One Response to “Waiting for The Matrix”

1. Stephen Says:
   February 24th, 2008 at 8:38 pm

   I think that word "design" can be changed to "contrivance". Note that life depends on this contrivance, otherwise it would be unable to recognize its own affirmation found as a sense-certainty; and agreeing with Gene's "Design Matrix" of which I am 40 pages from the end. Therefore, design (or contrivance) is fundamental in both evolution and development. We may say "Natural-design", or "God-design", but both of these versions come with contrived attachments that have generated friction. It is better to use the word "design" alone, or "contrivance" alone, to find the better sense-certainty that does not carry the unwanted friction.

   Where would we be without our contrivances?

   All laws of nature are experiential; meaning they are first conceived in the mind, and only later are they empirically verified. Therefore, there are no laws of nature given as an absolute equation, even as all laws are represented by equations; they are only contrived as equations. What holds the law together, the right-hand side married to its left-hand side, is not the abstract ideality; rather the equation is discovered as a synthetic, and so it is not above the object-subject unity, and it is not above Kant's transcendental aesthetic. Kant's "thing in itself" could be well beyond the laws of nature, and so our laws of nature are provisional and have a limited range of application. Laws only provide mere conditions of necessity (derived from conservation principles that are found affirming Trinity/Logos/Tao while permitting a universal grammar - my own contrivance), while the question of sufficiency slips quietly away. Meaning was never contained in the chemistry of ink, rather meaning was felt sufficiently given the obvious contrivance thought to be intelligently designed. I don't think DNA is going to be any different!

   Honest scientists will admit to their limitations, but it does not follow that all scientists are this humble. There remains a tendency to over extend science into areas beyond science (like into philosophy), thereby forgetting that the laws of nature (given as abstracted equations) are not above the object-subject unity. If you need an example of an offender you need only look to the likes of Richard Dawkins who now claims to be an expert in religion. Nevertheless, we live in a reality where both ethical behavior and beauty are permitted and these areas are well beyond what science usually studies; even as scientists have the responsibility to study reality the way reality is and not the way reality ought to be for science, lest we fall for scientism and the perpetual equivocations that come with a heated emotionality that is found face to face with contrivance.

   There are many word games; e.g., changing blue to red, and red to blue, leaving everything else the same and solving nothing (including the heated emotionality). Likewise, the said difference between a neo-vitalism and panpsychism is the same word game. The vital is merely pointing to the ineffable, pointing to an innateness that underwrites our words in their heated expression; the vital could as well represent proto-consciousness.

   Look to the said science that said to have rejected vitalism and you will find only word games hung up on mere conditions of necessity. In fact, life is unexplained by chemistry, and hence vitalism has not been defeated despite the unfounded claims that only pretend (by under-handed contivance) to have all the answers. Where are the science papers that claim to have put an end to vitalism?

   It is self evident that we feel the ineffable, otherwise there would never be word games that source Kant's 3rd antinomy. Because we feel the antinomy it is that the feeling is speaking of the innate, and this is as close to proto-consciousness that we need to go. Something escapes a contrived literalism that pretends to have all the answers, and in that great escape we find the answer that we are looking for. The universal grammar is found affirming Trinity (the giver of words).

Comment by Stephen — February 24, 2008 @ 8:38 pm

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