Philosophical Speculations

Collections of them in a petri dish act like a community, responding to one another’s presence and participating in collective activities.

But the frog skin cell clusters quickly began to use their cilia for a different purpose: to swim around by beating in coordinated waves. A midline formed on the cluster, “and the cells on one side row to the left and those on the other side row to the right, and this thing takes off. It starts zooming around,” Levin said
How does the xenobot decide where to draw the midline? And what even “tells” it that doing this would be useful? That’s not yet clear.
But these entities don’t just move; they seem responsive to their environment. “They’ll sometimes go straight, sometimes in circles,” Levin said. “If there’s a particle in the water, they’ll circle it. They will do mazes — they can take corners without bumping into anything.”
He added, “I’m quite certain they do a lot of things we don’t even recognize yet.”

Simon Adams wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 10:41 pm I’m curious what people think of this from a metaphysical context?

Also to go off at a bit of a tangent, from my perspective (a kind of christian neoplatonic idealism), there is a kind of hierarchy along the lines;

God ->
Divine ideas/Archetypes (universal) ->
Forms (particular) ->
Representation of forms

I’m sure I’m using the wrong terms, as this realm of forms is different from the way plato uses forms (which is more the divine ideas realm), maybe more what Bernardo would just call mental processes.

However there is definitely a difference between living forms and non living forms. I would argue that living things have something we can recognise as a type of consciousness. Even watching a creeper plant speeded up looks like something we would recognise as feeling for something to grip onto. Inanimate matter just doesn’t behave like this, even things like crystals that show a kind of ‘organised behaviour’ are missing this intuitive characteristic that’s difficult to describe.

I admit that there are examples that seem like exceptions, but I’m curious what a “pure” idealist makes of this essential difference? Is every living organism an ‘alter’ of mind at large? If so, does that mean MaL has processes that behave one way, and another way once isolated as an alter?

To my thinking there are two different types of forms, natural forms and living forms. The natural forms are still made of the same substance (mind/spirit), but the living forms have a kind of will/telos as well. All living forms are shaped by a higher idea/archetype, but natural forms can just be a stone that was knocked off a rock, or two entangled photons etc.

I can see an argument where the larger natural forms, say planets and stars, have something closer to the living forms, but even that seems unlikely. So I think I would need at least one branch in my hierarchy;

God
Divine ideas/Archetypes
Natural Forms - Living Forms
Representation of forms

Anyway just thinking to myself aloud really, but am interested if people have thoughts under ‘normal idealism’ of the difference between the “mental processes” that we call living things versus inanimate stuff?

Lou Gold wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 11:47 pm Sheldrake considers the Sun to be a living being.

Simon Adams wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 10:41 pm I’m curious what people think of this from a metaphysical context?

Also to go off at a bit of a tangent, from my perspective (a kind of christian neoplatonic idealism), there is a kind of hierarchy along the lines;

God ->
Divine ideas/Archetypes (universal) ->
Forms (particular) ->
Representation of forms

I’m sure I’m using the wrong terms, as this realm of forms is different from the way plato uses forms (which is more the divine ideas realm), maybe more what Bernardo would just call mental processes.

However there is definitely a difference between living forms and non living forms. I would argue that living things have something we can recognise as a type of consciousness. Even watching a creeper plant speeded up looks like something we would recognise as feeling for something to grip onto. Inanimate matter just doesn’t behave like this, even things like crystals that show a kind of ‘organised behaviour’ are missing this intuitive characteristic that’s difficult to describe.

I admit that there are examples that seem like exceptions, but I’m curious what a “pure” idealist makes of this essential difference? Is every living organism an ‘alter’ of mind at large? If so, does that mean MaL has processes that behave one way, and another way once isolated as an alter?

To my thinking there are two different types of forms, natural forms and living forms. The natural forms are still made of the same substance (mind/spirit), but the living forms have a kind of will/telos as well. All living forms are shaped by a higher idea/archetype, but natural forms can just be a stone that was knocked off a rock, or two entangled photons etc.

I can see an argument where the larger natural forms, say planets and stars, have something closer to the living forms, but even that seems unlikely. So I think I would need at least one branch in my hierarchy;

God
Divine ideas/Archetypes
Natural Forms - Living Forms
Representation of forms

Anyway just thinking to myself aloud really, but am interested if people have thoughts under ‘normal idealism’ of the difference between the “mental processes” that we call living things versus inanimate stuff?

000416 Religious ideas in alchemy: an historical survey of alchemical ideas. 4. The prima materia. VI. The hidden treasure. In: Jung, C., Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 12. 2nd ed., Princeton University Press, 1968. 571 p. (p. 340-344).

Some of the various ways in which alchemists symbolized the “hidden treasure” or the “treasure hard to attain,” believed to be present in the dark prima materia, are examined. Among these are Christopher of Paris’ notion that this substance is potentially present in the chaos of the prima materia as a mass of all the elements combined into one. Johannes Grassens held that the white dove called “the salt of the metals” was contained within the lead (plumbum) of the philosophers. Valentinus believed that, like a reflection in a mirror, the treasure is an invisible spirit, intangible, yet, the root of all substances necessary for alchemy. In a similar view Michael Maier expressed the belief that the sun, in its revolutions, spins gold into the earth. As the sun is the image of God, the heart is the sun’s image in man, and God is known in the gold. This golden image of God is the anima aurea which, when breathed into common quicksilver, changes it into gold.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 1:06 am
I have been fortunate enough to never have seen a person in a coma, but I wonder if the feeling is anything similar to viewing inanimate Nature in our normal waking consciousness. If they are both in a deep 'sleep' of seeming unconsciousness. And if just as a person can come out of a coma, the forms of the mineral world can be reanimated by our higher modes of consciousness.

Lou Gold wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 1:51 am

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 1:06 am
I have been fortunate enough to never have seen a person in a coma, but I wonder if the feeling is anything similar to viewing inanimate Nature in our normal waking consciousness. If they are both in a deep 'sleep' of seeming unconsciousness. And if just as a person can come out of a coma, the forms of the mineral world can be reanimated by our higher modes of consciousness.

With respect Ashvin, I've got to ask if you in normal consciousness see 'inanimate' nature as comatose? I confess that I can't imagine it that way.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 2:11 am

Lou Gold wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 1:51 am

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 1:06 am
I have been fortunate enough to never have seen a person in a coma, but I wonder if the feeling is anything similar to viewing inanimate Nature in our normal waking consciousness. If they are both in a deep 'sleep' of seeming unconsciousness. And if just as a person can come out of a coma, the forms of the mineral world can be reanimated by our higher modes of consciousness.

With respect Ashvin, I've got to ask if you in normal consciousness see 'inanimate' nature as comatose? I confess that I can't imagine it that way.

Yes. I can't imagine how humanity could interact with nature as it has in the modern era without seeing it as comatose. I am referring to mineral aspect of nature and not plant life, although we treat plant life rather poorly as well. Animal life for that matter too.