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
jdk #185,
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I'll address some of your points as soon as I get some time, but would you mind telling me how you think an impersonal world-root, having neither intelligence nor free will, might have produced a world (i.e. all of reality) only a finite time ago and done so in a way that its values were finely-tuned to a tiny subset out of all combinatorial space that just so happened to allow for the existence of such a remarkable phenomenon as conscious intelligent life?
I and other theists don't simply assume that the necessary being is personal. We find it to be a logically necessary conclusion. It is the conclusion that the necessary being must be personal that leads to theism, not theism that leads to the conclusion the necessary being must be personal.HeKS
April 24, 2017
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JaD:
What if someone doesn’t share your “gut reaction” or wasn’t “indoctrinated” the same way you were? Is he morally obligated not to kill or rape an innocent person?
No he isn't. As he obviously isn't under your objective morality either. But, thankfully, subjective society has decided that we don't care about what he thinks his moral obligations are. If he kills someone, society will not tolerate his walking free amongst us.Armand Jacks
April 24, 2017
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CR:
UB: That correlate of intelligence has been established by physical analysis. (about 50 years ago)
It was? Then there should be decades of papers which you can reference. Where are they? Why has my question gone unanswered for the umpteenth time?
For the umpteenth time, you can find them here: http://biosemiosis.org/index.php/bibliographyOrigenes
April 24, 2017
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to HeKS.
Your post at 178 is thoughtful, articulate, and well-reasoned: a keeper as a statement in favor of the IS-OUGHT connection.
However, it is based, as you say, on the fact that "I and other theists believe it is necessary that this being must be personal ..."
But that right there is the point under contention, because I am offering, as a logical possibility, that the IS of the universe is not a personal being. It is not a logical impossibility that the root-level of reality, while capable of creating the fine-tuned universe we live in, with all its features, including life, is not a personal being that is interested in the specifics details of what goes on in this world.
Of course a theist sees this differently, but it is not a logical impossibility for a finely-tuned universe, with free, rational creatures within it, to exist without the root-level of IS having the personal characteristic of caring about, or having any expectations for, the behavior of those creatures.
Similarly, from an empirical point of view (and that part of your post was also well done), you write,
We also find that these minds not only have thoughts about moral issues, but a sense that these thoughts are connected to a deeper reality, and perhaps most telling, that we feel a deep-seated compulsion that we OUGHT to do what we BELIEVE is good, whether or not we happen to be correct in discerning the moral status of some particular behavior.
You describe the sense of a theist, but the fact that some people feel this way is not evidence that what they feel is true. Other people (me, for instance) understand the nature of moral and other normative structures in people and society in a different way: one that does not posit their being connected to a deeper reality. Again, this is exactly the issue at hand.
So you have done a good job of explaining how a theist sees the situation, arguing that an IS-OUGHT connection exists at the root-level of reality, but you haven't really impacted the statement that it is logically possible for the IS not to contain the OUGHT. It is incoherent to the theist to consider such a world, but the argument here, for me, is not whether theism is true, but whether it might be, logically, that we live in a finely-tuned universe and be free, rational creatures, but that theism is false because the root-level of reality is a not personal being.
And last, you write,
Its possible coherence might be limited to a narrow hypothetical scenario in which the world-root, though being personal, has no essential moral positions and produces a reality of pure chaos in which it does not intervene to make possible the existence of intelligent beings with ingrained moral proddings. But that, in any case, is not our reality.
I'm not sure why the a world-root "which does not intervene to make possible the existence of intelligent beings with ingrained moral proddings" would produce pure chaos. I find it easy to imagine that free, rational beings capable of understanding the physical and social world as we do might not produce various psychological and social structures about how people ought to behave in order to meet their needs at all levels: food and shelter, social interaction and validation, intellectual and artistic expression, etc. (This being "ought" with a little "o", not OUGHT: creations of the free, rational creatures, based on their rational understandings, and freely chosen.)
And I don't think it is certain that this is in fact not our reality. But at least I feel fairly certain that such a world is not logically impossible.jdk
April 24, 2017
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@UB
2) That correlate of intelligence has been established by physical analysis. (about 50 years ago)
It was? Then there should be decades of papers which you can reference. Where are they? Why has my question gone unanswered for the umpteenth time?
Furthermore, ID is supposedly based on an inductive inference from human designers. There are trillions of observations of information correlated with “intelligence”. Nor have we observed information without a designer. Sources we have not observed are excluded. However, my criticism is that the future is unlike the past in a vast number of ways, and it’s simply impossible for them to continue in every way. For example, one could claim those very same observations are an inductive inference that establishes that intelligence is a sign of complex material brains. We know of no other form of intelligence. Yet I’m guessing ID proponents are unwilling to exclude non-material designers because they have yet to be observed. Nor can material brains design themselves.
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. And I’ve given examples of this, including our expectation of experiencing the sun rising tomorrow.
Finally, I’ve given concrete examples of precursors to universality in number systems, computation. etc. When people were the result of a leap to universality, it was often not an intentional goal. They stumbled upon it. RNA is a concrete precursor to DNA in biological organisms.
As for failing to respond, I don’t recall you actually addressing the above criticisms by either quoting them or stating them back in a way that actually acknowledged the arguments they represent.
Apparently, everyone knows organisms were designed. It’s obvious and no response is necessary.critical rationalist
April 24, 2017
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HeKs, 178 -- good discussion. I add another factor, part of necessary reality is logical-structural [start with: Math as the logic of structure and quantity]. Further to this, failing to heed such structure tied to functionality and purpose will have painful consequences, already defining quite a fair number of oughts along the lines of giving a fish "freedom" outside of its existential requisite, oxygenated water. (a lot of the more idiotic demands for "rights" and "identities" that I see strike me as being much like fish complaining about being imprisoned in water instead of making the most of their life-giving medium.) A similar case for rational, socially interdependent and communicative creatures is that general deceit is ruinous, as the Kant Categorical Imperative indicates. But even at world-creative level, the structuring of a world is inherently a rational process. Such rationality inherently requires true freedom and responsibilities in its use in that grand creative context, thus moral government as a necessary component of sound rationality. What objectors really need to do is to come up with a coherent alternative world-root being: __________ I suggest, one reason they haven't is because they cannot. Nor, can they cogently suggest a good reason why the candidate on the table is an impossible being. KFkairosfocus
April 24, 2017
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CR,
First, there is a point by point response in the old thread.
Second, the trilemma framework for causal chains more or less exhausts options.
Notice, I first pointed to the successive, temporal-causal structure of our world (implying finite stages BTW), Then the issue is the past root of the chain. Infinite succession, chicken-egg loop or finitely remote start point.
While you posted a chunk about authoritarianism etc, you did not actually provide a fourth. If you believe there is, kindly give it, explaining the dynamics: _________
I think, somewhere you seem to have objected to causality. If you do so, I suggest you ponder the chain of ancestry that brought you here, and stretch events back to say 13.8 or so BYA, and into whatever you imagine lies beyond. Kindly explain how causal-temporal succession of stages does not apply to the cosmological level being discussed, if you challenge cause: _________
KFkairosfocus
April 24, 2017
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Oh good grief CR, you are constitutionally incapable of addressing the issue. On the one hand, you are setting up to argue that the capacity to establish a general purpose digital language isn’t really a correlate of intelligence (good luck on that one), and on the other hand you want to know if I believe designers have brains!!
Hello?
It does not matter if I believe designers have brains. It does not matter if you think designers have brains.
1) ID claims that a universal correlate of intelligence can be detected in the origin of life on earth.
2) That correlate of intelligence has been established by physical analysis. (about 50 years ago)
It doesn’t matter if I believe the intelligence has brains or not. That is nothing but a distraction from the observable physical evidence. You just don’t seem to be able to get yourself (and your sociological needs) out of the chain of evidence long enough to grasp it.
Again, you will not address this issue.Upright BiPed
April 24, 2017
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In case it's not clear, the source of the signal would also be a "person" in the context I'm using the term because it was capable of creating explanatory knowledge. So would any general artificial intelligence. People are universal explainers.critical rationalist
April 24, 2017
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Critical Rationalist,
Are you Popperian (the person who used to comment here under that name)?HeKS
April 24, 2017
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jdk,
We previously had this exchange:
A root-level of reality which grounds what IS, including life, but does not ground OUGHT–which is supremely unconcerned about specific events and behaviors in the world at all levels–is not a logical impossibility.
If we accept your point that the IS part is necessary, what is your position? Is a root-level IS without an OUGHT an incoherent impossibility or a logical possibility?
Well, I don’t think that the coherence of that proposition is anywhere near as obvious as you seem to believe. I think there are several problems with the idea, both logical and empirical, and at multiple levels, and I think KF has actually touched on some of these. That said, I have to run out for a few hours, so I’ll try to offer more thoughts on the subject either later tonight or tomorrow.
