Philosophy: Null-A and the Catholic Church

[Truthstalker]

Now I have to re-read the article. I read it initially focusing on implications for null-A thought, with interest on what happens if casuality is broken. You seem to be defending casuality, which is a sane thing to do. I, however, am on this thread interested more in the things that are insane but represent reality better than those things do which belong to our conventional patterns of thinking.

I’ve known about the wave/particle bit, as most people have, for a long time. You could argue that a photon being a wave and a particle at the same time is a contradiction.

Platonic thought is to Newtonian mechanics as X is to a unfied field theory. All theological statements would have to be recast in X terminology and new problems might arise. The truth would be better understood, but maybe not more understandable.

I just skimmed the article again in writing this, but it needs a more careful reading. Interesting article.

 

[WynCatholic]

How locked into Aristotelian logic is the Catholic Church? I think the argument can be made that Aristotelian thinking is so basic to Catholic thought that systems such as general semantics or other null-A (non-Aristotelian) systems are inherently contradictory to it. Yet the world can be described from within null-A systems, or there may arise a null-A system that makes Aristotelian thinking antiquated.

I just successfully demonstrated to those who know what I am talking about, that I don’t know what I am talking about.
Comments?

1. for a bit there I thought your were going to be talking about the science fiction of A.E.VanVogt (“The world of Null-A” ) ahwell
   2.Ratzinger and other theologians seem perfectly willing to explore null-a methodologies, but are thankfully anchored into the historicity of Jesus atoning life, death and ressurrection in union with His People.
   3.Throughout church History the church embraced the “both-and” versus the either-or.
2. The catholic concept of God is robust enough handle the sci-fi type of explorations, imho.
   5.I have also successfully demonstrated to those who know what I am talking about, that I don’t know what I am talking about either.

Be blessed in Him

 

[jemfinch]

Um… no. That is not what they said at all. How can our readings of the same paper be so divergent?

And here again we see the major problem with Sola Scriptura

Jeremy

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Truthstalker:

Now I have to re-read the article. I read it initially focusing on implications for null-A thought, with interest on what happens if casuality is broken.

And we can still consider causality, null-A, and the Catholic Church. I just had to stop for a bit to question an assumption made about causality.

I do not believe that we are off topic in discussing the flexiverse, quantum mechanics, and causality – provided that we return to the OP. I think this temporary detour will prove useful to our discussion of the OP. Agreed?

Truthstalker:

You seem to be defending casuality, which is a sane thing to do.

First of all, after reading that flexiverse article, I wish to inform you that I have gone completely nuts. :whacky:

I do not think that am defending causality. I am saying that causality does not depend on what we thought it depended on before Feynman, Hawking, and the others. Observation is part of causality. It wasn’t before. An illusion existed before as to the impartial observer.

Truthstalker:

I, however, am on this thread interested more in the things that are insane but represent reality better than those things do which belong to our conventional patterns of thinking.

More than fair enough. Awesome, in fact.

:extrahappy:

Truthstalker:

I’ve known about the wave/particle bit, as most people have, for a long time. You could argue that a photon being a wave and a particle at the same time is a contradiction.

So it seems. It certainly is paradoxical. And paradoxes do tend to be crazy-making but expansive in their effect on understanding.

Truthstalker:

Platonic thought is to Newtonian mechanics as X is to a unfied field theory.

I think I am following you. Could you define X a little more please? Perhaps if you set out your claim in the form of a word equation?

Truthstalker:

All theological statements would have to be recast in X terminology and new problems might arise.

Would you give an example of a theological statement recast in X terminology? We can hammer that out and then deal with problems as the arise or if they arise at all. Problems have solutions.

Well, it would be a inter-disciplinary conversation which instantly makes physicists very uncomfortable, although Hawking seems to have mastered the genre very happily – perhaps because of his need to communicate in images and metaphors (because of his illness) as opposed to calculus, matrices, and so on.

But, I mean, the groundwork for that was established in Einstein’s thought experiments for relativity. So we do have that leitmotif from which to leap.

