Jim Kalb offers a criticism of the general mission statement of this weblog, Is “the secular” so clear?:
My own view, which my book goes into at length, is that by itself rational empiricism gives you desire and technique as (radically anti-conservative) guides to life. Satisfaction of desire doesn’t seem to constitute human flourishing. To get beyond it though you need a moral tradition that’s understood to connect to something that transcends desire and thus the empirical.
So far as I can tell, an adequate theory of such a thing is going to have to explain why life objectively has a purpose, and that’s going to involve attribution of purpose and intention to the world at large. In other words, the theory is going to be religious. And it’s going to say something definite, otherwise it will be useless. So it’s going to make specific religious and non-empirical (“supernatural”) claims.
This is an old argument. Religious people often believe that morality grounded in the reality of God gives their own worldview a consistency and coherency which those who do not believe in God can not have. But I think that religious people often forget the power of their argument emerges in large part when you presuppose that such a God does exist, with the characteristics which religious people attribute to it. An objective ethics and metaphysics outside, above, and beyond, the natural does exist in your own mind when you presuppose it does exist. But saying it is won’t make it so.
Recently I was engaged with a discussion with an anarcho-capitalist who agreed with the assertion that his politics were metaphysically true. Obviously I disagree, and have an extreme skepticism toward metaphysics in general. Rather, I believe politics are simply a means to an ends, a subset of the utilitarian inclination. The ends are defined in large part by the custom & tradition of a community, and to a large extent rooted in urges and impulses which have a biological grounding. In other words, at the end of the day the is-ought dichotomy and naturalistic fallacy collapse. But to say that human morality is fundamentally natural does not mean that there is no room for debate in terms of the what it is in the specific sense.
As for the idea that a transcendent reality is necessary, I will venture to offer that I have always found the models and theories posited by religious people about their gods less than awe inspiring. There certainly beauty and glory in this universe which is simply outside the purview of human animal comprehension; anyone who has grappled with the formalisms of Quantum Mechanics can claim that they seen the face of the incomprehensible & awesome abyss. But I believe that its relation to a human political and social order are tenuous at best. Rather, the primary entity which transcends is the community and society, because I do believe a strong case can be made that individualistic hedonism which is the final form of classical liberalism offers diminishing returns precisely because of the nature of the human beast. We are a social animal, and individual happiness is contingent upon communal amity.
Note: These sorts of philosophical discussions are of course only relevant for a very small, if influential, minority. Most human animals operate in a world of custom and innate reflex, not analytic reflection.
There’s some interesting research being done recently on the biological foundations of morality:
How fairness is wired in the brain.
Brain reacts to fairness.
Serotonin affects our sense of fairness.
I see no reason why puzzles like meaning, ethics, purposefulness etc, won’t be figured out once we have a really good, empirically-based, understanding of the brain.
From what I’m seeing, it looks like it will turn out exactly as Matoko_chan says: There is a biological basis for all behavior.
I think the strangest notion that these non-secularist have that life must have a meaning or a purpose; that it can’t just be. I believe that it is linked to the human capacity (desire, craving, need) for narratives and story-telling. But I don’t see what is so difficult to understand about the notion that “the good life” can be had — that humans and human society can flourish — through secularism and rationality without the need for anything “supernatural” (whatever that’s supposed to mean.)
Isn’t it enough that the rainbow in the sky is pretty and that it’s kinda cool that we were able to figure out that it’s the result of light rays passing through water droplets? Do we really have to pretend that it’s a message from God, too?
Do we really have to pretend that it’s a message from God, too?
some people obviously do. i think there are 3 classes of people here
1) intellectually engaged theists who think that *ultimate* telos and ground of being are necessary
2) intellectually engaged atheists who do not think these are necessary
3) the vast majority of the human race, theist or atheist, who may give lip service to #1 or #2, but live in the moment and are not excessively concerned with matters of ultimate meaning
What a nightmare it would be to find the ultimate meaning.
Gee – is it that diffucult? ALL religion is politics. from the beginning – religion is a way into the power dynamic of politics, ergo, political power.
Preists are not royal, religion is not part of the power dynamic unless supersition rules and royalty proclaims it so – at least in the very beginning.
Show me a place on this planet where there is not some sect of Christian church within a 3 iron on the seat of government.
Outside, of course, of the Muslim world – the Religion of Peace.
