Dupré on Reductionism
by machtHere is John Dupré's review of Alex Rosenberg's Darwinian Reductionism: Or, How to Stop Worrying and Love Molecular Biology. You might also want to check out this interview with Dupré.
Here is John Dupré's review of Alex Rosenberg's Darwinian Reductionism: Or, How to Stop Worrying and Love Molecular Biology. You might also want to check out this interview with Dupré.
April 11th, 2007 at 4:53 am
"You, Me, and Dupre"
Comment by Douglas — April 11, 2007 @ 4:53 am
April 11th, 2007 at 9:23 am
Hi Macht,
I have to admit, I admire your style.
You appear to enjoy posting interesting tid-bits with little or no comment to see what reaction is generated. I will try not to disappoint you.
My first reaction was to wonder about this "Dupré" guy and why his opinion was important. Since I didn't know off-hand, I decided against commenting (at least at first).
Then I ventured over to Discover Institute. They weren't as subtle. The article there was titled Alex Rosenberg's "Darwinian Reductionism" Under Fire leaving no doubt as to DI's take on the subject.
Even if I wanted to accuse you of "carrying water" for the Discovery Institute, I couldn't since I don't know which post proceeded which. Besides, you simply provided a link to the review, not to DI's biased interpretation. So, in order to respond to your post, I had to find out a little bit about this Dupré guy.
Here is what I found…
John Dupré is professor of philosophy of science in the Department of Sociology and director of the Economic and Social Research Council's Centre for Genomics in Society (Egenis). His most recent book is Darwin's Legacy: What Evolution Means Today (Oxford University Press, 2003).
link
Ok, so this is basically a compare and contrast of the views of two credentialed philosophers of science with Dupré in the position of questioning Rosenberg's claim of having special insight to a philosophical Truth.
These kinds of exchanges between philosophers date back to the time of Socrates. The results are very repetitious. The one claiming that no one knows the Truth comes out on top. I generally agree with Dupré but, at this point, I have only read his side of the argument.
So what does this have to do with Telic Thoughts and/or Intelligent Design?
I have no problem looking at the "ID Movement" as a philosophical endeavor. Especially considering I tend to equate philosophy and religion. Putting both on the same side of the NOMA divide.
This is how I interpret Mike Gene's position that ID is not science. It is the same way most people would claim religion is not science. A claim that philosophy is not science is more controversial.
It is the phylosophy controversy that causes me to agree with the thought that the NOMA question is really at the heart of the ID/"Darwinism" conflict.
What does a philosophical argument have to do with the scientific status of Evolutionary Biology?
The question only makes sense if NOMA is questioned first.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 11, 2007 @ 9:23 am
April 11th, 2007 at 9:43 am
I found the review from this website.
What it has to do with ID? My basic position on biological ID is that things like irreducible complexity point towards the non-reducibility of biological laws to physical laws. And molecular biology is where we often encounter philosophical problems because the objects of study are right on the border between "biological" and "physical."
I would say similar things about the non-reducibility of human consciousness to biology.
Comment by macht — April 11, 2007 @ 9:43 am
April 11th, 2007 at 10:52 am
LOL! Instead of trying to deal with the points raised by Dupré, "Thought Provoker" starts out by trying to see if Macht's post can be connected to the DI. Thought provoking, indeed.
Comment by Krauze — April 11, 2007 @ 10:52 am
April 11th, 2007 at 11:03 am
macht:
Then there's the issue of whether appeals to 'The Laws' of physics are fundamentally equivalent to appeals to 'The Laws' of God. Nancy Cartright seems to think so.
And here is where we'd expect to be able to quantify what they so love to call "living matter." Yet the matter - the elemental atoms and their dynamics - is no different from any other elemental atoms of the same type. It's what they do that makes them 'alive', not what they are.
Thanks for the link - I quite enjoyed Dupre's take.
Comment by Joy — April 11, 2007 @ 11:03 am
April 11th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
Speaking of reductionism, I wonder … what conglomeration of biological molecules led to the fact that the sum of the squares of the legs of a right triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse?
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — April 11, 2007 @ 12:59 pm
April 11th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
Hi Macht,
Thanks for the link and the post.
You wrote…
Is this a kin to saying "A wse man knows that he doesn't know"
Like I said, I have no problem with thinking of ID as a valid philosophical argument (yes, I said "valid"). And as long as NOMA is acceptable, we have little to argue about on this point.
Regards,
TP
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 11, 2007 @ 9:18 pm
April 11th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
When people begin to equate the laws of physics with the laws of God or of reality, a question might be asked as to which version of those laws they are talking about. Newton's? Einstein's? A future version that will reconcile relativity with quantum physics? The one after that?
If they mean simply the "true" laws of physics rather than a particular instance of our attempts to define them, then it becomes difficult to draw conclusions.
For example, the idea that "a miracle implies that God is violating his own laws" depends on having a very particular idea of what those laws are. Where does that come from? There is no empirical reason to believe that God's laws would forbid or exclude God's own actions. By way of illustration, it is not unreasonable that the designer of a car would include both a door and a steering wheel within the design. We have no reason to exclude the possibility that the same is true of nature.
Comment by eric — April 11, 2007 @ 9:34 pm
April 11th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
No.
And NOMA is not acceptable.
Comment by macht — April 11, 2007 @ 9:37 pm
April 11th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Hi Macht,
I asked…
Is this a kin to saying "A wise man knows that he doesn't know"
You responded with
Thank you for your clear answers.
So now we have a clear conflict.
Reductionism is the general subject of this post and if I understand your position, you are holding that scientists will continue to "encounter philosophical problems" preventing them from ever establishing a single understanding to the existence of life via Physical Laws.
This, while simultaneously rejecting the option of separating philosophical understanding from physical understanding. IOW, we have Overlapping Magisteria (OMA for short)
Can you see how others, like me, see this as trying to have your cake and eat it too? Philosophically, no one can ever know the Truth.
This allows you and others to reject any and all proposals based on Physical Laws as insufficient because it can't be the "Truth".
Why is this limited to the questions about biology? Isn't this just as applicable to other scientific studies, especially cosmology?
