Can someone please give me an example of what you feel is NOT natural?

Sorry Saidin, but my post was all about environments. And about curry. In kitchens. natural spices are mixed and "Unnatural" (not my word) chemical reactions occur among the ingredients to make what we call curry.

And the environment is a kitchen AND the "unnatural" introduction of heat, salt (sodium chloride), acid (vinegar or tamarind) and other ingredients that potentiate chemical reactions to change the food and kill bacteria and enhance its taste and smell.

So if i cook my food and add things you might find in a lab as part of the environment of its making it is somehow unnatural, or synthetic? Don't mistake the strange term "naturally occuring" (with which i also have issues) with the term natural.

Incidentally, a spider "cooks" its food. (MMMmmm arachnavindaloo) ! Its food is no more or less naturally occuring, or natural, than a bowl of tikka masala.

Curry is not naurally occuring, but are you also considering it unnatural, or synthetic? I will reiterate snozzleberry's request (and one I made at the beginning of this thread):

At what point, SPECIFICALLY, does a process cease being natural, despite its evolving entirely with elements culled from nature? WHERE is that line for you? Define it.

The not answering of this question is the true dead end, or impasse.


Cheers,
JBArk

If you cannot understand my reasoning why this is so, when I have provided it in numerous posts to the best of my ability, then I have no more to say. My arguments have been unconvincing to you, and that is fair enough. I lack understanding and the language to explain it any better than I have.

The basis of: It exists (for whatever reason, or through any process), therefore it is natural leaves very little if any room for a counter argument. I lost before I even began as this is a position that cannot be logically refuted. I condeded that early on and tried to find some middle ground using the commonly accpeted meaning of "natural". If you wont budge from a singular, uncommon usage of the word which we are discussing, there is no point.

There is no thing that is not natural. Stop separating humanity from the rest of nature. Natural vs unnatural is a hopeless distinction, it serves no purpose. The differences in properties of things however, is a much more useful set of distinctions to discuss.

If it's greater than it's parts...would that not be the human unnaturalness thing I was talking about earlier? Where something inherent in human nature causes the sum total of these natural parts to be seen by some as greater and therefore unnatural?


This is the scientific usage of the word "natural"...I get that we are not a purely scientific community...but calling it singular or uncommon is just not true.


Exactly...

jbark, what about my question you have been avoiding.

there is nothing that is not natural..there is only things more novel than other things..and things that fit more sustainably in certain situations than others becasue of the position they hold within the system they arose within.

sorry thirdeyevision. just that i have been very clear for 7 pages that i feel the term "natural" is meaningless, so naturally so is the word "unnatural".

Therefore I cannot logically provide examples of something which has no meaning.

To reiterate, I believe "natural" is an anthropocentric term that may actually be, naturally and ironically, responsible for the mess we are in environmentally and ethically!

Now to you:

JBArk wrote:
At what point, SPECIFICALLY, does a process cease being natural, despite its evolving entirely with elements culled from nature? WHERE is that line for you? Define it.


JBArk

I have difficulty understanding how the comparison of making food in a kitchen is anywhere close to making a synthetic cell in a labratory. Yes, on the most basic level they can be considered the same, but it is like saying apples = oranges. Sure they are both fruit, but they are not the same thing. A naturally orruring bacteria and a synthetically created one are both life, but are they really the same?

How is chemicals reacting in the presense of a heat source unnatural?

The question of at what point does something become unnatural is a difficult one. The line is not static, so it is hard for me to pinpoint...but I would have to say at this moment, creating life in a lab, through synthesis of inert chemicals.

Good answer!


just for the record, the curry thing (as well as the others further up) were just to point out that so far no line has been drawn by anyone here, and that we are going in circles because no one will commit to a specific line. Given where your line is, i can understand you not comprehending the reference or comparison.

I don't understand the need for the line, but at least it's there for everyone to see. At the risk of blowing this wide open again though (UH-OH.....), why is your line there and not elsewhere?

But I feel the circles coming on...

