I take it, following Galen Strawson, that consciousness is a wholly physical phenomenon, it arises from configurations of matter. So, there is no "immaterial"-material problem. — Manuel

If there are real abstract entities, it torpedoes that claim.

As you know as well as me, this is great material for working up a cult of personality. We humans love the ineffable, the paradoxical, the esoteric, the grandiose, the mysterious. Give us this day our wizards of the ephemeral and the diaphanous. — plaque flag

Yes; perhaps it's a distraction from the fact that we are going to die; a terror management system. :smile:

I don't want to defend this or that religious institution but I'm not atheist - my view is that the falsehoods of religions arise from distortions of an originally profound truth — Wayfarer

I agree with this bit. I think the profound truth is that human beings are special and that some things are sacred.

However, the idea that if you don't accept that this is somehow reflected in the cosmos at large and you don't believe evolution has a purpose, then you're in thrall to an evil ideology--that is a profound untruth.

However, the idea that if you don't accept that this is somehow reflected in the cosmos at large and you don't believe evolution has a purpose — Jamal

That is rather ambiguous - can you explain what you mean by that?

It's just my rough summary of the views you expressed in the post I was referring to:

I see enlightenment (not in the sense of the European enlightenment and scientific rationalism) as having cosmic significance, that the Cosmos comes to understand horizons of being that could never be revealed otherwise, through living beings such as ourselves, and that is what the higher religions reflect, although often poorly. So, no, I don't believe we are products of the Dawkins/Dennett dumb physical forces driven by the blind watchmaker. I believe it's an evil ideology masquerading as liberalism. — Wayfarer

Since this is quite vague, it's possible I misrepresented you, but I think I wasn't far off.

I still don't understand your point, nor which evil ideology you're saying that I'm in thrall to, if that is what you're saying.

I think what I said is a clear response to what I just quoted from your post:

I see enlightenment (not in the sense of the European enlightenment and scientific rationalism) as having cosmic significance, that the Cosmos comes to understand horizons of being that could never be revealed otherwise, through living beings such as ourselves, and that is what the higher religions reflect, although often poorly. So, no, I don't believe we are products of the Dawkins/Dennett dumb physical forces driven by the blind watchmaker. I believe it's an evil ideology masquerading as liberalism. — Wayfarer

However, the idea that if you don't accept that this is somehow reflected in the cosmos at large and you don't believe evolution has a purpose, then you're in thrall to an evil ideology--that is a profound untruth. — Jamal

Apart from the possibility that I misrepresented your view, I don’t know how to say it clearer.

Maybe clearer for you like this:

However, the idea that if one doesn’t accept that this is somehow reflected in the cosmos at large and one doesn’t believe evolution has a purpose, then one is in thrall to an evil ideology--that is a profound untruth

OK, I think I see what you mean. I specifically referred to Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, who have global reputations as evangalising atheists, and the kind of ideology they represent.

As for a very nuanced consideration of the idea of telos and teleology in biology that is opposed to materialism but still within the bounds of naturalism, have a read of Steve Talbott's Evolution and the Purposes of Life

Yes, but in the post I replied to you implied that it was the denial of cosmic purpose that was evil, or that the only alternative to cosmic purpose is the evil ideology of Dennett-Dawkins “scientific rationalism”.

You launched a provocative polemic so it deserved a response.

I read him as saying you should not project transcendent meaning/purpose on evolution as the only correct way to understand it.

The topic I was discussing at the time was Daniel Dennett's materialist philosophy, in the context of which I said that I don't believe we are products of the Dawkins/Dennett dumb physical forces driven by the blind watchmaker - which I don't. I don't know how many evolutionary biologists believe it - some, I imagine, but I would think it's hardly a consensus.

I did glean, in my brief reconnoitre on the topic, that Chomsky himself is sceptical about some Darwinian claims, indeed I recall a book co-authored by him and Robert Berwick, Why Only Us? The authors argue that language is an innate ability that is unique to humans and cannot be explained by traditional Darwinian evolutionary theory. Instead they propose a new theory of language evolution, which they call the "biolinguistic" approach. They argue that the language faculty evolved as a result of natural selection, but that the development of language cannot be explained solely by the gradual accumulation of small changes over time. Instead, they suggest that there was a sudden genetic mutation that allowed for the development of language, and that this mutation was a key factor in the evolution of the human species.

