If you love "God," you love Tsunamis

[Doreen Peri]

There's also another possibility.

It's all an accident. A beautiful freaky accident.

No God at all. Just chemistry. Boom! Life came to be! And it evolves.

We are spiritual creatures because we have not only intelligence (most of us... lol), but also spirituality. Not just emotions. Something on another level entirely.

But that doesn't mean any omniscient person(s) or force created us.

Natural disasters are just that. Natural. Caused by chemistry and physics.

"Evil" is a man-made word.

[ren&stimpy]

Yes, that is what I was implying in my above post, but there are some chemists and mathematicians who argue that many biological processes are too complex to have just evolved randomly: human eyesight for one, the Krebs cycle, blood clotting, certain aspects of the DNA molecule. One argument goes like this--if you walked into a casino and got 500 blackjacks in a row wouldn't you (or someone watching) think the game was rigged?

And many cellular processes are like this--the probability of certain organic enzymes coming together as they did is far too low (above 1 in a million sort of thing) for it to have occurred randomly. But some old school Darwinians have other explanations to counter them. It's not a trivial or easy topic but some schools in "Red States" are now teaching Intelligent Design along with Darwinian models.

My point is that if you assume a Designer exists ( like you, I don't think that inference is warranted) then such a Designer is no different than what we assume to be "Evil." ( And you are enough of a skeptic or atheist that you wouldn't refer to say Hitler's concentration camps as Evil? )

[e_dog]

these designer arguments seemed designed to proclaim the authority of science for what are really hocus pocus theologizing.

consider the googleplex-ticket lottery. it has a winner. his name is Jimmy. it is wicked, mad unlikely that Jimmy would win. but he won. Therefore, there must be an intelligent designer who orchestrated it so that Jimmy wins. (not a very strong argument.)

anyway, Hume demolished the watchmaker argument two and a half centuries ago as ridiculous hubris and i don't believe the fact that some crazy chemist is awestruck by the Krebs cycle changes that.

[ren&stimpy]

Yeah I would agree that Hume took Paley's arguments apart, but I am not sure mere Humean inductivism is up to the task of taking on the ID people, armed as they are with modern biochemistry, mathematical modeling etc. I am aware of your opposition to scientific thinking in any form, but if you read about all the biochemistry and neural programming involved with just eyesight one gets an appreciation for Behe's claims--and Behe and some of the ID theorists don't make any specific Xtian claims (some do). Orr, a Darwinian biologist and skeptic (sort of like SJ Gould) has some strong arguments against ID though they are not trivial.

(would your anti-scientism go so far as to lead you to not take a sick parent or relative to a doctor were she to fall seriously ill?)

[e_dog]

being against scientism is not the same as being against science. scientism is akin to pseudo-science; scientism is making claims for science that science cannot and could not fulfill (like a science of morals or a science of art, etc.). it may be that i am, in a way, against both (really, i am against the hegemony of science and technology within Western culture, which is not the same as being "aginst science" whatever that would be), but that it not essential to my critique of theism including pseudo-science-based theism which critique is more or less Humean, who was as you know a naturalist. Hume's thought are many and varied, not limited to a single argument. in fact, just about everything that people like Russell and Mackie have said in the 20th century against theism was already written by Hume in the 18th.

1) if you can even sketch the outline of an intelligent design argument that is plausible, then i will grant you every single empirical premise it contains. i repeat, for the sake of argument, I WILL GRANT EVERY SINGLE EMPIRICAL PREMISE of such an argument. and it still will not be remotely convincing if you lay bare the structure and ridiculously biased (anthropocentric, mentalistic, monotheistic, theistic, JudeoChristian, Christian (in varying degrees of specificity), liberal-capitalist). in its assumptions. you say that the eye is complex. agreed. you say that the eye is super-duper complex. fine. you say that the eye really, really, really complex. okay. how in the world does that lead to positing a "designer". as Hume said, this is an incredible anthropcentrically biased way at looking at nature: because we are familiar with a numer of causal processes of production of products by human design -- the watchmaker making a watch -- we assume that such process can be atttributed to nature as such, which is a fallacious inference.

(indeed, if anything, one might even think that the more complex it is, the LESS likely it is to be designed.)

