Conflict between storyteller and science telling.

 

During one of this morning’s walks with my Maddy dog–musing on my current project, Thomas Nagel’s iconic essay, “What is it like to be a bat?”–I had a defining insight regarding the conflict I feel–as a life long science enthusiast and follower–with theology and philosophy.

Even though they also interest me, however in the same way art and music impress me, not in any self-defining manner the way serious science does.

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On the one side we have,

the storyteller, confident in the stories created from within one’s mind. Using the outside world as a prop upon which to tell a provocative spellbinding tale. Glorifying in the unsurpassed genius of our own spectacular mind.

versus,

the observer, collecting evidence, and allowing the facts to create and dictate our story. Demanding honesty and suppressing our natural ego driven bias as much as possible.

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Physical Reality ~ Human Mind divide

I suggest it’s the most fundamental observation that can be made regarding our human condition, it provides a realistically intellectual foundation to build a down-to-Earth, bottom-up understanding.

Awestruck Scientist responded:

Even though they also interest me, however in the same way art and music impress me, not in any self-defining manner the way serious science does.

I agree on two accounts, and disagree on one:
I agree with putting theology and philosophy in the same category as art and music - they all arise subjectively.
I agree with the distinction between storyteller and observer, which I would call the subjective and the objective.
I disagree with the notion (I hope I am not misinterpreting here you) that the observer is somehow more relevant than the storyteller. For me they are equally important and true, as long as they don't attempt to usurp the truth claim of the other perspective.

My response:
that the observer is somehow more relevant than the storyteller.
A.S., good point and thanks for making it!
I agree, storytelling is one of humanity's most important advances, I'm not questioning that.
This is about the source of authority used by the authors of the respective styles of storytelling, that I want to shine a klieg light on.
The philosophizing, and literary, storyteller follows their muse, molding their own story and emotions out of their own mind-scapes, as they strive to create, and perhaps share as hopefully, spellbinding stories. They are the masters of their world and their stories.
On the other hand, the scientist story teller is confined to following the known evidence as they plot the outlines and themes of their stories.
As science advances, new evidence comes in, often absolutely unanticipated, and radically rearranging the story. The scientific story honors, by striving to honestly reflection the actual factual, up to date, evidence that the best and the brightest have gathered and shared.
The philosophical. theological, and literary storytelling is all about human ego, wanting to be heard. It's beautiful, I'm right in there with the rest of us who strive to write well and meaningfully, and hope that someone notices.
Still we must understand scientific story telling is all about striving to understand this world we were born into based on solid physical evidence, and about ourselves in the bargain. That's what I owe all my allegiance to.
It's why I identify as an Earth-centrist.
Earth Centrism = Geocentrism. Seriously?
The Missing Key to Stephen Gould’s “Nonoverlapping Magisteria.”
Cheers & have a good weekend.

What is the Self?

Let’s be honest with ourselves and start at the beginning.

For us and many other animals it starts with a unique egg and sperm and not so much a plan as an imperative.

Grow, survive, prosper.

The imperative within me came out of the momentum of half a billion years’ worth of 100% successful generations building upon each preceding generation. Always learning and refining.

“Self” begins with your biology interacting with the physical world around us. Senses + body + brain, constantly interacting with the real world, exterior and interior.

Let’s be realistic, how could any creature possibly feel like anything other than what it is? How can any creature not feel itself, since itself, and its own needs, are all that it knows?

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Can Other Things Be Conscious?

Panpsychism makes no sense.

What is the point of consciousness, when there aren’t any decisions to be made? Which is the case out in the cosmic realm of particles and energy and gravity.

Why On Earth Are You Even Aware?

 

This is condensed out of my previous exposition.

Blame it on Evolution.

If one is not aware, one gets eaten and never makes babies.

Think about this — you exist within an evolved incarnation of a body/brain that has gone through some half a billion years worth of development, each new generation building upon the previous one. Not one single miss during all that time, or you would not be here.

It gets wilder, the cells that make up your body — their history goes back over four billion years’ worth of successful reproductive cycles — all within a harsh and unforgiving biosphere. (see Nick Lane)

Awareness was required for single cells to succeed, even before the eukaryotic cells took it to a whole new level with their nucleus, organelles and complex insides. Science shows us that awareness, drifting into consciousness was one of biology’s first hurdles on the way to creating life. (see Arthur Reber)

Even single celled creatures require awareness, communication, command and control, along with a vessel to navigate.

