It is almost — almost — amusing but then quite sad to see how objectors to design theory play with logic and worldviews issues, then run away when the substantial issues are taken up.
Let me clip from the FFT, AJ vs Charles thread to pick up these matters, but to avoid making this utterly too long, let me point here on for the underlying questions of worldviews, first plausibles and self-evident plumb-line truths such as the first principles of right reason.
While we are at it, let us observe from the diagram on the right, how worldviews issues influence everything we do as a civilisation, and how the issue arises, on whether business as usual is a march of folly and needs to be turned from to move to a more sustainable, more sound alternative.
In our day, it is pretty clear that evolutionary materialistic scientism and its fellow travellers rule the roost, but that such is inescapably incoherent, self-refuting, self-falsifying and amoral, opening the door to ruthless nihilist factionalism.
So, it is a service not only to the ID community but the civilisation to say what is not politically corrupt today, the unmentionable fact that A is A.
So, now, let us proceed by clipping some posts in the relevant thread:
FFT5: The implications of the familiar extraordinary.
In this thread, there are arguments [posted] that . . . as an observable phenomenon . . . show that we are capable of significant choice and reasoning, i.e. we are responsibly, rationally, significantly free, conscious, en-conscienced, morally governed, communicating creatures. (Indeed, those trying to object are operating on the implicit premise that we are urged by conscience toward the truth and the right; and if we were not, this world would descend into a dark, chaotic ruin in short order. It is a good thing that something urges us on to the truth and the right.)
Locke, in Sec 5 of his essay on human understanding (and yes, I add scriptural references i/l/o his cites and allusions), aptly comments:
Men have reason to be well satisfied with what God hath thought fit for them, since he hath given them (as St. Peter says [NB: i.e. 2 Pet 1:2 – 4]) pana pros zoen kaieusebeian, whatsoever is necessary for the conveniences of life and information of virtue; and has put within the reach of their discovery, the comfortable provision for this life, and the way that leads to a better. How short soever their knowledge may come of an universal or perfect comprehension of whatsoever is, it yet secures their great concernments [Prov 1: 1 – 7], that they have light enough to lead them to the knowledge of their Maker, and the sight of their own duties [cf Rom 1 – 2 & 13, Ac 17, Jn 3:19 – 21, Eph 4:17 – 24, Isaiah 5:18 & 20 – 21, Jer. 2:13, Titus 2:11 – 14 etc, etc]. Men may find matter sufficient to busy their heads, and employ their hands with variety, delight, and satisfaction, if they will not boldly quarrel with their own constitution, and throw away the blessings their hands are filled with, because they are not big enough to grasp everything . . . It will be no excuse to an idle and untoward servant [Matt 24:42 – 51], who would not attend his business by candle light, to plead that he had not broad sunshine. The Candle that is set up in us [Prov 20:27] shines bright enough for all our purposes . . . If we will disbelieve everything, because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall do muchwhat as wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly. [Text references added to document the sources of Locke’s allusions and citations.]
All of that is in the context of rebuking a lazy, sneeringly supercilious selective hyperskepticism that will scorn more than adequate warrant for ethical theism, because it shuns the premise of moral government: accountability on plainly recognisable duty, before our Maker, Lord, Governor and utterly just Judge.
But, that is a bit quick off the mark.
Let’s start with computational substrates, whether mechanically or electrically analogue or digital or neural network. For instance a ball and disk integrator as was used in tide table machines or naval gunlaying computers is clearly a cause-effect, blindly mechanical system. If it has a fault or is badly programmed, it will err, and it cares not, it is just like Monadology’s Mill-Wheels grinding away blindly. Leibniz:
[P]erception, and that which depends upon it, are inexplicable by mechanical causes, that is to say, by figures and motions. Supposing that there were a machine whose structure produced thought, sensation, and perception, we could conceive of it as increased in size with the same proportions until one was able to enter into its interior, as he would into a mill. Now, on going into it he would find only pieces working upon one another, but never would he find anything to explain perception.
There is no recognition of meaning, no perception, no purpose, just blind cause-effect chains externally arranged to yield the solution to certain differential equations. GIGO, and all that. Likewise, the old Pentium chip neither knew nor understood nor cared about the wired in errors that led to the early recall. And, a neural network is not in principle any different. (BTW this points to serious design inferences on the relevant hardware and software in bio-cybernetics systems, but that is a secondary point.)
The primary point has been highlighted by Reppert:
. . . let us suppose that brain state A, which is token identical to the thought that all men are mortal, and brain state B, which is token identical to the thought that Socrates is a man, together cause the belief that Socrates is mortal. It isn’t enough for rational inference that these events be those beliefs, it is also necessary that the causal transaction be in virtue of the content of those thoughts . . . [But] if naturalism is true, then the propositional content is irrelevant to the causal transaction that produces the conclusion, and [so] we do not have a case of rational inference. In rational inference, as [C S] Lewis puts it, one thought causes another thought not by being, but by being seen to be, the ground for it. But causal transactions in the brain occur in virtue of the brain’s being in a particular type of state that is relevant to physical causal transactions.
In short, a physicalist account of mindedness (much less, guidance by light of conscience) faces an ugly, impassable gulch.
In effect, rocks — even refined and carefully organised rocks — have no dreams; computation is not intentional contemplation.
At this point, evolutionary materialism and its fellow travellers — and nope you cannot properly, conveniently open up rhetorical daylight between some vague agnosticism and full-blown evo mat to deflect this — face an impassable gulch.
One, that brings out what was already highlighted: mindedness, consciousness, reasoned inference and conscience’s compass-pointing alike are all reduced to grand delusion on evo mat premises.
Grand delusion would collapse responsible, rational freedom and so falls into irretrievable incoherence and absurdity. Thence, the necessary falsity Pearcey and others have pointed to.
But in reality, rational, responsible, conscience-compass bearing consciousness is our first undeniable empirical fact. The fact through which we perceive all others.
This is the familiar extraordinary phenomenon, the pivot on which the project of building a sound worldview turns. In effect, unless a worldview is compatible with our being responsible, reasonable, conscience-guided and significantly free beings, it cannot even sit to the table for a discussion of comparative difficulties. It is silenced by being inconsistent with rationality. It is patently, irretrievably absurd and necessarily false. (Evo mat and fellow traveller ideologies, I am looking straight at you.)>>
So, we have to first face mindedness and the limitations of computational substrates.
FFT6A: Last evening, in FFT5, we looked at the familiar extraordinary; it is almost amusing to see how this has been almost studiously pushed aside. One hopes that the latest focus for hyperskeptical dismissiveness, heptades, will now settle down.
At this point, we have to deal with a key conclusion in 153:
. . . a physicalist account of mindedness (much less, guidance by light of conscience) faces an ugly, impassable gulch.
In effect, rocks — even refined and carefully organised rocks — have no dreams; computation is not intentional contemplation.
At this point, evolutionary materialism and its fellow travellers — and nope you cannot properly, conveniently open up rhetorical daylight between some vague agnosticism and full-blown evo mat to deflect this — face an impassable gulch.
One, that brings out what was already highlighted: mindedness, consciousness, reasoned inference and conscience’s compass-pointing alike are all reduced to grand delusion on evo mat premises.
Grand delusion would collapse responsible, rational freedom and so falls into irretrievable incoherence and absurdity. Thence, the necessary falsity Pearcey and others have pointed to.
But in reality, rational, responsible, conscience-compass bearing consciousness is our first undeniable empirical fact. The fact through which we perceive all others.
This is the familiar extraordinary phenomenon, the pivot on which the project of building a sound worldview turns. In effect, unless a worldview is compatible with our being responsible, reasonable, conscience-guided and significantly free beings, it cannot even sit to the table for a discussion of comparative difficulties. It is silenced by being inconsistent with rationality. It is patently, irretrievably absurd and necessarily false. (Evo mat and fellow traveller ideologies, I am looking straight at you.)
What sort of world do we have to live in for there to be creatures like us?
That’s rather like a point R W Hamming made in addressing a thought exercise that counter-balances one of the mythical paradigm cases of empirical investigation, the dropping of a musket-ball and a cannon-ball from the famous leaning tower of Pisa. And yes, the very same News who so many hyperskeptics sneer at brought this to attention:
Let us next consider Galileo. Not too long ago I was trying to put myself in Galileo’s shoes, as it were, so that I might feel how he came to discover the law of falling bodies. I try to do this kind of thing so that I can learn to think like the masters did-I deliberately try to think as they might have done.
Well, Galileo was a well-educated man and a master of scholastic arguments. He well knew how to argue the number of angels on the head of a pin [–> which is actually about location vs extension], how to argue both sides of any question. He was trained in these arts far better than any of us these days. I picture him sitting one day with a light and a heavy ball, one in each hand, and tossing them gently. He says, hefting them, “It is obvious to anyone that heavy objects fall faster than light ones-and, anyway, Aristotle says so.” “But suppose,” he says to himself, having that kind of a mind, “that in falling the body broke into two pieces. Of course the two pieces would immediately slow down to their appropriate speeds. But suppose further that one piece happened to touch the other one. Would they now be one piece and both speed up? Suppose I tied the two pieces together. How tightly must I do it to make them one piece? A light string? A rope? Glue? When are two pieces one?”
The more he thought about it-and the more you think about it-the more unreasonable becomes the question of when two bodies are one. There is simply no reasonable answer to the question of how a body knows how heavy it is-if it is one piece, or two, or many. Since falling bodies do something, the only possible thing is that they all fall at the same speed-unless interfered with by other forces. There’s nothing else they can do. He may have later made some experiments, but I strongly suspect that something like what I imagined actually happened. I later found a similar story in a book by Polya [7. G. Polya, Mathematical Methods in Science, MAA, 1963, pp. 83-85.]. Galileo found his law not by experimenting but by simple, plain thinking, by scholastic reasoning.
I know that the textbooks often present the falling body law as an experimental observation; I am claiming that it is a logical law, a consequence of how we tend to think . . .
This ties back to the view that mathematics is substantially the logic of structure and quantity, which we may freely explore because we are responsibly and rationally significantly free.>>
Again: What sort of world do we have to live in for there to be creatures like us?