“Glory” in the universe? Don’t understand that concept. “Beauty” in the universe? OK, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder, don’t forget. “Purpose” to life? Puleez, life just is. All that said, nothing will ever overcome the need for most people to have religion, god or some other supernatural force in their lives.
I think the strangest notion that these non-secularist have that life must have a meaning or a purpose; that it can’t just be.
Who’s really the strange one here, though? The fact is 90-something percent of the world has that view. Like it or not, you and I and others posting here are the strange ones, the oddball. That doesn’t mean we’re wrong, of course, just that that relative can be turned around quite easily.
That doesn’t mean we’re wrong, of course, just that that relative can be turned around quite easily.
as a point of fact i think that all humans, except for the non-autistic do see agency and purpose in the universe as a matter of innate psychology. if meaning or purpose was lacking shoot yourself in the head right now. where some might differ is the conscious evaluation of whether this has natural or supernatural origins, dependent on whether they believe that term supernatural describes anything real. in other words, two different people might say that they believe that the universe has purpose, or doesn’t, but in terms of their mental state i don’t think it makes a big difference.
by analogy, you could contend that our universe has 11-dimensions, with the extra 7 hidden in some way. or, you could reject this model. either way it makes little difference in terms of how how intuitively perceive the universe, which has 3 spatial dimensions + time.
Kalb never said that a “transcendent reality” was necessary. He said that a general belief in it was necessary.
And of course all the freethinkers at this site have unfounded metaphysical beliefs, often some pretty intricate ones, like your anarcho-capitalist friend’s. As the secularist article cited in the previous post by “Bradlaugh” conceded, all of you stone-throwers live in glass houses.
For whatever it’s worth, I agree completely with Kalb’s remark, at least for my own definition of “an adequate theory.” Your own vision of politics as technology might satisfy a few Anglo-Saxons for a brief historic period, but I don’t see much long-term future for it.
Wait a second. Is someone who goes by the name “David Hume” arguing that it is possible to defend on secular grounds the idea that we can objectively choose to pursue objectively good ends? As I understand it, Hume himself believed that the ends we choose are basically chosen by passion or mere desire, and that only the means can be chosen by reason or assessed for their objective goodness!
Incidentally, I think there are good strong arguments for that position from secular grounds. See, e.g., Harry Binswanger’s The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts, F. Ayala’s “Teleological Explanations in Evolutionary Biology,” and Larry Arnhart’s books. (Ayala and Arnhart are themselves religious, but I think they make arguments that don’t rely on supernatural claims.)
No purpose to life. No meaning but what we bring to it. Et cetera. Is there any coincidence between the modern advance of atheism and the dramatic rise of the anti-depressant industry? In a secular world, what makes anyone even stop to consider the question of life’s meaning, beyond heeding the legal system (no on murder, etc.)? How do you explain the meaning of nature, of beauty and human life, except to use science as the prism of rational interpretation? Is that enough to give meaning that will be non-superficial and inspire defense where required?
The more I hear these arguments the more I am convinced that y’all are trying to strip something away that belongs naturally in the human realm– spirituality, religion, whatever you like to call it. As opposed to believers *adding on* something, of which you seem convinced. You don’t need to add religion to the lemonade to make it taste good, etc.
It is exciting these arguments take place at all. It wasn’t that long ago that atheism was looked upon very dimly on a good day. Belief needs to be challenged. And so does the idea that belief is a fable for weak-minded individuals.
How can there be a ‘transcendent’ reality other than reality?
There’s physics and only physics. Everything, even mathematics, ultimately derives from observations of the physical world.
Oh, and if you can only perceive this world as meaningful if you postulate a level beyond it, what supposedly gives that level its meaning?
I’m not a freethinker Ploni, I’m a Darwinian Agent – A genebot.
Humans are not really freethinkers. There used to be a species of freethinkers, but they became extinct as soon as they discovered nihilism.
Their average life expectancy was 35 minutes, because that’s how long it took them to find a rope.
“And of course all the freethinkers at this site have unfounded metaphysical beliefs”
How can you demonstrate that? You *can* demonstrate it, can’t you?
A curious assertion, given that I possess no metaphysical beliefs at all.
Hannon,
The idea that you can discover purpose through pure philosphy is rubbish.
Our sense of purposefulness is almost certainly preprogrammed into our brains by our genes. The only way you could discover the mechanisms of that purposefulness is through empirical study of human brains.
