Can pseudo-intellectual philosophy sway the masses?

@Olivier5,

True !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92vV3QGagck

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@brianjakub,

Sorry, that Spitzer post should have been addressed to you

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@fresco,

Watched the video of Rorty. Enjoyed it. Understand his arguments. Thanks for the link. I will comment soon.

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@izzythepush,

Oh! He meant that i had him tagged on the forum? Then, sure, i "follow" him; of course, i do. He's an interesting specimen.

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@fresco,

Quote:

Most scientists have no need of an ad hoc Prime Mover/ID position and many understand that 'beginnings' have a dubious theoretical status.
Once more, I find myself saying, in terms of a pragmatist reletavistic view of 'existence', God 'exists' for believers because it is a useful concept for them, but for an atheist the concept is useless. And as thinkers concepts are all we have!

Spritzer is selecting evidence to provide an argument that suggests there is a need for a hypothesis including a prime mover. He is suggesting that the evidence supporting that, overwhelms the evidence that supports the hypothesis that there is no need for a prime mover. I think what you are calling your pragmatist point of view is really a neopragmatist point of view. A pragmatist believes that we can objectively view reality, therefore reality defines what we are sensing. I understand the neo pragmatists point of view is, reality is not determined by what we observe because we can't observe it objectively. Therefore a neopragmatist defines reality as something we each subjectively sense, and then develope the language to describe what we perceived by our interaction with the so called reality. By neopragmatists "as a group" having the ability to choose the words and the definitions of those words, they in turn define what reality is by consensus. As atheists they are required to have that point of view because, they don't believe the information they are observing was established by an Intelligence that stored the message for a purpose. A message without a messenger can be interpreted any way you want, so why not get a bunch of smart people together and arrive at a consensual definition of reality.

I would call Spitzer a pragmatist. He uses human experience to test the practicality of ideas. The pattern he observed of humans establishing order by, creating ideas, developing and communicating the ideas through words which become houses, bridges and theories, over time, has caused him to assume for practical purposes, the pattern holds true for the extreme order he observes in nature as well.

Saint John Paul II expounded on this idea with his Theology of the Body talks he gave while he was pope, where he explained how human nature and experience reveals the nature of the God of creation. He took his explanation of God further than most philosophers would because, he believed man was created in the image of God. (Which is a belief I share because it is the best Interpretation of the data we have collected from Physics, philosophy, paleontology, biogentics, etc. . .) The problem I have with Spitzer is, he doesn't offer a hypothesis that involves a prime mover in a specific enough to way to be called 'the legitimate alternative theory which includes his God', and he acts like he doesn't believe it is possible. I believe it is possible.

I am familiar with Rorty, Plato, Socrates, Aquinas, Putman etc. . ., and fresco. They are all extremely intelligent men that are flawed and subject to there humanity. My question to you is,"why do these very intelligent people (including you and I) have such a divergent view of reality?"

I believe the ultimate explanation for reality (unless reality doesn't exist at all, which I believe is not a logical interpretation of the data) is there to be had, and we should go after it. What do you have to loose?

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@Ponderer,

Here is my proposal to all of us posting in this thread, namely:

Let us work together to concur on a common concept of what is philosophy, then we will know by opposition, what is a pseudo-intellectual philosophy.

Okay, I am waiting with bated breath to read what our dear colleagues here have to offer on their respective concept of what is philosophy.

If you anyone asks me to first tell you all what is my concept of philosophy, here it is:

“Philosophy is the continuous and unending search for the programming that exists or might exist or should exist in everything, that exists in the world outside and independent of our mind, and/or inside in our mind.”

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@brianjakub,

We have diverging views according to our conditioning and current needs. It is a well known statistical fact that 'belief in God' correlates with diagnosis of terminal illness.
S far as the words 'reality' and 'existence' are concerned, you yet understand the nonrepresentationalist point that the meaning of words is relative to the social contexts in which they occur and NOT to any independent ontological 'things'. In an earlier post you seemed to understand that particles like 'electrons' insofar as they were useful constructs for directing the observations of scientists. As Rovelli puts it, 'there are only 'interaction/observation events from which we infer the nature of
participants. Between events there is no requirement to assume any existential status of those participants. Now obviously this applies at the quantum level, but in 'normal life' what we call 'properties of things' could be expressed as our human expectancies of observation/ interaction events. The difference between the two levels is merely statistical with respect to confidence levels. Pragmatism is about our confidence 'what works', and neopragmatism takes into account that words set up up different expectancies in different contexts. It is the abstract permanence of a word that a naive realist equates with 'permanence of things'.
BTW, your concern with 'labels' ( pragmatist etc) is a de facto demonstration of your tendency to such 'realism'.
I won't comment further on Spitzer. He is a good manipulator of context cashing in the status of a powerful social conditioning agent. 'Word Magic' operates at many levels as hypnotists well know !

