In another post Mung points out this interesting quote to Kantian Naturalist (an atheist): “That crude matter should have originally formed itself according to mechanical laws, that life should have sprung from the nature of what is lifeless, that matter should have been able to dispose itself into the form of a self-maintaining purposiveness – that [is] contradictory to reason.” Immanuel Kant
Kantian Naturalist replies:
[Recently] I read “Bio-agency and the problem of action” by J. C. Skewes & C. A. Hooker (Biology and Philosophy 24 (3):283-300, 2009). I won’t get into all the details right now; suffice it to say that the way they set up the problem in what I find to be a deeply compelling fashion. Namely, the Aristotelian-Kantian notion that organisms are centers of their own causal activity is not compatible with linear effective causation — what you might call a “domino” theory of causation. So, what they propose to do is reject the domino theory of causation. Put otherwise, they reject mechanism. In its place they argue that dynamical systems theory can explain how autopoeitic systems arise. Anyway, that’s why I agree with Kant.
“Autopoeitic” is from the Greek“self” and “creation,” and literally that which creates itself. The term was coined by biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. From Wikipedia:
A canonical example of an autopoietic system is the biological cell. The eukaryotic cell, for example, is made of various biochemical components such as nucleic acids and proteins, and is organized into bounded structures such as the cell nucleus, various organelles, a cell membrane and cytoskeleton. These structures, based on an external flow of molecules and energy, produce the components which, in turn, continue to maintain the organized bounded structure that gives rise to these components (not unlike a wave propagating through a medium).
Here’s the interesting part of the Wiki article for our purposes today: “Though others have often used the term as a synonym for self-organization, Maturana himself stated he would ‘never use the notion of self-organization, because it cannot be the case… it is impossible. That is, if the organization of a thing changes, the thing changes.’”
Are Skewes, Hooker and Kantian Naturalist using “autopoeitic” in a different way than Maturana or do they just disagree with Maturana’s statement? And what does it mean to reject “domino causation”? Is that just another way of spewing the nonsense of “emergence”? See “Materialist Poofery” for what I think of that nonsense.
“”Autopoeitic” is from the Latin “self” and “creation,” and literally that which creates itself.”
‘creates itself’,,, Hmm,,, that must be the ultimate ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ smokescreen. ,,, Somebody notify Krauss and Hawking! 🙂
I never fully understood Varela and Maturana, because they seemed to leave too many details unexplained. However, autopoesis is generally understood to include self-organization.
It is also hard to work out what “self-organization” is supposed to mean. And I take that to be part of Maturana’s point.
A snow crystal forms out of the condensing water vapor. And some would call that “self-organization.” But the self (the snow crystal) does not even exist at the beginning of that process, so we cannot credit the non-existent crystal with doing that organizing. And that is probably what Maturana is getting at.
I suppose the term “self-organization” is something of a slogan. It is a term we might use but, like all slogans, it is an oversimplification and is often misleading.
An auto-poetic system? Organized by meter and rhyme?
That seems like a reasonable interpretation, Neil.
Not to be belabor the point, but although I’m an atheist*, I’m not a materialist. I trust I’ve made my reasons for that sufficiently clear by now.
* Though “atheism” is a term I’m not really happy with. I prefer to think of myself as a secularist, humanist, and naturalist. Not that it matters what labels I apply to myself.
I read KN to be saying he rejects ‘linear efficient causation’ as the only valid form of causation.
A causes B causes C as a sequence in which each cause is only construed as an efficient cause. That’s what I think he meant by domino causation.
I love this line from Life’s Ratchet.
How complicated a simple snow flake is!
I missed this on first reading:
Which came first, crude matter or mechanical laws?
Did mechanical laws bring the crude matter into existence?
Did crude matter bring the mechanical laws into existence?
How can it be the case that either one could be true?
as to:
But if one removes cause and effect relationship how does one reason within science? This seems to me to be a severely misguided corruption of science on the atheists part. Take for instance the snowflake that was given for an example. Now the example of the snowflake that was given, in its seemingly endless variety around its basic structure, is certainly a thing of beauty to behold and argues, from that beauty alone, against random causation, but there is also much more evidence besides beauty to suggest, very strongly, that the water molecules from which the snowflakes form are designed and are not the result of some random processes. For instance when we look at water, the most common substance on earth and in our bodies, we find many odd characteristics which clearly appear to be designed. These oddities are absolutely essential for life on earth. Some simple life can exist without the direct energy of sunlight, some simple life can exist without oxygen; but no life can exist without water. Water is called a universal solvent because it has the unique ability to dissolve a far wider range of substances than any other solvent. This ‘universal solvent’ ability of water is essential for the cells of living organisms to process the wide range of substances necessary for life. Another oddity is water expands as it becomes ice, by an increase of about 9% in volume. Thus, water floats when it becomes a solid instead of sinking. This is an exceedingly rare ability. Yet if it were not for this fact, lakes and oceans would freeze from the bottom up. The earth would be a frozen wasteland, and human life would not be possible. Water also has the unusual ability to pull itself into very fine tubes and small spaces, defying gravity. This is called capillary action. This action is essential for the breakup of mineral bearing rocks into soil. Water pulls itself into tiny spaces on the surface of a rock and freezes; it expands and breaks the rock into tinier pieces, thus producing soil. Capillary action is also essential for the movement of water through soil to the roots of plants. It is also essential for the movement of water from the roots to the tops of the plants, even to the tops of the mighty redwood trees,,,
,,,Capillary action is also essential for the circulation of the blood in our very own capillary blood vessels. Water’s melting and boiling point are not where common sense would indicate they should be when we look at its molecular weight. The three sister compounds of water all behave as would be predicted by their molecular weight. Oddly, water just happens to have melting and boiling points that are of optimal biological utility. The other properties of water we measure, like its specific slipperiness (viscosity) and its ability to absorb and release more heat than any other natural substance, have to be as they are in order for life to be possible on earth. Even the oceans have to be the size they are in order to stabilize the temperature of the earth so human life may be possible. On and on through each characteristic we can possibly measure water with, it turns out to be required to be almost exactly as it is or complex life on this earth could not exist. No other liquid in the universe comes anywhere near matching water in its fitness for life (Michael Denton: Nature’s Destiny).
Here is a more complete list of the anomalous life enabling properties of water:
Surely all these coincidental properties of water are enough to make one wonder as to causation. Well it turns out that if one follows cause and effect down far enough in the water molecule then finally one reaches the ‘final quantum cause’ which must, because of the non-locality of quantum actions, reside outside of time and space:
The atheist simply does not have a coherent non-local, beyond space and time, quantum cause to appeal to, whereas Theists have always maintained God as ‘final cause’.
Verses and music:
Here is ‘Down In The River To Pray’ as it was done in the movie ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
Down In The River To Pray
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qw6Hon013E
In re: (7), Mung, here’s the paragraph from the Guyer and Matthews translation of the Critique of the Power of Judgment
In context, I take it that “formed itself” means “become an organized, purposive whole”, bearing in mind that form, or morphe, is that which, in Aristotelian and Scholastic ontology, confers systematic and purposiveness wholeness on something. The classical conception of matter, from Democritus and Epicurus down to Hobbes and Boyle, is that matter is just that which doesn’t have “form,” and so is a mere aggregate, without any unity or wholeness to it. (This emphasis on aggregation vs. wholeness or unity is also crucial to Leibniz’s critique of materialism, and Leibniz’s impact on Kant is difficult to underestimate.)
