The Human Question

Isn't Aristotle's notion of spheres and the intelligent beings that direct them as prime movers or unmoved movers (but not THE unmoved Mover)... isn't this a way of tipping his hat to something like polytheistic accounts of natural phenomena (the gods cause this and that natural phenomenon) but a non-materialistic version therof)? (but then again, Greeks don't wear hats...) AND isn't the positing of one transcendent, utterly unmoved Mover  an affirmation of the existence of a supreme Being that is  like the Platonic Good as the supreme Being? Three asides: First the Good is not just another god--it is not just another being among the other "divine: beings, but is a kind of condition for the possibility of the being of the many divine beings). Secondly, Aristotle's sort of Supreme Being is personal inasmuch as it is intelligent, but it is not exactly a personal being inamsuch as it is not personally involved in the day-to-day events going on in each

Yes, DD, thinking that atoms cling tenaciously to their electrons is a mistaken anthropomorphization.  Yes, there's a gradation between the full-blown agency and lower levels of causality.  But that doesn't lead inexorably to the "sophisticated" opinion that nature, at its lower/lowest level, is Democratean changes that just happen. To opine thus might not be more sophisticated, but to argue that this opinion about nature is true because its more sophisticated might be more sophistical. Question to self: if there is at least some trace of agency-like effort at the lowest level, where is the individual-like entity to which you would attribute something like trying-to-push (or pull)?  Given action/reaction equivalence, it might seem more proper to say that nature acts rather than say that the pusher/pushed-thing acts... ...worth pondering more.

The transitions occurring at the pixel level are described by laws.  The pixels themselves, however, should not be understood (Dennett tells us), as using power to act on each other.  They merely follow laws of transition.  But in that case, since the laws are not themselves pixels, then nature would consists of two realities: pixels and laws that guide pixels.  But in that case, if the pixels represent matter, then the laws would be immaterial--more supernatural than natural.  We can avoid this dualism by saying that the laws merely describe how the pixels transition rather than forcing them transition in the ways that they do.  In this conception of things, we merely abstract laws  from the transitions we might observe going on in the pixels rather than conceive of the laws as imposing themselves upon the pixels from without. In that case, however, there is no reason why they act in the ways that they do.  And there is a fortiori , no reason for them to act consistently at all.  Ev

Aristotle talked about higher powers appropriating or encompassing the operations of lower powers in a manner analogous to the way in which a five-sided figure contains the makings of a four-sided figure--and more besides.  Well, that's a kind of model/game of life in which the higher and lower levels of operation are (albeit inadequately) represented.  But maybe there's a way of representing the Aristotlelian understanding of the hierarchy of powers.  Maybe that way is a kind of multidimensional representation, such that a line is seen as belonging to a plane, which in turn is seen as belonging to a solid, which itself is seen as being more than just the sum of many such planes.  The higher is in a sense  greater than the lower in this sort of analogy.  Is that an insight, or is that an example of "Analogies Gone Wild"?  Maybe there's some other way to convey, somewhat visually, the way powers are interrelated in a hylomorphic understanding of life forms. Hmmmm

Instead of using Conway's game of life to represent life forms, try using it to represent chemical reactions, explosions, and the like.  Or even movement.  As I said earlier in this blog, we can call this Conway's Game of Physics.  If we find problems with the Conwayesque representation of inanimate lower/less-complex forms, then we would be reasonable in suspecting greater problem to attend the representation of (them being higher level / more complex) life forms. One indicator of the sort of problems that I anticipate would be the fact (or purported fact) that nature doesn't operate in a voxel-like way.  Rather, any two or three dimensional pixel/voxel representation of nature must piggy-back on a nature that is utterly different. Nature is not voxels "all the way down." Can a voxel or pixel even represent movement?  Take the 8x8 square (with rows represented by letters A through H and columns represented by numbers 1 through 8)  At time-1 A1 is white whil

I need to examine Steve Pinker's Language Instinct  from that point of view. This is just a place marker, because I don't have the time right now to do it...

