Posted on 07/19/2005 9:03:50 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Thank you so very much, D-fendr, for this insight from C. S. Lewis! The Abolition of Man is a stunningly beautiful (and chilling, even frightening) work. Among other things, Lewis also says this:
"This thing which I have called for convenience the Tao, and which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgements. If it is rejected, all value is rejected.... The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgment of value in the history of the world. [Pace Marx, Lewontin, Pinker, Singer, and other would-be constructors of 'Second Realities.'] What purport to be new systems (or as they now call them 'ideologies'), all consist of fragments from the Tao itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they possess.... The rebellion of new ideologies against the Tao is a rebellion of the branches against the tree: if the rebels could succeed they would find that they have destroyed themselves. The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of imagining a new primary colour, or, indeed, of creating a new sun and a new sky for it to move in."
IMHO, the flight from First Reality -- what Voegelin has called the Great Hierarchy of Being [God - Man - World - Society] -- is a flight to irrationality, to insanity; it is a profound spiritual disorder that, to me, looks a whole lot like a "death wish." Our age is virtually characterized by this "will to revolt," which in the end is tantamount to the suicide of the human race -- the "abolition of man" is self-arranged, and self-dealt.
As Lewis puts it, we cannot take "the thread of life out of the hand of Clotho' and be henceforth free to make our species whatever we wish it to be.... For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means ... the power of some men to make other men what they please."
And also:
"Nature is a word of varying meanings, which can best be understood if we consider its various opposites. The Natural is the opposite of the Artificial, the Civil, the Human, the Spiritual, and the Supernatural.... Nature seems to be spatial and temporal.... She seems to be the world of quantity, as against the world of quality; of objects against consciousness; of the bounded as against the wholly or partially autonomous; of that which knows no values as against that which both has and perceives value; of efficient causes (or, in some modern systems, of no causality at all) as against final causes."
"Final causes" being understood in its Aristotelian sense, as that for which everything altogether exists.
Anyhoot, any Lurkers reading this, IMHO, The Abolition of Man is a stunning work that tells us a lot about ourselves and our human condition at the outset of the twenty-first century.... Not a lengthy work at all, it can be read in a single sitting.
D-fendr, your introduction of Lewis' Abolition to this thread seems entirely fitting to me.... Thank you so very much for writing!
How so, Alamo-Girl? Please share your thoughts? What a fascinating suggestion!
No, what we currently believe to be the facts of this world. It could change tomorrow. "Something" has always existed.
And therein lies all the difference in the world! Truth pertains to values that are eternally, universally valid; facts to observations of contingent, finite phenomena. Therefore, you cannot secure the autonomy, the liberty of the human person by means of an appeal to facts. Please see the reply at #1,041 on this thread for further details....
Thanks so much for your excellent post/essay, YHAOS!
To the contrary, LogicWings, “mainstream” scientists continue to investigate qualia; it is a most difficult subject for both evolutionary psychologists and for strong artificial intelligence.
They can investigate it all they want, it is purely subject and incapable of proof. AI is a fantasy, without life there is no consciousness or "intelligence.
To the contrary, I know there was a beginning because geometry exists.
This from the same person who, on the Platonic Realism thread said everything is an illusion. You can't have it both ways. If everything is an illusion, then you can't "know" anything.
It all depends on what you mean by “something”. If the something is corporeal and thus having space/time coordinates – in a geometry – then yes, I aver that geometry cannot have an infinite past. Space/time is a continuum. Time is a dimension and is relative to space and distinguishable from timelessness. Energy/matter are created as the geometry changes.
All these absolute statements about things you couldn't possibly know about because you "weren't there to observe or falsify it." Funny how you guys love to make absolute statements about things you cannot know anything about but won't accept a simple transitional fossil. Amazing.
This view which essentially rejects general relativity and all variations of string theories - could propose an infinite past but only in terms of absolute time.
General Relativity is a "Theory." It isn't a fact. Apply the same critiques to your own arguements that you apply to the ToE.
When have I ever said the big bang is an illusion? And what is a Platonic illusion?
I chased you through 3 threads where you maintained that everything was, due to Platonic Realism, in the final analysis, an illusion. If you want to disavow that now, fine. I won't forget it though.
If you are a nominalist, then we can never agree to very much at all because your “reality” is completely different, a subset of the realist view which denies the very existence of universals, the realist view.
You are confusing "universals" with abstractions. The difference here is you hold they have some independent existence "somewhere" which you cannot demonstrate, give evidence of, or prove and I maintain abstractions are a necessary process of the human mind. There are no "universals".
Again, this is a matter of worldviews – epistemology this time. How does one know what one knows and how sure are they that they know it. Again, we are utterly different. Spiritual revelations are more certain knowledge to me than anything logic or sensory experience can provide.
