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Author
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Topic: gnosis in action
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Light Jaguar
Member
Member # 599
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posted 13. December 2002 19:48
Good evening brainstormers and hello forum
I guess my reason for starting this new thread, as a new member here, is to trigger perhaps some genuine exploration of how the type of “ID” I lean towards can be attached to a worthwhile scientific process.
Over at ARN I am (reasonably) well known for waxing lyrical in a philosophical way, but I recognise first of all that the tone of this forum is different, so if I do fall foul of any border it won’t be on purpose. I am not a troublesome or inflamatory character in that way, so don’t worry. Secondly, I appreciate that a philosophical navigation of one’s own interest or topic is of limited use (if it is of any use) beyond merely exciting some novel ideas. I say this, yet of course, I do believe that there is a reasonable chance that life may exist and “operate” in some way approximate to the manner in which I envision it (I will describe this in a moment), so I am genuinely interested in seeing if we can wring out, with the good minds here, some feasible route to some point of doable scientific attachment, or at least conceiving how we might begin to do it.
First a note or two about the forum language. I am a little unsure of your exact use of the terms “brainstorming” and “complex systems”. So this may be my first blunder with oversized gloves. For instance, a computer plus software is definitely a complex system in my estimation, but it is not necessarily complex (again, only in my estimation) in the same way as life structures, functions, and processes may be complex. Indeed, they may be fundamentally different.
So, with all these cautions and parentheses behind, the version of “intelligent design” I lean towards is one in which “design” is inherent to the life process itself. My view is that reality is fundamentally gnostic at its ground (this has ancient philosophical roots of course, quite legitimate ones in their own right, I am not suggesting I have summoned the idea from whole cloth!). I will try to keep this as simple as possible, as I have had a recent aversion to the effects of overly complex language. I suspect that this “gnostic stuff” is what really shapes and animates and perpetuates life. Organisms, in simple words, are like “complex foldings” of gnosis-in-action. The designer is not external in my view…what I tend to call an “artisan designer”…rather the designer and the designed are wrapped in to the same process. To some extent it is even questionable that the word design is the appropriate word, as this naturally tends to imply a forward abstraction of thought subsequently implemented on an object (the standard artisan act).
It would further be my view that the structures and functions of evolution are the products of this indwelling intelligence, and that they would not have been possible without this intelligence. This, I admit, is a ferociously difficult thing to prove. Nevertheless, I feel reasonably comfortable with the idea that most of the data and discoveries of biology can probably be reinterpreted, without grievous stretching, to this viewpoint. I do not say all: scarce is the perspective that has no points whatsoever counting against it.
So far the only thing I have really conceived as being akin to a doable scientific experiment, at all, is investigation of sleep. This was posted at ARN and is probably best viewed there for those interested, rather than reiterate here. I wouldn’t anyway, as I don’t believe it is strong enough. It’s a start, that is all. The fundamental difficulty is developing any kind of certainty in knowing what we are looking at. Is a gene, a body system, an organism, an “object” without the necessary invoking of consciousness to inform and perpetuate its structure or function? If so, then a materialism of life is possible, and Darwinism is possible. If, on the other hand, a living system is really a structure of “gnosis-in-action” as I have called it above, where this gnosis is fundamentally what keeps the organism alive from moment to moment, and drives the creative events of evolution, then it would be highly unlikely that a materialism of life is possible, or that Darwinism is possible, in the strictest sense.
It also is worse than this, I think. I am not at all clear about the idea that living systems can be attached with a mathematical formalism. In my way of seeing this, I would view that as problematic, ie I am not sure what a formal mathematics with consciousness as one of the variables, indeed the key variable, actually is. Perhaps such a mathematics could be created for descriptive purposes, but I cannot see how it could be prescriptive, ie if it were possible to run an algorithm to generate a structure of life then this would clearly contradict the idea that gnosis-in-action is what underlies all living systems. My point is, not that my whole idea cannot be wrong (of course it can), but if it is not wrong, I cannot imagine how we could encapsulate the critical properties of living systems in a mathematical system. Again, perhaps diagnostically this could be done, but we would still simply be tracking the shadow of whatever indwelling gnosis is and does.
However, all of this is cart before the horse. Even though I think there is a reasonable fighting chance that life is this way, a good chance actually, I recognise the difficulty of attaching this to a scientific process. I think the attempt to do so is important, for, despite the difficulties, we cannot just abdicate the quest to understand life, even if aspects of it potentially transcend our scientific process (it is my suspicion that they do, although, this does not mean that we can’t do anything at all with a scientific process that might shed light on the question).
At the moment we interface with the creative aspect of evolution principally by means of things we call “mutations”. Conceivably, these mutations (and other structural changes envisioned in a gnosis-less way) are one and the same as the creative changes themselves. Or conceivably they are not, and in one way or another, what we are seeing is really a kind of “printout” for the creative changes, which are executed instinctively by gnosis-in-action. To put it another way, and as an analogy, imperfect though it may be, new words emerge into the English language by a semantic process. However, if we interfaced with “language” solely or exclusively through proof sheets for dictionaries issued in publishing houses, we might imagine that new words emerge by a process inherent in words themselves, alphanumeric permutation, or perhaps typographical errors at the print house. Please observe that I am not at all saying that such is impossible. I am however saying that it cannot be considered a certainty, and as with all views, there are risks inherent in the transparencies you bring with you to your observations.
