Apparently what you're saying is that by having a trust in uncertain reality, scientific materialists (for example) have already paid admission to enter the theme park and yet haven't acknowledged that those costumes Mickey and Goofy are wearing might (or must) have a label on them that says "Made in Japan." And because they're all near-sighted (and forgot to bring their glasses) there's no point in trying to read the labels.

This partnership is working just like I knew it could.

But with all them big words and difficult concepts, do you ever feel like the 13-year-old kid holding a magnifying glass over an ant on a sunny day?

It's more like the joy I got from the following incident. It was a pleasure mixed with some anxiety. My nine year old is not allowed to pop firecrackers with adult supervision, moreso 'cause we don't want him running around with matches and less so out of concern for the blackjacks at his age. After New Years, I knew he had been salvaging firecrackers that had been blown apart from their packs without exploding in order to light later. One day, I heard firecrackers popping in my driveway and I just knew it was him even as I just knew he wouldn't run out with a box of matches without permission. His mother's unknowing gaze of curiosity toward me confirmed she hadn't given him permission. I could not help but admire his ingenuity as I looked out the window and saw him hunched over a blackjack with a magnifying glass, patiently popping one at a time with a little help from El Sol.

But to get more directly to your point, it does seem like all of modern philosophy as may be geared toward religious questions, iow, the philosophy of religion, is geared toward demonstrating that 1) belief is not unreasonable; 2) unbelief is not unreasonable; 3) suspension between belief and unbelief is pragmatic.

Because of the paradox of existence, alternate accounts can reasonably coexist and our beliefs are not, at bottom, justifiable through rational demonstration. Now, here is where one is frying an ant on the metaphysical sidewalk: If at the very beginning of our philosophical exposition we took into account the fact that we made unjustified leaps (by unjustified, I mean not rationally defensed other than by either reductio ad absurdum or pragmatic analyses), even as we chose our aristotelian system, then it follows that anything we attempt with that system is based on faith anyway.

IOW, we used a faith-based system to analyze other faith-based systems, ergo, we should know at the outset of our inquiry that we are going to end up with rational options not grounded in premises that were empircally demonstrable. By virtue of inescapable built-in system constraints, we knew that without being able to construct premises that were empirically provable, in the sense that they were conclusive via the clasical proofs of science, other valid arguments were going to be possible and we were going to be left holding the bag regarding which one was sound.

An important point can be missed, still. And that is, everything that we claim to know or even prove is, at bottom, based on faith. So, who has the privileged epistemology? Who has the greatest modeling power?

Well, for starters, I'd say this exercise made a strong case for buying into a system that claims to be based on faith and reason, fides et ratio, because other systems, claiming a superior faith independent of reason, or claiming a superior reason independent of faith, reveal, to me, that they haven't even gotten in touch with the reality of the fides et ratio engine installed under the hood of all epistemological vehicles. They aren't even critically aware of their own epistemological nuts and bolts. They are, in a very real sense, alienated from their own way of knowing, not aware of how it is they can even claim to know what it is they think they know.

I just came up with a novel idea:

Know thyself.

That's why I reject epistemological hubris as well as excessive epistemological humility and advocate, rather, an epistemological holism.

Turning that lens on: 1) belief is not unreasonable; 2) unbelief is not unreasonable; 3) suspension between belief and unbelief is pragmatic; it seems that one must then take up the challenge to examine the truth claims of the great traditions with an aim toward establishing, at least probabilistically, which of those claims may indeed correspond to reality. And one has available the same epistemic criteria of internal coherence, external congruence, logical consistency, interdisciplinary consilience and hypothetical consonance, etc to make these calculations as they do in making any other bets on reality, however mundane or sublime, as they do each and everyday.

pax,
jb

1) belief is not unreasonable; 2) unbelief is not unreasonable; 3) suspension between belief and unbelief is pragmatic.

All three positions acknowledge ultimate reality's incomprehensibility. The introduction of the God-hypothesis by believers is the introduction of yet another incomprehensibility, a multiplication, if you will, of one incomprehensibility by another.

However, what about intelligibility? What about this process of using one's analogical imagination to increase intelligibility using the effects of unveiled causes to draw an analogy to similar effects of veiled causes?

When the materialist does this, the materialist is using positive kataphatic affirmations in the form of analogies to suggest that reality is infinite, even if still incomprehensibly so, with efficient causality infinitely looping, relying on our understandings of efficient causation to make intelligible at least that aspect of the paradox of this putatively uncaused existence. It thus accepts the paradox of infinity and rejects the paradox of existence, implying that existence poses no conundrum even if infinity does.

When the theist does this, the theist is taking an inventory of physical and/or metaphysical causations and is employing negative apophatic denials in suggesting that these effects are absolutely and unequivocably disanalogous to whatever it is that caused this incomprehensible existence, relying on our understandings of efficient causation to make intelligible the notion that something else must be going on that we cannot begin to comprehend, rejecting both the paradox of infinity and the paradox of existence, implying nothing we know of can clear up these conundrums.