Overall, some of Chomsky's ideas are uncomfortably close to innatism for the liking of empiricist philosophers. There's something altogether too platonic about his 'innate grammar'.

Overall, some of Chomsky's ideas are uncomfortably close to innatism for the liking of empiricist philosophers. There's something altogether too platonic about his 'innate grammar'. — Wayfarer

Perhaps. I just watched him defend human morality as constrained by innate structural limitations - or something of the sort - against arguments by that scoundrel and relativist Foucault.

dumb physical forces driven by the blind watchmaker - which I don't. — Wayfarer

This would be a slanted or polemical account of evolution, right?

Whatever Dawkins or Dennett say in polemical mode, I'm not sure words like 'dumb' or 'blind' help us with a full understanding. The evolutionary process is clearly complex and tailored and remarkable enough, without recourse to anthropomorphising nature.

I agree with Descartes in so far as he takes it that experience is the phenomenon, we are most familiar with out of everything. I drop the dualism, especially the substantive kind. — Manuel

Thanks for expanding, but I'm still not quite clear on your position. Is experience material in your view ? Why is the subject familiar with experience as opposed to simply familiar with the world ? I guess I'm a direct realist in some kind of postHegelian sense. So for me there's no image between us and the world. And there's no pure 'matter' in the sense of secret (we can't get it uncooked) substrate (the matter of physics is, for me, just a piece of the scientific image, itself a piece of the lifeworld among others.)

This would be a slanted or polemical account of evolution, right? — Tom Storm

One of Dawkin's books is called 'The Blind Watchmaker'.

The problem of intentionality, meaning, and purpose is a very deep one, although, as Thomas Nagel observed, much of the debate about it is shaped by the fear of religion:

Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world. Instead they become epiphenomena, generated incidentally by a process that can be entirely explained by the operation of the non-teleological laws of physics on the material of which we and our environments are all composed.

It goes back to @plaque flag’s question, which I don’t think you answered (you simply denied the antecedent of the hypothetical). I’ll ask it again but I’ll put it differently: if evolution was a blind watchmaker, would that render the world meaningless for you? Would that remove all reasons for ethical and responsible behaviour or for enjoying life?

I think it’s an important question because it seems to me that setting life’s meaning on the foundation of something either external to/higher than life or else something in the actual workings of evolution itself, is an idea more harmful than the Dennett-Dawkins view of evolution.

I’m not saying that the gene-centred view of evolution is right or that teleology is merely a convenient fiction. I’m not saying that science isn’t significantly infected with Cartesian mechanism and dualism. These issues are interesting, but they’re not really germane to my point. I just wonder how strong one’s dedication to meaning in life can be if it depends either on biological theory or cosmic purpose. It also seems somewhat inconsistent to me to expect a determinate connection or mapping between biological theory (empirical reality) and cosmic purpose (transcendent truth). But my main criticism is of the idea that meaning depends on something transcendent. Why can’t it be immanent in our species—in our families, society, and history? What would be wrong with that?

One of Dawkins books is called 'The Blind Watchmaker'. — Wayfarer

Yes, I've read it and used to own it. I already said it was a polemical title, but you'll note the book is full of descriptions of a highly complex interactive process as organisms interact with their environment and change over time. Is there a need to anthropomorphise this process? Do you have evidence that evolution is directed by higher consciousness? Or is this just an inference, a fallacy of incredulity wherein one can't imagine how it works without some kind of magic?

It's not 'enquiry' that is at issue, but subordinating the subject within the scope of the objective sciences. It's intrinsically demeaning to declare that really, humans are confabulations of unconscious processes that only appear to be intelligent due to the requirements of survival. — Wayfarer

The intelligence is no less real though for being evolved. It's Darwin's genius that he (and others) made the case for how astounding complexity could emerge from a much simpler situation.

Yes, we have a soul, but in what sense? In the sense that our brains, unlike the brains even of dogs and cats and chimpanzees and dolphins, our brains have functional structures that give our brains powers that no other brains have - powers of look-ahead, primarily. We can understand our position in the world, we can see the future, we can understand where we came from. We know that we’re here. No buffalo knows it’s a buffalo, but we jolly well know that we’re members of Homo sapiens, and it’s the knowledge that we have and the can-do, our capacity to think ahead and to reflect and to evaluate and to evaluate our evaluations, and evaluate the grounds for our evaluations.

