then it fits into the conservation of energy principal. 

Quote:

fiddle said:
Fun stuff to think about, nevertheless.




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Offlineshivas.wisdom
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Re: Alive but not living? [Re: 4HO-DMT]
    #19198198 - 11/27/13 08:30 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

haha, surprise surprise, another conversation on the nature of consciousness has ended in "but I guess we don't really know either way"


Quote:

Fun stuff to think about, nevertheless.




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Invisible4HO-DMT
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Re: Alive but not living? [Re: shivas.wisdom]
    #19198252 - 11/27/13 08:47 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

shivas.wisdom said:
To be honest, I don't believe that the scientific community has even reached a consensus on how to define consciousness, let alone how such a thing arises from the physical human body. Until we can understand how biological systems give rise to consciousness, we aren't really in a position to pass judgement on whether non-biological systems can be conscious as well.





This statement is so true and provides a barrier to knowledge about spirituality.  But, humans are inquisitive and most will think about it for most of their lives.


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Offlinemaddad
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Re: Alive but not living? [Re: 4HO-DMT]
    #19198470 - 11/27/13 09:52 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

physicist said:
Quote:

shivas.wisdom said:
To be honest, I don't believe that the scientific community has even reached a consensus on how to define consciousness, let alone how such a thing arises from the physical human body. Until we can understand how biological systems give rise to consciousness, we aren't really in a position to pass judgement on whether non-biological systems can be conscious as well.





This statement is so true and provides a barrier to knowledge about spirituality.  But, humans are inquisitive and most will think about it for most of their lives.




I think the first step would be to adequately differentiate consciousness from intelligence. Because the two are fundamentally different. Let us for a moment bring robots or A.I. into the picture. Could robots ever be conscious? And I think if you answer yes to that question then the answer to the original question has to be yes as well. Intellegence, seems to be a disembodied source of knowledge. An ambiguous sort of understanding, if you will. Because computers are not conscious, but they have intelligence. Yet computers can process and adapt infinitely faster than we. And could one day indeed be very conscious. It seems that plants have this sort of intelligence as well, albeit of a fundamentally different order. One cannot deny the intelligence in DNA.

Fruit was evolved by plants to be eaten by animals. So that the seeds would be carried somewhere else and then fertilized and grow. Because at the end of the day life is about surviving and multiplying right? So it takes a certain amount of conscious action somewhere in there for that to happen. Because if you mean to tell me that this universe, our world and everything on it is just a bunch of random happenings that all worked out just right to get us to this point, then I don't think there is anything you couldn't believe. It seems to me that intelligence would have to be the building block, so to speak, for consciousness. But then at what point do you make that distinction?


--------------------
I live in an aura of hope because I live in a twilight world of my own self-generated, cannabinated fantasy, and I forget that not everyone is so fortunate. - Terence McKenna


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OfflineViveka
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Re: Alive but not living? [Re: maddad]
    #19198551 - 11/27/13 10:17 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

Fruit was evolved by plants to be eaten by animals.




Fruit was evolved by animals to be produced by plants. I think that's a more accurate semantic as it pertains to causality.


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Offlineshivas.wisdom
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Re: Alive but not living? [Re: Viveka]
    #19198632 - 11/27/13 10:38 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

Viveka said:
Quote:

Fruit was evolved by plants to be eaten by animals.




Fruit was evolved by animals to be produced by plants. I think that's a more accurate semantic as it pertains to causality.



Or even better,
plants that experienced a random mutation(s) which allowed them to grow seed bearing fruit were more successful at reproducing than similar plants that did not produce fruit, due to animals eating the fruit and spreading the seed.

As I understand it, evolution is not a conscious process, and neither plant nor animal can be said to have 'evolved' fruit.


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OfflineViveka
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Re: Alive but not living? [Re: shivas.wisdom]
    #19198692 - 11/27/13 10:58 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Well that was the point of my semantic reversal. To emphasize that it is not organisms that are actively doing something in the evolutionary process. Rather the interaction of elements in the environment over time leads to a certain fruition...

Also, in the case of humans, it can be said that the animal 'evolved' fruit. So it is a conscious process at certain stages.


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Offlineshivas.wisdom
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Re: Alive but not living? [Re: Viveka]
    #19198798 - 11/27/13 11:30 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

Viveka said:
Also, in the case of humans, it can be said that the animal 'evolved' fruit. So it is a conscious process at certain stages.



I see what you are getting at.

I should have used the term 'natural selection', rather than 'evolution' when referring to it not being a conscious process.

You are speaking of artificial selection, which I agree, involves a process of conscious selection, but remains a mechanism of evolution.

I still feel it would be wrong to say that humans 'evolved' fruit though. The initial mechanism would be mutation, a random process, followed by a period of natural selection (most likely), before artificial selection on the part of humans would begin.

We don't cause the fruit to evolve--we merely select for pre-existing beneficial traits and increase their chance of being passed down to future generations--which, although it can be said to effect the evolutionary process, is not the entire evolutionary process in itself.


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Offlineshivas.wisdom
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Re: Alive but not living? [Re: shivas.wisdom]
    #19198811 - 11/27/13 11:35 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Perhaps in the case of genetic manipulation, humans can be said to directly and consciously cause something to evolve--thus the 'playing god' tag.


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Offlinemaddad
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Re: Alive but not living? [Re: Viveka]
    #19198826 - 11/27/13 11:42 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

I don't care for natural selection, genetic mutation is too sloppy of an idea for me to actually consider serious. Because mutations usually arise from the diet animals consume. It seems to me that certain plants and animals evolve symbiotically. Which would mean there would have to be a consciousness bridged between them. Each benefits from the relationship, and they depend on each other. This is the case for many plant-insect relationships, bees specifically. Plant mutations happen far less often than animal mutations, simply because of the diet factor. Which makes it hard for me to believe that there is no conscious act in there somewhere on the plants part.


--------------------
I live in an aura of hope because I live in a twilight world of my own self-generated, cannabinated fantasy, and I forget that not everyone is so fortunate. - Terence McKenna


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OfflineViveka
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Re: Alive but not living? [Re: maddad]
    #19199234 - 11/28/13 03:09 AM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Yea, beneficial, random mutation does seem a bit far fetched, even in the face of unfathomably long periods of time.

Consider Lamarck who before Darwin posited that traits acquired within a single generation could be passed to offspring. He was thoroughly condemned for it once Darwin and the ideas that sill hold today were embraced.

The fact is that Lamarck was actually technically correct, even within the context of the natural selection dogma. There is extrachromosonal genetic material that can affect the organism's inheritable gene expression, viRNA being the cleanest example. (See roundworms and single-generation inherited immunity for one example. Here is another example.)

The natural selection dogma doesn't really cut it. Consider what we're understanding about cell membrane biology and the way environmental information affects receptor and effector sites to change the function of the cell. So we're still trying to figure out even the fundamentals. We shouldn't take any of the dogma too literally.


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