Correction:
That would be circular, but only if the word “accidental property” is defined as “not self-perfective.” But “accidental property” refers to a quality that modifies a pre-existing subject. It doesn’t matter whether a rock is moving or not, it’s a rock either way. If a living thing stops being self-perfective, it is dead. Living things also have accidental properties, but self-perfection is not one of them.
What you are discussing here is a type of teleology to be sure, but I think we need to draw a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic teleology. Using a rock as a paperweight is entirely observer-relative, since it depends not on the rock’s nature but on the intentions of an external subject. A rock is probably a poor example for intrinsic teleology since it doesn’t really have too many actualities, but you might say it is inherently directed at holding things down, since its very nature as a rock gives it this ability. Life is a better example. Life by its very nature is directed towards growth, reproduction, metabolism, etc. since it does these things naturally. If all human observers go out of existence, there will be no such thing as “paperweight-ness” anymore since that depended wholly on our intentions, but rocks would still by their very nature hold lighter things down and life would continue to grow and reproduce by its very nature. That’s all that is meant by intrinsic teleology and directedness.
Sure, that’s just a thin slice of what it means to be God. You could accept it and be a-religious, and even not think that God is personal in anyway. The aspects typically associated with God would have to be argued for further, and clarifications would have to be given that don’t ascribe common qualities like “powerful”, “intelligent”, “good”, etc. in the same way they are applied to finite things, but are only applied in an analogous sense. Anyway, that’s a whole other discussion, but I think if you recognize that this kind of thing is more what we have in mind than the deistic architect god then I think that is a win. I think you are right that many secular thinkers use the universe as a fill-in for this classical conception of God, but then you’d have difficulties since it does seem to be logically possible for the universe not to exist, or to have been different than it is, due to the fact that it changes constantly (so it’s constantly losing old being and gaining new being, so it does not seem to be unrestricted being).
I would take material to mean “anything that is essentially extended in space.” I was using the word “physical” to mean the objects/realities typically studied by modern physics, to be contrasted with chemical, biological, psychological, etc.
Yes, I think we are not talking about the same thing. I don’t doubt you could come up with a description of a cell with only physical terminology, but it would still be presupposing the reality of the biological features. This seems to be so because you’d have the cell as an archetype and then you’d be describing all of the physical interactions within that context. It’s hard to see how you have completely reduced biology if you cannot get away from that archetype. You’d have to start from the “ground-up” so-to-speak, but then there would be no reason for you to ever end up with a biological system, or to even recognize one or have it stick around, because things like electrons by their very nature need not constitute biological systems.
Not only is it predicted by science, but thanks to the Manhattan Project it may well have been immensely hastened by science.
As far as I know, empirical refers to knowledge gained through the senses, to be contrasted with rational which refers to knowledge derived from logical or self-evident principles. You did a pretty good job of using empirical knowledge to at least get you thinking about a metaphysic below.
Thank you, this is the point I was trying to get across to the other posters. So you used your empirical knowledge to recognize the fact that reality is regularly-occurring and predictable. You also saw that our recognizing patterns is the only way we have real knowledge of the universe. Next question: is there a reason for this or not? Yes → then it seems that these regularities are objective and intelligible. Next question: is this intelligibility separate from the world or intrinsic to it? If you say separate, then you have “laws of nature” or Platonic forms, but then why do these laws have an essential connection to the world if they are separate from it? If you say intrinsic, then you have what is usually referred to as forms or natures (at least of the Aristotelian type). But then how does this relate to the fact that things change, which is another empirical datum? Are they constantly changing natures or is something non-essential changing? Then you get into act-potency for instance, and then 2,000 years of philosophical development.
You are the one that is assuming that there is some kind of obvious connection between the universe being ordered and it necessarily requiring an intelligent cause to make it thus. Although I think that order does ultimately need recourse to an omniscient cause, I don’t think that is immediately obvious since one could always say that the order is simply due to the nature of real things themselves and no further explanation is needed, as Aristotle said. It is however immediately obvious that the universe is ordered in the sense we’ve been talking about, so I don’t know why people have this tendency to deny it.
Not only that.The adulation of science at the expense of religion has already led to countless atrocities. Fanaticism is not confined to those who claim to believe in God…
As Mao and Stalin, both atheists, were pleased to illustrate.
I agree whole-heartedly with the last sentence. Fanatics wear many different stripes.
