Friday, August 17, 2012

Rediscovering Human Beings

My article “Rediscovering Human Beings” will appear in two parts over at The BioLogos Forum.  Today you can read Part I.  Part II will be posted tomorrow.  

UPDATE: Part II has now been posted.

267 comments:

  1. This is anon from the other day (the one who explained to touchstone how his beliefs are self-refuting and his idea of meaning in materialism is a contradictio in adjecto)

    Since that day, we've seen several other people come in and explain to touchstone how wrong he is and how what he's saying makes absolutely no sense. He continues to refuse to listen but instead tries to "argue" in his little circle completely oblivious of the fact that the very circle he is utilizing is itself incoherent (for reasons pointed to him already – derrida’s work only being one of them)

    He seems to like throw blanket statements such as “to believe in the reality of the intellect is a superstition” (paraphrasing), backed up by a "beg the question" definitions. He defines superstitious as anything supernatural... But that can't help him can it? Since he just so defined it. If I define as superstitious anything that tastes like bacon, would that make my breakfast a superstition? Of course not. So we instead must look for a more sophisticated definition for superstition and one that is not circular in favor of materialism.

    The definition for superstition is therefore: "Assigning false causality to something". For example, lightning strikes my house, and I appeal to Zeus' powers because he is angry at me due to the fact that I like Poseidon more. I cut myself and get an infection, the reason I cite is the fact that I did not obsessively wash my hands the previous night 5 times with a new bar of soap (a la Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets). And so on.

    Continuing on the topic of superstition, touchstone is telling us that according to his worldview, constituents that are devoid of intentionality (teleology) can somehow "create" meaning. But a fundamental requirement of meaning is intentionality. So how can this thing called "matter" which is devoid of the most fundamental causal role "create" meaning? It simply can’t. Either one is not referencing meaning when using that word or he is appealing to magic (causal inadequacy). And there you have it, the superstition of all superstitions, ladies and gents. Materialism!

    The same can be said about matter, chance and nothingness as the most fundamental superstitions that have captured the imagination of some people. They claim that such "things" can create order, design, intelligibility, reason, beauty and even existence (among many other things). Usually, such absurd claims are hidden behind anti-intellectualist babble that disguises itself as "science", when in reality they simply interpret some science according to their belief system (when the same science can be interpreted in a myriad different ways including via the use of the exact opposite metaphysical position).

    Once I came to realize these games that materialists and some "scientists" played it hit me like a ton of bricks. The word deception does not even begin to cover my sentiments and thoughts.

    Since I don't want to digress I want to comment on one last thing that touchstone mentioned that I find rather funny... He categorized Thomists in the same group as the objectivists and called both fetishists. After seeing just how confused touchstone in on most issues it's by no surprise that he misses the blatant irony of that claim.

    You see, one thing that is central to Aristotle and Aquinas is their understanding of the importance of common sense in daily activities, in philosophy and in science. They understood, much like Heisenberg did, that regardless of how extreme our abstractions are in the sciences (he cites his work on quantum physics) they eventually need to be grounded in real experience and in the language of common sense for the simple reason that it's the starting point of all inquiry. There is simply no escape from it.

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  2. I'm not going to comment on the ridiculousness of objectivism but I will comment on the fetishism that exists in materialistic circles, which brings us back to the irony charge. One of the objectives of materialism is to try and redefine and re-describe reality in a way that literally makes no sense (this entire discussion is testament to how absurd materialism has been shown to be) since any materialistic account of meaning will be a self-defeating activity. Stuck in epistemological nihilism, trying to get out of a self-imposed quagmire – the prison of the mind (as a result of the overt epistemologization of modernism) such activity is no different than ***close your eyes if you’re younger than 18 or are offended easily*** tying up your genitalia and dipping them in hot wax as a means to have an orgasm. You can dip them in the wax ‘till kingdom come but you’ll never get there…

    In the same way touchstones belief constitute the modern fetish of philosophy, which is more concerned with philosophical masturbation instead of exploring the beauty of reality. Caught up in a game of arbitrary self-imposed rules ad infinitum, the materialist is destined to continue to “pleasure” himself by his lonesome (since nominalism is upheld), while being oblivious to the reality and possibilities around him. Since that’s all he knows, he confuses his obsessive philosophical masturbations with that which is in fact Real and we have a clear case of simulacra (as per baudrillard, which is also ironic since he is a victim of the same phenomenon he identifies).

    Fortunately, one is not “alone” in this world and much like in situations of sexuality, one has the option to share himself and experience others. One is not forced to exist in isolation inside the philosophical dungeon of materialism but instead has a direct relationship with the splendor or reality much like one has experience of the splendor of a woman (or man depending on your orientation – yay for political correctness). That experience of beauty of the ‘Other’ is of course found in Realism. A world created as so to be intelligible and beautiful. A reality where possibilities surpass even our wildest imagination and the act of personal exploration is a fundamental purpose of its very fabric.

    I hope my little story served to expose the irony of a materialist calling others victims of fetishism.

    ;-)

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  3. Thanks Anon!

    That was interesting.... It won't change anything hahahah though and unfortunately.

    IN Touchstone model, I think even Blaming Zeus is Green to Go. Pretty much that is the part I agree with Touch... The performative models. But the performative models need fundamental tools so we can make use of them... Touch's is naturalism, mine is... I have none! Sort of.

    But yeah man, thanks for sharing, is always cool to kmow why someone changes their mind, even if they change to position we don't like.

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  4. Out-of-touchstone said... On the chance that by "RS", you actually meant "TS" ('r' is right next to 't' on my keyboard), I'm absolutely, perfectly uncredentialed in philosophy.

    No, he meant RS. (But hey, meaning is all a matter of statistical bunching, right?) Don't worry, nobody would mistake you for having any credentials in philosophy.

    very similar to Thomists from my point of view in terms of fetishistic impulses on metaphysics.

    Is "fetish" a compliment to you, or is that your way of saying you don't understand what metaphysics is either?

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  5. RS, are you a philosophy professor? A grad student in philosophy? It's been over a year since I've visited this blog and back then you were nowhere to be seen.

    I discovered this blog a little under a year ago, and started posting here a few months back. And, no; I'm afraid I'm just an amateur with a deep interest in philosophy.

    This is transcendentally true, it's presupposed by the concept of meaning. If you have to go 'outside' to ground meaning, you have necessarily brought whatever-it-is 'inside'. If it's not inside, and it's not part of the system, it cannot be the basis for meaning, it's not referencable in the system as the basis for carrying semantic cargo.

    Denying premise 1 (and 8, in turn) is pretty much the only way to get out of the trap. But this commits you to the position that intentionality is intrinsic to the system of signs, which is what you were trying to deny by relocating it to the outside. Otherwise, you're committed to Derrida's total relativism.

    Any Thomistic basis for meaning is necessarily 'inside' the system of meaning -- that's why it would be described as a 'basis for meaning'.

    Actually, Thomists hold that real essences enter the mind--not just representations of things. It doesn't work like a system of signs. Further, as Feser explains, they believe that words have forms. Finally, they also hold that the mind is immaterial, which keeps it out of a deterministic relationship with the sign-based brain.

    When we create meaning, and rely on meaning, we are not talking about the "meaning of the entire system", we are making semantic distinctions *within* the system.

    Yes, this is true. However, from the phrasing at (1) and (8), it should be clear that the system needs an infusion of meaning for any of its conclusions to have meaning. Otherwise, meaning (determinate content, intentionality) is "what we make of it", and even science is Derridized.

    "Apple" can and does have meaning by distinguishing what it does *not* refer to, inside the system. Concepts in side the system are "system-internal".

    This is exactly what Derrida concludes. However, because closed systems of signs are incapable of having a solid foundation in "reality"--even the term "reality" is within the closed system--, meaning becomes entirely fluid. This applies even to science. Everything is relativized and objectivity is impossible.

    It's not illusory or meaningless -- you use this system to good effect just in participating in this thread. Where sender can impart information -- this and not that -- you have meaning, demonstrated.

    But, because the sender is not outside of the system, whatever he "imparts" is lost. With no objective grounding, the signs within the system mean totally different things to different people. Meaning is a relativistic illusion: everyone thinks that they have it, but none of them really do.

    I appreciate your putting this in succinct, more concrete terms. That is helpful and productive, thank you. It reveals the nature of the problem in what you've been claiming.

    No problem. I hope you'll see now that your counterargument does not work.

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  6. @Glenn,


    You read and considered--starting at (1) all the way up to, including, and beyond (8)--then circled back to 'refute' (8)?


    No, just a quick scan before bed last night quickly located (8) as both debilitating, and easily shown to be such. (1) is the same problem, but it's ambiguous; I'd have to get clarification if that meant what (8) clearly (must) means. If it's the same problem, then the same observation replies. But (8) is conspicuously wrong, and in a way that I can layout within a 4,000 character post limit and a few minutes, and without have to loop back for clarifications (which seem to be a problem in getting from rank sophist -- when I ask, I don't seem to get clarifications back).


    Realize ye not that ye could simply have taken aim and lobbed your attempted refutation at (1) ("A system of signs obtains its meaning from outside of itself")?

    I read this to possibly mean that those *signs* obtain their meaning from outside of that sign, where "itself" refers to the particular sign, not the system of signs. If that's the case, then I agree. The singular "itself" to me indicates 'system' as the referent, rather than a particular sign ('signs' a plural was used), but no matter, (8) provides all I need without that ambiguity.

    While travelling from Los Angeles to San Diego via Chicago can be more entertaining and fun, some pople might think it can also be a tad bit less efficient, as well as somewhat more time consuming.
    Agreed, but the priority in these situations is to locate points of criticism and analysis that are the most fruitful, the most clear, fair, representative, and important. (1) on my own reading runs the risk of "no you didn't understand". Perhaps I didn't and rank meant meaning obtains outside the sign itself (not the system). In that case, I'm just forcing a detour in the discussion, and missing the goal of my critique.


    If your implicit assertion is correct--that a system of signs does not obtain its meaning from outside of itself--then it follows that there cannot be any such thing as an idiom, i.e., an expression whose meaning cannot be derived from the individual meanings of its constituent elements.

    No, that's still system internal -- it's only by having other parts of the system to compare the idiom to that we can establish its "idiom-ness". For example, to use an example from Derrida (I think), "il fault" and "un certain pas" are idiomatic French vis-à-vis English; "il faut" maps to "fault", "it's needed" and one (or more) other translation(s) that escape me at the moment. Its doesn't map backwards or forwards that way in English. This is idiomatic to French.