For Brad, what I am really saying is that the materialistic position is Deja Vu-esque: Seems like I've been here before , over and over and over, in a chain of infinite regress/progress. The theistic position is Vuja De-esque : I've never seen this before and I cannot remember ever seeing anything like it either. The agnostic position is: JaVa Day-esque : I think I'll drink coffee all day.

pax,
jb

note to self: This is why modal ontological arguments, if using apophatically predicated terms for the God-concept, will hold better than those using kataphatically predicated terms, which represent attributes as analogies. The logic is weakened by the use of analogies because all one has to do to defeat the logic is to invoke a self-contradiction between two different divine attributes, like is done all of the time in classical theodicy between omnipotence and omnibenevolence. God is all-powerful but not in the same way that we could ever conceive of power. God is all good but not in the same way that we can ever conceive of goodness. The apophatic predicates of modal logic in the modal ontological argument would not admit such contradictions.

Let's dig deeper in analyzing this DejaVu vs VujaDe model of reality.

The atheistic DejaVu model is claiming that we can explain existence (it just is) but that we just have to accept paradox (in the form of infinity) as some kind of metamathematical illusion generated by our minds. It suffers an infinite loop error.

The theistic VuJaDe model is claiming that neither existence nor infinity are, at bottom, paradoxical, we just cannot explain how this is so in familiar terms. It experiences a 404 error: Page not found.

We've all encountered both types of errors on our computers. What do we do for each?

Hmmmmmmmmm

pax,
jb

The "Device driver is stuck in an Infinite loop " error message is usually the result of a system communication problem.

This error message does not occur on all systems configurations.

The following suggestion may help to correct this issue:
Please ensure that you have the latest Cosm-OS update for your Mothernature and test your philosophical system.
Make sure you have an adequate power supply.
Disable or enable rush to closure - fast write and test your system.
Set your memory settings in the COSM-OS less aggressively and test.
If the above suggestions did not resolve your issue please contact your mothernature manufacturer to obtain the latest chipset drivers.

Click Here for 404 Error Analogue

JB said: My nine year old is not allowed to pop firecrackers with adult supervision, moreso 'cause we don't want him running around with matches and less so out of concern for the blackjacks at his age.

LOL. Here we are, all complaining about having too many lawyers in the world. I�m surprised that we don�t have even more since all kids seem to be already slanted that way. �It depends on what the meaning of the word 'match' is.�

Back to consciousness per se:

I don�t know the origin of this story:

A man was walking home one dark and foggy night. As he groped his way through the murk he nearly tripped over someone crawling around by a lamp post. "What are you doing?" asked the traveler. "I�m looking for my keys." Replied the other. "Are you sure you lost them here?" asked the first man. "I�m not sure at all," came the reply, "but if I haven�t lost them near this lamp I don�t stand a chance of finding them."

At any rate, I think it may be instructive for our discussion of science and metaphysics versus science as metaphysics. Richard Seel writes :

quote:

�Most people know this story. For me it is metaphor of science. �Normal science� in Kuhn�s (1962) terms, consists of looking as assiduously as possible in the lit area, perhaps exploring those edges where the gloom is not quite impenetrable. From time to time someone manages to switch on a new light�a paradigm shift, in Kuhn�s terms�and a new area of exploration is opened up. Science is about the art of the possible; it does not deny that the keys may lie in the darkness, it simply does not consider that its job consists of feeling around blindly.�

That sounds reasonable enough but in his unequivocal denial of metaphysics, does this sound like what Dennett is saying in Consciousness explained . ( Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991)? He wrote:

quote:

�There is only one sort of stuff, namely matter - the physical stuff of physics, chemistry and physiology - and the mind is somehow nothing but a physical phenomenon. In short, the mind is the brain ... we can (in principle!) account for every mental phenomenon using the same physical principles, laws and raw materials that suffice to explain radioactivity, continental drift, photosynthesis, reproduction, nutrition and growth .�

If that seems in the least equivocal, what about this quote from Darwin's Dangerous Idea , described as a model reductionist work, representing precisely the sort of scientism that so concerned C. S. Lewis? Dennett writes therein:

quote:

"My own spirit recoils from a (personal) God in the same way my heart sinks when I see a lion pacing neurotically back and forth in a small zoo cage. I know, I know the lion is beautiful but dangerous; if you let the lion roam free, it would kill me. Safety demands that it be put in a cage. Safety demands that religions be put in cages, too......

R.S. Woolhouse on Pierre Gasendi's attitude towards scientism:

quote:

"[Gassendi] suggested , also, that an undue concentration on the new natural philosophy might lead to a certain intellectual arrogance: 'May not a man go too far in this study, and overvalue his progress so far, as to think nothing out of his reach?'"

