Author Archives: jbernal

Remarks on a few philosophers’ misconceptions

Juan Bernal  -  November, 2012

What we mean by truth is just the recognition that someone (or some group) has correctly affirmed some fact or other.  In this sense “truth” is nothing more than a term in the vocabulary of an intelligent, language-using culture.

The contrary to this – that truth stands apart from the truth seekers – seems plausible only because people tend to equate the term ‘truth’ with reality or with some actual event.  Thus, we get such metaphorical phrases as “seeking the truth” and “look to the truth,” which misleads insofar as they suggest that truth lays ‘out there somewhere’ waiting to be discovered.

So is truth a fiction then?  Is it not real?

Truth like happiness and moral good is real only in relation to a society of intelligent beings who seek to learn the truth about their world.  ‘Truth’ is real only in relation to human thought, language, the sciences, culture, history, and the society of active, striving human beings. Such ‘realities’ — as truth, happiness, and moral good — evolve or emerge in the context of a human culture. When we notice and articulate them, we might say that we discover them.  But such ‘discovery’ only happens with regard to something that we created in the first place. The apparent discovery is very different from that associated with the sciences, historical inquiry, or exploration of the planet.

Normally by the term truth we mean “what things are really like.”  Use of the term “truth” is just a preferred way of talking or a short-hand way of talking.  “We learn the truth” is short for “we learn what things are really like.”   (or learn “the nature of things out there” or “learn what events actually occurred.”)

Truth, happiness, and moral good are all human-based notions, sometimes associated with the actual nature of things, but often dis-connected with the ways that the universe works.

We build a large portion of our reality (social, cultural reality), and then forget that we originally built it.  So we come to see that social, cultural construct as objective reality that we discovered, a reality that was there separate from and independent of our human work.

There is much that we discover (by the sciences and other rational inquiries) and much that we construct.  We should not confuse the two.

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The world is of a specific sort.  Scientists investigate, discover things, propose and test hypotheses, analyze, and ultimately issue descriptions and reports.  A subset of philosophical tribe takes what the scientists issue and work to sort and clarify things for the rest of us.

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Contrary to what much of Western epistemological thought has assumed, human’s primary activity is not simply that of perceiving the world (surely not just visually perceiving the world), and the primary philosophical problem is not to certify those perceptions as valid.  Humans act and interact in the world; we effect changes in our environment and in turn are changed by our environment.   And philosophical problems of pragmatics are just as vital as those of epistemology.

The world is real, and our being-in-the-world is a fundamental reality.  It is not something that has to be proved!    Hence, statements like the following are very misleading:

 “The world we perceive is an artificially constructed environment whose character and properties are as much a result of unconscious mental processing as they are the product of real data. Nature helps us overcome gaps in information by supplying a brain that smooths over the imperfections, at an unconscious level, before we’re even aware of any perceptions.”

(Leonard Mlodinow, Subliminal, How your Unconscious Mind Rules your Behavior, Pantheon Books, 2012)

Why is this misleading?  Because it rests on a bad assumption, namely, that analysis of the process by which we experience the world undermines, instead of explains, our experience of the world.

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One can issue explanations (scientific, neurological, psychological, quasi-psychological) of the processes (neural processes, workings of the sensory faculties) which under lie sense perception.  These result in analyses or breakdowns (e.g., reducing things to neural processings) of the processes that underlie a person’s perception of the world.  It could be called an “examination of the machinery the makes perception possible.”

But nothing about this work refutes the common-sense proposition that we perceive (see, hear, touch, taste, smell) aspects and objects of the real world.  Nothing precludes the idea that we see things as actual existents in the objective world, although these things perceived can be described and analyzed in different ways.

Mathematical physics breaks down the objects of ordinary perception to a level far removed (and unknown by) ordinary experience.  This scientific analysis amounts to a “deep probe” of physical reality.  It does not amount to a replacement with a separate, inaccessible world.  Nor does it show that we never perceptually experience the real world.

When scientists analyze (explain) the processes that underlie perception and behavior they do not negate the fact that the subjects who perceive things and act/interact in the world are persons existing in an environment and interacting with other persons. The work of scientists in this respect does not give any reason for thinking that the perceiving subject is the brain itself or a little homunculous within the brain.

The brain (or something within the brain) does not perceive the world; rather the brain enables the perceiving subject (an animal existing in a natural and social environment) to perceive aspects of his environment.

EPIPHANY – By Robert Richert

Robert Richert

EPIPHANY

 

“You know sometimes I think there should be a rule of war saying you have to see someone up close and get to know ‘em before it’s ok to shoot ‘em”.

Colonel Potter, the character portrayed by Harry Morgan in the TV series MASH

 

Colonel Potter’s remark reveals an ugly truth of war; dehumanize and demonize the enemy and it becomes easier to kill them.

I grew up in essentially an all white neighborhood with all the creature comforts that Americans take for granted.  Vietnam was quite a culture shock.  The life and environment of the Vietnamese rice farmers and fishermen that I encountered was a world away from mine.  For example, I once saw an old lady take a crap out in a rice paddy.  Lacking plumbing facilities, I assume this was a common practice over there.  We Americans sat on furniture instead of squatting on the ground; a degrading pose, I thought.  The Vietnamese chewed betel nut in order to turn their teeth black.  They considered blackened teeth a mark of distinction.  I thought it disgusting!  Many soldiers, stressed by the circumstances of war and never knowing who the enemy may be, were often cruel or disrespectful to the civilian populace.  Although I never committed acts of cruelty, I viewed the Vietnamese as uncivilized and primitive.  Like my fellow soldiers, I called them gooks or dinks.