2) assume that we have indeed established the need for a creator. we could have used a cosmological argument for a more stream-line result but in any event, the teleological version is more sexy. so we have reached the causer/designer/engineer. then a whole lot of new questions and unsolved problems arise. who is doing God's R&D? Does God have a venture capital firm backing his projects? etc.etc. that is, who or what created God, after all, one would assume that the designer must be as compliated and sophisticate as that which he designed. so who or what created the designer? Once we get to this level, we see that the allegede argument is afailure as a scientific hypothesis. science is based on abductive reasoning inference to the best explanation (a corrolary principle of which is known as Ockham's razor). but positing a creator or designer or whatever is a pseudo-explanation, much like saying that the soporific powers of a sleeping pill causes sleep. the usual response is: God causes himself or God exists by definition or God doesn't need a causer. that is, the theist reverts either to the ontological argument, rendering the whole cosmological or teleological business a side-show; and the ontological argument can be criticized in its own right (though we might need another thread to see why). or his response amounts to simply declaring victory bu fiat . . . Well, the designer just IS. And that is not scientific. And note, that if such a response is valid, then why not simply do that at an earlier stage in the progression: i.e. just say that Nature just IS (the universe just IS, the eyeball just happened to develop and we don't know how) etc.etc. rather than positing the tooth-fairy like explanation of "God" ?

so, again, if you can even point toward the general structure of an ID argument that COULD work, i would be less sceptical. but the fact that its advocates are scientists, is not impresive. Newton, after all, thought that space and time was "God's sensorium." scientists doing theology is like artist's playing footbal. citing mathematical formulas and the unsolved mysteries of bioevolution is not necessarily even relevant. if someone brings a Picasso painting to a football match, it may make the game look more interesting (perhaps) but won't help the team win.

[ren&stimpy]

Yes the causality question is weird, but I think it's just as weird for those who assume a purely random view of evolution: that the human eye (not to say brain and many other processes) arose ex nihilo, starting from some random combination of organic molecules--bacteria or algae. And the watchmaker analogy is still not so bad. ---were say some JPL geeks to locate some sort of computer or calculator on a distant planet would they say--this arose randomly?? Hell no. And the human brain is more oomplex than computer. You would assume a computing device on a distance planet as a sign of designer, of intelligence. My point is that said Designer (or designers?), were he said to exist (or have existed) is not at all necessarily judeo-christian or benevolent .....

The monkeys with a typewriter is another apt analogy. Will those monkeys ever produce say a 5 act play, the Tragedy of Monkey, purely randomly by pecking at the keys for centuries ? Yet that in a sense is what old-school Darwinians ask us to believe: that purely randomly, incredibly complex biological processes, including consciousness and language, arose, whose probability of occuring is like 1 out of 5 million or something , and the monkey started to type out an Iliad. TO be honest I remain materialist and skeptic (the thought of a Designer or Deity who simply swats down 1000s by a wave or plague is too absurd) but I do think some of the ID arguments and challenges to Darwinian evolutionary models are interesting.

[e_dog]

we don't know what the probabilities are. any such estimates require assumptions that are little more than wild guesses and projections of our own ignorance, science notwithstanding.

anyway, evolutionary theory doesn't say that the human eye formed randomly. rather, it developed as a result of intense selection pressures from the environment and other critters, from more primitive forms to the more complex. unpredictable for us is not the same as random.

regarding computing machines on another planet, that is a flawed example. if wre found a box with a circuit board and a trademark on the cover, etc. etc. we would conclude that it is an artificial object. if however the "computational" structure was embedded in a self-sustaining and -replicating network of organic-like tissue we might conclude it is a lifeform. the analogy between a brain and a computer is loaded and the argument turns on a question-begging element. to the extent tyhat someone buys into the somewhat dubious model of the brain qua computational device, to that extent one should conclude that computers can be produced naturally. but such computers are only metaphoircally related, or related on an abstract level, to the man-made artifact piece of capital equipment. what makes the latter an object of design is not its logical complexity somuch as its actual form and ontogenesis in the institutions of human creativity and production.

[ren&stimpy]

anyway, evolutionary theory doesn't say that the human eye formed randomly. rather, it developed as a result of intense selection pressures from the environment and other critters, from more primitive forms to the more complex. unpredictable for us is not the same as random.

That's only partially true. The adaptation of the organism to environment due to natural selection is not random, true, but the biologists also claim that mutations to DNA occur purely randomly; the mutations may be good neutral or harmful. And yet if you suggest that natural selection itself is some regulating principle then you might as well call that design it seems, though of course any hints at Social Darwinism are not too PC.

Look I'm not arguing for any theological perspective--if anything I think the ID theorists who infer a Deity or Designer --especially a monotheistic one--from biochemical complexity are beng a bit naive if not illogical, yet there are many shortcomings to Darwinian theory.

UNfortunately philosophers generally don't have the skills and technological acumen to point out the flaws of Darwin and evolution: even a simple phil. question (say materiality, relevant to both the design issue, and intention, consciousness, etc) usually turns on a claim about nature and thus involves chemistry and physics. Philosophers and literary types don't care to hear that, but it is their sort of bogus platonism (making predications about an unseen Mind, what Skinner referred to as Mentalism) that is really the issue not the status of physical science. I will grant you the brain- computer analogy (and the I.D. analogies) is not always helpful or relevant, but I do think it is far more workable and in a sense pragmatic than postmod or various updatings of the Freudian unconscious.