I don't have a ton of time, but let me elaborate on this bit to explain why I don't think a scenario where a world-root IS exists (something I consider a logical necessity) but no OUGHTs exist is an obviously coherent one.
The first thing that I think needs to be kept in mind is some of the entailments of a necessary being vs a contingent being. A necessary being, in the absolute sense (which is what is needed as a world-root being), cannot depend on anything external for its existence. In other words, a being that is necessary in the absolute sense does not HAVE a context or exist WITHIN a context but is, itself, THE context. Anything that relies on a larger context for its existence is contingent to one degree or another, not necessary in the absolute sense.
This means that at the root of reality we must have some necessary being that forms the context for reality but did not exist within some context larger than itself, like some kind of external spacetime. At some point that necessary being exhausted reality, with no space or time external to itself, and everything else that came to exist has its ultimate root in that necessary being. This means that the necessary being is the foundation or bedrock of reality and is suffused into the fabric of existence. Reality is, in some meaningful sense, directly out of this necessary being. It had to produce reality, not merely shape it. This, in turn, means that whatever this world-root necessary being IS in some way informs and forms the basis for what reality IS (and just to be clear, when I speak of "reality" I don't just mean physical reality, but rather the entirety of everything produced by that necessary being, whether physical or otherwise). But if whatever this necessary being IS forms the basis for what reality is, then the nature of the necessary being would be properly normative for reality. Because the necessary being provides an absolute context for all of reality, it stands as the absolute standard for how reality OUGHT to be in order to be consistent with its ultimate nature and source. Because I and other theists believe it is necessary that this being must be personal, capable of making a free choice to cause a new effect, and because its personality would have to be directly rooted in its essential nature, its personality would form part of the normative standard for reality. So, to the extent that this necessary being would have 'moral positions' rooted in its essential nature, those moral positions would impose a normative moral framework on reality, somewhat similar to the way the laws of physics (in their actuality, not merely their scientific descriptions) impose a sort of normative physical framework on the physical world. As surely as walking off a cliff immediately results in you plummeting to your death, acting contrary to the moral framework undergirding reality immediately results in you plummeting into sin. The objective reality is what it is, but neither the laws of physics nor the laws of morality will prevent you from making stupid choices. (Let's not get too wrapped up in the gravity comparison, as it is merely being used to illustrate a kind of ontological relationship, not an epistemological one).
So, to summarize the problem presented here for your proposition of a reality with a world-root IS but no OUGHTs ... If that world-root IS is a personal necessary being with moral positions rooted in its nature, then the concept of a reality produced by that being but lacking any OUGHTs would not seem to be a coherent possibility. And it's important to note that this would be the case regardless of whether or not that being chooses to mete out any rewards or punishments for good or bad moral behavior. Indeed, it would hold even if the being didn't ultimately care about moral behavior, because the OUGHTs, such as they are, would be derived not from that being's interest in the moral behavior of intelligent beings, per se, but from the very nature of that being's causal relationship to reality. This is also why the Euthyphro dilemma fails. The Good is not merely some external reality that God comments on, nor is it something that God establishes by decree on a whim, but it is rooted in the very essential nature of God and informs the fabric of reality that God has produced.
Now, that is merely one of the logical problems with the proposition, but as I said earlier, there are also empirical problems, and Ill cover some of those very quickly.
You speak of the potential lack of OUGHTs in the world on the basis of the possibility of a world-root IS that simply doesn't care about outcomes in the world it produces. This seems problematic on numerous counts. To begin with, the initial conditions for the origin of our own universe appear to have been very finely-tuned to allow for a specific outcome, namely the arrival of intelligent life. I and many others here would say that further fine-tuning took place at the level of our solar system and planet for the same purpose, and at all these levels to make the universe scientifically discoverable to the intelligent life that would ultimately come to exist here. We also see some manner of intervention in the origin of life and at various other points on the path to intelligent human life. We also see a need for involvement in the creation of a rational mind capable of having thoughts that are about things and capable of rational deliberation and deducing conclusions on the basis of the contents of premises, all of which necessarily implies an aspect of the mind that goes beyond the merely physical. We also find that these minds not only have thoughts about moral issues, but a sense that these thoughts are connected to a deeper reality, and perhaps most telling, that we feel a deep-seated compulsion that we OUGHT to do what we BELIEVE is good, whether or not we happen to be correct in discerning the moral status of some particular behavior. I say that this last point may be the most telling, because even if there is disagreement about what courses of action really are good, the sense that we OUGHT to do whatever the good is is universal, except among those that we would consider to have some kind of mental or emotional pathology. And, of course, in the case of Christians, we believe there is historical evidence supporting the resurrection of Christ from the dead.
All of these factors, individually and collectively, suggest a world-root IS that is anything but disinterested in the outcomes taking place within the reality it has produced. Instead they strongly point to a cause for existence that cares about intelligent life and about the moral behavior of that life.
Anyway, those are just some fairly quick thoughts on the issue of whether it is coherent to suggest that there could be a world-root IS but no OUGHTs within the reality it produces. That coherence seems to face trouble on both logical and empirical grounds. The nature of the causal relationship between the world-root and the world would seem to call into question the logical coherence of the proposition, while the empirical facts we have access to would seem to seriously call into question its coherence as a possibly true description of the reality we actually live in. Its possible coherence might be limited to a narrow hypothetical scenario in which the world-root, though being personal, has no essential moral positions and produces a reality of pure chaos in which it does not intervene to make possible the existence of intelligent beings with ingrained moral proddings. But that, in any case, is not our reality.
Take care,
HeKSHeKS
April 24, 2017
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Critical Rationalist,
CR: IOW, what you seem to be suggesting is that a designer created the a set of macro functions in the form of DNA molecules that is a domain specific language (DSL) for creating organisms, in the way that the Ruby on Rails developers built a DSL on top of the Ruby programming language for creating web applications.
ID does not speculate on the way life was designed, or on the way that design was implemented. ID is neutral on the hypothesis that the design of life is similar to the way “that the Ruby on Rails developers built a DSL on top of the Ruby programming language for creating web applications”. IOWs ID does not concern itself with the ‘how’ question.
CR: So, it’s a question of knowledge, which is why I keep asking you for the origin of that knowledge.
ID has adopted a common sense approach wrt the origin of ‘knowledge’, evidenced by trillions of cases, namely that intelligence is involved.
UB: Moreover, physicists can clearly identify that system among all other physical systems, and have only identified that type of physical system in one other place anywhere in the cosmos — that is, during the use of written language and mathematics, which are two universal correlates of intelligence.
Another interesting follow-up question would be: “what is the origin of intelligence?” However, these second-order questions are outside of the domain of ID.
You have also asked:
CR: When I ask with the origin of that knowledge, I’m looking for an explanation for how intelligence results in a designer possessing it that knowledge. What is that explanation?
I’m not sure if I understand your question, however, I’m pretty sure it also refers to something outside of the domain of ID.
Eric Anderson: ID is not an attempt to answer all questions. It is a limited inquiry into whether something was designed. Questions about who, why, how, when are all interesting second-order questions that can be asked only after an inference to design is drawn. You may want, deeply in your heart of hearts, for ID to answer all of those questions. But that is a failure of your expectations, not ID itself.
CR: What physical theory of information are you referring to?
How the intelligence that organized life on earth knew how to organize life on earth is completely irrelevant to the detection of that intelligence. If SETI receives a narrow-band radio signal from space counting off the first 100 prime numbers, we will not ask “how do they know” what a prime number is? We will not say. “no, no, no … we must first know how they gained this knowledge” before we can grasp the significance.
A narrow band transmitter would only be the result of explanatory knowledge, which has enough reach to, well, reach beyond the planet of origin so we could detect it. By reach, I mean the ability to solve problems beyond the exact situation originally encountered. Only people can create explanatory knowledge by conjecturing theories about the world works in an attempt to solve a problem, criticizing those theories and discarding errors we find. We are universal explainers. This is contrast to non-explanatory knowledge, which are useful rules of thumb, which have limited reach. So, yes, our explanation for the growth of knowledge is relevant in determining the significants of such a discovery.
The idea that some other species would also value prime numbers is yet another explanatory theory that primes should have use not just to themselves, but to other people even in environments they have never observed before. That is reach.critical rationalist
April 24, 2017
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Again, I already did respond to this. Coronation is not causation.
Specifically I’m looking for criticism along the lines of “The explanation for that knowledge is X, Y and Z. However, evolution doesn’t fit that explanation.” This is in contrast to an appeal to induction by saying “every time we’ve experienced knowledge, it has been accompanied by intelligent agents.” and since the future (and distant past) resembles the (recent) past, the designer of organisms was an intelligent agent.
But the future is unlike the past in a vast number of ways. It’s our explanations of how the world works that indicates what we will experience. For example, if our long chain of independently obtained explanations for how our sun works indicated it would suddenly grow cold when its fuel supply is exhausted and that will occur in roughly 4.6 billon billion years after it was formed, we wouldn’t expect the sun to rise tomorrow despite having experienced it rising every day for the entirety of human existence.