What sort of world do we have to live in for there to be creatures like us?
This surfaces a key issue, that two truths x and y must be such that we never have y = NOT-x; that is in a coherent world all true statements — those that accurately describe facets of reality — will be mutually compatible. I note this, fully recognising that for many, this is actually quite a difficult point today; as, various ideologies have led to a conflation of truth with perception or opinion. Hence, a conversation I had today that turned on the concept, “my truth.” Language decay is an old problem, and Orwell pointed out what could be done through new-speak and double-talk. How many are two plus two, Mr Smith?
My answer was and is, that we already have perfectly adequate words for opinions and perceptions; so, there is no need to corrupt the meaning of the precious or even vital word, truth. The truth — as Ari noted long ago in Metaphysics 1011b — says of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not.
This in turn brings us to the question of being and non-being, of possible and impossible being, of contingent and necessary being. Thus, of causal roots of the world, of reality. And it points to the issue of possible worlds: comprehensive enough descriptions of how things could be or are.
Impossible beings such as a square circle cannot exist in any possible world. As, core characteristics stand in mutual contradiction and cannot hold of the same thing, X, under the same circumstances. Here, squarishness and circularity.
By contrast, possible beings could exist in at least one possible world. Contingent ones would not do so in all possible worlds but would exist in at least one. I think, in 100 years there will be unicorns, as biotech will be there and people will be willing to pay to have one. Just as we seem to be seeing ever more miniature sized horses already.
Necessary beings must exist in any possible world, as they are frameworking requisites of a world existing. For instance, two-ness or distinct identity (equivalent) must be there for a distinct world to be. This is non-trivial, as distinct identity has three immediate corollaries: Law of Identity, Law of Excluded Middle, Law of Non-Contradiction.
That is, core logic is built into any possible world; including of course the logic of structure and quantity, i.e. mathematical realities. (NB: We already see here, a key reason for the awesome power of Mathematics in our world and especially in scientific work. [So much for the sneer that this thread has little or no relevance to Science.])
Back to us, as being able to significantly freely discuss our concerns responsibly and rationally, and having an inner compass-sense that insistently points to the truth and the right — conscience.
What sort of world must this be to allow such. and what must be in its frameworking structure?
First, we already saw that the denial of responsible, rational, significant freedom lets grand delusion loose and instantly ends in absurdity. Self-evidently, this is a world in which responsibly rational and significantly free, morally governed creatures are possible and in fact actual.
That’s already a huge result and it sweeps away all worldviews — their name is legion — that are incompatible with such creatures. This of course includes evolutionary materialistic scientism, its fellow travellers, radical subjectivism and radical relativism. (Cf. the chain of comments here on, above.)
Next, we face the implication of the IS-OUGHT gap, on many levels. A world with moral government has to be such that OUGHT is well-rooted in the fabric and framework of reality. Post Hume et al and post Euthyphro et al, that can only be in the very root of reality, i.e. there must be a necessary being that so fuses IS-ness and OUGHT-ness, that they are inextricably entangled in the roots of reality.
What sort of being is capable of such?
The answer is utterly challenging, and I have long thought it is best posed in light of comparative difficulties and worldview level inference to the best candidate explanation.
We need to look at serious candidates (as opposed to something like a flying spaghetti monster, which will not be a necessary being — made up from bits and pieces, i.e. composite.)
There is just one serious candidate, after centuries of debate: the inherently good Creator God, a necessary and maximally great being, worthy of loyalty and the responsible, reasonable service of doing the good in accord with our evident nature (thus, the law of our nature).
This is not an arbitrary imposition, if you doubt, simply put up a viable alternative: ________ (this is after all comparative difficulties analysis).
Prediction: hard to do.
This also has a further highly relevant implication. For a serious candidate necessary being will either be impossible as a square circle is, or else it will be possible thus would exist in at least one world. And, as it would be a frameworking reality, it would be present in every possible world, including our own — an actual world. (And yes, I am not saying THE actual world.)
The God of ethical theism as described, is a serious candidate [e.g. NB’s have no beginning or end, are eternal]. This means that God is either impossible as a square circle is impossible, or he is actual. And decades ago, the problem of evils used to be trotted out to make that argument, but that option is effectively dead post-Plantinga and in fact post Boethius.
Then, too, if one claims to be an atheist or agnostic, s/he implies knowing good reason to doubt or dismiss the God of ethical theism as impossible even as a square circle is impossible. It would be interesting to hear what such a reason is: _______ (esp. post, problem of evils as a serious view as opposed to a handy piece of intimidatory rhetoric).
So, now, we are at a very important threshold, the God of ethical theism is on the table as a serious candidate necessary being, root of reality that grounds a world in which responsibly and rationally free creatures such as ourselves are possible and indeed actual.
That is a momentous turning-point, and it would be interesting to see if we will hear of the viable alternatives, including reasons why such a God is an impossible being.>>
Of course, these two blanks were never ever filled in cogently. So:
FFT6C: It is worth noting the unresponsiveness to 219 and 178 above, especially at the points where objectors were directly invited to put up alternatives.
We can take it to the bank that UD is obsessively monitored by denizens of a penumbra of hostile sites. Denizens, more than willing to pounce when they see opportunity.
In short, the above blanks left unanswered speak to yet another hovering ghost or three in the room.
Here, first, the point that there is no necessary appeal to design inferences and debates to build a case for ethical theism adequate to ground commitment to such.
Second, that the atheistical objectors and their fellow travellers have no cogent answer to the need for a necessary being root to reality, nor to the point that the God of ethical theism is a serious candidate to be such (by utter contrast with the cartoonish flying spaghetti monster etc), nor to the onward point that such a serious candidate will be either ontologically impossible [as a square circle is impossible] or else will be actual.
Third, they have no cogent answer to the significance of the point that just to have a real discussion, we must implicitly accept that we are responsible, reasonable, significantly free and intelligent beings under moral government. Not least, conscience is the compass within pointing to the truth, the right and our duties of care towards such. Undermining this dimension of conscious mindedness by implying it is delusional lets grand delusion loose in our minds, ending in shipwreck.
So, we can see that the evo mat scientism picture of the world falls apart, and that there is no need to go out of our way to accommodate it. It is self-referentially incoherent and so self-falsifying.
Nor, should we yield to the trend to corrupt the concept, truth. (That, too, is part of the benumbing and warping of conscience, as say Orwell brought out so forcefully in his 1984.)
The astute onlooker will also note that we have had a worldviews discussion, not one pivoting on parsing Bible texts. Though, I have noted that this analysis is compatible with at least one key summary argument in Scripture, one that points to this sort of analysis as valid on the whole if soundly done.
Let me clip:
Rom 1:18 For [God does not overlook sin and] the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who in their wickedness suppress and stifle the truth, 19 because that which is known about God is evident within them [in their inner consciousness], for God made it evident to them.
20 For ever since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through His workmanship [all His creation, the wonderful things that He has made], so that they [who fail to believe and trust in Him] are without excuse and without defense.
21 For even though [d]they knew God [as the Creator], they did not [e]honor Him as God or give thanks [for His wondrous creation]. On the contrary, they became worthless in their thinking [godless, with pointless reasonings, and silly speculations], and their foolish heart was darkened.
22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory and majesty and excellence of the immortal God for [f]an image [worthless idols] in the shape of mortal man and birds and four-footed animals and reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their own hearts to [sexual] impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them [abandoning them to the degrading power of sin], 25 because [by choice] they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen . . . .
28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God or consider Him worth knowing [as their Creator], God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do things which are improper and repulsive, 29 until they were filled (permeated, saturated) with every kind of unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice and mean-spiritedness. They are gossips [spreading rumors], 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors [of new forms] of evil, disobedient and disrespectful to parents, 31 without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful [without pity]. [AMP]
The passage goes on to highlight how the warping of mind and conscience ends up in a topsy-turvy world that approves evil and by implication disapproves the good. That alludes subtly to another text, from the prophet Isaiah:
Isa 5:18 Woe (judgment is coming) to those who drag along wickedness with cords of falsehood,
And sin as if with cart ropes [towing their own punishment];
19 Who say, “Let Him move speedily, let Him expedite His work [His promised vengeance], so that we may see it;
And let the purpose of the Holy One of Israel approach
And come to pass, so that we may know it!”
20 Woe (judgment is coming) to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness;
Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!
21 Woe (judgment is coming) to those who are wise in their own eyes
And clever and shrewd in their own sight! [AMP]
This summary rings all too sadly true as we look out across the moral wasteland of our largely apostate civilisation that has so often deliberately turned its back on the truth and has refused to endure sound instruction. Instead, we have ever so often chosen to go out in the ways of cleverly constructed errors, leading many astray into ruin.
Given an onward exchange, I think I should note from Eta Linnemann on the undermining of theology:
Theology as it is taught in universities all over the world . . . is based on the historical-critical method . . . . [which] is not just the foundation for the exegetical disciplines. It also decides what the systematician can say . . . It determines procedure in Christian education, homiletics and ethics . . . . Research is conducted ut si Deus non daretur (“as if there were no God”). That means the reality of God is excluded from consideration from the start . . . Statements in Scripture regarding place, time, sequences of events and persons are accepted only insofar as they fit in with established assumptions and theories . . . .
Since other religions have their scriptures, one cannot assume the Bible is somehow unique and superior to them . . . . It is taken for granted that the words of the Bible and God’s word are not identical . . . the New Testament is pitted against the Old Testament, assuming that the God of the New Testament is different from that of the Old, since Jesus is said to have introduced a new concept of God . . . . Since the inspiration of Scripture is not accepted, neither can it be assumed that the individual books of Scripture complement each other. Using this procedure one finds in the Bible only a handful of unrelated literary creations . . . . Since the content of biblical writings is seen as merely the creation of theological writers, any given verse is nothing more than a non-binding, human theological utterance.
