Mind Over Matter

_{Barry Arrington

January 1, 2013

Intelligent Design}

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In any philosophy of reality that is not ultimately self-defeating or internally contradictory, mind – unlabeled as anything else, matter or spiritual – must be primary. What is “matter” and what is “conceptual” and what is “spiritual” can only be organized from mind. Mind controls what is perceived, how it is perceived, and how those percepts are labeled and organized. Mind must be postulated as the unobserved observer, the uncaused cause simply to avoid a self-negating, self-conflicting worldview. It is the necessary postulate of all necessary postulates, because nothing else can come first. To say anything else comes first requires mind to consider and argue that case and then believe it to be true, demonstrating that without mind, you could not believe that mind is not primary in the first place.

William J Murray

Comments

Hey BA77, these seem to be right up your alley: The Non-Local Universe Mindful UniverseMung_{January 8, 2013
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KF: Maybe you should start a thread. I have enough of these stories to fill a book. You're right about the hostility; it's the same thing when it comes to any idea that the atheist/progressive media/academia/scientism complex is against. You get bullied, ridiculed, ostracized, blackballed. It is ironic that they have become the very thing that in their mind is so terrifying; a "church" of persecution against the "others" who will not toe their ideological line.William J Murray_{January 7, 2013
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Box and WJM: Do you see how some thing that is fairly common [in terms of absolute numbers, but rare relative to how many "ordinary course of nature" events happen], because of a hostile climate, can be severely under-reported? What does that tell us about the likelihood that conventional wisdom is sound on such things? Why? How? KFkairosfocus_{January 7, 2013
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@William J Murray 167
William J Murray: “I swerved into the right lane to avoid it and braced for collision with the 18-wheeler. I guess I was hoping to somehow squeeze between the truck and the concrete construction divider and just do damage to both vehicles.”
I like your story much better. Your role is way more heroic. I was a complete sissy. Like I said before, for a moment I intended to peddle as hard as I could, but I caved in at the same time. My legs went to jello. A sob welled up. I bowed to the inevitable. All in split seconds.
William J Murray: “Nothing happened."
Exactly. Nothing happened.
William J Murray: “I looked around.”
I was still looking down. And with legs filled with jello I pedaled along.
William J Murray: “The 18 wheeler was nowhere to be seen. I asked my wife if she saw that 18 wheeler and she looked like a ghost and said yes. There was no way off that road right there. It was just gone.
Earlier I wrote: ’And then … the car went through me’. That is probably an inference. It is probably more accurate to say that the car was just gone. Somehow it had vanished into thin air.Box_{January 7, 2013
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Box and William,,, WOW! I've seen 'small' "ordinary' miracles but if I saw something like what you guys saw it would absolutely blow me away. Sarah McLachlan - Ordinary Miracle http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqZE4ZDnAkQbornagain77_{January 7, 2013
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Box, I had a similar incident. I and my wife and son were driving back from Colorado to Texas on a stretch of highway that had a lot of construction. I was doing about 65 and had kind of "zoned out" until I realized my lane was ending abruptly and there was a couple of those huge barrels and then a concrete barrier in front of me too close to stop before hitting them at high speed. I glanced in my side and rear-view mirrors and there was an 18-wheeler in the right lane right on my back right fender and gaining ground as I had already started applying the brakes. Going forward was a certain bad accident and for whatever reason I swerved into the right lane to avoid it and braced for collision with the 18-wheeler. I guess I was hoping to somehow squeeze between the truck and the concrete construction divider and just do damage to both vehicles. Nothing happened. I looked around. The 18 wheeler was nowhere to be seen. I asked my wife if she saw that 18 wheeler and she looked like a ghost and said yes. There was no way off that road right there. It was just gone. Our lives have been full of such miracles.William J Murray_{January 7, 2013
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Would you offer this story to the papers? The idea never crossed my mind. It is completely unbelievable. I have told this to my wife, my mother and my best friend. These people want to believe me but even for them it is quite a stretch. I’m not even sure that I can believe it myself. What I’m sure of is that I try to be as accurate and honest as possible when I tell the story.Box_{January 7, 2013
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Did the papers take up the story? KFkairosfocus_{January 7, 2013