The significance is based on the explanation for the origin of that knowelge not based on merely what we've experienced it in the past. If something else is compatable with that explanation, there can be more than one source of it.
On the other hand, I’m saying that the explanation for how human designers create the knowledge they posses is variation and criticism. We [people] create both explanatory and non-explanatory knowledge. Evolution does fit this explanation, in that the non-explanatory knowledge in genes is created by variation and selection. Both fall under the universal explanation for the growth of knowledge.
But don't just take my word for it. Do you think every intelligent agent must have a complex material brain because every designer we've experienced had one?critical rationalist
April 24, 2017
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CR,
So, it’s a question of knowledge, which is why I keep asking you for the origin of that knowledge.
Facepalm.
You didn’t hear a word I said, did you? When I predict that you are incapable of responding to the actual claim of ID, the least you could do is try.
But you don’t, and you can’t afford to. You can’t afford to acknowledge the actual claim of ID for the very reasons I have previously outlined. To do so would put you in the position of having to agree with those claims – the very last thing you can allow yourself to do.
In any case, once more for the cheap seats:
Biological ID claims that a universal correlate of intelligence can be detected in the origin of life on earth. Quoting directly from my last post:
Biological ID is not about the ultimate source of knowledge. Biological ID is not about where the intelligence that organized the first self-replicating cell on earth got its knowledge. It’s not about the motivations, goals, or hair color of that intelligence. It’s about none of those things. It’s about the detection of an act of intelligence in the origin of life on earth.
How the intelligence that organized life on earth knew how to organize life on earth is completely irrelevant to the detection of that intelligence. If SETI receives a narrow-band radio signal from space counting off the first 100 prime numbers, we will not ask “how do they know” what a prime number is? We will not say. “no, no, no … we must first know how they gained this knowledge” before we can grasp the significance.
Again, you will not respond to this.Upright BiPed
April 24, 2017
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As a simple illustration, try to imagine a world in which distinct identity, A AND ~A — thus two-ness — does not exist, or how such could begin or end. Doubtless some ill-advised interlocutor may wish to suggest otherwise, but no such world — already a distinct identity! — will be possible; it would fail for incoherence.
Yes, KF. Trying to imagine A AND ~A is an attempt to take a claim seriously for the purpose of criticism. That's my point. Again, not having a good criticism of an idea is not the same as holding it immune to criticism, therefore making it a candidate for justifying non-basic beliefs. That a theory plays a integral role in our current, best theories is a criticism that the belief is false.
In fact, having picked A AND ~A as an example means you attempted to criticize it and came back with none. If you held it immune to criticism, you would have no reason to have chosen it, instead of some other idea.
Again, how is this incompatible with what you call basic-beliefs?critical rationalist
April 24, 2017
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… of course, I only pose this question rhetorically, knowing full well that none of this will even make a dent in your defense. That fact, however, doesn’t make the physics go away.
Again...
What physical theory of information are you referring to? How does making this request represent ignoring the issue? What physics will not go away? How does that translate into your conclusion?
"The physics" therefore design is not an argument.
IOW, I could just as well "predict" you will fail to produce an argument as to why my criticisms are not relevant.critical rationalist
April 24, 2017
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KF,
A couple of questions, perhaps more FFT rather than anything:
As a simple illustration, try to imagine a world in which distinct identity, A AND ~A — thus two-ness — does not exist, or how such could begin or end. Doubtless some ill-advised interlocutor may wish to suggest otherwise, but no such world — already a distinct identity! — will be possible; it would fail for incoherence.
Do three-ness, four-ness, and five-ness also exist necessarily?
My other question is in a completely different direction, and simply a request for clarification. I take it that just as in mathematics, there are no "free parameters" in objective morality. In other words, just as even God could not arrange for e^iπ to be a number other than −1, He cannot choose to make some action moral or immoral---it just is moral or immoral, period. Could humans simply have the ability to discern (however imperfectly) this objective morality, even in the absence of a God?daveS
April 24, 2017
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@KF
The first is absurd, as the infinite cannot be traversed in successive finite stage steps. The second is just as absurd, as circular causation does not account for origin — non-being cannot cause, and if J and K mutually depend on one another to come into existence, neither chicken nor egg will get started. There is no credible fourth alternative and so we find ourselves facing a finitely remote world root.
The Dogmatic Structure
Popper identified an authoritarian strand at the heart of Western epistemology in a paper delivered to the Royal Society in 1960 and reprinted as the Introduction to Conjectures and Refutations. In this paper he set out to resolve some aspects of the dispute between the British and the Continental schools of philosophy. The British school insisted that the source of all genuine knowledge was observation; in contrast the Continental school promoted intellectual intuition, the perception of clear and distinct ideas, as the basis of true beliefs.
Popper pressed two claims:
1.Both sides were wrong.
2.Each had more in common than they realised.
As to each side being wrong, he argued that observation and reason each have roles to play in the growth of knowledge, but neither can be described as authoritative sources of knowledge.
As to their common features, they share a certain religious tone in their authoritarian attitude to the alleged sources of knowledge. They also share the naively optimistic view that the truth is clearly visible to all those who are willing to see it, meaning those who employ the right method and the right source of knowledge.
Popper showed how overly optimistic theories of knowledge, combined with a strong element of moralism about being right, produce a very nasty downside - the conspiracy theory of ignorance. George Orwell described this as applied by Catholics and Communists: "Each of them tacitly claims that 'the truth' has already been revealed, and that the heretic if he is not simply a fool, is secretly aware of 'the truth' and merely resists it out of selfish motives". [sound familiar?]
Popper explained that the traditional theories of knowledge are essentially concerned with authoritative sources of belief. Consequently no amount of debate between rival schools does anything to challenge the authoritarian framework assumptions that they all share.
In contrast, he argues that no ideal sources exist and all "sources" are capable of leading us in the wrong direction. He proposed to replace the question of sources by very different questions: "How can we generate better ideas to promote the growth of knowledge?" and "How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?"' For new ideas we have to make use of our imagination. For error-elimination we have to use all forms of criticism to the best of our ability (see the four forms of criticism described in my previous article on Popper).
The question of the sources of our knowledge, like so many authoritarian questions, is a genetic one. It asks for the origin of our knowledge, in the belief that knowledge may legitimate itself by its pedigree...if possible from God.
His own approach derives from the view that pure and certain sources do not exist, and that questions of origin or of purity should not be confounded with questions of validity, or of truth.
This insight into the authoritarian tradition inspired Bartley to pursue a fundamental critique of the quest for positively justified beliefs, an error, which he labeled "justificationism". The target of Bartley's critique is the dogmatic or 'true belief' theory of rationality which demands positive justification as the criterion of rationality. This demand is summed up in the formula:
Beliefs must be justified by an appeal to an authority of some kind, generally the source of the belief in question, and this justification makes the belief either rational, or if not rational at least valid for the person who holds it.
The problem is to specify a suitable authority for certified beliefs. In the Anglo Saxon tradition of Empiricism the authority of sense experience was adopted. In the Continental Rationalist tradition, following Descartes, the locus of authority resides with the intellectual intuition. Both Empiricism and Rationalism evolved in conflict with ancient intellectual and religious authorities and their essentially individualistic ethos was recruited by political movements seeking liberty, equality and fraternity. But they did not challenge the deep-seated theory of justificationism, which provided the common framework of thought in which the rival schools waged their battles for intellectual, moral and political authority.
Infinite Regress versus Dogmatism
The true belief framework is fundamentally flawed due to the perennial problem of validation and the dilemma of the infinite regress versus dogmatism. Sextus Empiricus was one of the first people to draw attention to this (circa 200 AD) and more recently David Hume made it topical with his devastating critique of induction. The dilemma arises as follows: If a belief claims validation by a supporting argument, what justifies the support? Where and how does the chain of justifications stop? If one attempts to provide reasons for the supporting argument then an infinite regress can be forced by anyone who presses for more supporting statements which in turn demand justification. It appears that this can only be avoided by a dogmatic or arbitrary decision to stop the regress at some stage and settle on a belief at that point.
This dilemma creates 'conscientious objections' to open-mindedness because a logical chain of argument apparently justifies resistance to counter arguments by suggesting that the only way out of the infinite regress is to place an arbitrary limit on criticism at some point: 'Here I stand'. To the despair of people who believe in reason, their opponents can defeat the principle of open-ended criticism and debate on impeccably logical grounds, simply by pointing to the problem of the infinite regress.
Critical Preference
The solution is to abandon the quest for positive justification and instead to settle for a critical preference for one option rather than others, in the light of critical arguments and evidence offered to that point. A preference may (or may not) be revised in the light of new evidence and arguments. This appears to be a simple, commonsense position but it defies the dominant traditions of Western thought which have almost all taught that some authority provides (or ought to provide) grounds for positively justified beliefs.
