Critical Thinking, reductionism, epistemology RI megathread

[MacCruiskeen]

Were I to assert that AD is a reptile, closely related to the python Kaa, his droppings in this thread would constitute powerful evidence in support of that assertion.

I'm out of here too. (VK and Searcher, thanks for your sanity.)

[American Dream]

Mac also egged Canadian_watcher on a great deal- though he did dissociate himself from some of her sketchy ideas and practices.

Searcher- much as we have disagreed- never, ever seemed to be trying to inflame things just for the sake of inflaming things- quite the opposite, I have always seen Searcher's intention to promote communication that is respectful and idea-based...

[barracuda]

American Dream, I really think there is something about respecting the wishes of the original poster to the thread the has purchase here. You made a similar request on your "Economics of Love" thread, and that request was aquiesed to by those it was addressed to with very little problems. It would seem that there is plenty of meat to this topic without recourse to further discussion about Icke in particular, so it would be nice and respectful of Searcher's wishes if you would give them similar consideration, golden rule-wise.

Regarding assignments of blame for what happened here, I don't really see how that can possibly lead to useful discussion. We're all adults here, I think. We can leave it behind for the moment.

Vanlose, I'm still going over your post and info, so gimme a bit of headspace, and I'll try and respond. Good stuff.

Thank you,
signed,

The Big Mean Teacher Fish, Mighty Wise Mystical Encyclopedia of Bullshit, Esq.

[American Dream]

American Dream, I really think there is something about respecting the wishes of the original poster to the thread the has purchase here. You made a similar request on your "Economics of Love" thread, and that request was aquiesed to by those it was addresed to with very little problems. It would seem that there is plenty of meat to this topic without recourse to further discussion about Icke in particular, so it would be nice and respectful of Searcher's wishes if you would give them similar consideration, golden rule-wise.

.

I was remembering that thread in particular when I responded to Searcher's request here. Jeff told me there that there is no "ownership" of a thread in terms of the original poster deciding who can post or what they can post on. I respected this guideline and it very much informed my response here.

That said, while I still think Icke, Shayler and company represent a great testing ground for critical thinking, reductionism and epistemology issues, I have no compelling need to talk about them here anymore. Recall that I was responding to Hammer of Los, who was expressing some thoughts and critiques on somewhat of a time-delay basis...

[Stephen Morgan]

American Dream, I really think there is something about respecting the wishes of the original poster to the thread the has purchase here. You made a similar request on your "Economics of Love" thread, and that request was aquiesed to by those it was addresed to with very little problems. It would seem that there is plenty of meat to this topic without recourse to further discussion about Icke in particular, so it would be nice and respectful of Searcher's wishes if you would give them similar consideration, golden rule-wise.

Is that just Icke or lizard people in general?

[JackRiddler]

.

Just call me a simpleton for the following.

A definition of nature in the philosophical sense:

Nature (also known as the universe or the real-existing sphere) is everything that exists. Everything that exists is nature. Everything that does not exist, does not exist. That which does not exist, is not nature. Some things have yet to exist, or potentially exist, so put these into the category of virtual or potential real-existing things. Ideas are such things; I would argue they do exist, because they are carried by a sentience which in this definition of nature is a natural, real-existing material entity. The idea exists, even if the thing to which it refers - Harry Potter, Belgian military victory in World War II, a black hole in my pocket - may not.

(By the way, you may choose a different definition of nature for the ecological sense, e.g., everything that exists before humans or would have existed without them. Peripheral to this discussion.)

Given that definition of nature:

"Supernatural" is a semantically suspect term for unknown or imagined things that may or may not exist. If these things do exist, they are natural, and merely unknown or unobserved (like electromagnetic waves were unknown to us until a couple of hundred years ago, and would have been "supernatural" to any strict empiricists until then). Ghosts, alternate universes and deities, if they exist, would be a part of nature. Anything that exists is material, by definition. We only call it non-material because we do not now know what kind of material it is, or could be; but if it manifests as existent, then it does so on a medium, which is material, by definition.