All of that aside, not all view the label scientism as anything more than descriptive even if it is most commonly defined as a pejorative of sorts (recall the Scientific American article on the Shamans of Scientism), and this encyclopedia entry seems less biased:

quote:

�For this reason, he [Dennett] may be described as a thinker who advocates a certain type of Behaviorism by means of an optimistic scientism which includes the belief that the best explanation of the functioning of consciousness will be provided by an account of human beings qua biological organisms under evolutionary constraints.�

Certainly there are efficacies that can be had from multiple working hypotheses at this stage in our lack of understanding about many aspects of consciousness, whether one accepts the hard/easy dichotomy or not? In Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin, �On multiple Hypotheses,� in On Scientific Thinking,� by Ryan D. Tweney, Michael E. Doherty, and Clifford R. Mynatt, Columbia University Press, New York, 1981, T.C. Chamberlin is cited in inventorying the efficacies of multiple working hypotheses: They: a) distribute the effort and divide the affections; b) protects against the radical defects of a single hypothesis; c) bring into distinct view every rational explanation of the phenomenon and develop every tenable hypothesis; d) gives to each of these a due place in the inquiry; e) make investigator the parent of a family of hypotheses; and so is less likely to fasten affections unduly upon any one; f) keeps the investigator from biasing hypotheses already proposed relative to the investigator�s own creations; g) allow the investigator to proceed with natural and enforced erectness of mental attitude, knowing that some of the hypotheses will perish and that some may survive.

Those who would proffer alternate hypotheses, would they even be viable? If not now, could they be, ever, in principle? What would be the nature of metaphysical versus physical knowledge? What might be its sources (ways of obtaining), limits and methods of validating? Could one apply useful analogies between the criteria of possibly obtaining indirect metaphysical evidence to the criteria applied by: a) CSICOP in examining paranormal claims for adherence to valid experimental designs and controls; b) quantum physics in identifying new particles; c) the pharmaceutical industry in describing putative drug mechanisms and efficacies? What evidence would be necessary? Would any indirect evidence be necessary and sufficient? How much evidence would establish probability? What would comprise one�s initial assumptions and how might one best continually challenge them? What would be the most important terms and how would they be defined per one�s understanding of the most important concepts? How would the evidence be characterized: testimonial versus demonstrative? direct versus indirect? mathematical and statistical? strong versus weak? Could there be, in principle, any strong, direct evidence? strong, indirect evidence? What would constitute reliable versus unreliable evidence? How would indirect or circumstantial evidence be determined to be either �consistent with� or �indicative of� the problem? Could an otherwise unprovable proposition be established as the most reasonable answer? Once a problem is posed and as many possible answers are considered, and once all the relevant evidence is gathered through rigorously controlled and carefully designed experiments, and once all of the evidence is sorted strong versus weak, however indirect, could any predictions be made or new evidence gathered?

Are the above nonsensical questions re: putative paranatural consciousness?

In Umberto Eco�s The Name of the Rose (page 366) Brother William of Baskerville isspeaking to his Benedictine novice Adso of Melk in November 1327:

quote:

�I was trying to tell you that the search for explicative laws in natural facts proceeds in a tortuous fashion. In the face of some inexplicable facts you must try to imagine many general laws, whose connection with your facts escapes you. Then suddenly, in the unexpected connection of a result, you perceive a line of reasoning that seems more convincing than the others. You try applying it to all similar cases, to use it for making predictions, and you discover that your intuition was right. But until you reach the end you will never know which predicates to introduce into your reasoning and which to omit. And this is what I am doing now. I line up so many disjointed elements and I venture some hypotheses. I have to venture many, and many of them are so absurd that I would be ashamed to tell them to you��

�I understood at that moment my master�s method of reasoning, and it seemed to me quite alien to that of the philosopher, who reasons by first principles, so that his intellect almost assumes the ways of the divine intellect. I understood that, when he didn�t have an answer, William proposed many to himself, very different one from another. I remained puzzled.�

�But then�� I ventured to remark, �you are still far from the solution��

�I am very close to one,� William said, �but I don�t know which.�

�Therefore you don�t have a single answer to your questions?�

�Adso, if I did I would teach theology in Paris.�

�In Paris do they always have the true answer?�

�Never,� William said, �but they are very sure of their errors.�

�And you,� I said with childish impertinence, �never commit errors?

�Often,� he answered. �But instead of conceiving only one, I imagine many, so I become the slave of none.�

Quien sabe?

Not me for sure!

pax,
jb

The atheistic DejaVu model is claiming that we can explain existence (it just is) but that we just have to accept paradox (in the form of infinity) as some kind of metamathematical illusion generated by our minds. It suffers an infinite loop error.

The theistic VuJaDe model is claiming that neither existence nor infinity are, at bottom, paradoxical, we just cannot explain how this is so in familiar terms. It experiences a 404 error: Page not found.

We've all encountered both types of errors on our computers. What do we do for each?

Hmmmmmmmmm

Interesting (and funny) analogy.

quote:

However, what about intelligibility? What about this process of using one's analogical imagination to increase intelligibility using the effects of unveiled causes to draw an analogy to similar effects of veiled causes?

When the materialist does this, the materialist is using positive kataphatic affirmations in the form of analogies to suggest that reality is infinite, even if still incomprehensibly so, with efficient causality infinitely looping, relying on our understandings of efficient causation to make intelligible at least that aspect of the paradox of this putatively uncaused existence. It thus accepts the paradox of infinity and rejects the paradox of existence, implying that existence poses no conundrum even if infinity does.

