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This is not only true for any cosmogony that extends, interpretively, for our cosmological
descriptions. It applies across our emergentist heuristic. It's the case for any quantum
interpretation that extends from the descriptions of quantum mechanics. So, too, regarding the
biopoietic origins of life, those descriptions remain open to a/biogenic interpretations. Our
neuroscientific descriptions extend, interpretively, to a plurality of philosophies of mind.
Descriptions of symbolic human consciouness extend, interpretively, to any number of
anthroposemiotic accounts.
Whether quantum, cosmic, biopoietic, zoopoietic (sentient) or anthropopoietic (sapient) origins,
our emergentist heuristic, eschewing invocations of supervenience, which remain question
begging for strong, trivial for weak, emergences, provides only conceptual placeholders,
epistemic bookmarks, where explanatory adequacy eludes us. These bookmarks remain on the
blank pages of our probabilistic, scientific, descriptive modeling narratives. They won't be filled
in by plausibilistic, metaphysical, interpretive explanatory metanarratives. This is to recognize
that epistemic states of in/determinable realities might be ontologically suggestive of various
putative ontic states of in/determined realities, but they should not, a priori, be considered
decisive.
In a peircean normativity, aesthetics precedes ethics which precedes logic. The highest and best
use of our metanarrative adventures is thus an affective attunement to oneself, to others, to the
cosmos, to ultimate realities via the cult-ivation of an evaluative dis-position and not, rather, the
articulation of descriptive or interpretive pro-positions, which cannot aspire to robustly
probabilistic argumentation.
Suitably chastized by the epistemic inadequacies of plausibilities and implausibilities,
evidentially, we'd do very well not to overinvest, poetically, in one 1) quantum interpretation or
another (Bohm vs Copenhagen vs ...); 2) cosmogony or the next (cyclical, oscillating,
singularity, un/bounded, in/finite, ...); 3) biopoietic or another (abiogenesis or vitalism or ...); 4)
philosophy of mind or another (physicalist or csc as primitive or ...); 5) anthropopoietic or
another (anthropic principle or irreducible complexity or ...).
This is to suggest, also, that our anxiety to overcome every form of insidious -ism cannot finally
determine our choice of quantum interpretation, our cosmogony, our biopoietics, our philosophy
of mind or our anthropic principles. Which aspects of reality are eventually found
in/determinable, in/determined, probabilistic or necessary, brute or question begging, will
always make for richer psalmody, greater affective attunement, more consoling evaluative
dispositions. The phenomenological taxonomy of our epistemic states, though, does not gift us
an infallible metaphysical map of reality's ontic states, not for proximate realities, not for primal
realities and especially not for ultimate realities.
In my view, the logic of the epic of evolution mythos accounts for emergent
teloi, which include the teleomatic, ententional regularities (pansemiotic),
the teleonomic purposive realities (biosemiotic sentience) and teleodynamic
purposeful realities (sapience). The emergentist mythos, then, would
account for free (enough) will and anthroposemiotic value-realizations.
For example, whether quantum origins, cosmic origins, biogenic origins, sentient origins
(consciouness) or sapient origins (symbolic language), our descriptive modeling attempts and
phenomenological taxonomies must not be mistaken for explanations. Quantum mechanics
invites a plurality of interpretations. Cosmological data invite a plurality of cosmogonies.
A/biogenesis posits a plurality of interpretations of how the robustly biosemiotic emerged from
the merely physiosemiotic. Neuroscience invites a number of philosophies of mind. If the
origins of sentience remain problematic, the so-called hard problem, how much more
problematic are the origins of sapience and anthroposemiotic symbolic language?
Thus the epistemic humility of Scotus' formal distinction and Peirce's modal phenomenology
instructs us in science and, if there, how much more in metaphysics and, if there, how much
more in metanarratives?
Whatever Pascal really intended, we best draw a distinction between speculative and
practical reason.
I would interpret both Pascal's Wager and Wm. James' 'forced option' as forms of
practical reason.
James also described this 'option' as 'vital.' We might say, then, that this option has
momentous existential significance.
James also described it as a 'live' option. For me, this is where speculative reason comes
in. Pascal's Wager, in my view, could not reasonably argue against one's use of
speculative reason per se. For an option to be 'live,' then, it must at least be equiprobable
vis a vis competing interpretations.
There are indeed competing metaphysical interpretations that refer to ultimate reality.
Whatever other epistemic virtues they might enjoy, they don't enjoy falsifiability, aren't
empirical or robustly probable but merely plausible. In that sense, interpretations of
ultimate reality can compete, leaving us with several 'live' options.
At this point, we 'leave' our spculative reason behind, but only because we have
dutifully exhausted its resources. Which forced, vital and live option do we choose?
We turn to practical reason and an existential disjunction, to live AS IF this or that. So,
our practical decision, our wager, moreso has 'performative' but less so informative
significance.
This equiprobability or equiplausibility principle suggests --- when we encounter a
coiled object on the floor of a dimly lit cave, unsure whether it's a snake or a rope --that we jump over it, for that's the safer course. We've nothing to lose by leaping over it
if it's a rope, much to gain if it's a snake!
If there's an illuminating epistemic fire burning in that cave, we are obliged to use the
light of reason to delimit, probabilistically, which options are truly live.
------------------------------------------------We do not know whether the concept 'nothing' successfully refers to reality, whether
temporally or atemporally?
Also, implicitly presupposed in the question 'why not rather nothing?' is the principle of
sufficient reason [PSR]. We do not know whether it successfully refers because we
cannot a priori know whether reality as a whole begs an explanation. (Fallacy of
Composition may or may not apply, who knows?)
Our ability to navigate reality successfully evolved in a milieu of sufficient
probabilities. Those probabilities remain metaphysically vague. They have epistemic
significance as regularities, but that, alone, doesn't tell us whether they also have
ontological significance as 'regulators.' If they are regulators, think laws (nomicity, it's
called), we still don't a priori know whether they're emergent, local and ephemeral
versus primitive, universal and eternal.
Put more simply, in a modal ontology of possibilities, actualities and probabilities, we
do not know whether those putative probabilities, which are often called 'necessities,'
successfully refer to reality either.
Without 1) the PSR, 2) eternal laws, 3) modal necessity or 4) reality as a whole begging
an explanation, the concept ---'nothing' --- makes no reference?
-------------------------------------------------
I haven't [i]a priori[/i] and cursorily dismissed the concept's meaningfulness on literal
grounds precisely because I suspect some Thomist will come along and nuance it in
some essentialistic, substance ontology that I don't want to have to inhabit in order to
defend my own arguments. I'd rather hop around on the surface of common sense than
head down some ontological rabbit hole. I don't have an ideological dog in that hunt, so
don't feel strongly about 'nothing' one way or the other. :up:
Besides, just because most of the metaphysical presuppositions listed above might be
indispensable methodological stipulations, necessary, if we're going to advance our
probes of reality, that doesn't mean they have to be considered metaphysical necessities.
For example, I stipulate to the PSR as I continue my probes, but I have no idea if it will
really hold universally. I also stipulate to methodological naturalism, but don't commit
to a philosophical naturalism.
By not conflating my methodological stipulations with their implicit metaphysical
stances, I remain open to ontological surprises. Just because abandoning PSR and/or
naturalism might thwart my future probes of reality doesn't, necessarily, make them
eternal metaphysical verities? Our root metaphors, for their part, are even more pliable.
Many, nowadays, don't employ static, essentialistic approaches like substance or being.
Instead, metaphors that are dynamic and relational --- like process, event or experience
--- seem to last longer before collapsing.
I have often wondered what [i]nothing[/i] might refer to in a question like [i]why is
there not rather no-thing, which is to really ask, why is there not rather no process or no
becoming[/i]?
At stake are notions of causation, including not only efficient but minimalist
conceptions of formal and final. What gets set aside is material causation. I'm willing to
leave that open, not imagining that [i]nothing[/i] cannot successfully refer just because
my methodological stipulations suggest that's the case. Our methodological stipulations
to certain metaphysical presuppositions may be ontologically suggestive but we're
proving too much to claim they're necessarily decisive?
------------------------------------------------Heading down the rabbit hole, then ...
1) A lot of metaphysics turns on one's chosen [b]root metaphor,[/b] e.g. being vs
becoming, substance vs process.
2) Even after opting for a root metaphor--- let's stay with being --- we must determine
whether another is speaking a) [b] univocally[/b], b) [b]equivocally[/b] or c)
[b]analogically[/b] of being as one moves from a descriptive physics to a normative
metaphysics.
3) The former employs a modal ontology of possibility, actuality and probability, which
has an implicit grammar. Noncontradiction [PNC] and excluded middle [PEM]
variously hold or fold in these categories. For a) [b]possibilities[/b], only PEM holds.
For b) [b]actualities[/b], PEM and PNC hold. For c) [b]probabilities[/b], only PNC
holds.
4) Still, the grammar of that modal ontology, alone, does not drive us, algorithmically,
to ontological conclusions, whether from physical or metaphysical premises. We must
first define our root metaphor, in this case being, revealing our univocal, equivocal or
analogical predications.
What often happens, then, is that our ontological conclusions are not flowing from our
modal logic or metaphysical premises, alone, but can be found already buried in our
definitions, for example, of being and nonbeing.
Let's see what happens to our modal ontology and its grammar when we tinker with our
definitions.
From a vague phenomenological perspective, which brackets metaphysics:
1) mere possibilities can be conceived in terms of the clearly a)[b]instantiated[/b]
(actual), b) [b]noninstantiated[/b] (pure) or c) [b]virtual[/b] (neither, but 'as if' actual).
2) mere probabilities (uniformities, tendencies, regularities) can be conceived in terms
of a) [b]nomicity[/b] (deterministic), b) [b]stochasticity[/b] (indeterministic) or c)
[b]propensity[/b] (neither, but virtual, cf. Popper, Peirce, Scotus).
5) Any given belief that a given concept may or may not successfully refer to reality is a
trope contained in a philosophical fortune cookie. That cookie and its tailored message
have already been baked to order. They will thus match those tastes that would best go
with the metaphysical selections that one has already made off the above-listed Chinese
Menu of epistemic and ontic entrees.
To make these distinctions more concrete, let's look at an example of how we can
reimagine and redefine concepts and what practical implications might flow therefrom.
Let's avoid the equivocal and analogical predications that lead, via their implict
metaphysical presuppositions, to concepts like absolute nonbeing, both because they're
more controversial and, to me, less interesting. Also, let's remain agnostic regarding the
What could this mean regarding our conventional understandings of the relationships
between initial, limit, boundary and final conditions?
We see the 'Arrow of Time' operating for thermodynamic, cosmological and
epistemological realities. What would be the relationship between the Quantum Arrow
of time, which seems to have arrowheads on both ends, and our other experiences of
reality, which have an ontologically penetrating arrowhead on one end and an
epistemologically stabilizing fletching of feathers on the other?
It seems that the Arrow, informationally, comes from increasing correlations, which
model equilibrations of entangled states. States collide, energy disperses, objects
equilibrate. Time's arrow, then, while reversible in theory, for all practical purposes,
remains asymmetric because there are way too many mixed states, exhibiting an
advance toward equilibrium, and far too few pure states, which are 'ordered' and not
ravaged by entropy.
A finite, unbounded universe could exhibit an eternal flux between pattern and paradox,
the random and systematic, symmetry and asymmetry, order and chaos, contingency and
necessity. But not between being and nothing, unless a putative nonspatial, atemporality
would refer to [b]nothing[/b]. But that would still be only in the sense of being,
energetically, [b][i]something else[/i][/b].
Finally, new questions beg if one posits the singularity this way. Why was the initial
state far from equilibrium? Does the concept [i]intial[/i] successfully refer?
------------------------------------------------In my view ...
Why is there not rather nothing? or Why is there not rather something else? or It's not
HOW things are but THAT things are which is the mystical? or It's neither how things
are nor that things are but that THESE THINGS are which is the mystical?
Which of these questions make sense, in whose metaphysic?
A given metaphysic, as an interpretive stance, provides a normative heuristic, which
could variously foster or hinder human value-realizations but doesn't add new
information to our systems. It can demonstrate the reasonableness of our questions
regarding many realities but, properly received, leaves those regarding first and last
things begging.
