h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Edward, (responding to post 328)

Just peeping back into the window of this party...

In life we do not make decision exclusively through a logical positivist (a la A J Ayer) approach (though there are some cases where that is best - I acknowledge). For example if that part of your brain where emotional intelligence resides is damaged it is very difficult to make choices when things are finely balanced from a rational only perspective.

If you like to ask a person out for a date, and you like several "candidates" nevertheless you have to make a choice (and probably best to choose just one!).

When dealing with choices and "human truths" Mostly everyone uses their whole human faculty for making decisions. It is not a rational only process.

Furthermore it becomes potentially dangerous if you remove the "humanity" from the decision. If you make decision on utility for groups as a whole, without reference to the individual. The 20th century is replete with rational decisions made on the basis of assumed rationality of eugenics and the science of history (eg., Nazism and Marxism).

To avoid such problems we need to be rational for decision where we are equipped with data that can be emprically verified and analtically processed. But also keep some universal truth of human morality and ethics (as articles of faith) to ensure we do not make tragic mistakes.

I am not asking you to give up your rationality. Just to accept it has its limits. And in those areas we can nevertheless make judgements that are sound and intelligent.

The positon that only rationality is meaningful can be proven to be either meaningless, or wrong (since it cannot emprically or analytically be applied to itself - you need faith!).

I'll just get my coat

Recumbentman,

The reference to Ockham statement can be found here (see section on Ontological Parsimony): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Ockham

Of course the precept (in its modern form - not Ockhams actual one) is nevertheless useful. I apply it myself from time to time, it's something I think needs to be taken seriously (and understood properly).

But its proper to understand that Ockham applies it primarily in support of a religious perspective (thus it is illustrates it is not a tool for anti-religious perspectives exclusively). I see you correctly note that his nomanalist worldview does this - good

Furthermore as a logical precept it does not reduce/increase the probabiilty of truth from alternatives of one proposition over another. it is merely a tool for subjective selection, in such circumstances. It does not PROVE anything. This is crucial to a proper understanding of the precept. In other words a complex proposition is as likely to be true as a simple one if the evidence shows that to be the case. Even though if you have the choice between them you may personally 'prefer" the simple one.

Unless that is you take it as an article of faith that the universe actually is set up with such an ontological pre-disposition, i.e., things are symmetrical, purposeful, simple, etc. In which case you need to acknowledge this is yet another example of an article of faith. An 'atomic' porposition in Wittgenstein terms. Again this is necessary reflection is missing from some people who freely use Occams razor like a child running with scissors!

I just get my coat (holding scissors/razor now safely!)

Noggin,

It's an article of faith that ALL cognitive functions can be explained satifactorily by evolutionary biology/psycholgy argument - its way beyond Darwinian claims. He said ...

'With me, he said, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?'

The extreme position (as mentioned in my opening sentance above) is one being pushed forward by radical fundamentalists in the naturalism debate, eg., Dawkins and Dennet. And I think they have gone to far. They have taken the Darwinina position and elevated it to a faith based system in and off itself. As long as you appreciate that you are basing your argument on is a faith-based propositon I am with that.

There are very well founded misgivings to why we should have Platonic forms apparently so well honed in our cognitive apparatus. The fact that infants are born pre-mature by other species reference terms, needing such long-term support and risk to the mother during birth (becuase of large heads of the children) and subsequent infancy dependency is a severe negative survival factor. Yet since the dawn of homo-sapiens coming out of the ice age living in small cave communities with associated rudimentary cognitive requirements would seem not to justify the development. Yet anthropologists assert that the cognitive ability of man has not developed since that time.

All that I wish to say it here is that there exists a seed of doubt as to evolutionary argument for the cognitive capability to rationally arrive at truth. In rebuttal response to Plantinga EAAN argument, Fitelson and Sober said :

http://philosophy.wisc.edu/sober/fi...%20and%20sober%20on%20plantinga.pdf

whilst admitting 'If someone challenges all observations and rules of inference that are used in science and in everyday life, demanding that they be justified from the ground up, the challenge can not be met', nevertheless argued that the same could be said for faith-based position 'What is true is that neither position has an answer to hyperbolic doubt'. On the issue on the confidence of belief in evolutionary theory they say '… if evolutionary theory does say that our ability to theorize about the world is apt to be rather unreliable, how are evolutionists to apply this point to their own theoretical beliefs, including their belief in evolution? One lesson that should be extracted is a certain humility — an admission of fallibility.'

