what are you?

[Hagakure]

do you see yourself as a soul in a shell like body?

an organism?

a machine whose program is set to act in certain ways?

i guess the bulk of my ideas fall under the neo-darwinism label. we are the product of millions of years of evolution. according to one book i recently read (though published in 1999) our personality is 50% genes 50% environment. our genes have been forged through random variation and natural selection, culture is created in a similar manner with a vast ecosystem of ideas that grow and die in popularity.

we are the creators but are at the same time the created.

we are puppets on strings but we pull the strings at the same time as they are loosened.

to relate this back to the AI debate in the "conciousness" thread, i think it is perfectly possible for us to create something that has been created through evolution by either copying the designs and placing them onto a computer or by setting up a system that sets up a random variation and selection for intelligence.

but lets not bring too much of the AI thread in here. what are you?

do you beleive in souls? are we humans some kind of chosen peoploe of some deity? what are your arguments for your beliefs and how do they stand up to arguments against your beliefs?

[reptyle]

creative self similarity to the power of infinity.

[shruman]

Organism.

"do you beleive in souls?" No LOL

"are we humans some kind of chosen peoploe of some deity?" No LOL

" what are your arguments for your beliefs and how do they stand up to arguments against your beliefs? " Evolution, I believe they stand up as well as any belief can. All other arguments seem very illogical to me.

[No_One]

I see myself as "Nothing", thats what I repeat in my head when I need to remind myself what I am.

I think we are consciousness separated from a greater consciousness to which we return when our physical dimensions cease functioning.

The physical plane is an anomoly and don't mean shit, the more you think it is the sicker you get from taking things so seroiusly.

When you reach this realisation you are put into battle with apathy, idle hands are the devils instruments.

Are you busy Living or busy Dying?

Sitting round all day in this meaningless place waiting to find meaning is time wasted and puts you on the wrong side of the entropy/atrophy battle.

I am all and everything and it's only when I do something or am driven to create/defend that my form changes, the logic I use to determine how to achieve the desired event i.e what is the right way to go about it etc. is based on the teachings of Zarathustra mainly.

The concept of the Daimon is another one I relate to a lot, it's like the driver of this body or wad of condensed energy I apparently own, it's the smallest thing I can break myself down to, I suppose the Daimon could be likened to Freud's concept of the libido - it wants to create, recreate, re-positive all the nagatives in the world to restore it to it's original neutrality.

I believe in Darwinism as an explanation of how life has changed form over the years but I don't think that the life "force" has changed or evolved at all, we've just tripped ourselves out trying to understand it. I think the more tangled up your mind gets trying to understand it the more other parts of your being suffer i.e. the condition of your physical body, condition of your "spirits".

I could keep dribbling on but that will do, anybody else think along these lines?

[-YT-]

Hmmm seems as men & women we have been instilled with awareness, as with animals and plants (altho some beg to differ there have been studies done with plants and human interaction with clear indications of plant response/reactions). As such we also percieve & interpret our daily world through whatever means one allies there reason to accepting into their particular view.

i wonder what would become of a man who's bodys cells became aware they were seperate reflections that are aware

[No_One]

i wonder what would become of a man who's bodys cells became aware they were seperate reflections that are aware

What if they already are and somewhere along the line that just decided it's better to let the more powerful awareness call the shots and they are just hitching a ride. The end game for them is survival, if it ain't broke don't fix it so why would they get up and leave?

Sick consciousness normally goes hand in hand with an unhealthy body and that's when cells give up the goast and start decaying etc.

It could be a situation like grafting cacti, wack a smaller consciousness on a bigger one in doing so they become "one" and hence stronger/better chance of survival?

[komodo]

not sure what the difference between organism and machine is there hagakure? but organism sounds more appropriate to me because it seems to distinguish biological life forms from inanimate machines.

since our bodies seem to be a hive of semi-autonomous cells in system, i'm possibly a kind of field of cohesion, a force similar to gravity but acting on a kind of subtle energy rather than mass... probably the nervous system is the wetware armature which generates this subtle cohesive field, powered by the vascular system, as a mass energy feed, and manifested as identity-over-time through RNA & DNA. it seems there is a core to this subtle nerve-energy system, which is the "i". my guess is that the brain is the mass vehicle for "i", the platform and storage device for thinking, but not the actual awareness itself. the 'i' itself i think is a chaotic agent/moment, which is a representation of the 'all'-possibilities. something like the hole made in clothing when you stich a needle through it, in a great big loop... hmm..