I precisely wondered, when the Higgs boson news broke, whether it spoke to my
questions regarding the putative asymmetries near any singularity, however it's
conceived.
While metaphysical speculations regarding putative ultimate realities remain especially
problematic, those regarding penultimate realities remain indispensable heuristic
devices.
Abductive-transductive inference, meaning analogical inference to the best explanation,
coupled with deductive clarifying, paves the way to the next best round of inductive
testing. In abduction or retroduction, we can look at various effects as might be proper
to no known causes and reason analogically how the unknown cause is like or not like
those that are known.
This is what happens when folks argue whether this universe as a whole begs
explanations not provided by its parts. We do face Godelian-like constraints in formally
formulating a Theory of Everything [TOE].
But the practical upshot of incompleteness is not that we necessarily could not taste and
see the truth of our axioms, only that we could not prove them in a closed, formal
symbol system. I have never gone through the Principia with Russell & Whitehead, and
one would need to go at least halfway, in order to satisfy myself regarding the axioms
that ground 2+2=4. We cannot [i]a priori[/i] say whether the axioms of some future TOE
will be interesting, controversial or seemingly trivial. We will evaluate it, pragmatically,
based on the values which we'll be able to cash out or not.
The anthropic principle, as it stands, rests on a conceptual confusion between chance
and coincidence. Unless and until we learn a lot more about the initial conditions of the
universe, we don't know what should be reasonably "expected" regarding our existence.
So, we shouldn't rush to closure regarding either metaphysics or epistemic probes. We
should cave neither to mysterianism nor naive realism. We should aspire to proceed
fallibly but inexorably.
If we dispatch metaphysics, we'll abandon highly theoretic sciences, too. We aspire
beyond descriptive accuracy to explanatory adequacy, the latter evaluated by pragmatic
metrics. I say let a thousand quantum interpretations bloom for our quantum mechanics,
then cash out their values, or pluck their friits, if any, . in advances in quantum
computing, energy production or who knows what.
Let QM birth quantum interpretations, neuroscience birth philosophies of mind and
cosmology birth cosmogonies. Until we negotiate those interpretations, how could we
presume to adjudicate primal much less ultimate realities?
We always hope the merely plausibilist can become robustly probable for any given
reality. I don't have a quarrel with competing plausible interpretations of any reality,
whether proximate, primal or ultimate. My concern is with how much normative
impetus (especially for others' behavior) some aspire to exert vis a vis our consensus
regarding rules of evidence and burdens of proof.
What does another want to demand of me based on their interpretation of reality, based
on what epistemic warrants or normative justifications?
That's a political reality. Thank the founders for nonestablishment and free exercise and
pity those who don't enjoy same!
------------------------------------------------
For starters, we can look at the concepts they employ, concepts that will have been
negotiated in various communities of earnest inquiry. Those concepts which have thus
been negotiated and out of which a great deal of pragmatic value has been cashed out,
are [i]theoretic[/i]. Those that remain still in negotiation are [i]heuristic[/i]. Those that
are nonnegotiable, like first principles, to which we must at least methodologically
stipulate, are [i]semiotic[/i]. Those not negotiated are [i]dogmatic[/i].
Our interpretations are normative, not descriptive, are explanatory attempts not
empirical measurements. If they are heavily laden with theoretic concepts, they likely
enjoy a greater degree of explanatory adequacy ... with heuristic concepts, less ...
with dogmatic concepts, even less.
So, while quantum mechanics, neuroscience and cosmology are descriptive, quantum
interpretations, philosophy of mind and cosmogony are interpretive. At the frontiers of
those disciplines, good heuristic devices can pave the way to the next best scientific
tests.
Beyond these penultimate realities, interpretations abound regarding reality's first and
last things, ultimate realities. Such interpretations are much more heavily laden with
heuristic concepts (e.g. metaphysics) and dogmatic concepts (e.g. religions). It's not to
be expected that such interpretive stances would enjoy the same degree of explanatory
adequacy as scientific theories or meta-theories --- not due to a lack of epistemic virtue,
but --- due to the nature of the realities under consideration.
Overlapping magisteria.
Mysterianism is a philosophic stance, mostly used in philosophy of mind. It's
descriptive not pejorative. While rejecting scientism, I also reject any [i]a priori[/i]
epistemic surrenders or rushes to closure that declare some type of, in principle,
ontological occulting. I think it was Chesterton who suggested that we don't know
enough about reality to say that it's unknowable.
As with other traditions, Buddhism's not monolithic but has different schools.
Below is a position statement I constructed with a Buddhist practitioner from an
extensive dialogue. She said that I properly interpreted her outlook. So, FWIW:
Many have been threatened by some buddhist-like conceptions of self and with other
no-self teachings. What they seem to most fear is self-annihilation or self-dissolution or
loss of self or loss of the individual or loss of personal identity or loss of selfsignificance.
Aurobindo and certain Buddhists do not deny what they refer to as the "empirical self,"
which is very much consistent with the conventional distinctions we draw between
individuals. As empirical selves, for example, we are still called forth in solidarity with
and compassion for one another. We still recognize moral obligations and practical
responsibilities toward one another. We can still even affirm a continuity of identity of
each individual, both temporally and eternally.
The no self conception is thus moreso an adjectival description and not an ontological
denial of the self. What we experience as individual empirical selves might be
considered "fractures" of the Divine Self. These fractures have no static essence per se,
metaphysically, but do present, empirically, as perduring individuals, who remain
recognizable as a dynamic process, which is related to and confluent with other everchanging processes, movements and energies. This conception of a person thus presents
moreso as an active moving target, which is in constant change and flux.
This divine fractured self perdures eternally. We can affirm an eternal Immutable Self as
well as individual streams of consciousness or karmic bundles, which, even in the
afterlife, we would recognize as each other, as the individuals we knew, so to speak, on
this side (even notwithstanding reincarnations and so on).
The divine fractured "S"elf expressed in our individual "s"elves are individual
peepholes on reality, seen by individual streams of consciousness, experienced as
distinct karmic bundles, complementing and supplementing the singular, all seeing Self
as discrete psychic perspectives, enriching the Immutable One's experience of Self
precisely via this fracture into mutable souls. Such wholeness and fracture both perdure
eternally in dialogue, the mutable and Immutable mutually enriching each experience.
This particular conception by Aurobindo would not be wholly inconsistent with a
Christian panentheism. The Oneness of the Immutable Self could correspond to what
we experience as a univocity of being (Scotus) and divine energies (Eastern Orthodox,
hesychasm). The love with which we all Love is, itself, the love of the divine,
immutable self, Who is One.
------------------------------------------------Because humans, for the most part, are similarly situated, we tend to share evaluative
dispositions and normative propositions toward many descriptive realities. We can thus
couple any given shared prescriptive premise to a given descriptive premise, then
reason our way to a normative conclusion. The move from the given to the normative,
descriptive to the prescriptive, is to an ought, in large measure, is not especially
problematical, for all [i]practical[/i] purposes. The same is true for Hume's problem of
induction, because we are situated in and evolved in relationship to a spatiotemporal
sphere of regularities, which needn't hold absolutely or universally, only provisionally
and locally.
Practical upshots of the Humean critique would certainly include epistemic humility.
But we are proving too much and rushing to closure if, theoretically, we [i]a priori[/i]
conclude for or against telos, nomicity or sufficient reason, on one hand, or
purposelessness, stochasticity or brute existence, on the other. Theoretically, we thus
have competing tautologies that differentiate axiomatically. They can't be adjudicated in
terms of logical validity, so we all fall back to weaker evidential arguments, which
cannot be adjudicated in a robustly probabilistic way, only advanced by plausibilistic
appeals.
One can agree that Pascal's Wager operates in a system where the axioms refer to telic
ultimate realities but would be meaningless in a nontelic system. However, doesn't
Pascal's Wager refer, meta-systemically, to one's choice between one axiomatic system
and another? Couldn't Pascal be acknowledging an ontological undecidability, hence a
deontological vagueness, which merely asks one to stipulate to telos for argument's sake
before deciding on essentially pragmatic grounds? This is to say that the Humean
critique could apply moreso to one's theory of knowledge but needn't presuppose one's
theory of truth, that it's epistemically impactful but not ontologically decisive.
-----------------------------------------------We can stipulate to a theory of truth, speculatively, for argument's sake, or normatively,
for all moral and practical purposes.
When we suggest one cannot reason from an is to an ought, we recognize that our
descriptive, evaluative and normative probes of reality are [i]methodologically
autonomous[/i], each asking distinctly different questions. We are not, however,
suggesting that they are not otherwise [i]axiologically integral,[/i] each necessary but
none, alone, sufficient, for every human value-realization.
We are not saying that one cannot couple descriptive (pre)suppositions, evaluative
dispositions and normative propositions in one's premises and then reason one's way to
prescriptive conclusions. Folks might reasonably disagree, however, regarding the
ultimate grounds of our descriptions (truth or Truth), evaluations (beauty or Beauty) and
norms (goodness or Goodness).
Those ultimate grounds operate axiomatically, so, we encounter godelian-like
constraints, unable to prove those axioms within the very systems they axiomatize. We
are confronted with a choice between consistency and completeness. The good money's
ordinarily opting for incompleteness.
This doesn't mean that we cannot formulate a system that is both complete and
consistent, however. It only means we cannot prove that we have.
Hume's critique, then, has an epistemic force similar to godelian constraints. He cannot
[i]a priori[/i] maintain that one cannot reason from an is to an ought, only that one
cannot know whether one has necessarily done so.
Pascal's Wager invokes such ontological, hence deontological, uncertainty. It invites
one, existentially, to live as if our existential orientations to truth, beauty and goodness
are grounded in putative transcendent imperatives of Truth, Beauty and Goodness. One
may live with the epistemic uncertainty and ontological vagueness implicit in both
Hume's critique and godelian incompleteness but still opt, existentially and practically,
and not unreasonably, to live as if our shared evaluative dispositions and normative
propositions are indeed grounded more deeply than our evolutionary inheritance. Or
not.
As for Pascal's specific gains and losses vis a vis what's at stake, that invites critique.
But the structure of the Wager survives, in my view, based on generic equiprobability
principles, which guide practical reason.
------------------------------------------------In a thermodynamic environment, far from equilibrium, dissipative structures arise,
morphodynamically, with novel boundary conditions formed. From the interaction of
morphodynamic structures, novel dissipative structures and boundary conditions arise,
which can interact --- not just thermodynamically and morphodynamically, but --teleodynamically.
The teleodynamic refers to downward causations. Teleodynamic realities interact
semiotically with novel boundary conditions provided by signs and, for humans, alone,
symbols.
This is the narrative called emergence. It's a descriptive heuristic, not robustly
explanatory.
People distinguish between weak and strong emergence, but the former distinction
remains trivial, the latter, question begging.
One takeaway is that semiotic science employs a minimalist telos, but doesn't suggest
whether or not its downward causations would violate physical causal closure.
The emergence of consciousness, in my view, could well have been entirely physical,
so, too, with life.
Without knowing the initial thermodynamic conditions, it's not possible to place odds.
Emergence isn't inconsistent with telos or Telos.
-------------------------------------------------
scientific theories, further, will discourse primarily with a terminology that employs
concepts that have been negotiated in a community of inquiry that --- not only
empirically measures and inductively tests, but --- pragmatically cashes out the
modeling power of those concepts.
This enhanced modeling power thus further differentiates theoretic from metaphysical
interpretations in terms of conceptual warrant, interdisciplinary consilience,
hypothetical fecundity, pragmatic utility, existential actionability, evidential
measurability, phenomenal predictability, popperian falsifiability and other normative
criteria of good scientific research programs.
Not all scientific theories can demonstrate all of these criteria, but they can be
distinguished from metaphysical heuristics using most of these criteria. The theory of
evolution is clearly a scientific interpretation while both intelligent design and
philosophical naturalism are metaphysical interpretations, so to speak, meta-theoretic.
The whole notion of irreducible or specified complexity lacks probabilistic significance
from the get-go.
