So much of what we do is hatched in our veins according to mandatory building codes and by our predecessors (less: educated, experienced selves), who we would all agree 'are not me now though they were then', that while it might be ok to think we are really here, it is crazy to think that we really are. (somehow brought from the past unchanged and continuing onward) Thus giving rise to the phrase "We are not men, we are Devo."


Wikipedia:
"Devo first performed as the "Sextet Devo" at Kent State University in 1973. Co-founders Gerald Casale, Mark Mothersbaugh, and Bob Lewis were students at Kent State at the time the National Guard shot and killed students at a protest against the U.S. invasion of Cambodia--the 'pivotal moment' in their founding, according to Casale.

The original inspiration for the band's name and underlying philosophy came from Oscar Kiss Maerth's "The Beginning Was the End", a pseudoscientific anthropological thesis which attributes the rise of man as an evolutionary accident caused by a species of sex-crazed, cannibalistic apes who developed tools to exploit each other sexually and feed on each others' brains (See devolution). This metaphor is carried throughout Devo's work as a commentary on modern society. "
...
"Oscar Kiss Maerth is the author of The Beginning Was the End (1973), a pseudo-scientific book that claimed modern man devolved from a species of brain-eating apes. According to Maerth, this diet increased the apes' brain size, sex drive, aggression, psychic ability and eventually caused insanity. Maerth offered no evidence for his theories, claiming only divine inspiration. Maerth's book was an influence on the new wave band Devo, who referred to him in early interviews as "Author Kiss-My-Ass".

Although roundly discounted by the scientific community, recent research into Prions has cast some validity on Maerth's cannibal Hypothesis"
...
"Prion hypothesis
The theory that TSEs are caused by an infectious agent made solely of protein has been around since the 1960s (Alper, 1967; Griffith, 1967). However, it was not until 1982 that the prion protein itself was discovered, by Stanley B. Prusiner of UCSF, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1997 for this discovery (Prusiner, 1982). Prusiner coined the word "prion" by combining the first two syllables of the words "proteinaceous" and "infectious". It should be noted that Prusiner intended the word 'prion' to be pronounced 'pree-on'.

Prior to Prusiner's insight, all known pathogens (bacteria, viruses, etc.) contained nucleic acids that are necessary for reproduction. The prion hypothesis was developed to explain the discovery that the mysterious infectious agent causing Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease resisted ultraviolet radiation (which breaks down nucleic acids), yet responded to agents that disrupt proteins (Alper, 1967). Initially, this hypothesis was highly controversial, because it seemed to contradict the "central dogma of modern biology", which asserts that all living organisms use nucleic acids to reproduce. The "protein-only hypothesis" — that a protein (which, unlike DNA, has no obvious means of replication) could reproduce itself — was initially met with skepticism. However, evidence has steadily accumulated in support of this hypothesis, and it is now widely accepted. Rather than contradicting the central role of DNA, however, the prion hypothesis suggests a special case in which merely changing the shape, or conformation, of a protein (without changing its amino acid sequence) can alter its biological properties. The actual synthesis of the prion protein is still carried out by the ribosome, while the infectious form of the prion protein only transfers the pathological conformation to the proteins synthesized by the cell.

A breakthrough occurred when researchers discovered that the infectious agent consisted mainly of a specific protein, which Prusiner called PrP, an abbreviation for "prion-related protein". This protein is found in the membranes of normal cells (its precise function is not known), but an altered shape distinguished the infectious agent. The normal one is called PrPC, while the infectious one is called PrPSc (the 'C' refers to 'cellular' PrP, while the 'Sc' refers to 'scrapie', a prion disease occurring in sheep) (Oesch, 1985). It is hypothesized that the distorted protein somehow induces normal PrP structure to also become distorted, producing a chain reaction that both propagates the disease and generates new infectious material. Since the original hypothesis was proposed, a gene for the PrP protein has been isolated (the Prnp gene) (Oesch, 1985), several mutations that cause the variant shape have been identified and successfully cloned, and studies using genetically altered mice have bolstered the prion hypothesis.

Although the identity and general properties of prions are now well-understood, the mechanism of prion infection and replication remains mysterious. It is generally assumed that PrPSc directly interacts with PrPC to cause the normal form of the protein to rearrange its structure. One idea, the "Protein X" hypothesis, is that an as-yet unidentified cellular protein (Protein X) enables the conversion of PrPC to PrPSc by bringing a molecule of each of the two together into a complex (Telling, 1995).