From one perspective, the vagus nerve is an example of inefficient engineering--from the perspective of a prototype engineer.  But from another perspective, it might be seen as the outcome of brilliantly efficient engineering.  That is, if we see evolution itself as a process designed to produce more and more interesting life forms without external regulation. Compare the two sorts of engineering perspectives with two different approaches to parenting:   parent #1 slices the pie for her two kids whereas parent #2 makes a rule that one slices the pie and the other follows up by choosing which slice to take.  The second arrangement will end up in very messy cutting by the kids with food and time wasted; whereas with the first arrangement the food is served and consumed with minimum waste: the first arrangement is much more efficient from a certain perspective.  But the first arrangement is much for efficient from the perspective of parental intervention and is much more effective in te

This is just a very rough analogy for the way in which there might be a hierarchy of levels of causality. Suppose that you are measuring the forces acting upon a ball (including gravity) as you drop it, throw in the air, etc.  The movement of the ball is truly following the laws of motion that pertain to such movement.  But with modifications that you don't notice, due to the fact that the earth is rotating on its axis and revolving around the sun.  So the actual behavior of the ball is both consistent with the various laws of motion that would, when combined, describe ball's falling or being projected (too bad "missiling" is not a legit word) through the air with gravity and air resistance, etc. acting on them.  even though its movement also includes law-abiding modifications caused by the influence of rotation and revolution. The laws describing the former influences (gravity, resistance) are not broken by the laws describing the latter (rotation, revolution).  R

Imagine a simple version of the game, with 8x8 squares, each of which is colored either solid white or solid black.  We'll name the squares from the left to the right A through H; and we'll name those from the top to the bottom 1 through 8. Imagine that at time 1 only A1 is black and the others are white.  At time 2, the very next phase, B2 is the only one that is black, while all of the others are white.  Then C3, then D4, etc. Given the phi phenomenon,  the onlooker will perceive this change as movement.  But it isn't really. At this level, we might call this Conway's Game of Physics, for it represents the sort of movement common to living and non-living things.  But it is a rather limited representation.  It's a toy version, and just as a toy gun leaves out that which does the real work, so does this toy version of physics.  Just as someone who plays with a toy compensates for what is lacking in it by using his or her own imagination, so too  one who plays

What if, instead of using the Game of Life invented by Conway to create toy versions of living things, we created a toy version of a physical grid that might display the game: What would it be like to create this "meta" version of the game?  What sorts of complications would arise? Couldn't we create many different background algorithms to generate the same toy grid? Does this multiplicity speak to the way in which the toy versions of life forms are created? Something to ponder further...

I regret to say that my recollection of Pinker's thoughts on thought is a bit foggy, but in spite of the uncertainty that attends this fog, I am willing to say that he claims that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the representations in our mind (or our knowledge) and the way the world is--between the way things are and the way our mind operates in order to know the world. But this goes against the common sense conviction that the same thing can be taken in many different ways.  Take, for example, my regard for the color of my superfolder:  I can regard it as red, as simply being colored, as crimson, or as a having a sensible quality.  In order for me to consider this thing in these four different ways, four different things going on in my mind on the four different occasions when I know this one thing (in these four different ways).  That claim, however, leads to the following dilemma. EITHER  1. Pinker is correct in claiming that there is an isomorphic relationshi

After laying out the weak anthropic principle (i.e., that things seem fine tuned to us because we are the lucky rational observers in a universe that is conducive toward our existence), the author argues that the improbability of our universe's having cosmic (rather than merely parochial) observers is evidence of fine tuning.  This argument hinges upon the claim that the very precision with which we are able to observe the laws of nature governing the universe goes beyond the practical advantages associated with human evolution.  That sounds plausible, but the author also claims that the fact that the universe has such precise laws goes against a Darwinian understanding of cosmogenesis.   That sort of account would have order originate from chaos.  My challenge to the claim re Darwinian cosmogenesis is that it might very well not  require order originating from an all-encompassing chaos: instead, there might be an original, qualified chaos from which might arise a more state that