It’s this expandable capacity to represent reasons that we have that gives us a soul. But what’s it made of? It’s made of neurons. It’s made of lots of tiny robots. And we can actually explain the structure and operation of that kind of soul, whereas an eternal, immortal, immaterial soul is just a metaphysical rug under which you sweep your embarrassment for not having any explanation.

There's definitely a connection there - Dennett not only forgets being, but wishes to eliminate it altogether. Which I think is actually the motivation for eliminativism - it's to avoid the responsibility of facing up to what Eric Fromm describes as 'the fear of freedom'. Better to pretend you're a robot or an animal. — Wayfarer

That's not so plausible, as I see it. Humans are left more free if they emerged from something simpler than they are, more without an example and (worryingly) without any force to catch them if they fall. Dennett pretty clearly is a kindly intellectual. To my knowledge he doesn't wrestle with the problem of the meaning of being, but that's not an easy one to touch. Even Witt and Heid say that (basically, at times) it may be nonsense, unsayable, beneath or above metaphysics/logic/science. I found some quotes that you may not have seen, that may add context (because you may be biased here?)

Is this Tree of Life a God one could worship? Pray to? Fear? Probably not. But it did make the ivy twine and the sky so blue, so perhaps the song I love tells a truth after all. The Tree of Life is neither perfect nor infinite in space or time, but it is actual, and if it is not Anselm's "Being greater than which nothing can be conceived," it is surely a being that is greater than anything any of us will ever conceive of in detail worthy of its detail. Is something sacred? Yes, say I with Nietzsche. I could not pray to it, but I can stand in affirmation of its magnificence. This world is sacred.

***********

If you can approach the world's complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only scratched the surface, you will find worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the greater scheme of things. Keeping that awestruck vision of the world ready to hand while dealing with the demands of daily living is no easy exercise, but it is definitely worth the effort, for if you can stay centered , and engaged , you will find the hard choices easier, the right words will come to you when you need them, and you will indeed be a better person. That, I propose, is the secret to spirituality, and it has nothing at all to do with believing in an immortal soul.

**********
We live in a world that is subjectively open. And we are designed by evolution to be "informavores", epistemically hungry seekers of information, in an endless quest to improve our purchase on the world, the better to make decisions about our subjectively open future.
*********
So Paley was right in saying not just that Design was a wonderful thing to explain, but also that Design took Intelligence. All he missed—and Darwin provided—was the idea that this Intelligence could be broken into bits so tiny and stupid that they didn’t count as intelligence at all, and then distributed through space and time in a gigantic, connected network of algorithmic process.

Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world. Instead they become epiphenomena, generated incidentally by a process that can be entirely explained by the operation of the non-teleological laws of physics on the material of which we and our environments are all composed.

This just sounds like the rhetoric of resentment or an ad hominem based on impugning motives. It by no means provides us with any evidence that evolution is directed by 'supernatural' powers.

Is there a need to anthropomorphise this process? — Tom Storm

No, but there's also no need to explain it away. Dawkins will often say that the processes he describes give rise to the 'appearance of being designed'. Compared to what? I wonder. Is anything designed whatever? Does the word have any referent, outside the activities of h. sapiens?

It by no means provides us with any evidence that evolution is directed by 'supernatural' powers. — Tom Storm

The fact that any discussion of purpose is bound to be interpreted as a reference to the supernatural is significant. Purpose, meaning and intentionality are fundamental items in the philosophical lexicon.

All he missed—and Darwin provided—was the idea that this Intelligence could be broken into bits so tiny and stupid that they didn’t count as intelligence at all, and then distributed through space and time in a gigantic, connected network of algorithmic process. — plaque flag

Connected by what, and how? Evolution itself is not an agency, it doesn't 'do' anything. People speak about 'the wonders of evolution' nowadays, but natural selection is a filter, not a force.

