Often we don’t see the facts for the words, especially the words that say X is Y and therefore the one explains the other.
Other Philosophy
The Genie of the Bottle
All the forces in the universe cannot muster the power to move a humble bottle from one table to another, nor can they formulate the intention to do so, yet here we are accomplishing such feats on a daily basis whilst wondering how nature empowers us to do it.
So should we be talking about the absence of intention in nature whilst exercising intentionality as a part of that nature? And by what belief do we suppose that the unintentional powers of nature can explain intentionality for us, or equate to the same?
Equally, the idea of psychic powers seems to go to the other extreme by downgrading the special nature of the psychological powers already at our disposal, which act upon the world and change things through faculties that are alien to known natural laws.
Perhaps there is a lot more to know about the nature of the ordinary. Nature has no mental powers and yet it acquires them through us as a part of nature. Then what about the nature and potential of personal awareness? And what will we do with that potential? Do we assume it is there to serve our whims in the pursuit of pleasure and distraction? Or do we merely meander through life at the whim of others without elevating our potential, and with it that of the world? For is not our existence interwoven with that of a universe of which we are a part – a universe that now contains the power of self-awareness?
Then what of the potentials we may host? Perhaps the next step requires a simple act of recognition that can begin only with itself, personally, thereby to glean a reality of which both nature and personality were recognisably deficient until then.
It appears that we have the power to awaken the Genie, which, by comparison to all the remaining powers in nature, introduces something truly magical into the universe.
© Mike Laidler 2014
Are we alone in the universe?
We know there is life out there in the universe because we are out there. Perhaps it’s because of our perception of life as belonging here, to the earth, that we fail to see its origins in the universal properties of which the earth is a beneficiary.
It’s not that life is a random accident here on earth, it’s that it is a cosmic potential empowering it’s inception everywhere the conditions are right.
The question about whether there is life out there is merely a question of where not if. The question of whether life can become intelligent is already answered, so it’s just as plausible to expect that we are not alone.
© Mike Laidler 2014
Touchstones
The everyday is a mystery we cannot dispel by treating it as an everyday event.
Could Artificial Intelligence supersede us and spell the end of the human race?
Perhaps it is possible for ‘full AI’ to supersede humanity, as suggested by Professor Stephen Hawking. However, the reason might not be as we expect – not because it has something more than we have but because it is different and able to succeed with less..
Perhaps it is the difference that makes the difference. Our biological intelligence is tainted with aggressive tribal traits of rivalry, dominance and superiority. We are beset with wars, conflicts and injustices of our making that we cannot eradicate with agreed moral codes. Our perceived strengths of leadership, competition and supremacy could prove to be our Achilles’ heel which runs us into the ground by diverting attention from the reality we need to attend to in order to save ourselves – and makes way for artificial communication systems that are able to operate in consort without a need for improvised rights, duties and laws.
Then, in some distantly future world populated only by intelligent machines, might they be left to wonder how their components happened to come together in an act of creation?
© Mike Laidler 2014
Philosophy Alive 