When the theist does this, the theist is taking an inventory of physical and/or metaphysical causations and is employing negative apophatic denials in suggesting that these effects are absolutely and unequivocably disanalogous to whatever it is that caused this incomprehensible existence, relying on our understandings of efficient causation to make intelligible the notion that something else must be going on that we cannot begin to comprehend, rejecting both the paradox of infinity and the paradox of existence, implying nothing we know of can clear up these conundrums.

For Brad, what I am really saying is that the materialistic position is Deja Vu-esque: Seems like I've been here before , over and over and over, in a chain of infinite regress/progress. The theistic position is Vuja De-esque : I've never seen this before and I cannot remember ever seeing anything like it either. The agnostic position is: JaVa Day-esque : I think I'll drink coffee all day.

I'm still scratching my head a bit, but I think something just clicked there.

1) belief is not unreasonable; 2) unbelief is not unreasonable; 3) suspension between belief and unbelief is pragmatic.

Well, with all due respect, I think there's a healthy amount of pragmatism in any approach. Hope, love, yearning and faith are pragmatic reactions to a world full of fear, doubt, uncertainty and pain. We'll hang our hats on a lot of things if helps to keep them from being trampled. I can also see where a clear rejection of religion is hanging one's hat on a different set of belief. And I can see where the agnostic is sort of a fence sitter, daring not to open believe one thing or another. But I can also see them doing, not only because they might wish to deny all the leaps of faith they've already made and thus to at least appear to remain pure in their neutrality, but because the evidence for either side is not yet strong enough for them.

quote:

�Most people know this story. For me it is metaphor of science. �Normal science� in Kuhn�s (1962) terms, consists of looking as assiduously as possible in the lit area, perhaps exploring those edges where the gloom is not quite impenetrable. From time to time someone manages to switch on a new light�a paradigm shift, in Kuhn�s terms�and a new area of exploration is opened up. Science is about the art of the possible; it does not deny that the keys may lie in the darkness, it simply does not consider that its job consists of feeling around blindly.�

Yes, but wouldn't it behoove scientists to start realizing that there are unlit areas? Might they start trying to see in the dark in unique and new ways, such as with night vision goggles?

�There is only one sort of stuff, namely matter - the physical stuff of physics, chemistry and physiology - and the mind is somehow nothing but a physical phenomenon. In short, the mind is the brain ... we can (in principle!) account for every mental phenomenon using the same physical principles, laws and raw materials that suffice to explain radioactivity, continental drift, photosynthesis, reproduction, nutrition and growth .�

While the relationships between the brain and mental phenomenon and senses is interesting, the THAT part of the equation is still not making its way into the discussion, let alone, what is to me, the clear indication that to describe our minds and senses as mere matter is to redefine what matter is and thus you haven't really said much at all.

quote:

"My own spirit recoils from a (personal) God in the same way my heart sinks when I see a lion pacing neurotically back and forth in a small zoo cage. I know, I know the lion is beautiful but dangerous; if you let the lion roam free, it would kill me. Safety demands that it be put in a cage. Safety demands that religions be put in cages, too......

What a provocative and powerful quote. I guess this is speaking to the idea that faith is dangerous because faith is often thought of as ignoring more concrete facts which then leads to denial and delusion which then leads to all sorts of repressive behaviors. Surely we can find plenty of examples where religion is associated with great cruelty. But in a basket full of other things such as the pursuit of power, control, revenge, hate, bigotry, ignorance, hostility and perversion, you can't just pluck faith out of that basket and single it out as the cause of all misery. It is this type of denial, hate, hostility, ignorance and the pursuit of power and control implicit in the above quote that truly leads to the very things that the quote is bemoaning.

quote:

"[Gassendi] suggested , also, that an undue concentration on the new natural philosophy might lead to a certain intellectual arrogance: 'May not a man go too far in this study, and overvalue his progress so far, as to think nothing out of his reach?'"

That's a zinger.

re: Well, with all due respect

I think you quite nicely laid out other dynamics that are certainly at work, especially once considering that most people are philosophizing on the run , maybe not making decisions with formal logical arguments (well certainly not) but using the best tools they've got from a whole smorgasbord of epistemic capacities to get along in the world ... and, for the most part, in a loving way.

pax,
jb

re: Surely we can find plenty of examples where religion is associated with great cruelty.

No doubt. But Stalinist Russia and Maoist China in the 20th Century, the greatest atheistic materialist social experiments conducted to date ...

