If Philosophical Materialism is incontrovertible, dogmatically, then it becomes intellectually impossible to shed Determinism; and if one perceives a personal freedom of will and agency, and recognizes that it is futile to deny it because denying it removes all meaning from one’s personal ruminations, then free will and agency are concepts which are also impossible to shed.
But they are contraries, and to hold both beliefs simultaneously renders the belief system non-coherent: irrational.
What to do?
It seems not possible for the dogmatic Philosophical Materialist to release Determinism, because the dogma of the philosophy requires it. But it also requires accepting the empirical, experiential conclusion that one must have free will and agency to function as a human. So we see right up front that the one contrary, Determinism, is dogmatic, and the other contrary, free will and agency, is empirical. So which is more important, the dogmatic or the empirical?
Philosophical Materialists choose not to choose. Instead, they create stories which attempt to show that the two contraries are not really contrary, but coexist somehow, compatibly. Hence, Compatibilism.
In order to do this, it is necessary to redefine the issue, so that it will fit the stories. Possibly Determinism is only partial? Or free will and agency are partial (or not free or intentional)?
Here I will consider a paper which is written from the completely Determinist viewpoint, a paper by James B. Miles, published in the British Psychological Society Journal, and reproduced at naturalism.org. I will quote from Miles’ paper, sometimes at length, and then place my own comments at appropriate intervals. I think this serves the analysis of Compatiblism because as a Determinist, Miles takes apart the Compatibilist theories for us. He then proceeds to the fully Determinist theory which he promotes, giving an opportunity to analyze that, as well.
First, Miles defines the categories which he makes available for discussion:
1. Illusionism claims that Free Will and Determinism cannot co-exist, that determinism is true at the human level, and that we do not have Free Will.
2. Compatibilism claims that Free Will and Determinism can co-exist, that determinism is true at the human level, and yet we do have Free Will (but not Free Choice).
3. Libertarianism claims that Free Will and Determinism cannot co-exist, that Determinism is not true at the human level, and that we do have Free Will.
What is left out is Dualism:
4. Dualism claims that Free Will and Determinism cannot co-exist, that Determinism is not true at the human level, and that we do have Free Will PLUS that Materialism is logically and evidentially false.
The analysis that Miles provides is for Philosophical Materialist propositions only; it is apparently inconceivable that non-Materialist thoughts might still exist in today’s Materialistic world. That works out fine for our needs here, since we wish to see and analyze the Materialist positions. And we will skip over Illusionism since that subject has already been addressed in earlier posts. So we proceed with Miles as he takes on Compatibilism:
Miles:
” But how can free will be compatible with, at the human level, a fully determined universe? Because, for free will compatibilists, free will is simply redefined as being something other than freedom of choice, something other than freedom to have done otherwise, something other than freedom to have willed otherwise.So “real” Determinists have no truck with compatiblists. That’s fine; I agree. It is not possible to accept contraries without either a logical breech, or redefining the precepts in illegal or meaningless fashions. Compatibilism is false. But there is another way out, perhaps: Quantum Indeterminism, a rather self-descriptive concept.
This is ultimately what all compatibilism boils down to; this is why Kant in 1788 called compatibilism a ‘wretched subterfuge . . . petty word-jugglery’, why William James in 1884 called it ‘a quagmire of evasion’ (James, 1884/1956, p. 149; Kant, 1788/1956, pp. 189–190). Within compatibilism, the general rule is that free will can be defined as anything, so long as it is never defined as freedom of choice, freedom for any actual individual to have done otherwise. So, for example, Susan Wolf has redefined free will to mean sanity (1989), whereas others have redefined it as freedom from constraint, as unpredictability, as acting in accordance with ‘reason’, and many, including the doyen of modern philosophical compatibilists Harry Frankfurt (1971/2003), as acting in harmony with your basic – causally determined – personality. The philosopher of science Dan Dennett (1984) has defined free will as mechanical self-control. Free will, according to Dennett, is possessed by yeast, chrysanthemums, and some plastic toys. Under Dennett’s formulation were you to take your child’s toy car, put in new batteries, and then set it to race away, it would not have free will; however, as soon as you turn your back and walk away from it never to return, you have blessed it with free will. In other words, free will has deliberately been defined so generously it becomes a meaningless term, a morally empty concept, a capacity we can share with both the Energizer Bunny and fungal infections.
