The Most Important Question of our Age?

Paulhanke,

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But the starting point is knowledge, not mysticism - if knowledge has spiritual implications, and it does, so be it, but it's false to begin with spiritual 'truths' and fit the science around them. The spiritual is not an answer - it's a question.



Peacefully? Has there ever been a political institution not founded in blood? I doubt global government will be any different in that respect, for the very essence of governemnt is a monopoly on the legitimate use of force - and it will be contested. I don't advocate violence but I wouldn't shrink from it either - and would use force against those who'd take arms against global government. I think it rather niave of you to expect such a transition could be peaceful - a bloodless revolution, evolution without death - who ever heard of such a thing?

iconoclast.

Zetetic11235

................................2u2!

iconoclast.

... time for another thought experiment (I know how much you like them! ) ... here's your two scientifically-conceived options for the survival of humankind:

1) a Gaia-like existence where humankind returns to and revels in its earthly legacy, or

2) an Asimov/Robots-like existence where humankind dominates the earth by wrapping it in a concrete and steel shell

... go ahead, make your choice ... science isn't going to help you here - it's gone as far as it can ... the answer will be spiritual ... and if your goal is to sustain this answer long after you're gone, it will be this spirituality that you will teach your children long before they learn anything of science.



... your point being that it's pointless to set ethical goals if they aren't absolutely achievable?

Paulhanke,

'Trantor! Capital of the First Galactic Empire. Its land surface of 200 million square kilometers was entirly domed (except for the Imperial Palace area) and underlaid with an endless city that extended under the continental shelves.'

I don't know if a surviving humanity will build Trantor, but I know they won't abandon knowledge and technology and return to the land. The rural idyll is a lovely dream but it's a dream, and takes no account of the harsh realities of life without knowledge and technology.

We can't go backward - and should not try. We must go forwards, but applying sceince for scientifically valid reasons, not using science to rape the earth for dollars.

iconoclast.

p.s. I edited my last post - when I got time. I was a bit swamped when I wrote 'peacefully - ha!' And thought it best I explain more fully why I think that unrealistic.

... in my mind, the difference between a Gaia-like mythos and a Trantor-like mythos is the difference between human-being-in-the-world and human-being-against-the-world ... the former represents a return to being sustainably integrated within the earth's natural rhythms and resources (without implying a return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle!), whereas the latter represents business as usual (the good old Victorian man-conquers-nature mythos) ... note that a human-being-in-the-world spirituality absolutely requires science in order to provide it with options for a sustainable future - understanding the earth's natural rhythms and predicting the impacts of human activity are critical to ensuring that our ethical choices have the desired results!

Anyhoo, the pain meds are wearing off and it's back to work tomorrow ... gonna have to drop back to my usual low volume of activity here (I'm sure you're all terribly disappointed! )

Paulhanke,

In my mind you establish a false dicotomy, and speak as if science is somehow opposed to nature rather than knowledge of nature - necessary that man might protect 'environmental resources.' And yes, I use that phrase in full knowledge of its implications.

Not even hunter-gatherers lived without employing environmental resources to thier benefit, and thus effecting the environment, and it does you no justice to ignore this fact.



You would attempt to return to the rural idyll then - good luck trying to persuade people of that! Ooh, let's all go wander naked in the forest, kill animals with a sharp stick, have 50% infant mortality and a life expectancy of 35. Pfft!

iconoclast.

And yet you hold science with such high regard? Whats to say that science wouldn't become as corrupt as religion?

Holiday,

Great question. In short the answer is scientific method, the determinability of fact and the inter-related nature of valid knowledge.

Let's say we have global government constitutionally bound to scientific knowledge, that is infiltrated by a group with a sepratist agenda. They have to persuade the world of something that isn't true in order to pervert decision making to favour thier cause.

But so much is known, and scientific method is structured such that the truth would out rather quickly. There would be methodological flaws in thier pseudo-research and incongruities in the conclusions where they don't gel with other facts, that the lie would soon be discovered. It wouldn't be worth it - because it wouldn't work, and so a sceintific polity would be resistant to corruption.

regards,

iconoclast

I think there could be a problem with that though. Since when does the public look to science's utilization? They look at the state they are in, the merit it holds to their standard of living.

When the proletarians came to realize liberalism, it was a succession of morals, not truth.

Although, the Roman Catholic Church was not founded on truth, rather public's ignorance and hypocrisy. So you're saying that science is a basis for truth that you'd encourage as intrinsic to the political power?

If morality would cause realization of religion then what realization would take off the blindfold of science? Or are you saying that the blindfold is purely truth?

Holiday20310401,

I'm sorry but I don't understand the question. Could you re-phrase it. Write as simply as possible in plain english words.

iconoclast.

