Or maybe not agree but at least you found that funny.

Reading from a book on ethics, chapter covering moral realism, I found a quote that I think is quite relevant:

"On the one hand, we have the idea of a moral fact as a fact about what we have reason to do or not to do. On the other, we have the idea of a moral fact in terms of what tends towards social stability and unrest. If the question is 'Which conception allows us to make the best sense of moral argument?' then the answer must surely be the former. For, to the extent that moral argument does focus on what tends towards social stability, it does so because social stability is deemed morally important, an outcome we have reason to produce.

Indeed, it seems that even this kind of moral realist's focus on explanation pushes us back in the direction of the idea of a moral fact as a fact about what we have reason to do. For, again, to the extent that we think of right acts as acts that tend towards social stability, we think that they have this tendency because they represent the reasonable thing for people to do. It is the tendency people have to do what is reasonable that is doing the explanatory work. But that, too, simply returns us to the original conception of a moral fact in terms of what we have reason to do. (We might say similar things about the idea that we can characterize a moral fact in terms of the proper function of human beings; for insofar as we understand the idea of the 'proper function' of human beings, we think that their proper function is to be reasonable and rational.)"

Ethics is the study of what we ought to do, based on rational reasons-for-action prescribed to individuals within or without a community. In order to be a convincing ethics, then, any normative theory needs to give good reasons for action, reasons that any rational individual will understand (and hopefully agree on).

(Ignoring apo's derail to address the OP quote)

We can question the is-ought gap by a couple of examples:

1.) Everything I say is true.
2.) I say having children is wrong.
3.) Therefore, having children is wrong. — darthbarracuda

This looks like a cheap trick, and it is. Here is an even simpler example:

1. The proposition "having children is wrong" is true.
2. Therefore, having children is wrong.

As in the original, the premise is ostensibly non-moral: the original premises both assert some facts about me, in my example the premise asserts a fact about some proposition. But of course, in my example disquotation yields a moral premise, and similarly, in the original example dereferencing yields the same moral premise. Indeed, we couldn't validly obtain the conclusion in either example if disquotation/dereferencing was not implied!

So the claim that by this sort of argument you can get a moral conclusion from non-moral premises is not true.

As I suspected. You are not here to defend an argument. You just want an excuse to chip in with the ad homs. Stroll on buddy. — apokrisis

I'm not here to defend an argument against someone who makes exactly the same argument and then calls me a solipsist. Buddy.

don't think it's necessary to have a super-sophisticated metaphysics in order for ethics to take off, as if we couldn't do ethics without some sort of Cartesian-style metaphysics-in-the-service-of-ethics. The two above quotations are qualifications enough, I think, because they don't demand any sort of (non-trivial) metaphysics while simultaneously being extremely compelling. — darthbarracuda

What exactly do you mean by "...for ethics to take off"? There's a distinct difference between producing a code of ethics, and producing within other people, the will to follow a code of ethics. When you refer to "doing ethics", I assume you are talking about the former, thinking about morality, what's good and what's bad, and philosophizing about what people should and shouldn't be doing.

But what is important in ethics is how to get people inspired to act morally, and this is where metaphysics is useful. So in your final sentence, you say that the two quotations are "extremely compelling". Can you tell me what it is, about those statements, which compels you? And, can you tell me in what way do they compel you? Do they incline you to act morally, and if so, how?

"On the one hand, we have the idea of a moral fact as a fact about what we have reason to do or not to do. — darthbarracuda

So here we have the very same issue, stated with different words. Ask yourself, what gives you reason to do something, or what gives you reason not to do something, which you might otherwise be inclined to do. This is the same question as "what compels you?".

