Philosophical Speculations

I'm new here. What does the acronym M@L mean? Is it the same as MAL?

Toto Gale wrote: ↑Fri Aug 06, 2021 8:57 pm I'm new here. What does the acronym M@L mean? Is it the same as MAL?

Mind at large

dachmidt wrote: ↑Fri Aug 06, 2021 7:46 am Of course, I think BK has the evolutionary process on his side, as evolution of life started instinctively, impersonal and without self-reflection at all.

This is a physicalist or panpsychist assumption. From an idealist perspective it is possible to consider that life has always been meta-cognitive. While there is likely no meta-cognition in individual (non-human) organisms, it is possible that there is in the species to which the organism belongs. What we call instinctve behavior in, say, a cat, can be looked on as an idea in the mind of the cat species which it is manifesting in each cat, with the species observing how it works in physical reality. As conditions change, it will modify its ideas, and hence the instictive behavior, and in extreme cases its genetic expression, which we call adaption.

Of course this is purely speculative, assuming one hasn't intuitive insight into the question (as some have claimed, and as mythologies have asserted, e.g., in stories of Coyote). I am merely pointing out that idealists need not, and I would say should not, make that assumption.