tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post7858063844100014132..comments2024-03-18T21:06:42.546-07:00Comments on Edward Feser: Conjuring teleologyEdward Feserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comBlogger186125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-64532541504075271622018-07-04T11:37:32.228-07:002018-07-04T11:37:32.228-07:00Continuing...
For a number of “naturalist” theori...<i>Continuing...</i><br /><br />For a number of “naturalist” theorists it has become entirely credible, and even logically inevitable, that the defense of “rationalistic” values should require the denial of the existence of reason. Or, rather, intellectual consistency obliges them to believe that reason is parasitic upon purely irrational physical events, and that it may well be the case that our nonexistent consciousness is only deluded in intentionally believing that there is such a thing as intentional belief. Or they think that what we have mistaken for our rational convictions and ideas are actually only a colony of diverse “memes” that have established themselves in the ecologies of our cerebral cortices. Or whatever. At such a bizarre cultural or intellectual juncture, the word “fanaticism” is not opprobrious, but merely descriptive. We have reached a point of almost mystically fundamentalist absurdism. Even so, what is really astonishing here is not that some extreme proponents of naturalist thought accept such ideas but that any person of a naturalist bent could imagine that his or her beliefs permit any other conclusions. <br /><br />If nature really is what mechanistic metaphysics portrays it as being, then consciousness is, like being itself, <i>super naturam</i>; and that must be intolerable to any true believer in the mechanistic creed. Materialism is, as I have said, the least rationally defensible and most explanatorily impoverished of metaphysical dogmas; but, if materialism is one’s faith, even reason itself may not be too great an offering to place upon its altar. If one is to exclude the supernatural absolutely from one’s picture of reality, one must not only ignore the mystery of being but also refuse to grant that consciousness could possibly be what it self-evidently is.”<br /><br />End quote. (David Bentley Hart, “<i>The Experience of God</i>”)<br /><br />MetaChristianityhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03782828324290721542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-61755011607043604812018-07-04T11:36:45.645-07:002018-07-04T11:36:45.645-07:00Along the same lines as the topic here, there is a...Along the same lines as the topic here, there is a quote of David B. Hart as the comment at http://disq.us/p/1mj0j0k which opens with the title (..of the comment etc...) of...<br /> <br />"<i>Reason Itself: The Parasite Upon Irrational Physical Events & The Colony of Memes In the Ecology of Cerebral Cortices</i>"<br /><br />The word count will require a few posts here:<br /><br />Quote: <br /><br />“In any event, my topic is not really the philosophy of mind, though by this point it may seem as if I have forgotten that. I am concerned not simply with the mystery of consciousness but with the significance of that mystery for a proper understanding of the word “God.” I admit that I have taken my time in reaching this point, but I think defensibly so. My claim throughout these pages is that the grammar for our thinking about the transcendent is given to us in the immanent, in the most humbly ordinary and familiar experiences of reality; in the case of our experience of consciousness, however, the familiarity can easily overwhelm our sense of the essential mystery. There is no meaningful distinction between the subject and the object of experience here, and so the mystery is hidden by its own ubiquity. <br /><br />One extremely good way, then, to appreciate the utter strangeness of consciousness — the hither side, so to speak, of that moment of existential wonder that wakens us to the strangeness of all things — is to consider the extraordinary labors required to describe the mind in purely material terms. We have reached a curious juncture in the history of materialism, which seems to point toward a terminus that is either tragic or comical (depending on where one’s sympathies lie). <br /><br /><i>Continued...</i><br />MetaChristianityhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03782828324290721542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-60996190315711939932018-07-04T11:22:33.636-07:002018-07-04T11:22:33.636-07:00Continued... (final part)
We on the other hand do...<i>Continued...</i> (final part)<br /><br />We on the other hand don’t merely make physical movements: the waving of your hand when your friend enters the room isn’t just a meaningless movement, but an action, the action of greeting your friend. If it were just a meaningless movement — the result of a seizure, say — we wouldn’t count it as an action at all; it wouldn’t in that case be something you do, but rather something that happened to you. The fan, however, is capable of making nothing but meaningless movements. For something genuinely to behave or act as we do requires that it does have intentionality — action and behavior of the sort we exhibit are themselves manifestations of intentionality, and thus presuppose it. But in that case, an appeal to a “capacity for action” cannot provide the ultimate explanation of intentionality. We need to know why our capacities for action are different from the mere capacities for movement that a fan exhibits. Merely noting, à la Searle’s Background hypothesis, that our capacities are non-intentional ways of acting cannot help, for that they are genuinely ways of acting is precisely what needs to be explained. Indeed, since they are ways of acting, they cannot be literally non-intentional, for if they were, they would no more be true ways of acting than are the capacities of an electrical fan. A capacity for action is, as a matter of conceptual necessity, an intentional capacity. In fairness to Searle, it isn’t clear that he intends his hypothesis of the Background to serve as a complete explanation of intentionality. His aim may be just to draw out some implications of the fact that mental states are logically and conceptually related to one another in a Network. <br /><br />The point, though, is that his way of avoiding the circularity or regress that threaten any conceptual role theory cannot be appealed to in order to vindicate such a theory as a complete theory of meaning — and that it may even be incoherent, if Searle holds that the capacities and ways of acting that form the Background are literally devoid of intentionality.” <br /><br />(by Edward Feser)<br /><br />End quote. <br />MetaChristianityhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03782828324290721542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-54524792549161751612018-07-04T11:19:11.491-07:002018-07-04T11:19:11.491-07:00Continuing....
