Quantifiable Knowledge
I am of the belief that, as people age past middle-age and into deepening maturity, the kinds of things they learn grow beyond the quantifiable knowledge that defines us as working members of society, words, names of things, facts, figures, conventions of politeness, technical skills, and become instead a deeper form of understanding, lessons learned from situations that may unfold over months or years, or may still be unfolding. And because every individual has a unique set of experiences (because that is part of what it means to be an individual) all of these life lessons are different, and yet they all reveal different aspects of a fundamental set of truths. So it becomes a challenge of vocabulary and semantics to translate between the meanings of different perspectives of deeper wisdom.
But to claim that knowledge ends at the boundaries of a scientific experiment would only be meaningful if we all lived every moment of every day in a laboratory. No, a test tube. The same test tube. So we might as well try to learn all of the lessons that life teaches us. And wherever one experiences the greatest aversion is usually where one has the most to learn. Because there is no need for what is understood to cause an emotional response.
But to claim that knowledge ends at the boundaries of a scientific experiment would only be meaningful if we all lived every moment of every day in a laboratory. No, a test tube. The same test tube. So we might as well try to learn all of the lessons that life teaches us. And wherever one experiences the greatest aversion is usually where one has the most to learn. Because there is no need for what is understood to cause an emotional response.
Comments (97)
I agree with the sentiment, but I don’t know if even the firmest propagandists of ‘scientism’ would put it that way. It’s more the way that the ‘scientific worldview’ filters through to what everyone thinks is the case. That the universe is mechanical, that life arises by chance, that humans are no different to animals, that reasoning is no different to computation. It shows up in these kinds of underlying sentiments.
Is that wisdom? Not really. If you live long enough and have an average memory, you see things over and over again.
:up:
It's like the same tune played on a horn, a tuba, a saxophone. For my money, what you are saying above is one of those fuzzy but important truths. To manifest a grasp of that truth is to happily invent a bridge-language in a friendly conversation, to want to understand and be understood more than one wants to establish 'my' pet terminology.
'I'm OK, you're OK, but let's learn from one another to be a little more OK.'
Or maybe it is?
Yes. Repetition compulsion is pretty powerful.
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[quote=Unknown]Evolution is JUST A THEORY[/quote]
Scientists have to realize this simple truth. They can't deny it for the simple reason that a better "theory" will immediately and with minimal to no resistance knock Darwin's "theory" of evolution off the pedestal its been put on for nearly 200 years now and counting.
How so? An example.
It would only be right to make assertions like this if reality was merely physical.
Google ‘the popperazi’. Suggests that ‘string theory’ comprises ‘science overstepping its mark’.
Why would you bother with that challenge?
More people than just scientists have claimed for millennia "there is no god" so that's not an example of science overstepping its boundaries.
Scientists study 'the reality of nature' and explain this with precise approximations called "theories" which they test with controlled experiments that compel them to revise their findings. Scientific understanding is deliberately fallible, approximate, defeasible and thereby self-corrective; the results are public, repeatable, measurable and reliable. No doubt it's the shallowest form of understanding there is except for all of the others our species has conjured-up in the last several millennia.
As for claims about "the nature of reality": that's merely speculative and anyone can and does play in the metaphysical sandbox; again, not an example of the overstepping of science.
Well, whatever "reality" is, it is also inescapably physical, and any non-physical "understanding" implies an explanation of how the physical is manifest and its function in some greater non-physical scheme of things. Since there are as many "non-physical realities" as there are 'mythologies pantheons religions theologies mysticisms & woo-of-the-gaps pseudo-theories' and yet only one physical (aspect of?) reality which allows for reliable repeatable public results, science opportunistically digs wells in the physical where it's far more likely to find water than in the endless desert of non-physicality. Perhaps the physical is "merely" the tip of the iceberg of reality (à la Gnosticism); that speculative possibility, however, is not denied by scientists and science, in fact, endeavors to discover the limits of the physical, that is, the lapses in physical laws – "the cracks" which are, as a poet sang, "how the light gets in."
It is said that ‘desperate problems call for desperate solutions’. If the prospect of infinite parallel worlds is a solution, then what’s the problem? How can something be so desperately out-of-whack as to require the sliding-doors answer of Hugh Everett III? Why, that would be the fact that ‘a measurement’ seems to effect the outcome of an experiment purely by the act of observation thereby undermining the sacred tenet of the ‘mind-independence’ of phenomena and suggesting a ‘fundamental role for consciousness’ :yikes: . That is the ‘desperate problem’ which the bomb-throwing alcoholic Everett offered a solution to, and despite the fact that Neils Bohr himself would never hear a word of it, it is now the preferred ‘interpretation’ of many physicists.
Quoting 180 Proof
You do come up with the occasional gem.
Yeah, Peter Woit’s book on string theory was called ‘Not Even Wrong’.
And as Kuhn points out, these are not all part of the same paradigm. Einstein never accepted quantum theory. Schrodinger's cat was making a rhetorical point, it's arguably not part of science at all. So they're not all part of one picture of the world, or of one worldview. So if what you're saying is, 'nothing beats scientific method', then sure! But the question is not that. It's the role of science in normative judgement. And that has restricted scope; it's restricted to those objects you can be objective about, something which you can measure and quantify - which leads back to the question in the OP.
Your issue is, I hope you don't mind me saying, you're still completely wedged in the Science V Religion dichotomy. You think everythihg has to be one or the other. Actually there are many scientists who have, let's say, a very holistic attitude, who are not all 'scientistic' - as you say! But if you continue to dichotomize what you see as the two sides, then you're going to be forked.
