Great point, Phil. And this remark by JB seemed like a zinger:

However, you also seem to be suggesting that a standard epistemology should toss out our strivings for intelligibility unless comprehensibility is also within our grasp, ignoring the possibility that comprehensibility may be excluded in principle.

That I understand that sentence at all is in good part due to my ongoing enrollment in the School of Johnboysian Metaphysics.

�excessive epistemological humility of the radical postmodernists

Being a bit of a postermodernist basher myself, I wonder if you might expand on that sometime � in English please.

I am very much into deferred gratification and am planting seeds in those philosophical rice paddies under heavy fire from materialist helicopter gunships, trying to rescue those young men and women they'd cart off and imprison with their dis-eased hermeneutics. . .

Well, there it is! And a mighty good reason to carry on! I think it's really important to engage in those kinds of dialogues and have a few similar places that I myself frequent from time to time. It's somewhat in the spirit of Step 12--to share the message with others--and partly to keep myself in touch with what's going on in other sectors of the world. I've always found it helpful, too, to engage with people that I disagree with, to see how my understanding holds up, what I can learn, and how I conduct myself. (BTW, you get an A+ for conduct on that philosophy forum, JB; that, in itself, is a witness of sorts to your message.

You have both a mind and a motivation for exactness. I, on the other hand, practically belch analogies.

All kidding aside, as I went to bed last night I was thinking that I could just ask you to partner with me if ever I do decide to write for publication and have you take charge of illustrating through analogies. Jesus was so darned good at this story-telling and parables and metaphors and allegories and myth-making. I was thinking, too, that I would be well-served by one of Phil's sister's workshops on storytelling. In the meanwhile, I appreciate requests for clarifications. They open what has obviously been for me a blind-side in my jo-hari windows.

pax,
jb

Well, the debate rages re: consciousness in the philosophy forum and I am still contributing there but see no sense in posting updates here. If anyone is interested in following that thread, go to: http://forums.philosophyforums.com/index.php? in the Metaphysics and Epistemology Forum and look for the Scientifically, How does Consciousness happen? thread.

I will be pleased to discuss anything here that any of you might bring up.

pax,
jb

I decided to attempt to archive my part of the conversation redacting others' identities, which are masked anyway ... but

quote:

Again, why the hegemonistic prejudice? Why the preoccupation with explanatory adequacy? The analogical imaginative faculties of human consciousness routinely make various phenomena more intelligible even when they remain incomprehensible, whether due to epistemic or ontological explanatory gaps (and in certain cases we just do not know which).

Sure, to reiterate your grasp of the obvious, the invocation of the nonphysical will never provide explanatory adequacy or comprehensibility for putatively immaterial phenomena in the real world. However, you also seem to be suggesting that a standard epistemology should toss out our strivings for intelligibility unless comprehensibility is also within our grasp, ignoring the possibility that comprehensibility may be excluded in principle. Again, why should all of our ontological problems be cast in terms of your inherent epistemological limitations?

As long as ontological discontinuity is actually putatively indicated in scientific research, cosmological or cognitive or quantum, it will be incumbent upon us all to abandon that epistemological hubris of both the rationalists and fideists and that excessive epistemological humility of the radical postmodernists and to embrace such an epistemological holism (perhaps as grounded in a critical realism and a fallibillistic critical rationalism? or, minimally, in a constructive postmodernism?) as can accomodate both physical and metaphysical explanations.

pax,
jb

Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It seems that physical explanations for cognitive process lead us to epiphenomenalism. Not only that, they eliminate free will altogether. Not nice but what is the alternative?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Phil Hefner speaks of four attributes of human nature: on one hand, 1) determinedness 2) embodiedness and, otoh, 3) autopoiesis 4) freedom. Those phenomenal descriptions are naturalistic interpretations, but not necessarily materialistic. I think they are useful to keep in front of us whether our sneaking suspicions about consciousness lean toward physicalistic accounts or nonphysicalistic accounts or something in between, such as certain varieties of monism. My major thrust has been, not to sell any of these particular accounts but, to suggest that we all remain mindful that our leanings, for now, are based on sneaking suspicions (using that term sneaking suspicions to allow everyone the poetic license to either more broadly or more narrowly conceive our human epistemic capacities, rather than continuing what could be an interminable debate).

More directly to the question: the alternative?

All that in mind, mindful that human nature exhibits determinedness/embodiedness and autopoiesis/freedom, perhaps a nuanced monistic account would say that we are open-ended processors with enough freedom to be distinguished from our phylogenetic cousins in our very novel, emergent biosemiotic capacities, thus allowing symbolic language, culture, and so forth, but not so much freedom as some might imagine. This speculation is not an explanation but it does seem to make physicalistic accounts more intelligible for some folks.

pax,
jb

Also, let me try to better establish our common ground.

If we recast the idea of the hard problem, just for heuristic purposes, in terms of epistemological optimism versus epistemological pessimism rather than hard vs easy, I think it would be fair for me to characterize your take on same as one of epistemological optimism.

Now, in that regard, if one buys into Polkinghorne's notion that epistemology models ontology , and if one construes John P.'s meaning the same way he does, then epistemological optimism is indeed warranted, which is to say that humans are positioned by our very immersion in reality to gain an ever-tightening grasp on same. This is tantamount to my prior assertion that we shouldn't look at godelian constraints as foreclosing on our ability to know reality even if we are indeed somewhat constrained by our ability to prove the truth that we can see in certain of our axioms within our closed formal systems.

