Life isn't fair. — frank

True that!

We all know that has limits. We expect the NYT to restrain itself in cases where American lives or national security is at risk. — frank

The claim that the publishing of personal details of many operatives put them at significant risk is weakened by the fact that apparently none of them suffered on that account. It is arguable that Assange was negligent in not redacting those personal details, and he could perhaps have been held to account if one of the any of the operatives had suffered injury or death, but people are generally not prosecuted for negligence unless that negligence causes personal harm.

Assange is not a beneficiary of any of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. It would have been cool if he had stood up for the idea of a global free press. — frank

I would have thought that rights guaranteed by the constitution apply to all individuals and corporations without prejudice. If Assange is not entitled to those rights on account of not being a citizen of the US, then it would seem to be inconsistent to claim that he should be subject to US law.

I imagine that Assange does stand for the idea of a global free press. Is there anything that leads you to think otherwise?

:up: :cool:

However, in the same way, you can't delineate the boundaries of anything without the idea/universal. The idea is what tells you "include this, not that," or "stop here." — Count Timothy von Icarus

You cannot arrive at the universal/ idea without a pre-conceptual gestalt that stands out for you. Inanimate objects like clouds, mountains, rivers, stones are perhaps less definitively bounded than living, self-organizing entities.

You don't get any discrete boundaries if you exclude any reference to minds. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Things seem to be constituted by differential intensities in an overall dynamic energy field. So the universe is presumably not an amorphous blob, but an everchanging energy field consisting of locally differing intensities.

It seems reasonable to think that these differing intensities in the field give rise to the different colours, textures, hardnesses, densities and masses that we encounter everywhere, and that it is on those physical bases that things stand out for us.

:up:

Mere statements, however fear-inducing they might be designed to be, don't cut it for me.

Is it the case that media outlets have never published leaked government documents? If it is not the case and leaked dicuments have been published, were the publishers prosecuted?

Hardly constitutes conclusive evidence.

It is extremely counterintuitive to claim that leaking classified documents results in no consequences, or that the government has no interest in addressing or punishing such leaks. — Leontiskos

I haven't claimed that the leaker of such information would not be prosecuted, I believe they almost certainly would be, but I'm questioning the claim that news outlets that published such leaked documents would be prosecuted. I'm also wondering whether any such leaks have been published by news media and if that has occurred whether they were prosecuted. I can research that myself if no one provides ready information, but I don't have time right now.

there were strong grounds for believing that these had been fed to them by Russia in an attempt to have Trump elected. — Wayfarer

Can you provide a link to reliable information backing that claim up?

I haven't claimed that no action has ever been taken against those involved with leaking documents. Perhaps you are right about private settlements or non-legal consequences. Can you cite any evidence to support that speculation, or any cases that remotely resemble the US treatment of Julian Assange?

Maybe the fact that they didn't! — Wayfarer

Who didn't do what? I haven't seen the movie you mentioned. so I'm not clear what "dangers" you are referring to. According to the information I have Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the papers. was initially charged with theft of government documents, espionage and conspiracy. but the charges were subsequently dismissed, while the New York Times, who first brought the attention of the papers to the public, was not charged with anything. So, I'm not at all sure as to what you are referring to.

Have a read of this:

The record suggests that the government has historically been largely unsuccessful, or simply unwilling, to prosecute national security leaks: “Excluding cases of true espionage, all those thousands upon thousands of national security-related leaks to the media have yielded a total of roughly a dozen criminal prosecutions in U.S. history.” Only one espionage case in recent history has been brought against “anyone other than the initial source,” and no journalists in the past half-century have been prosecuted for publishing leaked information.

Because of they did, the publishers and journalists would like have been prosecuted under the Official Secrets act. — Wayfarer

I doubt that would happen to a large media organization that published leaked documents. Do you have any evidence to support the claim that it would happen?

What makes you think those organizations would not have published them?

Do you think Wikileaks was a bona fide media organisation? — Wayfarer

They published and presented important information to the public, so they were obviously a media organization. Who decides what criteria counts as 'bona fide" in that context?

You seem to sit in judgment of Assange, yet you have not said what crime you think he committed.

For the indifferent or one who finds the question incoherent it is not a matter of truth value, and that is the point. So, @Joshs "none of the above": seems most apt.