I find that this set of definitions, once you accept it, clears up a lot of misunderstandings due to semantics. N-dimensional structures if they exist would be natural and material. A conscious big-creator-of-all entity if it exists would be natural and material (albeit not a kind of material we understand or see, as yet). If Jehovah causes the walls of Jericho to tumble down, that involves a process of energy transfer: a material action in nature. In other words, in this terminology, natural/supernatural is not generally a useful dichotomy.

Known/unknown is a useful dichotomy. Empirical/faith-based is a useful dichotomy. Observable vs. speculative is a useful dichotomy. (Here we should understand that no dichotomy is really dichotomous, there are broad uncertain area between the two regions the dichotomy defines.)

Those who work from the observable and prefer to move deliberately on making any definitive statements about the unobservable or unknowable are empiricists. A good empiricist is a skeptic, which means: knows that she doesn't know. A true skeptic (not the brandname "skeptics" a la Randi, who are mostly establishment dogmatists) is well aware that there is a great deal of unobserved and unknowable that contains entities-yet-to-be-named ("entities" in the philosophical sense) but is reluctant to make definitive statements about the unknowable and unobserved unless the logic is compelling and proceeds from the observable. (Example: gravity is something that is observed, exists and acts, even if I have no clue what it is, so some theory of it has got to be the best possible explanation we will come up with for it, even if that theory has yet to be formulated.) A scientist is an empiricist who formulates falsifiable hypotheses about the observable world and then tries to test them through controlled observation or experiment.

Up to there, we might all yet agree. Or not. Or you might agree but still be on a different wavelength that considers the above trivial, or peripheral. Let's see.

But proceeding from there, here's where I go:

Those who fill in the unobserved-unknowable with as-yet unfalsifiable constructs they find logical may be excellent speculators who intuitively get their guesses right, but that is a rare, rare thing: to actually guess right for the right reasons. Often it's like thinking you're going to win the lottery. More often those who fill in the gaps are engaging in wishes, picking up a convenient simple construct (e.g., "god") that doesn't actually explain anything but can be infuriatingly repeated a hundred thousand times as though it does. This is what I mean by faith-based thinking: without evidence, without sturdy logic proceeding from evidence, I stick in an entity that solves this burdensome not-knowing for me, and then insist upon it, even though it's little more than a label I stick on the blank white territory of my map.

So I believe: The proper philosophical position following from all that with respect to higher creator entities is agnostic and open to informed speculation, if rigorously resistant to pure faith-based assertions. But the proper practical or political position (and sorry, politics is important and much bigger than what we usually call "politics") is to be merciless with those who want to sell any practical or political proposition on the basis of their "faith."

God has no business as a justification for anything disputed on the social plane, until such time as it might choose to make an appearance to us socially, instead of being coy and talking only through would-be prophets, obviously human-written scriptures, visions accessible only to preachers, a "feeling of awe that I get but you don't get," gurus and higher "spiritual" persons, etc. etc. I am talking especially about disputed matters, "issues." I don't really care if God is your justification for not eating other human beings or not robbing my house (although I find it mildly disturbing if you think you need a god to prevent you from that), since the morality and ethics of doing such things are not seriously in dispute (even if justifications for such behavior are often suggested by the euphemisms of macroeconomic theory). I do care if your God is your justification for telling me how I should behave.

We have a serious problem in this country (the US) with the use of "God" as a bludgeon on behalf of right-wing politics and nationalist hooey ("God Bless the United States" - and her wars, of course - is not just a right wing idea) that have no basis in logic or observable reality or our evolved morality of not eating each other or robbing our houses. But this God does serve certain interests who are all too happy to use it as a political bludgeon, whether or not they really believe in it. This problem is familiar in other countries as well.

In this scheme, ID doctrine is anathema to anything you might call science, empiricism or logic, because it is a mere abdication of the attempt to know and communicate anything. ID is a zero. Its nominal value amounts to this: Wow, life's big and complex and unlikely ever to be understood, I really don't get it, it doesn't seem to me to be explained by reductionist science. Therefore I shall simply give up on that effort altogether, and attribute the creation of species to someone whom I can't see but who does know how it all works (and whom I shall worship). This nominal position is not science, it doesn't even mimic it very well.