There are some who continue to argue that the compatibilist project is a noble one, trying to steer a just course of limited human freedom through the murky waters of determinism, but I argue Dennett gives the lie to the suggestion that compatibilism is about advancing human understanding or justice. Dennett, one of the world’s leading compatibilist scholars, tells us he finds facing up to the absence of free choice ‘almost too grim to contemplate’ (1984, p. 168). But what exactly does Dennett not wish to contemplate? As a free will theorist it is his job to contemplate the non-existence of free choice, so it cannot be his own contemplation he fears. No; what scares Dennett is not the fact of no free choice, it appears to be the risk of the public being given the chance to understand that fact. Motive becomes almost irrelevant; because, in a world without free will, ‘luck swallows everything’ (Strawson, 1998), one effect of denying the electorate such knowledge is to pretty much ensure that the lucky stay lucky while the unlucky remain unlucky.” [emphasis added].
J.B. Miles, The British Psychological Society;
Naturalism.org
Quantum Indeterminism
” Indeterminism cannot save free will for humankind, because if the mind is,
at least in part, undetermined, then some things ‘just happen’ in it outside the laws of causation for which, by definition, nobody and nothing is responsible. An individual is not responsible if their actions are caused, because those actions were ultimately set in motion before they were even born. But an individual is also not responsible if some of their actions are uncaused, because those actions just came out of nowhere. To be freely choosing an individual would have to be free from both deterministic effects and indeterministic effects. Free from both A and not-A, as a logician would put it. To be freely choosing you cannot have A, but you cannot have not-A either; free choice requires something that cannot logically exist in this or any possible universe.”
But is this seeming contradiction real? Is indeterminism as a cause really the contrary of determinism as a cause, or is there some other, actual contrary which applies? No, it is not a legitimate logical contradiction; it is a false dichotomy, because the categories which obtain are these:
U = D and !DThe contrary of Determinism is not Indeterminism, it is non-determinism. The division is between physically causal and not physically causal. It is decidedly not the division between degrees of causality. So the actual field of choices is this:
(Where U = universal set; D=Determinism subset)
[D] Determinism: (with Subsets A and !A):The author’s argument above, purported to be logical, is actually selecting between sub-subcategories [D & A] and [D & !A], while ignoring the [!D] subcategory altogether. This is expected, not logically, but dogmatically if the dogma is Materialist determinism as the only possibility which is allowed in the universe – which exists only under a philosophical, not empirical, dogma.[D & A] Determinism, Totally causal.
[D & !A] Determinism, Randomly causal.
[!D] Non-Determinism: (with Subsets N and !N):[!D & N] Non–Determinism, Free Choice, agent caused.
[!D & !N] Non-Determinism, Totally acausal
To exacerbate the issue, the argument is said to be a case against Free Will and Agency, when in fact it is an illegitimate rendering of the universe in order to eliminate them from consideration, a priori. Even further, this illegitimate elimination is done under the cover of the claim of logic.
When we look at the possibility categories, we see that we can eliminate [!A] and [!N] fairly easily. (The author already eliminated [!A]). So the proper differentiation becomes that between [D & A] vs. [!D & N], or [totally causal Determinism] vs.[ Free Will / Agency]. Under this proper understanding, either we are totally predetermined in every action and thought, or we have Free Will. In other words, there is no compatibility to be had using this particular logic.
” But logic, which deals only in right and wrong answers, certainly can disprove the existence of free choice. We saw earlier that to be freely choosing an individual would have to be free from both deterministic effects and indeterministic effects. Free from both A and not-A, as we put it. To be freely choosing you cannot have A, but you cannot have not-A either; free choice requires something that cannot logically exist in this or any possible universe.”This is an acceptance and promotion of a false dichotomy; these are the only two Materialist choices, perhaps, but not the only two choices, and not proper logical contraries to boot.
” Most of the great intellectual names of the pre- and post-enlightenment openly derided belief in free choice, including Hobbes, Spinoza, Voltaire, Darwin, and Einstein, and they did so because logic ruled out even its hypothetical existence. Nietzsche went so far as to call the idea of free choice ‘a kind of logical rape’ (1886/1990, p. 50).”Under Philosophical Materialism, these great intellectual names used the same unprovable and illogical constraints that Materialism provides, and which is falsified, above. And Nietzsche also murdered the First Principles, thereby nullifying logic totally, and necessitating his invention of Antirationalism. If one chooses Antirationalist claims, then one cannot also claim rationality. As an Appeal to Authority, this comment is weak on top of being a fallacy in argumentation.