I am heading into late middle age. I don't think I have learned anything much from the passing of time or experience. I'm not sure how I would test this. Memory? Even more fallible than emotions. What I have always thought is that our emotional reactions are unreliable and are barely understood to our own selves. We may be less influenced by our emotions as we age but that is a moot point. In making decision I look for good reasons and evidence. I may be better at doing this with age but I really can't say for certain.
Non sequitur.
Not at all, my friend. Rather it's the role – adaptivity – of 'evidence-based knowledge-claims' as compared to 'evidence-free belief-claims' in normative judgment.
My issue, to put it in my own words if you don't mind, is I am committed, with Kantian severity, to demarcating the Scientific & Philosophical discursive practices (re: Spinoza's 2nd & 3rd kinds of knowledge) from pseudo-scientific & pseudo-philosophical fantasies (re: Spinoza's 1st kind of knowledge).
It is not at all a non sequiter. The ‘Copenhagen Interpretation of Physics’ and the ‘Schrodinger’s Cat’ thought experiment/parody are part of a paradigm shift relative to earlier physics, a complete revolution regarding fundamental conceptions of reality. (A paradigm of a paradigm shift, you could say!) And neither of them, which you try and appropriate in support of your argument, are ‘evidence based’ - they’re both types of interpretation. People see the same evidence, but there’s enormous differences in interpretation, in what they say the evidence means. And that is not a matter of science, obviously - otherwise there could be no such divergences of view.
How on earth are you interpreting 'science' such that practicing it cannot include more than one interpretation of the raw data?
The subject I referred to was arguments over the string theory and the interpretation of quantum physics. The differences in interpretation are irreconcilable. Sure, they’re all advocated by scientists, but not all of them can be true as they’re contradictory. There is scope for interpretation but not all of them can be right, and deciding between them may not be a matter for science.
Quoting 180 Proof
There are some scientists who say ‘string theory’ is not science, will never be validated or falsified by experiment. That’s why Woit called his book on it ‘Not even Wrong’. There are others who say that it science. So you have no scientific consensus that string theory is in fact what you say it its. At worst, it’s not ‘physics based mathematical metaphysics’, but mathematical woo - just the kind of thing you claim to abjure.
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Yes, science is a method and a body of incomplete and approximate facts. It isn't meant to be an ultimate truth, just one of many tools we should employ in the search for ultimate truths.
Or it may be Hempel's Dilemma. But, never mind, you can put the 'science NOT religion' stamp on it, and that will do, right?
That a connection exists maybe true but a chain is only as strong as its weakest link and the theory of evolution is, as creationists insist, "just another theory" among many others I suppose. Scientists. fortunately or not, are sending out mixed signals on this score - some like Richard Dawkins vehemently maintain that Darwin's theory is a "truth" and others like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Lawrence Krauss admit that a scientific "theory" is only a tentative explanatory framework, liable to revision or even, sometimes, to expunction.
For what it's worth, my personal opinion is that scientisim's bedrock foundation is a firm conviction that science is a, the sole dealer/purveyor/agent of "truth" which is clearly not true.
Some would say the sole article of faith required is absolute commitement to the non-existence of God.
That's a fine point. I suppose scientism is just a wolf (atheism) in sheep's (science's) clothing.
On a different note, your little exchange with @180 Proof reminded me of a video interview of actual string theorists and though they spoke of string theory in glowing terms they did make it a point to mention its fatal flaw viz. it makes no verifiable/falsifiable claims that could be lab-tested. In a Popperian sense, this definitely is a serious setback for string theory for it relegates what to me is a very promising mathematical model to pseudoscience (woo-woo). The only thing that keeps physicists from abandoning string theory is its similarity to a really powerful idea in science - Einstein's theory of relativity. I can see string theorists telling themselves, "we're on the right track!" and their detractors going, "maybe they're on to something". Einstein was no ordinary person.
Don't know about scientism as opposed to privileging science. But there are many secular humanists - advocates of science who would argue that science provides the best models of reality based on the evidence available and makes no proclamations about truth. It is a tool, no more. To say there is no God or to say that there are no other truth sources does not fit with many secular humanist science geeks I know.
Google definition of "fact": a thing that is known or proved to be true.
I guess to err is human...
By the way, I consider Richard Dawkins to be one of the greatest living luminaries of our times.
If you're dispassionate about it, though, 'science' provides no particular ground for 'humanism'.
You know the Italian Renaissance is said to be the seeding ground for humanism, right? That magnificent heretic, Pico Della Mirandola, and his Oration on the Dignity of Man? That Marcello Ficino produced the first complete Latin translation of Plato? Both were deeply steeped in the classical tradition, and in both, humanity was seen as a microcosm, an image of the Universe - their humanist counterpoint to the Church's 'imago dei'. Both skirted heresy - they questioned ecclesiastical dogma, but they were still firmly humanistic in their philosophy, because humanity retained a role in the cosmic drama.
There's nothing like that in post-Enlightenment humanism. From Russell's 'accidental collocation of atoms', to Hawkings' 'chemical scum', to Daniel Dennett's 'moist robot', we are just the byproduct of a process that had no prevision of any end. There couldn't be an end, because the process is purposeless. So don't believe that modern 'secular humanism' is actually humanistic - whatever humanism it retains, is from the dying embers of the Christian culture that gave rise to it.
