The Human Question

http://integral-options.blogspot.com/2010/09/big-questions-online-is-human.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/88apr/wright.htm http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0060972572/theatlanticmonthA/

Legendum est: https://www.bigquestionsonline.com/content/why-does-higgs-particle-matter

It seems that he was onto something after all... http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/transformations-lamarckism

It seems that those who know tell me that jellyfishes, octopedes, insects and vertebrates all form eyes because of something in the environment -- light -- rather than because there was a specific genetic predisposition. If that is true, then what about our ability to do math?  What is there are four other species of rational animal in the universe?  Don't we already know that -- IF they do math, then they will know that 2+3=5 with as great a certainty as we do? And wouldn't that be because of a different kind of light shining on their minds? n.b., nephew Bryan sent me article from The Tangled Bank: an Introduction to Evolution  by Carl Zimmer, which illustrates the evolution of eyes on pages 172.

...the Government of the United States deliberately encourages and even makes necessary by its laws the breeding--with a breakneck rapidity -- of idiots, defectives, diseased, feeble-minded and criminal classes. Billions of dollars are expended by our state and federal governments and by private charities and philanthropies for the care, the maintenance, and the perpetuation  of these classes Year by year their numbers are mounting.  Year by year more money is expended.  The American public is taxed--heavily taxed--to maintain an increasing race of morons which threatens the very foundations of our civilization.  More than one-quarter  of the total incomes of our States is spent upon the maintenance of asylums, prisons and other institutions for the care of the defective, the diseased and the delinquent.  Do not conclude, however, that all of our feeble-minded and mentally defective are segregated in institutions.  No, indeed.  This is a free cou...

found this at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scheler/ :  "...Scheler's claim that the human being is a God seeker allows for atheists and agnostics, but it does lead him to a much stronger claim. “Every finite spirit believes either in a God or in an idol” (GW V, 261). An idol is a finite object that is treated as if it were infinite, as if it were God (GW V, 263). The atheist is not really, according to Scheler, a non-believer. Rather the atheist believes in a no-God, believes that there is no absolute value or meaning. This is still a religious act and a religious belief. Scheler's point is that there is always an intending of the absolute, a seeking of a God. What is in question is necessarily what fulfills this intention. The human being is always already taking some object as a God. In the act of idolatry, this God is a finite object or good such as wealth, fame or power..."

While listening to what Wittgenstein has to say about necessity as it pertains to mathematics, I noted that he is not denying that we encounter constraint or necessity when doing mathematics: he is denying that this constraint comes from something outside the game.  Rather, it is from the game itself.  But what if mathematics is a game we can play with rational beings very different from ourselves?  Can we intuit that all would be constrained as we are?  Even if they are incredibly smarter?  And what about God?  Is math a game we play with God rather than being a kind of activity the we aim at God (or at God's Mind) as a kind of ideal object?

... is "this way." In other words, it presupposes (albeit not explicitly) that you and the other are cooperating in some common endeavor directed toward a common goal.  Without that presupposition, there is no communication.

Science as such cannot discuss miracles, but it can show them.

Psyche is the unity in the manifold of acts.

Complexity has to do with the way in which something can be described mathematically.  Something describable in a simple equation is, well, simple.  Something describable in a complex one is, more complicated than the other one (obviously I've forgotten the details, but that'll probably do for now). Thesis: isn't our description is always in part a function of how we interpret what we are looking at? Suppose someone thinks that the brain is a radiator: wouldn't he or she think that its mathematical description is simpler than would someone who recognizes the brain for what it is?  Yes, By several orders of magnitude! Suppose you were shown a tin bucket full of sand and asked to compare its complexity to that of  a human brain:   What if you found out later that each pebble in the tin bucket is actually (as long as you don't move it) shaped and situated precisely (to the nearest nanometer) in order to convey (in an ET language that you don't know) the histo...

Better to say emergent agency than emergent property, for properties as such belong, and that to which they belong is an agent either in the full sense (e.g., you and I) or in a diminished sense (a falling rock). Try to define the property of an agent and you will see that it is a category mistake (taking a moment as a piece) to substantialize it, for it is always given as the property of a whole just as the shape and color of this desktop are both "of" this whole.  The "of-ness" of properties. Try to define the property of a non agent, and you will see the same, especially if you recall that causality is attributed to sub-agents only by analogy with agents.