And what becomes of “logical” refutation, any logical thought at all (especially in the absence of material evidence) if the lack of free will produces an inability to choose correct over incorrect, true over false, logical over illogical? This alone falsifies the position taken by the author.
However, this is ignored, and the moral issue is taken up.
Free Will vs. Morality
The moral case goes like this: because the concept of Free Will leads to the concept of personal responsibility, Free Will leads to “contempt” and “violence”, where the impoverished are blamed for their own problems, and violence in prisons is due to the idea of personal responsibility.
Libertarians, those who think that there is Free will and Agency, exhibit a “moral hardness”:
” their unwavering faith in the righteousness of their worldview no matter the lack of any objective evidence and the pain caused to others. As Double puts it, ‘fallibilism about one’s views is a desirable quality in general, but it is morally obligatory when dogmatism has potentially harmful repercussions for persons’ (2002, p. 231). It should furthermore be noted that asserting the existence of something for which there is zero objective evidence is widely viewed as a form of pseudoscience.”
After having admitted that there is no empirical evidence against free will either, it is remarkable that Determinism is not declared pseudoscience first and foremost; it cannot be proved, ever, because it is a universal, inductively held and subject to the inductive fallacy. Plus, Hume famously put a perpetual doubt in place concerning the actual existence of cause itself. And as for self-righteousness, there is none so great as that of those who create their own ethic, which they demand that others must obey; it is out of this self-righteousness that others are morally condemned.
But this is ignored, and the moral case for denying free will continues:
” To consider for a moment, Western law recognizes that the penal system is so harmful to the existing life and future opportunities of persons that to convict requires evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. Yet libertarians provide no objective evidence whatsoever for the existence of free will, and therefore no apparent justification for the mass poverty and brutal punishments that belief in libertarian free will often brings with it. The leading legal theorist Stephen J. Morse freely admits that harsh prison conditions and execution are only morally tolerable where the presumption of free choice exists (1976a; 2004).”
And,
” Shariff, Vohs, and Schooler tell us that we should be prepared to ‘stake our very lives on the introspective certainty’ that we are conscious, but ‘perhaps none of us would be prepared to do the same for free will’ (Shariff et al., 2008, p. 190). Yet surely social psychology risks appearing far too ready to stake other people’s lives on the ‘introspective certainty’ of free will?”The pressure of moral denouncement by their peers is too much for them? Especially under the draconian accusations proffered pompously here.
Now for the obligatory Social Justice:
” Because of their belief in the fairness of ‘deserved inequalities’, such respondents were discovered to have become almost completely unconcerned with the idea of promoting greater equality while at the same time asserting that Britain was a beacon of fairness that offered opportunities for all.”
It seems that it is not opportunities which he really wants:
”The 2010 British Social Attitudes Report also found that there has been a fall in those supporting any form of wealth redistribution, from 51% in 1994 to 38% in 2010; sympathy was now limited to those who did not ‘choose’ to live in poverty”
It is equal outcomes which he really wants. Here comes compassion and justice:
”Thomas Halper showed in a 1973 Polity essay that attitudes to poverty – including our corresponding compassion towards the poor or lack thereof – have always depended upon our views of personal merit, and choice in one’s position, but Halper’s most worrying conclusion comes when he describes how the main reason for the great longevity and influence of the notorious concept of the deserving versus undeserving poor ‘was its profound legitimating power’ (1973, p. 76). When some are identified as deserving their station through choice rather than luck or accident it becomes not only an excuse not to do anything to help them but also, even more malignantly, is given as proof that such a society is just.”And,
”Free will becomes the legitimating excuse that is used to ignore the plight of the most unfortunate, as the world is not now examined to see if it is just but instead is simply assumed to be just.”In this discussion we are not allowed a glimpse of any actual chosen degradation; we are told that it is all because of a lack of empathy in society, which in turn is due to the concept of Free Will. It also presumes that prosperity is completely accidental and not a product of any personal agency.
And of course racism is the next charge:
”All of which leads the legal theorist Anders Kaye at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law to note that any legal approach, such as compatibilism, which plays down the fact that choice is lacking is more conducive to the use of state violence against the disadvantaged, and that the disadvantaged tend to be ‘disproportionately – though not exclusively – people of color. . . . This is also the group with the most reason to criticize and challenge the social order’
Kaye has called this the ‘secret politics’ of the compatibilist criminal law. Free will is a belief that hurts the poor, acts to advantage the rich and powerful, and discriminates against the coloured, and it is crass not to recognize the unfair advantage the myth of free will may be giving to some segments of society, and very much at the expense of others.