@Hannon,
How do you explain the meaning of nature, of beauty and human life, except to use science as the prism of rational interpretation? Is that enough to give meaning that will be non-superficial and inspire defense where required?
Who says that nature, beauty or life has any “meaning” outside that which one chooses to apply to it? And, to me, the value that I impart upon life, nature and beauty are far from superficial and are more than sufficient to inspire me to defend them when required.
Do you find anything at all in religion to be non-superficial or capable of inspiring you to defend it? I can’t imagine what that would be like (aside from the social aspects. But that’s really pointing to the people, and not the religion.).
I feel nothing but pity for those people throughout history who threw their lives away like they were meaningless over the most insanely stupid religious conflicts, a particular view of religion or god or transubstantiation or some meaningless and trivial piece of doctrine. Presumably they found “meaning” by being willing to give up their lives in defense of “god” or “the mother church” or the “true faith” or whatever lame description was given. I find the whole thing rather sad and pathetic that they would waste their very lives over nothing.
The more I hear these arguments the more I am convinced that y’all are trying to strip something away that belongs naturally in the human realm– spirituality, religion, whatever you like to call it. As opposed to believers *adding on* something, of which you seem convinced.
You may very well be correct that there is something inherent in human nature that craves this religion or spirituality thing. But that does not mean it is something that should be accepted and cherished in the context of today’s society. Human’s drive for sweet and fattening food was an adaptive advantage long, long ago, but is now a huge problem and a cause of immense suffering and death today. The “religious” craving is the same, I suspect.
I think our sense of aesthetics is also preprogramed.
In particular it seems to me quite likely, that the sense of the “beauty of nature” may be one of the ways that the brain motivates itself to struggle to survive. Other ways might include love of family, longing to know the future, fear of death and pain. In the past when I have been very ill and close to death, these were the kind of emotions I experienced.
This is a hypothesis. One could only verify it by studying the structures underlying the survival mechanism in the human brain. I would expect that the “survival instinct” will turn out to have many connections to other drives in the brain. In fact it occurs to me that it may consist of nothing other than those connections. The whole complex constituting “the survival instinct”.
And of course all the freethinkers at this site have unfounded metaphysical beliefs
interesting to know that you’re a mind reader. perhaps god himself lurks on this weblog?
but I don’t see much long-term future for it.
in the long term we’re dead. my only interest is to compare political orders in terms of the magnitude of their ephemerality.
Wait a second. Is someone who goes by the name “David Hume” arguing that it is possible to defend on secular grounds the idea that we can objectively choose to pursue objectively good ends? As I understand it, Hume himself believed that the ends we choose are basically chosen by passion or mere desire, and that only the means can be chosen by reason or assessed for their objective goodness!
1) you overead my claims
2) passion is contingent upon our cognitive hardware. in other words, it doesn’t explore an arbitrary sample space, but is constrained by our innate propensities
3) as i’ve stated before, i admire david hume, but i am not david hume 🙂
Dare– “The idea that you can discover purpose through pure philosphy is rubbish.”
I don’t see where I said anything anywhere about deriving purpose from philosophy. In fact it would not surprise me if a lot of people never think much purpose at all, or why we are here, whether urban moderns or “primitives”, even among religious folk. It strikes me as a superficial query, since we are here and have been here a while. It’s a done deal. The question is what do we do with our being here, and where are we headed– with an eye to the past.
Canyon–
“Who says that nature, beauty or life has any “meaning” outside that which one chooses to apply to it?”
I don’t think it does really, but how exactly is this limited view coherent at the communal level? Don’t you think a shared purpose, common goals and cultural integrity– those traditional things that have superseded (until now) the vaunted status of autonomy– require more than a collective individual choice to be sustained? How is such a crucial cohesiveness to be maintained in the absence of religion? I’m not saying it can’t. I am asking. Which goes straight to conservatism and how you imagine you can be conservative with such an atomized world view (pardon my liberal extrapolation). Then again I have not seen much discussion on this site about conservatism but there is much explication of secularism and atheism.