For historical-critical theology, critical reason decides what is reality in the Bible and what cannot be reality; and this decision is made on the basis of the everyday experience accessible to every person [i.e. the miraculous aspect of Scripture, and modern reports of miracles — regardless of claimed attestation — are dismissed as essentially impossible to verify and/or as merely “popular religious drivel”] . . . . . Due to the presuppositions that are adopted, critical reason loses sight of the fact that the Lord, our God, the Almighty, reigns. [Historical Criticism of the Bible: Methodology or Ideology? (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1993), pp. 83 – 88 as excerpted.]
There is nothing in historical-critical theology that has not already made its appearance in philosophy. Bacon (1561 – 1626), Hobbes (1588 – 1679), Descartes (1596 – 1650), and Hume (1711 – 1776) laid the foundations: inductive thought as the only source of knowledge; denial of revelation; monistic worldview; separation of faith and reason; doubt as the foundation of knowledge. Hobbes and Hume established a thoroughgoing criticism of miracles; Spinoza (1632 – 1677) also helped lay the basis for biblical criticism of both Old and New Testaments. Lessing (1729 – 1781) invented the synoptic problem. Kant’s (1724 – 1804) critique of reason became the basic norm for historical-critical theology. Hegel (1770 – 1831) furnished the means for the process of demythologizing that Rudolph Bultmann (1884 – 1976) would effectively implement a century later – after the way had been prepared by Martin Kähler (1835 – 1912).
Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855) . . . reduced faith to a leap that left rationality behind. He cemented the separation of faith and reason and laid the groundwork for theology’s departure from biblical moorings . . . . by writing such criticism off as benign . . . .
Heidegger (1889 – 1976) laid the groundwork for reducing Christian faith to a possibility of self-understanding; he also had considerable influence on Bultmann’s theology. From Karl Marx . . . came theology of hope, theology of revolution, theology of liberation. [Biblical Criticism on Trial (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2001), pp. 178 – 9.]
Another text has haunted me for months as I have pondered the path of our all too patently willfully perverse civilisation:
1 John 2:15 Do not love the world [of sin that opposes God and His precepts], nor the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the lust and sensual craving of the flesh and the lust and longing of the eyes and the boastful pride of life [pretentious confidence in one’s resources or in the stability of earthly things]—these do not come from the Father, but are from the world. 17 The world is passing away, and with it its lusts [the shameful pursuits and ungodly longings]; but the one who does the will of God and carries out His purposes lives forever.
18 Children, it is the last hour [the end of this age]; and just as you heard that the antichrist is coming [the one who will oppose Christ and attempt to replace Him], even now many antichrists (false teachers) have appeared, which confirms our belief that it is the last hour.
19 They went out from us [seeming at first to be Christians], but they were not really of us [because they were not truly born again and spiritually transformed]; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out [teaching false doctrine], so that it would be clearly shown that none of them are of us.
20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One [you have been set apart, specially gifted and prepared by the Holy Spirit], and all of you know [the truth because He teaches us, illuminates our minds, and guards us from error]. 21 I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie [nothing false, no deception] is of the truth.
22 Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed)?
This is the antichrist [the enemy and antagonist of Christ], the one who denies and consistently refuses to acknowledge the Father and the Son. 23 Whoever denies and repudiates the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses and acknowledges the Son has the Father also.
24 As for you, let that remain in you [keeping in your hearts that message of salvation] which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning remains in you, you too will remain in the Son and in the Father [forever].
25 This is the promise which He Himself promised us—eternal life.
26 These things I have written to you with reference to those who are trying to deceive you [seducing you and leading you away from the truth and sound doctrine]. 27 As for you, the anointing [the special gift, the preparation] which you received from Him remains [permanently] in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you. But just as His anointing teaches you [giving you insight through the presence of the Holy Spirit] about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as His anointing has taught you, [c]you must remain in Him [being rooted in Him, knit to Him]. [AMP]
In the end, that is the diagnosis, and the answer to the spirit of our age.>>
Now, why should we reject these diagnostic notes, given something like this from Plato 2350+ years past in The Laws, Bk X:
247, >>Plato, on the warping of the moral compass and where it leads a community i/l/o the collapse of Athens:
Ath [in The Laws, Bk X 2,350+ ya]. . . .[The avant garde philosophers and poets, c. 360 BC] say that fire and water, and earth and air [i.e the classical “material” elements of the cosmos], all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art . . . [such that] all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only [ –> that is, evolutionary materialism is ancient and would trace all things to blind chance and mechanical necessity] . . . .
[Thus, they hold] that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.-
[ –> Relativism, too, is not new; complete with its radical amorality rooted in a worldview that has no foundational IS that can ground OUGHT, leading to an effectively arbitrary foundation only for morality, ethics and law: accident of personal preference, the ebbs and flows of power politics, accidents of history and and the shifting sands of manipulated community opinion driven by “winds and waves of doctrine and the cunning craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming . . . ” cf a video on Plato’s parable of the cave; from the perspective of pondering who set up the manipulative shadow-shows, why.]
These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might,
[ –> Evolutionary materialism — having no IS that can properly ground OUGHT — leads to the promotion of amorality on which the only basis for “OUGHT” is seen to be might (and manipulation: might in “spin”) . . . ]
and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions [ –> Evolutionary materialism-motivated amorality “naturally” leads to continual contentions and power struggles influenced by that amorality at the hands of ruthless power hungry nihilistic agendas], these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is,to live in real dominion over others [ –> such amoral and/or nihilistic factions, if they gain power, “naturally” tend towards ruthless abuse and arbitrariness . . . they have not learned the habits nor accepted the principles of mutual respect, justice, fairness and keeping the civil peace of justice, so they will want to deceive, manipulate and crush — as the consistent history of radical revolutions over the past 250 years so plainly shows again and again], and not in legal subjection to them [–> nihilistic will to power not the spirit of justice and lawfulness].>>
But isn’t all this just an excuse to dress up right-wing fundy theocratic Christofascist totalitarianism in a cheap tuxedo?
Of Lemmings, marches of folly and cliffs of self-falsifying absurdity . . .
FFT7: But, isn’t the whole exercise of a pretended ID science an attempt to dress up dubious religion in scientific clothes, with intent to impose onward some sort of right-wing Christofascist theocratic tyranny that for instance robs women of their “rights” to their own bodies — and maybe would gaol them for even a miscarriage? Etc?
I am of course outlining a summary of trends of strawman caricature argument commonly encountered over the years.
A serious-minded glance above will rapidly demonstrate that the main discussion I have made so far under the FFT theme, has been PHILOSOPHICAL, not theological, first and foremost setting the worldviews comparative difficulties context for discussion. It is in that context that I then proceeded to show why evolutionary materialistic scientism and fellow travellers have been tried and found wanting as inherently incoherent, self-falsifying, necessarily false views. They cannot get us to a responsibly, rationally free, morally governed, warranting, knowing mind. So they fail the test of our being able to have a rationally guided discussion.
It will be quite evident above, that active objectors and those lurking from the penumbra of attack sites, have no real answer to this. That’s not new, I have seen that for years at UD and for decades elsewhere. Before me, the point traces back to the likes of Plantinga, C S Lewis and even leading evolutionary theorist J B S Haldane.
He aptly says:
“It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” [“When I am dead,” in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209.]
I invite the reasonable onlooker to scan above and see for himself, if there is a cogent answer forthcoming from the usual objectors or their backers across the Internet.
The truth will be evident, there is no non-incoherent evolutionary materialistic account of mindedness.
As for the associated amorality, radical relativism and reduction to nihilistic might and manipulation make ‘truth’ ‘right’ etc, that unanswered problem has been on record for 2350+ years, from Plato’s reflections i/l/o the collapse of Athens. If you want to see an example of the sort of misleadership that that toxic brew spews up, try Alcibiades as case study no. 1.
Resemblance to recent history is no coincidence, try out his parable of the mutinous ship of state.
Look above, to see if you can find a serious-minded grappling with such momentous issues and their implications. Try out the penumbra of attack sites. You will soon see why I have long been concerned about a civilisation-level march of ruinous folly that manipulates the public and democratic institutions only to lead us over the cliff. Luke’s real-world ship of state microcosm in Ac 27 should — should! — give us pause.
As one simple example I note that the right to life is the first, foremost, gateway right and so a civilisation that systematically dehumanises its posterity in the womb and warps medicine, nursing, pharmacy, law, law enforcement, government, education, media and more to promote and protect the holocaust of 800+ millions in 40+ years (and mounting up at a million per week now), is corrupting its soul through blood guilt, is utterly warping conscience to do so, and is wrecking the ability to even simply think straight and live by the truth and the right. It is setting itself up to be a plague upon the earth that morally taints the land, which will vomit us out.
If we do not repent of our bloody, soul-wrecking folly as a civilisation, we will ruin ourselves. And, whatever emerges from the bloody chaos and dark age to follow, will not see freedom as an important value, as liberty turned to libertinism and wicked, blood-guilty licence.
Yes, I am out and out saying we have become the enemies of sustainable liberty under just law that duly balances rights, freedoms and responsibilities.
If you want a personal motive, there it is. I come from a nation that wrecked its prospects for generations through irresponsible, wicked misleadership, agit prop, media shadow shows and blood shed. That includes a murdered auntie.
I know the hard way, that the lessons of sound history wee bought with blood and tears. Those who refuse to heed them doom themselves to pay the same coin over and over again in their futile folly.
(I have said as much, many times, but no. Those hell-bent on folly have to project garish caricatures unto those who dare stand athwart the path heading over the cliff and cry out, no.)
Anyway, the reader will simply not find a sober-minded response to such concerns.
After this, I set about a sounder foundation, several days ago now, which was of course studiously ignored. This was elaborated through pondering what sort of world has to be here for there to be creatures like us, then followed up.
All, studiously ignored in a rush to set up and knock over conveniently loaded straw men.
Let me clip key points from the last, FFT6C:
It is worth noting the unresponsiveness to 219 and 178 above, especially at the points where objectors were directly invited to put up alternatives.
We can take it to the bank that UD is obsessively monitored by denizens of a penumbra of hostile sites. Denizens, more than willing to pounce when they see opportunity.
In short, the above blanks left unanswered speak to yet another hovering ghost or three in the room.
