Religious anti-science in sheep's clothing.

When philosophers, humanities, religion, or witch doctor step into the realm of science they're usually pushing some malignant agenda to the detriment of all. Science provides you the truth, as best we can, in the least wrong way possible. It's the witchdoctos and preachers and humanitarians' job to accept that and keep all the guys from trying to cannibalize each other with that knowledge or whatever. If they reject the science, I assume they're just sharpening their own cannibal fork.

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Huh?

We don't have to talk to a dog to know it has differing experiences from us, though granted I would say dogs are probably one of the closer animals to humans as far as that goes. That's beside the point though, because we can easily derive that the eyesight and scent dogs have create a different sensory experience than we have.

Science has allowed us to begin to understand the experience of other animals, we don't have to "talk to them".

Bats clearly experience reality differently than we do, Bugs as well, etc... It's all essentially the function of an output determined by chemical/sensory inputs. That's basically what op was getting at.

I love how you think about things, and I’m probably going to read about frog skin cells for hours. Thanks for the rabbit hole.

A few points I’d like to make however: for the insect example in particular (and speaking of evolution and executive choice in general) it doesn’t seem to be guided by anything except fitness on an individual and species level.

All of this is, as far as we can tell, guided by emergent properties of the fundamental laws of physics (and speaking generally, the ability to both better use chemical and electromagnetic energy, and ensure offspring survive to reproduce.)

Insects aren’t as large today as they were at one time because atmospheric oxygen levels are much lower.

Insects largely absorb oxygen through their skin, and volume increases much faster than surface area as objects get larger.

This means that large insects were selected against for millions of years, as they couldn’t support their metabolic needs as efficiently as smaller insects due to reduced oxygen in the atmosphere.

There is no “it” to “figure out how to maintain itself”, anymore than the speed of light or an asteroid is an “it” with a sense of self that seeks to preserve itself.

It’s just deceptively simple rules on the smallest scales leading to larger and larger emergent properties and systems that give rise to self perpetuating systems like life.

Just like Conway’s game of life or pareidolia, it’s easy to ascribe an identity to something that has none, simply because some of its properties are reminiscent of systems we are familiar with that have some level of agency and awareness.

Sorry. So far we've only done it for cats.

> Why doesn’t evolution adapt an insect of the past to maintain its giant form despite the pressure from the environment? Couldn’t it have figured out a way to maintain itself?

What? That's well known. The O2 content of the atmosphere.

This whole post is just bollocks appealing the to mysticism of the unknown. But bro, other people know more than you and have answers.

True. Not to mentions the sad reality that physics as we understand now, and possibly forever (though hopefully not!), does not possess the faculty of explainings the underlying (or if you prefer fundamental) properties of reality upon which it manifests.

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I get where you're coming from, but that's really just word games and doesn't support "is not reducible to our brains and biology".

> [Waves] but cannot be reduced to the properties of a molecule.

If you studied how water molecules interacted with each other, ie the fluid behaviour that really does come from their physical properties (as dictates by their nuclear properties) then you'd be able to extrapolate how the wave pattern form. The potential for making waves is certainly because of the molecules and we can point to the exact part which dictate it. (It's a phase diagram).

It's for sure a lot easier to see at the macro scale and simply observing a puddle, but saying that emergent properties aren't reducible to their base components is disingenuous.

Here in this context, it amounts to "humans are unique not because of our biology, but because of how our biology is out together." Both of those are within the set of "because of our biology".

That sounds like a brain thing

You've misunderstood Levin a bit. His claim is that environment guides cellular development. Specifically, intercellular electrical gradients.

It's our culture that makes us unique - social structure, language, psychology - to what extent these are reducible to brains and biology is the key question.

The size of our frontal cortex is unique. Also we have taught multiple primate species sign language, and they are incapable of asking a question. There is also speculation about cooking being the most advanced digestion on the planet to fuel our minds.

