I claim my techno-dialectics gets down to the root of things in providing a naturalistic explanation - one that ties the construction of the modern self to the driving impulse of thermodynamic necessity.

But what say you? — apokrisis

I think your starting point is too over-determined and abstract. Individual sense and interpretation get lost when we begin from a monolithic ground of natural objects. It misses where those objects come from, that they arise as fictions of a sort , or better yet, idealizations.
We dont begin with the natural except as a naive presumption. We begin, every one of us, with a constantly changing flow of sense from which we carve out patterns of stability that integrate what we perceive with how we move our bodies to form what we eventually call empirical objects when we correlated our own perspectives with those of others in our communities. But each perspective remains one’s own , even when we convince ourselves that we can be conditioned, shaped, indoctrinated into larger social structures.
We are only indirectly beholden ton techno ,economic -and language structures, but we are , each one of us , directly beholden to our own personal construals of the sense of language , technology, economic structures.

An Apple phone means different things to different people, and its effect on the working of culture also break down to subgroups and those subgroups to even smaller groups and so on , as a function of what each of us brings to our interpretation of the sense and meaning and usefulness of the toys made available to us.

Brain circuitry is some kind of standard algorithm - but also not really an algorithm in the mainstream computer science sense. And so neuroscience has more work to do on elucidating the nature of what we would mean in talking about a neural code. — apokrisis

I may have missed the post where you get into the details of this. There are a number of fans of the later Wittgenstein on here, and they may be of help in clarifying whether your model of neurosemiosis, of language in general , is at all compatible with the radical contextuality of Philosophical Investigations. I mention this because phenomenology and Wittgenstein move in the same direction on semiology, and we could save a lot of time by being able to refer the topic of language back to some very helpful previous threads.

I think what I suggest leads to good science and practical knowledge in the following areas:
— Joshs

Those are motherhood claims rather than concrete examples. Is there a particular case where phenomenology or continental philosophy delivers an insight that my brand of semiotic holism or systems science couldn’t? — apokrisis

The claims I made included models of schizophrenia and
autism. These illnesses involve deficits in empathy whose elucidation requires a theory of empathy, how we recognize others as having minds, thoughts , feelings. The discovery of mirror neurons which fire not only when Chimps perform an action but when they see another chimp perform the same action has led to a new range of theories of empathy. The three leading candidates for theory theory simulation theory and interactionism. Theory theory relies on classical information processing models of in which an internal representation is generated of the other’s actions and compared against that action. According to this perspective, Autistics fail to pedicure a theory of other minds. Interaction theory, borrowing from phenomenology, argues against the idea that we generate a theory of other minds as the main way that we relate to others. They argue empathy is no mediated by representations but is immediate and directly in the world. They point out that autistics have difficulty in this immediate and direct relating and so fall back on a theory of mind as an inadequate substitute for direct interaction.

I agree that the general project of internalism is a valid reaction to the excesses of externalism, or objective third person, view from nowhere, metaphysics. — apokrisis

It is a common misunderstanding to consider phenomenology as an idealism, internalism, introspection, a philosophy of the ‘inside’.

But as Zahavi puts it :”…the very alternative between internalism and externalism – an alternative based on the division between inner and outer – is inapplicable when it comes to phenomenological conceptions of the mind-world relation.


As Husserl already pointed out in the Logische Untersuchungen, the entire facile divide between inside
and outside has its origin in a naive commonsensical metaphysics and is phenomenologically suspect and
inappropriate when it comes to understanding the nature of intentionality (Husserl 1984b, 673, 708). The
same criticism can also be found in Heidegger, who denies that the relation between Dasein and world can
be grasped with the help of the concepts “inner” and “outer”. As he writes in Sein und Zeit:

In directing itself toward...and in grasping something, Dasein does not first go outside of the inner
sphere in which it is initially encapsulated, but, rather, in its primary kind of being, it is always already
“outside” together with some being encountered in the world already discovered. Nor is any inner
sphere abandoned when Dasein dwells together with a being to be known and determines its
character. Rather, even in this “being outside” together with its object, Dasein is “inside” correctly
understood; that is, it itself exists as the being-in-the-world which knows. Again, the perception of what
is known does not take place as a return with one’s booty to the “cabinet” of consciousness after one
has gone out and grasped it. Rather, in perceiving, preserving, and retaining, the Dasein that knows
remains outside as Dasein (Heidegger 1986, 62).
The notions of internalism and externalism remain bound to the inner-outer division, but as the following,
final, quote from Merleau-Ponty illustrates, this is a division that phenomenology plays havoc with:

“Inside and outside are inseparable. The world is wholly inside and I am wholly outside myself” (Merleau-Ponty
1945, 467 [1962, 407]).

Considering the way in which phenomenologists conceive of intentionality, of the mind-world
relationship, I think it is questionable whether it really makes much sense to classify their views as being
committed to either internalism or externalism. Avoiding the two terms obviously won’t solve all the problems,
but might at least permit us to avoid letting our investigation be guided by misleading metaphors. The mind is neither a container nor a special place. Hence it makes little sense to say that the world must be either inside or outside of the mind. Ultimately, we should appreciate that the phenomenological investigations of the structures and conditions of possibility for phenomena are antecedent to any divide between psychical interiority and physical exteriority, since they are investigations of the dimension in which any object – be it external or internal – manifests itself (cf. Heidegger 1986, 419, Waldenfels 2000, 217). Rather than committing the mistake of interpreting the phenomena mentalistically, as being part of the mental inventory, we should see the phenomenological focus on the phenomena as an attempt to question the very subject­-object split, as an attempt to stress the co-emergence of mind and world.”

What do you say to people who argue that the notion of personal growth is often an archaic and romantic one and problematic in its measuring? — Tom Storm

I just slap them. Does wonders for my personal growth.
Seriously though, there’s a way of talking about development without reducing it to a linear progression. For instance , Kuhn can talk about the development of science , but not as an accumulation of facts. Rather , we can replace a way of seeing with one which is more useful to us in a relative way , in a different way than what it replaces.

Why do you exclude modelling along with copying and representing? The biosemiotic approach of biologists like Pattee, Salthe, Rosen and many more stress the need for the epistemic cut that indeed produces the closure of autonomy — apokrisis

An epistemic cut, the attempt to glue back together the objective and the subjective, which we decided to separate many centuries ago, is only necessary when we take the following as our ground.

“…the semiotic view says there is a real world out there of matter and energy. It is objective, and indeed utterly recalcitrant, in its existence.”

I mentioned in a previous post what I consider to be the practical and scientific implications of the model
of causality I support. You undoubtedly noticed that these have to do with psychological processes that are quite a distance from the physical, biological and psychophysical regions that you are interested in. Although I believe that eventually this approach will impact thinking in these domains , I don’t have any particular criticisms of your thinking as long as it confines itself to territory that doesn’t involve psychological phenomena such as affect, rationality , social and political interaction , and language.


In that light , your view of semiotics as structural coding and decoding strays into the territory of human language,
and clashes with recent thinking in psychology on the nature of language. As psychologist George Kelly wrote

“For about three centuries now Anglo-Saxon man has labored under the somewhat mislead-ing assumption that knowledge is transmitted through the senses. This was John Locke's great notion in 1690' In expressing it, he provided the essential spade work for both modern experi-mental psychology and the courageous empiricism of Sigmund Freud. But great ideas, like great men, sometimes have a way of eventually blocking the very progress they once so courageously initiated.

Thus it is, even after continued experience in psychotherapy, most of us still hold doggedly to the belief that one man's understanding of the universe can be somehow encoded within a signal system and then transmitted intact to another man via the senses. The signal system is often called "language." Indeed, Pavlov's psychological term for "language" was simply "the second signal system."