But ultimately these mental states...<i>Continuing....</i><br /><br />But ultimately these mental states, and the Network as a whole, function only against a Background of capacities, such as the capacity to move about the world of physical objects, pick them up, manipulate them, and so on. This capacity is not to be identified with the belief that there is a real external world of physical objects; for if it were such an intentional mental state, then it would have to get its meaning from other mental states, and thus couldn’t serve as part of the Background that ends the regress of mental states. The capacity in question is rather something unconscious and without intentionality, a way of acting rather than a way of thinking. One acts as if one had the belief in question, though one in fact does not. While this capacity could in principle become a conscious, intentional mental state — one could come to have the explicit belief that there is a real world of external physical objects that I can manipulate and move about within — this would mean that this particular capacity has moved out of the Background and into the Network, and now rests on some other unconscious, non-Intentional Background capacity or way of acting. <br /><br />There is, in short, always some set of capacities or other that comprises the Background (even if it is not always the same set for different people, or even for the same person at different times), and these capacities serve to ground the Network of intentional mental states. There is much to be said for Searle’s hypothesis of the Background, but it seems that it cannot save the conceptual role theory, for to speak of a “non-intentional capacity for acting” is to speak ambiguously. Consider that when you act without the conscious belief that there is an external world of physical objects, but merely manifest a capacity to interact with the world of physical objects, your capacity isn’t non-intentional in the same sense that an electric fan’s capacity to interact with the world of physical objects is non-intentional. You behave “as if’ you had a conscious, intentional belief in a world of physical objects, but of course you don’t, because it typically never even occurs to you either to believe or doubt that there is such a world: you just interact with the world, period. The fan also behaves “as if” it believed there was a world of external physical objects (that it “wants” to cool down, say); but of course it doesn’t really have this belief (or any wants) at all. In the case of the fan, this is not because it just hasn’t occurred to the fan to think about whether there is such a world, for the fan isn’t capable of such thoughts; it is rather because, strictly speaking, the fan doesn’t really “act” or “behave” at all, as opposed to just making movements. And the reason we don’t regard it as acting or behaving in the same sense we do is precisely because it doesn’t have intentionality — it is a dumb, meaningless, hunk of steel and wires. <br /><br /><i>Continued...</i><br />MetaChristianityhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03782828324290721542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-67931288582686070572018-07-04T11:18:03.473-07:002018-07-04T11:18:03.473-07:00At the comment http://disq.us/p/1mj0his is the ope...At the comment http://disq.us/p/1mj0his is the opening title (of that comment) which is "<i>Intentionality, Mental States, Searle, Networks, and Causal Backgrounds</i>". It is a quote of Edward Feser which is perhaps of some utility to the topic here. It's word count etc. requires a few posts. So, here goes.....<br /><br />Quote:<br /><br />“This sort of theory proposes that the meaning or intentional content of any particular mental state (a belief, desire, or whatever) derives from the role it plays within a system of mental states, all of which, as we’ve seen, seem logically interrelated in the manner briefly discussed in chapters 3 and 6, since to have any one mental state seems to require having a number of others along with it. The idea is that what gives the belief that Socrates is mortal the precise meaning it has is that it is entailed by other beliefs meaning that all men are mortal and that Socrates is a man, that together with a belief meaning that all mortals will eventually die it entails a belief meaning that Socrates will eventually die, and so on. If we think of beliefs, desires, and the like as a vast system of logically interconnected elements, the theory holds that each element in the system gets its meaning from having precisely the place in the system it has, by bearing exactly the logical and conceptual relations it bears to the other elements. (More precisely, it is the objects of beliefs, desires, and the like — sentences of Mentalese according to the CRTT, or, more generically and for those not necessarily committed to the CRTT, “mental representations” of some other, non-sentential sort — that bear meaning or intentional content. But for the sake of simplicity, we can ignore this qualification in what follows.) <br /><br />There seems to be a serious problem with the conceptual role approach, namely that even if it is granted that mental states have the specific meaning or content they do only because of their relations to other mental states, this wouldn’t explain how mental states have any meaning at all in the first place. That a particular belief either implies other beliefs or is implied by them presupposes that it has some meaning or other: nothing that was completely meaningless could imply (or be implied by) anything. The very having of logical and conceptual relations assumes the prior existence of meaning, so that no appeal to logical and conceptual connections can (fully) account for meaning. Moreover, if belief A gets its content from its relations to beliefs B and C, and these get their content from their relations to beliefs D, E, and F, we seem destined to be led either in a circle or to an infinite regress. <br /><br />Either way, no ultimate explanation of intentional content will have been given. To provide such an explanation thus inevitably requires an appeal to something outside the network, something which can impart meaning to the whole. John Searle, who endorses something like the conceptual role theory of meaning, acknowledges that logical and conceptual relations between mental states cannot be the whole story if circularity or infinite regress is to be avoided. He therefore postulates that the entire “Network” of intentional mental states (he capitalizes Network to signify its status as a technical term) rests on what he calls a “Background” of non-intentional capacities to interact with the world around us. We have, for example, such intentional mental states as the desire to have a beer and the belief that there is beer in the refrigerator, and these mental states do, in part, get the specific meaning they have via their relations to each other and to other mental states in the broader Network. <br /><br /><i>Continued....</i><br />MetaChristianityhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03782828324290721542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-18889360570098167252017-02-27T19:40:32.364-08:002017-02-27T19:40:32.364-08:00Isn't the purpose of an electron to balance th...Isn't the purpose of an electron to balance the charge of a proton? Isn't the purpose of all physical matter to create a balance of forces tending toward homeostasis while following the second law of thermodynamics? Teleological existentialism? Separation requiring unification.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-49262522073598738882016-08-30T20:03:46.551-07:002016-08-30T20:03:46.551-07:00DBH: "being is known in its oppositions, and ...DBH: "being is known in its oppositions, and oppositions must be overcome or affirmed"<br /><br />This is pretty much textbook Wittgenstein: Sense is always bi-polar, and any intelligible existing factual state of affairs must therefore, at least in principle, be also conceivable as <i>not</i> obtaining. This is why "1+1=2" is not a factual statement, but "pigs cannot fly" is. ("1+1=2" is instead a conceptual proposition, a rule of language.)