"...are we characters in a dubious fairy tale written thousands of years ago in the depths of human ignorance? Or, random globs of cells who got a little luckier than $%#@ that grows on our shower tiles?" - Jon Stewart on The Daily Show
Humanity has a track record of being self-centered. For millennia we considered ourselves, and Earth, to be the literal center of the universe. We almost can't help our obsession with ourselves. And quite frankly, our self-centeredness almost seems like a reasonable position for humanity to take. After all, we haven't met any other life-forms. The closest we've come to touching another planet is our few short trips to the moon.
The question "why am I here?" seems to be a natural thing people ask. It's almost pre-programed into our brains. We want to be important. We clearly feel the need to have a purpose. But, just because we feel like we should have a purpose doesn't mean we actually have one. Aside from our insecurities and sense of self-importance why should we think we are any more special than the molecules on any other planet?
48 comments:
Who says we are only molecules?
Who says we are only molecules?
I do... and I'm a molecular biologist. Since molecular biology got started about 30 years ago, we've been able to explain thousands of biological phenomena based on molecular interactions (mostly protein-protein interactions). By contrast, we've never seen anything to suggest a non-molecular ghost in the machine.
LNM,
You don't find it at all suspicious that the universe somehow conspired for rational, intelligent beings to exist?
CM,
"Since molecular biology got started about 30 years ago, we've been able to explain thousands of biological phenomena based on molecular interactions"
Yes, but the emergent properties of a human being are hardly things you can predict from molecular biology.
You could just as easily say that we are just quarks and electrons, but that wouldn't tell you much about the emergent properties of chemistry, much less biology. And much much less psychology or philosophy.
Yes, but the emergent properties of a human being are hardly things you can predict from molecular biology.
I'm not sure what you mean about emergent properties. But there's nothing about a human being that, to me, seems supernatural.
However it all works, and it is pretty complex, it is still just molecules doing the work.
LNM-
The Descatesian statement "I think therefore I am," seems to answer that. The fact that we can conceive of the question is in and of itself a justification for the question. Even though it is just a bunch of molecular interactions.
CM,
"However it all works, and it is pretty complex, it is still just molecules doing the work."
Trivially true, but a person is more than just the sum of their parts. For a simple example: while life emerges from the molecular processes of a cell, you cannot reduce life itself to the molecules. It is a gestalt.
Similarly, you cannot derive the mind by studying a single neuron. It emerges from the system of neurons.
Just to be clear, I'm not asking an existential question. We obviously exist. And while on one level we are just a bunch of molecules, I think a highly complex group of molecules interacting in highly complex ways can be more than the sum of its parts.
My question is do we have any more purpose than any other animal. Take dolphins for example. Dolphins are fairly rational, somewhat intelligent beings. We obviously think we are better than dolphins. But, maybe on the scale of potential intelligence we're actually in the same ballpark.
I don't see that the universe 'conspired' to make intelligent life any more than it conspired to make any other highly complex system like volcanoes or rivers or the planet Jupiter.
"The Candy Man said...
Who says we are only molecules?
I do... and I'm a molecular biologist. Since molecular biology got started about 30 years ago, we've been able to explain thousands of biological phenomena based on molecular interactions (mostly protein-protein interactions). By contrast, we've never seen anything to suggest a non-molecular ghost in the machine."
Then tell me what consiousness is.
"I don't see that the universe 'conspired' to make intelligent life any more than it conspired to make any other highly complex system like volcanoes or rivers or the planet Jupiter."
It didn't conspire to make volcanoes or the planet Jupiter. Dead interactions did that. They are not complex systems. They are dead systems. Life by contrast is complex. A star is a simple object a brain is by contrast so far beyond simple.
"However it all works, and it is pretty complex, it is still just molecules doing the work."
Who am I talking now then? How can we talk?
> Who am I talking now then? How can we talk?
Clearly, only with great difficulty.
"Lubab No More said...
> Who am I talking now then? How can we talk?
Clearly, only with great difficulty."
Answer the question. Rather than be spiteful.
"However it all works, and it is pretty complex, it is still just molecules doing the work."
That's like saying however a shelf got put in it was only arms at work.
I think the question you were attempting to form was something along the lines of "Who am I talking to if you are just a bunch of molecules?" (Please read your comments before you post them).
Just like a film is just a bunch of pictures and sounds that comprise a movie, you're talking to a bunch of molecules that comprise a human being. The sum is not a total of the parts.