You choose the have any cognitive configuration, but Solypsism does not conform to the external world(which is logic since it denounce a external world. How the mind can exist without external worlds is a question. It is beliving that one is a go’s that creates everything yet don’t remember any of it). Also the philosophical stance don’t further any understanding about the worlds and is therefore useless by definition

"human experience" lol. Call me when they could talk to my dog to see what his experience is like to even compare. This is like Actors awarding themselves Best Actor. Sure.

Yes wave is result of interactions of individual molecules, no one argued that, but wave is not just any result of interactions of individual molecules, it is a certain pattern, and the pattern is not a property of single molecule in the wave, it is a property of a whole.

That is why a wave cannot be reduced to "interactions of individual molecules, phase, frequency" etc. Because just random interactions do not produce wave, you need a certain pattern which does not belong to any single molecule.

The final definition of a wave then will be a pattern of interactions of single molecules in a form that makes a wave. So "a wave is... a wave".

>One can write a dissertation on emergent properties IMO, and I am not a PhD, but allegorically speaking, a wave on the liquid surface is determined by the physical properties of the molecules of the liquid, but cannot be reduced to the properties of a molecule.

Of course it can. The phenomenon of periodic motion that we call a wave is merely the result of individual molecules reacting to applied forces according to their properties. The wave has no existence outside of the molecules. Any properties that we attribute to it (e.g. amplitude, phase, frequency) are properties which exist only because of, and in principle can be computed from, the properties of each individual molecule. Conveniently for us, those properties are such that we can describe the motion of a large enough chunk of molecules using simple equations to a good approximation. But that's all it is, an approximation.

And orca is the apes predator in the ocean. But it goes after a few fish or a single seal at a time.

Humans can lay out 2 miles of net and bring up a whole school of fish.

So, there is a thesis, reduction to Brian

And antithesis. Reduction to body

And what we need is a synthesis of these two to extract higher order solutions to the problems that arise.

If you can steelman someone who hold an antithesis to your thesis. And I mean really steelman to the point where the other person says, dude, 100% you nailed it. and they can do that for your position. Then you have a team that can synthesize higher order principals.

It goes beyond just language acquisition. How do you sum up the consciousness and awareness of humans through science? It’s a largely subjective experience. You can start from science and we’re still learning more about the brain from biology and neuroscience but I don’t agree that we can fully explain human psychology through hard science as of yet.

Some would argue that it is. That all of our experiences, sensations, decisions are all just chemical reactions enticing us to benefit ourselves in some way or form.

I think language acquisition can very much be explained by biology.

By our tongues, our teeth, our soft palette, Broca's and Wernicke's area in our brain.

Philosophers who don't understand science love complaining about science being "too reductive."

And language acquisition is one of the most distinctively "human" characteristics we have.

There’s something intuitive in the evolutionary process. Michael Levin points out how Plenarians, these one-inch words, can be cut up to 200 individual pieces and each one will grow to a regular Plenarian. He postulates the question of what tells the Plenarian to stop growing at one inch and why so symmetrical when it can be cut so much. Some would say “DNA” but he is a biologist who understands the answer is not so simple. Each piece develops it’s own cognition as if it’s an individual once it is separate, but such conflict of growth doesn’t exist once the creature reaches its full state. There’s an underlying executive condition that we don’t understand that guides the genetic information to achieve certain goals. Frog skin cells left in suspension eventually develop their own form and become xenobots and have the capability of developing its own methods of travel and communication, enough so that they can solve basic mazes. Something guides the genetic information we have to experience the world as it is. It’s not so simple as pressure and environment as anything can be scaled, just like how we know there were bigger insects before on earth. Why doesn’t evolution adapt an insect of the past to maintain its giant form despite the pressure from the environment? Couldn’t it have figured out a way to maintain itself? The executive element is the question and how it guides our genetics to adapt.

One can write a dissertation on emergent properties IMO, and I am not a PhD, but allegorically speaking, a wave on the liquid surface is determined by the physical properties of the molecules of the liquid, but cannot be reduced to the properties of a molecule.

What is the difference in your opinion?

It’s a phenomenon arising out of biology, it cannot be fully explained by biology, at least not yet