I provided an scientific "outline" that included an Intelligent Designer. Is it an acceptable ID proposal? Or should it automatically be rejected because it just might be consistent with Physical Laws thus being too unsatisfying as an Ultimate Truth?
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 11, 2007 @ 10:47 pm
April 11th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
I never said anything of the sort. The "philosophical problems" occur when we assume biological laws are reducible to physical ones yet the evidence points to the fact that they aren't. This isn't to say that future evidence won't suggest otherwise, but as of right now the scientific evidence is inconsistent with the position of physical reductionism.
No.
False. And you've given absolutely no reason for anybody to think this statement to be true. I assume you won't be giving a philosophical argument for its truth.
Did somebody say it was? I didn't.
I have no idea what NOMA has to do with this. But it is still not acceptable.
You would do very well to stop making assumptions about what I said. As Krauze pointed out, this happened in your very first comment in this thread and it has continued in your subsequent comments. It is very annoying and if it continues to happen, I will just ignore you.
Comment by macht — April 11, 2007 @ 11:21 pm
April 12th, 2007 at 12:01 am
Hi Macht,
I am sorry that you feel I misrepresented you. It was not my intent.
My intent has always been to provoke. Being "annoying" is a side effect of that.
Thank you for your response.
I wrote…
Philosophically, no one can ever know the Truth.
You responded with…
Let's see…
My philosophical argument is that no one can know the Truth. But since it itself is a philosophical argument it can't be the Truth so it must be false. But philosophers have been seeking Truth for thousands of years and have yet to find it. And then there was the bit about the Oracle of Delphi. Maybe someone is finally wiser than Socrates. You Macht?
No, I don't know the answer. Philosophically, I continue my search.
Since we have established that I know nothing, I will offer my opinion.
NOMA is what keeps people like Ken Miller from having a mental breakdown over internal conflicts. I suggest we all have a form of NOMA. We simply can't question what is real or not every second of every day.
IMO (which is just an opinion) your use of the words "Physical Laws" is an outgrowth of NOMA. A separation of "Physical Laws" from fill-in-the-blank is at the heart of NOMA. I fill in the blank with the general term of "philosophical truth". It looks like you are filling it with "Biological Laws". But, of course, philosophically, I can't really know the Truth.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 12, 2007 @ 12:01 am
April 12th, 2007 at 12:22 am
Sigh. Being annoyed is not a "side effect." It is a direct result of you trying to make pulled-out-of-your-ass connections between me and the DI, of you putting words in my mouth, of you not making arguments for the things you say, and you pontificating about what my words are "outgrowths" of based on just a few measly, terse sentences that I wrote.
You can have the last word, but I tell you now that I won't respond.
Comment by macht — April 12, 2007 @ 12:22 am
April 12th, 2007 at 12:40 am
Hi Macht,
I am truly sorry if I gave you the impression I wanted to make a connection between you and DI. I hope you will reread my first comment and see it in the light I intended. I thought this thread and real potentitial at flushing out a key issue in the ID discussions.
I meant it when I said "I will try not to disappoint you."
Apparently I failed in my attempt.
Regards,
TP
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 12, 2007 @ 12:40 am
April 12th, 2007 at 1:17 am
Thanks, Macht. There is a lot of interesting stuff in that interview. For example, anyone who has bothered to read my web page might notice some points of convergence here:
Comment by MikeGene — April 12, 2007 @ 1:17 am
April 12th, 2007 at 11:20 am
macht wrote:
Hi macht,
Besides the "Hard Problem" of consciousness, can you give some specific examples of biological laws which are irreducible to underlying physical laws?
Comment by keiths — April 12, 2007 @ 11:20 am
April 12th, 2007 at 11:34 am
keiths:
Um… what are these "biological laws?"
Comment by Joy — April 12, 2007 @ 11:34 am
April 12th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Joy,
That's what I'm asking macht. He refers to them in the quote I supplied but then gives no examples.
Comment by keiths — April 12, 2007 @ 11:42 am
April 12th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
keiths:
Google returned more than 44 million hits on "biological law." I went through the first 6 pages of links, and find that everybody claims there are some, but nobody knows what they are. Figures.
Although if anyone is going to assert that biological processes are the agent-less outworkings of physical laws, then biological laws should be easy to define. At least, in so far as we have rudimentary laws of physics to appeal to.
I don't think probability is an actual law, though we observe probablistic distributions in the entire realm of quantum physics. When considering the actions of biological processes in a critter with billions of cells, we can expect some probability distributions to apply. If we consider evolution as a population dynamic over lots of individuals in a population, traits will also appear in a probablistic manner. Statistical probability does NOT say anything meaningful at all about individual events or their causes.
Thus the formula RM-NS can't be "biological law" applied to evolution. Science cannot say anything about specific cause of specific events in any individual genomic event. The random qualifier applies only to statistical appearance in a larger population. Conversely, natural selection does not apply directly to most genomic events, but only to relative 'success' (upon arbitrary measurements) of individuals out in the real world. A critter with a perfect genome (if we could define that) can as easily fall prey to disease or accident before living very long. That's the Wheel of Fortune, not a biological process.
Worse, when one looks closely enough at the actual operations of biological processes, one is immediately struck with the fact that they're strongly dependent upon quantum mechanics at the molecular and sub-molecular level. Here there be "hidden variables" that a probablistic approach cannot factor, causes of effects that cannot be individually quantified.
If Prigogene's description of life as functioning at all times "on the edge of chaos" is true, we may suppose that the quantum effects life is so dependent upon are influenced more strongly by the sheer fact of being alive than any random decay of raw elements would be. IOW, in life these things are purposeful. In uranium and in dead bodies of once-alive constructs, they do not appear to be so.
Comment by Joy — April 12, 2007 @ 12:35 pm
April 12th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Joy,
Perhaps the statistical *law* of large numbers implies that the quantum fluctuations you're going on about cancel each other out and have no measurable effect at the organismal level.
Google "power law", and you'll find plenty of law-like patterns in biology. For example, the near universal scaling of metabolic rate with body mass according to a 3/4 exponent.
And then there's Bergman's law: animals get bigger at higher latitudes.
