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Hi John M,
I actually agree with what you are saying here (or with what I
THINK you are saying...)
> John M. wrote: I have a hunch that
'ambience' is a negative model: it extracts from the totality one's "self",
while such part (the self) of the totality is in total interconnection with the
'rest of the world'.
But what my father was describing was science, which is a human
intellectual pursuit. If you can think of a way to "do science" without engaging
in such dualisms, I'd love to hear about it. Without psychic ability or
supernatural ability, we are left with "only" intelligence and
imagination.
> John M. wrote: Anthropomorhpic modeling:
"I" am something special, 'out of the world'. - No way! I am part of it, in
a 2-way interaction. Descartes' 'cogito' is not an action of a
singularity cut off from its "ambience": it is part of (included in) the
wholeness, based on 'total' experience and interpretation of such.
Are we not both? And more? It's much more than just a two-way
interaction. The reasons I gave for why biological systems are so difficult to
analyze apply here. The average human being is more than one distinct system,
which is part of your point (if I'm getting it right-- am I?). We can also
be defined as a whole community of organisms which live on us, in us,
around us, with whom we have co-evolved. In turn, we are part of a larger
community, etc. Some are interdependent with others, all affect each other, in
an ever widening concept of "system". Our planet is only one in this solar
system. Our solar system is only one in this galaxy, our galaxy is only one....
Just as some component in a complex system does multiple duty as the equivalent
of being different components in different relational aspects, the system
I'm labeling as 'human being' can be a distinct system with distinct
organization, but also can serve as aspects of other systems with other
organizations. It gets really convoluted when we factor in the notions of
consciousness, social interaction, societal systems, computer networks, internet
communities, etc...
Incidentally, humans are not the only creatures who have this "I am
something special" attitude. All organisms are driven (presumably by the nature
of their organization-- namely; LIFE) to survive, which is the basis for
the human attitude. All organisms regard (in some sense) the "ambience" as their
own private home. Any food source is each organisms "own private food source". A
bacterium will simply colonize-- obviously if it kills the host, that's not
optimal, but they don't think, they just "do". A beaver will change its
environment in ways that kill many of the previous residents but offer new
habitat for other types of organisms-- and they make no apologies for it-- it's
all incidental. It's "their" universe. That attitude is typical of all living
things, so in a sense it's remarkable that human beings even think twice about
it. A concept like sustainability is not visible in any other organism on the
planet, that I've ever seen, and I've been searching for one. What we
refer to as "Nature" handles that aspect, and does so quite brutally. If
humanity lets things go far enough, Nature will sort out our sustainability
problems for us, too, just as brutally.
What is "nature"? Nature, it seems to me, is simply the process of
complexity at work. There is no consciousness to it. The only reasons are
"causal" reasons, which may or may not be viewed as my father defined
them.
> John M. wrote: And I prefer: I think,
therefore I think I am (and so on).
Yeah. I like "I think I think, therefore I think I
am."
Judith
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