So Kant is attributing to Blumenbach, but also endorsing, the view that it is contrary to reason to suppose that raw matter could, in accord with mechanical laws alone, give rise to organisms.
http://www.blumenbach.info/
Thank you for cashing out that metaphor!
I was describing how Skewes and Hooker try and resolve the problem. It’s not really a problem about the origins of life, so much as its a problem about how to think about the distinctive kind of causality that living things display. Their point is that one obstacle to thinking about this lies in an overly simplistic model of efficient causation. So the key, they argue, is to abandon that overly simplistic model without abandoning efficient causation tout court. And they think that the way to do that is to treat living things as dynamical complex systems.
Now, they don’t reintroduce “final causes”, and so they’re not really teleological realists. I would say that, on their view, there is something real about what teleological describes, but that a genuine explanation of that reality is cashed out in terms of how efficient causation functions in dynamic, complex systems, as distinct from static or simple ones.
But no one is talking about removing cause and effect relationship. We’re considering that there is more to causation than just efficient causes.
I think you’re confused about the role of the word ‘final’ in final cause.
http://www.mathpages.com/home/.....ath581.htm
http://plato.stanford.edu/entr.....causality/
thanks Mung, I think I had confused ‘final cause’ with the ultimate ‘uncaused cause’ of Aquina supon which all causes must ultimately rest:
Not Understanding Nothing – A review of A Universe from Nothing – Edward Feser – June 2012
Excerpt: A critic might reasonably question the arguments for a divine first cause of the cosmos. But to ask “What caused God?” misses the whole reason classical philosophers thought his existence necessary in the first place. So when physicist Lawrence Krauss begins his new book by suggesting that to ask “Who created the creator?” suffices to dispatch traditional philosophical theology, we know it isn’t going to end well. ,,,
,,, But Krauss simply can’t see the “difference between arguing in favor of an eternally existing creator versus an eternally existing universe without one.” The difference, as the reader of Aristotle or Aquinas knows, is that the universe changes while the unmoved mover does not, or, as the Neoplatonist can tell you, that the universe is made up of parts while its source is absolutely one; or, as Leibniz could tell you, that the universe is contingent and God absolutely necessary. There is thus a principled reason for regarding God rather than the universe as the terminus of explanation.
http://www.firstthings.com/art.....ng-nothing
as to:
I know I may regret asking this mung, but since I can’t decipher his reasoning, exactly what cause does KN propose to remove the necessity of reasoning to the ultimate ‘uncaused cause’ within science. ,,, Seems to me that any sort of reasoning that refused to look for ultimate causation would be as fruitless as a dog chasing its tail in a circle! Definitely not satisfying to me but I can see where someone who wanted to hold on to his atheism would be attracted to such self deception.
I don’t see why it’s “self-deception” to think that some questions are beyond our finite, all-too-human capacity to answer, or at least to provide empirically-grounded answers.
One thing I like about the Skewes and Hooker article is that it provides a model for “naturalizing teleology”, and putting some much-needed flesh on that skeletal phrase. (Notice, though, that this is not a phrase they use.) The idea now amounts to explaining in terms of a special kind of efficient causation (that of dynamic, complex systems) what is described in terms of final causation.
“as fruitless as a dog chasing its tail in a circle”
The tail is wagging the dog!
as to:
And I can see why someone not given to the Theistic philosophy would be predisposed to such a ‘hopeless’ position of thinking that he, in his puny state of being compared to the cosmos, shall not ever be able to reason to ultimate causation for reality. In fact it is such ‘hopelessness’ that is found in other worldviews that prevented modern science from ever coming to fruition in those other cultures in the first place:
In fact the Christian presupposition of the universe being created by a rational Creator, and of us being made in the image of God, and that we can therefore rationally understand the universe, which was so instrumental in the founding of science,,,
,, has some very stunning empirical confirmation behind it. A couple of points are noted here:
In this following video, Dr. Richards and Dr. Gonzalez reveal that the universe is ‘suspiciously set up’ for scientific discovery:
These following videos are in the same line of thought as the preceding videos:
But, as impressive, suspicious, and persuasive, as the preceding ‘hints’ are that the universe was created by the infinite Mind of God and can therefore be understood by the mind of man, since we are made in God’s image (as Christianity makes abundantly clear), the deepest correlation, of our mind to the Mind of God, finds its most concrete proof of correlation from looking at consciousness itself through the lens of quantum mechanics.,,, Due to advances in quantum mechanics, the argument for God from consciousness can now be framed like this:
But as audacious as it may seem to someone who has no a-priori reason to believe that the universe may be thoroughly intelligible, as the christian Theists a-priorily believed, I’m given to go one step further and audaciously hold that not only was Christianity necessary for the foundation of modern science but that modern science will find its ultimate completion and authority in the person of Christ! (How’s that for stepping on a few atheistic toes? 🙂 )
verse and music:
I’ll comment on that, because the meaning seems obvious to me. Of course, KN can correct me if this is not what he means.
I take “domino causation” to refer to the idea of a sequence of events, each causing the next. However, the world is more complex than that. Every event has infinitely many contributing causes, and in turn contributes to infinitely many other events. That’s why physicists use differential equations, rather than simple propositional logic. But even the differential equations are simplifications. To make matters worse, some of the contributory causes are random quantum events.
The effect of all of this is that there is a fluidity to nature that does not fit the way that we think about mechanism. And this fluidity is particularly relevant to biological systems.
“Emergence” is not nonsense, though the term is often thrown around too casually. Gas pressure is an emergent property of vibrating molecules. There’s nothing nonsensical about that.
The problem arises when people seem to use “emergence” as if it were a magical explanation. Generally speaking, we should see emergence as something to be explained, rather than as an explanation.
This “autopoeitic” idea was referred to us (by Nick or Lizzy, if memory serves) several months ago as an attempt to explain something about how life came about. There was a specific paper referred to, which I took time to track down and read. Bottom line, it was rather much nonsense and just another attempt to redefine away the problems with a mechanistic origins story by introducing this autopoeitic idea that complex functional systems were kind of destined out of biochemistry itself.
If I get time later tonight, I’ll track down the paper and post the link.
Found the reference. It was Nick referring us to life as some kind of “kinetic” state based on some “autocatalytic” property. The (long) skinny is here:
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-421718
Bornagain posted this, among other things:
In order to support common understanding, can you (or anyone) provide a simple way sensibly to parse this sequence of words?
as to:
Sorry for any lack of clarity on my part. I think Dr. Meyer explains the basic idea much more clearly than I did:
Sorry but do I have this right:
Christians presuppose the existence of a rational creator, and can therefore rationally understand the universe.
Is that your argument?