Comment by Raevmo — April 12, 2007 @ 12:55 pm
April 12th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Raevmo:
Statistical probability - and statistical distributions - do not speak to individual events. IOW, the fact that there is a statistical distribution of IQ among a group of humans does not tell us anything about any individual human's IQ. If the high middle of the bell curve sits at 100, it does NOT mean my IQ is 100.
As for quantum effects, these are never quantified individually beyond the 50-50 probability at reduction. I also think that a hydrogen atom's tendency to be a hydrogen atom from one moment to the next is mostly habit, not a real coin-toss. This doesn't even begin to address superconductivity in the pi stack of chromatin, and the orchestrated expression of genes. If things were not less-than random at that scale, life would tend to spontaneously dissociate or combust all the time.
IOW, I don't think you can legitimately consider statistical distributions to be "laws" of nature. They may be cumulative effects of real laws that we don't know how to define, but they aren't the laws themselves.
Though the concept of "laws of nature" is obviously very fluid, being whatever someone wants them to be whenever they're appealed to to explain something otherwise unexplainable.
Comment by Joy — April 12, 2007 @ 1:41 pm
April 12th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
I meant to post this here instead of there.
Obviously this is some sort of glitch in the matrix…
Comment by Rob R. — April 12, 2007 @ 1:44 pm
April 12th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Of course the IQ distributions tell us something about your IQ. Like that it's very unlikely that you have an IQ above 150 or below 50.
Sounds to me like some pseudo-scientific new age mumbo-jumbo. Dancing Wu-Li masters and all that.
So a law of nature has to be completely deterministic?
Comment by Raevmo — April 12, 2007 @ 1:51 pm
April 12th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Raevmo:
Yeah. Biologists don't seem to have much respect for physics generally. Or philosophy either, it seems. Still, any biological theory that ignores both these disciplines is begging to be demolished. Besides, if biologists want to appeal to physical law while at the same time calling 'em "pseudoscience," they should have their knuckles rapped with rulers. Just more inconsistencies for the terminally inconsistent.
Law should definitely be invariant. This is why probability and statistics aren't law. So while we don't have a good grasp on what the actual "law of gravity" is outside of planet earth (where we can measure how fast things fall in our gravity field), we do presume from looking at universal system order that one exists. Nobody has yet incorporated the inertial baseline or discovered the nature of mass, so we don't know what the heck gravity is or where it comes from.
Observed generalities are not law, they're merely generalities. Stanford has an extensive page on the subject, so I'll use one of their examples…
1. All gold spheres are less than a mile in diameter.
2. All uranium spheres are less than a mile in diameter.
1. is a generalization, 2. is the inevitable result of law. While we're never likely to see a sphere of gold a mile wide, that's a generalization. If we had enough gold, we could probably construct a sphere a mile wide, even if we're never going to bump into a naturally occurring cosmic body a mile wide made entirely of gold.
We KNOW we'll never see a sphere of uranium a mile wide, because that's beyond critical mass and it'll dissociate well before that point and vaporize everybody involved.
So yeah, laws should be deterministic and universally applicable. Governance of that which exists and CAN exist.
Comment by Joy — April 12, 2007 @ 2:22 pm
April 12th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Joy,
I regard laws of nature as descriptions of regularities in nature. These regularities can be statistical, as in Mendel's *laws* of inheritance: if two heterozygous AB (alleles A and B at a diploid gene locus) individuals mate, then their offspring will have genotypes AA, AB, BB according to a 1:2:1 distribution. On average. Law of large numbers again.
Ouch. I didn't call physical law pseudoscience, I called your statements pseudoscience. Stuff like this:
What is a "habit" in this context? What is the "pi stack of chromatin", and when is it superconducting?
Don't you mean an *enriched* sphere of uranium?
Comment by Raevmo — April 12, 2007 @ 2:55 pm
April 12th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Raevmo:
That's convenient, but don't you think it would be more valid in a general discussion of natural law to use the most rigorous scientific/philosophical definition? I mean, it's totally fallacious to appeal to physical law to justify general observations or statistical distributions. Maybe you should think about calling these 'distributional norms' or merely 'sociology'. Fuzzy, fuzzy.
According to this open-at-both-ends definition, all the outliers would be "illegal" - violations of these "laws of nature." I don't mind if biologists want to define law out of existence for themselves. But if that's what they want to do, they need to quit appealing to laws of physics to justify their speculations and fuzzy theoretics.
I can understand why a non-scientist or a biologist doesn't feel a need to follow the investigations of fundamental physics - or even biophysics or biochemistry. But don't just insult the whole endeavor because you don't like what I've got to say about it. The pi-stack is the central core region of the active conformation of DNA. Deals with living, operational dynamics, not counting base codes on dead, blasted-apart splinters of raw matter.
You do know that life doesn't operate by means of splintered pieces-parts of dead matter, don't you?
Charge transport through a molecular pi-stack: double helical DNA
Experiments in Physical Biology - abstracts
A simple model of the charge transfer in DNA-like substances
And habit is… habit. Unless perturbed by something, the states of atoms in your molecules will continue to be what they are from one moment to the next. Now, atoms may spontaneously disintegrate here and there at unpredictable intervals. Free radicals may perturb electrons, stripping them or causing jumps to new energy levels. Bonding may occur or bonds may be broken. All this is called interaction of matter/energy, and interactions are governed by physical law. The laws do change at scalar intervals. But they are pretty much invariant (given complexities supplied by surrounding interactions) within the scale being applied.
No need. Just throw together all the uranium (all isotopes in natural distrubution) you can gather from as many planets as you need to gather it from to ensure a mile-wide sphere, and it'll go critical before you get very far. I promise.
Comment by Joy — April 12, 2007 @ 4:26 pm
April 12th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
raevmo wrote:
Why should there be any regularities in 'nature'?
Or, if 'nature' simply comprises such regularities, why should there be any such regularities, or any such nature?
Comment by stunney — April 12, 2007 @ 11:29 pm
April 13th, 2007 at 4:56 am
U238 has no critical mass, and naturally occurring uranium consists of more than 99% U238. It seems as if your knowledge of physics derives almost entirely from a subscription to Scientific American. The way you talk about probability suggests to me you have no formal training in math either.
That's rich coming from a non-scientist like yourself.
