The Sokal Hoax brought home how absurd it can be to suggest an approach to solving an assumed quantitative problem by resorting to mathematical analyses of concepts whose non-quantitative aspects are not first recast. That would be akin to trying to quantify how righteous is the sky. However, the Hoax could just as easily be inverted (a Lakos Hoax?), by suggesting that a given qualitative concern should be resolved by resorting strictly to non-qualitative apprehensions. This would be akin to deciding the extent to which a person (or witch?) was good or evil by counting the bubbles in any given quantity of her spit.
The more important concerns that we encounter will generally carry aspects both of the quantitative and the qualitative. We cannot resolve such concerns by resorting only to an appreciation of one or the other, the quantitative or the qualitative. We cannot scientifically prove a best ethics for how to advance science in every situation. We tend to presume our quantitative, math based science is rational, while our qualitative, moral based preferences are emotional. A moment's thought, however, tends to show the interface is much fuzzier than that. The quantitative is mixed with the qualitative because we tend to choose to measure that which draws our interest, and vice versa. An uneasy problem remains: How should we occupy ourselves in our given time, space and resources? Should we apply poetic license to whip ourselves into various states of caring, or should we (care so much about rational accuracy as to) remain indifferent? Is there some way to measure scales of "caring indifference?" It appears that emotional apprehensions will (and should?) always fuzz the paths of our technological unfoldments. Perhaps the last laugh will be on Sokal (or Lakos).
Unexpected feedback will always surprise a role for intuition, immateriality, poetry, inspiration, awe, and the source of each common beginning. In that, we share a moral connection with a unifying sponsor. To my lights, it tends to be love of semantics more than of truth, often born of frustration, that incites so many to prefer to say (for they cannot prove) that the Unifiying Sponsor is Some Thing not worthy of unifying reverence.
The more important concerns that we encounter will generally carry aspects both of the quantitative and the qualitative. We cannot resolve such concerns by resorting only to an appreciation of one or the other, the quantitative or the qualitative. We cannot scientifically prove a best ethics for how to advance science in every situation. We tend to presume our quantitative, math based science is rational, while our qualitative, moral based preferences are emotional. A moment's thought, however, tends to show the interface is much fuzzier than that. The quantitative is mixed with the qualitative because we tend to choose to measure that which draws our interest, and vice versa. An uneasy problem remains: How should we occupy ourselves in our given time, space and resources? Should we apply poetic license to whip ourselves into various states of caring, or should we (care so much about rational accuracy as to) remain indifferent? Is there some way to measure scales of "caring indifference?" It appears that emotional apprehensions will (and should?) always fuzz the paths of our technological unfoldments. Perhaps the last laugh will be on Sokal (or Lakos).
Unexpected feedback will always surprise a role for intuition, immateriality, poetry, inspiration, awe, and the source of each common beginning. In that, we share a moral connection with a unifying sponsor. To my lights, it tends to be love of semantics more than of truth, often born of frustration, that incites so many to prefer to say (for they cannot prove) that the Unifiying Sponsor is Some Thing not worthy of unifying reverence.
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To sever a religious form is not to sever God. To try to require that no religious form can be observed, in government or anywhere else, is not only depraved, but impossible. Moral pursuits are much improved in flavor as one apprehends that our words and forms are only indirect means for appreciating God. Much would be improved were more of us to apprehend that each of us is a perspective for availing appreciation of God. The good works would better be considered as mediators for ways of considering God; they are not themselves God. It is not for us to reconcile good and evil in ultimate terms, but only to participate in the effort. That participation tends to be more depraved, confused, hopeless, cynical, manipulative, incorrigibly deceptive, and anarchistic the more one tries to reconcile, "scientifically," that there abide higher values, but no reconciling God.
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