Neil states:
Yet Dr. Bradley states,,
In this following video,,,
Dr. Bradley states:
And if we ask the question, ‘What is the cause of these simple mathematical equations that govern the universe?’ we find ourselves, once again, at the profound epistemological mystery as to why we should even be able to comprehend reality at such a deep level in the first place,,,
As to Neil’s quote here,,
Actually tracing out the ultimate cause for randomness in quantum mechanics reveals some very interesting things,,
In the following video, at the 37:00 minute mark, Anton Zeilinger, a leading researcher in quantum teleportation with many breakthroughs under his belt, humorously reflects on just how deeply determinism has been undermined by quantum mechanics by saying such a deep lack of determinism may provide some of us a loop hole when they meet God on judgment day.
Prof Anton Zeilinger speaks on quantum physics. at UCT – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3ZPWW5NOrw
Personally, I feel that such a deep undermining of determinism by quantum mechanics, far from providing a ‘loop hole’ on judgement day, actually restores free will to its rightful place in the grand scheme of things, thus making God’s final judgments on men’s souls all the more fully binding since man truly is a ‘free moral agent’ as Theism has always maintained. And to solidify this theistic claim for how reality is constructed, the following study came along a few months after I had seen Dr. Zeilinger’s video:
Can quantum theory be improved? – July 23, 2012
Excerpt: Being correct 50% of the time when calling heads or tails on a coin toss won’t impress anyone. So when quantum theory predicts that an entangled particle will reach one of two detectors with just a 50% probability, many physicists have naturally sought better predictions. The predictive power of quantum theory is, in this case, equal to a random guess. Building on nearly a century of investigative work on this topic, a team of physicists has recently performed an experiment whose results show that, despite its imperfections, quantum theory still seems to be the optimal way to predict measurement outcomes.,
However, in the new paper, the physicists have experimentally demonstrated that there cannot exist any alternative theory that increases the predictive probability of quantum theory by more than 0.165, with the only assumption being that measurement (*conscious observation) parameters can be chosen independently (free choice, free will, assumption) of the other parameters of the theory.,,,
,, the experimental results provide the tightest constraints yet on alternatives to quantum theory. The findings imply that quantum theory is close to optimal in terms of its predictive power, even when the predictions are completely random.
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-quantum-theory.html
So just as I had suspected after watching Dr. Zeilinger’s video, it is found that a required assumption of ‘free will’ in quantum mechanics is what necessarily drives the completely random (non-deterministic) aspect of quantum mechanics. Moreover, it was shown in the paper that one cannot ever improve the predictive power of quantum mechanics by ever removing free will as a starting assumption in Quantum Mechanics!
Henry Stapp on the Conscious Choice and the Non-Local Quantum Entangled Effects – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJN01s1gOqA
of note:
What does the term “measurement” mean in quantum mechanics?
“Measurement” or “observation” in a quantum mechanics context are really just other ways of saying that the observer is interacting with the quantum system and measuring the result in toto.
http://boards.straightdope.com.....p?t=597846
Needless to say, finding ‘free will conscious observation’ to be ‘built into’ our best description of foundational reality, quantum mechanics, as a starting assumption, ‘free will observation’ which is indeed the driving aspect of randomness in quantum mechanics, is VERY antithetical to the entire materialistic philosophy which demands that a ‘non-telological randomness’ be the driving force of creativity in Darwinian evolution! Also of interest:
Scientific Evidence That Mind Effects Matter – Random Number Generators – video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4198007
I once asked a evolutionist, after showing him the preceding experiments, “Since you ultimately believe that the ‘god of random chance’ produced everything we see around us, what in the world is my mind doing pushing your god around?”
Of note: since our free will choices figure so prominently in how reality is actually found to be constructed in our understanding of quantum mechanics, I think a Christian perspective on just how important our choices are in this temporal life, in regards to our eternal destiny, is very fitting:
Is God Good? (Free will and the problem of evil) – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rfd_1UAjeIA
Ravi Zacharias – How To Measure Your Choices – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Op_S5syhKI
You must measure your choices by the measure of
1) eternity
2) morality
3) accountability
4) charity
as to:
Well, I might add that we are made in the image of God and can therefore understand the universe, but basically yes, that is the argument, indeed, that is the state of mind, attitude, of the Christians who founded modern science:
Founders of Modern Science Who Believe in GOD – Tihomir Dimitrov
http://www.scigod.com/index.ph.....File/18/18
Some quibbles:
1. The terms “auto-” and “-poetic” come from Greek, not Latin.
2. To speak of matter and the laws of nature as separable things is to speak from a design viewpoint, and rather a straw-man viewpoint at that, as if God first devised the electron, the proton, etc., and then decided what those particles would do. To draw an analogy, this is like saying that a computer programmer wrote a program and then, when the program is finished, decided what the program was going to do (insert your favorite Microsoft joke here).
The laws of nature should not be regarded as separable from the entities of nature; the laws are merely our conclusions about the properites of those entites.
In further response to Neil on ‘randomness’, (being that randomness is suppose to the ultimate causation of creativity in the atheistic mindset), it is interesting to point out that the ‘entropic’ randomness of the ‘particles’ of this material universe is bounded by a constant, whereas, as pointed out before, the randomness in quantum mechanics is unbounded by any constant and in fact the randomness in quantum mechanics is found to be driven by a ‘free choice’ assumption.
notes:
And if we trace out the ultimate source/cause of entropic randomness in the ‘material’ universe, entropic randomness which is suppose to be the ultimate creative engine in the Darwinian mindset, we find out some very interesting things:
Indeed, blackholes are certainly destructive:
Although atheists may want to replace God as the creator with some ill defined notion of randomness, all I can say is, after looking at the destructive power noted in the ‘entropic randomness’ of Blackholes, Thank God that He has bounded the entropic randomness of this universe with a constant so that it is not unlimited in its effect!
Also of note to the ‘entropic randomness’ of the material universe is the fact that,,,
This number is gargantuan. If this number were written out in its entirety, 1 with 10^123 zeros to the right, it could not be written on a piece of paper the size of the entire visible universe, even if a number were written down on each sub-atomic particle in the entire universe, since the universe only has 10^80 sub-atomic particles in it.
Dr. Gordon discusses the initial entropy at the beginning of this video:
In further response to Neil on ‘randomness’, (being that randomness is suppose to the ultimate causation of creativity in the atheistic mindset), it is interesting to point out that the ‘entropic’ randomness of the ‘particles’ of this material universe is bounded by a constant, whereas, as pointed out before, the randomness in quantum mechanics is unbounded by any constant and in fact the randomness in quantum mechanics is found to be driven by a ‘free choice’ assumption.
notes:
And if we trace out the ultimate source/cause of entropic randomness in the ‘material’ universe, entropic randomness which is suppose to be the ultimate creative engine in the Darwinian mindset, we find out some very interesting things:
Indeed, blackholes are certainly destructive:
Although atheists may want to replace God as the creator with some ill defined notion of randomness, all I can say is, after looking at the destructive power noted in the ‘entropic randomness’ of Blackholes, Thank God that He has bounded the entropic randomness of this universe with a constant so that it is not unlimited in its effect!
