Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 00:55:38 +1100
From: hbone <hbone-AT-optonline.net>
Subject: From Ontology to Ideology


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--Boundary_(ID_v4MZIpqzjKuZLkTI9OWpRg)

FROM ONTOLOGY TO IDEOLOGY
[
INTRODUCTION
Was creation necessary? Given its initial conditions the Big Bang produced 15 billion years of random evolution. Perhaps God sleeps between Big Bangs that may have already spawned vast multiverses beyond reach of human powers of detection. And if we believe in endless time and unbounded infinities, 15 billion years and one Universe is a minute speck of spacetime compared with imaginable multiverses. 

Items for discussion: 
1)The importance of Divine revelation compared with Scientific discovery ? Laws created by God and published in holy inscriptions to Moses, or laws determined by Nature's response to scientists' experiments. 
2) Conscious vs. unconscious life processes - not to be confused with the Freudian Unconscious, as the latter presumes hidden and retrievable elements or traces of conscious memories.
3) Contradictions and paradoxes do not invalidate real knowledge and real processes in specific domains.

Whether God fashioned Man in His image, or the inverse is true, human intelligence and related kinds of intelligence in other species comprise the only intelligence we know. The intelligence of computers and computer-robots is a human derivative that seems unlikely to ever become autonomous.

There are various human capabilities at different stages of development. An infant starts life with consciousness, and must develop its senses, perception, and memory. Accumulated memory is a store of experience that makes language, learning, communication, and knowledge, possible. Such actions form a permanent personal history, an individual basis of intelligence that continues to grow each year. At all stages, the persona experiences emotions, feelings, self-awareness and gradually acquires beliefs, meanings and values. 

The spectrum of intelligence is comprised of areas that are sometimes characterized as:
1) Ontology - Being - the self, the self in action, world in action.
2) Teleology - The intelligence of nature, DNA is desting.
3) Epistemology - Knowing, learning, communicating, the world of knowledge.
4) Theology - Religious theory and practice
5) Ideology - Social theory and practice, substitutes for religion

Along with progress in the science of consciousness, there is much discussion of the source and role of human motivation. The extension of mankind's scientific and philosophical knowledge is a social project which is often fueled by fears of war, plans for war, and the destructive wars that follow. Historical practices of aggression, self-destruction, and sacrificial death brought numerous wars in the 20th Century, and about 160 million deaths.

Historically, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were inventors and proprietors, and the U.S. and Russia, are, today, custodians of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons sufficient to destroy humanity.
But much of the knowledge gained in war effort has ultimately proved beneficial. A by-product of WWII, was the development of long-range un-manned rockets. Exploitation of rocket technology, led to moon-landings, space-probes, and eventually to the Hubble telescope and the large space station now under construction. 

Assuming that mankind is able to develop the desire, the unity, and the intelligence to avoid its species-destruction in wars, bio-science might possibly lead to accidental extinction of the species. The number of extinct species is said to far exceed the number alive. There is a chance of unanticipated side-effects from genetic experiments or from genetic applications in agriculture. A remote possibility would be the unwitting creation and accidental release of dangerous self-propagating microbes, or industrial emission of dangerous inanimate substances into world-wide oceans and atmosphere. If such agents prevented photo-synthesis the results would be catastrophic.

MIRROR OF INTELLIGENCE
Characteristics of world, universe, cosmos, are produced by human sensory faculties, and processed by conscious action of brain-mind-body. Before Darwin, serious scientific and philosophic thinkers believed in a Divine intelligence. Some scientists today hold religious beliefs.

For others, belief in the ideas of science (ideology?) is more important than their religion. Unconscious processes constitute the beginning of new life, for example the initial embryonic heartbeat is repeated for decades of normal human existence. In plant species, linked trees, such as aspens, grow from common roots as a single organism that is practically immortal. We do not think of such processes as manifestations of intelligence, yet, in a sense, the ability of an organism - animal, plant, or other - to survive. to grow, to achieve its hereditary configuration and reproduce - might be called "nature's intelligence". And humans and human intelligence are as much a part of "nature" as any other creatures. One definition of intelligence is the ability to learn or understand or deal with new or trying situations.

SELF AND EXPERIENCE
The self is a web of contingencies, a collection of metaphors. The self is a locus of experience, a node on a network of personal relationships, an intelligence that is to some extent aware of its multiple functions and roles. Man is observer, witness, explainer of events in nature and society. It is important to believe, to learn and grow, to act. By its actions a self is transformed..

The reality of the "self-for-its-self" does not exist outside one's own mind. But what are you (what is your "self") to relatives, friends, acquaintances? The reality of "your" self, for others exists only in "their" minds. Lately, I encountered the idea of regarding physical entities as existing within a close-packed collection of dimensionless points.
An atomic particle, such as a neutrino, moving through space and through such entities (solid, liquid, gas), and space, would generate a "worldline". This would be envisioned as a record, a history, an accumulation of occurrences. The events happening, taking place, as the particle traversed each point.