Fatalism
”Confusing determinism and fatalism is lack of knowledge of the history of the free will debates; almost two and a half thousand years ago, the Stoics showed that an understanding of determinism should never imply fatalism. Determinism means that every action in the quasi-classical universe has a cause. In contrast, fatalism is a resignation to events that suggests that as everything is determined it is pointless to act because of a belief that no matter what one does one’s future will not change. The Stoics called this the ‘lazy’ or ‘idle’ argument, and Cicero said that Chrysippus (ca. 270–207 BCE, Before Common Era) criticized the fatalist argument by showing that determinism left plenty of room for taking action. Fatalists used to argue over the point of calling the doctor if you are ill, but Chrysippus showed that you will get better by calling the doctor; it is just that the act of calling the doctor is itself also part of the chain of cause and effect.Where there is no free will, actions and efforts have effects and change the outcome from what it would have been if the effort had not been made; it is just that the outcome can still be defined in terms of prior causes. Where there is no free will, actions and efforts have effects and change the outcome from what it would have been if the effort had not been made; it is just that the outcome can still be defined in terms of prior causes.”This is blatantly impossible to reconcile with no Free Will or Agency; if it is possible to decide to act or not to act, then there is Free Will. Fatalism is not a philosophical option in opposition to free will, it is an emotional response. The response is an emotional reaction to the concept of no free will and no agency, as is required under Determinism. To claim that Determinism allows for the free choice to call a doctor or not is an on-the-fly redefinition of Determinism. It is false to claim that an outcome can be changed by personal action if it is also claimed that every action is predetermined and thus every outcome is predetermined. These claims are internally contradictory and non-coherent.
”But a determinist will make as many decisions as a libertarian, it is just that he or she will recognize their [sic] decisions as fully determined.”This becomes word-play, where the rationalization becomes unintelligible to all but the cognoscenti who endorse the premise. If an outcome is predetermined, it is not determined by decisions being made, it is “fully determined” by preexisting states which force an outcome which could not be otherwise. To claim that decisions are anyway involved in changing outcomes requires a complete redefinition of at least one and maybe several terms in the proposition.
Redefinition as a tactic is quite common in Philosophical Materialist propositions; this is one example.
Here the author goes the whole distance:
”As a determinist understands that all effects need causes, and that all change only comes about through effort, a determinist is perhaps more likely to strive harder than most. I make the effort to write this paper in order to have an effect; the effect of, at the minimum, ensuring social psychologists become better informed about the free will debates. Vohs, Schooler, and Baumeister appear to have to date been testing the effect of belief in fatalism, not the effect of disbelief in free will.”Let’s parse this position:
1. ” All effects need causes.”
Maybe so; but first, consult with Hume.
2. ”All change only comes about through effort.”
No. Wrong. Under Determinism the total causal chain is entropic, requiring no effort, which is good because minerals are incapable of expending effort in order to create change. Energy is degraded and lost to heat, not summoned forth for teleological efforts. Water makes no effort to flow downhill; it never exerts itself to flow uphill toward some elevated purpose. The statement above is completely false, and is not a principle of physics. It is a principle of Free Will, not Determinism. It is false to co-opt a principle of Free Will in order to prove Determinism.
3. ”I make the effort … in order to have an effect.”
BINGO. Here the author claims to have agency. It is by his own effort that the effect is created, and he, the human agent, is the cause. He is the agent which created this very paper, an effect which he hopes will have even further ripple effects after publication. And the author doubtless is an agent in the pursuit of the effect of publication. It is an inadvertant admission that his prior denial is wrong; yet he sees it as consistent: Determinism is now wholly compatible with his own agency. The eternal contradiction and non-coherence is not even recognized.
Summary of the Miles paper:
1. Free Will is “Irresponsible and a disservice” (title of the paper).
This is a moral conclusion, based on defective logic as well as personal moral tenets.
2. Free Will cannot exist in a Deterministic universe. Free Will fails logic.
Disproved easily and categorically, as was shown above.