I buy into the notion that our minds are open-ended processors, however they may have physicalistically emerged or however they may otherwise partake in some as yet undescribed primitive property of existence. We can use these processors to get outside our formal symbolic system (linguistic or whatever it is) imaginatively and to prove our axioms in those imagined systems. I suppose we do this all the time when we provisionally close and take a certain ontology as axiomatic: a) such as what we do monistically with science, b) such as what we do when invoking either ontological undecidability or some type of dualism or idealism or what have you with metaphysics.

My position has been that these should only be provisional closures, paying due respect to Kurt Godel. So, clearly, science is seeing certain truths through the lens of a methodological naturalism and seeing them very well, but it is not, at the same time, proving a metaphysical naturalism. Science's best results should and do come, therefore, when its methodological naturalism is applied to that part of uncertain reality that doesn't transcend human nature. Now, in the very act of invoking this transcendence, we aren't trying to declare an ipso facto ontological discontinuity anymore than a scientist is ipso facto declaring a metaphysical materialism when employing her methodological naturalism. In fact, we can view this transcendence, minimalistically, as just our experience of such godelian constraints as are part and parcel of the open-ended nature of our brains, a wonderful adaptation gifted us by natural selection; in that case, our explanatory gaps could be merely epistemic. We can also view this transcendence as a hint at an ontological hierarchy; in that case, introducing bigger explanatory gaps.

How do we choose between these views?

When saying that epistemology models ontology, we could be saying that epistemology predicts ontology. Then, if a methodological naturalism works best it is predicting that a metaphysical naturalism corresponds to a reality described by the materialist monists. Alternatively, we could be saying that the epistemological layering of degrees of abstraction (math, formal logic, metaphysics, physics) predicts ontological layering or degrees of being and that methodological naturalism, of course, works best in the ontological layer we inhabit but is constrained in its penetration of other layers of being. In fact, we could say that if epistemology predicts ontology, that since the most intractable scientific problems do indeed show up on the frontiers of cosmic evolution, on one hand, and its apparent end-product, consciousness, on the extreme other hand, that this likely corresponds to a reality described by the metaphysical dualists, as we find ourselves ontologically sandwiched, if you will, between cosmos and consciousness. Or we could just say, let's leave this alone for now.

So, let me say let's leave it alone for now.

Rather than get ahead of ourselves and say that epistemology predicts ontology, let's stick with it modeling ontology and recognize that this ontological undecidability calls for an epistemological holism or explanatory pluralism. We can keep our epistemological optimism, I believe, and with warrant claim that our scientific methodology will continue to yield an ever-tightening grasp of reality, even if part of reality is suspected of being immaterial. We may have to rely on indirect evidence and inconclusive proofs and increased ingenuity in our statistical methods, along with metaphysical hypotheses, to penetrate the other ontological layers that sandwich us, but there is no reason we shouldn't expect to be able to make increasingly compelling inferences about increasingly intelligible realms with explanatory ideas that get increasingly indispensable about that which we won't ever, in principle, fully comprehand, even as we may be comprehended by it, whether that be a vat that holds our disembodied brains or an Intelligent Designer or some other hypothesis. This approach should work for Tegmark and Hawking in cosmology. It should work for Andy Newberg the way it worked for Gene D'Aquili in cognitive science. Some find it a satisfactory approach even beyond the reaches of these disciplines.

In a nutshell, if some of you are epistemologically optimistic, then so am I. Our very immersion in reality indeed positions us to gain an ever-tightening grasp on same, whatever being, itself, turns out to be. Will some paradoxes perdure in all of this? The tighter our grasp has gotten, yes, the more this seems to be the case. That, too, makes me optimistic.
pax,
jb

I sort of resonate with such both/and approaches.

In the rationalist/empiricist and realist/idealist matrix, out of the rationalist/idealist kantians, the rationalist/realists platonists, the empiricist/idealist humeans and empiricist/realist aristotelians, I think the aristotelians show us where it is we must begin our inquiries but that we should take pains to answer the kantian and humean critiques and give a nod to the neo-platonists (not to ignore the linguistic turn, pragmatists, existentialists et al).This yields a critical rationalism, however fallibilistic, and a critical realism, and is entailed in my thomistic perspective, which deals with causal chain, causal joint or causal gap problems (interaction problems as you say) analogically by our knowledge of effects, recognizing that while some causes could be incomprehensible, we can at least characterize their effects and thereby attempt to catalog at least some parts of reality where these effects, so to speak, obviously are not coming from (whether cosmologically, ontologically, teleologically, epistemologically, axiologically, etc). It remains tricky terrain.

pax,
jb

All kidding aside, as I went to bed last night I was thinking that I could just ask you to partner with me if ever I do decide to write for publication and have you take charge of illustrating through analogies.

Well, it�s a heck of an honor even to be considered. It�s analogous to�no wait. Better save �em up.

I must admit that my hat is off to those (such as Phil) who have the patience to sit down (maybe their secret is standing up) and write a book. I love to work with ideas but absolutely detest the nitty gritty of all the details and planning that it takes to produce something more formal. In all humility, I remember writing a paper that knocked my teacher�s socks off but (rightly) was graded much lower due to poor footnoting (or no footnoting�I forget).

I�ve read some of your stuff, JB, and have really liked it. You�ve got the talent and it�s probably (like me) just a matter of time and motivation. Maybe, like me, all the formal stuff just tends to take the fun out of it. I don�t know.

