The Human Question

If animal action involves perception, anticipation, desire, and movement, then which came first: a mutation bringing about perception alone but not the others? perception and anticipation but neither desire nor movement? All four?  Each answer has its problems, but the way to solve the prob is  to posit a continuum between zombie like responses and proto desire, etc.

The 2% difference in DNA had by humans and chimps underscores our common ancestry and is thought  to show that humans and apes in their present form belong on the same continuum. But actually, the smaller the amount of difference in DNA, the stronger the evidence for a NON-dna difference!  Imagine that it were found that the difference is a small fraction of 1%: just enough to keep us from breeding with each other and to make us look different.  No difference in brains or brain DNA.  Yet a large difference in how we behave. The difference in how we behave would have to be accounted for by factors other than DNA: such evidence would call for a dualistic explanation.

What if at each level, form is contingent AND prime matter is not some pure underlying stuff, but rather the potency of any substance to become any other kind of substance? In such a case, wouldn't the third way avoid the fallacy of composition?  For one could apply it in a kind of orderly way to each m/f relation within any particular substance and arrive at a conclusion about the whole, doing so in a manner analogous to how the first way, rightly considered, has to do with per se movers, and the second way has to do with per se causes rather than per accidens...

Isn't there a kind of simplicity in every reported case of complexity?   Think of how we might look at various facts at different times and places under  a unifying persepctive.  The unity/simplicity is in a sense supplied by us, even if there is a genuine sameness in re. Think of how we look at a collection of machine parts as a functional whole: in this case too, we supply the unity or perhaps project it INTO the machine.    But we can’t do the same to organisms But an organism, and especially a human organism, seems to be a different case.  When looking at our own agency "in the first person" (i.e., I, me, mine and perhaps we, us, ours).   At this moment, I can't quite put my finger on the difference, except to point out two things. 1. that regarding machines as wholes is in a sense to mistakenly perceive them as being other selves... not in the sense of thinking they have full blown human agency, but in the sense that they have ...

May He support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed. And the fever of life is over. And our work is done. Then in His mercy may he give us a safe lodging And a holy rest and peace at the last.

To treat of the present condition of human and other animal nature as being accountable in terms of evolution of organisms from less to more complex forms is to treat the human in the present as the sum of its parts.

Dr. Wang also says in his lectures on anatomy says that the homunculus (the human figure derived from marking the parts of the body that correspond to respective parts of the neocortex) is a misrepresentation of the actual anatomy, inasmuch as it has a pretty hands and face. Who said it was a representation? I confess: I stole this point from Alva Noe (well, not this precise point, but the principle that I'm applying)

I am listening to some excellent lectures on neurology. But the professor (a Dr. Wang from Princeton) cannot avoid using homuncular language.  For example, a neuron "signals" another.  Signalling involves imagining, remember, anticipating, perceiving, kinaesthesis, cultural context, etc.  Cells don't really have what it takes to signal in the primary sense of the word.  But they do something analogous, albeit at a lower level than do human wholes.  Perhaps we should use the term "sub-signaling" or "infra-signaling" for the way parts of the brain interact with each other.

How can the world be created by God if there is so much suffering? One approach to an answer is to ask if the world is good: that is, is it better that there be this world rather than none at all?   If the answer is yes, then that goodness--a goodness that withstands the problem of pain--is a goodness that points to God in some way. One may object by coming up with situations of extreme suffering for individuals.  To this objection we can reply by asking: is it possible for the world to be good for this person even with such suffering?  That is, is it better for that person to be rather than never to have been at all?  We might be tempted to answer this question for another person, but it is a question that we must first answer for ourselves.  And I venture that the answer would be that if I can exercise my freedom in a meaningful and good way, then the world is good for me even in my situation. Furthermore, one who has found meaning while having to face...

Apply this thought experiment both to truths of math and to truths of ethics. Thanks to your reason, and in some qualified sense perhaps also to evolution, you possess a truth that you know is true, even though you grant that your knowledge of it could be improved with time. Do you think that another being, evolved differently might be able to recognize the same time and most definitely could not think it false?  Even if that being is far superior in knowledge?  Do you think, in other words, that reason itself, however it comes into being, is an openness to reality in all of its factors so that some truths would be either knowable or their contradictories could not be "known" to be true AND that the superior rational beings would have to know it... then your knowledge is in a sense not a function of evolution in the sense of being caused by it.  Rather, the truth is REAL and transcendent: evolution only serves to bring us closer to it. Not also that the affirmation ...