3. Compatibilism is false.
Agreed. Determinism and Free Will are mutually exclusive, and cannot be made compatible without either internal non-coherence, or changing the ground rules.4. Free Will is a myth which is morally reprehensible. Free will is an illusion which serves to suppress decent goals such as empathy for the poor in the form of equal outcome as a goal. Free Will is racist. Free Will leads to state violence in prisons, against those who are not responsible for their own actions and thus cannot be guilty (victimology).
Moralizing based on faulty conclusions, in turn based on the illogic of the original proposition.5. Determinists make decisions.
No, actually that cannot be the case without severe damage to the original definitions. That decidedly falls into Compatibilism, which the author previously declared false, and with good reason. Now claiming otherwise is non-coherent.
6. The public needs to know that they don’t have Free Will.
It will take a better case than presented here to convince anyone other than the prior believers that none of us has Free Will and Agency.The author has not proven his case that Free Will does not and cannot exist. He maintains that Free Will has no material, empirical evidence, despite the fact that neither does his own position, Determinism, meaning that that claim is not a differentiator. In fact, the universal human experience is that humans do choose freely and are agents; this universal subjective experience is far more empirical and credible than any Determinist data. He claims logic: but, his logic is fatally flawed. His morality is Virtue Ethic, which is nothing more than an opinion, being without any moral authority opinion, with no moral authority to proclaim its supposed universal value. His appeal to empathy is little more than an egalitarian political move, driving toward equality of outcomes based on the non-responsibility which the impoverished have for their own poverty, and the incarcerated have for their incarceration. Redistribution of wealth, that is the key. And of course, Free Will is racist.
In short, this compendium of flawed logic veered into Leftist political territory very quickly.
The result is that we can see that Illusionism is false, Compatibilism is false, and Libertarianism needs the help of Dualism. This is because under Materialism (as Libertarianism is), it cannot account for any source for that which it believes: that Free Will exists and that Determinism is overridden at the human level in order for agency to operate. There is no Materialist explanation or provision for this phenomenon. And so Libertarianism suffers and dies due to its inability to fulfill its obligatory Materialist evidentiary requirements.
When a concept is false it will generate contradictions at every attempt to justify it. Monism is one of those concepts, and Determinism is clutched to the monist’s heart as a necessary fallacy which must be held tight in order to preserve the “reality” which monists have defined for themselves. But monism leads to falseness such as the Philosophical Materialism fallacy, the necessity for abiogenesis, and the illegitimacy of Free Will and Agency. These beliefs and others are held uncritically and despite their rational non-coherence, purely in order to preserve the perceived necessity of monism. But the process is inverted from rational processes, which demand that the conclusion flow from the truth of the premises. Monism demands that all premises be true because the conclusion is true, by virtue of dogma alone. Monism, Materialism and Atheism all suffer from this irrational basis. They are held despite the glaring lack of evidence and the embarrassingly faulty logic required for their support: they are held as faiths, blind faiths without evidence, and blind faiths of the worst kind: demonstrably false.
11 comments:
For the life of me, I can't figure out how it is that such a trenchant analysis produces not a single comment, while the responses to Dr. Coyne's series of posts on free will--including some by apparently very qualified individuals--must have numbered in the hundreds.
To me, this is an even greater mystery than the question of free will itself.
If there is one thing I've learned here, it's that Atheists don't want logic, they want affirmation.
"For the life of me, I can't figure out how it is that such a trenchant analysis produces not a single comment,"
I don't know if Miles welcomes amateur analysis but he's not dead or anything. Stan could mail this to him. Could be interesting.
"while the responses to Dr. Coyne's series of posts on free will--including some by apparently very qualified individuals--must have numbered in the hundreds"
There might be a difference in how famous and qualified Stan is compared to Dr Coyne. Dr Coyne was already getting species named after him three decades ago. (The Atelopus Coynei, obviously).
Yeah, all I have is a bunch of patents and a whole lot of working digital and analog products which I didn't name after myself. Maybe Coyne didn't name things after himself either, I don't know. But he appears to be no expert in logic; as it happens, I am, and have been for decades, being employed in a profession which uses formal and mathematical logic daily. In engineering, one's credentials are visible by being allowed to continue in engineering.
It is a universal expectation that "philosophers" will rationalize entire schemas to support a philosophy; for them, the philosophy (conclusion) comes first, the support (premises) later. One of my favorite examples is this from Steven Pinker, describing the Computational Theory of Mind:
"Eventually the bits of matter constituting a symbol bump into bits of matter connected to the muscles, and behavior happens. The computational theory of mind thus allows us to keep beliefs and desires in our explanations of behavior while planting them squarely in the physical universe. It allows meaning to cause and to be caused."