Quoting TheMadFool
Like a ship in a bottle, constructed so as to look as if it had been built there.
I think evolution is a fact too but I don't consider it capital T truth.
Gravity waves were unfalsifiable for a century or more yet not "woo woo", you know why? Because in principle they were always testable, but the technological means to do so were lacking until recently. Same with string theory: the energy required to test it are far beyond even foreseeable technological capabilities at the moment but it is in principle testable nonetheless. Neither "pseudo-science" (falsified and not the best explanation available e.g. "Lamarckism") nor "woo woo" (unfalsifiable in principle and doesn't explain anything that it purports to explain e.g. "Jungian Synchronicity"). Though I'm not persuaded of its approach compared to, say, Rovelli's RQM, I hold that string theory purports to explain a great deal (re: quantum gravity) but that so far there aren't any technically feasible ways to falsify its explanatory model (i.e. science).
Because the project of life is to live well, and what that means exactly is a mystery that can only be discovered through living. And there are not enough moments in a single life to do it justice. So we need to develop a lexicon for sharing the complex understandings that each of us uniquely develops. That's why mythologies exist.
Everyone has a perspective, and there is a reason for that perspective. So even if the perspective itself isn't objective, for example, it can still be meaningful and valuable.
Those arguments are regularly made but I think it would be a mistake to adopt such a reductive view of today's secular humanism. It's a well established tradition (really just progressive politics without God) with some diversity of views. And no doubt every cause has its dogmatic dick heads.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure. I studied Pico's Oration and that fecund period 30 years ago. But everything comes from somewhere else, just as Zoroastrian ideas influenced Judaism. Satan came to us from there too, but it didn't stop Christian theology and literature manufacturing new ideas for Old Nick. Values of empathy, justice and human dignity are as old as humanity and so 'secular' humanism is not such a big leap.. or fall.
From what you write it sometimes seems your chief gripe with scientifically derived secularism is its ugly aesthetics and sometimes brutal language. Are we just jumped up pond scum? What is fascinating to me is that people like Dawkins love their architecture, classical music and poetry and great literary works. They spend a lot of time immersed in the numinous. I don't think their scientism (which I don't and can't share) is as limited as is sometimes insinuated. I believe Dennett and Dawkins probably have significantly rich inner and cultural lives of no less a kind than say, one of the better Archbishops of Canterbury or my local Rabbi.
You point to the CCP as the future of secular humanism? Why is it not the future of capitalism? Or the future of politics? Or the future of the Democrat party? That's no more serious an insight than the future of religion being Islamic State. Actually... I think this last one may be right. :razz:
Ok. So if you repeatedly mistreat people in the pursuit of success, will you ultimately reap some kind of negative reward? Is that a fact? It's at least as important as an anomalous muon precession frequency in the human world. Probably much more so.
Maybe such 'human' facts are only statistically true, true in some cases. That's the case in objective science too.
This is kind of the whole point. How exactly do you quantify knowledge? Is it measured by the salary that it facilitates? Or is it in the types of things that you do with that salary? Or the way you use your free time?
All I am doing is reporting what my memory and impressions tell me. It may well be wrong but it is all we can do.
Maybe speaking in terms of "knowledge" is problematic, in terms of trying to find criteria that fall under this term. In English, this word is a bit different it's not the same to say "I know how to walk" or "I know my self" as opposed to something like "I know the history of neoliberalism" or "I know Schopenhauer", etc.
How do we apply this term to actual people? I've met people who "know" a lot about manual stuff: plumbing, fixing broken machines but who aren't familiar with astronomy nor 20th century history. Yet the certainly have something I lack.
And the other way around too, some people "know" astronomy very well, but can't fix a broken desk.
I think we'd need to use a series of words that try to capture what it is you're trying to quantify. Because one problem would be to ask, then what does not count as knowledge?
Well, somewhere between "all we can do" and all we do do lies knowledge.
Yes, one wonders where philosophers would be without farmers. And yet there is little philosophy of farming.
This was something I always liked about monastic orders. Historically they have been, to the extent possible, self-sufficient communities, with each individual participating very broadly in all duties, regardless of specialization. Specialization is like a...reward.
It can be. But life is multi-specialized, so we have to branch out.
But your question is a good one, it's just really hard to answer in quantifiable terms.
Btw, a fellow working-class, Catholic-raised Bronx, wiseass who called common sense "bullshit" on the religious outlook (not a word about "science"):
https://youtu.be/8r-e2NDSTuE :halo: :naughty:
I'm not as informed as I'd like to be on string theory. What exactly is string theory? I only recall that it, employing higher dimensions, succeeds in unifying gravity with quantum mechanics. I also remember a video featuring American theoretical physicist Brian Greene making statements that string theory weaves a coherent story around the four forces (fundamental interactions) which to physicists is a big deal I suppose.
Thanks for clarifying why string theory isn't falsifiable. It looks like that it can be disproved even if, for the moment, only in principle. What's missing is the technology to make the string theory experiments a reality. I wonder what the level of urgency is though. Given string theory is one that's widely publicized as a candidate conceptual framework for The Theory Of Everything (TOE), shouldn't scientists be racing full-throttle towards developing the technology to test string theory? The fact this isn't the case is puzzling and also amusing too: we know what the holy grail of physics is (TOE), we've found an object that could very well be it (string theory) but we need some kind of foolproof method of authentication and that's where this exciting story of discovery is left unfinished. What's up with that? On second thought, don't answer.
Life doesn't teach lessons. It's up to us to learn them.