[e_dog]

we might need a separate topic for a debate about the so-called mind-body problem, but i will say a few things here.

to reject computationalism -- the view that the mind/brain is computer-like -- does not require one to reject a materialist or physicalist view of psychology. it just means that one rejects a certain model (or range pf models) about the structure of mental processes or neural processes.

Skinner was a skilled experimenter and provocative theorist but he is not the most philosophically astute of materialists. Skinner's position assumes that to speak of mind or to uses mentalistic concepts is thereby to attribute occult qualities or to believe in Cartesian mental substance or something. (you mentioned Platonism, though it is not obvious what Plato's theory of the soul actually was.)

Freud is an interesting case. some interpreters believe that Freud is consistent with naturalism. how could that work, you ask? well, think of the unconscious as a theoretical posit to explain behavior. a logical fiction used to explain and predict the observable; according to Quine, most of the entities of science are just such "fictions" and Quine is famous for saying that if the Greek gods proved useful in the best -- most coherent-- theoretical acount of sense experience then he would have no trouble with accepting such enetities. and Quine is one of the most scientistic of philosophers.

now, how could mental concepts help? precisely because once you step outside of relatively simple control experiments on rats, and so forth, we really do not have and cannot have a purely behavioristic account of human behavior. even if a mental state like anger, etc. is ultimately dependent on physical processes in the brain, etc. it is more helpful to speak at the level of human meaning about these things than to remain silent; so speaking in mentalistic terms is pragmatically justified. and, as a special case of this, it may be that Freudian analysis is a descriptively accurate and useful way of understanding human behavior and psychic events (dreams, etc.). Skinner liked to speculate that his perspective can be used to explain human behavior, but aside from pointing out the similarity between rats pressing levers and people pulling slot-machine levers at casinos, it is not obvious that the leap can be made in practice.

lastly, what metaphysical claims do "literary types" buy into, as a class? the views of literary figures range from the thoroughly materialist to the mystical and spiritual to common sense unphilosophy.

[ren&stimpy]

Behaviorism--which starts really with Wm James and then to Pavlov Watson and Skinner, etc.-- is indeed limited, but far less so than discussing "free will", ideas, impressions. emotions, sensations, as the old empiricists did. And I don't think reducing behaviorism to Skinner's animal conditioning experiments is a fair assessment; that is rather cliche man. Social psychology is comprised by and large of behavioristic elements: let's observe humans in a certain environment and then infer things about them. A Hume or Locke or Freud can sit in his study all day and speculate about anger and motivations, the relation between perceiver and perception, etc.; the behaviorist, on the other hand, sets up a scenario and records what the humans actually do.

If, as Milgram's now trite study shows, 60% of thousands of humans obey an order to deliver a dangerous if not lethal shock to someone in another room, we get I think a much clearer picture of human nature (intentions, motivations, etc.) than we do by a Freudian contemplation of "thanatos' or one case study of some psychotic. And it is to me as valuable as philosophy--applied ethics . Other soc. psych. experiments (Tversky I believe) showing problems with the Rational Man standard also are certainly as valuable as freudianism or or phenomenology.

You are right about Quine , and that point about efficaciousness as the sole standard of truth is often debated; yet Greek Gods do NOT prove as efficacious as a Periodic table, or genetics, and Newton and Einstein etc. In other words, Hamlet and helium may both be posits, but if the Hamlet posit doesn't really refer to something or isn't verifiable ( and Quine remains a verificationist, tho expanding it to whole domain of science and thought) and the helium post does then one posit may be "better" than another . Some posits are more equal than others. However I do think QUine and some of the other analytical phil. (Russell and Witt in places) do offer some grounds for a modified platonic realism type of viewpoint--but that is leading to your mind- body thread (which in a sense is the core phil. problem which all others hinge on)

[ren&stimpy]

Ok that was a bit unwieldy. One point was about behaviorism, which I think depends on observation and testable hypotheses and is, in general, a more pragmatic way to understanding humans than is the old empirical introspection or speculation. Yet the brain scientists and cognitivists are, as Skinner and other behaviorists admitted, doing something valuable as well.

The other point about Quine and his "posits" is more epistemological. Quine is not so far from a behaviorist type of approach, but he was more concerned with logic, semantics, epistemology, etc. right? In many ways I think you are correct that he wanted to adhere to some platonic realist viewpoint (as many math types do) but the inductivists and behaviorists made that quite untenable. So I am, with some reservations, on the side of the Anti-ghost myself.