Here, first, the point that there is no necessary appeal to design inferences and debates to build a case for ethical theism adequate to ground commitment to such.
Second, that the atheistical objectors and their fellow travellers have no cogent answer to the need for a necessary being root to reality, nor to the point that the God of ethical theism is a serious candidate to be such (by utter contrast with the cartoonish flying spaghetti monster etc), nor to the onward point that such a serious candidate will be either ontologically impossible [as a square circle is impossible] or else will be actual.
Third, they have no cogent answer to the significance of the point that just to have a real discussion, we must implicitly accept that we are responsible, reasonable, significantly free and intelligent beings under moral government. Not least, conscience is the compass within pointing to the truth, the right and our duties of care towards such. Undermining this dimension of conscious mindedness by implying it is delusional lets grand delusion loose in our minds, ending in shipwreck.
So, we can see that the evo mat scientism picture of the world falls apart, and that there is no need to go out of our way to accommodate it. It is self-referentially incoherent and so self-falsifying.
Nor, should we yield to the trend to corrupt the concept, truth. (That, too, is part of the benumbing and warping of conscience, as say Orwell brought out so forcefully in his 1984.)
The astute onlooker will also note that we have had a worldviews discussion, not one pivoting on parsing Bible texts . . .
It will then be no surprise to see that the grounding of ethical theism as a responsible worldview (by utter contrast with the radically self-falsifying and amoral evolutionary materialistic scientism and fellow travellers) does not turn on design inferences on empirical signs such as FSCO/I.
Evo mat scientism and fellow travellers are utterly incompatible with the responsible, rational freedom required to have a serious, fact and logic guided discussion seeking understanding of the truth. It rules itself out so soon as we must have a serious discussion.
We then address on comparative difficulties, how can we have a world with beings such as we are.
That takes us through the IS-OUGHT gap to issues of being and non-being and rootedness of a world with moral government. Which, repeat, is a condition of serious discussion.
That points to the only serious candidate for such a root, after centuries of debate. Candidate X was duly laid out, and the open invitation was given to put forth a comparable candidate Y that does not instantly collapse.
Silence.
Silence, for good reason: something like the flying spaghetti monster is simply not serious, never mind its appallingly common rhetorical use by those who should know a lot better.
Then, a second invitation to comparative difficulties discussion was given: part of X’s bill of requisites is necessary being. A serious candidate NB either is impossible (as a square circle is impossible) or it is actual.
The challenge was given, break X’s candidacy.
Silence, again.
So — as X = the inherently good creator God of ethical theism, a necessary and maximally great being worthy of loyalty and the reasonable, responsible service of doing the good in accord with our evident nature — it is clear that there is a very good warrant to adhere to ethical theism as a worldview.
Without even engaging design theory debates.
A point that needed to be put up on the table and warranted.
Which, it has.
That’s why at 220 and henceforth, I could freely write:
you will see the stage of argument in FFT6B just above. I wonder what our well-informed skeptical interlocutors will put up as alternatives? Especially, noting that THERE IS NO DESIGN INFERENCE in the argument to date, i.e. the design inference as such is demonstrably not an inherent, inextricable part of an argument to God as root of reality. Where, note, the case I am arguing here is not based in Scripture though it is compatible with it — truths will be compatible the one with the other. And of course, contrary to the talking points I heard today, the God of ethical theism is not automatically the devil, the author of evils and confusions.
Why then has there been such a hot debate over design, and why has it been laced with accusations about creationism in a cheap tuxedo and the like?
Simple: evolutionary materialistic scientism, from the outset in modern times [this is demonstrable historic fact], has tried to come up with a designer substitute that would plausibly put the creator-God out of a job. The idea is that if the world of life and onward the physical cosmos can be explained on naturalistic grounds, the perception of design can be dismissed while wearing the holy lab coat, and belief in God can eventually be made to seem to be the resort of the ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked.
That rhetorical stratagem has worked and has become institutionalised.
But at a terrible price.
First, it is ill-founded and credibly false, erecting falsity as the yardstick for judging truth. Where, science first and foremost must seek to discover the empirically grounded truth about our world.
Ill-founded, as there are credible, empirically warranted signs of design, which are copiously found in the world of life and in the structure of the cosmos.
Design theory is the empirically and analytically grounded scientific investigation of such signs, which in fact are not too hard to find. Start with the algorithmically functional text in DNA and the execution machinery of the cell that puts it to work. (This points to OOL and OO body plans. Design is evident in the tree of life from the roots up.)
Likewise, the corruption of science from definitions and outlines of its methods on up makes blatant falsity into the yardstick to judge truth by. Truth cannot pass the test of agreement with relevant falsity, and so the ideological imposition of evolutionary materialistic scientism inherently corrupts a pivotal institution of our civilisation.
So, those who hope to build a sound future will be found on the side of needed reformation of tainted science.
In that context, freed science can then return to its true path.
Such is being ruthlessly resisted because it threatens entrenched worldviews and power interests in many institutions. But, the only way to defend institutionalised and fairly obvious falsity is by means that cannot stand the cold light of truth, facts and logic. That is why we find the distortions, strawman tactics, stalking, stereotyping and scapegoating.
All of which are utterly corrosive to liberty, not just academic freedom.
And so, the time has come to find where one stands, why, even as our civilisation descends into chaos, confusion, folly, bizarre agendas and outright blood guilt all around us.
We stand at kairos.>>
We are at kairos, in the face of a civilisation hell-bent on a march of folly. It is time to think again, soberly. END
Comments
CR @241
CR: I fail to see how merely choosing to call inductivism an “explanation” helps because, in the context that you’re using the word, it means the same thing.
I am not “choosing to call inductivism an ‘explanation’”.
CR: Again, a designer that “just was”, material or not, complete with the knowledge of what transformation of matter are necessary to a copy of a biological organism from raw materials serves no explanatory purpose.
We have been over this before. It is utter madness to say that Leonardo da Vinci serves no explanatory purpose wrt the Mona Lisa.
CR: This is because one could more efficiently state that organisms “just appeared”, complete with that knowledge already present.
It is utter madness to hold that one could “more efficiently state” that the Mona Lisa “just appeared, complete with that knowledge already present.”Origenes
April 28, 2017
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Thanks for the update - we both have many other things to do, I'm sure.jdk
April 28, 2017
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jdk,
I'll respond as soon as I have some time.HeKS
April 28, 2017
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CR,
The discussion over fallibilism has happened here before, and it actually went more like this:
SOCRATES: Wait! We are fallible in all our thinking? Is there literally no idea that we may safely hold immune from criticism?
HERMES: Like what?
SOCRATES: [Responding immediately:] The Law of Identity and other essential rules of right reasoning
HERMES: How did you come to choose those particular propositions as candidates for immunity from criticism? Was it because you decided that the propositions you chose would best make your point because they were the most obviously, unambiguously true of all the propositions you considered using?
SOCRATES: No.
HERMES: Then how did you determine how obviously and unambiguously true those candidate propositions were, compared with others? Did you not criticize them? Did you not quickly attempt to think of ways or reasons that they might conceivably be false?
SOCRATES: No.
HERMES: Then what is the reason for your choice?
SOCRATES: Because the Law of Identity and other essential rules of right reasoning are absolutely foundational to the very process of rational criticism. In their absence, criticism is meaningless, and the degree to which anyone could ever even conceivably use argument to undermine these basic laws of reasoning is precisely the degree to which they undermine their argument against them. The idea that it is even possible that rational criticism could succeed in undermining the the very laws of reasoning that undergird and provide validity to rational criticism is self-referentially incoherent.
HERMES: ....
HeKS
April 28, 2017
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CR @240
CR:
Origenes:
Indeed, if “no position can be positively justified”, then it cannot be positively justified that no position can be positively justified..
Are you serious? Why would someone who has given up on positive justification try to positively justify fallibilism?
Because this someone holds fallibilism to be true.
CR: What would it look like to be a fallibilist about fallibilism?
It would look like self-defeating incoherent nonsense, which is my point.
CR:
SOCRATES: Wait! We are fallible in all our thinking? Is there literally no idea that we may safely hold immune from “criticism?
HERMES: Like what?
SOCRATES: Like the idea that we are fallible in all our thinking.Origenes
April 28, 2017
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F/N: Merriam-Webster:
>>
Definition of criticism
1
a : the act of criticizing usually unfavorably seeking encouragement rather than criticismb : a critical observation or remark an unfair criticism had a minor criticism of the designc : critique
2
: the art of evaluating or analyzing works of art or literature; also : writings expressing such evaluation or analysis an anthology of literary criticism
3
: the scientific investigation of literary documents (such as the Bible) in regard to such matters as origin, text, composition, or history>>
KFkairosfocus
April 28, 2017
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CR, in addition to many other problems, you seem never to have acknowledged that induction in the modern sense describes argument that supports conclusions (generally i/l/o empirical evidence), rather than demonstrating them. It explicitly does not guarantee truth of conclusions but in many instances is capable of moral certainty, and moreover, we cannot but reason inductively. KF
PS: One important form of inductive argument is inference to the best [current] explanation, aka abduction. This has been pointed out many times so the dismissive talking point above is less than acceptable.kairosfocus
April 28, 2017
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@Origenes
In the context of the design inference, there is no dichotomy between past experiences and explanatory theory. Intelligence, as a cause, explains the presence of complex specified information in life.
I fail to see how merely choosing to call inductivism an "explanation" helps because, in the context that you're using the word, it means the same thing.
You have a problem accepting intelligence as a cause for several reasons. First, you hold that an explanation must be an “ultimate explanation”. Here, you seem to assume that only physical explanations can be ultimate explanations, which is incoherent given that there is no reason to assume that the universe brought itself into existence.
Explanations have reach. They extend beyond the immediate problem. That’s what differentiates explanatory knowledge from non-explanatory knowledge.
Again, a designer that “just was”, material or not, complete with the knowledge of what transformation of matter are necessary to a copy of a biological organism from raw materials serves no explanatory purpose. This is because one could more efficiently state that organisms “just appeared”, complete with that knowledge already present.