[Μορφέας]

Are you busy Living or busy Dying?

Sitting round all day in this meaningless place waiting to find meaning is time wasted and puts you on the wrong side of the entropy/atrophy battle.

I agree, too many people think and ponder but dont act. I was one of them til I realised what I was doing

[Hagakure]

i guess its a mechanism vs vitalism debate. i use the term machine as i fell there can be biological and man made machines. both of which are capable of self awareness etc.

to the multicellular issue. sure you are made up of individual cells that work together in a symbiotic way to create you, from your own cells to bacterial cells creating your digestive system.

but these have mechanistic activities.

their actions have been selected for through trial and selection.

our minds have been developed to be efficient at surviving. our self awareness and cognitive abilities are a huge boost to our fitness.

the underlying process is mechanistic though. proteins in lipid membranes, sections of code edited and selected for.

no vital principle like a soul is required IMHO

komodo: you talk about the system in terms like "cohesive field" but is this field mechanistic or vitalistic? is anything apart from the physical world required for its construction?

[foolsbreath]

I'm a cat. I have white fur, blue eyes and a zest for life.

I am deaf and partly blind and my favorite spot to sit is on top of the subwoofer in the back of the zd fairlane when we go cruising

I have been shot, runover twice lost down the drain and stuck up a tree for 2 days, have aids and kidney failure

I am foolsbreath and now you will only find me here

No but seriously, Foolsbreath died last year, and for a long time I could feel him sitting there or brushing against my leg

An old friend had experiences with ghosts/spirits/souls, to the point where one day a woman came to see him out of the blue to burn candles for the dead. They had driven him very dark and troubled.

I think we are consciousness separated from a greater consciousness to which we return when our physical dimensions cease functioning.

I like this idea Shiva, and although it may not mean we have a soul per say, we leave an imprint of energy, of ourselves before returning to the collective conscience, ready for rebirth, or whatever happens from there

do you see yourself as a soul in a shell like body?

an organism?

a machine whose program is set to act in certain ways?

A bit of all of the above, an organism with a soul who has been conditioned by genetics and environment to behave as we do.

And noow you know where my stage name is from

[No_One]

Latley I've been thinking that the thing we call a soul/spirit could simply be the sum of mind and body. The quality of each determining the quality of the soul.

Healthy Mind, Healthy Body, Healthy Spirit?

The saying "you should know better" keeps coming into it when I think about it, for them to be able to say this they must know better hence are more enlightened or whatever you wanna call it.

If you perform "bad" actions but don't know any better then how can you have a "bad" soul, they just don't know any better ways to chase down there desires?

Predators don't know any better in the wild, does that make them bad souls?

So now if you use your body to do the best most positive things that you are aware of then you would probably be deemed a "good soul".

If you were aware that you could be doing better i.e. contributing positives instead of negatives, but didn't - then eventually you would have to force yourself to deny what your aware of - this to me is where psychosis starts, denial of your true self to fit into someone elses design.

[komodo]

the answer to what you are is related to where you think you came from. personally i think there is no origin, and therefore the motion of the universe (it is certainly not static), is continually generated through the truly free actions of living beings. if you think living beings are not capable of truly chaotic impulse, you need to explain what is responsible for the very apparant non-stasis of the universe.

the survivalist, or fitness landscape, model for evolution is not sufficient. it proceeds from a mechanistic perspective, whereby protobiotic chemistry is in the same continuum of 'entity' as human beings, with just a order of magnitude of mechanistic complexity seperating them. survivalism is not a motivation in itself, but a mechanism by which the motivations of life (eg. seeing another sunrise, getting laid, raising kids, etc.) can be realised (ie. you survive to go on living, not just to survive). the problem here is that if the sole reason for life is to be more fit, it would never have started in the first place, as there was no environment/subject interaction before the subject turned up. you need to posit a motive impulse somewhere in the chain.

one way to answer this problem is to pose god. eg. there is a mystical mega-being who has desires for things to be a certain way, and so set in motion a cosmic machinery whereby these desires can be satisfied. life is therefore a kind of meccano set for god to play with, wholly mechanical. it can't be meccano without god though, because someone had to start the machine (if machine it is).

this is similar to the AI thread in that if life is a complicated machine, it is artifice, ie. created artificially by some precursor motivant. if life is artifice, it requires this 'creator', or starting point. to me this is an insurmountable philosophical barrier. if anyone can think of a way you can have a totally causal (linear) model of life/evolution without a starting point, or an explanation of the starting point that doesnt require an infinite being that has desires, i'd be very interested to hear it.

and yeah, good and bad, all relative ;)

Edited May 17, 2007 by komodo

[Hagakure]

before i answer in detail, should i pencil you into the vitalist camp?