The degenerative diseases caused by prions are known collectively as "transmissible spongiform encephalopathies" or TSEs (Collinge, 2001).
Useful prions in yeast and other fungi
Not all prions are dangerous; in fact, prion-like proteins are found naturally in many (perhaps all) plants and animals. Because of this, scientists reasoned that such proteins could give some sort of evolutionary advantage to their host. This was suggested to be the case in a species of fungus Podospora anserina. Genetically compatible colonies of this fungus can merge together and share cellular contents such as nutrients and cytoplasm. A natural system of protective "incompatibility" proteins exists to prevent promiscuous sharing between unrelated colonies. One such protein, called HET-S, adopts a prion-like form in order to function properly (Coustou, 1997). The prion form of HET-S spreads rapidly throughout the cellular network of a colony and can convert the non-prion form of the protein to a prion state after compatible colonies have merged (Maddelein, 2002). However, when an incompatible colony tries to merge with a prion-containing colony, the prion causes the "invader" cells to die, ensuring that only related colonies obtain the benefit of sharing resources . In 1965, Brian Cox, a geneticist working with the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, described a genetic trait (termed [PSI+]) with an unusual pattern of inheritance. Despite many years of effort, Cox could not identify a conventional mutation that was responsible for the [PSI+] trait. In 1994, yeast geneticist Reed Wickner correctly hypothesized that [PSI+] as well as another mysterious heritable trait, [URE3], resulted from prion forms of certain normal cellular proteins (Wickner, 1994). It was soon noticed that heat shock proteins (which help other proteins fold properly) were intimately tied to the inheritance and transmission of [PSI+] and many other yeast prions. Since then, researchers have unravelled how the proteins that code for [PSI+] and [URE3] can convert between prion and non-prion forms, as well as the consequences of having intracellular prions. When exposed to certain adverse conditions, [PSI+] cells actually fare better than their prion-free siblings (True, 2000); this finding suggests that, in some proteins, the ability to adopt a prion form may result from positive evolutionary selection (Harrison, 2002). It has been speculated that the ability to convert between prion infected and prion-free forms enables yeast to quickly and reversibly adapt in variable environments. Nevertheless, Wickner maintains that [URE3] and [PSI+] are diseases [1]. "

But your right, the casual explinations could go on forever.

__________________
-Marty

1986 300E 220,000 miles+ transmission impossible
(Now waiting under a bridge in order to become one)

Reading your M103 duty cycle:
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/831799-post13.html
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/831807-post14.html

I took the liberty to label what I believe are separable thoughts, at least I believe I understand and agree with the first but I may not understand the second, and so perhaps disagree.

Perhaps it is because I don't understand your use of the phrase, "internal experience." It is my impression that the majority of experiences with God that people have are internal (intangible, subjective) and that people long for an external (tangible, objective) experience.

Again, I get confused when you assert that there is no scientific evidence of our existence. Perhaps we are confusing terminology, i.e. "brain" with "mind?" because the brain really is there, trust me. Now the degree to which the mind is present in the brain is a more difficult question.

B

I meant that there is no scientific evidence for the agency of the self, because any scientific analysis of the causal process of our existence, always comes up with a cause that is an effect of another cause. Science can't access the 'mind' or our free responsible self.

I think we believe in such a self because we experience ourselves. We think, decide, plan and act therefore it seems reasonable from our internal perspective to ascribe agency to ourselves despite the scientific evidence that we do is a result of prior material causes. But with God, religious people claim to have internal experiences of God, something other than themselves (by which I mean they are drawing a distinction between a mental event of themselves and another mental event which is of a non-material separate being), but to my knowledge, they never experience the thinking, planning, deciding and acting of the deity. Hence there is no internal evidence to ascribe a mysterious personal agency behind the universe as a whole comparable to our own experience of personal agency.

I remember a show describing the evolution of our knowledge of prions. There was a remote cannibalistic tribe that had a high incidence of CJD in the male population but not the female. Turns out that when they killed their enemies, the males got to eat the best part--the brains, whereas the females got stuck with the muscle tissue.
Never heard of Devo before.