So, the concept of probability has no validity vis a vis a coincidence and statistical
science thus pertains to chance and not coincidence. Probability deals with the
epistemically-unavailable, is an empirical notion subject to empirical methods and is
assigned to arguments with premises and conclusions (and not rather to events, states or
types of same).
I suppose that if we knew enough about the emergence of life or of consciousness, much
less the universe's initial conditions, then we could imaginatively (conceivably) walk
ourselves back to life's beginnings, the dawn of consciousness or even T=0 and thereby
invoke chance, but we don't thus have such an informed grasp of what should or should
not be expected of these realities.
------------------------------------------------That's why we distinguish between descriptive sciences, which employ a
[i]methodological[/i] naturalism, and interpretive metaphysics, not all which employ a
[i]philosophical[/i] naturalism.
As long as no one confuses what belongs in science books and what belongs in
philosophy books, there's no rub for me.
Philosophically, the emergentist paradigm, in my view, serves as the paragon of
interpretive heuristics vis a vis complexity. It precisely has room for formal and final
causations, especially from the perspective of semiotic science. It takes note of
[i]downward[/i] causation in nature, but doesn't [i]a priori[/i] suggest whether it would
necessarily violate physical causal closure or not.
I embrace an emergentist stance, myself, but remain metaphysically agnostic regarding
the origins of the universe, life and consciousness. I find that the affirmation of
teleodynamics makes reality much more intelligible as a heuristic device even though,
obviously, it doesn't gift us with a great deal of explanatory adequacy.
Allowing a design inference into descriptive or theoretic sciences is not the proper
antidote to [i]scientism[/i]. Instead, scientism and ID theory both need to be chased back
across the quadrangle to the philosophy department.
Metaphysics provide interpretive heuristics, which may or may not be true, without
adding new information to our systems. Their sheer multiplicity reveals their still-innegotiation status. They gift us, when well formulated, with good questions. Not
answers.
Life's higher goods, which are intrinsically rewarding, are [i]givens[/i] and in no need of
an apologetic or justification to be realized. A good heuristic, though, can be tested
pragmatically. Certain amplifications of epistemic risks can augment human valuerealizations.
------------------------------------------------Sciences describe. Cultures evaluate. Philosophies norm. Metaphysics & religions
interpret, as do those fast & frugal heuristics gifted by evolution, which we refer to as
common sense.
We interpret reality, existentially, in a robustly participatory manner (beyond any mere
cognitive map-making).
The normative mediates between the descriptive and interpretive to realize the
evaluative.
Our methods differ in the questions they ask, which makes them autonomous.
What's that? Describe it.
What's that to us? Evaluate it.
What's the best way to acquire or avoid that? Norm it, morally & practically.
Given any relevant epistemic indeterminacy and ontological vagueness, how shall we
interpret this reality (including proximate, penultimate or ultimate realities)?
Existentially, we will [i]live as if[/i] ... thus and such is the case.
No, my pragmatic criteria apply only to a theory of knowledge, not a theory of truth. In
other words, it does not equate truth with utility. It suggests, rather, that a useful belief
has a greater chance of also being true, hence is weakly truth-indicative.
------------------------------------------------Our discourse implicitly relies on various metaphysical presuppositions, which function
as indispensable methodological stipulations. While it would be silly to deny that such
presuppositions are ontologically suggestive, at the same time, we haven't been able to
demonstrate that they're ontologically decisive.
So, scientifically, we bracket the nature of regularities, using probabilities for all
[i]practical[/i] purposes. Metaphysically, many different (reasonable) interpretations
compete, in varying degrees of plausibility.
Any who suggest that epistemology, in many instances, successfully models ontology,
in varying degrees (as it seems you are suggesting?), are certainly not being
unreasonable.
-------------------------------------------------
Actually, it seems you have begun to grasp what I mean, when you suggest [i]If we
know the numbers we can work out the probability[/i].
We don't know the numbers, so can't calculate the odds, that any given dissipative
structure might arise far from thermodynamic equilibrium.
Scientific theories remain rather domain specific and cannot (yet) be facilely cobbled
together into a Theory of Everything. They suffer explanatory gaps. Scientific theories
don't rise and fall based solely on explanatory gaps. Instead, they gain theoretic
resilience from making innumerable unfalsified predictions and gifting us with
countless practical applications, unlike, for example, the Design Inference.
Precisely because scientific theories are vague interpretive heuristics, they don't
ambition the degree of explanatory power you seem to require of them. They, instead,
enhance our modeling power of reality, [i]relying[/i] on certain rules without
[i]explaining[/i] them. So, again, your overemphases on explanatory gaps to discredit
the modern biological syntheses don't strike at the theories' modeling power resiliency.
Furthermore, your confirmation bias is betrayed by your inventory of problematics,
which wholesale ignores the web of coherence provided by the [b]uncountable[/b]
examples of practical applications of our modern biological syntheses.
Finally, scientific theories, as interpretive heuristic devices, especially those that are
broadly interdisciplinary, aren't tossed aside due to explanatory gaps or experimental
anomalies. Isolated, auxilliary hypotheses that get disconfirmed get replaced. They
aren't fatal to the syntheses, as you continue to insist.
Most of all, though, theories don't get tossed aside until there are better ones to take
their place. What [i]scientific[/i] theory do you have in mind?
It may turn out that our methodological naturalism may ultimately fail us precisely
because reality's implicately ordered by initial, boundary or limit conditions that, in
principle (ontologically), elude our physical measurement systems, or due to technical
methodological constraints (epistemologically), or entropic erasures. What would make
no sense at all would be to [i]a priori[/i] concede such epistemic defeat, to shut down
inquiry. So, just because we persist in a line of inquiry, methodologically, that stipulates
to naturalist presuppositions, doesn't mean anyone's thereby [i]a priori[/i] committed to
naturalist metaphysics. Science brackets metaphysical stances.
------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------I already located our impasses 1) at the level of methodological categories, how one
conceives scientific theories versus metaphysical interpretations and 2) how theories
function. It would be pointless to argue evidentially for and against a stance, where I not
only object to its premises but don't even agree with its definitions.
Regarding the latter, you rather idiosyncratically set the evidential and explanatory bars
inordinately higher than science's conventional standards and relatively modest
epistemic aims.
Resultingly, you attack your own caricature of evolutionary principles, the applications
of which are so abundantly accessible that any dispassionate inquirer can readily tally
them without my assistance, the principles of which don't lend themselves to ontological
distinctions, micro vs macro.
------------------------------------------------My own interpretive stance has been influenced by both Eastern & Western traditions.
My attitude likely overlaps greatly with yours.
My only interest in this thread concerns demarcation criteria vis a vis science and
metaphysics.
------------------------------------------------This math is [i]deeply[/i] flawed. Selection is not random. Quite the contrary, it involves
deterministic processes. Even nonliving morphodynamics involve deterministic
processes. Thus, there's an [b]orthograde[/b] (against entropy) [i]ratchet[/i] dynamic,
dramatically increasing various probabilities.
That particular study by Axe wasn't published in a mainstream peer reviewed journal,
likely because it wouldn't have survived. Besides, contrary to this example, ancestral
reconstructions have indeed been used to change enzyme/binding specificity.
As far as life's origins, establishing odds against any specific life-form isn't informative
or interesting. We need to know the odds, rather, against any life-form. The odds that a
specific protein won't likely win the lottery pale in comparison to the odds that
[i]some[/i] protein might.
Infinity inschminity.
------------------------------------------------Not sure exactly how materialists might self-describe re: your other descriptions, but
since there are several materialist versions of philosophy of mind, it seems there
wouldn't be a single philosophy of intention either.
You're trafficking in either-or and all or nothing conceptions for realities that present in
degrees.
And you're dealing with an idiosyncratic conception of theories. Theories are variously
formal due to the nature of the realities they interpret. Theories can present syntactical
interpretations, like axiomatic propositions. They can also employ semantical
interpretations, like classes of models. They also include pragmatic interpretations
regarding how [i]they can be [b]used[/b][/i].
Indeed, the quintessential example for how theoretic interpretation works can be seen
precisely in the topic under consideration --- [b]population genetics[/b]:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/structure-scientific-theories/
As for common descent, it has been so widely corroborated across so many diverse
[i]lines of evidence[/i] over a century and a half that it enjoys the normative impetus of
a [i]fact[/i] --- not something I find terribly interesting in a philosophy forum. Some of
those lines of evidence are summarized here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
The pseudo-scientific number games being played by some all commit the same errors,
1) confusing coincidence and chance and 2) arbitrarily setting bayesian priors in the
place of unknown initial and boundary conditions:
http://infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/addendaB.html
clear supermajority, worldwide, participate in spiritual practices and are open to more
than physical descriptions of reality? I doubt seriously many nonscientists give much
thought at all to philosophy of science? Best I can tell, a great many scientists seem
philosophically illiterate? I have no real grasp of such sociologic metrics, so used a lot
of question marks ???
------------------------------------------------In my view, we know enough from both science and our own phenomenal experience to
do anthropology without becoming overwrought about competing metaphysical
interpretations. Metaphysically, physicalist conceptions of consciousness or even of the
soul threaten neither human freedom nor human value-realizations. Similarly,
physicalist conceptions of cosmogony don't obviate theological approaches.
This is to suggest that methodological naturalism, even when coupled with a physicalist
metaphysic, anthropologically and/or cosmologically, remains a solid philosophical step
removed from eliminativist and reductionist accounts.
Now, as far as norming anyone's approach to ultimate realities, in a pluralistic world,
free exercise and nonestablishment works well here in the USA. If those who take a
more enchanted stance toward reality seem to be having a rough go of things in the
public marketplace of ideas, I suggest they focus more on getting their own rampantly
fundamentalistic houses in order and less on Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris,
who engage facile caricatures. In other words, quit emulating those caricatures! The
world, per my stance, remains pervasively enchanted, just not for all the reasons many
seem to imagine.
Edit to add url's:
Those interested might check out
1) metanexus.net
2) counterbalance.org
3) ctns.org
------------------------------------------------I agree that religions, going beyond metaphysics, can augment both human freedom and
human value-realizations, if that nuance or conception is worth anything to you.
But I would maintain that the anthropology we can derive from science, phenomenal
experience, common sense and common sensibilities, including philosophy but
bracketing metaphysics, is both necessary and sufficient to establish human freedom
and human value-realizations.
This is to recognize that people can live both a good and a moral life without religion.
If we have an impasse, that's fine. I just wanted to more precisely locate it as well as to
clarify both what I was saying and not saying.
-------------------------------------------------
I'll leave you with this teaser. While I think any anthropology worth its while would
have to affirm our radical human finitude, my theological anthropology doesn't do [i]the
Fall[/i].
--------------------------------------That's right. Faith, properly approached, takes one [i]beyond[/i] but not [i]without[/i]
reason.
Religions generally address both [i]creedal[/i] and [i]moral[/i] realities, the former
characterizing reality's first and last things or [i]ultimate realities[/i], the latter
pertaining to this, that and the other thing or [i]proximate[/i] realities. While creedal
realities tend to rely on alleged special revelations, moral realities are transparent to
human reason.
Creedal beliefs aspire much more to successful references to --- much less to successful
descriptions of --- ultimate reality and generally entail an existential disjunction or a
[i]living as if[/i] ultimate reality is friendly, as if all may, can, will and shall be well.
Such an evaluative disposition toward ultimate realities, which can also inform one's
affective attunement to others, the cosmos, even oneself, is transmitted by and
celebrated within interpretive communities.
In such communities, right belonging (orthocommunal) and right desiring
(orthopathic) tend to enjoy a formative primacy over right behaving (orthopraxic), much
less right believing (orthodoxic). A [i]polydoxic[/i] perspective, gifted by modern
interreligious dialogue and comparative theology, interprets the diverse creedal stances
of the Great Traditions, as well as indigenous religions, as complementary references to
--- not conflicting descriptions of --- ultimate realities.
When it comes to human references to ultimate realities, we inescapably fall back on
logical consistency and evidential plausibility and our interpretations compete, some
clearly better than others. Even among the best equiplausible interpretations we will
find agnostic, theistic, nontheistic and atheistic accounts, none which deserve
stigmatizing.