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@Kairosfocus I remember that I passed 4 or 5 cyclists whom were patiently waiting in queue at the traffic light which I chose to ignore. Two of them were standing next to each other so I had to really get around them in order to commit my traffic violation. Then there was the person sitting in the front car of the long queue for the other traffic light on my right. And last but not least the driver of the black car. But I don’t know any of them and I was not in a scientific mood during and right after the mind boggling event. Maybe being perplexed and not being able to do scientific research is a recurring problem during miracles.Box_{January 7, 2013
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Box: An interesting tale [similar to the risen Jesus apparently walking through walls and appearing in the room then shut for fear], were there other witnesses, especially to the car being there? Gkairosfocus_{January 6, 2013
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@161 Kairosfocus
Kairosfocus: But, at this stage I don’t think anything apart from a personal meeting with the designer would be deemed acceptable evidence by some of the truly committed objectors out there. There is a term for that sort of attitude (multiply by how just so stories that fit the party line are just fine), and let’s just say that undue skepticism about what is uncongenial is not exactly an intellectual virtue. KF”
I have to confess that ‘undue skepticism’ is part of me too. And I fully agree with you that is not an intellectual virtue. In fact I do not consider my doubts to be rational at all and am certainly not proud of them. I do not understand people who use it as a starting point. Moreover, I do not understand people who consider materialism to be attractive. I've never understood this and I never will. For me materialism is the ultimate nightmare of total lack of purpose and meaning. I see it as a duty for every man to strive for meaningfulness.
Kairosfocus: (..) ”that car rushing at you on the street is or is not there it is not both.”
I do not wish to argue about logic. This is an account of a miracle which I experienced, which seems more or less appropriate since you told about a miracle in post 149. About 15 years ago I was cycling and ignored a traffic light. On my right was a queue of cars which waited for traffic lights. Next to that queue of cars was an empty track, or so I thought. When I arrived at the "empty track" a black car rushed at me with formidable speed. I remember that I intended to pedal as hard as I could, but couldn’t because I knew it was useless, there was simply no escape possible. And then ... the car went through me. Everything around me was quiet and I cycled on and did not look back. Totally amazed.Box_{January 6, 2013
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Box: Organisation of extremely complex entities often tends to be designed in a sort of multi-layer fashion, leading to a degree of modularity. Think here of the ISO OSI seven layer communication model, from physical to applications. where, indeed, organisation per a wiring diagram and hierarchical modularity point very strongly to purpose and design, but so does code, digital code used in algorithms and so does much else. But, at this stage I don't think anything apart from a personal meeting with the designer would be deemed acceptable evidence by some of the truly committed objectors out there. There is a term for that sort of attitude (multiply by how just so stories that fit the party line are just fine), and let's just say that undue skepticism about what is uncongenial is not exactly an intellectual virtue. KFkairosfocus_{January 6, 2013
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Kantian Naturalist "If I had time for only one book by one of those philosophers, what would you recommend?" Based on the books I have read, I would recommend either "Degrees of Knowledge" or "The Range of Reason," by Jacques Maritain. If, however, I may be so presumptuous as to recommend something I am about to read (based on my knowledge of the author's familiarity with current topics), try this: David Oderberg: "Real Essentialism" (2007)StephenB_{January 6, 2013
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Mung: Oderberg? Yes, thanks!StephenB_{January 6, 2013
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That Hilbert Hotel argument is just a Hotel Manager of the Gaps argument.Mung_{January 6, 2013
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David Olderberg
Oderberg?Mung_{January 6, 2013
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Kairosfocus: "I am not comparing life forms as a whole with machines in some sort of comparison (...)"
Kairosfocus, can you please respond to my question to you in post 95?Box_{January 6, 2013
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F/N: Cf Craig's video, which uses Hilbert's Hotel Infinity to show the problems above and more.kairosfocus_{January 6, 2013
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F/N: I see this from 131:
Here’s one of my worries: just why is it that the classical philosophers, from Plato to (say) Kant, thought that infinite regresses are “absurd” or “irrational”? I suspect that one powerful motivation for this move on their part is that they lacked a precise concept of infinity. They just didn’t have the tools to think about it clearly. But we do, thanks to the foundations of set theory. So it’s not really clear to me that the classical objections to infinite regressions make as much sense to us now as they did when they were first articulated.