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@brianjakub,

NB The Rovelli reference is from his bookon Quantum Gravity : ' Reality is not what it seems'.

For my views on 'Man in the Image of God' see this reply to Leadfoots' Claim that ID is 'scientific'.

fresco wrote:

WRONG !
According to the Popper, a theory/ concept is 'scientific' if it is open to potential refutation. So how would you attempt to falsify ID ?
Suppose a scientist were to create 'life' in a laboratory...would that constitute a refutation ?...No , because it could be argued that the creativity of the scientist itself was dependent on his creator'.
In fact Prigogine showed that no 'agent' was required for the spontaneous occurence of dynamic structures similar to but simpler than lifeforms. The systems principle of DKS (dynamic kinetic stability) acts in opposition to entropy to maintain such structures.
So ID is NOT 'scientific' on falsifiability grounds, nor does it seem required to account for complex structures according to promising 'systems' considerations. ID a bit of 'ad hoc -ary' serving a useful function for believers. In fact more sensible scientific 'believers' like Polkinghorne,have 'dumped' ID on 'scientific grounds' and advocated a 'God as the source of morality' instead. You can argue about 'complexity' all you like...the fact is 'complexity', like 'God' is a human construct both open to human negotiation.
Of course ID advocates have invested much of their 'self integrity' in protecting their 'rationality' such that an attack on ID is seen as an attack on themselves. Perhaps they should ask themselves how different they are from those we call 'religious zealots' who counter 'attacks' with actual physical force.

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@Hassled005,

The magic of script-writing. lol

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In writing there is a lot of useless babble when talkers don't bother to think where they are coming from, where they are going, and where they are presently at.

So, dear colleagues, you want to talk philosophy in particular pseudo-intellectual philosophy, in order to find out how it influences the masses.

But the masses know right away that you are talking without any conscious attention to where you are coming from, where you are going, and where you are presently at.

And they tell you, Present your concept of what is philosophy, or just keep quiet and start thinking on what is your concept of philosophy.

Here is again my concept of philosophy as a member of the masses:
"“Philosophy is the continuous and unending search for the programming that exists or might exist or should exist in everything, that exists in the world outside and independent of our mind, and/or inside in our mind.”

Okay, I will now sit back and await the reaction of the colleagues here, to witness whether they dare to do some genuine thinking from their own brain, on what is their concept of philosophy at all, or continue with their in effect directionless talking, and imagining that people take them for something at all worth their attention.

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@Hassled005,

Dear Hassle, you should have just produced an abstract of your present OP, otherwise it is too long to read and people go away with uttering tl:dr.

Tell you what, try now to do an abstract of your overly lengthy OP, that will get you to realize that you don't know where you are coming from, and where you are going, and where you are presently at.

Quote:

Can pseudo-intellectual hilosophy sway the masses?
Post: # 6,485,403 • Hassled005 | Wed 16 Aug, 2017 12:35 pm

I was thinking today and was wondering how much of a part that [etc. etc. etc. tl:dr],

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@fresco,

Quote:

We have diverging views according to our conditioning and current needs. It is a well known statistical fact that 'belief in God' correlates with diagnosis of terminal illness.

My need is to come up with a theory or law that scientifically explains evolution by our best scientific interpretation of all of the data. I thought that was your need.

Quote:

S far as the words 'reality' and 'existence' are concerned, you yet understand the nonrepresentationalist point that the meaning of words is relative to the social contexts in which they occur and NOT to any independent ontological 'things'. In an earlier post you seemed to understand that particles like 'electrons' insofar as they were useful constructs for directing the observations of scientists. As Rovelli puts it, 'there are only 'interaction/observation events from which we infer the nature of

I understand the nonrepresentationalist point of view. To a nonrepresentationalist an electron is not defined by what it physically is; it is defined by what we percieve it to be at the moment, and that perception becomes a definition for the electron from scientific consensus of how the words or math best fit our needs that day as a scientific community.

