Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Meta-Absolutes
Meta-Absolutes: I take it that there is a God. God has blessed America with a founding on Judeo-Christian values. The Ten Commandments, Great Commandment, Golden Rule -- those work. And I think they work for a meta-reason. I am with Mr. Duke that we can ill afford to turn our backs on that founding. I see it as part of my task to help convince others. I do not see it as my right to enlist government to force others to profess belief in such values. To my subjective intuition, I see such values as "meta-absolutes," insofar as we seem to have been guided by a good and strong Providence to them. But I am uneasy at mixing Conscious Will with Indifferent Matter to try to come up with some kind of purely objective absolute. For those who want to follow God as most of us "understand" God, you will want to follow those commandments. If you do not want to follow God as such, I cannot materially, objectively, prove or KNOW that you are violating an absolute -- even if I BELIEVE that you are. Insofar as Mr. Duke is encouraging strengthening of belief in such commandments, I agree that such effort is vital. Because the alternative is a deep fall ... for citizens and country alike. One may ask oneself: Is it worth the fall, to push America to criminalize the public inculcation of Judeo-Christian values just in order to spread around a few more pleasures?
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Rift In Language Of Intuitionists and Empiricists:
There is a fundamental rift in the world. There are people of good faith who follow a path of empiricism and other people who follow a path of intuitive insight. One side is prone to see the world as being based purely in scientific materialism, while the other is prone to see the world as being based primarily with a metaphysical Source. Presently, our models and language are too ambiguously undeveloped to facilitate much worthwhile communication between the two sides. In fact, pure materialists deem all metaphysics to be counterproductive, silly, or dangerous. Of course, they lack power so to "deem." (Who do they think they are? Lol.)
To me, it seems meaningful life is occupied with trying to appreciate the Source by which irreconcilables should be, and are, reconciled. The meta-reconcilable/irreconcilables are: Will and Cause.
I suspect significant aspects of our religious and scientific models comprise important way stations towards the truth about the Source. Still, there is work to be done if we are better to appreciate the "interpenetrating" relationship between that which is measurably causal and that which is consciously chosen. So long as we remain mired in models and terminology that support only one side or the other, we will gain few new insights about such interrelationships. Interesting ideas for how to approach reconciliation of Will with Causation are found in The Atheist and the God Particle.
I suspect there is good news: Materialism has no power to eliminate or reduce Conscious Will (or its derivative -- moral choice making).
Anonymous said...
Big Gov vs. Judeo-Christian values --
and the Unfolding Design of Creation: Obviously, consciousness, in how it apprehends and reacts to feedback from the material environment, affects the unfolding design and evolution of the environment.
A more interesting concern relates to whether the feedback effect of such consciousness is apprehended and reacted to at a holistic, meta level of consciousness (in God). How may perspectives and empathies of consciousness come to be organized? Does their feedback find organization in meta ways, which are horizontal, vertical, and fluxing? (Feedback processing: does each material brain signify reduction of each decision to the conscious communication of its organism only after a higher aspect of consciousness has already made the decision, a split sequence before? Is matter merely logos for consciousness?)
By definition, it would seem that no material testing could confirm existence of a binding organization of immaterial aspects of consciousness. Rather, respect for the wholeness and the parts of consciousness is derivable, if at all, in abstract intuition and math. One intuits and believes consciousness is holistically connected, or one does not.
We can rationally believe that a meta interconnection of perspectives of consciousness appertains, but we cannot prove that, because we cannot create, control, replicate, or predict the unfolding path of its holistic aspect. At most, we can rationalize backwards, by feedback, about how to relate onwards to the Oneness of consciousness.
The good news is, as we respect the Source of our need to act in good faith and good will, that is enough to guide a meaningful life. The bad news is, those who willfully remain blind to the role of higher empathy in leading responsible lives will lurch about, desperately trying to fill the holes that are their purposelessness with the kind of materialism that has no power to fill those holes. And they will crave and push your company towards those depths. To do that, they will use all available force, including force of government ... to no good end.
Compare http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfdUrGTSFls&feature=related
From A.T. -- Re: “In other words, since the moral concepts of good and evil are social constructs that tend to organically emerge within any given cultural setting, we can arbitrarily fashion a moral paradigm where actions can be judged as good or evil, and we can bypass any invocations of a higher being we have to eventually answer to. We thereby answer only to ourselves.”
Except as we are dignified to enjoy feedback relationships with the wider context whose Author is Meta, we will be taxed to look to priests or elites to give and enforce our moral constructs. Personally, I prefer getting my feedback tally from Meta. And the feedback (karma?) ensures I have more to answer to than just myself.
Re: http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/exodus/exodus21.htm
Well, it takes all kinds to make a world. I would not lay down the laws as written in exodus to be immutable laws for all time, nor would I consider any holy book to be our entire or exclusive repository for how to relate to God or morality. God is too potent to be encompassed within a book. And laws evolve within a civilization of perspectives of consciousness, not altogether unlike how species evolve.
I suspect many of the laws laid down in Exodus were deemed improvements at the time. If wealth and empathy improve, future civilizations may consider our present laws backward. Or, if craziness, greed, and access to WMD explode, the present may be our high water mark for human decency.
The thing is, we try to do the best we can in the space-time context we are dealt. So how do we do that? I don’t see how we can do that with nothing but pure reason. I suspect consciousness carries something with it, beyond indifferent, material cause and effect. In any event, consciousness exists. So, as it becomes more apparent that it cannot be entirely reduced to material explanation, what are we to make of it?
Well, whatever we come to make of it, we are going to need means for extending good faith and good will. We cannot just leave that to our scientific or elite betters. Not decently; not without being reduced to slaves or robots.