Truthstalker:

The truth would be better understood, but maybe not more understandable.

Um… no. If it is understood, then it is understandable.

Back to the drawing board on this one. OK?

With conversations such as this one, it is often difficult to articulate what one means. I think you are onto something but I need you to articulate it more accurately so that I can understand what you are saying. OK?

So we are dealing with matters of truth. N’est-ce pas? There are other considerations besides truth which may lead us in through the back door closer to truth.

We can look at what is real? Note that Hawking and the others use a concept of imaginary time – something familiar to electrical engineers.

We can look at what something does? What is its purpose? What is its effect? How can we use it? That is what Hawking and the others have done by focussing on the observation point rather than the Big Bang.

We can look at what is the cause? And prepare to have even our assumptions about causality challenged.

And there are other questions which we can ask.

Thoughts, suggestions anyone?

The point I am making is to focus on the moves for a bit rather than the content. Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, and frankly every other thinker of note had moves – including the great thinkers in the Church.

I learned the hard way in a course on Post-Structuralism that it was the moves which were important. Once I learned that, I made literally a quantum leap between not understanding a single thing I was reading for my course to at least being able to respond to what I was reading. In responding to what I was reading, I was able eventually to understand it and to assess it.

Learning the moves as much as the content are what expanded our understanding over the centuries. In other words sometimes simply the act of reframing a question expands our understanding even if no more content emerges.

The benefit of looking at the flexiverse article is that it posits that the content does change by reframing the question.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Truthstalker: what I recommend be done with this thread very quickly is that you ask the moderator to change the title so that ‘Philosophy’ is added in front of your first title. The mods are asking folks who want a new Philosophy forum, to start threads as usual but to add the prefix ‘Philosopy.’

That way the mods can quantify the interest in philosophical discussions. Adding the prefix also attracts folks who are interested in philosophy and who may have some formation in same.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

5.I have also successfully demonstrated to those who know what I am talking about, that I don’t know what I am talking about either.

Let’s start a club.

Edit: Oh that Vogt! Which I read but don’t remember reading in my youth. I do remember reading Philip K Dick though and have in fact read almost everything he wrote. So I am zoning in closer to where yall are going with this Null-A thing. I am all ears and a happy camper.

 

[Truthstalker]

Could you define X a little more please? Perhaps if you set out your claim in the form of a word equation?

Let’s call X superrationality, for lack of a better term. X is shorter to type. Hopefully I’m not stealing the term from somewhere and causing confusion.

Newtonian mechanics is to unified field theory

as

Aristotelean logic is to superrationality

Superrationality would subsume aristotelean logic and be able to accommodate all these phenomenae, such as photon behavior, without blinking. Things such as causuality and non-contradiction, the basis of Aristotelean thought, would no longer be universals but would be secondary to what the actual universals are.

Asking me to cite a present theological problem in superrational terms is like asking me to provide you with a physics problem in terms of unified field theory. You flatter me.

A few hints as to what superrationality might include: a provident God. The universe is no longer strictly mechanistic. Human will and observation factor into how the universe behaves. Time is no longer one direction in effect; things happening in the future may affect what happens today. Perhaps time is viewed as a whole rather than as something passing Contradiction and paradox are taken in stride. God intervenes in human affairs. Miracles do not exist in a strictly mechanical or deistic universe, but they are part of a superrational one.

Problems we grapple with, such as predestination versus free will, would be easily solved. What is now mystery may be explained, with greater mysteries of a more profound nature waiting for discovery. Rationality stops at mystery; superrationality may handle a great deal more concerning Who and What God is and really boggle our minds.

I read some A.E. van Vogt when I was younger. Among his works is “The Worlds of Null-A.” There are several noves in the series, I believe. This thread alludes to it with the “Null-A”. I can’t remember much about his particular variety of Null-A, though, except I think it made an interesting plot device and allowed amazing things to happen in consequence.