When it comes to proximate realities, both practical and moral, normatively, our
interpretations incorporate evidential probability. Robustly probabilistic reasoning
guides us morally and practically. It helps us discern the best disciplines, asceticisms
and practices to foster our intellectual, affective, moral and social growth and
development, in other words, to realize our human authenticity. One doesn't need to be
on any particular creedal path to realize such values.
So, when we talk about the rules of evidence in the context of failing or succeeding, we
always inquire further: failing to do what? Burdens of proof are normative rules which
ask: [i]What do you want to do with that evidence?[/i].
Religious beliefs regarding creedal realities thus enjoy free exercise but are curtailed by
nonestablishment. Interpreted as evaluative dispositions toward ultimate realities, they
can be celebrated as both private and communal [i]reverie[/i]. Those regarding moral
and practical realities, however, require higher burdens of proof (because they aspire to
coerce others' behaviors, whether prescriptively or proscriptively), which is why
essentially religious moral claims do fail, evidentially, should not serve as a public
[i]referee[/i] (of others' behaviors) and cannot justify coercive strategies.
------------------------------------------------Biosemiotics describe how living things interpret signs. When synthesized with an
emergentist stance, it would recognize [i]downward causations,[/i] which can be
characterized as analogous to Aristotelian formal and final causations, but it doesn't
[i]explain[/i] them metaphysically. For example, they may or may not violate physical
causal closure. Biosemiotics combined with emergentism remains metaphysically
agnostic and is not robustly explanatory. It serves as a vague heuristic device and
provides some conceptual placeholders, precisely where questions continue to beg.
------------------------------------------------Beyond biosemiotics, which includes phyto-, zoo- and anthropo- semiotics, some
[i]complexity[/i] thought speculates about a putatative [i]physiosemiotics[/i], which
implicates a [b]pansemiotic[/b] perspective.
A pansemiotic stance would be consistent with a [i]teleonomic[/i] account
([i]purposive[/i] integration or adaptation not [i]purposeful[/i] intention) of at least some
of the universe's regularities.
While science, as a methodological naturalism, would remain metaphysically [i]
[b]a[/b]gnostic[/i] regarding the putative nomicity of regularities, that's quite different
from the metaphysical [i][b]i[/b]gnosticism[/i] urged by the [i]scientistic[/i] cohort. In
the first instance, science leaves the question to be framed by philosophy. In the latter,
scientism says the question's not even meaningful or is a pseudo-question.
We'll continue to probe the origins of the quantum, of the universe, of life and of
consciousness, scientifically. Complexity approaches will continue to frame these
explanatory gaps, philosophically, and the questions they raise are legitimate.
If I've interpreted you correctly, at least in part, you are protesting metaphysical
ignosticism regarding these questions. I would agree, wholeheartedly, that such a stance
is philosophically indefensible.
------------------------------------------------Is your stance epistemological, ontological or both? Are there specific philosophies of
mind you [I]a priori[/i] reject? or not? or even accept?
I ask in the interest of seeing how your stance toward the mind might interface with
your metaphysical framing of life's origins?
------------------------------------------------It's not sentimentalism to recognize the difference between fully determined
mechanisms and partially determined organisms. Mechanistic accounts of organisms are
necessary, because organisms are, in part, determinate, but they are insufficient
precisely because organisms are, in part, indeterminate. Arguably, this could mirror the
fabric of the cosmos. Pervasive indeterminacy, in principle, would prevent complete
reducibility. That's one reason we refer to methodological naturalism and not
methodological [i]physicalism[/i]. Some scientists don't get this distinction, which can
make for bad science.
Those who draw inspiration from Robert Rosen's work may also find the following
authors stimulating: James Coffman,
Joyus Crynoid, Terrence Deacon,
Jesper Hoffmeyer, Alicia Juarrero, Donald Mikulecky and Evan Thompson.
See Crynoid's [i]The Scientific Misconception of Life[/i]
http://hubpages.com/education/The-Scientific-Misconception-of-Life
Consider Coffman's abstract, below, of
[i]On the Meaning of Chance in Biology[/i], Biosemiotics, December 2014, Volume
7, Issue 3, pp 377-388
[quote=Coffman]
Chance has somewhat different meanings in different contexts, and can be taken to be
either ontological (as in quantum indeterminacy) or epistemological (as in stochastic
uncertainty). Here I argue that, whether or not it stems from physical indeterminacy,
chance is a fundamental biological reality that is meaningless outside the context of
knowledge. To say that something happened by chance means that it did not happen by
design. This of course is a cornerstone of Darwins theory of evolution: random
undirected variation is the creative wellspring upon which natural selection acts to
sculpt the functional form (and hence apparent design) of organisms. In his
essay Chance & Necessity, Jacques Monod argued that an intellectually honest
commitment to objectivity requires that we accord chance a central role in an otherwise
mechanistic biology, and suggested that doing so may well place the origin of life
outside the realm of scientific tractability. While that may be true, ongoing research on
the origin of life problem suggests that a biogenesis may have been possible, and
perhaps even probable, under the conditions that existed on primordial earth. Following
others, I argue that the world should be viewed as causally open, i.e. primordially
indeterminate or vague. Accordingly, chance ought to be the default scientific
explanation for origination, a universal null hypothesis to be assumed until disproven.
In this framework, creation of anything new manifests freedom (allowing for chance),
and causation manifests constraint, the developmental emergence of which establishes
the space of possibilities that may by chance be realized.[/quote]
------------------------------------------------Metaphysics and science remain in a dynamical dialog. The sciences rely, implicitly, on
formal categories and relational structures, which a metaphysic explicitly unifies,
introducing abstract concepts to refer to such unifications. Those categories and
structures include modalities, entities, essences, properties, causalities, primitives (like
space, time, mass & energy), mereologies and such.
The most highly speculative theoretical sciences shade into metaphysics on a continuum
that reflects the different degrees in employment of abstract concepts in any given
interpretive discourse.
Science not only describes but interprets. Those interpretations are explanatory. Those
explanations are theories. Those theories are scientific.
Very highly speculative theories introduce novel unifying abstract concepts. The fewer
of these employed, the more scientific. The more of these employed, the more
metaphysical. Some interpretations are indeed more scientific. Abiogenesis employs
fewer abstract concepts than ID, so is more scientific. At the same time, any biopoietic
interpretation that ignores complexity theory and mereological relationships would be
bad science.
So, these specific demarcation criteria (number of conceptual placeholders) do
distinguish between biopoietic and ID accounts. There are other criteria we've also
discussed that further distinguish between a scientific and metaphysical interpretation.
But, even if one stipulated for argument's sake that the design inference is sufficiently
scientific, it employs a woefully inadequate analysis of relevant im/probabilities, which
makes it, at best, bad science.
------------------------------------------------I share your critique of scientism.
I affirm the need for an [i]expanded[/i] evolutionary synthesis, generally, supplemented
by holistic and emergentist perspectives, also, specifically, framed by a semiotic
interpretation. (I say expanded and supplemented but never conceived it
mechanistically, myself.)
This synthesis would remain agnostic regarding both the universe's primitives (space,
time, mass, energy plus ???) and the nature of its regularities (nomicity vs stochasticity).
This is to suggest, perhaps, that, ontologically, I reject no serious metaphysic, [i]in
principle[/i]. Epistemologically, I take a fallibilist stance, where I recognize the reality
of any given epistemic uncertainty, [i]provisionally[/i], but don't suggest it will
necessarily remain, [i]in principle[/i].
Concretely, for example, I wouldn't [i]a priori[/i] rule out panpsychism or even
consciousness as a primitive. My sneaking suspicions, however, are that consciousness
is an emergent reality, consistent with a nonreductive physicalist stance. Since I don't
have to choose, I don't.
I appreciate that a mechanistic account is not sufficient to describe human moral
realities.
A semiotic emergentist evolutionary synthesis, in my view, is sufficient, whatever the
natures of our universe's primitives and regularities. Our phenomenal experience,
common sense, common sensibilities and good old fashioned [i]reductio ad
absurdum[/i] reveal what we need to know about our free will and how to be moral.
---------------------------------------------Just to clarify, do you accept the distinction between the neo-darwinian synthesis [i]per
se[/i] and its [i]materialist conception[/i]?
In other words, it's one thing to suggest that the evolutionary synthesis is clearly wrong
but quite another to recognize that it's merely inadequate to this or that task? And,
further, that methodological naturalism, itself, doesn't require a mechanistic paradigm?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Have you come across the neologism - [i]ententional[/i]?
Terry Deacon coined it as a reference to a broad range of phenomena that exhibit
[i]aboutness[/i]. It would include end states, goals, functions, purposes, life, teleology,
intentionality and so on.
Also, are you familiar with the distinctions that ethologists and others have drawn
between teleomatic, teleonomic, teleodynamic and teleologic?
The above distinctions are controversial and their definitions vary. Below are my own
idiosyncratic parsings.
The [b]teleomatic [/b] refers to mechanistic phenomena governed by physical laws. The
ententional [i]aboutness[/i] of teleomatic realities vis a vis end states might include the
2nd law of thermodynamics or, perhaps, a principle like entropy maximization.
The [b]teleonomic[/b] refers to organismic phenomena governed by programs
(computational & algorithmic). The ententional [i]aboutness[/i] of teleonomic realities
might include [i]intentional aboutness[/i], adaptations, functions, abductive [i]instinct[/i]
and [i]purpos[b]ive[/b][/i] behaviors with determinable end states.
[i]genetic[/i] (Dawkins) and [i]memetic[/i] (Dennett) fallacies, which treat genes and
memes as [i]replica[b]tors[/b][/i], when they are, instead, mere [i]replicas[/i].
Clarifying those misunderstandings may not do much, however, to cure anyone's
anxiety regarding the grounding of moral realities.
Most moral approaches seem to converge, methodologically, in their analyses of acts,
intentions and circumstances. They tend to reason from is to ought, from the given to
the normative, from the descriptive to the prescriptive, by coupling shared prescriptive
premises to shared descriptive premises and then reasoning to a normative conclusion.
The shared prescriptive premises, sometimes referred to as self-evident, derive from
shared evaluative dispositions, which are grounded in our collectively being similarly
situated as radically social beings, who experience, empathetically, a great deal of
human solidarity and compassion, transkin even. Not to say we're not variously
tribalistic, which contributes to tensions and tears at the fabric of solidarity. But, for the
most part, our existential orientations to what we call truth, beauty, goodness, unity and
freedom needn't be grounded in transcendental imperatives in order to work.
As it is, those who rely on foundational epistemologies, authoritative appeals and
transcendental theories of truth don't agree, anyway, regarding which authority or
foundation grounds our stances regarding good and evil, right and wrong, true and false.
Even with a foundational theory of truth, a properly fallibilist theory of knowledge
should inject enough epistemic humility into our moral reasoning. After all, shouldn't
any de-ontology be at least as modest as its ontology is tentative?
------------------------------------------------You have precisely located where the religious impulse often derails. The matrix I
employ uses an axis of speculative to affective and another of kataphatic to apophatic.
An overemphasis on the 1) affective and kataphatic produces [i]pietism[/i] and
[i]fideism[/i]; 2) speculative and kataphatic produces [i]rationalism[/i]; 3) affective and
apophatic produces [i]quietism[/i]; 4) speculative and apophatic produces
[i]encratism[/i].
These epistemic vices apply to one's meta-philosophical outlook every bit as much as
they describe one's [i]mythos[/i] vis a vis putative ultimate realities.
There are varieties of rationalism, wherein the speculative impulse avoids self-critique
and/or apophatic criticism, which we know as the epistemic vices of radical empiricism
and logical positivism, which also manifests as scientism, which further leads to
theological ignosticism, all of which are philosophically indefensible.
It is one thing to take the stance of philosophical naturalism, which can certainly be
internally coherent, logically valid and evidentially plausible vis a vis primal and/or
ultimate realities. It's quite another to suggest, however, that religious stances cannot,
This is all just to suggest an optimistic stance for our methodological naturalism since,
as GK Chesterton suggested, [i]we don't yet know enough about reality to say that it's
unknowable.[/i].
------------------------------------------------Religion, properly conceived, would take one [i]beyond[/i] our positivist and
philosophic horizons of human concern but not [i]without[/i] them. This is to suggest
that it can be pulled off with one's epistemic virtue intact, just like any other interpretive
metanarrative, whether implicit or explicit.
