There are ways of knowing the world that do not require an objective reality. — T Clark
There's a good argument to be made that objective reality is a human construct which boils down to that which can be perceived, conceived, and understood by humans. — T Clark
"Truth" is generally defined as congruence with objective reality. — T Clark
I realize that you can claim that the need for purpose and origin are similar to some extent, but science renders their existence suspicious not just by its exploration of the inanimate universe, but also because it conveys to us about our mental fragility and our addiction to self-affirmation. — simeonz
he universe might be all the explanation there is. It might be its own reason — simeonz
A question to you: what exactly is the difference between the living and the non-living? — TheMadFool
Ernst Mayr, one of the architects of the modern [evolutionary] synthesis, has been one of the most outspoken supporters of the view that life is fundamentally different from inanimate matter. In The growth of biological thought, p. 124, he made this point in no uncertain terms: ‘… The discovery of the genetic code was a breakthrough of the first order. It showed why organisms are fundamentally different from any kind of nonliving material. There is nothing in the inanimate world that has a genetic program which stores information with a history of three thousand million years!’
The idea that ‘life is chemistry plus information’ implies that information is ontologically different from chemistry, but can we prove it? Perhaps the strongest argument in support of this claim has come from Hubert Yockey, one of the organizers of the first congress dedicated to the introduction of Shannon's information in biology. In a long series of articles and books, Yockey has underlined that heredity is transmitted by factors that are ‘segregated, linear and digital’ whereas the compounds of chemistry are ‘blended, three-dimensional and analogue’.
Yockey underlined that: ‘Chemical reactions in non-living systems are not controlled by a message … There is nothing in the physico-chemical world that remotely resembles reactions being determined by a sequence and codes between sequences’ p. 105.
Yockey has tirelessly pointed out that no amount of chemical evolution can cross the barrier that divides the analogue world of chemistry from the digital world of life, and concluded from this that the origin of life cannot have been the result of chemical evolution. This is therefore, according to Yockey, what divides life from matter: information is ontologically different from chemistry because linear and digital sequences cannot be generated by the analogue reactions of chemistry.
At this point, one would expect to hear from Yockey how did linear and digital sequences appear on Earth, but he did not face that issue. He claimed instead that the origin of life is unknowable, in the same sense that there are propositions of logic that are undecidable.
It is perfectly possible to study consciousness on a purely scientific basis — T Clark
I would also not make a necessary connection between the pursuit of spirituality or philosophy with self knowledge either. It could just as readily be self-deception. — Tom Storm
this transcendental or metaphysical realist position is the paradigm of a nonsensical or incoherent metaphysical viewpoint, for (among other problems) it fails to acknowledge its own reflexive dependence on the intersubjectivity and reciprocal empathy of the human life-world.“ — Joshs
The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. (pp. 35-36) — Thomas Nagel, Mind & Cosmos, Pp35-36
Never said there was not, only that we can't assert it is ipso facto better than naturalism. — Tom Storm
A question to you: what exactly is the difference between the living and the non-living? — TheMadFool
just scientism speaking — Wayfarer
what benefits do you believe your worldview brings, which are not available to the person who thinks the scientific method is the only reliable pathway to truth available to us at the moment? — Tom Storm
Since when is the ‘scientific method’ not itself a worldview.? — Joshs
Given you are pretty much an atheist (from our pervious conversation), as far as more literalist theists may be concerned, what benefits do you believe your worldview brings, which are not available to the person who thinks the scientific method is the only reliable pathway to truth available to us at the moment? — Tom Storm
It's one of those questions, like, 'what is the nature of time', which seems obvious until you try and answer it. I mentioned a NY Times article on the Corona Virus which points out how difficult it is to define the difference precisely. If all those white coats can't work it out, buggered if I will be able to.
Philosophically, I claim an ontological distinction can be discerned between mineral, plant, animal, and rational beings. That harks back to the 'great chain of being' which is not favoured by modern thinking.
But there is some support for at least the first distinction in current science:
Ernst Mayr, one of the architects of the modern [evolutionary] synthesis, has been one of the most outspoken supporters of the view that life is fundamentally different from inanimate matter. In The growth of biological thought, p. 124, he made this point in no uncertain terms: ‘… The discovery of the genetic code was a breakthrough of the first order. It showed why organisms are fundamentally different from any kind of nonliving material. There is nothing in the inanimate world that has a genetic program which stores information with a history of three thousand million years!’
The idea that ‘life is chemistry plus information’ implies that information is ontologically different from chemistry, but can we prove it? Perhaps the strongest argument in support of this claim has come from Hubert Yockey, one of the organizers of the first congress dedicated to the introduction of Shannon's information in biology. In a long series of articles and books, Yockey has underlined that heredity is transmitted by factors that are ‘segregated, linear and digital’ whereas the compounds of chemistry are ‘blended, three-dimensional and analogue’.
Yockey underlined that: ‘Chemical reactions in non-living systems are not controlled by a message … There is nothing in the physico-chemical world that remotely resembles reactions being determined by a sequence and codes between sequences’ p. 105.
Yockey has tirelessly pointed out that no amount of chemical evolution can cross the barrier that divides the analogue world of chemistry from the digital world of life, and concluded from this that the origin of life cannot have been the result of chemical evolution. This is therefore, according to Yockey, what divides life from matter: information is ontologically different from chemistry because linear and digital sequences cannot be generated by the analogue reactions of chemistry.
At this point, one would expect to hear from Yockey how did linear and digital sequences appear on Earth, but he did not face that issue. He claimed instead that the origin of life is unknowable, in the same sense that there are propositions of logic that are undecidable.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.2015.0060 — Wayfarer
This leads to all sorts of problems. Is there another way, sure - look at the world, forgive me, holistically. As one unified system. There are sciences that do things that way - ecology, geology, evolutionary biology, hydrogeology. Observational rather than experimental sciences. — T Clark
don't think Wayfarer was talking about supernatural phenomena. We'll let him respond. — T Clark
If you are going to say science is a worldview, fine. So is everything, from medicine to sport. But some worldviews are more helpful than others. — Tom Storm
life could be defined in terms of intent — TheMadFool
life, even the very simplest forms of life, seem to possess an intentional aim, namely, to survive and propagate — Wayfarer
isn't the tendency to use this word 'scientism' usually a patronizing label? Is applying it to Sagan useful? — Tom Storm
Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.
Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen. — Richard Lewontin
it sometimes seems to me that you are saying you have greater innate sensitivity because you know that the universe has more in it than matter. My question is where (in general terms) do your presuppositions actually lead you? — Tom Storm
I'm a civil engineer. That means, when there is some work to be done, I find out what our client wants, get a survey, do some calculations, make a drawing or two, then get a bunch of bulldozers and knock everything down. That works, to the extent it does, because we follow the typical materialist route of separating our area of interest from the rest of the universe and pretending what we do inside the area doesn't have anything to do with what goes on outside. — T Clark
What secular reason is missing is self-awareness. It is “unenlightened about itself” in the sense that it has within itself no mechanism for questioning the products and conclusions of its formal, procedural entailments and experiments. “Postmetaphysical thinking cannot cope on its own with the defeatism concerning reason which we encounter today both in the postmodern radicalization of the ‘dialectic of the Enlightenment’ and in the naturalism founded on a naïve faith in science", says philosopher Jurgen Habermas.
Postmodernism announces (loudly and often) that a supposedly neutral, objective rationality is always a construct informed by interests it neither acknowledges nor knows nor can know (@Joshs). Meanwhile science goes its merry way endlessly inventing and proliferating technological marvels without having the slightest idea of why. The “naive faith” Habermas criticizes is not a faith in what science can do — it can do anything! — but a faith in science’s ability to provide reasons, aside from the reason of its own keeping on going, for doing it and for declining to do it in a particular direction because to do so would be wrong.
I don't think Wayfarer was talking about supernatural phenomena. We'll let him respond. — T Clark
I did mention that:
life, even the very simplest forms of life, seem to possess an intentional aim, namely, to survive and propagate
— Wayfarer
But do read the passage I quoted from Barbieri again, he makes a great point about the ontological distinction between life and non-life, in scientific terms. — Wayfarer
science *is* a religion. — Wayfarer
'metaphysics' and 'supernatural' are essentially synonymous terms, — Wayfarer
Science is an ideology, not a religion. — T Clark
You cherry picked that quote: I said ‘for this kind of thinking, science is a religion’. I don’t think that most people see it like that, but it’s a significant strain of thought in come circles. — Wayfarer
concept to what I have in mind. All life seems to exhibit intent, living organisms seem to want to do something as opposed to following the normal course of events either chemically or in a physics sense. What I'm getting at is in some sense encapsulated in the expression "a life of its own." — TheMadFool
But leaving that aside, naturalism also methodologically excludes the possibility that there might be alternative cognitive modes or ways-of-knowing about which the sensorily-grounded methods of empirical science can detect nothing. — Wayfarer
Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, — Richard Lewontin
One of the things I think it says is that, to all intents, for this kind of thinking, science *is* a religion. Hence, 'the religion of scientism'. — Wayfarer
I think anyone on a spiritual path has a sense of trying to navigate to a higher destiny. — Wayfarer
St Augustine said that 'miracles are not against nature, they're against what we understand about nature'. — Wayfarer
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