As you say, there are plenty of other examples.

re: I think there's a healthy amount of pragmatism

I have, even fairly recently, described my own approach as essentially pragmatist because those first few prephilosophical positions: belief in human reason, in other minds, in reality and its intelligibility, etc are practical and not theoretical decisions and, truth be known, I had to parse a lot of ideas to distinguish between that and the reductio ad absurdum that I claim to also use, because, after all, the premises that are being rejected by the reductio aren't exactly empirically demonstrable in the classical scientific method sense. Like I said, they aren't an either-or proposition; we might all do best to use both. Fact is, most people don't need to worry about those question begging distinctions.

pax,
jb

Back to Athens for another round:

You know, putting one's money where one's mouth is, truth be known, while I will likely always defend the NIH-Complementary and Alternative Medicine research effort, I do think funding for same should not exceed certain levels. For the intractable problems of science, I'll likely always defend multiple hypotheses and, the more intractable, the greater the diversity of hypotheses, including what we have agreed to describe as a metaphysics of the gaps. However, I am unalterably opposed to placing gods in those gaps, predicating my God-concept meta-metaphysically and apophatically, at that, which is to say we gain descriptive accuracy regarding the God of the philosophers through a process of negation by saying what God is in fact not or is not like. Based on these predications, kataphatic descriptions of God, which are attempts to gain descriptive accuracy by saying what God is like, can only be analogical to physical or putative metaphysical realities and can not be predicated literally. I only mention this in passing because so much confusion arises by the dragging of God into speculative cognitive science and those who are most worried by scientism are those so often guilty of fideism.

Like I said before, Dennett or Dembski, Dawkins or Behe, Sagan or Craig, Godel or Schmeauxdel, insofar as their raw scientific hypotheses shorn of metaphysical presuppositions are concerned, who should have a stake in those outcomes? I'll defend them all in their pursuits of truth. The more pioneering the work and the more intractable the problems, the more I encourage unfettered brainstorming, though I'm clearly set on dedicating public funding where the scientific method rubber can best hit the road, if not able to pursue direct evidence, at least in the most scientifically rigorous pursuit of indirect evidence (and that's what we obtain when it comes to many psychoactive drugs that are efficacious even if their mechanisms aren't known, and that's what we obtain in particle physics).

A second missive that refers to a response, not to the post above, but to a prior post:

You did not at all address my points re: how science can use its indirect or circumstantial evidence when direct evidence is precluded, whether in principle or methodologically. As is the case with particle physics and experimental pharmaceuticals and speculative scientific cosmology, so it can be with consciousness (and I don't exclude psi, but it doesn't need to become a distraction).

I encourage you to read this essay by Steven D. Schafersman. http://www.utexas.edu/cola/dep...pers/Schafersman.txt You should resonate with much of what he has written. I do not know if you would accept his distinction between naturalism and materialism, but I think it is spot on. His fundamental argument seems to be that naturalism is a methodological necessity in the practice of science by scientists, and an ontological necessity for the understanding and credibility of science by scientists. He also more precisely defines scientism, more narrowly conceiving it in order to escape the charge himself.

Schafersman teases out the nuances in the distinction between methodological materialism (or naturalism) of science with philosophical materialism/naturalism and then goes on to level charges of logical inconsistency and internal incoherency against anyone who would adopt naturalism methodologically but not ontologically, claiming that scientists who are also supernaturalists are playing a game. He writes: The moral entailment of ontological naturalism by methodological naturalism does not create an ethical lapse among those supernaturalists who assume methodological naturalism, but something similar to an insincerity or want of courage. Even as he also writes: The power of science lies in the fact that it is not a metaphysics, but an epistemological method; it has no prior commitment to a description of reality, being, or existence.

He thoroughly explores the origin of naturalism and its history in relation to science. He then devotes the remainder of his essay to an analysis of creationism and ID theory.

He does state: Why is there something rather than nothing? I have no answer to this question.

Schafersman makes some important distinction that I'll quote at length, below, that I find useful, that I alluded to in my immediately prior post and that I accept with some qualifications:

quote:

Supernaturalists identify--misidentify, I believe--the immaterial world of the human mind, which obviously exists and is part of nature, with the transcendental world of their supernatural beliefs. This practice is so pervasive that I must discuss it here. Let us name and classify the three philosophical worlds and their elements: First, the material and physical
world of nature that includes matter and energy; second, the immaterial world of nature that includes mind, ideas, values, imagination, logical relationships, etc.; third, the transcendental world of supernature that includes gods, spirits, souls, etc. Belief in the first world with denial of the independence of the second constitutes materialism, belief in worlds one and two constitutes naturalism, while belief in all three worlds constitutes supernaturalism. While the identification of brain with conscious mind is relatively easy, supernaturalists identify conscious mind with soul. Similarly, naturalists identify brain with imagination and emotion, but supernaturalists misidentify
imagination and emotion as transcendence. Similarly, brain is self becomes spirit; brain is dreams (or psychosis) becomes revelation; brain is imagined all-loving, all-powerful authority figure becomes a deity; an unexplained natural phenomenon is a mystery becomes a miracle; a wrongful act is an immoral act becomes a sin. In short, supernaturalists are exploiting the uncertainty and ignorance of science regarding the second world of immaterial elements to create and justify their belief in a third world of supernature. Supernaturalists would object to this analysis, I am sure, but it explains to me why they can continue to harbor their beliefs without empirical evidence--they think they have evidence, but I think they are misinterpreting elements of the second world.