The objection to religion is that it's unnecessary: that is, I don't need to believe in God to be morally good.  Evidence is given in the form of pointing to many decent/nice/exemplary/moral persons who are not believers (while ignoring their positions on Eugenics, abortion, infanticide, bestiality [between consenting mammals], etc.) Instead, offer to clear their heads by asking a few questions.  I imagine the clarification would take place thus: "Why do you believe that morality comes from God: isn't it obvious to you that an atheist can be moral and a theist can be quite wicked?" "Do you believe that morality comes from evolution?" "Yes." "Do you need to acknowledge the role of evolution in order to be morally good?" "No." "So morality can in one sense rely upon something that doesn't even occur to the mind of the virtuous person." "Yes, but I am not claiming that evolution somehow whispe...

In the closing words of   The God Delusion, RD suggests that humans have an unbounded capacity to understand nature.  This is exactly where the religious sense begins.

RD defends talking harshly about religious beliefs that seem irrational on the basis that religion is nothing special.  I wonder if he is assuming that his own cherished convictions about morality don't have some basic underpinning that are likewise a matter of belief.

At the end of The God Delusion , Dawkins quotes Creation, Life and How to Make It  by Steven Grand, who says that you are not the same person as the child version of yourself whom you remember, because not one atom is the same.  Reductionism ... to absurdity.

I'm listening to the God Delusion (which might also be called  the Atheist Hallucination )... getting toward the end, and it looks as though he's about to propose making it illegal for parents to teach their kids about Hell, as it's child abuse.  How about monitoring parents who send their kids to Little League?  Put their daughters in Beauty Contests?  Make them learn piano just so that they can perform in recitals?

a kind of belonging that is not a matter of choice, but one to which we may choose to respond.

I am placing this post as a place marker for helpful links on science / religion that I've stumbled into lately. More later..

“The creed of the English is that there is no God, and that it is wise to pray to him from time to time." In Against the Self-Images of the Age, p. 26.

The fetus does not suffer as much as a fully-developed cow; hence killing the fetus is no worse. I suppose if we anesthetize our victims first without their even knowing what we are doing, killing will not be murder.  Yeah: right.

Simply to posit theism as the problem and atheism as the solution is ... simple minded.  The question that remains is "which atheism?"  And of course, as soon as RD is forced to make a commitment one way or the other, one can compare his claims to materialism, teleology, theism, etc.

allostasis

Selfish gene theory, if I'm not mistaken, is a theory because it can explain things.  And one of the things that I believe it explains is why we'd risk our lives for one member our immediate family, or possibly many members of our remote family, and are more likely to make this sacrifice for someone whom we are less closely related to.  It's all about preserving our gene type or its most similar version. If this were a reliable explanation, then we'd rather save the life of a plant (say, a rice bush) than we would the life of an Exta tererestrial intelligence.

To think of an object as acting upon oneself is to think of it as behaving like an agent.  To think of one object as acting upon another object is to think of them as being like two agents.  To think of them as two objects is to think of them not as interacting, but as appearing before an agent/perceiver in a certain order. In other words, awareness of agency is the source of our awareness of  objects as interacting.  There is no pure object language in science... or rather, such a language is a purely mathematical interpretation without any modeling.

What if on some other planet, there's the equivalent of the book of Genesis telling how the immaterial, eternal caused gradual evolution and a competing, non-believing hypothesis re a demi-god that does it in seven days.  The point;  to disassociate rejection of Genesis from rejection of theism; to see how evolution doesn't exclude God's being the source of all finite being (including our evolving world).

Dawkins asks why God should care about us measly humans? The proper reply is that RD is thinking of God as a super-Zeus: that is, a finite but superior personal being.  The greater the disproportion between our being and that of such a being, the less significant we would seem.  But if God is infinitely greater than us, then a different sort of calculus kicks in.  Our being greater or lessor doesn't alter the ratio between us and God.  And God does not have to give less regard. Consider how, if there are twice as many of us, then a super-Zeus would be able to give half as much attention to each.  But the infinite God is able to give full attention to each, no matter how many that there may be. Consider how, if a super-Zeus were to become twice as great, we would seem half as significant in comparison.  But an infinite being could regard us precisely according to how we are, not just in proportion to some other finite being.

Listening to a professor Sam Wang from Princeton talk about neurology in a Teaching Company set of lectures. He talks of one part of the brain as "interpreting" a "signal" from another part.  This manner of talk is too homuncular.  One needs a vocabulary that tips its hat, as it were, to human operation as the source of analogies by which we understand the processes taking place within our bodies.  But that vocab must also distinguish the processes/states occurring in this or that part of the human FROM properly human operation.  Perhaps one should speak of this part of the brain as "sub-interpreting" the "sub-signal" from another part?  Uh, perhaps that is more distracting than illuninating (hmnmmm).

