The Naturalists’ Conundrum

_{Barry Arrington
December 17, 2012

Intelligent Design

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Intelligent Design}

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Kantian Naturalist writes that almost all naturalists (including, presumably, himself) believe selection tends to favor true beliefs.

I don’t know why he would say this, because Neo-Darwinian Evolution (“NDE”) posits that selection favors characters that increase fitness as measured by relative reproductive fecundity. Per NDE, selection is indifferent the truth. It will select for a false belief if, for whatever reason, that belief increases fitness.

Now the naturalist might say that it is obvious that true belief must increase fitness more than false belief. Is it obvious? Consider the conundrum of religious belief from an NDE perspective:

1. By definition the naturalist believes religious belief is false.

2. The overwhelming majority of people throughout history have held religious belief.

3. Therefore, the naturalist must believe that the overwhelming majority of humans throughout history have held a false belief.

4. It follows that natural selection selected for a belief that the naturalist is convinced is false.

We can set to one side the question of whether a particular religious belief is actually false. The naturalist, by definition, believes they all are, and therefore he must believe that natural selection selected for a belief he thinks is false.

What is the naturalist to do? Indeed, if the naturalist concedes that natural selection at least sometimes selects for false beliefs, how can he have any confidence in his own conviction that naturalism itself is true?

Appeals to “the evidence” won’t save the naturalist here. Both sides of the religion issue appeal to evidence.