Comment by Raevmo — April 13, 2007 @ 4:56 am
April 13th, 2007 at 10:32 am
Raevmo:
I'd welcome you to try the experiment, but concern for public and post-grad health makes me advise against it. They don't even let 'em pile bricks in gymnasiums for the exercise anymore. §;o) A simple look at history, geology and metallurgy would suffice. You do know what keeps the mantle molten, don't you?
238 doesn't fission from [fast] neutron bombardment, but it does spontaneously fission (releasing extra neutrons) or absorb neutrons. And daughters in a neutron-rich environment can also fission or absorb neutrons. Producing several further fissionable isotopes like uranium 233, thorium 232 and plutonium 239. Then there's the spherical configuration to consider… works much more efficiently than a pile of bricks.
There are other reasons you couldn't get a mile-wide sphere of uranium no matter how hard you tried anyway, given that it would always be laced with daughters that are NOT uranium, and is known to get hot enough to melt. Mere technicalities, but yet more reasons why:
All uranium spheres are less than a mile in diameter. The laws of nature simply don't allow such a thing. But you could construct a mile-wide sphere of gold.
This is a very strange attitude about something so simple that the 'laws of nature' do not allow to exist. I don't need Scientific American to find out the details - Google works great. So even if I never donned a single dosimeter and never met a GELI, I could say with confidence that if you're constructing a sphere of uranium, it wouldn't get anywhere close to a mile before killing you or disqualifying itself.
So what's the point?
Glad I could be of some amusement to you. That's my job!
Comment by Joy — April 13, 2007 @ 10:32 am
April 13th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
stunney:
The complete and utter absence of any regularity would be a kind of regularity in itself. Hence, there must always be some regularity. QED
What would a 'nature' without regularity look like? Is it even possible to describe such a thing? I'm looking forward to such a description.
Comment by Raevmo — April 13, 2007 @ 1:53 pm
April 13th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
John Dupre' said in the interview cited above:
One of the problems with those that advocate the so called NOMA view is that it leaves the prestige and authority science has gained for itself virtually unchecked, and therefore open to bias and abuse. For example, reductionism cannot be directly deduced from a study of nature itself. Reductionism is a metaphysical a priori commitment that some scientists, philosophers of science and other self appointed advocates of science smuggle into their work. What makes reductionism so attractive (I would say seductive) is that there are a lot of things, especially in the natural sciences, that can be explained reductively. However, there is no warrant in claiming that everything can be, and therefore must be explained by an appeal to some kind of reductionism.
For example, in the modern study of mind and consciousness the two main approaches are: physicalism and some kind of dualism, with physicalism in general being the dominant school. But why is this? Is it because that they have come to and understanding what consciousness is and can begin explain it in a reductionist manner? The answer is no. The truth is nobody at present even has a clue what consciousness is and can begin explain it in a reductionist manner? The answer is no. The truth is nobody at present even has a clue what consciousness is or how it is caused by the physical structure of the brain, or even if it is caused by the physical structures of the brain. Yet, many researchers, especially those committed to strong AI, are convinced that mind and consciousness are nothing more than an emergent property that results when we have the right kind of neural circuitry and/or programming. Why do they believe this? No doubt it is because that is the way science appears to work (and at times work triumphantly) in physics and chemistry etc., as well as the practical engineering that is the result of these sciences.
But is there any logical reason that consciousness could not be ontologically irreducible? I can't think of any. So, why not at least consider models that view consciousness that way?
Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — April 13, 2007 @ 2:05 pm
April 13th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
John_A:
One of the participants in the largely AI-Guy funded quest to quantify consciousness predicts 200 years to come to a consensus agreement on what it is they're questing for. Yet strangely enough, most of us do know from empirical evidence that the phenomenon exists. Those who tie themselves into ridiculous knots to deny the obvious are NOT the majority. Reductive materialism is an inconsistent enough position to be dismissible. The rest are just professional nay-sayers asserting counterfactuals because they're afraid of answers.
More dueling metaphysics. You'll have this whenever questions of intimate import are raised.
Comment by Joy — April 13, 2007 @ 2:15 pm
April 13th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
This made me think (whatever that is) of an anecdote about John von Neumann. After a public lecture he was asked by someone in the audience "but Prof von Neumann, surely you don't believe that machines could possibly think?". His answer (I'm paraphrasing): "If you can tell me exactly what thinking is, then I can build you a machine that can do just that."
Comment by Raevmo — April 13, 2007 @ 2:46 pm
April 13th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Many years ago, when I was in college I remember writing a paper that assessed psychology as a science. I remember coming up with a hierarchy that ranked sciences from the most reductionistic to the least. It went something like this: Physics and Chemistry are to be considered the most reductionistic, Biology holds an intermediate position, Psychology is the least reductionistic, which is why it's status as a science has always been considered to be somewhat tenative. The interesting thing about this hierarchy is the status of Biology holding an intermediate position. Maybe this explains, at least in part why there are such heated debates when reductionism in biology is challenged. Think of how much more powerful biology could be if it could match some of the predictibilty of Physics and Chemistry.
Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — April 13, 2007 @ 4:00 pm
April 13th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
raevmo wrote:
I suppose you're claiming that a complete and utter absence of regularity is impossible since the regular occurrence of complete chaos would be a regularity. But the occurrence of chaos need not be regular. It could be unpredictably intermittent, interspersed with bouts of order of varying kinds.
In any case, that doesn't answer my question because my question was: why should there be any regularities in nature? Given that chaos—either regularly or intermittently occurring chaos—is not what we observe, what accounts for that fact? Why should nature exhibit regularity rather than irregularity, and why should the regularity of nature be itself something that obtains regularly rather than irregularly?
Imagine a universe with two lumps of matter in it. At irregular intervals there pops in and out of existence in that universe an unpredictable number of additional lumps of matter with unpredictable shape, mass, and density.
Comment by stunney — April 13, 2007 @ 4:16 pm
April 13th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
raevmo wrote:
How would one tell if that machine was working properly?
Suppose science will some day show that conscious thought and making rational inferences, such as proving the Pythagorean theorem or deriving the General Theory of Relativity etc, are all purely material processes. Presumably making fallacious inferences and having irrational thoughts are also purely material processes. How do we decide which material processes are 'correct' and which are 'incorrect'?