Some people are naturally inclined to mediation and translation.
Giordano Bruno's speculation of "thousands of other suns with other earths" (which got him burned at the stake in 1600 CE), it took nearly four centuries before humans walked on the moon and the Hubble telescope, etc had found apparently Earth-like exoplanets around distant stars; likewise, the problem of testing "string theory" is currently intractable, and besides there are other candidates such as "LQG" / "RQM" being worked on toward prospective experimental testing. (NB: Carlo Rovelli, Sean Caroll, Kip Thorne, David Deutsch, Frank Wilczek, Max Tegmark, et al are among the current popularizers of fundamental physics that I've found most informative.)
My understanding is that the energies involved to show that 'spacetime is quantized" with these models, or that it is not, are still orders of magnitude higher than can be produced. i suspect scientists are looking for extremely high-energy naturally occurring events out somewhere in the universe to be used as "living laboratories" just as they'd found and used colliding neutron stars & black holes which generated gravity waves they could then detect as GR predicts. And nagging problems like "inflation" (re: Einstein's fudge factor aka "my greatest mistake" the cosmological constant), "dark energy" & "dark matter" also need to be solved too in order to complete a ToE, so "string theory", though popularized for almost the last two decades by Brian Green et al isn't the only, or even most, promising game in town. Anyway, that's my oversimplistic layperson's understanding of the situation at the moment.
Sure. But it has no warrant in their philosophy. Whatever love they have for it is purely personal. That’s one of the glaring internal contradictions in their writing. I’ve heard Dawkins argue that language is like an elaborate form of the peacock’s tail, it’s main purpose is successful procreation. I've seen Dawkins acknowledge that darwinism is a terrible social philosophy. He doesn't seem to understand that philosophy itself is one of the things that is dissolved in 'Darwin's dangerous idea'. He's too philosophically naive to understand the philosophical implications of his own writing.
Quoting Tom Storm
After I wrote that post, I deleted that sentence, as I thought it a bit rash. But the rhetorical point is, in the CCP you’re looking at a culture that has no constitutional recognition of the notion of human rights. Citizens are thoroughly subordinated to the state. And I’m of the view that the origin of human rights in Western culture was with Christian social philosophy. Where did the idea that 'every individual has innate worth' originate? Certainly not from science.
Quoting 180 Proof
I think Thomas Nagel's Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion is germane in the context.
In fairness to Dawkins I suspect he is more sophisticated than this. But he has become immersed and besmirched in an anti fundamentalist warrior groove which is, by definition, brutal and unnuanced work and limits his oeuvre. I think fighting this form of harmful religion remains pretty important work and needs to be picked up by someone. Philosophy will continue regardless.
Humanism can stand apart from religions without problems. It does so without issue all over the world. Not having 'a warrant' is an old fashioned frame for this. Humans are hard wired for empathy and system building. Without empathy we couldn't raise children. From this we build social conventions and codes of conduct. Or secular humanism.
And what exactly is the Christian world view? Is it burning witches, or stoning to death gay people? Is it pogroms against Jews? Pedophilia in the Catholic church? Is it the KKK - a strong and pious Christian organization? Not sure that the 'humanism' inherent in the Gospels can be relied upon to cut though. Secularism has often saved Christianity from barbarism and prejudice.
If you argue the point that the impulse to care for our fellow creatures can only come from a place of higher consciousness, you need to demonstrate this other than by inference. The evidence suggests that people care for their fellow creatures without requiring a transcendent foundation and people who do have such a bedrock, do not seem to object to hatred, murder and genocide.
And yes, the real question - the fundamental nature of reality and consciousness - remains unanswered. If this happens during my lifetime and the results require a shift in my thinking, I will make adjustments. In the meantime I am more concerned by how people behave rather than the origins of their beliefs.
I think a concomitant fear of evolutionary naturalism and atheism propels Nagel and many others. Aesthetically and emotionally the notion of there not being a god, or some kind of higher consciousness is an anxiety and preoccupation I hear expressed more often than I can count.
I still don't buy Nagel's argument and never have. I've been a nonbeliever since I was 15, came out of the closet, against the real and ever-present terror to not conforming, in my strict Catholic high school religion class junior year, and during class, not from "fear of religion" but from, if anything like fear, my fear of being gullible and ignorant. Nagel talks out of his bunghole in this essay (and quite a few others). As George Carlin points out in that video link, the Bible in particular and "sacred scriptures" in general traffic mostly in the most outrageous bullshit (Harry Frankfurt), or in other words, 'utterances made without any regard for corroborable differences between true and untrue statements'.
I'm not an nonbeliever because I've been duped by "evolutionary naturalism"; it's the other way around: I'm a Naturalist (re: explanations – Physicalist re: processes (e.g. "mind") & Materialist re: events, things, relations, voids) because I'm a nonbeliever who rejects supernatural entities (& stories about them) as truth-claims because, in every instance (I'd already found in my teens, for fuckin' Christ's sake!), claims thereof are uncorroborable.
Strawman. Bunghole's for shitting not talking, sir, try to desist. I've no "faith" position at all and have only said that I reject "supernatural entities", etc and nothing about "the non-existence" of anything in my previous post. What I've argued elsewhere is that theism is untrue but not that some "g/G does not exist".
What I'm trying to establish is why everyone would have some perspective on how to live life well. All that everyone past middle age has done is lived life. There's no reason to believe any have done so well, in fact most seem to have done so appallingly badly and continue to. I'm wondering what you think their insights are going to contribute the your project of living live well.
