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The line between Nature and Artificiality

Q

Quantum Perception

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Where does natural innovation give way to artificial technology?

If we are to think of our species as something that grows from the earth as an apple does from a tree, rather then feel as if we are just placed here,

then can we really distinguish between what is produced by the human mind and what buds off a plant?

Thoughts?
 
Artificiality is determined by the precedence of intent.

Where intent precedes existence, a thing is artificial. A car doesn't exist until after it has been designed.

Where existence precedes intent, a thing is natural. A stick is just a stick until some human uses it as a club.
 
"then can we really distinguish between what is produced by the human mind and what buds off a plant?"

imo: no.

"But don't animals or plants have intent?"

dun see how that affects my answer
 
I think that the dividing line is people, simple as that. What we call 'natural' predated us, and what we call 'artificial' postdated us. Notice that this is an entirely value-neutral statement -- it does not imply that either category is inherently good or bad, which are generalizations that really don't hold, as far as I'm concerned. Anytime you or any person alters the world in a way that no other entity, force, or process has ever been seen to do, an something artificial has come into being.
 
MyDoorsAreOpen said:
I think that the dividing line is people, simple as that. What we call 'natural' predated us, and what we call 'artificial' postdated us. Notice that this is an entirely value-neutral statement -- it does not imply that either category is inherently good or bad, which are generalizations that really don't hold, as far as I'm concerned. Anytime you or any person alters the world in a way that no other entity, force, or process has ever been seen to do, an something artificial has come into being.
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When did we("us") start?

Ancient hunter-gatherers with no sense of symbolic culture or thinking outside the upkeep of nutrition and homeostasis:they had our bodies, but not our minds or culture.

Are they included in the "we/us" as well?

Do more primitive people get thrown in the same lot as us?

As Alan Watts said: "We grow from the Earth like and apple grows from a tree." So i find it hard to think of us as separate from nature, when we are an expression of it, an unique at that.


...I wonder how different our society would be if they saw themselves as an extension of nature instead of an intruder of it.
 
What human beings do is certainly "natural to the human being".

And if we accept that human beings are a natural species, then there's nothing artificial about what people are doing.

I'd suggest that what people actually do behavior-wise is quite a bit simpler/more basic than what thought or the mind makes of it. Turn off the sound on the TV some time during some complex program, and just watch what people do... it's surprising how much they talk/think, and do comparatively little ;).
 
Drugs show this line. Anything "forced" by man (whether that be into quantities, purification, or knowingly moving one chemical with another and then forcing a pressure in it is artificial). Is artificial good or bad? Well, that depends on where you're at.
 
Draigan said:
Allan Watts inspired post. Boom!

To answer your fun and entertaining but meaningless question...

Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand?

Because I am a bad pretend Zen master, i am just going to tell you that the koans purpose it to show u that you find out the answer to your question not by asking stupid philosophical questions like you are, but by ceasing it entirely. If you try to cease anything, though, you clearly still don't get the koan.

I like to call it doing without doing.


My fav Koan is "is a dog capable of enlightenment or not?" haha. I love this koan because its so easy to see where a person "stands" when they answer it.
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I don't think its meaningless. 8)
I just read the way of Zen by Alan and I believe this kind of question can help someone see how they and their environment are intertwined. Help them realize that they are an expression of nature, not an intruder to it.
This kind of seeing is the art of Zen, no wobbling.
 
Quantum Perception said:
When did we("us") start?

Ancient hunter-gatherers with no sense of symbolic culture or thinking outside the upkeep of nutrition and homeostasis:they had our bodies, but not our minds or culture.

Are they included in the "we/us" as well?

Do more primitive people get thrown in the same lot as us?
Click to expand...

Good point, but this is truly academic, not practical. For most intents and purposes of modern day people, the line between 'man made' and 'not man made' is fairly clear cut. Even hunter-gatherer societies today alter the world in ways no other species or natural force do. Not maybe as profoundly as industrialized societies, true. But there is no non-human agent that makes poison-tipped darts from tree frogs and sticks, and uses them to hunt. The ingredients (frog skin and sticks) are natural. But the end product is decidedly artificial.

There are no longer any living individuals who straddle the line between 'not modern humans and living in a state of nature', and 'modern humans'.

As Alan Watts said: "We grow from the Earth like and apple grows from a tree." So i find it hard to think of us as separate from nature, when we are an expression of it, an unique at that.


...I wonder how different our society would be if they saw themselves as an extension of nature instead of an intruder of it.
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I agree. I think that humanity is an outgrowth of the living organism called Earth. When did we cease to be in a 'state of nature'? As the Garden of Eden story metaphorically illustrates, I think it happened at the point where we realized we could take control of the growth and lives of nonhuman life for our own ends, i.e. agriculture. This alienation from nature, which is the basis of the natural/artificial dichotomy, is indeed problematic, or at the very least a Faustian bargain. But that may be beyond the scope of this thread.
 
Raw Evil said:
Artificiality is determined by the precedence of intent.

Where intent precedes existence, a thing is artificial. A car doesn't exist until after it has been designed.

Where existence precedes intent, a thing is natural. A stick is just a stick until some human uses it as a club.
Click to expand...