Let's say the answer has the general form of, 'Material process A is correct if it represents material process B'.
How do we know if the representation is 'true', 'accurate', 'good', 'correct', etc?
Comment by stunney — April 13, 2007 @ 4:45 pm
April 13th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
That's a nice example. This could grow into quite a scenario if I keep asking questions about the properties of this universe and you keep providing more and more evidence of its irregularity.
OK, let's see where this goes. It seems that every coordinate in space can be in only two states: matter and non-matter. Then there seems to be the "lumpiness" or connectedness of matter.
Comment by Raevmo — April 13, 2007 @ 4:52 pm
April 13th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
If we knew exactly what thinking is, we could simply observe whether the machine operates according to those specs. A more traditional black box-like approach would be to apply a Turing test.
Comment by Raevmo — April 13, 2007 @ 5:03 pm
April 13th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Raevmo:
Um… nope. There are also zero point fluctuations and quantum superpositions to consider. As of current theory, a 'thing' can both be and not be at the same time, in exactly the same place and time. Per the matrix, that is…
Gravity works. So does chemistry. §;o)
Comment by Joy — April 13, 2007 @ 5:04 pm
April 13th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
That premise would certainly be my starting point. I'm not sure what you mean by 'correct' though.
Comment by Raevmo — April 13, 2007 @ 5:11 pm
April 13th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Joy:
I was responding to stunney's post on his hypothetical completely irregular universe, not our universe, which praise the Lord is regular.
Comment by Raevmo — April 13, 2007 @ 5:14 pm
April 13th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
Raevmo:
A "completely irregular" universe is either 50-50 over time, or it doesn't really exist because it keeps canceling itself out. 50-50 over time allows for all sorts of weirdness. Of course, if consciousness is in some way fundamental and universal, it could all as easily be illusion generated (or reality generated) by consciousness.
Doesn't look promising for determinists [reductionists] either way to me.
Comment by Joy — April 13, 2007 @ 5:47 pm
April 13th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
raevmo wrote:
How do we, or how does anything, 'observe' anything?
And how do we, or how does anything, know or rationally infer that such observation is accurate?
How do we, or how does anything, 'understand' the Turing test and know or rationally infer that it's being 'correctly' applied?
There could also be anti-matter.
Lumpiness could sometimes be due to Newtonian billiard ball-hood, and at other times be due to a Pauli -style exclusion principle. At random intervals the universe could switch from being Newtonian to being quantum mechanical. And at random intervals the magnitude of a Planck or basic quantum length could vary.
Comment by stunney — April 13, 2007 @ 8:00 pm
April 13th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
I wrote:
To which raevmo responded:
According to the materialist, all inferences are material processes. Hence both logically valid inferences and logically invalid inferences are material processes. The question I asked is how one can distinguish them in materialist terms.
From the premises that all men are mortal and that Socrates is a man, Freddie may infer (incorrectly as it seems to us), that Socrates is immortal; while Alison infers (correctly as it seems to us), that Socrates is mortal. For the materialist, both inferences are material processes. But what is the material difference that makes Freddie's inference incorrect and Alison's correct?
Let's say the answer is given in terms of some material facts about the brains of Freddie and Alison. But then the question repeats itself—why do those material facts make Freddie's inference incorrect and Alison's correct? We can even take the entire state of the material universe as the 'answer', and yet still ask why that state of the universe makes it the case that Freddie's inference was fallacious.
In short, it seems that no material fact entails what one might call a logical fact, such as the fact that if all men are mortal and if Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal. Because that is a logical fact regardless of whether Socrates ever exists and regardless of whether any men ever exist, and of whether all men, or some men, or no men are mortal.
Comment by stunney — April 13, 2007 @ 8:30 pm
April 13th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Deep philosophical questions to which I have no fully satisfactory answer at present. But feel free to enlighten me. As long as the answers aren't "magicmandunnit".
Comment by Raevmo — April 13, 2007 @ 8:30 pm
April 13th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
Replace "material(ist)" in this argument with "material(ist) + immaterial(ist)" or "material(ist) + immaterial(ist) + whateveritis(ist)". It doesn't make the problem go away.
There will always remain the problem of how a universe, whether there's an "immaterial" dimension to it or not, can make verifiable self-referential statements. You can always add another layer of super-supernatural ad infinitum, but the nature of the problem doesn't change. I draw the line at the smallest number of layers. Uncle Ockham told me so.
Comment by Raevmo — April 13, 2007 @ 8:51 pm
April 13th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
I wrote:
raevmo responded:
Why is magicmandunnit worse as an answer than magicmatterdunnit?
What's at issue is whether mind is reducible ontologically and explanatorily to matter.
The atheist complaint is that positing a creator of the universe which is endowed with reason and value because it is a mind, 'doesn't explain anything'. But this complaint is no better than a complaint to the effect that 'matter doesn't explain anything'.
Suppose that mind, upon which supervene the properties and phenomena of reason and value, is not reducible to matter. Suppose that rational and moral normativity inherent in personhood are ontologically basic. It won't do to then say, oh, but that doesn't explain anything! Because that would explain a lot—everything in fact.
Now the materialist will say that matter–however science finally or ideally conceives of it—will be found to explain a lot. Everything in fact. That's the claim. But if matter can't even explain rational observership and rational inference and rational agency, upon which the entire enterprise of science depends, then it begins to look like materialism will never explain everything–or, indeed, anything. For even matter itself is shot through with rational order and intelligibility; and yet rational order and intelligibility are not themselves bits of matter.
Comment by stunney — April 13, 2007 @ 8:58 pm
April 13th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
raevmo wrote:
You're missing the point. I don't think it is a 'problem'. It's only a problem if you try to give a materialist reduction of it. But I wouldn't try such a reduction.
The theist doesn't think that rational and moral mindhood needs to be or can be explained, if by 'explained' you mean 'explained in terms of something else which doesn't possess mindhood'.