Comments

KN @59, my final comment should read, "However, I can think of no way to make teleological [Aristotelianism] compatible with non-teleological Darwinism.StephenB_{December 18, 2012
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In re: StephenB @ 49: Yes, I do accept noumenal knowledge at some level. But I don't think that noumenal knowledge is possible by reason alone. My disagreement with Kant is about the ideality of space and time. If space and time are both real and forms of experience, then there's no 'veil' or 'wall' between us and things-in-themselves. So on my picture, it's not our concepts can somehow 'leap over' the veil of the sense, for there is no veil -- it is our senses themselves that are fully immersed in how things really are, although only a tiny fraction of it. (One example I sometimes give my students when I'm teaching Dewey is that the limitations of our senses are better thought of as "the size of the aperture", rather than the "thickness of the lens". Unfortunately, this metaphor doesn't always work because they have no idea how pre-digital cameras functioned.)
How can monism (materialistic or naturalistic) explain both the realm of the recognizer and the realm of the thing being recognized. Since the environment is physical and since the organisms that interact with it are also physical, both exist in the realm of the thing being recognized. How do we account for the role of the recognizer. Isn’t the answer to transcend monism and assign it to another realm of existence, namely the realm of spirit? I am not clear on how the interactive process alone can produce the map, which requires some level of consciousness. I can understand how such a dynamic could effect change in terms of degree, but I don’t understand how it could effect change in terms of kind, that is, the change from a territory to a map or from the potential object of recognition to the conscious awareness of the recognizer.
I don't know if "cognition" or "recognition" in the sense I'm using here requires consciousness, in the sense of sentience, being awake (instead of being asleep). Spiders are certainly cognitive, but are they conscious? Maybe, but it seems funny to say so. One way of putting my thoughts here, about what it is for something to be an organism, is that organisms are -- to use a colorful language -- a fold in being. Not a different kind of being, or a hole in the fabric of being (as Sartre put it), but a place where being has been folded in upon itself and constitutes both itself and a new relation with what is exterior. The very genesis of inside and outside, self and not-self, takes place with this folding of being. At any rate, that's how Merleau-Ponty puts it, in the ontology he develops towards the end of his life, and I think that complexity theory and autopoeisis theory are finally at a point where we can flesh out his abstract ontology with some empirical details.Kantian Naturalist_{December 18, 2012
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BA:
BD, You can’t just cherry pick what you want to be true out of these NDE’s. The consistent pattern of hellish ones from pantheistic (reincarnation) cultures (which you use to claim to be a pantheist before you realized that word did not particularly have ‘the ring of truth’ any longer), must be accepted along with the consistent pattern of heavenly ones from Judeo-Christian cultures.
I don't select what I want to be true and disregard the rest. I simply have a different explanation for the phenomenon than you do. I think that a person's belief that they will go to Hell when they die can influence what they experience during an NDE. Most people in the West, whether they are religious, spiritual, or atheistic, do not believe that they will go to Hell, either because they don't believe it exists, or because they believe that their religious faith "saves" them from that fate. Thus Westerners tend to be spared from a Hellish experience in an NDE. Notice by the way that this dichotomy is not universal. There is a small percentage of people in the West who experience unpleasant NDEs as well as a similar percentage in the East who do not. Notice also, that the Hell experienced by Eastern people in their NDEs is not a Christian Hell of eternal suffering. The time periods are generally of finite duration, and conform to the notion of Hell inherent in the religion to which they subscribe. It's more like the Catholic notion of Purgatory than Hell.
I’m sorry BD, my eternal soul is far too valuable to trust to your ‘inner knowing’ that God simply would not allow people to go to hell
I would never ask you to trust my inner knowing. I present my understanding of the nature of reality for anyone interested to consider, that is all. Trust your own inner knowing. I will, however, point out the flaws in your logic when you attempt to prove that I am in error.Bruce David_{December 18, 2012
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"Ring of truth" and "inner knowing" not subjected to rigorous logical examination is of no more value than whim and desire.William J Murray_{December 18, 2012
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In re: Mung @ 45, Yes, I do conceive of organisms as exhibiting immanent teleology because they pursue their own ends -- that's right. Whereas "transcendent teleology" is when the goal-directed process has the goals that it has because of something external to it.
What would convince you that three is immanent teleology in non-living things or transcendent teleology in living things?
I interpret the first clause as my coming to believe that Aristotle's physics is superior to contemporary mathematical physics, and I really can't imagine what would convince me of that. I interpret the second clause as my coming to believe that the unmoved mover of Aristotle or the world-spirit of the Stoics is a better explanation than whatever it is we've got now. I'll admit that I can't imagine what would convince me of that, either. The lesson to draw here is that I'm of limited imagination today. :)
Would you agree that for the Aristotelian, both immanent and transcendent teleology are explanatory? Do you think this is where they go wrong some how?
