You’re right, BTW. Most of the news media don’t put out the fact that Dawkins get creamed by most of his opponents in debates. Usually it comes out like--------“Dawkins put up a strong fight and/or the opponent was unable to totally prove his case.”
I would say (and I know more “rigid” logicists would probably not like this supposition, but here it goes):
Science is based on the following principles:
They would appear to, at this level of perception that we call human. At the quantum level objects as we we “know” them don’t exist, there are only partices flashing in and out of existence.
Whatever that means. Having a mind that devides, we can keep slicing things smaller and smaller ad infintum and never find what is doing the slicing.
As such, yes, whatever it is, So you admit of a general idea manifest individually, My basic pemise would be Consciousness is individuated as awareness. Consciousness IS, awareness is the individulaized “container” of experience which has consciousness as its ground. We mistake the contents of our awareness for “self.”
It can comprehend in kinds and degrees “things,” that is to say projected divisions within its realm of sense objects experienced subjectively. Those objects have only a relative existence.
Logics can be valid in thier orders and yet may not be true.
It will, to a linear paradigm inculcated mind, but doesn’t in fact. The parts that engender that sort of perception are in the realm of eternality, which has no component of duration.
I that there is One Event, yes, In that they are linearly “related,” no, save in appearence at our level or in our spectrum of perceptual ability. Causality is a working assumption of a limited type of awareness that does not yet include, but can, greater depths of its self. Causality appears to be, and is useful mechanistically until it is understood to be a gross limitation.
Science is organized knowledge. Having claimed to “know” these things, you have scientized them, albeit arbitrarily, therfore they are observed, and measured as analog experience, ie subjectively. You have used the ideas of observation, testing, teleology, and hypothesization to come to your conclusion. You have experientially explained science to yourself.
Science, as you have used it, is a methodology, and is not a self explecative entity. If you said that the scientist cannot explain himself to himself, that would be true, as long as he used only surface methods. But since those are ultimately subjective as well, the proper direction of inquiry to arrive at the “explanation” of anything/anythink is in the section of experience called “I.” What we call “I” is the sole/soul factor of our being that does not change. What we call “me,” person, changes from moment to moment. Abstract what does not change from your experience and all will be known.
Alan I’ve read many of your posts and like much of what you say. You make for very interesting reading. Thanks.
Science, as far as it deals with surfaces and not the substance of subjectivity, will never get a handle on Consciousness as Principle. There will always be the question of the immesurable and ineffable Unknown.I agree. Consciousness, collectively, is about as concrete as I’m willing to claim “for sure,” as a science lover. You can hit me over the head with a hammer and that doesn’t prove you exist anywhere but in my consciousness. Nor does it prove the EMT’s who take me to the hospital exist.
We don’t live at the quantum level nor does science usually operate at the quantum level!
Let me count the ways.
The metaphysical principles are not invented “on the fly” and can be found in any textbook on the philosophy of science.
To explain science means explaining the metaphysical principles on which science is based.
You are making the materialist’s assumption that science can explain the whole of reality - including metaphysical principles .
Materialism is eminently falsifiable of course - and it excludes the existence of a supernatural Creator (which happens to be a fundamental Christian belief).
Correction:
Well there’s your problem straight off. The OP pits philosophy against science on which is top dog in explaining reality. You’re using a philosophy text book, so of course it will put philosophy on top. It’s this issue again of biasing the evidence.
Why? Seriously, on what grounds, as science is unconcerned with metaphysics, it is successful in great part because it deliberately doesn’t try to assign meaning.
It isn’t an assumption. If you’ve been reading my posts, I’ve been arguing that as humans we cannot have a completely objective explanation of reality. I would therefore argue that such things as meaning, purpose and knowing how we know that we know are bound to be subjective and cannot be aspects of objective reality.
Sure, but the OP is about science, not materialism.
People did not know that, but now do. The point is, scientific investigation - that is, empirical investigation - may access, in principle, anything that is accessible to human senses (and the extension of those senses permitted by technology), anything that has any discernible effect whatsoever upon the world as we experience it. If there are things that are genuinely inaccessible to science, even in principle - not just things scientists haven’t got around to investigating yet - then such things are also irrelevant to human existence.
Undoubtedly there are things for which we currently lack complete scientific elucidation - consciousness, for example, has long defied explanation yet is, in principle, accessible to scientific investigation, since we experience it every day. Understanding how consciousness occurs will be a matter of finding just the right ways to investigate it - not a matter of settling for unhelpful and obfuscating supernatural explanations. There is no doubt, for example, that humans experience things that we call apparitions. The question is, should these be taken at face value, as actual apparitions of supernatural beings? Or are they a manifestation of some other phenomenon? We know that people experience hallucinations under certain conditions, for example - what makes an apparition any different?
Far be it from me to suggest that all supernatural believers are tarred with the same brush; at least the traditional monotheisms have the benefit of believing in religions that are not the deliberate design of a science-fiction writer (if only because their all-too-human designers, as such, are lost to history).
Imho those who disrespect other religions disrespect their own.BTW, Baptists are sola Scriptura Christians. Maybe you should pick Scientology next time.
Another issue occurred to me. Your abstraction only really applies to the “hard” sciences such as physics and biology, and excludes the social sciences like psychology and anthropology.
Well said.
Brilliant. The coaching idea is a sort of new one on me, though I’ve thought that the actual intent of His teachings has been diverted by lesser minds into less useful motives. You would be an excellent candidtate for a chat over a coffe or a beer.
Again yes. Because something isn’t physically tangible or mentally deducible, it doesn’t follow that there isn’t something there, but neither does it follow that using a stopgap idea as a placeholder is the end of inquiry.To me, “spirit” is something I typically use to discuss the connectivity of us that we don’t sense with our five senses nor can as yet measure with lab instruments. “Holy Spirit” is like a scapegoat – if I can’t explain why I did something, well then the HS prompted me do it.
I’m glad you like it. If a person does nothing but look at frequency graphs, such as a speaker salesman, they will have no idea about what the speakers will do to a certain (name removed by moderator)ut signal.
You must know some pretty boring scientists.