If you’re going to improve the problem, you would need to explain that knowledge.
As an alternative explanation for knowledge you offer “variation” and “criticism”. One problem with these proposed ‘causes’ is that they cannot explain on which they depend. Criticism and variation presuppose, among many other things (see post # 216), what they attempt to explain: knowledge.
You’re assuming knowledge requires a knowing subject and that all forms of criticism needs to happen consciously or even by people. You seem to be having difficulty taking yourself out of the equation.critical rationalist
April 28, 2017
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@Origenes #228
Indeed, if “no position can be positively justified”, then it cannot be positively justified that no position can be positively justified..
Are you serious? Why would someone who has given up on positive justification try to positively justify fallibilism?
I wrote:
Second, Bartley does provide guidance on adopting positions; we may adopt the position that to this moment has stood up to criticism most effectively. Of course this is no help for dogmatists who seek stronger reasons for belief, but that is a problem for them, not for exponents of critical preference.
What would it look like to be a fallibilist about fallibilism?
SOCRATES: Wait! We are fallible in all our thinking? Is there literally no idea that we may safely hold immune from “criticism?
HERMES: Like what?
SOCRATES: [Ponders for a while. Then:] What about the truths of arithmetic, like two plus two equals four? Or the fact that Delphi exists? What about the geometrical fact that the angles of a triangle sum to two right angles?
HERMES: Revealing no facts, I cannot confirm that all three of those propositions are even true! But more important is this: how did you come to choose those particular propositions as candidates for immunity from criticism? Why Delphi and not Athens? Why two plus two and not three plus four? Why not the theorem of Pythagoras? Was it because you decided that the propositions you chose would best make your point because they were the most obviously, unambiguously true of all the propositions you considered using?
SOCRATES: Yes.
HERMES: But then how did you determine how obviously and unambiguously true each of those candidate propositions was, compared with the others? Did you not criticize them? Did you not quickly attempt to think of ways or reasons that they might conceivably be false?
SOCRATES: Yes, I did. I see. Had I held them immune from criticism, I would have had no way of arriving at that conclusion.
HERMES: So you are, after all, a thoroughgoing fallibilist – though you mistakenly believed you were not.
SOCRATES: I merely doubted it.
HERMES: You doubted and criticized fallibilism itself, as a true fallibilist should.
SOCRATES: That is so. Moreover, had I not criticized it, I could not have come to understand why it is true. My doubt improved my knowledge of an important truth – as knowledge held immune from criticism never can be improved!”
critical rationalist
April 27, 2017
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@UB #220
A molecular language
There is a language in organisms, so they were designed? Is that more accurate? Still not seeing it. J
So, how do you connect those two dots? Nothing in the papers you referenced connects them.
Is it probability? But probably is only applicable when applied inside an existing theory that constrains the number of options to choose from. It’s unclear how you know what options there are for alternative theories, such as those we have yet to conceive of yet, those that you haven’t observed, etc. Furthermore, if you’re appealing to probably, how probable are other designers at the place time that this supposed act of intelligence occurred? We haven’t observed any designers other than human beings and they couldn’t have designed themselves. If the only designers we know of are so improbable, how can some other designer be the probable cause of organisms? IOW, it’s unclear how you can calculate the probability that a designer did it. It’s simply not applicable in this case.
Is it induction? But we’ve been over this before.
Bertand Russell's story of the chicken and the farmer not only shows that one cannot induce truth from past experience, but that it's a myth that one can extrapolate observations to form new theories.
For Russell's chicken to reach a false prediction via induction, it must have first interpreted the farmer's actions (being fed every day) using a false explanation, such as the farmer had benevolent feelings towards chickens. However, had the chicken first guessed a different explanation, such as the farmer was feeding the chicken so it would fetch a good price when slaughtered, then it would have extrapolated the farmer's actions quite differently.
As such, it's unclear how one can extrapolate observations without first putting them into a explanatory framework. This is why I keep asking for an explanation, not merely an appeal to inductivism.
Again, symbols in a language represent knowledge. What is the origin of that knowledge?
Ruby on Rails is a framework for developing websites. But it's not just a framework as it adds what appears to be new languages keywords to Ruby. It's as if the Ruby language itself was extended just for developing websites. How was this accomplished? The developers of the framework took all their previous knowledge of past and current projects, along with the meta programming features of the Ruby programming language, and abstracted it into a domain specific language (DSL) for building server side web applications. When these new “keywords” are encountered by the Ruby interpreter, they are expanded and that knowable is applied.
The key point being, if the developers did not possess that domain specific knowledge, they could not abstract it into a DSL. So, a language represents knowledge. And, in people, knowledge grows via conjecture and criticism.
This is why I’ve said, a designer that “just was”, complete with the knowledge of just the right genes (domain specific knowledge) that would result in just the right proteins, that would result in just the right features, already present, doesn’t serve an explanatory purpose. This is because one could more efficiently state that organisms “just appeared”, complete with the knowledge of just the right genes that would result in just the right proteins, that would result in just the right features, already present.critical rationalist
April 27, 2017
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F/N: Reppert on reasoning, building on points argued by Haldane and Lewis:
. . . let us suppose that brain state A, which is token identical to the thought that all men are mortal, and brain state B, which is token identical to the thought that Socrates is a man, together cause the belief that Socrates is mortal. It isn’t enough for rational inference that these events be those beliefs, it is also necessary that the causal transaction be in virtue of the content of those thoughts . . . [But] if naturalism is true, then the propositional content is irrelevant to the causal transaction that produces the conclusion, and [so] we do not have a case of rational inference. In rational inference, as Lewis puts it, one thought causes another thought not by being, but by being seen to be, the ground for it. But causal transactions in the brain occur in virtue of the brain’s being in a particular type of state that is relevant to physical causal transactions.
We need to ponder, what is reasoning. Then, how it connects to responsible freedom.
KFkairosfocus
April 27, 2017
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P.S. to HeKS: I took a quick look at the first part of the first link you provided, and quickly saw that it wasn't too relevant to our discussion. I am positing the existence of a non-material root-level of reality, not a materialistic atheism. Therefore, I hope we can just continue our discussion as it is going and not confuse it with other perspectives.jdk
April 27, 2017
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JDK, I suggest you look at my response to HeKS yesterday, at 223 above, and other remarks further above. Remember, this is a worldviews discussion i/l/o comparative difficulties and using key first principles of right reason to guide discussion, so it may be helpful to cf here on, including here on on the issue of being, these being at 101 level. Sorry, this is not light, obvious stuff that is simply and briefly resolved. By best definition, phil is the study of hard fundamental questions, known to be such as there are no easy answers, forcing comparative difficulties as key approach. Where, ALL answers bristle with difficulties so the issue becomes, comparison. KF
PS: A key consideration in my assessment is that to be truly rational, capable of insightful, logical inferences from ground to consequent and/or to construct cogent inductive inferences from empirical grounds to well supported conclusions, an agent needs to be responsibly free. That is, issues of duty to truth, proper inference and the like lurk, and such cannot be merely mechanical or stochastic, blindly grinding out what are tagged conclusions on being given inputs. That is non-rational, cause-effect behaviour [cf the ball and disk integrator in the OP], not reasoning. A coherent cosmos is then instantly shot through with reasoning, and that is not accounted for on either chicken-egg loops or proposed but infeasible infinite chains of causal-temporal succession or the like. It is of course then left to a finitely remote world root and such will need to be capable of the sourcing of a coherent cosmos -- logically and dynamically coherent. I note too that moral duty is not to be conflated with fear of being hauled before some cosmic version of a Judge's bench to give an account.kairosfocus
April 27, 2017
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to HeKS re 233:
OK, I get that you don't think I am understanding your arguments, so, in part as an exercise in trying to communicate fairly precise abstract ideas, I'll try to focus here on understanding what you are saying.
First, you write,
IF a world-root being holds any ‘essential positions’ (as I defined that term in my previous comment) that we would consider morally relevant, THEN it would necessarily produce a world where those morally relevant essential positions form part of the backdrop of reality, such that reality would have within its fabric an objective moral dimension or framework, and that this would be true EVEN IF the being didn’t care about how free beings chose to act in relation to that framework.
and in your previous post you define "essential position" as "a position that must be derived from the essence of what it IS in its very nature rather than from analysis of or beliefs about external realities."
I think I get this, and I accept your conditional statement. Of course, determining that the root-level has such essential positions is the real issue.
Also, I think my use of the word "superimposed" has caused some of the confused, and I'll accept your statement "The basic existence of such a moral dimension would be derived directly from the the world-root being by virtue of the nature of its causal relation to reality," without reference to how any free, rational agents in the world might relate to that moral dimension. (With, of course, the above disclaimer about the antecedent part of the conditional, "IF such essential positions exist at the root-level".)
However, I thought I had expressed understanding of this when I wrote,
That such root-level moral positions might exist irrespective of whether any creatures know about them or act or them might be the case, but I don’t think you present any argument that it must be so. Traditional theism certainly supports the distinction you make: that the moral truths are there, but we are free to follow or not. But there is no logically necessary “definition” that says that allowing of and providing for the existence of free, rational creatures means that, whether those creatures know it or not, moral OUGHTS are built into the fabric of root-level reality.
You, however, said I was still misunderstanding, and wrote,
Again, I think you’re blending together a series of distinct issues and looking at some of them backwards. As I said above, my arguments about logical necessity are conditional rather than absolute. I’m not making the absolute claim that Y is logically necessary. Instead, I’m arguing that IF X is true, THEN Y would seem to be logically necessary.
However, this seems to be what my first sentence says: I accept that if x, then y, but you don't seem to have presented any evidence for x.
So when you write,
And, again, this comment suggests that we’re not really on the same page about the argument. I’m not trying to convince you of my intuitions, nor am I suggesting that my intuitions have any particular logical force. I’m not arguing that any world-root being MUST have moral positions because my intuition tells me so. In fact, I’m not making that claim at all. I’m merely trying to establish the distinctions between different concepts that are relevant to this discussion (which will be important as the discussion progresses into different areas) and to show the actual minimal conditions necessary to establish the presence of an objective moral framework as a logical necessity.