I am content with that admission of fallibility and humility (missing from the likes of Dawkins and Dennett). As it happens I am not an advocate of ID. I believe in "reason". I just beleive it has limits, and that we all in those circumstances fall back onto faith based positions. Atheist do this as much as Theists, though often "their faith" is unreflected and assumed to be something "other", but on analysis it is not. IMO

I'll just get my coat -

Edward,

You are assuming that neurocellular phenomena equates 100% to consciousness. I am fairly sure to a large part it does, but it is an assumption that is made that can be argued that there are other apsects as yet not fully understood.

It is simply not so cut and dry. And in those circumstance rather than jumping to the conclusion (a leap of faith) that Theists are wrong it is better to be more willing to say that its your personel POV (as Susane mentioned) and be more tolerant and less fundamentalist (I don't say this about your opinion necessarily but the strident and militant ones of the Dennett/Dawkins brigade!).

Whenever they try to define things away that are still only partly understood, (and things like consciousness may never be able to be rationally understood according to philosophical debate from folks such as Nagel and others), you necessarily start to use 'atomic' expressions that are merely place markers for the unknown. You enter into metaphysical debate. That's but they should not have the hubris to claim it something empirically verifiable - it's not, that's simply bad science, bad philosophy (It's called misology the hate of reason/logos).

I'll just get my coat

Recumbentman,

Regarding "balanced diet".

For me Atheism and Theism come from the same ingredients, if you only based your evidence on rational sources and analysis. In such cases they are from the REALIST food group, i.e., we can get at an answer to the Belief-In-God proposition. Broiled or boiled it the same evidence and argument being made, and becomes simple a matter of personal taste (junk is anothers cordon bleau).

What is the opposite to the REALIST position is the ANTI-REALIST position, this is that you cannot get at certainty as a matter of principle. The BIG proposition yeilds a variable that takes a Bayesian value in between 1 and 0. (true or false), eg., 0.5.

For me, I am an Anti-Realist on the BIG question from rationality argument and data alone. I only arrive at a Realist position (in my case Theism) when I apply my personal and subjective reasoning faculties, other than rationality. And such exists and can be proven in its actual utility to humanity, e.g., emotional intelligence.

Such an argument comes from the work of the British Analytic Logician Michael Dummett, who developed from the philosophical school in Oxford previously dominated by Wittgenstein.

For Wittgenstein (as you know) in his 1st opus "TLP" he considered such discussions (on either side of the BIG debate) as meaningless. Furthermore he would also consider statements such as 2+2=4 meaningless since the concept of 4 and + implies the concept of 2. His theories of Logical Atomism was picked up by the Vienna Schoold who made the Logical Positivist (or Empiricist) school - that is popular with the verificationist position of many Atheists.

Yet (to his credit) after seeing errors in his positon he came back to the debate and developed work such as "Philosophical Investigations" (PI). In this work he redrew the debate for question such as a the BIG proposition or statements such as "I Love You" not as meaningless expressions, but of one of "Games". This revision was not picked up by the Vienna school who continued on their verficationist skeptical tradition.

At this point he stopped and handed the baton onto others such as GEM Anscombe and Dummett. Your Wittgenstein arguments are thus somewhat outdated.

Metaphysics and Human Relationships to Wittgenstein where games, with some utility. But to many these games are the only thing that gives meaning to the world. Everything under the sun (as Ecclesiates might say) is a game doomed to futility. It is only if you "choose" meaning that the erstwhile game can elevate to something other that a futile one. You cannot prove "meaning" in the rational sense in my worldview. You choose it as an act of Free-Will.

A nihilist chooses futility and considers it a courageous existential choice. Whereas I think it is simply not having the courage to wake up from the nightmare and make a new day for themselves, one that supports an integration of faith and reason. A much better diet.

I'll just get my coat

Pilgrim IV:
>>When dealing with choices and "human truths" Mostly everyone uses their whole human faculty for making decisions. It is not a rational only process.

>>Furthermore it becomes potentially dangerous if you remove the "humanity" from the decision. If you make decision on utility for groups as a whole, without reference to the individual. The 20th century is replete with rational decisions made on the basis of assumed rationality of eugenics and the science of history (eg., Nazism and Marxism).

Now back up just a darn tootin' minute willya?. In common with many Christian theologians, you have misinterpreted what is meant by 'Rational'. As I think I've explained before, it is not synonymous with logical, stepwise, unemotional, utilitarian Vulcan-like. You have the wrong end of the stick there.