------------------------------------------------There's a plurality of models.
------------------------------------------------I precisely meant to imply that probability's not necessarily incompatible --- not only
with determinism, but --- other explanations.
------------------------------------------------When distinctions are drawn between spatial and temporal singularities in speculative
cosmology, I never gathered that was done over against the notion of space-time. I took
it to mean there might be competing ways to model the nature of space-time. For
example, when modeling the universe as finite but unbounded, we'd employ one set of
mathematical axioms for time (e.g. imaginary numbers, square root of negative one),
while other models might describe it differently? Thus I've come across such
distinctions as the [i]spatialization[/i] of time versus the [i]temporalization of[/i] space,
the former modeling boundary conditions per Hawkings' [i]history of time[/i], the latter
corresponding, perhaps, to our conventional notions. But I can better see, now, the
possibility for category errors in drawing such facile comparisons, especially by
approaching it from the perspective that, as you say, imputes neither intrinsic meaning
nor objective existence to same. I'm still trying to learn the right questions, much less
evaluate the myriad answers.
------------------------------------------------QM doesn't seem weird to me. The competing interpretations can get rather interesting,
though!
This isn't to deny that other interlocutors might not over-reach metaphysically.
For my part, I'm quite willing to concede the internal coherence, logical validity and
some degree of plausibility of a materialist monism, as a [i]provisional[/i] closure.
There's nothing, in principle, that stands in the way of materialists reciprocating such
concessions to competing stances?
If, when one adopts a materialist stance, however, one is also overtaken by the urge to
annihilate metaphysics, telos and action under uncertainty, then highly speculative
theoretic sciences, teleonomic paradigms and decision theory norms will suffer,
unnecessarily so, as epistemic collateral damage. Such [i]hege[/i]monistic urges were
philosophically purged, last century, but those epistemological whack-a-moles --logical positivism, radical empiricism and theological ignosticism --- keep popping up
in different ways?
------------------------------------------------See #247 re: the putative relationship between temporality and intentionality. How one
conceives telos, whether as primal and/or emergent, leads to different inferences re:
design. So, too, re: time.
------------------------------------------------Even if one stipulated, for argument's sake, that conceptions of past and future were
only [i]emergent[/i] references to nature, couldn't they still successfully model our
spatio-temporal reality?
We must disambiguate each conception and define whether it's being predicated
univocally, analogically or equivocally between our physical and metaphysical models.
To the extent that certain of our physical conceptions represent emergent descriptions of
nature, while others represent fundamental descriptions, the former would be predicated
only analogically between our physical and metaphysical models, while the latter might
be predicated univocally.
More concretely, this is not at all to suggest that conceptions like intentionality,
temporality and various causes would, necessarily, not successfully refer,
metaphysically, if they were taken to be physically emergent. Rather, it would mean that
those metaphysical references refer only analogically.
One practical upshot would seem to be that, methodologically, we might make a
successful reference to such a putative reality but remain a step or more removed from a
successful description of that reality. In any event, our claims would be weaker (hence,
more defensible?).
This, of course, applies to any Design Inference and what might be the precise nature of
a design, purpose, final cause or designer, for example, if the telic conception represents
an emergent rather than fundamental reference to nature, or vice versa.
-------------------------------------------------
I most resonate with those who represented semiotic stances. The most salient
distinction between animal and human biosemiotics presents when humans interpret
symbols, beyond the interpretation of icons and indexes, of which animals are capable.
Within an emergentist paradigm, brains certainly exhibit teleomatic features, explained
per [i]mechanistic[/i] physical laws, and teleonomic features, explained in terms of
[i]organismic[/i] programs (algorithmic, computational, determinable). Human brains
also exhibit teleodynamic features, which are noncomputational, exhibiting downward
causations that wouldn't, necessarily, violate physical causal closure but which derive
from boundary constraints, analogous to Aristotelian formal causes.
Teleomatic properties are [i]about[/i] end states (e.g. maximizing entropy). Teleonomic
properties are about end goals (purposive) and would include [i]instinctual[/i]
abduction. Teleodynamic properties are end-directed (purposeful) and higher order,
which is to recognize that they include [i]inferential[/i] abduction (as well as, triadically,
induction and deduction). The acquisition of language, which may have co-evolved with
the brain and which is largely social, is integral to higher order cognition.
The Libet experiments, in my view, refer to teleomatic and teleonomic brain activities.
So, too, jumping out of the way of that London bus. Folks may grossly underestimate
how much human brain activity exhibits teleonomicity. Throwing oneself in front of
that London bus, however, requires teleodynamic brain activity.
Directly, though, the evolutionary role of consciousness has [b]not[/b] been explained
yet. Those heuristic conceptions --- teleomatic, teleonomic and teleodynamic --- are,
indeed, placeholders for rather intractable explanatory gaps. At least until we reconcile
the quantum and gravity, maybe beyond that even, we don't know how those gaps might
close, reducing to new physical accounts, or intractably perdure, nonreductively.
---------------------------------------That might roughly describe [i]one[/i] interpretation of the data for [i]some[/i] brain
activities, but the case hasn't been made that it's an exhaustive description of [i]all[/i]
brain activities.
Misspelling? You meant, rather, scienti[b]s[/b]tic?
Scienti[b]f[/b]ic refers to a methodology, not an ideology.
Many draw a distinction between physicalism and naturalism. Scientists generally
employ a methodological [i]naturalism.[/i]
An emergentist stance, which would be agnostic to philosophy of mind, so, not
inconsistent with a physicalist interpretation, recognizes the unpredictable novelty that
presents as dissipative structures interact. Not all levels of complexity can be described
by mechanistic accounts due to emergent whole-part constraints. Still, as ontological
density increases and complexities transist from the mechanistic to the organismic, their
activities can be described via programs that are clearly algorithmic, computational,
determinable, even though purposive. Human realities require both these mechanistic
and organismic accounts, which are necessary but not sufficient to account for our
experience of purposeful, noncomputational brain activities.
All of these properties exhibit final causation, just of different types. One might
question, then, whether we have introduced distinctions that make a difference. The
same is true for the distinction between [i]ententional[/i] and [i]intentional[/i], a
neologism introduced by Terry Deacon as discussed on the [i]abiogenesis[/i] thread.
Ententionality refers to a broad range of phenomena that exhibit [i]aboutness[/i] and
includes end states, goals, functions, adaptations, purposes, life, teleology, intentionality
and such.
Deacon also coined the term teleodynamic, which per his usage seemed to include
teleonomic properties, but I have parsed it to draw a distinction between it and Ernst
Mayr's ethological conception of teleonomic.
The differences between these concepts are nomological, specifically located in how we
model the rules that operate at each discrete level of complexity.
We model thermodynamic processes, homeodynamics, for the most part, utilizing the
2nd Law. For morphodynamics, we use physics, broadly conceived to model physicochemical, teleomatic end-states.
We model teleonomic properties with reference to programs, whether developed by
phylogenetic (via selection) or ontogenetic (via experience or social interaction)
activities or even a quasi-autonomous, electro-mechanical apparatus via human
programming. To oversimplify, behavioristically, we're essentially talking S ----> R
or stimulus ----> response, although the algorithms can get increasingly complex.
We refer to teleonomic properties as purpos[b]ive[/b], but teleodynamic properties as
purpose[b]ful[/b].
Here emerge human realities, which, while partly determined and uniquely bounded,
exhibit robustly autopoietic, intentional behaviors. Freedom, for its part, is not an all or
nothing, either-or, reality, but presents in degrees. The human will is undeniably plenty
[i]free-enough[/i] to enjoy manifold and multiform value-realizations, broadly
categorized in terms of truth, beauty, goodness, unity and freedom.
I don't ordinarily bother refuting facile philosophical tautologies and reductionistic
accounts by employing formal arguments or even im/plausibilist appeals, but approach
them the same way I do [i]solipsism[/i].That which lacks existential actionability,
pragmatic utility or robust normativity, both prudential and moral, gets tossed into the
philosophic wastebin via good old fashioned [i]reductio ad absurdum[/i]. I'd rather
watch football than construct a sylly syllogism to prove I'm not a brain in a vat or alienprogrammed robot with an umwelt.
------------------------------------------------I first encountered such distinctions in biology, then realized, later, they were
philosophically freighted.
The fast and frugal heuristics of common sense gift us a great deal of modeling power,
evolving in relationship, as I like to say, to [i]this, that and the other thing[/i] or
[i]proximate[/i] realities. When it comes to various [i]first and last things[/i] or
[i]ultimate[/i] realities, which include horizons for the emergence of quantum, cosmic,
living and conscious realities, while formalizing our models and arguments gifts us
enormous heuristic utility, in my view, the logical structures of common sense remain
indispensable. I refer, here, to instinctual abduction, inferential abduction (including
what some call retroduction as well as transduction or analogical reasoning), fuzzy-type
logic, which is more like set theory, less like algebra, and cumulative case-like, informal
reasoning. The epistemic virtue that's required when considering primal, ultimate or
horizon realities, is much less realized by syllogistic approaches, much more realized by
avoiding any [b]rush to closure[/b] when otherwise giving free reign to abductive
inference.
Formal, syllogistic logic remains an enormously powerful tool, but, starting with a false
premise, one can proceed free of fallacy, very efficiently, to an erroneous conclusion,
which is why the greatest logicians can end up further from the truth in a nanosecond
than the local village idiot could ever aspire to travel in a lifetime. This is precisely why
I harp on definitions so much. Many times, one's conclusions might not be explicitly
obvious in one's premises but are otherwise implicitly embedded in one's very
definitions. Disambiguation searches out our predications as we engage one model vis a
vis another to discern whether they're employed univocally, equivocally or analogically,
much less successfully.
Well, the teleonomic operates in social organisms both phylogenetically, via selected
adaptations, and ontogenetically, via experience & social interaction, which involve
nonsymbolic biosemiosis.
I think the epistemic virtue of an emergentist stance precisely resides in its avoidance of
either an epistemic or ontic rush to closure via its bracketing of metaphysics. This is to
say that I employ an emergentist + semiotic + methodological naturalist paradigm rather
minimalistically. For example, the cards I will not, necessarily, play, at one level of
complexity or the next, include concepts like supervenience, or distinctions like weak or
strong emergence, the latter begging questions, the former rather trivial.
I've a friend who refers to emergence as [i] something more from nothing but [/i]. I like
to say [i]something more from something else[/i]. The questions that beg remain
[i]nothing but [b]what[/b]?[/i] and [i][b]what[/b] else?[/i] ... etc!
So, I don't [i]a priori[/i] rule out consciousness being a primitive, along side space-time,
materio-energetic realities, anymore than I rule out physicalist or naturalist conceptions.
I do rule out the [i]consciousness [b]explained[/b][/i] absurd.
Intentionality and temporality remain indispensable conceptions, along with final
causation (but finality first [i]vaguely[/i] conceived, then dutifully disambiguated vis a
vis various levels of complexity or ontological densities).
We don't know enough about reality's initial, boundary and limit conditions, in my view,
to infer probabilistically what should or should not be expected, emergently. Strong
anthropic principles rely on a conceptual confusion between coincidence and chance.
Indeed, we go beyond mere description, evaluation and normativity whenever we
[i]interpret[/i] reality.
Interpretation existentially engages reality, perhaps in response to some equiprobable
existential disjunction ( In the shadows, is that a snake or rope? Uncertain, I shall jump
over it and leave it alone!), perhaps in response to some Jamesian forced, vital and live
option, perhaps in response to what Walker Percy distinguished as [i]news[/i] versus
information, always with [i]performative[/i] significance.
Philosophy, then, amounts to a life lived, hopefully well, whether one ever articulates
one's common sense and common sensibilities explicitly or, still competently, well
executes one's implicit sneaking suspicions even a tad unawares.
-------------------------------------------------
The Postmodern Critique, in my view, didn't drastically modify the Enlightenment, but
it did introduce a novel thought, [i]self-criticism[/i], which innoculates metaphysical
realisms against [b]naivete.[/b]
------------------Probabilities and plausibilities reflect epistemic not ontic states.