Some things must be accepted as a priori, whether you like or not. You cannot change or reject transcendentally certain things such as time and space, living, doubting, ageing and death, feeling nihilistic at t — Corvus

By changing the way you understand these things, you change the things themselves. Time and space, in the way they are commonly understood , are constructs going back to the Greeks. But there are alternative easy of interpreting these notions. And that is certainly true of concepts like death, nihilism, doubt. Just look at the diversity of views on this forum.

I accept the reality as it is — Corvus

Never accept reality as it is. There is no way that things ‘really really are’ in themselves , outside of all construction of them. The universe is amenable to an infinity of alternative constructions, some more useful than others. Even if youre relatively satisfied with the way you’re construing your world, you should never allow yourself to become complacent and assume that it is THE one reality. Be audacious.

Nihilism is realism. — Corvus

I’ve never been much of a realist. Too conforming . I’m more of a constructivist. If you dont like your reality, construct a new one. And keep in mind , it is likely that medical science will eventually figure out how to outfox death (As you know , there are plenty of living things that don’t age).

Most famous philosophers in history enjoyed solitary living for their thinking and writing. Human relations come and go, and it is something of a contingent affair for most grownups. — Corvus

Human relations are the background condition for everything we do, whether alone or with others. It may be true that philosophers spend much time physically alone, as do novelists ( there’s a happy bunch) , but whether they do so happily or not is a function of how they perceive their status with respect to others in their lives. If you haven’t found a way to feel a sense of belonging, mutual understanding and connection with others, then this failure will define the quality of your solitary experience as well.

If you have managed to find rewarding meaning in your relationships, such value doesn’t vanish simply because of death. This wasnt Schopenhauer’s argument, it was that the course of life itself, within itself was arbitrary and thus without value.

Nietzsche turned this thinking on it’s head. He argues that pessimists were still mourning the loss of the grand old metaphysical absolutes (God,Truth, Goodness) and hadn't figured out a way to replace them with existential values of change and becoming. So they concocted a solution (death and nothingness) which was itself a metaphysical notion. But pure nothingness is no more coherent than absolute truth or an eternal God. Nietzsche recognized that the fundamental basis of life was Will to value. We are always in a state of desire, and even the desire for nothingness is still a valuing and willing. That’s why psychologists say that suicide is a life affirming act.

all have to die one day. That is why life is viewed as tragic, therefore nihilism is realism. — Corvus

I think the tragedy of death is great fodder for mental
masturbarion, but fear of kicking the bucket isn’t what makes people into miserable nihilists or pessimists. It’s their failed relationships with others and their inability to be comfortable with themselves. I guarantee you that a person who does not see the world as an ugly place, who empathizes with others , even those who we are told to despise, who delights in their friendships and in their solitary enjoyments , such a person will have no use for nihilism.

You mentioned illness, being stuck in a miserable job, and lack of friends as reasons to be pessimistic. In you own life , what are the things that make you most unhappy? For most people , it’s their relationship with others and their inability to avoid loneliness and find contentment when they are alone. If you were by yourself for a week , say, in a cabin in the woods, would you be able to find contentment?

I am happy just making physicalism work as a model of reality. I don’t see it as a failed project but instead as an already stunning metaphysical achievement.

Do you think what you suggests leads to good science or practical knowledge? — apokrisis

I think what I suggest leads to good science and practical knowledge in the following areas:

the understanding of affectivity , including mood, emotion and feeling, and its relation to intentionality, perception and cognition( I’m sorry, but Lisa Barrett’s attempt here just doesn’t cut it).

elucidation of the behavioral processes involved in autism, schizophrenia , depression and ptsd

the understanding of empathy, language and interpersonal dynamics ( how first, second and third person dynamics relate to each other)

an alternative to the realism of cogntive behavioral therapy

a grounding for logic , math and empirical science

I wanted to add the following discussion of information by Anthony Chemero, in which he contrasts an enactivist view of it from representational, computational modeling approaches like that typically seen in predictive processing.