Yes. yes and yes.

I must admit that my hat is off to those (such as Phil) who have the patience to sit down (maybe their secret is standing up) and write a book. I love to work with ideas but absolutely detest the nitty gritty of all the details and planning that it takes to produce something more formal. In all humility, I remember writing a paper that knocked my teacher�s socks off but (rightly) was graded much lower due to poor footnoting (or no footnoting�I forget).

I am GREAT at footnotes and the nit-picking. I have no recollection of knocking a teacher's socks off with a written paper. A partnership is born!

Brad, my dim recollection is that Phil DID stand up to work. He had this draftsman's table thingy in his office. Phil, is that true? Are my memory and Brad's psychic connection both intact here?

I�ve read some of your stuff, JB, and have really liked it. You�ve got the talent and it�s probably (like me) just a matter of time and motivation. Maybe, like me, all the formal stuff just tends to take the fun out of it. I don�t know.

Well, it ain't a matter of time. I don't have the motivation and fun is an important ingredient lacking in the prospect of authorship, too. If anyone ever finds a pearl in the middle of my pile of epistemological oyster shells, they can string it on their hermeneutical necklace and never look back. No royalties required.

pax,
jb

Brad, my dim recollection is that Phil DID stand up to work. He had this draftsman's table thingy in his office. Phil, is that true? Are my memory and Brad's psychic connection both intact here?

Hey, I don't know if you're pulling my leg, but I swear I have no inside knowledge of Phil's writing techniques � other than his propensity for moving his lips when he reads.

If anyone ever finds a pearl in the middle of my pile of epistemological oyster shells, they can string it on their hermeneutical necklace and never look back. No royalties required.

I like "big picture" stuff more than details (in general). I get the general idea (at least this is my impression, full of projecting as it may be) that when you write on a subject, JB, you want it to be exhaustive. It seems that summaries and approximations are not your game. Fair enough, I say. But what I have always found most interesting about your ideas (or the ones you presented and expanded on) are that I did not know that these subjects even existed. I consider myself a moderately informed laymen and I'm not alone. I think there are many people who are curious about a great many things � particularly cutting-edge stuff � but don't have the time to read entire books that are devoted to the subject, especially when these books are written in great and excruciating jargon-filled detail. But I consider it a highly necessary and valuable to keep the average Joe informed about such ideas.

If I were to advise you on what kind of book to write, I would advise you to write a general-interest book (slightly advanced) that hit on a number of topics; intelligent design, for example (and I forget at the moment the tons of others we've covered). You've got to first and foremost write about what interests you so you might choose a range of subjects that are at least tangentially related to your faith and tie them all together. It would seem a book such as "The religion of science" would be a natural, where you could expose the numerous fallacies and errors in thinking and methodology on both the scientific and religious sides of the equations.

Brad, I deeply appreciate your feedback and find all of your comments right on. I truly have no aspirations in this regard, though, other than to plant a few seeds in internet forums and through a little e-mail. If it has been a trial for me to compose a comprehensible posts in nonspecialized forums, it would be a prison term for me to write for a general audience.

Is all of my investigative research for naught or just for jb, ergo?

No, not at all.

I can point people to the best authors re: formative spirituality, natural theology, metaphysics, philosophy, systematic theology, moral theology, popularized science, etc, knowing that my diligent review of same can save them much time and trouble because I have already separated the wheat and the chaff.

Why should they trust me?

Well, I hope that I have at least portrayed a reliable, credible, trustworty authoritativeness on such matters coupled with a transparency of motive and depthfulness of love. IOW, I hope that by doing small things with great love that I can lead others to those whose charisms allowed them to do greater things with great love.

Doing small things with great love is no different from doing great things with great love. It is like the paradox of infinity. If you take all of the blue books out of a library with an infinite number of blue and yellow books, the library will still have an infinite number of books.

Go figure. Or just trust jb who loves you.

That's what I bring to the people in my orbit.

Glad to do it, too. Blessed. I am one of the luckiest people alive.

pax,
jb

I truly have no aspirations in this regard, though, other than to plant a few seeds in internet forums and through a little e-mail.

Doin' it for sh*ts and giggles, just like me then. But heck, in the process I've learned a lot and continue to learn a lot. It's like going to college, but without the chicks. And if I had wanted money or fame I would have just been born a celebrity.

If it has been a trial for me to compose a comprehensible posts in nonspecialized forums, it would be a prison term for me to write for a general audience.

It may not be what you like to do, but I've seen enough to convince me that you're more than capable of writing for the masses (or heck, even the Masses).

Is all of my investigative research for naught or just for jb, ergo?

Butterfly wings.

I hope that by doing small things with great love that I can lead others to those whose charisms allowed them to do greater things with great love.

Flapping.

I had this thought today while driving back from town. I was thinking specifically of St. Francis and how much time we spend accumulating stuff we don't really need; how we complicate our lives far more than is necessary; and how we look and look for the good things in life and yet it's all right there and you need no more than the shirt on your back to access it (with the exception of cable TV where the History Channel is an almost necessity).

Doing small things with great love is no different from doing great things with great love. It is like the paradox of infinity. If you take all of the blue books out of a library with an infinite number of blue and yellow books, the library will still have an infinite number of books.

Interesting ANALOGY. Isn't it similar to that book "All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" (or somethin' like that). Of course, the REAL book that would do this is "All I Need to Know is What I Learned in 'It's a Wonderful Life'". It's like George Bailey. You really don't know how many lives you effect. Still, I would have gone on the honeymoon with my wife for goodness sakes.