His question: is the claim that the fetus is a human philosophical, religious or scientific? My counter-question:  is the claim that humans are equal philosophical, religious, scientific, or merely legal?

While listening to GKC's book on Eugenics, I learned that some British MPs introduced eugenic legislation that sought to limit the procreativity of the "feeble minded." *** Later I learned that Churchill himself was quite in favor of such legislation: http://www.winstonchurchill.org/support/the-churchill-centre/publications/finest-hour-online/594-churchill-and-eugenics Also worth noting is that this movement was much more successful in the US than in the UK, in part because scientists successfully used their expertize as political capital: http://www.jstor.org/pss/4027015

Would it be okay for a post-menopausal woman to marry her son? Is the fact that we instinctively regard this as ... icky... a sufficient basis for proscribing against it? Is the fact that we regard marriage as fundamentally fertility-related a sufficient basis...? *** Is marriage the only appropriate context for heterosexual sexual activity? If SSM became legal reality, then would marriage be the proper context for homosexual sexual activity?

RD responds to the "weren't Hitler and Stalin atheists" objection by replying that atheism was at most incidental to their morality. Quick reply is to change the question: the question is not whether atheism caused these persons to commit atheism.  Rather it's as follows:  can one thorough-going materialist could give another such materialist a good reason for regarding what H & S did as evil? 

If we could use technology to change human desires, would it be okay to create a sub-race of happy slaves?  If it would be wrong to do so, then it is only because there is such a thing as human nature and that nature deserves a kind of respect that stands above cost/benefit analyses.

This point is perhaps not worth making, for it is more about RD's ignorance than it is about a thoughtful challenge to theism.  But here goes: he conflates moral absolutism with the categorical imperative with theism... all of which he thinks are bad.  It would be worth asking whether he thinks that all theists are moral absolutists or vice versa.  If the former then why the OT examples of exceptions?  If the latter, then would one who is absolutely opposed, say, to infanticide have to be a theist?

There is probably a way to say this without committing the tu quoque fallacy: when he accuses Christians of picking and choosing which things to take literally in the OT (which seems unprincipled) one might ask if he is not doing the same with materialism, denying God but affirming equality, etc. *** A better answer, of course, is to point out that the New Testament takes much of the Old Testament and transforms it, so that the latter can only be understood in light of the former.  The NT in a sense redeems the OT.  For example, the story of Abraham and Isaac becomes a foreshadowing of "God Himself" providing "the sacrifice." More specifically Christian ethics centers on the notion of man as imago Dei.  We are in a kind of family with God.  There's no room for divinely mandated genocide etc. in such an understanding of the human person.  If the OT seems to have interpreted God as having mandated this, the NT has a different understanding.  The questi...

I've covered this theme before... while searching for a way to apply the notion of primitive impetus/energy to that of the first mover.  This time, however, I am attempting to use it to demonstrate the existence of soul (form that animates living matter).  Seems appropriate to discover substantial form before looking for a first mover. Mechanism as we initially encounter it is always found in something that serves as a machine/device FOR someone (maybe that's not the relevant point for this context, but I just wanted to point it out). More relevant point about machines/devices:  They always make use of fuel or energy that they have not produced.  E.g., a waterwheel.  And this fuel/energy aims at something on its own: humans at most trigger or direct the energy release.  This source of what I'll call impetus is not itself mechanically driven  Otherwise an infinite regress of mechanistic parts.                 ...

RD is a cafeteria atheist in the sense that he picking and choosing from materialism.  Or to be more precise, he is sneaking into another food line without paying, for one cannot derive modern notions of equality, democracy, justice from a robustly materialistic understanding of reality.

the ONLY version of theistic ethics that he deals with is divine command ethics. He grants that the golden rule can be derived from religion but adds that it can also be derived from elsewhere.  Yes, but that elsewhere may be another milieu of convictions about how everything fits together/adds up/makes sense can be found.  Is any of them systematically materialistic?  Hobbes?  But does Hobbes want to follow the golden rule for the right reason?  Any other candidates? The question I have to be able to answer before writing this book is how Buddhist ethics would fit in.

Is the conviction that all humans are equal a matter of philosophy, science, or faith. Expected answer: none of the above: it's a matter of common sense! Further question: you mean, like geocentrism? Expected reply: No. Further question: then why not?  Is your conviction that this conviction has a different epistemic status than geocentrism a matter of faith, philosophy, science or common sense? If the reply is an appeal to common sense, then ask how or whether you could explain this to a non-believer in human equality? Expected reply to that: none Then make point that secularism relies upon fashionable beliefs that it ends up undermining If the reply were an appeal to a future possible scientific experiment, then point out that future possible results are definitely open to debate... and until corroborated are a matter of an act of faith.  Hence the same point can be made as was made in the face of the appeal to common sense.