In terms of logic, we have: yes, no, maybe. The view you describe is a maybe. In my opinion, that is perfectly fine. — Tarskian

What you are missing is the possibility that an atheist, having no disposition towards theism at all, may not take up any of the positions you characterize by "yes, no, maybe" that is they may not believe, disbelieve or suspend judgement in relation to the question, but simply give it no thought whatsoever, perhaps on account of not acknowledging it is as a question, thinking of it as incoherent or a non-question, or perhaps due simply to a complete lack of interest.

In my opinion, the difference between "absence of belief" and "disbelief" is just language engineering. — Tarskian

If your opinion is that there is no valid distinction between lack of belief and active disbelief, then your opinion is based on insufficient thought.

An atheistic can quite coherently say they see no reason to believe in a god, and yet that they cannot rule it out. They are a-theistic in an analogous sense in which someone may be a-sexual—in the latter case they have no sexual disposition and in the former case they have no theistic disposition.

Agnosticism is different —it is about knowing not believing—an agnostic says we cannot know God, which means we cannot know whether God exists, whereas a gnostic says we can know God.

That said most agnostics today probably don't believe in God, simply because they don't know. But in the original sense of the word, one could be an agnostic theist, and in fact most sensible theists are agnostic, in the sense that they acknowledge that one cannot know whether there is a god, and they acknowledge that it is a matter of faith, not knowledge.

Yes, and more broadly the same is true for many people who identify with 'New Age' spirituality and Eastern religious ideas - even those who follow this or that guru. They remain resolutely obsessed with status, wealth and real estate. And having worked with a number of Thai Buddhists - the same materialism dominates. — Tom Storm

Totally agree :100:

Of course many defenders of higher consciousness worldviews are likely to say that such people are not real, Buddhists, Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Christians, etc. — Tom Storm

True, and that was basically the response tendered by @Wayfarer. I think that there is definitely such a thing as "higher consciousness", and although the "higher" part suggests "otherworldliness", "afterlife" or "spiritual realm", it doesn't have to be wedded to that way of thinking, it can be thought of simply as an altered state—a heightened state of awareness and cognition.

:up:

I’ve been trying to point to more recent ‘philosophies of biology’ e.g. Terrence Deacon, Alice Juarrero, Steve Talbott, which question that form of materialism. — Wayfarer

I have read some Terrence Deacon many years ago now (I have his book Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter} and I take him to be as the second part of the title indicates a kind of physicalist. I don't remember him positing that anything beyond the physical world exists, any transcendent reality. The others I can't speak to.

The question is as to whether nature evolved in an unplanned way out of a primordial state of chaos or whether the world was created with a purpose in mind. If there is, as epigenetics seems to suggest, some feedback from an organism's experience of the internal and external environments, that doesn't equate to intentionality in my way of thinking. For me intentional means deliberate planned.

Animals are capable, to varying degrees, of intentional behavior because they are cognitive agents. For me, nature does not count as intentional unless it is either a cognitive agent or is directed by a cognitive agent.

A recent survey of academic philosophers shows that slightly more than 50% ‘accept or lean towards’ physicalism, presumably they don’t. (Another survey shows that around 66% ‘lean towards’ atheism. So the majority of academic philosophers ‘lean towards’ physicalism and atheism. No surprises there.) — Wayfarer

That doesn't specify what kind of physicalism they lean towards. Atheism is a separate issue, I had thought you were an atheist, in the sense of lacking belief in God, yourself.

They’re plainly related. It’s logical for a social philosophy that recognises nothing other than the physical. — Wayfarer

Nonsense. The US, probably the most materialistic culture, has a high percentage of people who profess to be either religious or spiritual.

In U.S., 47% Identify as Religious, 33% as Spiritual from here

But such constraints are not considered in reductionism. — Wayfarer

I haven't been arguing for reductionism. Is there a third person in this conversation? I have been trying to persuade you to consider the possibility that there are different kinds or definitions of physicalism. One kind would consist in the claim that everything can be explained in terms of physics. I find that claim ridiculous, because everything obviously cannot be explained in terms of physics.