Dawkins will often say that the processes he describes give rise to the 'appearance of being designed'. — Wayfarer

I'm no expert on Dawkins work but whenever I have read or heard him talk about the 'appearance of design' he is generally providing a rebuttal to some intelligent design proponent.

One of the key problems in dealing with Dawkins' work is separating the blunt polemical from the elaborately scientific. He's trying to be both a bar room brawler (albeit a tweedy, polite one) and a scientist. The two get mixed up and often deliberately so by people who dislike his work.

Does the word have any referent, outside the activities of h. sapiens? — Wayfarer

And animals (birds nests, beaver's dams, etc.) Probably not.

.

The problem of intentionality, meaning, and purpose is a very deep one, although, as Thomas Nagel observed, much of the debate about it is shaped by the fear of religion: — Wayfarer

This is a twoedged sword, because clearly religion has had much to fear from science in general and perhaps from the theory of evolution most of all. In any issue that matters to people (that isn't too boring and dry), it'll probably always to be possible for either side to accuse the other of motivated reasoning. We can't let ourselves get stuck at that level.

He should have stuck to his knitting. He did a great job as a science explainer, but he is not very good at philosophy. The first chapter of TGD book was entitled 'a very religious non-believer' and was about Einstein as an exemplar of his scientific atheism. But Einstein said things which Dawkins would never contemplate, like, 'there are people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views' (quoted in Isaacson's Einstein: His Life and Universe).

Religion has had much to fear from science in general — plaque flag

Any religion has something to fear from scientific discovery is not worth respecting in my view (although the misuse of scientific knowledge is another thing altogether.) You know, none of Darwin's books were ever condemned or prohibited by the major Christian denominations, outside American protestantism. And also, please do know that Thomas Nagel, in that essay, states unequivocally that he himself is atheist, lacks any religious sense. He's critical of the idea of neodarwinian materialism purely on philosophical grounds, elaborated in his later Mind and Cosmos.

Connected by what, and how? Evolution itself is not an agency, it doesn't 'do' anything. People speak about 'the wonders of evolution' nowadays, but natural selection is filter, not a force. — Wayfarer

One needs randomness too. These days we have the tools create our own simplified Natures in which we can follow evolution closely, for instance :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XEklaH9k6k

Any religion has something to fear from scientific discovery is not worth respecting in my view — Wayfarer

:up:

He's critical of the idea of neodarwinian materialism purely on philosophical grounds, elaborated in his later Mind and Cosmos. — Wayfarer

I've read it and was disappointed. I don't remember it very well, but think I found it too dualist or Cartesian. And what of this ?

entirely explained by the operation of the non-teleological laws of physics

Does he mean explainable in principle ? He must. Does he think a single cell isn't explainable in principle via chemistry and physics ? A single neuron ? Where's the threshold ?

Maybe it all adds up, after millions of years, to an Einstein and a Darwin.

.

He did a great job as a science explainer, but he is not very good at philosophy. — Wayfarer

As we all know Dawkins is not a philosopher. But none of this answers whether we have evidence that evolution is directed by a designer, however we wish to formulate this notion.

In fact, Darwin (and others often forgotten) explained 'purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world.'

So it's not the denial of purpose but finally an explanation of the complex in terms of the simpler and not in terms of the yet more complex and mysterious. Some who were attached to that previous 'explanation' felt that such purpose had turned to dust in their hands. It wasn't real unless God had made it.

Yes. Those on the Dawkins forum - the very first forum I joined - constantly used this defence against his many howlers, notwithstanding that his books are in the ‘Religion’ section of shops all over the world.

In fact, Darwin explained 'purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world.' — plaque flag

Only insofar as they serve the purposes of evolutionary theory, which is to survive and reproduce, and no further. The philosophical significance of the theory is gravely overstated in my view.

Apropos of all this, a splendid article by Jules Evans on Julian Huxley’s evolutionary transhumanism

https://julesevans.medium.com/julian-huxley-and-the-otter-potential-movement-45dbda59fac5

Does the word have any referent, outside the activities of h. sapiens? — Wayfarer

I'd say it does now, by the usual metaphorical extension of our language.

But, prior to our development of design, and the coining of the word ‘design’, there were no instances of design in the cosmos, right? If the apparent design in nature is only apparent, and not actual, that must be the implication, mustn’t it?