Ted Hoffman

Boneyard bill First off is our incapacity to measure to infinite accuracy.
Secondly, in the weather model, (a) So many factors come into play, and most have a kind of synergistic effect on each other. There is no control experiemnt or constant to maintain consistency.
For example weather is affected by changes in clouds(cover), sea motion, atmospheric energy import from lower latitudes, atmospheric and oceanic processes and circulations air masses (atmospheric turbulence) precipitation, water vapour (which is always changing because of the Uneven heating of the Earth and Earth rotation) Relative Humidity, Saturation Points, vaporization, changes in the radiation besides, in physics a system in chaos will try to reach an equilibrium level: the first Law of Equilibrium states A system is in equilibrium if and only if the sum of all external forces acting upon the system at a point equals zero.

Everything keeps changing and every particle is striving to reach an equilibrium. This is the nature of the eternal flux of the universe. Within the atoms electrons move to different energy levels, air from high pressure areas will move to low pressure areas etc.

In short, the environment is always changing and getting duplicate data is impossible and even then, there are too many factors that come into play.

Look at a pool of mad that is cracking - no two cracks are the same. And they (the cracks) are unpredictable - does that mean its chaotic?
I say no, I say it means the possibilities are infinite.

*resoundingly* Yes! - not an assumption, an accusation.
Its not possible to obtain identical initial conditions. Thats why the experiment fails from the word Go. Thats why I am saying that instead of calling the media to announce the discovery of a "chaotic universe", they should go back to the labs and hone their measuring equipments.

It does have an influence as we speak.
Its not about getting away. Its about differentiating "infinite possibilities" or nonpredictability from chaos. What will we do when we eventually meet something truly chaotic?
From the technical definition of chaos, there is some form of constraint or border so even the so called chaotic systems are not truly chaotic. For example, when looking at cracks in a pool of drying mad, there is an underlying pattern. One can't find an evenly zigzag line for instance among all those cracks.
I am just saying we have seen nothing conclusive -nothing that satisfies the definition of chaos. Because of too many possible loopholes in the experiments.
And the case of too much dependence on initial conditions and exponentially different results is most likely a case of highly synergistic systems or factors. NOT chaos.
In a way, this theory of chaos paves way for a non-naturalistic explanation for phenomena. Because its saying "such a huge difference in the final outcome could not have been done by a natural process - there is something else".
You should believe them if you find them logical and plausible. If you dont, let me know ASAP.
When they are inaccurate and not iron-clad. When they cannot achieve a measure of desired accuracy - when the experiment itself is a charade or too "open" like when we .We must be able to see cases where including a percentage of error is inadequate. That would be the time to employ a new paradigm.
Instead, they (some scientists) throw up their hands and label the systems "chaotic". I think its a cop-out.
If he exists, I doubt that he would change his mind, unless he wanted to create another universe. Increasing gravity for instance will result in unthinkable results. If he decides to change the nature of light photons, just imagine the consequences. I find the universe self-regulating and thats why I find the inflationary universe model plausible. Everything seems to have been set as a result of everything else and everything else comes from that something, so if an external force came in to change the rules, the consequences could be grim, but not necessarily chaotic. Chaos cannot be sustained because sooner or later the object or system exhibiting chaotic features attains its equilibrium and balance is preserved.
I agree and disagree at the same time. I dont think dogmatism or authoritarianism is the word: its authoritativeness. Some physics professor observes something, he calls it demonic effect. The mainstream physicists debunk his observation and it dies for sometime. Twenty years later, one of his students comes up with a better model for demonstrating the demonic effect and its accepted worldwide. Nobody bothers about the meaning of the word demonic.
They would rather abandon dictionary meanings and use the meaning as applied by a peer. I think its about jargon and obfuscation: keeps non-physicists at bay.

Owleye
This is only sensible in non-chaotic systems.
Presented? By who?
Who explains anomalies using chance?
Ender
*takes a deep breath*
*sheds off scientific coat and wears the ill-fitting philosophical one*

How can you know what the world really is without relying on what is perceived and conceptualized?