Now, I don't wholly object to this analysis because it is at least analogous to the distinctions I have drawn between the physical, metaphysical and meta-metaphysical and it could comport, with much additional nuancing, with a hylomorphic view of the soul as form, which would not be in conflict with our functionalistic accounts of consciousness, whatever those eventually turn out to be.

Below, however, is where you would clearly seem to be parting company with many of your fellow methodological/ontological naturalist but don't call me scientistic cohort, when it comes to consciousness:

quote:

Science is less reliable if we examine more difficult questions about the relationship of the material world to the immaterial world of the conscious mind: the world of thoughts, ideas, beliefs, dreams, truths, values, morals, meanings, purposes, intentions, reasons, logical relationships, imagination, free will, and self-awareness. All of these things are undoubtedly part of the natural world, and science certainly helps to investigate them and provide reliable knowledge to help us understand them, but, on its own, it has not provided reliable answers to questions about them, and I'm not sure that, in principle, it can. Philosophy is required along with science in our investigation of the immaterial world, although their combined reliability is no sure thing, either. The immaterial world includes, of course, the nature of truth and knowledge, and therefore the ultimate reliability, certainty, and objectivity of scientific knowledge. Thus, I am happy to acknowledge the vital importance of philosophy in the effort to explain how science works. I emphasize that science and philosophy are both involved in understanding and explaining all non-material aspects of nature.

pax,
jb

This essay is instructive.

quote:

Worthwhile work is done by CSICOP. There are pseudo-sciences. And yes, science is under attack these days from these pseudosciences, and various ethereal, feel good, New Age philosophies.

But the ground has been gained by these beliefs by default: people see science in retreat from genuine anomalies that need study. And here's where CSICOP has done the most damage, in promoting this retreat.

That is the biggest problem I have with fundamentalistic scientism in its approach to consciousness.

pax,
jb

When you guys are ready, maybe we can close the thread and start a new one, designating this one as a hall-of-famer! I think the new forum software is more stable than the old, but I still get nervous when we reach 7 pages or so, recalling how some good K-pax discussions got eaten by a hungry php orc!

This essay is instructive.

Great link, JB. While I'm not sure about the existence of God (and have no problem expressing that opinion) what I *am* sure about is the dynamic involved between religion and science and that science, in it attempt to distance itself from religion, has retreated from the search for truth while taking on many of religion's supposed faults in the process. And what is just a howler for me is that these scientists are not only usually of great intelligence overall, but their profession is the very search for truth. Physician heal thyself. Still, I am sympathetic because we're really talking about social pressures, in-group dynamics, prejudice, bias and ignorance; nothing that is exclusively the domain of scientists. Still, it's a double howler to see schools and universities (entities for passing on knowledge and truth) spend so much time and resources on such things as diversity training and other such liberal ideas as if they were carving away the last vestiges of human evil while such a BIG whopper as their own prejudice and bias hangs right there out in the open.

quote:

Well, I was among the _dis believers, big time. Whether it's the Kennedy Conspiracy, the Loch Ness monster or dowsing, CSICOP doesn't buy it. In fact, one of the group's co-founders left because he found more reflex naysaying among the members than actual skepticism.

What kind of a person puts such an emotional premium on disbelief? CSICOPers often comment on people's misguided need to believe, whether its in elves or Elvis. However, in their distaste for psychoanalysis (that's bunk too), CSICOP members seem somewhat blind to their own motivations.

At one point in the conference, a woman claiming UFO experiences was at the podium. One of Dr. John Mack's patients, she began by asking for a show of hands from the audience. "How many people here believe in God?" she asked. To gradually building laughter, the CSICOP audience realized how homogenous its thinking was: among over 500 people no one raised their hands.

The woman's point, I think, was that there's as much a belief system among the so-called skeptics as there is among the "believers."

Atheism has no more a logical foundation than blind faith.

Devastatingly well written and sort of puts in a nutshell my main interest in all this.

quote:

Any compelling physical evidence for UFOs, studied by competent scientists such as Pierre Guerin or Jacques Vallee, has never been adequately addressed by CSICOP. The reason, I believe, is that the idea of a superior intelligence from the skies harkens back to the very thing that CSICOPers find most repellent: the concept of God.

The very reason some people uncritically accept UFOs is essentially the same reason others so uncritically reject them: for their archetypal, mythic baggage. God is dead, CSICOP has decided, and UFOs aren't doing so well either.

Are these mostly people who replaced one religion with another - science - and turned disbelief into a belief system in itself?

Great stuff.

quote:

We all have our cliques, our in-groups, both professionally and privately. But it is dangerous when any group is convinced it has The Truth.