If God does not exist, then His existence is impossible. But His existence IS possible. Therefore, God exists. The key here is to argue the second premise on the basis of analogy.  If goodness in things is objective, then there may be goodness ipse. One can argue the first premise on the basis of becoming: such a being could not come to be if not already existing.  But this may be cheating...

Human communication displays a common desire for the infinite, and in virtue of that display, constitutes as a goal the shared satisfaction of that desire.

The prayer of the scientist if he prayed, which is not likely: Lord, grant that my discovery may increase knowledge and help other men. Failing that, Lord, grant that it will not lead to man’s destruction. Failing that, Lord, grant that my article in  Brain  be published before the destruction takes place. (Walker Percy,  Love in the Ruins )

Aristotle's concept of energeia is a kind of temporal holism (and hence a basic evidence in support of anti-reductivism).  For the act of seeing continuously a ONE whole act, not an accumulation of an infinite number of infinitely small events (the latter being a reductive interpretation). It is only in virtue of energeia's being seen as such a temporal whole  that kinesis can be seen as a whole as well. Judgment, qua synthesis, is another kind of

To the person who objects that there is so much other stuff in this universe than that which is essentially connected to humanity, the following question: What would you have expected the universe to look like in order to support just humanity?  would it be only as big as our planet and the sun?  And the moon (for the tides)?  Isn't the world we live in much more interesting than that? Why shouldn't we expect the universe to be incredibly varied and interesting?  Wouldn't that be more reflective of God's greatness?

If all processes in this universe were reversible, then what would a scientific discovery look like?

This book looks promising: http://catalog.umd.edu/F/RKN45D6X1VBMK8RGNYT2TXVB4FBGTYCGYXLKFD5MFNXEVJBIAN-00067?func=full-set-set&set_number=006491&set_entry=000015&format=999

One could not judge that x and y are discrete except by contrasting both of them to a continuum of some sort.

The quotes below are from q. 91 of the supplement to the Summa theologiae. Since Aquinas didn't have a concept of momentum, he thinks the movement of the spheres has either a  an angelic or a supernatural (in the strict sense) cause.  That is problematic, but he allows for an openness of natural things (like spheres) to direction by reason in a way that is consistent with his notions of natural/unnatural&violent.  That is interesting and worth pondering "...  things that are directed to the begetting of  men , such as the movement of the heaven  and the variations of the elements... every body that is moved  naturally  has a place wherein it rests  naturally , whereto it is moved  naturally , and whence it is not moved except by  violence . Now no such place can be assigned to the heavenly body, since it is not more  natural  to the sun to move towards a point in the east than to move away from it, wherefore either...

Perhaps free will bends the deterministic universe like gravity does spacetime.  Compare this to movement of waves in StThAq.

http://thomism.wordpress.com/2013/11/20/physical-theory-and-i/

complexity (in the mathematically describable sense) with an end (in the sense of goal, purpose, but including not only those that are the product of deliberation but natural ones as well).  So a natural order would be an order that exists prior to / independently of any deliberation.

Why emergence > mechanism as explanation/and/or description of life the operation of the whole, is something unitary that one could not describe as simply a sum of the interactions of the parts. Why first actuality> emergence as explanation/and/or descritpion think of the act of being as something like an overflow from a spring.  Outside influences don't push the water OUT (mechanistic): rather, they CHANNEL the FLOW.  Here first actuality indicates a kind of initiative that is already and always there.

Rough draft:  Perhaps the higher level is underdetermined and acts in a manner that is, from the perspective of the lawfulness of the lower level, indeterminate in a manner analogous to how the digits in pi seem undetermined to one who is unaware of what they represent.  But at the higher level, they act in a manner that is determined, albeit in a manner that is conditioned by circumstances. And these determinations are best understood in terms of seeking a kind of equilibrium/goal.  The highest level would be that of a rational being that apprehends the good as such, and is, in virtue of its determination to seek this goal, undetermined...free.

Could stand for being as such? ... only the discussable as such?

Eternalism, says Sean Carroll in his lectures on time, is the notion that a scientist, or at least a physicist, has a "view from nowhen" inasmuch as past and future are viewed with a kind of indifference.  This indifference consists of the ability to see that, for any particular particle moving in one direction at a certain speed, it can be conceived of as moving in the opposite direction at same speed.  Since every change involves an interaction of equal and opposed forces, the same process can be reversed while operating according to the same laws of nature.  Consequently, the processes that we witness in our daily life could, in principle, occur in reverse.  One would need a closed system for that to happen, so it makes more sense to say that all of the processes in the universe could together go in an order that is the reverse of what we now see happening.  And in doing so, they would proceed in a manner consistent with the laws of nature.  Of course, t...