It's the materialist who thinks mind, consciousness, reason, normativity, moral and aesthetic and emotional value, needs to be explained in terms of non-mind, non-reason, non-consciousness, non-normativity, non-value. The theist is saying that doesn't need to be done, nor can it be done; and that it's wrongheaded to think otherwise. The theist holds that it's ultimately mind that explains why matter exists and has the properties it has–it was intelligently designed. The mind of the creator is THE basic truth about reality, because it is itself the basic reality. All other realities reflect this basic truth by being themselves rationally ordered in their design. And some of these created realities are endowed with reason and value, and with the capacity for moral agency.
The explanation for that just is that a transcendent creative mind pre-eminently endowed with reason and value, is the fundamental ontological and explanatory fact about reality.
It is senseless to say that this 'doesn't explain anything' in precisely the same way that it would be senseless to say that positing impersonal material forces as the fundamental fact about reality, 'doesn't explain anything'.
Mind works this way…..consciousness, reason intention, purpose, knowledge, etc.
Matter works this way…occupying space, rest mass, inertial motion, etc etc.
Why hold that mindstuff is more 'mysterious' than matterstuff?
It strikes me that our conscious mental lives are the most obvious matter-of-fact taken-for-granted, intuitively indubitably self-evident realities there are, and that it's things like curved spacetime, energy fields, quarks, and suchlike that are the 'mysterious' things.
Comment by stunney — April 13, 2007 @ 9:25 pm
April 14th, 2007 at 12:28 am
JOHN_A_DESIGNER wrote:
Hi John,
I think most neuroscientists and neurophilosophers lean toward a physicalist account of conscious experience simply because physicalist explanations work so well for every other aspect of the mind besides conscious experience itself. It seems uneconomical to introduce a separate ontological category of "irreducible consciousness" to address the shortcoming — a little too much like a "consciousness of the gaps" argument.
On the other hand, the Hard Problem itself — the difficulty of explaining first-person subjective experience in terms of third-person objective phenomena — cannot be lightly dismissed, and so the search for a satisfactory answer continues.
Comment by keiths — April 14, 2007 @ 12:28 am
April 14th, 2007 at 12:44 am
Raevmo:
No we don't want to go there. Not when theorized unknown and unspecified pathways to life have the feel of alchemy. Why would any rational person impute intelligence behind a purposeful arrangement of nucleotides enabling symbolic coding except for the fact that when we observe similar symbolic patterns and identify their source we find intelligence? But this infers the possibility of the type of deep philosophical issues you don't like. So keep the faith and believe in the chemical magic known as abiogenesis.
Comment by Bradford — April 14, 2007 @ 12:44 am
April 14th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Hi Stunney,
Raevmo wrote:
Replace "material(ist)" in this argument with "material(ist) + immaterial(ist)" or "material(ist) + immaterial(ist) + whateveritis(ist)". It doesn't make the problem go away.
You wrote…
Non-Overlapping_Magisteria? (NOMA)
Do you feel the "materialist" is attempting to claim all of the overlapping magisteria? (OMA)
There isn't a conflict if we have Non-Overlapping_Magisteria.
That is where neither side attempts to claim they know they are "correct". I use the term "Truth" (capital "T")
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 14, 2007 @ 12:45 pm
April 14th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Hi Bradford,
You wrote…
By your sarcastic phrasing, it appears you believe the Other Side is trying to claim their methodology will eventually find all the answers.
The question is, are you suggesting an alternate methodology that will?
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 14, 2007 @ 12:58 pm
April 14th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
I doubt all the answers will ever be found and think it important to have open minds.
I like some of the ideas expressed here. In particular I believe practical results would more likely yield to the following approach than one based on historic relationships between organisms.
Comment by Bradford — April 14, 2007 @ 1:21 pm
April 14th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Hi Bradford,
You wrote…
Thank you for you very positive response to my question.
I can easily understand a push for a more holistic approach to problems. Personally, I think a balance of holism and reductionism is appropriate for all scientific endeavors, especially medicine.
While you have been consistent in your claim that a hierarchical structure to life doesn't automatically imply Common Descent, hopeful you can understand why others might be confused on that. And then there is stated goal of this idea you like…
That is a pretty lofty goal and I am not sure how it is compatible with the goal of Intelligent Design.
One of the reasons I pick on you so much with the "what is your proposal?" question is that you obvisously know a lot about the subject. And rather than argue with you point by point, I am truly interested in understanding how you are making the logical connection needed for your holistic view. In other words, how does your Big Picture work even if all of your base assumptions are correct?
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 14, 2007 @ 1:54 pm
April 14th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Thought Provoker wrote:
Yes, in the sense that if physical science deals only in physical facts, and if such facts do not comprise the only kind of fact there is, then something other than physical science will be needed to investigate nonphysical facts—for example, logical facts, mathematical facts, metaphysical facts, moral facts, and theological facts.
How could science—the discovery and explanation of physical facts—demonstrate that there are no nonphysical facts? If there are any such facts, science would be singularly ill-equipped to detect them. Hence asking for "˜scientific proof' of nonphysical facts is like a blind man demanding that the existence of visual sensations be proven by things he can taste, smell, touch, or hear.
Of course the central fact which grounds and mediates anyone's access to any fact whatsoever is the fact of rational consciousness. And the central observation we can make about the fact of rational consciousness is that it's unlike any physical fact we know. Indeed, consciousness, through which we encounter whole realms of the nonphysical such as rationality, morality, aesthetics, and meaning, is intrinsically unlike anything else in the physical universe, a fact reflected in physics textbooks which purport to explain everything about the universe but say nothing, far less explain anything, about consciousness.
Yes.
True. But, in my experience, it's not the theist who is typically denying the reality of physical facts. It's the atheist who is typically denying the reality of nonphysical facts. And often they're not even content with that—they attempt to ridicule those who believe in the reality of nonphysical facts by equating such a belief with a belief in magic. But of course belief in nonphysical facts such as logical, modal, and moral facts has been intellectually respectable for over two millenia, and continues to be.
Meantime, it's only fair to point out that materialists have a hard time accounting in their own terms for the central presuppositions of science–namely, rational observership, rational inference, and rational agency—without appearing to endow matter with magical properties.