The person who decides to become a scientist does so on the basis of belief and desire, not on the basis of a demonstration (knowledge rather than belief, and knowledge derived from other knowledge).  This decision can be a reasonable decision... albeit a leap in the dark (note, by the way, that I said "dark," not pitch-black).  This sort of reasonableness makes possible the sort of reasoning engaged in by scientists.  And perhaps, at the end of the day, when it comes to applying the fruits of scientific discovery, a similar leap in the dark is called for.  In such a case, concrete beliefs about how to satisfy my most important desires are the beginning and end (in the sense of "purpose") of scientific inquiry.

What if someone downloaded "your" program into two computers and "tortured" the digital you in one while "soothing" the digital you in the other: would you be happy or sad?  Both?  What kind of "you" could be both?  Perhaps not the kind of you that you are... perhaps not you at all.

If reductionism is false, then there must be a way in which any whole transcends the laws governing its parts.  That's not big news: Polanyi says something like that in the Tacit Dimension (great example of using human agency as the basis for a broader ontology), as does Aristotle, I think at the end of book I (?) of the Physics. The point that's crossing my mind right now, however, is that folks tend to talk about this world being driven by physical necessity except for cases of free-will.  Now I certainly am convinced that free-will and intellection are exceptional in comparison with the rest of the world.  But I would be careful about how I would affirm this. Let's take an animal acting on the basis of desire as a test case, knowing that my point might even be applicable to lower levels. My claim is that if reductionism is false, then imagining an object of desire and desiring said object are acts that, while having as necessary conditions for their occurrence ...

...it ignores the virtue ethic dimension of justice but treats justice as vengeance.  The criminal needs to make amends: so do we.  And we do in a sense, by not only accepting but also identifying with Christ's act of doing so.  Christ's story becomes ours.  ...it treats one (key) aspect as if it were the whole.  Part of what Christ did on the cross was respond in a loving way to negative things like pain and injustice.  One way to look at our redemption is to identify with Him in this response.  And I mean "identify"!  And the joy in the Christian response is, in this life, a radiation of the Resurrection upon the world ...it displays the ugliness of sin, the beauty of forgiveness, the tragedy of death, the glorious triumph of grace: no Shakespearean play will ever match this drama. ...there's more to this, but it escapes my mind at the moment.

Freedom of achievement: my own expression for freedom as the ability to achieve your goal.  If you have the parts to a radio, then getting assembly instructions will give you to make that which you desire to make.  This notion of freedom shows up in Augustine and Aquinas, but gets replaced in the popular mind later on with... freedom of indifference: not being predetermined to act or to act this way rather than another: this freedom is a negative freedom, at least as described.  It may also be incoherent.  The point in the ramblings below is that I replace freedom of indifference with something that at a superficial level LOOKS like it, but is fundamentally positive. We see this positivity if we consider the two following freedoms that can be attributed to God: 1. God's freedom in being able to love and enjoy God's own Being. 2. God's freedom in creating rather than not creating and in creating this world rather than another. Craftsman's analogous freedom ...

First of all, it's worth asking whether his Christian morality was focused upon the desire to encounter Christ in the faces around you... or whether it was all about getting assurance of salvation (and acting nice to reassure oneself that one is part of the elect0.  If the latter, then his claim is plausible. But even granting this, I would turn the tables on him in the following manner:  I would change the question being asked.  It is not  whether good Christians who became non-believers continued to do good or better things, but whether any evil persons came to desire to live genuinely human lives once they came to believe in God AND to contrast that with the answer to the question regarding whether any vicious persons came to do the same once they became thorough-going materialists.   (understatement time): It's hard to see how materialism helps one to discover one's own humanity, one's common destiny with other human beings... it's easy to imagine how the...

First of all, it's worth asking whether his Christian morality was focused upon the desire to encounter Christ in the faces around you... or whether it was all about getting assurance of salvation (and acting nice to reassure oneself that one is part of the elect0.  If the latter, then his claim is plausible. But even granting this, I would turn the tables on him in the following manner:  I would change the question being asked.  It is not  whether good Christians who became non-believers continued to do good or better things, but whether any evil persons came to desire to live genuinely human lives once they came to believe in God AND to contrast that with the answer to the question regarding whether any vicious persons came to do the same once they became thorough-going materialists.   (understatement time): It's hard to see how materialism helps one to discover one's own humanity, one's common destiny with other human beings... it's easy to imagine who the...