Here's how I understand the reversibility of time.  Suppose you took measurement of everything going on at one instant (wait--to say that is to talk as if there is absolute time!  Wouldn't Einstein have a problem with that?) and somehow reversed the movements indicated by those measurements.  The result would be that everything would continue to work in reverse indefinitely.  For example, a bowling ball being dropped on the ground with a kind of wave of movement being transmitted and dispersed through the earth, would, when played in reverse, amount to the opposite: many very small movements would congeal together and become more intense in a reverse-wave, with the result that the bowling ball would be propelled upwards.  And so it would be for each event that preceded the dropping of the ball... The following claim is made about reversibility: If, per impossible , one could pull this off, history would reverse itself. Someone lying on the ground in a...

ST I, q. 105, a. 6, ad 1:  Moving something like water upward, as the heavenly bodies do in the case of the waves, is not violent in the Medieval sense, because they depend upon heavenly bodies for their natural inclination. Reply to Objection 1.  In  natural  things something may happen outside this  natural   order , in two ways. It may happen by the  action  of an agent which did not give them their natural  inclination; as, for example, when a man moves a heavy body upwards, which does not owe to him its  natural  inclination to move downwards; and that would be against nature . It may also happen by the  action  of the agent on whom the  natural  inclination depends; and this is not against  nature , as is clear in the ebb and flow of the tide, which is not against  nature ; although it is against the  natural  movement of water in a downward direction; for it is owing to the influence ...

Wouldn't it be more parsimonious to posit one world soul rather than giving every piece of the universe its own concsioussness?

Isn't it possible to interpret space-time as not allowing for any simultaneity whatsoever?  That is, if we kept pushing the same line of reasoning that would support the claim that we and the folks in some galaxy "far, far away" cannot rightly be said to exist at the same time, then couldn't one maintain that no two things, no matter how close, exist at the same time? If so, how might that relate to the concept of "now" that would seem to be a necessary condition of humans sharing something in common with each other (including those we find in scientific practices)?  How would it relate to the internal unity of things (think of DaVinci's drawing of a man with his arms extended: do the right and left are coexist?? Couldn't this give rise to a kind of temporal monadism (on in which there are no wholes because every point in space-time has its own "now")? Wouldn't the common sense notions that make human endeavors like science possib...

Given: that evolution occurs through chance. The conclusion that evolution is not teleological makes perfect sense if one is a thoroughgoing reductionist, for in that case, evolution is nothing more than complexification.  So assuming the latter, then yes, evolution offers zero evidence of teleology.   But to argue on the basis of the apparently ateleological nature of evolution that reductionism is true is to put the cart before the horse.  And that is precisely what folks do: they ignore the question of whether their understanding of life forms, especially what we call higher life forms, ARE more than just more complex versions of non-living things. The other alternative is that living forms have a kind of UNITY in their complexity and that higher life forms have a higher kind of unity, etc.  If all this is true, then the chanciness of evolution is like the chanciness of an IED: when it goes off is a matter of chance, while that it is there to go off is...

That is, the outermost sphere is a continuous source of disequilibrium, which keeps the four elements from settling into their four levels, but instead stirs things up so that complex compounds are formed from which life might arise. This concept is a mind of ancient recognition of the need for disequlibrium as a necessary condition for life.  The fact that Aquinas et alia, not recognizing (as Jean Buridan did recognize) that this sort of motion could, once started, continue on its own, must have a rational source, is a kind of anthropic argument, albeit a defective one, for a rational source of life (albeit one less than the divine, for the primum mobile is not God).

This thought experiment, conjured up by Maxwell, starts with two boxes that are roughly at equilibrium with the normal levels of fluctuation.  Maxwell asks us to imagine a demon that is able to open and shut teeny-tiny doors between the two boxes.  These doors open and shut very quickly without creating any significant entropy in either box.  Their timing is precisely controlled by the demon so that high speed particles enter one door going in the direction of box A and low speed ones travel only in the other direction. As Sean B. Conner points out, this is a good metaphor for life, for it constantly creates a low disequilibrium, which it uses to perform life functions. I would like to point out that the metaphor of the demon, inamusch as it is a rational, illustrates how life seems to come from mind. In order to keep track of the movement of particles, the demon relies upon notes which need to be erased in order to make room for new information.  This erasure ...