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

I think that prion disease was kuru.

thanks for the clarification. It makes a lot of sense. It also opens the door to Aquinas' first proof, a handy 'backdoor' into the I.D.

Do you think that a way out of a Zeno-like Paradox of the mind is the hominid fossil record? The fossil record implies that humans and apes became less distinguishable as we go back in time. Projecting backward to the proto-primate and it's ancestor I think we can safely assume that whatever attributes of mind we define as human became simpler as the encasing structures become more primitive. Therefore, mind attenuates with phylogeny? I guess that only makes sense if we assume that mind and brain have some dependent correspondence.

If I understand you correctly, I think I agree. The existence of mind in humans is an argument that even the simplest molecule has some primitive form of experience. (I first read that argument in Whitehead). Otherwise, mind becomes a miracle in humans.
I don't think it provides support for Aquinas. He thinks that in order to explain this existence of mind, some supermind had to exist prior to matter. I think it only implies that matter and mind are always intertwined in some form, and that the highest form of mind we can know, is our own mind.

Since our intelligence and God's intelligence are intertwined issues, how does the Turing test apply to God?

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

I suspect that if there is a god examiner we are no further along than the current crop of A.I.

__________________
-Marty

1986 300E 220,000 miles+ transmission impossible
(Now waiting under a bridge in order to become one)

Reading your M103 duty cycle:
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/831799-post13.html
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/831807-post14.html

Everybody who prays to God, just like everybody who speaks on the telephone, is giving and taking a Turing test.

I reread my post concerning Turing, Aquinas, and the mind and I completely understand why you had trouble understanding it. When I reread it I couldn't figure-out what I was saying either. I'll try again because somewhere in that mess I think there's a useful idea trying to escape. I'm trying an assault on Aquinas' first proof of God's existence. Basically the watchmaker's argument, I guess.

It works on a ratio in which mind is to brain as moved is to Mover. So, as we regress through phylogeny both brain and mind become less complex. If we move far enough back we arrive at some point at which the concept of brain and of mind cease to be meaningful. Neither is recognizably different from their environment. In the same sense, as we regress from the moved back through time, do the moved and Mover cease to be distinguishable, too? If so then the argument for a Mover collapses, I think.

B

I think KerryEdwards is a diephobe







-Hal-

Now I get it. Yes, I can see your point, if we think of God as 'outside' the universe as Aquinas apparently did. But I can see two issues. Since the explanations of our own mind and consciousness seem to be independent of empirical causal explanations, might not explanations of the Prime Mover be completely independent of empirical causal explanations of the universe? Prime Mover explanations are parallel explanations to empirical causal explanations, just like mental causes and personal agency parallel empirical causal explanations.

On the other hand, if the universe is a part of God, then God's consciousness must also be increasing as the consciousness level of the universe increases thru evolution. There was primitive divine agency early on in the universe, now, thru our own consciousness and the consciousness of other animals, divine agency has become more complex.

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

The sad news is that I am a diephile, not a diephobe.

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

Describing mind as infinitely retrogressively divisible leads inexorably to pantheism. Not a bad place to be, I guess. I just don't know anything about pantheists except for a few things I've read in anthropology. Are there any modern, critical apologies for pantheism? It might be interesting to learn more about it (them...they, we,...hm, English is not designed to talk about pantheism).

B

There are, but I'm way more familliar with the panentheist apologist. I think David Ray Griffin is one of the best (Re-enchantment without Supernaturalism) but you may not read him because he falls into the category of 'conspiracy theorist'.

Would it be better to apply the Turing test to various ages of children? Would it be any easier to fool the adult? What if children used the test against computers and other children? Would it be possible to assess the age level of our computer's intelligence?

I'm happy with the idea that a thermostat thinks. It thinks too hot, too cold, just right. This seems roughly comparable to the thoughts of a newborn. Hungry, full.

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

I'm more familiar with panentheism, which seems weak to me. I think the current popular form is "process theology." Practitioners want to hang onto Father-God but also want an anthropocentric universe. Why not just break clean and be done?

The appeal (to me) of pantheism is that it subsumes the Abrahamic God and humanity within a common, pervasive reality. Issues of first cause and final disposition are no longer important. It is the act of living that is of prime value. Morality is an adornment, not the driver, of pantheism.

Would you like to play a game, diephile?