The Human Question

natural selection and selfish gene: both helpful metaphors that impute something like agency to nature.

If you have a utilitarian understanding of God (as beholden to the principle of seeking the greater good for the greatest number), then a philosophical reflection on the problem of pain is capable of making you an atheist.  And as a matter of fact, a lot of pain related arguments against the existence of God rely upon a utilitarian understanding of good and evil.  But to make such an objection is to assume that the only or best reason for affirming God's existence is likewise utilitarian. Perhaps the uitilitarian/deist thinks that God made the world for God's pleasure, and has since left it alone (as in "been there, done that").  But such basis for theism, if it exists, would be a straw-man.  If you are a theist in the face of pain, it is because you have a non-utilitarian understanding of God: God wants you to be fulfilled in the exercise of your freedom by living that freedom in communion with Him.  God wants you to be childlike in your trust, but an adu...

Test any philosophical claim that thinks that it is required by the scientific method with the following:  would adhering to it make impossible for the form of human agency to arise that is involved in doing science?  Such as the free pursuit of the knowledge of truth?  The ability to refer back to past beliefs? etc.?  If so, then such a claim can hardly be based upon a respect for the efficacy of the scientific method.

Continuing that division between the quantitative treatment of things in nature and the analogical-to-human agency approach that is brewing in this blog: Add that communicative acts are human acts par excellence. Then note that can't treat everything as a little person: treat non-persons some as instruments OF persons. And add that to treat them via math is to treat them simply in relation to each other AND (perhaps) as being manipulated by me.  Push and pull.  stuff like that.  Not communicative.  Non-telic.  Ergo math is the logic of instruments in relation to each other. On the other hand can treat them as word-like: as instruments of human agents interacting with each other. Not quite sure what all this means or where leading, but--PTL--it seems to be promising.