Another major difficulty for materialists (which I've alluded to earlier in this thread) is to account for why matter appears to obey 'laws' or behave with regularity, laws and regularities of remarkable mathematical (and hence rationally intelligible) elegance and beauty. How can the matter now present in the universe control its own future, so to speak—-especially if we conceive of it as being devoid of teleology. If 'laws' are posited to explain regularities, must not they themselves be immaterial entities that transcend and govern the universe's material entities? And is it not the case that the only plausible candidates for being immaterial entities are only ever encountered as the contents of minds?
I don't think anyone is claiming to be omniscient. People engage in debate, however, not merely to pass the time or stave off boredom. They shouldn't, and normally don't, expect to discover or prove the 'Truth' in some grandiose sense; rather, they debate and evaluate which beliefs are worthy of acceptance; which beliefs are rationally warranted, or justifiable, or defensible, or plausible or otherwise adequate from our admittedly limited epistemic vantage point, and which are not.
Comment by stunney — April 14, 2007 @ 3:43 pm
April 14th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
Hi Stunney,
Your reply was pretty much what I expected you would say. Please take that as a compliment. You are consistent.
Unfortunately, it makes for an unexciting debate since I see nothing to argue.
But perhaps here is an entry…
As I indicated in my proposal and other comments, I think of myself as belonging in the Atheist-NOMA quadrant. I put you in the Religious-NOMA quadrant. You and I can coexist happily with no conflict.
When I say "Atheist", I don't mean I-know-God-doesn't-exist, because I don't. In fact, an argument could be made that I am "Agnostic" since I am open to the possibility of the existance of God along with fairies and orbiting tea-pots.
Now you suggest we debate to "evaluate which beliefs are worthy of acceptance". This is probably the source of our differences. I have what I call "ethics". They are not based on belief, they are based on a self-imposed code I feel is "rationally warranted, or justifiable, or defensible, or plausible or otherwise adequate from our admittedly limited epistemic vantage point".
Part of that code is that since no one can know the Truth (capital "T") all beliefs have an equal chance of being correct. If we extend the multiverse into the metaphysical then all beliefs are correct.
With NOMA, argument is futile since we will never know.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 14, 2007 @ 4:40 pm
April 14th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
TP, as I thought about a response to your question it became apparent that its scope entails too many details for a comment. However I thought it would make a good blog entry. Since the response consists of my personal views I'll likely address the topic at my blog.
Comment by Bradford — April 14, 2007 @ 8:43 pm
April 14th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Hi Bradford,
Thank you.
I look forward to reading your post no matter where it is.
For what it is worth, I think TT could use more posts about ID science and less about Culture War stuff.
But that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone by now.
Regards,
TP
P.S. I am cleaning up and adding to my blog (though "blog" is an overstatement). Here is the link.
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 14, 2007 @ 8:59 pm
April 14th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
I checked it out. There was some interest in that blog entry. I noticed an old nemesis there.
Comment by Bradford — April 14, 2007 @ 9:24 pm
April 14th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
Thought Provoker wrote:
Does that imply that you believe that one ought to keep one's beliefs consistent? That consistency is better than inconsistency? If so, would you describe such a belief in the merits of consistency as referring to, or being about, a physical fact or a nonphysical fact? Or as being a belief about no fact at all?
Well, let me try…
It would be no big news if we discovered that a Russian cosmonaut had brought a tea-pot on board the International Space Station. So I venture to suggest that you deem the existence of an orbiting tea-pot to be much more liable to be worthy of belief and something to which you're much more open, than the existence of fairies. But maybe not.
What I'm less clear about is why you place yourself in the atheist camp. Is there, for example, a reason for that self-designation? Or did you flip a coin about it, or adopt that view to please a girlfriend when you were 17 or 18?
I'm not sure why you use the word 'feel' in that last sentence. If you wrote the same sentence but substituted 'believe' for 'feel', would it not amount to the same thing? Of course, you would probably then want to omit the initial clause, 'They are not based on belief', in order to avoid self-contradictoriness (assuming you believe self-contradictory sentences ought to be avoided).
In other words, why not simply say that you have a self-imposed code that you believe is rationally warranted, or justifiable, etc? Or, if you don't think it's appropriate for you to state that you believe that, is it because you really believe that your self-imposed code is not rationally warranted, justifiable, etc?
I disagree that the unknowability of the 'Truth' entails that all beliefs have an equal chance of being correct (including the belief implied by my disagreement. To me, disagreement just is the assertion of inequality in the Chances of Correctness Sweepstakes.)
But, regardless of whether the entailment you allege holds, is it your belief that ID is as likely to be correct as evolutionary naturalism? And is it your belief that you, or anyone else, ought to try to prevent ID from being taught in the science classes held in US public schools? And, if so, what kind of fact does that latter belief refer to–in particular the 'ought' part of the belief; in what part of the NOMA quadrant would the existence, if any, of an 'ought' kind of fact fall into?
This may be the source of one puzzle I have about the utility and meaningfulness of such ideas. I was reading the other day the splendid book version of Peter van Inwagen's 2003 Gifford Lectures, 'The Problem of Evil'. In the chapter on 'The Idea of God', van Inwagen asserts his belief that God exists in all possible worlds (see pages 30 and 33, also 22-26 for background on the modal concept of possible worlds).
Well, taking your idea that in an metaphysically extended multiverse all beliefs are correct, then van Inwagen's belief that God exists in every possible world is correct. However, some atheists have argued not merely that God doesn't exist, but that God cannot exist—that God is an impossibility. They believe that God exists in no possible world. Your idea implies that the relevant beliefs of van Inwagen and of these atheists are both correct in a suitably extended conception of reality–a metaphysical multiverse in which every possible world exists. But, as noted, the beliefs of van Inwagen and the atheists are beliefs about what exists, or does not exist, in every possible world. And they are contradictory beliefs. 'Contradictory' means there is no possible world in which these beliefs are both true. Which I, not I think idiosyncratically, regard as a 'reductio ad absurdum' of your notion of all beliefs being correct, even in a metaphysically extended multiverse.
In other words, I regard such talk as literal nonsense, and hence as serving no useful function. So I'm somewhat puzzled by your seeming addiction to engaging in such talk.