Another kind would consist in the claim that everything that exists, all entities, events, relations, processes and qualities are fundamentally physical insofar as they consist in energy flow and exchange. This leaves the question about abstractions, generalities—do they exist somehow apart from the energetic processes of thinking of or about them? If we think they do exist apart from the thinking of them, that is itself a thought which involves energy flow and exchange. Do we even really know what the question could mean?

Mechanistic materialism still prevails in or underlies many naturalistic accounts. — Wayfarer

Many or some? Do you know what is the percentage of contemporary naturalist accounts that are merely mechanistic, that deny the existence of emergent qualities which cannot be mechanistically explained?

The physicalist paradigm is just exactly that everything is ultimately reducible to the laws of physics. But it’s clear that these are abstractions that don’t describe the complexities of organic life. — Wayfarer

I've been trying to get you to see that it's not a case of the physicalist paradigm, but rather of a physicalist paradigm. I don't know why you are so worried about what I think is a minority position in today's world. As i see it a far bigger problem in today's world is materialism in the form of consumerism—the desire to acquire ever more and more possessions, the identification of the personal identity, of its worth, with material wealth.

‘Physical reductionism’ is generally taken to mean ‘explainable in terms of the laws of physics and chemistry.’ It is the kind of attitude which says that living organisms are ‘nothing but’ colllections of atoms or ‘nothing but’ the vehicles by which genes propagate. In practical terms, the desired reduction base is something that can, at least in theory, be explained and predicted in those terms. — Wayfarer

You seem to be equivocating between 'explainable in terms of' and 'finds its origin in' (or as I should have added 'is constituted.by') That something is not explainable in physical terms does not entail that it is anything over and above its physical constitution, the relations between its parts and the global and local constraints it is subject to.

So, of course intentional behavior is not explainable in terms of physical reactions, because to say it is would be to deny the very conception of intentionality that is purported to be unexplained. But all that means is that there is a limit to what can be understood in mechanistic terms. To reject physicalism on this basis is to be working from and reacting to outmoded mechanistic conceptions of physicality. In other words, it is to be attacking a strawman.

‘Global and environmental conditions’ were not, in times past, considered to be physical interactions, or considered as part of the reduction base. That is what might be called a holistic approach which is the opposite to reductionism. — Wayfarer

Of course, but in times past global and environmental conditions were thought to be given by God or determined by karma or some imagined supernatural principle. Are you now appealing to those kinds of ideas, and if not, just what are you appealing to? What are you trying to imply beyond the well-accepted fact that not everything in human life or even nature can be understood in mechanistic terms. That's the problem, you never come out and say just what it is you are arguing for.

The ‘law of physics’ are context-free. They don’t need to take into account environmental factors but rather describe the behaviour of ideal objects under specified conditions. This is what makes them universal - the behaviour of a body with specific physical attributes will predictably act in accordance with physical laws under said conditions - like, the apple will fall at a given rate, provided nobody catches it, or the wind doesn’t blow and alter its path, or it isn’t in zero-gravity environments. — Wayfarer

We call them "laws of physics" or "laws of nature', but really, they are just generalized formulations of observed regularities, and in that sense, they are not context-free, not independent of our empirical observations. We don't really know whether they apply everywhere in this universe but given that they seem to accurately picture the nature of what is observed, and that they are underpinned by elegant mathematics, we assume that they are universal.

Accordingly, I think it’s a mistake to try and conceive of the ‘something more ‘- the aspects of organisms that can’t be reduced to the chemical and physical - as any kind of ‘something’. That leads to the misconception of an elan vital or spooky ethereal substance - in other words it’s a reification. As you know, I’ve often commented that I think one of the consequences of Cartesian dualism is exactly that kind of reification, by treating mind as a ‘thinking thing’, more or less on a similar plane to physical things, but of a different kind. — Wayfarer

If the mechanistically unexplainable aspects of nature are not "any kind of something" then they are not any kind of anything. In other words, all that is being shown by their (current) unexplainability is either the (current) limits of human understanding, or perhaps the permanent limits of human understanding, which might well make sense given that it seems reasonable to think that nature is non-dual, whereas human thought is intrinsically, inextricably dualistic.