Also of note to the ‘entropic randomness’ of the material universe is the fact that,,,
This number is gargantuan. If this number were written out in its entirety, 1 with 10^123 zeros to the right, it could not be written on a piece of paper the size of the entire visible universe, even if a number were written down on each sub-atomic particle in the entire universe, since the universe only has 10^80 sub-atomic particles in it.
Dr. Gordon discusses the initial entropy at the beginning of this video:
Whatever happened to good old billiard ball causation?
Neil:
Is it? I think it’s an emergent property of a volume!
What does it mean to say that A is a property of B, or that be has property A, regardless of whether that property is ’emergent’ or not?
Can a single entity have an emergent property, or does emergence always require a community (e.g., gas molecules) of entities?
I guess another way I could put that is to ask whether a single molecule has an emergent property that we can call pressure?
If there is a large number of molecules, can we say they have an emergent property, large number of molecules?
Needless to say, I don’t think you’ve given us a valid example of an emergent property. I think that pressure can be explained without recourse to something “else in addition to” molecules in motion inside a volume with a surface.
timothya:
Does that even remotely resemble the argument that Jaki was making?
EvilSnack:
Demonstrating that the laws are indeed separable from the entities. And thus the problem with mechanism.
In re: Neil’s (19), yes, you understood my meaning just fine. Whereas I talked about “the domino picture of causation,” Skewes and Hooker are more precise:
As this makes clear, the causal-thread picture of efficient causation leads to conceiving of agents as ‘causal boxes’, and that impedes our appreciation of the basic Aristotelian/Kantian point that organisms are self-determining, self-causing to some degree or other.
In other words, instead of rejecting efficient causation as insufficient to explain organismal agency, they reject a particular conception of efficient causation — though one that has a widespread influence, thanks to Hume and others. So they are not really friends of teleology. But on my reading, there’s a distinction between descriptions and explanations, such that “naturalized teleology” explains in terms of efficient causation what is described in terms of final causation.
That said, I haven’t really thought much about causation in contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of physics . . . it occurs to me that the 17th-century standard old model of “efficient causation” might not capture what philosophers today think about causation . . . so all of a sudden I don’t know what to say.
Before reading this article, I had independent reasons for thinking that simple, linear efficient causation impedes our understanding of living things, but I didn’t have quite the right vocabulary for describing the problem.*
While we’re on the topic, I also got a lot out of “Life After Kant: Natural purposes and the autopoietic foundations of biological individuality” by Webber and Varela.
* Those independent reasons stemming from reading Donald Davidson about animal minds.
Also, I just found “A move beyond Kant? – The Autopoiesis School on Life and Cognition” by Annett Wienmeister — looks very interesting, clearly written, and sets out a cogent critique of the autopoiesis approach.
It’s the causal-box theory of philosophy!
I know what you mean. Every time I start down one trail I come to another that also needs to be explored.
More reading, less internet. 😉
Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy
The Causation Debate in Modern Philosophy, 1637-1739
http://spot.colorado.edu/~tooley/Causation.html
Apparently the answer to this question is yes.
But also in the sense in which autopoeisis applies to living organisms, not inanimate matter.
Living organisms are the cause of their own organization and maintenance. They form themselves.
KN mentions a paper “Life after Kant: …”. However, the link he gives seems to be for temporary access that has already expired. Here’s an alternative link. That probably gets you to a brief abstract and a pay wall to see the full paper. I accessed it from my university campus, and was able to get to the full paper (the campus has presumably paid the subscription for electronic access to this journal).
And a note to KN: I have several posts at my blog which explore a basis for natural teleology.
HMM,
Theist:
How did life start?
Atheist:
Autopoeitically!
Theist:
Can you demonstrate life originating autopoeitically?
Atheist:
Nope.
Theist:
Well how do you know that life started autopoeitically?
Atheist:
Because the only other alternative, i.e. God, is unthinkable!
Theist:
Did you autopoeitically come to that conclusion? 🙂
Mung, thanks for those links about the history of the concept of causation!
Neil, I’ll take a look at your posts later on today or sometime soon. Thanks for the alternative link to the paper.
Bornagain77, autopoeisis is not a theory of abiogenesis. It’s an account of what it is for something to be alive, and it’s perfectly compatible with both theistic and naturalistic metaphysics.
“autopoeisis is not a theory of abiogenesis. It’s an account of what it is for something to be alive, and it’s perfectly compatible with both theistic and naturalistic metaphysics.”
I see, basically since it can’t even differentiate the completely different views of life that naturalism and Theism have, autopoeisis really is as useless as a dog chasing its tail in a circle! 🙂
note:
Is the Soul Immortal? (J.P. Moreland) – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7nqB7SH-7s
Here’s a way of thinking about the contrast between descriptions and explanations that bears on the notion of “emergence”.
When we say that something (e.g. salt or sugar) is “soluble,” we can describe solubility in relational terms: “X is soluble in L” means that if X were placed in L, it would, given various background conditions, dissolve. That gives a description of solubility, but does not explain it. The explanation lies the attraction and repulsive of differing electrical charges across the molecules of the substances involved. So solubility is an “emergent property”, because whether X is soluble in L depends on the entire system of electrical properties of X-molecules and L-molecules.
A few other books I keep on meaning to get around to reading:
The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth-Century German Biology
Nature’s Purposes: Analyses of Function and Design in Biology
Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System
Divine Machines: Leibniz and the Sciences of Life
Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind
In short, what I’m slowly groping for here is to reconstruct a philosophical and scientific tradition in which Aristotelian teleology ‘evolved’, as it was revived by Leibniz and Kant to correct the extremism of Descartes and esp. Spinoza, continued to influence biology well into the 19th-century (as well as speculative philosophy of nature, Naturphilosophie), went ‘underground’ in response to the rise of Darwinism, and which is now making an intriguing sort of comeback.
This is not to say, obviously, that design theory is irrelevant to the conversation — rather, it is to say that Nagel is right in thinking that there’s a tertium quid between reductive materialism (“chance” and “necessity”) and intelligent design. With respect to the dialectic of our arguments here, it means that the following argument won’t work:
(1) Either intelligent design is true or reductive materialism is true;
(2) But reductive materialism is false because (a) it fails on empirical grounds and (b) it fails on conceptual grounds;
(3) Therefore, intelligent design is true.
I agree with (2), and especially with (2b), but I reject (3) because I think that (1) is false, because it’s a false dichotomy — natural teleology is a tertium quid. That was true when Aristotle proposed it as a tertium quid between Democritus’ reductive materialism and Plato’s intelligent design, and it remains true twenty-three hundred years later.
This assertion rests on an equivocation about two different senses to the word “life”.
Naturalism and theism may have different views about the existential significance of life, or human life in particular (as in “the meaning of life”), but that’s completely different from the task of describing what it is for something to be a living thing, as opposed to dead or inanimate matter. On that point — providing a theory of what it is for something to be alive — autopoeisis has a great deal to say (though of course it’s not the only game in town).
