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Have any of you ever look at something think hard enough and it changes? I sometimes look at sandals for instance and think of it as just a platform for your feet to walk on with a strap, and it changes how it looks, If sometimes I look at someones face long enough and examine all details, the face looks different. It's not just limited to looks, if i think of certain ideas or thoughts they change as I take two steps to the left and five steps backwards (metaphorically). It's like that for a lot of things that would take a really long time to talk about. Is it just me who looks at the world differently sometimes? And just in case your wondering, I don't do drugs so that's not the answer.
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On the other hand, thinking about these things are very useful because even if we only have our five senses (so to speak), these thoughts can still relate and change how we perceive reality.
That brings me to one thought I had a while ago. This one has to do with extraterrestials.
We've been looking for aliens on other worlds and thinking of aliens on other worlds to share the senses we have and to need to have water to live. How do we know that? Maybe just us on Earth needs that stuff. What if aliens have different senses that us humans can't even percieve. We only know how things work down here on Earth, not how it works on that unnamed rock 4 galaxies over. They might not even need water, who knows.
Sorry if this was a bit vague, I sometimes have trouble translating my thoughts into words.
Not to worry Skull, I know exactly what you mean because not only have I been thinking about it, but there has been smatterings of discussion of the sort when speculating on extra-terrestrial life.
WARNING: HIGHLY UNINTELLIGIBLE PASSAGE FOLLOWS!
There are assumptions on every single level. First we assume certain characteristics when we call something 'living' but as of yet we are unable to come to a consensus on what these are. After this, we sometimes try to think in terms of 'responsiveness to environment' and set up a mechanistic chain of information --> sensory input --> processing --> pattern generation/interaction with environment. To varying degrees of complexity and depth. But it's this one that we're looking at here.
In what way is information gained and what gives us information? Even from a meta-epistemological perspective (i.e. looking at the ways in which we discuss ways of gathering information), would it be appropriate to say that all living things gain information the same fundamental way for the same purposes?
I could give it a shot, though I guarantee you it will not stand to rigorous examination. To adapt a quick list given by Moegreche, I'm going to say that necessary characteristics for something to be called 'living' include "anti-entropic behavior" (i.e. geared to cycles modulating entropy within an entity...this is as simply as I can express it for now), reproduction, and interaction within environments. Note that I haven't limited this within, say, a molecular-biological understanding of living beings (that would limit definitions of life to that as observed on Earth).
Within that nebulous "interaction within environments" comes the whole description of "information --> processing --> reaction". This is actually pretty inclusive- it's not restricted to cognitive domains, and can include things like "sunlight --> cellular activation --> sunflower changing aspect". More detailed would be the considerations of what constitutes information. I think we could refer to the previous page when Skyla described passing time as the sequential change in state.
In keeping with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and certain types of Buddhist philosophy, perhaps 'change of state' would be the most appropriate starting point from which the notion of 'information' can be derived.
Another thought...
I've been wondering, why is there life? To put it simply, we are just a bunch of sacks of energy consuming other sacks of energy. But why to begin with? Sure we're doing it to survive, because we find ourselves alive and we'd like to keep it that way. But why are we even here to begin with?
Why are we humans smart and other animals not? It's just been a competition of who can dominate the other species and I guess we humans took things a bit too seriously in the competition of dominance, and started to cheat using tools, and adapting a larger brain to use them better. And since we have a need to dominate, once we became dominate in this world, we started fighting ourselves in the quest of dominance. We've become so complex that we no longer only have the jobs of hunting and conquering, but now have an extremely complex society requiring millions of different jobs. Every job in one form or another is to dominate the other guy.
For those not getting enough domination as it is, you've got video games giving you the basic dominating tool, death. Video games are fun because you have the need to dominate others, and when you can't do that, you must escape from reality to oppress computer generated people.
But this brings me back to why. Why is it that we must dominate? Why is it that we are so desperate to keep alive, when we don't even know the purpose of life?
Perhaps if you consider life a car trip, only you don't know where your going, you just want to get there. But are driving the car? Is god? Are you drinking and driving? Do you have enough fuel to get there? Where are you heading anyway? Is it someplace you want to go, or someplace you want to avoid?
Just some more of my rambling...
Sorry for double post but this buged me... a lot...
But are driving the car?
i meant are you driving the car.
PS: please allow edits ^^;
Nobody can answer 'why is there life' objectively- I'm going to take a leaf from Dennet's book and go with 'we're asking why because our consciousness fooled us into think it was an important question'.
Why are we humans smart and other animals not? It's just been a competition of who can dominate the other species and I guess we humans took things a bit too seriously in the competition of dominance, and started to cheat using tools
Despite being an advocate for the consideration of other animals as a 'eople' type of being, this actually allows me to say that the 'cheating using tools' isn't a bad thing.
One way of expressing intelligence is to say that seeing as we acknowledge different kinds of intelligence across humans, so too can we acknowledge the same for other animals as a whole. Different animals can use different bits of information that is relevant to them in different ways to us.
We've become so complex that we no longer only have the jobs of hunting and conquering, but now have an extremely complex society requiring millions of different jobs. Every job in one form or another is to dominate the other guy.
This is a very deep observation because while the answer may be simple ("competition as a driver of life", it is still mind-boggling.
I've got a passage from a novel I'm writing on-and-off (it's not my main project), where the protagonist has a similar thought process...it even takes place while he's driving the car:
"...But beyond the issue of how one could continue to perform their own job if it was meaningless, was the grand scheme that each one of those people fit into. What was it that produced that noise from the radio, the car I was sitting in, the highway it traveled on, or even that building I was traveling from? What was going on in the minds of every occupant of every other car that streaked down that same highway, or across the overpass I was going under, or even in the city, state, or country? I could just imagine myself awakening, for the first time in many years, gazing in utter astonishment at this world, wondering what was I doing here, and how, just how did we manage to land ourselves in this situation, here, today? To think of our origins, back through history and even prehistory, and of the great procession of milestones of human achievement- the advent of tools, of fire, of civilization, language, rational thought, science and the arts, electronics, and how from simple beginnings things built up like the sounds cluttering my car, piling up on the floor amongst the artifacts and paraphernalia, rising above my neck and rattling in my ears until it threatened to drown me in a cacophony and I had to desperately fumble at the dial and switch the damn radio off, and blink and catch my breath as I returned, dazed, to the world around me. It was so alien. And to my mind, it was horrifying."
Well, say when you sit down in a place where it's very noisey. (Beside your window, watching tv, ect.) And stare at your toes with them in front of you. Don't move your eyebablls, just stare at one particullar toe. You'll become in a trance, and everything will fade from sight, touch, sound, taste, everything but that one toe. And when you move even the slightest muscle, everything will come back.
i do what bob said when im eating except someone has to get me out i can eat and do anything except walk and still be in a trance
Here are two quotes that summarize this entire topic.
"If you think you are insane, you are not, because the insane man believes what he thinks is reality."
"I had a dream that I was a butterfly, and when I woke up, I was not sure if I was a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming I am a man."
I failed at remembering where i heard them.
This is kinda making me think of The Matrix or something. Awesome movie =)
Yes i have noticed but is this in the right forum? I can't really tell for sure...
Yes i have noticed but is this in the right forum? I can't really tell for sure...
Well, this has a sorta religious aspect, a sorta world event aspect, and this does have 'Ect.' in it too, so i would say its in the right place.
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