BTW, go easy on the posting there cowboy. It's starting to look like spam in here.
>LNM,
You don't find it at all suspicious that the universe somehow conspired for rational, intelligent beings to exist?
This is an interesting question, because I think there are two issues here
a) The complexity of life
b) Existence of rational, intelligent beings
I have serveral issues with OP's question:
a) Assuming you are not a young Earth crationist, don't you find it suspicious that it took ~14 billion years for the only life we know to appear.
b) Take something like a jellyfish. It basically contains 99% of the same "miraculous" mechanisms that human beings do. Let's pretend we are observers from another universe looking at our universe and it contains nothing smarter than a jellyfish. Would we still ask OP's question - would we find it suspicious that the universe somehow conspired for jellyfish to exist?
c) It is true that today we are rational, intelligent beings, but we prize that because that is what makes humans unique. Yet we cannot spin webs, or use echo-location, which makes other living things unique. So we use rationality and intelligence as the yardstick for advancing the idea of the Anthropic Principle.
"Lubab No More said...
I think the question you were attempting to form was something along the lines of "Who am I talking to if you are just a bunch of molecules?" (Please read your comments before you post them)."
I do and did.
"Just like a film is just a bunch of pictures and sounds that comprise a movie, you're talking to a bunch of molecules that comprise a human being. The sum is not a total of the parts."
But the film itself is nothing but a bunch of still pictures and sounds. There is no reality to the film. It is only an illusion to the eye. We make it more than the sum of its parts because that's what we are. I'm saying this:Consciousness cannot be just be just a bunch of molecules interacting. If it is that's not being aware. Dead things interact and aren't aware.
"BTW, go easy on the posting there cowboy. It's starting to look like spam in here."
Spam is where your not giving ideas but trying to disrupt. I've given nothing but ideas.
"Take something like a jellyfish. It basically contains 99% of the same "miraculous" mechanisms that human beings do."
But the differences are so enormous.
LNM,
"I don't see that the universe 'conspired' to make intelligent life any more than it conspired to make any other highly complex system like volcanoes or rivers or the planet Jupiter."
In evolution, whenever there is a powerful niche to exploit you can be confident that some species will find themselves in it. The fact that the Earth is covered in a thick atmosphere virtually guanteed that flying creatures would evolve. Whether they'd have wings or floated like balloons or whatever are open possibilities, but the niche would be filled.
The fact that the universe is so orderly and intelligible and open to manipulation is the very way it was possible (inevitable?) for evolution to produce an intelligent species like us. Our minds are filling a niche produced by the highest, most refined properties of the physical universe and not just those produced by the particular local environment. That rivers exist is trivial compared to what we have.
Whether that means we have a purpose per se or more of a purpose compared to other things is difficult to say, but I think we hold a pretty special place in the order of things.
> Spam is where your not giving ideas but trying to disrupt. I've given nothing but ideas.
If you have a lot to say and a bunch of posts you want to comment on by all means comment BUT, please combine them all into one post so the system only sends out one email and not half a dozen.
OP,
> Our minds are filling a niche produced by the highest, most refined properties of the physical universe and not just those produced by the particular local environment.
But our minds aren't that much different from the minds of many lesser species. Our brains are just souped-up versions of the brains other mammals have. We fill a niche, but from a hardware standpoint we're not doing anything spectacularly different.
> I think we hold a pretty special place in the order of things.
I would agree that on Earth we're pretty damn special. But in the universe? We're just a speck, on a speck, on a speck.
I think the jury is still out on whether humanity is so great. To ourselves we seem pretty special but we're just witting off the (rest of the) animal kingdom and assuming there is nothing better out there. Who knows, in a hundred years AI might think we're no more interesting than Koko.
LNM,
I think you and I are saying similar things.
LNM,
"We fill a niche, but from a hardware standpoint we're not doing anything spectacularly different."
Different enough, clearly. But I don't see why this is relevant anyway. Why would intelligence's meaningfulness require quantum leaps?
"I would agree that on Earth we're pretty damn special. But in the universe? We're just a speck, on a speck, on a speck."
Give it time. Intelligent minds are potentially the most powerful force in the universe. We have the ability to harness everything else to our ends.
"I think the jury is still out on whether humanity is so great."
If you note, I did not refer to humanity per se.
One thing going unsaid is that "consciousness" and "life" defy clear definitions. There is no consensus on what constitutes life. It's like pornography: we can't define it, but we know it when we see it.