<br /><br />You: <i>"although you lack even that given that you’ve not yet offered us more than a temporal wad of neurons – full stop)."</i><br /><br />Again with the neurons I never talked about except when I said that the mind is not the brain. But I guess there is no stopping you from endlessly repeating a false narrative so you can have just one more "full stop".<br /><br /><i>Your claim that we cannot follow rationality to God is both irrelevant and also laced with hubris. It is the later because it makes Man the measure of all things despite the final (or ultimate, or cosmic) painful intellectual cost of doing so</i><br /><br />Another gross distortion of what I actually said. The point was that rationality does not quite reach up to Existence (capital E) because God/Existence by definition has no conceivable opposite. "Existence" is knowable only by analogy with ordinary existence, which means (see DBH) <i>opposition</i>, i.e. being vs not-being. But for Being there is no such distinction. Hence our knowledge of God cannot possibly be of the same type as ordinary knowledge. Thus there is no perfectly rational ladder we can climb up and see God in the same way or sense as we are able to see ordinary existence.<br /><br />It would indeed be hubris if I concluded from this that "man is the measure of all things". But that would obviously be ridiculous and I have explicitly affirmed the opposite. Nevertheless, an explicit, "positive" account of God must elude us and we can argue only vaguely by analogy. (And this is also the Thomist position.)<br /><br />The rest of your paragraph reads more like a feverish rant than an argument:<br /><br /><i>the stubbornness of hubris writ large across your slavery-dis-mathematic / dis-logic being but one tiny slice of thousands of painful examples – whichever road we travel. It is the former because we need not follow rationality to God. We need only avoid annihilating and expunging our own sanity, our own rationality</i><br /><br />No idea what this even means, or what this weird "-dis-" infix is supposed to be.<br /><br />And finally:<br /><br />DBH: "My claim throughout these pages is that the <b>grammar</b> for our thinking about the transcendent is given to us in the <b>immanent</b>, in the most humbly ordinary and familiar <b>experiences</b> of reality; in the case of our experience of consciousness, however, the familiarity can easily overwhelm our sense of the <b>essential mystery</b>. There is <b>no meaningful distinction between the subject and the object of experience here</b>, and so the mystery is hidden by its own ubiquity"<br /><br />[emphases mine]<br /><br />And this is nearly 100% identical to what I have argued. The fact that there is "no meaningful distinction between the subject and the object of experience" when it comes to Existence means precisely that we cannot really talk <i>about</i> it. An "essential mystery" remains and words (and by implication, rationality) must necessarily fail us. Which again is textbook Wittgenstein.pcknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-70875882427532987252016-08-30T19:15:20.495-07:002016-08-30T19:15:20.495-07:00I think it's pretty safe to assume that W.'...I think it's pretty safe to assume that W.'s take on good and bad/evil is not that different from the Christian conception. While W. is silent about the exact nature of the source of morality, it is reasonable to assume that he neither thought of it as illusory nor as being located within the material order (all of which is consistent with his favoured notion of a "silent religion").<br /><br />Make of this what you want, but to conclude that W. is a "TGM" is simply not plausible at all.pcknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-40334118611010946822016-08-30T19:14:57.242-07:002016-08-30T19:14:57.242-07:00I hadn't seen that you were still posting here...I hadn't seen that you were still posting here. I'll make this brief since we're going in circles and you seem to keep misinterpreting what I've been saying. I cannot really tell since you have never responded to any of my inquiries for clarification. And as I have written about 100k of text already, there is little hope that things will change for the better.<br /><br /><i>Your ontology is Man.<br />Full stop.</i><br /><br />No. Full stop. (Your "full stops" are getting a bit out of hand, don't you think? They don't help your argument and are starting to make you sound crazy.) See my posting from May 8, 2016 at 3:54 PM.<br /><br />You are far too obsessed with calling everyone and everything with a different view other than making God the one and only reference point for all meaning a TGM. This is irrational because most of what we say and do is perfectly meaningful without any need to explicitly reference God. And this includes moral judgments. We don't need to invoke God for the purpose of issuing and understanding a statement like "you are a bad man for letting innocents come to harm on purpose" or "slavery is bad".<br /><br />God only comes into play once we ask for a <i>justification</i> of such judgments, since the source of morality cannot be located within the world. (At least not within its material order, i.e. its "states of affairs" to use W.'s terms from the Tractatus. A state of affairs X can be good or bad, but the reason why X is good or bad cannot be another state of affairs Y, since then we could ask for a justification of Y, and so on ad infinitum. So either the source of morality is transcendental, or there is no morality at all.)<br /><br />Additionally, for the Christian, it is important that God is referred to <i>in a specific way</i> when it comes to the justification of moral judgments.<br /><br />Wittgenstein, being first and foremost a philosopher of language, did not say very much on the subject of ethics, but he noted once that whatever the reason for our being in the world may be, he was quite certain that "it is not to amuse ourselves". I read this as a hint that for him too, a) there is a source of morality and b) it is not located within the world. (This isn't too far-fetched considering he was strongly influenced and deeply impressed by Tolstoy's "The Gospel in Brief".)<br /><br /><i>All you’ve offered us is W1 and W2. And both are Truth. Slavery is simultaneously good and evil.</i><br /><br />I haven't offered anything even remotely like this. Quite the contrary. This is a strawman you keep setting up again and again to justify your "TGM" conclusion. It became mere rhetoric long ago.<br /><br />Obviously certain states of affairs can have opposing moral qualities at the same time. Not everything is perfectly clear cut.<br /><br /><i>Yet you claim that good and evil exist in distinction.</i><br /><br />I don't. I claim that they exist as distinct <i>qualities</i> which often coexist within the same state of affairs. It's called moral ambiguity. The ancient Greeks were masters of telling stories about it.<br /><br /><i>Does W agree with you? Or have you left W behind here in Ethics?</i><br /><br />See above. In his only lecture on ethics he explains that "good" and "bad" are fundamentally different from "true" and "false" (in the sense that facts are), since "good" and "bad" refer to a person or situation in their entirety without any qualifications, not just to what a person did or did not do (or what a situation is or is not like). I.e. compare<br /><br />"You should not sell this slave at such a low price" (because of reasons X)<br />=> not a value judgement about slavery or the seller of slaves in question<br />to<br />"You should not buy and sell slaves"<br />=> no qualifying circumstances, no explicit reasons given (and it wouldn't help if there were)pcknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-79110698836583070742016-06-29T18:10:51.838-07:002016-06-29T18:10:51.838-07:00
Speaking of Wittgenstein......