This is really a vast oversimplification of the subtle nuances that constitute natural selection. The distinction between natural and artificial, environmental and biological, all becomes very muddled as we grow further aware that epi-genetic interactions constitute the large actuation of most our traits.

If a car is the natural and inexorable progression of naturally evolved human beings, what's to say that it isn't as natural? I think you're failing to take into account the absolute complexity of the systems that give way to sustained life on this earth.

essentially: your conception of artificial vs. natural isn't logically incoherent, but it fails to meaningfully paint an accurate picture of reality with its over simplification. it isn't holistic enough
 
I never found this division useful, except maybe as an analytical heuristic, to differentiate humanly conscious creation / environmental transformation from 'natural', system-emergent creations of the Earth's, of which we are one.

ebola
 
Lol I knew u just read some Allan Watts and posted this. Could just tell.

If you read it closely you would see that the first thing he said was that talking about Zen is meaningless, but alas you paid for me to talk about Zen so I gota come up with something!!

He would call him self a psychedelic spiritual entertainer.

His purpuse is not for you to intellectualy understand anything bro. Hes trying to get you aroused so that you take the dive and see what he means with your own eyes, not your intellectual eyes.
 
I think this distinction is hugely anthropocentric. It seems to supervene on a rejection of Darwinism, a belief that humans are somehow "other" from all other animals. Honey, cobwebs, and anthills are all indisputably natural (though I'm anticipating someone challenging this assertion), and they are produced by animals for their own purposes, with intent. LSD and microchips are of exactly the same nature, a recombination of matter to achieve emergent properties that were not previously present by an animal. The only difference is that, in the latter cases, the animal involved is Homo sapiens. For some people, that difference is sufficient to divide the world into two kinds of objects. Personally, I think that anything that arises from the natural world is necessarily natural.

Or, in short: what B9 said.
 
Yerg said:
I think this distinction is hugely anthropocentric.
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Yes, but...

It seems to supervene on a rejection of Darwinism
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This doesn't logically follow. By this reasoning, calling the freezing point of water 'zero degrees' implies something thermodynamically special about water.

Using 'pre-human' and 'post-human' to divide up the world is simply using a benchmark, and doesn't need or presuppose any assumptions about the nature of people. And personally, since we are front and center of the world we know, I do see it as useful in some instances to make a distinction between that which came before us and that which followed/follows us.

Keeping in mind, of course, that all dichotomies are really just useful tools or schema for the sentient observers who construct and impose them on the big oneness.
 
Right, the term might not inherently rest on that assumption, but the way that it is used does. If we were to consider anything that was a deliberate artifice of a creature artificial, then there'd be no problem, but common usage dictates that only humans are capable of creating artificial things. I suppose that the relevant case with your analogy would be if we were to call the phase change from liquid to solid in all other materials than water something other than freezing, then that usage would rather imply something special about water.

I also feel like you may be ignoring the complex interactions between humans and other organisms:
the line between 'man made' and 'not man made' is fairly clear cut. Even hunter-gatherer societies today alter the world in ways no other species or natural force do. Not maybe as profoundly as industrialized societies, true. But there is no non-human agent that makes poison-tipped darts from tree frogs and sticks, and uses them to hunt. The ingredients (frog skin and sticks) are natural. But the end product is decidedly artificial.
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I don't think it is so clear cut as you suppose, nor that the way you use the term "artificial" is typical. For instance, many consider GM foods to be artificial, and organic foods to be natural. However, organic chicken is, by your definition, artificial- there is no such thing as a chicken without the artifice of humans. I agree, however, that the term can be useful, for instance, if we are talking about chemical substances that are found in nature, it is unhelpful for the semantic pedant to insist that all chemicals that exist are found in nature. I think my problem stems from people trying to force the concept onto the world and divide it neatly in two.

Keeping in mind, of course, that all dichotomies are really just useful tools or schema for the sentient observers who construct and impose them on the big oneness.
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Quite.

A small quibble not really relevant to the debate- what is "artificiality"? Doesn't "artifice" express the same concept rather less clumsily?
 
I think artifice has additional shades of meaning that artificiality doesn't, but they're largely interchangeable.

Yerg said:
I don't think it is so clear cut as you suppose, nor that the way you use the term "artificial" is typical. For instance, many consider GM foods to be artificial, and organic foods to be natural. However, organic chicken is, by your definition, artificial- there is no such thing as a chicken without the artifice of humans. I agree, however, that the term can be useful, for instance, if we are talking about chemical substances that are found in nature, it is unhelpful for the semantic pedant to insist that all chemicals that exist are found in nature. I think my problem stems from people trying to force the concept onto the world and divide it neatly in two.
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Might artificiality / naturality (huh... Microsoft doesn't consider this a word, but the rastaman sure do :) ) be things that come in degrees? I could see it argued that organic food is more natural, and less artificial, than modern conventionally farmed food. I agree with you that organically farmed food, or any farmed food, is far from purely natural. But I think it could be correctly said that the life course of an organism and its life's effects on the surrounding environment are typically a lot closer to those of its pre-human wild cousins, if it's grown organically.

I see your point about the way the word 'natural' gets abused. I'm all for stricter rules about the definition and use of that word in advertising, in a similar way that 'light' and 'lite' were reined in in the 1990s. But I disagree with those who say it's a good for nothing dichotomy.
 
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