Bartley published his solution to the logical problem of rationality and the limits of criticism in the early 1960s but the impact of his work was blunted by several factors. He first spelled out his ideas in the context of the evolution of modern Protestant theology and neither the theologians nor the philosophers took much notice. Some regarded Bartley as an eccentric theologian with a tendency to atheism. The problem of rationality is generally posed in non-logical terms and so Bartley's logical approach is likely to be regarded as unimportant or irrelevant. Threats to rationality are often depicted as psychological (pace Freud and Jung) or sociological (Marx) or due to relativity (Einstein) or uncertainty and indeterminism (Heisenberg.) In addition, as a revolutionary innovation Bartley's theory renders redundant most of the academic debate about rationality and belief. This is a threat that many professional philosophers are more than happy to hold at bay.
First, does this not seem familiar? Second, how is this not credible?critical rationalist
April 24, 2017
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WJM, responsibility and thus moral government is intrinsic to rationality, which requires freedom. The very act of conceiving of and creating a coherent world is shot through with moral considerations on truth, logic, coherence, etc. Just ponder the role of the logic of structure and quantity in a cosmos. That is, mathematics. Further to this, ponder the logic of necessary being (as in, framework to any possible world) keyed to the grand fact of the existence of THIS cosmos involving morally governed creatures. I discussed in more details earlier this morning. KFkairosfocus
April 24, 2017
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HGP,
Thanks.
Let's clip the opening remarks:
UNSPEAKABLE ETHICS, UNNATURAL LAW*
ARTHUR ALLEN LEFF**
I want to believe-and so do you-in a complete, transcendent,
and immanent set of propositions about right and wrong,findable rules
that authoritatively and unambiguously direct us how to live right-
eously. I also want to believe-and so do you-in no such thing, but
rather that we are wholly free, not only to choose for ourselves what we
ought to do, but to decide for ourselves, individually and as a species,
what we ought to be. What we want, Heaven help us, is simultaneously
to be perfectly ruled and perfectly free, that is, at the same time to
discover the right and the good and to create it.
I mention the matter here only because I think that the two contra-
dictory impulses which together form that paradox do not exist only on
some high abstract level of arcane angst. In fact, it is my central thesis
that much that is mysterious about much that is written about law to-
day is understandable only in the context of this tension between the
ideas of found law and made law: a tension particularly evident in the
growing, though desperately resisted, awareness that there may be, in
fact, nothing to be found-that whenever we set out to find "the law,"
we are able to locate nothing more attractive, or more final, than our-selves.
My plan for this Article, then, is as follows. I shall first try to
prove to your satisfaction that there cannot be any normative system ultimately based on anything except human will.' I shall then try to
trace some of the scars left on recent jurisprudential writings by this
growing, and apparently terrifying, realization. Finally, I shall say a
few things about-of all things-law and the way in which the impossi-bility of normative grounding necessarily shapes attitudes toward con-
stitutional interpretation.
2
Consider what a "finder" of law must do. He must reach for a set
of normative propositions in the form "one ought to do X," or "it is
right to do X," that will serve in, indeed serve as the foundation for, a
legal system. Once found, these propositions must themselves be im-
mune from further criticism. [--> of course, Leff has absorbed the little error at the beginning, that there are no self-evident truths that can serve as a plumbline for our schemes of thought, he thus dooms his efforts to failure by attacking a strawman target] Of course, once the finder finds what it is
he is looking for, his work is not necessarily over. He may still work
with the propositions, show their interactions, argue about their reach
and implications, rationalize, restate, and reflect. But the propositions
he has found are the premises of his system, and once found they can-
not just be dispensed with. That which is found becomes a given for
the system, however the system may be systematically manipulated. It
is not created by the finder, and therefore it cannot be changed by him,
or even challenged.
Imagine, now, a legal system based upon perceived normative pro-
positions-oughts-which are absolutely binding, wholly unquestiona-
ble, once found. Consider the normative proposition, "Thou shalt not
commit adultery." Under what circumstances, if any, would one con-
clude that it is wrong to commit adultery? Maybe it helps to put the
question another way: when would it be impermissible to make the
formal intellectual equivalent of what is known in barrooms and
schoolyards as "the grand sez who"? Putting it that way makes it clear
that if we are looking for an evaluation, we must actually be looking
for an evaluator: some machine for the generation of judgments on
states of affairs. If the evaluation is to be beyond question, then the
evaluator and its evaluative processes must be similarly insulated. If it
is to fulfill its role, the evaluator must be the unjudged judge, the un-
ruled legislator, the premise maker who rests on no premises, the un-
created creator of values. Now, what would you call such a thing if it
existed? You would call it Him.
There is then, this one longstanding, widely accepted ethical and
legal system that is based upon the edicts of an unchallengeable creator
of the right and the good, in which the only job of the person who
would do right is tofind what the evaluator said. Assuming that I know
Oh, how far we have fallen. And oh, do we not sense in all of this an implicit appeal to an utterly evident law of our nature: we ought to seek and serve the truth?
In short, the utter incoherence is there from the outset, in self-referential form. Hon. Master Leff, if WE are under force of ought, are you not also?
The crooked yardstick, predictably, locks out the truth and the right.
Let us remind ourselves from Cicero, in De Legibus:
—Marcus: . . . the subject of our present discussion . . . comprehends the universal principles of equity and law. In such a discussion therefore on the great moral law of nature, the practice of the civil law can occupy but an insignificant and subordinate station. For according to our idea, we shall have to explain the true nature of moral justice, which is congenial and correspondent [36]with the true nature of man. We shall have to examine those principles of legislation by which all political states should be governed. And last of all, shall we have to speak of those laws and customs which are framed for the use and convenience of particular peoples, which regulate the civic and municipal affairs of the citizens, and which are known by the title of civil laws.
Quintus. —You take a noble view of the subject, my brother, and go to the fountain–head of moral truth, in order to throw light on the whole science of jurisprudence: while those who confine their legal studies to the civil law too often grow less familiar with the arts of justice than with those of litigation.
Marcus. —Your observation, my Quintus, is not quite correct. It is not so much the science of law that produces litigation, as the ignorance of it, (potius ignoratio juris litigiosa est quam scientia) . . . . With respect to the true principle of justice, many learned men have maintained that it springs from Law. I hardly know if their opinion be not correct, at least, according to their own definition; for “Law (say they) is the highest reason, implanted in nature, which prescribes those things which ought to be done, and forbids the contrary.” This, they think, is apparent from the converse of the proposition; because this same reason, when it [37]is confirmed and established in men’s minds, is the law of all their actions.
They therefore conceive that the voice of conscience is a law, that moral prudence is a law, whose operation is to urge us to good actions, and restrain us from evil ones. They think, too, that the Greek name for law (NOMOS), which is derived from NEMO, to distribute, implies the very nature of the thing, that is, to give every man his due. For my part, I imagine that the moral essence of law is better expressed by its Latin name, (lex), which conveys the idea of selection or discrimination. According to the Greeks, therefore, the name of law implies an equitable distribution of goods: according to the Romans, an equitable discrimination between good and evil.
The true definition of law should, however, include both these characteristics. And this being granted as an almost self–evident proposition, the origin of justice is to be sought in the divine law of eternal and immutable morality. This indeed is the true energy of nature, the very soul and essence of wisdom, the test of virtue and vice.
And, Locke in Ch 2 Section 5 of his essay on human understanding [with onward discussion from Hooker]:
>. . . if I cannot but wish [--> accurately perceiving my own moral worth and so my rights] to receive good, even as much at every man’s hands, as any man can wish unto his own soul, how should I look to have any part of my desire herein satisfied, unless myself be careful to satisfy the like desire which is undoubtedly in other men [--> accurately perceiving that here are others of like nature] . . . my desire, therefore, to be loved of my equals in Nature, as much as possible may be, imposeth upon me a natural duty of bearing to themward fully the like affection. [--> notice, imposes, by the sense of my own moral state and the perception of others who are as I am, I have reciprocity of duties of care in community] From which relation of equality between ourselves and them that are as ourselves, what several rules and canons natural reason hath drawn for direction of life no man is ignorant
[--> these teach us so that we come to knowledge of morality: warranted, credibly true beliefs; of course, this is not the basis for that warrant, that lies in a world-foundational, world-root, world-source IS that inherently grounds OUGHT. And therein lieth a deep root of hyperskepticism on this, for if we are inherently -- by patent facts of our nature as responsibly free and rational, valuable beings -- under moral government and moral law, it points straight to a world root level Lawgiver and Governor. That is, to the inherently good Creator God, a necessary and maximally great being worthy of ultimate loyalty and the reasonable service of doing the good in accord with our nature]
. . . [Hooker then continues, citing Aristotle in The Nicomachean Ethics, Bk 8:] as namely, That because we would take no harm, we must therefore do none; That since we would not be in any thing extremely dealt with, we must ourselves avoid all extremity in our dealings; That from all violence and wrong we are utterly to abstain, with such-like [--> being core principles of law derived from reciprocity and my sense of my own worth and quite evident to such as Aristotle] . . . [Eccl. Polity, preface, Bk I, “ch.” 8, p.80]
St. Paul puts much the same point, this way:
Rom 2:1 . . . you have no excuse or justification, everyone of you who [hypocritically] [a]judges and condemns others; for in passing judgment on another person, you condemn yourself, because you who judge [from a position of arrogance or self-righteousness] are habitually practicing the very same things [which you denounce]. 2 And we know that the judgment of God falls justly and in accordance with truth on those who practice such things. 3 But do you think this, O man, when you judge and condemn those who practice such things, and yet do the same yourself, that you will escape God’s judgment and elude His verdict? 4 Or do you have no regard for the wealth of His kindness and tolerance and patience [in withholding His wrath]? Are you [actually] unaware or ignorant [of the fact] that God’s kindness leads you to repentance [that is, to change your inner self, your old way of thinking—seek His purpose for your life]? 5 But because of your callous stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are [deliberately] storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed . . . .
14 When Gentiles, who do not have the Law [since it was given only to Jews], do [c]instinctively the things the Law requires [guided only by their conscience], they are a law to themselves, though they do not have the Law. 15 They show that the [d]essential requirements of the Law are written in their hearts; and their conscience [their sense of right and wrong, their moral choices] bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or perhaps defending them 16 on that day when, [e]as my gospel proclaims, God will judge the secrets [all the hidden thoughts and concealed sins] of men through Christ Jesus . . . .
Rom 13:8 [b]Owe nothing to anyone except to [c]love and seek the best for one another; for he who [unselfishly] loves his neighbor has fulfilled the [essence of the] law [relating to one’s fellowman]. 9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet,” and any other commandment are summed up in this statement: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong [--> NIV, "harm"] to a neighbor [it never hurts anyone]. Therefore [unselfish] love is the fulfillment of the Law.
11 Do this, knowing that this is a critical time. It is already the hour for you to awaken from your sleep [of spiritual complacency]; for our salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed [in Christ]. 12 The night [this present evil age] is almost gone and the day [of Christ’s return] is almost here. So let us fling away the works of darkness and put on the [full] armor of light. 13 Let us conduct ourselves properly and honorably as in the [light of] day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and irresponsibility, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 But clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for [nor even think about gratifying] the flesh in regard to its improper desires. [AMP]
How dare you quote that, that, that piece of rubbish written to oppress us under that imaginary bronze age sky tyrant!
Actually, Paul is pointing to the law we can find as close as our own consciences and as close as our own outrage when we feel that we have been wronged (instantly forgetting that we are guilty of much the same).
We show every sign of knowing that we have responsible, rational, significant freedom and ought to use that in the path of persisting in love that treats neighbour as we would wish to be treated. But, oh, how we want to be the exception to the rule, to indulge ourselves at the expense of the other!
And so, it is our inconsistency that is one of the most striking evidences.
Where, of course, the notion that we are not under any higher obligation than we make up opens the door to amorality and the nihilism of might and manipulation make right. Ending in ruin.
Besides, this would directly entail that our inescapable, pervasive sense that we are under the law of a morally governed nature, is utterly delusional. Where, there are no firewalls in mindedness, so -- never mind how this is brushed aside or dismissed or studiously, sullenly ignored -- so the implication of this view is that we are victims of grand delusion.
The proud edifice of rationalism then collapses, by its direct implication that as a race, we are mad.
But of course, those who insist on measuring by a crooked yardstick refuse to hear or heed any such point.
And they demand that we join the march of ruinous folly.
KFkairosfocus
April 24, 2017
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HeKS @148
Yeah, I get that - that's why I said it was something to ponder for a while - I was going to think about whether or not one could have god without having moral oughts. One cannot have a universe without a necessary being to ground it (god); oughts do not exist without free, responsible beings with intents that extrapolate the "is" of the world into an "ought"; the question I was pondering is if morality is a necessary category of oughts in any such created universe with free, responsible beings.
In one sense, the question is academic - we do not live in that universe and this universe was not created by an amoral God. The question remains an interesting one. I'm thinking that just as the physical universe carries in it the basis of oughts derived by beings with intention, so too do other physical manifestations of free will entities. Obviously, however, we have sociopaths that treat other beings as simply physical things and they extract "oughts" from their existence in an amoral manner.
So, I would say that yes, it is possible for an amoral god to have created an amoral (no moral oughts) universe with free agents that behaved amorally. The next question I suppose from an objector's standpoint would be, can an amoral god create a universe that - for whatever reason - is populated by free agents that imagine and invent moral codes for their own benefit? IOW, could a fictional structure of morality actually, at it's heart, be an amoral manipulation of behaviors for the benefit of those who abide it (or at least for those in power)?
BTW, I say that the question is academic and that we do not live in that world based on experience; through conscience I experience the moral landscape. I know it's real the same way I know I'm breathing in air and in the same way I know gravitational effects are real. Thankfully I've managed to repair much of the damage I inflicted on my conscience when I was an atheist.William J Murray
April 24, 2017
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Armand Jacks @158:
With respect to objective vs subjective morality, the only difference in my estimation is in where they originate. Not how they affect us.
Do you know the essay "unspeakable ethics, unnatural law"[1]? It explains some of the differences that exist between those two, and why they are important. If you don't know it, I recommend reading it. It makes several points about this difference much better than I could hope to explain.
If you know this essay, then I would like you tell me, in what way you answer the points raised there and come to the conclusion that the only difference between the two kind of systems "is in where they originate"? The essay points out, that there is a qualitative difference between those two kind of systems.
[1] http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2724&context=dlj;hgp
April 24, 2017
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PS: For reminder, the ship of state:
It is not too hard to figure out that our civilisation is in deep trouble and is most likely headed for shipwreck. (And of course, that sort of concern is dismissed as “apocalyptic,” or neurotic pessimism that refuses to pause and smell the roses.)
Plato’s Socrates spoke to this sort of situation, long since, in the ship of state parable in The Republic, Bk VI:
>>[Soc.] I perceive, I said, that you are vastly amused at having plunged me into such a hopeless discussion; but now hear the parable, and then you will be still more amused at the meagreness of my imagination: for the manner in which the best men are treated in their own States is so grievous that no single thing on earth is comparable to it; and therefore, if I am to plead their cause, I must have recourse to fiction, and put together a figure made up of many things, like the fabulous unions of goats and stags which are found in pictures.
Imagine then a fleet or a ship in which there is a captain [–> often interpreted, ship’s owner] who is taller and stronger than any of the crew, but he is a little deaf and has a similar infirmity in sight, and his knowledge of navigation is not much better. [= The people own the community and in the mass are overwhelmingly strong, but are ill equipped on the whole to guide, guard and lead it]
The sailors are quarrelling with one another about the steering – every one is of opinion that he has a right to steer [= selfish ambition to rule and dominate], though he has never learned the art of navigation and cannot tell who taught him or when he learned, and will further assert that it cannot be taught, and they are ready to cut in pieces any one who says the contrary. They throng about the captain, begging and praying him to commit the helm to them [–> kubernetes, steersman, from which both cybernetics and government come in English]; and if at any time they do not prevail, but others are preferred to them, they kill the others or throw them overboard [ = ruthless contest for domination of the community], and having first chained up the noble captain’s senses with drink or some narcotic drug [ = manipulation and befuddlement, cf. the parable of the cave], they mutiny and take possession of the ship and make free with the stores; thus, eating and drinking, they proceed on their voyage in such a manner as might be expected of them [–> Cf here Luke’s subtle case study in Ac 27].
Him who is their partisan and cleverly aids them in their plot for getting the ship out of the captain’s hands into their own whether by force or persuasion [–> Nihilistic will to power on the premise of might and manipulation making ‘right’ ‘truth’ ‘justice’ ‘rights’ etc], they compliment with the name of sailor, pilot, able seaman, and abuse the other sort of man, whom they call a good-for-nothing; but that the true pilot must pay attention to the year and seasons and sky and stars and winds, and whatever else belongs to his art, if he intends to be really qualified for the command of a ship, and that he must and will be the steerer, whether other people like or not-the possibility of this union of authority with the steerer’s art has never seriously entered into their thoughts or been made part of their calling.
Now in vessels which are in a state of mutiny and by sailors who are mutineers, how will the true pilot be regarded? Will he not be called by them a prater, a star-gazer, a good-for-nothing?
[Ad.] Of course, said Adeimantus.
[Soc.] Then you will hardly need, I said, to hear the interpretation of the figure, which describes the true philosopher in his relation to the State[ --> here we see Plato's philosoppher-king emerging]; for you understand already.
[Ad.] Certainly.
[Soc.] Then suppose you now take this parable to the gentleman who is surprised at finding that philosophers have no honour in their cities; explain it to him and try to convince him that their having honour would be far more extraordinary.
