Critical thinking on the existence of God

@Tuna,

"for the win" The first time I saw it, I thought it meant "**** the world." Confused

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@FBM,

Oh. I was thinking WTF backwards, but that didn't make any sense.

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@FBM,

Quote:

Stockholm syndrome. Survival instinct. Very evolutionary. In those days, non-believers could be killed by Jeebus-loving, god-fearing believers for no other reason than non-belief. Wink

Oh, so THAT'S why all those guys in Gitmo and Abugrab converted to Christianity! You and W had that all figured out.

It all makes sense to me now.

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@Tuna,

'Truth' does not transcend language nor does 'measurement', nor does 'existence'. All are words i.e. behavioral gestures used to coordinate actions in social contexts (inclusive of internal dialogue). Contrary to popular belief ,words are not 'representational' of realities separate from human behavioral contexts, even though it is convenient to imagine they are when joint focus of attention is undisputed.
It is cases where focus IS disputed that waffle is generated. One persons 'God which helped them through illness' is another person's 'childhood myth'. And each is correct if the use of that word 'God' coordinates their subsequent actions. 'Existence' of a thing called 'God' is relational to to user of that word in the context of its usage. Outside this forum I as an atheist have no use the word 'God' for my modus vivendi. I assign no 'thinghood' to it. It requires no counting \ accounting. (The first level of measurement is counting 'one').

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The god Fresco has spoken...

...and revealed the truth about the REALITY of existence...

...from his perch on-high!

Hilarious!

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@fresco,

I wouldn't say words are behavioral gestures. Maybe you meant speech acts are. Words are formal entities that may have baseline definitions, but we have to look to context of use to pick out particular meanings. You could apply behaviorism to that, but it's still the speech act which plays a role in human interaction.

Have you come across Donald Davidson's challenge to relativism? On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme is food for thought.

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@Tuna,

I have not read Davidson directly, only Rorty's analysis of him and his contribution (together with those of Quine, Sellers and Wittgenstein) or otherwise to non-representationalism. The key issue with "definition" is words defining words. This is sidestepped by the biologist Maturana who talks of 'languaging' as a form of co-ordinating behavior which we have developed significantly beyond languaging in other species. In this way he attempts to avoid anthropomorphism and stress evolutionary continuity.

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@fresco,

I'm just worried that Maturana has side-stepped off into nowhere. If his theory has referents for words like "species" and "evolution," then it's contradictory. If his theory has no referents at all, then its meaning would best be approached in the way we understand the songs of birds, which we don't suppose are speculations about the world. Right?

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@Tuna,

No. The issue for him is the understanding of 'life' 'An external world' does not figure in Maturana's philosophy. It is 'organism based' involving adaptations to perturbation by adaptation of structure. As with Heidegger, the primary mode of 'being' does not involve subjects contemplating objects. For the cat chasing the mouse there is no 'cat' or 'mouse' as far as those humanly specified entities are concerned. There is only an interactive 'chasing' (like Heidegger's 'hammering' in which neither 'self' nor 'hammer' are 'thinged'. Cognition is viewed as 'the general life process'. Consciousness/ thinking is devalued. Social interaction is covered by the term 'structural coupling' in which organisms are involved in resonant interactive behavioral processes.

This is of course a mere thumbnail sketch, but following Wittgenstein we should be wary of terms like'theory' applied to such systems. It is an alternative epistemological position with certain advantages over naive realism.

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@fresco,

Quote:

'An external world' does not figure in Maturana's philosophy.

The more solipsistic, the more better, Fresky always says, eh!?

Aint that right, Fresky?

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@fresco,

There is no Maturana. Correct?

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@Tuna,

There is only an 'M' as far as that behavior we call 'reporting' is concerned. And that reporting can go on in our own heads as a process we might call 'conscious observation'. Heidegger's point, embellished by M, is that much of the time that conscious reporting is absent. Most of the time humans are on 'automatic' when neither 'self' nor 'object' is evoked as separate entities.....and for less conscious species, that automatic mode(what Dreyfus calls 'seamless coping') may be the only mode of operation.

BTW. Languaging is a social activity involving the adherence of groups. The assumption that the above system implies 'solipsism' is ridiculous. Its place in epistemological terms is perhaps reflected by the chemical signals in an ant colony . IMO it the abstract persistence of words as perceived 'objects' in their own right which leads to our assumption of persistence of all objects they might evoke. The word 'tree' remains unchanged but that tree in my garden does not...neither biologically nor functionally according to my transient relationship with it. From this position, 'reality' and 'existence' are about contextually agreed modes of reporting in order to co ordinate subsequent action.

You need to acknowledge that seamless coping as part of your own experience in order to commune with the above position. Just thinking about that inconsistent, daydreaming 'self' is one aspect of that.

