Science, Reason and Morality

I think it is interesting to think of the way the practice of science influences brain organization, and how the state of attention or attunement to some property of the world begins to associatively affect how we experience one anothers social relations.

This is not generally considered, but science and morality - or the golden rule - are based on the same principle: attunement.

It's simple. You are an organism - a node in the web of life. You are a) a molecular machine subject to thermodynamic processes, but seemingly made possible by a system of 'quantum coherence', whereby states become quantuamly correlated at one scale, and then a higher scale - you can imagine the complexity of what this means when your body has 35-50 trillion cells - the neurons of which represent the non-linear dynamics of bodily homeostasis as its affective stream. In the cortex itself, the 16 billion neurons there are estimated to be made up of 100 or so billion molecules. Do you understand the scale of complexity were talking about here? It's also here in the cortex that the 'jumping gene' phenomenon seems most stochastic; as many as 50% of the genes - nucleotides - in the nucleus of a neuron cell 'jump' from one chromosome to another - with a subtle, albeit, extraordinarily complex logic, scientists have determined that the activity of these genes is regulatory upon other genes. Indeed, the author John Parrington wonders whether the flexibility of human attentional processes, and the cognition and intellection it gives rise to, is embodied physically in the spellbinding complexity of millions upon millions of nucleic acids flying from one chromosome to another to 'latch on' to the right gene sequence - all the time, btw, being mirrored by a mind that experiences itself as existing 'above' the individual parts which make it up.

We live a banal life - at least here in the 21th century, under capitalism, the Human condition has been molded towards two basic psychodynamic attractor's: onthe one end, there's the 'ideal' - the desire and lust towards the spectacle. To follow the 'sirens' call even though it'll end in your ruin. The ideal is socially disseminated, and so comes to take on a 'formative' capacity within the conscious dimension of the mind - although the conscious ego itself will not recognize its idealism (wishfulness) unless it is something intersubjectively made relevant in this persons life. Obviously, such psychodynamic explanations are short in coming in our media, so people live and our structured primarily by their idealism i.e. by wanting to be or express some unconscious model of success in this world - which is inevitably communicated by others who embody the desired model.

The other psychodynamic attractor is trauma. It is well known and accepted nowadays - indeed, a biological model exists for what is happening in the brain - that trauma creates 'gaps' in the minds structure, which means that the elements associated with the induction of the trauma - social cues, and what they mean - will be 'defended' against, in a split second like manner - far too fast for the conscious mind to recognize whats happening (again, unless through education) so that the system dysregulation associated with the cues will instantenously channel the mind to identify with a idealized identity state: this is how the phenomenon of consciousness uses "identities" to "metabolize" the environment were about to interact with.

So again, when you seek to understand something intrinsic about the nature of reality, you instinctively attune yourself to the properties of the phenomenon in question. Eventually an 'entrainment' occurs between your dynamical system and the externally observed system - so that your unconscious mind guides the movement of your awareness towards the correct and coherent insight about the phenomenon in question.

It's through processes like these that the Human heart evolved its tendency to decode the body signals of others as a way to make sense of its own blossoming consciousness. This is the double-edged sword of consciousness. It exists for social interaction and the construction of social meaning - yet its reality - and realism - can confuse the mind into thinking that its consciousness is literally - and factually - his or hers. This awareness - since its so strongly regulated by social processes - is a major hurdle for many people to get over, since the friends we have literally constitute the invisible 'other pole' that constitutes the vitality of our personal existence. Webs - the web - or internet itself - creates webs of connection between people all over the world, and these webs are not simply physically embodied and materially communicated. Since every human self is affected by its myriad relations - any two selves in interaction are becoming entangled into one another's existence - as elements of meaning-structure which depending on the time and information, can have very significant effects upon the anothers life-stream.

Science, it is well understood, has created the modern world. You can say technology played a bigger role, and to a certain extent that's true, but science itself made possible the digital age - as the very fabric of computer technology depends on theorization - attunement - between the observing mind and the structure of reality. The founders of quantum physics didn't take the question of the nature of reality lightly. Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein both had a monist sense of the significance of reality - and they both subscribed to a moral standard that confirmed the relevance of reason to moral deliberation. Erwin Schrodinger, another genius of that era, also had an acute sense of the unity of life with physics - and so started the field of "biophysics" with his book "what is life?".

A world which denies the place of reason in its politics - and yet supports science, which is based upon a reasonable attunement to the observable properties of an observed phenomenon - is existing in an unhealthy and confused state: assuming the relevance of reason in one sphere, but avoiding its necessity in another sphere because it interferes with the maniacal needs of a bloated self, is not sustainable, let alone possible, as incoherence in one sphere "leaks" into the other sphere, and so we enter an age of wishful and idealistic "science" (or scientism) which pursues questions made meaningful because of a denial of the importance of a nurturing morality in the structuring of human social dynamics.

We see such wishfulness in genomics and the belief in being able to 'improve' the human condition by modifying our genes - already taking place in labs in China on Human embryos. This fantasy completely contradicts the realities of systems biology and epigenetics. The complexity is too great and the moral consequences too severe. Yet they keep on moving, showing that there are always good reasons to a mind that is dissociatively related to their motivations for acting.

We see it again in cognitive science and robotics with the completely unreal expectation that the internet will come alive, or that artificial intelligence can be created. And what about those sciences which conflict with the goals of the Trump era - such as human development?

a reply to: Astrocyte

I will attempt to put this in layman's terms.

"You are what you read. Garbage in? Garbage out. "

I completly agree. If you focus on being a doctor, you will have a very different world view than someone who is studying to be a software developer.

Am i close?

That was very interesting. I wonder if my sub conscious can even dissect that? Maybe in 5 years, after the processing is complete, I will understand what I have just read.

originally posted by: Woodcarver
a reply to: Astrocyte

I will attempt to put this in layman's terms.

"You are what you read. Garbage in? Garbage out. "

I completly agree. If you focus on being a doctor, you will have a very different world view than someone who is studying to be a software developer.

Am i close?

I like the simplified version you gave.