Isn't "what the world really is" a conceptualization?
This depends on what "an accurate understanding of the universe" entails - who gets to decide that its accurate - on what basis. For example, people once believed that insanity is caused by demons, or that suffering is caused by sin. Not anymore. People once believed that an atom is the smallest divisible part of an atom,not any morr. As you said earlier, the universe is in an eternal flux...So, what does "an accurate understanding of the universe" entail?
What are these rival interpretations?

Ender, I am not propounding a teleological interpretation of the universe. And I assert that detecting order in the universe does not amount to pantheism and there is a huge difference between assigning purpose or cause and detecting or acknowledging order.
I deny any belief of any grand plan in the scheme of things.
Therefore you will not find it necessary to refute pantheism, materialistic atomism or determinism.
Aah! a true student of Neitzsche!
This position is as self refuting as saying there are no absolutes. You are saying that there are no facts: only interpretations. But that statement itself, is an interpretation, so why should it be treated as a fact? Its a claim to a higher ground without earning it or demonstrating that its a higher ground. As such, its just grandiose posturing without any epistemological basis.
We can measure and compare because the universe lends itself to measurement. If its a superfluous (how do you know this?) perspective that lies outside of life and nature, one that is not afforded to living creatures such as ourselves, who are we to assign that perspective to other creatures if we are not even supposedly capable of it?
In any case, aren't all creatures living? (your argument implied we are only living creatures and should leave the task to other creatures)

By that same breath you say "There is no such position ..." you assume that position for who are you to know it?

Even then, your argument could cut both ways if there indeed existed creatures outside our universe. If they are outside our universe, then they cannot see and perceive what we perceive. If they can, then they are in our universe - unless you want to introduce creatures with remote sensing mechanisms (just like the IPUs).
So your argument fails.
I do not disagree with much of this but I do not see why they found it necessary to bifurcate the "original" from the "phenomenal" world. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive because one has to interpret any perceptions in order to conceptualize his surrounding FROM his own perspective.
The "original" - is epistemologically useless unless its conceptualized. I would say that the original is the lemon and the phenomenal is the juice.
Personally, I find Neitzches' description of the world as chaotic to be baseless. For example in The Gay Science he says Lack of trespassers, laws, obedient followers etc, is not proof of chaos - its essentially an argument from silence. It can only amount to disagreeing with the idea of a sentient being in control. His arguments seemed to have been leveled at people who had ontological beliefs or those who propounded anthropomorphisms. I am neither But I find no support for his arguments (if you know of any, I would appreciate a pointer).
I am sorry I don't have the book anywhere near but what phenomenological evidence did he provide for what he called a set of irregular" or "contradictory movements."?

"Errant" is an anthropomorphic term and if that was the word he used, wasn't he arguing against himself (given that he said there are no facts: only interpretations)? I thought he always argued against imposing our ideas on natural phenomena?
About "labyrinthe path", I could say something following a path of infinite possibilities could appear to be following a labyrinthe path while it actually isnt. Our "linear" thinking is what makes us find them to be following a "labyrinthe path".
Which God? if they meant the christian God, he had no single trajectory for on one hand he created man and put him on a beautiful garden while on the other hand he sent a flood to kill him. On one hand he gave man free will and left on the other hand he came back and took sides in battles, brought plagues upon people and so on. Is that what he meant by single trajectory?
I believe the premise of his argument was shaky and thats why I find the argument unsound.

The "best" that is actualized by Leibniz' God, is it what we have? How does he know its the best if the possibilities are infinite?
Those laws are meant to guide us as we study nature, and from that perspective, I do not find them to be anthropomorphisms.
Secondly, the laws are a description of our perspective - which is a description of how the surrounding phenomena interacts with us. The universe remains non-sentient, but still our observation indicates their behaviour to be consistent with the laws laid down. Whether the universe is uncaring is a bit irrelevant vis-a-vis the practicality of scientific laws.
That fertilization takes place undr certain conditions is a fact. That water flows downstream is a fact. That planets in the solar system revolve around the sun is a fact.
That is what I call order. Morality is a preserve of sentient and highly intelligent beings.
That they are locked in combat does not mean they are all useless. It means that the search for the best perspective is a never ending quest for mankind.
impermanent, fluid etc simply underline the dynamic nature of knowledge due to two causes: mankinds advancement technologically and the eternal flux of the universe.
Knowledge is not static. Its dynamism has been labelled "chaotic" by some.
The universe is not static either but its in no way chaotic.