I really think I understand that, and have understood it.
So the next step is to explain what these minimal conditions are that would establish the logical necessity, and thus the truth, of the antecedent condition that the root-level reality of this world does indeed hold "morally relevant essential positions.
Also, as a last comment, I'm sure I understand the distinctions between ontology and epistemology.
I may read your linked posts, although in genreal trying to revive past discussions is not as fruitful as just having a current one.
So perhaps we can move on: what are the minimal conditions for establishing that the root-level of reality for our world indeed has essential moral positions, and what are the arguments and/or evidence for those minimal conditions being met?jdk
April 27, 2017
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CR: Instead of induction, I’ve suggested our expectations of what we will experience is not based on past experience, but explanatory theories about howe the world works.
In the context of the design inference, there is no dichotomy between past experiences and explanatory theory. Intelligence, as a cause, explains the presence of complex specified information in life.
You have a problem accepting intelligence as a cause for several reasons. First, you hold that an explanation must be an “ultimate explanation”. Here, you seem to assume that only physical explanations can be ultimate explanations, which is incoherent given that there is no reason to assume that the universe brought itself into existence.
As an alternative explanation for knowledge you offer “variation” and “criticism”. One problem with these proposed ‘causes’ is that they cannot explain on which they depend. Criticism and variation presuppose, among many other things (see post # 216), what they attempt to explain: knowledge.Origenes
April 27, 2017
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jdk #232
I see you have the same problem with being brief that I do! ????
Yup :) A quick look any of the conversations I've participated in here will show that I'm not known for my brevity.
Regarding your comments in #232, I get the sense that you are still not understanding my argument ... or the distinction between what I am and am not arguing. The arguments I'm making are conditional, not absolute. I'm arguing essentially two points: 1) IF certain things are true, THEN other things would seem to logically follow; 2) The conditions that need to be true in order for those other things to follow are fewer and more basic than what you (and many others) seem to think.
I am not arguing that any being capable of producing a world must, as a matter of logical necessity, produce a world with moral OUGHTs. What I'm arguing is that IF a world-root being holds any 'essential positions' (as I defined that term in my previous comment) that we would consider morally relevant, THEN it would necessarily produce a world where those morally relevant essential positions form part of the backdrop of reality, such that reality would have within its fabric an objective moral dimension or framework, and that this would be true EVEN IF the being didn't care about how free beings chose to act in relation to that framework.
and later, after I argue that some creatures might be truly free, without the superimposition of any root-level OUGHTS
I think part of the problem we're having here is with your idea that the objective moral framework would be superimposed ON TOP OF reality ... after the fact. I'm saying it would be precisely the opposite. It would lie at the very root of reality. It would be baked in. I think what you're talking about is whether or not free beings would have a responsibility to act in accord with the framework, and that's a different question. As I pointed out in my prior illustration, the two issues are not inextricably linked by some logically necessary bond. There could be courses of action that are objectively right and wrong and free agents could also be free of any responsibility to act in accord with them, just like there could be secular laws that are technically on the books but that are never enforced. The responsibility to act in accord with the moral framework may be imposed on free agents once they are on the scene, but that is a different issue from the basic existence of the moral dimension of reality. The basic existence of such a moral dimension would be derived directly from the the world-root being by virtue of the nature of its causal relation to reality.
That such root-level moral positions might exist irrespective of whether any creatures know about them or act or them might be the case, but I don’t think you present any argument that it must be so. Traditional theism certainly supports the distinction you make: that the moral truths are there, but we are free to follow or not. But there is no logically necessary “definition” that says that allowing of and providing for the existence of free, rational creatures means that, whether those creatures know it or not, moral OUGHTS are built into the fabric of root-level reality.
I fully appreciate that you feel this must be so, but I don’t see that your arguments support this as a logical necessity.
Again, I think you're blending together a series of distinct issues and looking at some of them backwards. As I said above, my arguments about logical necessity are conditional rather than absolute. I'm not making the absolute claim that Y is logically necessary. Instead, I'm arguing that IF X is true, THEN Y would seem to be logically necessary.
Whether or not the X in this case is true (and whether under all or only specific scenarios) is open to investigation through a combination of both logical and empirical considerations, but I don't presently think that you can simply declare as a matter of logical necessity that ANY being capable of producing a world will, as a matter of logical necessity, produce a world with moral OUGHTs. I can imagine what seem to be logically coherent scenarios where that might not be true ... it's just that those scenarios don't look anything like the world we find ourselves in.
You then provide a long analogy explaining how moral positions could reside in the root-level being even if it didn’t care whether other free agents acted upon them. But you don’t explain why the root-level would have those moral positions at all. It might, but it might not: there is no logical reasons why they would be necessary.
This tells me that we're not presently on the same page. I didn't argue for the logical necessity of the root-level being having such positions because I never claimed that it was logically necessary that ANY possible root-level being must have such positions. I was simply trying to get you to understand that IF the world-root being had any such basic positions, THEN that is all that would be necessary for a moral dimension to become a logically necessary aspect of reality ... EVEN IF that being didn't choose to impose any responsibility on free beings to act in accord with its own positions.
This type of conversation could go on, I think, without any further resolution. You are thoroughly a theist, and I don’t mean this disparagingly: you articulate your intuitions very well, and are quite familiar with the theology and philosophy of theism.
....
My position, which it may not make sense to belabor anymore, at least about this logical issue, is that your intuitions, no matter how sure they feel to you, do not have the logical force that you feel they do to someone who does not share those intuitions and background.
And, again, this comment suggests that we're not really on the same page about the argument. I'm not trying to convince you of my intuitions, nor am I suggesting that my intuitions have any particular logical force. I'm not arguing that any world-root being MUST have moral positions because my intuition tells me so. In fact, I'm not making that claim at all. I'm merely trying to establish the distinctions between different concepts that are relevant to this discussion (which will be important as the discussion progresses into different areas) and to show the actual minimal conditions necessary to establish the presence of an objective moral framework as a logical necessity.
In short, there are two areas of distinctions that it is important to recognize.
First, it's important to recognize that there is a distinction to be made between a Moral Value (an essential moral truth lying at the base of reality that relates to or establishes moral worth) and a Moral Duty (a responsibility to act in accord with and in a way that respects Moral Values), with the latter being a kind of law imposed by a lawgiver.
Second, it's important to understand the distinction between Moral Ontology (related to the existence of an objective moral framework) and Moral Epistemology (how we might get to know about the details of the objective moral framework if it exists). Whether or not objective morality exists is a separate question from whether or not we can come to know its specifics and, if so, to what degree. The vast majority of arguments people make against the existence of objective morality fall into the error of actually addressing Moral Epistemology rather than Moral Ontology.
As for the two articles I've written here on the subject, here are the links:
DOES IT MATTER WHAT WE BELIEVE ABOUT MORALITY?Reply To An Argument Against Objective Morality: When Words Lose All Meaning
The comment threads to these posts covered a lot of ground in some great depth, including issues you've raised here, so you might find them useful as well.
Take care,
HeKSHeKS
April 26, 2017
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to HeKS re 222.
I see you have the same problem with being brief that I do! :-)
Also, I saw that your 206 was to kf, but I thought it was general enough that I could respond.
You write,
I think the error you’re making here is that you’re failing to make a distinction between 1) the concept of objective moral truths that are part of the very fabric and context of reality, and 2) moral agents capable of rationally and responsibly acting in accord with or against moral truths.
You go on to argue as I think you have once before in different words, that merely by making a universe where life can and does arise
automatically calls into serious question (if not outright eliminates by definition) the possibility of a world-root that is absolutely disinterested in life as an end.
and later, after I argue that some creatures might be truly free, without the superimposition of any root-level OUGHTS, you write
Again, you’re failing to make a distinction between the existence of moral truths and values forming part of the fabric of reality because of their existence in the world-root being and whether or not that being ultimately cares about whether or not humans act in accord with them. My argument holds even if the being doesn’t ultimately care what people choose to do.
That such root-level moral positions might exist irrespective of whether any creatures know about them or act or them might be the case, but I don't think you present any argument that it must be so. Traditional theism certainly supports the distinction you make: that the moral truths are there, but we are free to follow or not. But there is no logically necessary "definition" that says that allowing of and providing for the existence of free, rational creatures means that, whether those creatures know it or not, moral OUGHTS are built into the fabric of root-level reality.
I fully appreciate that you feel this must be so, but I don't see that your arguments support this as a logical necessity.
You then provide a long analogy explaining how moral positions could reside in the root-level being even if it didn't care whether other free agents acted upon them. But you don't explain why the root-level would have those moral positions at all. It might, but it might not: there is no logical reasons why they would be necessary. You say,
This type of scenario would hold true infinitely more strongly for a being lying at the root of all reality, in no small part because any morally relevant positions it would hold would have to come out of its own nature rather than from some interpretation of or deliberation on the realities of some external context,
but you don't explain why it would have any morally relevant positions at all.
This type of conversation could go on, I think, without any further resolution. You are thoroughly a theist, and I don't mean this disparagingly: you articulate your intuitions very well, and are quite familiar with the theology and philosophy of theism.
You summarize thusly,
Likewise, from a theistic perspective, God 1) establishes the objective moral values that form the backdrop of reality as I’ve described above, 2) informs humans about these laws, partly by implanting them “on our hearts” and partly by communicating them directly through inspired writings, and 3) by rendering ultimate justice, which for each of us remains a future prospect.
None of that is part of my background or belief system.
My position, which it may not make sense to belabor anymore, at least about this logical issue, is that your intuitions, no matter how sure they feel to you, do not have the logical force that you feel they do to someone who does not share those intuitions and background.
And last, you write,
And, once again, I’ll have to put off address the empirical aspects to another post (though I’ve written two relevant articles here that address the matter, which you can find by entering my name into the search box on the main page).
I continue to be interested in this. I've made some comments about how the wide range of beliefs and feelings that people have about these issues is, to me, evidence that all of this is human invention and speculation, and that we can't actually know anything about the root-level of reality, much less establish anything about it by pure logic.