That makes me suspect that the dichotomy between alive and dead is false. These two categories are not strictly separate. There is no distinct line between a collection of dead molecules and an alive organism.
If you have a clear definition of life, do tell.
The fact that the universe is so orderly and intelligible and open to manipulation is the very way it was possible (inevitable?) for evolution to produce an intelligent species like us.
Is it actually intelligible? I for one am baffled to intuitively comprehend quantum mechanics. I find it deeply mysterious no matter how mathematically precise it is. It seems that the world at the quantum level is beyond human intuition.
I think we overestimate our abilities to comprehend our world. We may reach a limit to our knowledge. What would that say about the human species?
I find it ironic that sometimes a theist may point to the mystery of the universe to argue for the existence of their God, and on other occasions will argue that there is a God because we have intelligence which allows us to comprehend the world. Either existence is profoundly mysterious or shallowly intelligible; we can't have it both ways.
"But our minds aren't that much different from the minds of many lesser species. Our brains are just souped-up versions of the brains other mammals have. We fill a niche, but from a hardware standpoint we're not doing anything spectacularly different."
Oh far from true. We have differences with apes that have no parallel with them. We don't simply behave and think like them at a higher level. A scientist recently showed that what has been concentrated on are the similarities but said that we see now profound differences. If we just soup up an animal brain we will still not have a human's brain complexity.
"> I think we hold a pretty special place in the order of things.
"I would agree that on Earth we're pretty damn special. But in the universe? We're just a speck, on a speck, on a speck."
It's so hard to make us. If intelligent life is as predictable to be filling every available niche in the universe as on earth then we aren't as special from the standpoint of science. But to the extent that a gap would show between the availability of niches and the utilizing of them to that extent we would be seeing a level of specialness beyond anything we encounter elsewhere in nature.
"Is it actually intelligible?"
It is. There is a distinction between procurable and intelligible. We can't picture a fourth dimension but it's behavior aught to have predictable consequences.
"G-d is subtle but malicious" Einstein
> A scientist recently showed that what has been concentrated on are the similarities but said that we see now profound differences.
Can you link to this research?
I tried to find it again earlier. I'll look again.
Whoops I typed earler a typo. Einstein didn't say G-d is subtle but malicious
He said:G-d is subtle but not malicious.
I'll match your Einstein quote with another which addresses his thoughts on God, the comprehensibility of the natural order, and the soul and body of mankind. When asked if he believed in Spinoza's God, he said:
"I can't answer with a simple yes or no. I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvellously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's pantheism, but admire even more his contributions to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and the body as one, not two separate things." (Einstein and God)
Thanks Jonathan Blake.
Lubab No more I found the article. http://www.world-science.net/othernews/070821_humans.htm
http://www.heartquotes.net/Einstein.html
...Albert Einstein
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible....Albert Einstein
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
Now it's beginning to feel like dueling Einstein quotes, but I've heard that quote as "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible." (emphasis mine) That makes quite a difference in this context. :)
If our self consciousness and free will don't prove that we are more than just protein machines, I don't know what will.
And about taxes, try H&R Block tax cut software. I find it's great.
JP,
I think your comment touches on one of life's certainties. Of course, I'm talking about the taxes thing.
OP,
> Why would intelligence's meaningfulness require quantum leaps?
Because if it's not that different, it's not that special.
"Jonathan Blake said...
Now it's beginning to feel like dueling Einstein quotes, but I've heard that quote as "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible." (emphasis mine) That makes quite a difference in this context. :)"
LOL I'll look it up. I'll get you (wagging finger) :)
Honestly a man like Einstein would not have felt that we can't comprehend the universe. Here was a man who thought that there was a Grand Unified Theory waiting to be discovered (a concept too far ahead of his time-also to be made). Einstein certainly knew that we can't picture everything but felt it had an affect and not randomly but by law. If Einstein could have stumbled upon the multiverse he would have been more user friendly than he was for Quantum Mechanics and Organized Religion. A multiverse allows his strict determinism for the multiverses' properties but spares each universe from deterministic perfection.
JB,
"That makes me suspect that the dichotomy between alive and dead is false. These two categories are not strictly separate. There is no distinct line between a collection of dead molecules and an alive organism."
Ok. And? The whole point is that life is a unique, emergent characteristic not derivable from its constituent parts.
"Either existence is profoundly mysterious or shallowly intelligible; we can't have it both ways."
Phenomena vs noumena. We have the distinct ability to make sense of the mechanisms that run the world but we are impossibly distant from the unfiltered reality in itself.