Such adaptive, purposive behavior cannot be entirely reduced to physical interactions because it involves a level of complexity and coordination that physical laws alone do not account for. That suggests that the principles governing biological systems include emergent properties and processes that arise from, but are not reducible to, their physical and chemical constituents. — Wayfarer

I have a question or two about this. By "reducible to" do you mean 'explainable in terms of' or 'has its origin in'? Do you count global or environmental conditions as physical interactions? Do you claim there is "something more" metaphysically speaking than the physical world with its global and local conditions and interactions? If you do want to claim that, then what could that "something more" be in your opinion?

Organisms not only react to stimuli but often do so in ways that are adaptive and goal-directed, suggesting a form of intentionality. This is seen in behaviors that enhance survival and reproduction, such as finding food, avoiding predators, and seeking mates. — Wayfarer

You're talking about "higher" organisms, and I've already agreed that some of those display purposive behavior. It seems to me you are stretching the meaning of intentional.

How is it not clear? That every organism acts intentionally (although not with the conscious self-awareness that characterises higher organisms.) — Wayfarer

It's not clear because you won't proffer a clear definition of intentionality which is different than acting "with the conscious self-awareness that characterizes higher organisms". Yes, "lower" organisms obviously respond to their environments, but I don't see how that equates to intentional behavior.
Just address that question or we will be unable to proceed.

Other than nothing you've written above addresses any of the questions i posed to you, so I find nothing else there to respond to.

I agree, but think there is another related connection between dialectic and wisdom. The art of making and evaluating opinion. In a word, the art of the enthymeme.

In the thread on Aristotle's Metaphysics I argued that Aristotle's arguments are dialectical. He says:

Thus it is clear that Wisdom is knowledge of certain principles and causes.
(982a)

then:

Since we are investigating this kind of knowledge, we must consider what these causes and principles are whose knowledge is Wisdom. — Fooloso4

Do you think he is referring specifically to practical wisdom (phronesis) rather than some kind of metaphysical or transcendent wisdom. I'm not trying to imply anything about a correct answer to this question, as I'm not that much familiar with Aristotle's works.

If Aristotle is wise can he teach us to be wise, to know the causes and principles? Now we all learn that Aristotle said there are four causes. It would be unwise to think that knowing this makes us wise. He does not teach us the causes and principles are whose knowledge is wisdom. He can, however, teach us to think dialectically about opinions and their claims and premises. — Fooloso4

I wonder whether Aristotle's wise man is a generic or universal wise man or whether he rather refers to those who are wise in various contexts or fields.

It seems right to think that the important lesson from Aristotle would be to understand the dialectical mode of thinking rather than to hold any particular beliefs.

The 'literal' question is as to whether evolution is directed and driven by an end goal or goals. If it would have this kind of purpose then the question becomes 'Whose purpose?" and of course the only intelligible answer would seem to be 'God's".
— Janus

But this illustrates the very point I was making. The way we have to see it is that it must be either psychological - in the mind - or then it's theistic - as the agency of God. I'm attempting to deconstruct the worldview which makes it seem that these are the only choices. I think (and MU agrees in the above) that 'intentionality' is manifest at every level of organic life, and that it is purposeful. — Wayfarer

First, what exactly do you mean by saying that intentionality is active at every level of organic life? Second, even if intentionality were "active at every level of organic life" in the way you mean it (presuming that you actually have a good grasp on what you mean by that), how could you test in a way that could demonstrate that? And even if you could demonstrate it, what significance could it have to how we should live our lives?

I am not going to deny that intentionality is "active at every level of life", because I don't really even know what that could mean. I think I understand to some degree human and even some higher animal intentionality, and I can see how that understanding might help my own living self-cultivation, but I can't see how a belief like, for example, the intentionality of cells could be of any relevance to that cultivation, because I find no familiarity in the idea.

And the final point I want to make is that even if we could know and show that there is an intentionality that we could understand as such at every level of life what could that demonstrate or prove about anything transcendent (which I think is where you are wanting to go with this. perhaps in order to justify some of your cherished personal beliefs)?

Perhaps there was a good reason that Gotama refused to answer metaphysical questions; not just because he thought that such preoccupations would distract people from practice, but perhaps also because he realized that such question are inherently unanswerable. Surely if he could have given empirically demonstrable or somehow self-evident once heard, and hence convincing, propositional answers to such questions, then that would have settled the matter in his disciples' minds and then they could have got on with the important thing: practice, no longer distracted by the perplexity that being obsessed with such questions would create.