Well said. The issue here is quite easy to resolve, in fact. If @Wayfarer can explain string theory without any reference to established an universally agreed on models of physics then we can accept that it is just like a religion, otherwise (and it will, of course be otherwise) it is very unlike religion in that it postulates from a basis of very sound knowledge. Knowledge unavailable to the layman but which demonstrably satisfies the requirement of universal applicability through predictable results.
There's a massive difference between taking what we know and conjecturing an answer to the remaining questions within its framework (string theory), and taking what we desperately want to be the case and elbowing it into what we now know by claiming everything's a metaphor (religious apologetics).
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Or, let's say, without any problems that the religious world didn't also have.
[quote=Feuerbach]
I...let religion itself speak; I constitute myself only its listener and interpreter, not its prompter. Not to invent, but to discover, “to unveil existence,” has been my sole object; to see correctly, my sole endeavour. It is not I, but religion that worships man, although religion, or rather theology, denies this; it is not I, an insignificant individual, but religion itself that says: God is man, man is God; it is not I, but religion that denies the God who is not man, but only an ens rationis, – since it makes God become man, and then constitutes this God, not distinguished from man, having a human form, human feelings, and human thoughts, the object of its worship and veneration. I have only found the key to the cipher of the Christian religion, only extricated its true meaning from the web of contradictions and delusions called theology; – but in doing so I have certainly committed a sacrilege. If therefore my work is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism – at least in the sense of this work – is the secret of religion itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature.
[/quote]
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/essence/ec00.htm
In other words, Christianity was an impure, implicit, & confused humanism.
Giordano Bruno :up: :clap: RIP "bro"
Thanks for putting the issue I raised into (the right) perspective. The timeline of science, though at times a rapid succession of discovries, seems to also consist of prolonged effort spanning over decades and centuries and perhaps even millennia.
Quoting 180 Proof
I see. So, the situation ain't as bad as I've been thinking it is. Astronomy then will play a huge role in string theory as I've been told the energies of cosmic events - black holes, supernovae, etc. - are colossal. Perhaps string theorists should tie up with astronomers and do what's the most sensible thing to do - wait and watch, fingers crossed.
My take on this is to separate the scientist and the philosophy they happen to have.
In some cases, I speculate/suspect that it's critics' own scientism that makes too much of scientists' non-scientific metaphysical remarks, wants to mix 'em with/as the science. Because it wants some nonscience to function as science.
Well, there are definitely lots of people who make mistakes when they choose things they believe to be in their best interests. Plato says no one knowingly desires the bad, and I think the vast majority of people can be said to be living their life according to the principle of choosing what they think will be in their best interest. I'd say that aligns with the general description of choosing to live well.
I don't disagree that a lot of people are not successful at this though. I'd say relative success at the project of living well would be good evidence of having attained some measure of wisdom.
Right. Seems at odds with...
Quoting Pantagruel
and
Quoting Pantagruel
and
Quoting Pantagruel
I have great aversion to learning from people who's lives seem like they're not living well, and many aspects of 'living well' (though not all of them) are perfectly quantifiable. So if we accept that this wisdom has effects on life choices and outcomes it becomes certainly filtered, and in some cases directly quantifiable. If we don;t accept that, then there seems little point in acquiring it since your life will demonstrably be no better for having done so.
Of course I can’t ‘explain string theory’. Where that came in, was the question of whether science ‘oversteps its mark’ and my claim that such speculative physics might well do that. And there are heated arguments within science as to whether string theory is a scientific theory or not.
The article I first referred to is this one https://www.philosophersmag.com/footnotes-to-plato/77-string-theory-vs-the-popperazzi
which is by a pretty wily philosopher of science, Massimo Piggliuci, and worth a read. (Although of course I understand that if I recommended it, you'll say there's likely to be something seriously wrong with it on that account :-) .)
Quoting Tom Storm
OK there probably is no such view as a monolithic or undifferentiated structure, but the point was with respect to the origin of the idea that ‘all individuals have unconditional worth’. That was certainly not a tenet of the ancient world until the ‘Christian revolution’ came along. Respect for individual persons for their own sake is, I contend, a product of Christian social philosophy.
Quoting Tom Storm
According to you, and others here. But what if this had been discovered, and was known to, previous philosophical traditions - what would it take for them to communicate that to us? Could it be communicated in the abstract, in third-person terms, like a formula or a method? Or does it require a kind of first-person participation which is different in kind to a third-person science?
What grounds are there for assuming that "consciousness" is (something) "fundamental"?
"Fundamental nature of reality" seems redundant like 'gigantic stature of giants'. Whatever it is, a reality, at minimum, is a manifestation of the real (e.g. order within disorder (e.g. wake of an event (e.g. eye of a hurricane))). The real of reality is immanent, ineluctable and necessarily contingent – what R.G. Collingwood calls (its) "absolute presuppositions" and, therefore, this is not a question that implies an answer (i.e. it's not propositional).
Why those presuppositions? Well, for starters, cite an example of 'a reality' lacking, or opposite of, any or all of them without contradiction or incoherence which, thereby, calls them into question. (No doubt a line of inquiry for another thread.)
I hear you and I get it. And I can only imagine that you must find it somewhat frustrating to keep articulating a position that seems to be circumvented. We (or at least I) don't seem to be hearing it very well. It does seem to come down to kind of Two Cultures debate.