No, I think that immanent teleology functions descriptively, for Aristotle. This is why his descriptions of living things are so wonderful and precise, thousands of years after the fact. (I say that having read only parts of De Anima and none of On the Parts of Animals, so these are second-hand claims.) But I think that transcendent teleology -- in Aristotle's metaphysics, the way that the unmoved mover is the final cause of all final causes, so to speak -- is explanatory. Where I think the mechanists, like Descartes and Spinoza and La Mettrie go wrong is in trying to do away with all teleological language altogether. I think that Leibniz is correct when he points out how problematic this is.Kantian Naturalist_{December 18, 2012
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as to: "the idea that God would create a Hell so contradicts the nature of God as to be utterly ridiculous." BD, You can't just cherry pick what you want to be true out of these NDE's. The consistent pattern of hellish ones from pantheistic (reincarnation) cultures (which you use to claim to be a pantheist before you realized that word did not particularly have 'the ring of truth' any longer), must be accepted along with the consistent pattern of heavenly ones from Judeo-Christian cultures. Otherwise you are, once again, asking us to believe something simply because your 'inner knowing' tells you that it is so. I'm sorry BD, my eternal soul is far too valuable to trust to your 'inner knowing' that God simply would not allow people to go to hell, especially when many reliable NDE's testify, with all sincerity as Howard storm did, to the contrary that they went there. No Sir, I put my trust in what Jesus did for me and am more than willing to go to the place He has prepared for me,,, if He is willing to accept such a wretch like me! Celtic Woman - Amazing Grace http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsCp5LG_zNEbornagain77_{December 18, 2012
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BA: re #42: I would remind you that I am no more a Buddhist than I am a Christian. To lump my beliefs together with those of Eastern religions simply because we share a belief in reincarnation makes no more sense than were I to call you a Muslim because you believe in one God. I am not a religious man, but I am a spiritual one. I form my beliefs by drawing from the wealth of competing and contradictory claimants to truth that which to me has "the ring of truth", which resonates with my own inner knowing. Reincarnation makes total sense to me. But from where I stand, the idea that God would create a Hell so contradicts the nature of God as to be utterly ridiculous.Bruce David_{December 18, 2012
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Kantian Naturalist
I don’t accept that things-in-themselves are unknowable to us. On my reading of Kant, this idea — that things-in-themselves are unknowable to us — is established on the grounds that space and time are only forms of sensible intuition. That is, space and time are just part of how we experience the world (including ourselves as part of that world). I don’t accept the ‘ideality’ of space and time, nor the transcendental idealism that Kant builds on top of it. I’m a realist of some sort.
Thank you for that articulate clarification and for a straight answer to a straight question. If I read you correctly, you acknowledge noumenmal knowledge at some level.
I think that Kant was right to insist that logic alone cannot establish the existence of anything.
Yes, and this indirectly takes us to the question of causality. Do you accept the metaphysical connection between every cause and its effect, or do you share Hume's doubts? My purpose for asking the question is to more fully understand your reasons for rejecting the rational proofs for God's existence. [How does any creature recognize the [territory] unless two realms exist, the realm of recognizers and the realm of things that are recognized, the realm of the mental map and the realm of the territory (hylermorphic [not Cartesian] dualism). Darwinism allows for only one realm. It is monistic, is it not?]
I like this question a lot. Materialism is monistic, in the sense you mean here, and so the very distinction between the map and the territory can’t really get off the ground. And that is a serious problem with materialism.
OK. All I can ask is that you reflect on this point and clearly you are doing that.
For while a matter-in-motion ontology can’t capture what we’re getting at here, the map-territory relation, we can capture the map-territory relation once we think about life in terms of the interactive relationship between organisms and their environments.
Once again, your comment calls attention to what, for me, is the central question: How can monism (materialistic or naturalistic) explain both the realm of the recognizer and the realm of the thing being recognized. Since the environment is physical and since the organisms that interact with it are also physical, both exist in the realm of the thing being recognized. How do we account for the role of the recognizer. Isn't the answer to transcend monism and assign it to another realm of existence, namely the realm of spirit?
Once we put the correct emphasis on the interactive organism-environment relationship, we can see that organisms of a sufficient complexity will not only instantiate maps of their environments, but also instantiate maps of their own relationships with those environments. Some of these maps can quite simple, such as the way a cat stalking a bird displays pure positional awareness of its own bodily orientations with respect to its prey. In the case of a being with language, and the recursive structures of thought made possible by grammar, the forms of self-awareness are much more complicated.
I am not clear on how the interactive process alone can produce the map, which requires some level of consciousness. I can understand how such a dynamic could effect change in terms of degree, but I don't understand how it could effect change in terms of kind, that is, the change from a territory to a map or from the potential object of recognition to the conscious awareness of the recognizer. [How can Darwinian evolution be reconciled with Arisotle's teleology]
Because there is teleology at the level of the organism itself, operating from within the organism, it’s being-at-work (energeia, even if there’s no teleology external to the process that produced the organism. We can call these “immanent teleology” and “transcendent teleology,” respectively. Aristotle, of course, believed in both.