Pinker, "How the Mind Works", pg 25.
One must first and foremost eliminate all undesirable conclusions, and only then devise a theory, no matter how intellectually abusive, to support that theory. The reduction of meaning to mere symbols is not supportable, while the source of meaning is ignored, the issue of aboutness of symbols is ignored, as is the issue of intentional abstraction of purely mental thinking, and experiencing abstractions. But the objective of restricting the conclusion is accomplished, even if it takes collateral damage to linear logic.
There is a significant difference with engineers: logic must work first; the philosophy comes later and must be based on what is real, not on what is needed for popular support or personal ideology. As I have said before, engineering is grounded; it is held responsible for its consequences; it is not glory seeking; it respects science as a discipline, not as a religion or a political redistributionist technique; it doesn't assert morality for others based on ungrounded pseudoscience. Engineering pursues what is true in the natural world, and proves it by using it successfully.
Philosophers are the antithesis of this, no matter how famous or "scientific" they are. If they weren't, they'd be engineers.
Finally, finding new species is induction, only. Engaging in deduction is not warranted by mere success in induction, it requires an all different set of knowledge, and an all different intellectual discipline.
Coyne's fame is likely not due to any logical abilities nor species-naming; it is likely because he radically supports a religious philosophy which appeals to a small but vocal segment of the population, to whom he sells books of affirmation based on Scientism.
nats,
I almost forgot. You didn't critique the analysis, you merely attacked the credentials of the author. Does that mean that you object, but can't figure out why?
If your ideology is correct and true, then why not defend it in a straightforward manner, rather than in Ad Hominems and oblique insults? That would be the mature approach.
I forgot to mention: the link to the Miles article is incorrectly formatted.
"nats,
I almost forgot. You didn't critique the analysis, you merely attacked the credentials of the author. Does that mean that you object, but can't figure out why?"
I haven't read it so I can't tell you whether I object or not. I've been reading the comments more than the articles lately. Sorry. I did start reading the your series on free will.
It does concern me that you consider my short comment "...Ad Hominems and oblique insults", an attack on the author and immature. It was not my intention to insult you but instead was simply a comment to Josh about why this article will not generate a similar amount of comments from qualified people. In fact, I can't see what you found so insulting about my comment.
What is true is engineering is incredibly useful and the world is better for it's study and application. (I actually started studying computer systems engineering before I found my true calling.)
Nats,
Interesting. I tend to read the articles and not the comments so much, at the few (very few) blogs I visit. Except at Massimo's place where the commenters frequently make more sense than the authors.
Out of curiosity, and you need not answer if this is too personal, what is your true calling?
What, in your opinion, would it take for a person to be qualified to make analyses of propositions compared to actual logical precepts? Would my PhD suffice? Or would long experience suffice? Or would holding a proper ideology suffice? What exactly qualifies an Atheist to reject a dimension he has not experienced nor prove non-existent? (I can go on with this for quite a while, but it's dinner time)
I'll have to be quick -
My comment to Josh was about Josh feeling that there were not enough commenters and not enough qualified commenters on your posts compared to Dr Coyne.
I haven't said anything about your ability to apply logic and analyze propositions and I've also said nothing about my qualifications (which in philosophical discussions about free will are less than relevant.)
Stan, you can do all the analyses you want, I never said you shouldn't, but Josh can't expect you to get hundreds of comments from qualified people in the relevant field. That's very unlikely. And like I told Josh, you can always write Miles.
Hello everyone,
(part 1 of 2)
I'll be not too brief today. As always, discussing about religious issues is always complicated. Inductive thought processes always, sooner or later, involve the approaching of some sort of conjectures which lead to some unavoidable philosophical thought, which sometimes leads to some emotional outputs that can be counterproductive for further analysis of the mentioned philosophical thought process (e.g. Sartre's existentialism/nihilism).
I apologize if these few paragraphs are sometimes deviated of the topic in hand:
If I define:
A = Useful
!A = Not Useful
B = true
!B = not true
A, B, !A and !B are among them, not XOR (mutually exclusive).
Whatever the perspective, semantics are necessary, and basic definitions should be understood if any sequential or fuzzy logic is going to be put in progress, in a way that should be enough to distinguish between something useful to analyse or not.