But I'd be willing to read the posts you written about this, if you could provide some links, or take the time to summarize here. (I did a search on your name, but too much stuff came up for me to know what posts you might be referring to.)jdk
April 26, 2017
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It is abundantly clear that you could not even state what my conclusion is, nor what would be required to support it. This is not a minor issue where you are concerned.
I'm still waiting for even a quoted response from criticisms in #184, let alone a restatement.critical rationalist
April 26, 2017
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#226
checkUpright BiPed
April 26, 2017
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CR,
I am trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here. You are making it difficult.
You tell me that the universal observations of science are to be disregarded; that the principle of uniformity underlying all of historical science is to be ignored; and apparently in place of our methodological documentation of nature, we should instead take into account observations that no one had ever made, or has ever even come close to making.
Yet, on the other hand, you seem utterly transfixed by someone who completely confuses one (well-documented) physical process for another, then based on this verifiable error, concludes exactly what you want to hear.
In other words, it now appears to me that you are prepared to blow the whole damn thing up before you will bend your conceptualizations to fit the physical evidence as it is actually found and documented in nature – even by people who are sympathetic to your own point of view.
Is the anticodon-to-amino acid association temporally and spatially independent of the codon-to-anticiodon association? You don’t seem to know, or to want to know, or care what the implications are either way. But yet you turn around and wonder what documentation supports the observations being made. These things are irrational and incoherent if they are genuine, and they are anti-intellectual as a defense.
I think we should end this conversation.
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EDIT:
#227
It is abundantly clear that you could not even state what my conclusion is, nor what would be required to support it. This is not a minor issue where you are concerned.
cheersUpright BiPed
April 26, 2017
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KF @225, CR
CR: According to the stance of critical preference no position can be positively justified …
Kairosfocus: Including the position just cited?
Do you not sewe the gross self-referential incoherence and so also self-falsification implied in the highlighted?
Indeed, if “no position can be positively justified”, then it cannot be positively justified that no position can be positively justified. IOWs CR’s narrative is simply poorly reasoned self-defeating nonsense. Surely he is not the only one; self-referential incoherence seems to be a requisite stamp on all materialistic musings.
Kairosfocus: I suggest to you that as a start for each of us it is undeniably true and evident to us that we are conscious, once we are.
“No position can be positively justified” … well, Critical Rationalist, go for it: try criticizing “I think, therefore I am”. Good luck with that.Origenes
April 26, 2017
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@KF
Again, UB pointed to those papers as supposedly supporting his conclusion. However, after a quick scan, no such arguments were found. In fact, one paper explicitly indicated Intellegent Design was not a conclusion of that evidence.critical rationalist
April 26, 2017
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UB, you are right, yet again. It is now evident that we are not dealing with those who are responsive to facts, evidence and reason. Sad, really. KFkairosfocus
April 26, 2017
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CR,
did you really ponder the source you cited above with approval, when it said:
According to the stance of critical preference no position can be positively justified but it is quite likely that one, (or some) will turn out to be better than others are in the light of critical discussion and tests. This type of rationality holds all its positions and propositions open to criticism and a standard objection to this stance is that it is empty; just holding our positions open to criticism provides no guidance as to what position we should adopt in any particular situation. This criticism misses its mark for two reasons. First, the stance of critical preference is not a position, it is a metacontext and as such it is not directed at solving the kind of problems that are solved by adopting a position on some issue or other.
Including the position just cited?
Do you not sewe the gross self-referential incoherence and so also self-falsification implied in the highlighted?
There is a world of difference between being critically aware and going to the extreme of reification that erects being aware that errors exist into the core of the system and denying that essentially anything can be justified beyond reasonable doubt.
I suggest to you that as a start for each of us it is undemniably true and evident to us that we are conscious, once we are.
Second, The Josiah Royce proposition that error exists is not only a matter of fact but can be demonstrated to be undeniably so, as the attempted denial leads straight to a case in point.
More broadly, there are significant numbers of self-evident propositions beyond these two, that serve as plumblines for rational, responsible discourse. Starting with distinct identity and its corollaries the triple first principles of right reason, LOI, LNC, LEM. Just to object to such you have to implicitly rely on them, bringing your whole scheme into self-referential incoherence and self-falsification.
Such has been pointed out to you any number of times across literally years, here at UD. I don't doubt that others elsewhere have tried to set you to rights also.
I suggest you are clinging to a system that is utterly and irretrievably self-falsifying, and that you would do better to take a reasonable time out and reconsider your worldview from the ground up.
I suspect, I am simply writing for the record, given your track record, but this point of reference will always be there to point you to if and when you insist on popping up with the same again and again.
FTR,
KFkairosfocus
April 26, 2017
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@UB
Evolution does not explain the “knowledge” required for that feature. However, an act of intelligence can explain it, and is indeed the only source known to be causally adequate to the task.
It can? Then what is that explanation? And if it can explain that feature, why not the rest? Explanations have reach, so it's unclear why you've decided to artificially limit it's application, should you actually have one.
I'd suggest it's because what I actually keep hearing is an appeal to induction (experience), rather than an explanation. "The only source known" you mean the only observed source, which excludes sources that have not be experienced. I've commented this at length, but you have still yet to respond.
Would you like to know how much of the paper is spent providing the reasoning behind this second postulate? The answer is none.
Then where are all the papers and evidence that support your conclusion? You act as if it is obvious for anyone to see, yet a quick scan of all papers in the reference section of the website you referenced does not appear to contain any such argument. Shouldn't I have found it by now?
I find it interesting that you think an authoritative consensus should carry weight against fully documented empirical observations – and I certainly note that you provide no challenge those observations.
Organisms were designed because they contain information? And I'm not denying that organisms contain information?
Again, it all seems to come down to an inductive argument about what we have experienced, rather than an actual explanation. Nor have you addressed the section of the paper I quoted or concrete examples of the evolution of universals.critical rationalist
April 26, 2017
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HeKS,
again here briefly.
Thing is, possible worlds are a bit hard to set off like separate trees with different roots and branches, the concept is inherently general: sufficiently complete logically coherent descriptions of how the or a world may be. Note, the intimate role logic plays in this, as no two truths X and Y can be such that both accurately correspond to reality and Y = ~ X. And BTW, just above CR's schemes collapse in spectacular, even classic, self-referential incoherence.
So, once there is an actual world that credibly contains morally governed creatures -- and objectors have to implicitly appeal to our duties to truth, right and reasonableness in order to object (showing the specious nature of their objection) -- this has implications. For, the ONLY level that oughtness can be fused with is, is at world-root.
Where, we also know such a root needs to be a necessary being, one that is framework to all possible worlds.
Even as, 2-ness/distinct identity is.
So, just from this world, we have a strong constraint on the ontology of the world root.
We need an IS strong enough to sustain OUGHT in our world, and that IS will also be at root of ANY actually possible world.
Just as 2-ness/distinct identity is.
Of course, there is only one serious candidate, and things like logic of structure and quantity take their place in that context as being eternally contemplated. A world of pure contemplative thought . . . the computer sim world WJM has sometimes contemplated . . . much less one with bacteria or one with us or the like, will all be inherently of morally grounded character.
This is also reflected in the nature of rationality, requiring genuine freedom of action, thus moral governance as the law of such a nature.
For us, in the end prior to us, for the Root, inherent to the nature as jointly necessary and maximally great, thus inherently good.
Hope this helps, later . . .
KFkairosfocus
April 26, 2017
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jdk #218
I'm going to have to make this somewhat brief, but here we go...
HeKS makes the distinction:
1) Is it LOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE that SOME personal world-root could produce SOME world that did not contain moral OUGHTs?
2) If such a thing happens to be logically possible under some particular scenario, does that scenario serve as a coherent and plausible description of the world we actually observe.
To the first, he says “maybe”, but then seems to add the qualifier such a world would be “void of any life.” I don’t see how this disclaimer is significant.
Well, you'll notice that the comment this was taken from was directed to KF. I was trying to explain to him why I thought that your proposition of an IS with no OUGHTs was probably not logically impossible in the strictest sense. As I understood KF, he was reasoning from the kind of world-root to which this actual world would be accessible, focusing on the characteristics of rational minds. I was pointing out that if we start at the other end of the equation, with a consideration of logically possible necessary beings, it seems logically possible that there could exist a world-root that is personal (by which I mean merely intelligent and able to make choices) but that has no positions on anything we would consider morally relevant. If that kind of world-root being is not logically incoherent then it is not logically impossible for that kind of world-root being to produce a reality that does not have moral OUGHTs baked into its fabric. And it would further be logically possible for such a world-root being to produce a reality that gave no empirical indication that the being might have any morally relevant positions, such as valuing life as an outcome, which would be a possible world in which there is no empirical reason to doubt that the world-root being is devoid of morally relevant positions.
Suppose, at some time, the only life-forms in the universee were approximately like amoebas here on earth. Do any OUGHTs bear upon amoebas? If the root-level of reality has created a universe, with the ability, through either its structure or through some active presence of that root-level, to instigate life somewhat as we know it, why would that necessarily entail any expectation, any OUGHT, about how amoebas should behave? They would just be amoebas, and manifesting their amoeba nature would be no different than water manifesting its nature, from the point of IS but no OUGHT.
I think the error you're making here is that you're failing to make a distinction between 1) the concept of objective moral truths that are part of the very fabric and context of reality, and 2) moral agents capable of rationally and responsibly acting in accord with or against moral truths.
The objective moral truths come from the world-root being and form part of the backdrop of reality, regardless of whether or not responsible moral agents are around to act on them. Specific moral decrees relevant to particular types of moral agents, like humans, would merely be expressions of or extrapolations from the more fundamental moral truths and values lying at the base of reality. Any physical world that contains life of any kind requires unfathomable precision in its basic construction (intelligent life like humans just requires even more fine tuning), and that automatically calls into serious question (if not outright eliminates by definition) the possibility of a world-root that is absolutely disinterested in life as an end.