https://ndpr.nd....<br />Speaking of Wittgenstein......<br /><br /><br />https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/68056-epistemic-angst-radical-skepticism-and-the-groundlessness-of-our-believing/ <br /><br />scbrownlhrmnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-88979818112409334902016-06-28T02:58:57.158-07:002016-06-28T02:58:57.158-07:00And, obviously.....
Two items on Wittgenstein:
[...And, obviously.....<br /><br />Two items on Wittgenstein:<br /><br />[1] http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2015/12/goodill-on-scholastic-metaphysics-and.html<br /><br />[2] http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/06/early-wittgenstein-on-scientism.html <br /><br />scbrownlhrmnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-67978484983497118462016-05-13T03:18:13.663-07:002016-05-13T03:18:13.663-07:00FWIW:
In an indirect sort of way.....
Segue:
...FWIW:<br /><br />In an indirect sort of way.....<br /><br /><br /><b>Segue:</b><br /><br /><br />From http://www.strangenotions.com/how-do-you-know-youre-not-in-the-matrix/<br /><br /><br />"I think solipsism is always an interesting topic because if we start "mid-stream" in our epistemology by rejecting solipsism (as I think most of us probably do), it is then interesting to try to infer what "upstream" structure of our thoughts must have led to this rejection. There is some hope that by swimming upstream in this manner we will discover certain "first principles" that lie unrecognized at the wellspring of our beliefs."(Jim/hillclimber)scbrownlhrmnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-80857484036183491632016-05-13T01:22:31.792-07:002016-05-13T01:22:31.792-07:00PCK
Well ---- part [4],
Simply to clarify:
This...PCK<br /><br />Well ---- part [4],<br /><br />Simply to clarify:<br /><br />This:<br /><br />To borrow from David Hart: Distinction is achieved only by violence among converging equals. Being is in some real sense a “…plain upon which forces of meaning and meaninglessness converge in endless war; according to either, being is known in its oppositions, and oppositions must be overcome or affirmed, but in either case as violence…” (although you lack <i>even that</i> given that you’ve not yet offered us more than temporal neurons / Man -- full stop).<br /><br />That was from DBH pointing out the final / cosmic pitfall of claim-making amid the paradigms of pantheism etc.... all lines end up equal -- and hence the irrational mathematics/logic of [Slavery is good] [equals] [Slavery is evil] [equals] [Full Stop] emerges -- and painfully so.<br /><br />DBH wasn't claiming that such convergence of equals is true inside of the Christian paradigm -- but that outside of the Christian paradigm such lack of (ontic) distinction finally, or cosmically, emerges. Of course those sorts of paradigms give the same treatment (finally) to reason itself along with ethics, and for all the same "reasons".scbrownlhrmnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-87456197277508455122016-05-13T01:09:15.221-07:002016-05-13T01:09:15.221-07:00PCK,
[3]
"………I suggested above that, in man...PCK,<br /><br />[3]<br /><br />"………I suggested above that, in many classical metaphysical traditions, the concept of being is one of power: the power of actuality, the capacity to affect or to be affected. To be is to act. This definition already implies that, in its fullness, being must also be consciousness, because the highest power to act — and hence the most unconditioned and unconstrained reality of being — is rational mind. <i>Absolute</i> being, therefore, must be <i>absolute</i> mind. Or, in simpler terms, the greater the degree of something’s actuality, the greater the degree of its consciousness, and so infinite actuality is necessarily infinite consciousness. That, at least, is one way of trying to describe another essential logical intuition that recurs in various forms throughout the great theistic metaphysical systems. It is the conviction that in God lies at once the deepest truth of mind and the most universal truth of existence, and that for this reason the world can truly be known by us. Whatever else one might call this vision of things, it is most certainly, in a very real sense, a kind of “total rationalism.” Belief in God, properly understood, allows one to see all that exists — both in its own being and in our knowledge of it — as rational. It may be possible to believe in the materialist view of reality, I suppose, and in some kind of mechanical account of consciousness, but it is a belief that precludes any final trust in the power of reason to reflect the objective truths of nature. I happen to think that a coherent materialist model of mind is an impossibility. I think also that the mechanistic picture of nature is self-evidently false, nothing more than an intellectual adherence to a limited empirical method that has been ineptly mistaken for a complete metaphysical description of reality. I believe that nature is rational, that it possesses inherent meaning, that it even exhibits genuine formal and final causes, and that therefore it can be faithfully mirrored in the intentional, abstractive, formal, and final activity of rational consciousness. If I am wrong about all of these things, however, I think it also clear that what lies outside such beliefs is not some alternative rationalism, some other and more rigorous style of logic, some better way of grasping the truth of things, but only an abandonment of firm belief in any kind of reasoning at all. God explains the existence of the universe despite its ontological contingency, which is something that no form of naturalism can do; but God also explains the transparency of the universe to consciousness, despite its apparent difference from consciousness, as well as the coincidence between reason and reality, and the intentional power of the mind, and the reality of truth as a dimension of existence that is at once objective and subjective. Here, just as in the realm of ontology, atheism is simply another name for radical absurdism — which, again, may be a perfectly “correct” view of