We can think about transfinite sets indeed, and what we can see underscores my point about the challenge of traversing a set of cardinality Aleph null step by step. Set operations on such sets are careful to either deliver the set at once, or to only suggest the set, e.g. {1, 2, 3, . . . } We are dealing with cause-effect chains, and specific events of cause from one to the next. There was credibly a big bang event, which expanded to yield our cosmos that we observe. At some point stars formed and cooked up key elements then dispersed their ingredients by various mechanisms, leading to onward generations of stars in our galaxy such as Sol. Planets formed, from the same giant molecular clouds. Atmospheres formed, as did hydrospheres etc. Somehow life was formed, and entered a succession of generations per a definite step by step reproduction and metabolism process. And so forth. That is, we are seeing dynamic, causal succession in stages, that can be counted, leading to the challenge of traversing the transfinite step by step. Where also, the classic paradox of Hilbert's hotel infinity and absurdities gives us a way to see the problems with taking up procedures that are ho hum with finite sets, with transfinite countable ones. The hotel is full. A new guest arrives. No problem, announce over the intercom that every guest in room n moves to 2n. The hotel is now half empty and the guest can be sent to room 1. If an infinite number of guests -- note, discrete -- arrives instead, simply send them to take up rooms, having sent guests from 1, 2, 3, . . . to rooms 2n, send the new guests to rooms 2n + 1 from n = 0, 1, 2, 3, up. And that is just the beginnings of hotel Infinity's absurdities. So, we cannot just wave off the issue of traversing the countable infinite step by step like the above. And that is exactly what traversing an infinite regress attempts to do. If you could deliver the actual infinity all at once -- notice the n --> 2n transition and the n --> 2n + 1 transition -- we carry out a single step or a few steps that give us an infinity all at once. But to count up, 1, 2, 3, . . . in succession step by finite step is a task of a different order. (You will notice, that I am NOT talking about spanning a continuum, which runs a race between dx and dt, leading to a finite limit. Yes, the tortoise will be overtaken by the hare in a finite amount of time as a result of the differing dx:dt ratios taken to the limit. That is what L'Hospital's rule is all about, and it is how we can sketch curves and see how we can move to asymptotes, etc.) KFkairosfocus_{January 6, 2013
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KN: One more thing, above you have suggested that there is no proper analogy between machinery etc and life forms. This is incorrect. I am not comparing life forms as a whole with machines in some sort of comparison, I am highlighting an observed fact about key components of especially the living cell. It is a fact that DNA is a digital information store in a string data structure. It is a fact that protein synthesis is a step by step algorithmic procedure that uses that digital info as first transcribed to mRNA to assemble AA chains that then fold to function in ways that are critically dependent on the AA sequences. It is a fact that tRNA has a matching anticodon and is loaded by a relevant enzyme that attaches the AA to a universal CCA coupler tip based on the match to the particular tRNA. It is a fact that the process we see is an information processing process, of step by step finite targetted form, i.e we see the physical instantiation of digital, algorithmic information processing. Yes, a four-state digital system is different from a 2-state one, but so is a 10-state system such as we use in arithmetic. Binary digital is a subset of digital, not a constraint on whether or not something is digital. We are here dealing with instantiation of a digital, algorithmic info processing system using an object code in a machine language. Thus the inference on the known cause of such systems is appropriate and the use of a threshold of complexity beyond which chance and mechanical necessity are not credible, is a way of strengthening the inference. While I am at it, let me note that by definition, mechanical necessity does not produce high contingency, i.e the idea that the chemistry of warm little ponds deterministically orders macromolecules and clusters them to go up the energetic hill spontaneously and self-organise [not self order] to effect string data structures with protein codes, regulatory codes and associated properly arranged execution machinery and raw materials is simply not credible. If that were so, two things would obtain: (i) the physics of the cosmos would have been programmed to create life in any suitable environment, a case of fine tuning on steroids if there ever was one, and (ii) every can of soup in a supermarket would be teeming with primitive life when we pop it open. Spontaneous generation on steroids. There is no observational evidence for the first, and for the second, the same obtains: cans of soup are not noted for spoiling so spectacularly, other than if there is some living microorganism that has got in. There is one commonly observed and only observed source of FSCO/I, intelligent design. That holds in the teeth of the suggested genetic algorithm alternative, which by virtue of hill climbing algorithms, is shown to be a matter of adaptations as programmed within islands of function, programmed by a presumably intelligent programmer and running on a presumably intelligently engineered computer. In short, the empirical evidence is all around us, in all sorts of places, from posts in this thread, to the computers we are using, to the books that surround us, to the Internet, to cans of soup on laden supermarket shelves, groaning under the weight of thousands of cans carrying our a form of the Humpty Dumpty prick and spread out the components of life and see if diffusion can weave them back again experiment. KFkairosfocus_{January 5, 2013
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Have you read anything from Reginald Garriquo-Lagrange, Eteinne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, Ralph McIrnerny. or David Olderberg?
