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
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 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
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
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
dumb physical forces driven by the blind watchmaker - which I don't. — Wayfarer
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
This would be a slanted or polemical account of evolution, right? — Tom Storm
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.
One of Dawkins books is called 'The Blind Watchmaker'. — Wayfarer
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
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
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.
Is there a need to anthropomorphise this process? — Tom Storm
It by no means provides us with any evidence that evolution is directed by 'supernatural' powers. — Tom Storm
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
Dawkins will often say that the processes he describes give rise to the 'appearance of being designed'. — Wayfarer
Does the word have any referent, outside the activities of h. sapiens? — Wayfarer
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
Religion has had much to fear from science in general — plaque flag
One needs randomness too. These days we have the tools create our own simplified Natures in which we can follow evolution closely, for instance :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
Any religion has something to fear from scientific discovery is not worth respecting in my view — Wayfarer
He's critical of the idea of neodarwinian materialism purely on philosophical grounds, elaborated in his later Mind and Cosmos. — Wayfarer
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 ?entirely explained by the operation of the non-teleological laws of physics
In fact, Darwin explained 'purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world.' — plaque flag
Does the word have any referent, outside the activities of h. sapiens? — Wayfarer
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