things, if reason is just a physiological accident after all, and logic an illusion. That is an argument that I shall not revisit just now, however. Instead, I shall simply observe that, if reason’s primordial orientation is indeed toward total intelligibility and perfect truth, then it is essentially a kind of ecstasy of the mind toward an end beyond the limits of nature. It is an impossibly extravagant appetite, a longing that can be sated only by a fullness that can never be reached in the world, but that ceaselessly opens up the world to consciousness. To speak of God, however, as infinite consciousness, which is identical to infinite being, is to say that in Him the ecstasy of mind is also the perfect satiety of achieved knowledge, of perfect wisdom. God is both the knower and the known, infinite intelligence and infinite intelligibility. This is to say that, in Him, rational appetite is perfectly fulfilled, and consciousness perfectly possesses the end it desires. And this, of course, is perfect bliss.” (DBH – <i>The Experience of God</i>)scbrownlhrmnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-54612238017424471362016-05-13T01:06:53.767-07:002016-05-13T01:06:53.767-07:00PCK,
Here's [2],
From David Bentley Hart on ...PCK,<br /><br />Here's [2],<br /><br />From David Bentley Hart on reason's impossibly extravagant appetite:<br /><br />“In any event, my topic is not really the philosophy of mind, though by this point it may seem as if I have forgotten that. I am concerned not simply with the mystery of consciousness but with the significance of that mystery for a proper understanding of the word “God.” I admit that I have taken my time in reaching this point, but I think defensibly so. My claim throughout these pages is that the grammar for our thinking about the transcendent is given to us in the immanent, in the most humbly ordinary and familiar experiences of reality; in the case of our experience of consciousness, however, the familiarity can easily overwhelm our sense of the essential mystery. There is no meaningful distinction between the subject and the object of experience here, and so the mystery is hidden by its own ubiquity. One extremely good way, then, to appreciate the utter strangeness of consciousness — the hither side, so to speak, of that moment of existential wonder that wakens us to the strangeness of all things — is to consider the extraordinary labors required to describe the mind in purely material terms. We have reached a curious juncture in the history of materialism, which seems to point toward a terminus that is either tragic or comical (depending on where one’s sympathies lie). For a number of “naturalist” theorists it has become entirely credible, and even logically inevitable, that the defense of “rationalistic” values should require the denial of the existence of reason. Or, rather, intellectual consistency obliges them to believe that reason is parasitic upon purely irrational physical events, and that it may well be the case that our nonexistent consciousness is only deluded in intentionally believing that there is such a thing as intentional belief. Or they think that what we have mistaken for our rational convictions and ideas are actually only a colony of diverse “memes” that have established themselves in the ecologies of our cerebral cortices. Or whatever. At such a bizarre cultural or intellectual juncture, the word “fanaticism” is not opprobrious, but merely descriptive. We have reached a point of almost mystically fundamentalist absurdism. Even so, what is really astonishing here is not that some extreme proponents of naturalist thought accept such ideas but that any person of a naturalist bent could imagine that his or her beliefs permit any other conclusions. If nature really is what mechanistic metaphysics portrays it as being, then consciousness is, like being itself, <i>super naturam</i>; and that must be intolerable to any true believer in the mechanistic creed. Materialism is, as I have said, the least rationally defensible and most explanatorily impoverished of metaphysical dogmas; but, if materialism is one’s faith, even reason itself may not be too great an offering to place upon its altar. If one is to exclude the supernatural absolutely from one’s picture of reality, one must not only ignore the mystery of being but also refuse to grant that consciousness could possibly be what it self-evidently is………..."<br /><br /><i>continued....</i>scbrownlhrmnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-55301709665938569672016-05-13T01:04:12.904-07:002016-05-13T01:04:12.904-07:00PCK:
Comments haven't been "taking"...PCK:<br /><br />Comments haven't been "taking", so I'll try again here with what I think will end up being three comments ([1] / [2] / 3]) etc......<br /><br />Here's [1],<br /><br />Your (or W.’s) ontology claims that good and evil exist and yet your ontology fails to distinguish such things as it equates all lines in Man, given them all the ontic-status of Truth. <br /><br />All you’ve offered us is W1 and W2. And both are Truth. Slavery is simultaneously good and evil. <br /><br />Yet you claim that good and evil exist in distinction. Does W agree with you? Or have you left W behind here in Ethics? <br /><br />Ontology:<br /><br />W1: Slavery is good! (both in word and act)<br />W2: Slavery is evil! (both word and act)<br /><br />Full stop.<br /><br />Or, simply: Man – Full stop.<br /><br />Just like the TGM (thorough going materialist).