Indeed, it seems that even this kind of moral realist's focus on explanation pushes us back in the direction of the idea of a moral fact as a fact about what we have reason to do. For, again, to the extent that we think of right acts as acts that tend towards social stability, we think that they have this tendency because they represent the reasonable thing for people to do. It is the tendency people have to do what is reasonable that is doing the explanatory work. But that, too, simply returns us to the original conception of a moral fact in terms of what we have reason to do. (We might say similar things about the idea that we can characterize a moral fact in terms of the proper function of human beings; for insofar as we understand the idea of the 'proper function' of human beings, we think that their proper function is to be reasonable and rational.)" — darthbarracuda

We have the following phrase in this passage "...the idea of a moral fact as a fact about what we have reason to do." First, we need to respect the fact that "reason" can be used very ambiguously, and even equivocally. The "reason" why I act, refers to the thing which compels me to act. In this sense, there is no good or bad inherent within "reason", as the act may be good or bad, both have reasons for them. There are reasons for the bad act just as much as there are reasons for the good act. From this sense of "reason" we have the word "rationalize", which is what a person does to give reason to an act which was bad. Because of this, it is a mistake to say that morality, is determined by "reason", we have reason to do bad acts just as much as we have reason to do good acts. We have "reason to do" bad acts just as much as we have reason to do good acts.

Further on, there is reference to what is "reasonable", the "reasonable thing" to do. In this sense of "reason", an attempt has been made to remove the bad reasons for acting, such that there is some objectively good form of reason, and this underpins "reasonable". This assumes that there is a particular way of reasoning, which the good person will follow, and this is what we call "reasonable". But this is not a well-grounded assumption. Each person thinks in different ways from others, and acts in different ways from others, under the same circumstances. So the assumption that there is a particular objectively reasonable, way of behaving is really unfounded. If we assume that there are many different ways of thinking and behaving under the same conditions, many of which are equally "reasonable", how would we distinguish which of the many different ways are unreasonable?

For the 1001st time you will be pleased to hear that I generalise the notion of mind to the metaphysics of sign. So - pansemiotically - the Cosmos has telos or values, even if of the most attenuated kind from our point of view. — apokrisis

Assuming that's true for argument's sake, you still haven't explained why we should care about such "telos or values".

This failure seems to be the nub of the problem for your claim that an immanently naturalistic metaphysical underpinning of ethics is possible.

So do you have to care about gravity or not?

What I explain is both what we need to care about and what we don't. The world is a hierarchy of increasingly generalised constraints. So something like gravity or thermodynamics are global constraints on our freedoms. And yet if we work within those bounds, that by definition becomes our degrees of freedom.

It's hardly rocket science. But the difference lies in accepting this is the logical structure of nature. Humans aren't nature's exception. We play by the usual cosmological rules. And so even ethical and aesthetic complexity can be explained as pragmatic. Organisation that reflects the "spirit" of the Cosmos.

For anyone interested in the actual application of dissipative structure theory to social order, books are being written about it - http://download.e-bookshelf.de/download/0000/0015/66/L-G-0000001566-0002335645.pdf

Even if the desire the Universe encodes is its heat death, isn't Thanatos or a death drive recognised as a telos in Romantic/Freudian thought? — apokrisis

Strictly Freudian. Nothing to do with the romantics AFAIK.

(New book out - Dance to the Tune of Life: Biological Relativity, Denis Noble. The first customer review provides a good synopsis. Noble is a noted biologist, contributed to invention of the heart pacemaker.)

Ethics is the study of what we ought to do, based on rational reasons-for-action prescribed to individuals within or without a community. In order to be a convincing ethics, then, any normative theory needs to give good reasons for action, reasons that any rational individual will understand (and hopefully agree on). — darthbarracuda

Are you familiar with After Virtue by Alisdair McIntyre? It is said to be one of the seminal texts of modern ethical theory. The central thesis is...

...the Enlightenment's abandonment of Aristotelianism, and in particular the Aristotelian concept of teleology. Ancient and medieval ethics, argues MacIntyre, relied wholly on the teleological idea that human life had a proper end or character, and that human beings could not reach this natural end without preparation. Renaissance science rejected Aristotle's teleological physics as an incorrect and unnecessary account, which led Renaissance philosophy to make a similar rejection in the realm of ethics. But shorn of teleology, ethics as a body of knowledge was expurgated of its central content, and only remained as, essentially, a vocabulary list with few definitions and no context. With such an incomplete framework on which to base their moral understanding, the philosophers of the Enlightenment and their successors were doomed from the beginning.

I'm inclined to agree, although I don't believe that Aristoteleanism is the sole repository of ethical wisdom. But the demise of any idea of telos is nevertheless fundamental to the whole 'is/ought' problem; it was that which Hume was reflecting in the passage quoted previously.