LNM,
"Because if it's not that different, it's not that special."
How not? It is a special quality and we just have it better than any other species we know. It's not humanity per se that is so special, it's the qualites we possess.
So we're all just molecules. :) The dead/alive dichotomy doesn't mean anything, emergent properties notwithstanding.
Also, I bet you could guess that I think noumena don't exist outside of the phenomena of our molecular brains. ;)
It is true that we don't have a full definition of what life is. We also don't have one for species either. Essentially we know it when we see it like art versus garbage (except for modern art which can be the same thing :-)). For species in particular though it gets arbitrary, somehow we can all sense the difference between an elephant a dog and a cat. Biology can afford a fuzziness intolerable for physics.
JB,
"So we're all just molecules. :) The dead/alive dichotomy doesn't mean anything, emergent properties notwithstanding."
It's as meaningful as what differentiates you from a pile of carbon dust. I would say that's a lot, you can put whatever value judgement you want on it.
"Also, I bet you could guess that I think noumena don't exist outside of the phenomena of our molecular brains. ;)"
That's your prerogative. I think noumena are self-evidently true once you understand the arguments.
I'm not arguing (as a friend is fond of saying) that there's no difference between me and crap on a cracker. I question the significance of that difference and where it comes from.
I don't believe there is an objective significance to what we call life. The significance is all internal to us, all subjective.
You can choose to take what I'm saying (i.e. we're all just molecules) in at least a couple of ways: either everything is dead and meaningless, or everything is in various states of alive. For example, the inorganic core of our planet contributes materially to the existence of life here by providing heat and creating a magnetic field which deflects destructive cosmic rays. It contributes so much that we are forced to call it integral to life. I would go so far as to say that is part of the system of life. Without it I wouldn't exist. It is a non-obvious part of me (whatever "I" am).
Anyway, the significance of any particular collection of molecules comes from us, not from the absolute.
JB,
"I don't believe there is an objective significance to what we call life. The significance is all internal to us, all subjective."
Depends what we're talking about. If it's just the mechanistic automations of some bacterium then I'd tend to agree with you, but as we rise up the orders of complexity and ultimately hit beings with self-consciousness I think we have entered a realm of unique significance. Not just to us, but related to the underlying essence of reality.
Frankly, I'm just too suspicious of incredible "accidents."
Aside from the fact that we are self-aware, what makes that particular attribute significant? Is it possible that the judges are a little biased?
JB,
"Aside from the fact that we are self-aware, what makes that particular attribute significant? Is it possible that the judges are a little biased?"
I can't speak from the absolute's perspective because I am not absolute, but what else is more significant than conscious observers? The entire story of the universe could pass through and nothing would ever take note.
Why is is important that some part of the universe (us) experiences another part of the universe in the way that we do? Is it important to you because you don't like the thought that the universe would pass away without someone taking note? That still sounds like a very subjective assessment of our importance.
I can't answer your question directly because it depends on what a person values. If you value consciousness above all other things, then that will be your answer. Other people and things will have different answers about what is significant. Meaning and significance is relative.
JB,
"If you value consciousness above all other things, then that will be your answer. Other people and things will have different answers about what is significant."
This is the point - "things" don't have values. If people don't matter then nothing matters. If anything matters then on the top of that list must be people.
Matter to whom?
Things could be said to have pseudo-values which can be deduced from what they act to create or sustain. For example, asteroids don't value life on Earth. It's a strange way of looking at things, I realize, but not essential to what I'm saying. The question remains: people matter to whom?
People obviously matter to other people, but do they matter to the non-human universe? I'm sure there are many individuals which would much rather the Earth had never given birth to human beings.
Questions of meaning and purpose always have an implicit "who" embedded in them. I'm trying to make it explicit by asking questions like "For whom is this meaningful?" or "Who benefits from this purpose?"
JB,
"I'm trying to make it explicit by asking questions like "For whom is this meaningful?" or "Who benefits from this purpose?""
And I'm trying to show you that by asking "whom" you are implying persons. "Whats" don't have values.
You may believe that everything has equally zero value from a cosmic perspective, but I don't believe in cosmic accidents and if anything in this universe is of value then it must be conscious minds.
"Things could be said to have pseudo-values which can be deduced from what they act to create or sustain."
Fair enough - and we have a universe that acts to create and sustain complex life and conscious minds. Whether that means the universe "cares" is not the point, it is a statement about our place in existence. That we are not accidents suggests a non-trivial place.
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