Physical idealism

[bennyboy]

The body is all there is and it is represented by DNA.

-Hammy

I don't think you're engaged with the point of the OP.

[Edwardo Piet]

Oh sorry, I think I did but I will try and be clearer

In other words, the human body actually isn't completely represented in the DNA

Yes it is. Some genes are dormant and some are active.

[Amine]

God dammit I thought this was going to be about physicalist idealism.

[bennyboy]

God dammit I thought this was going to be about physicalist idealism.

We could.  My version of physicalism is that underneath the hood, it's really a kind of idealism.  I have't seen that link or that theory before, though.

But we could bring it around with a parallel to this question I've asked in the past: is a wave an expression of physical ideas, or are the ideas our own, and just descriptive terms?


That article is very interesting, and maybe we should talk about it.

[bennyboy]

Oh sorry, I think I did but I will try and be clearer

In other words, the human body actually isn't completely represented in the DNA

Yes it is. Some genes are dormant and some are active.

But it's a secondary representation.  What, for examples, does say an ASCII "65" code represent?  It represents the text symbol "A" which in turn represents the A sound, and a collection of various sounds represent words which represent ideas.  There is a complex mapping of meaning from level to level, but ultimately, there is purpose in that mapping: the ideas don't supervene on the structures which relate them, but vice versa. Now to be clear, when I talk about say the "idea" of a wave of light, I'm not saying Bob the Creator is thinkin' on it 'n' sich-- I mean that light-ness drives the photon, rather than being a property OF a single photon or a collection of them.

As for dormant genes. . . what would happen if you stripped them all, in your opinion, and had a "simplified" DNA strand.  Would we be streamlined superbeings, or pools of jelly?

[Neo-Scholastic]

... it would be more proper to say that the human body is an expression of ideas which happen to be represented in DNA, than to say that the DNA expresses itself as a human body.

Careful, you are getting dangerously close to the idea of formal cause.

[bennyboy]

... it would be more proper to say that the human body is an expression of ideas which happen to be represented in DNA, than to say that the DNA expresses itself as a human body.

Careful, you are getting dangerously close to the idea of formal cause.  

I'm fine with that, so long as I don't have to call it Daddy and give it money every Sunday.

[Mudhammam]

It's not really at odds with evolution at all.  My point is that like our mental understanding of things, the DNA represents a collection of ideas which are reworked or recycled, rather than a "set piece" for a species.

But do you mean to suggest that such a "collections of ideas" as represented by DNA structures are, outside of the ideas by which you categorize your experiences, anything but (keeping in mind that the following presumes an affection of the mind) some vague "substance" with attributes that affect your senses, and thereby your intellect?

[bennyboy]

It's not really at odds with evolution at all.  My point is that like our mental understanding of things, the DNA represents a collection of ideas which are reworked or recycled, rather than a "set piece" for a species.

But do you mean to suggest that such a "collections of ideas" as represented by DNA structures are, outside of the ideas by which you categorize your experiences, anything but (keeping in mind that the following presumes an affection of the mind) some vague "substance" with attributes that affect your senses, and thereby your intellect?

Yeah, it's a case of the chicken or the egg.  Clearly, the DNA has ideas which are expressed as the human body and the human mind (at least in qualitative terms).  However, where do those ideas come from?  Evolution I'd say boils down to the following principle: chaotic systems, if they allow for properties which persist through time, will tend to organize.  Since statistically those properties which are likely to dominate will dominate, you end up with a record of what I'd call "statistical moments" in space and time.  And I'd call the resultant persistent properties of those moments "ideas," since they provide the framework for subsequent events.

However, given our understanding of life, I'd say that at least some ideas will obviously transcend their medium.  Reproduction, for example, will always be a part of the evolution of life, on Earth or elsewhere.  So will selection, etc.  So should we say that reproductive instincts come FROM the DNA, or that the principle of reproduction which is really a principle of form arising out of a chaotic system, leads to DNA or something like it?

I'd say the ideas drive the DNA, not vice versa, and they cannot therefore be said to BE DNA, but must be thought of as abstract principles.

[Neo-Scholastic]

As I see it, the principles mentioned, like selection and reproduction, are in some sense prescriptive and not merely descriptive. DNA is the means by which those principles are expressed.