Superrationality may also be the only way to proceed in physics - or overcome existentialism, postmodernism or other junk running around. A superrational apologetic may be necessary if the old ways of thinking are creaking. And it seems they are.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Truthstalker:

Let’s call X superrationality, for lack of a better term. X is shorter to type.

OK.

Truthstalker:

Hopefully I’m not stealing the term from somewhere and causing confusion.

Actually good thing I asked because X is a term used in the Arabian world of Aristotilean thought. But you have provided a definition, so let’s go with that one.

Truthstalker:

Newtonian mechanics is to unified field theory as Aristotelean logic is to superrationality

Understood. And Korzybski would say that is true because of time binding: that knowledge grows generationally because our ability to see the next ‘horizon’ hinges on our ability to ‘stand on the shoulders’ of the previous generation’s view of their horizon.

Truthstalker:

Superrationality would subsume aristotelean logic and be able to accommodate all these phenomenae, such as photon behavior, without blinking. Things such as causuality and non-contradiction, the basis of Aristotelean thought, would no longer be universals but would be secondary to what the actual universals are.

Understood.

Truthstalker:

Asking me to cite a present theological problem in superrational terms is like asking me to provide you with a physics problem in terms of unified field theory. You flatter me.

Ok, let’s leave that for now.

Truthstalker:

A few hints as to what superrationality might include: a provident God. The universe is no longer strictly mechanistic. Human will and observation factor into how the universe behaves.

With you so far.

Truthstalker:

Time is no longer one direction in effect;

Even though I have offered up imaginary time, I am not convinced that imaginary time contradicts the arrow of time. But mind you, I haven’t examined this question. I have to go out now, so will catch up later. In the meantime perhaps you could posit a possible universe where time moves in both directions, forward and backward in history. Hint: Hawking dismisses the possibility in a Brief History of Time.

There is another thread on time and Purgatory.

Truthstalker:

things happening in the future may affect what happens today.

More arrow of time stuff. Let me look at it. Or you explain it.

That seems plausible in positing a God’s eye view and may be worthwhile for us to pursue. Actually Hawking mentions these divergent points of view in that article on the flexiverse.

continued…

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Truthstalker:

God intervenes in human affairs. Miracles do not exist in a strictly mechanical or deistic universe, but they are part of a superrational one.

How? Explain please?

Truthstalker:

Problems we grapple with, such as predestination versus free will, would be easily solved.

I had a feeling you could reconcile these. These came up for me too. Can you set out your thinking? Thank you.

Rationality stops at mystery; superrationality may handle a great deal more concerning Who and What God is and really boggle our minds.

OK, gotcha. But how?

A writer (the foundational null-A writer) said that he read Korzybski several times and didn’t understand it at all but then the understanding simply fell into his lap. Heidegger and Habermas might also provide some insight into this. I have found this to be true too. Sometimes I have to just sit in front of my computer doing nothing or try-and-fail until the answer just falls into my lap.

Waddupwidat? Many discoverers have had similar experiences.

Truthstalker:

I read some A.E. van Vogt when I was younger. Among his works is “The Worlds of Null-A.” There are several noves in the series, I believe. This thread alludes to it with the “Null-A”. I can’t remember much about his particular variety of Null-A, though, except I think it made an interesting plot device and allowed amazing things to happen in consequence.

Vogt read Korzybski. For those of you whose eyes are glazing over, I will provide a list of links to which we can all refer when I get back these evening. Mine aren’t the best links so if others have good ones, then feel free to post them. Thank you.

Truthstalker:

Superrationality may also be the only way to proceed in physics - or overcome existentialism, postmodernism or other junk running around.

I would welcome hearing your problems with existentialism. However, I just think pomo has been hijacked by modernists who don’t understand how pomo can oppose modernism. There is quite a bit of potential in pomo to understand some of the ‘superrationalism’ you have brought up. Pomo is very flexible. I say we hijack it back.



