My belief is that everything man-made is natural. I say this because I believe man is natural, therefore everything we do is natural. I would like to ask two questions. Is a dam made by beavers natural? and Is human hair natural or man-made? My underlining principle is that Natural and Man-made aren’t mutually exclusive, which others tend to believe in my experience.
Thoughts?
i agree that the distinction is an arbitrary one in a sense, in a big sense…
but in another sense, i think it might be useful to conceptually separate things between man-made and not-man-made in order to determine the consequences of what we’ve done so we can better examine the possibilities of what we can do in the future.
maybe.
I agree completely. I wasn’t trying to say we shouldn’t use the distinction, rather that I look at man-made as a child or subcategory of natural development. I’m glad you see my perspective, I’m often terrible at conveying my ideas.
Natural and artificial are not two ultimate forces of the universe. Artificial is a conceptual subcategorization for natural. If we built robots that could self replicate, they could identify themselves as natural. But if they recreated new machines that could self replicate . . . then those machines to them could be seen as artificial. Which raises metaphysical questions. How do we know the universe itself is natural and not at some point engineered. Stephen hawking spoke of protouniverses through black holes.
Natural and artificial can be subjective descriptions, still part of a greater objective scheme, but it really only distinguishes the intentional from the (usually pleasantly) accidental. Only grey lines there.
I agree with your first two sentences, but it seems like you’re saying in the third sentence that the ability to self reproduce is a prerequisite to being natural, which if this is the case, I’ll have to disagree. A rock for instance can’t replicate itself, yet is natural. My idea is that if X is natural, X’s actions, impacts and creations are natural, not artificial. The idea of us being artificial is really interesting, but of course we’d need to know our source before any understanding could be reached.
Depends on what you mean by ‘natural’ and ‘artificial.’ Medicines are made of chemicals that are present in many plants, for example. Chemists figure out what the active chemical is in St. John’s Wort that alleviates depression and come up with a drug that has the same chemical, only its been synthesized, purified and presented in tablet form. Concrete is a mixture of sand, pebbles, cement and water.
These constituents are all ‘natural,’ but the mixture is man-made.
Welcome to ILP, CIP.
Why we made a distinction between natural and human made is odd as your example of the beaver pointed out. The beaver changes the world in a similar way that humans do but we don’t talk about the beaver building the dam as on thing and the rest of nature as another thing. The fact that we came up with a distinction between human acts and the rest of the world shows that we think we are superior to the rest of nature. Christianity seems to be the answer. From a scientific point of view we aren’t anything special and we evolved as a product of natural forces just like everything else. We are made up of atoms just like everything else. The beaver has the same place that we do in the universe. There is beaver made and there is human made.
Engineered objects are able to be engineered because the laws of physics allow for them to be engineered. I can’t see how you could engineer the universe since there is no matter that obeys laws to begin with. How could the laws of physics be engineered? In such a case particular laws in physics would have to be assigned to particular things rather than laws of physics simply being the way that they are. Unless if you mean by engineered that the universe already has laws assigned to objects which fundamentally are not created and that the course of the universe is engineered using the matter with which have laws innately attached. In the second case I don’t see a problem. In the first it is questionable whether the analogy drawn between engineered in the case of everyday engineered objects can be applied to the engineering that might occur when creating the laws that govern the universe. In other words it is one thing to rearrange the universe it is another thing to make it.
The sense of natural that refers to “not man made” is the way it is, a word, used to describe a concept. The concept is legitimate and there are reasons for it to exist. You don’t have to believe in the concept, but there’s nothing to believe in really about the matter, its just a way to describe that something was or wasn’t man made. You shouldn’t have a problem with this, it is just a categorical descriptor.
“Natural vs man-made” is an important topic when considering the relationship of people to national parks. It’s not a trivial issue.
Natural
Supernatural
Subnatural (artificial)
Now just try to get the homosapian to refer to his creations as “subnatural”.
a sign of wisdom is to know the difference between
shit and shinola…very important…
James has framed it well.
If theories described such as Stephen Hawking’s - that protouniverses or “baby universes” are created through black holes, and could somehow be influenced in its creation by an advanced interstellar technology, (ie: control the creation of the black hole, you might control the creation of that universe) then perhaps such a thing has happened before. Hence: An engineered (artificial) universe. Could that ever somehow be us?
I don’t think self-replication is a prerequisite for being natural. But I was imagining machines existing parallel to us in a similar fashion. They would continue as their own species in a natural fashion. At some point they might ask themselves whether they are really “artificial.” What seems to feel natural is what continues without the needed intervention by the host of that natural environment.
Cut skin replenishes and “heals” itself in a way of pretty advanced technology. For us it feels natural because we don’t really need to intervene with anything to have that process continue. If somehow we discovered in the past that another species had genetically influenced the human race, we would ask ourselves if we are so “natural.” What if nanotechnology were able to create Prokaryotes atom by atom - Makes us look like a collection of carbon-based nanites.
Just food for thought. The words still have meaning.
You have said everything that needed to be said.