That is not correct, naturalism holds that life ’emerges’ from some configuration of material particles and that life will cease to exist if that configuration is sufficiently disrupted, whereas theism holds that life, i.e. the soul, of a living organism (any living organism, not just man) existed prior to the living organism and will continue to exist afterwards. Dr. Moreland commented on that particular distinction at the 9:20 mark of the video I listed in my previous post.,, Moreover, whereas I can’t make heads or tails out of any of your reasoning, I can find evidence precisely for that distinction. i.e. Do we have scientific evidence for something that transcends time-space, matter and energy in living organisms?
notes:
In fact it is found that a ‘non-local’ quantum, beyond space and time, cause is needed to explain protein folding:
Physicists Discover Quantum Law of Protein Folding – February 22, 2011
Quantum mechanics finally explains why protein folding depends on temperature in such a strange way.
Excerpt: First, a little background on protein folding. Proteins are long chains of amino acids that become biologically active only when they fold into specific, highly complex shapes. The puzzle is how proteins do this so quickly when they have so many possible configurations to choose from.
To put this in perspective, a relatively small protein of only 100 amino acids can take some 10^100 different configurations. If it tried these shapes at the rate of 100 billion a second, it would take longer than the age of the universe to find the correct one. Just how these molecules do the job in nanoseconds, nobody knows.,,,
Their astonishing result is that this quantum transition model fits the folding curves of 15 different proteins and even explains the difference in folding and unfolding rates of the same proteins.
That’s a significant breakthrough. Luo and Lo’s equations amount to the first universal laws of protein folding. That’s the equivalent in biology to something like the thermodynamic laws in physics.
Finding the ‘quantum transition model’ to be a ‘universal law’ of protein folding is no small matter since a ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, cause must be supplied to explain quantum entanglement within proteins (and DNA). Theism has always postulated a beyond space and time cause for life. Reductive materialism, upon which neo-Darwinism is built, has no beyond space and time cause since it postulates that material particles are self-sustaining from which life simply ‘emerges’:
supplemental notes:
Does DNA Have Telepathic Properties?-A Galaxy Insight – 2009
Excerpt: DNA has been found to have a bizarre ability to put itself together, even at a distance, when according to known science it shouldn’t be able to.,,, The recognition of similar sequences in DNA’s chemical subunits, occurs in a way unrecognized by science. There is no known reason why the DNA is able to combine the way it does, and from a current theoretical standpoint this feat should be chemically impossible.
Coherent Intrachain energy migration at room temperature – Elisabetta Collini & Gregory Scholes – University of Toronto – Science, 323, (2009), pp. 369-73
Excerpt: The authors conducted an experiment to observe quantum coherence dynamics in relation to energy transfer. The experiment, conducted at room temperature, examined chain conformations, such as those found in the proteins of living cells. Neighbouring molecules along the backbone of a protein chain were seen to have coherent energy transfer. Where this happens quantum decoherence (the underlying tendency to loss of coherence due to interaction with the environment) is able to be resisted, and the evolution of the system remains entangled as a single quantum state.
https://www.scimednet.org/sapphire/main.php?url=%2Fquantum-coherence-living-cells-and-protein%2F
Quantum states in proteins and protein assemblies:
The essence of life? – STUART HAMEROFF, JACK TUSZYNSKI
Excerpt: It is, in fact, the hydrophobic effect and attractions among non-polar hydrophobic groups by van der Waals forces which drive protein folding. Although the confluence of hydrophobic side groups are small, roughly 1/30 to 1/250 of protein volumes, they exert enormous influence in the regulation of protein dynamics and function. Several hydrophobic pockets may work cooperatively in a single protein (Figure 2, Left). Hydrophobic pockets may be considered the “brain” or nervous system of each protein.,,, Proteins, lipids and nucleic acids are composed of constituent molecules which have both non-polar and polar regions on opposite ends. In an aqueous medium the non-polar regions of any of these components will join together to form hydrophobic regions where quantum forces reign.
http://www.tony5m17h.net/SHJTQprotein.pdf
Further note:
Does Quantum Biology Support A Quantum Soul? – Stuart Hameroff – video (notes in description)
http://vimeo.com/29895068
Being the skunk at an atheist convention – Stuart Hameroff
Excerpt: When metabolic requirements for quantum coherence in brain microtubules are lost (e.g. death, near-death), quantum information pertaining to that individual may persist and remain entangled in Planck scale geometry.
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/skunk.htm
i.e. quantum information is ‘conserved’ and cannot be destroyed!
further note:
Case for the Existence of the Soul – JP Moreland, PhD – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SJ4_ZC0xpM
Of related interest:
The Unbearable Wholeness of Beings – Steve Talbott
Excerpt: Virtually the same collection of molecules exists in the canine cells during the moments immediately before and after death. But after the fateful transition no one will any longer think of genes as being regulated, nor will anyone refer to normal or proper chromosome functioning. No molecules will be said to guide other molecules to specific targets, and no molecules will be carrying signals, which is just as well because there will be no structures recognizing signals. Code, information, and communication, in their biological sense, will have disappeared from the scientist’s vocabulary.
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/.....-of-beings
The predominance of quarter-power (4-D) scaling in biology
Excerpt: Many fundamental characteristics of organisms scale
with body size as power laws of the form:
Y = Yo M^b,
where Y is some characteristic such as metabolic rate, stride length or life span, Yo is a normalization constant, M is body mass and b is the allometric scaling exponent.
A longstanding puzzle in biology is why the exponent b is usually some simple multiple of 1/4 (4-Dimensional scaling) rather than a multiple of 1/3, as would be expected from Euclidean (3-Dimensional) scaling.
http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/~dre.....18_257.pdf
“Although living things occupy a three-dimensional space, their internal physiology and anatomy operate as if they were four-dimensional. Quarter-power scaling laws are perhaps as universal and as uniquely biological as the biochemical pathways of metabolism, the structure and function of the genetic code and the process of natural selection.,,, The conclusion here is inescapable, that the driving force for these invariant scaling laws cannot have been natural selection.” Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, What Darwin Got Wrong (London: Profile Books, 2010), p. 78-79
http://www.uncommondescent.com/evolution/16037/
4-Dimensional Quarter Power Scaling In Biology – video
http://www.metacafe.com/w/5964041/
A disagreement about certain metaphysical views regarding the soul — whether it exists and whether it is the sort of thing that survives the death of the body — seems to me to quite different from a disagreement about autopoiesis as a theory of what makes something an organism, as opposed to inanimate matter.
Also, “non-local” does not mean “beyond space and time”. It just means, “not restricted to particular spaces and particular times”. A physical variable can be non-local in that sense without being transcendent to all space and all time. One might, just conceivably, construe non-local physical variables as lending support to pantheism, but that’s a long ways away from lending support to a transcendent deity.
I’ve only skimmed “The Unbearable Wholeness of Beings” but I didn’t see anything I objected to. What I saw is pretty much how Kant explicates the difference between teleological systems and mechanistic systems, and on my reading, lends aid and comfort to autopoeisis.
Now, there’s an interesting debate going on amongst design theorists and their supporters as to whether design theory treats organisms as machines. Dembski acknowledges that design theory uses mechanistic analogies but seems to construe that as a heuristic tactic for arguing against Darwinism (which he seems to regard as fully committed to a mechanistic biology). Steve Fuller, on the other hand, is completely explicit about this (in his Science v. Religion? Intelligent Design and the Problem of Evolution): on his view, design theory just is the claim that “biology is divine technology”, and technology is mechanistic if anything is.
