In the NOVEMBER 29 , 2010 issue of National Review, Edward Feser reviews The Grand Design, by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. Feser discusses Hawking’s notion relating to contingent reality and model dependent realism, to explain how it is old where it is defensible and muddled where it is original. That is, Hawking engages a fallacy of equivocation by conflating realism, instrumentalism, and idealism. Feser’s critique highlights the proneness of Hawking types to overstep their expertise in dealing with a conundrum: any contingent reality, like the universe, must depend upon a necessary being acknowledged as a necessary, i.e., the principle that nothing contingent can be the cause of itself.
Compare entries in the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, from “relations” through “relativism.” Consider the problem of trying to comprehend the difference between that which is relative and that which is essential, intrinsic, or holistic. Consider whether that which is essential may consist with a field that mediates that which we experience, model, and communicate about, as if such were measurable mass (having form, size, density, and motion), even while the way or substance by which the mediation effects our experience may be of an essence that defies scientific measure or empirical comprehension. That possibility must drive many scientists who wish to have faith only in science, rather than in a dance with God, into incoherence, if not madness.
Eventually, by a process of feedback and measurement, one may come to apprehend that one’s sensations entail interactions of fields and particles, i.e., relations charting expressions of particles operating within ranges and domains -- relating and changing among overlapping ranges and domains, and so on. The universe of ranges and domains most relevant to one’s experience will necessarily be the same universe of information-being-communicated that one shares with other perspectives that experience much the same information.
Abstracting further back, one may apprehend that consciousness of sensations of one’s mind is part of the entailment. Abstracting even further back, one may apprehend or intuit that one’s mind, itself, is part of a higher model or system, which is beyond the measure or empirical control of one’s mind. One may intuit that there is purpose, meaning, and goodness, yet apprehend that one is not completely the pilot of one’s mind. That is, a mortal mind is not so independently powerful as to be able to predict a future path for which it cannot change to cross different bridges as it comes to them. Nor is a mortal mind so powerful as to be able to measure or control that which does completely account for and pilot it.
What we can do is model various overlapping fields of ranges and domains. We can get a sense of our general direction and even make general, statistical measures of it. However, we cannot make a perfect model of that which allows us to make models. Rather, we can, in empathy, be guided by IT, to factor ever new information, to discover and empower ever new and powerful keys to combinations for ways of experiencing and communicating information. We cannot control IT, but we can be guided by it.
To observe oneself is to change oneself. That which determines or decides each change is always at least one step ahead. One may be copasetic with one’s Pilot, or not. If not, one’s Pilot may abandon cooperative interest, or take pointed action to demand harmonious regard.
When our scientists, pleasure seekers, and eaters of entrails come hubristically to presume they have no need of metaphysical empathy or guidance, that is when the lesser minds and diverse addicts that follow them come to believe we need not be guided by anything higher, but that we can continue to soar without IT. That is when the quality of empathy we need to sustain meaningful civilization begins rapidly to fall. That is when the Field of Consciousness begins afresh, to seek a relationship with more faithful and promising partners. And that is when civilizations fall and there is much gnashing of teeth.
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Suppose we were to accept as mortal limitation our incapacity to measurably explicate what conscious will consists of, beyond a logical construct that infers its existence, both as a field and as a particulate expression, perhaps with some generally measurable signs in the cumulative. How then might a model look that mixed such a variable with more quantifiable relations and variables? Could such a model be as precisely viable in many respects as any other current model? Compare Klingman’s The God Particle.
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From A.T. -- Look around. How many warning bells have already been silenced? Just because we take a breather does not mean the social anarchists are. Europe is being overrun by a population that is the nemesis of individual freedom of expression and enterprise. Free trade is being applied for Chinese and Islamist interests to corrupt or buy out Western Civilization, at least to the extent of wiping away individual freedoms in the name of multicultural sensitivities. Progs are clamoring during a time of war to micromanage the best judgments of our Army, Marine and Air Force commanders. Our national and state legislators are being punked by judges taught by Progs and appointed by Progs. Czars are leading departments and regulators to trump parents to the point of sexualizing school children. Religion is being ridiculed by state educators to such an extent that it may as well next be banned. More than a few scientists seem to be auditioning to be priests of new Gaia, as if they had knowledge and expertise to replace all traditional priests and ban religion, to intercede as messengers for Gaia in order to spread from minarets of science the gospel that there is no God but Gaia, who decrees that an invisible hand produces goodness as a result of all hands contriving to selfishness. What kind of “God” is this? Is this message inspirational? Does it promote assimilating or higher values? Is it sustainable?