<br /><br />Such a line suffers all the same (ultimate) annihilation of <i>ontological distinctions</i> (Good/Evil/Etc.) as Atheism or Non-Theism (and TGM) in its attempt to assert such actualities, though perhaps by a different “path”. That is to say, the contours of love's reciprocity are – at some ontological seam somewhere – either <b>A)</b> annihilated or else <b>B)</b> of equal metaphysical status as Selfishness, Hate, Amoral, Indifference, or Etc. Therefore “The-Good” vis-à-vis personhood/love once again (as in outright Atheism / TGM) fails as a (metaphysical) ultimate meaning maker, even though they are (the logic goes) “eternal” (though your case is even worse as it offers us not the eternal lines of pantheism or panpsychism but purely the temporal man and the neurons inside his skull). <br /><br />To borrow from David Hart: Distinction is achieved only by violence among converging equals. Being is in some real sense a “…plain upon which forces of meaning and meaninglessness converge in endless war; according to either, being is known in its oppositions, and oppositions must be overcome or affirmed, but in either case as violence…” (although you lack <i>even that</i> given that you’ve not yet offered us more than a temporal wad of neurons – full stop).<br /><br />You’ve not offered us anything other than this:<br /><br />[Slavery is good] [equals] [Slavery is evil] [equals] [Full Stop]. <br /><br />Your claim that we cannot follow rationality to God is both irrelevant and also laced with hubris. It is the <i>later</i> because it makes Man the measure of all things despite the final (or ultimate, or cosmic) painful intellectual cost of doing so – the stubbornness of hubris writ large across your slavery-dis-mathematic / dis-logic being but one tiny slice of thousands of painful examples – whichever road we travel. It is the <i>former</i> because we need not follow rationality to God. We need only avoid annihilating and expunging our own sanity, our own rationality. From David Bentley Hart’s “<i>The Experience of God”</i>, on reason’s impossibly extravagant appetite:<br /><br /><i>....continued....</i>scbrownlhrmnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-11424841115014572822016-05-13T00:24:17.490-07:002016-05-13T00:24:17.490-07:00PCK,
A repost tomorrow perhaps.... comments don&#...PCK,<br /><br />A repost tomorrow perhaps.... comments don't seem to be taking today :-)<br /><br />scbrownlhrmnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-21309543368885569462016-05-13T00:21:53.951-07:002016-05-13T00:21:53.951-07:00PCK,
I'll try posting again..... didn't t...PCK,<br /><br />I'll try posting again..... didn't take....scbrownlhrmnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-65353709047688609252016-05-13T00:20:15.365-07:002016-05-13T00:20:15.365-07:00PCK,
Your ontology is Man.
Full stop.
Hence:
O...<br /><br />PCK,<br /><br />Your ontology is Man.<br /><br />Full stop.<br /><br />Hence:<br /><br />Ontological stalemate. <br /><br />Your ontology is this: <br /><br />W1:<br /><br />Slavery is good. <br /><br />And:<br /><br />W2:<br /><br />Slavery is evil. <br /><br />You haven't shown otherwise. <br /><br />All you've offered is W1 and W2.<br /><br />Or, simply: Man -- full stop.<br /><br />Just like the thorough going materialist (TGM).<br />scbrownlhrmnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-25671185606290531742016-05-08T15:54:33.022-07:002016-05-08T15:54:33.022-07:00W1, who affirms slavery's goodness, by word or...<i>W1, who affirms slavery's goodness, by word or *act*, or both, and his twin, W2, who affirms slavery's evil, by word or *act*, or both, are still in a stalemate within that system. Good or Evil, it's all still "Man -- Full Stop".</i><br /><br />This is bad reasoning. The stalemate exists only in your mind. The man who does good and the man who commits evil acts really do good and/or evil, no matter what they think their justifications are. These things are in the world, they are realities.<br /><br />To deduce moral relativism from the fact that not all men appeal to the same kind of authority (God, secular laws, personal convictions, etc.) is a fallacy. You conflate justification with ontology. Even in Christianity, good and evil are "man, full stop". It's not God who commits good or evil acts (in the ordinary sense of those terms, which are *ours*, not God's). Again you presume to be able to know the mind of God by climbing the ladder of rationality. This is hubris, and also quite rationally knowably false.<br />pcknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-91905195415861980822016-05-08T15:43:07.834-07:002016-05-08T15:43:07.834-07:00W.'s reach ends where TGM's reach ends (th...<i>W.'s reach ends where TGM's reach ends (though they take different paths) and so too on reasoning.<br /><br />Love. Reasoning. Mind. Being. Evil. Self/Other. Logic.</i><br /><br />Pretty much all of W.'s work provides important insights into Reasoning, Mind, Self/Other, Being and Logic. (Love and Evil not so much, since he is not a theologian or philosopher of ethics.)<br /><br /><i>That is why E. Feser and D. Hart follow reason and logic beyond such a stopping point</i><br /><br />The stopping point you imagine for W. does not exist. The problem may be that you have no actual formal training in logic or mathematics. If you knew more about how the sausage (of logic) is actually made, you would not jump to the claim that one can simply <i>follow</i> reason and logic to attain "total lucidity". I don't know about Feser, but D. Hart most certainly denies such a claim. (As all Christians ultimately must, since much of the weight of Christianity relies on revelation and not reason alone. But even if we ignore revelation, the business of "pure reason" depends on human creation of tools of thought as much as it does on our natural orientation/desire towards truth and lucidity.)pcknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-14422882021660853522016-04-10T02:51:05.252-07:002016-04-10T02:51:05.252-07:00PCK,
