Re: sustain vs enhance, radical impartiality

[Dan Fiscus <***>]

John M,

Good points, but I am not sure how and/or why we seem
to disagree. Maybe we don't. Three questions for you that
may or may not be related:

1. You talk about qualia - do you see any difference between
life and non-life in terms of quality?

2. You once wrote about pan-sensitivity - do you see life as
more sensitive than non-life?

3. Do you agree with the radical impartiality of Taoism and
perhaps other Eastern traditions such as indicated in this
story paraphrased from the endnotes of the translation of
Tao Te Ching by Stephen Mitchell (already posted on this
list before, but worth doing it again I think):

The gist of the story is - A man's horse ran away and all
the people of his village came to offer their condolences for
his loss. A "sage" said, "How can you tell that this is not a
good thing?" Later the man's horse returned with another
horse of another breed and the two created very strong
offspring together. The villagers offered their congratulations,
but the sage said, "How can you tell that this is not a
disaster?" The man became rich and successful in the horse
breeding/selling business. In all the horse business going on
his son was actively involved as a worker. One day he was
thrown by a horse and broke his hip. The villagers came
and offered their sympathy, but the sage said again, "How
can you tell that this is not a good thing?" Later a war broke
out and most of the young men were conscripted and went
to fight, and the majority that did were killed in the war.
Due to the broken hip the man's son was spared this fate.

Mitchell uses this story to back up the passages in the Tao
that suggest the wisest approach is to not label, assign,
judge things as good or bad, but to remain impartial, to
embrace both of what others label as "good" and "bad"
aspects. He and the Tao also seem to imply, though, that
impartial is good, or that for world events or dynamics,
"its all good".

Thanks for any more comments on how I might understand
your views which seem pretty radically holistic to me and
a bit hard to get a handle on or relate them to Rosen
questions like the nature of life, life vs machine, etc. Sorry
if I am slow to get this...you may have said it all before...

Dan



John M wrote:

> Dan F,
> thanks for the consideration and reply towards the thoughts I raised. To
> reduce archive-length I quote your paragraphs I try to reflect to - don't
> just copy the prerequisits' 1000 lines.
> Read please below. (">": your recentl posted text-parts, "> > " my previous
> post remarks)

> [JM]: "who is that "LIFE" itself? are you talking about the narrow-minded
> (reductionistically identifies) and  "C-H2O" (etc.) based so called biology?
> doesn't the Cosmos (our universe) have a 'life' with birth, death, evolution
> and functional changes induced and inferred?  Is the "integral whole" indeed
> an interconnected PARTIAL VIEW of the total? of the 'complexity' nature? Do
> you 'model' life as a substantial entity, - even
> with a "fundamental goal" which I would deem (better: understand?) as
> different from the 'rest of it'?
> Persistence and survival are characteristics we observe in our time-related
> views. Changes go on without ceasing and some are deemed (by us) as
> 'mutation of the same species' (if I restrict this train to conventional
> biology) - while some are deemed 'emergence of new species' depending on the
> aspects we use as our boundaries in the observation. If the boudaries are
> close enough, the changes look like 'open ended'. How did 'life' fair before
> humans and will after humans (I mean Gaia, or biosyphere, or even Earth or
> Solar System - you may go all the way to the edge of universe <G>).
> ----(Snip the anerobes)----

> [JM]: It seems you wear rosy glasses (just kidding). (Besides the 'life as
> an integral' - again). One might look at the antipoles of all that "great"
> and wonder: you want to export the politicians, injustice, violence, lies,
> etc. to the 'rest of the universe' as well? And if you think of mentioning
> Leonardo, Aristotle, Leibnitz, Einstein, Mozart, Buddha, Darwin,
> Shakespeare, and another 1000 unsung mental heroes, think again, it only
> increases the shame of the shameful 'other side' when those illuminating
> stars were around as well.
> I missed the understanding of your 'fossil legacy' - I rather think of
> (future) non-fossil resources.

> I find it dangerous to "act" upon 'uncertainty' (ignorance?) "gleaning" -
> maybe by the wrong connotations - i.e. drawing the wrong conclusions. The
> convetniponal scientific views are based on a reductionistic-style
> observation made and explained in ages wirh much less information than
> collected later on. These conclusions stayed in the "gleaned views" and
> haunt to this day. We have to make fundamental reviewing -
> a mental houskeeping - and this is exactly where RR's ideas can help.
> It is hard to turn loose from a millennia-long meme-brainwashing. It sticks
> in the mindset. Especially in one's learned profession plus daily
> occupation. I never questioned the 'truth' in my polymer science activity
> while working in it. Scientific schizophrenia is a hard thing to exercise.
> And domain-shauvinism is hard to eliminate.
>
> Best wishes
>
> John M