    But what "il fault" maps to is not important. That we can see that mapping *against* English semantics is what makes the idiom... idiomatic. Again, as above, meaning is an internal set of relationships. English and French are different languages, and each have unique associations from symbols to referents that make them singular with respect to each other and any other language. French and English are "groups of meaning" and can be contrasted, producing idioms. But this all occurs within the system.

    -TS

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  7. RS,

    But, because the sender is not outside of the system, whatever he "imparts" is lost. With no objective grounding, the signs within the system mean totally different things to different people. Meaning is a relativistic illusion: everyone thinks that they have it, but none of them really do.

    It's even worse than that, isn't it? He never "imparts" meaning to begin with, because the act of imparting would be yet another instance of meaning, and so on. And when you say the signs within the system "mean totally different things to different people", that too is being too kind if I understand the concept right - because what means what to whom would be yet another instance of meaning itself, which of course never gets off the ground.

    So it's pointless to suggest that something "means something to this person", because that suggestion would itself be an instance of meaning.

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  8. It's even worse than that, isn't it? He never "imparts" meaning to begin with, because the act of imparting would be yet another instance of meaning, and so on. And when you say the signs within the system "mean totally different things to different people", that too is being too kind if I understand the concept right - because what means what to whom would be yet another instance of meaning itself, which of course never gets off the ground.

    So it's pointless to suggest that something "means something to this person", because that suggestion would itself be an instance of meaning.


    Very true. These are actually Derrida's conclusions as well. Somehow, bizarrely, he never admitted that his system eats away at its own foundations. He accepted every other insane result.

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  9. Well Rank, I think when someone finds PRINCIPLES that for them are self evident truths or irrefutable principles; that person will apply 100% trust in them and follow from there. So if you find out that you are actually a FISH with a BULL's head... well that conclusion is CERTAIN, no matter what, no way you missed something along the way!

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  10. Touchstone: This is precisely what the label 'superstitious' looks to identify, belief in activity and interaction that have no basis in science, no basis in our knowledge of nature.

    No, it doesn't, as is clear from the fact that superstition has been identified throughout history by people who accept "activity" beyond science. If you want to argue that there is nothing "beyond science" and that therefore any such ought to be called superstition, feel free to make that argument — but it is an argument that needs to be made, not something you can simply assume.

    None of these "contradict science" in the equivocal way you invoked above.

    Yes, lots of things don't contradict science, even things that are not true. "Contradicts science" is not a synonym for "wrong".

    I've never encountered "immaterial intelligence" as even a contemplated or putative component of a natural model. It is always placed outside of nature, beyond the reach of science and natural knowledge (hence the "immaterial").

    An intellect in the A-T view is entirely natural, and certainly within the realm of natural knowledge, which is not to say that it is quantifiable by physics. It seems to me that no small part of the confusion here is failing to understand just how Thomists view nature, intentionality, souls, science, etc. To take the modern stance on any of these issues for granted is to beg any number of questions against the alternative positions from the get-go.

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  11. You see, one thing that is central to Aristotle and Aquinas is their understanding of the importance of common sense in daily activities, in philosophy and in science. They understood, much like Heisenberg did, that regardless of how extreme our abstractions are in the sciences (he cites his work on quantum physics) they eventually need to be grounded in real experience and in the language of common sense for the simple reason that it's the starting point of all inquiry. There is simply no escape from it.

    Well, that's quaint coming from Aquinas, or Aristotle, given the tiny perimeter of science in their day, so little to demonstrate the limitations and misconceptions of common sense. But now, it's just a sad, self-imposed foot-locker sized cage to enclose one's mind in, Sarah Palin epistemology.

    Why would we want to return to our starting point of inquiry? If we have to end up at our child-like impulses and crude intutions, why bother trying to detour into science at all? You must give up all that got earned and developed, to return to the 13th century baseline, and for what? "There's simply no escape from it?" Seriously? Look around. There is knowledge that performs and is grounded in overwhelming amounts of empirical evidence, uncountable series of real-world tests, and yet stupefy and boggle those that suppose that the extra world MUST be containable and expressible at the level of Sarah Palin.

    Forget Heisenberg, his work is four layers removed from common sense. Pick 10 common people at the local common train station and see how their common sense performs on the Monty Hall problem. And then remember it all must be grounded in the language of common sense.

    Science is the acid solvent for common sense. Much of our common sense gets upheld and validated by science, and here we benefit from science by seeing what doesn't dissolve in our intuitions and reflexive thinking. Lots of issue that are local, immediate to the human experience bear up well to the acid (even as many do not). But as we move outward from our immediate experience, our common sense breaks down more and more, and the acid solvent reveals the inadequacy and self-deceiving capabilities of our common sense. JBS Haldane observed that "the universe is not just queerer than we suppose, it's queerer than we CAN suppose".

    But by all means, let's make it axiomatic that we must return to the language of common sense. Spooky action at a distance? Boil that down for me, please. That doesn't make sense, doesn't jibe with my human scale experience. Else, who needs it. Must be wrong, somehow.

    "Intuitionists" get annoyed at the arrogance of science, but this is hubris and conceit, the dogmatic clinging to the intuition as invincible, our vulgar sensibilities as the magic 8 ball for the remotest mysteries and hardest questions. And all just inside a subjective box, the isolated mind incorrigible by objective models.

    I think it's true for those who claim their box is inescapable -- if you think you "simply can't escape it", I'm inclined to agree with you.

    -TS

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  12. @Mr. Green,

    No, it doesn't, as is clear from the fact that superstition has been identified throughout history by people who accept "activity" beyond science.
    I have Independent Baptist friends who think the Catholics are "cultists". And I have Jehovah's Witnesses who think the Mormons are "cultists". And some of those Mormons think the Independent Baptists are "cultists". Superstition, like "cults" to a Baptist or a JW, is what it's called when *other* people do the same thing. For a Catholic to furrow their eyebrows at the "superstitions" of their Voodoo practicing neighbors, then go take mass, and dismiss the conjuring therein as something other than raging superstition... well, that's just cutting oneself slack in a very conspicuous way, isn't it?

    "Accepting activity beyond science" is not the problem. It's the extra-natural (perhaps that's less distracting than "supernatural") interaction with *will*, the suspicion of external telos that captures the concept. My breaking a mirror imparts a supernatural kind of causality to me, if an unfortunate one. I can effect my destiny, not through science, but through some mysterious, immaterial superphysics. The Aztecs thought blood spilled down the steps of their temples from mass human sacrifice had magical, mysterious, immaterial effects, sufficient to appease the gods and sustain the universe. Thomists suppose that use of the intellect requires the interaction of a mysterious, immaterial can't-say-what, because well, they can't imagine something like that happening naturally, in a way science would model.

    If you want to argue that there is nothing "beyond science" and that therefore any such ought to be called superstition, feel free to make that argument — but it is an argument that needs to be made, not something you can simply assume.
    "Beyond science" is too general, and doesn't focus on the type of credulity "superstition" points to, as I understand. That is a necessary condition, but insufficient. In addition, the positing of interaction by will, either by the invoking human to manipulate the Mysterious Other, or the Mysterious Other interacting and intervening in nature from outside it, or both. And as far as science, "beyond science", not just in current practice and technology, but beyond it *in principle*.

    Yes, lots of things don't contradict science, even things that are not true. "Contradicts science" is not a synonym for "wrong".

    I agree, that is not a synonym.

    An intellect in the A-T view is entirely natural, and certainly within the realm of natural knowledge, which is not to say that it is quantifiable by physics. It seems to me that no small part of the confusion here is failing to understand just how Thomists view nature, intentionality, souls, science, etc. To take the modern stance on any of these issues for granted is to beg any number of questions against the alternative positions from the get-go.
    No, I think that's not giving the critic enough credit for the idea, here. Look, last year I had the chance to here an astrologist try to convince me at length that not only was astrology not superstitious, but it was not superstitious because it was entirely natural. What??? Well, it's just not natural the way Big Bad Mainstream Science construes the term.

    So, take a seat next to the astrologists, I guess? I understand your point, but that just makes the problem wider. Now you are overloading "natural" in a superstitous way -- works beyond the ken of sense-experience, testing, model incorporation, or falsification, and boom! all the mysterious agency you could ever want. An unlimited supply. I know Catholics chafe at being lumped in with their fellow superstitionists, but if we apply the concept consistently across all these...

    -TS

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  13. @Anon

    The definition for superstition is therefore: "Assigning false causality to something". For example, lightning strikes my house, and I appeal to Zeus' powers because he is angry at me due to the fact that I like Poseidon more. I cut myself and get an infection, the reason I cite is the fact that I did not obsessively wash my hands the previous night 5 times with a new bar of soap (a la Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets). And so on.

    Too broad. That would make "superstitious" synonymous with "mistaken" or "in error". The idea it has been used to capture -- bearing in mind the hazards of the conceit that tempts on to see superstition as something only the "other guy" or "other tribe" can partake in -- is unwarranted credulity toward mysterious agency beyond natural physics. If I suppose that having lots of books in my house causes my kids to be smart, I have "assigned false causality to something", but it's not superstitious -- there's no mysterious agency or immaterial spookiness contemplated, it's just a misconception about natural causality, a mistake. If I think that books have "immaterial powers" to cause my children to be smart, apart from reading them, and considering there contents, just by being *near* my kids, THEN I have superstition. Assigning false causality, yes, but via credulity about the mysterious, immaterial agency of books.

    If you apply this to candidate explanations for causality, it works. Inspector Johnson thinks Jones committed the murder, when actually Smithers did it... not superstitious, mistaken about natural causality. Black cat crossed your path and cause you to now face extra bad luck... superstitious, mistaken about mysterious, extra-natural, immaterial causality.

    Ptolemaic astronomy? Not superstitious, mistaken about natural causality (at least as superior to heliocentric models). Spilling salt as the predicate for

    Superstition is a signifier for a class of "mistakes about causality" that appeals to supernature, immaterial agency, beyond science in principle. Of course if one *believes* the superstition, one does not think it's superstitious, because it's NOT a "mistake about causality", but a "truth about causality" beyond nature.

    -TS

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  14. @rank sophist,


    Denying premise 1 (and 8, in turn) is pretty much the only way to get out of the trap. But this commits you to the position that intentionality is intrinsic to the system of signs, which is what you were trying to deny by relocating it to the outside. Otherwise, you're committed to Derrida's total relativism.