A thing can be looked at as part of a machine only in virtue of its inner teleology, to which human purposes are superimposed. Mechanism is not the denial of teleology: it's the denial that higher level teleologies are more than the sum of their parts.  It's an attempt to demythologize wholes, but it's based upon the myth that knowledge of nature starts with abstract knowledge akin to geometry rather than familiarity with human agency.

It seems to me that if the asymmetry I propose is correct (that the same cognitive state can be instantiated in many different states of the same matter, even though each of these states of the the same matter correlate to only ONE cognitive state), then functionalism is undermined.  Functionalism works, I believe, only if there is a perfect symmetry between cognitive physical states.... ... I gotta think about this more... pretty foggy stuff...

Harris as quoted by RD quotes high/low crime rates in red/blue states.  This establishes no connection between individual belief and action.  Better to look at the Survey conducted by Arthur Brooks, called "Who Cares?" that was quoted by Dinesh D'Souze in his debate with BE.  It correleates belief and action, and concludes that those who are conservative and religious are more generous (per dollar of income) than those who are liberal and secular.

RD says that humanism is the ethical system of atheism.  What rubbish! First of all, an atheism that isn't PARASITIC on Christianity and on the elements of philosophy that tend to lead toward theism....such a non-parasitic atheism will be much more consistently materialistic than that of secular humanism.  It  will be POST humanist as it will be unable to give any guidance to technology, with its inherent ability to instrumentalize the human. Once we fail to say to Christ that, "You alone are worthy..." we end up abandoning our own human dignity.

Methodologically speaking, it may be better to speak initially about the desire for knowledge being for omni-temporal knowledge rather than for knowledge of the infinite.  There is still something towards-God about omni-temporal, and even if that is not apparent, it gives one a platform for exploring the desire for knowledge of God. In other words, it may be better to explore first the desire for knowledge that is God-LIKE and thereafter the desire of knowledge OF God.  Thus avoiding appearing of logical leap-taking.

RD distinguishes between reproduction as the evolutionary purpose (?) of sex and pleasure as the sexual desire, the satisfaction of which may be the purpose of sex by two individuals. Is this distinction, in RD's mind, the same as the distinction between game theory as understood by theoriests and as practiced?

RD says that the rules of game theory are not the rules-of-thumb that animals operate according to.  The former were first known in the 20th century: the latter have been around a long, long time.

Useless for determining truth or falsity of ideas.  Next!

RD compares religion to a moth heading toward a candle as if it were heading toward the sun.  My point: maybe this example is a great metaphor for sin: it's treating the finite things of this world as if they were the infinite just as the moth treats the candle flame as if it were the sun... Result: you get burned.  Harr harr...

RD mentions how some birds compete for altruistic roles (e.g., to stand sentinel in a highly vulnerable location).  My question: do they get a payback in terms of food or mating privilege?  Or do they act that way without getting an individual payback?  Not 100% clear from text.

To give an account of how something like the evolution of justice might have taken place, you have to recognize that you are giving an account of human action, not of behavior.  The distinction between the two is a big deal for MacIntyre: more on that later...

In the Newtonian system, gravity is not driven by something else.  It's a primitive fact off reality.  And there is something desirous about it.  It can be described in terms of attraction. So maybe not the universe as a whole is a mechanism for post Newtonians but everything but gravity =machine and gravity=desire-like element that moves the machine????

A machine doesn't work at all unless desire exists, albeit desire that is extrinsic to the machine.  A machine in its primordial givenness is an aspect of a whole, the other part of which is the desiring agent. The universe as a whole, therefore, cannot be a machine... unless one posits an extrinsic, desiring agent.

I'm repeating myself here. RD is making room for, if you will, phenotypic altruism, while explaining that as the result of selfishness (the latter allows his account to a Darwinian-sounding. Only problem is that gene behavior is not well-described as selfish.  It's self-diffusive, which is a kind of generosity, albeit of a narrow kind (I must generate more of my own kind) Just as "natural selection" is a modified metaphor taken from human agency, so too is the selfish gene.

It's not a line between two points, but rather like the circle representing the middle term in a venn diagram.  By being in Christ we are in the Father.  Such an understanding of mediation makes much better sense of the fact that Christ taught us to pray, "Our Father": he didn't tell us to say, "Lord Jesus, please tell your Father for us..."  In fact, the linebetweentwopoints conception puts the Father in a hostile position.  The use of the first understanding of mediation by Protestant critics of the Catholic practice of honoring the saints belies a lack of intimacy with the Father.