“Predictive processing models, and the allied theoretical machinery, bounce back and forth between thermodynamic and information-theoretic understandings of information and entropy. These understandings are not identical or even equivalent, even though they are theoretically related. But the differences are rarely acknowledged by predictive processing proponents. Here is an example from Clark himself, in a recent paper whose main ideas we otherwise endorse:

‘ This is where FEP [the free energy principle] gets invited onto the stage. FEP states that living organisms that persist must minimize free energy in their exchanges with the environment. The ‘free energy' in question here is an information-theoretic isomorph of thermodynamic free energy, which is a measure of the energy available to do useful work. Useful work, in the information-theoretic story, involves fitting a model to a domain, so reducing information-theoretic free energy is improving the model.’ (Clark 2017)

This is cringeworthy, because it runs roughshod over exactly the point where care is needed. As Deacon (2012) points out, there is no analogue of work in information theory. More important for now is that neither thermodynamic nor information-theoretic understandings of information involve semantics, whereas semantics is the key point of the ecological information in dynamic enactive models. Ecological information—the information available to a moving animal in the environment—is inherently semantic because it specifies the affordances of that environment, what the animal can do in that environment, and generates and supports expectations for what that moving animal will experience as it moves. Ecological information reveals the world as significant for a given creature.

In contrast, it rarely crosses anyone's mind that thermodynamic information might be semantic; and many people forget that information-theoretic (Shannon) information is meaningless in itself, because it is generally discussed in the context of a known decoder that transforms the encoded patterns in the transmitted signal into something meaningful. But this way of framing the relationship between an organism and its environment, and the nature of the signals it receives from that environment—in terms of a transition from thermodynamic free-energy to information-theoretic free-energy—is far from theoretically benign. It is this switch that makes free energy minimization seem to have representational implications, and appear to necessitate the various accoutrement of computational theory of mind.

Why is this? Because the most compelling case for a world-representing inner-model-building brain begins by ignoring the richness of ecological information. This leads to the claim that perception offers insufficient information to guide action, and we therefore need a model to do so (Hohwy 2013). The assumption that organisms work with thermodynamic and Shannon (i.e, non-semantic) information builds that poverty in from the start. This is problematic because some (in our view) fairly unpalatable philosophical conclusions can be drawn from this particular well: if our behavior is driven directly by a model, and only indirectly by the world, then the thought that we have only indirect epistemic access to that world can begin to seem compelling (Clark 2013; 2016b; Hohwy 2013; 2016). And if we only have indirect epistemic access to the world, then isn't perception a form of controlled hallucination, a sensory veil cutting us off from the very world we appear to inhabit?”

Life involves copying DNA and producing proteins based on "instructions." — frank

That’s the Dawkins reductionist view. The holistic alternative recognizes that dna and rna are not autonomous structures but components of a cellular and intercellular milieu in which much more than ‘copying’ is going on. Genes are switched on and off in cells in highly complex ways as a function of changes in this larger system.

https://youtu.be/QceGqKZMqIM

the Royal Society is promoting views that life is a process of copying, so information processing. — Pop

It would seem a "change in the state of a system" would be a necessity for a system to register external information? — Pop

If one rejects the tenets of first generation cognitive science in favor of enactive, embodied approaches, then life is not a process of copying, modeling or representing a world, it is a process of action, creation, transformation and production. Awareness does not register and copy external information, it enacts a world.

“ “One of the basic propositions of the enactive approach is that being autonomous is a necessary condition for a system to embody original intentionality and normativity. Sense-making is the interactional and relational side of autonomy. An autonomous system produces and sustains its own identity in precarious conditions and thereby establishes a perspective from which interactions with the world acquire a normative status. Certain interactions facilitate autonomy and other interactions degrade it. Information-processing models of the mind leave unexplained the autonomous organization proper to cognitive beings because they treat cognitive systems as heteronomous systems. These models characterize cognitive systems in terms of informational inputs and outputs instead of the operational closure of their constituent processes. As a result, they do not explain how certain processes actively generate and sustain an identity that also constitutes an intrinsically normative way of being in the world.”(Thompson)

I am flaunting not just one person’s or one group’s technical jargon here but the great many ways a lot of people have said much the same thing throughout history. — apokrisis

I get that. I traffic in a different kind of technical language originating in a segment of the Continental philosophic community , and I sample from a variety of these positions when I write.