    No, the whole recipe, or "chain of thinking" if you want to use Eduardo's term was problematic. For example, the next item:

    (2) Our brains are based on a system of signs.
    That strikes me as precisely backwards. A system of signs is based on our brains. Or perhaps, better, Signs are based on the systems of our brains. In either case, the brain evolved, and is the substrate from which faculties that enabled semiotic processing arose. The proto-brain came first, and symbolic thinking and language emerged on the recent end of the timeline. Signs and meaning are (relatively) recent features of our adaptations.

    If we are looking to what science has to say on the matter, anyway.

    The next one:

    (3) Our brains reduce all outside input, even pre-conscious, to this system.

    recapitulates the problem introduced in (2), positing a "system of signs" as the predicate for brains (!).

    There's just a rich tangle of problems with the whole chain.


    Actually, Thomists hold that real essences enter the mind--not just representations of things. It doesn't work like a system of signs. Further, as Feser explains, they believe that words have forms. Finally, they also hold that the mind is immaterial, which keeps it out of a deterministic relationship with the sign-based brain.

    Astrologers hold that what sign you are born under affects your destiny, or is it your personality, or both? Doesn't matter. It's all of a piece. You are at parity with astrologers with this paragraph-from-the-blue.


    Yes, this is true. However, from the phrasing at (1) and (8), it should be clear that the system needs an infusion of meaning for any of its conclusions to have meaning. Otherwise, meaning (determinate content, intentionality) is "what we make of it", and even science is Derridized.

    Meaning is not intentionality. These are not synonyms. Meaning is the expression of relationships between entities in a system. See my comments on the computer program with simulated magnetic objects, repelling and attracting each other as they move around. The concept of "distance" between the objects has meaning, meaning within the system, meaning we can use to code the crude 2D physics algorithm that governs their movement on the screen. The relationships are objective -- the distance is the same no matter who is looking at it, or who is measuring it. The content of meaningful relationships can express intentionality, and the creation of meaningful relationships can be the result of intention, but this is not to conflate the two.

    -TS

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  15. @rank sopist,


    This is exactly what Derrida concludes. However, because closed systems of signs are incapable of having a solid foundation in "reality"--even the term "reality" is within the closed system--, meaning becomes entirely fluid. This applies even to science. Everything is relativized and objectivity is impossible.

    This commits to the same error as (8) (and I guess now (1) as well, as you've now indicated they are the same). A system of signs is necessarily closed, and cannot be otherwise, transcendentally. Anything "outside" a system of signs that informs or affects the system of signs is thus necessarily INSIDE the system. In trying to make a case of self-refuting arguments, you've got an 'own goal' happening here. Anything that posits a "solid foundation in reality" for signs necessarily incorporates that "solid foundation" into the system. If your claim, like (8) is taken to be true (basis outside the system), it is then necessarily false (same basis is inside the system!). This is concise self-refutation.

    And "relativized" does not interfere with any objectivity in the system. Inertial frames are all "relativized" in nature, but they obtain and behave objectively, and are not dependent on anyone's mind or will. I think you are confusing "relative" with "subjective". These are not synonyms.


    But, because the sender is not outside of the system, whatever he "imparts" is lost.

    Lost? When? You mean when heat death overtakes the universe? If I just stipulate that all meaning within the system is surely going to be lost at some point, so what? That doesn't negate the existence of meaning within the system, when and as it existed. Now, it seems, meaning must be eternal to be meaning?

    Oy!

    With no objective grounding, the signs within the system mean totally different things to different people.
    It's a hazard. Words mean what we *agree* they mean. If convention doesn't obtain, agreement on the referents for shared symbols doesn't happen, and communication is hard. Happily, convention and agreement, to effective levels of precision, is practical in a great number of cases, making good communication possible and practical.


    Meaning is a relativistic illusion: everyone thinks that they have it, but none of them really do.

    It's only an illusion if one holds to the idea that meaning is extrinsic to *any* system, never mind the transcendental contradictions that are entailed by that. If one understands meaning as the expression of relationships between subjects and objects within a system, there's no illusion. Meaning is just what we understand it to be. The "illusion" only obtains on grounds that misunderstand how meaning obtains.

    -TS

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  16. That strikes me as precisely backwards. A system of signs is based on our brains. Or perhaps, better, Signs are based on the systems of our brains. In either case, the brain evolved, and is the substrate from which faculties that enabled semiotic processing arose. The proto-brain came first, and symbolic thinking and language emerged on the recent end of the timeline. Signs and meaning are (relatively) recent features of our adaptations.

    If we are looking to what science has to say on the matter, anyway.


    Brains work by reduction to electrical impulses, which is basically how computers operate. Hence, "a system of signs"--a group of "this means that" associations. This objection fails.

    recapitulates the problem introduced in (2), positing a "system of signs" as the predicate for brains (!).

    There's just a rich tangle of problems with the whole chain.


    The brain cannot experience the outside unless it reduces it to electrical impulses. In other words, to a system of "this means that" associations. Another failed objection.

    Astrologers hold that what sign you are born under affects your destiny, or is it your personality, or both? Doesn't matter. It's all of a piece. You are at parity with astrologers with this paragraph-from-the-blue.

    Begged question. Next.

    Meaning is not intentionality. These are not synonyms.

    They are. You clearly need to brush up on your analytic philosophy, Touchstone. Intentionality = semantics = meaning. Something cannot mean something unless it has semantics, and semantics are based on intention. Hence, the three words all mean roughly the same thing. Wittgenstein and Searle discussed this to no end. And the former said, a left hand moving money to a right hand is not a gift.

    Meaning is the expression of relationships between entities in a system.

    Trying to redefine the word "meaning" to make the argument seem like it's going in your favor? Interesting move.

    If this is all "meaning" means, then "meaning" is something completely different than pretty much every philosopher has ever suggested. Perhaps an eliminative materialist would agree with your definition. Even if they did, the Derrida problem is still there: a closed system of signs can never be objective, even in pre-conscious form, and so science is doomed.

    The relationships are objective -- the distance is the same no matter who is looking at it, or who is measuring it.

    The relationships are only known through closed systems of signs that are in no way connected to the outside world, so it's impossible for them to be objective. Sorry.

    A system of signs is necessarily closed, and cannot be otherwise, transcendentally.

    Since when? Is the English language closed? Can it not be affected by non-English sign systems coming in from the outside?

    Any system of signs that encompasses the brain and mind will be closed. But whether the brain and mind are within the system is exactly what's at issue, so you appear to be begging the question again.

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  17. Anything "outside" a system of signs that informs or affects the system of signs is thus necessarily INSIDE the system.

    This is might matter if I believed that systems of signs were the lowest level of reality. However, I don't happen to think that brains, minds or language are merely systems of signs. Intentionality is prior to signification, and intentionality, on the A-T view, permeates all of nature. It's apparent in both the formal and final cause of every substance, and it manifests in language through these aspects. You, on the other hand, say that signs are prior to intentionality, which commits you to Derrida's ridiculousness.

    If your claim, like (8) is taken to be true (basis outside the system), it is then necessarily false (same basis is inside the system!). This is concise self-refutation.

    Again, this would only hold if I bought the system I was describing. I don't. It was a reductio.

    And "relativized" does not interfere with any objectivity in the system.

    You don't seem to understand what "relativized" means. It means that all objectivity is an illusion. Nothing can be objective if it must be reduced to a system of meaningless signs before it can be understood. You, Touchstone, have committed yourself to a brand of skeptical idealism, just like Derrida.

    Inertial frames are all "relativized" in nature, but they obtain and behave objectively,

    If your system was true, then you could never know that they "obtain and behave objectively". You've assumed the truth of the concept that you've declared false. Any idea of "objectivity" or "truth" or any such thing is an illusion--and you're participating in it. All you're left with is pure, unadulterated epistemological nihilism.

    Lost? When?

    Before it's even imparted, Touchstone. Before it's even imparted.

    If convention doesn't obtain, agreement on the referents for shared symbols doesn't happen, and communication is hard.

    Convention can't obtain at the neurological level, which is where your problem surfaces. Sorry. And the suggestion that evolution is "convention-like" merely begs the question, because the very idea of evolution is just another figment of your closed system of meaningless signs.

    If one understands meaning as the expression of relationships between subjects and objects within a system, there's no illusion.

    Relationships between subjects and objects are what Derrida denies. A closed system of signs means that signs only refer to other signs, and never to any objects. Objects would be what gave them meaning. Since signs only relate to other signs, you get an infinite chain that never disambiguates itself. In fact, it only becomes more vague.

    You don't seem to realize exactly how destructive your ideas are.

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  18. And, again, any closed system of signs falls into Derrida's trap. Any system that encompasses the mind and therefore precedes intentionality is trapped in a magical land of subject-subject relations, forever. An infinite chain of subject-subject relations. Unless intentionality is prior to the system of signs, there cannot be subject-object relations, because then subject can never be "about" the object. And the object can never invade the system, because it would have to be reduced to the subject for that to happen.

    I'm glad I'm not a computationalist.

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  19. While rank is eviscerating Touch again, now is a good time for me to mention that a lot of the problems that obtain for Touch do so because of not only a poor metaphysics about minds, but a poor metaphysics about nature, period. From the Thomist/Feser's perspective, the materialist doesn't only differ from the Thomist when it comes to minds, but when it comes to matter and brains as well. That was part of the point of Ed's two-post series at Biologos.

    I wonder if part of Touch's problem is that he's taking his subjective experience as irrefutable data (cogito ergo sum, I have thoughts and they are determinate), and then assuming that any system he argues for is compatible with that data, with the idea that the system he's proposing actually requires ditching his deepest convictions about his subjective experience being unthinkable (heh) to him.

    It's like reading Alex Rosenberg's writings on the mind and thinking that what you're reading is true, but that can't possibly mean that you don't have a self, or that your thoughts have no intentionality, and so on. So you end up trying to defend Rosenberg's system while trying to deny everything that actually follows from his system, and wondering why you're not convincing anyone who actually knows what Rosenberg is saying. "Surely Rosenberg couldn't be saying THAT. That's just stupid."

    No, sorry, that is what he's saying. It really is that crazy.

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  20. @Touchstone:

    Superstition is a signifier for a class of "mistakes about causality" that appeals to supernature, immaterial agency, beyond science in principle.

    Too narrow. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

    Definition of SUPERSTITION
    1. a: a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation

    b: an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition

    2.: a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary

    So, what is characteristic of superstition is not the appeal to supernature, immaterial agency or going beyond natural science, in principle. What is characteristic of superstition is its irrationality or that it results from ignorance.

    A-T metaphysics, for example, goes beyond natural science, but it is not irrational - it is well reasoned and argumented and is therefore not a superstition.

    Except if you want to claim (as you probably would) that everything that goes beyond natural science IS irrational. But that claim would be (a) obviously begging the question, and, what is worse, (b) it would be self-contradictory, because the claim itself would go beyond natural science.

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  21. Touchstone: Well, that's quaint coming from Aquinas, or Aristotle, given the tiny perimeter of science in their day, so little to demonstrate the limitations and misconceptions of common sense.

    That doesn't make any sense. You seem to think "common sense" means something like "naiveté", as though without the benefit of Newtonian physics or quantum mechanics, Aquinas was somehow unaware that people get things wrong. Of course "common sense" has a specific, technical meaning in certain philosophical contexts, but even the everyday sense doesn't support that interpretation. The first dictionary to hand calls it "good sense and sound judgement in practical matters", which clearly rules out "crude" "child-like" stupefaction. "Spooky action at a distance" came from scientists — not from science itself, of course, but from their attempt to fit it into a modernist philosophy that wasn't suitable. It turns out, however, that from a Thomist perspective, discoveries like relativity or QM aren't "spooky" at all.

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  22. Touchstone: Thomists suppose that use of the intellect requires the interaction of a mysterious, immaterial can't-say-what, because well, they can't imagine something like that happening naturally, in a way science would model.

    Curiously, I've never seen a Thomist explain his position that way. Perhaps you can provide a citation to support this peculiar claim of yours.

    I know Catholics chafe at being lumped in with their fellow superstitionists, but if we apply the concept consistently across all these…

    You mean, you believe in magical powers of brain-matter, so you are superstitious too. I guess that's a sort of "consistency", but it doesn't seem very productive.

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  23. "You mean, you believe in magical powers of brain-matter, so you are superstitious too. I guess that's a sort of "consistency", but it doesn't seem very productive."

    He's not interested in being consistent. Really, if you watch his exchanges in each and every thread, it's mostly TS being exposed as not really knowing what he's talking about (either in terms of what he criticizes, or what he advocates), getting schooled repeatedly, but hoping that if he's just snarky enough people will miss where he fails (lacking that, he just leaves).

    Really, if you know his history, you'll know that the entirety of his presence here isn't to learn anything new (he avoids this, as it's very, very scary to him), or even argue a point. It's mostly to put on an act, in the hopes that if he just pretends hard enough that he's right, or that he's refuted everyone, people will think he's right.

    Unfortunately, this isn't Debunking or his usual hangouts, and most of the commenters actually have a good handle on Thomism and materialism both, so they can spot equivocations and question-begging a mile away. That's why his comments here are just a long string of failures: he doesn't know how to handle people who know what they're talking about. He doesn't even know how to handle himself when faced with such.

    Still, it's a joy to see RS, Josh and company make with the thorough takedowns. It just goes to show that the Thomist criticisms of materialism have made root.

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  24. @touchstone

    Superstition is a signifier for a class of "mistakes about causality" that appeals to supernature, immaterial agency, beyond science in principle. Of course if one *believes* the superstition, one does not think it's superstitious, because it's NOT a "mistake about causality", but a "truth about causality" beyond nature.]

    Again, your definition is circular. If you're going to brand everything that is not naturalistic (which is different from what A-T considers natural) then you're back into your petitio principii. The sheer fact that you're defining superstition as it suits your needs negates any negative connotation that the word may have. If you are simply using the word as an empty designator that's fine, but I don't think you are. The fact is, you've been shown to be wrong on the discussion pertaining to the intellect and are now resorting to semantic gimmicks. Why else would you place so much emphasis on this (and other) types of strawmen?

    If your definition of superstitious is anything not materialistic (as it seems to be) then the word becomes meaningless. I think you are smart enough to understand what I am saying, despite the fact that it's an inconvenient truth for you. Superstition does not require any appeals to anything that transcends nature. The predominant understanding of Karma does not transcend nature for example. It’s an effect (or collection of effects) brought upon oneself by their own actions much like a natural domino effect. (This adheres to event causality which I will address later)

    Placing the books in the house and expecting the books (natural object) to change the smartness level of your child is a superstition. Adding the word mysterious or immaterial in that setting is a sleigh of hand fallacy. Ironically, in order for the books to be intelligible as objects that provide us with knowledge when read implicitly assumes formal causality (which of course you need to borrow from A-T).

    I would also say that appealing to tribes, which for the most part believed in naturalistic powers as mediating forces is still within the realm of naturalistic superstition and not transcendence. The same applies to the cat. You also need to be careful not to conflate transcendence with immanence, which you are so blatantly doing. This is often the case, when anti-intelectualist, atheist pop-preachers talk about God in the same way they would talk about immanent gods as if the two are in any way the same. Simply because they are labeled under the same noun (God) that does not entail likeness and the distinction between noun and proper name must be upheld if there is to be any clarity and honesty in the discourse. Failing to uphold the correct principles of linguistic expression leads to mistakes such as the one you just committed (note, I am not referring to it as a superstition).

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  25. The difference I am referencing in regards to materialistic superstition is in causal efficacy not in event causality (that’s another distinction that must be recognized). Your example about Jones and murder appeals to event causality (i.e. he did not commit the murder) as opposed to adequate causal efficacy (i.e. he is not able to commit a murder). There you correctly make the distinction and that is not a superstition. But appealing to say an ant, (natural living organism) committing a murder would be a superstition, since a worm is incapable of committing such act. Following my analysis regarding the incorrect attribution of causality to causality impotent or inert materialistic things such as "matter", chance, nothingness and the like is precisely the superstition at question here. You seem to believe that somehow these things can magically (here the superstition of chance shines through more than anything at the backdrop of our entire discussion) create an intelligent being. If that's not the ultimate appeal to unintelligibility (even worse a contradiction). Unintelligibility was in fact a salient component (as per your claim) of what one would call a superstition, an the appeal to matter and chance creating what is arguably its exact metaphysical opposite is an example of just that. You can put all the lipstick you like on that pig but it's still going to be a pig.

    Another user has actually provided you with a definition straight from the dictionary, which specifically mentions chance as a core aspect of materialism. In all honesty, I did not reference a dictionary with my definition although maybe I should have. Nonetheless, this vindicates the very analysis I made in this post as well as my previous one. The other user also mentioned something that I unfortunately missed in my definition (but will remember to do from now on) the element of irrationality. This brings us to another issue... How do we get from materialism and chance to rationality? If we cannot even discover meaning in the world then how can we even make appeals to reason? You seem to take that reason exists for granted as a staple of materialism, when in fact it's in violent contradiction with it. I don't see how you can appeal to reason even in principle in such a world. This is one truth that nietzsche understood quite clearly when he proclaimed all reason to be an illusion. “Reason came from unreason” he said. If that’s not a superstition then I don’t know what is. However, he was honest about the logical conclusions of his beliefs. Why aren't you?

    So to sum up, appealing to reason itself in materialism (if by reason we mean a means to understanding reality more - if not grasping truth per se) is a superstition due to the causal inadequacy of your worldview to manifest such a reality. Appealing to meaningful semantics caused by an intrinsically meaningless metaphysic is again a superstition since the "causal connection" is just an appeal to nothingness (since materialistic worldviews are devoid of the potentiality necessary then where else doing it come from?) causing something to be. Appealing to your very immaterial thought process as a as an illusory reduction of matter colliding randomly with other matter is again a superstition for the same reason.

    Now at this point you need to be clear what you're interested in doing. If you're interested in leveraging circularity (i.e. anything that does not conform to materialism is superstition) be honest about it but remember that such word loses its force since your definition is arbitrary and opportunistic. If on the other hand you're looking for a definition that escapes circularity and instead relies on the application of logic and the practice of sound philosophy then you must abandon your definition.

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  26. Of course if one *believes* the superstition, one does not think it's superstitious, because it's NOT a "mistake about causality", but a "truth about causality" beyond the realm of reason.

    I fixed your last sentence. You need to be more careful, all too often you’re vulnerable to a tu quoque. ;-)


    Thomists suppose that use of the intellect requires the interaction of a mysterious, immaterial can't-say-what, because well, they can't imagine something like that happening naturally, in a way science would model.

    Here you’re just exposing your ignorance and embarrassing yourself. Honestly, at least make the effort to understand that which you’re trying to criticize and for Heaven’s sake stop conflating materialistic dogma with science. I’ve been calling you out on this from the start, yet you continue to engage in such empty rhetoric. That’s just dishonesty at its finest.

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  27. @bullpup


    It's like reading Alex Rosenberg's writings on the mind and thinking that what you're reading is true, but that can't possibly mean that you don't have a self, or that your thoughts have no intentionality, and so on. So you end up trying to defend Rosenberg's system while trying to deny everything that actually follows from his system, and wondering why you're not convincing anyone who actually knows what Rosenberg is saying. "Surely Rosenberg couldn't be saying THAT. That's just stupid."

    At least Rosenberg has the guts to be honest about naturalism and scientism. For that I respect him and his book should be required reading for anyone who wants to call themselves an atheist/naturalist/materialist.

    I'll take Rosenberg over the totality of atheist charlatans that like to appeal to science and reason thinking that simply by appealing such things they can escape their absurdity of their beliefs. All these hardcore atheist fundie communities (aka the GNUs) are precisely of this flavor and they are nothing but a disgrace to intellectual discourse.

    Rosenberg might be wrong about his assessment of reality but he is correct in his assessment of naturalism and scientism.

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  28. Touchstone,

    I first read about the Monty Hall problem in a book by Marilyn vos Savant. She said switching was the thing to do, and I thought, "That is nutty."

    But then my common sense kicked in.

    "Hold on here. She is smarter than you. So you might want to at least consider the possibility that she does know what she's talking about. And if she is right, then there is no reason why you wouldn't be able to see why she's right."

    Instead of looking up the explanation, I decided to engage in what you might consider to be a dangerous activity--I decided to think about it.

    Lo and behold, it took all of about 5 seconds to see not only that she is correct but why she is correct.

    Since then, I've had a conversation with a math PhD who explained to me in various ways (not to mention with a variety of tones) why switching is meaningless, and I've seen papers by other PhDs employing statistics to 'prove' that switching is pointless.

    Science did not overturn my common sense.

    In fact: a) science wasn't involved at all; b) it was my common sense doing its thing that enabled me to arrive at a correct perspective of the matter; and, c) without common sense having done its thing, I would likely have had dug in my heels, and remained emotionally committed to the initial knee-jerk reaction.

    It is evident that you either don't know what common sense is or pretend to not know what it is. Either way, it is likewise evident that your common sense is given to malfunctioning more than infrequently.

    As just one example, you read a statement such as, "A system of signs obtains its meaning from outside of itself", and your common sense--due either to inertness or malfunction--permits the release of incontinent kablooeyness such as,

    I read this to possibly mean that those *signs* obtain their meaning from outside of that sign, where "itself" refers to the particular sign, not the system of signs. If that's the case, then I agree. The singular "itself" to me indicates 'system' as the referent, rather than a particular sign ('signs' a plural was used), but no matter, (8) provides all I need without that ambiguity.

    (Btw--not to get off the subject of common sense, but you had to go 'outside the system' in order to mislabel "a system of signs" as something plural. Just sayin'.)

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  29. Glenn: Dunno about dangerous, but he would definitely consider it mysterious and spooky.

    It's creepy and it's kooky,
    Mysterious and spooky,
    It's altogether ooky!
    The Thomist intellect!

    Some people tend to doubt it,
    'Cause they won't read about it.
    Afraid to learn, they shout at
    the Thomist intellect!

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  30. Touchstone said... Meaning is not intentionality. These are not synonyms. Meaning is the expression of relationships between entities in a system.

    They're not exact synonyms, but intricately related, close enough for the present discussion. If you have been using "meaning" in some other sense, then that does not accord with the usual definition of the word, and definitely is not applicable to any of your objections to A-T. So basically you have not addressed anything the rest of us have been discussing at all. That also explains why I couldn't understand your example about the screensaver -- you said "distance" is meaningful in that system, but there is no meaning there at all. (The only meaning is between you and us talking about the system, which has nothing to do with the system itself.) If "meaning" is your secret code word for "relationship", then yeah, you don't need an intellect to have certain "relationships" (though they still do require an immaterial aspect). But basically it means everything you've said has been off-topic, it no more refutes anything about A-T than talking about the weather.

    On your view, water cannot be wet because such synthesis cannot obtain -- Hydrogen and Oxygen aren't wet on their own.

    This also misses the point. "Wetness" is just a matter of how molecules slide around or stick to other molecules according to their arrangement, electric properties, etc. H and O can move around, have electric properties, etc. There's no mystery. What you are doing, on the other hand, is like claiming that electromagnetism reduces to gravity. "Superstition!" you cry. "Science has again and again reduced "magic" to gravity -- the orbits of the planets, the tides, the bending of light around the sun. I cannot imagine why it won't some day do the same for electromagnetism!" Simply claiming that things that are different in kind are reducible to each other is not an argument.

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  31. Anon,

    The "relationships" to which Touchstone is referring are often cited by eliminative materialists as proof that things can be "objective" without having intentionality. Churchland does it, for instance--and he also likes to jabber on about pre-conscious "mapping systems" and so forth. My goal with this argument about signs and associations is to show that even his argument must presuppose intentionality to remain objective. If the signs are prior to intentionality, then they can never relate to an "object" without reducing it to a totally arbitrary, meaningless infinite regress of signs, which completely undermined the beloved science of the positivists and eliminativists. So, even if Touchstone redefines "meaning", he's still screwed.

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  32. @Anonymous,

    Again, your definition is circular.
    It's a definition, not an argument, not a syllogism. A "circular definition" uses the term being defined in the definition of that term. So first, what you are stumbling around is the idea that assume the truth of naturalism, which does not make make the definition circular in the slightest -- you are confusing 'circular definition' with 'circular argument', which you demonstrate clearly in your next statement:

    If you're going to brand everything that is not naturalistic (which is different from what A-T considers natural) then you're back into your petitio principii.
    That has nothing to with any circularity in the definition, though, but rather the truth value of any dismissal of supernatural agency. It's not circular, it just incorporates a conclusion (perhaps, more on that in a moment) about the merit of those beliefs. And even that is incindental; I do not know of any such supernatural agency/immaterial activity that warrant belief. But that would be an additional fact about my belief, not organic to the rule the definition refers to. Again, back to the quote I provided initially from Wikipedia (which, in turn, appears to be a reference to Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 19–22:

    Superstition is a belief in supernatural causality: that one event leads to the cause of another without any physical process linking the two events, such as astrology, omens, witchcraft, etc., that contradicts natural science.

    That's a razor that divides between natural causality and supernatural causality. If you think a superstition is *true*, it doesn't make it "un-superstitious", it just becomes a "superstition that is true".

    The sheer fact that you're defining superstition as it suits your needs negates any negative connotation that the word may have.
    It's an effective, clean razor. If a superstition is true, than in that case being superstitious is a good thing. The definition just identifies a form of credulity -- about non-natural propositions that are science-problematic.
    If you are simply using the word as an empty designator that's fine, but I don't think you are.
    No, I use it to good communications effect all the time. I just punched it into Wikipedia when it came up a couple days ago here, and boom! the first paragraph their jibes nicely with my understanding of the term. Words mean whatever we agree they should mean, and this is one with wide and consistent agreement, in my experience.
    The fact is, you've been shown to be wrong on the discussion pertaining to the intellect and are now resorting to semantic gimmicks. Why else would you place so much emphasis on this (and other) types of strawmen? It's not a gimmick any more than another convention about the definition of a term is a gimmick -- which, given some of the above, I suppose is a possibility for some here, all conventions as gimmicks. But that aside, it's a clean separator between thinking that relies on natural knowledge and thinking that identifies agency and activity in a supernatural realm.

    I think what runs beneath this is exchange is some discomfiting from the application of the rule in a fair way. Like I said, Jehovah's Witnesses bristle at Mormons as "cultists". Mormons bristle at JWs as "cultists". They are both wacky in terms of indoctrination and fundamentalism. But neither likes having it applied to them.

    Catholics pride themselves in resisting, historically, "voodoo" and other "occult" practices - combatting superstition. But then the go watch the priest conjure a cracker or piece of bread into the body of Christ. And then bristle at being labeled "superstitious". It's just hypocrisy, bristling at the idea they apply to others being applied to them in the same way.

    -TS

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  33. Screwed, that would have been an apt title for Rosenberg's most recent book.

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  34. @Anonymous,


    The difference I am referencing in regards to materialistic superstition is in causal efficacy not in event causality (that’s another distinction that must be recognized). Your example about Jones and murder appeals to event causality (i.e. he did not commit the murder) as opposed to adequate causal efficacy (i.e. he is not able to commit a murder). There you correctly make the distinction and that is not a superstition. But appealing to say an ant, (natural living organism) committing a murder would be a superstition, since a worm is incapable of committing such act. Following my analysis regarding the incorrect attribution of causality to causality impotent or inert materialistic things such as "matter", chance, nothingness and the like is precisely the superstition at question here.

    I'm fine with that distinction. That implicates "immaterial intellect" as well as Black Cat Bad Luck, and the like. I don't know which dictionary you prefer but Merriam Webster has this for "superstition":

    : a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation
    b : an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition


    from that definition, then, the definition of "magic":

    the use of means (as charms or spells) believed to have supernatural power over natural forces
    b : magic rites or incantations
    2
    a : an extraordinary power or influence seemingly from a supernatural source
    b : something that seems to cast a spell : enchantment
    3
    : the art of producing illusions by sleight of hand


    That fits your notion of causality adequacy, but it implicates supernatural powers. Both of which suit me fine as principles to apply towards beliefs. Of course one who thinks their superstitions are *true* will not find them "irrational", but the understanding in the usage is that magical appeals (supernatural agency) fit squarely in that concept. That nails transubstantiation initiated by the priest's consecration of the host, but it applies as well to "immaterial intellect" beliefs. It doesn't do to say "but we understand 'natural' to mean something else!". That'd be an appeal to equivocation, trying to switch out the dictionary's definition for natural for your own. You are free to define things as you like, but when MW refers to "natural", it's not your esoteric version it intends by that reference.

    If that were kosher, then no superstitious belief about magic would be superstitious: we would have to allow that "that's how nature really is", for the believer in Black Cat Bad Luck.

    -TS

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  35. @Anonymous (con't)

    You seem to believe that somehow these things can magically (here the superstition of chance shines through more than anything at the backdrop of our entire discussion) create an intelligent being.
    I think you misunderstand what is meant by chance there. Ever hear someone appeal to "luck"? The superstition doesn't obtain from probabilistic resources being referenced, but belief in a supernatural agency or control over probabilities. If you believe your birthday is your "lucky number", the superstition does not obtain in any probabilities preceding an outcome, but on the belief that the "lucky number" is related to those probabilities and can favorably affect your outcome from those probabilities over and against what would happen, well, unsuperstitiously, in the mode of scientific/natural modes of probabilities.

    If that's not the ultimate appeal to unintelligibility (even worse a contradiction).

    It's neither. Probabilities are natural as natural can be. They are as far from supernatural agency as we can get. If a process has random or stochastic features, that description obtains PRECISELY because there is no LUCK, no magical or supernatural constraints or interactions that "de-probabilize" it. You are confusing superstitions about ways we might magically CHANGE or ALTER probabilities with the stochastic features of natural processes themselves.

    Unintelligibility was in fact a salient component (as per your claim) of what one would call a superstition, an the appeal to matter and chance creating what is arguably its exact metaphysical opposite is an example of just that. You can put all the lipstick you like on that pig but it's still going to be a pig.
    No, 'probabilities' is a manifestation of intelligibility. The term "Gaussian Distribution" points to knowledge about probabilities and statistical ensembles and randomness. And the key driver behind this its perfectly impervious to our manipulation. You can't do an incantation and conjure up a messiah's flesh, you can't chant a verse and make your odds at Roulette better than it otherwise would be. The mind is impotent against any of that. No mind or will can mess with physical principles of nature, and that's the "exact metaphysical opposite" of superstition. Probabilities and indeterminism are facts of nature. The credulity superstition points to is the kind that supposes "back doors", transcendant agency, mysterious controls that govern or violate the integrity of those physical principles.

    -TS

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  36. Another definition of superstition that [will be of particular interest] / [is relevant to] Touchstone is, a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary.

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  37. s/b ...[will be of particular interest] / [is relevant] to...

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  38. @Anonymous
    Another user has actually provided you with a definition straight from the dictionary, which specifically mentions chance as a core aspect of materialism. In all honesty, I did not reference a dictionary with my definition although maybe I should have. Nonetheless, this vindicates the very analysis I made in this post as well as my previous one.
    See my reply previous, particularly the part on chance. Probabilistic processes are not a source of superstition, that's just part of nature. It's the belief that one can magically affect natural probabilities that is superstitious with respect to 'chance'. When a guy has his girlfriend blow on the dice at the craps table for good luck, the superstition is in thinking the blowing affects the outcome of his upcoming roll, not in the fact that probabilities will create a result that either wins or loses his chips.


    The other user also mentioned something that I unfortunately missed in my definition (but will remember to do from now on) the element of irrationality. This brings us to another issue... How do we get from materialism and chance to rationality?

    Chance (probabilistic processes) and law are creative in impersonal fashion, as best we can conclude from reasoning on the evidence.

    If we cannot even discover meaning in the world then how can we even make appeals to reason?
    Meaning obtains. It's just obtains *within* the system, as a set of relationships between objects first (as neural connections and associations in the brain), and as a described set of relationships between objects (the extra-mental referents that correspond to activation of those patterns in the brain). We discover meaning when we observe relationships between features in the percepts we process. Our brain creates associations that map to those relationships.


    You seem to take that reason exists for granted as a staple of materialism, when in fact it's in violent contradiction with it.

    No, it's an observed fact of nature. There are abundant testable and observable examples of reason in action all around us. No model -- not ONE -- that we have developed on a performance basis (it survives comparison with real world tests) requires magic or anything supernatural. We can't know everything we don't know, so like the existence of God, we treat some notions as unsupportable by reasoning and modeling, but logically possible. An "immaterial intellect" is just a frivolous, superflous addition to any performative model we have, for example. Imagining a "creator God" adds nothing to our knowledge of the universe and models of its creation. There's plenty we don't know, and may never know, but supernatural agency, or "immaterial intellect", or angels or any of that do not help at all. They can't be falsified, which is a problem, and they don't add anything to our models that we didn't have before without them.

    Divine creation of the intellect, immaterial or otherwise, doesn't help. So while it can't be categorically ruled out, it's just ignored as superflous, inert.

    One only arrives at your "violent contradiction" through an appeal to ignorance. You cannot imagine the emergence of meta-representational cognition through impersonal natural processes, ergo it can't happen! We don't have a testable model (in detail anyway) of it happened, but it's plausible on our knowledge of natural processes. That, in conjunction with the conspicuous absence of any non-natural agent or mechanism we might appeal to for our model, commends naturalism.

    -TS

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  39. @Anonymous,

    I don't see how you can appeal to reason even in principle in such a world. This is one truth that nietzsche understood quite clearly when he proclaimed all reason to be an illusion. “Reason came from unreason” he said. If that’s not a superstition then I don’t know what is. However, he was honest about the logical conclusions of his beliefs. Why aren't you?
    It's not qualitatively different than "wetness" obtaining in water, where it wasn't present in H or O. It's just a much more complex phenomena. That stance, even if you think it's mistaken, is the apotheosis of anti-superstition, which is what makes this such a fatiguing conversation to have, over and over, with magical thinkers, (not to mention Dr. Feser's TLS a spectacular bit of irony in choosing a title... or would be if I didn't suspect that's precisely his reason for choosing it).

    If we remain ignorant about the chemical pathways for abiogenesis, or the specific genetic adaptations that gave rise to human cognition, we are still appealing to known, observable, intelligible causal processes. This is the maximally anti-superstitious choice of all available, the most loyal to known causal forces. The idea of divine issuance of the "immaterial intellect", or the imago dei breaks with this reliance on effective causal powers, and conjectures whole new forms of causality that are completely unknown, perfectly mysterious, and indistinguishable from being imaginary.

    -TS

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  40. @Glenn
    Another definition of superstition that [will be of particular interest] / [is relevant to] Touchstone is, a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary.
    I'm fine with that as another definition. We do we reject the Bad Cat Bad Luck superstition? We have no basis to suppose it's true, based on all the evidence we have available. Such a belief goes against all available evidence.

    We do we suppose a consecrated host is just the flour and water it was when it was made? Because we have no basis to suppose it's true, on all the evidence we have available. Such a belief goes against all available evidence.

    If we can think "the host is really transubstantiated", then we can think that a black cat crossing your path is bad luck by the same measure. That bad luck is exactly as real and effective as any transubstantiation on the evidence.

    Or, if we are to abide by the evidence, both fail.

    -TS


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  41. There you go again with the inert or malfunctioning common sense. In this case, you're confusing what (from your perspective) would be an absence of confirmatory evidence with the presence of contrary evidence. Tsk, tsk.

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  42. Oh, btw...

    Since you are now on record as agreeing that a superstition is a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary, and since there is ample evidence on this blog of your maintaining notions despite evidence to the contrary...

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  43. Earlier in the thread we saw the utter intellectual/theoretical bankruptcy of Touchstone's ideas on meaning, and now he is so kind as to demonstrate its practical bankruptcy in his exposition of a loaded, question-begging use of a term, which has no real meaning or usefulness save to the one who wishes to abuse language and logic. We should really be thanking him, I think.

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  44. Signing off for now, as flight leaves in a few hours. Two human beings will be rediscovering Hawaii.

    Do try to behave yourself while I'm gone, Touchstone, eh? There's a good lad.

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  45. Okay, one last quick one... I agree with what Josh has to say just above.

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  46. rank sophist said... The "relationships" to which Touchstone is referring are often cited by eliminative materialists as proof that things can be "objective" without having intentionality.

    OK, so maybe he just didn't explain it well, but if he really is referring to "meaning" in any normal sense, then it has to include some sort of intentionality -- same for the word "sign". Otherwise, it would be trying to have your cake and eat it too, simply by fiat. And that's how I took your arguments against that.

    But then distance as a relationship is not a meaning, a sign, or anything else of the sort. (And you still need intentionality to have any sort of scientific/natural system, at least at the bottom level, and then that leads to the Fifth Way, but I was glossing over that because I figured it would only add to the confusion.) So I guess you are saying that TS and Churchland are basically making the very mistake that Ed explained in the piece -- given an intentionally-laden system (like a computer simulation), they ignore the intentional aspect and focus on the non-intentional aspects (like "distance"), and then they pretend that the explanation of the latter explains the former… i.e. they are "explaining" the meaning of a sentence by studying the ink and paper.

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  47. So I guess you are saying that TS and Churchland are basically making the very mistake that Ed explained in the piece -- given an intentionally-laden system (like a computer simulation), they ignore the intentional aspect and focus on the non-intentional aspects (like "distance"), and then they pretend that the explanation of the latter explains the former… i.e. they are "explaining" the meaning of a sentence by studying the ink and paper.

    Pretty much. And doing so necessarily leads them down a rabbit hole of absurdity, contradiction and epistemological nihilism, just like Derrida. Take away intentionality and everything collapses. Touchstone has and will continue to deny it, but it's the unavoidable consequence of his position.

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  48. @Touchstone

    Superstition is a belief in supernatural causality: that one event leads to the cause of another without any physical process linking the two events, such as astrology, omens, witchcraft, etc., that contradicts natural science.

    That's a razor that divides between natural causality and supernatural causality. If you think a superstition is *true*, it doesn't make it "un-superstitious", it just becomes a "superstition that is true".


    Well, that's certainly not the usual meaning of the word "superstition". Superstition is, as I and others have already explained to you, irrational belief or practice regarding the supernatural, resulting from ignorance and/or contrary to evidence (and, as Glenn rightly observes, "contrary" doesn't imply merely absence of confirmatory evidence, but presence of contrary evidence).

    On the other hand, the idea that you describe is better represented by words such as "supernaturalism" or even "non-physicalism". So why don't you use these terms instead? You chose to use the term "superstition" simply because it, in it's usual meaning, has negative connotations, i.e. it is offensive. But that is (1) semantically incorrect and (2) not in the interest of well-behaved discussion.


    Catholics pride themselves in resisting, historically, "voodoo" and other "occult" practices - combatting superstition. But then the go watch the priest conjure a cracker or piece of bread into the body of Christ. And then bristle at being labeled "superstitious". It's just hypocrisy, bristling at the idea they apply to others being applied to them in the same way.

    Not hypocrisy, but different (and correct, unlike yours) understanding of the term. Superstition is defined by St. Thomas (II-II:92:1) as "a vice opposed to religion by way of excess; not because in the worship of God it does more than true religion, but because it offers Divine worship to beings other than God or offers worship to God in an improper manner". But what is true and what is false religion, what is proper and what improper worship - that we know by reason (and revelation, the fact of which is also known by reason), so this definition is perfectly consistent with the one I gave earlyer: irrational attitude towards supernatural, resulting from ignorance and contrary to evidence. It is also perfectly consistent with the definition of anonymous: false belief about causal efficacy, because false religions attribute causal efficacy to non-existing powers/deities.


    Chance (probabilistic processes) and law are creative in impersonal fashion, as best we can conclude from reasoning on the evidence.

    What is "chance"? Isn't it just a shorthand name for our ingnorance of true causes or behaviors of individual objects, too complex for us to know? But if so, than appeal to "chance" as an ultimate explanation is really appeal to ignorance, and the only difference from superstition in that case is that you don't claim you can magically change this statistical behavior. And if chance is not that, than what, precisely, this "chance" is? Some "misterious can't-say-what"? Than how do you, with your appeal to this magic-like chance, avoid your own accusation for superstition that you directed to thomists because of (what you falsly described as) the appeal to "misterious can't-say-what"?

    What is "law"? Is it (a) only a descriptive abstraction of the way things behave due to their natures/essences; or is it (b) some positively and independently existing reality that somehow permeats the universe and prescriptively affects things? If (a), than you are on your way to A-T metaphisics. If (b), prove it!

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  49. @Touchstone (cont'd)

    An "immaterial intellect" is just a frivolous, superflous addition to any performative model we have, for example.

    No, it's not; the existence of the immaterial intelect is strictly proved by reason, as Feser has shown and your talk of neural nets completely missed the point. I have a PhD in computer science and I do know something about neural nets and pattern recognition. Yes, they can behave as if doing classification, patter "recognition", clustering, something that to us looks like recognizing concrete, particular instances of triangles. But they still can not form a precise concept of triangle. We can. Case closed. To classify (or "classify") images is one thing, to form a precise concept - to know, understand, what triangle is - is another. So all your nerdy talk about neural nets and computational "intelligence" misses the point. So I repeat: case closed.


    We do we reject the Bad Cat Bad Luck superstition? We have no basis to suppose it's true, based on all the evidence we have available. Such a belief goes against all available evidence.

    Not only that we don't have basis to suppose it's true; we have positive basis to suppose it's not true. Black cat had crossed my way more than once, and nothing bad happened. Therefore, this belief is contrary to evidence; therefore it is superstition.


    We do we suppose a consecrated host is just the flour and water it was when it was made? Because we have no basis to suppose it's true, on all the evidence we have available. Such a belief goes against all available evidence.

    But we do have basis to suppose it's true: revelation. Tha fact of which is known by reason, but it's too long story for combox comments.

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  50. Touchstone:We do we suppose a consecrated host is just the flour and water it was when it was made? Because we have no basis to suppose it's true, on all the evidence we have available. Such a belief goes against all available evidence.

    Perhaps you suppose that, but many of us do not. You already know that, though. You know that we think Catholicism can be shown to be true (and, therefore, the doctrine of the Real Presence is true). I am not sure why, then, you beg the question above and expect us to suppose with you that Transubstantiation has as much evidence as the black cat superstition.

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  51. @touchstone
    Well, that's quaint coming from Aquinas, or Aristotle, given the tiny perimeter of science in their day, so little to demonstrate the limitations and misconceptions of common sense. But now, it's just a sad, self-imposed foot-locker sized cage to enclose one's mind in

    First, why do you insist on spewing such ignorant nonsense?

    Let’s see why I talked about common sense. I did so as a mean to juxtapose a specific notion of Aristotle and Aquinas that serves to unite sense perception in the apprehension of what a given substance. Something that is in stark opposition to the incomprehensible and self-refuting nominalism you follow. Not knowing anything about it of course, you start rumbling about something completely unrelated. This takes us back to the criticism that was laid before your several weeks ago where you could not respond even in principle as to how you know reality given your intellectually bankrupt epistemology. I proceed to unveil the usual intellectual masturbations that people who think like you engage with their arbitrary and self-referential sophistry as per anti-realism and materialism. Much like everything else it went right over your head.

    The result was a typical touchstone IRRELEVANT rant into a different tangent. You of course conveniently appeal to the notion that common sense is naivete in order to divert attention from the indefensibility of your dogma into the usual myths of scientism. Although it will unsettle you, common sense includes a plethora of realities that are pre-scientific and necessary to scientific inquiry. Science is not contra-common sense but based on common sense. You can’t do science without common sense assumptions about the nature of reality (e.g. its intrinsic intelligibility, which your worldview cannot account, hence would be absurd to maintain any form of scientific realism, which is the mother of all ironies given your obsession with science). You can’t do science without common sense notion that reality exhibits cause and effect relations. You can’t do science without common sense notions regarding our senses and their intimate relationship to the external word (teleology assumed). You cannot do science without necessary axioms that uphold the very foundations of science. You cannot do science without distinction. And so on and so on.

    The questions asked when human inquire into the word are first and foremost stated in common sense language. That’s what Heisenberg is saying and since science and the method of initial inquiry are based on common sense it needs to be translated back to the very form that the question that was asked initially. Science can only be allowed to stray for so long but eventually in needs to come back down to reality. That’s precisely why so much work has been done in the philosophy of science. At present, excepting the faithful of scientism such as yourself, science has been extremely deflated as compared to its mythological standing during the haydays of the so-called “enlightenment”.

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  52. It’s been shown to be relative, inconsistent, contradictory and in many cases sheer sophistry as seen with many materialistic cosmological models today. In fact, the real question is whether there is such a thing called science stands apart from other forms of inquiry. The answer to that is a categorical no. Even data has been shown to be theory-ladden. The synthetic analytic distinction is dead following quine’s work and Popper tells us that science cannot be demarcated from metaphysics. You can continue to believe in the myth of scientific “objectivity”, but it doesn’t make it any less of a myth.

    Finally, much of the ephemeral conflict that you perceive between science and daily experience is due to language not reality. Unless that language is grounded it’s just arbitrary abstract models correlated to data. So it must be translated back to common sense language in order to be relevant as a description of reality. That is the point Heisenberg is making and had you read him you would know. But you didn’t, so you simply assume that which suits your agenda and launch the usual tirade. But yes, let’s forget about Heisenberg and listen to your babble instead. /yawn

    You accuse others trying to correct you, with being locked in a box, when in reality it’s you that is the one whose mindful scope is severely limited. Appealing to the religion of scientism (let’s call a spade a spade, because you’re not appealing to science here) is not going to impress anyone. I’ve shown you how problematic your positivism-meets-falsificationism garbage is several times. Give it a rest already.

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  53. @touchstone

    What is sad is your inability to understand this and your vacuous claims that somehow science’s role is to undermine human common sense. That is the delusion of scientific “objectivity”. Science does not exist in suspended animation. It’s a human construct and a specific method (to be honest a variety of incommensurable methods often contradictory – thanks Feyerabend) utilized to address a very limited number of questions whose origin lies in human experience (not devoid of it as you so wishfully want to be the case), hence common sense.
    What is even more troubling is that on one hand you’re arguing that everything, including percepts is interpretation and based on convention (a la derrida) and now you’re pretending that somehow the human subject (which is nothing but a materialistic automaton according to your worldview) can rise above that and entertain “objective” scientific knowledge. I honestly am baffled how you do not see the contradictions in your claims. Do you honestly hear yourself talk?

    Why would we want to return to our starting point of inquiry? If we have to end up at our child-like impulses and crude intutions, why bother trying to detour into science at all?
    I already explained that.
    Quotes such as these is why people don’t take you seriously any more. Once again you lack the understanding regarding common sense and what it entails in classical philosophy and simply parading around to your misconceptions. If you do not return to common sense language then you never address human experience.

    Look around. There is knowledge that performs and is grounded in overwhelming amounts of empirical evidence, uncountable series of real-world tests.
    All of that is based on common sense as the ground and starting point. Once you abandon the delusion that common sense is the opposite of empirical investigation you’ll see it more clearly. Instead of forgetting Heisenberg I’d advise you to read his work. Hopefully with an open mind, otherwise you’re just wasting your time.

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  54. as we move outward from our immediate experience, our common sense breaks down more and more, and the acid solvent reveals the inadequacy and self-deceiving capabilities of our common sense.

    As we move outward from our immediate experience, we utilize a different forms of language (e.g. mathematics in the case of QM)and extreme abstractions that do not have any relationship to reality but instead are used for instrumental purposes (e.g. 9+ dimensions in string hypothesizing, multiverses etc), this creates the illusion that common sense has been undermined. Once these models are construed realistically (as opposed to nominalistically) they break down more and more into empty imagination. Reason and the correct philosophical principles are the solvents that reveal the inadequacy and self-deceiving capabilities of materialistic dogmas masquerading as science.
    There’s your parody. Enjoy it.
    JBS Haldane observed that "the universe is not just queerer than we suppose, it's queerer than we CAN suppose".
    Sounds like superstition talk according to your definition. ;-)
    The irony is I use this quote when talking with narrow-minded materialists who think they can investigate reality in its totality using science. I think you just shot yourself in the foot. You just admitted than a huge part reality cannot be subjected to scientific inquiry and even more importantly to human methodology like falsificationism. The degree to which you are refuting your own views is incredible.

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  55. "Intuitionists" get annoyed at the arrogance of science, but this is hubris and conceit, the dogmatic clinging to the intuition as invincible, our vulgar sensibilities as the magic 8 ball for the remotest mysteries and hardest questions.

    If one intuition is undermined via empirical investigation, its opposite intuition is therefore strengthened. Nice try, but you failed again.

    And all just inside a subjective box, the isolated mind incorrigible by objective models.
    That is a perfect description of yourself given your nominalism, materialism and scientism. Sitting in your dungeon of epistemological nihilism “pleasuring” yourself. ;-)


    I think it's true for those who claim their box is inescapable -- if you think you "simply can't escape it", I'm inclined to agree with you.
    That’s ironic seeing how despite the fact that we’ve shown your worldview and epistemology to be incoherent time and time again, you still insist in clinching to it so fervently to it. You simply can’t escape the box you neatly folded and placed yourself in. But that has nothing to do with what I said about common sense. Right now we’re in touchstone la-la land on a completely different topic.

    *My point about common sense however has nothing to do with that as I have already explained.

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  56. @touchstone

    It's a definition, not an argument, not a syllogism. A "circular definition" uses the term being defined in the definition of that term.

    One would think that after the word of Ayers and Wittgenstein and their insistence on analytic statements being tautologies one would have the aptitude not to engage in red herring fallacies such as here. Ergo, the term ‘circular definition’ as you refer to it is redundant. So naturally, the meaning behind what I am saying is that your argument is circular based on your self-serving definition (which you of course realized). However, being oblivious to the fact that ‘circular definition’ per se is redundant, you try to be a smart ass by fabricating a silly dichotomy and proceed to tell me that I am somehow confused in what I am saying. Cute, real cute. But when you don’t have a good argument you will resort to such pedantic gimmicks. ;-)

    propositions that are science-problematic.
    All pre-scientific propositions are science-problematic according to your pseudo-intellectual dichotomies. You’ve already been through it. Your claims taken to their logical conclusion would render science undoable. You’re trying to bring the ghost of positivism back again. You’re grasping at straws.

    I just punched it into Wikipedia when it came up a couple days ago here, and boom! the first paragraph their jibes nicely with my understanding of the term
    With Wikipedia as your source no wonder you’re so terrible at constructing a coherent argument. But hey, you’ve mastered the petitio principia so far. Keep at it.

    Words mean whatever we agree they should mean, and this is one with wide and consistent agreement, in my experience

    Appealing to conventions as the court of appeal in regards to my objection concerning your empty rhetoric pertaining to superstition isn’t going to help you.

    it's a clean separator between thinking that relies on natural knowledge and thinking that identifies agency and activity in a supernatural realm.
    You’ve been told time and time again that the intellect is natural according to A-T just not materialistic. This is sheer dishonesty and ignorance on your part and yet another strawman.


    But then the go watch the priest conjure a cracker or piece of bread into the body of Christ. And then bristle at being labeled "superstitious". It's just hypocrisy, bristling at the idea they apply to others being applied to them in the same way.

    This right here can only be described as stupidity. If you’re unable to recognize symbolism in religion then you’re in no place to even comment on it.

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  57. Please don't feed the trolls.

    The anon that was an ex-materialist is just right. Touchstone is here to give a show, turn your back to him and the clown will stop laughing.

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  58. @touchstone

    Now you are overloading "natural" in a superstitous way -- works beyond the ken of sense-experience, testing, model incorporation, or falsification

    By your definition of natural half of reality is annihilated. All you’re doing is imposing methodology on ontology. It’s like imposing a tiny little box on reality and telling it that anything that doesn’t fit inside is simply “superstition”. That is not in line with the scientific or the philosophical spirit. That is a form of neuroticism that has no place in science but only in superstitious materialism.
    Popper refuted this line of argument by the way, I already told you that. Stop trying to propagate unwarranted nonsense.

    I'm fine with that distinction. That implicates "immaterial intellect" as well as Black Cat Bad Luck, and the like.

    No, it does not implicate the intellect but rather it implicates materialistic sophistries in regard to mindless matter somehow magically creating intellect. You either don’t understand or simply refuse to understand.

    As far as categorizing the intellect with a black cat I think that’s rather comical. Again rhetorical “loudness” does not a good argument make. ;-)

    : a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation

    This definition from the dictionary that you provided actually makes my point for me. Ignorance, chance, trust in magic and causal inadequacy are all central to the superstition of materialism as I have already explained them. You’ve essentially proved my point. Thanks.

    Once you demarcate empirical knowledge from the superstition of materialism then you might understand what everyone has been trying to tell you. So long as you remain in your little box you’ll be unable to understand.

    one who thinks their superstitions are *true* will not find them "irrational", but the understanding in the usage is that magical appeals (materialistic reductionism and chance) fit squarely in that concept
    I fixed your statement for you. ;-)
    No surprise then that you don’t see the blatant superstition behind your irrational beliefs.

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  59. @touchstone

    I think you misunderstand what is meant by chance ther
    No, it’s YOU that doesn’t understand what is meant by chance. The word chance in a metaphysical context the assumption of effect without a cause. It’s a reification of an abstraction derived from real entities and then assumed to have independent ontological status. The problem arises when people like you confused probabilities, commit the fallacy of equivocation and then assign real “powers” to chance. In metaphysics, chance is nothing more than the “god” of the atheist. In Ancient Greece, the distinction was made between Logos and Chaos (the word chaos in Greek translates into emptiness or nothingness). So the superstition of all superstition is what lies behind materialism and this notion that effects arise devoid of cause (another contradictio in adjecto). This renders of course your entire treatment of the notion of chance worthless, since as per usual you’re on your own irrelevant tangent.
    What is ironic is that probabilities obtain based on a rational a causal structure and a natural order that exists as a core feature of the world. This is something materialism is in conflict with… It simply cannot account for this and you’re just taking it for granted much like the act of reasoning. There is no reason given chance and materialism that we should observe such a world. None. So you’re back into your superstitions trying to magically fabricate aspects of reality to make thing intelligible. Without realizing it you’re hijacking aspects of other metaphysical systems in order to make sense of your own (even even that doesn’t help you). You can always claim the impossible that Chaos creates Logos in which case you’ve reduced yourself to the level of the sophist.
    By the way Aristotle was one of the first to address probability in nature. That’s another thing you should learn.

    Meaning obtains. It's just obtains *within* the system
    We’ve already explained to you about a dozen times how incoherent your materialistic claims to meaning are. Just listen to derrida and stop beating on that dead horse. It’s getting boring.

    No, it's an observed fact of nature.
    This as a response to the fact that materialism would be devoid of reason shows just how poor your understanding of the objection is. Reason is not something that you can verify empirically. Reason is pre-empirical and a requirement for there to even be a category labeled as empirical in the first place. This touches a bit on common sense as I expressed it in my initial posts today and obviously alludes you completely. There has never been a coherent account of materialistic “reason”, while the notion has been refuted time and time again. There is an abundance of literature that show how inept materialism is in this regard, just to mention a few thinkers, Searle, Lewis, Dreyfus, Reppert and Nagel (look into Nagel’s new book, it should be devastating to materialism and much of the neo-darwinian babble is my guess). Of course to even get to reason you need meaning, which you can’t have, so it’s a lost cause regardless. ;-)

    we treat some notions as unsupportable by reasoning
    Then why do you continue to claim that materialism is in anyway coherent after being shown repeatedly that it’s not?

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  60. @touchstone

    An "immaterial intellect" is just a frivolous, superflous addition to any performative model we have

    If you haven’t noticed by now most people here are realists and are interested in understanding reality not in operationalizing ideas into technology production. You’re appealing to pragmatism, which is just another form of relativism. Good luck making sense of reality using that. I’m not going to get into the banalities of relativism.

    Imagining "chance" adds nothing to our knowledge of the universe and models of its creation
    Another parody for you. Enjoy.

    You cannot imagine the emergence of meta-representational cognition through impersonal natural processes, ergo it can't happen! We don't have a testable model (in detail anyway) of it happened, but it's plausible on our knowledge of natural processes.

    You have no right to appeal to notions of emergence as a reductionist. Again, I’ve explained this to you before. Either emergence is latent reality with a formal structure and dispositions (in violent contradiction to materialistic reductionism) or it is. The former takes you to Aristotle and again you’re appealing to our metaphysic in order to try and make sense of the world (irony) or you’re back into epistemological obscurity.

    It’s you that is arguing from ignorance because you don’t even understand the nature of my argument and simply appeal to some wishful future-to-come models. The problems is, as I have already explained, is that said model can be interpreted in many different ways. If said model were to be interpreted materialistically it would implode into incoherence. So even if we did have a model it would still not help you. If anything, creating some form of artificial intelligence would vindicate the centrality of intellect and undermine superstitions of chance, since it’s a product of intellect.

    we are still appealing to known, observable, intelligible causal processes
    And all that is not only compatible with A-T but presupposes it. In other words, one must have a robust causal structure (as per A-T) in order for your statement to obtain. That is not something materialism can offer as I have explained so you must resort in hijacking intelligible causal structures from our metaphysic. You’re only proving my point for me.

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  61. the imago dei breaks with this reliance on effective causal powers
    On the contrary, it’s reinforced since proportionate causality is what must be appealed to in the first place in order to avoid materialistic superstitions. The problem is that you don’t understand a damn thing about Aristotle and Aquinas and simply talking out of ignorance. This takes us back to your self-imposed box/dungeon of sophistry. More than any of my specific arguments, the fact that you completely miss the essence of the metaphysical system you claim to criticize (as being pointed out to you by myself and other repeatedly), while trying to make irrelevant arguments and strawman fallacies show just how empty your words are. To put it as simply as I can, your arguments (if you can even call them that) are not against A-T but again a figment of your imagination that you simply label as A-T.

    It's not qualitatively different than "wetness" obtaining in water, where it wasn't present in H or O. It's just a much more complex phenomena. That stance, even if you think it's mistaken, is the apotheosis of anti-superstition, which is what makes this such a fatiguing conversation to have, over and over, with magical thinkers, (not to mention Dr. Feser's TLS a spectacular bit of irony in choosing a title... or would be if I didn't suspect that's precisely his reason for choosing it).

    You’re equating the reality of the intellect to that of wetness and saying that it’s qualitatively identical is laughable. Apart from that claim being refuted I think Moreland and Searle both did it if my memory serves me right (not that one would need an analysis of such preposterous and simplistic assertions) you’re still appealing to emergence, which either appeals to the presence of potentiality resistant to reduction, hence materialism is refuted, or you’re merely engaging in obfuscation by talking about “complex phenomena” which obscure our understanding (i.e. appeals to ignorance). The apotheosis of anti-superstition come in the realization just how intellectually bankrupt materialism actually is. Once it’s divorces from science (since materialism is nothing but a parasite on science). But I agree, it’s tiring and boring interacting with you, trying to take you seriously and being let down every step of the way. You hide your magical thinking behind the word (not the practice) science and parade around as if what you’ve been saying throughout this entire discussion is not one giant self-refuting claim.

    Feser was spot on with his title and it has been demonstrated to you in 200+ post on this thread and hundred’s of other in others.

    My advice to you, look at your beliefs and try to understand your hidden and unconscious assumptions about reality without acting as a cancer on science but tarnishing it by conflating it with materialism. Only honesty towards oneself and clear reflection can rid you of this superstition. I know, because I lived through it myself.

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  62. *Apologies for the grammatical and spelling errors. Was a bit in a rush.

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  63. Eduardo said...
    "Please don't feed the trolls.

    The anon that was an ex-materialist is just right. Touchstone is here to give a show, turn your back to him and the clown will stop laughing."

    Hear, hear! Some of what TS is indeed interesting, but the majority of it is deaf to the claims and questions of his 'interlocutors'. Time to put him to bed and leave off this pointless interaction.

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  64. Anon,

    "You’re appealing to pragmatism, which is just another form of relativism."

    After an inane assertion like that no wonder you want to remain anonymous.

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  65. @jindra

    After an inane assertion like that no wonder you want to remain anonymous.

    Instead of typing up such empty nonsense, explain to us how pragmatism is not a form of relativism.

    If it's anything like the garbage you post on your blog I think we're in for a good laugh watching you publicly embarrass yourself.

    Are you the same guy that was whining because Feser banned him for being a troll some time ago? ;-)

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  66. Touchstone: Catholics pride themselves in resisting, historically, "voodoo" and other "occult" practices - combatting superstition. [...] It's just hypocrisy, bristling at the idea they apply to others being applied to them in the same way.

    I'm guessing that was supposed to be funny, but if you were serious, then (given your own claims) I have a serious question: which one are you — superstitious or hypocritical?


    Also, perhaps it got lost in the shuffle, but we're waiting for you to defend a couple of claims you made earlier:

    Curiously, I've never seen a Thomist explain his position that way. Perhaps you can provide a citation to support this peculiar claim of yours.

    And:

    That is indeed a bad argument, but what I meant was, can you cite where Behe or Fuller or Nelson or Johnson actually say that?

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  67. Links are down. Can't find this article on google.

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