Sublime

The way to proceed is clear: start with the minimal specification for a living, reproducing thing—a list of all the things it has to be able to do—and work backward, making an inventory of the available raw materials (often called the feedstock molecules of prebiotic chemistry), and asking what sequence of possible events could gradually bring toge

Instead, consciousness can be grown from “scratch” with only a few well-timed molecular parts and plans laid out.

Concerning Locke, for example, Rommen writes, “Locke substitutes for the traditional idea of the natural law as an order of human affairs, as a moral reflex of the metaphysical order of the universe revealed to human reason in the creation as God’s will, the conception of natural law as a rather nominalistic symbol for a catalog or bundle of indivi

the mindless processes of evolution cannot create moral obligations.

side had been originally predisposed to respond in a particular way to the problem posed by our existence and reject other solutions, another example of how we bring ourselves to the table whenever we debate these issues.

By the way, Dr Johnson did not directly kick the rock either. A person is a mind, not a body. The Dr Johnson who performed the experiment was a mind, and that mind directly ‘kicked’ only some nerves, which transmitted signals to muscles, which propelled his foot towards the rock. Shortly afterwards, Dr Johnson perceived being ‘kicked back’ by the r

Dualism becomes obsolete by the material circularity of autopoiesis. In a self-referential system, meaning is the “inner side” of the material aspect of the system’s closure.

Canetti, Elias (2002): Über Tiere.