And then first person points of view become something more like what we really mean - private information, personal action - once nature threw up biological structure with internal codes and memories as its latest trick — apokrisis

Ah, but if the codes of the cognitive system are just tricks, that is, adaptive accidents , then first person points of view in the experiential sense are really just eliminative rmaterialist products of the wider causal cosmic model.
But if you start with a truly fresh model
of causal motivation at the experiential level, you might have an entirely different notion of first person on your hands, one that might require a rethinking of world as objective Cosmos.

f we say that a system is attuned to the world by way of information and information is always acting on a system. A biological system differs from a rock in that it can register fine changes, whilst say a rock can only register coarse changes. So this would be a way of rationalizing what an object is conscious of, by way of what can cause it to change — Pop

What if we say that being an organic system means that the creature has a patterned way of interacting with its environment each moment , that essentially what a living thing is is this patterned interacting which, unlike a stone, maintains its overall integrity and consistency of functioning even as it is incessantly altering its behavior in response to novelties imposed by the outside(the ‘outside’ includes the consequences of the creature’s own functioning, the reciprocal impact on the life form of the changes it makes to its world in the process of functioning).
Information in this sense would be the normative goal-oriented directionality of a living system’s functional organization. It would reside neither strictly within the living thing nor in its environment but would be instantiated in the organism-environment coupling.

Your comments are an exellent example of 'Showboating' and I especially liked this paragraph. Do you have a room with technical terms tacked to the wall and a ball of yarn or do you use more modern methods? I'd like to know — Mark Nyquist

If you re-read all his posts carefully you may find as I do that he is pointing to a consistent and coherent set of ideas. It seems to me that showboating is an unnecessary use of technical terms to illustrate a point that could be made more clearly without them. But I’m seeing more than that in apo’s argument. It’s legitimate and interesting to integrate Peirce’s metaphysics, quantum theory and neuroscientific models of consciousness. It may also be threatening or confusing to those who prefer a more classically reductionist approach to these matters.

Yes, our humanity gets in the way of reality.

Have you considered what information is? Daniel has bought in Change into the mix of considerations. Does information entail change? I think it does. I'm sure you would have some views on this? — Pop

Merleau-Ponty founds consciousness in gestalt ensembles organized as figure against background. “The perceptual ‘something' is always in the middle of something else, it always forms part of a ‘field'.”(Phenomenology of Perception, p.4) .
The background is the formal (we can call it informational, the irreducible relation of the parts to the whole and the whole to its parts ) aspect of perceptual experience in its most primordial sense. Change is presupposed here rather than being added onto awareness , in that each moment introduces a new figure as it re-forms the background.

The Peircean approach is not to rid our view of reality of any subjectivism, it is instead to match such a science of the third person view from nowhere with its “other” of a general science of first person points of view. So a science of semiotics and habits of interpretance, in other words. — apokrisis

Does Peirce aim to derive the third person from the first person as a secondary modality or achieve a mutual affecting between them , a matching of already existing entities or aspects?

This is a view of information that leaves out any receiver of the information. It is moot whether an event or degree of freedom is considered to be random noise or orderly signal as there is no higher meaning or symbolism being attached to the mark. The first step is just to discover the foundational thing of a counterfactual - the starting point of it being even meaningful to ask of anything: "are you a 1 or a 0? A presence or an absence? A something or a nothing?" — apokrisis

We can recover the other sense of information as not just about countable physical differences, but differences that make a difference to someone as they are symbols being read as part of an exchange of messages. — apokrisis

This concatenation of information as meaningless mark and as subjectively meaningful signal system sounds compatible with Dan Zahavi’s depoction of metaphysical realism:

“If we want to know true reality, we should aim at describing the way the world is, not just independently of its being believed to be that way, but independently of all the ways in which it happens to present itself to us human beings. An absolute conception would be a dehumanized conception, a conception from which all traces of ourselves had been removed. Nothing would remain that would indicate whose conception it is, how those who form or possess that conception experience the world, and when or where they find themselves in it. It would be as impersonal, impartial, and objective a picture of the world as we could possibly achieve. How are we supposed to reach this conception? Metaphysical realism assumes that everyday experience combines subjective and objective features and that we can reach an objective picture of what the world is really like by stripping away the subjective. It consequently argues that there is a clear distinction to be drawn between the properties things have “in themselves” and the properties which are “projected by us”. Whereas the world of appearance, the world as it is for us in daily life, combines subjective and objective features, science captures the objective world, the world as it is in itself.”

Would it be fair to characterize your thesis as a kind of techno-dialectics? There seems to be a fair amount of Marx in it , with technology moved to front and center. Have you read Richard Lewonti ?

If we can crack fusion in the next decade, it could be game on again. But if it is a civilisational future to be built on wind and solar, then that is a very different growth regime. — apokrisis

Isnt there a distinction to be made between growth defined in classical economic terms ( GDP, etc) and growth of knowledge( scientific, technological, philosophical , literary)? If there were a catastrophic disruption of access to sources of energy for technological use, do you really think this would prevent individuals from continuing to transform their ways of understanding the world?

The longer you live, the more experiences you have learnt to deal with, and so the less you need to learn. You've long had it all figured out down to the level of automaticism. — apokrisis

I wouldn’t say it’s the number of experiences you cope with that produces growth but the manner in which you organize those experiences. And each useful reorganization propels you into a new world , accelerating the possibilities of further growth rather than impeding them. Personal growth is akin to technological advances in cultural history. They evince an overall accelerative character.

It is completely coherent Josh you just need a higher level of understanding to appreciate it. — Julian Malek

I want what you’re on so I can get as high as you are

Random word generator? Are you related to Alan Sokal?

I am tempted to argue that what you have here is akin to an attempt to use a hardware description to explain software patterns. It’s not that your model is necessary wrong , just that your account ends just where the real scene of consciousness begins. To use the computer metaphor , you leave us with the
power on and the monitor active. But what actually takes place in awareness requires an entirely different causal language that that of physics.

Do you think Lalatos’ approach to the logical proof is consistent with the later Wittgenstein? I wonder i particularly about the notion of truth , as opposed to usefulness , with regard to logical
proof.

The GR assumes that people choose to treat each other with disrespect. Because it focuses on intent, it also assumes that disrespect drives differences in interpretation of the GR. But I think intent is not the crux of the issue when it comes to moral behavior. Rather, the issue is precisely interpretation. That is to say, sincere differences in interpreting or making sense of other cultural values is at the root of violence and what we call immorality, not bad intent or desire to disrespect.Limits in our understanding of each other, not a bad attitude, drives what we call iimmorality.This makes the GM a truism.

Big claim, Joshs. I admire the chutzpah of it. Can you expand on this perhaps with an example of it in action — Tom Storm

First I’d clarify the sense of the golden rule. Do unto ‘others’ only applies to others who are like you in certain key respects that pertain to their humanity. We don’t generally apply the golden rule to livestock, insects or plants, or to any other being that appears to us to be somehow less than fully human in the moral
sense. Thus we see how , at various times in human history, those who were regarded as only 2/3 human, evil, barbarian, heathen, pathological or demented were treated differently than we would want to be treated, without the golden rule being violated.

I believe that every major act of violence in history was committed by an individual or group who thought themselves to be following the golden rule, just as today we incarcerate and punish people based on the golden rule.

The Golden Rule is a recipe for immorality, because it can be used to justify whatever prejudice one harbors. For instance, ‘if I were a homosexual, I would want you to treat me as abnormal’. That prejudice justifies discriminating against others, without violating the Golden Rule.