However, if you're honest about the politics, then you know that the above really is only the nominal value of ID, and that nominal value is a ruse to disguise the normative one, which is to demand a faith in a very particular form of "god" as sole sentient creator and director who speaks through scriptures and churches -- a faith-demand that can no longer be sustained in any scheme of empiricism, science, logic, or, for that matter, just politics. This is why some of us get so combative when ID is inserted as "one idea among others." Because they know that it was formulated and introduced as a trojan horse for Christianism, after simple Creationism a la Genesis became too ridiculous to sustain outside of Christianist enclaves.

ID doctrine is also a big pain in the ass for having any serious theoretical discussion on the facts of life on earth, which all evidence says has grown by evolution through various forms over a period of 4 billion years. This just isn't subject to debate on the evidentiary plane. A theoretical debate exists, not about evolution, but about natural selection. Because while natural selection is an indisputable and abundantly-observed mechanism for evolution on the micro level, it may not be the actual primary mechanism for species generation on the macro-evolutionary level in nature (here, "nature" in the ecological sense). Understandings of symbiogenesis (which has also been observed), autopoeiesis and epigenetics may yet radically modify the current Darwinian synthesis of natural selection among genetic mutations as the driver of all speciesation.

However, you've got these thinly disguised religious proselytizers waiting for every chance to holler any time natural selection as sole driver is debated, as though they gave a crap about concepts like symbiogenesis or the implications of punctuated equilibrium, or as though these concepts in any way support a top-bottom creator (they do not, although they also don't falsify it since it's conveniently unfalsifiable). The real and observable purpose of these ID proselytizers is to restore and/or strengthen the rule of theistic priests (with or without collars, in church or secular guise) over the education of children. It's all part of a larger ideology: Obey God, State,* Boss, Father and the Flag; don't fuck, carry to term if you do fuck, don't question, don't know things outside what a narrow Christianist worldview demands, hate and shun gays and cultural deviants and foreigners. (State* in this case meaning the police and military functions, not necessarily the part about other public services or taxes.) Now you may believe in some kind of ID without that baggage, but you can't deny that ID was introduced into the modern debate from those who promote that baggage, so even if you do support ID, at least acknowledge that.

This assault forces evolutionary science into a defensive posture in public, often falling into the trap of sounding a dogmatic tone or over-simplifying itself for consumption by those who are unwilling to consume it; even as the theory of speciesation purely by natural selection amongst genetic variants is debated within the discipline.

.

[stefano]

Just call me a simpleton for the following.

That's extremely well and patiently put. Good post, thanks.

[Sounder]

Jack wrote...

Just call me a simpleton for the following.

No I will not. But I will suggest that formal materialism is bound to transcend empiricism as it learns to categorize more subtle elements of this material world.

You are so right about the guessers, yet with inadequate information this is what we are reduced to. As always, thanks for laying your thoughts out so clearly Jack.

This was written before Jacks post, and is noted as so only because I called AD simpleminded before Jack asked to be called a simpleton. (I wish I could be a simple as Jack)

I am somewhat embarrassed to be saying the following on a ‘critical thinking’ thread given that talking about ideas, carries much more appeal than does talking about people, in my world at least.

AD, I have no doubt that you are a ‘good’ person. I used to be suspicious that you were an agenda pusher that was unwilling to express your personal voice for fear of exposing your agenda. Now, I merely think that you are a bit simpleminded, combined with an abiding conviction and resulting need to tell everyone else that you are on the ‘right’ side of every issue. This (I think) results in an unconscious need for you to devalue any potential meaning content of ideas that run counter to (what appears to be) a material rationalist approach to reality.

If you stuck to the ideas, no problem, but when you confuse categories by acting as if you think the person is a ‘bad’ person if they give consideration to what you consider to be a bad idea, then it irritates me a bit because I know that many ‘good’ people down through history have been afflicted with bad ideas.