We agree! The problem IS epistemology, always has been. You don't know how you know what you know, you just "know it." Whether it is your "spiritual revelations" or reality. As if there was some sort of contest there. We aren't utterly different at all. You simply accept the evidence that conforms with your worldview and reject anything that conflicts with it. I take the world as I find it. You prove my point when you say:
I aver that it is impossible for an existent “in” space/time to arrive at an objective truth because everything is relative within space/time.
If there is no "objective truth" then everything is an illusion. The problem with this statement is, if it is true, it negates itself since it is universal statement about absolute reality. That reality cannot be objectively known. Therefore, the statement that reality cannot be known, cannot be known either. This is called Contradictory Premises and thus logically proves it is a Fallacy.
To the contrary, one may conclude that the “will to live” which characterizes all of biological life is an effect of intelligence
Opinion Masquerading as Fact. You have no evidence for that conclusion. There is no provable "will to live" until you can prove "will" in lower animals, let alone intelligence. Begs the Question.
Indeed. Many people do not realize that the intelligent design hypothesis is not a replacement for the theory of evolution, it is a supplement.
And all this time I thought you had no sense of humor!!!
It is either creationism or evolution. Take your pick, and don't straddle the fence.
You fail to realize what my statement implies.
Because BB I have seen so many people use the premises of QM to state that, 1) Nothing can be known 2)Observing reality changes it 3)Nothing is fixed or determined because QM states that all elementary particles exist as "probability states" and have no real existence. 4) on and on and on.
For an example, read the book "The Way of the Voyager" written by the astro'nut' who did psychic test surreptituously on the way to the moon. On the basis QM he literally said that it would be possible for you to look at the moon one second and it would be there, and look up the next and it would be gone, based upon QM. This from a supposed "scientist."
Why do you think you, and AG and the rest of the mystics, like Deepak Choprah are always going on and on about QM. Because of the uncertainty that allows you to question how anybody knows anything and thus, maybe, just maybe, your religious views are correct. Despite the total lack of evidence.
If QM makes human knowledge less than precise then there is room for doubt. Why do you think people are always going on and on about the "Uncertainty Principle"? Or Godel's "Incompleteness Theorum"? Because it furthers the idea that there is no "objective" knowledge about the Universe. (Which would be an objective statement about the universe)
Finally Niels Bohr is a big part of the problem. He committed the sin of stating a Fallacy of Reification as true scientific fact. Someday somebody will correct this.
Right, you make my point. This is tripe. Everything you see takes place in the past. You cannot change the past. It takes a given amount of time for information to reach your senses, so it all takes place in the past. I cannot change the sun because the light I am observing is already 8 minutes old. Doesn't matter if it is a minute or a millionth of a second. It is in the past.
This is one of those errors that is holding science back. It is wrong. Observing something cannot change it.
Before you can make this assertion, give any evidence of anything 'beyond' space/time. Give any evidence that space/time has any limits at all, for there to be anything outside it.
QM can only afford us the "partial view" of the particular observation made.
Love those absolute statements. If you are so certain here, then how can you be so uncertain in other cases? Like the following:
Bohr argues it's senseless to ask what transpired "before" the observation, because there's no way to know that on the basis of fact. Thus, it cannot be a scientific question proper.
How does he Know this? If it impossible to know, then he can't know this either. This is just a guy trying guarantee he has the last word. Fallacy of Proving the Negative - "no way to know". Can't prove what isn't there. This is just one of many Fallacies that Bohr commits.
His epistemology is severe and quite elegant....
Actually it was sloppy and full of holes. Opinion Masquerading as Fact.
Observations of the whole are necessarily partial, because we can only "see" what falls within the range of our observation; we do not ever see the whole.
Are you saying it is impossible to see the whole? Then what is AG's "spiritual revalations?"
The contradictions abound.
Jeepers, I was wondering why I found quantum theory so fascinating ... but now you've cleared it all up for me, LogicWings! It's news to me that I am a "mystic"; but if you say so, it must be true. :^)
Be that as it may. Yet haven't you just demonstrated the fallacy of reification here? Your observation has made something "real" (at least for you) that (as far as I know) was never there before. I.e., my alleged sympathy for Deepak Chopra, which is actually news to me: my deepest spiritual proclivities run to Christianity, not Buddhism. (I don't have much use for New Agers of whatever stripe.... It's a "been there, done that" kinda thing.... From my present vantage point, that exercise wasn't completely useless; but then on the other hand, it wasn't particularly valuable either. Anyhoot, it was a long time ago....)
(Of course, my strong sympathy for Alamo-Girl is not similarly an instance of the fallacy of reification....)