A realist does not look to consesus, but looks at patterns and statistical anlysis. It appears to me, and I think a lot of scientists agree from statistical analysis of electrons in many atoms, that all electrons in the universe are the same, as well as all the hydrogen atoms, and each individual isotope of every atom in the universe. Analysis tells scientists that for the universe to operate as we observe, those atoms are interacting the same way following certain rules everywhere, even when they are not being observed.

1. Do you think the atoms, electrons, and rules do not exist if we are not observing them?

Quote:

Now obviously this applies at the quantum level, but in 'normal life' what we call 'properties of things' could be expressed as our human expectancies of observation/ interaction events.

Neopragmatism takes into account the societal needs and biases of the participants trying to reach consensus. If all the participants see no need for ID, because they are at peace with their mortality, does that mean it will not be considered as a possibility. If so, I think this question needs to be answered with near certainty, and without end of life biases.
"(We could all turn into worm food with no heaven or hell, nor any morality be written into DNA and ID could still be a contributor to the mechanism).

2. Are end of life needs and biases irrelevant?

Quote:

The difference between the two levels is merely statistical with respect to confidence levels. Pragmatism is about our confidence 'what works', and neopragmatism takes into account that words set up up different expectancies in different contexts.

3. If the answer to question 2 is yes, should the different expectancies of the neopragmatist even be considered and the statistical analysis of the pragmatist be the only considerarion?

I think that is Spitzer's reasoning for selecting arguments for his proofs.

Quote:

It is the abstract permanence of a word that a naive realist equates with 'permanence of things'.
BTW, your concern with 'labels' ( pragmatist etc) is a de facto demonstration of your tendency to such 'realism'.

An atom appears to be fairly permanent in most cases. Atoms store information, that is how we tell the difference between the different types of atoms. Something that stores information is a by definition a word, and atoms appear most scientist to be fairly permanent words. I think that is a defacto demonstration of realism.

I am not forcing my beliefs on you. I just want science to have an open mind when interpreting the data. Lack of consideration of ID is a defacto demonstration of athesistic forcing beliefs on the rest of society when you are a scientist or philosopher developing curriculam and directing moneys at an institution of higher learning

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This is my very own style with writing in a web forum: don't react to one text after another, just choose one line which is categorically endorsed and advocated by the author of a post, then you can write a good piece all in connection of that one line.

Otherwise you are into not knowing where you are coming from, where you are going, and where you are at present.

See if you anyone writing in web forums will take the utmost task to examine yourself, when you write in a web forum or anywhere else in re knowledge of reality, that means everything: where are you coming from, where are you going, and where are you presently at.

Consider these three places to situate yourselves:

1. The default status of things in the totality of reality is existence.
2. Existence can be from oneself or from another.
3. Existence can be in the mind and/or outside and independent of the mind.

And also, seek to spot whee at all a writer has set forth his concept of the most important thing in a thread, otherwise he is talking without any direction at all.

Dear anyone here, when you want me to explain what I write, just keep to one thought at a time. no need to bring up this and that text, just concentrate on one thought or even just one line from me, and I will explain to you what I mean, that is if you have no comprehension of my language.

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@brianjakub,

Nonrepresentationalism implies that words including the word 'is' are context bound as far as their meaning is concerned. This implies that words like 'atom' or 'electron' are inseperable from those contexts in which their usage informs subsequent humsn action. This'action' can be as trivial as 'answering an exam question' like ' 'which particle carries a negative charge'. Without considering the whole historical paradigm in which usage of words like 'atom' or 'electron' were fotmulated, questions like 'do atoms exist' are meaningless because that question would never arise unless competing paradigms were being considered in which 'the words would lose their functional status.
In short, you still appear to be asking whether any 'things' have 'absolute reality' and since all is in dynamic flux and human life spans are short, the answer seems to be 'no'.
I don't want to get (further) involved with ID and evolution on this thread. Suffice to say that the social negotiation of 'reality' pov, (i.e. paradigmatics) which I take to be an aspect of my pragmatism, suggests that ID is vacuous, and 'explanations' of evolution may still await developing paradigms like 'systems chemistry', some of which reject 'information' as a useful concept. You may have to wait for such satisfaction !

