My dna/rna has no intention whatsoever - it has as little purpose as a bolt of lightning striking a house or a log rolling down a hill - it simply does what it does. Like waves lapping at the shoreline. To ascribe purpose to such phenomena is to anthropomorphize nature. There are only results - at least that’s all that science can understand.
and i am pointing out that “decision” making is unique to higher level organisms - as such, it really doesn’t make sense, from a strictly scientific perspective, to say all life moves towards a particular purpose - it doesn’t actively seek out anything specific any more that gravity actively seeks to attract apples - it just happens.
right - it’s all me - i deserve it - you’re so right.
Perpetual motion machines “of the second type” are common these days.
The theory of natural increase in entropy gets spoiled pretty quick by a variety of inventive arrangements. I personally invented a new one in 1972, thinking at the time that I was coming up with something special. It turned out that I wasn’t the first nor the last although my method is, as far as I know, to this day, unique.
The simplest entropy law defeat scheme comes in the form of merely a tall column of a mixed gas, hydrogen and argon. The entropy is maximum when the column is first filled and the gases are homogeneously mixed. But wait a while and natural forces will not only decrease the entropy, but will also provide increased temperature, above where it all began.
People have in the past complained that such a model is not good because it involves outside gravity, but that is not an issue. You can equally imagine a large space drifting vessel/balloon and the exact same effect occurs.
The argon settles to the center of the balloon or the bottom of the column. This causes order from chaos. But in addition, any heat introduced as well as the initial heat, rises to the upper area where it was already heated. Again, heat ends up traveling “uphill” and thus defeating the very initial notion of the second law.
Aluminum rods can be inserted so as to cause the rising heat in a column to be tapped from below. This causes an eternal cycling of the thermal energy from top to bottom and back. That flow can then be used to extract mechanical energy from what was a quiescent and stagnate thermal field.
My version of a chaos-to-order mechanism was a little more complicated, but far more industrially interesting.
scientifically speaking, evolution has NO “purpose” - survival is only the result of evolution, it is not the goal or intent. A comet collides with a moon, a gene replicates - these things happen and have consequences - but they don’t happen in order to accomplish those consequences - the consequences are merely byproducts.
As pointed out previously, your view is coming merely from your different use or connotations of the words. Everything you have said can be resolved merely by closely examining the real conceptual definition of the words you are using (obviously not clearly understanding their deeper concept).
You are assuming that “those guys” have it all wrong because they were just old superstitious fools. That is what you have been taught. The problem is that they were merely using the words with precise concepts that you (and many) are ignoring so as to presume “those guys” to be wrong.
The words that I am referring to are “decision”, “intention”, “aim”, “purpose”, “anthropomorphize”, “evolution”, and “Science”.
Get the real concepts right and it will all fall into place. Before you rant about how you already know it all when it comes to these words and others, realize how little trouble others have had with what I am saying. The distinction is that they and I understand the concept behind the words with less presumption and more precision.
Something for you to ponder;
Evolution => humans => purposeful decisions.
So evolution causes purpose. Thus within evolution, purpose arises. Exactly how?
I am not referring to anything supernatural or mystical. It is an issue merely of definitions of the words.
dissappointed but not surprised to see that you don’t
the concepts are not deep, and they are flawed - if you are, in the name of science or logic, attributing any purpose whatsoever to processes of evolution you are committing the anthropocentic fallacy
this is pure presumption - you have no idea what i have been taught. i don’t think you’re a superstitious old fool - i think you are misusing certain words in ways that have potentially undesirable implications for science.
it’s really not about understanding your concepts - i do - and the fact that others are making the same mistake as you are does not make it any less of a mistake - the problem is precisely that you are not using the concepts with adequate precision.
purpose arises (in higher level organisms) because it is conducive to life - not the other way around.
Is that the direction they “decide”? But then again, you would have to learn what “decision” means and for that, you would have to learn what “intention” means, and purpose, and the others.
Well outside my competencies – but work is slow today!
You say decrease the entropy I presume you mean that the molecules go from an even mixture to being more separated or clumped?
Ah wait OK the argon sinks - got it!
When you speak of natural force and an increase in temperature then might that not imply gravity is an active force using energy and thus an (heat creating) energetic process causing the non-equilibrium mixture – in which case it is actively developing a non equilibrium position and so can be described much like life within thermodynamics
Its inputting energy to in some way alter the dynamic away from a perfect mixture/maximum entropy and as such wasting energy as heat to outside the system also?
But if gravity is the mechanism here then that’ll work in a floating balloon too (though lessening with height) – only in deep space would you have close to (never completely) zero gravity – Have they bought the mixture up to a space station?
This example still involves an energetic force and an over all increase in heat – not QED even for my basic memory of school/ first year college science
Well you might get good energy capture but there would still be some heat loss there I reckon
Got to take your word on that!
I agree
I think
sometimes people find it easier to conceive of it anthropomorphized i.e “nature abhors a vacuum”
also you can argue that as far as evolution goes, once started – body plans, mutations, selections may restrict how far and in what direction it goes down different lines. So it might be tempting to say that “it (evolution - anthropomorphizing again!) explores” a certain phase space of body plans etc (often can be simulated on computer given values for these parameters and then run as “what if” models)
– BUT I strongly agree no conscious purpose in the way we understand it!
It takes consciousness to have intention in the normal use of the word. Decisions can be made without intention, but not purposefully. Does Life have consciousness (awareness of itself and its surroundings)?
If Life has consciousness, what prevents it from having intention/purpose? Doesn’t life make decisions toward a goal? Don’t you when you decide what to eat, or what road to take?
At what point do you decide to call something Life?
Yeah, the whole question is bogus. “Meaning” or “purpose” requires an agent. Anything that means something means it to someone. Any purpose is someone’s purpose.
The question of the meaning/purpose of life has to be answered individually.
Those someone’s have intention, purpose, and meaning in their choices.
The issue is resolved in the very thing that we call “Life”.
We don’t call it Life unless it is seeking its own survival = purpose/intent.
My point has merely been that survival is best achieved through maximum momentum of the process of Life (as basics physics will explain) == Maximum Self-Harmony == The Purpose
Gorgias would agree. There is “no-thing”, only that which we use to describe it. If everything is understood in relation to another, then we end up in regression trying to determine which descriptor is a actually a “thing”. So, he follows that even if there were a thing, nobody would know about it. And, even further, if one did know of a thing, how could he communicate it (if not for relationships and descriptors)?
I’m not sure I agree with thinking that radical in this context, but I must agree that life, tree, and water are not “things” by definition–
So, for instance, a tree is not simply “Tree”, we can say it is a natural structure of wood, bark, roots, branches, leaves, and that it seek sustenance or evolves.
Life has no agenda, we prescribe purpose and meaning to life the same we do designations and descriptions.
Regarding the second part of that definition, he also argues that existence and thought are not fundamentally the same. So, for something to be an object of thought, it need not exist (and vice-versa I suppose). Of course, this is ancient stuff and he was a rare breed of rhetorician, so it is meant to be confusing. Just thought it was funny because I just read up on him the other day and here we are with the same debate.
