a brief (and crazy?) theory of man's existence

Something hit me. Many people assume that man and nature are two different things. We discern things as either "natural" or "artificial". But arn't we the products of nature's development? We interact with nature on almost all of our physical and mental levels, ranging from simply ingesting foods, to carefully calculating sub-atomic particle velocities to find the composition of the known universe. All that we make and interact with is nature, making us firmly integrated with nature. What does this suggest...

This suggests that our space program is a product of natural development. This suggests that our ability to see millions of lightyears away is nature's ability to see this far away. That our nuclear programs are nature's means of finding mobile power sources. Being that nature is EXTREMELY adaptable (even nuking the planet with all our warheads would not destroy all life, just cause it to dwindel, adapt, and start again), it has created us, a species of self-destructive, rapidly consuming, pattern-making sub-sentient lifeforms who's sole purpose is to act as a spearhead initiative for the collective life form we call nature expand to other worlds. Plants make off-shoots to cling to rocks and such, forests expand into other ecosystems and even cross oceans, why shouldn't we believe that nature as a whole is trying to off-shoot to other worlds? What if all our war-fighting and nuclear programs and our urge to learn about space (we know more about space than our own oceans they say...) is not a product of our own intuition, but a product of nature's development? We are the off-shoot. We are the branch reaching out to grab something, only this branch is trying to do something this planet's nature has never had the chance to: expand. Maybe to other planets and moons, maybe even other star systems. By all reasoning this is the best step a collective consciousness such as nature can take, gaining extra foothold in order to survive, say, a hypernova blast, or a meteor strike, or any number of cataclysmic "natural disasters". I don't know, maybe I'm over-crediting nature here, but does this sound like a reasonable philosophy?

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This philosophy is totally reasonable, weed_eater_guy. I've never really thought about it like that, but it makes total sense to me.

I'm impressed with you.

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(93 posts to go!)

 

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I can see how you arrive at your conclusions, but I do not agree with your theory. I do not think that plastic or computers are natural products, they are inventions of mankind, and not a natural invention.

Also I would not say that nature is a collective consciousness...and just because humans are a product of nature does not mean that everything humans do is natural.

 

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WEG
Your Hypothesis is totally reasonable.

Dream
Is honey natural? Are anthills natural? Aren't these and myriad other things, produced by animals and insects by process?

Just because humans can take things out of the earth and turn them into something else by more intelligent process, doesn't make those new things 'unnatural'.

 

I remember having this discussion some time ago with Jenyar... let me have a look some of my older posts.

 

Hah, found it in the philosohpy forum, lot of argumentation about good and evil in it, but my opinion on this matter is also contained on pages three and four.
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=36465&page=3&pp=20

And it was moementum7 and not Jenyar with whom I have discussed.

Obviously I/we did not reach a certain conclusion, so I will repeat myself if I say that the line between natural and artificial is something subjective, just like good and evil...

 

Because we would have to assume that "Nature" not only has cognizance, foresight and intention, but it can also see millions of years into the future and all the billions upon billions of minute mind-numbing details of endless cause and effect relationships that gave us the ability of space travel.

It's not quite a simple and straight forward as a vine climbing a rock.

It would also annihilate free will as all our actions would have had to be pre-determined or else all of those intricate details would not have happened according to "plan" and the whole theory of "Nature's" intention is shot.

Do you see "Nature" as an omnipotent God-like figure watching us?

 

no, nature's not god, i just see nature as a force that learns to adapt. Every stupid organism ranging from fungus to cockroaches to vertebreas are somehow interconnected to everything and anything going on on the planet. For example (an I'm borrowing this from a short story i heard but I can't recall the name, so don't shoot me): if you could change one thing in time and you decided you'd go back a few million years ago to squash a fly (let's say someone's that dumb), that fly's carcas could become decomposed matter where it fell (as opposed to if it died later), which would help slightly to nurish a new plant, which would let a herbivor that came along have an extra leaf to eat in it's lunch, and since food can make life-or-death determinations we'll say that animal had enough food to breed healthily, making a new geneology tree of animals (a few dozen in a few years, we'll say, if it's a small herbivor), which gives food for other animals, which inevitably die and distribute decomposed matter that a colony of truffles grows out of, where some boars eat it, nurishing them to make new boars, who run over a few humans, who would've been John Kerry's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents! That's all far fetched, I know, but the fact is every life form has an effect on every other life form, making a giant calculating matrix (nature) that could act as a cognetive entity. I just figured that humans would be the explosive, high-paced, pattern-making part of this entity capable of doing very diverse and crazy things in comparission with the rest of nature. We will inevitably die out as a race, replaced by something else, but nature will most likely live on, maybe on heavenly bodies other than the one you're sitting on right now.