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@fresco,

Typical names dropping, technical terms dropping, and empty un-decryptable verbiage.

Tell your lore in 50 words or less.

Start with the default status of things in the totality of reality is existence.
Then determine whether it is from oneself or from another.
Finally, is it all in your mind, and/or outside and independent of your mind.

There, so get busy and start thinking, factoring in your experiences in life and also with your family members and friends and people in life and in work and in society you interact at with most of the time and in your common environs.

Now, I will sit back and await with bated breath for reactions from colleagues here, will it be cuss language on me, or admitting they can't understand my language, or continue with more defiant names dropping, technical terms dropping, and empty un-decryptable verbiage.

That is all what I call evasiveness from the serious work of thinking, anything else is easy to undertake as to deceive naive reader with one's own supposedly profundity, erh, profanity.

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.....now what did I do with that fly spray ?......

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@fresco,

Quote:

In short, you still appear to be asking whether ant 'things' have 'absolute reality' and since all is in dynamic flux and human life spans are short, the answer seems to be 'no'.
I further don't want to get (further) involved with ID and evolution on this thread. Suffice to say that the social negotiation of 'reality' pov (i.e. paradigmatics) which I take to be an aspect of my pragmatism, suggests that ID is vacuous,

We have no evidence to suggest that the reality of an electron or atom has changed since the physics we observe today were established soon after the Big Bang. A few billion years of stable existence to matter seems fairly absolute enough of an establishment of absolute 'reality' for today's discussion.

Your suggestion that your pragmatist view is better than my pragmatist view because, yours has Rorty's neo pragmatic twist, (along with your choice of the word "vacuous" in describing my thoughts and arguments supporting ID) leaves me to suggest I sense a bit of "antiscience religious zealotry(the religion being "atheism") in your answer. I have thought about and researched this extensively. I believe you have also. It seems to me that your beleiefs are based more on Rorty's ability to choose words to reach consensus among like minded people, than statistical analysis of the patterns provided by the data. So to answer the original question, 'can pseudo-intellectual philosophy sway the masses?" I would answer vehemently yes. You and your use of Rorty's philosophy (which I believe is in agreement with Putman, is "pseudo-intellectual philosophy") has shown how it has biased the masses of atheists to be such zealots that they refuse to further discuss the facts supporting ID in a more pragmatic and scientific way. I sure would have appreciated a clear answer with an an explanation, to each of the 3 questions in my previous post to you. I consider all your answers well thought out and well supported by experts in the field. Is that still a possibility?

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@brianjakub,

Sorry but I don't think you know 'where I'm coming from', because from there words like 'fact' start ringing alarm bells. As the thread progresses our divergence increases because you will never be satisfied with my deconstruction (Derrida) of your questions which tends to intensify in lieu of avoiding repetition of previous points I thought I had made.
I'm going to suggest we disconnect for a while so you think about where and how concepts like 'intelligence', 'design' and 'complexity originated and what their utility is outside of evolutionary scenarios. Then you might agree that as far as 'ID' is concerned it's an example of what Wittgenstein called 'language on holiday' (Wittgenstein being one of Rorty's key thinkers). And if that 'language game' rings true, then your 'questions' evaporate.

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@fresco,

Could you give me examples of me not knowing where you are coming from. "Words like 'fact' start ringing alarm bells" doesn't give me much to go on. I WANT to know where you are coming from. Give me something to contemplate while we take a break. Maybe if you would have answered my 3 questions it would have helped. Maybe instead of saying facts, I should of said a logical interpretation of the data. Lots of then time that does provide a fact or truth though that we can call a law of physics or science.

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Dear colleagues here, you are asking among yourselves questions which you can solve as to come concurrence, when you only take into account my three statements on thinking:
1. The default status of things in the totality of reality is existence.
2. Existence is either from oneself or from another.
3. Existence is either in the mind and/or also outside and independent of the mind.

That is the miserable mindset of humans, though they have a working brain, they don't use it to come to the ultimate thoughts which are the foundations for all other thoughts, like the above enumerated three statements.

Ask me a question in not more than fifty words, and I will answer you by paying attention to my three statements above.

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Can pseudo-intellectual philosophy sway the masses?

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