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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I don't trust you. I don't like you. So, no discussion.
What does he mean by reductionist?
Well "reductionism" is a philosophical model closely related to positivism. It "reduces" all explanations to exclude all conceptual/extra-physical reality causes.
New atheists like Dawkins appear to have been surepticiously pushing this, although without making it explicit because Dawkins knows how much ire it will invite from the scientific community at large (who unlike Bigguns suggested, are not so confident that science dismisses questions of the divine).
Dawkins often appears to imply certain beliefs without making them explicit, which may be why he's often accused of things he hasn't explicitly promoted. What specifically were you alluding to in the interview?
Fair enough...the feeling is pretty mutual.
You are free to keep your prejudice and remain outside of the discussion.
I found this interview very unsatisfactory. Kaufmann states, "Yes. And when a pre-adaptation happens, a new function comes to exist in the biosphere and can change the history of the planet. We just don't know ahead of time what the relevant selective environments are. This is just stunning when you think about it. We cannot say how the biosphere will evolve."
I would have liked to have seen a follow-up question. Why is this stunning? Most evolutionary biologists readily admit we have no idea how the biosphere will evolve. Physicists may be wedded to determinism, but evolutionary biologists are not. They tend to see the process of evolution as driven by chance, inherently unpredictable, and favoring a long term trend towards complex genotypes with a tendency towards variability and hence potential pre-adaptations to unpredictable future environments. Maybe Kaufmann has a better explanation of why he thinks this is so stunning, but it does not show up in this interview.
unanswerable. Logic is logic and faith is faith, with an ethical dimension that the logicians don't understand.
Dawkins doesn't have the mental agility for the faith experience. Fine. No one expects him to. But he has plenty of time for a scientist's mental masturbation. It's funny too that such a great rationalist hasn't noticed that religious folk are the ones caring for the poor and defending the oppressed, while rationalists sit on their self satisfied asses.
Once more into the breech, Salon.
To start with, a little lesson in Madison Avenue: To sell somone something, convince them they have a problem and the product you're selling is the solution.
So. Religion pushes the idea that without meaning and awe and agape-ness you have "problem" and lo! They have the solution-- their religion.
Honestly, people! Where are you getting this idea that you are entitled to meaning in your life? It comes from the religious snake-oil salesmen that you encounter in your childhood, most likely. Day-to-day, people don't think about their "meaning" and "awe", they don't get depressed about it, they don't give a thin sh*t out of a rat's ass about it. Most people only care about their meaning and awe quota when someone (usually a religious person) is pestering them about it.
Thus, meaningless universe leads to meaningless life, leads to my own personal meaninglessness. I happen to be fine with that. Most people, the VAST majority of humanity has little problem with that. A tiny minoriy of people, whose livlihoods depend on it, do, and a tinier minority, who have bought way to much into the advertising.
As to Kauffman's arguments, they seem to fall into the standard deserate-believer boxes. Start with something completely obvious (some chemicals make copies of themselves), yet personal (we're made of those chemicals!), pick at it (or reduce it) 'til you get a gap in the knowledge (but why do those chemicals make copies in the first place?), give it a funny name (self-organization emergence), and then throw in a little magic (or in the terms of someone who really wants to believe, but doesn't want to look crazy-- "Quantum mechanics"). And hey! God's back in the game! And you get your meaning and awe back!
I'm afriad that I'm just not convinced!
And yep, still happy with the meaninglessness.
Pay no attention to the yellow-circled star by my sig, I quit giving these morons money.
Every time they publish more gawd-drool like this, I am reminded of how wonderful was that decision.
Link to a department and you don't even have to look at their obnoxious ads. I use http://dir.salon.com/topics/comics/
AdBlock Plus in Firefox
It's a beautiful thing
"We need something else" rather than just theism and/or atheism, Stuart Kaufman says.
Try egolessness. Egolessness practices are all over the place. It's possible to practice them non-fanatically, and non-religiously as well. That's the original contact point to the best consciousness has to offer.
Best -
(More, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston", or "Egolessness".)
the key point is when he starts to think that quantum behavior can occur at the level of neurons
so sad, when a brilliant mind starts to freak out at the sheer givenness of the cosmos. sorry, professor, there is no god
It's controversial, but not crackpot.
"The chemical forces that control the interactions of atoms and molecules are indeed quantum mechanical in origin, and it is largely chemical action that governs the behaviour of neurotransmitter substances that transfer signals from one neuron to another - across tiny gaps that are called synaptic clefts. Likewise, the action potentials that physically control nerve-signal transmission have an admittedly quantum-mechanical origin."
"Shadows of the Mind", Roger Penrose pp 348
I clicked on Salon and for a moment thought I was on the wrong site. An intelligent, thoughtful article? How refreshing!
First, I have read and enjoyed Stuart Kauffman's works in some detail and they are much more nuanced and useful than comes across in this interview.
Second, I know the term “god” was in the original article but let me put aside the term "god" and its baggage because I don't think the term is necessary for the discussion I want to have, at least it is not necessary for my comprehension of life, the universe and everything. Does that make me an atheist? I'll let you decide; since I think the term “god” is not a necessary for me in this discussion then it is just as unnecessary (or even paradoxical) for me to talk of being an atheist since it would reduce to something like one who is not a user of a term s/he does not think is necessary.
Third ,I DO find useful discussions of special moments in life that for lack of a better phrase I'll call sacred experiences. (Words can only point at things and never quite reach them.) I guess, duh, yeah we all have special moments and we all like to discuss them. But I mean a discussion in which we don't have to leave science, particularly biology and evolution. I think there are, or could be, discussions within science about “the sacred experience” that could productively be informed by emergence and self-organization, and, Kauffman's term, the adjacent possible. I'm fine with people who want to leave science for such a discussion but somehow that does not interest me (in the past yes but not right now).
Instead of proceeding forward with Kauffman's (and all of your) thoughts I'll refer back to Gregory Bateson (a self-described atheist) and offer a few quotes from him and from his daughter. They were working on some way, grounded in biology, of framing (my term not theirs) the term “sacred” that is “Neither Mechanical nor Supernatural.”
What is it that men and women hold sacred?
What does it mean to hold something sacred?
And why does it matter?
‑‑Gregory Bateson & Mary Catherine Bateson (Angels Fear)
AND...
Let me give you another example to come a little closer to what I mean by... [sacred].... The following poem by Coleridge is probably well known to many of you. It is part of the story of a ship in terrible straits. The decks are littered with corpses who have died of thirst, and one sailor, the "Ancient Mariner," survives to tell the tale. [His killing of the Albatross was the event that began the ship's misfortunes, and the body of the dead bird has been hung around his neck.] This piece is the central fulcrum‑‑the turning point‑‑of the whole poem. I've always found it singularly moving.
Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watched the water snakes:
They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.
Within the shadow of the ship
I watched their rich attire:
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.
O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.
The selfsame moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.
Of course, I am not suggesting that blessing the water snakes caused the rain that then came. That would be another logic in another, more secular, language. What I am suggesting is that the nature of [the sacred] and the like is most evident at moments of change... I think it is important here to notice how often [such a moment] is a sudden realization of the biological nature of the world in which we live. It is a sudden discovery or realization of life.
The water snakes give us a hint of that.
‑‑Gregory Bateson
& Mary Catherine Bateson, Angels fear
AND finally, a quote from Mind and Nature, A Necessary Unity:
"What pattern connects the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the primrose and all four of them to me? And me to you? And all the six of us to the amoeba in one direction and the to the back-ward schizophrenic in another?
"What is the pattern that connects all living creatures?"
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
