IUBio

repost: "everything"

F. Frank LeFever flefever at ix.netcom.com
Sun Jul 19 22:29:49 EST 1998


In <35B21327.6B651C9E at banet.net> Sej Mac <skring at banet.net> writes: 
>
>F. Frank LeFever wrote:
>
>> In <6oiq4s$87u$1 at nnrp1.dejanews.com> kyan1 at vaxc.hofstra.edu writes:
>> >
>> >                Everything  (p)1998 July 11
>> >
>> >   * beginning with solipsism.  Im trying to make sense of the
>> world...
>
>>      COMMENT: Lots of luck; you're operating with a severe handicap.
>
>Actually, Kyan is making a proper start.  All true philosophers,
famous
>and obscure, start this way.


FURTHER COMMENT: I don't denigrate the start, but given the evident
handicap, doubt the outcome.

- - - - - - - (snip)- - - - - - - - -





 on October 22--I forget the year--Fechner
>>                 had a sudden conviction that he knew how to prove
that
>>                 everything in the universe was conscious.  He wasn't
>>                 thinking clearly--just woke out of a deep sleep--but
>>                 his method DID prove useful)(i.e. the psychophysical
>>              method)



- - - - - - -  - - -(snip) - - - - - - - - -



> I disagree with Frank's value assessment of psychophysics. Fechner &
>Weber were outrageously idiotic with their "equations."  At their
time, as
>today, the nonphysical sciences (knowledge pursuits) were very
covetous of
>the physical sciences' success (mostly physics), and mistakenly
believed
>that it was due to "math."  This misapprehension continues today.  The
>success of the physical sciences, IMO, is that they *observed.*
>Carefully, with their *minds.*  The seeking and relatively unfettered
mind
>is capable of controling variables on its own.  It "instinctively"
>utilizes the scientific method of REASONING.
>


FURTHER COMMENT: Well, here we have the problem in a nutshell. 
"Reasoning" is NOT the scientific method.  It is the method of
philosophers and (for that matter) the man in the street, in his
armchair, re-inventing not only round wheels but also square ones and
generating nothing much but endless arguments basically incapable of
resolution.  Only in the past 2-3 centuries, with acelerating pace, has
rigorous application of the scientific method begun to answer those
questions which are susceptible of answers.

The psychophysical method, as a METHOD, has contributed to our
knowledge of how our senses work, and continues to do so--Fechner's own
applications and conclusions (as well as his bizarre inspiration) are
really not relevant and do not detract from this fundamental
accomplishment.




>>          COMMENT: I tend to believe Barbie Dolls are still without
>>          consciousness; and consciousness may be rather limited in
>>          adults who play with them or attribute consciousness to
them.
>>
>>           Frank
>

FURTHER COMMENT: What follows is just plain silly.  You would base your
understanding of the universe on figures of speech and/or careless
anthropomorphisms of the (basically unthinking) masses?

Apparently so, given your rather similar approach to those clever
little nucleotides (cute rascals!)

Frank


>Matter does seem to be imbued with some kind of "mind."  So many 
modern
>people have perceived dimly that their cars, their calculating
>machines---even their computers seem to have "minds of their own." And
>don't forget such colloquialisms as "the walls have ears," and "if
these
>walls could talk. . .." I have difficulty with this at the surface of
>things, but if mass-energy is created out of purely meta-physical
(outside
>of the parameters of the set of things we call mass-energy), then
every
>quantum would possess mind.  Not *human* mind, of course.  What
>differentiates animate from inanimate matter is the former's ability
to
>control their own destinies vis a vis the environment.  A rock, a
grain of
>sand, is at the mercy of erosion.  Nucleotides seem to have found a
way
>around this, limitedly, by coalescing into walless bundles.  Then they
>in-vented (in-"winded") walls---the primordial virus; next came the
>internal storehouse of materials to maintain the code
(cytoplasm)---the
>prokaryote,  and so on.  Only mind could do this.  Statistics and
random
>chance plays a role only in what the environment provides at any given
>moment.  A mind *discerns,*  then *learns,* then *chooses.*
>
>> >     & that humans have 5 senses is only an evolutionary
contingency
>
>On the right track, I would say, except that who says humans have only
5
>senses?  But even that with which we were endowed have greatly
weakened
>over the last 7 millenia from nonuse, misuse, and abuse.
>




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