Quotable quotes: ... by Wilhelm von Humboldt in this article:  only humans "make infinite use of finite means." ... by Noam Chomsky: "It's important to learn to be amazed by simple facts." ... by the author of the article (Alessandra Stoppa): "In Genesis, God stops and listens to His creature give names.  I always asked myself what it really meant to be made 'in His image and likeness,' but in giving names to things we are like God, because it is a creative act, albeit partially." http://www.traces-cl.com/2013/12/thebigbang.html

I am 28 minutes into the debate found at a now-defunct link (apparently it's an edited version of the following youtube presentation: http://www.tacticalfaith.com/portfolio/william-lane-craig-and-sean-carroll-debate/). In any case, Sean Carroll has just begun his 20-minute rebuttal to William Lane Craig's opening statement.  Presently I will make no comprehensive remark about Carroll's reply or about the debate as a whole.  Instead, I'll go after the "small change": the many points that I find noteworthy (including ones that deserve to be criticized). SC's rebuttal is as follows: 1. naturalism works (where his definition of naturalism is the belief that "all that exists is one world, the natural world obeying laws of nature that science can help us discover"). 2. the evidence is against theism. 3. theism is not well-defined.  I will go through his rebuttal in detail, and offer my own responses.  For the present, however, I will say that

Suppose that thousands of years ago you were commissioned with the task of crafting a story that would reveal to a people what they needed to know in order to be able to interpret their situation and achieve life's most important goals: what story would you  tell? It depends upon what truths you thought were most important and helpful It depends also upon their ability to understand the concepts you wish to communicate. It depends upon the genre of story-telling as it existed at that time. What story would you tell?

Point the following out to him: 1. that we can all use common nouns to refer to many individuals of the same kind, many cats, humans or bear.w  And in doing so we recognize that they have something in common with each other (assuming here that nominalism is not a live option for a Whiteheadian).  But we could easily include two phases of the same individual.  So there must be something common to the same individual at two different moments.   The very fat that we can know a multiplicity of members of a the same species entails the identify through time of an individual: our meaningful use of common nouns entails that each individual of a certain kind continues to be the same kind of being, i.e., has an enduring essence.

Common law did not start off as legitimate law, but rather as an artful imposition by clerks working for a Norman conquerer.  It acquired legitimacy through acquiescence by subjects who respected its consistency and justice.  Common law today retains that legitimacy through its consistency with the past.  Sometimes -- when circumstances change -- common law must also change so as to adapt.  But that change is legitimate only inasmuch as it reaches into the past for a way to understand something new in the present.  By proceeding in this manner, the common law judge preserves the legitimacy of his judgments through their conformity with a kind of democracy of the dead. Simply overturning common law because one detects -- not a new situation -- but a new principle is to undermine the legitimacy of common law.  Even if one believes this new principle is obvious to those formed by the spirit of the age, one cannot legitimately introduce it to a common law situation.  For common law has n

I am thinking here of of Dawkins's God Delusion, which in the last few pages waxes poetic about the possibility that there is an unlimited intelligibility and beauty in nature (my memory is imprecise, so I admit there may be a bit of isogesis going on here...but the basis point stands).  And Steven Pinker, who at the end of his Language Instinct,  talks about "endless forms, most beautiful."  That is, the limitlessness of the possible expressions, which is explained in his opinion by the combinatorial nature of words (for the record, I propose that while the combinatorial nature of expressions may   partially explain the limitlessness of their possibilities, there is something about us that makes the combinatorial possible but which Pinker doesn't recognize because of his materialism).  And Sean Carroll, whose book on evolution has a title that sounds quite like the words I just quoted from Pinker.  This title, as well as the book, may appeal to the same attraction to