It is too easy to fall into your line of reasoning regarding wasted blood through history. Blood has been spilled for many reasons, religion often being only a superficial excuse. How do we know? How can we be sure that without the course of events having unfolded precisely as it did, that we would have had the Enlightenment? I’m not defending every battle or Vatican edict of course, but for me there is a aspect to the idea of “fate” that is intriguing. I’m sure you would say that if a hundred battles or other events had gone another direction we would still have ended up with something interesting, maybe even better. But that is not the point. You could say the same thing about cetacean evolution but here you are stuck in Darwinism– just material moving around, doing stuff, and with various turnouts. I think it is pretty freaking incredible things have turned out the way they have, and the way things continue to unfold, from my own life on out to larger levels. Is it all just by pure chance? You cannot say empirically that it is, in much the same way that I cannot claim convincingly that it is all God’s plan. Which takes a lot of the air out of the argument.
“But that does not mean it is something that should be accepted and cherished in the context of today’s society.”
Obviously not by everyone. I suspect someday we may move beyond religion as we know it, but not as a run on atheism and certainly not in the near term. These things take time– what do you imagine is the average awareness level of the global population? I mean mental awareness of what lies beyond their tiny lives, not counting intelligence or faith. Many barely understand the rudiments of their current faith; the demands of atheism, whether understood superficially or theoretically, could result in as much conflict and bloodshed as many previous eras of religious warfare.
You can learn everything you need know about the philosophical rigor of this blog by looking at the page featuring its mission statement.
Next to a large picture of David Hume you have a statement claiming that ‘human flourishing’ and ‘eudaimonia’ are the ends of politics.
This conjunction is, frankly, hilarious. Hume completely and utterly rejected everything in your mission statement; and your mission statement is completely at odds with the thought of David Hume.
This only strengthens my hunch that, while there may be some really intelligent people here, that nobody knows a (&@#@* thing about the history of philosophy or religion.
It would appear to me that most human beings benefit from having certain irrational beliefs, among which are many beliefs that we would categorize as religious.
For this reason I rarely debate religion with my predominantly religious circle of friends and family. They have some good opium in their crackpipe and I see no benefit to disabusing them of the pleasure.
This site seems to be the home to (among others) a circle of people with whom I have a hard time relating, people who claim to have very little religious inclination and who don’t feel a “God-sized hole” in their lives. I’m not such a person.
Agnosticism was foisted on me as I screamed, struggled and yelled for help. I was raised to be fanatically concerned with religious matters and, even within the hyper-religious community of my youth, I was quite extreme in my religious beliefs and practices.
To me, atheism is almost synonymous with nihilism and I begrudge the idiotic fuckers who have been able to keep their imaginary God at their side despite all of the sways of logic. The vast majority of us are almost certainly biologically pulled in the direction of belief in various religious concepts and we who have peeked behind the curtain are not necessarily better off for the enlightenment. Nor, for that matter, are our genes.
mnuez
{P.S. I feel that I should note that it’s not all bad. There are definite advantages to being a CT (Critical Thinker), but we all know and agree on those, what I see a lack of in atheistic spaces is the recognition that most of us are not feeding our biological hungers as much as our fundamentalist relatives are and also that we’re leaving far fewer children than they are.}
Just so it is perfectly understood, I don’t know a (&@#@* thing about the history of philosophy or religion.
mnuez,
This site seems to be the home to (among others) a circle of people with whom I have a hard time relating, people who claim to have very little religious inclination and who don’t feel a “God-sized hole” in their lives. I’m not such a person.
Agnosticism was foisted on me as I screamed, struggled and yelled for help. I was raised to be fanatically concerned with religious matters and, even within the hyper-religious community of my youth, I was quite extreme in my religious beliefs and practices.
Now you, I sympathize with. Because there would have been a time, say for the first decade or so after leaving religion, when that could have described me too. It did gradually pass though. It left a real respect for the trauma of leaving religion. A strong sense, that I see you share, that we shouldn’t interfere in other peoples’ religiosity.
As I say in the end it passed. As I have gotten older, I have found a greater willingness to come to terms with finiteness. I think it helps a lot if you have family, children. It means there is something left after you. But even without children, there is a sense that the world is all there ever was and all there ever could be. And I was incredibly fortunate to have known it.
I think non-believers have a humility that is quite the opposite of the hubris of those who fool themselves that they know the answer. To me the difference is, in the end, one of honesty.
For me the “rewards” that come from faith have never been worth the price of living your entire life in self-deception. If death and finiteness, are part of life, as I believe they are, then I must know death and finiteness in order to really know life.