[ edited to remove anthropomorphisms ]

[ April 27, 2002: Message edited by: IntenSity ]</p>

Adrian Selby

Very interesting comments Ender.

A quick question then. With regard to the regularities observed in nature, is it we that create the regularities or do the regularities exist and we observe them?

Adrian

Ender

It's no biggie, bub! This application in the metaphysical is merely an aesthetic exercise; a test of what is tasteful. Whatever comes out of this will only illuminate staid, dull and narrow perspectives, or strengthen the mummified convictions behind them.
You cannot. This is exactly the sort of nonsense Kant dispelled in his negative programme in the Critique. The pretensions of reason led many great thinkers before Kant to reach certain philosophical positions that lay beyond the bound of sense (whatever does not presuppose spatio-temporality). That is precisely why I deny a "neo-Kantian" reading of Nietzsche.
Ding-ding! What do we have for him, Vannah? A 2003 Hyundai! With this line of thinking, Kant won't be too difficult for you to assess. The direction with a "conceptualization" you decide to take does not necessarily lead into empiricism. There is a difference between the ontological status of existence and the ontic status of existence. You are cognizant of the epistemic fallacy, that one assumes that ontological statements or statements about being are reducible to epistemological statements, or statements about knowledge of that being, I hope. This is a popular mistake of the western philosophical tradition, that we have always anthropocentrically identified the question of what is with the question of what we can know. Guys in the department colorfully call this "collapsing ontology into epistemology."
Safeguard that little defenseless scientific method, for the philosophers have gotten out of the lunatic asylum again! Guard it to the death!

All I see is changes in methodology on how to ascertain knowledge. What do you think of Paul Feyerabend, the radical philosopher of science who pushed for epistemological anarchism?

There are only appropriate perspectives for the beholder, and nothing more. How can one begin to account for the shark's perspective in the language of the sea lion's? The 20th century pop culture artist in the language of an ancient Egypt slave? The grounds you seize for evaluating knowledge has always been and always will be a subjective one predicated by one's value system. Do you value pragmatism? Science's your bitch. Is it authoritarian doctrines? The fundamentalist chanting room is down the hall.

Competing ideologies, world-views, metaphysical systems, and whatnot!
Elucidate on the "huge difference," please. Aren't you mistaking "order" in the mathematical models of reality, and not reality in itself?
You're not my only prey on this question.
Your rush at a retort whiffs completely the point of my segment. I was denying that there is such an objective view of reality independent of delimiting perspectives- in fact a total emancipation of every viewpoint is a self-referential paradox that gets nobody anywhere and creeps closer to a paralogism. In addition, if you grant the "no facts but interpretations" meaning, you inadvertently admit your position is a matter of perspective as well. This tedious retort of self-contradiction is quite understandable because to conservative noses, perspectivism does smell like relativism. Interpretation does not necessarily indicate a hopelessly private, relative or subjective activity- only a naturalistic one. Some interpretations are better than others- based on naturalism. Naturalism is the cut off point of the inherent relativism in perspectivism. In fact, I conjecture that that naturalism is the primary reason why Nietzsche ends in a holistic or hermeneutic position that prioritizes the irreducibility of interpretations. Naturalism rejects the wet dream of epistemologists- a God's eye view- and the ontological ideal of a "pre-given" world of Kant.
The universe does not "lend" itself to measurement until we configured a mythology of physics to produce practical results. We are capable of self-deception, more-so than other creatures. The greater the intellect, the worse off the possibility for errors. In addition to the fact that no creature has our sensory capacities, that or our unique biological assessment of reality- that superimposing our inventions (language) upon another lifeform's perspective is all-too-typically anthropomorphic. One reason why I elevate science above metaphysics is probably the same as yours- that the fictions of science is useful, that it contributes to human vitality and helps us becomes lord of the Earth. But science hasn't discovered truth- because there is none to discover!
Where am I denying that? I wrote "...a superfluous perspective that lies outside of life and nature, one that is not afforded to living creatures such as ourselves."
*snorts* I see clear through your attempts at rehabilitating objectivity. And who are you to ask for objective grounds from a subjective assessment? Again, God is dead. Unless you'd like to prove me wrong that there is such a position, that there is a God's eye of the entire universe?
I can't make heads or tails with this comment.
No your predictable stab at equating perspectivism with relativism fails.
Easy. Take away the sensory data you have of an object, and what do you have left? If you do not perceive the object (the minute you avert your eyes from it) what does it look like? The Berkeleyan question remains- how do we conceive of unperceived matter? His idealistic solution sucked, though. Are the properties of the object the entire object? The color the shape, the weight, the texture, the smell, the taste are all conceivable apart from the object- which leads to the question whether the empirical properties of the object is all there is, or is it founded on something else.