------------------------------------------------A [i]provisional[/i] ontology.
Epistemology relies on implicit metaphysical [i]presuppositions[/i], but we cannot [i]a
priori[/i] know whether they successfully refer only locally, like the rules of one's
neighborhood fantasy football club, or universally, which is to say, fundamentally or
emergently.
---------------------------------------------There is neither an [i]a priori[/i] nor [i]in principle[/i] assumption of unintelligibility,
only a recognition that intelligibility could be thwarted for all [i]practical[/i] purposes
and that we may have no way of [i]a priori[/i] or even [i]a posteriori[/i] knowing it,
should that happen.
------------------------------------------------It's also speculatively provisional, because both physical and metaphysical claims are,
properly considered, [i]fallibilistic[/i].
Metaphysical claims employ root metaphors, like substance, process, experience, etc
Dynamical accounts of regularities in a process metaphysic, which employs conceptions
like nonstrict identity, wouldn't be inconsistent with a continuum of epistemic states
representing degrees of intelligence along an axis of in/determinability, on one hand, on
the other, a continuum of ontic states representing degrees of causation along an axis of
in/determinism. Universally, then, intelligibility, itself, wouldn't, necessarily, hold.
Fallibilism would, however.
That's a theory of [i]truth[/i], which is distinct from a theory of [i]knowledge[/i].
Rational discourse can rely on a correspondent theory of truth even while only holding
to a coherentist, fallibilist theory of knowledge, or even pragmatism. This is to
recognize, again, that both epistemic state in/determinability and ontic state
in/determinism represent polar realities that present in degrees without threatening the
axioms of one's implicit, provisional, metaphysical presuppositions.
The [i]essence[/i] of metaphysical realities --- ultimate, primal and proximate --- or the
prevaling epistemic and ontic states of the environs wherein one evolved?
------------------------------------Do you not accept that there are a plurality of interpretations for quantum mechanics,
cosmogenesis, biogenesis and philosophy of mind as well as probability theory, itself,
precisely regarding epistemic, ontic and epi-ontic distinctions?
I was conflating nothing. I recognize both epistemic and ontic states. In the context of
equiprobability and equiplausibility there's no reason to misintepret those as anything
but epistemic descriptions.
------------------------------------------------You conflate a theory of knowledge with a theory of truth, which leads to a rather naive
realism rather than a fallibilist epistemology.
I've got news for you. Abductive inference is precisely what you were praising in
armchair thinkers. Inference is optimally triadic. Abductive hypothesizing and deductive
clarifying can spin their epistemic wheels without inductive testing ever hitting the
ontological road. The point was that abductive hypothesizing about ultimate realities
can only be considered either arational, nonrational or irrational by someone who
idiosyncratically narrows his definition of rationality, which keeps implicitly driving
your conclusions per the very epistemic vices you have explicitly disclaimed: radical
empiricism, logical positivism, theological ignosticism. Empirical falsifiability sets the
contours for neither rational discourse nor metaphysical hypotheses. You do realize that
metaphysics traffic in hypotheticals, not eternal verities? And that Popperian
falsification can't be, well, falsified! And is an overly narrow and idiosyncratic view of
empirical methodology and philosophy of science?
My point regarding abduction is that you cannot vote it out of one type of discourse or
domain without crippling its pragmatic utility in another, precisely due to overlapping
magisteria.
Your demarcation criteria continue to be either arbitrary or derived from idiosyncratic
definitions. Not all rational discourse is descriptive. Not just scientific interpretative or
theoretic discourse is rational.
It will turn a naive into a critical realism and infallibilistic metaphysical presuppositions
into provisional methodological stipulations that needn't present absolutely or
universally, all or nothing, either-or.
You mistake the Postmodern [i]Critique[/i], which deserved a response, for its
perversion into a [i]system[/i], which is indeed incoherent. The proper response, in my
view, is to drop your foundational epistemology for a nonfoundational brand, or at least
embrace a much more critical realism. Or, try Peirce's semiotic.
------------------------------------------------Yes, I had grasped that and wanted to take the opportunity to reinforce how I employ it.
Emergentism takes many forms, some which presumptively smuggle in rather reductive
presuppositions. If anyone hasn't gathered yet, I only employ metaphysical
presuppositions as provisional methodological stipulations. I embrace a fallibilist
metaphysical realism while being ontologically agnostic. Most human valuerealizations, in my view, via an axiological epistemology, can be adequately explicated
by an ontologically vague modal phenomenology, relying on informal, cumulative caselike reasoning. In short, I think our common sense and common sensibilities remain our
greatest epistemic resources but derail us if we rush to closure, which may be our most
ubiquitous epistemic vice.
A great deal of critical thinking goes into informal reasoning. Arguments which, alone,
may be rather weak, when otherwise stranded together in a cable of intertwined
inferences, can gain epistemic resilience and gift us with fairly good modeling power. I
think that cable metaphor originated with Peirce.
Thanks SO much for saying THAT, because, quite candidly, well ... sometimes, one has
to quit beating one's head against the wall just because it feels good when one stops.
------------------------------------------------Most who reify PSR, then reason syllogistically to Necessary Being, predicating same
in a deist, pantheist or classical theist sense, if I am interpreting that situation correctly.
He deftly avoids that route, however, with his own PSR reification by [i]a priori[/i]
commiting to an ontological physicalism, the primitives of which remain undefined,
awaiting a unifying root metaphor, while presupposing complete causal closure. !#=.$%
thus, best I could gather, believes in a Necessary Being, physically predicated. It's not
incoherent per se. He just wrongly imagines that all competing interpretations are
irrational, which is too strong a position to defend, just like his philosophy of mind, just
like his philosophy of science.
Here's my parsing:
As we draw a distinction between higher and lesser goods, the latter enjoyable in
moderation, the former without limitation, we might observe that the higher goods
precisely refer to our anthroposemiotic probes of reality. We interrogate reality
descriptively per our sense of truth, evaluatively per our sense of beauty, normatively
per our sense of goodness, interpretively per our sense of unity. We experience this
hermeneutical cycling as intrinsically rewarding, as an epistemic means to our
existential imperatives which has transmuted to a rewarding end, in and of itself.
Reductively, then, we observe how bird plumages correlate with food sources. One
adaptive attractant, evolved in relationship to feeding behaviors, re-emerged in
relationship to breeding behaviors. The evaluative pursuit of a given coloration becomes
aesthetically rewarding, experienced as an end, in and of itself, although certainly also a
means to feeding and reproduction.
Our interpretive semiotics reward us, as our descriptive, evaluative, normative and
interpretive probes of reality become their own rewards, ends unto themselves, in need
of no justification or apologetic, valued per a [i]just-because-ishness[/i].
Hence, truth, beauty, goodness and unity get experienced as higher goods, intrinsically
rewarding. We needn't appeal to some transcendental ground to make our deontological
moves from the given to the normative. Rather, we couple our shared prescriptive
premises (as would derive from our shared evaluative sensibilities) to our shared
descriptive premises (as would be derived from our sciences and semiotics), then reason
our way to shared normative conclusions (both practical and moral).
Because the symbolic species distinguishes itself as a meaning maker, evaluatively,
what I call an aesthetic teleology needn't be conceived in terms of transcendental
imperatives but cannot be denied as existential orientations. We describe, evaluate,
norm and interpret realities, cycling truth, beauty, goodness and unity hermeneutically,
abductively inferring that there might be Truth, Beauty, Goodness and Unity. That
abductive inference remains question begging, of course, though not unreasonable. Any
aesthetic telos, whether merely teleonomic, as in a bird's plumage, or robustly
teleodynamic, as in [i]Homo aestheticus[/i], remains otherwise emergent.
------------------------------------------------In my last response I drew a distinction between the assignment of moral
[i]significance[/i] versus the ascribing of moral [i]agency[/i]. I addressed the
relationship between life's higher and lesser goods, between existential and
transcendental imperatives. In my view, self-transcendence, fosters human authenticity.
Intellectually, we avoid a rush to closure by asking if there might be more to this reality
than I have described. Affectively, we ask whether there might be more to this or that
reality than my feelings presently suggest, evaluatively. Morally, we ask whether there
are goods at stake beyond my horizon of concerns, normatively. Socially, we ask
whether there might be other interpretations of this reality than those gifted by my own
interpretive community. Religiously, even, we ask whether other conceptions of
ultimate realities might not speak to our ultimate concerns, transcendentally.
Abraham Maslow, Bernard Lonergan and Viktor Frankl all came around to recognizing
that the pursuit of self-actualization frustrates its own ends, that self-actualization
ensues, rather, as a by-product of self-transcence. Those intellectual, affective, moral,
social and religious turns of epistemic humility refer to what Lonergan called secular
conversions, which lead to human authenticity. He recognized, similarly, that
authenticity was a by-product of self-transcendence, that sustained authenticity could
only be realized via [i]being in love[/i].
This is all to recognize that we are radically social animals, that we begin already inside
interpretive communities with evaluative sensibilities, normative approaches and
descriptive, participatory imaginations. Any notion of self must begin anthropologically
in that social reality. Only out of such shared interpretations and evaluations and norms,
do we ever launch our descriptive probes, which have only ever established that
teleodynamic, teleonomic and teleomatic realities emerged. The [i]out of what[/i]
question remains open, but does invite provisional closures. It doesn't lead, yet, to
apodictic certainties.
------------------------------------------------You refer, in my view, to formal causations, how the self is partly bounded, partly
determined. I agree.
The self is also autopoietic and free, beyond being partly determined, partly bounded.
Hence, beyond static, essentialist conceptions of self, we best conceive it as dynamical
and per a nonstrict identity.
I'm not sure what you mean above, though, regarding the similarity, sameness,
individuality. Ever heard of Peirce's [i]haecceity[/i]? It might be of interest.
Erratum: not Peirce but Scotus
------------------------------------------------Questions beg for now and other reasonable pictures compete. That would make for an
interesting success. I wonder at the nature of such a picture's axioms and what we'd
think and how we'd feel about them!
No, it might be rooted in divergent anthropological stances or CSP's [i]logic follows
ethics and both follow aesthetics[/i].
Essentially, I described an axiological epistemology within the framework of the
normative sciences of logics, aesthetics and ethics, as methodological approaches,
which remain agnostic to the metaphysical natures of truth, beauty and goodness,
relying only on our shared vague conceptions of many of their characteristics. This
stance remains consistent with evolutionary epistemology and naturalist accounts.
I'll say this much. However one pictures reality, whichever root metaphors one
employs, in some way, various realities, however otherwise transcendent, must share
some type of unitary nature, must require some univocal predications between them.
This wouldn't [i]a priori[/i] mean there couldn't also be equivocally and/or analogically
predicated features, too, such as might apply to interpenetrating fields or matrices.
CSP considered argumentation regarding ultimate realities a fetish. I don't see why that
wouldn't include the [i]a priori thermodynamicization[/i] of reality. Not to worry, he
certainly would abide same as a fallibilist metaphysic or provisional closure.
Proselytizing and theodicizing best yield to evangelizing (modeling not tutoring values),
not for fear of their consequences to oneself but because they offend charity toward
others.
------------------------------------------------I think it's Loyal Rue who offers the distinction between telic realities that implicate
only [i]because of[/i] and not, rather, [i]so that[/i] explanations. This speaks to the
distinctions between teleomatic and teleonomic, ententional and intentional realities.
Thermodynamics will only ever yield, as they only ever have, [i]because of [/i]
explications. From our regnant, ubiquitous, ineradicable, humanist perspective, they
can't jot or tittle ever become prescriptive [i]so that[/i] norms. The communities of
inquiry, including all of the great traditions, indigenous religions and secular
humanisms, pretty much unanimously draw distinctions, oh, just for instance, between
such as by-products, waste-products and end-products.
I do recall this much. CSP drew a distinction between an argument and argumentation.
The former refers, basically, to the abduction, the formulation of the argument.
The latter refers to what I would describe as a nonvirtuous cycle of abductive
hypothesizing and deductive clarifying without the benefit of inductive testing.
I believe this may be contained in his Neglected Argument for the Reality of God. He
specifically avoided the concept [i]being[/i] in reference to God, which I generalize to
any metaphysical (being) argumentations regarding ultimate realities (God).