For all that, I have come to believe that even without faith, life *works*. It took me a long while to see it and understand it though. Even then, it took me some time to fully let go and just be.
Nothing of course! The metaphysical gibberish being bandied about in this conversation is what is meaningless.
I don’t read your minds, just your URLs. Did you follow the link in the post just preceding yours? That’s where the secularist guy conceded that you (we) live in glass houses too.
That author admitted that “human rights” are just some unfounded metaphysical belief. Seems there are lots of libertarians at this sight, and some of them might share that belief, I don’t know (they call theirs “natural rights”). There are lots of other such beliefs that we all share, some of them made famous by some guy named David Hume. Causality, for one. The principle of scientific induction, for another. That’s why I can be sure without reading your minds that you’ve got ungrounded metaphysical beliefs.
There are probably a few moral realists here, too. By “moral realism” I mean the philosophy that moral qualities “really” exist, as opposed to referring to nothing but our own personal preferences and behavior. For instance, believing that Hitler was “really” bad, meaning something beyond just your own personal preferences, etc. Whether or not moral realism is founded, I doubt that any moral realists here can advance a sound rational argument for it. And here’s a catch: even if you believe, in general, that morality is nothing but personal preferences etc., still, at the moment of making a moral judgment, you probably do believe that that particular moral truth is “real.” It may even be impossible not to.
Anyway, if you’re only interested, as you say, in comparing “political orders,” consider this observation by the philosopher Edward Caird: metaphysics are the clearest and most intense expression of an epoch.
“There are lots of other such beliefs that we all share”
Oh? How do you know that?
I’ll bet I have some thoughts about causality that would make your head spin, if you hadn’t already lodged it tightly.
Caledonian.
I don’t believe it’s possible to build a neural system that can detect motion without incorporating causality into its design, at the hardware level.
For instance the visual system has to detect a ball that it glimpses through clutter. And it has to infer that the succession of ball objects are actually the same object tracing out a gently curved trajectory.
Individual neurons have to switch mode from detecting motion to detecting background as the object moves throught their piece of retinal space. There is just a huge amount of physics presupposed in the design of such a neural network. This includes concepts like curved trajectories, causality and inertia.
Other examples would included visual flow fields that are used for inferring self-motion and successive glimpses of distant objects that are used to remove 3d depth-perception ambiguities.
E.g. Flies use flow fields to infer and correct their own landing trajectory. They are using inference from a visual flow-field to update a causal model of their own motion.
If you guys need a transcendent purpose, I suggest stuff like transhumanism, singularity, and the omega point concept. Teilherd de Chardin was one of the originators of these ideas. I just finished reading a book called “The Intelligent Universe”, which is the follow up of “Biocosm”. This book is good because it weaves together the various concepts of tranhumanism, singularities, and the omega point concept to come up with a totalistic trascendent framework with is not only compatible with Christianity, but is the REAL possibility of universal resurrection and infinite life.
My point is that with the advent of these ideas, luddite forms of Christianity that do not incorporate these concepts are no longer relevant to the future of humanity. I believe that a new version of christianity will emerge in the near future that will be based on transhumanism, singularity, and the Omega point in the same manner that protestant Christianity emerged 500 years ago as a result of the invention of the printing press.
One of the benefits of transhumanist-based christianity is that it is the logical extension of the protestant work ethic in that the world we want is created by our own efforts. This is the logical extension of the self-reliant, do it yourself ethic that is the basis of Western civilization.
kurt9,
How does Omega Point Theory stand up, now that cosmologists are favoring a dark energy, accelerating-expansion type of model?
Doesn’t OPT require a final collapse?
If dark energy is a cosmological constant, then aren’t we in a universe that must resemble some kind of de Sitter space as its final state.
@Hannon
I don’t think it does really, but how exactly is this limited view coherent at the communal level? Don’t you think a shared purpose, common goals and cultural integrity– those traditional things that have superseded (until now) the vaunted status of autonomy– require more than a collective individual choice to be sustained?
No, because I believe that all these things ultimate are based on individual choice, anyway. However, even if they require something more, I think that there are many other things, such as familial love, patriotism, civic pride, etc., which can provide the shared purpose and common goals without the need to resort to religion.
How is such a crucial cohesiveness to be maintained in the absence of religion?
