How can a good God allow suffering

@cicerone imposter,

I'm interested in these things, not bothered.

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@fresco,

Doesn't work for me. Eyesight for instance is not a "perturbation", not anymore than a camera is a tool to collect "perturbations". Binocular vision is clearly a system enabling judgement of distances, etc. I can't explain any of this by thinking in terms of "perturbation", but "information gathering" does work as an explaination.

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@Olivier5,

You make some good points. I'll investigate some of the criticism and get back to you in due course.

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@fresco,

Appreciated.

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@Olivier5,

Okay, Maturana's work began with his study of visual perception (in frogs). From this he concluded that perceptual apparatus does not *represent 'the world ', it constructs it. Thus our languaged concept of 'distance' is for Maturana, 'a useful construction' , whether coined or not, in terms of niche survival, prior to the place of such a term in the consensual domain we call 'science'.

*Von Glasersfeld points out there are two forms of representation (different words in German for example) one of which involves symbols (information coding) and one which re-presents/re-constructs an interactive coupling.

The point is that we are so conditioned by common sense 'realism' that our starting point when thinking about everyday vision is how we see the world 'as it is'. Without that 'bedrock' we feel uncomfortable. But note how those foundations are far less certain in frontier physics.

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@fresco,

Quote:

But note how those foundations are far less certain in frontier physics

This is interesting could you explain?

Is what the information is saying to an observer uncertian or is the predictability uncertian at times?

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@brianjakub,

No, I am saying 'the world' being constructed by the shifting human paradigms of frontier science is far less 'picturable' or 'common sensical' than that of ordinary experience.

As far as the concept of 'information' is concerned its status becomes dubious when attempting to investigate things like black holes from which no 'signals' emerge, or nonlocality which appears to be antithetical to the speed of light axiom.

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@Olivier5,

Common interpretation of what and how we observe our universe through language is necessary. I think legal statements come close to that requirement.

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@fresco,

Quote:

he concluded that perceptual apparatus does not *represent 'the world ', it constructs it.

The two are not mutually exclusive. Our senses construct a representation of the world around us.

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

The two are not mutually exclusive. Our senses construct a representation of the world around us.

And our subjective brain provides us with our reality.

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

Maturana's aversion against the word "representation" springs from the fact that, like Kant and Schopenhauer, he excludes conceptual pictures or replications of an objective, ontic reality in the cognitive domain of organisms. In contrast, re-presentations in Piaget's sense are repetitions or reconstructions of items that were distinguished in previous experience. As Maturana explained in the course of the discussions at the ASC Conference in October 1988, such representations are possible also in the autopoietic model. Maturana spoke there of re-living an experience, and from my perspective this coincides with the concept of representation as Vorstellung, without which there could be no reflection. From that angle, then, it becomes clear that, in the autopoietic organism also, "expectations" are nothing but re-presentations of experiences that are now projected into the direction of the not-yet-experienced.

Von Glasersfeld on 'representation' as Vorstellung (re living) versus Darstellung (modelling).

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@Olivier5,

It occurs to me too that Heidegger talking about phenomena said that there was always a 'considering' factor involved in observstion. Thus there were no 'things ' detached from 'affordances' of interaction by the observer. (e.g. the facade of house to a naive visitor to a film set could constitute the entire house with its affordanc of entry, ascending stairs etc....)This might explain what 'perceptual experience' is about for Maturana, together with his constructivist phrase, 'bringing forth the world'. Phenomena may always involve embellishment.

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@fresco,

Quote:

No, I am saying 'the world' being constructed by the shifting human paradigms of frontier science is far less 'picturable' or 'common sensical' than that of ordinary experience.

'The world' is not necessarily far less 'picturable' or 'common sensical' than that of ordinary experience. Maybe it looks that way because we just aren't trying to picture the quantum world using the same common sense logic we use in ordinary experience.

Quote:

As far as the concept of 'information' is concerned its status becomes dubious when attempting to investigate things like black holes from which no 'signals' emerge, or nonlocality which appears to be antithetical to the speed of light axiom.

