Science and language.

Val + JJ

By saying that "time is a psychological construct" I am referring to problematic results from "science itself" rather than some philosophical points from phenomenologists. I am implying that physics, especially quantum physics, has revealed the limits of its own authority and therefore science as an epistemological activity based on prediction (in time) is limited (spacialiality being irrelevant to this point).

For my take on "physiology" you need to consider the difference between comparative physiology which distinguishes between species for traditional "scientific" clasificatory purposes and
functional physiology which tries to explain how the parts contribute to the functioning of the whole. Whereas I can go along with the comparative physiology in order to justify different worlds for different species etc I cannot go with functional physiology because nobody knows where the boundaries of "the whole" are except for specialized local control purposes. (All levels of "life" function may be epistemologically significant from cell, through organism, society, planet and beyond) This division may go some way to answering your "both camps" objection even though I have already rejected the utility of traditional dichotomies (mind-matter, physics metaphysics etc)

JJ

I have not said anything about "thought" ! However if "life" and "cognition" are synonymous then "thought" is a subset of general life processes characterized by the use of language. The objectification of "the world" as existent independent of the life processes which objectifies it seems to be a dualistic fallacy encouraged by the severing of "words" from their original contexts.

Spendius,

Kuvasz has made some good points which you might take as partial answers.

JJ

No - not two "worlds"...according to Capra (et al) we have life/cognition/self sustaining organizational structures interacting with "non-life". All descriptions of any section of this dynamic interactivity is necessarily incomplete in as much that "event" segmentation takes place for some observer goal. As kuvasz says reminds us, the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.
To take an example which I often use, what we might call "a rock" will depend on syntagmatic and paradigmatic semantic links with particular observer activities.i.e. the "properties" of "rock" are in fact predictions of the outcomes of possible interactions with it...singularity,shade, weight, hardness etc. A rock does not possess such properties independent of oberver intertactions with it...there isno "rock"! ... there is (potential) "observer-rock interaction" which if carried out will shift the mutuality of oberver-observed from state1 to state2....e.g. "man seeking hammer grasps rock" to "man having hammered no longer notices discarded chipped rock".

Note that for the third party epistemological observer of the man/rock exhange both man and rock have "changed" but try telling the man that unless his name happens to be Heisenberg! :wink:

"Existence" depends on observer observed interaction....for lizards there may be no "rock" only "shelterness". Thingness requires a thinger...and this is simplistically resolved by theists (a la Berkeley) by evoking "God" as the ultimate observer.

JJ

According to my reading of Capra (et al) "mind" is an invention or evocation of "thingness" of a particular complexity of "life". Note also that "the observer" need not need to be at "person level"....it could be at any level from "cell" to "society" asnd beyond.. We are indeed stuck with the limits of ordinary language in appreciating that range

The claim is that "life" is characterized not by its materiality but by a mathemetical description of a particular form of system dynamics. Thus materiality is a necessary but not sufficient condition for life.