The rest is Evolution.

This Pageant of Evolution forces us to realize our body started as something very simple. With each generation modeled by the trials and tribulations dished out during its, one day at a time, life cycle, before getting passed along to the next generation. Always building upon what was there before. Striving to do better.

Considering Things Science Can Explain About Consciousness.

"Without deeply, personally appreciating the Pageant of Evolution, trying to ask, and answer, these deep existential questions is like playing basketball in zero gravity."

"Dr. Mark Solms makes it clear: … Modern science shows us that our mind is best understood as “a reflection of your body communicating with itself.” "

"Consider that momentous invention some four billion years ago of the Krebs cycle. Here on Earth, when geology and chemistry learned how to harness electricity, thereby giving birth to this Krebs cycle, which in turn gave birth to biology. There you’ll find the difference between a rock and living creature." 

Introduction

Professor Massimo Pigliucci asks: “What Hard Problem?”

 

I also published this at medium.com, July 8, 2025

Recently I published a short article at Medium.org questioning David Chalmers’ so-called hard problem of consciousness and a commenter took me to task.

Unfortunately he chose not to engage with my response, which is what usually happens. The heart of his complaint reads:

HS commented: “…But an organism still has to utilize the equipment available in its universe and how molecules or physical forces create consciousness is not explained just because, for example, a neuron has come to be.

Get it? It is still a hard problem. There has to be something inherent to that universe with the potential to create consciousness. …”

No. I don’t get it.

The universe is about as distal from down to Earth reality, as we can get. For me, the really hard problem is why does this sort of philosophizing get away with ignoring the realities of our evolutionary biological origins down here on Earth?

So, in an attempt to better clarify my previous article. I want to share from Professor Massimo Pigliucci’s short essay (©2013) in philosophynow.org. The essay asks: “What Hard Problem?” — and I believe it provides a perfect vehicle for constructively pushing back.

Diary Dec 31, 2023 - Reflections on this New Year's Eve.

Saying good-bye to 2023.  

Another year older and still working towards that elusive final draft of my Earth Centrist perspective.  I've been spending five years digesting the concept and the evidence behind it, I've written long articles and short bullet points, fielded some push and a lot of handwaving and slammed doors - there's only so many ways to refine something so fundamental and straightforward and that elusive final draft of my Earth Centrist perspective summary, is just around the corner, as they say.  

I have been taking the discussion online at CFI Forum (Center for Inquiry) a small discussion board and have been receiving interesting feedback and pushback.  I'm also participating in a college philosophy club.  Then, this past July I wrote up a dialogue with a short book, Buddha Science, by Daut.

It made for a nice contrast to dealing with Don Hoffman's ideas, in that I agree with much that Daut wrote, but I do come at it from a very different evolutionary biological bottom up perspective and I enjoyed this excuse to review and try to enunciate my Earth Centrist concept in a more constructive atmosphere.

Science has learned a great deal about Evolution, our animal biology, and also consciousness across the entire animal kingdom.  Philosophers and the general public would do good to lay to rest old brainteasers and to catch up on the significance of current scientific biological evolutionary breakthroughs.

This Earth Centrist writing project has been dedicated to people who appreciate nature and evolution and scientific understanding about how evolution weaves us together with all other living beings on this planet.  

Which includes a deep appreciation for how our body/brain produces consciousness, as in, the inside reflection of our body communicating with itself (see Dr.Solms) and realizing how that offers keys to better understanding our own endless flesh vs spirit conflicts.

I'm looking to connect with people for whom a notion such as "Appreciating the Human Mind ~ Physical Reality divide" makes sense and who are unfazed by recognizing themselves as evolved biological thinking creatures, products of Earth's processes. People, who glory in the Pageant of Evolution that created our body and love learning from serious scientific efforts.

These aren't irrelevant trifles, they are keys to a more straightforward understanding of those dogged questions: Who am I?  Why am I here?  Why doesn't my body do what I tell it to?

10/10 - Dialogue with "Buddha Science" - Conclusion (Steve Daut)

 

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Chapter 9, Buddha Science, Conclusion

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edited Dec 3, 2023

Chapter 9a, Conclusion, Say again?

¶a2  “… The best we have is concepts.  The “real” problem is that we get so enamored of our concepts that we begin to believe they are reality. …”

I say it differently: Getting lost within one’s mindscape.

