Introduction

Nice click-bait title, yes? Life doesn't exist? C'mon! After all, don't we see life all around us? Myriad forms skulk, slither, slide and stroll across the surface of this planet, down beneath the soil and under the sea. There are creatures that thrive under extremes of heat, cold and pressure. There's even a microscopic little guy called a tardigrade, or water bear, that can exist in the vacuum of space! Look out your window. You'd be hard pressed to find a single square inch out there that isn't teaming with microorganisms, and the same holds true inside a volcano as well as beneath the Arctic ice.

But what, exactly, is this thing we call life? In times past life was believed to be some kind of vital spark inhabiting a biological container, an animated essence temporarily wedded to flora or fauna and yet fundamentally distinct from whatever organism it happened to be living in. Soul, spirit, ghost, pneuma, creative force- these are some of the terms people have used to describe that invisible, intangible 'stuff' which supposedly exists at the core of our being, and which differentiates living things from the stars, the moon and the sky. Oh, and rocks, too. Truth be told, this is still the way most people see things, even after science came along and poked holes in the methodology by which such ideas about the facts of nature are ascertained. Old ideas die hard, it seems.

On the other hand, and lest we fall into the trap of believing that only superstitious yokels and fools fall for such supposed malarkey, there is a sense in which all of us believe and communicate according to the feeling that there is something above and beyond material existence. That we are more than the sum of our parts. It will be the purpose of this blog to explore these notions and their ramifications, and if nothing else bring a little clarity to the issue. Join in the conversation, won't you? Feel free to disagree, and let's keep things civil, shall we?

UPDATE: Kudos to Libb Thims, who I understand is the coiner of the term 'abioism'. I haven't read any of his work yet and so cannot comment on it, but the term rocks! ;)

Zombies

Since I touched on the subject of consciousness a bit in the last post, I thought a brief discussion of philosophical zombies (p-zombies for short) might be in order. The term is usually identified with the philosopher of consciousness David Chalmers, and is used as a defense of the notion that there is more to consciousness than just the sum of the brain's processing.

The argument goes something like this: It is possible to imagine a zombie that is an exact replica of a human being, EXCEPT that in the case of the zombie, there is no inner sense of personal experience i.e. consciousness. Therefore, since it is logically possible to imagine that such a zombie could actually exist, it follows there must be something more to consciousness which makes people qualitatively different from p-zombies. More precisely, it must be either non-physical, or perhaps it is the case that matter itself has a hidden aspect which explains the nature and existence of qualia (mind stuff), a concept known generally as 'matter dualism'.

Now, it might just be me, but right off the bat this argument smells an awful lot like the ontological argument for the existence of God, which comes down to necessitating His existence solely via the process of rhetoric. It also seems to beg the question, since it adds a mysterious aspect to a human being that isn't present in the p-zombie. But that conclusion is based solely on the unsupported presumption that mere brain processes aren't sufficient to achieve that inner state of awareness, which was the assertion under fire in the first place. It's circular, through and through.

Maybe the problem lies in granting the imagination powers it doesn't actually have. Sure, we can imagine what a zombie might be like on the surface; we've seen enough of them on television, after all. But it's another thing to say that we can fully imagine it, including all the trillions of biological processes involved in the complete replication of a human being, even sans that inner, invisible quality which is the subject under analysis.

For the physicalist, the answer is straightforwardly clear. There's simply no such thing as a p-zombie, and furthermore, within the parameters of the argument, there never will be. Why? Because an exact replica of a human being IS a human being, 'mind' and all. Frankly, this is one of those philosophical arguments that goes absolutely nowhere. Perhaps it should be called a p-argument, something that seemingly gets up and walks around, but contains no inner substance. What do you think?