Let's try another word: Naturalistic. We are part of a natural/rational world. There is no other world - supernatural, spiritual, whatever. All - *all* - of our thought processes, whether mere data-processing or emotional, are firmly part of this world. By 'Rationalism' (which I prefer. 'Naturalism' has connotations of hippy-trippy nature-worship), all I am advocating is that the search for truth belongs only in the here-and-now. Where else is there? I am in no way saying that our biologically inevitable emotions are trivial. In fact...they're the whole point in who we are and in making us do what we do. (Avoiding pain; seeking pleasure; breeding; raising children; forming communities; building cathedrals...)

>>They have taken the Darwinina position and elevated it to a faith based system in and off itself. As long as you appreciate that you are basing your argument on is a faith-based propositon I am with that.

And like many Christian theologians, you misunderstand that this is the *opposite* of faith. There is no leap in the dark required to understand evolution.

<>

I have to agree with Edward that you're misconstruing the meaning of "rationality" here by applying it only to the reasoning process. Is emotional intelligence irrational? The way your paragraph above is written suggests that, presented with the facts A is bigger than B, and B is bigger than C, your "subjective reasoning faculty" might come to the conclusion that C is bigger than A. But I don't think this is what you intend. Rather you are looking at the premises from which the reasoning process starts. Rationality is concerned here only with whether those premises are true (or that our judgement of their probability be the best we can manage). Is "subjective reasoning" concerned with something else, something whose truth is best served by the premises being untrue? And if so, what is that something?

Noggin

Edward,

Maybe you are just being silly and trying to pull my chain.

I have never indicated that I have a problem with the concept of Darwinian Evolution, I think it an accurate and useful scientific theory with a high degree of plausibility.

My beef is that Evolutionary Psychology is not a well founded scientific theory, as expressed in the adaptionist ideas of Dawkins/Dennet. As any theory that purports to describe accurately all facts, before they have been established, is a faith based system and not a scientific one according to the Popper view on falsification. I take a more structuralist perspective.

It strikes me that you are to ready to discount the ideas I have expressed before understanding them.

If you care to look at the evolutionary debate between adaptionists and structuralist look here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism_(biology) and here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptationism

I believe Dawkins/Dennett are adaptionist not becuase of the merit of that theory over structuralism but becuase they ontologically WANT it to be true so as to provide them with support for their Atheist Fundamentalist perspective. For example see Dennett famous biased rant against Stephen Jay Gould in his book "Darwins Dangerous Idea". If I am right they are not doing science a service, since they argument is biased to make their belief system justified.

I hope that clarifies issues

Noggin

The point I make is the philosophical difference between 'rationality' and 'reason'

A summary definition of rationality is;

1. We speak of rationality whenever people follow a specific set of principles which determine the realm of their validity, identify their objectives, define the aims to be achieved, the methods to be followed, and the criteria to be applied.
2. These principles must be coherent with one another in order to allow coherent usage.
3. Therefore, to be rational simply means to follow the rules suggested by these principles. In doing this, we are rational in the sense of the respective version of rationality

Whereas;

Reason operates on a fundamentally different level from rationality. While forms of rationality refer to objects, reason focuses on the forms of rationality. This has been the constellation of reason and rationality at least since Kant who said: "Reason is never in immediate relation to an object, but only to the understanding."

So in the context of my posting I have been saying there is the rationality of logical positivism (LP) based on analytical empricism. And that is fine is so far as it goes. However there are other modes of non-LP reasoning that use other faculties of human understanding, eg., Emotional Intelligence, Body (Genentic/Memetic) and Spirtual (though needless to say for the Atheist this is something that does not get on the starting grind very easily!)

The definitions of Rationality and Reason come from Wolfgang Welsch in "Rationality and Reason Today" http://www2.uni-jena.de/welsch/Papers/ratReasToday.html

Yes, your right about Evolutionary Psychology. It currently lacks an evidential basis. But I think you're wrong to lump Dawkins and Dennett in with that.

To my mind, the big impact of The Darwinian Revolution on religion is that it not only established humans as ordinary animals, but it also revealed (albeit that the details were filled in over time) that the processes of life are an inevitable consequence of biochemistry. If Dawkins and Dennett have any link to Evolutionary Psychology it is simply that they hold the truth to be self evident that this includes the neurocellular process of which our mind is made.

Re. Rationality...I fire it back at you...the big thing that I can't understand from Theists is this:
Besides Rationality...what else...*precisely*?

It's not Emotion - that's a rational, biological process. What is the "something other" that we dumb Atheists simply don't get?

Edward,

Dawkins view on Memetics and Dennett views on Consciousness put them firmly in the Evolutionary Psychology camp from an Adaptionist perspective.