Pax TV (that's all the Latin I know).

Well, I hope that I have at least portrayed a reliable, credible, trustworty authoritativeness on such matters coupled with a transparency of motive and depthfulness of love. IOW, I hope that by doing small things with great love that I can lead others to those whose charisms allowed them to do greater things with great love.

Those are most worthy ideals, JB, and again I'll say that I think you're demonstrating them very nicely on that philosophy forum. Do let us know when/if anyone validates some of your points, however. From what I read, there was an entrenched resistance to hearing you.

(This goes for everyone.) I think we all need to find where the cutting edge of life and growth is for us and to venture into that space courageously. If we don't then what's the use in living? We also need to discover our charisms--those gifts given not just for ourselves, but to build up the community--and exercise them in whatever way we feel moved, whether society approves or not, and whether it helps just a few or the masses. Let the Spirit construct the building; enough for us to make the building blocks available. (Back to you, JB.) So if this means hanging out on a philosophy forum or even a place like Mac Fixit for awhile, then that's the thing to do. And you do it until you're "done," then move on to whatever is next. Hard to know what that might be. "The wind blows where it will . . ." (Jn. 3: 8).

"The wind blows where it will . . ." (Jn. 3: 8).

One day, thirty years ago, Herman Sensat told me that there was a Scripture verse that always made him think of me. Now, knowing Herman, Phil, you can appreciate that he did not tell me why and really didn't rationalize why to himself either (as he was the nonrational* person in Fr. Roger Moag's Unholy Trinty). It was the verse above.

pax,
jb

*nonrational as not to be confused with irrational

Of course, the REAL book that would do this is "All I Need to Know is What I Learned in 'It's a Wonderful Life'". It's like George Bailey.

In 1987, when I was President & CEO of a local savings and loan (and 32 years old, quite the spring chicken), a bank examiner told me that I reminded him of someone from an old movie. He said that there was this movie made around 1946 starring Jimmy Stewart that had an S&L theme to it and it was done by Frank Capra ... blah, blah, blah. I interrupted him and said: "You mean It's a Wonderful Life?" I went on to tell him how I first saw that movie in the winter of 1979 when I was sparking and spooning late one night at my bride to be's home. We fell in love with that movie and it became our all time favorite and so much so that each year thereafter, for the first few years of our marriage, we threw an "It's a Wonderful Life" Party and invited family and friends over to view the movie, coming dressed as their favorite character. I wore an old banker's grey suit complete with ZuZu's petals in my watchpocket. Now, my almost grown children are It's a Wonderful Life evangelists and try to get all of their friends to watch it, too.

The plot thickens.

My son, fairly recently, started dating this precious little girl whom he'd met several years ago when they were both actors in our community theater's production of The Sound of Music. When he met her parents and was telling him who his family was and so on and so forth, her Dad said: "Hey, wait a minute. You and Josh are second cousins." (or he said something like that.) True enough, my wife's Mom was a first generation American from an out of Sicily family. The blood ran from my son's girlfriend's face at the hint of the slightest prospect that they shouldn't be together but came right back as he comforted her with the knowledge that my wife was adopted.

So, this past Christmas Eve, I dug out some old handwritten genealogical materials from my late mother-in-law's papers and went to make copies of about 8 pages, some in Italian. I was making duplicates on a scanner, so the process was slow. Long and short of it is that I was reading these papers and figuring out connections as the copies were being made. And there it was: Frank Capra and my mother-in-law were first cousins! I said: Attaboy Clarence! and I excitedly raced back home to tell the 40 or so people assembled there, many watching "It's a Wonderful Life" on DVD, that my wife and children were close relatives of Frank Capra. (My wife said: "I knew that." and that's another story.) I was especially pleased to be able to inform the two young theater buffs, my son and his new gal, that they had Hollywood connections.

So, you see Brad, it really is a wonderful life. and, every time a bell rings ... So, now you know, the rest of the story.

Do let us know when/if anyone validates some of your points, however.

There is this fellow with the moniker Born Again Scientist, who is very sharp, who recently joined the thread. You may want to check this post of his out.

For my part, here are my parting words, assuming no one comes back with questions:

quote:

I much appreciate your depthful engagement of my views. As I look at certain of your latest interrogatories, some seem rhetorical and some I have already addressed in previous posts, perhaps lacking clarity and likely lacking brevity. Perhaps it would be a good exercise for you to attempt to answer your latest round of questions for me for yourself, using my cumulative postings on this thread to date as a guide to what you suspect my answers might be. I say this because I feel like I would only be repeating myself, more than I already have, to pursue this thread with you going forward. For us not to have located our impasse after the consumption of this much bandwidth is likely prologue for our future exchanges on this topic, which is to suggest that we are somehow talking past one another. No fault. No foul.

I will not leave you hanging though. If you have any burning issue you would really like me to address, then restate a few of your questions in another post and I'll take another stab at them for you, gladly. Otherwise, I am pleased to give you the last word on the issues we have dialogued on and to leave this thread in the archives for others to judge on its merits and demerits.

My best and my gratitude,
jb

p.s. After the Iowa caucases and State of the Union, the political season is in full bloom and I want to go into other forums and feast on the repartee.

