Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Sunday, February 07, 2021, 11:03 (1173 days ago) @ David Turell

How we see color

DAVID: Do we all see exactly the same shade?:
https://theconversation.com/do-you-see-red-like-i-see-red-151650?utm_medium=email&u...

QUOTE: "Is the red I see the same as the red you see?”

Nothing new here. It's the usual problem leading to the subjectivity of all perception and to epistemology, which we’ve discussed many times.

Spiders lasso

DAVID: I agree. I view the strong webs as God's gift to spiders.

dhw: Hardly an agreement, but if you believe your God preprogrammed spiders and their strong webs 3.8 billion years ago, or alternatively popped in to operate on pre-spiders, so be it.

DAVID: I know. I find it illogical you can still consider chance causation or drag in panpsychism as a form of mind (God lite).

Hold on, hold on! I do not consider spiders to be the first cause! I would regard them and their webs as the products of evolution, as cell communities (possibly designed by your God) find their own ways of surviving. My scepticism concerns your fixed belief that although your God’s sole purpose was to design H. sapiens, he directly preprogrammed or dabbled every other life form etc., 99% of which had no connection with humans. And to be honest, even if the spider is essential to our human food supply and environment, I would still find it hard to believe your God programmed it 3.8 billion years ago, or popped in to operate on the cells of a bunch of pre-spiders.

Fin to limb genes

DAVID: Our views are not that different. Yours: God might have; mine: God did it.

dhw: Your “God did it” means that he preprogrammed everything 3.8 billion years ago, or popped in to change fins to limbs and limbs to fins before the respective animals changed their environments. My “God might have” refers to the design of cells with the intelligence to “do it” themselves. I’d say there’s quite a difference.

DAVID: Your God 'cell intelligence' is really God one step removed.

More than one step. If God exists, I would remove the millions and millions of steps you make him take, either through individual programmes for every life form, econiche etc., or through individual operations carried out or courses given to millions of living creatures as he changes them from one species to another, or instructs them on how to perform their wonders.