Yet the worst of those ‘good’ people were quite sure that ‘bad’ ideas could never find purchase within their ‘beautiful’ minds.

[stefano]

I will suggest that formal materialism is bound to transcend empiricism as it learns to categorize more subtle elements of this material world.

Is the other way around not more likely: that empiricism will recognise and transcend the limitations that formal materialism imposes on our models of the world? I think so. One of the important parts of Jack's post is this:

A true skeptic (not the brandname "skeptics" a la Randi, who are mostly establishment dogmatists) is well aware that there is a great deal of unobserved and unknowable that contains entities-yet-to-be-named ("entities" in the philosophical sense)

This is important, and I think often glossed over by people who resent what they see (I think) as science de-romanticising the world. Rigorous inquiry answered by empirical testing is the best tools we have for understanding the world, and I really don't understand this attitude of 'science is all bullshit'. I mean, that's not only untrue and dishonest but actively anti-knowledge.

To Searcher (sorry this is a response to something you wrote yesterday, I think, but I didn't respond then): how is the language of logic, of the 'politician and the lawyer', patriarchal? I don't see that at all and it's quite correct that politicians and lawyers, people who have to argue to a conclusion, have always been the ones to refine the arts of logic and rhetoric. Nothing wrong with that, I think, but I'd like to know if you disagree and why?

[justdrew]

Just call me a simpleton for the following...

never!

but I bet no one on here could name a single thing that doesn't exist.
(in some way)

[JackRiddler]

Just call me a simpleton for the following...

never!

but I bet no one on here could name a single thing that doesn't exist.
(in some way)

Belgium's military defeat of the German Reich's invasion of 1940 does not exist. (An alternate universe where it does exist itself may or may not exist, but is currently an unobserved, unknowable, unfalsifiable and frankly illogical proposition.) Harry Potter as a living human being does not exist, he does exist as a fictional character and as a fervent desire of his fans, which nevertheless does not cause a living version to materialize. (Insert alternate universe disclaimer here.) My pocket doesn't have a star-mass black hole in it; that's only a tear in the cotton that lets the coins drop through.

See? I am a simpleton. (Not just fishing for praise in saying so.)

.

[gnosticheresy_2]

Just call me a simpleton for the following...

never!

but I bet no one on here could name a single thing that doesn't exist.
(in some way)

The concept of things existing doesn't exist.

[American Dream]

.

Just call me a simpleton for the following.

A definition of nature in the philosophical sense:

Nature (also known as the universe or the real-existing sphere) is everything that exists. Everything that exists is nature. Everything that does not exist, does not exist. That which does not exist, is not nature. Some things have yet to exist, or potentially exist, so put these into the category of virtual or potential real-existing things. Ideas are such things; I would argue they do exist, because they are carried by a sentience which in this definition of nature is a natural, real-existing material entity. The idea exists, even if the thing to which it refers - Harry Potter, Belgian military victory in World War II, a black hole in my pocket - may not.

(By the way, you may choose a different definition of nature for the ecological sense, e.g., everything that exists before humans or would have existed without them. Peripheral to this discussion.)

Given that definition of nature:

"Supernatural" is a semantically suspect term for unknown or imagined things that may or may not exist. If these things do exist, they are natural, and merely unknown or unobserved (like electromagnetic waves were unknown to us until a couple of hundred years ago, and would have been "supernatural" to any strict empiricists until then). Ghosts, alternate universes and deities, if they exist, would be a part of nature. Anything that exists is material, by definition. We only call it non-material because we do not now know what kind of material it is, or could be; but if it manifests as existent, then it does so on a medium, which is material, by definition.

I find that this set of definitions, once you accept it, clears up a lot of misunderstandings due to semantics. N-dimensional structures if they exist would be natural and material. A conscious big-creator-of-all entity if it exists would be natural and material (albeit not a kind of material we understand or see, as yet). If Jehovah causes the walls of Jericho to tumble down, that involves a process of energy transfer: a material action in nature. In other words, in this terminology, natural/supernatural is not generally a useful dichotomy.