I appreciate hearing clearer articulations of your position. Essentially if seems to come down to what we consider to be knowledge and how this can be found. I can't find a way to a contemplative understanding of higher consciousness but I do take these ideas seriously precisely because it is not a path I would naturally take.
None. You're probably correct. Try as I might, I use words here with cavalier imprecision (and without any philosophical education) so I was just placing it in there to underscore 'consciousness' (it looked so bare on its own), without considering for a second whether there were any fundamentals involved.
Experiential grounds. Every single phenomenon we experience arises into/fades out of consciousness. Our thoughts, feelings, percepts.. and literally everything else seems protean in nature, while consciousness remains the stable backdrop of all experience. Does this not indicate that consciousness is fundamental?
Thank you, kind of you to say so. I'm resigned to being one of the forum idealists even though I know it's a minority position. But I continue to learn, not only from the objections I get, but also from better trying to articulate my own view and also by finding correspondence with the texts.
Quoting 180 Proof
I'll have a crack at that. It is because before anything can be known, before any claim made and position taken, then I must be, in order to consider. Precisely the meaning of Descartes' famous argument, anticiplated by Augustine millenia earlier:
(Augustine, On the Trinity 10.10.14 quoted in Richard Sorabji Self, 2006, p.219).
The problem is, as always, that mind - I prefer that term to 'consciousness' - has a double aspect, both as something to know, but foremost as that which knows. And 'that which knows' is epistemically prior to any cognitive act, for the reasons given in the above quote (which again are quite Cartesian in nature).
Quoting 180 Proof
Why 'contingent'? And 'contingent' upon what? If everything is contingent/conditioned, then what is its basis or foundation? If that question is situated in the tradition of Western metaphysics, or for that matter even in the context of Indian philosophy, it is a question that has been entertained for millenia, and remains current to this day. Seems to me that the notion of 'contingent' can't stand on its own, because contingency always implies something to be contingent on. (Which points towards some version of the cosmological argument.)
Let me also suggest that according to many esteemed philosohers, the ordinary human waking consciousness is in some sense delusional or mistaken in some fundamental way. And furthermore that there may be correctives to that (mis)take other than those anticipated by science, those being the therapeutic practices which are supposed to be the curriculum of philosophy itself.
And what corroborates these "experiential grounds"? Uncorroborated they're merely subjective assumptions or dispositions.
So what? What about the astronomically vast domains of phenomena that we (not only do not) cannot "experience" and upon which "consciousness" – however it is explained – necessarily, unconsciously, supervenes ... like a single grain of sand on a wind-swept slope of a dune somewhere in the Sahara?
You've got that backwards, I think. "Consciousness" is only a dinghy ("remains ... stable") tossed on ocean waves ("protean ... backdrop").
Not in the least. All this indicates is that "consciousness" is/may be an epiphenomenon (or hyper-developed forebrain spandrel) of 'ecology-bound information systems' complex enough for intermittenly sustained 'self-awareness' (or intentional agency). "Fundamental" things or processes (e.g. entropy, gravity, vacuum energies) constitute embodied "consciousness" (since there is not (cannot be) A N Y evidence of it being "disembodied") – which, by the way, it's a dynamic process and N O T a non-dynamic thing or abstract object.
No, the context was comparing faith in 'string theory' to faith in God/Religious claims. The two are completely dissimilar for the reasons given. String theory is a conjecture about what follows from established universally applicable principles in physics. It may not ever be testable, but it may - there are arguments about that (and what's more those arguments themselves are based on the universally applicable principles of physics and how they might apply to the possibility of testing string theory). See how these principles of physics both inform and limit the discussion at every level - it's no coincidence that those engaged in it are all physicists. The conjecture of a layman would be demonstrably less reasonable than that of an expert.
With faith in God there is no such foundation. There's no universally applicable principle from which 'God' is one of the possible derivations. The nature of 'God' is not constrained by a set of universally applicable principles, nor is the conversation about what type of theory it is. Which is why every man and his dog can (and usually does) have a theory about 'God'. There's no body of universally applicable knowledge from which 'God' arises as a reasonable conjecture. An expert's conjecture is not demonstrably more reasonable than that of a layman.
It's just yet another argument from negation. "String theory isn't proper science, therefore it must be just the same as any other woo". It's the same issue you dodged in the other thread. Just because science (or the claims of scientists) don't meet some standard, doesn't put them in the same category as everything else which doesn't meet that standard, there is more than a single standard by which we differentiate the reasonableness of conjecture.
Not what I said. Also, the article I linked to pointed out that whilst the parties to the dispute may be physicsts, it would be relevant to include philosophers in the debate, so as to help delineate what is and what isn't a scientific hypothesis.
Quoting Isaac
And you know this, how? It's an article of faith on your part, or rather, a tenet of non-belief, the mirror image of a believer. You say 'well, if it's not an engineering problem, then there's no other kind of knowledge or philosophy that will be relevant.' But you show no interest in any of them, or any knowledge of them. Done talking to you Isaac, don't waste your time further.
They are corroborated in the same way as any naturalistic claim. By observation and consensus. You can affirm my experince by having a similar observation in your own experience.
Quoting 180 Proof
What about it indeed? The single grain of sand has not affected my experience until you mentioned it. Now it has arisen as an idea within my conscious experience and soon it shall dissipate. How is it relevant at all?
Quoting 180 Proof
This is merely an interpretation by your mind. Meditation discloses the inverse.
Quoting 180 Proof
But here you are leaping to conclusions based on what you want to be the case. Until science provides irrefutable proof that consciousness is an epiphenomenon, the evidence of experience will continue to point strongly to consciousness being fundamental.