The ascendancy of nominalism in philosophy was the main precursor of these events.

the appeal to [Platonic] forms or [Aristotelean] natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom (sapientia), traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. Preoccupied with overcoming Cartesian skepticism, it often seems as if philosophy’s highest aspiration is merely to secure some veridical cognitive events. Rarely sought is a more robust goal: an authoritative and life-altering wisdom. Notice: even if contemporary philosophers came to a consensus about how to overcome Cartesian doubt and secure certainty, it is not clear that this would do anything to repair the fragmentation and democratization of the disciplines, or to make it more plausible that there could be an ordered hierarchy of sciences, with a highest science, acknowledged as queen of the rest—whether we call it first philosophy, or metaphysics, or wisdom.

What's Wrong with Ockham?

As it is, the residue of all of this is what philosopher Richard Bernstein designated as 'Cartesian anxiety', which is 'the notion that, ever since René Descartes promulgated his influential form of body-mind dualism, Western civilization has suffered from a longing for ontological certainty, or feeling that scientific methods, and especially the study of the world as a thing separate from ourselves, should be able to lead us to a firm and unchanging knowledge of ourselves and the world around us'.

↪John
So do you have to care about gravity or not? — apokrisis

Well, I have to take account of it if I want to survive. But I don't think gravity qualifies as "telos or value"and I don't see how it has any ethical or moral implications..

Which do we celebrate more - going up the mountain or trotting back down?

Ancient and medieval ethics, argues MacIntyre, relied wholly on the teleological idea that human life had a proper end or character, and that human beings could not reach this natural end without preparation.

I don't know if this is from Wikipedia, Wayfarer, but I just wanted to comment that to me this summary is somewhat inverted. Human beings, like every other creature or object known, have an 'ergon' in Aristotelian terms. This is sometimes translated as 'function' but it might be best left to its own devices since we know for instance how to call things 'ergonomic'. It corresponds reasonably well to 'ecological niche', in a modern revisionary version of neo-Aristotelianism. The cosmic order involves everything having a particular nature and place.

It is then part of this human ergon to have a certain telos or end. For Aristotelian humanity that's eudaimonia, a form of good achieved through virtuous living. The purposiveness, that is to say, comes second to the niche and flows from it.

This approach to Aristotle can with quite a bit of pushing and pulling be shaped into the sort of systematic 'new naturalistic' approach that apo favours, as I read it. It certainly has an ecological ring.

It's not easy to fit, though, for Aristotle's idea of order is not a 'natural order' but a social one, albeit one far from what MacIntyre calls the modern 'Weberian' view, which is what MacIntyre takes to be almost all-encompassing nowadays: a fragmented set of remnants from lost moralities re-formed one way or another by a managerial/bureaucratic ethos...greatest good as decreed by Taylorism, say...or greed-is-good individualism....or State benevolence with varying control and surveillance added for ill measure.

MacIntyre in turn contrasts the Aristotelian approach with the tragic approach of Sophocles/Euripides - that certain virtues inevitably conflict with each other, and in tragic circumstances one's commitment to one virtue does not shield one from the consequences of the other that one does not commit to.

What I explain is both what we need to care about and what we don't. The world is a hierarchy of increasingly generalised constraints. So something like gravity or thermodynamics are global constraints on our freedoms. And yet if we work within those bounds, that by definition becomes our degrees of freedom.

It's hardly rocket science. But the difference lies in accepting this is the logical structure of nature. Humans aren't nature's exception. We play by the usual cosmological rules. And so even ethical and aesthetic complexity can be explained as pragmatic. Organisation that reflects the "spirit" of the Cosmos.

For anyone interested in the actual application of dissipative structure theory to social order, books are being written about it — apokrisis

The problem is that you want to believe that the balance of good and bad experiences somehow make the process generally "good" because that just "is" what happens. However, while being the phenomenological agent experiencing the good and bad, it is much different than looking at it from a disinterested observer who simply notes the interplay of the two in experience from afar. I'm going to call your approach "Nietzschean" simply because you want there to be an ethics beyond "good and evil" or in this case "good and bad". However, whether or not the two interplay in nature means nothing to the individual experiencing it.

No matter how much Nietzschean logic you apply to the situation, there will always be a measure of a more ideal situation. Even Buddhism and Stoicism or any system has a better situation, which may entail not judging something better..but that more ideal state is something that is not happening NOW and is continuously foisted upon the practitioner to "better themselves" against their system's ideal. Anyways, the point is that even if there is the interspersed balancing act of good and bad and intertwined mixture of the two, the ideal of better is going to be there, because humans naturally have counterfactual analysis of what could have been or could be the case (but is currently not). This in itself shows this Nietzschean approach is not "good" because it "is" how things are. We would have had it differently, but it is not that way. One can paint the yin/yang Tao symbol and say "see" this is elegant, except the fact that when the actual phenomenol Dasein experiencer goes through life, it is not a disinterested Tao but an actual organism that is experiencing the good and bad. It is not elegant, it is the tumultuous nature of living in power structures, living in social structures, living in psychological structures, living in existential structures. You have again gotten too carried away with your maps and forget the terrain.

Sure gravity is a constraint on us; something that makes activities both difficult and possible. It is undeniably a very big, perhaps even the biggest, part of the conditions under which we live, and certainly even for the very possibility of our living the kinds of lives we live. But whether we celebrate going up or coming back down the mountain will depend not on gravity, but on our moral character. We probably don't value the difficulty of climbing the mountain simply for itself, but more likely for the changes that overcoming the difficulty in order to climb, or simply the act of climbing, might bring about in us.

There are so many different possible reasons why someone might want to climb a mountain, and they might thus value the climb, or being on the top, or the descent, depending on the reasons for wanting to be up there, to go up there, or to get it over and done with. In any case gravity itself is not the value, but merely provides the difficulty (and in a global sense the possibility) we find ourselves faced with if we want, or need, for whatever reasons that do involve vales, to climb a mountain.

So how, in your solipsistic ethics, do you handle paedophiles and crack addicts? They are just doing what makes them feel good, right? Should you be able to curtail their pleasures by introducing some kind of constraint on their lives?

And is virtue not a good even if virtue means some degree of personal sacrifice?

Where do your ethical simplicities stop and some real moral theory start?

We probably don't value the difficulty of climbing the mountain simply for itself, but more likely for the changes that overcoming the difficulty in order to climb, or simply the act of climbing, might bring about in us. — John

So you agree that gravity has a direction in that regard? For some reason, making an effort is morally improving. The underlying entropic telos of nature has come into sight right there.

In any case gravity itself is not the value, but merely provides the difficulty (and in a global sense the possibility) we find ourselves faced with if we want, or need, for whatever reasons that do involve vales, to climb a mountain. — John

Sure, the difficulty is the value. That is, the difference in gravitational potential that has been thus created.

So this is the simple example that illustrates the general principle. Human morality is naturally focused on the notion of building the potential for powerful action. We have to sweat to build muscle - whether that is physical, mental or emotional muscle. It costs a lot of entropy production to get there, but we see it as the highest good to build a psychosocial capacity for negentropic action.

This approach to Aristotle can with quite a bit of pushing and pulling be shaped into the sort of systematic 'new naturalistic' approach that apo favours, as I read it. It certainly has an ecological ring. — mcdoodle

Natural philosophy is this hierarchical approach to telos. The telic is understood as a cascade of increasingly specified constraints.

So telos can be parsed as {teleomaty {teleonomy {teleology}}}. That is, a hierarchically developing gradation from universal tendencies to general functions to private purposes.

The Cosmos only has to have its telomatic tendencies to be considered telic. But for Baconian scientism, even this maximally attentuated notion of human purpose is heresy. So naturalism is outside the mainstream in that regard.

See for instance http://www.nbi.dk/natphil/salthe/Meaning_as_Finality.pdf

In order for Nature to become susceptible to a semiotic analysis, we need to reconstruct our model of the physical-chemical world, as irreducibly triadic. This amounts to a need to incorporate into our accounts of Nature some generalized form of meaning. I suggest in this paper that such meaning can be assimilated to finality.

I certainly agree that we value potence over impotence, and that seems natural enough insofar as the difference has practical import. Beyond the ambit of practical significance it becomes more complicated. But in any case this practical understanding of human potential is basic, and self-evident to us and doesn't seem to rely on any abstruse science or metaphysics, or even on science and metaphysics at all, but rather on our everyday experience of how we feel when we succeed and fail, and so on. I think such practical understandings of human potential, struggle and character are more or less universally encountered.

Right. So there are two ways you are prepared to view my contributions here. Either I'm wrong, or if I'm right, I'm only stating the obvious.

Cool.

But the point of all the abstruseness is to get beyond the commonsense level of analysis and develop general mathematical models of natural phenomena. A theory of these things allows for concrete measurement and prediction.

Commonsense is always handy. But knowledge is more potent.

I don't say that a naturalistic understanding of ethics, based in science would be wrong; if it is good science it should be right. I say that when we want to get beyond the practical sphere it would be inadequate. Scientific understanding is neither necessary nor sufficient for understanding ethics in its fully human, subjective and inter-subjective dimensions. Literature, the arts, and religion do a much better job when we want to get beyond purely practical (pragmatic) considerations.

Again, I would say that to deny this, to deny the importance of the humanities, the arts and religion, or to attempt to reduce them to science; is to exaggerate the potential and the importance of science, in other words to be a proponent of scientism. For me, that just is what it means. But I also acknowledge that there is room for more than one view on these kinds of questions, in the sense that others are entitled to their views, and that a diversity of views, even if some of them must be wrong, or at least less right, is nonetheless a good thing; do you?

It is then part of this human ergon to have a certain telos or end. For Aristotelian humanity that's eudaimonia, a form of good achieved through virtuous living. The purposiveness, that is to say, comes second to the niche and flows from it. — mcdoodle

I think one of the key points of McIntyre's book is the loss of any idea of telos whatsoever. The SEP entry on Aristotelean ethics notes in respect of 'ergon' that:

The good of a human being must have something to do with being human; and what sets humanity off from other species, giving us the potential to live a better life, is our capacity to guide ourselves by using reason. If we use reason well, we live well as human beings; or, to be more precise, using reason well over the course of a full life is what happiness consists in. Doing anything well requires virtue or excellence, and therefore living well consists in activities caused by the rational soul in accordance with virtue or excellence.

Whereas the modern conception of reason is that it is essentially adaptive or instrumental - reason, like anything else, evolves through adapative necessity, as a means to an end.

This approach to Aristotle can with quite a bit of pushing and pulling be shaped into the sort of systematic 'new naturalistic' approach — mcdoodle

Where in this schema does 'contemplation of the One' fit in? That is the 'acme of reason' for Aristotle, as for all Platonists. It is at once aesthetic, intellectual, and spiritual.

The happiest life is lived by someone who has a full understanding of the basic causal principles that govern the operation of the universe, and who has the resources needed for living a life devoted to the exercise of that understanding.

(From article mentioned above.)

Literature, the arts, and religion do a much better job when we want to get beyond purely practical (pragmatic) considerations. — John

Folk are always saying this kind of thing. But on what grounds should my freedoms be constrained by artistic or religious notions? Can you provide a specific example that isn't simply already commonsense.

You are making a pretty huge claim in saying "Literature, the arts, and religion do a much better job...". You might need to back that up with the evidence.

But I also acknowledge that there is room for more than one view on these kinds of questions, in the sense that others are entitled to their views, and that a diversity of views, even if some of them must be wrong, or at least less right, is nonetheless a good thing; do you? — John

No, I don't support a diversity of views just so that folk can be wrong. I don't see that as an important right to uphold. Paedophiles, psychopaths, crack addicts, nazis ... I'm quite happy with the idea that diversity has its limits.

This is of course a natural principle. In a flourishing system, a balance must be struck between stability and plasticity, constraint and freedom. So the genetic variation of species is tuned to suggest many small tweaks and avoid creating a generation of "hopeful monsters".

A natural system will evolve an appropriate balance of diversity. There is a creative optimum where the system ensures it has sufficient variety so that it can continue to learn and adapt, given the irreducible unpredictability or vagueness of the future. Things are "good" when the degree of diversity matches the degree of uncertainty in accurate fashion.

You are making a pretty huge claim in saying "Literature, the arts, and religion do a much better job...". — apokrisis

I'll have a go. One of the consequences of the scientific revolution was science as a 'mode of knowing' that proceeded by deliberately bracketing out the subjective. The idea was that what was amenable to mathematical quantization is the primary reality, and what is subjective is delegated to the mind/soul/observer, and made in some basic sense private. That is why when you say 'show us the data', you know full well that nobody can - the 'data' about such matters is not actually data at all but 'lived experience', which can't be quantified or analysed in the 'third person' in the way that the subjects of scientific analysis is able to be.

(This is the subject of Thomas Nagel's book The View from Nowhere. There's a synopsis here.)

Your semiotic approach allows for that possibility of first-person knowledge, but only in the sense that it is able to simulate it. It is very much like the kind of understanding you would have to have to program a very sophisticated 'Sim Earth' type of computer game. It models life and mind far more successfully than the old reductionist paradigm that has been rightly abandoned, by the introduction of the 'triadic' structure of subject, sign and referent. But it's still not a 'first philosophy' in the sense of being a guide to lived experience, in my opinion - which is what I presume John was referring to in 'literature, the arts, and religion'.

Folk are always saying this kind of thing. But on what grounds should my freedoms be constrained by artistic or religious notions? Can you provide a specific example that isn't simply already commonsense. — apokrisis

Science enables us to understand the mechanics of what we are (physically) constrained by, but it does not inform us as to what we should do in situations involving ethical or moral choice. Studying, and practical and affective involvement with, the humanities, religion, literature and the arts generally leads to a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the human condition in subjective and inter-subjective terms than can ever be achieved by mere scientific measurement and modeling. Of course that deeper understanding cannot be formulated as determinate models in the ways that scientific knowledge may be. That goes without saying. If you are promoting the idea that the only important knowledge is the knowledge that can be determinately modeled, then you are promoting scientism and you are devaluing the humanities, the arts and religion. I for one, would not want to live in a society that enforced or even instilled such values. I think such a society would inevitably devolve into a robotic mono-culture.

This is of course a natural principle. In a flourishing system, a balance must be struck between stability and plasticity, constraint and freedom. So the genetic variation of species is tuned to suggest many small tweaks and avoid creating a generation of "hopeful monsters". — apokrisis

This is simply a diversion to a "slippery slope" argument as I see it. Of course a balance is desirable, but I don't believe the kind of balance you are extolling here can ever be precisely struck, and nor should it ever be attempted as artifice. That would amount to social engineering.

Yes, you explained it in another way, but very well! 8-)

One of the consequences of the scientific revolution was science as a 'mode of knowing' that proceeded by deliberately bracketing out the subjective. — Wayfarer

But isn't this exactly what my semiotic naturalism is about - bringing four causes thinking back into scientific thought?

So there is a dualistic divide which most of the posters here embrace - matter vs mind.

And I speak for a pansemiotic holism - matter and sign.

The idea was that what was amenable to mathematical quantization is the primary reality, and what is subjective is delegated to the mind/soul/observer, and made in some basic sense private. — Wayfarer

Yep. There is a good reason for mathematical quantification to be the "ultimate" in this regard.

Once we accept semiosis as our epistemic condition - we can't experience the world in transcendentally direct fashion, we can only form a pragmatic sign relation - then numbers are the most honest way of dealing with the noumenal. We drop all the pretence of dealing with reality in phenomenologically direct terms and treat our signs as openly and transparently just signs.

We didn't invent maths and science because it was a crazy thing to do. We did it to lift ourselves out of the merely biological to become a community of thinkers, self consciously employing an asbtracted system of sign.

But it's still not a 'first philosophy' in the sense of being a guide to lived experience, in my opinion - which is what I presume John was referring to in 'literature, the arts, and religion'. — Wayfarer

Sure, the mechanical view of nature leaves out most of what might matter. But I'm not arguing for the mechanical view here am I?

I'm not arguing for the mechanical view here am I? — apokrisis

No - but then, neither are a lot of the bio-sciences now, out of necessity. And physics, also. The Cartesian model of mind and matter, 'exhaustive and exclusive', is being well and truly superseded. But perhaps your presentation of the 'four causes', while it acknowledges their importance, doesn't do justice to the real depth of the Aristotelean 'final cause' in the sense of being the reason why things exist. That is not at all intended as a harsh criticism.

We didn't invent maths and science because it was a crazy thing to do. We did it to lift ourselves out of the merely biological to become a community of thinkers, self consciously employing an asbtracted system of sign. — apokrisis

I wouldn't ever say it was crazy. Again the historical background ought to be considered. Renaissance humanism re-introduced Platonism to European thought - Ficino published the first Latin edition of Plato's works. Kepler was attempting to prove the existence of the Platonic solids when he discovered the elliptical orbits of the Planets. So Platonism was hugely influential on Galileo. That was all behind Gallileo's 'the book of nature is written in mathematics', which is a Platonist intuition if ever there was one. And there is great truth in that, but I think also some profound issues about the nature of knowledge, and especially the nature of mind, were left out of the model (1). Accordingly, mind it is nowadays assumed to be a product of nature. I think the biosemiotic approach does offer an alternative to that - that is the direction it's heading. But I think, culturally, we're not there yet. There is another scientific revolution in the making, and I think biosemiosis is one element in that.

Science enables us to understand the mechanics of what we are (physically) constrained by, but it does not inform us as to what we should do in situations involving ethical or moral choice. — John

Right. Which is exactly where the thread started!

That goes without saying. If you are promoting the idea that the only important knowledge is the knowledge that can be determinately modeled, then you are promoting scientism and you are devaluing the humanities, the arts and religion. — John

How many more times must I say that my semiotic approach is founded not on determinism but indeterminism. Constraints and freedoms co-arise in mutually synergistic fashion.

And note how in progressive society, art is on the rise, religion on the demise. There are a lot of things you don't want to talk about in creating your "unified front" against Scientism.

The church once controlled social iconography and acted pretty viciously against the pagan alternatives. Modern art can still create a slight frisson with its "Piss Christs". But generally - in the secular civil society that now dominates the power discourse - the battle has been long won. Transgressive freedom is the new norm - the social marker for being a member of the true elite. Look at me. I can shove outrage in your face. I win.

So "art and religion"? Hah. Whether it is telling me that your big daddy in the sky is going to come and get me, or yours is the exclusive back-slapping club to which I can't belong, it always comes back to the pragmatics of social power.

Of course a balance is desirable, but I don't believe the kind of balance you are extolling here can ever be precisely struck, and nor should it ever be attempted. — John

If a balance is desirable, then why shouldn't a balance be attempted? Why would you let the perfect become the enemy of the good? (Or is this one of those non-commonsense examples of religious/artistic wisdom that I was asking for.)

That would amount to social engineering. — John

You mean like ... politics?

Accordingly, mind it is nowadays assumed that mind is a product of nature. I think the biosemiotic approach does offer an alternative to that - that is the direction it's heading. But I think, culturally, we're not there yet. There is another scientific revolution in the making, and I think biosemiosis is one element in that. — Wayfarer

It all boils down to the organisation of power. And power is organised through systems of signs. In nature, that is all mind is - the organising and directing of material flows in pursuit of purposes.

Religion and tradition used to control individual minds. Only social-level thoughts were thinkable. The duty of the individual was to police even their own feelings. Now that was power!

Then came the Enlightenment (the resumption of the Greek philosophical project). A new understanding of power - control over material flows - was created. It needed a new scientific language - a new level of semiosis. But the social stranglehold was broken. The abstractions of mechanism rapidly eroded the mental hold of the church.

But then the Enlightement led to Romanticism. The individual wanted a complete rupture and the right to claim authorship over their own symbols. Every person could - and thus should - craft their own private realm of semiosis. Interpretation of reality became solipsistic as a social right.

But as I say, this Nietzschean inversion was really about a pragmatic power grab - at least for those not too muddled in their thinking to appreciate the development of this new secular game. What more fun is there in the modern world than to be a priest of high culture?

Dress up in black, learn a few Nietzsche quotes, display your messed up tatts and your gender confusion as the stigmata of the blessed, get invited to the right openings, and you are good to go. Yep. It is all about organising power with systems of sign.

I like to tell my family that we all have a competitive animal in us, trying to dominate, and gain the throne. That world religions are usually about that one guy that killed it, and is now perfectly good -- only that's bullshit. It never goes away. Eternal vigilance.