Edited May 17, 2007 by Hagakure

[komodo]

i guess, is there a campfire there and stuff??

[Hagakure]

there sure is.

the catch is its distinct from physicochemical forces so it provides no light or heat or any way of measuring it.

Edited May 17, 2007 by Hagakure

[komodo]

sounds like theyre just burning phlogiston. i think i'll go off in the woods and leave the campsites to animals with herd instincts

i pretty sure theres a vital spark (i've seen it in humans) but i'm not an -ist kind of guy really.

hagakure, i think you have a purely mechanical view of the universe, perhaps you have an answer as to what set the machine in motion?

Edited May 17, 2007 by komodo

[nabraxas]

I am a robot

Programmed not to know

That I'm a robot,

But some dumb fuck emailed me

The computer code that

Makes up my soul... ..: Pete Miser, "Scent of a Robot" :..

[Hagakure]

what set the machine in motion?

that implies the machine was once in a state of non motion, something i dont think anyone can currently prove or disprove. im inclined to think in terms of constant motion.

if hypothtically, however, i said a higher being set it in motion, i would then have to answer what triggered that higher beings existance. if all our dimensions cant just be, i dont see why a higher being can.

edit: btw. cool lyric nabraxas.

Edited May 21, 2007 by Hagakure

[komodo]

constant motion in machines does not occur. machines are linear in terms of time/change. they proceed with regularity from one state to the next. for these reasons it seems clear to me that a mechanical universe is a linear one, and has a start and a end. i guess you can posit some kind of eternal loop taking place, with endless repetitions of the same events, but that seems a pretty wack cosmic vision to me. guess it comes down to personal choice

[Hagakure]

is this debate really getting down to nitpicking word definitions?

the term mechanistic doesnt equal machine. though i think i used the term machine once or twice higher up so i can see how this tangent was created.

the universe i see is constantly changing. it is changing according to certain rules. when we understand certain rules we can predict future events. weather patterns, trajectory of objects in flight, crowd movements.

if we knew every single rule and had every piece of data (impossible but its a thought experiment), my position is that you could predict the future with great accuracy.

loop like behaviour would certainly be interesting. i have been reading theories on the ultimate fate of the universe recently and have become particularily interested in this possibility.

my main concern is not the wackness level but probabilities and levels of data to support any theory.

the jury is still out of course but i have communicated my personal opinion

[komodo]

my position is that you could predict the future with great accuracy.

great accuracy... does that mean an absolutely predictable universe, or is there an element of uncertainty?

[Hagakure]

if we could factor every proton, electron etc into the model IMHO we would have a model that could predict the future with 100% accuracy. of course a model like this is impossible as it would be a universe in itself. could the universe contain itself?

but as a thought experiemtn i think if you modelled it down to that level of resolution you could predict the future with 100% accuracy as you would have control over any parameter in your moel like time.

at this juncture i should say that while i beleive in a mechanistic model over any model relying on outside forces to exaplin things (models involving souls and all that business), i dont like the image the mechanistic model portrays and am a big fan of the philosophy often explained by alan watts.

i would recommend checking out some alan watts mp3s because he is one of the most interesting speakers you will ever listen to. i will try to link to some of his material later that while not dismissing the mechanistic model, looks at it from a much better angle.

[apothecary]

I am actually about a hundred trillion slowly dividing cells.

Although, I'm sure some of them will get bored and wander off...

[komodo]

if we're all one big machine how come we disagree?

Edited May 28, 2007 by komodo

[No_One]

if we're all one big machine how come we disagree

'cause our minds have learnt to associate a sense of self with the ego and the ego wants to believe that we are all separate so it can protect itself from other ego's.