The Human Question

According to those who advocate methodological naturalism, we must presume that no process is an exception to the laws of nature: otherwise, (in those cases in which natural causes lay deeply hidden) we would fail to seek and eventually discover those causes.  This presumption is methodological; nevertheless, the  danger is that method will become dogma.  That is, one may end up thinking that one who wishes to foster scientific rationality must assert that there is no God who intervenes: "Law (and chance) account for everything; otherwise, nature can be regarded as a function of divine caprice." But if the fruitful search for laws of nature requires ontological naturalism (i.e., the assertion  that there is no supernatural intervention), then it requires determinism as well. For if everything in nature is the result of the confluence of chance and law, then human freedom cannot exist; and if humans are not free, then  no science is possible! It follows ...

"When a man makes his way through a piece of wood, he alone has made something new." Where did he say that?

Simply positing a multiverse doesn't get rid of theism: for if every "verse" has life as well as the conditions for life and does so in a manner that seems improbable, then you have a repetition of the same problem.  You have an intensification of the anthropic principle.

The claim that one cannot make a statement about the totality is self-destructive, for it has the totality itself as its background.  That is, it couldn't be true unless its true always and everywhere.

Perhaps it is better to ask questions about human creativity before asking about human freedom.  That is, how is it that we can produce something new?  What does it mean to say that we produce something new?  Do we really ever produce something new? The answer will involve the awareness of more than the individuals before oneself, more than what one can imagine, but of essence/being/stuff like htat.  There is an ordering of the lower that one can see or imagine toward the higher that is beyond the imaginable.  Perhaps the "meaning" of our acts must be framed in terms of this ordering of lower to higher.  And perhaps freedom of action is best understood in terms of this ordering.  Perhaps actions are free inasmuch as they possess this "meaning."  Perhaps this meaning is invisible to an ideological materialist in the same way that written words are meaningless to someone who doesn't speak the language in which they are written Perhaps the best e...

I wonder if it would be fruitful to contrast Heidegger's notion of finitude with the fact that a tendency to think of the infinite is involved in each abstract thought....

This post is part of a thought experiment I'm conducting, using emergentism as a  pivotal position.... one that opens the door to a view of nature that undercuts materialism, is perhaps to an Aristotelian understanding of matter/form and leads to theism. Materialists would look at human activities as more complicated versions of those done by lower animals.  Such a position is reductionistics inasmuch as it implies that what-seems-higher is just a more complicated version of the lower (we are just a pile of chemicals, etc.) Emergence affirms that higher level activites are not reducible.  It also maintains that higher operations build upon lower (I would want to correct that position  in part). My point is that "higher" always has to do with higher levels of unity.  Think of the knowledge of universal truths; and of the notion of the common good.  These involve objects that are one and the same for many different folks at different times.  Object...

Insist on ontological reductionism while granting that explanatory reductionism is false?  Isn't there something akin to fideism in that position?

I'm thinking here about the relation between desire, imagination and self-movement: how do these arise in animals so that they operate seemlessly together? The answer to this question shows that an evolutionary theory that is emergent rather than reductive is far less problematic.  But since emergent evolutionism is also open to theism (without being subject to the charge of supernaturalism lodged against ID), it follows that openness to theism makes, in this case, for better natural science. Let's begin Let's start by separating the problem of motion from that of cognition and appetite:  I suppose one can move a la zombie without perceiving or desiring: so one could simplify the problem somewhat.  Movement can arise on its own, without the other two.  But whence the other two?  And how is it that they seem so interwoven with each other and with self-movement? It is hard (or impossible) to conceive of the interwoven operations of all three as a mechanica...

Steven Jay Gould compared the increase of complexity to a drunken man's stumbling walk ... he eventually finds the gutter.  Nature likewise finds more complex life forms. But what actually happens is emergence, not mere increase in complexity (granted the latter occasions the former). And what emerges is a greater openness to a reality that is not itself evolving.  Think of aspects of rationality that we would share with rational creatures that have evolved through different paths than ourselves.  Objects of mathematics.  A recognition of some kind of justice. Nature, as emerging into rationality, is not merely stumbling via random variation upon a gutter-like stability of more complex forms: it is reaching toward the infinite... through its  more and more perfect cognition it attains nobler and nobler objects of reason. Just as the gutter is already there to be found, so too are the real objects of reason. To mistake the ideal objects of reason for a ...

Evolution is about what has happened to others in the past: ethics is about how I shall act now and in the future.

To desire truth is to desire communion with those who know the truth, to live in communion with rational beings, even if (or especially if) they possess truth more perfectly.  It is to possess an openness to greater and greater levels of truth.  And ultimately to the One who does not merely have truth but IS infinite truth. To desire truth is to desire communion with God.

A thing can be viewed a machine by us only (?) in virtue of how it is seen as an instrument, that is, as something other than ourselves that acts not out of desire but is made to act so as to serve our purposes (in other words, to satisfy our desires).  But that means that we cannot be viewed by ourselves as a machine.  But if we cannot seem to be a machine, then claiming that we are such is to say that our appearing to be otherwise is an illusion.  But if that is an illusion, then how could a machine even be a machine.... it too would only seem to be a machine--no? So isn't positing a mechanistic universe kind of like looking at the universe and forgetting that you, by looking at it in such a way, are claiming NOT to be part of it?  I guess one can say that in this case the machine works for no one.  And why isn't that claim special pleading? And isn't saying that humans are machines a kind of denial that they act as they do because they desire something? ...

Do computers think or do they model thought? If the latter, then their operation is like the modeling of an earthquake: we mustn't confuse the model with the modeled.

It seems that my argument for God will consist of two or three stages. First to show that mechanism leaves out the teleological aspect of reality and that we need a metaphysics that makes room for something like emergence.  Even a evolutionary metaphysics is less wrong than a mechanistic metaphysics. Secondly, to give an internal critique of an evolutionary metaphysics: to show that classical theism (i.e., the argument for a unique, infinite, unchanging supreme being) is required to account for teleology in nature.

I am thinking about the utterly strange and inscrutable are the descriptions given to sub-atomic particles. If reductionism is true, then reality is just that weird and unknowable, and the familiar is just a facade. If reductionism is false and emergence or something like like it is true (substantial form, anyone?),then the familiar is the real deal rather than a mere facade.  And to regard reality as consisting of nothing more than them would be turn away from that reality.

This link is to clips of Discover Magazine's discussion of Hawkin's notions of time and creation: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/ 

Francis Crick (as in Crick and Watson) is a great example of a materialist who has espoused racism. Suppose a positivist who believes in some sort of human equality wishes to argue with Mr. Crick: how would he do it?

In the Descent of Man, Darwin bemoaned the dysgenic consequences of celibacy in an earlier age.  I wonder what he would think of the modern, secular European?

I am enjoying lectures on Neurology by Dr. Wu, the prof from Princeton, who points out that our mathematical ability has its origin in abilities shared by us and other animals to recognize the relations between two quantities (<, >, and =), as well as our ability to subitize (i.e., ). What if someone proposed that all of our present mathematical skills can be reduced to our explained in terms of those skills shared with sub human animals.  As in non-Euclidean geometry.  Would this proposal be laughable? So too, would be the attempt to reduce human motivations and obligations to some primatial proto-ethics.