Towards Evolutionary Reality. Basic concepts
The TER is about my universe. So the first assumption is that your universe is similar enough to mine, so the concepts of my universe are relevant for you.
My universe is the one I created and built since my birth And I am still learning about that universe more and more and I am learning also about the process of building it.
I trust that what I learn is true- but to the degree, as the picture changes all the time.
Of course some parts change more, other less, still other seems to be “so true’, that they can not possibly change.
Also some parts are conscious, some not, some I know and remember about, others I do not know or I forgot them.
During the process of figuring out my Universe I use my Mind. It looks that this is the name I use to put together all my figuring out faculties. This is all very vague and seem to be culturally and civilisation- dependant, but generally different parts of my universe correspond to different parts of my Mind. The Consciousness and Unconsciousness correspond to the conscious and unconscious universes of mine.
The perception usually attaches to the real, material world, the thinking produces intellectual universe, the soul- the connection to the divine and the immortal, etc, etc…
Most of my universe I learned from others-the ancestors, the parents, the teachers, the books, and now- from Google. All this material has ultimately identical origin- from somebody else’s universe, which is built and structured very similarly to mine .
One of the most profound teachings I learned about my Universe is related to the evolution.
It helps me to understand such difficult concepts like energy, time and space.
I see myself as an evolution-created creature trying to figure out my Universe. I think it is an evolved form of the “attempt to survive”.
It is what all animals do , all the time. They are trying to figure out their Universe in the attempt to survive. The behaviors promoting this goal have inbuilt pleasure incentive, doing otherwise produces pain.
Each of them has its Mind , which directs the behavior.
Now with going back in time, the discussion become linguistically tricky. We shift the names according to the animal’s complexity. For the caveman the”mind” is ok, but for the bat?
All it has (dr.Nagel, au secours!) is the perception, some memory and the instinct.
I believe, that all three are forms of the behavior.
The instinct contains the behaviors genetically and epigenetically selected by evolution, these neural networks should include the metabolism, motor patterns, neurotransmitters flow (“feelings”) and perception system settings and data.
The memory has behaviors from the past, successful and not- the learning history.
The perception has the same behavioral content except it is connected with the neural network denoting “present time” and “near future” combined with “positive planned outcome”.
If we look deeper into, say, bacteria- the same pattern will work, but simpler.
So simple, that maybe can be tested and proved or disproved.
This is an interesting way of thinking – kind of evolutionary form of
cartesian reductionism. Instead of breaking the matter into smaller and simpler pieces in order to understand the whole thing, one goes back in the evolutionary time examining simpler and simpler organisms.
It uses our understanding of the evolutionary process.
1. the evolution improves efficiency with tiny steps, it can not shift/exchange a principle or a basic mechanism.
2. all we see are winning behaviors, losers died away, if we see “loser” it means that the evolutionary behavior boundaries were poorly understood. The behaviors go across the organism, organs or the culture. These are our boundaries invented by us to help to understand, not the evolution’s .
3. The time, the evolution, the complexity and the entropy has the same “arrow”, why?, our process of the understanding has the opposite. These concepts helped us to understand and organise the universe, while reaching further and further in space and time with our science.
The biocentrism postulates that the life created matter. This is revolutionary, this is fantastic. What is most extraordinary that Dr. Lanza and others before and after him, developed the idea on the base of the understanding of quantum physics.
I got it through the understanding of the evolution.
Heylighen, Clement and Gershenson with their complexity science and systems theory are very close to it.
Goswami and Meher Baba with their spiritual paths are practically saying the same.
Still, it is so preposterous, nobody pays any attention.
Basic concepts of the TER are biological. Not philosophical( like Kant’s) not mathematical or physical, not thermodynamical or experiential or spiritual. Biological and secondarily- social.
I am me, and not you, but your experience is like mine. This is this and that is that. And not otherwise around.
And this is my Universe, not yours, not my Mom’s, not my grandson’s.
It is not the Universe I saw as a baby, or as an embryo. Not the bat’s Universe.
When I and a bat are in the same cave , we both see real cave, completely different, two perfect, hard realities in the same time, the same place.
Do we need to worry that when we both (the bat and I) leave the cave , it disappears? And which one is left as Nobody’s cave.
It looks how I see it. It lays inside my understanding. It is true, it is one, it is real.
It is not an illusion, the illusion implies the existence of the second world behind , the real one.
So, it is similar to the biocentrism, but not exactly the same.
It is not that the life crated matter.
Neither life , nor the matter are independent or even prominent entities in my understanding,
The matter of scientists it is just play of words, you can not touch it, the relationships between the forces, complexity and the energy.The matter of normal people is the trick of the senses invented 400 million years ago , somewhere about the Cambrian Explosion.
The evolutionary algorithm works independently of the matter and life.
When I was conceived, the complexity, the time and the energy/space started as me.
I guess, the same happened to the first one- my imagination sees this process extended and stretched for billions of years- more and more of the first one, of the first live organism , of the first conscious one, of the first me.
So there is my universe, and I believe there is your universe, but I do not think there is Nobody’s Universe.
It is not the life that created it, not the consciousness, these are biological concepts.While the basic assumptions of the TER are biological.( or “organic”) the “flip” is not biological, I am not discovering any biological properties, this is philosophical, it is my understanding that created it. So my universe is not in my head, it is conceptual, it is everywhere, reaching back to the immobile, pre- time, pre-energy the mathematical universe of possibility.
It is preposterous , but the implications are practical. (see: “TER- how to act”).
1.1.2014
The Evolution explains the origins and the function of the nervous system.
In the pre- NS world, the interplay between the environment and the organism determines the survival. With increased complexity of the organism the repertoire of the adaptive reactions increased both in spatial and in the temporal realms.
In pre-NS world the changes of the environment and organisms adaptive reactions are random.
To relate these environment’s changes to organism’s action you need the behavior.
The behavior includes the information about the environment’s changes (the niche) the ways to remember them , organisms action and the way to remember it. Intent/ reward system is also included very early. These information processing “ need” “ pushed” the development of the nervous system.
So, as I understand this, the content of the organism’s nervous system are these information pieces or neural networks organised in systems being actually behaviors.This is organism’s Universe with the intent/reward system unifying them into an agent, (in more complex organisms it become “I” or consciousness)
These Universes overlap , as the experiences overlap, depending on the complexity and socialization of the organism. This is so simple , especially comparing to the Quantum- everything world. Well, with the Human World it is slightly more complicated , as we are v.v. complex and v.v. hypersocial- so we created from those overlapping experiences this Nobody’s Universe, we call real.
To summarize:
As a “modern human” I automatically divide the experiences into two types.
One world is my subjectivity, my inside World. There, my mental faculties can distinguish different parts : my perceptions, my feelings, my memories, my beliefs, my consciousness.
The other world is the outside World .
The animals have mostly outside world- their reality. The higher animals have more memory and emotions, but a simple worm- only outside, real, true, worm- independent World. Of course our worm is deeply wrong- her primitive nervous system tells her : eat, stop, go, eat- what kind of world it is?
Well, as a 2 week old embryo, I was not much smarter, even as a baby, the world was simple and unified : eat, stop, sleep, cry…
Then my mental faculties, around 6 to 8 month of age made the split: inside vs outside.
I believe it is only one world. My universe- real, and perceived by different mental faculties like pictures in a kaleidoscope-the dreams, the forests, the angels, the angers, Plato and my daughters- then my brain will ( partly unconsciously) sort this out. It will use multiple filters- usability, reliability, probability, categories, personal experience etc.
I believe your Universe is similar, and Sox’s my cat’s and the simple worm’s.
And there is no Nobody’s World.
The consequences of this theory I described in “TER how to act” in my blog.
Ecohumanist Lab 