How would you devise a morality and course of action for humanity (i.e. how would you define progress and choose goals) utilizing only logic? You cannot devise a direction for logic in and of logic, logic is an apendage. This would be akin to using a tool to find its use, but the tool cannot define its use; only its application can bring about an inductive and psuedo-rational course of action as the tool is applied in various circumstances intuitively.

In other words, to use logic is not logical, it is instinctual. To aim logic is not logical, but inductive and intuitive. You cannot choose a goal through entirely logical means, this is part of why a logic machine would not have free will or any semblence of will at all. Self preservation is not a logical priority, no priority is logic based, only intuitve and instinctual/emotional.

Logic does not espouse purpose, but rather is a tool which brings us towards our subjective goals insofar as its use is not exhuasted(if, for instance, it hits a barrier of subjectivity in which case intuition and instinct reclaims precedence in our decision making). To turn logic to its own justification without accepting this truth, logic must only be illogical, as it cannot self justify. This is why accepting an intuitive base to everything is so important, and thus why we must seek to cooperate through democratic process upon issues that logic finds subjective barriers in.

I would be very interested in anyone who might propose a system by which compromise can best be reached, for in finding compromise in the totally subjective, a universal system of action, intent and law can be devised. The best system so far is democracy, but democracy, I think, should give way to logic except in the decisions which remain totally subjective. There, it should hope to find an agreeable mean view by which the subjective decision is made and further logical decision making shall ensue. Without these subjective transits, logic has no value and cannot be used to make decisions, for once again, logic cannot define what the desired outcome shall be, it is instinct and intutition which decide these things.

Zetetic11235,

Thanks for this orginal and intelligent post. I accept your arguments absolutely about logic, but I'm not proposing a scientific singularity - but at the very least, employing science to the end of securing the continued existence of humankind.

In implementation, I strongly suspect there would be a great many other values that would be employed in the decision making process - but that can be accounted for by the scientific appreciation of the sociological and psychological.

In short, while i honour science as a method of achieving valid knowledge I don't recognize the 'ought from is' argument - or pure logic as a basis for decision making. We're not Vulcans - and I see no reason why we should aspire to become divorced from the emotional/spiritual/ethical aspects of the human personality.

For example, it might be scientifically justified to kill half the people on earth in the cause of environmental sustainability but why would this not be feasible? Because it would leave such a severe spiritual and psychological wound that the life bought at such cost would be forever soiled, indebted and rotten.

Take the practice of medicine - it's essentially science, but with a strong ethical element in implementation. There's no dicotomy here - it's a Cartesian philosophical leftover.

iconoclast.

The scientific method took a lot more than freedom from dictates like this to come about. These dictates weren't really the problem .

Part of the tragedy of European science up until modernity was a dogmatic reverence for the scientific writings of antiquity. I regard Aristotle as a true scientist, or at least proto-scientist. His physics and metaphysics were based on observations of the world and an attempt to abstract principles from these observations. But he was succeeded, ultimately, by a 1500 year period in Europe that looked at him so reverently that his writings were never questioned.

The same was true with other ancients -- like Ptolemy in astronomy (and navigation / cartography!), and like Galen in medicine. This whole crap about catching a cold by going out in the cold is a relic of Galen, who lived ~ 2000 years ago. We still haven't entirely shed it.

And I think the problem is that European society was so economically marginal, so illiterate, so belligerent for so long, that the prosperous cities and universities that existed in Islam during the 9th-12th centuries did not come into being until much later. So while Islam was inventing calculus, breaking ground in physiology and astronomy and navigation and in rational philosophy, the only institutions to achieve such influence in contemporaneous Europe were the church and the throne. Both were equal offenders, and both were equal opportunists.

It's critical to realize that the advent of the modern university, modern thought, and modern science, was not only contemporaneous with religious reform, but also political reform.

Aedes,

It makes sense. The Curch of Rome founded the Inquisition in 1233, partly in response to the return of the works of Aristotle from the East. From the fall of Rome in 410-ish, under the rule of the Church Europe slid back into illiteracy and ignorance, and so when armies returning from the Crusades brought Airstotle's works home with them, they were ancient scripts of a higher intellectual content. As you say this would tend to create a backward looking intellectual milleau.

However, I don't buy the political reform part of your argument. I think it may be possible to argue there's some relation between Galileo's proof of heliocentric planetary motion, 1632, and the break up of the Holy Roman Empire in the Peace of Westphalia, 18 years later.

Nations took soverignty unto themselves - but these were rationalizations of pre-existing religious dynamics, esatblished by a century of religious conflict - and furthermore nations took soverignty on the basis of the Divine Rights of Kings.

They continued to draw upon religious authority as a basis for domestic legitimacy while themsleves building empires over-seas, slaughtering the natives as heathens and enslaving them in a supposed Christian civilizing mission.

