letter to my buddy somewhere in NJ

Thank you, ____________, for your cordial reply.

Even though your remarks are often over my head, I am gratified by what I do understand, and I entertain the hope that some of those things will become at least a little clearer as time goes on. I enjoyed learning how my remarks re China resonated with you.

You said:

Although it breaks my heart to do it, I'll admit that there are some voids or limitations in our experience which religion might help occupy

Ah, it shouldn't break your heart: it's the guarantee that the ultimate Reality, being in some sense infinite, will never leave you bored. What if that Reality--that Mystery--is so great that we should continue to be enraptured by it... even if we existed for eternity? What's not to love?

You continue by proposing the view of Einstein, who said:

"I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind."

There are reasons for concluding that God is provident, but I won't get into them right here and now. I will respond instead by pointing to how natural it is for us to wish and hope that there be a provident God: I ask you to think of something that you really, really want (for me this would be a new Subaru Legacy). What would be better: simply having this thing that you want or having it because you have received it from a benefactor who cares for you? What if reality is not only beautiful, but also a gift? Wouldn't that make it more beautiful?

I know that there are anti-theistic come-backs to my questions, but I am hoping that you can at least appreciate how theists are drawn to embrace reality with all the greater intensity because they regard it as a gift.

Your argument about free will begins as follows:

if one accepts the Multi-Worlds Interpretation of quantum theory, as most scientists (including Hawking and others) today do

That's precisely the sort of starting point that I object to. "IF"! And how many years do you expect this or that paradigm to stand?

Rhetorical question time: How long was it that we were all certain that Newton's view motion and such was correct and that it was only a matter of time before everything got explained away? Was it decades or centuries? (okay, I'm not sure of how long, but you get the point)

Speaking of multi-worlds, I have an argument for freedom of the will, _____, one that I've designedespecially for you! The central argument is as follows:

1. Because Platonism is (partially) true, we are determined in some respects

2. Because we are determined in some respects, we are free in others (and those other respects amount to what we normally mean by "free will"

Add the stipulation that there are many universes (very _____-friendly stipulation), each of which has rational beings capable of understanding that 3+7=10 is necessarily true. That is, in each universe, anyone who bothers to think of 3, 7 and 10 necessarily thinks that 3 plus 7 equals10.

Questions What is it that constrains the individuals in these different individuals to think of the same object in the same way? even though the diverse knowers are literally worlds apart (BTW: don't you hate how some people use the word "literally" when they mean "metaphorically"). Remember: there is a different set of laws of physics in each universe YET the same thing causes the knower to know that 3+7=10. What causes this?

Whatever it is that causes such knowledge, it CAN'T be the laws of any particular universe. After all, these laws differ from universe to universe, while the mathematical truths don't differ at all.

Conclusion: mechanical laws don't cause us to know the necessity that characterizes necessary truths. In other words, one who is in s sense "constrained" to see that 3+7 MUST equal 10 is simultaneously in another sense liberated from immediate mechanical processes. Truths that transcend the limits of spatial-temporal objects act on us, constrain us, and in so doing liberate us from the control that immediate processes would otherwise exercise upon us.

This is just the beginning of the argument, but I have to get out of the sandbox and do some ... grading-drudgery.

Till next time,

Leo

Dembski's "specified compexity" semiotics and teleology (both ad intra and ad extra)

Integral to Dembski's idea of specified complexity (SC) is the notion that something extrinsic to evolution is the source of the specification in how it develops. He compares SC to the message sent by space aliens in the movie "Contact." In that movie, earthbound scientists determine that radio waves originating in from somewhere in our galaxy are actually a signal being sent by space aliens. The scientists determine that these waves are a signal is the fact that they indicate prime numbers in a way that a random occurrence would not. What is interesting to me is the fact that Dembski relies upon an analogy with a sign rather than a machine. Like a machine, signs are produced by an intelligent being for the sake of something beyond themselves. Machines, if you will, have a meaning. Signs, if you will, produce knowledge. But the meaning/knowledge is in both cases something other than the machine/sign itself. Both signs and machines are purposeful or teleological...

particular/universal event/rule

While listening to a recorded lecture on Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism, it occurred to me that every rule is in a way, a fact about the world. Think about baseball: from the p.o.v. of an individual player, a baseball rule is not a thing but a guide for acting and interpreting the actions of others. But this rule, like the action it guides, is part of a concrete individual --i.e., part of an institution that has come into existence at a particular place and time, has endured and may eventually go out of existence. The baseball rule, as a feature of that individual, is likewise individual. The term "baseball rule," on the one hand, links us to a unique cultural event; it can, on the other hand, name a certain type of being. In this way, it transgresses the boundary between proper and common noun. If there were no such overlap, then we might be tempted to divide our ontology between a bunch of facts "out there" and a bunch of common nouns "in here....

continuing the discussion with Tim in a new post

Hi Tim, I am posting my reply here, because the great blogmeister won't let me put it all in a comment. Me thinks I get your point: is it that we can name and chimps can't, so therefore we are of greater value than chimps? Naming is something above and beyond what a chimp can do, right? In other words, you are illustrating the point I am making (if I catch your drift). My argument is only a sketch, but I think adding the ability to name names, as it were, is still not enough to make the argument seem cogent. For one can still ask why we prefer being able to name over other skills had by animals but not by humans. The objector would demand a more convincing reason. The answer I have in mind is, to put it briefly, that there is something infinite about human beings in comparison with the subhuman. That "something" has to do with our ability to think of the meaning of the cosmos. Whereas one might say"He's got the whole world in His han...

The Human Question

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