We will make many choices, and many of them will have little to do with logic, reason, or empiricism. They will be based on a feedback relationship with our entire context. Pursuing that relationship entails something more than pursuing pure reason. IMHO.
From A.T. --
“There is nothing about our 'atomic constructions' that precludes consciousness arising as an emergent property.”
Well, has there been a single case showing consciousness to have arisen as an emergent property?
“As for dodging the burden of proof with your false assertion that atheist are asserting another form of 'revealed truth' about the nature of our world and existence, nothing could be farther from the truth.”
If we were discussing agnostics, I may concur. But an atheist takes the position that there is no causal source worth considering, outside measurable physics, is that not the case?
If we were discussing only that which is measurable, again, I may concur. But in what way is morality, insofar as it deals with that which we should do, strictly confined to that which is measurable, as opposed to including that which in intuitive yet beyond empirical proof?
“Atheists simply assert that the evidence presented to them is insufficient to support the theories of spirituality on offer from various proponents of theistic philosophies - Christian or other.”
Yes, but you’re engaging a bit of a circular device. You’re assuming there can be no good reason to respect belief in God unless God is measurable to empirical evidence, and then, finding no evidence, you feign to prove there is sufficient reason to believe.
What you imply to be unreasonable is that many intuit, believe, or find that consciousness and the empathy that flows from it, absent empirical evidence to the contrary, suggest moral responsibility for exercising will.
You imply that one “should” refrain from so believing until scientific elites have had time to see if they can produce consciousness out of nothing but inanimate matter.
Well, WHY should one so refrain, and how long should scientists be given to work on that problem? In the meantime, to what source or elites should we look for moral guidance? And what is wrong with the guidance (Ten Commandments, Golden Rule) that have been worked out under religious traditions of Western Civilization?
“The technique is simple, start from an assumed belief in God and then claim that the atheist needs to disprove it.”
I’m not quite getting how this kind of haughty jibe is supposed to be indicative of good faith communication. The more pertinent concern would seem to be: Acknowledge a need for good faith communication about moral interests, and then explore how best to facilitate them.
From A.T. --
Jb said, "The fact is that the need for a morality is implicit in the nature of human consciousness."
I would agree with that, although I think the word "human" is not necessary to the point. But the gist begs a question: why is a need for morality "implicit in the nature of ... consciousness"? IOW, what does that say about the "nature" of consciousness, in respect of development of, and responsibility for, free will? What is so wrong with referring to the mystery of the meta-answer to that question with the word, God? If the concern is that "God" has been too hijacked by wrongheaded authoritarians pretending to speak for God, then the better response would seem to be to deepen and widen our respect for what "God" may be. But how are we going to do that, if we cannot even refer to the concept without upsetting hackles and building walls?
See http:/ /en.wikipedia. org/wiki / William_Hughes_Mearns:
Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away
A limerick by Ronald Knox and an anonymous reply:
There was a young man who said "God
Must find it exceedingly odd
To think that the tree
Should continue to be
When there's no one about in the quad."
"Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd;
I am always about in the quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God."
At best, I suspect we only intuit or believe that there is basis for making moral judgments. I don't see how we can prove the issue with material-based empiricism. Insofar as we care about trying to make consistent or objective moral judgments, what do we look to? Do we look to traditional, conservative, family-friendly notions of right and wrong that seem to have worked relatively well, or do we follow the leader of the flavor of the day? Do we put it to a vote, to decide between a Cult of the Supreme Being versus a Cult of Reason? See http: // en.wikipedia.org/wiki / Republic_of_Virtue. Problem is, to put it to a political vote would be to put it under control of government.
We don’t know, but we remain uneasy, because we do know that we have no choice but to make choices. And we have no objective way to prove precisely what choices we should make. Given this predicament, traditional habits of belief offer solace for rallying guidance, while expecting answers to moral dilemmas by resorting to pure reason seems delusional.
I appreciate agnosticism (since professing belief seems another way for professing not to have empirical proof). But I don’t quite see the point for the stance of atheism, except as a wedge device, to try to get fundamentalists to be more receptive to changing contexts that challenge old literalisms.
In any event, Dawkins’ “unbelievers” (and they’re quite loud about it) apparently “believe” we should engage in some assimilative form of social charity. But unless they have empirical proof for precisely how we ought to do that, it seems to me that they are simply transferring their subjective frame of reference for guiding what we should do. Instead of individual conscience in respect of a higher Source, they are transferring allegiance to the moral reasoning of elite mortals. That is, I don’t see how they escape the problem of “needing to believe,” insofar as we cannot know.
So, what should be one’s focus for inspiring, communicating, and assimilating moral purposefulness? Should it be church-based, participatory receptivity to higher Conscience? Should it be instruction from our elite betters? Should it be anarchic?
I don’t think there is an objective answer. But I do think there is an answer for best helping America to retain its assimilating values, which, in main, have guided us since our founding.
People who lack capacity to intuit a higher Source entertain their need to believe in something by believing in people like Obama. Problem is, people like Obama tend to believe only in themselves. We have circled this drain before, but the self-grading "Brights" never quite get it. And now we have put them in power.
Insofar as Barry and Hillary both see America as being in dire need of fundamental change, they believe there is much merit in what our most vociferous enemies say. So why expect Barry or Hillary to avoid being goaded? They are dutiful goats for their cause, all the while keeping their eyes on the prize. The more we refuse Obama's fixes, the more he will hate Americans and grease the way for our enemies. These are parlous times. All institutions of significance -- media, academia, Congress, and probably many churches -- are brimming over with elite socialistic leadership. If America pulls back from the black hole of collectivism, it will be because our faux elites all fell for a fundamental misperception about the character of ordinary Americans.
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