Until I have read more into these issues, I will have nothing worthwhile to contribute (and maybe not even then). In the meantime, I'll continue to follow along with interest.

I think this is tricky because some regard dialectic as a method of establishing the truth rather than as a search for the truth. My impression is that Platonists regard the search as something that has reached a successful conclusion. Socratic philosophy, including both Plato and Aristotle, is about being wise in the face of ignorance, keeping our ignorance alive rather than eliminating it. — Fooloso4

Is it a different sense of truth? It could be said that finding wisdom is finding truth, even though nothing in the propositional mode of truth might be possible to say about the wisdom that is found. Perhaps dialectic is a process of error elimination that enables the gaining of wisdom even if the wisdom gained is only to realize that one does not know what one thought one knew.

This is where I distinguish between Plato and Platonism. Plato is a Socratic, Platonists are not. — Fooloso4

Right, Socrates seems far from being an ideologue or purveyor of doctrines.

as our culture is individualist, we tend to conceive of purpose and intentionality in terms of something an agent does. Purposes are enacted by agents. This is why, if the idea of purpose as being something inherent in nature is posited, it tends to be seen in terms of God or gods, which is then associated with an outmoded religious or animistic way of thought. I think something like that is at the nub of many of the arguments about evolution, design and intentionality, and the arguments over whether the Universe is or is not animated by purpose. — Wayfarer

This is more of a psychological thesis than a philosophical treatment of the idea of purpose. Biologists may speak in terms of purpose in evolution, but they generally acknowledge this is a kind of metaphor. The 'literal' question is as to whether evolution is directed and driven by an end goal or goals. If it would have this kind of purpose then the question becomes 'Whose purpose?" and of course the only intelligible answer would seem to be 'God's".

You say purpose and intentionality are conceived in terms of something an agent does. What is an alternative way of framing it? That's the question you haven't addressed. The arguments over whether or not the Universe is animated by purpose, just are the arguments over whether or not a God exists. What else could they be?

As for the purpose of ‘nature as a whole’, I think that indeed frames the question in such a way that we could never discern an answer. We don’t know ‘the whole’, but only participate in and enact our roles and purposes within that larger context. But as Victor Frankl observed, those with the conviction that there is meaning and purpose in life generally do better than those without it. Call it faith, if you will, but I resist the facile claim that this amounts to ‘belief without evidence’. — Wayfarer

But the question just is about the purpose of nature as a whole. No one denies that humans and other animals have their purposes. And Frankl is indeed correct that those who find purpose in their lives do better than those who don't, but that says nothing about the existence or non-existence of purpose in nature as a whole. Some people need to believe in an overarching purpose in order to find purpose in their own lives, and others don't. Humans are diverse. I would say the most general purpose for humans would be to actualize, to realize, one's potential. Not everyone requires a "greater authority" in order to be concerned with the question of their own potential. Of course some do, and it is those who trun to religion. You agreed before that everyone does not need to think the same way.

But this is why the question has assumed urgency in biology, in particular, as all living organisms obviously act purposefully. Of course, in physics, there is no question of purpose - it’s all action and reaction, describable according to mathematical laws. As that became a paradigm for knowledge generally, namely ‘physicalism’, then it was simply assumed that life itself was also purposeless, as physicalism assumes that physics is the master paradigm, of which organisms are but one instantiation. But this is just what is being challenged in this debate over whether and how organisms and evolutionary processes are purposeful. — Wayfarer

Yes,organisms act purposefully—I haven't denied that. It isn't assumed on account of physics that life is purposeless (in the overarching sense)—it is only in the life sciences that purposeful behavior is observed. It follows that there is no evidence of purpose outside the context of life, and there it is only the purposes of individuals and collectives of individuals (animal and human communities) which are manifest. I don't think your psychological explanation holds water. There is no debate within evolutionary biology about whether evolution is purposeful—such a question is outside the scope of science as it is a theological question.

The other question I would ask is how such an unanswerable (if not coherently unaskable) question could have any bearing on the philosophical issues around the human situation and human potential.
— Janus

But this is exactly an instance of the kind of positivism that I keep saying you seem to advocate. Remember the exchange yesterday, about Wittgenstein’s complaint that modern culture seems to say that something either has a scientific solution, or no solution at all? Isn’t this what you’re implying? That if science can’t adjudicate the question, then there can’t be an answer to it? — Wayfarer

When you find you cannot counter what I say with rational argument you resort to framing me as one of your favorite bogeymen—as a positivist. How many times do I have to remind you that I don't think science is capable of answering anywhere near all the questions that are inherent in the human condition? Those questions have to be grappled with and answered, in their different ways, by individuals.