----------------------------------------------CSP emphasized two distinctions in God-talk that obtain in any metaphysical discourse
regarding ultimate realities --- that between 1) existence and reality and 2) argument and
argumentation. He wrote that it [i]would be fetichism to say that God exists[/i], yet
formulated an argument for the [i]reality of God[/i]. Justice Belcher discussed the forms
of that methodological fetish which confuses natural science and mathematics. The
philosophic take-aways aren't found in the various definitions of fetish, which could
become a red herring, but in the substance of the relevant peircean critiques, which
suggest that we often run into extraordinary error in rendering our vague vernacular
conceptions precise and that we often [i]prove too much[/i], say way more than can
actually be known and tell untellable stories, for example, when saying precisely what
the order in the universe consists in.
A proper formulation of an [i]argument[/i] establishes the rational acceptability of a
belief, whereas an [i]argumentation[/i] aspires to compel belief in the truth of its
conclusions. Metaphysical arguments have established many rationally acceptable
beliefs regarding ultimate realities, but no metaphysical argumentations have compelled
beliefs in their conclusions regarding same. Still, many [i]prove too much[/i], imagining
they have [i]a priori[/i] demonstrated metaphysical necessities.
Justice Belcher, in his introduction to [i]Philosophical Writings of Peirce,[/i] similarly,
points out: "This attitude is inimical to philosophies in which intuitive cognition is
fetish, whether in the form of self-evident [i]a priori[/i] principles or in that of infallible
perceptual apprehension. By the queer yet understandable twists of philosophic history
such view-points have in their different ways purported to be scientific, apriorism
[b]confusing natural science and mathematics.[/b] (emphasis mine)
[quote=Peirce from Answers to Questions Concerning My Belief in God (c. 1906; CP
6.494-521)]
No words are so well understood as vernacular words, in one way; yet they are
invariably vague; and of many of them it is true that, let the logician do his best to
substitute precise equivalents in their places, still the vernacular words alone, for all
their vagueness, answer the principal purposes. This is emphatically the case with the
very vague word God, which is not made less vague by saying that it imports
infinity, etc., since those attributes are at least as vague. I shall, therefore, if you
please, substitute God, for Supreme Being in the question. I will also take the
liberty of substituting reality for existence. This is perhaps overscrupulosity; but I
myself always use exist in its strict philosophical sense of react with the other like
things in the environment. Of course, in that sense, it would be fetichism to say that
God exists. The word reality, on the contrary, is used in ordinary parlance in its
correct philosophical sense. It is curious that its legal meaning, in which we speak of
real estate, is the earliest, occurring early in the twelfth century. Albertus Magnus,
who, as a high ecclesiastic, must have had to do with such matters, imported it into
philosophy. But it did not become at all common until Duns Scotus, in the latter part of
the thirteenth century began to use it freely. I define the real as that which holds its
characters on such a tenure that it makes not the slightest difference what any man or
men may have thought them to be, or ever will have thought them to be, here using
thought to include, imagining, opining, and willing (as long as forcible means are not
used); but the real thing's characters will remain absolutely untouched. Of any kind of
figment, this is not true. So, then, the question being whether I believe in the reality of
God, I answer, Yes. I further opine that pretty nearly everybody more or less believes
this, including many of the scientific men of my generation who are accustomed to
think the belief is entirely unfounded. The reason they fall into this extraordinary error
about their own belief is that they precide (or render precise) the conception, and, in
doing so, inevitably change it; and such precise conception is easily shown not to be
warranted, even if it cannot be quite refuted. Every concept that is vague is liable to be
self-contradictory in those respects in which it is vague. No concept, not even those of
mathematics, is absolutely precise; and some of the most important for everyday use are
extremely vague. Nevertheless, our instinctive beliefs involving such concepts are far
more trustworthy than the best established results of science, if these be precisely
understood.
[b]For instance, we all think that there is an element of order in the universe. Could any
laboratory experiments render that proposition more certain than instinct or common
sense leaves it? It is ridiculous to broach such a question. But when anybody undertakes
to say precisely what that order consists in, he will quickly find he outruns all logical
warrant. Men who are given to defining too much inevitably run themselves into
confusion in dealing with the vague concepts of common sense.[/b][/quote]
------------------------------------------------Of course, for starters, I would subscribe to a realist, triadic, semiotic, social, relational
metaphysic of experience in a [i]turn to community[/i] that employs an equiprobability
principle, which prescribes the most life-giving, relationship-enhancing, conversionfostering, existentionally actionable response optimal in relationship to every given
forced, vital and live option one encounters.
The metrics, then, would guage humankind's collective intellectual growth, affective
attunement, moral achievement, social responsibility and ideological polydoxy, which
would correspond to how well individuals, societies, cultures and communities of
inquiry, all as communities of value-realizers, variously describe, evaluate, norm,
interpret and transcend realities they encounter.
Alas, the metrics are fuzzy, variously over- and under-determined, such remaining the
case in our social sciences, even biological sciences, but less so for the physical
sciences.
So, while it may disappoint some that I employed by-products, waste-products and endproducts only analogically, using a manufacturing metaphor more amenable to a
reductionistic thermodynamic paradigm, don't doubt that there are metrics but only
recognize that they are categorically apt to the relevant ontological densities, layers of
complexity and orders of emergence under consideration.
Entropic processes would represent naught but boundary constraints to our robustly telic
human value-pursuits. Sustained human authenticity would comprise our end-product,
love, per those sociologic metrics. By-products might include human happiness and
hope. Waste-products might include , well, nothing, especially if all things can work
together for the good!
------------------------------------------------You've advanced a tautology, which may or may not be true but which adds no new
information to ANY of our systems. And not all tautologies are equally taut.
Your circular reasoning doesn't present explicitly in your premises. Instead, your
argument's conclusions are embedded in your overly broad conception of final
causation, which per my own tautology, includes [b]pseudo-teloi.[/b]
[quote=Tom Short points out] I think, nevertheless, that Peirce erred in 1902 by dening
nal causation too broadly. His caution of 1898, when he introduced the term nious
if, he said, teleological is too strong a word was better. [b]For the nal state of
maximum entropy is not one that the Greeks would have recognized as a form of order.
[/b] It is, instead, a modern representation of that chaos from which they saw order as
emerging. Nor would we, today, be tempted to describe it in teleological language. It is
quite otherwise with organic features. Let us therefore call teleological those
anisotropic processes only that result in forms of order. These are the ones that, in
Peirces account but not Aristotles, are due to selection (from among alternatives due
largely to chance). A nal cause, then, in Peirces but not in Aristotles sense of that
term, is a type for which selection is made. The selection can be made consciously and
deliberately, as by a human agent, or, in Darwins phrase, naturally, by no agent at all.
As Peirce suggested, though for the wrong reason, this conception of nal cause
includes but is broader than our ordinary idea of purpose.[/quote]
These peircean distinctions by Short remain consistent with Mayr's teleomatic
(mechanistic) and teleonomic (organismic & purposive) distinctions, as well as my
appropriation of Deacon's teleodynamics for anthroposemiotic realities (purposeful).
[quote=Short expanded in his notes]In the 1902 writings on which we have drawn,
Peirce wrote, Final causality cannot be imagined without efcient causality; but no
whit the less on that account are their modes of action polar contraries; again, Final
causation without efcient causation is helpless. Such has been our theme, about
anisotropic processes generally: their particulars are mechanical; they would have no
existence otherwise. Peirce added, Efcient causation without nal causation ...is
worse than helpless...; it is mere chaos. That is in line with the Greek conception of
chaos or Boltzmanns of entropy, as conforming to the laws of mechanics but bereft of a
patterned result. However, Peirce continued, and chaos is not even as much as chaos,
without nal causation; it is blank nothing. But, surely, there can be efcient without
nal causation. As Aristotle noted, rain does not fall for a purpose, e.g., to make crops
grow. It just does fall, of necessity.[/quote]
It's, at least, controversial to interpret peircean conceptions of final causality as
inclusive of entropy maximazation, in particular, thermodynamics, in general.
others find philosophically inhabitable. Your epistemic promissory notes for reconciling
QM and gravity, explaining vaccuum fluctuations, singularities (or not), boundaries (or
none), open or closed systems, generalizing thermodynamics , etc appear to me to have
philosophic junk bond status as far as cashing out any peircean pragmatic value.
------------------------------------------------We may be a lot closer than I have gathered. Human authenticity refers to
developmental trajectories such as those described by Piaget, Erickson, Kohlberg and
others.
Even sustained authenticity refers to anthropological realities interpreted in a naturalist
frame.
What's the difference your distinctions make? Practically, what would humankind do
differently? Morally, what ought humankind do differently?
You touched upon this regarding energy conservation earlier I believe, for example?
Perhaps you could expand on concrete norms or point me to other resources.
------------------------------------------------Why must we conceive these as mutually exclusive?
I agree that we must strike a balance between overly optimistic and overly pessimistic
anthropologies. As for re-establishing norms, however, won't that require a novel
aesthetic appeal?
------------------------------------------------Although 3ns cannot be prescinded from 2ns, conversely, 2ns can be prescinded from
3ns. Hence, there can be no prescission of final from efficient causality, but efficient
causality can indeed be prescinded from final causality. In so doing, however, the
dyadic account loses a degree of rationality, explaining only the [i]post hoc[/i] but not
the [i]propter hoc[/i], which implicates regularities and laws. So, I wouldn't want to [i]a
priori[/i] surrender rationality by drawing a flat out distinction, between one system
process and another, such as [i]completely mechanistic and ideal[/i] versus [i]fully
teleological and real[/i]. Instead, maintaining an irreducible triadicity, I'd presuppose
that every event and process involve an element of objective chance, efficient causation,
and final causation.
Not entirely over against Short, maybe just nuancing our differences, I continue to
distinguish [i]teloi[/i] by degrees. To wit:
[quote=Menno Hulswit]Granted, in mechanical processes the degree of deviation
from the deterministic laws is minimal, and thus the degree of finality is very low. But
even so, the fact remains that in some way, all processes are teleological, even though
Laws can evolve. So, too, novel boundary constraints. You are not being serious when
you facilely caricature my stance, especially given the background context of my other,
rather exhaustive, posts. The distinctions that some of us draw, such as between
teleomatic, teleonomic and teleodynamic processes, precisely employ the conceptual
placeholders at explanatory gaps, such as regarding the origins of life, of consciousness,
of human symbolic language. If you want to employ a root metaphor employing
entropic processes or information, that's fine. But I know you don't pretend that it has
eliminated the explanatory gaps that would resolve quantum interpretations,
cosmogonies, a/biogenesis, philosophies of mind or human language origins.
Telos itself can evolve. The boundary constraints that inform thermodynamics birth new
boundary constraints in morphodynamics which birth novel boundary constraints in
organisms which birth novel boundaries, genotypically and phenotypically, all the way
up our phylogenetic lineage.
Now, to suggest that a robustly purposeful telos remains distinct from its purposive
teleonomic, organismic substrate which emerged from a teleomatic mechanistic process,
in my view, is to say nothing terribly informative (pun) ontologically. It describes,
rather, epistemic states, probabilities, differentials in degrees of in/determinability. It
doesn't describe ontic state properties or natures, but brackets them and any degrees of
in/determinism. I have no earthly idea what emerged from what or how.
But even if I stipulate to a physicalist stance, which best coheres with my sneaking
suspicions, it still would not follow that I have anywhere suggested that human
intentionality is fundamental rather than emergent. No, not even implicitly. No, not even
[i]ipso facto[/i] via an auxiliary consequence of some other argument.
Just because I maintain that an emergent, purposeful telos might be more robustly
teleological than a purposive telonomic process, which is more indeterminable than a
weak teleomaticity, exactly why would it follow that the robust telos would necessarily
be more temporally fundamental than the weak?
I assign an axiological primacy to human values, to pragmatic interests. It's a category
error to confuse that with any putative temporal primacy exhibited by some degenerate
3ns. An axiological anthropocentrism doesn't implicate an anthropic cosmological
principle. It does comport with the emergence of human semiosis which is, well,
inescapably human.
All in keeping with the peircean notion that [i]Logic follows Ethics and both follow
Aesthetics,[/i] we next draw upon his distinction between the normative sciences as
[i]theoretic[/i] and those logical, ethical and aesthetical activities out of which we cash
[i]pragmatic[/i] value. Further, we can discuss and even robustly describe theories of
[i]knowledge, aesthetics and/or ethics[/i], as epistemic and practical methodologies,
apart from any precise theories of [i]truth, beauty and goodness[/i], as metaphysical and
theoretic presuppositions.
[quote=John Deely]What distinguishes the human being from the other animals is that
only human animals come to realize that there are signs distinct from and superordinate
to every particular thing that serves to constitute an individual in its distinctness from its
surroundings.[/quote]
Humanism, properly considered --- not only takes account of our anthroposemiotic
differentiations from other biosemiotic and pansemiotic realities, but --- norms our
efforts to subdue our animality out of which our [i]sapience[/i] extends, such efforts
including our education, cultures and traditions. Humanism, thus conceived, attends to
peircean thirdness to realize authentically human values. Humanism [i]is[/i]
pragmatism, perceiving that which humans attend to and attending to that which
interests humans, including our existential concerns, which lead us to forced, vital and
live options. Pragmatic humanisms turn attentively to the accumulated wisdom of
educational, cultural and traditional realities (habits, tendencies, 3ns).
An authentically pragmatic humanism retrieves wisdom --- neither ahistorically nor
uncritically ---from humanism's classicist, renaissance, enlightenment and existential
expressions (yes, even overcoming Heidegger's critiques) and presents as a
nonfoundational, fallibilist, postmodern humanism. It requires only our semiotic,
phenomenological taxonomy with only a vague modal ontology and shared vague
conceptions of human values such as truth, beauty, goodness, unity and freedom. It
doesn't require a systematic architectonic or metaphysic.
This humanism remains unapologetically and thoroughgoingly anthropocentric, almost
axiomatically so, axiologically secured by the time-honored, long-established, and
ubiquitously shared evaluative dis-positions and normative pro-positions of
humankind's diverse communities of value-realizers.
I say ironic because this is over against any indefensible anthropo[i]morphic[/i]
pansemiotic, which onto-extrapolates human intentionality to other forms of
[i]aboutness[/i]. I'm sympathetic to a pansemiotic and physiosemiotic view, but properly
nuanced by an emergentist stance that remains ontologically vague and tentative, hence,
deontologically modest.
------------------------------------------------[quote=Tommi Vehkavaara]Thus, the excess vagueness of the adopted metaphysical
concepts and doctrines, that makes them incapable of explaining (or even describing)
anything, is another pitfall that should be avoided (if biosemiotics is going to be a
science). The third pitfall is that we may be drifted to pronounce unnecessarily strong
metaphysical statements (as in [b]physiosemiotics[/b]). As such they are often either
simply false or even if true, so weekly justified (if justified at all) that others do not
have much reasons to become convinced of their truth. The proclamation of
unnecessarily strong statements is strategically unwise if weaker claims are sufficient
for making biosemiotics. The fourth pitfall is that we are driven to believe our
metaphysical convictions as a doctrine, not as the hypotheses or ends but as the
principles or starting points.Limitations on applying Peircean semeiotic. Biosemiotics as
applied objective ethics and esthetics rather than semeiotic, Journal of Biosemiotics,
2005, Volume 1, Number 1, pp. 269-308 [/quote]Per the [i]fallacy of misplaced
aboutness[/i],we avoid any facile conflation regarding ententional and intentional teloi.
While both are [i]rule-governed[/i], only the latter are [i]meaning-constitutive[/i].
Intentionality relates to significance, relevance and interests, beyond any sheer quantity
of information or rule-governance.[quote=Ahti-Veikko Pietarinenn]Normativity has to
do with rule-governed, meaning-constitutive practices and activities, because logic as a
normative science is, according to Peirce, one of the most purely theoretical of purely
theoretical sciencesWhy is the Normativity of Logic Based on Rules? [/quote]In the
continental view, epistemology remains inherently [i]anthropocentric[/i]. In the analytic
view, ontological specificity remains unnecessary. A pragmatic, semiotic realism can
adopt both stances. A taxonomy of vague phenomenological conceptions suffices,
ontologically. It provides those implicit, indispensable metaphysical presuppositions
(modal ontological logic) required for an axiological epistemology. Those
presuppositions require only provisional closures or methodological stipulations, not
ontological commitments.In the normative sciences, while ethics and logic depend, in
principle, on aesthetics, they won't collapse into hedonism if, phenomenologically, we
properly redescribe pleasure and pain.[quote=Richard K. Atkins]As Peirce notes, his
theory is exactly contrary to hedonism, which locates normativity in the feeling of
pleasure. In contrast, Peirces conception of normativity is grounded in the struggle for a
state of pleasure.This is the agreement of the faculties of understanding and imagination
in reaching determinate concepts by which to subsume (and hence understand)
nature.The normative sciences bridge phaneroscopy and metaphysics by bringing the
struggle between the ego and the non-ego into an aesthetic state of quietus, or
agreement. Aesthetics recognizes the state of quietus to be what is admirable in itself.
This is determined by the very nature of judgments and the mutual interdetermination of
the ego and the non-ego. The science of ethics strives to bring the ego and the non-ego
into a state of quietus in conduct. The science of logic strives to bring the ego and the
non- ego into a state of quietus in thought.<------ LambruscoE snipped here ------>Is not
pleasure by definition a feeling?In reply, the feeling is, indeed, consequent on reaching a
state of quietus. However, the feeling is only an epiphenomenon, a symptom, or an
accompaniment of the achievement of quietus. Conceivably, one could reach a state of
quietus (i.e. a state in which the struggle between the ego and the non-ego is minimal)
but this state not be accompanied by a feeling of pleasure. On the Peircean account, the
person would still be in a pleasurable state, even if he does not feel the pleasure. The
feeling of pleasure is the icing on the cake it is an indicator that one has reached a
state of quietus. However, the pleasure itself is the state in which quietus is reached. It is
this state that grounds normativity, not the feeling that accompanies reaching this state.
[i]The Pleasures of Goodness: Peircean Aesthetics in Light of Kants Critique of the
Power of Judgment[/i][/quote]The intentional teloi of human experience are grounded in
our relationships to value-rich ecological objects or [i]affordances[/i] and are attenuated
by intensely pro-social feelings, all within our pragmatic interests, which, due to our
radical finitude, can compete, one value vs another, and conflict, one individual vs
another vs even the common good, requiring various sacrifices.[quote=Ursula
Goodenough and Terrence Deacon]We have our virtues neither by nor contrary to our
natures. We are fitted by our natures to receive them. If brains are amazing, the human
brain is flat-out astonishing. .... No doubt about it: Our symbolic minds allow us to
access mental experiences, like mathematics, aesthetics and spiritual intuitions, that we
have every reason to believe are novel, unique to the human. ...But we suggest that it is
also of utmost importance that we not lose track of our mental evolutionary antecedents.
... Any perspective on the human condition that brushes this fact aside is an incomplete
perspective, --indeed, we would say that it is an impoverished perspective. ... Given that
we have evolved from an intensely social lineage, we are uniquely aware of what it feels
like to be pro-social, and it is this awareness of what it feels like to be moral -- this
moral experience -- that undergirds and motivates the actions of a moral person.? From
Biology to Consciousness to Morality by Ursula Goodenough and Terrence Deacon,
Zygon D 03; 38(4): 801-819 [/quote][quote=Joshua Johnson]Consider it this way:
Shannon entropy is often used to measure the amount of information in an object, by
calculating the degree of randomness contained within any given string of information.
Very random strings may have more Shannon entropy than very structured strings, since
it is difficult to predict the appearance of new bit of information in a random string. But,
even though long random strings could have more information than very short well
structured strings, they may not be very relevant or interesting. Without a capacity to
decide the relevance or structure of various interpretations, the sheer number of
interpretations tells us very little about the significance of the object at hand.<-----LambruscoE snipped here ------>J.J. Gibson theorizes affordances as ecological features
which enable or constrain an animal by virtue of their invariances. He distinguishes
them from the phenomenal theory of gestalt psychology, in so far as affordances are not
dependent upon the observer, but are invariant features of the environment:The
[b]theory of [i]affordances[/i][/b] is a radical departure from existing theories of value
and meaning. It begins with a new definition of what value and meaning are. The
perceiving of an affordance is not a process of perceiving a value-free physical object to
which meaning is somehow added in a way that no one has been able to agree upon; it is
a process of perceiving a value-rich ecological object. Any substance, any surface, any
layout has some affordance for benefit or injury to someone. Physics may be value-free,
but ecology is not. (Gibson)[i]Full Spectrum Aesthetics: Process Ontology,
Normativity,
and
Speculations
on
the
Category
Theoretical
Approach[/i]http://joshuaj.net/cat/marginalia/full-spectrum-aesthetics-process-ontologynormativity-and-speculations-on-the-category-theoretical-approach/
[/quote]
[quote=Marco Stango]Aesthetics, then, deals with habits of feeling evaluated under the
category of nobility (cf. Parker 2003) or absolute admirability. The puzzling aspect of
Peirce's treatment of aesthetics is that esthetics is taken to deal with both the normative
habits of feeling and the Summum Bonum itself. Between the normative habits of
feeling and the normative ultimate ideal there is an immediate and essential link. In fact,
on the one hand, Peirce states that since ethics asks to what end all effort shall be
directed, that question obviously depends upon the question what it would be that,
independently of the effort, we should like to experience, that is the essential question
of aesthetics (CP 2.199). On the other hand, Peirce admits that the moralist merely
tells us that we have a power of self-control, that no narrow or selfish aim can ever
prove satisfactory ; and for any more definite information, as I conceive the matter,
he has to refer us to the esthetician whose business it is to say what is the state of things
which is most admirable in itself regardless of any ulterior reason (EP 2: 253). The first
quotation shows that esthetics aims to fix the good habits of feeling, while the second
quotations makes clear that its object is extended to the definition of the nature of the
Summum Bonum. As we know from the previous chapter, Peirce found that the ultimate
normative ideal of human life, its Summum Bonum, is the development of concrete
reasonableness in the world.Agency and Normativity: A Study in the Philosophy of
Peirce and Dewey [/quote][quote=Donald Gelpi]Esthetics measures other goods against
supreme excellence and formulates a normative account of the kinds of habits one needs
to cultivate in order to appreciate supreme goodness and beauty. An esthetic perception
of supreme goodness engages the heart rather than the head. In other words, it engages
that appreciative insight into the identity of the good and the true which humans call the
beautiful. Esthetics puts order into the human heart and psyche by teaching it to
appreciate those realities and values that make life ultimately worth living. Esthetic
insight grasps affectively and simultaneously reality's goodness and truth.Esthetics also
gives an ultimate orientation to the other two normative sciences of ethics and of logic.
Ethics studies the kinds of habits of choice one must cultivate in order to live for the
ultimately beautiful. Logic teaches one to think clearly about reality so that one can
make realistic choices that lead one to the appreciation and enjoyment of ultimate
beauty, goodness, and truth. In other words, in Peirce's understanding of normative
thinking both ethics and logic serve the ultimately beautiful as their end.
[/quote]Aesthetically, we distinguish imitation or mimesis, expressivism and
instrumentalism. Ethically, we distinguish the deontological, aretaic (virtue) teleological
and (consequentialistic).Regarding our vague conception of [i]beauty[/i], we approach
aesthetical value realizations 1) intrasubjectively, through formalism or essentialism in
art; 2) intersubjectively, through expressivism or emotionalism in art; 3)
intraobjectively, through mimesis and imitationalism in art; and 4) interobjectively,
through art as instrumentalism.Regarding our vague conception of [i]truth[/i], we
approach noetical value realizations 1) intrasubjectively, through virtue epistemology;
2) intersubjectively, through a semiotic, community of inquiry; 3) intraobjectively,
through correspondence; and 4) interobjectively, through coherence.Regarding our
vague conception of [i]goodness[/i], we approach ethical value realizations 1)
intrasubjectively, through aretaic or virtue ethics; 2) intersubjectively, through