Thought is a protective mechanism. It isolates you from the totality of nature, which cannot be separated from you. So the difficulty here is that it is impossible for you to accept that you are not separate from the totality of things or what you call nature – that every form of life is also part of this nature. When I use the word nature, I use it in the general sense; it’s not that I have a general insight into nature that others don’t have. You are not separate from nature; nature means the world around you. All the species that we have on this planet are integral parts of what we call nature; it cannot be separated from that. But unfortunately, through our thinking we have succeeded in separating ourselves, and through the help of this knowledge we continue to maintain the continuity of the knowledge, and that is the reason why we have invented all this integrity – becoming one with nature, and all that kind of thing – and we are not going to succeed, because we don’t understand and realize that what it is that separates you from the totality of things is the thought. And the thought cannot be used to bring about an integral unity. Basically, we are all integrally united, and unfortunately, through our thinking, we have separated ourselves, and we are acting from this point of separateness, and it is this that is responsible for the chaos in personal lives, for the chaos in the world around.
Everything a beaver, ant or spider does (as in, systematically manipulate their environment) took thousands, millions of years to evolve, somethings humans do take mere seconds to evolve, that’s the difference between the two. One is sloppy, quick and conscious (us/artifice), the other is fine tuned, slow and unconscious (them/nature). Both have their advantages and disadvantages. We have not made good use of ours because we’ve become wholly preoccupied with 1 form of technology (science/power) and wholly unpreoccupied with the other (wisdom/control). Power requires wise control, otherwise, Prometheus shouldn’t’ve ever imparted fire to us.
There it is, solved for all time.
When the word, “Natural,” is used in this sense, I take it to mean, “Naturally occurring,” which is, essentially, occurring by necessity.
That said, I don’t think a dam made by beavers is natural, per se, but in the same sense that we would call a toilet, “Man-Made,” we could call a beaver-dam, “Beaver-made,” if we wanted to. We’re basically using the term to indicate that the conception and execution of the physical item in question was a product of man as the dam is a product of beaver.
I think I understand what you are saying, however. To the extent that everything that is naturally occurring must be used to make those things that are, “Man-made,” regardless of whether or not those things exist by necessity. To wit, peanuts are natural, and peanut butter is derived from peanuts, therefore, peanut butter is also natural.
The problem, obviously, is that peanut butter would not come to pass without the intervention of man, nor would a beaver dam come to exist without the intervention of a beaver. In determining what is man-made and what is natural, then, I believe the distinction we employ is correct. The distinction, in my view, is, “If humans did not exist, but all other things remained equal, would physical object x be the case?”
If the answer is, ‘yes,’ you have a natural object; if the answer is, ‘no,’ it’s man-made.
I think that humans take longer than a second to evolve.
I have no problem with describing human activities as natural on a conceptual level. Ultimately this is because the term “natural” is totally empty in the way you want to use it. It seems as if on your terms, “natural” means anything which is determined…
Like Pav said.
But lets get specific.
I suspect that for you, this conclusion has implications which are not wholly “conceptual.”
You haven’t been very clear about what the implications of “natural” are. Really, you don’t have to be. Philosophically… (depending on your conceptual definition of “philosophically”)…Philosophically you are not called upon to consider the implications of the statement “therefore everything we do is natural” on a rhetorical level.
I can’t help but bring social sciences into the philosophy board. Call it schadenfreude.
I can’t help but imagine that when you say, “therefore everything we do is natural” you mean to imply some of these:
The effects of man-made pollution (CO2 emissions, water/air pollution, global warming) are natural rather than man-made, thus we bear less responsibility.
Nuclear holocaust (nuclear war resulting in 99% human extinction) is natural, thus not subject to moral constraints. If hurricanes and earthquakes aren’t subject to moral constraints, then the decision to launch the nukes is not subject to moral constraints. Instead, the decision to launch the nukes depends entirely on a Realist politics, or whatever is in the best interests of whoever controls the nukes.
Capitalism and the free-market are natural processes. We should disband the welfare state because inequality is not man-made. Inequality is natural. It is inscribed in creation that 1% of the human population shalt control 50% of the resources (or whatever the statistic is). Compassion is ridiculous because nature determines the fate of the poor. Supply and demand shalt be thine guide.
Women occupy less positions of power than men. This is not the result of some kind of man-made patriarchal hierarchy. Rather, women occupy less positions of power because women are “naturally” less competent to lead.
Whenever I hear someone say that “Man-made events are Natural!” I assume they espouse one of those four views. Which one will you defend?
There’s a big difference between human systematic manipulations of the environment (sme) and animal smes, being human smes are conscious, take years, months or even just days to evolve (for example, I invented a new behaviour today, it’s called farting well drinking hot orange juice, it’ll catch on), where as animal smes (spider webs, beaver damns, bees nests) supposedly take millions of years to evolve and are unconscious.
Thus, artifice is smes that’re cultural, learned, natural is all other smes.
It’s really that simple folks. There’s a difference between what we do and what they do, with the possible exception of some really bright animals (crows, chimps, dolphins, especially crows), some of the things they do are artificial.