Kant was the one who thought his transcendental idealism was necessary in order to solve the problem of Hume, where he logically progressed empiricism into a vat of skepticism. He refused to take the first step Hume did, that "all simple ideas come from sensory impressions" and set out to inquire on how experience was made intelligible. Kant refused to believe that senses were a means to know objects in themselves: "As the senses never and in no single instance enable us to know things in themselves, but only their appearances, and as these are mere representations...all bodies, together with the space in which they are, must be held to be nothing but mere representations in us, and exist nowhere else than merely in our thought. Now is this not manifest idealism?" Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics 13, note II. The answer to that last question is no. Kant's grounds for denying such is that he didn't rule out that there are "things-in-themselves" but only that we can know anything of them as they are. <a href="http://home.ican.net/~arandall/Kant/Idealism/" target="_blank">This link goes much further in depth on defending Kant's Transcendental Idealism, and does a much better job.</a>
Spoken like a dyed-in-the-wool empiricist. Are you cognizant of the problems of the empirical worldview?
Nice metaphor in defense of causality.
No comments on this section? Do you agree that we do actively arrange the sensible data with our brains in order to render experience intelligible, yes or no?
Just what do you mean by "support" unless you caricaturize "chaos" to prefigure your disagreements? For what it is worth, you do have these same ontological beliefs- much like a good empiricist, you equate the question with existence with the answers of knowledge.
Phenomenological evidence? Do you know how strange, -incoherent even- that question is? It is the equivalent to my asking of phenomenological evidence of your experience of reading this post.

In the hopes of a "naturalization of humanity" Nietzsche was committed to a thoroughgoing naturalism in his epistemology and ontology, as well as the "de-deification of nature" that denies the "pre-given world" and results in perspectives/interpretations and the entities internal to them.

Well, given that "truth is an mobile army of metaphors" ... you raise a good point, whether asserting the unknowability of becoming runs the risk of a positive characterization. One commentator, Mittelman, said that Nietzsche argued for an ultimate, noumenal reality as a world of becoming that was true but "false" and a "self-contradictory world of becoming and change."
Take away our common sense assessment of reality and it remains a brute fact, naked, indifferent, and not beholden to our aesthetic preferences of order.

If so, why safeguard linear, hierarchical thinking?
Assuming there is a God, the omnimax kind (generic Judeo-Christian version) the universe has inherent purpose, order, and a goal- by virtue of the definition of God's omnimax capabilities. Our standards of knowledge is pitiful and utterly worthless in evaluating omniscience! Which reminds me that theophillus hasn't been around lately. Haven't you studied theodicy? In the goal of infideldom, Leibniz' argument as well as his opponent, Spinoza's are worth looking into.
I agree, I don't find Leibniz' or Spinoza' theodicies really convincing. It's a sneaky way to refute an opponent by using your opponents' premises against them.
God is omnipotent. He knows better on which one of infinite possibilities is the best of all! Leibniz is responsible for popularizing this maxim: "this is the best of all possible worlds." Russell countered his idol with this: "this is the worst of all possible worlds."
I find this your weakest assertion so far. If laws are meant to guide us, how are they NOT anthropomorphisms for our sake?

Your equation of truth with utility is noted.
Contingencies convenient for survival is order, of course. I am in complete agreement.

