Feathered T-Rex

[emmline]

I'm not much of a theist either. It's too fraught with the potential to apply anthropomorphics. But I often find it comforting to talk to the...whatever.

[Darwin]

By citing to intuition you are opening up the entire field of hermeneutics and all the objections to it. (You'll forgive me for not spelling all of this out more.)

I'm impressed that you've spelled out "hermeneutics". Now, how do you pronounce it?

(Too early, no coffee yet.)

[susnfx]

I'm not much of a theist either. It's too fraught with the potential to apply anthropomorphics.

Not if you believe God is a glorified man as at least one Christian religion does.

Susan

[Jack]

By citing to intuition you are opening up the entire field of hermeneutics and all the objections to it. (You'll forgive me for not spelling all of this out more.)

I'm impressed that you've spelled out "hermeneutics". Now, how do you pronounce it?

(Too early, no coffee yet.)

It's even more impressive when you consider that English is not Bloomfield's native language (I don't think, at least). I've always admired his writing style, use of obscure words, and the like.

[Darwin]

Even if the universe is eternal, each stage being a necessary result of what went before, it is still full of contingent beings--that is, beings that exist either by chance or due to the agency of other things, hence needn't have been.

Ah, something I can disagree with.

First, I'll say that I cannot even imagine anything happening by "pure" chance. That is, anything that is uncaused. Usually in science, we use the term "chance" to mean either that there are causal factors impinging from outside the system being studied, or that the causal situation is too chaotic to grasp. In either case, we're just saying that we can't pin down the causal relationships, not that there are none. So, things that happen by chance still involve cause and effect. So, assuming you don't really mean "outside of cause and effect", I'll take "chance" to be no different from "the agency of other things".

The claim, however, that something that exists due to the agency of other things "needn't have been" is a bit odd. From the standpoint of cause and effect, everything that is is the inescapable result of everything that was. There are no alternate scenarios. Everything that happens at any point in time had to happen. What appear to be alternate possibilities (in the future or in the past) look that way only because we don't know enough of the details to make a prediction. We say, "The 8-ball may go into the corner pocket, and it may not." But if we knew all the factors leading up to the shot, we would know the result. My reason for believing this is experience. We are increasingly successful in subjecting various kinds of events to finer and finer levels of analysis. I see no theoretical constraints on this, only practical ones.

As far as I'm concerned, this covers human actions, as well. In other words, I see no place for any interesting meaning of "free will", because I don't see any reason to believe that there is any component of the individual that is truly "free" of the constraints of the totality of cause and effect. We feel that we are free of cause and effect because we don't really have clear insight into our motivations. (I've felt this way for a long time, but I'm happy to see that experimental neuroscience now seems to support this. When Francis Crick came out with The Astonishing Hypothesis ten years ago, I wasn't astonished at all. Now, sadly after Crick's death, hypothesis is becoming theory, and theory is becoming fact.)

Fortunately, chaos keeps things from becoming boring.

OK, let me try to keep my promissory note. First, I believe
that Quantum Mechanics, the mainstream theory, is indeterministic.
A consequence is that electron jumps from ring to ring in the
cloud outside an atom's nucleus are only probabalistic.
The past and natural laws do not determine what the
electron will do, according to mainstream QM. You
may recall that Einstein objected
to Quantum Mechanics: "God does not play dice with the
Universe.' I believe it is generally thought these days by physicists
that determinism is a long shot--though there is
a deterministic variant to QM that isn't widely
accepted.

I don't see where this indeterministic nature has, in fact, been demonstrated. I'm still waiting to hear what the observed difference is expected to be between. "We don't know why what happens happens." and "There is no reason for what happens to happen."

And, in fact, in every case of probabilistic behavior in the macroscopic world, such as rolling dice or flipping a coin, we believe that we are observing deterministic behavior that is simply too complex to anaylyze. What is it about the quantum level that should make me believe that there is no deterministic substratum? Physicists may believe what they believe, but I need to see where it's been demonstrated experimentally before I'll believe it.

If, in fact, there is no causal chain at some level, then why would one probability hold and not another? And why, for example, would radium decay at one rate and plutonium at another? If there is no deterministic reason for rate of decay, then there should be nothing regular about it--and, yet, there is. Sorry, but that doesn't sound "indeterministic" to me at all.

In any case, let's suppose that strict determinism holds, as
you believe. And let's suppose, just for argument's sake,
that the only contingent beings are kangaroos, an infinite
series of them going back forever, each generation
innevitably producing the next. Precisely because each
kangaroo is produced by others, its nature doesn't secure
or insure its existence. It is the sort of thing that is produced
by something else.

Now you are right: each kangaroo in the series must exist
GIVEN THE PRECEDING KANGAROOS. But this is consistent
with the fact that there needn't have been any kangaroos
at all, the entire series needn't have been. So the question
remains: Why is there something rather than nothing?

As kangaroos are our stand-ins for Contingent Beings,
the problem iterates for any Contingent Beings,
the question remains, and
we can't answer it by adverting to Contingent Beings.
The only possible answer must appeal to a non-contingent
being, that is, a Self-Existent Being.

And, why is there a Self-Existent Being rather than no Self-Existent Being?

Calling it "Self-Existent" doesn't explain anything. It doesn't advance our knowledge. It just provides a name as a kind of placeholder. If all we want is a placeholder, why is an unknowable Self-Existent Being preferable to an unknowable Self-Existent Universe-As-A-Whole?