It could be that you simply don't wish to engage in discussion of philosophical issues for your oft-mentioned Socratic reason, and use this (in my view rather transparently disingenuous) egalitarian attitudinizing towards philosophical beliefs to ward off such discussion. But this blog cannot help discussing such things. For example, the question, 'Should ID be taught in public schools', raises moral issues (note the 'should' in there); and it raises questions about what counts or qualifies as science and what doesn't, and why (which are central questions of the philosophy of science).
And, rather more importantly in my view, since the concept of an intelligent designer is closely connected to the concept of mind; and since that latter concept is a mainstay of contemporary philosophical disputes, and by implication of disputes over the criteria any science (such as biological science) should use to determine whether there's evidence for a mind or minds other than our own having ever been active in this world, then I don't see how one can pursue intelligent discussion of this blog's central topic without addressing philosophical issues.
And I think we can do that without thereby claiming to Know the Truth, just as Socrates did it in his day.
There is a dispute about what phenomena should and shouldn't be included under each magisterium. I don't see that argument as being futile. The magisteria don't define themselves automatically or ab initio.
The concept of mind, (and the related concepts of reason, consciousness, intentionality, etc) is currently the focus of an intense dispute about whether it can or can't be naturalized—that is, about whether mind is correctly deemed as being wholly or in part a possible object of natural science, and concomitantly about what its nature really is. This bears rather directly on which magisterium mind should belong to, and on whether ID can be a science even in principle. I think it's useful to discuss that.
I think it's also useful to discuss the possibility of a radical revision of the concept of science itself, a possibility canvassed by David Chalmers and Galen Strawson (I provide relevant quotes from their writings below), which again bears heavily on the whole topic of ID and on what the correct boundaries are for each magisterium.
What is also useful to discuss is the tendency of some within the scientific community to not limit themselves to scientific statements, but to attempt to imply that science 'proves' or otherwise supports the belief that life on Earth had no intelligent designer—a belief that I regard as having strictly speaking no scientific support whatsoever.
Here are the promised quotes from Chalmers and Strawson, in that order, with emphases added:
Comment by stunney — April 14, 2007 @ 10:59 pm
April 15th, 2007 at 1:11 am
Hi Stunney,
It is getting late and I have been adding to my blog. You might be interested in the NOMA post I just put up. Here is the link.
Please excuse any abrubtness in my reply but I didn't want to wait until tomorrow.
I wrote…
Your reply was pretty much what I expected you would say. Please take that as a compliment. You are consistent.
I meant consistent as in logically consistent, not stuck-in-the-mud consistent.
Sorry for the confusion.
I wrote…
When I say "Atheist", I don't mean I-know-God-doesn't-exist, because I don't. In fact, an argument could be made that I am "Agnostic" since I am open to the possibility of the existance of God along with fairies and orbiting tea-pots.
My practical choices are to say "I believe in God", without defining the term. "I am Agnostic", which is essentially the same as the first choice. Or, "I am an Atheist", which is more provocative and usually forces people to ask me why. I have learned not to be the one to bring up religion first, so I let others do it.
I didn't start answering with "I am an Atheist" until late in my adult life. I don't believe I ever used "I am an atheist" as a pick-up line.
At 17 I was a practicing Christian Scientist (as I raised). If you don't know the religion, you may find that its beliefs about mind over matter interesting. Even though Christian Scientists are more open to questioning than most religions, I felt constrained in my exploration. Therefore, I investigated many religions (visiting many churches). I found Unitarian Universalism and Judaism to be then most compatible religions. However, even they had some drawbacks.
I wrote…
Now you suggest we debate to "evaluate which beliefs are worthy of acceptance". This is probably the source of our differences. I have what I call "ethics". They are not based on belief, they are based on a self-imposed code I feel is "rationally warranted, or justifiable, or defensible, or plausible or otherwise adequate from our admittedly limited epistemic vantage point".
Let me correct the paragraph…
Now you suggest we debate to "evaluate which beliefs are worthy of acceptance". This is probably the source of our differences. I have what I call "ethics". They are not based on religious belief, they are based on a self-imposed code I beleive is "rationally warranted, or justifiable, or defensible, or plausible or otherwise adequate from our admittedly limited epistemic vantage point".
better?
Although I could say my code based on Unitarian Universalism belief if it would make you feel better to think of me as religious.
I will answer the rest tomorrow.
Regards,
TP
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 15, 2007 @ 1:11 am
April 15th, 2007 at 4:14 am
Thought Provoker wrote:
Oh, I don't believe I was confused. Actually, I was assuming 'consistent' was meant in the sense of logical consistency. I didn't give a thought to the other sense you mention.
And I was asking if you believe that (logical) consistency is better than, or preferable to, its opposite; and, if so, what kind of fact, if any, such a belief refers to, or is about—a physical or a nonphysical fact. The reason being, I wanted to know whether you are willing to help yourself to nonphysical facts while choosing to discuss only physical facts.
Comment by stunney — April 15, 2007 @ 4:14 am
April 15th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Hi Stunney,
What do you think of this…
There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual
This is the Christian Science Statement of Being,
I was raised as a Christian Scientist, I recited the above quote over countless Sundays and quite a few testimonial Wednesdays. I still agree with some aspects of this religious statement.
You wrote…
Based on what I think your definitions of the terms are, they are both on the philosophical side of the NOMA divide. So yes.
you wrote…
Yes, at least until the U. S. constitution is changed. In other comments we have been touching on the consistency concept. This is fundimental to my code of ethics. It is resonable to expect organisations and people to do what they say they will do. Therefore, for the reasons outlined in the Dover decision, ID (as embodied in the book Of Pandas and People) should be prevented for being taught by the entity (U.S.Government) that made a promise to prevent this kind of activity.
I consider it a valid point that teaching existance in school implies a claim to the single, OMA truth. That is why I have been expending effort in exploring thus. Did you check out my blog?
I don't claimed philosophical discussion is easy. Quite the opposite. It is too open for consideration of what our common senses would consider absurd.
In another thread, I am having a discussion with Salvador, I am stipulating that the impossible may be required. As in, something (Ultimate Observer) outside the multidimensional space-time continuum may have to exists in order to maintain internal consistency of that continuum.
We can word-smith these concepts in an attempt to tailor them to our biased viewpoints, but with