Great point again.

re: While I'm not sure about the existence of God

As one of the most distinguished prelates of the Catholic Church writes: Faith is always poised over the abyss of doubt ...
that's Cardinal Dulles

And, as one of the most respected Protestant theologians submits: Faith and doubt are a polar reality ...
that's Paul Tillich

You are in good company ...

pax,
jb

re: Schafersman

His fine distinctions, notwithstanding, he either implicitly or explicitly falls back on a notion of emergentism and/or supervenience in his version of consciousness and its material/immaterial dichotomy, quite a useful explanatory idea but even by his own account lacking explanatory adequacy (not to mention causal joint paradoxes). For a fellow otherwise rigorous in his philosophical and scientific assertions, so desperately trying to evade the charge of scientism, he sure took a long metaphysical stroll off the short end of his so-called scientific plank.

pax,
jb

When you guys are ready, maybe we can close the thread and start a new one, designating this one as a hall-of-famer!

It's nice of you to say so, Phil. JB ran up the 20,000 rushing yards thus qualifying us for such status and I kept the football dry.

I'm not done (is one ever?) responding to JB's stuff but do what you think best and we can continue in another thread. No big deal.

quote:

Science is less reliable if we examine more difficult questions about the relationship of the material world to the immaterial world of the conscious mind: the world of thoughts, ideas, beliefs, dreams, truths, values, morals, meanings, purposes, intentions, reasons, logical relationships, imagination, free will, and self-awareness. All of these things are undoubtedly part of the natural world, and science certainly helps to investigate them and provide reliable knowledge to help us understand them, but, on its own, it has not provided reliable answers to questions about them, and I'm not sure that, in principle, it can. Philosophy is required along with science in our investigation of the immaterial world, although their combined reliability is no sure thing, either. The immaterial world includes, of course, the nature of truth and knowledge, and therefore the ultimate reliability, certainty, and objectivity of scientific knowledge. Thus, I am happy to acknowledge the vital importance of philosophy in the effort to explain how science works. I emphasize that science and philosophy are both involved in understanding and explaining all non-material aspects of nature.

I can certainly live with that summation. That�s an interesting contrast, JB, that you draw between the first and second quotes that you posted from Schafersman

JB said:

quote:

You know, putting one's money where one's mouth is, truth be known, while I will likely always defend the NIH-Complementary and Alternative Medicine research effort, I do think funding for same should not exceed certain levels. For the intractable problems of science, I'll likely always defend multiple hypotheses and, the more intractable, the greater the diversity of hypotheses, including what we have agreed to describe as a metaphysics of the gaps. However, I am unalterably opposed to placing gods in those gaps, predicating my God-concept meta-metaphysically and apophatically, at that, which is to say we gain descriptive accuracy regarding the God of the philosophers through a process of negation by saying what God is in fact not or is not like. Based on these predications, kataphatic descriptions of God, which are attempts to gain descriptive accuracy by saying what God is like, can only be analogical to physical or putative metaphysical realities and can not be predicated literally. I only mention this in passing because so much confusion arises by the dragging of God into speculative cognitive science and those who are most worried by scientism are those so often guilty of fideism.

I�m sort of experiencing a buffer overrun trying to hold all these thoughts in consideration while trying to process them. You seem to be making a very good point in the overall context.

JB said:

quote:

Those who would proffer alternate hypotheses, would they even be viable? If not now, could they be, ever, in principle? What would be the nature of metaphysical versus physical knowledge? What might be its sources (ways of obtaining), limits and methods of validating? Could one apply useful analogies between the criteria of possibly obtaining indirect metaphysical evidence to the criteria applied by: a) CSICOP in examining paranormal claims for adherence to valid experimental designs and controls; b) quantum physics in identifying new particles; c) the pharmaceutical industry in describing putative drug mechanisms and efficacies? What evidence would be necessary? Would any indirect evidence be necessary and sufficient? How much evidence would establish probability? What would comprise one�s initial assumptions and how might one best continually challenge them? What would be the most important terms and how would they be defined per one�s understanding of the most important concepts? How would the evidence be characterized: testimonial versus demonstrative? direct versus indirect? mathematical and statistical? strong versus weak? Could there be, in principle, any strong, direct evidence? strong, indirect evidence? What would constitute reliable versus unreliable evidence? How would indirect or circumstantial evidence be determined to be either �consistent with� or �indicative of� the problem? Could an otherwise unprovable proposition be established as the most reasonable answer? Once a problem is posed and as many possible answers are considered, and once all the relevant evidence is gathered through rigorously controlled and carefully designed experiments, and once all of the evidence is sorted strong versus weak, however indirect, could any predictions be made or new evidence gathered?

That�s the real head scratcher, ain�t it. My opinion is (through lots of whacking of the stick by you) not that science will be able to prove some of this more metaphysical stuff, but that by dispensing with it prejudicially they are limiting the key ingredient to science � one that is even more important than the scientific process: imagination. Some of the stuff that science proposes is pretty �weird� in the traditional sense. Some of the avenues of inquiry that science has gone done looked pretty damn weird to many at the time too. Surely science has matured sufficiently and is confident enough in its own methods that there is no threat to science if they follow some non-standard lines of inquiry; unless, of course, science and scientists have such a simplistic view of the world and people that it�s still, in their minds, a battle between science and religion.

JB said: Would any indirect evidence be necessary and sufficient?

