Henry P Stapp, an American mathematical physicist, known for his work in quantum mechanics, particularly the development of axiomatic S-matrix theory, the proofs of strong nonlocality properties, and the place of free will in the "orthodox" quantum mechanics of John von Neumann. — Kizzy
Einstein had a great deal of difficulty doubting his own theory because his metaphysical parameters did not admit of the possibility that his theory could be wrong. — Leontiskos
Similarly, if the naturalist thinks that the only possible argument for theism is a god of the gaps argument, then it seems to me that it is the paradigm that is controlling his conclusion more than the data. — Leontiskos
The (classical) theist responds that this is a fine argument except for the fact that God is not and has never been conceived as an object within the universe. Internalism is a non-starter for the theist. It's not a matter of adjusting supernatural claims, but rather of attending to the actual claims that have been with us for thousands of years. — Leontiskos
More pointedly, the question of whether the metaphysical structure is or is not a brute fact is not adjudicable within a naturalistic paradigm, but it does not thereby follow that it is not adjudicable. — Leontiskos
And because of this the god-of-the-gaps paradigm of the modern naturalist matches the theological paradigm of the modern fundamentalist, which ensures that these two camps seldom talk past each other. Both are working with a similar conception of God. — Leontiskos
But the facts forced him to change his mind.
...
It is all the more impressive that such an epistemic method worked despite the deeper intuitions of one of the most brilliant ever thinkers. — apokrisis
Again, a pragmatist asks only what use is this belief? Does the belief have observable consequences? If not, it is not even a theory capable of being wrong. So it is up to the theist to deduce the consequences of their theory such that they stand counterfactually opposed to some clear alternative and so measureable on that explicit basis. — apokrisis
Even the null hypothesis would do as that alternative – the statistical case that there is some effect to be discussed rather than just some random noise in the data. So what difference does your version of a God make in this natural world? What difference would His absence make? What effect are you making claims for in a suitably counterfactual fashion? Where is then the evidence in terms of at least some statistical reason for a pause for thought? — apokrisis
Of course the theist might take refuge in transcendence. But why would any rigorous epistemology go along with that? Once isn't a pragmatist because one dislikes truth. — apokrisis
When one metaphysics endlessly has to retreat in the face of scientific advance, and the other metaphysics instead keeps looking scientifically sounder by the day, I would say history is indeed passing its judgement on the beliefs of humans. — apokrisis
Am I operating in that paradigm? As a pragmatist, I would say not. — apokrisis
If you can show me the effect in some controlled fashion – show it isn't just nature being random – then I would say, well let's start investigating that as a class of cause. — apokrisis
So Peirce of course had to presume something as a starting point. He "believed" nature is essentially tychic. Rooted in true spontaneity. — apokrisis
The Big Bang is the tale of infinite dimensional possibility being broken by its own dimensional symmetry breaking. Absolute spontaneity reducing itself to a Planckian residue of just three spatial directions organised by exactly those global and local symmetries that could not in the end be completely cancelled out of existence.
The Big Bang starts at the point where nearly all free possibility was wiped out. And that then resulted in a hot seed of dimensional structure – a fleck of energetic order – which took off towards its own form of self-cancellation or temporal inversion in expanding and cooling its way to its own Heat Death. — apokrisis
So as a cosmology that provides a metaphysical alternative to transcendent theism, it is pretty detailed. It relies on mathematical strength arguments about Lorentz boosts and Lie groups. It demands all the mathematical machinery of general relativity and quantum field theory. It raises a whole set of factual issues about "the missing critical mass" or "quantum weirdness". — apokrisis
Thanks for sharing some further reading! I have never heard of John Wheeler! Glad you brought him up, he's a good ole Florida boy and I am from the sunshine state myself! I will add this all to my list.....Thanks!!Anyway- the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2022 was awarded to three scientists for proving the world is not locally real. But is this like saying that noumena is not locally real? We know from experience what the classical is and isn't.. It's pretty interesting how this raises ancient questions but dresses them in modern garb (stylish). Between observer-centric theories and, say, pilot wave theory or objective collapse theory, there is John Wheeler's "participatory universe" theory, which states that the substrate of the quantum combined with the nucleus of the consciousness is what creates the world. It's an interaction between "I" and "not I". It's more of a duality becoming a whole rather than a duality of separation, and this is what guarantees we can have knowledge of the world — Gregory
I also asked what the difference was between the mental percept that 620-750 light ordinarily causes to occur and seeing red, and dreaming red.
You claimed "nothing" as an answer to all three questions. If there is no difference between four things, then they are the same.