Identity (part 1)

The philosopher Alan Watts was known to use the term 'environmental awareness' to describe an intuitive recognition of our connectedness with the larger environment surrounding us. Not so surprisingly, science continues to discover how deep these connections run as its investigative tools and theories are improved upon through time. "LEVELSSSS... OFFFF... MAGNIFICATIONNNNNNNN....." as Paul Frees used to intone on the old ride at Disneyland where they shrunk you down to the size of an atom. Sponsored by the Monsanto Corporation, no less. :)

Still, we tend to think of ourselves as somehow fundamentally distinct from our environment, as if we move through it instead of being pulled along with it. Or perhaps more accurately, we fail to recognize that we are just focal points within the environment, a location of relative chemical stability not different in it's foundational structure from a whirlwind or the red spot on Jupiter i.e. atoms bumping into each other and getting into mischief.

Then again, none of this is particularly revelatory in terms of basic principles. Even most Christians have moved away from the idea of a literal, physical resurrection, recognizing that the body is in constant flux through the simple process of eating and drinking. The catchy part of the argument comes when we start to consider the mind as belonging to the same class of 'being' as everything else. For it seems obvious that this 'mind' (or you might replace 'mind' with 'soul' if you're of a spiritual bent, whatever the hell THAT means), is of a qualitatively different sort of thing than 'mere matter'. It's a tempting conclusion, at least on the surface. After all, you can't crack a guy's skull open and find all his hopes and dreams nestled like acorns in their shells. There's something mysterious about the mind, isn't there? From our first person perspective, mind seems to be made of something wholly insubstantial in relation to physicality. An entity set apart. An essence of profound substance that dwarfs it's material counterpart in depth and profundity. A ghost inhabiting a meat machine. And it is this enigmatic, invisible entity with which we identify as our personal identity.

Then again, perhaps 'mind' as generally intuited doesn't exist at all. END OF PART 1

Emergentism

Emergentism is the belief in emergence(duh). According to the simplest definition, emergence means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You're most likely to read about this subject as it pertains to the philosophies of life or mind, although it's by no means limited to these areas. Here's a link to get you started.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergentism

And already, the problems begin. Life. Mind. Both nouns. You know- persons, places and things. But, oh no, there's that 'thingness' rearing its ugly head again! Sometimes I wonder if our misconceptions are almost always about language. We seem to pull ontological entities out of the void simply by the recitation of holy words, a summoning upon the altar of Webster. Life and consciousness are no longer a product. Instead, they are mystical butterflies springing from cocoons of physicality that have trapped them like air in a bicycle tube.

It's as if I assembled an ax handle and an ax head, and 'chop' leapt into being. Or held three balloons together and Mickey Mouse was born. We have come to understand many such 'things' in this fashion. Consciousness. Morality. Justice. Value. It's a mythological approach, and really not a whole lot different from ascribing personalities to the natural forces of wind, fire and rain. And there, look and see! I've done it again. For wind, fire and rain are really descriptive terms for processes, with 'process' itself being just a word for stuff doing stuff. And stuff...well, I think you get my point. Ugh, words! It's like pointing at the moon and believing you have green cheese in your hand. Oh well, we seem to be stuck with them until the Vulcans come and teach us melding, or pon far, or whatever that shit was.

Even the concept of information can be taken too far and escape into the world of ghosts. Where is the information in your computer, if not in the configuration of physical gates? And yet some serious thinking folks have posited the idea that information 'itself' actually undergirds the physical structure of the universe.

Somewhere along the line I'll be addressing some of the concerns I have with this kind of magical thinking, regarding some of the more popular takes on emergentism on a variety of issues. This post is just meant to be a primer to get things started. Until next time, here's some more reading...and then, a movie!!!

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8QzZKw9WHRxjR4948/the-futility-of-emergence

Interlude

I suppose there'll be breaks like this that don't have much to do with the titular subject matter, but what the heck?

I do a lot of cyber-surfing, and I read and watch lots of different forums on all kinds of subjects. I'm retired, so what else is there to do? One thing I've noticed, which will be obvious to anybody who's on the internet often enough, is that every at least halfway busy blog, forum and vlog attracts it's share of insistent masochists. That is, they disagree with the host's position, or maybe even a smidgen of their position (puritanism all over again). Maybe they even hold animosity towards the host(ofttimes for very good reasons). So the host rains down vitriol upon their head, they retreat to their separate corners, and thus the psycho-session ends.

BUT THEY KEEP COMING BACK! And the commenter starts things over again, and again, and again, and the hostility ramps up higher and higher, and the vulgar rhetoric escalates even as the substance diminishes to near zero. What a strange species we are. Or maybe not so strange, given that much of human civilized behavior is but a thin veneer laid over a boiling mess of primal urges. It seems that we are condemned to be fuck ups, as opposed to the reasoned individuals that we think we are. We're not so removed from our evolutionary ancestors as we like to think, it seems.

Humans, animals, bacteria, cells, viruses, molecules, atoms, quarks, strings, angels dancing on pinpoints...down, down and down we descend into almost nothingness. And that's what we are. Patterns in the void. Or perhaps swirling clouds of chemistry, coalescing and separating. Or lizards locked in a death embrace, spinning and spinning in the dirt. Or wolves fighting over a scrap of dead rabbit. Or idiots feuding over nothing, bound and determined to never see the other side.

Or, scritching a kitty under the chin. Having a sense of humor, and of charity. Winking without cynicism.

Then again, what choice do we have? When all's said and done, we never left the void. Not really. We ARE the shadows in Plato's cave, while the mystery dances outside. Is this mystery good? Is it bad? Nah, those are just the grunts of hominoids, the scent of a skunk, the chirping of crickets, the pop of hydrogen in a test tube when you light it, a flare of the sun, atoms wrestling, quarks coalescing, strings vibrating. The universe flexing its muscles while we dance to the tune of a savagery beyond comprehension. And everything absolutely inevitable.

Hm, had no idea what I was going to write there, but I DID sort of bring it back around, I think. Best wishes to all of you on this 4th of July (my mom's birthday, btw. Better give her a call!)

Thingness

On the face of things, we seem to live in a world of objects, the list of which is seemingly endless. But what is an object? The term implies a kind of fundamental discreteness as set against an environment of other objects, or perhaps against empty space. Of course as any grade schooler can probably tell you, reality at one level of magnification can appear completely different at another. As we zoom in, we discover that a blade of grass is actually made of billions of cells. Looking closer, we find that the cells themselves are composed of literally trillions of atoms, which in turn are built of even smaller particles called quarks. And even though these little fellas are unimaginably tiny, it is theorized that they themselves might be made of objects zillions of times smaller called strings, little vibrating loops of almost-but-not-quite nothingness. It seems that at this point, we've hit rock bottom.

But then comes along field theory, and all our intuitions about what constitutes an object fly out the window. Field theory postulates that, fundamentally, there are no 'things' at all, that instead the universe is permeated with an absolutely continuous, unbroken 'field' or fields out of which our illusion of objectivity arises. Imagine you've dropped a pebble into a relatively still body of water, like a lake. Consider the ripples that the pebble's disturbance create. Now, does it seem reasonable to consider these ripples to be fundamentally discrete objects unto themselves? Clearly they are not, but instead are merely the consequence of disturbing the otherwise relatively placid surface of the water.

This analogy, though imperfect as all analogies are, describes the basic scenario in which objectivity arises from the seamless whole of fields. Admittedly this is still a theory in progress, and is a much more complex notion than what I've described here. From fields arise strings(?), which in turn gang together like bubbles sticking to one another (again, a simplistic analogy but it's the best I can do for now). On up to sub-atomic 'particles', to atoms, to molecules, to grains of sand and rocks and blades of grass, and finally to you and me.

Where does this leave us vis-a-vis this 'thing' we call life? We'll leave that for my next post (I like to make my essays bite-sized for easy digestion), in which we will consider the principle of emergence. Stay tuned! :)

For further reading, here's a nice little article describing the basic ideas behind field theory- https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/08/20/qft/

Quote

"Today's brains are yesterday's mashed potatoes." Richard Feynman