3 ms·
It seems a bit odd that we exist at all though, doesn't it? Surely the natural state, or the starting state, would be to have nothing, no time and no space. But
by incompatible 3y ago
It seems a bit odd that we exist at all though, doesn't it? Surely the natural state, or the starting state, would be to have nothing, no time and no space. But then, how would anything ever happen?
But given that we exist, then perhaps things have always existed, before the apparent beginning of the universe that we can apparently observe? But if things have existed for so long, why are we in such a state of ignorance and imperfection? Surely given all this infinite time, something better would have been created by now?
But consciousness doesn't seem to be a "thing" with a physical presence in the real universe. It seems to be an emergent phenomenon created by the brain apparently because it's useful in some way. Like a web browser running on a computer. Go to sleep and the web browser shuts down, wake up the next day and a new one is instantiated. Then there's no continuity of consciousness, it only lasts for a few hours, and we can return to wondering why I feel like I exist in a here and now, one moment in a possibly infinite timeline.
- vintermann 3y ago> It seems to be an emergent phenomenon created by the brain apparently because it's useful in some way. People need to be more careful about that word "useful". Saying something is useful, is always implying a who it is useful for. Saying it's useful, but it's not useful for anyone, is as meaningless as saying something is useful, but it's not useful for anything. (This was, as I recall, one of Kant's "categories of reason"). So by saying the brain creates something for a purpose, you're already assuming that the brain is a thing, and it's a thing that wants things. I'm not saying that's wrong, but given how hard it seems to not make circular arguments with it, maybe it isn't actually an empirical question.
- incompatible 3y agoUseful from the point of view of helping an animal satisfy its needs, so allowed to survive by natural selection? Perhaps it's just a inevitable by-product of certain types of thought.
- vintermann 3y agoThat's assuming an animal is a thing that wants things. Again, not unreasonable, but also not actually an empirical statement, when you look critically at it. You're just pushing the teleology up a level.
- incompatible 3y agoAt some level it's just trying to survive because trying to survive is what helped all its ancestors to actually survive. It doesn't even need to be expressed as a "want", since plants are doing the same thing without a nervous system, going through a sequence of actions programmed in DNA and expressed in a chain of extremely complex biochemical reactions.