From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu 17 Nov 2005 - 01:52:49 GMT
Ted wrote:
I don't posit fields and memory because I think they're neat. I posit
them because they account for the fundamental features we observe in
organisms, in particular the human organism. A theory of life should be
true-to-life. It should make room for self-existence,
self-determination, awareness and self-awareness, desire, will and
purpose, memory, regret, shame and guilt, the ego and the unconscious,
anxiety and dread, fear and terror, love and hate, representation,
intelligence and communication, trust and deceit, pleasure and pain,
even qualities as simple as color and humor. The willing, purposive mind
is the center of the living universe.
My reply:
If you're looking at making something like regret, shame or guilt
fundamental to a theory of life, you're going to need to figure out how
to get an *E. coli* on the couch and analyze it's life story. In what
way does a bacterium feel regret or shame? If we're throwing
psychoanalytic terms about in inappropriate ways (ego and unconcious)
let's just go all the way and ask if unicellular organisms (sans
neurons) have a superego (aka conscience). If so, shouldn't
*Saccharomyces* yeast species responsible for the production of alcohol
have felt regret or shame for the consequences of human alcoholism due
to their intoxicating products? Sorry this may sound off the wall, but
extrapolating human subjective feelings across the rest of the living
phyla seems a bit strange IMO so you opened yourself up to the ridicule
with these gems. You are focusing on human traits then searing them
across the whole of the living world without respect for the fact that
most organisms do not have complex CNS's nor culturally derived concepts
like, guilt, regret or shame.
If non-human organisms do have a sense of humor they will probably be
rolling on the floor about now. It's been a while since I've read
Dennett's _DDI_, but didn't he pretty much explode the mind-first stance
in that book? I mean I might not be Dennett's biggest fan, but I'd at
least circle the wagons when someone states that mind (willing and
purposive) is at the center of it all. Mind resulted from evolution, it
was not the initial cause, nor does it factor into the equation for most
species. The evolution of mind became relevant to our discussion when
nervous systems became elaborate enough to generate something that could
be called mental activity. That certainly rules plants out, even those
plants like the sensitive briar or venus flytrap that have some
relatively rapid responses to environment changes.
Does a tree that falls on someone's house feel regret? Do pistils love
stamens or vice versa? Your views amount to anthropomorphism writ large.
Dawkins's metaphor of the "selfish" gene doesn't even come close to the
extent you're pushing it. Human attributes have very limited ranges of
applicability, especially in the literal sense. Dawkins's metaphor
wasn't a literal one, but I'm wondering about your allusions to regret
and shame in the non-human organisms.
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