A comment didn't "take" (show ...<br />PCK,<br /><br />A comment didn't "take" (show up) yesterday, so I'll repost again, with a few more sentences added:<br /><br />It seems that we are affirming the same limitations of W. ' s actual and/or intended "reach", though by drawing attention to different explanations of those limitations.<br /><br />That consciousness and agency are immaterial were your words about W., about this business of reasoning. If, now, there neither is nor isn't material/immaterial, well there it is again. But that business of neither/nor lacks the power to go anywhere -- stalemates emerge in circular patterns.<br /><br /><br />W1, who affirms slavery's goodness, by word or *act*, or both, and his twin, W2, who affirms slavery's evil, by word or *act*, or both, are still in a stalemate within that system. Good or Evil, it's all still "Man -- Full Stop". <br /><br />Just as with the (final) state of affairs within the thorough going materialist's (TGM's) system. Different paths, same ending. Same stalemate. <br /><br />Reasoning itself ends up in the same state of affairs within both systems (though I agree it is for obviously different "reasons").<br /><br />There's much to appreciate in W.'s work. Teaching us to retain epistemic humility for one, and, also, the obvious business of meaning conveyed in and by immaterial consciousness (as his stopping point) -- which is heavily laden with what Non-Theists seem to dislike.<br /><br />But those two facts (there's more to like of course) do not change where he leaves off wrt man, good, and reasoning. <br /><br />".....the option for the Christian philosopher to get to know more about how his own doctrine works within the stream of human life...." (via language and conveyed meaning) is beneficial, obviously. <br /><br />The Christian disagrees that polemics against slavery convey exactly zero meaning as to the Immutable, as per W. Of course W. *must* claim that zero insight into the Immutable is conveyed *given* the fact that, ultimately, W.'s reach ends where TGM's reach ends (though they take different paths) and so too on reasoning.<br /><br />Love. Reasoning. Mind. Being. Evil. Self/Other. Logic.<br /><br />While TGM and W. are forced to converge and agree that zero insight into the Immutable exists, the demand of total rationalism for lucidity through and through rejects such a conclusion. <br /><br />That is why E. Feser and D. Hart follow reason and logic beyond such a stopping point -- and rationally continue into nothing less than what total lucidity demands: God. Or as D. Hart describes it, "Total Rationalism". <br />scbrownlhrmnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-3185616523502708832016-04-09T03:11:15.783-07:002016-04-09T03:11:15.783-07:00One opposes slavery by acting against it, not by g...One opposes slavery by acting against it, not by giving a logical proof that "slavery is bad, q.e.d". This <i>shows</i> one's stance concerning slavery. One's actions are part of reality. We must not conflate life/reality and talking-about-life/reality. A Christian is in no better position to <i>say</i> that slavery is bad than an atheist or agnostic. The appeal to a cosmic or divine "Good" pertains to the matter of <i>justification</i> for your actions, not to the question of your actions being <i>capable</i> (or incapable) of being good (or bad). There is indeed no such <i>thing</i> as goodness, but that doesn't mean one cannot be good or that one cannot argue against the claim that slavery is good. By the same standard one could also not argue the opposite, so one would have to conclude that "good" and "bad" have no meaning at all, which is obviously wrong, even for the atheist.<br /><br /><i> [...] where the Christian leaves W. behind for W. chooses to remain within the system of “conveyed meaning” as per the system (singular) of [1] and [2] which suffers a final absurdity absent a cogent handling of said system.</i><br /><br />As I said earlier, W. is not the be-all, end-all of philosophy. But one can (and, as I believe, should) profit from W.'s philosophy in a Christian context. Two important points are:<br /><br />A) It is wrong to claim that remaining within physics "suffers a final absurdity", as long as one is aware that physics is not the last word on everything; and<br /><br />B) What is in question for the Christian is the <i>status</i> of the language he uses in his theology. Here we need to acknowledge that "following logic and reason" is not the same as following a trail of breadcrumbs which eventually leaves us at the door of ultimate truth. Two (related) reasons why this is so are:<br /><br />1) Logic is not exclusively a process of deduction. It also involves acts of creation, which in turn involve decisions that cannot be read off of the world (although they can be inspired by it). This is already true of purely formal systems such as mathematics (for example in the definition of irrational numbers) and is equally apparent in the distinctions we draw in our linguistic practices. These play a big part in our understanding of the world (and whatever may lie beyond). The objection that the world does not change if we change our "syntax" has no bite, despite being, to some extent, correct.<br /><br />2) The logic used in talking about the transcendent has no meaning in the ordinary sense of the word and is inspired, but not justified, by ordinary notions of meaning and sense (again, see "blind truth ascriptions" by WL Craig or the ontological discussions of analogous uses of "exists" in Feser's "Aquinas", pg. 58, or the opening chapter of "Experience of God" by DB Hart). Neither propositional logic and facts, nor logical reason, can capture our practices and speech involving ethics and aesthetics. There is no system of logical reason or rationality which can justify ethical aspects of reality, even if they are often used together and are interrelated in complicated ways.<br /><br />So neither Christianity nor Wittgenstein's analyses can tell us, by way of <i>logical</i> proof, what a good life is or could be. What a Wittgensteinian analysis can do is to show how to get more clarity about what (for example) Christianity considers to be a good life (that is, how Christians use the word "good" within Christian life). Christianity is concerned with asking and answering what human life is about. Wittgenstein is concerned with clarifying how language is capable of conveying such convictions in the first place. There is no competition between two world-views there, but the <i>option</i> for the Christian philosopher to get to know more about how his own doctrine works within the stream of human life.<br />pcknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-70325764592698260062016-04-09T03:03:23.967-07:002016-04-09T03:03:23.967-07:00Consciousness is immaterial?