The point is that there can be no one general definitive answer to such questions, and that whatever "answers" are found cannot be rigorously tested as scientific answers can ("answers" in inverted commas because the experiences in which the sense of encountering them are generally ineffable). The one general truth that comes out of creative and spiritual pursuits is that people are capable of transformative altered states of consciousness. This is amply and perhaps most vividly demonstrated by the use and study of psychedelics, but I think meditative practices, mystical experiences and the arts also show this human potential for experiential transformation.

In fact, the question of purpose, whether it is real or whether it is just imputed, seems to me a philosophical question par excellence. The fact that it’s *not* a scientific question, and why it’s not, is also a very interesting question. — Wayfarer

The reality of human and animal purpose is not in question. The question as to whether nature itself exists to fulfill an overarching purpose ("overarching" because such a purpose would necessarily be beyond nature itself) seems to be an impossible question to frame coherently outside the context of the assumption of theism.

Apart from the idea that there could be a designer who created nature for a purpose, what other possibility is there for an overall purpose for nature as a whole? If you are able to frame the question in another way, I would be happy to consider it.

Science doesn't deal in anything which is either unobservable or has no observable effects, so I don't find it surprising that it is not a scientific question. If it cannot be coherently formulated as a question (outside the presumption of theism) then I can't see how it is a philosophical question either.

The other question I would ask is how such an unanswerable (if not coherently unaskable) question could have any bearing on the philosophical issues around the human situation and human potential.

and also to indicate that the question is a live issue and subject of debate, especially in biology. — Wayfarer

Now you seem to be contradicting yourself: saying that the question of purpose is "a live issue and subject of debate, especially in biology" while also saying it is not a scientific question.

Would you say that Gerson's thesis is a tempest in a teapot regarding the limit of philosophy? Or is there something in his either/or that resonates with you? — Paine

I think the fact that thoughtful people all seek to live well, meaning that we all in that sense pursue the good and aim to be rationally self-governing rather than being slaves to our impulses, received opinions, addictions and so on, and that we thus participate in the dialectical search for the truth of the general human condition and of our own conditions in particular exemplifies what is best in Platonism.

I am no scholar of Plato, but I have read with interest what you and @Fooloso4, as much closer readers of Plato than I am, are having to say about seeing Platonism as being less a matter of fixed doctrine than it is of searching for what is good and beautiful and true and flourishing engendering while acknowledging that there can be no definitive answers to those questions.

I haven't read enough Gerson to form a clear opinion, but what I have read in the passages quoted in these forums make him look somewhat like a thinker with a predetermined agenda.

That’s the question posed in the original post. I feel that article I linked at least addresses it. — Wayfarer

I'd prefer if you would speak for yourself rather than asking me to read linked articles. Otherwise, I'll be left guessing as to what your own thoughts are, and I really don't have the time for that.

But doesn't it reduce it to a matter of opinion? The assumption of Greek philosophy, generally, was that reason, logos, animated the universe but was also the animating principle of the individual soul/psyche. Not that there's anything wrong with what you're saying - it's not meant as a personal criticism, but insofar as this is typically how us moderns view the world, in terms of our individual search for meaning. — Wayfarer

So, you think it would be better if everyone thought the same and all find the same meaning in, and purpose for, life? I don't see it that way—it's like aesthetics where I think there are real qualities, and real differences of quality, but as with altered states of consciousness, the truth as to which works are the best is impossible to determine definitively.

The kind of knowing involved in the arts, just as with self-cultivation, is participatory, not propositional. And what really matters is that you find purpose and, meaning in your own life. This is not to say that there are not general principles—so it is still wrong, and not merely " a matter of opinion" if someone finds their purpose in being a serial killer, pedophile or rapist.

I saw an account recently of the meaning of a teleological explanation: it is an explanation in terms of what something is for, rather than what conditions caused it. It doesn't sound like much, but really a lot hinges on that distinction.