My point is that if we accept the views of Kant, Talbott, and Varela — that there’s at least an epistemological difference between organisms and machines (Kant) and perhaps also an ontological difference as well (Talbott, Varela) — then design theorists should resist Fuller’s way of explicating design theory more strongly than they have (to my knowledge, anyway).
The author of Life’s Ratchet cites The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth-Century German Biology and credits the author of that book with coming up with “teleomechanism.”
I wouldn’t then be surprised to find that the quote in the OP was borrowed from The Strategy of Life.
But really, teleomechanism? Aren’t mechanisms inherently teleological?
All those authors on “what is life?” I want to read What Does It Mean to be Dead?
Depending on how far back you want to go, here’s another:
Cause and Explanation in Ancient Greek Thought
Mung, how about this? 🙂
as to one of many incoherent points:
I suggest you catch up on just how deeply locality has been violated by entanglement before you make such declarations:
But what if the debate is not over ID and reductive materialism, but over teleology and reductive materialism?
What if the actual world we inhabit is one from which teleology cannot be excised?
What if reductive science isn’t the be all and end all of what can be known?
I think I would agree with you that (1) is a false dichotomy. But what would be the proper dichotomy over against reductive materialism?
“Mung, how about this?”
Do I look like I have time to read another book!?
😉
Is that one better than The Egyptian Book of the Dead?
In saying that (1) above is a “false dichotomy,” I meant to leave open that there could be a trichotomy: reductive materialism, teleology, and design. Though I’m sure that the correct explanation, should we ever discover, would contain certain elements of each.
And no, I doubt you do have time to read any more — nor do I. And this stuff isn’t even germane to my teaching or current research.
KN:
But that’s a false trichotomy.
It could be, if there’s a fourth option. I can’t think of one off the top of my head, though.
Or it could be that teleology and design are not mutually exclusive.
Yes, that’s quite reasonable.
I try.
What would be the proper dichotomy over against reductive materialism?
Mung posted this:
According to the Jaki quote that was included upthread, the acceptance of ex-nihilo creation, and the suppression of various necessitarian postulates was essential to the flowering of science in a Christian society (and conversely prevented in other societies).
I can see why this mindset might be sufficient to guide scientific thinking into fruitful channels (though it doesn’t explain why scientific progress was also retarded by Christian authority’s insistence on other, clearly nonsensical presuppositions). But I can’t see that it is necessary. Unless you want to argue that, since it happened this way, it could not have happened any other way.
In any case, Jaki’s argument only holds so long as one is prepared to devalue any and all scientific and technological developments that manifestly did occur in non-Christian societies. If so, the argument boils down to, “we won, therefore we must have been right”.
as to:
No, I beg to differ. The argument is far more nuanced than that. There is something within Christian thinking, besides the correct framework for thinking about reality as ‘contingent and rational’, which sets it completely apart from other worldviews, a ‘something different’ that enabled, and continues to enable, the breakthroughs of modern science. I hold that ‘something different’ to be the guiding hand of the ‘Spirit of Truth’ which proceeds from God the Father.
as for a few tantalizing pieces of evidence along this line:
Bruce Charlton’s Miscellany – October 2011
Excerpt: I had discovered that over the same period of the twentieth century that the US had risen to scientific eminence it had undergone a significant Christian revival. ,,,The point I put to (Richard) Dawkins was that the USA was simultaneously by-far the most dominant scientific nation in the world (I knew this from various scientometic studies I was doing at the time) and by-far the most religious (Christian) nation in the world. How, I asked, could this be – if Christianity was culturally inimical to science?
http://charltonteaching.blogsp.....-wife.html
List of multiple discoveries
Excerpt: Historians and sociologists have remarked on the occurrence, in science, of “multiple independent discovery”. Robert K. Merton defined such “multiples” as instances in which similar discoveries are made by scientists working independently of each other.,,, Multiple independent discovery, however, is not limited to only a few historic instances involving giants of scientific research. Merton believed that it is multiple discoveries, rather than unique ones, that represent the common pattern in science.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.....iscoveries
I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by men who were inspired. I study the Bible daily…. All my discoveries have been made in an answer to prayer.
Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), considered by many to be the greatest scientist of all time
Inventors – George Washington Carver
Excerpt: “God gave them to me” he (Carver) would say about his ideas, “How can I sell them to someone else?”
http://inventors.about.com/od/...../a/GWC.htm
. The following video gives deep insight into how serious the problem of ‘knowledge acquisition’ is to the worldview of atheistic materialism:
Kurt Godel – Incompleteness Theorem and Human Intuition – video (notes in description of video)
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/8516356/
The following video is far more direct in establishing the ‘spiritual’ link to man’s ability to learn new information, in that it shows that the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores for students showed a steady decline, for seventeen years from the top spot or near the top spot in the world, after the removal of prayer from the public classroom by the Supreme Court, not by public decree, in 1963. Whereas the SAT scores for private Christian schools have consistently remained at the top, or near the top, spot in the world:
The Real Reason American Education Has Slipped – David Barton – video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4318930
AMERICA: To Pray Or Not To Pray – David Barton – graphs corrected for population growth
http://www.whatyouknowmightnotbeso.com/graphs.html
United States Crime Rates 1960 – 2010 (Please note the skyrocketing crime rate from 1963, the year prayer was removed from school, thru 1980, the year the steep climb in crime rate finally leveled off.) of note:
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
What Lies Behind Growing Secularism by William Lane Craig – May 2012 – podcast (steep decline in altruism of young people since early 1960’s)
http://www.reasonablefaith.org.....secularism
You can see the dramatic difference, of the SAT scores for private Christian schools compared to public schools, at this following site;
Aliso Viejo Christian School – SAT 10 Comparison Report
http://www.alisoviejochristian.....at_10.html
The following article points out the flaw in a 2007 study that found equality in education between public schools and private schools by artificially ‘correcting’ the test scores upwardly for public schools:
Do private schools educate children better than public schools?
Excerpt: The results of education testing seems to show mixed results on the question of whether private schools educate children better. The results of the 2000 National Assessment of Educational Progress tests showed that private school students achieved higher scores at all three grade levels tested. However, a 2007 Center on Education Policy study found that once socioeconomic factors are corrected when assessing test results, private school students didn’t perform any better than public school students. Basically, this study says that students who did well on the standardized tests would have done well regardless of whether they attended a private or public school. However, moving past the dueling tests and studies, what’s clear is that private school students have better SAT scores, and better college admission and graduation rates, regardless of socioeconomic level.
http://curiosity.discovery.com.....ic-schools
It is also very interesting to point out that even though Christianity has a incredible track record of being very conducive for scientific progress, and also being very helpful to the education of children, Christianity is, in spite of this unmatched track record, treated with severe prejudice in higher education.