No, I'm afraid not. Though I've heard of Gilson's From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again and it seems like something I'd enjoy. If I had time for only one book by one of those philosophers, what would you recommend?Kantian Naturalist_{January 5, 2013
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Alan Fox said: " I don’t doubt that people have these experiences. I question whether they are real or symptomatic resulting from anaesthesia. It’s still anecdotal." This is a perfect example of ideological bias. You have no idea what the Lancet paper was about or how the research was conducted; you just assume it could have only been "anecdotal" in nature, which it wasn't. Testimony corroborated by expert eyewitnesses and physical evidence in a rigorous experiment is not "anecdotal", because none of it was "secondhand".William J Murray_{January 5, 2013
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KN
I read a great deal of philosophy, and I find something to agree with and something to disagree with in everyone I read. I have a fairly loosely defined ‘home’ at the intersection of pragmatism (Peirce, Dewey, C. I. Lewis, Sellars, Rorty), phenomenology (Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty), and critical theory (Adorno, Marcuse, Habermas), with Kant and Hegel as the headwaters from which those streams run and sometimes cross.
Have you read anything from Reginald Garriquo-Lagrange, Eteinne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, Ralph McIrnerny. or David Olderberg.StephenB_{January 5, 2013
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KN: Pardon, but you simply handed back the same problem of traversing aleph null stepwise in another form. How can we get here from aleph null past, and on what evidence do you suggest such an infinite regress to now in the teeth of the Hubble evidence and the issues of heat death? It seems to me that he observed cosmos is bounded in the past by a singularity, per the general results of the science, and in the future by thermodynamic deterioration. And, to speak of in effect the infinite succession of "gods" I raised at step one at three years of age brings us back to the same problem that any infinite succession of causal steps implies. Now, I have not really been tracking this thread so I missed your 84. On that, I do not find your remarks particularly impressive as there is indeed a distinction between the three as easily spotted as: 1: . . . ASASASAS . . . 2: . . . giq3tgu35reonwsfjb . . . 3: Functionally specific organisation is not randomness nor repetitive periodic order. To get type 3, you have a very different causal pattern than the sort of blind forces that you have invoked, which at most get us to type 1 rather than 2. In the case of say a snowflake the symmetry is 1 ans the complexity is 2, though in principle we could manipulate circumstances to express a coded pattern. Forced natural regularity is not high contingency and contingency comes in two distinct forms. When we come to algorithmic messages that constitute prescriptive information, and which to work must be coupled to executing machines, the problems compound. It is a highly relevant finding that FSCO/I, when we can observe the cause, traces to intelligent design. It is relevant that on analysing the relevant config spaces and the implications of multipart complex function dependent on proper arrangement and interfacing as well as sequence, we credibly face the islands of function effect and we then see that even 500 bits worth of info exhausts the needle in haystack capacity of the solar system, and 1,000 bits the observed cosmos. The set of implied commitments to deny a finite and grounded cosmos [the reality of traversed infinite regress in some form or circularity of causation], rooted in a necessary being are mounting up in terms of metaphysical price tag and want of empirical warrant. In addition, the implied commitment to an amoral universe that scientism and materialism present to us, is little short of monstrously absurd. You and others need to explain to us why we should be willing to accept such a price tag. I think I am having a case of metaphysical price sticker shock, especially when a worldview predicated on an inherently good and wise Creator God, makes sense and does not call for such a price. I need not add much on my own experience with God and that of millions, save this: absent a miracle of guidance when my mother was desperate in the face of a chronic out of control illness that had me at death's door, I would not be here to converse with you -- forty years now. On that alone, I have no doubt of the reality of God. Nor am I by any means the only person like that, which gives me -- and millions of others across the ages -- a very different view on the credibility of the various speculations on offer in the market place of ideas and values. From my viewpoint, too many are willing to pay an extravagant metaphysical price to avoid dealing with an alternative that raises far more directly personal -- especially, who is in charge of my life -- challenges. Sorry if that gets a bit personal, but at this point eh matters are quite