In part they are correct, I think Meme's and the Functionist perspective have a lot of truth within them, but not all the truth. But Dennett and Dawkins build a worldview on these "conclusions" as if they where well established facts, that have implications in society. Its a unsafe, biased and profoundly unscientific assertion. (In the past now universally acknowledged bad 'science of history' led to marxism and 'eugenics' led to nazism, I am just a voice crying in the winderness that there is danger here also )

Have a look at Kuhn concept of incommensurability here: A1049915 he states that - further to scientific theories not being (properly) justified with relation to objective empirical evidence - scientific theories are in fact judged after having passed through the interests, biases, and sensibilities of the scientists involved.

All I want is for folks to be a bit more open minded about issues like the above recognizing the danger of hubris. And reflecting that their positions contain more faith and belief than they more have 1st acknowledged.

As to Rationality...

I have (for the purposes of my argument) defined Rationality in the posting earlier and associated it with Logical Positivism of the Vienna School, check out A J Ayer here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Ayer

This follows the method of Popper in the so called Critical Rationalism (see A455924 )

In that context Reasoning through say faculties of Emotional Intelligence fall outside of Rationality. I appreciate that emotions are a natural phenomena however.

We can also Reason through Embodied Intelligence. Much research (see Anne Foerst) has been done in demonstrating that intelligence is distributed in the body, eg., in the sensory apparatus and nervous system as well as evolved feedback loops of the endocrine system, eg., adrenaline response. It's on the edge but some will argue there is cellular intelligence and memetic intelligence as well that is part of this embodied intelligence. By the way this aspect of intelligence belies the physicalist/functionalist definition of Mind a la Dennett, Minsky and Pinker. Again though this is a natural phenomena, no phenomena here!

We probaly can agree on the contribution to Reason of the 3 points above:
'Mind' (LP-Rationality), 'Heart' (Emotions) and 'Body' (Embodied/Genetic/Memetic) at least in outline as providing input to our FULL set of Human faculties of Reason. We might modify the definition of Rationality to include these faculties, though becuase Heart and Body are subjective (non-analytic and personnel) many 'dyed-in-the-wool' Verificationists would baulk at such a suggestion.

What we may almost certainly not agree on (I suspect!) is a 4th category: Soul. This is becuase it may not be legally representable in your reference system given it is in part not a natural phenomena, its is in part (to Theists) a supernatural one. Elsewhere I have tried to explain it this way...

It's like our mind is an AM radio. We know how to recieve AM signals and decode them, categorize and make sense of them. However it is possible for an AM radio to recieve non-AM signal in certain circumstances (eg., just before my mobile phone rings there is some interference sometimes on my PC - I actually get a 'premonition' that my phone will ring in a sense .) At this level the receiving sense is a natural phenomena. What is supernatural is the transmission source. The way 'some' minds would handle such a signal is that it would be a spurious error message perhaps, something not categorizable. It might be dismissed.

Human beings are cognitively equipped (mostly via 'standard' evolution process) with Mind, Body and Heart, but our Soul part is not fully integrated, we see things in the sense of Soul only partially and somewhat distorted. Maybe for some there is no sense at all. It appears that 'Faith' helps it along, i.e., Belief in Meaning is out there. Maybe with excercise, such as meditation, we can get better at facilitating this faculty.

Its also possible, according to certain Quantum Theories of Consciousness that Faith & Will is a key part of our Consciousness, and that our Consciousness is a casual part of our Actuality. (remember earlier comments on Berkeley).

So when in Chrstian scripture it says:

Matthew 22:37 -“ Jesus said unto him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”

Mark 12:30 - “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength: this is the first commandment.”

Mark 12:33 - “And to love Him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbor as himself...”

Luke 10:27 - “And He answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.”

(Understanding that to Love something is to FULLY Underdstand that something in the original Hebrew understanding)

Thus when Christian Theists say that Atheists are not allowing themselves, through their own free will choice, to get the full message, what is being said is that since they ASSUME that only getting at meaning through LP-Rational mode (as I have defined it) is the only rationaly empirical and analytic method to get at meaning (as Ayer and the Vienna School defined it) they end-up denying themselves the good news in its entirety.

When Dennett goes on about Atheist being 'BRIGHT" to Theists this is just a typo therefore. What Theist think he really meant was "BLIGHT".

Hope that clarifies my POV.

