The Human Question

To Peter Atkins and others who call the positing of eternal life, with its promise of eternal bliss, mere wish fulfillment: Is positing science as a discipline that attains the truth mere wish fulfillment?  What would it take to know the truth more and more adequately—how long would it take?  If we were able to achieve this goal more and more adequately, would the truth continue to satisfy us?  Eternally?  

In an earlier post I talk about how "Atkins denies that the universe has a meaning or purpose, and then displays at every point in the discussion, a craving for unbounded knowledge of what is. That atheist is so  purpose driven ." More on the same theme.  It seems to me that Atkins' objection to cosmic purpose is based on the fact that there is no measurable "purpose-fact" out there in the world.  Granted.  But he's looking in the wrong place.  Instead of looking for purpose in galaxies and black holes, look at    human beings  (and possibly by other rational beings)  engaged in distinctively human activities.   That is because of the way that purpose relates us to each other and to the universe.  Place a bunch of humans in the same place and you get -- not a sum of individual purposes -- but a community with one purpose: to discover what others would also recognize as true... something naturally achieved together with them. W...

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/05/23/physics-and-the-immortality-of-the-soul/ thanks, Tim, for the heads up!

Fuzzy/raw idea about a response to those who find an adaptive basis for distinctively human modes of cognition: what is the adaptive basis for non-Euclidean geometry?  Evolution does not allow for us to be over-engineered, but we are overengineered in the sense that a thousand years ago, we were genotypically ready to do forms of math invented only in the last two centuries and to listen to/compose symphonies.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8510711/Belief-in-God-is-part-of-human-nature-Oxford-study.html

...the need for beauty. In fact,  The Greatest Show could be seen as a persuasive argument that evolution is beautiful.  And he offers such an argument perhaps because he recognizes the divide between beauty and truth that besets a positivistic culture. One might object that if evolution is beautiful, then how are we to understand all of the ugliness that so often attends life?  Here Dawkin's answer would seem to be like that of Augustine: the beauty of the whole is not undone by the ugliness of some of the parts, for they  lead, ultimately into something beautiful (the latter point made rather well by Michael Dowd in his sometimes touchy-feelie Thank God for Evolution ). In such as case, however, what becomes of all of some of Christopher Hitchens'  complaints about the ugliness of nature (thinking here of his allusion to the horror of human existence prior to modern medicine)?  If Dawkins/Augustine are right, then even these horrors are more adeq...

Instead of talking about what is natural in terms of what-is-natural-in-itself-apart-from-our-regard-for-it, instead talk about what is natural (as in "second nature")  quoad-nos (in relation to us) in virtue of our practices.  Then dig deeper till we find the contours of first nature within second nature... get insights into that which is natural " quoad omnes ." At about the same time also look at the   nos and omnes , not as larger and larger collections of rational individuals, but as a members of a community.  Argue that affirming nature either entails or suggests an orientation toward and from the One who is head of the community of rational beings in virtue of constituting nature. Disadvantage of not proceeding this way: without making this move, talk of what is natural in morality seems to be a question begging appeal to God as arbitrary craftsman/or/lawmaker.  It tends to sound like it wants to trump the arbitrariness of our conventions wi...

I have an idea for discussing the so-called subjective aspect of human action (feeling, perceiving, thinking, etc.) in comparison to the so-called objective aspect (human processes and structures that we can observe from the outside and measure).  Historically, we have come to talk about them as if they were two different things that mysteriously interact with each other.  But that is kind of like thinking of magnetism and electricity as two different processes.  Just as one discovers that they are two aspects of the same reality called electromagnetism, so two, one can discover that the subjective/objective are likewise two different aspects of the same hylomorphic reality.  Of course, this analogy limps if you take it too far...

While debating with my friend __,it occurred to me that his anti-organized religion screeds were one-sided because he lacked an appreciation of the desires that lead one to regard religion as good.  I would like to construct an analogy with a tone deaf person who can't recognize the beauty of violin playing, but winces with pain whenever a violinist squeeks a wrong note or something like that.  Such a fellow would look at violin music as pernicious.  Similarly, with __.

He says at one point he asks, rhetorically, why should God care about someone as insignificant as we are in comparison with Himself?  And at another point he lists all the vices of God vis-a-vis humanity with the understanding that God ought to have cared enough to treat us better.  Apparently, we both are and are not insignificant...

"What is the author trying to communicate?" is a question that can be answered only within the context of the answer to the question "What is the author trying to get the reader to do?" And the latter question can be answered only within the context of the answer to the question "Where does the author think everything is heading?" And the latter can only be answered by relating it to "Where are we heading?"

What if the violinist was your mother?