So, I suppose we'll even shift our focus here to last night's address and such.

pax,
jb

Pax TV (that's all the Latin I know).

pax, paxil ... what's the difference?

quote:

I much appreciate your depthful engagement of my views. As I look at certain of your latest interrogatories, some seem rhetorical and some I have already addressed in previous posts, perhaps lacking clarity and likely lacking brevity. Perhaps it would be a good exercise for you to attempt to answer your latest round of questions for me for yourself, using my cumulative postings on this thread to date as a guide to what you suspect my answers might be. I say this because I feel like I would only be repeating myself, more than I already have, to pursue this thread with you going forward. For us not to have located our impasse after the consumption of this much bandwidth is likely prologue for our future exchanges on this topic, which is to suggest that we are somehow talking past one another. No fault. No foul.

I will not leave you hanging though. If you have any burning issue you would really like me to address, then restate a few of your questions in another post and I'll take another stab at them for you, gladly. Otherwise, I am pleased to give you the last word on the issues we have dialogued on and to leave this thread in the archives for others to judge on its merits and demerits.

This is how truly intelligent and mannered people say �I know you are but what am I?�

That�s a remarkable story about Capra and �It�s a Wonderful Life.� Were we separated at birth? I have an uncle who is absolutely in love with the movie (as am I) and this Christmas we had our own little trivia contest regarding it.

I can�t believe I couldn�t remember the title of the book left in the basket by Clarence. And I call myself a buff!

Today's Paper on jb goes to Athens

quote:

What you both say re: the objects of the science of consciousness, i.e. a) consciousness-as-computation and b) consciousness as awareness, precisely comports with the distinctions some have drawn between the hard and easy problems.


The easy problems are computation and awareness. The hard problems are nonalgorithmic/noncomputational consciousness and experience.

So, we have the following dichotomies: 1) algorithmic & nonalgorithmic by Penrose; 2) awareness & experience by Chalmers; 3) syntactical & semantical by Searle; 4) percept& concept by Adler; 5) metaphier & metaphrand by Jaynes. [ Not all directly analogous, but not unrelated either.]

If one sides with Locke, Hobbes, Berkeley and Hume, then I suppose that some of those distinctions would be considered false dichotomies.

If one sides with Plato, Descartes, Kant and Hegel, then those distinctions would hold, but to an extreme.

Now, if you really, really like science, you probably opted in pragmatically, your chief apologetic being it works. Maybe darwinistically you'd say it has survival value and adaptive significance. Or, perhaps you took the reductio ad aburdum route and rejected the humean, kantian and platonic absurdities that flow algorithmically from the mistakes of extreme empiricist/idealist, rationalist/idealist and rationalist/realist outlooks.

So, one way or another, as a good scientist, you bought in to the empiricist/realist route of Aristotle.

What now?

Well, first, don't let the lessons of the perils of taking an extreme route be lost on you. Next, don't forget who took you to the philosophical ball when you get your cognitive science dance card signed by various metaphysical suitors.

Ergo, be sure to go home with Aristotle and don't hesitate to dance with Plato and Kant. And, whatever you do, remember how Locke, Hobbes, Berkeley and Hume jilted you before and don't get caught dancing with them, much less sparking and spooning, denying the hard problem.

pax,
jb

nice to return to Jerusalem each day,
jb

Next, don't forget who took you to the philosophical ball when you get your cognitive science dance card signed by various metaphysical suitors.

Groucho Marx must have been a philosopher and didn't know it.

The easy problem of JB is why he makes me laugh.

The hard problem is understanding the jokes.

Okay, I've finished "Are We Spiritual Machines" and am ready for the pop-quiz. There were so many interesting assertions, but I like these in particular:

quote:

But the choice between materialism and substance dualism is ill�posed. Both are wedded to the same defective view of matter. Both view matter as primary and law�governed. This renders materialism self�consistent since it allows matter to be conceived mechanistically. On the other hand, it renders substance dualism incoherent since undirected natural laws provide no opening for the activity of spiritual substances. But the problem in either case is that matter ends up taking precedence over concrete things. We do not have knowledge of matter but of things. As Bishop Berkeley rightly taught, matter is always an abstraction. Matter is what remains once we remove all the features peculiar to a thing. Consequently, matter becomes stripped not only of all empirical particularity but also of any substantial form that would otherwise order it and render it intelligible.

The great mistake in trying to understand the mind�body problem is to suppose that it is a scientific problem. It is not. It is a problem of ontology (i.e., that branch of philosophy concerned with what exists). If all that exists is matter governed by natural laws, then humans are machines. If all that exists is matter governed by natural laws together with spiritual substances that are incapable of coherently interacting with matter, then, once again, humans are machines. But if matter is merely an abstraction gotten by removing all the features peculiar to unified things, then there is no reason to think that combining it with natural laws (or anything else for that matter) will entail the recovery of things. And in that case, there is no reason to think that humans are machines.

Todays Headliners from Athens to Jerusalem (redacting others' comments)

I think we have moved much closer to locating our impasse.

Further, I indeed see some truth in the proposition that it is the tool of intuition that is used to separate awareness from experience and not some a priori reasoning process, except maybe for various reductio ad absurdum analyses, which do have their perils inasmuch as counterintuitiveness, alone, can misguide us in a world filled with paradox.

What we have, then, is a proper characterization of the hard problem as not belonging to science but moreso to metaphysics. To me, this is not epistemologically fatal insofar as I think we can penetrate into the hard problem and gain intelligibility, but it does mean we are, in principle, epistemologically constrained from gaining comprehensibility.

