Ecohumanist Lab

 Towards evolutionary objectivity.
There is Kardashev scale- it classifies civilizations according to the consumption of the energy.
There is Barrow’s scale- it classifies civilizations according to the size dimensions they manipulate- how far into macro and microcosm they penetrate.
But maybe the civilizations are just external props allowing humanity its progress into understanding itself.

This sound awfully like “Purpose” or “new Age”. No.No.No. These are the metaphors. It looks for us like “trying to understand” or ” trying to figure out”. More biological/evolutionary sounding metaphor would be “behaviors” or “winning behaviors” .

We are still just buying time , so we can figure out what are we doing and why. The process of figuring out(in the dimension of civilizations and in the personal) seems to be a primordial faculty of living things, it is fun and there is always enough things to figure out – see the scales  above.
Or, may be we need another scale- measuring how much a civilisation figured out- in bits of information?
.Carlos Gershenson said “all ontological statements are ultimately epistemic”. Initially I thought- great, yes, this is the confirmation of my subjective approach to the reality. But , well, no, what about the things we are making statements about? Surely, some of the things at close inspection turn out to be actually somebody else’s statements( may be far in the past, like fish’s statements about the large moving objects with the dorsal triangular fins…), but are they all? Are all things the ontological statements?The reason the science demands objectivity is that the scientists( and everybody else who uses “scientific” thinking, which means everybody)  do not like nor trust each other. When people will get enlightened, they will love and trust everybody, and what you ( a general you) say will be more important than what is   ( parenthetically, and between you and me, what is , is what somebody , sometime , somewhere saw or felt or said or wrote).

As I understood it, Stephen Hawking in his latest “synthesis “ book gives up on the philosophy and the nature of reality dilemma. “Lets make sense of the observations which we (humanity) have made.”
This is Grand.
The arrow of time orients all events from earlier to later.
The arrow of complexity orients all events from simpler to more complex.
The arrow of the II law of thermodynamics orients all events from hotter to cooler.
Instead of the heroic metaphor of “arrow” we can call them all  “dimensions”.
We can add 3 more “arrows”/”dimensions” describing space- they followed or better coexisted with the first three : Space Dimension I- Measure of density or concentration- in the “embryonic “form present with the most primitive form of life.
Space Dimension II- this is rather theoretical one- when the organism has two receptors of density communicating- the perception of plane’
Space Dimension III – with more receptors – gets the depth, tridimensional world.
But I think that all of the above are secondary and subservient and derivatives of the mother of dimensions: the birth and death dimension.
The nervous system operates within this framework -the birth is good, we need more of that ,and it happens before death which is bad we need less of it or delay it and it happens at the end. It originates concept of time, of the behavior, of the intent.

This is when the question of subjectivity comes in.
Looking from outside , especially when looking at the primitive life forms makes things simpler, we can see how these behaviors become the favorite currency of the evolution.  By Golly, few synaptic connections and the fish navigates better, remembers enemies,  survival galore. These behaviors are inherited by genetics, epigenetics , and niche characteristics. For the subject they feel like the objective reality: sharks, coral reef, escape, safety, hiding. ? No it is how we humans antropomorphisise it. Fish ain’t a geographer or a story teller. It has synaptic connections which are winners. These synaptic connections correspond to behaviors , perceptive input, memory, executive functions, actions. We think about the behaviors as a property of the organism. Try the opposite: the organism as a property of the behavior. Some behaviors are associated with just group of cells or organs , some group of organisms( like a family or a tribe), a society or a species.