Morality is at bottom sentimentality and precedes scientific utility.
Correct, they are not useless. One's own perspective is justified according to the individual or beholder, not to another of different ken.
In objectivity, truth and knowledge requires states of affairs that remain distinct and durable over time. Obviously you are searching for finality, a fixed state of meaning whereas the 'truths' of interpretations only become. Plus I do not think "truth" is something that lies in a final determination according to a fixed set of criteria, but merely the pregnant pause between battles of perspectives that has no final victor.

A brief summary: the atheological stance I have taken holds an incredulous opinion of theological or metaphysical interpretations and cohorts a naturalistic reinterpretation of ourselves, and our world. If we stop centering human beings as the goal of the universe, we will realize to see people as natural organism who do not fundamentally differ from other organisms. If we stop conceiving of human reason as something divine and supernatural, mummified concepts such as "necessary" "universal" and "unconditional" will go poof. We will understand it as a natural tool that arranges past, present and future experiences. The death of god gets rid of the belief that there is an absolute point of view where the universe is seen as it really is. This leaves us with only perspectives and interpretations, and none of them unchangeable or consistent with one another. The downside is that there is no hope for convergence of these perspectives, so no absolute knowledge is to be had. The death of god concepts gets rid of theological entities and explanatory principles, and immerses us in a world that is contingent, conditional, temporal and affective through and through, a world w/o absolute beginning, essence, purpose, or aim.

~Theothanatologist~

((UBB)))

[ April 27, 2002: Message edited by: Ender ]</p>

Ender

Regularities are not a priori concepts. Since they are found in experience, they must be a posteriori concepts instead. A priori concepts are necessary, whereas A posteriori concepts are contingent. Therefore, regularities are contingent in which its truth validity are not independent of experience.

I could've muttered something a Kantian would and hid behind that VERY questionable notion of "synthetic a priori judgements" but nah, i think phenomenology corrects the deficiencies of empiricism far better than idealism ever did.

It beehoves me to go on a bit about the philosophy of science, and address why realism is the default position of humanity, but i think this answer suffices for now.

~Speaker 4 the Death of God~

((edited for grammar- we will not be rid of God until we get rid of grammar first, especially bad ones))

[ April 27, 2002: Message edited by: Ender ]</p>

boneyard bill

Vorkosigan writes:

What is supernatural about terms like "reason," "intelligence," or "will"? We have a pretty good idea of what we mean by those terms. Working biologists use them all the time. But if you try to incorporate them into a larger description of life and its origins, you are immediately attacked as a creationist or supernaturalist. But if such terms are not allowed in a larger description of the process, they shouldn't be allowed at the level of individual events either. The problem for the metaphysical naturalist is that he can't very well argue with a specific researcher in the field because the researcher knows his subject much better than the theoretician does. So such language is overlooked when used at this level. But there is no logical justification for allowing the use of such terminology in individual research projects and rejecting it in a description of biological processes generally.

boneyard bill

Intensity writes:

But I think you completely miss the point. What if the problem isn't the measuring instruments? What if identical initial conditions do, in fact, produce widely divergent effects over time? How do we know the problem is simply the inability to measure the initial conditions? We simply assume that. I think even the chaos theorists assume that this is the problem.

But as I also pointed out, because the universe is in constant motion; we can never have absolutely identical initial conditions. So chaos theory, and its critics, are simply imposing a scientific world-view on the evidence when, in fact, the phenomena in question may be truly chaotic.

boneyard bill

Intensity writes:

You're being much too literal. The Old Testament God changed his mind all the time. Remember how he hardened the heart of the Pharoah? He apparently didn't want Moses job to be too easy. But the O.T. writers didn't seem to take that as evidence of chaos. If intelligent or willful agency is at work in the universe, this would be seen as chaotic by a materialist but not by someone interpreting the world from a different persepective.

That is not the point. I am not talking about circumstances in which researchers use mental language in an obviously metaphorical way. I am talking about circumstances in which mental language is the only possible way to describe the process. Usually the process involves some holistic or teleological implications. Genes act in ways that preserve the unity or wholeness of the structure that is not explicable in mechanistic terms. For just one example, see Barbara McClintock's Nobel Prize address.

Bill

I personally reject the postmodernist view that every distinct perspective (or "interpretation") of the world is equally valid. Down that path lies an inability to make moral judgments, and the consequence of that inability is the devolution of human society back into the animal existence from whence we evolved.

