anthropometric and other new words and thoughts

Causality cannot be conveyed simply in terms of a logical relation. Causality is a term (i.e., subject or predicate, not a relation between propositions.

For example, “the water is poured by me” “is poured by me” is a term. “By me” makes it causal.

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If those who are fond of wielding Ockham's razor are looking for a big target, then I propose that they dispense with the necessity ascribed to the laws of nature. Why? because we do not perceive or measure their necessity, nor do we necessity in iself. That is, we perceive neither necessity in nature nor semantic necessity. Nor do we perceive contingency. So let those who would replace metaphysics and religion with science take their own medicine. And they will find that they have rendered science vacuous.

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The recognition of non-measured characteristics is a necessary condition for measurement. Measurement is always the “measurement of” something. Inasmuch as the characteristic is that by which we measure, awareness of it could be said to be is pre-quantitative awareness. Such awareness is prior to quantification.

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“Man is the measure of all things”: true inasmuch as man measures all things in terms of himself. But man himself, as part of nature, is not something subjective or arbitrary; hence no need to be relativist.

Getting rid of anthropomorphism in science: a vain exercise for the naïve. Energy and force are anthropomorphic. Without kinaesthesis, we’d never be able to form an analogous concept. Instead of de-anthropomorphizing, scientists and philosophers of science need to be more self-conscious of how they inevitably anthropomorphize.

Science is, at the end of the day, anthropometric.

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The objection “I know that the table is not solid because I’ve learned about atoms” may be based on a billiard ball conception of atoms. But if we see reality in terms of fields, the solidity may return somewhat, inasmuch as fields are continuous.

Many positivistic think that science is overtaking folk psychology through another, Copernican like revolution. But they need to reflect on how one can go too far in portraying science as correcting common sense (e.g., saying that notion the table is not solid b/c it consists of atoms, etc.)

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Objection by positivists: MRI brain scans show no soul. Reply: these scans don’t even show (strictly speaking) efficient causality between the components of the brain. All they do is give a billiard ball like view of things.

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Temperature is to molecular motion as observation is to formal cause? Well, maybe.

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Aristotle’s natural place was replaced by inertia/momentum, which is a second-nature type of movement. Nature still at work.

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It is naïve to say that there is no formal cause unifying human as in-divid-uals, but instead there is only many interconnected material components that interact in the manner of efficient causes.

For it takes the claim that the micro-components are wholes as unproblematic. But if one were to apply the same dissolving acid to the micro-components, then they would be seen not to be whole, individual entities but rather complexes of nano-components, pushing and pulling each other, and so on ad infinitum. In which case, efficient causality would dissolve as well.

Moral of the story: efficient causality requires a whole efficient cause, which is whole in virtue of its formal cause.

Note also that the push, pull, energy and disposition of material components are identified as such only in virtue of their (somewhat diminished) analogy to human agents.

to understate how anthropometric science is.

P F Strawson's Freedom and Resentment: the argument laid out

Here is a summary and comments on the essay Freedom and Resentment by PF Strawson. He makes some great points, and when he is wrong, it is in such a way as to clarify things a great deal. My non-deterministic position is much better thanks to having read this. I’ll summarize it in this post and respond in a later one. In a nutshell: PFS first argues that personal resentment that we may feel toward another for having failed to show goodwill toward us would have no problem coexisting with the conviction that determinism is true. Moral disapprobation, as an analog to resentment, is likewise capable of coexisting with deterministic convictions. In fact, it would seem nearly impossible for a normally-constituted person (i.e., a non-sociopath) to leave behind the web of moral convictions, even if that person is a determinist. In this way, by arguing that moral and determinist convictions can coexist in the same person, PFS undermines the libertarian argument ...

response to friend who suggested that the self is a democracy of neural parts

This is a nice way to try to avoid being cornered re the irreality of the self if you're a reductionist, for you can assert that a pattern obtains at the microscopic level that is not all that unlike the pattern found at the societal level. No need for the one self that does it all: instead, you have many sub-selfs that compete for dominance or take turns guiding the whole. The problem with this is, however, that the voters/officials are all zombies. None of them thinks about the whole as such. And perhaps none of them thinks even about themselves (unless one is a panzoist). None of them makes a comparison of alternatives. The more this proposed democracy seems like a zombocracy, the more consciousness will be seem to be epiphenomenal. Furthermore, if the oneness of the self is less real than the multiplicity of explanatory neural parts, then why can't each of these neural parts be conceived of as democracy as well? And why not parts of these parts, et...

interesting article by Jimmy Akin on death before the Fall

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/did-animals-die-before-the-fall/ Akin below: Aquinas.... writes: In the opinion of some, those animals which now are fierce and kill others, would, in that state, have been tame, not only in regard to man, but also in regard to other animals. But this is quite unreasonable. For the nature of animals was not changed by man's sin, as if those whose nature now it is to devour the flesh of others, would then have lived on herbs, as the lion and falcon. Nor does Bede's gloss on Genesis 1:30, say that trees and herbs were given as food to all animals and birds, but to some. Thus there would have been a natural antipathy between some animals [ Summa Theologiae I:96:1 ad 2 ]. Aquinas thus holds that it was not all death that entered the world through man's sin, but human death.

The Human Question

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