I write too much...

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Yes, I agree it is wholly natural what we have accomplished.

This is what makes it discouraging that we have no evidence of other intelligent life in the universe. It means the distances between us are indeed impossibly vast.

 

I do not think that nature is a matrix that calculated everything to happen the way it did. I do think that nature is the basis for our development, but our species might aswell has died if a fly did not get a heartstroke (or whatever flies die of) at a certain point, just to decompose to nourish a plant that was eaten by our ancestors.

I think you accredit too much power to nature, the things that evolved from nature have grown accustomed to each other and are ultimately dependant on each other (except some very basic lifeforms) and they created a system, but I doubt that it was the will of nature that the system is just like it is today.

 

I think there are two answers to this.

1) The facile answer: If by 'nature' you mean 'natural selection,' then of course man-made products are not a direct product of natural selection. They are concocted by an entity (the inventive human brain) that was itself shaped by natural selection, but they themselves are the direct result of a specific, goal-directed process, and not of blind selection. The difference between an anthill and a space shuttle in this regard is that the ant has no choice but to make the anthill; the behavior has been selected for over time and is now encoded in its genes. The space shuttle is the result of an actual innovation, one in which natural selection played no direct role. (The brain was selected for, millennia ago; the space shuttle never was.)

2) What I really think: What is the point of making this distinction anyway? It seems totally purposeless to argue over whether petroleum products and nuclear warheads are 'natural' or not. The fact remains that by creating them so rapidly and on such a huge scale, we have disturbed the balance of the ecosystems that had evolved prior to our civilization. It doesn't matter whether you call them 'natural' or 'artificial,' the fact remains that they pose a problem to the continued existence of life on this planet (our own as well as that of other species).

 

One raven

I disagree, wasn't it you I made the dragonfly analogy too?
Nobody believes a dragonfly egg has cognizance, foresight and intention, nor that it can see into the future. But within the dragonfly egg is a predictable future- egg, larvae, pupae, adult (Enemas Loosen Plugged Asses... yep I got it right

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). Things might not work out, but its destined to "try" and reach adult hood via a predictable path.

Earth is a more complex organism than the dragonfly, but that doesn't mean it couldn't work on the same principal. It's history could be it growing towards becoming an adult that can breed; via human spaceship-shaped spores that it "releases" into the galaxy.
And magic isn't required for this future to have been built within the origin of the planet. Really things only could have happened how they happened.

I figured free will was already annihilated, due to the reality of cause and effect.
A domino effect has occurred to lead up to the point of someone having a thought. And if you go back along that line of dominos they couldn't have fallen any other way. Unless, funnily enough, someone did go back and change something.
There's been a big tree of cause and effect branching out since forever, and every new branch relied upon the branch it stemmed from to come into existence.
Even the meteorite hitting the earth and causing extinctions was an event destined to happen. It too is the result of a string of events that were bound to take place due to each of their own respective strings of events.

