[FRIAM] A Question For Tomorrow

[Nick Thompson]

Glen, 

I direct my posts at who ever made me think about something.  I think I am following up on a question you asked, roughly, why are we talking about consciousness when basic facts of biology pose all the interesting problems and we know a lot more about them?  My basic New Thought (new to me, I mean) was, why talk about biology when we can talk about computer programming, given the wonders that simple algorithms (eg, cellular automata) can generate.  I wondered how any computer programmer could have doubts about materialism: i.e., doubts about how emergent properties (such as consciousness) could be generated from higher and higher levels of material relations.  The Alphabet Soup Letter I sent you shows how the complexities of the genome could readily arise from material relations.  

You basic point is however correct.  I think many of us who write here are trying to work out some ideas and we use the posts of others as the occasions for those developments.  Threading might not be as ... um ... tight as should be.  But I find that looseness actually exciting  -- people here are trying to figure stuff out.  FRIAM has been a tremendous help to me in that regard. 

Nick 


Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Wednesday, May 01, 2019 11:49 AM
To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Question For Tomorrow

Heh, you mistake me for someone who thinks clearly and understands social interaction. I have no idea why you forwarded that or why you direct it at me. In fact, culturally, I wonder why so many of you *direct* your posts at all. So many of you start your posts with "Bob, ..." or "Tim, ...". It's weird and confusing to me. I tend to think quoted preambles like "On 2/12/2050 5:56 PM, Frank Zappa wrote:" as the person most likely to *respond* to my post. But it's a post to a lot of people and not really directed *at* Mr. Zappa. If anyone would like to throw some words out that may clear up my confusion, I'd be grateful.  Seriously.

But back to the topic, I think the majority of the people on this list are, and have been for most of their lives, committed materialists. Affiliations can be tricky, of course. E.g. I've been agnostic my entire life (as far as I can tell), but I was affiliated with St. Martha's Parish from age 4-16 or so, until my affinity for Satanic metal stressed that affiliation. 8^) I didn't "identify" with the Satanists until the Satanic Temple emerged. The Church of Satan, though I appreciated their libertarian and entheogenic overtones, had too much "social darwinism" to it. I didn't learn the term "social darwinism" until I started arguing about neo-Darwinism back at Lockheed Martin, where a fellow engineer asserted, very confidently, that black people were bred to be extraordinary athletes. I struggled to find ways to communicate with someone I had thought to be a fairly thoughtful person until he put that forth at our weekly salon over Guiness and darts. He single-handedly coerced me to identify as a politically correct snowflake.

Anyhoo ... what were we talking about? 8^D

On 5/1/19 12:13 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> This Article <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312489651_Alphabet_Soup>, published in the 70's, will show that my materialist affiliations go way back. Please let me know if the link doesn’t work.
> 
> My children, who are now pushing sixty, admit that I have become a 
> somewhat better cook.

--
☣ uǝlƃ
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