I'll just get my coat

Pilgrim...if you'd please excuse me momentarily for not continuing with your train of thought for a little while...there are a couple of other contributors who I;ve been meaning to respond to for a few days now. Would you mind keepin your coat on for a wee moment? (although I really do think that you're on to a non-starter with pseudfo scientific explanations for a 'soul'...No - let's leave it for now. ) Eventually I want to probe a little at Recumbentman's thought-provoking Post 17 (you see how long ago it was . I don't want it to get buried.) "Is there any point in discussing religion as an individual's mindset? It occurs in the world as a mass phenomenon. Mass psychological phenomena are something different to talk about; very tricky indeed." But first of all...I'd promised to take up susanne's Post 337. Here's the page: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/F2217673?thread=695898&skip=320&show=20 On evolution. Sorry...you're just plain wrong on that - not just on evolution per se, but on the status of Proof in science. In maths you can prove that, say, the squaw on the hippopotamus is equal to the sum of squaws on the other two hide. You can say for certainty that this *must* be so for all triangles. But the empirical sciences aren't like that. All you can say is 'On the observed data, X (actually, they call it (H0) is very unlikely to be true - so let's go with Y. (or H). So with evolution...H0=the only reason there can be many species is that God must have created them all individually. That looks unlikely once you get a body of very compelling evidence which powerfully suggests alternative mechanisms. So, no - you got me bang to rights, I can never say the God didn't individually design all the species. Nor can I say that fairies, Loch Ness monsters, Blue cheese moons *do'* exist...but I have excellent grounds for doubt. (Oh - and an infinitessimal evidence for creationism - only if we accept the word of the unknown writer of Genesis, really) OK - so what does it matter if, in people's private opinion, they believe in God, the afterlife, creationism, green cheese moons. Well - in a sense, nothing. My powers to change peoples' minds are limited. But - leaving aside the obvious observation that such beliefs *seldom* remain private - that is not to say that I need endorse the type of reasoning - or lack thereoff - by which they got there. Now let's take it a step further: By the same processes, people may come to decisions on they - and frequently I - live our lives. I am entitled to ask them to show me their working out. I am entitles to subject it to the same standards I would apply to any paleontologist. Other than that - fine. But if religious notions really *are* just a private matter - then what on earth are they for?

Back to Recumbentman:

Yes...I do see where you're coming from. Most probably, religion wouldn't occur to individual psychologies unless a mass of people had gone before. Furhther, the nature of an individual's religious belief will tend to be shaped by their predominant religious cultures (including the theologians whose theological culture encourages them to look at different slants).

What does that mean for us here? It suggests to me that the best part of Atheist thought should be devoted to the everyday idiocies of mass religion.

But that's not very interesting, is it? Within all religions, you seem to get those who insist that religion is ultimately a matter of a personal understanding of god. Isn't this the 'Faith' thing that the Theists so confuse us with?

Now I would probably agree that this is a meme that they've brought along as part of the whole religion meme-cluster...but as good Empiricists...shouldn't we take them at face value? Shouldn't we explore Faith as a phenomenon in individuals?

And to turn it on it's head...these days, we Atheists are very much part of a tradition of thought. But it seems to me that some Theists would agree with much of that thought - evolution, for example, while suggesting that we are missing the individual acceptance required for us to come to our senses.

So it seems to me that both the wide-angle lens and the microscope are appropriate here. Mass theology and individual faith. Sociology and psychology. (and there's presumably an analogous philosophical pairing also?)

>Most probably, religion wouldn't occur to individual psychologies unless a mass of people had gone before.

An understatement; there could be no psychology of any sort unless a lot of people had gone before.

Clean sweepers can say "religion is the remnant of pre-scientific magical explanations; we have a lot of better explanations now" but that is becoming a straw man. Wittgenstein saw that religion is untouched by the facts of the world; it resides in the attitude one takes to those facts.

The "cosmic explanation" side is not, pace Pilgrim and other scientifically concerned theists, the side of religion that we most critically have to face up to. What I see is people who are fiercely loyal to a culture; and that culture is not going to be taken away from them, not even from their cold dead hands.

Hmmm. Yes. And it can be very deep-rooted culture, can't it? At the shallow end, there are those who are identifying themselves by their right to adopt traditional modes of dress - veils and the like. (And, yes, I recognise that for many of them, the veil is fairly knew to their ancestral culture). At the deeper end are those who hold to, as yer man Ludwig says, 'attitudes to the facts.' Thus people raised in, say, traditional Christianity are wont to veer towards a happy-clappy branch that would have been quite alien to their parents...or to adopt 'personal spiritualities' based on mish-mashes of crystals, teepees and deep breathing.

What are you muttering there to yourself? "Young people these days" . . .

Pretty much

Actually...no, though. The New Agey pish seems to do for people of my own age and upwards (that's mumblemumble years...or ooo!ooo! in bonobo years). What I find deeply puzzling is that more and more young people are getting into thoroughly old-fashioned and irrational forms of Christianity - which they seem to think is some sort of radical new discovery.

Ah well...it's their job to shock the previous generation.