That will do for now. Please feel free to rip into me about how I should change future posts to better fit in with your wishes and desires, although I must restate my own personal wish that the minds here might be able to help, support or critical, in the attempt to sharpen this nascent viewpoint into the domain of researchables. I have not cited any references because, frankly, I am not sure if there ARE any. In the meantime, may I wish you all a Merry Xmas, and have lots of fun altering your gnostic systems over the festive period.
Light Jaguar
[ 13. December 2002, 20:03: Message edited by: Light Jaguar ]
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Light Jaguar
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Member # 599
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posted 16. December 2002 15:52
I should perhaps make the primary question more straightforward. Namely, if life takes after the fashion in which I have described it (a gnostic principle, inherent in living systems, is what animates those systems and makes them "alive" as we understand it, as well as allowing creative moments in the history of evolution)...is this position testable? Or, if we consider it possible that this is true (and I can think of no fundamental reason why we should not), are we stuck then with the possibility that life cannot be understand by a scientific process?
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RBH
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Member # 380
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posted 16. December 2002 18:04
LJ,
Nice to see you here. To reassure you about the dearth of responses, I've read your OP several times in the last day or two, and will doubtless read it several more before I can think of anything coherent to say. As the opening screen to Brainstorms says, people actually do think before writing (usually) and some of us think more slowly than others. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
For now, to try to understand better, let me ask how you would distinguish "gnosis in action" from, say, 19th century vitalism, if in fact you do? That's a strong flavo(u)r I taste in the OP, and I wonder if I'm wrong. And, for further clarification, is there (as I suspect there is) a teleological component to gnosis-in-action? That is, is it goal-directed beyond the obvious 'goal' of staying alive and propagating?
Given a choice, I'd vote for a discussion/answer of/to the second question because I suspect it might be a better route to potential scientifically testable implications. The first question is to forestall "been there, done that, and the French were wrong."
RBH
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Light Jaguar
Member
Member # 599
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posted 16. December 2002 19:10
Hello RBH.
Nice to see you too.
I would have to say that I am not an expert on vitalism, but what I understand of it seems to suggest a kind of surrogate physicality introduced into the proceedings. In other words, there is some physical-like “substance”, be it astral matter, ether, or whatever, which for all practical purposes is spiritual in nature, but is also a kind of “stuff” that interweaves with physical stuff.
True, the vital fluids (or whatever, in vitalism) animate the living organism, and it could be said (indeed, I would say) that gnosis animates the living organism. The critical difference, I think, is that gnosis in its primal form, in the sense that I use the term, equates to the universal ground. Thus, the ground becomes (at least) proto-psychoid in nature. I would not see it as a “stuff”, most specifically not a separate, special “stuff” that wafts through and around physical matter. Rather, I would see states of physical matter, ultimately, as complexified structures of gnosis-in-action. How does the ground “fold up” like this? How does it do specific things? I really don’t know, but that, I think, would identify the key difference between my own view and vitalsim. More succinctly: vitalism supposes a special “breath of life” stuff that enters into the mix. In a gnostic universe, everything is really “breath of life” at different levels of behavioural and structural complexity. Note that to say, for instance, that a dead body no longer “contains” something that a living body did, does not necessarily imply vitalism.
You ask a question about the goal-directed nature of Gnostic Field, or the universal ground, as I see it. To be precise you asked about gnosis-in-action, but I cannot separate this in my mind from the ground, so I will answer it there, so to speak. First, I should say that this really takes us into a philosophical discussion (that is to some extent inevitable, dealing with ultimates and infinites, but I recognise that it is pulling us further away from any kind of demonstration). To answer it philosophically then, it would be my view, which has strengthened recently, that Gnostic Field actually does not have any specific teleological goal beyond the “mere” expression of being (which, if thought about, is surely a thousand times sufficient in itself). Still, in this “mere expression”, I think there are some profound issues. Again, apologies if I am rabbiting on here (I suppose the sad truth is I am more comfortable with quasi-philosophical discussions than with other types…but there you go, another defect!). It is the fundamental problem the Buddhists never quite got round to explaining: why does the manifest world exist at all? If the ground is self contained and replete of itself, if emptiness is itself fullness, why the world? My suspicion: omniscience needs kenosis (an emptying of itself…into a world of myriad specifics) in order to exist. Through the manifest world and its multivarious living forms it “explores” a vast array in textures of experience, perhaps an infinite array. But really, all of this is actually one necessary half of the divine figure. I hope that makes some kind of sense to you, at least within the confines of its own peculiar logic.
I think that expires my 3 post limit...
[ 16. December 2002, 19:13: Message edited by: Light Jaguar ]
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