[Ad.] I will.
[Soc.] Say to him, that, in deeming the best votaries of philosophy to be useless to the rest of the world, he is right; but also tell him to attribute their uselessness to the fault of those who will not use them, and not to themselves. The pilot should not humbly beg the sailors to be commanded by him –that is not the order of nature; neither are ‘the wise to go to the doors of the rich’ –the ingenious author of this saying told a lie –but the truth is, that, when a man is ill, whether he be rich or poor, to the physician he must go, and he who wants to be governed, to him who is able to govern. The ruler who is good for anything ought not to beg his subjects to be ruled by him [ --> down this road lies the modern solution: a sound, well informed people will seek sound leaders, who will not need to manipulate or bribe or worse, and such a ruler will in turn be checked by the soundness of the people, cf. US DoI, 1776]; although the present governors of mankind are of a different stamp; they may be justly compared to the mutinous sailors, and the true helmsmen to those who are called by them good-for-nothings and star-gazers.
[Ad.] Precisely so, he said.
[Soc] For these reasons, and among men like these, philosophy, the noblest pursuit of all, is not likely to be much esteemed by those of the opposite faction; not that the greatest and most lasting injury is done to her by her opponents, but by her own professing followers, the same of whom you suppose the accuser to say, that the greater number of them are arrant rogues, and the best are useless; in which opinion I agreed [--> even among the students of the sound state (here, political philosophy and likely history etc.), many are of unsound motivation and intent, so mere education is not enough, character transformation is critical].
[Ad.] Yes.
[Soc.] And the reason why the good are useless has now been explained?
[Ad.] True.
[Soc.] Then shall we proceed to show that the corruption of the majority is also unavoidable, and that this is not to be laid to the charge of philosophy any more than the other?
[Ad.] By all means.
[Soc.] And let us ask and answer in turn, first going back to the description of the gentle and noble nature.[ -- > note the character issue] Truth, as you will remember, was his leader, whom he followed always and in all things [ --> The spirit of truth as a marker]; failing in this, he was an impostor, and had no part or lot in true philosophy [--> the spirit of truth is a marker, for good or ill] . . . >>
(There is more than an echo of this in Acts 27, a real world case study. [Luke, a physician, was an educated Greek with a taste for subtle references.] This blog post, on soundness in policy, will also help)
Will we ever learn? Or, are we doomed -- as of all people Marx warned -- to repeat the past, the first time as tragedy, the next as farce?kairosfocus
April 24, 2017
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FFT: The astonishing, glaring -- and obviously obliviously unintentional (it would be laughable, were it not so sad) -- irony in the above is the patent contradiction between declared subjectivism and/or relativism and the obvious expectation that WE . . . the targets . . . abide by binding moral obligations as perceived towards truth and right.
In short, the imaginary ideological fantasy of a world of rational creatures exhibiting moral behaviours but where such a binding duty of oughtness is NOT properly grounded is so incoherent . . . so self-referentially inconsistent and self-falsifying . . . that it cannot be argued for without parasiting off -- big hint -- the fact that implicitly we all know and typically (but not always!) do better.
The above is replete with examples, just look again if you haven't already spotted it.
This has already been pointed out, of course, but the deeply indoctrinated and polarised who have become full of contempt for those who dare to differ with what they imagine is the wave of the future are not genuinely open to correction by mere words.
(NB: A very familiar pattern for someone who cut his intellectual eyeteeth in dealing with Marxists full of visions of a workers paradise that would usher in utopia if only the wicked forces of reaction could be swept away. That was the 1970's and 80's. By the mid 1990's, Marxism in its classical form was dead, exposed as a cruel, destructive fantasy responsible for the deaths of over 100 million victims of democide, not counting the very considerable contribution of such countries to the shocking Abortion holocaust total of 800+ millions and now mounting up at another million per week. BTW, notice the unresponsiveness and enabling behaviour in response to pointing this out? That is a portent of what is in store by way of infanticide, euthanasia then ruthless mass killing of the targetted, if what we are facing seizes unrestrained power. And no surprise, much of it is rooted in cultural marxist ideology and its resort to so-called critical theory approaches. Alinsky's rules for radicals then swing into devillish play and we instantly can understand what we see: "4. "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity." 5. "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counteract ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage." . . . . 13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Yes, Mischief, thou art at thy devillish work.)
So too, as was pointed out above, when a crooked yardstick of error is set up as standard of truth, right etc, the real truth and right cannot ever pass the test as they will not conform to error; they already conform to reality.
That is the sad pass we have reached.
That is the civilisational march of ruinous folly on which we are embarked.
And if such ill-advised mutineers win the fight to be kubernetes on the ship of state, a voyage of folly to ruin will follow as night follows day.
That is why it is ever so important for us to first take seriously the task of setting our worldviews straight, and then to look to sorting out the now well-known seven mountains of influence, by reformation. For which, the example of Wilberforce is a vital historical case study.
That would already be a lot.
But we have more to say, again by way of repetition for reminder and record:
HOW DO YOU GET TO A WORLD IN WHICH THERE ARE MORALLY GOVERNED CREATURES THAT LIVE IN COMMUNITIES CRITICALLY DEPENDENT ON MUTUALITY AND TEAMWORK BASED PRODUCTIVITY (INCLUDING FOR UPBRINGING OF CHILDREN)?
The answer starts from observing -- and that already implies that we have a duty of care to attend to evidence that can reveal the truth of the world around us -- that we live in a fine tuned cosmos, one that is set to an operating point that facilitates C-chemistry, aqueous medium, cell-based life.
Where does such a world come from, i/l/o what we know regarding the source of functionally specific, complex organisation? (And, again, duties of care to prudent inductive inference grounded on accurate observation come to the fore.)
Our world is temporally-causally successive, as the current present -- Now, N -- leads to the next stage of the world, and as the chain of past once present stages recedes into the past. (More duties, of accurate observation and inference)
That poses the temporal-causal form of a very familiar trilemma (by duty to follow logic to the bitter end). As was noted in 107 (but was studiously ignored as to its import):
a: Regress [from a purportedly infinite past]:
. . . . N-k, . . . N-2, N-1, N –>
b: Circle of cause:
{Circle, J –> K AND K –> J] . . . N-k, . . . N-2, N-1, N –>
c: World-root:
ROOT –> N-k, . . . N-2, N-1, N –>
The first is absurd, as the infinite cannot be traversed in successive finite stage steps. The second is just as absurd, as circular causation does not account for origin -- non-being cannot cause, and if J and K mutually depend on one another to come into existence, neither chicken nor egg will get started. There is no credible fourth alternative and so we find ourselves facing a finitely remote world root.
As I went on to point out --
and I must belabour: notice the implicit issues that we must not simply be driven and blindly controlled by our brain electro chemistry as Crick so self-referentially imagined, we must be free enough and willing enough to attend to, follow and heed the force of logical inference --
. . . that:
Of course the observational evidence — such as we have in a world where evidence forced cosmologists to accept a big bang ~ 14 BYA frame — points to the last, but that is not all. Circularity of cause in which J causes K and K J with no further onward cause is absurd. Likewise — and there have been several long exchanges on the involved logic of structure and quantity — an endless, beginningless quasi-temporal succession of stages to reach now implies traversing the transfinite in finite stage successive steps. This too will fail but it seems many cannot be brought to see the unachievable supertask involved.
We face a need for a finitely remote beginning to the causally successive temporal order, and we face a need onward to have an adequate cause thereof, a necessary [and thus eternal!] being. To see that requires the patience to work through the logic of possible vs impossible and contingent vs necessary, world-framework being. That too, when it was discussed was doubtless thought to be irrelevant verbiage. Unfortunately those who think like that then wish to imagine unfettered by the underlying logical constraints and so will not accept that they are proposing incoherent frames.
In short, we are looking at the need for a world-root necessary being is capable of creating a fine-tuned cosmos set up to the sort of operating point that our cosmos sits at. That essentially requires intelligence, rationality and awesome power, as say the lifelong agnostic and Nobel-equivalent prize winning Astrophysicist, Sir Fred Hoyle so frankly acknowledged out of his recognition of duties of care to intellectual integrity:
Once we see that life is cosmic it is sensible to suppose that intelligence is cosmic. Now problems of order, such as the sequences of amino acids in the chains which constitute the enzymes and other proteins, are precisely the problems that become easy once a directed intelligence enters the picture, as was recognised long ago by James Clerk Maxwell in his invention of what is known in physics as the Maxwell demon. The difference between an intelligent ordering, whether of words, fruit boxes, amino acids, or the Rubik cube, and merely random shufflings can be fantastically large, even as large as a number that would fill the whole volume of Shakespeare’s plays with its zeros. So if one proceeds directly and straightforwardly in this matter, without being deflected by a fear of incurring the wrath of scientific opinion, one arrives at the conclusion that biomaterials with their amazing measure or order must be the outcome of intelligent design. No other possibility I have been able to think of in pondering this issue over quite a long time seems to me to have anything like as high a possibility of being true.” [[Evolution from Space (The Omni Lecture[ --> Jan 12th 1982]), Enslow Publishers, 1982, pg. 28. And, there is much more from Hoyle in a similar vein, this is actually the modern source of the term intelligent design.]
