phaedrus

Came across this article which summarised a debate on the issue at the Royal Insitution, London and the chaps involved were : Richard Dawkins, Patrick Holden, Chris Leaver and Aubrey Manning. Here is the article -

<a href="http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/sciencedebates/article.jsp?debate=1" target="_blank">What is ‘Natural’? - The debate</a>

Now while going through the article, the old question came forth again. Leave the religion crap out of it (coz of the usual supernatural...et al) and then we look at the issue. What exactly is natural? Sure we are far from possessing any significant understanding of consciousness, but if at all we can reduce everything to an electro-chemical process or find the neural correlate, will we be able to understand why we see things as "good" or "bad" or we can modify people so that they will be "moral"? Is the human being "natural" - given the leaps the species has taken compared to the other species on this planet? Or is natural just what we define as natural? Or as the old statement goes - everything that exists is natural?

Edited coz i managed to hit the submit button instead of the URL one....

[ June 24, 2002: Message edited by: phaedrus ]</p>

ManM

If everything is natural, why do we feel as though something is wrong?

DRFseven

It's that homeostasis thing. The cellular signaling and detection of an off-balance or dissonance triggers thoughts of "wrongness".

Mageth

I don't "feel" like something is wrong.

Ierrellus

phaedrus,

I read the article. Damn, what small print for older eyes!

I agree with Deakins that what is natural may not always be what is beneficial. If one throws a few toys into a gorilla habitat, the gorillas will, out of curiosity, try everything they can do to see what the toys will do. In the matter of humans, the same situation, as with the gorillas, exists.

Geeze, we can put frog DNA into e-coli bacteria! We have tobacco plants that glow in the dark! We have found new toys--alteration of genetic material. As Einstein noted, our knowledge is surpassing our sense of morality. And in that sense, morality is only the desire to keep what evolution has spent a billion years to provide.

Ierrellus

PAX

phaedrus

Ierrellus

My problem was not with whether its beneficial or not. The problem i find is with the definition (s) of "natural" and the reason i didnt want the religious angle involved here coz i have seen enough threads turn into some sort of battle grounds about the supernatural part. The usual "superior alien technology example" gets into the picture, and the same old arguements are rehashed. Will we in our lifetime come to an agreement on the issue, what are the chances of science as a "system" to survive, does science provide any answers to the age old philosophical questions, is "process" (scientific) becoming the overriding factor of human intuition/thinking and in a way inhibiting the way we can look at life, is there any conscious effort in the scientific streams to keep analysing the fundamental tenets/assumptions that build the structure or have we just taken those things for granted??????.....too many questions

JP

Ierrellus

Phaedrus,

Science and technology are mankinds new toys so they will persist; and no one will become tired of them in our time because they create such remarkable consumables for our market economies.

Enough of that, what fundamental structures and tenets are you referring to?

Ierrellus

PAX

ManM

DRFseven,
I asked why we feel something is wrong, not how we feel something is wrong.

Mageth,
I feel something is wrong when I hear about floods that take hundreds of lives in poor countries. I am disturbed that you do not have similar feelings.

Vorkosigan

Because interests and points of view are natural as well. Do not confuse "natural" with "right."

Vorkosigan

Leones Homus

Surely you feel something is wrong when you know it can easily be set right?