Majority of American University Professors have Negative View of Evangelical Christians – 2007
Excerpt: According to a two-year study released today by the Institute for Jewish & Community Research (IJCR), 53% of non-Evangelical university faculty say they hold cool or unfavorable views of Evangelical Christians – the only major religious denomination to be viewed negatively by a majority of faculty.
Only 30% of faculty hold positive views of Evangelicals, 56% of faculty in social sciences and humanities departments hold unfavorable views. Results were based on a nationally representative online survey of 1,269 faculty members at over 700 four-year colleges and universities. Margin of error is +/- 3%. ,,,
Only 20% of those faculty who say religion is very important to them and only 16% of Republicans have unfavorable views of Evangelicals; the percentages rise considerably for faculty who say religion is not important to them (75%) and among Democrats (65%).,,,
“This survey shows a disturbing level of prejudice or intolerance among U.S. faculty towards tens of millions of Evangelical Christians,,,,
One-third of all faculty also hold unfavorable views of Mormons, and among social sciences and humanities faculty, the figure went up to 38%. Faculty views towards other religious groups are more positive: Only 3% of faculty hold cool/unfavorable feelings towards Jews and only 4% towards Buddhists. Only 13% hold cool/unfavorable views of Catholics and only 9% towards non-Evangelical Christians. Only 18% hold cool/unfavorable views towards atheists.
A significant majority – 71% of all faculty – agreed with the statement: “This country would be better off if Christian fundamentalists kept their religious beliefs out of politics.” By comparison, only 38% of faculty disagreed that the country would be better off if Muslims became more politically organized.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ne.....y/07050808
Apparently tolerance in academia only means tolerating those who are no real threat to your preferred worldview of atheistic materialism.
Tim you state,,,
No, I beg to differ. The argument is far more nuanced than that. There is something within Christian thinking, besides what has turned out to be the correct framework for thinking about reality as ‘contingent and rational’, which sets it completely apart from other worldviews, a ‘something different’ that enabled, and continues to enable, the breakthroughs of modern science. I hold that ‘something different’, as strange as it may sound to someone of the naturalistic mindset, to be the guiding hand of the ‘Spirit of Truth’ which proceeds from God the Father.
as for a few tantalizing pieces of evidence along this line:
A atheists may claim those are just coincidences and mean nothing, yet the following video gives deep insight into just how serious the problem of ‘knowledge acquisition’ is to the worldview of atheistic materialism:
The following video is far more direct in establishing the ‘spiritual’ link to man’s ability to learn new information, in that it shows that the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores for students showed a steady decline, for seventeen years from the top spot or near the top spot in the world, after the removal of prayer from the public classroom by the Supreme Court, not by public decree, in 1963. Whereas the SAT scores for private Christian schools have consistently remained at the top, or near the top, spot in the world:
The following article points out the flaw in a 2007 study that found equality in education between public schools and private schools by artificially ‘correcting’ the test scores upwardly for public schools:
It is also very interesting to point out that even though Christianity has a incredible track record of being very conducive for scientific progress, and also being very helpful to the education of children, Christianity is, in spite of this unmatched track record in education and scientific progress, treated with severe prejudice in higher education.
Apparently tolerance in academia only means tolerating those who are no real threat to your preferred worldview of atheistic materialism. This severe prejudice against professing Christians simply should not be so. Indeed, colleges should be fighting over recruiting the brightest Christian high school students instead of despising them.
of related note:
I’m not sure there is one! Does there need to be? Perhaps some version of emergentism (bottom-up) or emanationism (top-down) — so, is there a larger class of theories that includes both emergentism and emanationism? Perhaps both might be regarded as varieties of holism — one can plausibly regard holism as anti-reductionist.
But in general, I try to avoid oppositional and “Manichean” approaches to how I configure the intellectual and practical options. I’m more interested in how opposed positions are partially internally constituted by that opposition, and how they feed off each other, and becoming increasingly polarized with every iteration of the feedback-loop between them.
Bornagain posted this:
Continues to enable? Have you seen the statistics on the proportion of US scientist who subscribe to a Christian worldview? Please. There must be some point where reality penetrates your hermetic mental crust.
Tim, appealing to consensus of atheist in academia to support your position is similar to a bigot pointing to all white neighborhoods in the south as proof that blacks did not in fact build those neighborhoods in the first place!:
Of note:
The Magician’s Twin: C.S. Lewis and the Case against Scientism – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPeyJvXU68k
Tim. let’s take a bit closer look at the fruit of your preferred atheistic worldview and see exactly what it has brought us in science and society:
Neo-Darwinism’s negative effect on science and society
Materialists like to claim evolution is indispensable to experimental biology and led the way to many breakthroughs in medicine, Yet in a article entitled “Evolutionary theory contributes little to experimental biology”, this expert author begs to differ.
In fact, as to the somewhat minor extent evolutionary reasoning has influenced medical diagnostics, it has led to much ‘medical malpractice’ in the past:
Moreover, besides evolutionary reasoning NOT ‘producing any new discoveries or increasing understanding’, and besides the medical malpractice that evolutionary reasoning has led to, is the fact that it can be forcefully argued that evolutionary reasoning, the more dogmatically it has been clung to, has in fact inhibited the ‘producing of new discoveries and of increasing understanding’. This is clearly illustrated in the junk DNA fiasco that evolutionary reasoning has foisted off on biology. Indeed imposed on it prior to investigation for any functionality in the non-coding regions of DNA;
Moreover the supposed Junk regions, once they were looked at more closely, were, amazingly, found to be ‘more functional’ than the protein coding regions:
ENCODE recently blew a gaping hole in the whole JUNK DNA argument of atheists:
Incredibly, many leading evolutionists (Ayala in 2010; Francis Collins in 2010) still, before the ENCODE findings of 2012, insisted that most of the genome, which does not directly code for proteins, was useless ‘Junk DNA’ even though levels upon levels of complexity were recently being discovered in the genome.
Some materialists have tried to get around the failed prediction of Junk DNA by saying evolution never really predicted Junk DNA. This following site list several studies and quotes by leading evolutionists that expose their falsehood in denying the functionless Junk DNA predictions that were made by leading evolutionists:
Here is quote that succinctly denotes this very anti-scientific stance of neo-Darwinism;
Moreover Darwinism, despite delusional denialism from atheists that would put chronic alcoholics to shame, has in fact had horrendous consequences for society in America and the world;
And let’s not forget the horror of the holocaust. Although atheistic Darwinists are also in complete denial of this fact of history, Richard Weikart has done a excellent job in tying evolutionary reasoning directly to the supposed ‘scientific justification’ behind the holocaust:
The unmitigated horror visited upon man, by state sponsored atheism, undergirded by the pseudo-scientific precepts of neo-Darwinism, would be hard to exaggerate,,, Here’s what happens when ‘enlightened’ Atheists/evolutionists/non-Christians take control of Government:
footnote: the body count for abortion is now over 50 million in America since it was legalized, by judicial fiat not by public decree, in 1973 (legislation by liberal justices from the bench who basically view the constitution of the United States as ‘evolving’!):
Related note:
In fact Charles Darwin, in his classic Origin of Species which is still venerated by the evolutionary elites of today, stated that…
If Darwinists want to insist that all these murderous consequences, and ethical implications, and hindrance of scientific progress, of Darwinism are just a mistake of the past will someone please inform Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University, of that???:
Related notes:
quote:
Music:
timothya:
Have you seen the statistics on the proportion of US scientist who subscribe to a Christian worldview? Please.