I'm aware of the astronaut to whom you referred, though his name presently escapes me, Ed something-or-other. Lynne McTaggert devotes quite a bit of ink to him in her book, The Field (published in 2000 as I recall). He had some interesting things to say -- but then I find lots of people have interesting things to say, including you!
Quantum theory just leaves so much open to philosophical speculation. But as <1/1, 000, 000th% astutely noted in a recent post (paraphrasing): There's no shortage of "bright ideas," but there is definitely a dearth of data to back them up....
If that Ed guy said anything about how you had to be looking at the Moon in order for the Moon to exist, I think that's just nutz. It is true that some QM theorists believe that no particle is real unless and until it is observed. But somehow I don't think that's right.
Einstein suggested that this was Niels Bohr's view (and Heisenberg supposedly shared it). But I don't think that's at all what Bohr meant. I think all he did mean was that if you haven't observed a thing yourself, then you cannot say that it does, in fact, exist. This strikes me as an epistemological issue, not an ontological one: Bohr's point seems to be about the limits of human knowledge, not about the reality of, e.g., the Moon. At least that's what I think he meant. But I might change my mind later, if/as new information becomes available.
If this is a correct interpretation, then the existence of the Moon would not be contingent on our observing it at all.
You wrote: "Why do you think people are always going on and on about the "Uncertainty Principle"? Or Godel's "Incompleteness Theorum"? Because it furthers the idea that there is no "objective" knowledge about the Universe."
LW, personally I don't think it's particularly helpful to attribute motives to others. In general, it seems to me that all the Uncertainty Principle says is that one cannot have complete knowledge with regard to a system on the basis of discrete observations of it. I think this was Bohr's view; for he insisted that particle/wave duality (Heinsenberg's idea I gather) constituted a complementarity. You can know the position of the the particle, or its velocity -- but you can't know both at the same time. The two transform. Any complete description of the system would involve knowing both -- but you can't have both at once under experimental conditions.
What you can do, however, is decide which you want to look at at any particular point in time, given the requirements/design of your experiment. So some people actually say that the observer can decide "whether a particle is a particle or a wave," and "reify it" as either one or the other by means of that decision. But I'm not sure that's true and, if it were true, what the implications would be.
Godel's "Incompleteness Theorem" simply states (trying to recall this accurately here) that there may be logical statements belonging to a system of axioms that the system itself cannot validate, even though they may be true statements. (Or something like that. Help, anybody???)
In either case, I don't think we're talking about advocating "subjectivity." I think we're talking about limits that pertain to the human mind....
At least that's how I'm interpreting these two "discoveries." As I learn more, my interpretations may need to be revised.
These are fascinating subjects, LogicWings. Thank you so much for proposing this discussion. Anyone else wants to jump in here, you are most welcome!!! (Especially if you can help me get a better grip on "quantum weirdness....")
This is one of those errors that is holding science back. It is wrong. Observing something cannot change it.
Well, if what you say is true, then you really aren't observing the sun, but rather light, which is really all we can say about anything that we think we are observing, literally speaking....and as such, if this light effects you (not to be confused with afecting you, which is a different discussion, maybe) then, logically, you must also effect the light. To say anything else would be the equivalent of proposing an effect without a cause.
Your statement therefore is not based upon logical assumptions, although you're free to believe what you want if it helps you sleep better at night.
Just a quick clarification. In QM, the word "observation" is normally used in the sense that something is done to the object being observed. Sometimes it involves bouncing a laser beam off it, passing it through a magnetic field or colliding it with a surface. It's not a passive activity.
In the case of an astronaut psychic observing the moon, you would be correct.
Sorry, couldn't help but chime in when I heard the physics discussed (it is my aspiring area of expertise (i.e. area of graduate study)).
Your description of the uncertainty principle is exactly correct, except for your statement about experimental conditions - it is, in fact, a fundamental statement about the physical nature of the very equations that govern the particles involved, and follows naturally from the wave-particle duality of matter.
It basically says that the product of the uncertainties in momentum and position of a particle are greater than or equal to a number known as Planck's constant. The thing is, Planck's constant is so small, that for everyday objects, the product of the momentum and position in ordinary units is HUGE compared to Planck's constant, and we don't notice the effect; it only becomes manifest for extremely tiny particles (of molecular scale or smaller).
Say you want to look at the pattern of atomic electrons in a crystal. One way this is done is by sending x-rays of a certain wavelength through the crystal and looking at their diffraction pattern on a photographic plate. This works well, except there's a certain fuzziness to the picture if you try to resolve it too finely. You can get around this problem by using x-rays of shorter wavelength, and discern a finer pattern. The catch is, when the wavelength gets shorter, the photons in the x-rays gain more energy (and momentum), and will give the electrons a "bump", and screw up your measurement for a different reason. The shorter the wavelength, the less the uncertainty due to the wave nature of the x-ray, but the uncertainty due to the particle nature correspondingly increases. This is a fundamental problem; you can't get around it with any experiment.