Ordinarily when we can't figure out whats going on in a system we deconstruct it. The problem is, nonlocality implies an entangled structure to space made up of Planck sized virtual particles. That structure could explain nonlocality but, it would have to have complex order to it. The problem is we can only imagine this structure because Planck sized particles are to small to measure and can only be measured when they are not entangled. (That is why we build particle accelerators, to 'unentangle' them like they supposedly did with the Higgs Boson.) We can, through trial and error, propose different structures or arrangements of these virtual particles and the real particles of matter inside an atom, and see which structure(s) gives us our physical constants we observe in physics (Fine structure constant, Planck's Constant, Boltzman's constant etc. . .)

Unfortantely this would provide another unexplainable level of complexity to the universe inside and outside of atoms. This complexity might imply there is more 'information ' in the universe (inside matter, black holes, and the empty space between them) than was previously known.

Imagine what we could do if we accepted the information was there and tried to understand it.

Do you think the shifting human paradigms of frontier science could become understandable if they were 'picturable'?

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@brianjakub,

You don't seem to know what I'm talking about.
1. Common sense CANNOT be applied to QM.
2. Picturability is a major factor in the naive realism which maintains that there is 'a world' independent of the actions and interactions of observers.(See Rorty for a comprehensive attack on picturability).
3. Without an 'independent world', the concept of 'information' falls entirely within the realm goal directed observation.

Word salad about 'complexity' and a hypothetical deity transmitting 'information' amounts to mere theological speculation shrouded in obfuscation.

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@fresco,

Quote:

Maturana's aversion against the word "representation" springs from the fact that, like Kant and Schopenhauer, he excludes conceptual pictures or replications of an objective, ontic reality in the cognitive domain of organisms.

From my point of view, dualism offers the best framework to understand mental representation of non-mental events.

Dualism states that mental events are of a different nature than non-mental ones. It follows that our mind cannot access the exact essence of non-mental events or 'things' out there. There's a distance, a unsurmontable gap, between say the real moon and our views of the moon. At best our senses and our mind can only construct a functional yet always necessarily imperfect picture of the world. Just like it is impossible to translate perfectly a poem written in language A into language B, one cannot 'translate' perfectly non-mental information into mental information. There will always be something lost in translation.

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@fresco,

We can begin with, how many deities were created by men? So many that for most people, it boggles the mind - if they have one to begin with. It's estimated that there are 8,000 to 12,000 gods in existence today. Any individual's personal god is as important as the next person worshipping a different god. As an atheist, I don't have to grapple with that huge number of gods to determine which ones are the true or false god(s). The only religion I need is "treat all living things with respect and dignity." Do I fail sometimes? Sure, but I'm not beholding to some invisible god(s). I must live with my own right and wrong. That's plenty enough for me!

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@cicerone imposter,

There is a difference between a god and the God.

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@Olivier5,

I understand your point, but for me 'eventhood' like 'thinghood' is in the mind of the beholder. i.e There are no 'non mental events'. So for me, its not a matter of 'imperfect mappings'....there is no point discussing noumena at all...a position taken by the post Husserlian phenomenologists. But this is not the same as Berkeley's solipsism because 'mind' is a social phenomenon involving a common language and not synonymous with 'brain'. Obviously 'a mind independent external world' is a useful concept for many purposes, but other than serving human specific striving for prediction and control it may not be sufficient (any more) for what we call 'understanding'. This is where I think constuctivists like Piaget and Maturana score points because they point out that as 'mind states' shift, projected 'world states' shift accordingly, which in turn shift mind states, and so on.

NB The ' unobserved tree falling in the forest scenario' is an oxymoron because as soon as it is 'pictured' it is already 'observed in the mind's eye'. This point is central to a constructivist pov.

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@SawyerMentink,

SawyerMentink wrote:

How can a God that is good allow human suffering?

Ask another question, "is it possible to create a universe in which no suffering takes place, and if so how would that work?"

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@cicerone imposter,

You are quite correct that the shifting proliferation of deities mitigates against the case for any one of them. But the main issue here is that bj is attempting to justify his 'god' on the basis of his dubious understanding of modern science, despite the fact that religious scientists (like Polkinghorne) have rejected that basis. No doubt relgious belief, conditioned or otherwise, is a useful psychological phenomenon for many, but fanciful attempts to justify it on 'pseudo scientific grounds' seem to me, as an atheist, to display a weakness of what I understand to be meant by 'faith'.

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How can a good God allow suffering

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