But something deeper is at work, necessary being. Something like a fire is contingent, dependent on enabling, on/off causal factors (here, oxidiser, fuel, heat and an uninterfered with combustion chain reaction . . . how halon extinguishers work). Such beings begin, end if an enabling on/off causal factor is withdrawn, and while they would exist in some possible worlds, will not do so in all. By contrast, a necessary being is embedded in the framework for a world to exist and is independent of enabling, on/off factors. As a simple illustration, try to imagine a world in which distinct identity, A AND ~A -- thus two-ness -- does not exist, or how such could begin or end. Doubtless some ill-advised interlocutor may wish to suggest otherwise, but no such world -- already a distinct identity! -- will be possible; it would fail for incoherence.
So, we can recognise necessary beings as a vital but not commonly discussed category of being.
However, something more obtains: a serious candidate necessary being will either be impossible (as a square circle -- and no, this is by implication a planar figure -- is impossible as it requires core characteristics that mutually contradict) or else it will be possible, embedded in the framework for ANY possible world, thus in this actual one also. And, it will be eternal -- without beginning or end.
This is shocking to many today, seemingly preposterously extraordinary. So, let us add a bit more.
Namely, that the biggest shock of all is that a world manifestly exists.
Y'see, we can conceive of a true nothing, non-being. Not space, not time, not matter-energy, not-mind. Such has no causal capacity, there is nothing there to have capacities. Thus, were there ever utter non-being, such would forever obtain.
As a result, if a world now is, SOMETHING always was, something independent of other things, something necessary and eternal. The world-root.
And so, the biggest shocker of all is that a world is, and by simply being points by force of logic to a necessary being world root.
One, that credibly is intelligent, purposeful and capable of setting up a world like ours.
And that already surfaces a big challenge to dominant, domineering lab coat clad evolutionary materialism and its fellow travellers. Such cannot pull a world out of a true nothing. Nor can we appeal to an ultimate chicken-egg loop. Nor can we credibly traverse an actually infinite past in causally successive temporal stages.
Such imagined worlds are credibly impossible.
We are forced -- by duty to logic -- to face a necessary being world root.
Where, such is credibly rational, thus free. But, freedom to enjoy rationality already embeds the sort of responsibility to truth, right, coherence etc that we have been noticing for ourselves all along. The world root IS, is inherently morally governed, just to get to an orderly, lawful, coherent cosmos. As that Bible thumping fundy -- NOT! -- Plato recognised in the same passage in The Laws, Bk X we have so often discussed:
Ath. Nearly all of them, my friends, seem to be ignorant of the nature and power of the soul [[ = psuche], especially in what relates to her origin: they do not know that she is among the first of things, and before all bodies, and is the chief author of their changes and transpositions. And if this is true, and if the soul is older than the body, must not the things which are of the soul's kindred be of necessity prior to those which appertain to the body?
Cle. Certainly.
Ath. Then thought and attention and mind and art and law will be prior to that which is hard and soft and heavy and light; and the great and primitive works and actions will be works of art; they will be the first, and after them will come nature and works of nature, which however is a wrong term for men to apply to them; these will follow, and will be under the government of art and mind.
Cle. But why is the word "nature" wrong?
Ath. Because those who use the term mean to say that nature is the first creative power; but if the soul turn out to be the primeval element, and not fire or air, then in the truest sense and beyond other things the soul may be said to exist by nature; and this would be true if you proved that the soul is older than the body, but not otherwise.
[[ . . . .]
Ath. . . . when one thing changes another, and that another, of such will there be any primary changing element? How can a thing which is moved by another ever be the beginning of change? Impossible. But when the self-moved changes other, and that again other, and thus thousands upon tens of thousands of bodies are set in motion, must not the beginning of all this motion be the change of the self-moving principle? . . . . self-motion being the origin of all motions, and the first which arises among things at rest as well as among things in motion, is the eldest and mightiest principle of change, and that which is changed by another and yet moves other is second.
[[ . . . .]
Ath. If we were to see this power existing in any earthy, watery, or fiery substance, simple or compound-how should we describe it?
Cle. You mean to ask whether we should call such a self-moving power life?
Ath. I do.
Cle. Certainly we should.
Ath. And when we see soul in anything, must we not do the same-must we not admit that this is life?
[[ . . . . ]
Cle. You mean to say that the essence which is defined as the self-moved is the same with that which has the name soul?
Ath. Yes; and if this is true, do we still maintain that there is anything wanting in the proof that the soul is the first origin and moving power of all that is, or has become, or will be, and their contraries, when she has been clearly shown to be the source of change and motion in all things?
Cle. Certainly not; the soul as being the source of motion, has been most satisfactorily shown to be the oldest of all things.
Ath. And is not that motion which is produced in another, by reason of another, but never has any self-moving power at all, being in truth the change of an inanimate body, to be reckoned second, or by any lower number which you may prefer?
Cle. Exactly.
Ath. Then we are right, and speak the most perfect and absolute truth, when we say that the soul is prior to the body, and that the body is second and comes afterwards, and is born to obey the soul, which is the ruler?
[[ . . . . ]
Ath. If, my friend, we say that the whole path and movement of heaven, and of all that is therein, is by nature akin to the movement and revolution and calculation of mind, and proceeds by kindred laws, then, as is plain, we must say that the best soul takes care of the world and guides it along the good path. [[Plato here explicitly sets up an inference to design (by a good soul) from the intelligible order of the cosmos.]
Of course, such has been pointed out but studiously, repeatedly ignored. We even have someone in-thread who lives in a world of inductively grounded knowledge who imagines that induction cannot deliver knowledge. Induction cannot deliver utter absolute certainty but it can and does often deliver reliable, trustworthy knowledge -- warranted, credibly true belief.
Where are we?
At world-root.
And there we see a bill of requisites building up: necessary, intelligent, powerful, skilled, creative [thus self-moved and initiating] being marked by rationality, responsibility [thus morally governed], goodness.
No world will be possible without such a necessary being at its root, especially once we know we have a world like ours with morally governed creatures such as ourselves.
If you would challenge this, kindly show why such a serious candidate necessary being is impossible: _____ (Remember, as fully drawn out we see just one serious candidate: the inherently good and wise and just creator God, the world root, a necessary, maximally great being worthy of loyalty and the free, responsible, reasonable service of doing the good in accord with our evident nature (i.e. the intelligible law of our nature). For years, this challenge has been ducked, dodged, side stepped, distracted from. No prizes for guessing why.)
We can also see why objectors imagine they can have a world without such a root: they are committed to or deeply influenced by atheistical evolutionary materialistic scientism, directly and/or through its fellow travellers.
Their favoured worldview is being challenged, and as they are using crooked yardsticks of error to judge truth and right, the errors become self-reinforcing. Especially as they find excuse after excuse to become increasingly polarised against the force of the logic that points so strongly to a different answer.
They don't even realise the irony of expecting us to adhere to the binding nature of oughtness, even as they demand the "right" to be subjectivists and/or relativists. They do not realise, that they are trying to make a fish live out of water, and wonder why every time they do that the poor creature soon starts flopping around, then dies.
They don't recognise that anything has an inherent nature above the latest incarnations of fermions and bosons and quarks, and so they completely misunderstand contemplative, rationally and responsibly free mind as opposed to GIGO-limited, blindly mechanical and/or stochastic computational substrates. Nor, will they see the incoherence in Crick, or the soundness of correctives from Haldane to Reppert.
Everything must line up with their crooked yardsticks, or else.
Might and/or manipulation must make truth, right, reason, etc.
March of ruinous folly, in pursuit of the ill-advised fantasy of an irretrievably incoherent, impossible world.
Let us turn back before it is too late.
KFkairosfocus
April 24, 2017
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@UB
An act implies a verb and a noun being acted upon. What is this act?
The formalization of a symbol system using a set of spatially-oriented (rate-independent) symbol vehicles along with the set of non-integrable constraints required to interpret the symbols – i.e. a language. In an autonomous self-replicator, this formalization is required to achieve semantic closure, allowing self-replication to occur via a medium of information.
To which I responded…
IOW, what you seem to be suggesting is that a designer created the a set of macro functions in the form of DNA molecules that is a domain specific language (DSL) for creating organisms, in the way that the Ruby on Rails developers built a DSL on top of the Ruby programming language for creating web applications. However, the developers needed to first possess the knowledge of how to build web applications before they could abstract it into a DSL. And there is the matter of the knowledge in the ruby programming language itself.
So, it’s a question of knowledge, which is why I keep asking you for the origin of that knowledge.
Why do you think intelligence was the case?
1) There was a system that was predicted as being necessary to establish an autonomous self-replicator capable of open-ended evolutionary potential. This is a well-documented historical fact, and is widely held as both coherent and correct. That system was a language system, which was then verified by its physical properties to actually exist within the cell. 2) Recorded language is a universal correlate of intelligence.
Yes, UB. The explanation for the watch cannot be the same as the rock. It could only be knowledge. In the case of organisms the knowledge is a recipe in organisms themselves, which defines which transformations of matter are required to transform raw materials into entire cells. We seem to be in agreement on (1). However, you make a leap in (2). Correlation does not equal causation.
Human designers are not magic. We have an explanation for how they create knowledge. And that explanation is compatible with natural selection.
and that the constraints that determine the system’s function are not integrable with a microscopic (lawful) physical description of the system operation itself. In other words, the “state transformation” are indeed not determined by the system’s dynamic properties.
Still not clear what you mean here. In regards to gene expression mediated by other parts of the system, those parts represent knowledge as to what mediations should occur. If you’re referring to the fact that what it means to be distinguishable is circular in Shannon’s theory of information, that is resolved in the theory of information I referenced. Again, what theory of information are you referring to?
Yet, you haven’t provided one iota of reason to believe that the system is – against all observations to the contrary – actually established by its dynamics, or that it somehow evolved prior to the onset of its evolutionary potential.
Again, we have concrete examples of the evolution of number systems, languages and computation. Each of which started out solving very limited, specific problems (limited reach) which was varied and improved. Then a disproportional leap to universality occurred, which we stumbled upon. And we have a concrete example in RNA, which is like Babbage’s Difference Engine, which was a precursor to a universal Turing machine, or Roman numerals.
Since it depends on specific kinds of chemicals, such as proteins, DNA is presumably not a universal for specifying any kind of life form. However, it can also “program” organisms (give them instincts) to construct things outside of its bodies, such as nests, dams, etc. And utilize inorganics, such as calcium phosphate in bones, or the magnetite in a pigeon’s brain.
What I’m referring to is a principle that all knowledge growth is by incremental improvement. It’s universal explanation for the growth of knowledge. But, in a number of fields, a threshold is exceeded when an improvement in the system causes a sudden, disproportional increase in reach, which makes it universal system in that relevant domain. When people brought about such leaps to universality in the past they rarely attempted to achieve it. That is, until the enlightenment, in which the universality of explanations people can create has become a priority.
Note: this is why I keep asking for a explanation for the knowledge in organisms, not merely predictions or inductive inferences. We are universal explainers and that gives our knowledge reach that has allowed us to make rapid, open-ended potential to explain phenomena.
The necessary physical proprieties necessary for replication is outlined in both papers I referenced. For example, this includes the ability to store information digitally, as it allows for error correction, etc.critical rationalist
April 23, 2017
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AJ @ 158
With respect to objective vs subjective morality, the only difference in my estimation is in where they originate. Not how they affect us. Your gut reaction to killing or rape or stealing or lying is probably the same as mine. You may argue that this is due to some objective proscription on killing. Whereas I say that it is the result indoctrination from a very early age by parents, teachers, etc., reinforced by our ability to predict the possible consequences of our actions. Neither of these are akin to a preferred flavour of ice cream. They are both deeply ingrained feelings that are not easily ignored.
What if someone doesn’t share your “gut reaction” or wasn’t “indoctrinated” the same way you were? Is he morally obligated not to kill or rape an innocent person? Ted Bundy certainly didn’t have the same subjective gut reaction that you would have and expressed a different opinion.
The following* is a paraphrase from a tape recorded conversation between Ted Bundy and one of his victims.
“Then I learned that all moral judgments are “value judgments,” that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either “right” or “wrong.” I even read somewhere that the Chief Justice of the United States had written that the American Constitution expressed nothing more than collective value judgments. Believe it or not, I figured out for myself – what apparently the Chief Justice couldn’t figure out for himself””that if the rationality of one value judgment was zero, multiplying it by millions would not make it one whit more rational. Nor is there any “reason” to obey the law for anyone, like myself, who has the boldness and daring “” the strength of character “” to throw off its shackles. … I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable value judgment” that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these “others”? Other human beings, with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more to you than a hog’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as “moral” or “good” and others as “immoral” or “bad”? In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me””after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited self.”
(p17 Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, by Louis P. Pojman & James Fieser)
It appears Bundy was a moral subjectivist. Notice how he justifies his rapes and murder:
“[I]s there any ‘reason’ to obey the law for anyone, like myself, who has the boldness and daring “” the strength of character “” to throw off its shackles. … I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited.”
In other words, rape and murder is the way he finds personal fulfillment. What is there in the universe to tell him that he ought not to fulfill his personal desires?
I would say that he is rationalizing. But I am making that claim from the perspective of a moral realist. How can that claim be made from a moral subjectivist perspective? If morals and ethics are subjective aren’t they what ever Bundy decides to think they are? How can a moral subjectivist ever be said to be rationalizing?
[*I originally posted this comment at Thinking Christian in 2010.]
https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2010/10/morality-without-god-would-i-care/#comment-24049
Like I argued above at 147:
I have no obligation (epistemically or morally) to accept ungrounded personal (subjective) opinions. On the other hand, interpersonal morality requires moral obligation (what we ought or ought not to do.) Therefore, it is impossible to base any kind of interpersonal morality on ungrounded personal opinions.
Morality is about, is based on obligation not on subjective opinion. So you can continue to argue your baseless opinions about subjective morality but the moral realists here are not obligated to even consider your arguments because it’s just your subjective opinion. So why are you wasting peoples time? What is the point of your persistence?john_a_designer
April 23, 2017
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My mother-in-law told me that when she was a young girl, in the city Graudenz, on the first day of classes in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1939, as she walked to the school, she asked another Polish girl -in Polish language- something about the classes. A German girl who was walking nearby, reacted angrily asking:
hast du nicht deutsch gelernt?
and slapped my mother-in-law’s face.
It's written that a few years later many German citizens that remained in the "liberated" lands were badly mistreated by the soviet troops.
What moral codes were observed by those different groups of people and by individuals in those separate cases?
In every case, the offender(s) acted according to what was understood as “correct” and their victims were wrong.
Welcome to this world!Dionisio
April 23, 2017
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Armand Jacks,
This was the first article I wrote at UD. You can find a discussion about whether subjective moral choices are different than ice cream flavor preferences starting with...
- Phinehas comment at #56
- Mark Frank's reply at #58 (unfortunately I just noticed that his linked article is no longer there)
- The latter portion of my response at #91
The relevant portion of my comment in #91 begins at this part:
It is perfectly possible to provide a rational basis for a subjective opinion. We all do it all the time about all sorts of subjective issues – whether things are funny, awesome, disappointing, attractive etc. and morally good or evil is no exception. I cannot understand why people deny something so obviously true.
Nobody does deny something so obviously true....
I've course, I personally think it would be worth reading the whole article and comment thread, as it covered many interesting aspects of this discussion.HeKS
April 23, 2017
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CR,
I chose not to respond to your posts because you chose not to respond to any of the points I made. See how that works? If I tell you that evolution cannot physically be the source of the "knowledge" of how to organize the cell (and tell you the reasons why), and you choose to not respond to my comments (other than to circle back and repeat your previous claims), then I have no obligations to respond further.
When I ask with the origin of that knowledge, I’m looking for an explanation for how intelligence results in a designer possessing it that knowledge. What is that explanation?
Please try to listen to what I am about to say. Have a temporary moment of amnesia, and pretend for a moment that you don't have a pre-packaged defense to the following comment:
Biological ID claims that a universal correlate of intelligence can be detected in the origin of Life on Earth. Understand?
Biological ID is not about the ultimate source of knowledge (!!!) Biological ID is not about where the intelligence that organized the first self-replicating cell on earth got its knowledge. It's not about the motivations, goals, or hair color of that intelligence. It's about none of those things. It's about the detection of an act of intelligence in the origin of life on earth.
And here's the other shoe: Physicists know specifically what type of physical system must be in place for open-ended evolution to occur (i.e. the type of system with enough capacity to specify its own translation apparatus, enabling semantic closure). That specific organization is required for evolution to occur, and as such, evolution cannot be the source of that system (i.e. if A requires B for A to exist, then A cannot be the source of B).
Moreover, physicists can clearly identify that system among all other physical systems, and have only identified that type of physical system in one other place anywhere in the cosmos -- that is, during the use of written language and mathematics, which are two universal correlates of intelligence.
So who has the better-supported argument: you proposing a source that is physically incapable of actually being the source ... or ID proponents, who propose the only source that can be demonstrated as actually being causally adequate to the task at hand?
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... of course, I only pose this question rhetorically, knowing full well that none of this will even make a dent in your defense. That fact, however, doesn't make the physics go away.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.)>>