That about sums up the basics of the uncertainty principle; it does have some interesting philosophical implications, though quantum mechanics does not prove the absence of any globally (i.e. divinely?) hidden determined variables, only the absence of locally hidden determined variables (a principle known as Bell's inequality proves this). In other words, be careful in applying the uncertainty principle in esoteric philosophical realms; it is merely a physical principle relating to quantities we can physically observe.
Hope this helps - if you don't totally understand quantum mechanics, don't worry, I don't think anyone really does; I've thought I've understood it before, only to have new problems drop a new surprise that falsified my understanding. However, it works in experiments and has given us applications ranging from computer chips to lasers, so its functionality is virtually indisputable (yet the details constantly evolve, as in any theory).
Source?
Are you going to accuse me of quote-looting again when I provide the source? (BTW, I never said "powered flight"...you did.)
J.A. Ruben (and others) Longisquama Fossil and Feather Morphology, Science, 291
Thank you so much for your excellent essay/post, Quark2005! I stand corrected; let the record show your important qualification of what I wrote.
Certainly QM "does have some interesting philosophical implications." But the philosophers, in the end, are going to have to let the physicists take the lead here: This is their area of expertise; and their endeavors will (hopefully) constrain the enthusiams of philosophers (and New Agers) who might be tempted to prematurely (mis)appropriate science for "philosophical ends."
Still the philosophers have seen the problem implicit in trying to understand the microworld through the lens of the macroscopic world. But then, indubitably the physicists are well aware of this problem, too.
I'm quite sure I don't "totally understand quantum mechanics"; all the same I'm not worried about it. I'll just patiently wait for "you guys" to do your thing, and hope/pray for the major breakthrough that I sense is "out there" just waiting to be found. IMHO, science is due for a "major score," on the order of Newtonian mechanics, special/general relativity, or the original formulation of QM itself.
Thank you ever so much for writing, Quark! Your elaboration of these issues is most deeply appreciated.
I didn't deny what I said. I deny what you said I said.
I suspicion that your hostlity toward any scientific questioning of Archy and the dino-bird theory comes from your evolutionary bias and assumptions, not from actual evidence...For some reason you think that Archy should be immune to scientific investigation and criticism by experts in the field. You outright refuse to consider the scientific evidence that contradicts the 130 year old assumptions about Archy. You make concrete assumptions about Archy that many scientists will not make because the evidence does not allow for those assumptions to be made...Like Dr. Patterson stated: "That is not science".
Again, you demonstrate yourself to be what you claim all creationists to be.
The "little snippets" I "waved around" were provided at the request of some of this site's evolutionists. These "little snippets" are from evolutionary scientists from mainstream science and scientific publications. You may want to try debating their evidence and interpretation of the data by some other means than "liar, liar, pants on fire" and "your ignorant".
How come your skull pictures don't include the "greatest find in the last 100 years" (The Chad skull...Sahelanthropus)? Are you going to get upset when I cite what scientists say about the Chad skull (rom Nature, Time, National Geographic News, Sydney Morning Herald, and etc.)?
And how come your skull pictures start off with a skull of a Modern Chimpanzee ?
Thanks so much for the clarification, <1/1,000,000th%!
I'm gonna agree with you on one point: QM has been royally abused by some to make "scientific" statements about metaphysics, Fritjof Capra is a chief offender. This type of category error is a pet peeve of mine as well.
Metaphysics includes, and is informed by physics however, so it there is a valid use to refer to QM in metaphysical discussion. I think one MUST include empirical knowledge in these discussions. A gross example: If someone wished me to believe his "spiritual powers" allowed him to levitate at will, I would require that he hie himself to a laboratory.
Speaking metaphysically and only for myself on the two items you mentioned:
Godel showed mathematically the limititations of sufficiently large axiomatic systems. Reality is always larger than what can be known, or reduced to, such a system.
Metaphysically again, the Uncertainty Principle, along with Bell and Aspect, leads us to see dualism (while an extremely useful - even required - view for much of our knowledge) as a less than complete description of reality.
Note that nothing above alters whether an objective reality exists, only what that reality is and the methodology used. As Ms. Boop said, when used in this sphere, it's closer to a discussion of epistemology than science.
At the risk of muddying the waters, I point out that objective reality is one component of reality when we speak of reality in the largest sense (including by not limited to matter).
Should have pinged you as well to #1,058.
I should have included the EPR paradox in the discussion of dualism in the previous post.
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