But don't casually dismiss intuition for it is indeed the tool you use in making your choices between the aristotelian, platonic, kantian and humean perspectives, such choices as involve the implicit rejection of radical skepticism, nihilism, solipsism, and such a choice as humean fideism, which involves that leap of faith you must make to get beyond Hume's explicit idealist empiricism to science's realist empiricism .

Indeed, few deny the humean leap but many characterize it as somehow smaller by invoking Occam's Razor or Hume's dictum.

My caveat to those who invoke Occam and Hume to argue against metaphysics is that the razor doesn't stop with an injunction against the needless multiplication of ontologies but also contains an implicit imperative to multiply them to that level that is not only necessary but also sufficient for getting the job done in our attempts to describe reality, grappling with: Why something and not rather nothing? Why this reality and not rather that? Why this seemingly infinite regress?

And so, we have the implicit acknowledgement of the humean leap and its justification on pragmatic grounds. A leap that I applaud. Indeed, I wholeheartedly agree that Darwinistic science and results oriented investigation are both better tools (than navel gazing) for those seeking cures for cancer. To adequately explain consciousness, however, we must multiply ontologies and it may be that this can be done naturalistically even if not physicalistically.

Finally, once leaping path Hume's skepticism and idealism, why not leap past Kant's silliness and take existence as a predicate of being?

pax,
jb

Whether or not the invocation of Godel, either via analogy (as has been done in some meta-metaphysical speculations) or in the usual metamathematical sense, is consistent, really depends on which intuitive leaps we have already taken as set forth in the manifold and multiform propositions of various humean, kantian, platonic, aristotelian, linguistic, analytic and pragmatic systems. Once we have bought into different systems with their explicit and implicit axioms, some the same and some different from those of other systems, our premises can and will sometimes differ, such as whether or not our minds are consistent, whether or not we can know that we know.


So, now that I have a better grasp of your presuppositions and you a better grasp of mine, perhaps we have discovered that, for you, an invocation of Godel in the science of mind would be inconsistent while, for me, it is not. The discussion does not therefore hinge on the applicability of Godel to consciousness studies but is more basic than that and turns, rather, on the plausibility of our respective models of the rational mind. Those models, in turn, precisely derive from our philosophical systems, those intuitive leaps that we have already taken as discussed above and in my earlier post.

However problematic the metaphysical speculations may be in speculative cognitive science, speculative scientific cosmology and some other disciplines, I think some of them can be hypothetically fecund and heuristically useful. I don't invest theological import in them and I think I am even willing to live with this as being considered a sort of metaphysics of the gaps. In fact, I may even like that moniker for what it is that Dembski, Behe, William Lane Craig and others are doing. Tu quoque, a materialism of the gaps might make for a good moniker for what Dennett, Dawkins and Sagan have been about. I don't really object to conflating one's philosophy with science, whether in the form of scientism or neo-creationism, as long as there is truth in labeling. All are combining faith and reason, fides et ratio, and should come clean in acknowledging their leaps , if for no other reason than to unpack our respective presuppositions in order to allow philosophy to properly function as the lingua franca of science and metaphysics and theology that it can be. And, let me say, I think the lingua franca is working well in this particular thread on the part of those of all perspectives. At least I feel like I can locate our disagreements and that we are, for the most part, avoiding talking past one another.

By multiplying ontologies I mean, for instance, what I do when I invoke physics, then metaphysics and then meta-metaphysics (theology) or any other approach that invokes different types and degrees of being, such as all of the different varieties of monism and dualism. It is just my way of suggesting how it is we may be applying Occam's Razor in the discussion at hand. As far as the natural and physical, I mean to draw a distinction not unlike that between naturalism and materialism. More specifically, in re: consciousness, I want to allow room for types like Chalmers and Searle while separating them from types like Penrose, while further separating them from types like Dennett.


Take for example this point made by Chalmers, as he takes Penrose to task on Godel in Minds, Machines and Mathematics:

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To really clarify the positions in the vicinity, we have to distinguish three questions:


(1) What does it take to simulate our physical action?


(2) What does it take to evoke conscious awareness?


(3) What does it take to explain conscious awareness? In answer to each question, one might say that (a) Computation alone is enough, (b) Physics is enough, but physical features beyond computation are required, or (c) Not even physics is enough. Call these positions C, P, and N. So we have a total of 27 positions, that one might label CCC, CPN, and so on.

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While I don't take exception to Chalmers, Searle, Penrose, Jaki, Rand, Peikoff, Dembski et al in their observation that consciousness has easy and hard problems, I don't buy into all of their propositions inter alia, and while I appreciate that the invocation of Godel by them in various ways is highly contentious, what I have really bought into is a membership in the AAA metaphysical highway club of Aristotle, Aquinas & Adler and, while I appreciate your kind offer, I am afraid that any consideration of how AAA may have epistemologically detoured me would be much too cumbersome and ponderous for this particular thread.

Some models of the rational mind see its underlying operations as a formal system, one that is consistent and that knows it is consistent. Such a model cannot be proved but only taken as an act of faith. Once making that leap, however, Godel applies.

Further, as we have discussed before, whether one thinks Godel can be properly applied to the science of mind or not, it most definitely applies to theoretical physics in that its most important measuring device is mathematics.