On the other hand, suppose that something exists that isn't due to chance or the agency of other things. Then the question 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' has an answer: Because something exists that cannot fail to be.

Lacking any concrete reason to pick Self-Existent Being over Self-Existent Universe-As-A-Whole, I'd go with the latter, just on the basis of Occaam's Razor. It's not economically sound to arbiitrarily multiply elements. I've experienced the universe, so I spend my time dealing with that. I haven't experienced a Creator of the universe, so I don't worry about what such an entity might be like, as I still see no compelling reason to assume that such an entity exists at all.

[Darwin]

I'm not much of a theist either. It's too fraught with the potential to apply anthropomorphics.

Not if you believe God is a glorified man as at least one Christian religion does.

Isn't it more like man is a de-glorified God? Man is made in the image of God, but just a bit out of focus.

I was thinking this morning--as I often do while trying to avoid actually getting out of bed--and I got to wondering about the idea that God gave man free will because it wouldn't be cricket to just force people to live happily in Heaven. (I've read this on a couple of Web sites.)

Does this mean that once you die and go to Heaven, you lose your free will? Or do you still have the potential to screw up and get kicked out?

[emmline]

Does this mean that once you die and go to Heaven, you lose your free will? Or do you still have the potential to screw up and get kicked out?

These questions include multiple assumptions derived from current Western religions.

[Joseph E. Smith]

Darwin:" Or do you still have the potential to screw up and get kicked out?"
===============================================
...hasn't this happened already?

[izzarina]

Does this mean that once you die and go to Heaven, you lose your free will? Or do you still have the potential to screw up and get kicked out?

With your free will, you have chosen to be with God for all eternity...ie: go to heaven. And once you are judged (sent to heaven , hell or purgatory), you cannot lose that. for you have made your choice with your free will. Clear as mud?

[Darwin]

Does this mean that once you die and go to Heaven, you lose your free will? Or do you still have the potential to screw up and get kicked out?

With your free will, you have chosen to be with God for all eternity...ie: go to heaven. And once you are judged (sent to heaven , hell or purgatory), you cannot lose that. for you have made your choice with your free will. Clear as mud?

So no subsequent choices can undo that? Cool!

[Will O'B]

Or do you still have the potential to screw up and get kicked out?

Sorry, but any type of "screwing" is not permitted beyond the pearly gates. It's the law. Don't believe me? Just ask Jim Baker or Jimmy Swaggart. They'll tell you it's only permitted here on earth and only for certain fortunate children of God (i.e. them).

Will O'Ban

[emmline]

A dog is not reckoned good because he barks well,
and a man is not reckoned wise because he speaks skilfully.

Disputation is a proof of not seeing clearly.
--Chuang Tzu

[Walden]

I'd just been reading some St. Anselm. Fascinating stuff.

[jim stone]

I'd just been reading some St. Anselm. Fascinating stuff.

Yes, if you do a search on Anselm's Proof (author Jim Stone),
you will find some stuff on his proofs in our archives. We
discussed it pretty deeply. Al Plantinga, one of the
best philosophers alive (he's at Notre Dame), believes it
works. I'm not sure it doesn't.

[Darwin]

I'd just been reading some St. Anselm. Fascinating stuff.

Yes, if you do a search on Anselm's Proof (author Jim Stone),
you will find some stuff on his proofs in our archives. We
discussed it pretty deeply. Al Plantinga, one of the
best philosophers alive (he's at Notre Dame), believes it
works. I'm not sure it doesn't.

Is it this one, from http://www.utexas.edu/courses/hilde/Phi ... nselm.html?


To be proved: God exists.

Proof by reductio ad absurdum

1. The Fool asserts that God does not exist.

2. What is called "God" is "a being than which no greater can be conceived."

3. The Fool agrees that "a being than which no greater can be conceived" exists in the mind, since he understands the words.

4. To say that "a being than which no greater can be conceived" does not exist is to say that such a being is only an idea--it does not exist in the mind and in reality.

5. But such a being, which exists in the mind alone, is in fact "a being than which a greater can be conceived" since it is greater to exist in both mind and reality than just mind alone.

6. So, the Fool believes that "a being than which no greater can be conceived" is "a being than which a greater can be conceived" which is impossible.

7. Therefore, since "a being than which no greater can be conceived" cannot exist in the mind alone (because that is self-contradictory) such a being must exist in both mind and reality.

8. Therefore, God exists.

====================
There are several neat bits of misdirection in this:

--2. What is called "God" is "a being than which no greater can be conceived."

This seems to be an attempt to make us think that any "being than which no greater can be conceived" is "God". These two terms are, however, not equivalent. Even if I cannot conceive of a being greater than Donald Trump, it does not follow that Donald Trump is God.

And, of course, it is not specified what it means to "conceive" of something. As far as the argument goes, it seems to mean only to be able to hold a noun phrase in one's mind.

This seems to me to be at the level of being able to conceive of an animal with the head and body of a tiger, the tail of a serpent, and the wings of an eagle. But such a "concept" falls apart as soon as any useful degree of detail is required--such as how muscles in the tail, which require a certain type of blood, can work with mammalian blood, or how the wing muscles will be attached--and how they will be hooked into the brain.

So, supplying a name is not the same as having a viable and useful mental concept of the thing that is named.

--3. The Fool agrees that "a being than which no greater can be conceived" exists in the mind, since he understands the words.

"Things" do not exist in the mind, only concepts exist in the mind. Neither God nor fruit bats exist in the mind.

It's very cute, but it's just a word game.