¶a3  “… to refresh your memory, these Buddha Science observations are interconnection, karma, impermanence, and illusion.

As we have seen, the idea of interconnection is simply that everything is connected to everything else. …”

¶a5  “… Complexity studies involve the idea of emergence, whereby new properties emerge from the complex interaction of many simple processes. …”

This is why taking the time to learn about Evolution is so important, because its insights have direct relevance to your self and how you get along with your self, your body.  That is your internal dialogue, and dealing with your world?

¶a5  “… Biology tells us that we are collection of part from all over the universe, and that our bodies are the result of eons of evolutionary development.  Consciousness itself may be an emergent property resulting from the interconnection of the human (body-)brain, experience, and meant formation. …”

I’m uncomfortable with that wording.   

Our Earth’s constituent atoms, and minerals that do come from all over the universe, but then we have some mind boggling mineral evolution, then biology and life, that’s all homegrown, here on Earth. That’s big, and we don’t know of anything in the universe that can hold a candle to this planet Earth.  

When are we going to own that - and start feeling a little pride for being a self-aware (or not) inhabitant of this overwhelming Earth with its biosphere and hydrosphere and cryosphere of interwoven always evolving life?

¶a7  “Ecology shows us the complex interconnections of organisms with their environment. Not only is the organism dependent on the conditions of the environment, but the condition of the environment itself is inextricably connected to and dependent upon the organism that exist within it.  And these system are also dependent on their past, including all the evolutionary changes and interconnections that occurred to give them their current configurations of entices and functions. …”

Nicely said, worth repeating.

9/10 Dialogue with "Buddha Science" - Science of the Mind (Steve Daut)

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Chapter 8, Buddha Science, Science of the mind

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Chapter 8a, Science of the mind, 

To be or not to be an animal?

¶a1  “Ever since Darwin began the evolution revolution, we have struggled to apply or reject “survive of the fittest” to the progress of society . …”

¶a2  “The middle way of Buddhism escapes this dilemma by taking the approach that if we see and recognize our true (Buddha) nature we’ll understand that our animal nature does not give us a true picture of Reality.   

Think about those words, our “Buddha nature” and our "Animal nature.”  What do they actually say about what we are?  

Animal nature sounds like something bestowed upon us.  But the fact is, we are evolved biological sensing creatures.  Our bodies are animal nature through and through.  

Our bodies and brains are much like most other mammalian brains, but with a slight twist that made all the difference in the world.  Perhaps this is the source of our developed Buddha Nature.

Folds within folds.  Rather than simply being aware of our world, we gained the facility to remember, to file away, to recall with increasing efficiency.  We enhanced those facilities with effective learning, weaving together memories, calculating into the future and dreaming.  Each advance building upon previous achievements. 

Until our human/Buddha mind learned to tame, or at least strive to somewhat tame our animal nature.

¶  “We’ll see that our thoughts and ideas are merely conceptions, a result of causes and conditions. …”

8/10 Dialogue with "Buddha Science" - Science of Life (Steve Daut)

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Chapter 7, Buddha Science, Science of Life

(edited July 29)

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Chapter 7a, Science of Life, That’s life, I can’t deny it

¶a1  “Let’s begin with the most fundamental question: What is life, exactly?  Peter Ward, “Life as We Do Not Know It,”  … life is an emergent quality of a complex system, … 

¶a2  “Carl Sagan and trying to define life.  It’s been impossible.  Capacity to change, ¶4 division between living and non-living, …”

It’s a good question, but what do the answers actually offer us regular people in regard to our normal lives?

We live and experience.  We know what life is and what death looks like, and what non-living material looks like, and that sometimes the boundaries get momentarily blurry.  

Then the hair splitting can begin.  One could argue, biological life is never “dead” because, for instance, once a person dies, the microbial world takes over with an explosion of life forms that inhabit and consume the carcass, transforming it’s tissue back into constituent living biological elements, that are then reabsorbed into the next life form to come along.  There is also time.  It can turn living creatures into life-less rock fossils, only to be ground up again, then absorbed and utilized by another living creatures and so on.  

Still, for regular people why over complicate, or over dramatize?  Life has more interesting aspects for wondering about.

¶a6  “Life in either sense requires balance, a chain of causes and conditions that allow life to emerge and sustain itself. … James Lovelock, Gaia Theory, Earth as interconnected complex living organism…”