On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 11:08 PM, Terren Suydam <terren.suy...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Telmo, > > Yes, those are good counter examples. > > But I think to say "pain and pleasure are fine-tuned by evolution..." is a > sleight of hand. Pain and pleasure are phenomenological primitives. If > evolution created those primitives, how did it do that? By what mechanism?
Completely agree. I mean pain and pleasure as things that you can observe with an fMRI machine. As for the 1p experience of pain and pleasure... wish I knew. I don't think evolution created these primitives in this latter sense. > Another way to think of this is to acknowledge that pain signals are > mediated by special nerves in the nervous system. But what makes those > nerves any different from a nerve that carries information about gentle > pressure? You may be able to point to different neuroreceptors used, but > then that shifts the question to why different neuroreceptors should result > in different characters of experience. Yes, I've always been puzzled by that. > One way out of this to posit that phenomenological primitives are never > "created" but are identified somehow with a particular characterization of > an objective state of affairs, I suspect the same. > the challenge being to characterize the > mapping between the objective and the phenomenological. That is my aim with > my flawed idea above. Cool. Sorry for not getting what you were saying at first. You still have to deal with my counter-examples though, I'd say... (forgetting the evolutionary rant) Telmo. > Terren > > > On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 4:52 PM, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com> > wrote: >> >> On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 10:36 PM, Terren Suydam <terren.suy...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> > This is close to an idea I have been mulling over for some time... that >> > the >> > source of the phenomenological feeling of pleasure is in some way >> > identified >> > with decreases in entropy, and pain is in some way identified with >> > increases >> > in entropy. It is a way to map the subjective experience of pain and >> > pleasure to a 3p description of, say, a nervous system. Damage to the >> > body >> > (associated with pain) can usually (always?) be characterized in terms >> > of a >> > sudden increase in entropy of the body. Perhaps this is also true in the >> > mental domain, so that emotional loss (or e.g. embarrassment) can also >> > be >> > characterized as an increase in entropy of one's mental models, but this >> > is >> > pure speculation. The case is even harder to make with pleasure. It >> > would be >> > weird if it were true, but so far it is the only way I know of to map >> > pleasure and pain onto anything objective at all. >> >> Hi Terren, >> >> Interesting idea, but I can think of a number of counter examples: >> cold/freezing, boredom, the rush of taking risks, masochism (for some >> people), the general preference for freedom as opposed to being under >> control, booze, .... >> >> I suspect life is just meaningless from the outside. I'd say that pain >> and pleasure are fine-tunned by evolution to maximise the >> survivability of species in an environment that is largely also >> generated by evolution. It's a strange loop. >> >> > Terren >> > >> > >> > On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 4:18 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> >> > wrote: >> >> >> >> On 10.04.2013 07:16 meekerdb said the following: >> >>> >> >>> On 4/9/2013 12:19 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: >> >> >> >> >> >> ... >> >> >> >>>> I have seen that this could be traced to Schrödinger’s What is >> >>>> Life?, reread his chapter on Order, Disorder and Entropy and made >> >>>> my comments >> >>>> >> >>>> http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2013/04/schrodinger-disorder-and-entropy.html >> >>> >> >>> >> >>>> >> >>> >> >>> Still tilting at that windmill? >> >>> >> >>> "A) From thermodynamic tables, the mole entropy of silver at standard >> >>> conditions S(Ag, cr) = 42.55 J K-1 mol-1 is bigger than that of >> >>> aluminum S(Al, cr) = 28.30 J K-1 mol-1. Does it mean that there is >> >>> more disorder in silver as in aluminium?" >> >>> >> >>> Yes, there is more disorder in the sense that raising the temperature >> >>> of a mole of Ag 1deg increases the number of accessible conduction >> >>> electron states available more than does raising the temperature of a >> >>> mole of Al does. >> >>> >> >>> I agree that disorder is not necessarily a good metaphor for entropy. >> >>> But dispersal of energy isn't always intuitively equal to entropy >> >>> either. Consider dissolving ammonium nitrate in water. The process is >> >>> endothermic, so the temperature drops and energy is absorbed, but >> >>> the process goes spontaneously because the entropy increases; the are >> >>> a lot more microstates accessible in the solution even at the lower >> >>> temperature. >> >>> >> >> >> >> You'd better look at what biologist say. For example: >> >> >> >> http://www.icr.org/article/270/ >> >> >> >> “and that the idea of their improving rather than harming organisms is >> >> contrary to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which tells us that >> >> matter and >> >> energy naturally tend toward greater randomness rather than greater >> >> order >> >> and complexity.” >> >> >> >> Do you like it? >> >> >> >> Evgenii >> >> >> >> -- >> >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> >> Groups >> >> "Everything List" group. >> >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >> >> an >> >> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> >> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. >> >> Visit this group at >> >> http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. >> >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >> >> >> >> >> > >> > -- >> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> > Groups >> > "Everything List" group. >> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >> > an >> > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. >> > Visit this group at >> > http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. >> > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >> > >> > >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >> >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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