[ExI] Is anyone an expert on Aristotle and Life?

[natasha at natasha.cc]

   Quoting Mike Dougherty <msd001 at gmail.com>:

> 2011/12/30  <natasha at natasha.cc>:
>> Quoting Mike Dougherty msd001 at gmail.com:
>>> If anyone claims to be an expert on Life they are trying to sell you
>>> something.  :)
>>
>> Come on.   Asking for an expert is a gracious way of asking for a skill or
>> scholarship in an area while complimenting in the same tone. Bty, BillK and
>> Stefano most likely have a prolonged experience with life, a quantifier for
>> being experts at life. :-)
>
> So is "a prolonged experience with life" also a gracious way of
> calling someone "old" ?   It's a nice euphemism.

   Mature and wise would be more precise.

> I am intrigued by the original question.  I feel like I have some
> sense of its direction but not its destination.  Can you elaborate?

   I am looking at "what is life" from a few perspectives. Aristotle  
is the key and often compared as a distinct to Darwin. Aristotle saw  
order and a plan, Darwin chaos and chance (actually this not true in  
either case). Anyway, I am only concerend with "life" and the "living"  
because that is what transhumanism is all about.  That we have a mind  
is clear. that is its located in the brain is theory that I use. My  
question is how does the psyche relate to the mind?  Probably doesn't  
if psyche is the movement, metabolishm, aim of life and mind is what  
the brain does.  Many people confuse spirit with mind (Decarte, etc.).  
Aristotle was not Cartesian.

> 2011/12/29  <natasha at natasha.cc>:
>> Is the absolutely teleological in the sense that it is religous  
>> and  determined by a God?  Why is not the telos of human  
>> >consciousness  or aim to evolve (self-directed evolution), as in  
>> transhumanism?
>
> If the context is Aristotle, how do you define "religious" and "God"?

   I don't. I have no idea what he thought about God.  He was Greek.

> "It is absurd to suppose that ends are not present [in nature] because
> we do not see an agent deliberating."
> —Aristotle, Physics 2.8, 199b27-9; (see:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology#Aristotelian[1])
>
> 'seems like Aristotle has already dispensed with "a god" that drives
> the universe.

   Maybe in this instance, but not in all the intrepretatinos of his  
writing on teleology.

> I imagine this kind of thinking to be analogous to pointing a video
> camera at the monitor displaying the camera's output.  The recursion
> of image-in-image is very sensitive to the orientation of the camera.
> Thinking about thinking (or awareness of awareness) tends to have the
> same sensitivity to being toppled by the next "ah-ha" moment.

   Nice visual.

   Natasha



Links:
------
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology#Aristotelian


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