Known/unknown is a useful dichotomy. Empirical/faith-based is a useful dichotomy. Observable vs. speculative is a useful dichotomy. (Here we should understand that no dichotomy is really dichotomous, there are broad uncertain area between the two regions the dichotomy defines.)

Those who work from the observable and prefer to move deliberately on making any definitive statements about the unobservable or unknowable are empiricists. A good empiricist is a skeptic, which means: knows that she doesn't know. A true skeptic (not the brandname "skeptics" a la Randi, who are mostly establishment dogmatists) is well aware that there is a great deal of unobserved and unknowable that contains entities-yet-to-be-named ("entities" in the philosophical sense) but is reluctant to make definitive statements about the unknowable and unobserved unless the logic is compelling and proceeds from the observable. (Example: gravity is something that is observed, exists and acts, even if I have no clue what it is, so some theory of it has got to be the best possible explanation we will come up with for it, even if that theory has yet to be formulated.) A scientist is an empiricist who formulates falsifiable hypotheses about the observable world and then tries to test them through controlled observation or experiment.

Up to there, we might all yet agree. Or not. Or you might agree but still be on a different wavelength that considers the above trivial, or peripheral. Let's see.

But proceeding from there, here's where I go:

Those who fill in the unobserved-unknowable with as-yet unfalsifiable constructs they find logical may be excellent speculators who intuitively get their guesses right, but that is a rare, rare thing: to actually guess right for the right reasons. Often it's like thinking you're going to win the lottery. More often those who fill in the gaps are engaging in wishes, picking up a convenient simple construct (e.g., "god") that doesn't actually explain anything but can be infuriatingly repeated a hundred thousand times as though it does. This is what I mean by faith-based thinking: without evidence, without sturdy logic proceeding from evidence, I stick in an entity that solves this burdensome not-knowing for me, and then insist upon it, even though it's little more than a label I stick on the blank white territory of my map.

So I believe: The proper philosophical position following from all that with respect to higher creator entities is agnostic and open to informed speculation, if rigorously resistant to pure faith-based assertions. But the proper practical or political position (and sorry, politics is important and much bigger than what we usually call "politics") is to be merciless with those who want to sell any practical or political proposition on the basis of their "faith."

God has no business as a justification for anything disputed on the social plane, until such time as it might choose to make an appearance to us socially, instead of being coy and talking only through would-be prophets, obviously human-written scriptures, visions accessible only to preachers, a "feeling of awe that I get but you don't get," gurus and higher "spiritual" persons, etc. etc. I am talking especially about disputed matters, "issues." I don't really care if God is your justification for not eating other human beings or not robbing my house (although I find it mildly disturbing if you think you need a god to prevent you from that), since the morality and ethics of doing such things are not seriously in dispute (even if justifications for such behavior are often suggested by the euphemisms of macroeconomic theory). I do care if your God is your justification for telling me how I should behave.

We have a serious problem in this country (the US) with the use of "God" as a bludgeon on behalf of right-wing politics and nationalist hooey ("God Bless the United States" - and her wars, of course - is not just a right wing idea) that have no basis in logic or observable reality or our evolved morality of not eating each other or robbing our houses. But this God does serve certain interests who are all too happy to use it as a political bludgeon, whether or not they really believe in it. This problem is familiar in other countries as well.

In this scheme, ID doctrine is anathema to anything you might call science, empiricism or logic, because it is a mere abdication of the attempt to know and communicate anything. ID is a zero. Its nominal value amounts to this: Wow, life's big and complex and unlikely ever to be understood, I really don't get it, it doesn't seem to me to be explained by reductionist science. Therefore I shall simply give up on that effort altogether, and attribute the creation of species to someone whom I can't see but who does know how it all works (and whom I shall worship). This nominal position is not science, it doesn't even mimic it very well.