What does that have to do with anything?
There must be some point where reality penetrates your hermetic mental crust.
There must be some point at which you can offer a rational, cogent, relevant argument.
Modern scientists operate in a culture. Their personal beliefs don’t impact much on that culture, and that culture was there before they arrived on the scene.
For some data on the religious identity of scientists, Scientists and Belief looks pretty good.
That’s perfectly true, and maybe a good response to timothya’s objection, but there’s another way of posing the problem.
Given that modern science arose within a background informed by certain metaphysical assumptions, such as progressive revelation (as Stark emphasizes), does it follow that science is only intelligible, only makes sense, given those or similar metaphysical commitments?*
Believe it or not, I really am trying to be fair here. But the problem as I put it above is the best I can do, for right now, to make sense of what the claim is under discussion. And I have to say, I just don’t see why one should accept it.
*For what it’s worth, my knowledge of the emergence of science is based on Funkenstein, Dupre, and Toulmin.
Yes.
Science isn’t just about what, but also very much about why. Which assumes there is a why to be discovered.
Mung,
I’m glad we at least established some conversational framework, so we understand what we’re talking about here. Now for some further refinements: is the claim that the intelligibility of scientific inquiry presupposes some metaphysics or other, or is that claim that the intelligibility of scientific inquiry presupposes the metaphysics of Christian theology? The former does not strike me as objectionable (though of course many philosophers disagree with it), whereas I’m highly skeptical about the latter.
Put otherwise: I think it’s true that scientific inquiry, successful and unsuccessful, necessarily presupposes that there is an intelligible reality to be investigated. But that doesn’t establish very much!
It certainly leaves wide open all sorts of questions as to how exactly that intelligible reality is to be characterized, and every characterization of that reality will draw upon scientific results, whether Aristotle’s, Newton’s, Darwin’s, Einstein’s, etc. (So there’s some circularity here which is neither avoidable nor vicious.)
Now, it seems to me that you want to establish a stronger claim here, namely something like:
(1) The metaphysical commitments shared by the originators of modern science explain the intelligibility of nature better than other metaphysical commitments; or perhaps
(2) Only the metaphysical commitments shared by the originators of modern science explain the intelligibility of nature.
What I’d like to know is, have I done a fair job of articulating what’s at stake here? Do (1) or (2) at all capture your position? And what’s the argument for (1) (or (2)) in contrast to the weaker claim,
(3) All scientific inquiry necessarily presupposes some metaphysics of some sort or other which explains the intelligibility of nature,
and more radical claim,
(4) All scientific inquiry necessarily presupposes some metaphysics of some sort or other which explains the intelligibility of nature, but for every stage in the history of science, the explication of that intelligibility draws upon the results of scientific inquiry at that stage.
I think we can agree on (3) to some degree, but it seems to me that you want to argue from (3) to either (1) or (2), whereas I want to argue from (3) to (4).
How am I doing so far?
Kantian Naturalist,
“I don’t see why it’s “self-deception” to think that some questions are beyond our finite, all-too-human capacity to answer, or at least to provide empirically-grounded answers.” KN
Do you ever consider the natural reasonableness that this is meant to be?
I mean if we reason with all carefulness and the progression leads step by step to a door of faith that we must choose to open or knock at or knock down, built up from strict reasonings that are empirically grounded to the heady heights of the classical metaphysical then I see no good reason to reject or spurn this except as a wilful unfounded bias. It seems to be a simple natural and justified progression that leads from the visible to the invisible all in accord with reason. To at that point put an emphasis on empirical grounding strikes me as the thing that is ungrounded but introducing or perhaps re-introducing a step that is out of its logical progression and order. This is where choice does indeed matter more than as a mere subjective predilection or desire but rather it is summoned and commanded to account.
ref. Romans chapter 1: 20
I don’t have as good an answer for you as you may wish, Michael, but here it is:
I just don’t think there is any “progression [that] leads step by step . . . [from] strict reasonings that are empirically grounded to the heady heights of the classical metaphysical”. I just don’t think that there’s any way of getting from the visible to the invisible, or in Kantian terms, from the conditioned to the unconditioned.
Why do I think this? Let’s consider the Big Three — the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the freedom of the will — and let’s call “theism” the affirmation of the Big Three and “naturalism” the denial of the Big Three. Now, there are all sorts of “proofs” that purport to establish theism on the firm ground of experience. But, there are also all sorts of “proofs” that purport to establish naturalism on the basis of experience, too!
On my view, Kant was right about two very important points: (a) experience cannot arbitrate between theism and naturalism, and (b) reason cannot arbitrate between theism and naturalism.
Regarding (a) in particular: I don’t think that Darwinian evolution lends support to naturalism, and I don’t think design theory lends support to theism. Theistic evolution and natural design (e.g. by aliens) are as well-supported by evidence as unguided evolution and supernatural design (whatever supernatural intelligences did the designing).
To summarize, both theism and naturalism are equally consistent with experience and with reason. You say you can reason from experience to theism; others say they can reason from experience to naturalism. And both lines of thought are just as rational as the other, so it seems that reason is divided against itself, and skepticism the only reasonable response.
Hence — I regard this point as always bearing repeating on this board — I myself do not regard naturalism as more reasonable than theism — nor vice-versa. As I often say here, from where I sit, it’s a “leap of faith” either way. (I guess you could call my view “faitheism.”)
That’s one big point I’ve been stressing in my conversations here. The other big point I’ve been stressing is that naturalism (conceived of as the denial of the Big Three) is no threat to such things as a liberal polity, respect for human rights, and other achievements of modern Western democracies (and others modeled after ours, such as contemporary India).
Kantian Naturalist:
My claim is much more modest. I hope you’re not disappointed. 🙂
Modern science developed and grew because of a particular metaphysical climate that was conducive to it’s growth. It found fertile soil, as it were, and flourished.
It’s not as if science never existed before. But it is also true that science didn’t flourish in just any climate.
There can be no doubt that Christianity in general and Scholasticism in particular played a leading role in the development of that climate.
I think those two are a false dichotomy, to take a page from your own playbook. I don’t mean to be coy.
I think (2) is much too strong for my tastes, and (1) sort of misses the point in putting the emphasis entirely on metaphysical commitments. What were the competing metaphysics?
As you say, this should be non-controversial. Not just in science, but in any system of enquiry.
On one sense yes but in quite another sense no.
The philosophers (metaphysicians) of the day seemed to be very familiar with the science of the day and in many cases you probably could not even tell them apart. It wasn’t called natural philosophy for nothing. The metaphysics fed the science and the science fed the metaphysics.
Sorry it took so long to get back to you, but you had an excellent post and I didn’t want to just toss off a response off the cuff. It’s been a joy having you here.
p.s. By the way, are you familiar with Neal Stephenson’s trilogy, The Baroque Cycle? Masterful historical fiction. If you enjoy the history of science you might want to check it out.