Still, today, in the UK, the monarch is the Head of Church and State - and the Houses of Parliament and higher echelons of the civil service and buisness are still largely occupied by people who boast that they can trace thier ancestry back to the Magna Carta.

So, what I'm saying is - the nation state is not a rational concept, but a rationalization of pre-existing religious dynamics - fundamentally opposed to a scientifically based understanding of the world and the species.

The problem with this being that, for example "in Kyoto" these ostensibly rational but actually religious groups can't cooperate on the basis of the facts of the matter, but pervert the science to further divisive interests, not founded in rational knowledge but in religious ideation.

iconoclast.

I doubt the state is opposed to scientific advancement.
They are opposed to truth that denounces their continuance and virtue.

Science is not founded by truth but by innovation and discovery. Truth construes a lot with that and usually in a way that would cause instability to the public to be aware of.

This is why the church tried Eckhart as a heretic and were not fond of Aquinas even though they tried to rationalize Christianity.

So yeah, the state wasn't rational, and never is.

Holiday,

I don't suggest that the state is actually opposed to scientific advancement as such, but that the state uses science to pursue it's interests. Because the state is not a rational institution it follows that it's interests are irrational.

For example, at the Kyoto climate change conference, nation states could only agree a 5% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over 22 years from 1990 to 2012 - and the US and Russia wouldn't agree even this modest target.

President Bush explained the reason in 2005, in an interview for British news: 'I walked away from Kyoto because it would hurt the American economy, you bet...' (Tonight with Trevor McDonald May 5th 2005)

Thus, he puts national economic interest above the scientific facts - but this is wrong, because science is valid knowledge, whereas the nation state is a human invention, not true, but a line drawn on a map.

This is the epistemological issue at the basis of my thesis, and the reason i say we need a global government constitutionally bound to a scientific understanding of reality.

iconoclast.

You're speaking in general terms about nation states. I spoke of the American government, an institution founded on secular principles, not religious principles. The religious social dynamic upon which the American government is founded is the notion that people should be free to worship, or abstain from worship, as they see fit. Therefore, the American government is not a religious sect formally assigned an administrative role. The writ is that religious sects are not part of the administration.

Moreover, nation states are not opposed to the fact that human kind is a single species inhabiting a singular planet. Nation states are a pragmatic reaction to the various divisions of the species. Regardless of whether or not these divisions should exist, they do exist, and therefore humans must find a way to surivive in spite of those divisions.

Only in some cases. Take note - some nation states have banned all religious sects.

Religious sects do not follow a universal order. To say that the features of a religious sect can be "mapped directly onto the nation state" is to say that both are organizations of people. Same could be said of your local boy scout troop.

And also unite one group of human beings with another group.

Secularism allows people to make their own decision on how to balance mythos and logos in their own life.
And it is incorrect to say that I am equating logos with science and mythos with religion. Logos is the rational aspect of human understanding, mythos is the aspect of human understanding outside of reason.
Logos incorporates the process of articulated demonstration, mythos incorporates ineffible experience. It would be incorrect to call either mythos or logos necessarily false - though there can be false assertions and understandings in both the realms of mythos and logos.
Both mythos and logos are equally universal, and have equal potential to divide people, just as they have equal potential to unite people. Logos is expressed in different ways across different cultures, as is mythos.

This topic isn't a discussion of my beliefs.

While you throw up this rock analogy, you avoid the question altogether. Sorry for trying to solidly establish our common ground.

Sometimes, but not necessarily. The US, Soviet Russia, Communist China, ect.

No, only more important things to deal with than replying to threads here - like school. No need to get self righteous.

Then you have a great deal to learn about religion - even if you reject religion. It's not the terms that are important, it's understanding that language cannot perfectly express human experiences.

In any case, I'm done with this particular topic. So far, Iconoclast, you have simply reasserted your views and danced around questions, moving in an irrational, circular motion. It's been fun, but the fun is over. If you decide to give serious consideration to these issues, I suggest you go read. I have two recommendations - "The Battle For God" by Karen Armstrong and "Tartuffe" by Moliere.

DT,

How will I manage without your flat denial of every two words I put together - your inability due to unwillingness to quite understand what I'm trying to explain?

I'd suggest you read some of the history of your own nation state - ever heard of a little proto-revolutionary event called the Great Awakening? Pilgrim fathers? Protestant Ethic and thre Spirit of Capiltalism?

Not ringing any bells?

How about 'In God we Trust'?

No?

iconoclast.

Again, with the self righteous rhetoric. Sure, when you say something false, I'm going to point that out. Honestly, you suggest a historical debate after claiming that the Dalai Lama was a communist appointee? I have better things to do.

Actually, I think you'll find that was a question.