Humans are an unnatural animal when compared to traditional animals, the only natural explanation is they are the planet's reproductive process firing up. Earth's puberty.
Humans are definately a change, saying "everything is natural just let it go" only displays that you haven't been paying attention. What humans are doing isn't akin to bees making honey, we could make buildings and even booze and still be a completely normal natural traditional animal. How we differ can only be seen from the much larger ecological perspective. In this regard we have transcended animals and become something else. We are still biologically animals and individually we are just run of the mill animals, intelligent yeah but so are dolphins thats really not the issue.
Our behaviour as a whole is unnatural, unlike every single other living organism in history.
We are seperating from the planet, it started with us weening off of it in a sense. We still rely on it but we have gradually become less and less reliant. We have seperated from its system.
Which is a good indication of our destined purpose, to seperate completely.
We've practiced with flying machines and took some out to space and come back to the "nest" like a young timid eagle.
It's only a matter of time before we float away to continue the family legacy.
And IMO we're giving ourselves a much too enthusiastic pat on the back to suggest its just our brilliant idea to spread out into space.
It is our idea, thats the means by which the process can go down, we were destined to come up with the "brilliant idea".
And just like a cunty teenager we were destined to treat our parents like shit and punch holes in the walls before leaving home.

This might seem to conflict with my environmentalist stance, but I'm just a mummy's boy, I don't want to grow up, I like home and am comfortable with the rules and curfews.
I still recognise humans on the whole are rebellious and feel the planet is cramping their style and can't wait to get out of here so they can be their own boss, stay up as late as they want and brush their teeth with soda.

(if nothing else, you have to admit I'm the king of analogies or metaphors or whatever the hell they are

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)

 

After reading that post, I don't think any one could argue with that statement!

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(You had some pretty good ones in there. I especially like the teenage thing you ran with.)

I am the one you made the dragonfly analogy to, and I admit that (along with the other points you broght up then) it was pretty strong evidence, but not enough.

The dragonfly is simply performing a biological function.
Humans, on the other hand, are building on an endless stream of innovations, discoveries, inventions, etc that are ALL dependant upon the prior innovations, discoveries, invetions, etc.

Interstellar speciation could not have been nature's goal or intention without seeing all these technical advances in advance.
It's easy to trace cause and effect in hidsight, and with that comes an assumption that things would have HAD to end up this way.
But, looking FORWARD is an entirely different thing.
I could decide to wear red socks tomorrow morning. It is well within my power of free will (try as you might there is NO convincing me that free will does not exist at least to some degree). That simple decision could conceivably change drastically change all of history that would have been if I had worn blue socks instead.
Cause and effect, as I'm sure you know, is immensely powerful, all pervading and inescapable.
As weed-eater-guy (I LOVE that nickname!

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) pointed out, if a certain fly had not fallen dead millions of years ago, it is possible that primates would not only not be the dominant life-form on this planet, we might not even exist as a species.
So, in order for space-flight to be the goal of nature, nature would have had to orchestrate every movement of every fly in the world, and been able to see the future.

I don't see how that is possible.
Mother nature doesn't care if that dragonfly grows to adulthood, or even if dragonflies exist at all.
Dragonflies, like all other species, are opportunistic.
They fill a niche.
If dragonflies did not exist, another species would have filled it's niche.
(whatever it is they do, eat mosquitos, right? let's just assume they eat mosquitos.)
If dragonflies did not exist then another species that also ate mosquitos would have flourished more widely than they currently have.
Or there would be a helluva lot more mosquitos.
Maybe, if dragonflies did not exist, humans would have been wiped out by a malaria plague many generations ago.
It's simple cause and effect relationships moving nature towards balance.
Nothing more.

It is Gaia at her most beautiful.

[edited to fix a buttload of typos]

 

And thats our point of difference. If I believed free will existed at all I'd be with you 100%. With the pressumption of free will your reasoning is perfect.

I know I won't sway you but let me give it a little half assed stab anyway;

I agree whichever you choose will make things snowball in different directions further and further away as time goes on.
My stance is, you weren't truely in control of what you chose, you were definately going to choose that due to a string of causes leading up to you making that choice. One of those causes might even be running into me and then purposefully trying to be contradictory with your choice to prove a point tomorrow morning.
No matter what, your choice won't be random. If it were possible to stop you on the millimicrosecond you were about to choose and then analyse the events in your life and the thoughts leading up to that choice we could predict what you would choose (if we were highly versed in cause and effect to a degree perhaps no human is but thats beside the point).
I believe we can make choices, but we can't choose what we choose. So you can see how(if thats the case-and I'm not assuming I've convinced you or anything) things had to happen as they have and will happen in the future in the only way they could.
It doesn't matter if you're purposefully trying to choose at random, a string of causes that started in the beginning of time lead to you trying to do that and something will eventually cause you to make a choice. When you pick a number out of a hat you only get 4 because it certain shakes caused it to shuffle around into the spot where you were inspired by previous events to put your hand. Its not random.
All the factors that will lead to pulling that number out are just the end of their own domino line that took a predictable path to that point in time. Its not "predictable" in that a person can predict but in the sense the hat being shook that way will make the number 4 bounce off that part of the hat that hard in that direction and make other numbers go over the top of it. And your life experience and the animal you are would have collaborated to make you decide to dig your hand in a little rather than grabbing one from the top.