Yes, I am familiar with the crucial difference between intrinsic and extrinsic teleology. Note, though, that Darwinism rejects both internal and external teleology; it is not an end-directed process. With no goals, purposes, or ends, it proceeds aimlessly toward an unspecified end. It has no teleology. This is why I would argue that Darwin cannot be reconciled with Aristotle.
A materialist is someone who reasons, “since Darwinism dispenses with transcendent teleology, there’s no need for any teleology at all, so it’s all just atoms and the void.”
Yes, that seems like an apt description.
Whereas this Kantian distinction allows me to be a realist about teleology at the level of organisms, a realist about immanent teleology, without having to endorse transcendent teleology.
Even Aristotle by himself will be enough to justify an argument for internal teleology. No appeal to Kant is necessary. However, I can think of no way to make teleological Darwinism compatible with non-teleological Darwinism.
....immanent teleology is, basically, a descriptive claim. .... But transcendent teleology is not descriptive; it’s explanatory.
A process is teleological (either intrinsically or extrinsically) if it is for the sake of, or proceeds toward an end of some kind. It is not a mere description in either case. It answers the question, “for the sake of what is this thing (being) doing what it is doing?” If it is for the sake of the being itself, it is intrinsic; if it is for the sake of a being outside of itself, it is extrinsic. So, we cannot hold to the position that external finality is explanatory and that internal finality is descriptive.StephenB_{December 18, 2012
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What would you consider the antonym to “naturalism”?
Chaos.Mung_{December 18, 2012
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Easy question for Kantian Naturalist while he's considering the challenging ones; What would you consider the antonym to "naturalism"?Alan Fox_{December 18, 2012
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Stephen B: “Accordingly, design cannot come from the physical realm of from physical laws, which means that another realm (spirit) is required.” - What can ID tell us about human consciousness? Is it just matter? Or is ‘the mind a real phenomenon that cannot be reduced to the properties of the brain’, like B. Arrington stated? Upright Biped: “In thinking about dualism vs monism, or inexorable law vs material freedom, it should not go un-noticed that the organizational constraint on matter which results in living things is based (not on law but) on materially-arbitrary relationships.” S.L. Talbott: “[T]he question, rather, is why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer?” http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-unbearable-wholeness-of-beingsBox_{December 18, 2012
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Hi KN, I'm interested in exploring further the concepts of immanent and transcendent teleology. Do you conceive of organisms as exhibiting immanent teleology because they pursue their own ends? Whereas transcendent teleology is when some thing exists to serve the ends of something else? What would convince you that three is immanent teleology in non-living things or transcendent teleology in living things? Would you agree that for the Aristotelian, both immanent and transcendent teleology are explanatory? Do you think this is where they go wrong some how? thanksMung_{December 18, 2012
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If “teleology” is only a “description”, the only “distance” you’ve put between yourself and materialism is measured in willful self-deception. If I describe what a computer does as “free will”, that doesn’t mean I’ve put any real distance between myself and determinists.
But I don't think we're free to arbitrarily decide how to describe our experience. I think, on the contrary, that if carefully attend to what it is that we're experiencing, as we experience it, and put aside (as far as possible) our prejudices, presuppositions, assumptions, and fantasies, then certain features of our experience will stand out as self-evidently true. And I think that the immanent teleology of living creatures, that sense of living things as centers of agency in their own right, comes to the fore. One can see this expressed with remarkable clarity in the work of nature writers like Gary Snyder or Aldo Leopold. I think that denying this fact of our lived experience -- our lived experience of them as living experiencers themselves -- is only possible if one is the grip of a powerful metaphysical doctrine which prevents one from acknowledging one's own experience. And that's what Epicurean materialism does.Kantian Naturalist_{December 18, 2012
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correction: "I remind you that THERE are a minority,,,"bornagain77_{December 18, 2012
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as to: 'which will be useful information for one’s next incarnation.' I remind you, once again, that the cultures which root your reincarnation beliefs have the most horrendous, hellish, NDE's as to "does not judge “in a condemning way”" and again if you want to see that type of 'condemning judgement' go to eastern pantheistic NDE's, with reincarnation beliefs, where even the most trivial of 'sins' is severely judged "in a condemning way” Near-Death Experiences in Thailand: Discussion of case histories By Todd Murphy, 1999: Excerpt: We would suggest that the near-constant comparisons with the most frequently reported types of NDEs tends to blind researchers to the features of NDEs which are absent in these NDEs. Tunnels are rare, if not absent. The panoramic Life Review appears to be absent. Instead, our collection shows people reviewing just a few karmically-significant incidents. Perhaps they symbolize behavioral tendencies, the results of which are then experienced as determinative of their rebirths. These incidents are read out to them from a book. There is no Being of Light in these Thai NDEs, although The Buddha does appear in a symbolic form, in case #6. Yama is present during this truncated Life Review, as is the Being of Light during Western life reviews, but Yama is anything but a being of light. In popular Thai depictions, he is shown as a wrathful being, and is most often remembered in Thai culture for his power to condemn one to hell. Some of the functions of Angels and guides are also filled by Yamatoots. They guide, lead tours of hell, and are even seen to grant requests made by the experient. http://www.shaktitechnology.com/thaindes.htm it is also of note that the worst enemies of Jesus, during His incarnation, were the so called 'religious' leaders who specialized in condemning people for the most trivial of sins: Matthew 24 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. 