I've read enough of <a href="http://www.secweb.org/bookstore/bookdetail.asp?BookID=692" target="_blank">Language, Logic and Experience</a> by Michael Luntley to understand that the view of the anti-realists, led by Michael Dummett, presents at least a facially valid objection to realism. However, in that book, Luntley himself goes to considerable length to distance himself from the total relativity of postmoderninsm. Accordingly, I read your diatribe against realism as a species of the <a href="http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/logic.html#bifurcation" target="_blank">Fallacy of Bifurcation</a>. I would agree that the realism of Bertrand Russell has been properly challenged. But I would assert, with Luntley, that the anti-realism of Dummett is not, in fact, a basis for adopting the entirely relativistic worldview of the popular postmodern position.

My own view is that the nature of our senses as filters ("mediations") of "reality" will forever prevent us from actually knowing "reality" in full. But this does not (or at least, should not) imply that we cannot asymptotically approach knowing "reality" in full over longer and longer periods of time. Such an asymptotical approach is consistent with (and perhaps a measure of) "human progress" over time.

Accordingly, I would assert that "absolutes" and "reality" exist, even if humans never know (or "fully know") them. Accordingly, I would not hesitate to answer "Yes!" to the classic question of: "if a tree falls in the forest, and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?" I'm not certain that I understand your point here. I would agree with the idea that nothing postulated to exist OUTSIDE of the universe-as-a-whole could possibly be invoked to give meaning to the universe-as-a-whole. That is a necessary conclusion to draw from Jim Still's essay, <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/james_still/w_why.html" target="_blank">The Mental Discomfort of “Why?”</a>, with which I happen to agree. On the other hand, INTERNAL teleology (as opposed to EXTERNAL teleology) is a well-proven part of the biological theory of evolution, and Aristotle's categories of causes can be readily invoked to describe those biological facts. For more on this point, read <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolphil/teleology.html" target="_blank">Evolution and Philosophy : Is There Progress and Direction in Evolution? : Are there goals?</a> by John Wilkins, from the TalkOrigins archive. Thus I cannot accept the idea that none of Aristotle's causes (formal, efficent, etc.) have any real existence.

Clearly, if there is "meaning" to the "universe" (meaning "all that exists" for "universe"), then that "meaning" must be supplied from within the "universe." If God exists, then God must be part of the "universe." In the absence of any sort of overarching and controlling spirit (God), it will be up to the plethora of creatures that exist in the "universe" to perhaps decide upon some "meaning" for existence. But that "meaning" will be something that said creatures choose to meet their own needs, and not relevant to anything external (such as some God). Once again, I would assert that if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, then it will still make a sound. We can passively observe "order" being assembled out of "chaos" throughout the viewable universe (roughly 10 billion light years in radius). It defies logic to claim that no real order exists in the absence of human ability to perceive that order.

I will skip your next paragraph on Nietzsche and Kant in order to jump directly to my real point here: I cannot disagree with this paragraph of yours any more than totally, and I am in total disagreement with your fundamental assertion here.

Yes, the universe may well be indifferent to the concerns of humanity. But still, the universe provides the very structure which nourishes our well-being. And the universe is not in any way tyrannical if it is, in fact, the source of our very existence. As Carl Sagan observed, we are all "star stuff," our very being constructed by the process of evolving order out of chaos, layer upon layer, from the original chaos of the stuff out of which the "Big Bang" was formed, on through the chaos of the early universe, where only energy existed, and down through the early generations of stars that were used to rapidly form complex atoms within their nuclear furnaces.

As Dennett says in <a href="http://www.secweb.org/bookstore/bookdetail.asp?BookID=112" target="_blank">Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life</a>, nature does operate in an orderly fashion, creating higher levels of "order" out of lower levels of "chaos" through the application of "law-like behavior." The arguments Dennett advances in favor of modern evolutionary theory work just as well (from a philosophical perspective) on the evolution of our "Big Bang" space/time continuum.

In a totally arbitrary and non-lawlike universe, I would expect irregular behavior to be the norm. I would expect people to vanish into thin air at any unexpected moment. Similarly, people would appear out of thin air. These sorts of irregularities DO NOT HAPPEN! Thus, there is at least "lawlike behavior" within our universe.