How much of modernism for example is Aristotilean? …end

 

[Truthstalker]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Truthstalker
God intervenes in human affairs. Miracles do not exist in a strictly mechanical or deistic universe, but they are part of a superrational one.

How? Explain please? By definition. Miracles do not occur in a world where miracles do not occur - where God does not intervene. In a deistic or strictly mechanical universe, there is no intervention.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Truthstalker
Problems we grapple with, such as predestination versus free will, would be easily solved.

I had a feeling you could reconcile these. These came up for me too. Can you set out your thinking? Thank you.

Umpteen zillion threads and posts on this and you want it NOW in a superrational system - one that hasn’t been developed yet. Do I look smarter than Aristotle and Einstein combined (my dog thinks so but that’s about it)? People attempt to reconcile these all the time. Often we stop when rationality stops and say it is mystery - let’s leave it at that. Superrationality may be the snowshoes we need to cross the barrier.

Quote:
Rationality stops at mystery; superrationality may handle a great deal more concerning Who and What God is and really boggle our minds.
OK, gotcha. But how?

Oh, grasshopper. When one is in the mountains are the mountains larger than when one is on the plains? I live in the flats; how can I sing of the peaks? I cannot explain things about a system that I can only postulate exists. You want to read
Truthstalker’s Guide to Superrationality for Reasonable People?

I haven’t gotten past the title. How unreasonable of me.

I’m just postulating such a system exists, one which would be able to handle the new discoveries of physics, subsume all current rational thought in a new matrix of deeper and more cogent comprehension and accurate modeling of the universe than mankind has attained in history, and I’m supposed to knock it out in one post on CAF? My long-repressed humility is rising.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Truthstalker:

Miracles do not occur in a world where miracles do not occur - where God does not intervene. In a deistic or strictly mechanical universe, there is no intervention.

Some would argue that miracles are built into our nature. But because our nature is fallen, miracles do not happen as a matter of course.

Problems we grapple with, such as predestination versus free will, would be easily solved.

Ani Ibi:

I had a feeling you could reconcile these. These came up for me too. Can you set out your thinking? Thank you.

Truthstalker:

Umpteen zillion threads and posts on this and you want it NOW in a superrational system - one that hasn’t been developed yet. Do I look smarter than Aristotle and Einstein combined (my dog thinks so but that’s about it)? People attempt to reconcile these all the time. Often we stop when rationality stops and say it is mystery - let’s leave it at that. Superrationality may be the snowshoes we need to cross the barrier.

I’ll give it some thought then.

Truthstalker:

Oh, grasshopper. When one is in the mountains are the mountains larger than when one is on the plains? I live in the flats; how can I sing of the peaks? I cannot explain things about a system that I can only postulate exists.

But that is what geniuses do all the time. And that is what the writer on Korzybski was describing.

Truthstalker:

You want to read

Truthstalker:

Truthstalker’s Guide to Superrationality for Reasonable People

?

Truthstalker:

I haven’t gotten past the title. How unreasonable of me.

I don’t understand what you are talking about. Where did that come from?

Truthstalker:

I’m just postulating such a system exists, one which would be able to handle the new discoveries of physics, subsume all current rational thought in a new matrix of deeper and more cogent comprehension and accurate modeling of the universe than mankind has attained in history, and I’m supposed to knock it out in one post on CAF?

One post? I thought we were having a discussion.

 

[Truthstalker]

Some would argue that miracles are built into our nature. But because our nature is fallen, miracles do not happen as a matter of course.

I’ll give it some thought then.

But that is what geniuses do all the time. And that is what the writer on Korzybski was describing.

I don’t understand what you are talking about. Where did that come from?

One post? I thought we were having a discussion.

We are. I was trying to be funny. Sorry, I thought that was clear. Apparently not.

Anyway here’s one link to our pal:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Korzybski

I used to be into general semantics, a long time ago. I rejected it, I’m thinking, because it seemed to be an inadequate way to apprehend the universe. In reading over the wikipedia article
I’m thinking Aquinas did a better job with the material discussed in the article. I think K. would have argued that we cannot know truth, or know we know truth, because of sensory and linguistic limitations. General semantics to me is a throw-back rather than an advance. How’s that for burning a straw man? To those who know what I’m talking about, I just proved again I don’t know what I am talking about.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Truthstalker:

We are. I was trying to be funny.