Humans design things for particular purposes and even some animals can do that, I don't see how it follows that leaves were designed for the purpose of photosynthesis, stomachs for digestion, teeth for processing food or killing prey, claws for digging or killing and so on

For instance in Aristotle's fourfold causation, the final cause of a particular thing is its end goal or purpose. A mundane example is that the final cause of a match is fire, as the lighting of fires is the purpose of a match. But notice that in this case, the final cause comes after the striking of the match, being the reason for the existence of the match.

Yes I have been long familiar with Aristotle's four types of causes. Final causes are certainly relevant to human life because things are designed with particular purposes in mind. I don't see any reason to think that is the case with nature, although the question is one of those imponderables which cannot be definitively answered. The idea would only make sense in a theistic context—if you were one of those who believe in a God who has a plan then of course final cause would make sese in the context of that belief or assumption.

The efficient and material causes are the composition of the matchhead and the act of striking it. That is very much how science since the scientific revolution has tended to view causality: what causes something to happen, in terms of the antecedent combination of causes giving rise to an effect. Cause in the Aristotelian sense has largely been dropped. That's where a lot of the controversy about the so-called meaninglessness of the scientific worldview originates. It's also what is addressed in the Forbes Magazine article I linked above - and it's a bitter controversy, indeed, with a lot of heavyweights slugging it out. So trivial, it isn't.

I see no place for formal or final cause in the context of science. Material cause just means the set of conditions and constraints that operate globally as distinct from efficient or proximal causes which consist in local actions generally thought to involve energetic interactions.

Why should we project thinking in terms of formal and final causes beyond the human context? I'm not impressed by academic "heavy weights" but prefer to assess what they say on its own merits. I'm not impressed by arguments from authority, no matter who the purported authority might be.

That said I don't weigh in subjects I am not at least competent in, but when it comes to metaphysics there are no real experts. I agree with Wittgenstein that philosophy is not a matter of theory, but of practice, not of explanation but of description and conceptual clarity—I say leave the theories to the scientists, since so-called theories which cannot be tested don't really qualify as theories at all in my book.

I read that book many years ago but cannot recall much in the way of the impressions it left on me. I still have it on my shelves, so I may take a fresh look at it.

I think naturalism is right, but I also think science forces upon us a very disillusioned “take” on reality. It forces us to say ‘No’ in response to many questions to which most everyone hopes the answers are ‘Yes.’ These are the questions about purpose in nature, the meaning of life, the grounds of morality, the significance of consciousness, the character of thought, the freedom of the will, the limits of human self-understanding, and the trajectory of human history.

That precisely outlines what science cannot provide and certainly cannot be described as "Platonist." But the statement is not "anti-philosophical" because it recognizes we have questions beyond what science tries to answer — Paine

My understanding is that human beings and other animals demonstrate purposiveness, but that science cannot show there to be any general or overarching purpose in nature. I don't see why a lack of overarching purpose and meaning should diminish the importance of general human and particular individual purpose and meaning.

The question as to how best to live, or to put it in Platonist terms the search for the Good, concerns us, or at least should concern us, all. I think it's not a question of what we specifically believe, but how we practice, when it comes to the "questions beyond what science tries to answer".

For example, in regard to the question of free will, I can be a full-blown determinist and still think it important for humans to be rationally self-governing.

The first thing we find out is that the best way for us is not identical with the best way for me. — unenlightened

I agree, when it comes to considering the details. There would seem to be general principles as to what is most conducive to human flourishing and rational self-government, but since we are not only beings of a certain kind but are also each unique individuals, knowing what is best for me must also come from direct self-knowledge and insight as well as grasping general principles and practices.

:up: I read it and agree with everything therein.

I don't believe I have ever said or even insinuated that science could replace everything else. If you think I have then you have somehow managed to misinterpret what I have said.

But he did not oppose the practice of science, only the claim it replaced everything else. — Paine

The claim that science could replace "everything else" is so patently absurd that I could never understand why anyone would believe it or bother to expend any energy opposing it.

:lol: :cool:

:up:

I must respectfully disagree with the passage from Derrida, which I find to be 'nonsense on stilts.' Identity, or what things are, is a fundamental constituent of rational thought and cognition. Even the simplest animals must identify kinds and types to navigate their environments. — Wayfarer

:up: