Kenny wrote:Kurieuo wrote:Take your response back to my questions Kenny.
(i've put updates to your response on question 1)
Kurieuo: Are humans above the natural order? In other words, can/do we transcend nature...?
Kenny: No. I don't believe anything goes beyond nature.
Kenny: [actually "Yes, human morality does, intelligence, mind, etc"]
Kenny: [actually "No, that stuff is in brain"]
Kurieuo: Is it wrong for us to deplete the Earth of its natural resources and send species extinct?
Kenny: Of course context must be taken into consideration; but on it's most basic level, I would say such action is wrong and foolish.
Kurieuo: Would it be a bad thing if all of humanity were wiped out?
Kenny: Yes
Kurieuo: By bad, do you mean morally bad/unacceptable?
Kenny: Okay. My personal feelings are it would be morally bad/unacceptable to wipe all humans off the face of the Earth.
Kurieuo: Is it morally wrong for a lion to eat its prey, even if it causes a species to go extinct? And can nature be accountable for any moral wrong?
Kenny:: No. Morality only applies to humans
Again, there seems to be an inconsistency that you need to work through
-- unless we transcend nature, then how can we be accountable for any moral wrong?
It seems to me that you either have let go of your first response that we don't transcend nature (since nature can't be accountable for moral wrong),
or let go of your last response that morality applies to humans (since we don't transcend nature any more than say a lion).
I hope that you get to sort your thoughts out Kenny.
All the best!
Please explain what it means to transcend nature. If you can explain what that means and perhaps provide a hypethetical of this happening, I can explain it in a way that it makes sense to you.
Ken
By "nature" I was using it within its most often understood context, a materialist sense that everything that exists is physical or has a physical cause.
If you are unfamiliar with these terms, let me know, because we may just need to cut the discussion.
BUT, it's up to you how you wish to define "nature".
If you wish to bundle "consciousness" within what Nature is comprised of, in addition to what is "physical", well then...
you're on much better grounds than someone who says only a physical world exists and that is what they ascribe to Nature.
What do I mean by this?
Well maybe there are actually "particles" of consciousness.
We've got a theory of physical stuff with space-time theorems, molecular understandings and the like.
Maybe a "theory of consciousness" and what such really is in the universe, is still waiting to be discovered.
Because there has been a reluctance (perhaps due to many calling it, what did you say? "Spiritual" -- which they have a strong distaste for), then well, research hasn't really been productive here to say the least has it?
Do you think it would be possible to define within the natural world, physical as well as mental properties that are distinct and yet found together in the "natural" fabric?
We have a lot of theories and the like that describe the physical. Science only appears to be getting started in even
acknowledging immaterial consciousness as being possible in the universe. I wonder why?
What the natural world is comprised of is something that you need to ultimately decide.
Unless you turn to Theism, then I don't think that you logically have many options here.
For if you exclude mental properties, saying such a reduced to the physical via some brain state or what-have-you, then you start coming unstuck in some of the ways that we've been seeing. The issue is not with me being smart and trapping you, but because it is a real unavoidable issue.
Consider Nagel's following words:
Nagel wrote:[T]he historical account would be restricted to purely physical explanations of the origin and evolution of life until the point at which organisms reached the kind of complexity that is associated with consciousness. After that, the history would be both a physical and a mental one, and if the emergent mental element played an independent causal role, and was not merely epiphenomenal, the causal process would cease to be strictly reductive.
Epiphenomenalism says that mental states emerge from a particular physical state, for example, a state of the brain. However, there is a known issue, in that while a physical state might cause a mental state, mental states (which simply emerge from the physical) can't cause physical states. To say another way, if one believes that our mental states are reduced to what is physical then a mental state can't cause a physical state. The communication can obviously only be one way, right?
Nagel is simply pointing out that the moment a mental state plays a causal role, then the causal process
ceases being strictly reduced to some physical state.
Let me provide an example of some mental state playing a causal role:
- You make a conscious decision to go and buy some bread. This makes you grab the car keys, get into the car, drive to the local shop believing they'll be open and have bread, pay with money which you know is needed to buy bread and all those mental beliefs that are required in order for you to carry out your "intentions" of just simply buying some bread.
The causal processes required to get some bread from the shop cease being strictly reduced to some physical state. Right? On numerous occasions even.
Our mind just plays such a crucial role in deciding, our beliefs play such an important role, the causal effects from physical to mental to physical to mental over and over -- well it's hard to see how this is really a physical to physical to physical to physical causal phenomena.
So then, you, not me, really need to decide what you believe the world as we have it ("nature") is really comprised of.
And if you choose to turn a blind eye to any issues here, well I'm not going to hassle your thinking further.
All the best, Kurieuo