:crying: I’m a little sensitive today. Yesterday a Catholic neighbour bellowed Chick tract gobbledy gook at me. Don’t ask me why. That has me weirded out.

Truthstalker:

Anyway here’s one link to our pal:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Korzybski

Thanks for this. Will read over the next few days. Here’s some more on K:

Science and Sanity
Time Binding

Some on Aristotle, some better than others:
Aristotle
Scholastics
Arabians
How Aristotle won the West
Aristotle et al readings
Galileo and Aristotle
Phenomenology and Analysis: Essays on Central European Philosophy

Brentano “found interesting in Aristotle precisely those themes that are relevant for the construction of a Catholic science.” (p. 193) Nevertheless, as his later life clearly demonstrated, he did not keep his thought in subjection to the Church or to Thomas Aquinas.

This is seen most clearly in the re-direction of his thought under the influence of August Comte, and in his rejection of the old view of the soul as the subject of psychology and his turn to psychical phenomena instead.

This had to go hand-in-hand with a rejection of the most fundamental distinctions of Aristotelian ontology and their replacement with a theory of wholes and parts, giving a new but still profound significance to Aristotle for Brentano and his school.

In spite of his break with the Church over various matters, such as the infallibility of the Pope, he continued to the end to pursue the goal of a “Catholic science.”

The Quantum Aristotle

Truthstalker:

I used to be into general semantics, a long time ago. I rejected it, I’m thinking, because it seemed to be an inadequate way to apprehend the universe.

General semantics is what? Ah! I just started reading the wikipedia article on the other screen. General semantics was K’s baby.

Any thoughts on what might be a candidate for adequately apprehending the universe? What about Conceptual Role Semantics? It addresses causation.

Truthstalker:

In reading over the wikipedia article
I’m thinking Aquinas did a better job with the material discussed in the article.

Point me to what Aquinas would have said about General Semantics? Thanks.

Truthstalker:

I think K. would have argued that we cannot know truth, or know we know truth, because of sensory and linguistic limitations.

The jury is not in yet for me. I’m still trying to digest the analysis of Science and Sanity.

 

[Truthstalker]

Point me to what Aquinas would have said about General Semantics? Thanks.

Well, that would definitely indicate the future affected the past.

Look at Summa 1, 84. Aquinas had plenty to say on epistimology. Here I am parroting Chesterton badly because I haven’t gotten that far into the Summa in depth.

While thinking about this I remembered my own solution. General Semantics led me directly into existential despair and the sense that the universe was valueless, unknowing, unknown. Then Jesus said “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but by Me.” He is the one who teaches us to know truth, the one who is the truth, the one who gives meaning and value. We can know truth because He comes down into our darkness with His light, illuminating Sheol for each of us and liberating us. Jesus is not only the personification of superrationality, He is the Person of the Word, the logos, the ultimate logos, ultimate reason. How that applies here I haven’t thought about. Just running my mouth.

 

[Semper_Fi_1]

If your asking about different types of logic itself, I would be careful. Any system of logic that is in reality unreasonable, that is, any system which would not uphold basic laws like causality, non-contradiction, conservation, etc. is problematic.

The Church rejects nothing true.

I’m not much of a philosopher or a theologian, so could you give us non-philosopher types an example or two of what you’re talking about?

 

[Truthstalker]

I looked at two of the links and now I want to mutter before I forget.

I think George Orwell dealt with general semantics in 1984 in a way. What people didn’t have words for they didn’t know. So, language controls thought at a political level.

The other thing is that someone might get the impression that the null-A I am interested in will tear down causation, et. al, and leave illogic in its place. No, I am interested in something truer, if there is anything, than what Aristotle came up with. I think there maybe something that will subsume Aristotle without compromising it and without being some kind of a Hegelian synthesis with chaos.

