The key thing to understand here is that semiosis - as I am using the term - is all about information regulating physics. — apokrisis
Could fRMI reveal the meaning of a state? Maybe. Quite probably, after sufficient technological advances. If it is correct that all conscious state is a result of neuronal firings.
Is that inhumane? Forgive me if I'm reading too much into your statement, but I felt like you were coming from a perspective of hoping/assuming that there is something more to our existence than just the physical/material structures of brain/bones/blood/neurons/etc. — Malcolm Lett
As inhumane as it feels to many, and to myself, I've slowly come to think that there isn't any inherent meaning to life beyond the physical.. — Malcolm Lett
I am curious, but I suspect you're probably a Christian steeped in Norte Dame idealism. — JerseyFlight
an American philosopher. He is a University Professor of Philosophy and Law, Emeritus, at New York University,[3] where he taught from 1980 to 2016. His main areas of philosophical interest are legal philosophy, political philosophy, and ethics.
Nagel is well known for his critique of material reductionist accounts of the mind, particularly in his essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" (1974), and for his contributions to deontological and liberal moral and political theory in The Possibility of Altruism (1970) and subsequent writings. He continued the critique of reductionism in Mind and Cosmos (2012), in which he argues against the neo-Darwinian view of the emergence of consciousness.
I'm simply referring to the fact that different systems/individuals can have differing degrees of understanding. eg: my calculator has zero of understanding of chinese; I understand about enough to sometimes recognise chinese characters vs not chinese characters; which is significantly less understanding than someone who can read chinese characters. — Malcolm Lett
Your position is becoming quite clear. — JerseyFlight
In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper - namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself. I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that!
My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind. 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 nonteleological laws of physics on the material of which we and our environments are all composed. — Thomas Nagel
I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. — Thomas Nagel
One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind. — Thomas Nagel
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. — Thomas Nagel
Nagel is defending delusion in place of reality — JerseyFlight
This is exceedingly suspect, further, you did not answer my last valid question for which you bear the burden of proof. What I mean about this being suspect is that it's exceedingly clear to me that you are trying to create a gap that you can fill with mysticism. The statement "not all-knowing," reminds me of God-of-the-Gaps reasoning. You are searching for a hole, why? Be transparent. It's hard to see that you are simply trying to follow noble thought where it leads in this sense. For my part, I would never argue that science is all-knowing, is this really a valid premise of science or a straw-man?
What on earth? Matter is what we find existing, this is not an "attitude," or "postulate." — JerseyFlight
I don't have a problem with deism, pantheism or other kinds of vague theism, just so long as they are not false postures for monotheism or organized religion. — JerseyFlight
Organised religion made uber-materialism thinkable because the whole question of what moves dumb matter could be shoved into the cupboard marked "mathematical necessity". — apokrisis
I think your atheist convictions are so overpowering as to make discussion with you pointless. — Wayfarer
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 nonteleological laws of physics on the material of which we and our environments are all composed. — Thomas Nagel
Early modern science, as a commitment to the discovery of universal truths, was very much a product of the monotheist tradition, — Wayfarer
Study of mechanical processes was considered to be about the manipulation of nature, not nature itself. This was consistent with the Aristotelian tendency to regard the operations of nature as analogous to that of an organism rather than a machine, and was also in keeping with Aristotle's assumption that the cosmos was eternal - that is to say, not a created artefact.
As we shall see, the early modern conception of nature as a machine and a divine artefact would make possible a novel union of physics as the study of nature with mechanics as the study of artificially induced motions
What is interesting about this passage is the manner in which Kepler invokes the divine will and his belief in a creator as the justification for, and indeed the foundation of, his realist mathematical astronomy. The reality of mathematical relations in the universe is asserted on the basis that God has instantiated these relations in the created order. In fact Kepler attributed Aristotle's inability to conceptualise a world founded on mathematical principles to the fact that the Greek philosopher had not believed that the world had been created.
A mathematical natural philosophy that was unacceptable to Aristotle, Kepler wrote, is "acceptable to me and to all Christians, since our faith holds that the World, which had no previous existence, was created by God in weight, measure, and number, that is in accordance with ideas coeternal with Him."
All of this makes possible the conviction that mathematical laws are not just human constructions and devices for calculation, but rather describe the real relations that obtain between physical objects in the universe.
A key characteristic of the notion of laws of nature was the idea of an external imposition of order onto the world. Such a perspective contrasted with theAristotelian view that attributed order to the intrinsic properties of natural things.
So not only was this new conception at odds with Aristotle's idea that mathematics be kept separate from natural philosophy and his insistence on maintaining a distinction between artificial and natural motions, it was also inconsistent with the Aristotelian view of matter and causation. The idea of divinely imposed laws was more consistent with the recently revived matter theory of the ancient atomists and with its modern modification, the corpuscular hypothesis.
Unlike the ontologically rich Aristotelian world, the sparse world of atoms or corpuscles was unpopulated by the qualities, virtues, active principles, and substantial forms that had once invested nature with significant causal agency. This was a causally vacant cosmos that would be receptive to the direct volitions of the Deity. It was also a world that required constant creative attention.
His account shows just how socially constructed our notions of reality are — apokrisis
Ultimately, I fault ecclesiastical religion for this - the emphasis on orthodoxy, on 'right belief', and the way heretics were treated, is what drove the dichotomy between faith and science in the first place. In other words, religious dogmatism drove the secular backlash that is one of the major strands of Enlightenment thought. — Wayfarer
If there is an admission of construction, then how do you get from this to transcendence? — JerseyFlight
There is something else that must be said here to clarify the context of what's going on. Where you have the upper intellectual hand against your opponent, you would no doubt pounce on his ignorance. This is not deserving of respect, it is the technique of all Christian apologetics. However, you no doubt find it very hard to pass off your idealism on a thinker like myself, and this is because I can discern that the polemic you leverage is itself constructed of sophistical, abstract precepts that merely give the appearance of progress in the direction of mysticism, but in reality, it is just a special pleading exercise in the absolute negative. Your own fantastical precepts, as an anti-philosophical tactic, are not even disclosed, and even if they were you would fallaciously exempt them from your negative criteria. This is not philosophy, this is modern sophistry. — JerseyFlight
Immanence and transcendence are logically derived as the dichotomous alternatives. — apokrisis
This is very close to an argument from ignorance. — JerseyFlight
Further, it is a mere assertion, you are simply demanding that you have the right to invent transcendence and assign being to it from the premise of matter. — JerseyFlight
The dichotomy here is false, a mere abstract derivation, it is not found in nature. — JerseyFlight
If you accept the premise that reality is constructed, then you must submit to the conclusion that your idea of transcendence is a construction — JerseyFlight
To avoid this conclusion I offered you the chance to connect the dots and show how you escape the dilemma of your own logic. Your reply was merely to appeal to idealism, this is not a solution. — JerseyFlight
If we don't set up our arguments counterfactually, they can only ever produce vague conclusions - no matter how decisively we may reject or accept either alternative. — apokrisis
I never said reality is constructed. I said our models of reality are socially constructed. — apokrisis
What makes the supernatural, religious dichotomy, which you have admitted is just a technique, an actual alternative? — JerseyFlight
So how do you go about verifying or testing your so-called, transcendent models? — JerseyFlight
It will be one of the most bizarre things I will have ever heard if you try to tell me that precision is the result of the projection of spiritual being, which it sounds very much like you are saying? — JerseyFlight
The interjection of supernaturalism into the process is unnecessary. — JerseyFlight
I believe transcendence fails — apokrisis
But just because one can promote the success of one's ontology, doesn't mean one fails to recognise the epistemic fact that one is always "just modelling". — apokrisis
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