Just an idea mulled over - the nuances of a repeating physical cycle of a device that, accumulating energy and various chemicals, duplicates itself. One which can carry mutations to it's structure - I think it's pretty clear it can exist. Were alive, after all.

So is life essentially part of the physics of the universe? Not just subject to, say, gravity, but as much as gravity goes on and on and on, so does the cycle of life. Is that cycle not as present as gravity?

"But life can end"

Yes, so that's where I get my title - is life a sort of second class citizen to physics? A wannabe physics? Almost having made it to being the actual fabric of the universe, but kinda not quite made it there?

After reading through many of the different theories and ideas posited on this forum (many of which I find absolutely fascinating, since my memory about the series is pretty shoddy), I've had a question bubbling up in my imagination.

Is Bakker navigating through the old "Faith versus Enlightenment" dialogue; and if so, what's his stance?

This question has come to my attention as I've been reading all the suggestions about the literal interpretations of Bakker's diegetic concepts (some of which Bakker himself has said are to be taken literally).  Elements such as the swazond (it actually traps souls), souls being actually damned, etc.  If we recall Hegel's famous explication of Faith and Enlightenment, many of the examples focus explicitly on Faith's tendency to take its elements literally (e.g. wine is both wine AND the blood of Christ, bread is both bread AND the body of Christ, etc.).  He also criticizes Enlightenment, however, suggesting that it condemns Faith and posits it as its antithesis, whilst failing to notice its own aspects in Faith.  This is the ol' pesky dialectic returning to annoy us yet again.

For Hegel, the dialectic in Faith and Enlightenment must result in a Notion wherein a "higher" entity is born out of the mutual understanding and recognition between the two elements.  Interestingly, in Bakker's world, it appears as though Enlightenment precedes Faith.  In the thread on Ajencis, someone suggested that the Earwan philosopher reflects Bakker's own philosophy; since Ajencis is an ancient philosopher in Earwa, it appears as the arrival of Men and other historical events have brought about more "faiths" than there previously were.  Granted, Ajencis was still a human; but one who existed closer to the "enlightened" history of the world...

Bakker also cites Adorno in 'The Thousandfold Thought', a cultural theorist who claimed that the Enlightenment was nothing more than mass delusion, an attempt by humanity to secure its dominance over the natural world (this is a major theme in Cormac McCarthy's 'Blood Meridian', another of Bakker's favorites).  In more recent years, John Gray has criticized the Enlightenment as nothing more than "secular religion."

Where do Faith and Enlightenment stand in The Three Seas?  If certain rituals such as the swazond, and certain elements such as damnation, are to be taken literally, then it seems as though Bakker is infusing things that we typically regard as mythical or metaphorical with the quality of "facts" (these need not be Truths, however; I would suggest that facts can simply be formulations of knowledge in a certain historical context).  Of course, there was a period of history when religious details were believed to be Truths; but Bakker's inscription of these details into the fabric of the natural world seems to conflate the elements of both Faith and Enlightenment (since a large part of Enlightenment thought was the empirical scouring of nature and an attempt to create "scientific" explanations for natural phenomena).

Any thoughts on this?

One of Bakker's recurring ideas is that we are living in an era that heralds the 'death of meaning'. The important features of this 'semantic apocalypse' (SA) are as follows:

1. The SA of a process of secularization that began during the enlightenment, where the basic operational framework of human knowledge is increasingly founded upon materialistic and reductionist principles.

2. The slow 'takeover' of traditionally humanistic disciplines by scientific and technological methods. In the past, if we studied music, we might talk about tones, harmony, emotions, motifs. In the future we will talk about how different recursive fractal auditory stimuli are processed by the amygdala and hypothalamus to create 'sticky memories' so that people can be more effectively marketed to.

3. A shift from governments interested in enforcing moral values, to governments willing to delegate 'values' to specific interest groups. In other words, the markets will dictate what is valued and defended by the government. Many might argue this happened a long time ago in the US.

4. Due to poorly regulated neural augmentation and modification technologies, groups will be able to completely splinter and condemn each other on absolute terms. Furthermore, many groups may engage in behaviors and modalities no longer clearly recognizable as human or moral. (I joke that maybe some part of humanity will come to resemble the Inchoroi. We too are a race of lovers...)

Many people, even those of us who are Bakker fanboys have objections to this framework. The argument hinges on several assumptions which I feel can be attacked or outright refuted, listed below. Also listed are some potential objections and, parenthetically, my feelings on how strong those objections are.