They're all experiences. — creativesoul
But I am more of a classical theist, and the classical theist won't generally address naturalism on its own terms. — Leontiskos
So then what is the counterfactual case for Tychism? For the idea that Logos is a byproduct of chance rather than a fundamental reality? — Leontiskos
As I read the Wikipedia article on Tychism I find that much of it seems to be in sync with theism and not opposed to it. — Leontiskos
In many ways Darwin has become our keystone to interpreting the world, and think this may be due more to a vacuum than to careful thinking or observation. — Leontiskos
The red part of hallucinating red, dreaming red, and seeing red are all the same thing — Michael
Your equivocating "red". — creativesoul
So as a metaphysics, neither matter nor form appear very “real” in any substantial sense. Reality seems derealised in a way that neither naturalists nor theists would think about things — apokrisis
I wouldn't disagree. BUT, let me ask you. These people doing that, living their day to day lives while stuck in what "could have been" are they aware that maybe two things are happening at once? Scratch that, do you think the awareness of these people to a certain level plays a considerable role? I wonder how a test could be given to someone and those that take the test will either be classified as aware or unaware, and not in a all around type of way just about this specific thing (bad thinking patterns, stuck in day to day life, unfulfilled, not happy)The thing about Many Worlds is that people wonder, regret, and dream of what "could have been" a lot. Humans want it all, however it is that they get it i guess — Gregory
Not all naturalist thinking is limited in this way. Joseph Rouse’s radical naturalism is one example of alternative paths that are being taken by new materialists. — Joshs
I am being very explicit with what I mean by the word "red", which is the opposite of equivocation. — Michael
I also asked what the difference was between the mental percept that 620-750 light ordinarily causes to occur and seeing red, and dreaming red.
You claimed "nothing" as an answer to all three questions. If there is no difference between four things, then they are the same.
They're all experiences.
— creativesoul
The red part of hallucinating red, dreaming red, and seeing red are all the same thing... — Michael
The when and how it is caused to occur is then what distinguishes dreams, hallucinations, and non-hallucinatory waking experiences. It's a dream when it occurs when we're asleep, it's an hallucination when it occurs when we're awake and in response to something like drugs, and it's a non-hallucinatory waking experience when it occurs when we're awake and in response to light stimulating the eyes. — Michael
There is no red pen while dreaming and hallucinating red pens. — creativesoul
They look that way because they reflect that wavelength of light, and our biology just happens to be such that objects which reflect that wavelength of light look to have that colour. That's all there is to it.
But the colour just is that mental percept — Michael
But Rouse’s concern here appears epistemological whereas I was talking ontological commitments. Rouse wants to place the scientific image within some wider pluralistic space of materialistic images. I am instead asking about the best possible version of that scientific image. What would it be like to bring our scattered scientific understandings of the world into one coherent image of natural being? — apokrisis
And maybe I am not your classical naturalist. If you take structuralism seriously, matter isn’t really very material when you get down to it. Even Aristotle’s prime matter or Anaximander’s Apeiron are a little too substantial. Plato’s Khôra isn’t right either but has something to recommend it. Somehow the material principle must be reduced to the purist notion of a potential. As in perhaps a Peircean vagueness or quantum foam. — apokrisis
Chance and necessity as the opposing limits defining the actuality we find sandwiched between these two limiting extremes.
Logos and flux would be another twist on the same thought. — apokrisis
Well Peirce lived in a very theistic times. There was plenty of social pressure, and advantage, to frame things in that light. — apokrisis
And I don’t think a semiotic metaphysics in general could come across as clearly opposing an immanent kind of idealism or divine principle as - as I argued - it shouldn’t either stand for anything like an orthodox material account of Nature. It is poised in some metaphysical space of it own that sees both classical materialism and classical idealism as suffering from misplaced concretism and not tuned into the subtleties of Aristotelean hylomorphism as an argument. — apokrisis
Well evolution is a pretty robust logical concept. How would you even prevent it happening in the sense that given a variety of possibilities, the most effective - in what ever sense that means - is going to win out.
Why else is physics so tied to the principle of least action? The path integral says every quantum event is a sum over a whole universe of possibilities. That’s a pretty dramatic application of Darwinian competition in its physicalist sense. — apokrisis
Nevertheless, theism tends to be averse to the notion of fundamental flux, — Leontiskos
For this reason theistic semioticians like John Deely relate to Peirce in an entirely different way than they relate to scientists bound by modern thought. — Leontiskos
But considering the idea that the most effective possibility will win out, are we saying that what is known in a prior way to be most effective will in fact win out, or is "most effective" being defined as whatever ends up winning out? — Leontiskos
Mechanistic science avoided the whole problem by turning a blind eye, but once teleology is admitted the idea of an ordering Intellect or Mover becomes more plausible. — Leontiskos
His point is that a ‘best possible image’ is always going to be relative to commitments and material practices which are contingently formed through indissociable interaction between the world and our purposes.
— Joshs
That’s still just epistemology — apokrisis
…both orthodox and liberal naturalisms impose on their conceptions of the sciences what I have elsewhere characterized as an epistemologically-based first philosophy. The challenge to familiar meta-philosophical
naturalisms does not concern their intramural disputes
over whether the sciences provide a conceptually unified
or comprehensive image of the (structure of the) natural
world or instead provide a partial and multi-leveled conceptual patchwork at multiple scales, ontological levels, or disciplinary orientations. The question is instead whether the sciences aim for or produce a consistent representation of the natural world at all.
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