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Hidden meaning transforms unparalleled abstract beauty.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

There is only an 'M' as far as that behavior we call 'reporting' is concerned. And that reporting can go on in our own heads as a process we might call 'conscious observation'. Heidegger's point, embellished by M, is that much of the time that conscious reporting is absent. Most of the time humans are on 'automatic' when neither 'self' nor 'object' is evoked as separate entities.....and for less conscious species, that automatic mode(what Dreyfus calls 'seamless coping') may be the only mode of operation.

What was confusing me is that when I asked if you think truth is transcendent, you denied it. The above perspective does require that truth be transcendent of language. You mentioned Wittgenstein. I assume you were talking about the tossing of the ladder. There again, the conclusion is that truth is never captured by language.

For Sartre, the self is a construction. For Heidegger, it's a product of analysis. The two views are similar, and neither is novel in the history of philosophy. As it relates to M, we would be aware that evolution is merely another narrative broadcast by the reporting function of consciousness and post hoc embraced as fact. The same is true of the concept of a "reporting function." In other words, if we say that "there is nothing but the narrative," the implication of our own assertion is the erosion of the assertion itself. What's left is: we can't speak the truth.

But we continue talking endlessly anyway. It would be cool to trace out a schematic of this story in which we ourselves star as Uroburos. I wouldn't start constructing that schematic with the outlook of a biologist, though.

One place to start would be the big H-man himself. Have you read Heidegger's OWA? Another possibility would be Nietzsche.

In other words, are you interested in doing a group reading on this forum? Do you have any suggestions for what to read?

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@Tuna,

If you're looking for the truth, well, then, here ya go, eh?

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@layman,

Truth:

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@Tuna,

I don't think we can infer 'transcendent truth' from the above. It implies a 'coherence' view of truth rather than a 'correspondence' one in line with its underlying links with a 'nonrepresentational' view of language. Thus if we agree that assertion X works for us, then we might say 'X is 'true'. This is a pragmatists view which takes into account specific contexts for 'what works'.

It is pointless trying trying to play a Russell's paradox game when we are stuck with language describing language. By saying 'the narrative IS all there is' implies that 'is-ness' is confined to assertions about 'existence' i.e. the contexts in which the verb 'to be' is utilized. Note the move by some philosophers to attempt to bypass this by banning the verb 'to be' in favor of 'Eprime'. Note too Derrida's point that 'is' also implies 'is not'....an assertion and its opposite are epistemologically inseparable.

I have not read that H reference directly, but I have audited 45 hours of Dreyfus's course on Heidegger which was available from Berkeley on podcast. I have been trying to get respondents to read something for many years on this forum with very little success. I would welcome suggestions from you but we are likely be 'the odd couple'.

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@fresco,

Quote:

I have audited 45 hours of Dreyfus's course on Heidegger

Did it learn ya how to praise Nazis?

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

I don't think we can infer 'transcendent truth' from the above. It implies a 'coherence' view of truth rather than a 'correspondence' one in line with its underlying links with a 'nonrepresentational' view of language.

We're going to have to part ways on this. What you presented is directly at odds with a coherence theory of truth. You could be a deflationist. You could be a truth skeptic.

Quote:

Thus if we agree that assertion X works for us, then we might say 'X is 'true'. This is a pragmatists view which takes into account specific contexts for 'what works'.

But there is no criteria for "working" that isn't a narrative. Since narratives are constructions, one would assume that practicality itself is a feat of mental engineering.

What you can do is say "Snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white.

Quote:

It is pointless trying trying to play a Russell's paradox game when we are stuck with language describing language. By saying 'the narrative IS all there is' implies that 'is-ness' is confined to assertions about 'existence' i.e. the contexts in which the verb 'to be' is utilized.

I wouldn't bring Russell's Paradox into the discussion because that requires the acceptance of abstract objects. It's not a paradox that I was pointing out. It's the looming incoherence of saying "M says M doesn't exist." This can't be redeemed with neuroscience, evolution, or indeed, any ontological account. The problem isn't in some downstream misunderstanding on the part of your listener. It's located in the first two words of the sentence: "M says."

I think you're shutting the door on the only way out of this apparent defiance of logic.

fresco wrote:

I have not read that H reference directly, but I have audited 45 hours of Dreyfus's course on Heidegger which was available from Berkeley on podcast. I have been trying to get respondents to read something for many years on this forum with very little success. I would welcome suggestions from you but we are likely be 'the odd couple'.

OWA is late Heidegger. It's short and beautifully written. And it's available on line! What do you think?

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@fresco,

I'll have a look at that Heidegger reference but I think you are missing the point that my thumbnail sketches are metalogical in essence. Neither M nor H relies on classical logic, they rely on neologisms which appear circular to the unwary. Indeed M has an attitude to his system which cites 'gut reaction' as a major factor in its comprehensibility.
I could 'go on' about the inappropriateness of 'formal logic' in evaluating this material but I will not. Suffice to say that operations based on static set membership do not seem applicable to dynamic interactions. Unless you can commune with that fundamental point we will be talking past each other.
As an attempt to prevent this I cite useful paper pro-M which discusses circularity and obseervation.
http://www.oikos.org/vonobserv.htm

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Critical thinking on the existence of God

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