That’s unhelpful for ...<i>Consciousness is immaterial?<br />That’s unhelpful for such leaves W. within the system of “conveyed meaning” over inside of the causally closed system of [1] and [2].</i><br /><br />This makes no sense. It seems to me that you're projecting materialist fallacies onto misunderstood conceptions about Wittgenstein. In fact, the very phrase "causally closed system" would on a Wittgensteinian analysis come out as either incoherent or empty of content.<br /><br />The phrase "Consciousness is immaterial" reifies consciousness, which violates the philosophies of both Aristotle and Wittgenstein. Neither Aristotle nor Wittgenstein are "immaterialists". "Consciousness" refers to a diversity of human <i>abilities</i>, not to a material or immaterial object or something that can be treated like one. W. is concerned with clarifications of the <i>actual use</i> of terms like "immaterial" and "consciousness", how they are related, what they refer to in actual linguistic practice, and so on. None of this leaves us "inside a causally closed system". On the contrary, since we are free to expand our logical spaces by creating new practices, the philosopher's work is never done, as it has to continuously examine and re-examine the changing forms of human life.<br /><br /><i>W. (or you etc…) is entitled to blur causation between [1] and [2] to the point of unintelligibility, or to just deny it altogether and land in the explanatory terminus of Reasoning/Consciousness Full Stop – of Mind – Full Stop – with a complete disconnect as to “conveyed meaning” constituting [2] from any and all “conveyed meaning” constituting [1].</i><br /><br />There is no such disconnect. There is no need explain any causal relations between "Physics" and "Consciousness". These do not exist. There is no "explanatory gap", because there is nothing to explain in terms of (efficient) causation. Nobody says "my neurons caused my hand to move" and even if they did, it would just be a metaphor for "I moved my hand". If you think that there is something to explain there, you have fallen prey to a metaphysical fiction which construes the workings of the mind as the manipulation of immaterial objects on an inner stage which is mysteriously connected to "the physical". But this is just crypto-Cartesian dualism. An analysis of the use of ordinary language, as conducted by W., reveals this.<br /><br /><i>Neither you nor W. (etc.) have presented coherent means by which one even has a “system” to move “within”, by which one merges [1] and [2].</i><br /><br />True, because such "merging" is a fiction. It does not occur, neither in life, nor in language.<br /><br /><i>That impressive (Cosmic) silence continues on inside of slavery’s goodness as when W. or you are presented with such a claim upon reality you both merely shrug at such goodness and claim that there neither is nor isn't any such thing – features are not things or treatable as if they were things, just like the joy in a joyful dance cannot be, object-like, separated from the dance. Hence slavery’s goodness stands unopposed by anything you or W. have offered or even can offer.</i><br /><br />The silence mentioned at the end of the Tractatus is meant to convey that there are things which cannot be talked about using factual language, not that these things do not exist. Ethical notions are indeed among what one must be silent about according to the early W., but this does not mean that they do not <i>show</i> themselves in language (it's just that they cannot be <i>said</i>) or that one must "shrug off" the notion of slavery being good (or bad).<br /><br />So even for the early W. it was no question that ethics and morality were part of reality. He did construe them to lie "outside of nature", much like the Christian does.<br />pcknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-2088717158395474022016-04-09T02:54:55.114-07:002016-04-09T02:54:55.114-07:00scbrownlhrm:
Your claim of immaterial consciousnes...scbrownlhrm:<br /><i>Your claim of immaterial consciousness, experiences, agency, reason and so on is fine. The problem is: Reasoning within the causal system of materialism (physics -- full stop) is, as Feser and D. Hart both affirm, and as you (or perhaps W.?) inexplicably deny, breaks down into ultimate insanity (Feser) or absurdity (Hart).</i><br /><br />It's perfectly possible to reason "within the causal system of materialism", as physics does, without breaking down into "ultimate insanity" or absurdity. It would be absurd to deny this and neither Feser nor Hart do so. Of course materialism cannot capture all of reality. I don't know why you think that I deny this. My chief reason for developing an interest in philosophy and W. in particular was to break away from a physicalist worldview which I knew couldn't be correct.<br /><br /><i>W.’s blind leap of faith into the immaterial is fine – and he is welcome to whatever version of immaterialism or Panpsychism or soft Idealism or soft Solipsism he wishes.</i><br /><br />Speaking of ultimate absurdity, I suggest you actually read some W. before jumping to such conclusions. There are extensive series of remarks of his which deal with (and reject) all of the -isms you list. W. is not a philosopher of -isms. While a good portion of his work does examine particular -isms and identifies what is useful or salvagable and what is not, the results do not amount to a "Wittgensteinianism", but to something quite different, namely a greater perspicuity with regard to the status and uses of language. Much of what W. wrote is concerned with what the goals of philosophy can or should be, and the production of more and more -isms is not among those goals. This is perhaps the biggest difference between W. and traditional philosophers -- W. does not try to build a new <i>system</i> or theory.[1]<br /><br />Thus there is no "blind leap into the immaterial" in Wittgenstein. The exact opposite is the case. Wittgenstein examines the actual, concrete uses of words like "material" and "immaterial". His (later) philosophy is always grounded in our actual use of "grammar", not in metaphysical speculations, which, by contrast, do indeed involve leaps, not of faith, but of logic, as discussed earlier (see my remarks about blind truth ascription). See also Tony's post <a href="http://edwardfeser.blogspot.de/2016/03/so-what-are-you-doing-after-your-funeral.html?showComment=1459602879030#c2902731883414253755" rel="nofollow">here</a>.<br /><br />[1] You use the phrase "W.'s causally closed system" a lot. But W. has no system, much less a "causally closed" one. These terms make no sense if applied to W.'s philosophy.<br />pcknoreply@blogger.com