Back to such a rational mind model as might comport with godelian dynamics:

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To assert one's own consistency is not exactly like predicting the time of the next train or next meeting of the Knesset. It is more like knowing that one is conscious, or knowing that other minds exist, or knowing that the future will be like the past, and some philosophers have schooled themselves to regard them as open questions. These are general presuppositions on which much of our thinking is based. They cannot be proved by deductive or inductive reasoning, and they can be argued against. But although they can be argued against, they can be argued for, and few people, except when they are being paid to as professional philosophers, seriously doubt them. In the case of the mind's consistency, I do not deny that there are arguments against my claim. In addition to counter-examples among our acquaintanceship, I cited naive set theory as a warning against too easy an assumption that what seemed all right intuitively was all right really. Nevertheless, the arguments on the other side are weightier still. One, which Mr. Hutton touches on but does not meet, is that simple consistency is, in the relevant systems, equivalent to absolute consistency, and it is highly implausible to make out that we are absolutely inconsistent. We say it occasionally as a reproach to a person "If you would say that, you would say anything", but it is not in general true of most people. If a mind could be adequately represented by an inconsistent system, then it would be prepared to affirm every proposition. But most people will not do that. Therefore they cannot be represented by inconsistent systems.

Another argument, of a more Kantian flavour, is that we must assume our own consistency, if thought is to be possible at all .4 It is, perhaps like the uniformity of nature, not something to be established at the end of a careful chain of argument, but rather a necessary assumption we must make if we are to start on any thinking at all . 4 In a somewhat similar vein I suggested that it should be seen as an act of faith, a decision or a commitment, nor arbitrary although not admitting of formal proof. Some men similarly decide to treat other human beings as centres of consciousness and autonomous agents If one chooses to collapse them because that is the only way one has of getting results, then that is scientism. . from J.R. Lucas, Philosophia VOL 6 No. 1. March 1976

If you collapse awareness and experience, then the results are indeed rolling in.

If you see a possible dichotomy between them, then re: model plausibility: stalemate.

This is why we disagree.
If one chooses to collapse them because that is the only way one has of getting results, then that is scientism .

If one chooses to dichotomize them because that is the only way to defend one's belief system, then that is fideism .

This is why some others disagree.

pax,
jb

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So why are you so committed to the belief in a difference between experience and awareness? I can understand (and remember) it being a difficult idea to give up, but that doesn't explain your commitment to it. What does belief in this idea actually explain?

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1) I am not committed to that belief.

2) If that difference is real it would not explain nearly as much as if it were not. That would just be too bad, wouldn't it?

3) I am committed to the philosophical perspective that suggests that a belief in that difference is an insoluble problem of ontology and a valid metaphysical proposition that is, in principle, off limits to science.

4) My sneaking suspicion is that agnosticism is the appropriate response to the question of whether or not that particular difference is real from a scientific perspective.

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Look, it's pretty easy to imagine that a bacteria has little difference between experience and awareness- are you suggesting that we are qualitatively different from all other life on this planet? (as opposed to simply a quantitative difference in degree of complexity)

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I think it remains an open question, scientifically, whether our novel semiotic capacities are emergent properties, where we have gotten something more from nothing but physicalistic accretions of complexity, or whether they are somehow qualitatively different, again, whether naturalistically or quasi-naturalistically or supernaturalistically or physicalistically or nonphysicalistically or materialistically or immaterialistically or whatever other characterizations are needed to capture the nuances of all of the propositions that are floating around. I distinguish between those propositions and any number of consonant metaphysical conceptions that involve various thomistic interpretations of being: aristotelian (hylomorphism), existential (actus essendi), transcendental (a priori intellectual dynamism), analytical (with a commitment to traditional thomistic metaphysics) and between neowhiteheadian interpretations (if their "fields" can be said to correspond to the deep and dynamic fields of formal causation akin to thomistic metaphysics).

pax,
jb

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Originally Posted by JB
Fair enough- I don't argue with belief [especially if its abstractions originate in sense experience].

pax,
jb

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Yeah, yeah.

But don't you think it's just slightly interesting that both belief and science "originate in sense experience", yet they can come to such different conclusions about the natural world?

The Roman Catholic physicists that I know haven't come to any conclusions about the natural world that are different from any other physicists (Chris Corbally and Stanley Jaki, for instance). Neither have the biologists, chemists, geologists or any other ists. Neither have the Roman Catholic theologians, who participate in dialogue between religion and science (like Jack Haught and Joe Bracken, for instance). Our fides et ratio are complementary and in no way set over against the findings of science.

pax,
jb

p.s. Perhaps you're confusing me with the fundamentalists and anti-evolution gang?

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Why is it that our intuitions are so fallible and yet our scientific theories are so fruitful?

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Because we constantly misapply Occam's Razor, forgetting the distinction between necessary and sufficient when it comes to explanations of this layered and uncertain reality and we also often mistakenly think that the absense of paradox is a necessary criterion for explanations. Physics is fruitful in its domain. Metaphysics is fruitful in its domain. Theology is fruitful in its domain. The rational is fruitful in its domain. The metarational is fruitful in its domain.


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For the purpose of discovering reality, why are our intuitions so often wrong?

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Because we use the wrong tools in the wrong domain, like scientism or fideism, for example, and because we shoot for the simplest explanation rather than the simplest explanation that can get the job done. Fortunately, even our intuitions can be trained through trial and error.

pax,
jb

quote:

If you collapse awareness and experience, then the results are indeed rolling in.

If you see a possible dichotomy between them, then re: model plausibility: stalemate.