Perhaps it is merely my growing up in a religiously pluralistic area, but, frankly, I can’t see any role for religion in such an endeavor, aside from theoretical considerations. I certainly have never personally seen anything in my lifetime where religion was crucial to such cohesiveness.
Which goes straight to conservatism and how you imagine you can be conservative with such an atomized world view (pardon my liberal extrapolation). Then again I have not seen much discussion on this site about conservatism but there is much explication of secularism and atheism.
Well, I’d be the first to admit that my interest in this site is more to do with the “secular” and less to do with the “right.” What I believe to be worthy of conserving is the political and social rights of the individual against encroachment by the state and in this day and age I see as much a threat to those things coming from the religious right as from the left. (Although it does come from both side, as I will admit in the hope of avoiding tedious and fruitless discussions about whether the right or the left is more or less protective of individual rights…)
It is too easy to fall into your line of reasoning regarding wasted blood through history. Blood has been spilled for many reasons, religion often being only a superficial excuse. How do we know?
Well, I can only say that those who are doing in the blood spilling are often very clear of their religious motives. I’ve found that the claim of religion being a “superficial excuse” rings hollow, as it is usually posited by those seeking to distance the act from the religion, even when the perpetrator admits the connection.
How can we be sure that without the course of events having unfolded precisely as it did, that we would have had the Enlightenment?
That’s a good point, and I guess we can’t. But even if it is true that a period of religious belief was necessary to obtain the Enlightenment (an interesting proposition which I am not certain about), it would be, in my opinion, kind of a pity that all that waste was unavoidable.
I suspect someday we may move beyond religion as we know it, but not as a run on atheism and certainly not in the near term.
This is probably true. I think in the less-affluent and less-educated areas of the world, religion will continue unabated. I think for the mass of humanity, the best we can hope for is something between the way people today are interested in Roman or Norse mythology and the way some people have a non-specific spirituality: basically, they’ll believe in a god/spirit with the superficial attributes of Yahweh/Jehovah/Jesus, but without any of the doctrines or the dogmas.
Canyon– Thanks for your comments. They are appreciated.
Some people have a way of writing that eloquently elucidates a theme. With regard to the disposition of religion and her modern enemies, here is such a piece by Roger Scruton:
http://www.axess.se/english/2008/01/theme_scruton.php.htm
Enjoy
@Hannon,
I can’t say I found Scruton’s writing enjoyable at all. While he does make his point known, I believe that he bases his opinion on an ignorance of that which those who he sees as enemies actually believe and have written. As a result, he countinues the nonsense that writers such as Hitchens and Dawkins are “screaming, angry, rabid atheists,” which is nonsense.
Tipler’s concept of the omega point does indeed require a universe that will recollapse on itself. I think his theory is wrong, as I think the current “expand forever” universe is as well. Tipler’s Omega point is not the only option available to us. Freeman Dyson proposed the possibility of infinite life in an open universe (Infinite in All Directions) about the same time that Barrow and Tipler published the Anthropic Principle.
In any case, we do have several billion years to figure out what to do about the universe to make sure that we can “sail bright eternity”. In the meantime, there are more immediate things to do, like develop fusion power (or thorium fission), get out into space, and develop effective anti-aging therapies. Some kind of self-replicating or exponential manufacturing would be useful as well (either nanotech, synthetic biology, or plain old robotics and automation).
The near term objective (next 10-20 years) should be to develop the technology to allow the “outward-oriented” types to get free of the constraints imposed by current political and cultural systems. We need to get ourselves free from these dustructive, luddite memes all around us, especially in the Age of Obama (and the luddite christian and muslim people). Later, we can deal with whatever the universe throws at us.
I found Tipler’s theory interesting mainly because it was the first time I had seen resurrection framed as a problem in physics. The very fact that you could do that is very intriguing and suggests that science rather than religion is the way to go if you want to resurrect. Even if his specific theory didn’t pan out.
Otherwise I broadly agree that we have a long time to figure out what to do about the universe, and in the meantime there are more pressing problems of space colonization. Broadly we need transhumanism and nuclear power developed to the highest level.
For me this is a matter of some urgency. We need to disperse to survive as a species long-term. Anyway I have always felt Space, not Earth, was my true home. 😉 Too much Science Fiction in my mis-spent youth probably.
mnuez,
Agnosticism was foisted on me as I screamed, struggled and yelled for help. I was raised to be fanatically concerned with religious matters and, even within the hyper-religious community of my youth, I was quite extreme in my religious beliefs and practices.
