Identity (Identity)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, August 25, 2009, 14:39 (5351 days ago) @ dhw

dhw,
> 
> First, though, another word about animals. There was a sad photograph in this week's Sunday Times, and the caption reads: "Two-year-old orphan Jumaane nudges the face of his dead mother in an attempt to bring her back to life. Yoki, who at 19 was not elderly for an elephant, died on Thursday at the Nyiregyhaza animal park in Hungary, apparently from a tumour in her spleen. Keepers say that since his mother's death, Jumaane has been inconsolable, wandering around aimlessly and weeping."
> 
> There is nothing unusual in this. Elephants not only grieve, but they even stand and contemplate places of death when they return years later. Conversely, they can also celebrate wildly, trumpeting, dancing, and peeing with excitement. If we have common descendants, we should not be surprised that we have common characteristics (which may include the peeing!), and these are not confined to the body. Thus far, the theory of evolution fits together well.
> - Of all the animals worthy of worship by man in his short history, elephants to me have always seemed to be highly esteemed for exactly the reasons you state. (Again, I betray my nym, however.) - > David, however, has been asking how evolution could have produced various extraordinary symbiotic relationships and methods of entrapment. I would like to extend his question to emotions, consciousness, memory, etc. The "free will" that you are so concerned with, Matt, is another of these faculties ... the result of enhanced consciousness. Like you, I think that we have it, but that we are also greatly influenced by factors (some internal) beyond our conscious control. This leads to two related questions: 
> 1) Do we believe that all of these astonishingly complex faculties are produced solely by physical cells within the cerebral cortex? 2) If so, do we believe that the relevant sections of the brain ... not to mention the nervous system to which it is connected ... arose initially out of random mutations, i.e. blind chance (though surviving and improving through natural selection)? 
> 
> If the answer to 1) is yes, then doesn't it mean that we are indeed, as you put it, "slaves to atoms"? If the answer is no, what else is there in us (and, in less developed form, presumably also in other animals) that can produce phenomena such as consciousness, emotion, memory, reason?
> 
> If the answer to 2) is yes, so be it. But the greater the complexity, even allowing for millions of years of evolution, the more faith we have to have in chance, which brought about those initial random mutations. - As much as I bring up Nietzsche, I feel like a parrot, but some of my views were similar to his before I took up the study. This is one of them. - There are some questions that do not have a binary answer. I really wish I could provide even a belief, but with how little wwe actually know in this area, I would feel I'd be putting a lie to my lips by offering even a belief. I mentioned to David, that some of what he was discussing reinvented the "chicken and egg" paradox. - We don't know how this issue arrived, and really at this point in his investigation--it's full of salient and intriguing observations, but my "scientific conservatism" won't allow me to voice a judgment due to the lack of knowledge. I feel you and I become more kin every day, lol. - Clearly, at one time our ancestors did not have the capacity for the kind of thought we have today. They were slaves to their environment, reacting, and never acting. Not until propositional language did human consciousness begin to arise from the murk of the world, giving us agriculture and then everything else. - What I don't understand is why David seems convinced that showing that evolution can happen in short time frames somehow makes a designer more palatable. I also don't see why beautiful and complex animal relationships also do this: symbiosis is explained adequately by selection. Maybe I'm just enough of a materialist that I'm missing an incredible subtlety here, but it just isn't enough to justify the belief in a creator. Just as we don't need to explain the origin of life to use evolution, we don't need to explain how clownfish and anemone became "friends." It doesn't nullify common descent or genetic transmission.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"