Are there any gifts and liberties in life and consciousness, in that it evolved by accident, or from it evolving by accident.

I mean there are the ones that maybe get thought about by an individual, and some or aspects that aren’t much thought about or at all. There are too the civilizing thoughts of many (or groups/culture) that involve whatever in some way.

Isn’t there a lot of good in much being accident, some of which maybe can be considered happened upon.

And what of knowledge constructions – the work of minds – that frame accidents (even that more generally organic – the biological, that humans have limited, or little or no control over) in a way that distort the reality.

Functional distortions that work, they have benefits.

An example. Much of homeostasis (the mechanisms) that have you keeping yourself fed, and within a comfortable temperature range (that you’ll recover from) and much more are accidents. They are evolved mechanisms. That they get replicated of course requires work, the efforts of the organism/s.

Mechanisms of course doesn’t suggest for such and such, like there was a design intention, an objective. It can be an acccident, happened upon, and proximately does whatever.

Tends to do this and or that, which is open to how one might see it (an understanding) and/to explain it.

In a way accidents probably can be (result in) a more solid reality than mental constructions, in my opinion. Just as gravity is invisible, you walk through it, take it for granted a lot of the time, yet you’d be fucked without it. Not to mention whatever it is remains mostly outside or beyond the work of minds.

So, my question is – is it that most of reality out there is not the work of minds a bigger contributer to the reality generated by minds than the reality the resides inside minds?

Are humans expanding the boundary of an illusion (delusion even) that reality is mostly what minds do? That the reality outside minds is being diminished, a conceptual overshoot, greedy-like.

> is it that most of reality out there is not the work of minds a bigger contributer to the reality generated by minds than the reality the resides inside minds?

I’ll get back to you on this one.

Evolution is largely a deterministic process, it doesn’t work by accident. Mutations involve some degree of randomness (although less than used to be believed), but the evolutionary process that selects or rejects them over time involves natural selection.

What’s got me is these little virus varmints and their crazy infatuation to protect their species.
They hide, they change their shape they pull every trick in the book to fool our defences and continue their life line.
But why, what’s the point, what’s driving them?

Peak Warming Man said:

What’s got me is these little virus varmints and their crazy infatuation to protect their species.
They hide, they change their shape they pull every trick in the book to fool our defences and continue their life line.
But why, what’s the point, what’s driving them?

life.

>it doesn’t work by accident

certainly most of it wasn’t intended

perhaps a good starting point would be the unintended aspects of reality (both that generated my minds, and that external).

the problems with thinking and injecting intention (including objectives) into what is seen, or understood

> Are there any gifts and liberties in life and consciousness, in that it evolved by accident, or from it evolving by accident.

Let’s start with consciousness.
We can consider the ability to learn a gift.
We can consider the ability to forget a gift.
We can consider the ability to multitask a gift.

We can consider the ability to throw a gift, no other animal can throw like we can, and that evolved largely by accident as a side effect of being able to swing through the trees.

We can consider the ability to swim a gift, no other primate can swim 100 metres in under one minute.

we don’t multitask. we just switch between different tasks.

Boris said:

we don’t multitask. we just switch between different tasks.

Au contrare. I can change gear while steering. I can listen while sleeping. A lot of what we do is programmed in as automatic, when these automatic routines are active we are free to concentrate on other tasks. A few people can even talk and think at the same time.

> perhaps a good starting point would be the unintended aspects of reality (both that generated my minds, and that external). the problems with thinking and injecting intention (including objectives) into what is seen, or understood

The Earth is an unintended aspect of reality. Most of our environment is, too, I didn’t plan on the dent in the ceiling above my head, or the dust on the desk lamp, or the weeds in the lawn. Coping with unintended aspects of reality by thinking is the origin of “work”.

> is it that most of reality out there (that) is not the work of minds a bigger contributor to the reality generated by minds than the reality (that) resides inside minds?

Assuming that there is an external reality, and that the universe actually exists, I’d say “yes”.

mollwollfumble said:

> is it that most of reality out there (that) is not the work of minds a bigger contributor to the reality generated by minds than the reality (that) resides inside minds?

Assuming that there is an external reality, and that the universe actually exists, I’d say “yes”.

Don’t think I agree with that. I’d say that the external reality (and there must be one, even if it is totally different to what we perceive), and the internal reality are both essential contributors to the reality that we perceive, and we can’t say one is a bigger contributor than the other.

With limited human senses a great deal of reality would be lacking, its one reason why our scientific instruments are so interesting they reveal a reality we cannot perceive normally.

“Reality” is a cognitive concept, a term we use in our ontological modelling. The world outside of our minds has no use for it.

The Rev Dodgson said:

mollwollfumble said:

> is it that most of reality out there (that) is not the work of minds a bigger contributor to the reality generated by minds than the reality (that) resides inside minds?

Assuming that there is an external reality, and that the universe actually exists, I’d say “yes”.

Don’t think I agree with that. I’d say that the external reality (and there must be one, even if it is totally different to what we perceive), and the internal reality are both essential contributors to the reality that we perceive, and we can’t say one is a bigger contributor than the other.

this is the unteresting part, not so much the question of what is bigger, but the effects and affects of bringing things into the range of minds’ work – into the field of intentions and objectives, when the devices (mechanisms of mind) that drive that have unintended aspects, + the tidy illusion generated of an understanding (an internal picture even). An impressive resolving tool it is, but.

back to the Q.

the gladness or otherwise, that so much is accident, is unintended.

(sidenote – i’d expect thinking, or absence of, in this area to influence political views)

transition said:

this is the unteresting part,

Unteresting choice of words :)

Bubblecar said:

“Reality” is a cognitive concept, a term we use in our ontological modelling. The world outside of our minds has no use for it.

certainly the physics of things do as does in the mindless reality

dig around in the mind, there maybe’s some mindless reality about the physics of that.