personal. Next, you seem to have implicitly slipped in an assumption that minded self-moved behaviour must somehow reduce to or emerge from type 1 and 2 together. But that is begging a big question and is not consistent with what we observe ourselves doing, i.e. we OBSERVE that we make genuine choices and reasonings, we do not simply carry out cobbled together survival reactions that are irrelevant to truth, logic or warrant or morality. Why should not mind/soul be of a different order of being that we experience as our first, first person reality that is indeed embodied but nonetheless is just as real as the body and world we perceive by that means? Where, BOTH are real? (Putting an unbridgeable ugly gulch between our necessarily inner experience and perception of reality and the reality of things in themselves in all cases goes several steps too far, into self-referential absurdity. How can we stand outside ourselves to know the external world is such that we cannot credibly know it accurately enough in many significant ways, never mind the limitations of our senses and reasonings? It is enough to follow Royce that error exists and we can thus know truths about the world to certainty, however humbling. Thus too, that which would undermine such or dismiss it, is refuted.) In that general context, pardon but you have mangled the raft metaphor as I extended it to include the sea and the sharks. I pointed out that in the context of seeking to speak of coherence as criterion and the idea of being partly under construction, the raft is all along resting on foundations that are necessary for it to float. Or the ever-lurking sharks will have lunch, so we have a first duty of care to do no irreparable harm -- which seems to be being neglected by too many in our time. At no point am I conflating cause-effect with ground-consequent. (Remember, I cut my eye teeth on Lewis and Schaeffer, responding to Marxists with their love of dismissing bourgeois false consciousness!) My point was and is that chains of warrant do not just run in circles, and they have an undergirding foundation, most notoriously in the first principles of right reason, as I have repeatedly pointed out to you. Which principles undergird all reasoned thought and which we cannot even successfully deny, for to try to say the LNC does not hold is to implicitly appeal to it. Nor is this merely verbal, that car rushing at you on the street is or is not there it is not both. Identity and distinction are real before we recognise them in language that must meet the test of reflecting that reality. And for Buddhists in japan, they look both ways before crossing the street. Ravi Zacharias assures us that that happens in India too. Some things are indeed both-and, but other things are inescapably either -or but not both. BTW, the first problem of set theory -- as the Barber paradox testifies -- is the distinction of inclusion/exclusion, too. So, yes, we have to be very choosy about setting up our set theoretic structures, exactly because of the problem. And that does not disappear simply because there are empty sets that can be contrasted. Going back, infinite regress of gods is just as subject to comparative difficulties on factual adequacy, coherence and explanatory power as anything. Apart from a handy ad hoc that may save the phenomena, what do you have to offer? KFkairosfocus_{January 5, 2013
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By because we can model an infinite regress as infinitely nested sets, and there's nothing absurd about that.Kantian Naturalist_{January 5, 2013
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@Kantian Naturalist How does set theory change the verdict on infinite regress?Box_{January 5, 2013
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In re: Box @ 145:
I thought that the absurdity of infinite regress was a done deal. A person cannot be carried by another person who is carried by another person … etc. without anyone actually standing on the ground. Why isn’t infinite regress clearly absurd?
Because of the considerations I raised in my (131) above.Kantian Naturalist_{January 5, 2013
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@KN
Kantian Naturalist: "My question was whether or not the cause of the universe couldn’t itself be contingent, and then have the cause of that in turn be contingent, and so on — ‘all the way down’. Why must the cause of this contingent being — the cosmos — be a necessary being? Why couldn’t this particular contingent being — the universe — have been caused by some other contingent being, and so on?"
Turtles all the way down? I thought that the absurdity of infinite regress was a done deal. A person cannot be carried by another person who is carried by another person … etc. without anyone actually standing on the ground. Why isn’t infinite regress clearly absurd?Box_{January 5, 2013
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p.s. just box it up and send it to me when you get tired of it.Mung_{January 5, 2013
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kf, can I have your mind when you're done with it?Mung_{January 5, 2013
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