I think indirect evidence is accepted all the time. That�s not the problem. The problem is what scientists think this indirect evidence may be intersecting with. I think most scientists would view some of these areas of metaphysics as tainted; that to give them much credence would be back-sliding into superstition and religion. Only when a subject is anointed by science as �legitimate� is it then okay to pursue down that road. Of course, the process that leads to something eventually being considered legitimate usually leaves a lot of dead or maimed scientific bodies lying around.

One area of inquiry that seems ripe for �serious� study is ESP (broadly defined). I know that in my experience that when I�m struggling for an answer to something the best thing I can do is just stop thinking. Often, but not always, the answer (or �a� answer) will come. And I kid you not when I say I feel more like the channeler of that answer than the originator. I suppose I�ve just done two very controversial and wrong things. I�ve supposed a connection between my mind and something else with little concrete evidence to support this notion. But much worse I�ve show a �faith� in a process about which I know very little but which does seem to work.

It�s particularly interesting to me that the nature of the most important instrument to a scientist � his or her mind � is left out of the equation. But here we are producing these abundant rational scientific results with something that works as if by magic.

Are the above nonsensical questions re: putative paranatural consciousness?

No.

One area of inquiry that seems ripe for �serious� study is ESP (broadly defined).

Brad,

Excuse me. I am coming in on the tail end of this thread. Have you heard of remote viewing? The US government has used it successfully for espionage. It is related to ESP. It has been investigated and used with success. The FarSight Institute has a piece about it online. There is also much other info on the web about it. It has been seriously studied and much time, and effort has been put into it by the US government. It has something to do with the location of mind, too.

Tonya

Tonya, I've just sent you an email to touch base on something. Please check it out at your registered address. Thanks.

Excuse me. I am coming in on the tail end of this thread. Have you heard of remote viewing? The US government has used it successfully for espionage. It is related to ESP. It has been investigated and used with success. The FarSight Institute has a piece about it online. There is also much other info on the web about it. It has been seriously studied and much time, and effort has been put into it by the US government. It has something to do with the location of mind, too.

Thanks, Tonya. I'll check that out. I'm not very familiar with all the various paranormal phenomenon, but since I kind of consider creativity to be a bit of a strange phenomenon my definition is pretty wide open. To me, creativity almost gets to the idea of "creating something from nothing." In many ways, creative ideas, while certainly influenced by other "causes", seem to quite untidily jump out of the strict (what I guess is called) "efficient" causation loop.

Many religious and philosophical ideas state that we all are connected. Heck, if the stranger aspects of physics are true then this principle seems to actually be proven. Particles can apparently communicate with each other instantaneously, defying the speed of light. And I've had several "weird" experiences that have done nothing to disprove this. I'm still a skeptic at heart so I too need ample proof, while still realizing that "proofs" usually mean scientific proofs. And although they are reliable and trusted (and quite productive), they, by definition, can prove only the types of things that can be proved using the scientific method. They can't yet (and maybe never can) actually prove some of the most basic and fundamental realities of our lives, such as that you and I are both conscious beings.

The touchy part is not to impinge, disrespect or delegitimize science (even as they may do so for things outside their field), while pursuing other knowledge. Science, at least in my view, is a part of the world, but it is not THE world.

The touchy part is not to impinge, disrespect or delegitimize science (even as they may do so for things outside their field), while pursuing other knowledge. Science, at least in my view, is a part of the world, but it is not THE world.

Well said.

I think if we have discovered anything in this thread about our consideration of human knowledge, we have realized that we all, inescabaly and without exception, begin with certain prephilosophical beliefs, which is to say a type of faith. We begin with faith in human reason and faith in the world's intelligibility and faith in the existence of other minds, things we don't (can't) rationally demonstrate and empirically prove, in the classical sense of the scientific method.

We begin with faith, whether as scientists, whether as skeptics, whether as believers, whether as atheists, whatever. We don't stop there but also value reason. We know the world then through faith and reason. One can think of faith as an existential warrant , something that our very way of living and moving and having being calls forth from us in the way of a trusting response to reality. We extrapolate this basic and most fundamental trust and reflect upon it through reason, which we might call rational justification .

Anyone who places a premium on reason and rational justification, losing sight of their implicit existential warrants or faith that preceded same, loses an integral part of what gives us an ever-tightening grasp of reality or, in a manner of speaking, forgets who brung 'em to the dance. Similarly, we don't lose sight of reason. Our epistemic capacities include faith and reason, and, such capacities much more broadly conceived, other matters of the heart and of even bodily wisdom.

To me, this is simply a fact. Faith and Reason is how we operate. It is not so to speak just a prescriptive thing that the Catholic Church teaches and prescribes but is also, prior to that, a descriptive thing, which is to say that is just how things are when it comes to human knowledge.

Assuredly, this interplay between faith and reason is problematic, but let no one tell you that scientific materialism is more rational, when, in actuality, it has lost sight of the faith and reason forest for the reason trees and is not in touch with the very dynamism that gifted it, before the scientific method was born, with its ability to gain an ever-tightening grasp on reality.

Fides et Ratio was an "is" before it ever became a "should".

pax,
jb