Going further, if life later developed so that free, rational creatures existed (in whatever way consciousness and rationality might slowly or suddenly come into being), then the argument I made in 193 would apply:
Given that the universe being posited can produce free, rational beings, the intent or “desire” might be that such beings are truly free: it’s up to us to figure out whatever we can about the world, including how to live with our fellow living creatures and the planet we are on, and create whatever meaning, including moral meaning, we want to. To be flippant, the attitude could be, “Here you go guys. Here’s an opportunity – see what you do with it.” This would make all the “oughts” human creations, but not anything embedded in the basic root-level of the world.
I see no logical impossibility in the root-level of reality creating a universe in which free, rational life-forms exists, and exercise that freedom and rationality with true freedom, without any superimposition of OUGHT upon their behavior.
Again, you're failing to make a distinction between the existence of moral truths and values forming part of the fabric of reality because of their existence in the world-root being and whether or not that being ultimately cares about whether or not humans act in accord with them. My argument holds even if the being doesn't ultimately care what people choose to do.
Let me use an analogy, keeping in mind that when we're dealing with concepts this fundamental to existence, an analogy is never going to be perfect...
Suppose I think that action x (substitute whatever you like) is morally wrong. It would not follow as a matter of logical necessity that I personally care that lots of people might be engaging in action x in the world right now, right? What happens happens. People are free to make choices regardless of what my own views are. But now imagine that my mind produced an entire self-contained reality in which other distinct beings operated and freely lived their lives. It is conceivable that those beings might engage in action x, and it is conceivable that I might not ultimately care because they are free to live their lives. And yet, this self-contained reality is the product and extension of my own mind, which contains certain morally relevant beliefs and positions, including my views against action x, and so those would form part of the backdrop and fabric of this reality. In a world that has no access to any reality or context higher than my own mind and which is produced by and an extension from my own mind, my mind wholly determines the nature of that reality. If I think that action x is wrong, it is wrong, period. That simply becomes a fact of this reality, and it remains a fact even if I don't really care whether or not the beings in this reality freely choose to engage in it. They would, in the process, be engaging in moral error, but if I didn't really care about their actions then there would probably be no ultimate consequences for their choices.
This type of scenario would hold true infinitely more strongly for a being lying at the root of all reality, in no small part because any morally relevant positions it would hold would have to come out of its own nature rather than from some interpretation of or deliberation on the realities of some external context. This is what I mean when I speak of an "essential position" (which is just my own term) ... a position that must be derived from the essence of what it IS in its very nature rather than from analysis of or beliefs about external realities.
Coming back to your point about freedom, the freedom of people to act as they please simply says nothing about the moral status of their actions or about whether or not the world-root being cares about those actions. At least, it doesn't serve as any argument that actions don't have a moral dimension or that this being doesn't care (if anything, it suggests the opposite, as ensuring freedom implies value and interest in choice).
Think about secular authorities on earth. For the most part, they don't render you physically incapable of breaking laws, so you are free to act as you please. But they do ultimately care about whether or not you act in accord with those laws. How do you know this? Well, they typically 1) establish the laws in the first place, 2) inform you about their existence, and 3) punish you if they catch you breaking them.
Likewise, from a theistic perspective, God 1) establishes the objective moral values that form the backdrop of reality as I've described above, 2) informs humans about these laws, partly by implanting them "on our hearts" and partly by communicating them directly through inspired writings, and 3) by rendering ultimate justice, which for each of us remains a future prospect.
And, once again, I'll have to put off address the empirical aspects to another post (though I've written two relevant articles here that address the matter, which you can find by entering my name into the search box on the main page).
Take care,
HeKSHeKS
April 26, 2017
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JDK, logic does not depend on our perceptions. More later, meanwhile note my comment to HeKS above on where my concern lies, starting with what rationality entails, even -- maybe, especially -- at world root level. Oughtness bears on the rationality of a coherent world-root and world, start with structure and quantity. In the relevant sense, an incoherent proposed world is like a square circle. KFkairosfocus
April 26, 2017
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Recognizing that you are neither going to challenge nor acknowledge what is being presented to you, I am now removing myself from this conversation and allow HeKS and JDK to continue with the actual thread topic. We can pick it up some other time if you wish.
I will leave you with a passage from the paper you quoted from earlier (and wish you well):
A Molecular Language
The discovery of the genetic code took place between 1961 and 1966 (Nirenberg and Matthaei 1961; Speyer et al. 1963; Nirenberg et al. 1966; Khorana et al. 1966), and immediately inspired the idea of a deep parallel between the genetic code and the codes of language. This idea was expressed in no uncertain terms by George and Muriel Beadle in 1966: “the deciphering of the genetic code has revealed our possession of a language much older than hieroglyphics, a language as old as life itself, a language that is the most living language of all — even if its letters are invisible and its words are buried in the cells of our bodies” (Beadle and Beadle 1966). But was this only a poetic metaphor or can we really say that the genetic code is a true molecular language?
A language is based on signs and can exist only in systems that make use of signs, i.e., in semiotic systems. The genetic code would be therefore a real molecular language only if the cell is a real semiotic system, i.e., only if signs, or symbols, exist inside the cell and are instrumental to its functions. This is the great potential implication of the discovery of genetic code, but can we prove it?
The idea that the cell is controlled by symbols was proposed explicitly for the first time by Howard Pattee at the symposia on theoretical biology organized by Conrad Waddington between 1966 and 1970, and was published in the proceedings of those symposia (Pattee 1968, 1972). The experimental evidence of the genetic code did not seem enough, on its own, to categorize the cell as a semiotic system, but Pattee argued that it becomes enough when we combine it with the theory of self-replicating automata developed by John von Neumann between 1948 and 1951 (von Neumann 1951, 1966).
Von Neumann showed that a self-replicating system capable of open-ended evolution must necessarily contain a description of itself, and such a description must be categorically different from the construction it controls. Self-replication is a two-step process: the first consists in transferring the description to the descendants, and the second in using it to reconstitute the original system in each descendant. The description of a system, on the other hand, cannot coincide with the system itself (“the map is not the territory”) so it is necessarily a set of entities that represent, or ‘stand for’, the material components, and therefore function as symbols. According to von Neumann, in short, an evolvable self-replicating system must be a physical system controlled by symbols.
The discovery that genes carry the information for the synthesis of proteins demonstrated that the cell is a system that contains two distinct categories, a software and a hardware (a genotype and a phenotype). But the cell is also a self-replicating system and Pattee concluded, on the basis of von Neumann’s logic, that the genotype must be a symbolic description of the cell. This is the argument that he used to conclude that “life is matter controlled by symbols”, a theme that he developed for nearly forty years in various publications (Pattee 1968, 1972, 1973, 1980, 1995, 2001, 2007, 2008). The idea that symbols exist at the cellular level was the first explicit argument in favour of biological semiosis. It was the beginning of what later would become known as biosemiotics.
Upright BiPed
April 26, 2017
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I stated that the origin of the features of an organism is the origin of the knowledge of which transformations of matter are necessary to construct it from raw materials. That knowledge is the what needs to be explained.
Yes, and the first feature of an organism is the capacity to provide a symbolic description of itself in a transcribable memory, and have the capacity to successfully interpret that description. Evolution does not explain the “knowledge” required for that feature. However, an act of intelligence can explain it, and is indeed the only source known to be causally adequate to the task. Not only that, but when the system is studied from a purely physical perspective, the system is found to be physically identical to the use written language -- which is a universal correlate of intelligence.Upright BiPed
It is almost — almost — amusing but then quite sad to see how objectors to design theory play with logic and worldviews issues, then run away when the substantial issues are taken up.
FFT5: The implications of the familiar extraordinary.
In this thread, there are arguments [posted] that . . . as an observable phenomenon . . . show that we are capable of significant choice and reasoning, i.e. we are responsibly, rationally, significantly free, conscious, en-conscienced, morally governed, communicating creatures. (Indeed, those trying to object are operating on the implicit premise that we are urged by conscience toward the truth and the right; and if we were not, this world would descend into a dark, chaotic ruin in short order. It is a good thing that something urges us on to the truth and the right.)
Locke, in Sec 5 of his essay on human understanding (and yes, I add scriptural references i/l/o his cites and allusions), aptly comments:
All of that is in the context of rebuking a lazy, sneeringly supercilious selective hyperskepticism that will scorn more than adequate warrant for ethical theism, because it shuns the premise of moral government: accountability on plainly recognisable duty, before our Maker, Lord, Governor and utterly just Judge.
But, that is a bit quick off the mark.
There is no recognition of meaning, no perception, no purpose, just blind cause-effect chains externally arranged to yield the solution to certain differential equations. GIGO, and all that. Likewise, the old Pentium chip neither knew nor understood nor cared about the wired in errors that led to the early recall. And, a neural network is not in principle any different. (BTW this points to serious design inferences on the relevant hardware and software in bio-cybernetics systems, but that is a secondary point.)
The primary point has been highlighted by Reppert:
In short, a physicalist account of mindedness (much less, guidance by light of conscience) faces an ugly, impassable gulch.
In effect, rocks — even refined and carefully organised rocks — have no dreams; computation is not intentional contemplation.
At this point, evolutionary materialism and its fellow travellers — and nope you cannot properly, conveniently open up rhetorical daylight between some vague agnosticism and full-blown evo mat to deflect this — face an impassable gulch.
One, that brings out what was already highlighted: mindedness, consciousness, reasoned inference and conscience’s compass-pointing alike are all reduced to grand delusion on evo mat premises.
Grand delusion would collapse responsible, rational freedom and so falls into irretrievable incoherence and absurdity. Thence, the necessary falsity Pearcey and others have pointed to.
But in reality, rational, responsible, conscience-compass bearing consciousness is our first undeniable empirical fact. The fact through which we perceive all others.
This is the familiar extraordinary phenomenon, the pivot on which the project of building a sound worldview turns. In effect, unless a worldview is compatible with our being responsible, reasonable, conscience-guided and significantly free beings, it cannot even sit to the table for a discussion of comparative difficulties. It is silenced by being inconsistent with rationality. It is patently, irretrievably absurd and necessarily false. (Evo mat and fellow traveller ideologies, I am looking straight at you.)>>