24You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. 25“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. 27“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. 28In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. 29“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. 30And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ 31So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. 32Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your forefathers! 33“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? BD you also say: "Notice, however, that your paragraph above is at odds with the idea that God will judge us and send those that He condemns to an eternal Hell." No it's not for,,, "by your own words you will be acquitted, and by your own words you will be condemned.” and,, Romans 10:9 That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. and,, Matthew 10:32-33 "Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven. Thus there is no inconsistency! Moreover I remind you that are a minority of hellish NDE's in Judeo-Christian cultures,,, The following of a (former) atheist academic is quite interesting: video - Hear Howard Storm’s moving firsthand account of his (Near Death) experience in Hell during a brush with death in Paris, France. http://www.daystar.com/ondemand/joni-hell-howard-storm-j922/#.UKzJ2YYsE30 video - Howard Storm continues to share his gripping story of his own near death experience. Today, he picks up just as Jesus was rescuing him from the horrors of Hell and carrying him into the glories of Heaven. http://www.daystar.com/ondemand/joni-heaven-howard-storm-j924/#.UKu3HIYsE30 BD, it seems to me that you have a very good grasp on some of the fundamentals of the perfect love of God, but it also seems to me that you, in your rightful disdain for the judgmental nature of many Christians, that you have thrown a very necessary baby (Christ atoning "perfect love" sacrifice) out with the very bad bathwater (condemning judgement) of religiosity. Music: Citizen Way - Should've Been Me - Acoustic Performance - Music Videos http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=0JB90FNUbornagain77_{December 18, 2012
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Speaking of Naturalist Conundrums, everyone ought to read this article over at ENV: Assessing the "Algorithmic Origin of Life"Mung_{December 18, 2012
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"On the contrary, it makes no sense at all. I know from direct experience that it is impossible to love and judge (meaning censure or condemn as morally bad, wrong, or evil) simultaneously (one of my axioms). Love precludes judgment, and vice versa. Hence, God, whose love is perfect (another axiom), can no more judge than He can make a square circle." _________ Hmmm. The standard of value in the Bible is not love, as this statement seems to suggest, nor is it intellect, as the Greeks believed. It is life, through which we see that there are actually two kinds of "love." There is the love that builds up life, as seen on the cross, and there is vanity, which leads to death and destruction. You are correct that men cannot both love and judge. This is because men themselves are under judgment--they are mortal. Jesus says, "Do not judge, or you also will be judged." But God can both love and judge because God is holy by the standard of life. God upholds the value of life when he judges. "God is love," true, but God judges the vanity and selfishness of men.allanius_{December 18, 2012
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BA:
Well BD, as usual I disagree with you. The standard by which their actions were compared was the perfect love of God. And even though they felt perfectly accepted in their ‘complete nakedness’ before God (and not judged in a condemning way by God, which is a point we agree on), none-the-less when their actions in their life review were seen as selfish, greedy, and/or unloving, they knew for a 100% fact that they had failed to live up to that perfect standard of love.
There is nothing in this paragraph I would disagree with. Have I not been saying for years on this blog that the way to live in harmony with one's essential nature (the image and likeness of God) is to live in the question, "What would Love do now?"? In one's life review after a given lifetime, one can evaluate exactly how well one accomplished this goal, which will be useful information for one's next incarnation. The point is that perfect love does not judge "in a condemning way" (your words). I have been at great pains in these discussions to make clear that when I was using the word judgment, I was using it in its meaning of censure and moral condemnation. By that meaning, love and judgment are incompatible. Notice, however, that your paragraph above is at odds with the idea that God will judge us and send those that He condemns to an eternal Hell. Perfect love (that does not judge "in a condemning way") would not do such a thing.Bruce David_{December 18, 2012
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Sometimes I wonder if it's possible to have a debate with a materialist (or a "naturalist") without becoming mired in sophistry. If "teleology" is only a "description", the only "distance" you've put between yourself and materialism is measured in willful self-deception. If I describe what a computer does as "free will", that doesn't mean I've put any real distance between myself and determinists.William J Murray_{December 18, 2012