If traces are left, as footprints in sand, or smoke from a rocket, they might be considered as (temporary) history which could be interpreted by a human mind.
In a world without humans would such artifacts have any meaning? Perhaps not, however, the concept is an apt analogy for memories, personal histories, the accumulation of remembered events and learning, as a kind of "software" which makes human cognition possible. Thus, a lifetime is a unit of accumulated percepts and learning; a history of the "being" of a unique individual over one interval of time. For a lifetime, each self inhabits a unique, personal, symbolic, universe
]
For each "self", language is not an option - language is a "given" that precedes each new human being. For each "self", artifacts, whether physical, as relics, or symbolic, as texts, enable the mind to imagine past events it did not experience. When we generalize about the human experience we think of abstract selves. In the sense that personal attributes are held in common, we generate a theoretical, abstract, self. Such commonalities are difficult to prove since we know our own minds imperfectly, and never know the mind of another.
The common traits which do exist are the basis of community. The smallest community is two. The first community is mother and child.

The "meaning" of experience comes from a primeval drive to survive. A cognizant being presumes/believes:
1) the present is "real" 
2) there will be a future
3) present meanings validate on-going actions, producing
4) abstract values which are
5) goals to be actualized in time

WORLD OF ACTION
To believe, to know, to act, to interact. Belief that an entity, fact, idea, or situation is "real" makes it real for the believer, provided there is no contradictory evidence and no brain-mind dysfunction. In the so-called "real" world, and throughout the history of the species, appropriate action in dangerous situations is essential to survival; believe and act or doubt and die. For example:
1) avoiding injury or death from on-coming objects. 
2) preventing a fall from great height. 
3) avoiding ingestion of poisonous substances.

Reality is actual, not theoretical - human beings are immersed in the reality of day-to-day living, experiencing, surviving. Works of Bohm and Feyerabend emphasize the actual. Theories of reality are "real" theories, but only in the sense that expressions of mathematics and probability are "real" formulas.

DNA IS DESTINY
The non-conscious biology that creates a new human being de-mystifies myths of creation, yet mankind remains subject to all the constructive and destructive forces (phenomena) of nature.
Evolutionary science has treated trial and error - survival of the fittest, as the determinant of species' characteristics. The discovery that "blueprints" of DNA specifically determine characteristics of offspring (in a suitable environment) gave the concept of teleology new meaning. 
Evolution rewarded humans' cognitive ability to find water, shelter, food, and avoid predators

Using a computer analogy, personal life-histories are our "software", providing the unique memories and learning that enable cognition and conscious action. Dreams and other unconscious activities also seem to affect capabilities to remember and think. 
Inanimate physical processes are relatively simple compared with life processes. Compare the numbers of different atoms, atomic particles, fields and forces, electro-magnetic waves and wave-functions with the numbers of species and sub-species found in living organisms, keeping in mind the fact that the number of extinct organisms is believed to exceed the number now alive.

WORLD OF KNOWLEDGE
We postulate, describe, theorize, calculate, estimate: ideas and facts, interactions and inter-relationships of what the human species knows, and can know, about the world.
The emphasis is on knowing and conveying knowledge to others, especially in an academic environment. It involves action and interaction with others, but the purpose of the project is essentially to convey knowledge, to educate.

Such activities are characterized as "epistemological". When religions or secular ideologies are studied, they are described as "theological", or "ideological". We evaluate knowledge of others, accepting as "true", domains of scientific or religious knowledge we never experienced or tested. And we "believe" in the validity of the elements of fact or theory under consideration.
Intelligence-world is an existential duality. Like organism-environment, like body-mind, like knower-known. Knowledge of each of these terms is interlocked with knowledge of the other term.

RELIGION AND SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION
Consider Divine revelation vs. discovery of :
1) knowledge acquired by observation theorization, generalization, abstraction, and synthesis of natural "law" from the stimuli of phenomena.
2) knowledge limited by human senses, mental methods, tools, and techniques such as mathematics and probability, and also limited by the effectiveness of physical devices such as telescopes, microscopes and computers.

We search for rules, authority, legitimization of beliefs about nature and society. Beliefs and belief systems are considered essential to creative and routine activities. Nature is another name for phenomena. The substitution of a belief in Nature for a belief in God may be regarded as the endorsement of Science as a secular system of belief. Phenomena are not an option - light, gravity, motion, are givens. 
A phenomenon, such as gravity, heat or light is a "miracle" of creation. Whether created by God or other mysterious force, such as Nature, the causes of phenomena, beginning with the Big Bang or preceding the Big Bang are unknown. 

Investigators question cause-effect relationships and precedence. Such questions arise when exploring the riddle of quantum "entanglement", and whether there is communication that travels faster than the speed of light.
In the "real" world of 6 billion persons, theologies and ideologies won't die.

The great religions "live" in the minds of the billions who continue to believe in Judeo-Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Confucian, Hindu, or other doctrines.
Primitive tribes searched for a land "without death or sorrow". Modern tribes seek a remedy for mortality - which has not yet been cured - and seek solace for grief when loved ones die.

Holy men of many religions try to serve this need.
The socio-ecomomic teachings of Marx, Adam Smith, neo-liberals promoting globalization, and other schemes, persist in the minds of persons who are considered to be victims of such ideologies, and activists who advocate a remedy.

--Boundary_(ID_v4MZIpqzjKuZLkTI9OWpRg)

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