However, if you're honest about the politics, then you know that the above really is only the nominal value of ID, and that nominal value is a ruse to disguise the normative one, which is to demand a faith in a very particular form of "god" as sole sentient creator and director who speaks through scriptures and churches -- a faith-demand that can no longer be sustained in any scheme of empiricism, science, logic, or, for that matter, just politics. This is why some of us get so combative when ID is inserted as "one idea among others." Because they know that it was formulated and introduced as a trojan horse for Christianism, after simple Creationism a la Genesis became too ridiculous to sustain outside of Christianist enclaves.

ID doctrine is also a big pain in the ass for having any serious theoretical discussion on the facts of life on earth, which all evidence says has grown by evolution through various forms over a period of 4 billion years. This just isn't subject to debate on the evidentiary plane. A theoretical debate exists, not about evolution, but about natural selection. Because while natural selection is an indisputable and abundantly-observed mechanism for evolution on the micro level, it may not be the actual primary mechanism for species generation on the macro-evolutionary level in nature (here, "nature" in the ecological sense). Understandings of symbiogenesis (which has also been observed), autopoeiesis and epigenetics may yet radically modify the current Darwinian synthesis of natural selection among genetic mutations as the driver of all speciesation.

However, you've got these thinly disguised religious proselytizers waiting for every chance to holler any time natural selection as sole driver is debated, as though they gave a crap about concepts like symbiogenesis or the implications of punctuated equilibrium, or as though these concepts in any way support a top-bottom creator (they do not, although they also don't falsify it since it's conveniently unfalsifiable). The real and observable purpose of these ID proselytizers is to restore and/or strengthen the rule of theistic priests (with or without collars, in church or secular guise) over the education of children. It's all part of a larger ideology: Obey God, State,* Boss, Father and the Flag; don't fuck, carry to term if you do fuck, don't question, don't know things outside what a narrow Christianist worldview demands, hate and shun gays and cultural deviants and foreigners. (State* in this case meaning the police and military functions, not necessarily the part about other public services or taxes.) Now you may believe in some kind of ID without that baggage, but you can't deny that ID was introduced into the modern debate from those who promote that baggage, so even if you do support ID, at least acknowledge that.

This assault forces evolutionary science into a defensive posture in public, often falling into the trap of sounding a dogmatic tone or over-simplifying itself for consumption by those who are unwilling to consume it; even as the theory of speciesation purely by natural selection amongst genetic variants is debated within the discipline.

.

Wow- thanks for this!

Well worth chewing on for a few days.

[JackRiddler]

Just call me a simpleton for the following...

never!

but I bet no one on here could name a single thing that doesn't exist.
(in some way)

The concept of things existing doesn't exist.

This sentence does not exist!

[justdrew]

Just call me a simpleton for the following...

never!

but I bet no one on here could name a single thing that doesn't exist.
(in some way)

Belgium's military defeat of the German Reich's invasion of 1940 does not exist. (An alternate universe where it does exist itself may or may not exist, but is currently an unobserved, unknowable, unfalsifiable and frankly illogical proposition.) Harry Potter as a living human being does not exist, he does exist as a fictional character and as a fervent desire of his fans, which nevertheless does not cause a living version to materialize. (Insert alternate universe disclaimer here.) My pocket doesn't have a star-mass black hole in it; that's only a tear in the cotton that lets the coins drop through.

See? I am a simpleton. (Not just fishing for praise in saying so.)

well, those things may not have existed before, but now they do since you've thought them up (or gone and pointed at the darn things. they'd been sitting there in the pleroma, minding their own business, then someone had to go and drag them into manifestation). They exist now as thoughts; but did you create them or were they already there, just waiting for someone to notice and mention them? Perhaps there are boundaries between different classes of existing, but they're porous boarders.

maybe the only thing that doesn't exist, is non-existence.

(see Pleroma -vs- Abraxas)
http://www.gnosis.org/library/7Sermons.htm

Michelangelo, the Italian renaissance artist, preferred sculputure to painting, because sculpture allowed him to simply reveal the form already hidden within the stone.