This is why we disagree.
If one chooses to collapse them because that is the only way one has of getting results, then that is scientism .

If one chooses to dichotomize them because that is the only way to defend one's belief system, then that is fideism .

Good stuff. Some of the rest is in my experience (of reading) but escapes my awareness (of understanding).

Dateline: Athens 2004 Jan 23 to Jerusalem

The Catholic approach to morality is not only deontological, which is to say authoritative, but also teleological, which is to say consequentialistic, too, although I find that some Catholic moral teaching does not rely enough on the teleological aspect and places too much emphasis on the essentialistic rather than the existential perspective, which is to say, in part, too much emphasis on abstract articulations of morality and not enough on morality as concretely experienced in our everyday lives. Long and short of it is that we reject the so-called naturalistic fallacy. Also, we believe that human beings can come to a knowledge of right and wrong from our knowledge of the natural world without any need for and independent from any divine revelation. IOW, we need science to help us do morality and we are very interested in what biological and cultural evolution can teach us toward that end.

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But you did cite Behe and Dembski in support of your position at one time- didn't you?
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I actually opened up with Deacon & Goodenough, who are closer to Dennett, and entered this thread with a defense of the heuristic value of their work, preemptively trying to ask people not to diss it. I also cited the work of Chalmers, Searle, Rand, Peikoff, Penrose, Jaynes and others who are also naturalists in order to defend the heuristic value of their work. It is in the same vein that I would have mentioned Dembski, Behe, Jaki, D'Aquili and Newberg. Finally, I made the point that if one has made the same philosophical leaps that Aristotle, Aquinas and Adler have made, then one could, not inconsistently, evoke Godel's theorem re: the hard problem. And, conversely, if one leapt with Hume et al, then there is nothing to apply godelian dynamics to re: consciousness. I think this summarizes what my contribution has been.

Now, let me say something about Dembski and Behe. After looking closely at what they have been about, their so-called wedge strategy, I am not at all convinced that they could truly be considered neo-creationists, at bottom. The reason is this. If you set William Lane Craig and the Kalam cosmological argument over against Sagan, and Dembski over against Dennett in their cognitive arguments, and Behe over against Dawkins in their ID arguments via irreducible complexity, then look more closely, you'll see a distinct assymetry in the so-called fideistic approach of Craig, Dembski and Behe versus Sagan, Dennett and Dawkins.

If you strip Craig, Dembski and Behe's arguments of any explicit theological baggage and look at their implicit raw scientific hypotheses, then you'll find that the final solutions of those hypotheses would be of no consequence to those who don't conflate metaphysics and science. Hence, the real litmus test for whether or not one is being fideistic or scientistic is to watch and see how bent out of shape they become at the prospect of: cosmologically, the Kalam argument being proved or disproved; cognitively, the hard problem being solved or declared insoluble; biologically, irreducible complexity being proved or disproved.

Now, Behe is Catholic, so I am assuming he doesn't care if irreducible complexity is proven false inasmuch as that hypotheses is not at all dispositive of Catholic metaphysics or theology. And, as for Dembski, he has a soon to be published book in the works and he said in an e-mail to me that he will "play with this assymetry" in that book, this in response to whether or not he viewed the Craig, Dembski, Behe vs Sagan, Dennett, Dawkins dichotomy the way I did. So, I suspect that Craig, Dembski and Behe are being coy but I don't believe, at bottom, they rely on their scientific hypotheses to bolster their faith. It doesn't matter one whit to a thomist whether science yields this result or that, in the above cases or any others. Neither should it matter to a scientist whose science has jettisoned presuppositions other than those required methodologically, which is to say ditching metaphysical naturalism and keeping methodological naturalism. As for Saganists, Dennett and Dawkins, they don't similarly luxuriate and are anything but coy and, at bottom, need to prove Craig, Dembski and Behe wrong to salvage their scientism.

pax,
jb

The problem, to me, is that, once one has accepted Kant's philosophy, one has also accepted Hume's fundamental premises. He tried to overcome Hume without rejecting his mistaken form of empiricism, which in its extreme led to logical positivism, and by toying around, instead, with the a priori, both analytic and synthetic, in the first instance, dissing self-evident or necessary truths, in the latter, maintaining there are synthetic judgments a priori. Kant should rather have ditched Hume's skepticism and phenomenalism and stuck with Aristotle. It's good hygiene for keeping scientism out of science because it keeps one from having to leap with Hume (avoiding a self-contradiction) on the epistemological chessboard, taking critical realism as one's starting point instead. The lesson is that, in answering serious philosophical critiques, such as Kant and Hume's, as we must, we musn't forget the option of rejecting their premises in addition to searching for their flawed logic. And we shouldn't be afraid to take the backdoor of philosophy and apply a reductio ad absurdum analysis to such premises, rather than getting bogged down in interminable rational demonstrations.

Ergo, in answering the idealist critique, the trick, as I see it, is not to turn from Aristotle to answer Kant but rather from Aristotle to answer Plato, incorporating neo-platonic influence, not that some of the most important thomists of the 20th Century, Rahner and Lonergan, didn't give a nod to a kantian transcendentalism with their anthropological methods but that was done analogously in their theology, not abandoning an aristotelian-thomistic metaphysics.

One thus ends up with a modified version of hylomorphism, which might share some analogies with a highly nuanced dual aspect monism and even with some neo-whiteheadian process approaches, all of which, metaphysically, could be consonant with anything science can teach us about consciousness.

pax,
jb