Saturday, October 19, 2013
The Mind Body Problem...Maya Knight
Thomas Nagel's Mind & Cosmos continues to boggle me; specifically, the mind body problem. Nagel disagrees with Darwinism which says that nature has no goals or direction. He instead believes that it is highly unlikely that "life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection" (Chapter 1). Nagel states in the essay, and I absolutely agree that there are things so remarkable that they can not merely be explained as accidental.
The laws of Physics and Chemistry are facts that science has proven, but is that all there is to nature? Why isn't consciousness associated with nature? I am keep going back and forth on whether the mind-body problem is a legitimate issue. On one hand I can't understand why is it so hard to accept the relationship between mind and matter, when as we stated in class, our bodies are made up of the matter of earth, or when consciousness exists because of the functionality of our brains. For example Whenever we want to do something (walk talk touch etc.) It is first signaled by the brain which sends chemical and electrical signals, from the neurons of the brain to other types of neurons in the body. For instance sensory neurons respond to light, sound, touch etc. Cells of these sensory organs send signals to the brain via the spinal cord. It is no coincidence that neurons can convert external stimuli from the environment into internal stimuli. Our bodies being able to interact in nature 'from within' leads me to believe that mind and matter must go hand in hand. Our technically consciousness comes from within our bodies which is made up of the earth. Still, on the other hand I feel like it can't be that simple, if scientists and philosophers have grappled with the subject for years. My small bit of knowledge of the body can't possibly be the explanation for why nature is indeed driven by purpose.
This reading also makes me think critically about the ascendence of the human race. Some biologists say that it happened passively. That could be true but given that I believe that nature is not passive, perhaps consciousness has yet to happen for animals and other species. Who is to say that there are not species on other planets that are just as advanced if not more than us. I was watching a documentary called Into the Universe by Stephen Hawkins, who said that there are species perhaps on this planet and even beyond that we do not know exists because we don't even recognize them as living organisms. We as the dominant species tend to under estimate the "other" we could be wrong in our assumption that animals can not comprehend some of the things that we do. This brings up another problem of ever being able to discover a single natural order that unifies everything on the basis of a set of common principles. Even overlooking the language barrier between species, human dominance would probably be the biggest hinderance of this ideal.
I wonder if it is true that if humans had not evolved some other species, sooner or later would have, but if that were the case, would that make nature passive? If any organism could have become dominant then maybe nature is without intention, as there are thousands and thousands of ways that the world could have turned out and it would not matter which of those ways it was it would just continue. For some strange reason I am trying to picture another species in this very spot, as the ascended species, at this computer struggling with this very issue, whilst I roam about the earth unconscious. Still, from my little knowledge, nature is not passive, it is always advancing and doing things to become better, stronger, faster etc.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think that as humans, we automatically establish ourselves as the human race at the center of the Earth and all its processes, and at the same time most people also view the world and it's processes as revolving around us. I'd say there's a difference between the two, the first meaning that we define the world around us and its processes in terms of our subjective human understanding of them, while insisting that these ideas are universal and objective; and the second meaning that we view the world and its processes as literally revolving around us, existing and functioning mainly in order to benefit us and support the continuing dominance of the human species over all others because we are the species currently at the height of the evolution of conscious, and easily overlook the fact that before we came to be there were plenty of other species that have held this same position and been usurped by the next evolutionary step.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of the mind-body problem and the failure to explain the phenomenon scientifically, it’s my belief that the human tendency to define the world in universal terms that come innately from the human perspective is the biggest obstacle standing between us and discovering the solution. We have created a blanket of universal laws for the earth and it’s functions under the guise that we understand them, and have covered the entire world in it, leaving a cut out in the middle for us as a species to stand, similar to the hole in the center of a spider web.
In terms of the character of nature, the idea of human dominance, and your questions regarding the possibilities of life on earth if a different species were to have fulfilled the role now occupied by humans, the second idea seems to come into play. The common viewpoint held amongst members of the human race is that everything that has happened on earth to this point has happened by acts of chance – since we are incapable of coming up with a “universal” law for these occurences – and all of these random acts have taken place in a way that has made our lives the way they are today and benefitted our species the most out of all the organisms on Earth. This viewpoint stems from the fact that we view ourselves as the most dominant organisms on earth, because in our minds, the things we do tend to have an effect – to some degree – on everything else on the earth. Because of this idea that everything that has happened so far in the history of the earth has resulted in our state today – disregarding the importance any effects on species outside our own – it becomes even more difficult for us to fathom the idea of any other creature being able to fulfill the place we hold today. We forget that there are species that display high levels of intelligence that could have, if they were given the chance, potentially reached our levels, and in fact still might do so someday in the future, in the same way that we forget to consider the improbability that any other creature shares in the belief/knowledge of the importance of the human species in the world as soon as we leave the realm of the human viewpoint.