I know this comment was not for me, but I think we can imagine a system of entities each depending on one another for their identity or meaning. In language, we have something like the meaning of one word being entangled in or dependent on the meaning of all the others. The edifice hovers or an abyss if you like. No particular entity bears the weight.
You mentioned Indian philosophy. Perhaps you had this in mind? I'm just looking into Nargarjuna, but he seems very familiar to me thru his similarity to thinkers I'm more familiar with.
begin quote
To say that all things are 'empty' is to deny any kind of ontological foundation; therefore N?g?rjuna's view is often seen as a kind of ontological anti-foundationalism[53] or a metaphysical anti-realism.[54]
Understanding the nature of the emptiness of phenomena is simply a means to an end, which is nirvana. Thus N?g?rjuna's philosophical project is ultimately a soteriological one meant to correct our everyday cognitive processes which mistakenly posits svabh?va on the flow of experience.
N?g?rjuna was also instrumental in the development of the two truths doctrine, which claims that there are two levels of truth in Buddhist teaching, the ultimate truth (param?rtha satya) and the conventional or superficial truth (sa?v?tisatya). The ultimate truth to N?g?rjuna is the truth that everything is empty of essence,[59] this includes emptiness itself ('the emptiness of emptiness'). While some (Murti, 1955) have interpreted this by positing N?g?rjuna as a neo-Kantian and thus making ultimate truth a metaphysical noumenon or an "ineffable ultimate that transcends the capacities of discursive reason",[60] others such as Mark Siderits and Jay L. Garfield have argued that N?g?rjuna's view is that "the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth" (Siderits) and that N?g?rjuna is a "semantic anti-dualist" who posits that there are only conventional truths.[60] Hence according to Garfield:
Suppose that we take a conventional entity, such as a table. We analyze it to demonstrate its emptiness, finding that there is no table apart from its parts […]. So we conclude that it is empty. But now let us analyze that emptiness […]. What do we find? Nothing at all but the table’s lack of inherent existence. […]. To see the table as empty […] is to see the table as conventional, as dependent.[61]
...
N?g?rjuna also taught the idea of relativity; in the Ratn?val?, he gives the example that shortness exists only in relation to the idea of length. The determination of a thing or object is only possible in relation to other things or objects, especially by way of contrast. He held that the relationship between the ideas of "short" and "long" is not due to intrinsic nature (svabh?va). This idea is also found in the Pali Nik?yas and Chinese ?gamas, in which the idea of relativity is expressed similarly: "That which is the element of light ... is seen to exist on account of [in relation to] darkness; that which is the element of good is seen to exist on account of bad; that which is the element of space is seen to exist on account of form."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagarjuna
also consider
Fear of the corrosive effects of antifoundationalism was widespread in the late twentieth century, anticipating such things as a cultural meltdown and moral anarchy,[11] or (at the least) a loss of the necessary critical distance to allow for leverage against the status quo.[12] For Fish, however, the threat of a loss of objective standards of rational enquiry with the disappearance of any founding principle was a false fear: far from opening the way to an unbridled subjectivity, antifoundationalism leaves the individual firmly entrenched within the conventional context and standards of enquiry/dispute of the discipline/profession/habitus within which s/he is irrevocably placed.[13]
By the same token, however, the antifoundationalist hope of escaping local situations through awareness of the contingency of all such situations—through recognition of the conventional/rhetorical nature of all claims to master principles—that hope is to Fish equally foredoomed by the very nature of the situational consciousness, the all-embracing social and intellectual context, in which every individual is separately enclosed.[14]
Fish has also noted how, in contradistinction to hopes of an emancipatory outcome from antifoundationalism, anti-essentialist theories arguing for the absence of a transcontextual point of reference have been put to conservative and neo-conservative, as well as progressive, ends.[15] Thus, for example, John Searle has offered an account of the construction of social reality fully compatible with the acceptance stance of "the man who is at home in his society, the man who is chez lui in the social institutions of the society...as comfortable as the fish in the sea".[16]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-foundationalism
However, that has to be mediated through N?g?rjuna’s adherence to the ‘doctrine of two truths’:
[quote=N?g?rjuna trs Garfield] The Buddha's teaching of the Dharma is based on two truths: a truth of worldly convention and an ultimate truth. Those who do not understand the distinction drawn between these two truths do not understand the Buddha's profound truth. Without a foundation in the conventional truth the significance of the ultimate cannot be taught. Without understanding the significance of the ultimate, liberation is not achieved.[/quote]
Which is why the assertion that ‘there is no ultimate’ has to be very carefully interpreted. From the perspective of the uneducated worldling - that’s us - there is certainly an ultimate truth, but from the perspective of the Buddha, ‘all beings are already Buddhas’ - or something like that. So the distinction between empirical and ultimate truth only exists on the empirical level.
(Hence the Zen koan, first there is a mountain - conventional realism - then there is no mountain - realisation of emptiness - then there is - harmonised understanding of ultimate & relative.)
The reason madhyamika is not simply nihilism is that on the level of conventional existence, empirical facts are to be respected. However empirical objects of perception have no ultimate or independent existence, which is where it differs from scientific realism, which imbues objects with inherent existence. But you still have to respect scientific facts. The Dalai Lama said in his book on philosophy of science that if science proves any Buddhist dogma incorrect then it has to be abandoned. (One casualty is the mythological cosmology of Mt Meru which has been grudgingly abandoned, although so far the Four Noble Truths are still intact!)