Sean B. Connery, in lecture 14 of his series on Time, points out that life slows down entropy in the earth biosphere just a teeny-tiny bit.  It proceeds close to 100% of the same speed that it would have had there been no life, the difference between the two rates being 1/4billionof what it would be had there been no life.  Or was 400 billion?

Isn't the term "operational definition" a very terse admission that science is inherently anthropometric? For the word "operation" comes from the word "opus" which is a human action.  And that action is the act of measuring, an action involving anticipation, imagination, desire, will, deliberation, memory, etc.--none of which is ever given as such in a manner that can be measured.  Measurement always has a human signature.  That is, in measuring we are always comparing the measured to our own agency, and that agency (including when it is engaged in the act of measuring) is itself is never given as something that could be measured. I

Could it be that the primum mobile postulated as both finite and rational by Aquinas (following Aristotle) allows us to put agency at the center of cosmological arguments for God? Not so much because it's plain silly to argue for such a being, but rather, because, inasmuch as a being is like this one (i.e., inasmuch as it is, like us, an agent, engaged in productive behavior) evidences something greater?

That's the official name, Sean Carroll tells me (in lecture 13 on Time) for what I call a "self-defeating statement."

Is there a combination of physical events that would constitute your being as convinced that 2+3=4 as you are presently convinced that it equals 5?

http://www.ignatius.com/Products/FFL-P/faith-of-the-fatherless.aspx

Perhaps the best way to understand entropy is to look at it as the tendency of things to arrive at equilibrium.  Many non-living processes head in that direction, but not all.  For an example of an exception, consider the movement of electrons around the nucleus: that movement itself doesn't seem to be heading toward any equilibrium… unless one considers the tendency of atoms to combine into molecules so as to fill the electron shells.  If reductionism is false, then isn't the fact that organisms continually create disequilibrium at one level, while seeking another equilibrium (for example a full stomach) quite relevant?   Of course, entropy as a law is about systems, not individuals…. right?

To understand  the necessity assigned to laws of nature, we must realize that, while these laws may be necessarily true in the abstract, they are not so in the individual.  That is because as generalizations, they abstract away other influences upon the behavior of individual.  Given that all other influences are NOT present, then YES, the sort of thing pointed out in the law may necessarily behave in the manner described by the law.  But with the application of the alw to an individual case, all that was abstracted away comes back into play, and with that concretion the necessity found in the abstract law dissipates like fog in the sunlight. Take for example the speed of light.  The claim that it travels 186K miles/second is true-- in a vacuum.  It travels more slowly through our own atmosphere and especially underwater.  That it travels more slowly under these conditions is not a violation of the law, for the law was an abstraction. Even if reduc...

Think of a truth -- x --about something going on here and now. When I say to others that I know x, I not only expect that they will agree because they see what I see, I also expect others to whom I have not yet spoken to see and agree to the truth of what I've said, should my proposal come to their attention.  In fact, I expect that all other rational beings, inasmuch as they have an adequate grasp of reality, will see the matter as I do, should they be confronted with the evidence that I've seen.  Of course, every human being's grasp is inadequate to grasp all truths, and my own grasp of things is always somewhat inadequate and hence in need of some correction.  But inasmuch as I am correct, those with an adequate grasp of the matter in question will see things as I do and agree that x is true. Openness to the possibility of any other ADEQUATELY acquainted rational being's seeing the truth of x is a necessary condition for my claiming that x is true.  By "o...

Does rest really trump motion for Aristotle if the spheres -- the highest non-living beings -- are always moving?  And if Aristotelian rest is more like an embrace than it is like inertness. How does God as you understand Him know? Through perception? Wouldn't God in order to satisfy your moral imperatives have to continually do miracles to prevent harm by performing miracles, so that nature would become superfluous much of the time? Wouldn't the one God have to be many (in the sense that God would not be the same before and after)? If I am not who I was yesterday:  wouldn't it be impossible for me to recognize abstract objects as such? Wouldn't God in His practical reasoning have to be guided by an abstract object (goodness)? Aren't you confusing freedom with indeterminacy?

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/24/despite-everything-francis-spufford-talks-about-unapologetic/?_r=0

We find ourselves walking down a path and see that it has a trajectory which is beyond where we were aiming to go; it is toward a point that we will never reach but which we always approach... (to be continued:  hopefully, I'll work out something about the Way.