As far as I can tell, mnuez, you’re kicking and screaming for help now louder than ever, albeit for other than gods. (Hint: “MR”)
In the mind of Caledonian,
(1)“There’s physics and only physics.”
(2)“I possess no metaphysical beliefs at all.”
where the conjunction of (1), a metaphysical belief, with (2), a denial of such, suggests
(3) (i) ignorance; (ii) idiocy; or (iii) dishonesty.
Deogolwulf,
That’s like calling atheism a religion. If you read the article in Wikipedia that Caledonian linked on the word “metaphysical” you can see the following text:
“The scientific method, however, made natural philosophy an empirical and experimental activity unlike the rest of philosophy, and by the end of the eighteenth century it had begun to be called “science” in order to distinguish it from philosophy. Thereafter, metaphysics became the philosophical enquiry of a non-empirical character into the nature of existence. Thus the original situation of metaphysics being integral with (Aristotelian) physics and science, has, in the West, become reversed so that scientists generally consider metaphysics antithetical to the empirical sciences.”
(My emphasis).
So this is a semantic quibble. Natural scientists and other empiricists, generally define “physics” and “metaphysics” exclusively. Only philosophers and theologians still define “metaphysics” as the superset.
DD: That’s not quite what he’s saying, I don’t think. In my experience, philosophers don’t talk about metaphysics as including physics either.
Regardless, the fact remains that the claim “there’s physics and only physics” isn’t physics. It’s not empirical and it’s not falsifiable. It’s clearly a claim about the nature of existence of a non-empirical character. This is the difficulty involved in affirming absolute empiricism, and this is largely why Ayer’s verification principle didn’t catch on in philosophy – there were quite a few positivists for a while, but it’s proven very difficult to rigorously formulate the positivist viewpoint in such a way as not to be self-defeating.
One can certainly reject concepts like ‘existence’ and ‘truth’ as meaningless, or one can simply define the concepts in terms of immediate perceptions (whether internal or external), but anytime you say that ‘there is nothing more’ than whatever way of knowing that you’re talking about, you’re doing metaphysics.
Of course, there are a bunch of other metaphysical beliefs that most of us have. Most of us are inclined to say that the world exists outside of our minds, that other people experience qualia in the same way that we do, and that inanimate objects don’t have conscious experience. If you’re just defining metaphysics as not-physics, then your beliefs concerning the rules of logic are going to be metaphysical.
It’s not exactly like calling atheism a religion. One can be agnostic on all religious claims, or can hold all religious claims to be meaningless, without making a religious claim. You can’t quite do that with metaphysics because the sort of thinking you’re doing when you say that metaphysics is bunk is itself metaphysical thinking. It’s a bit like philosophy in general – it’s difficult to say that all philosophy is bullshit without making a philosophical claim.
Gotchaye, I suspect a hard-core empiricist would regard “metaphysics” as a branch of psychology. They would look for the ultimate resolution of it in neurophysiology.
The claim that “there’s physics and only physics”, I would justify in terms of Ockham’s razor. Parsimony.
Sure, but you have to first believe that you can legitimately apply Occam’s Razor to more than just scientific theories. And while beliefs about metaphysics may properly be the domain of psychology, the subject of metaphysics is not primarily psychological.
The basic problem is the same as with any logical system – you absolutely need axioms that can’t be justified by the other statements of the system (both in the Godellian incompleteness sense and just because you can’t build a system at all without axioms). All of those axioms can’t possibly be justified empirically, since they aren’t justified at all (they’re axioms) and since empiricism itself rests on some axioms. At the very least, these axioms are not-physics.
“That’s like calling atheism a religion.”
Try not to be silly, Mr Dare, the matter is very different. If you claim that nothing lies beyond physics, i.e., that what we call the physical is all that is the case, then you make a metaphysical claim in that you claim to know what lies beyond it, namely, nothing. It is certainly not a matter for physical-empirical science to know such a thing; for it would be quite nonsensical to say that one knows by physical-empirical science that nothing lies beyond physical-empirical science, since then that which one knows by physical-empirical science is not thereby beyond it, and what — if anything — really is beyond it remains for ever as before out of reach by it. If you wish to take positivism seriously — as much as it can be — then I suggest that, on metaphysical matters, you do what the Austrian said: keep schtum. Quite how you have come to think that the quote from Wikipedia aids you in denying the metaphysical nature of the claim, I am at a loss to say. You say: “Natural scientists and other empiricists, generally define “physics” and “metaphysics” exclusively.” Then you will acknowledge, I presume, that the claim that nothing lies beyond physics is not a claim of physics, and has no hope of being so by empirical-scientific means, but rather is exclusively of metaphysics, and boldly so. If, however, for some odd reason, you do not feel inclined to acknowledge it as a metaphysical claim, then please do give me some conception as to how you think you might fit it into physics. Can you conceive — per impossibile — of a way in which physics can detect what lies beyond it? If not, but if you still wish to maintain the claim that nothing lies beyond it, then why not try the radical option of honesty, and admit that you hold a metaphysical belief? You can call yourself a physicalist. Others don’t seem too embarrassed to do so.
“If you claim that nothing lies beyond physics, i.e., that what we call the physical is all that is the case, then you make a metaphysical claim in that you claim to know what lies beyond it, namely, nothing.”
No I don’t think that I am really saying that; so much that there is nothing meaningful that can be said about what is “beyond the physical”. The concept is incoherent.
i.e. Sure physics cannot know. But neither can anybody else. All claims to the contrary are fraudulent.
In other words, at the end of the day the is-ought dichotomy and naturalistic fallacy collapse.
This is a really bizarre claim – doubly so from someone calling himself David Hume!
Let’s take a concrete example: slavery. Many historical societies practiced slavery and regarded it as a simple matter of property law; it’s defended in the Bible, for example. If “the ends are defined in large part by the custom & tradition of a community”, wouldn’t that imply that slavery is right in societies that define it as right? (Indeed, that quoted phrase sounds very like the naturalistic fallacy.) Or is slavery somehow objectively or transcendentally wrong in a way that doesn’t rely on contemporary social norms?
Maybe I should disclose my own angle here: I’m a noncognitivist until I see a darn good reason to be something else (much like I’m an atheist until I see a darn good reason to be something else).
“Regardless, the fact remains that the claim “there’s physics and only physics” isn’t physics. It’s not empirical and it’s not falsifiable.”
It’s a simple matter of applying the definition of the word. The fact that there is only physics arises directly from the nature of things. Ultimately, physics (the nature of things) is responsible for physics (our attempt to model the nature of things).
That works fine if you define physics as “the study of the nature of things”, provided sufficiently generous conceptions of ‘nature’ and ‘things’, but that’s not what most people mean by ‘physics’. What you’ve defined is classical metaphysics – an inquiry into the nature of things is -exactly- what Aristotle was trying to do in that work, and it’s what every metaphysician since has considered himself to be doing. You can call it whatever you like, of course, but it’s not empirical and it’s not falsifiable. I very much doubt that any physicist would claim that his discipline is self-justifying.
Basically, your definition of physics as the nature of things seems to include things like Kantian ethical theory and theories of substance and cause (like Leibniz’s Monadology, say). It makes your claim that “there’s physics and only physics” seem pretty empty – the statement has no more information content than “there is what there is and no more”. You clearly still understand metaphysics as being not-physics, but I don’t see that you’ve left room for any kind of thinking other than physical. Most people, I imagine, think of physics as the study of the empirical nature of things and of metaphysics as the study of the non-empirical nature of things – basically just the Kantian phenomena/noumena distinction.
What you’ve defined is classical metaphysics – an inquiry into the nature of things is -exactly- what Aristotle was trying to do in that work,
I think that’s a valid point Gotchaye. But it’s exactly the position of the monist.
Now you might say that monism is a metaphysical assumption. I would argue it is the Bayes-derived, provisional, optimum search-strategy, commonly known as “Ockhams Razor”.
We use the simplest hypothesis until it fails.
“but that’s not what most people mean by ‘physics’.”
Most people are idiots. They are also wrong.
“the statement has no more information content than “there is what there is and no more”.”
Exactly! All statements, when given in combination with the reasoning that produces them, are tautological; the fundamental truths, which cannot be produced by reason, are tautological in themselves.
Why in the world are you rejecting a tautological statement of truth? You’re guaranteed to be wrong!
WTF is an “anarcho-capitalist?”
Oh! Poor dear, you never heard that word?
Could it be a zealot of unbridled free market?
What could this mean?
I am truly wondering 🙂