I can agree that no external source of laws exists; the universe does not have an external "lawgiver" to create the natural laws under which we operate. I reject the ontological argument for God on the grounds that the existence of a thing does not prove that an intelligent maker of the thing also necessarily exists. This rejection is founded upon the very scientific process which could not exist if the universe were totally lawless.

=====

Finally, I find it necessary to directly challenge your conclusion that "There is no order and a fortiori no moral order in the universe." The argument for order in the universe is given in brief, above. We humans would not exist without order in the universe. We are the latest result of the building-up of order from an earlier state of chaos.

Humans have created a new dimension upon which evolutionary forces can operate: the dimension of the human mind (a dimension of mental rather than physical facts). Moral order exists as a creation of mankind for the better survival of our species. If moral order didn't enhance our ability to survive, it would have died out long ago. The conclusion that moral order doesn't exist is the most odiferous of assertions of the postmodernist worldview. I view such postmodernists as the lead character in Lynard Skynard's song That Smell. In point of fact, the denial of moral order is an attempt to destroy human society, and it leads to death, destruction, and horrible suffering.

On the good side, moral order is our own creation, and as such, it is under our control. But the overall control for human moral order is what it contributes to human survival as a species. Again, the reason for the existence of moral order is the Darwinian idea that it adds to the fitness of humanity to navigate over an ever-changing fitness landscape. Because this is true, moral order is an inherent part of what it means to be human.

For those who would care to delve into the relationship between chaos (chance) and order, I recommend <a href="http://www.secweb.org/bookstore/bookdetail.asp?BookID=112" target="_blank">Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life</a>. I couldn't have said it better myself.

== Bill

boneyard bill

Ender writes:

But then, doesn't Nietszche lead us to mysticism. If all knowledge is perspective, then all knowledge is grounded in the self. If we can dissolve the self, we can apprehend the world in its immediacy, as neither subject nor object. I'm sure Nietszche was familiar with mysticism, but I'm not aware of what he said about it.

boneyard bill

Ender:

I also have a problem with Nietzsche's critique of reason. As I recall, Nietzsche argues that logic is based on the law of contradiction. But to apply the law of contradiction we must know the thing and its opposite. But we do not know the thing in itself. We have no a priori knowledge and therefore we cannot know the opposite either. We have only a posteriori knowledge. So we don't know things, we only know appearances. From this, Nietzsche derives a hostility to abstractions and to conceptualization.

But I don't see how Nietzsche's critique destroys logic. If I know, a posteriori, that "humanity" consists of intelligent bi-pedal creatures; I am perfectly justified in saying that unintelligent four-legged humans is a contradiction. The fact that a concept like "humanity" may also be applied in other and even contradictory ways i.e. as reference to compassion and also as a reference to original sin; does not mean that the term has no meaning within the context in which it is used.

I assume that Nietzsche would reply that that still gives us no a priori knowledge and that, therefore, the term, though used abstractly, has only a concrete meaning detemined by the context. There is no "humanity" apart from the concrete characteristics of human beings. We still have no knowledge of anything "outside" of our personal experiences.

But the term "humanity" does, in fact, convey a relatedness that is lacking in a focus on human beings per se. Primitive tribes used the term "human beings" to refer only to themselves. Members of other tribes were not human beings. When we create the term "humanity," therefore, are we simply creating a new perspective or are we discovering a reality that was previously "outside" of our a posteriori knowledge?

To make the point in post-modern terms, if there is nothing outside the text; what has happened when we have expanded the text? Abtractions and concepts expand the text. Of course we can never know of anything outside the text if, as soon as we learn of it, we create a new word or a metaphor to account for it. Does this mean we have discovered nothing new?

To be part of "humanity" instead of being merely tribal "human beings" is to discover a relationship that didn't previously exist - a relationship that was "outside" the world of appearances.

Isn't that what Plato was all about? Wasn't Plato trying to come to terms with our ability to form abstractions and to elucidate the reality that these abstractions represented? Perhaps Plato excessively reified these abstractions, but I think Nietzsche and the post-modernists go too far in the other direction.