JBArk

Thanks. So honestly when it boils down to it we've spent 6 pages to come to a single conclusion. We only define the word differently. Not that one is more accurate than another, just to you it means one thing and to another it means something else. Could cause some confusion when the word pops up, but that is all. To you it has no meaning and to others it simply separates something man-made from something that is not man-made. like I said 7 pages ago as well

For ME. A product ceases being natural when it's put together by human hands to form something new.
IE: an automobile, could be made of natural ingredients but you wont see it growing on a tree. Basically if it is man-made it is not natural. Now please don't jump in and say "Your Wrong!" because I am not. As you quoted there are two definitions of the word, scientific and casual. Most of the world uses the casual.

LOL, Doh! You had to ask why!

And I can only refer you to my earlier posts where I think I tried to qualify this. But the most basic reason is that it is my own subjective value judgement from my understanding of the concepts of natural and synthetic.

Edit:
This is true for everyone here, whether you see the line or not, and no matter where you put it. Which means we are both right, and we are both wrong. Just the way I like it

Waves hand. These are not the droids, I mean lines, you are looking for....

ThirdEyeVision wrote:

"For ME. A product ceases being natural when it's put together by human hands to form something new.
IE: an automobile, could be made of natural ingredients but you wont see it growing on a tree. Basically if it is man-made it is not natural. Now please don't jump in and say "Your Wrong!" because I am not. As you quoted there are two definitions of the word, scientific and casual. Most of the world uses the casual."

So by your definition curry is unnatural but not cooked spider food. The hoover dam (but not a beaver dam). a hospital but not a beehive. a bonfire but not a forest fire. a snailshell but not an igloo.

I don't agree at all, but i understand. I just think personally that it is the very definition of logically inconsistent. But no, you're not wrong. Logical inconsistencies have no moral value.

Most of the world does use the word in the casual sense, as most of the world uses the word "organic" to mean something that it does not mean. People are more often logically inconsistent than not.

I guess one could even say that it is logical to expect logical inconsistencies when dealing with people.

I just call them out on it cause im an ornery bass-turd!

JBArk

I knew we'd agree on something!
I also understand your position.

Quite the contrary, now I think we're getting somewhere (well, ignoring the majority of the last couple pages of running in circles arguing which definition is "right". I don't think that either definition is "wrong", so long as we're clear about which definition we use. (Pardon me for getting a bit long-winded here, it's all in the service of avoiding misunderstanding.

Myself, jbark, and others have been using natural to mean anything which occurs through natural processes, including through the actions of organisms. Things that are unnatural by this definition are things which occur outside of or beyond the laws of nature (supernatural phenomena like divine intervention, the transsubstantiation of water into wine, wine into the blood of a dead god, crackers into the flesh of a dead god, etc.). I won't go so far as to claim that everything real is natural, since I can't claim absolute knowledge on the reality or non-reality of supernatural phenomena.

But our definition isn't really relevant, aside from increasing the clarity of the conversation. Pinning down your definition of natural (anything occurring through means other than human agency) and unnatural (things which occur through human agency) is very important in light of the context in which the definition came into contention, hence my previous post probing the definition thoroughly.

The context that I'm referring to is the notion that this synthetic cell is a very dangerous thing because it is unnatural, because we're "playing God". But having clarified that unnatural simply meant "through human agency", then it appears plain that "playing God" here is little more than a euphemism for "playing human".

Through the course of evolution, there are many key developments that dramatically increase the accessible "design space" (the realm of hypothetical possibilities that could occur through natural processes). When the ancestor of the mitochondria entered another bacterium in such a way as to allow concurrent replication (the very first eukaryote), the accessible design space expanded, laying the foundation for initial multicellularity events (which occurred at least three distinct times, as represented by plants, fungi, and animals) as well as for sexual reproduction. Each one of those multicellularity events again affected another expansion of the accessible design space. Eventually we come to humans, where the advent of consciousness again changes the picture in a big way. As consciousness builds upon its own foundation via the capacity for reflection, the influence this has on design space is tremendous.