We all know why the old, the isolated, and the uneducated hold to the views of the past, but there's good reason those views have been swept to the dustbin. I'm willing to hear from the sociologists who discuss our social evolution, but less so to hear directly from the mouths of our dinosaurs who don't realize time passed them by. — Hanover

You’d better be careful. Before you know it, you may find yourself being treated as the next dinosaur whom time has passed by. Foucault would have a field day providing a genealogical analysis both of the ‘reasons’ behind the change in values at the Olympics and your moralistic outrage ar those who dont follow the new orthodoxy . It sounds like you’ve latched onto the emancipatory version of critical theory but haven’t yet made your way into thoroughgoing postmodern territory

I think there are some interesting points that are being ignored here, regardless of Leghorn’s motives. For instance, the concept of competition has changed relative to 50 years ago. Leghorn is correct that athletic courage used to be thought of in terms of ignoring pain and suffering , both mental and physical , for the sake of athletic achievement for oneself and one’s team. Today there is an appreciation that one’s mental and physical well-being is more important than winning at any cost. This reduces the focus on competition and redirects it toward a more balanced concept of excellence. Included in this new thinking is the role of culture in either promoting or hindering personal excellence, which is where the discussion of racial bias comes into play. I think these are all positive and necessary developments but it is quite possible that they may detract from the entertainment value of the Olympics by creating an identity crisis.

Audiences used to expect Olympians to act as John Wayne-type superheroes. Now they like their superheroes (like Batman and Spider-man) to be depicted as angst and doubt ridden vulnerable
mortals. It makes for a different kind of drama. If its working for cinema , maybe it will work for the Olympics.

Forest for the trees.

I was created by something a trillion times greater then your minds doubts.

Therefore not only do I have no self doubts, but the very things you doubt are my greatest strengths — hope

I am much happier thinking of my self as something self-creating and re-creating rather than being created by a being outside myself whose knowledge I can never have complete access to. I also have no desire for access to ‘greatness’ , only for intimate, intricate, gentle and peaceful relational understanding of others.

How can there be anxiety if we trust every blade of grass is exactly positioned for its purpose? I credit Hope for bringing this up. — Hanover

Prior to Darwin, biologists believed that God created each species to be exactly suited to its purpose. It was a simple, ordered scheme. They didn’t try to explain the relations between species because it didn’t occur to them to look for such relations. So we have two entirely different kinds of ordered schemes in the pre-Darwinian and the Darwinian model. Similarly, a fundamentalist religious view could post that God put evil in this world to give humans the opportunity to exercise free will. In this approach, the ordered scheme of the world is one of good vs evil. Like the pre-Darwinian model, it doesn’t try to probe the relation between those who do ‘evil’ and those who do ‘good’ because it doesn't occur to it that good and evil are value judgements arising g out of relatively shifting cultural contexts.
My point is that it is not enough to believe in a perfect schematic order of the world. The question is how that order is accessible to us, and what the nature of the order is. One could say that God made every person to be positioned for their purpose just as every blade of grass is positioned for its purpose. But that could mean that one sees each person as either good or evil , of a good character or bad character. In that case, one may believe that anxiety is unnecessary because all is explained. But all one has done is trade anxiety for a resigned, accepting suffering. Why? Because one has settled for a rigid explanatory scheme that fails to make sense of people’s behavior in anything but the most superficial terms.

God knows all the answers. You don’t. That means, unless you abdicate your self responsibility to live your own life. you’re going to have to get up tomorrow morning like all the rest of us and deal with the normal day to day conflicts, frustrations and confusions. You will not call these anxieties because that would make you an unbeliever. If you did call these anxieties you might be prompted by these feelings to try and achieve a deeper understanding of others that would alleviate some of the conflicts, frustrations and confusions. Since you won’t call these
expereinces anxieties , how will you respond to them? Will you assume it is all part of the greater plan and simply accept the conflicts? Will you pray for guidance and try to change your world or your thinking about the world?

BTW, would it be possible to know where you've read all this stuff — Apollodorus

Apparently somewhere in Leviticus

Or maybe it's about realizing your creator is a billion times vaster than you are so you have no right to doubt or hate yourself. — hope

That’s just going to make you feel worse when you do inevitably doubt or hate yourself.