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There are a few topics up and running here. The main one, the problem of emergent properties, is one I'll have to return to later on in the day after I've figured out how to explain what I mean. In re:; StephenB @ 23
I was under the impression that, as a “Kantian,” you subscribe to Kant’s departure from the correspondence theory of truth and the event that prompted it, namely Hume’s doubts about causality. Otherwise, why would you not accept the rational proofs for the existence of God?
I don't accept that things-in-themselves are unknowable to us. On my reading of Kant, this idea -- that things-in-themselves are unknowable to us -- is established on the grounds that space and time are only forms of sensible intuition. That is, space and time are just part of how we experience the world (including ourselves as part of that world). I don't accept the 'ideality' of space and time, nor the transcendental idealism that Kant builds on top of it. I'm a realist of some sort. But, I'm close to Kant in a number of points. Firstly, and most importantly, I share Kant's emphasis on normativity: that we are count as thinkers and agents only insofar as we are subject to norms of correct thought and action. Secondly, I think Kant is right in claiming that there are a priori concepts -- concepts that we must have in order to form any judgments at all. Thirdly, I also share with Kant the idea that all concepts acquire meaning and sense only with regards to experience. I think that Kant was right to insist that logic alone cannot establish the existence of anything. But the argument as to why concepts only make sense when applied to objects of experience is separate from the argument for the ideality of space and time, and on my reading, it is the latter which grounds the rejection of noumenal knowledge.
How does any creature recognize the [territory] unless two realms exist, the realm of recognizers and the realm of things that are recognized, the realm of the mental map and the realm of the territory (hylermorphic [not Cartesian] dualism). Darwinism allows for only one realm. It is monistic, is it not?
I like this question a lot. Materialism is monistic, in the sense you mean here, and so the very distinction between the map and the territory can't really get off the ground. And that is a serious problem with materialism. But, to go back to something I've been stressing earlier, that objection helps show a deeper problem with materialism, namely that it utterly lacks any concept of life. For while a matter-in-motion ontology can't capture what we're getting at here, the map-territory relation, we can capture the map-territory relation once we think about life in terms of the interactive relationship between organisms and their environments.
I am not clear how the materialist Darwinian process could be responsible for even this modest form of animal recognition, let alone provide for human cognition, which consists of self–reflection, moral awareness, and rational thought. How can matter reflect on itself? How can matter get concepts under its own belt?
My response here is to drop "matter" out of the equation entirely, so to speak. Once we put the correct emphasis on the interactive organism-environment relationship, we can see that organisms of a sufficient complexity will not only instantiate maps of their environments, but also instantiate maps of their own relationships with those environments. Some of these maps can quite simple, such as the way a cat stalking a bird displays pure positional awareness of its own bodily orientations with respect to its prey. In the case of a being with language, and the recursive structures of thought made possible by grammar, the forms of self-awareness are much more complicated.
However, I am not clear on how you reconcile Aristotle’s purposeful teleology, which knows where it is going, with Darwin’s purposeless and radically contingent non-teleology, which doesn’t know where it is going.
Because there is teleology at the level of the organism itself, operating from within the organism, it's being-at-work (energeia, even if there's no teleology external to the process that produced the organism. We can call these "immanent teleology" and "transcendent teleology," respectively. Aristotle, of course, believed in both. But there is a distinction here worth making -- indeed, a distinction first made by Kant, in the Critique of the Power of Judgment. This distinction of the utmost importance for me, because it allows me to distance myself from materialism. A materialist is someone who reasons, "since Darwinism dispenses with transcendent teleology, there's no need for any teleology at all, so it's all just atoms and the void." Whereas this Kantian distinction allows me to be a realist about teleology at the level of organisms, a realist about immanent teleology, without having to endorse transcendent teleology. So the question here is, can immanent teleology be so neatly severed from transcendent teleology? This is where Aristotelians rightly want to push on my view. But I think it can be, and here's why: immanent teleology is, basically, a descriptive claim. We do, in fact, experience other living things as displaying purposive behavior, pursuing goals, centers of their own agency. That's how we experience them, so immanent teleology just describes our experience. But transcendent teleology is not descriptive; it's explanatory. It's a theory which explains how it came about that there are purposive beings, centers of agency, and so on -- so the two kinds of teleology are actually quite different kinds of assertions, descriptive and explanatory.Kantian Naturalist_{December 18, 2012
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Hi Box, In thinking about dualism vs monism, or inexorable law vs material freedom, it should not go un-noticed that the organizational constraint on matter which results in living things is based (not on law but) on materially-arbitrary relationships.Upright BiPed_{December 18, 2012
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sorry for the double post on scripture: Music: Third Day - Trust In Jesus http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BtaCeJYqZAbornagain77_{December 18, 2012