A high powered microscope on a dragonflies body might make things seem random too, hormones suddenly squirt out of here and this suddenly grows from there, that cell replicates itself now and its all seemingly unorganised. But from further away we can see that every time the egg develops along a predictable path. And if we had a better microscope we might see what caused the cell to replicate then and the hormones to squirt there etc.

 

I think you coundn't possibly be more right.
In this statement, at least:

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I do know what you are saying.
I may have had a particularly good sleep, and I was feeling refreshed and bold in the morning, so I picked the red socks.
Or maybe I had an awful sleep and was too tired to reach any further then the yellow socks that were on top of all the other socks.
Sure, we can trace the billions of steps backwards to search for the cause was for how I slept that night, but the fact remains that all those factors serve to influence not determine my decision.
In that all-critical sock picking moment, my decision would be influenced by many different things, but it remains MY choice.

 

even if that is true, we cannot say that a nuclear war is natural, and a nuclear war would wipe out all life on the planet, it is possible that some bacteria frozen in ice in antarctica would someday thaw out but by the time it has evelved into anything more the planet will be gone somehow.

 

One raven, I'm curious, do you believe that right up untill free will evolved everything happened the only way it could have?
If so, wasn't free will itself pre-destined to occur?
In which case couldn't it be a pre-determined gamble of sorts? Like a shark sends its offspring off, gambling they will survive to breed, the planet might be gambling that it's free willed organism will find a way to spread its seed throughout the universe.
We might happen to be on a planet where the gamble is looking like it might pay off, where other planets may have failed or succeeded, or even failed to reach the free willed organism stage, such is the struggle of the life harbouring planet.

I don't see why what I'm saying would be in conflict with that. All organisms are a community of parts functioning together, and so is the planet. I'm just claiming there's no reason what's possible for earth's living organisms is impossible for earth itself. No one thinks magic is what makes red land crabs release their eggs into the coming tide, so why are they so sure earth can't be interested in continueing it's legacy? It doesn't need a brain or mind to do this, trees do it, and fungai. And it could concievably have a lifecycle, or at least be gambling on having a successful life cycle. Planets that did this in one way or another would be favoured by natural planet selection right? (I know the planet is rock and such, but the fizzling tapestry of life covering it might be a lifeform in itself. The living animal that is coral is only the little colourful bits on what we consider coral, the structure itself is not alive.)

And for the record I still absolutely don't believe in free will (in case it seemed like I was going soft there for a moment

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).

 

Oh, goody.
Another free will mutation.


What seperates man from beast is simple- lies and literature.
Anyway, this:

Is not new.

That the world seeks to know itself and transcend- Hegel called it the absolute, Schopenhaur called it a destructive will seeking to apprectiate itself through art.
The stoics I believe called the the world soul a pneuma, or breath- and Spinoza believed everywhere that Nature was God.

Also- to liken the earth to an organism seeking to know itself, like a human, is lacking the very thing- the only thing- that distinguishes the consciounsess of a flea with that of a human: self-contradiction.

So the Gaia theory is pretty, but false.

 

Gaia theory does not claim that the earth or Nature has a consciousness, any kind of cognizant thought, any goal or intention.
It simply claims that the Earth as a whole, can be seen as a macro-organism that gravitates towards balance.
People that have applied consciousness and all sorts of religious undertones to Gaia, have simply misunderstood it.
I recommend you read James Lovelock.

 

Here's a very good link that I actually came across on this forum a while back.