This is why Murti compares N?g?rjuna’s ‘two truths’ to the phenomenal-noumenal distinction in Kant. He also points to the similarity between the 10 ‘unanswered questions’ of the Buddha, and Kant’s antinomies of reason. Murti is now criticised for adopting a Eurocentric approach as a consequence of his Oxford education, but I think he still has great insights. (His book was published in 1955). Mark Siderits, who you quote, is much younger, still alive in fact, and much more rigorous in his comparisons with Western philosophers, but his books are extremely technical. Jay Garfield is a very good scholar in this field and plays a kind of hybrid role of scholar and dharma teacher.
I think the takeaway is that attaining ‘insight into emptiness’ requires, or indicates, a radical change of perspective, namely from that of the ‘uneducated worldling’ (putthajana) to the awakened perspective of the bodhisattva. At least, that is what all of the standard texts indicate. There’s a saying from a recent teacher, that compassion and wisdom (meaning, ‘realisation of emptiness’) are the two wings of a bird, both are required to take flight.
Yeah, the eye "must be" in order to look and see; but a brain-CNS in a body that's imbedded in an environment must be prior to – independent of – the eye in its blindspot in order for looking and seeing to function. Likewise, embodied mind (I prefer it to consciousness as well) "knows" and "claims" or "takes positions" and "considers" because embodiment is always already imbedded in an environment (pre-mind background) upon which, by extension, mind supervenes. 'The Cogito', as Kant et al shows, proves nothing but the metacognitive limits of Descartes' / Augustine's exercise (as well as the lack of grounds to "doubt everything" ~Peirce) and is the funny mirrors-image of a more apt formulation: 'Thinking exists, therefore thinking happens' (à la existence preceeds essence).
Because necessity only obtains in formal abstract domains and not with respect to matters of fact. There aren't any 'necessary facts', that is, relations of relata the changing or negating of which entails a contradiction. The real, as I've described it, always can come-to-be, continue-to-be and cease-to-be because there cannot be anything (without self-contradiction or inconsistency, ergo principle of explosion) not-real – unreal, or external to the real – to constrain contain maintain block stop the real from changing randomly, or without cause (sans PoSR).
However, Wayf, feel free to cite an example of a 'necessary fact' which does not entail a contradiction or inconsistency when changed or negated, and so, thereby, disabusing me of this speculative delusion, to wit:
(Heidi & Hegel ain't got mystagogic shit on me!) :victory:
:roll: Anachronistic ontology. See the account above.
It's some venerable apologetic nonsense I, once upon an old thread ago, had exorcised here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/350254 :eyes:
ud 8.03
It should be noted that theosophists and others of that ilk have made much of this passage, comparing the ‘unborn’ in this text to the ‘wisdom uncreate’ of the Western theistic tradition - an interpretation which Buddhists fiercely reject. (Buddhists hate having theism smuggled in to their religion). Quite what ‘the uncreated’ is, then, is obviously an exceedingly delicate hermeneutical question, probably best ‘bracketed out’ rather than made subject of speculation. However it remains central to the whole tradition - if you go to sutta central and search for the unconditioned you will learn there are references throughout the literature.
I would have thought that the concept of scientific law can be taken to mean that at least some things are true by necessity. Even Newton’s laws of motion are applicable for the range of phenomena in which they apply, are they not? So they will permit precise calculations of the trajectory of shells, for example. The outcome of a certain force will necessarily be a certain trajectory, won’t it? Is that not necessarily so?
For me antifoundationalism != nihilism. Personally I don't embrace/defend scientific realism. Electrons are no more real or unreal than chairs. Also/or 'real' has no context-independent meaning.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure. I'd say science is one of our best conventions.
Quoting Wayfarer
I like the two-wings metaphor. As in the esotericism thread, we seem to differ in our attitude to the sage. I think critical thinking, which requires courage & compassion, is the path, but that the path doesn't lead to either a superhuman state and so to some unvarying intensity of compassion/insight.
I don't find an on/off notion of enlightenment plausible. Obviously my views could change.
But what I see on the surface at least (the passages I quoted), I also find in some of the critical, 'secular' 'Western' thinkers I already study. Of course it's not about the fame/authority of this or that author but the case they make.
That's a tough one. I can only guess what this or that author intended. Personally I'd make sense of the unconditioned in terms of the 'system' as a whole. Within the system conditioned entities depend and are defined in terms of one another, but there's outside or beyond the system for it to depend on. How intelligible/useful this 'system' or 'the unconditioned' are is another issue. But roughly I can imagine a heightened state (achieved thru compassion and the labor of the concept) where the boundary between selves and conventional intrawordly objects (oh wait that includes selves?) vanish.
:party: :fire: :clap:
Consider Hume's problem of induction. If you mean necessity by the 'laws of logic,' then (as noted) quantitative models include it in their pure math aspect but not as far as I can see in their application. The math is applied in a certain extra-mathematical way. A model responds to a hypothetical input with a predicted output and this becomes part of serious decisions. We seem to trust whatever reliably works. Few people learn real analysis, and this doesn't stop them from trusting calculus. I think we'd trust a magic 8-ball if kept beating other methods at making predictions.
The problem is, the more dimensions of knowledge you synthesize, the more abstract become the relationships. These used to find form in the so-called 'Renaissance Man' who was himself the epitome of the broad synthesis of human knowledge. Today, it seems we've passed the point of any one person achieving that level of synthesis. Nevertheless, for me it represents a motivating ideal.