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Well BD, as usual I disagree with you. The standard by which their actions were compared was the perfect love of God. And even though they felt perfectly accepted in their 'complete nakedness' before God (and not judged in a condemning way by God, which is a point we agree on), none-the-less when their actions in their life review were seen as selfish, greedy, and/or unloving, they knew for a 100% fact that they had failed to live up to that perfect standard of love. Thus judgement of a person's actions in life, every minute detail of that life, was measured to a perfect standard. As to you saying that it is 'self-judgement' and not really judgement from God, well that particular caveat you are trying to make is in the Bible as well,, Matthew 12 Moreover, I tell you this: on the Day of Judgment people will have to give account for every careless word they have spoken; for by your own words you will be acquitted, and by your own words you will be condemned.” Matthew 12:36 But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. Matthew 15:11 "It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man."bornagain77_{December 18, 2012
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Does ID theory include dualism?
ID theory cannot not address that philosophical question because it is limited to scientific methodology. The process of drawing inferences from data cannot, on its own, provide the kind of information that would settle the question of monism vs. dualism. However, an ID theorist, or anyone else who is capable of philosophical reasoning, should be able to recognize that two realms are a metaphysical requirement for creative design. Through philosophical reasoning, we can conclude that nature's regularity, expressed as the physical laws that direct matter's activity, are rigid and, therefore, incapable of creating a novel design; they just do what they do and nothing else. Accordingly, design cannot come from the physical realm of from physical laws, which means that another realm (spirit) is required.StephenB_{December 18, 2012
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BA:
And yet in extremely deep Near Death Experiences it is exactly by God’s perfect love that judgement is made to every minute detail of a persons life in the life review to see if that person’s life lived up to that perfect standard:
Well I watched the video you linked to, and there was no judgment in it whatsoever. Quite the opposite, in fact. The participants reported being "totally accepted" and "completely forgiven". The only judgment any of them reported was one woman's question of whether she could forgive herself. The notion that the life reviews people discussed towards the end of the video include judgment in the sense that I defined it in #22---"meaning [to] censure or condemn as morally bad, wrong, or evil"---is something you added to their experiences, not what they reported. In fact, the video is a strong confirmation of my point---love and judgment are incompatible. Where there is perfect love, there is no judgment.Bruce David_{December 18, 2012
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Barry Arrington: “Consider the hard problem of consciousness. We all believe we are conscious, and consciousness must be accounted for. For the ID theorists, this is easy. The mind is a real phenomenon that cannot be reduced to the properties of the brain.” This is informative to me, because I assumed that ID theory holds a materialistic view on human beings and life. So I was wrong in assuming that, according to ID theory, ‘the designer’ created ‘living’ machines which consist of just matter? Does ID theory include dualism?Box_{December 18, 2012
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@Barry Arrington. Allow me to quote you from https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/materialist-poofery/ BA:"And what evidence do we have that “emergence” is a real phenomenon? Absolutely none. Emergence is materialist poofery. Take the mind-brain problem again. The materialist knows that his claim that the mind does not exist is patently absurd. Yet, given his premises it simply cannot exist. So what is a materialist to do? Easy. Poof – the mind is an emergent property of the brain system that otherwise cannot be accounted for on materialist grounds." I could not agree more. 'Materialist poofery', very well put.Box_{December 18, 2012
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KN you astutely observe: "Of course there are certain kinds of experiences which lead one from being outside to being inside, but that’s just part of my point — some kind of fundamentally significant experience is required, not just the procedures of argument alone." KN, it seems you have a leg up on Nicodemus: John 3 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, "Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him." In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again. " "How can a man be born when he is old?" Nicodemus asked. "Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!" Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.' The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." "How can this be?" Nicodemus asked. "You are Israel's teacher," said Jesus, "and do you not understand these things? Music: 'SNL' Opens With 'Silent Night' in Honor of Shooting Victims http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTbhVlHuONobornagain77_{December 18, 2012
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KN holds to 'emergence' to 'explain away' consciousness which I find to be a weasel word, or 'materialist poofery' as Mr Arrington put it. But the plain fact of the matter is that, as with the 'self-organization' model which KN invokes to 'explain away' the functional information we see in life, KN, no matter what he may prefer to believe, has ZERO evidence that consciousness is emergent from, or even concurrent with, a material basis. The Science of Heaven by Dr. Eben Alexander - Nov. 18, 2012 Can consciousness exist when the body fails? One neurosurgeon says he has seen it firsthand—and takes on critics who vehemently disagree. Excerpt: Many scientists who study consciousness would agree with me that, in fact, the hard problem of consciousness is probably the one question facing modern science that is arguably forever beyond our knowing, at least in terms of a physicalist model of how the brain might create consciousness. In fact, they would agree that the problem is so profound that we don’t even know how to phrase a scientific question addressing it. But if we must decide which produces which, modern physics is pushing us in precisely the opposite direction, suggesting that it is consciousness that is primary and matter secondary. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/11/18/the-science-of-heaven.html Yet on the other hand, the Theist is now able to make a very compelling case from empirical evidence that his position, that consciousness precedes material reality, is in fact true. Quantum physics says goodbye to reality - Apr 20, 2007 Excerpt: Many realizations of the thought experiment have indeed verified the violation of Bell's inequality. These have ruled out all hidden-variables theories based on joint assumptions of realism, meaning that reality exists when we are not observing it; and locality, meaning that separated events cannot influence one another instantaneously. But a violation of Bell's inequality does not tell specifically which assumption – realism, locality or both – is discordant with quantum mechanics. Markus Aspelmeyer, Anton Zeilinger and colleagues from the University of Vienna, however, have now shown that realism is more of a problem than locality in the quantum world. They devised an experiment that violates a different inequality proposed by physicist Anthony Leggett in 2003 that relies only on realism, and relaxes the reliance on locality. To do this, rather than taking measurements along just one plane of polarization, the Austrian team took measurements in additional, perpendicular planes to check for elliptical polarization. They found that, just as in the realizations of Bell's thought experiment, Leggett's inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we're not observing it. "Our study shows that 'just' giving up the concept of locality would not be enough to obtain a more complete description of quantum mechanics," Aspelmeyer told Physics Web. "You would also have to give up certain intuitive features of realism." http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/27640 “I’m going to talk about the Bell inequality, and more importantly a new inequality that you might not have heard of called the Leggett inequality, that was recently measured. It was actually formulated almost 30 years ago by Professor Leggett, who is a Nobel Prize winner, but it wasn’t tested until about a year and a half ago (in 2007), when an article appeared in Nature, that the measurement was made by this prominent quantum group in Vienna led by Anton Zeilinger, which they measured the Leggett inequality, which actually goes a step deeper than the Bell inequality and rules out any possible interpretation other than consciousness creates reality when the measurement is made.” – Bernard Haisch, Ph.D., Calphysics Institute, is an astrophysicist and author of over 130 scientific publications. Preceding quote taken from this following video; Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness - A New Measurement - Bernard Haisch, Ph.D (Shortened version of entire video with notes in description of video) http://vimeo.com/37517080 The following recent experiment is also impressive to validating the Theistic position: Here’s a recent variation of Wheeler’s Delayed Choice experiment, which highlights the ability of the conscious observer to effect 'spooky action into the past', thus further solidifying consciousness's centrality in reality. Furthermore in the following experiment, the claim that past/present material states determine conscious choices (determinism) is falsified by the fact that present conscious choices are effecting past material states: Quantum physics mimics spooky action into the past - April 23, 2012 Excerpt: The authors experimentally realized a "Gedankenexperiment" called "delayed-choice entanglement swapping", formulated by Asher Peres in the year 2000. Two pairs of entangled photons are produced, and one photon from each pair is sent to a party called Victor. Of the two remaining photons, one photon is sent to the party Alice and one is sent to the party Bob. Victor can now choose between two kinds of measurements. If he decides to measure his two photons in a way such that they are forced to be in an entangled state, then also Alice's and Bob's photon pair becomes entangled. If Victor chooses to measure his particles individually, Alice's and Bob's photon pair ends up in a separable state. Modern quantum optics technology allowed the team to delay Victor's choice and measurement with respect to the measurements which Alice and Bob perform on their photons. "We found that whether Alice's and Bob's photons are entangled and show quantum correlations or are separable and show classical correlations can be decided after they have been measured", explains Xiao-song Ma, lead author of the study. According to the famous words of Albert Einstein, the effects of quantum entanglement appear as "spooky action at a distance". The recent experiment has gone one remarkable step further. "Within a naïve classical world view, quantum mechanics can even mimic an influence of future actions on past events", says Anton Zeilinger. http://phys.org/news/2012-04-quantum-physics-mimics-spooky-action.html In other words, if my conscious choices really are just merely the result of whatever state the material particles in my brain happen to be in (deterministic) how in blue blazes are my choices instantaneously effecting the state of material particles into the past?,,, I consider the preceding experimental evidence to be a 'quantum leap' improvement over the traditional 'uncertainty' arguments for free will, from quantum mechanics, that had been used to in the past to undermine the deterministic belief of materialists: Why Quantum Physics (Uncertainty) Ends the Free Will Debate - Michio Kaku - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFLR5vNKiSwbornagain77_{December 18, 2012
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footnote: cultures which believe in reincarnation have the most horrendous NDE testimonies that I've seen: Near Death Experience Thailand Asia - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8M5J3zWG5gbornagain77_{December 18, 2012
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