But don’t you think that plants are programmed to behave that way? If bad food goes inside my body then doesn’t my body react immediately like the plants do? Can it think and reject the food and so one will not get sick? You know that is not true. Doesn’t that mean that the inside of my body does not know that it exists? My dear it just reacts.
Otherwise explain this to me:
Most varieties of plants and trees change colour and lose all their leaves when fall season comes. If they can think then come fall and wouldn’t there be deviants among those varieties who would say, “Hey! Look, I don’t want to lose my leaves and so this is the way I’m gonna stay.” And they would stay like that. But the FACT IS, that they can’t. Any variety that sheds, all of them shed. We have deviants among us because we can think and feel and we know that we exist. Plants just perform or react to programming.
I think that most lies are not conscious lies, at least those we tell to ourself. On the subject of lying to others, there are times when it is justified to avoid harm.
Well! If plants could lie then it means they have the ability to think independently. But I’m saying they DON’T have the ability to think independently and so they cannot lie because they are just programed to do what they do. As far as your lying thing is under question, plants can only SEEM to lie I suppose much like our computer does that is really only programed to perform.
If plants are lying isn’t it because they think it’s in their best interests, or why would they lie? So lying cannot be there if thinking isn’t there. And I was just saying that plants cannot lie because they cannot think, they only perform to stimuli or info. Whatever, from your ungrateful responses to me in other threads too, I’m beginning to TINK dat it’s a good TINK not to converse with you. Bye!
I know that i have often used the term ‘lie’ in relation to the automatic behavior of insects (Their coloration mimicking that of bees for example). But I may have been wrong. I’m not sure that you can use the verb ‘lie’ to describe the behavior of non-sentient beings inasmuch as lying is intentional deception.
You cannot eliminate intentions. If you did then the lawyers would KILL you. That is their bread and butter. The modern legal system would collapse. Crimes without witnesses would never get convictions.
its not entirely fair to shift the context of a particular discussion to something removed from the heart of the matter while trying to come to an agreement on a general definition.
intention is peripheral, and generally all intention is survival at the highest level.
also applying human motivation or ideals to this is obfuscating the point. of course the bees intended to deceive, they didnt deceive by accident. they deceive to survive, their intent is to survive. i dont think one can define intention only as high level brain functions, autonomic reactions are just as intentional, though maybe not on a granular level, ie just because the bee isnt thinking i will fool you, its high level programming is thinking it.
but i think this is a tangent to the original thought, which is that deception is the progenitor of creativity. which is an interesting idea and i think fundamentally true. and interesting thing which talks about this is alan moore’s promethea, which endeavors to trace the roots of imagination, albeit through the means of fiction.
Welcome to the forum Tommy Calabrese! I was saying, Whitelotus, that lying is intentional by definition, but that argument gets into semantics, and I don’t want to go that route.
Can one speak of genes as having ‘intention’? I think not. The bad genes die out and the good ones live to replicate, but the genes themselves are unwilling participants. I hesitate to speak about intention in higher organisms because, as Tommy Calabrese stated, it is not entirely germane.
Doesn’t every fiction writer have to create a World that was not there before? These imaginative Worlds and ideas cast a light into our own lives. Hope and imagination are both useful lies frequently used in art
Italics mine source:www.dictionary.com
semantics QED
Please remember that i used that statement in the context of lower organisms. You go on to apply that to humans, which is something i never intended. Context is extremely important.
Where have I posited a mind/body dualism? I think you’re proving my point by saying that words can mean something in one place, and something else somewhere else. They call that equivocation. It probably represents one of the most subtle and ingenious forms of lying that i know.
Wait a moment. Are you suggesting that the concept of intentions is derived from Christianity? Roman law addresses intentions long before the influence of Christianity.
Do you dislike Christianity?
It could be argued that all systems of justice are just forms of official and authorized revenge.
Very clever of you Whitelotus, to respond about my mind/body dualism but fail to mention my charges of equivocation. As usual, your arguments are tendentious and taken out of context.
After wading around in this swamp I went back to the original post and inquiry. zanderman posed an observation and invited an inquiry that related exclusively to human capabilities. No where was there any reference to plants or various insects. This thread has been hijacked and the insight and question asked by the originator of this thread has been lost in the miasma of “philosophical” nitpicking. Is anyone interested in getting this subject back on track?