When discussing God stuff, it's more important to focus (initially) on teleology, more specifically, on human teleology, that is, on whether we have have an natural inclination for one or more activities, and what that activity or set of activities might be.  Only after talking about that and how it relates to God would it make sense to talk about immateriality and immortality.  After all, only the desire a truly human kind of fulfillment could lead one to desire to be eternally so fulfilled.

What if human practical reasoning is the point where the presence of God is most evident?

Is "soul" part of a descriptive account of human action, or is it hidden, explanatory?  Or is both? If the first-person description of my action includes a kind of identity in the manifold of my actions then the soul is given in that description. If the third-person explanation posits being or activity that is continuous in the individual even when that individual has no first-person report of activity, then that explanation gives us the soul. If we can identify soul as given in one account with soul as given in the other, then.... well, I guess we can say (with a little irony) "mission accomplished." Perhaps relevant:  I need to find that great quote in the Summa theologiae that notes that esse is to essence as action is to power: it may be helpful here...

http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/Principles/prin6.htm which is discussed in http://thomism.wordpress.com/2013/09/28/athanasiuss-cosmological-argument/ Where the blogger says, " Athanasius’s: If diverse things form a single reality,* there is some cause separate from them.  The best defense of this premise is, oddly enough, in Chapter VI of William James’s  Psychology “ On the Mind-Stuff Theory ” (it’s also in Volume 53 in the Great Books series). James uses it to show that, despite all the best efforts to the contrary, psychology has to posit the existence of a soul separate from all mental reality; though the same premise gets us Athanasius’s conclusion that we need some being separate from all natural or noumenal reality ." Nice!

http://thomism.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/note-on-the-clayton-dennett-debate/

My favorite epistemological joke--"How do you know that there will be a problem of induction tomorrow?" is closely related to the following point: Criticizing some attempts to solve the problem of induction as circular may itself be naive --unless one's estimation of this issue includes the recognition of the fact that it is only through induction that we recognize this problem.  There is no way to "step outside of our own skin," as it were, i.e., to make use of a non-inductively obtained vantage on this issue.  But there may be no need to do so if induction gives us eidetic knowledge rather than only predictions.  It would be a kind of faux pas to criticize the inductions had by others as being merely predictive and probable while regarding one's own grasp of the same in eidetic terms.  But that seems to be the sort of move that one must make in order to justify skepticism on the basis of the problem of induction.  If the attempted solution is not induct...

Defeasibilist: "We don't really know that 2+3=5" One response: that we know WHAT "2+3=5" means (while prescinding from the discussion of whether we know that it is or must be true) is sufficient to make manifest the fact that we have access to transcendent, Platonic objects.  What I think of when I say this is at least as obvious as what I see when I open my eyes. In order to disagree about whether a claim is true one must agree (at least in part) about what the utterance of the claim means.

The "no miracles hypothesis" (NMH) applies a form of reasoning called "inference to the best explanation" (IBE) to argue that scientific success is best explained by its truthfulness. After all, if science were successful but devoid of truth, then that success would seem miraculous.  Truthfulness is a better explanation than miraculousness; hence science's success is better explained by its truthfulness The objection to NMH is that it is an example of the very thing it is trying to justify: NMH is itself an inference to the best explanation, hence it can't be used to justify IBE without circularity. But IBE itself already has a kind of support in our common sense reasoning (as does truth); hence its use to argue that science gets us at the truth may seen as an application of common sense convictions to science.  On the basis of common sense, it seems more likely that science gets us at the truth than it is a miracle or coincidence.  If NMH is circular re...

http://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2012/02/consciousness-mind-brain

What if the higher level operations we associate with human beings weren't the highest that there could be?  What if there were an animal operation that were as different from our cognitive and appetitive activities as ours is from digestion?  That is, what if cognition and appetite were not the highest possible animal activities? My conviction, of course, is that there's nothing higher than the two aforementioned operations, except for improved versions of sort of cognition and appetite presently found in humans.  But a materialist who sees cognition as a more complex version of a chemical process would have no reason in principle to deny that there could be something related to cognition as cognition is to taking in nourishment.  But what would that something be? Nothing?

The principle of parsimony is better served if the religious sense is regarded as related to science/philosophy/poetry as a whole is to many parts.

...or does a materialist recognize "states"?  And if s/he does, isn't that opening the door to energeia/form?

Anti-reductionism can start with beings that are complex but not living (e.g., atoms), and go from there to the investigation of organisms.

Append a discussion of biotechnology to the discussion of evolution.  Once you have the hierarchy / aperture theory established, you can   allow for biotechnological stuff, even life synthesis, while denying mechanism.

In disproving mechanism, I am not proving the existence of immateriality, but showing that there is more to matter than which can be conceived of mechanistically.

The Companion to the Philosophy of Biology  discusses the "hallmarks" of life: that is, characteristics that are, for the most part, found in living things, but which are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for life. I propose instead to look at these characteristics as found in humans and to explore how they are interrelated in us--especially how there might be a necessary/sufficient/contributing relation between these characteristics as they are found in us.  Next I would look at other species in comparison to humans, and in many ways as diminished examples of life as found humans, so that it might not be so surprising to see that some of those characteristics or hallmarks do not show up in some cases.

As one gets to lower levels of being, one finds greater fluctuation: it is hard to see how a genuine stability and continuity at the higher level could be in any way the result of the these lower level fluctuations.  And if it's illusory, it's hard to see how even an illusion could have the requisite stability.

Before discussing what went wrong with the reductionist's notion of the scientific method, I need to discuss holism--especially Polanyi's hierarchy of operations and the same notion as found in Aristotle.  This chapter would be concerned holism broadly enough so that it could be applied to inorganic wholes as well: it would not carry on as if organisms were the only kind of legitimate whole (even if that's the case); nor would it bank on coming up with a perfect list of necessary and sufficient conditions for life. The heart of this holistic position will be that it is the same I who desires, intends, tries to move, perceives, reasons, understands, etc.

http://thomism.wordpress.com/2013/07/21/being-and-goodness-in-contemporary-cosmology-pt-2/

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/mark-shea/interesting-conversation-with-an-atheist-about-the-moral-law-and-you-know-w

Ask a computer to give a first-person account of what it's like to know that p is true.

That phrase appeared in The Companion to the Philosophy of Biology.   Lovely description of how Aristotle saw organisms.

In a machine, the desire that directs the operation of the machine is something other than the impetus that moves it.  In an animal, the two are at some level the same. 

  Kurt Goldstein 's  The organism: A holistic approach to biology derived from pathological data in man  in 1934 (mentioned in Wikipedia)

For the past few days I've been unable to write the second chapter.  Once I had begun, I figured out that  it was hard for my position NOT to seem like vitalism, AND that seeming to defend vitalism makes one the instant target of lots of criticism by mechanists. It's really hard to say what vitalism is, as it seems to be many different things to many different people.   Some would place Aristotle with vitalists simply because he's not a mechanists.  Some would say vitalists think that there's an immaterial force--but they are probably reading vitalistic claims from a positivistic perspective, which assumes all material forces are measurable in the way that psi is measurable.  Some think that vitalism implies that the artificial synthesis of organic compounds is impossible.  But urea and other organic compounds can be made artificially.

What if there is something that every possible rational being would accept as desirable, no matter how evolved? I don't really know what to make of this question, but it seems to point to moral principles that would have a special kind of objectivity, something akin to the moral principles in natural moral law.  For the goals you seek would be desirable to you, not because of the specific way in which you have evolved, but because what you presently are: a rational being.

Yes, that was a joke...:)

cognizing self-identity (through time) is a necessary condition for cognizing other-identity.

It just occurred to me that "openness" a perfect metaphor for my modification of the scientific method (adding that one is always open to supernatural) given the fact that elsewhere I talk about the aperture metaphor, i.e., I talk of person as letting light come in so that one can know all there is to know about a subject.

Well, it means something different in the case of animals than it means in the case of plants. If perception is something over and above the chemical reactions going on in the perceiver, and the object perceived is desired or hated by the perceiver, then being moved by this perceptual object is something over and above being affected by the chemical process concomitant with perception...and the animal, in being so attracted and repulsed by this object that it engages in pursuit or avoidance...is in such a case, engaging in what could be called (from the perspective in which what plants do is the null hypothesis) self-movement. Something analogous could be said about human self-movement: it is really about our being moved by the desire for the universal good.  And it is precisely because THIS sort of good is infinite that humans are able to be creative.

It's possible that an animal might a least momentarily hesitate when confronted with two desirable things that are present or between two ways to the same desirable thing without deliberating in the proper sense of the word.  Searching for what one craves sometimes involves hesitation while trying to get an adequate perception of the more likely path to that which will satisfy. What is much more interesting, however, is the fact that humans pull up two different goals, at least one of which is not presently actionable.  For example, one might compare going to medical school with studying to become an accountant (we'll assume that the one comparing these two would find both options highly satisfying and not just as means toward an end).  Those two alternatives are quite different than two paths that might lead a predator to its prey. The very act of recalling two such alternatives would require a sense of self as being one and the same in both situations (accountant vs...

Affirming that an animal's many parts as seen under the microscope belong to one whole:  this may seem analogous to affirming action at a distance.  For that perspective shows us how each part interacts with other parts, but it doesn't show why these components are parts of one whole.  Any grasping of that unity is to be had by reflection on one's own actions; this unity of the parts eludes a third-person perspective. It is worth pointing out that there is a lot that one can figure out about planetary movement while accepting action at a distance--even if that assumption is wrong.

Just some meanderings re evolution that I'd like to discuss with a science buff. Let's say that there are two mutually exclusive traits that can be had: V and R. Persons with trait V are more likely to survive but less likely to reproduce, while persons with trait R are more likely to reproduce; raise offspring (IF they survive) but are less likely to survive (because they are willing to engage in risky behavior). Let's quantify that.  Some other time. Depending on how the numbers work out, there could be a way of exploring the degree to which the Rs are likely to outstrip the Vs after a sufficient number of generations. Most interesting would be to show an inherent connection between R and ~V (and between V and ~R as well). I can't work this out, but the gist of the expected results would be that sexual selection might naturally  outpace mere survival as a determining factor in natural selection.  And in this case, altruistic behavior (at least the sort dis...

The reductionist naturally regards the concept of agency as a pre-scientific misunderstanding.  That is because a materialist of this stripe believes that human activities such as wishing, thinking, and moving are nothing but processes going on in the brain. These processes are in principle identifiable through scientific observation: that is, a scientist can correlate different aspects of experience (perception, emotion, thought, etc.) reported by a subject with different processes occurring in different parts of that subject's brain.  But the unified way in which those features occur in the subject is not to be found through any such observation.  For example, at this moment I am sitting, typing on a keyboard, sub-vocalizing what I am writing, focusing on my computer screen while being peripherally aware of the rest of my office, and starting to feel hungry.  Each of these aspects of my experience may be correlated with different physical processes going on in diff...

Much of daily life consists of our responses to problems and opportunities.  Practical reasoning is the name for the mental processes that guide these responses.  It can be divided into four stages: first comes our recognition of some opportunity or problem, followed by our deliberation about how to respond to it; followed in turn by the adoption of one of those courses of action; followed by our ascertaining the success or failure of our course of action.   If we reflect upon this process, we may recognize that we have kept the very same goal in mind throughout our deliberations, or we may recognize that the goal itself has changed.  In either case, we are aware of not only the goal, but also of our having pursued one or many goals at many different times.  This characterization of ourselves as desiring, anticipating, planning, acting, and reflecting can be summarized in the word "agency."  Looking at ourselves as agents is not to characterize ourselves as...

Materialism can be defined as the conviction that all beings that exist are made of matter, or at least that human nature is so constituted that the individual ceases to exist with the death of the body.  These positions are not the target of this chapter.  Rather, a somewhat extreme version called reductive materialism is all that I mean to address here.  The alternative that I will propose--we'll call it holism--will serve as a common sense position that we can use to evaluate reductive and other positions. Reductive materialism claims that a human individual (and other animals) is nothing more than a collection of chemicals and that human action is nothing more than the complex chemical and mechanical interactions of those parts.  The whole that we call a human being is quite literally the sum of all of its parts. This position is frequently called mechanistic because a machine really is the collection of its own parts.  If we see it as a whole, that is o...

Toward the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, some authors began talking about a conflict between science and religion.  Science, they proposed, offers explanations that can be proven true through measurement and observation--or at least can be proven false.  Religion, on the other hand, offers no method for testing the truth or falsity of its claims, but instead begins and ends with wishful thinking, as in the wish to live forever, to be loved unconditionally, or the wish to return to infantile bliss.  If these critics do not associate religion with childish wishful thinking, then they associate it with fear.  That is, the fear of a judge from whom you cannot escape and a punishment that never ceases.  Religion is anchored in these irrational hopes and fears, say these critics, while science is anchored in  tests through which we I am sure that there are some religious people whose lives and words might make these criticisms seem part...