Human evolution: we are entirely improbable (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, January 21, 2021, 18:44 (1191 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Yes, but we can still keep learning as I put entries here, and add to the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. Fair summary?

dhw: Yes to “keep learning” – for which I must reiterate my gratitude – and to the arguments for design (see the theory of cellular intelligence), but emphatically no to “beyond a reasonable doubt” when it comes to the origin of whatever does the designing. i.e. the existence of an unknown, unknowable, eternally conscious, immaterial mind without a source but with infinite powers of psychokinesis.

"We are discussing the need for a mind that can create by specific designs. Design keeps you agnostic. Why? Design requires a designer.

"Let's look at a philosophic view just published about our improbability:

https://nautil.us/issue/95/escape/is-life-special-just-because-its-rare-rp?mc_cid=d526f...

"Even if all “habitable” planets (as determined by Kepler) do indeed harbor life, the fraction of all material in the universe in living form is fantastically small. Assuming that the fraction of planet Earth in living form, called the biosphere, is typical of other life-sustaining planets, I have estimated that the fraction of all matter in the universe in living form is roughly one-billionth of one-billionth. Here’s a way to visualize such a tiny fraction. If the Gobi Desert represents all of the matter flung across the cosmos, living matter is a single grain of sand on that desert. How should we think about this extreme rarity of life?

***

"Most of us human beings throughout history have considered ourselves and other life forms to contain some special, nonmaterial essence that is absent in nonliving matter and that obeys different principles than does nonliving matter. Such a belief is called “vitalism.” Plato and Aristotle were vitalists. Descartes was a vitalist. Jöns Jakob Berzelius, the 19th-century father of modern chemistry, was a vitalist. The hypothesized nonmaterial vital essence, especially in human beings, has sometimes been called “spirit.” Sometimes “soul.”

***

"there are no hidden and nonmaterial sources of energy that power human beings. In more recent years, the composition of proteins, hormones, brain cells, and genes has been reduced to individual atoms, without the need to invoke nonmaterial substances.

"Yet, I would argue that most of us, either knowingly or unknowingly, remain closet vitalists. Although there are moments when the material nature of our bodies screams out at us, such as when we have muscle injuries or change our mood with psychoactive drugs, our mental life seems to be a unique phenomenon arising from a different kind of substance, a nonmaterial substance. The sensations of consciousness, of thought and self-awareness, are so gripping and immediate and magnificent that we find it preposterous that they could have their origins entirely within the humdrum electrical and chemical tinglings of cells in our brains. However, neuroscientists say that is so.

***

"what is that special arrangement deemed “life?” The ability to form an outer membrane around the organism that separates it from the external world. The ability to organize material and processes within the organism. The ability to extract energy from the external world. The ability to respond to stimuli from the external world. The ability to maintain stability within the organism. The ability to grow. The ability to reproduce. We human beings, of course, have all of these properties and more. For we have billions of neurons connected to each other in an exquisite tapestry of communication and feedback loops. We have consciousness and self-awareness.

***

"there’s another way to think of existence. In our extraordinarily entitled position of being not only living matter but conscious matter, we are the cosmic “observers.” We are uniquely aware of ourselves and the cosmos around us. We can watch and record. We are the only mechanism by which the universe can comment on itself. All the rest, all those other grains of sand on the desert, are dumb, lifeless matter.

***

"Without a mind to observe it, a waterfall is only a waterfall, a mountain is only a mountain. It is we conscious matter, the rarest of all forms of matter, that can take stock and record and announce this cosmic panorama of existence before us.

***

"We cannot imagine a universe without meaning. We are not talking necessarily about some grand cosmic meaning, or a divine meaning bestowed by God, or even a lasting, eternal meaning. But just the simple, particular meaning of everyday events, fleeting events like the momentary play of light on a lake, or the birth of a child. For better or for worse, meaning is part of the way we exist in the world.

"And given our existence, our universe must have meaning, big and small meanings. I have not met any of the life forms living out there in the vast cosmos beyond Earth. But I would be astonished if some of them were not intelligent. And I would be further astonished if those intelligences were not, like us, making science and art and attempting to take stock and record this cosmic panorama of existence. We share with those other beings not the mysterious, transcendent essence of vitalism, but the highly improbable fact of being alive.

Comment: How do you explain our existence? My answer is not by chance!