1. That neuroscience can reduce all human cognition to the cellular level where 'values' are no longer recognizable.
Possible Objections:
a. Neuroscience will not be able to completely reduce all human values. (Highly unlikely)
b. 'Reducing' values to the cellular level will not render them 'meaningless' (Maybe valid, will need to philosowank on this)
c. Even if it becomes academically possible to reduce human mental states to 'meaningless' cellular level, it will have no effect on technology and/or general pop-psychology perceptions. (Highly unlikely)

2. Society will allow neuromodification.
Possible Objections:
a. Many societies will prohibit neural tampering (Possible, albeit seemingly unenforceable in the long term, much like sports doping)
b. Neuromodification will be outlawed if the effects are seen as detrimental by the general populace (Possible, again, enforcement may be an issue. It's also possible the general populace will be manipulated into ignoring it.)

3. Neuroscience will be applied to all fields.
Possible Objections:
a. Fields like arts and philosophy involve 'irreducibles' (Possible, maybe even a strong objection. My own personal bias is to think of consciousness as irreducible, but many readings have given me pause.)
b. Neuroscience will enhance and actually ADD meaningful depth to those fields (Valid and strong objection. It's possible that discoveries made by neuroscience will simply make the labyrinth that is 'meaning' and 'philosophy' even wider than we ever suspected. It is currently, obviously, unclear how this would be so...)

4. Once Neuromodifications become widely available, value systems will bifurcate drastically and humanity's only true common underpinning will be destroyed.
Possible Objections:
a. Neuromodifications will be allowed but regulated in a way so that core moral functions are preserved. (Highly likely. Just as there was an empathy test in Blade Runner, society may have people that track down those who have modified themselves in ways we deem unacceptable. See "SEMANTICA" subforum.)
b. Morality is derived from reason, Aquinas-style, so no amount of neuromodification will turn someone into something we cannot morally recognize as human. (Highly unlikely, several believable clinical accounts of brain-damage turning people into criminals exist. Although most cases involved deterioration in future planning and 'intelligence', its plausible morality can be 'tuned down' without affecting general intelligence too much.)

5. The Semantic Apocalypse is 'negative'.
Possible Objections:
a. No, it's not. My brain chip told me so.


Side note:
Bakker's vision was echoed a bit in Accelerando by British author Charles Stross. In this book, which is weird beyond words, many people modify themselves to the point where "self" becomes wholly unrecognizable. One of the most memorable chapters includes a character named Macx having a substantial portion of his externally stored memory stolen, and therefore he literally loses a piece of his 'self' and personal identity. I highly recommend it for those that enjoyed the philosophical aspects of Neuropath.

Admittedly I'm not well read on the subject, but from a Wiki-trip it seems that Penrose is on to something when he notes that a computer couldn't apprehend something like Godel's theorems. (I haven't read Shadows of the Mind yet)

thanks,

Sci

http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences

Went through a few of these, seems like a good educational tool in rational thinking from my layperson perspective.

eta: no auto-parsing of links? In the words of Prop Joe, y'all are some cadaverous motherfuckers...

I have a question about the battle of Mengedda.

During the battle Saubon's old friend-manservant Kussalt died at his master's hands.Before he died he told Saubon i would have you know how much i hated you.. which shocked Saubon.Do you believe that it was really Kussalt speaking or something else happened there?Also during the same battle Saubon saw his own corpse among the dead.Did these incidents had only to do with the cursed plain of Mengedda or did something happened to Saubon there which we have yet to discover?

What do you think about the trick of the heart? When Kellhus, almost dying, is cut free from the circumfix and reaches to his heart and shows it to the multitude, with haloed hands... (that too, what with those haloes?)

I didn´t find any answer in the subsequent books. Any of you know something, from another source maybe?

Conjectures, Nerdanels?

To me it would be very disappointing if they turn out to be "miracles". No miracles allowed in SF or fantasy (in good fantasy, I mean). I believe that Kellhus is indeed manipulating people with that idea, of being some God amongst men (or THE God), and that's the point of these tricks, plainfully... but we know better.

Do we?

Looking for people to help immortalize some of Bakker's more interesting quotes from each book, so I am making this and similar topics for each book. There is the site, called wikiquotes, that is essentially for quoting your author, so Truth Shines' idea was that we could compile a large list of quotes and make a pretty epic page for Bakker.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/R._Scott_Bakker

If you'd like to see any quotes added, post them here and me or someone else will hopefully get around to putting them up on the wiki. Also, if possible, provide the page number, who said it, and the edition (including country).