1) when [A] leads to [!B]
Is because what seems to be useful should be formulated once again, something like this(putting it in a rather "programmish" way):
while [A] leads to [!B]
reformulate [A]
If under the boundaries of the A is not possible to resolve the problem, then it is more recursive to:
reformulate [!B] so that it is shown to result in [!A]
And start over.
2) But when [!A] leads to [B]
Then here's a problem with reasoning the potential usefulness of the problem in hand. Some people are too hasty in this reasoning and rationalize a way to make it [!A] to [!B], but some others try with huge efforts, sacrifice and no fear to ridicule and ruin, to make [B] lead to [A]. This also happens with the mystical regarded as a source of knowledge.
I somehow disagree with Bertrand Russell regarding this problem, as
I'm barely trying to show above, because defining something as useful and true does not undermine the other potential possiblities of logically redifining what could be useful and also true.
I also appreciate some of his works, but regarding his views of pitagorean mathematics and political/religious views, I think he was just making the same mistake all of us would by refusing to analyse further some correct definitions regarding the philosophical dictums he disagreed with, but that logically acually could lead to something also useful and true.
I'm also surprised about the parallels between mysticism and science (not just by direct, individual experience), because even if indivual inquiry methods of each one are sometimes rather opposite, it is a shallow analysis to undermine the many similarities in which actually the potential knowledge from these two sources is actually acquired.
For what I understand, is the ingraning of agressive political measures into the ancient religions which end to mess up their important and implicate meaning, and also the so-called "false religions" or "bad religions".
When religions are being analysed beyond the shallow outcomes which are brought by the basic ecclesiastic parts (which I'm afraid, most contemporary atheists just don't get through because of laziness or apathy or both), it is possible to see that the apparent contradictions among sacred texts is just being undermined by their particularities and commonalities which, being induced logically and/or by direct experience of the phenomena, that may be distinguished. The commonalities of sacred texts should not be seen in a Reductio-ad-Absurdum fashion where every context is just a historical one, and in consequence an ecclesiatic only one where everything is taken from a literal point of view. This is one of the biggest mistakes of Old and New Atheism alike.
(continuing below)
(part 2 of 2, continuing from above)
Regarding the New Age movement, the problem is not its effectiveness, of lack thereof, among 100% of its proponents, the problem is finding that some of these proponents are "skimming" some of the knowledge of ancient mystical traditions and makes them think in a possible "perfection" where is has not yet achieved, something analogous to the people which abide fanatically to Scientism, and in some cases unfortunately that makes some of these people pushy (Brian Weiss is one of the notable exceptions). Many people believe that 100% of the New Age movement is a clap-trap because of this problem. I shouldn't say this again, but I will stay with traditional mysticism and away from New Age.
I believe anyone, rationally and mildly emotionally, may value the truth in a defined context when it is not just assesed logically, but also the experience of the phenomenon is direct:
Not necessarily by the strict meaning of empirism, IF it is obviously taken from a totally holistic prespective it is too broad of a problem to specify how could be the direct experience of a phenomenon be classified, but just classified, not logically induced/deduced.
When experiences are discussable and are similar or common (not just analogous), then there's something to begin with, even if it at first seems to be something anecdotal.
It seems to be that the actual problem with philosophical materialism alone is that is just too much simplistic to help somebody understand perspectives of how some aspects of reality may or might be, in something that may be interpretated so more than one person could get to some similar conclusions, with the rather tight boundaries when addressing something which is shown to trascend the ideological stance, and without prior negatively emotional dismissals from people who love authority and excessive egos.
As always, the core of the problem with any given source of knowledge, is when are we able to understand something deeply enough without resorting to ONLY communicate and assmiliate the knowledge as it is actually perceived by someone else (I mean the way knowdledge is transmitted from person to person)even if it is working in its actual status.
I think here's when induction becomes something difficult, it may not regress to infinity... there must be a start point.
Regarding PSI and spiritual experiences, even though some of them are measurable (just look at Dean Radin's interesting experiments), that those although discussable as very similar, are in essence unique to each of us, where interpretations are just trascended.
That's why I think the burden of proof under some stantards is difficult, but not impossible to manifest.
Kind Regards.
Nats,
OK. I don't think that this blog will ever get very many consistent readers because I am not here to provide ideological affirmation, as I mentioned before.
However, this blog does seem to occupy a tiny niche which is otherwise unserved, which is to promote the understanding and use of actual logical process in one's pursuit of truth in a personal worldview.
Thanks for the note on the bad link, it's fixed now.
Post a Comment