These links are going to take a while to get through.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Hegelian synthesis with chaos.

It sounds like fast food.



It is definitely pomo. Gadamer might like it.

I say we turn Marx on his head and turn Hegel back on his feet. Wotsay? Bwa-ha-ha.

 

[Truthstalker]

It sounds like fast food.



It is definitely pomo. Gadamer might like it.

I say we turn Marx on his head and turn Hegel back on his feet. Wotsay? Bwa-ha-ha.

There is no smilie for glazed eyes. This will have to do::hypno:

Holy esoteric references, Batman! When the revolution comes, both will be turned (bad pun intended).

“I’ll take a Hegelian synthesis with chaos, a side of fries and a chocolate shake.” indeed.

 

[Truthstalker]

I’m not much of a philosopher or a theologian, so could you give us non-philosopher types an example or two of what you’re talking about?

I’m not either. And I think I’ve claimed twice to have demonstrated that to those who know what I am talking about, I’ve shown I don’t know what I’m talking about. So in hopes of provoking some real lurking philosopher into correcting me, I will offer my services in this respect and attempt to answer you.

Reason requires that statements follow each other according to certain rules. You cannot say the sky is blue therefore my shoe is untied, unless you have already established a relation between the two observations. There is a famous syllogism:
All men are mortal.
Aristotle is a man.
Therefore Aristotle is a mortal.
On these forums you will find people quickly pointing out errors in each other’s reason. We seem to instinctively understand “what makes sense.” In contrast this does not make sense:
All men are mortal.
Aristotle is a duck.
Therefore the sea is full of petunias.
we celebrate good, logical argument. We also point out errors - even when we can’t say why something is an error.

On causuality, A makes B happen. I shot John. So John died. It is inferred that because I shot John, he died. To deny causuality would be to say that even though I filled John with lead, it could not have killed him. He’s dead, but there is no correlation between my smoking gun and his lead-filled frame. You could argue that I shot John in 1933 and he died in 2007 of old age. You could argue that I shot John Smith but it was John Jones who died. You could do many things, but the only way to deny causuality per se is to say that to say that it is wrong that because I shot John, he died of the bullet wounds I gave him.

I can hear the philosophers spinning in their graves. They are arguing there is no correlation between their spinning and this post. This post did not cause their spinning. Nothing causes anything else to happen. THAT is the true denial of causuality.
They can stop spinning now.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Truthstalker:

Well, that would definitely indicate the future affected the past.

Not following you. What would? Thank you.

Truthstalker:

Look at Summa 1, 84. Aquinas had plenty to say on epistimology.

OK, thank you.

Truthstalker:

Here I am parroting Chesterton badly because I haven’t gotten that far into the Summa in depth.

Oh darn! I knew there was something I had forgotten. I really wanted to read that Chesterton link. No wait. The Chesteron link was on another thread. To which work are you referring? Did I miss it? Do you have a link? Thank you.

Truthstalker:

While thinking about this I remembered my own solution. General Semantics led me directly into existential despair and the sense that the universe was valueless, unknowing, unknown.

OK. Philip K Dick who was influenced by K was struggling with the same thing. I believe he did manage to buy an order of Hegel with Chaos when he collaborated with Ridley Scott on the film Blade Runner just before he died. He was so going in that direction in his later novels.

Truthstalker:

Then Jesus said “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but by Me.” He is the one who teaches us to know truth, the one who is the truth, the one who gives meaning and value.

Yes, because He gives the Real Presence as well.

Truthstalker:

We can know truth because He comes down into our darkness with His light, illuminating Sheol for each of us and liberating us.

Yes liberating. And K talks about being limited by language. Now this is useful. Depressing but useful. He says that the map is not the territory. Now pomo does an endrun around this by saying that several maps can apprehend territoriness. That there can be a merging of horizons. Pluralism. A pluralist experience. A pluralist participation.

continued…