Of course interacting species have always had large effects on the evolution of one another, both in symbiotic relationships (eg. flowers with insects/birds) and predator/prey relationships (eg. cheetahs and gazelles). And in the early days of humans, our impact was superficially nearly-indistinguishable from these previous processes. But as a natural consequence of our reflective capacity, the process of domesticating plants and animals began... and it didn't take long to figure out that by breeding the most desirable specimens, the result was generally similarly-desirable offspring (sometimes even more desirable than the parent specimen, due to hybrid vigor). So the aurochs became the cow, and the puny ancestors of corn became the large ears we know today. All through the deliberate agency of humans. But that wasn't the end of it. As consciousness developed more efficient ways to pass down information (written language) and more efficient ways of acquiring knowledge of the world around us (scientific investigation), which eventually led to comprehension of genes, and the ability to transfer them between different species (a trick that viruses had been doing mindlessly for billions of years), and even design new proteins (which we currently are not good at) and cobble together entirely new cells (like the one this thread is about).

In one fell swoop (the advent of consciousness), nature has hugely increased the potential for diversity (while at the same time paradoxically our short-sighted thirst for draining resources seems to be creating a massive extinction event). But it's in that light that I see this new cell as a natural organism. Nature is always coming up with tricks for generating things it's never seen before. Consciousness is one of those tricks, and this new cell is one of the fruits of it.

Of course, regarding it as the product of a natural process does not in any way absolve us of the responsibility to ensure we don't use it to harmful ends. That's what's really important. That's what consciousness must entail if we're going to be long for this world. Knowledge and technology is not dangerous in itself, it only has the capacity become so in the context in which it's used. That is the great responsibility of being a conscious, reflective species... we've got to use it or lose it. If we don't use our capacity for reflection to temper our habits of short-sighted destructiveness, we'll back ourselves into a corner we can't think our way out of sooner or later.

The idea that if something is manmade, it's unnatural, may serve a function. Most manmade things are objects, tools or devices we one way or another, use in our daily lives, like houses, icecream, cars, machineguns and supermarkets.
In this sense the concept 'unnatural' is yet another way to filter things that may be relevant to us from things that are less relevant, or relevant in a different manner. It's a way to filter things according to their meaning.
Manmade things have a different meaning to us.

I would think birds would do the same thing. To them all birdmade things like nests and eggs are probably 'unnatural'. To them the distinction between birdmade things and other things is probably as usefull as the manmade/natural distinction is to us.

I think dog's act the same way two: they probably would not care if i would have pissed against a tree they pass by, but if another dog did, they have to leave yet another mark.

But terming it unnatural is inefficient and serves no real purpose anyway. Why not just talk about the property of a thing instead of terming it unnatural because it may not be of relevant use? It's just drawing this whole definition game even further out. Besides, lots of things are irrelevant all over the place elsewhere in nature. Species have a lot of things that are not at all relevant for survival, is this unnatural?

As people have said earlier here, it doesn't make sense to call something manmade unnatural. It's like saying humanity is outside nature and that whatever we do or produce doesn't belong here. It's such bullshit, we are nature and anything we create is natural. It doesn't matter whether or not it was there before or if it is dangerous or not - it is there now and it is perfectly natural. Unnatural is just a stupid term in my opinion, and it's like it is being used as if it was a goddamn profanity. Is anything made by man NOT natural, or is it just the potential dangerous stuff made by us that is not natural? It is a lot more effective to talk about the properties of things instead, and the potential dangers associated with them. And potentially dangerous stuff you can easily find out there in nature that is not produced by us, things that can easily kill you.

Get over it folks, technology is not unnatural, and it is not a big bad wolf. Technology is neutral, it is only the manner of it's use that make it good or bad.

Whoa there tiger. Take a deep breath, everything is going to be OK. The last page pretty much sums up the conclusion to the debate of the word natural. If the word offends you, Im sorry. I didn't create it, that would be un-natural.

For the record, I love technology (without it I couldn't have read your insightful post ). If you would have read the entire thread I don't think you would have posted what you did. read it.

Anyways. no need to get so abrasive.

But it DOES serve a purpose to make that distinction: when you get stranded on some tropical island and you see a highway lying there, you know that someone's been there before you stranded there. If you don't see highway's or emptied beercans, you can claim the island for yourself.

I think it's kind of innevitable that we look differently to things made by man. Just like a bird will look differently to birdmade things and dogs look differently to the smell of another dog's urine than the urine of any other type of animal.

Woopsidaysi! I didn't mean to sound abrasive, and I wasn't (I like to think I wasn't at least). Sorry if it seemed to come out the wrong end, it was not intended that way =)