[e_dog]

i wouldn't say that Quine was or tried to a platonist. in fact, his is a very strong example of antiplatonism.

Quine's inclinations are some where between behaviorism and radical empiricism -- tho this may not be very conherent, the image i always got of what sort of research program that would be ideal for Quine would be to conduct behavioristic experiments ON a radical empiricist, but i digress -- but and here is where he departs from the extreme behavioriosm of Skinner, Quine's pragmatism about concepts and ontological commitment means that he is willing to accept mentalistic explanations if they are workable, whereasw Skinner seems to reject it out of hand. on the extreme version of behaviorism, even something like Milgram's experiment is flawed, or at least limited, by the lack of a behaviorist reduction of "giving an order" or "receiving instructions" etc. that is, all the meaningful elelments of the situation would have to be analyzed into pure behavior: tus, meaning, ritual, culture reveals itself as the difference between rats and humans.

the key is that a Quinean fiction and a Platonic Idea are of very different statuses. The Platonic Idea is the ultimate real, whereas the logical fictions are just conceptual or linguistic tools that we use to make sense of -- or to get a handle on -- experience. Quine goes far more in the direction of empiricism than Skiner however, insofar as Quine would say that the rat and the lever are also to some extent logical constructs from sense experiences, whereas experimental psychology assumes the world of ordinary objects as real.

Hume and Freud are the two most visionary theoretical geniuses in the prehistory of modern psychology. both operated on a speculative method as far as their theorizing goes, Hume deriving his data from self-observation, Freud getting his data clinically from patients. science lives off of speculative theory just as human evolution lives off of mutation. the rest that you mentioned - Skinner and Pavlov included -- are functionaries of social discipline, intentionally or not, serving the social control machine

(after Hume, Kant was an absurdist laboratory on the way to (a) Hegel, who was an absurdist opera on the way to Marx who revealed the limitations of individualistic social science; and (b) Schopenhauer whose moral philosophy converged with Eastern thought before being unfairly appropriated-and-denounced by Nietzsche whose own brand of psychoanalysis was too fragmentary to attain the level of theoretical elegenace Freud obtained. these are the philosophical journeys that form the groundwork for empirical psychology.)

[ren&stimpy]

Au contraire. I think you need to reread "On What There is" and "Reification of Universals" ( as I do myself) Quine seems to favor a philosophy of mathematics which is very close to platonic realism (and that "realism" is not to be confused with mere naturalism or physicalism as it is interpreted by lit. types). The real numbers do exist, as do other mathematical concepts, sets, and objects; infinity for example; and the "
reals" are not simply sense impressions but "abstract entities" whcih are independent of mind. Not that I really care that much for that, since I guess I woud side witth nominalists if asked (and I think Quine has nominalist urge as well). I think his willingness to embrace some mathematical platonism is part of ontological relativism. It gets deep rather quickly but I think his writng on math is quite different than his epistemology. There's quite a bit of stuff on the web about this.

"Quine adopts mathematical Platonism, in spite of his initial nominalistic temptation. His philosophical position is based on a conservative Pragmatism. Because Zermelo’s set theory is as strong as it is simple, and, with its cortège of specifiable and nonspecifiable real numbers, is required for the needs of natural sciences, Quine declares himself a reluctant Platonist in mathematics.22To be is to be the value of a variable, a refrain tirelessly repeated by him, is the key to his mathematical Platonism: as long as a theory purporting to be a foundation for all the mathematical truths without quantification over impredicative sets is missing, it is precipitous to proclaim - as the pathetic title of arecent French book does – the defeat of Plato. If the objectual interpretation of the existential quantification (i.e. the standard reading of '(∃x)Fx') is accepted, there is no way to avoid Quinian Platonism."

[e_dog]

what's the source of the quote?

anyway, i'd have to read more but seems there are some serious confusions here.

first, "Quinean Platonism" is not Platonism.

Regarding "On What There Is" that is a relatively early work and doen't have the developed epistemology of the later Quine but even so, the acceptance of the theoretica l legitimacy of universals is not the same as being a Platonist.

for Quine theory construction comes first, that is why he is a sort of pragmatist. The Real is just the correlate of useful theories. So if you can make a coherent theory1 that uses entitities X and Y, X and Y are "real". But it could be that theory2, rejects X and Y, does the same work with Z and W and (none of these are idenitical with X or Y); according to ontological relativity, this is just as good as theory1. this is not Platonism, which has a world of forms which is not relative but absolute. Quine's "Platonism" is a pseudo-Platonism or quasi-Platonism.

second, the last sentence of your quote seems to fall into a logician's metaphysical fallacy according to which meaning requires determinate reference to a corresponding definite object. this is, i believe, denied by formalist phil. of math, and dealt with differently by constructivism.