Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Felix]

Well that pun went over like a Led Zeppelin....

[Alias]

[-if Nature can be conscious without an agent having made it so
-then life can become conscious without an agent [Nature] having made it so. ]

You are reading me too literally, I never said that Nature made life conscious, I did say that intelligence is integral to Nature and this is reflected in Life. It's not a matter of one producing the other but of one being instrumental to the other, just as the acorn is the means for generating the oak tree - or vice versa, depending upon how you look at it.

So - life also produces Nature? And they're both intelligent? And they make each other conscious? So we don't need complexity to arise from simplicity, because Nature and Life complicate each other with a purpose. ?

It's hopeless. I'm lost.

[Felix]

"It's hopeless. I'm lost."

Hey, don't blame me for your confusion. It's not that complicated: consciousness or intelligent order is fundamental to the Universe, Nature, Life, etc.

[Thinking critical]

"It's hopeless. I'm lost."

Hey, don't blame me for your confusion. It's not that complicated: consciousness or intelligent order is fundamental to the Universe, Nature, Life, etc.

Except for 99% of the Universe where there is no complexity or consciousness. Intelligence is fundamental to beings who wish to make sense of the Universe, the Universe itself is guided by the laws of physics - gravity, electro magnetism, strong and weak nuclear force.

[Alias]

Hey, don't blame me for your confusion. It's not that complicated: consciousness or intelligent order is fundamental to the Universe, Nature, Life, etc.

The Universe, Life and Nature are all conscious and intelligent, and purposeful. None of them had this them became conscious, intelligent and purposeful first, to cause the other(s).
I'm not smart enough to understand how this works.

Can I at least ask what their purpose is?

[Alias]

Hey, don't blame me for your confusion. It's not that complicated: consciousness or intelligent order is fundamental to the Universe, Nature, Life, etc.

The Universe, Life and Nature are all conscious and intelligent, and purposeful. None of became conscious, intelligent and purposeful first, to cause the other(s).
I'm not smart enough to understand how this works.
(See? I can't even construct a sentence.)

Can I at least ask what their purpose is?

[ThomasHobbes]

It is a vestige of a more complex organ.

Yes - possibly a secondary stomach for storing and perhaps fermenting fibrous plant material. However, the caecum is so far down the digestive tract that no nutrient could be retrieved from its product, so it's more likely to be retaining mineral salts, perhaps water, and to prepare indigestible matter for painless excretion.
However, all primates and several other species also have an appendix, which would be a highly coincidental vestige for unrelated animals with different diets to have in common; so

It has evolved to a point of being completely unnecessary.

according to that cited article, it does have a use - presumably from quite a long way back in evolution - of storing needed bacteria, in case of gastrointestinal extinction events. That's what made it worth keeping. ..
I mean, that's why the individuals that had retained this vestigial organ survived severe dehydration and gut-purging epidemics.

People without appendixes survive dehydration and wTF "gut-purging epidemics'.

We can all have them removed with NO adverse effects, therefore they are completely unnecessary. It's not even relevant if they do something.
They are about as useful as nipple on men.

[ThomasHobbes]

Hey, don't blame me for your confusion. It's not that complicated: consciousness or intelligent order is fundamental to the Universe, Nature, Life, etc.

The Universe, Life and Nature are all conscious and intelligent, and purposeful. None of them had this them became conscious, intelligent and purposeful first, to cause the other(s).
I'm not smart enough to understand how this works.

Can I at least ask what their purpose is?

This statement "It's not that complicated: consciousness or intelligent order is fundamental to the Universe,", is absurdly logically and empirically false.
All evidence points to consciousness coming very late to the universe, and likely to be somewhat temporary, given the age of the universe.

[Alias]

People without appendixes survive dehydration and wTF "gut-purging epidemics'.

Dysentery, Salmonella, Typhoid, E. coli, cholera, clostridium and like that.
Now in countries with advanced medicine readily available, people without an appendix survive to reproduce.
Not so much, a few million years ago, when evolution favoured the ones with.
I'm not particularly concerned about the appendix, one way or the other. Just attempting to clarify recent findings why its retention is not an evolutionary mistake, after all.

[Belindi]

Thomas Hobbes wrote:

We can all have them removed with NO adverse effects, therefore they are completely unnecessary. It's not even relevant if they do something.
They are about as useful as nipple on men.

You believe that then.

[Felix]

Alias: Can I at least ask what their purpose is?

The purpose of what, the Universe/Nature/Life? Like everyone else I can only speculate, could be an endless number of them.

ThomasHobbes: All evidence points to consciousness coming very late to the universe, and likely to be somewhat temporary, given the age of the universe.

We don't know the age of the Universe. I presume you're referring to it's purported age based on the premise that it started with the "big bang." But there's no reason to believe the Universe began then, unless you believe that it suddenly burst into existence out of nowhere. In an eternal universe, temporal universes and temporal vehicles of consciousness will come and go, but the source of their existence is timeless.

Alias: Now in countries with advanced medicine readily available, people without an appendix survive to reproduce.

Not any more, modern medicine has been stymied by new strains of intestinal and other bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, such as c. diff.

[Thinking critical]

We don't know the age of the Universe. I presume you're referring to it's purported age based on the premise that it started with the "big bang." But there's no reason to believe the Universe began then, unless you believe that it suddenly burst into existence out of nowhere. In an eternal universe, temporal universes and temporal vehicles of consciousness will come and go, but the source of their existence is timeless.

I'm not sure who you're referring to by "we" in regards to the age of the Universe, however the excepted consensus by pretty much all cosmologists, Astro physicists and theoretical physicists is that the a Universe has a beginning and it's age is approximately 13.8 billion years old.
The BBT makes no such claim that the Universe suddenly burst into existence out of nowhere, this is a common misconception by lay folk, in fact the BBT makes no claims what so ever to the origin of the Universe.
However an eternal Universe does not match any observations from expansion or data from the CMB and contradicts the first and second law of thermodynamics.

[Karpel Tunnel]

What did you mean when you brought up the appendix above?

It is a vestige of a more complex organ.
It has evolved to a point of being completely unnecessary.

So you disagree with the scientists.

Here's another link:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... been-lost/

[Karpel Tunnel]

TH
And of course the original link I gave you countered your claim also. I wish you had read it and addressed it, instead of simply making explicit your incorrect claim that it counters and this latter link counters.

[Alias]

The purpose of what, the Universe/Nature/Life? Like everyone else I can only speculate, could be an endless number of them.

If you don't know what the purpose is, how do you identify purposeful action?
How do you know progress is being made toward and aim, or that there is one?