Why, as I watch fiscal conservatives urging social conservatives not to raise social issues, do I think of German # 1 overpowering Pvt. Reiben in Saving Private Ryan, saying shush, shush, as he forces the knife to his heart? I recommend Ben Franklin’s autobiography. “So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.”
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@tradguy said, "The false choice is that morality must either come from religion or from government. Neither is true. Morality can be established without either one."
Depending on how terms are understood, I may agree. However, what is this "morality" that is to be established without either religion or government? Does it exist in realism, in idealism, or in pragmatic instrumentalism? Is morality a real existent, but one we approach to communicate about only with concepts? What are these concepts? Are they like religions or religious allegories? If there do abide higher values, of what may their existence be contingent upon? If we cannot communicate values apart from pushing various kinds of forms of mass (stored information?) against one another, thereby communicating concepts, then how can these concepts be other than stand ins (i.e., religious allegories) for the real thing? IOW, if religion is so bad, how can religion be avoided?
Where do these concepts come from? I think they come from basic empathy shared among perspectives of conscious will. If so, isn't that like a religion? Aren't religious allegories like figures of speech? Don't figures of speech facilitate language? Can a civilization cohere without common language and common allegories about values, religion, and God?
Some say we ought to be about more than being led around by our glands. Some say the glands are sensors for substantialism, and that substance is all there is to existence, indeed, that “the brain itself” is a gland. Thus, they say, neither God nor Gaia has any other way to inter-function with us.
I say that the brain is merely an organization of mass that serves as an instrument for receiving, storing, translating, and communicating impingements and connections among varying organizations of interconnecting masses (forms, sizes, densities, and motions). However, this does not answer what mass itself IS, nor why or how its variously relating organizations give rise to experiences of conscious will and qualities of sensations. Rather, that of which mass intrinsically consists and which avails capacity for experiencing conscious will may be thought of as being coordinate with a Field of Mind, to be distinguished from local, particular expressions or perspectives of consciousness.
Unlike brain, mind senses with something more fundamental than glands or other expressions of mass. Rather, mind is something more mysterious, which supports and creates, but is not created; which organizes, but is not organized; which defines and couples and identifies with that which it organizes, but is not organized by it. At some fundamental level, mind senses more than that which is limited by the forms of masses whose relations it organizes. That is, mind senses and appreciates feedback among its varying and dancing perspectives with something approaching the empathetic intuition of the metaphysical.
For mind, the gland pleasures are not the end of the message, but only the means, i.e., the means for carrying along more fundamental messages pertaining to empathies, ideas, and expanding perspectives and identities. Our purpose is not merely to orgy in baseness unto death. Our purpose is to facilitate higher expressiveness unto spirit. Our higher value pertains to how to dance with that, i.e., how to avail a civilization that celebrates that. Problem is, pursuing such higher values generally necessitates higher mindedness. Looking around, that quality does not seem especially prevalent. Political communication among ordinary folk seems riven with deceit, meant to obtain an upper hand in order to prey upon baser interests. Experience has not conditioned me to have much faith or trust in the conceits of either Rinos or Dinos. Show me the honest statesman who is passionately and mainly animated by desire to lead us to a decently fulfilling and sustainable civilization of general freedom of expression and enterprise. Mainly, what I intuit are competing camps of gland happy contenders, each camp feeling entitled by higher commission to prey upon the other. In between is generally found the class of middling moderates. Until we have more who are philosopher-kings over their own character, we will not have the character of electorate that we need in order "to form a more perfect union."
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