Well, to have a teleology, you need an end of some sort. I’d say my position depends on what you take to be an end. If an end is just something that will happen, such as the universe tending ultimately toward heat death, then sure, teleology is intrinsic. If an end is a goal, i.e., a prescribed mission of some sort, then teleology is extrinsic. Is this roughly how you would distinguish the two?
While no one would be around to label it a paperweight or use it as such, its quality as a paperweight is still something objective. So in that sense, paperweight-ness is an essence.
I would actually dispute that it’s logically possible for the universe to not exist, depending on precisely what you mean by that. It seems logically possible for the laws of physics to be different, so in that sense a particular universe with a particular set of laws is a contingency.
Alright, I can agree that it would not be desirable to reduce biology to physics in the sense of reduction you’re using. I only meant biology can be translated to physical terms. So for future reference I may call it “translation” rather than “reduction”, although I prefer reduction because it is clear from this term that the relationship is not symmetrical, e.g., physics cannot be translated/reduced to biology.
In my first post in this thread I used the analogy of a set and its properties as a substitute for the universe and its laws, so if I may, I will reframe your question using that it analogy.
Teleology is always extrinsic because it requires the premeditated ordering of a being toward its end. Nature cannot premeditate. Natural selection is a misnomer, since the universe does not order itself to heat death, but is ordered to heat death. Natural selection is a misnomer because there is no mind in nature that orders nature to certain ends. Teleology requires a mind to give purpose to anything, as when a human mind invents a hammer for hammering.
Nothing requires anything supernatural. You are absolutely permitted to believe such…it just isn’t a fact…not truth.
How do you distinguish what is natural from what is supernatural? Is God natural?
I think that gets it mostly right, although I prefer to qualify it a bit more. Intrinsic teleology is something that a natural being tends towards given its nature, for instance the fact that a living organism tends towards growth and reproduction. So it is goal-directed even in the case of intrinsic teleology, although it certainly is not always a conscious goal (plants for instance do not consciously seek to grow). It even holds for inorganic things, for instance ice naturally tends towards cooling the surrounding air/liquid.
Sure, but its quality for being used for the external purpose of holding down paper exists in as much as the object is naturally heavy, not in as much as it is a paperweight which is observer-relative.
I think you are right to recognize the contingency of the laws of nature and the definition of the universe as the set of every existing thing seems to be a reasonable one, but I don’t think that means that the universe would therefore be logically necessary. This seems to be the case since the fact that there is a set relating existing things seems to depend on things actually existing, so the existents are more fundamental than the set is, and the existents are not logically necessary as was admitted when we said that the laws of nature could have been otherwise.
Okay, I understand that but what you are describing is a law on the set that relates everything in the universe, which would seem to be accidental as you indicated. To use your example, it’s not really the case that the evenness of 2, 4, and 6 is dependent on any property of the set. If you added 7 to the universe, they would still be even for the same reason as before even though the proposition that “everything in the universe is even” no longer holds. I was getting at something more fundamental, namely why the items in the set exist at all. If the previous analysis is correct, then they need not exist, so either their existence is an inexplicable brute fact or the ultimate reason finds itself in unrestricted being, which does exist through its nature.
It follows that naturalism is untenable and objections to supernatural reality have no rational foundation.
Isn’t naturalism a form of fanaticism?
I think “heavy” is observer-relative too, because it is theory-laden, and theories are observer-relative. You say it’s heavy because you believe gravity is acting on it. But perhaps there is no gravity and objects don’t fall to the ground, Earth falls to the objects. Or perhaps the space between objects shrinks so they will collide. The everyday terms we use to describe objects are “natural” in the context of some theoretical framework. But all of our theory, such as gravitational theory, is still contingent on observation, observers, and those observers assigning roles to objects within the model of the theory.
I don’t think my definition of “universe” depends on anything existing. The universe could very well be the empty set. Of course, the next question one might ask is “Why is the universe not empty?” which my definition alone doesn’t address. But by the definition I’m using, the universe will still exist regardless of any contingencies. The only contingencies are whatever is inside of it.
To someone within the universe I described, it may seem remarkable that everything is even. It’s a striking coincidence, right? Now suppose we add 7 as you suggested. Ah, but now there are just as many composite numbers as primes in the universe! Out of all the numbers that could be in the set, what are the odds that would happen? It can’t be coincidence!
Dawkins?