Although it occurred over forty years ago and some details are lost to memory, a twenty minute episode in Vietnam still resonates deeply in my psyche.  The only term I can think of to describe the experience is epiphany.  One day, our unit was sent on a combat assault mission.  Helicopters dropped us off in remote foothills covered by dense bamboo and palm forest punctuated with meadows.  Most of the time, our patrols through villages were uneventful.  We searched for weapons, an interpreter interviewed the residents or dogs sniffed around, and finding nothing suspicious, we moved on.  However, sometimes we discovered caches of weapons or received enemy fire.  Sometimes in the aftermath of a battle, we set fire to the village huts, which we called hooches, and let them burn to the ground.  While on patrol this day, our platoon came upon a village consisting of a handful of hooches along with a couple of acres of rice paddies.  I doubt these isolated Vietnamese had experienced much contact with American soldiers.

It began to rain; no surprise in this tropical climate.  The rain became more and more intense and in no time we were soaked to the bone.  We couldn’t see beyond a few yards.  In a panic of pounding rain, our squad sought shelter and made a bee line toward a nearby hooch.  I don’t recall that we knocked first, but I do remember that all seven of us burst inside at once!  A man, his wife, and two small children glared at us in shock.  What a sight we must have been—foreign soldiers standing a foot taller than the adults and draped with rifles, grenades, and bandoleers of ammo—I’m sure we scared the hell out of them!  However, once the initial shock wore off, the man and his wife began nodding politely and even offered us food.  We politely refused.  I suggested to the others that because we scary soldiers burst in uninvited, we be as gracious as possible to our hosts.  Of course, we couldn’t speak Vietnamese and what little communication we shared was in the form of gestures.  I don’t recall what the parents were wearing, but the typical villager wore black or cream colored pajamas.  No, they weren’t really pajamas, but that is what we called this simple attire consisting of a pair of silk pants and a long-sleeved, button-down silk shirt.  The two children were clean and sat together in a crib-like, shallow box.  They appeared between one to three years of age.  Their hair, cut short with a small crop like a pony tail toward the back, indicated that this was a Buddhist family.  Just a couple of months earlier, I witnessed a child about their age die from a shrapnel wound, and I still have nightmares about that episode.  However, this day my heart was warmed by these two wide eyed infants so irresistibly cute and cuddly.  I doubt they felt the same way about me!

I looked around the one room structure, which was about the size of the average American bedroom.  The walls, two small beds, and table were constructed from local materials; mostly cross weaved palm fronds supported by bamboo struts and bound by strips of strong plant material.  Many crude looking implements hung on the walls.  However, upon closer scrutiny, I could see that they were skillfully hand crafted.  I’m not mechanically inclined.  My dad used to joke that I didn’t know which end of a screwdriver to use!  I was quite impressed because this man, perhaps with some help from family and neighbors, had built everything—the hooch, furnishings, and all but a few of the implements.  The interior was well organized and neat as a pin.  Like the home I grew up in and missed dearly, this hooch was cozy and homey, and I came to feel comfortable there.

After twenty minutes or so, the rain let up and it was time to leave; back to the war.  I was the last of our squad to exit.  Just before leaving, I gestured with open hand toward the children and the home, smiled, gave the parents a big thumbs up, and said, “Number one”!  Almost all Vietnamese understood that term as a positive acknowledgement.

I learned early upon arrival in Vietnam that rice farmers, eking out a bare bones living without modern conveniences, endured a hard life.  However, none of this hit home until I entered this modest hooch and took the time to observe and absorb my surroundings; and allow reality to sink in.  This humble family and their quaint home made a lasting and deep impression upon me.  I felt an overwhelming sense of humility, and recall thinking that in many ways this ‘peasant’ was a better man than me!  If I had to trade places with him I would be in way over my head.

I felt pride that day because I treated this family with the respect and dignity that they deserved.  At the time I couldn’t have known it, but I was fulfilling Colonel Potter’s wish; I was beginning to know and appreciate the Vietnamese as people, not gooks.

In those twenty minutes crammed inside that tiny hooch, my eyes, heart, and mind were opened wide.  I gained maturity and wisdom well beyond my twenty three years!

On Cosmology, Death of God, and Nihilism

Creator Final

Juan Bernal

A Difference of Opinion on Cosmology, Death of God, and Nihilism

 Thanks, Spanos, for your most revealing response.  It gives a good idea of how you see things and why you think that arguing exotic theories of cosmology and particle physics has some connection to the values by which you live your life.  It seems that behind all the black holes, the Big Bang, quantum foam, and quantum gravity, you expect to find objectively real values.  Is that a correct reading of what you’re saying?

You had also declared that a “scientific-based metaphysics leaves us in a world devoid of values and one in which everything (and anything) is permitted.“

Of course, most contemporary thinkers do not share this conclusion at all!   Plenty of philosophers (e.g., see John Dewey) have affirmed a view of reality which is scientifically based and yet allows for moral values and moral sensibilities which allow civilization to flourish quite well, thank you!  One does not have to be a neo-Darwinist and argue that values can arise from evolutionary processes in order to argue that human-socially based values are sufficient to enable moral life.  The view that a scientific-based metaphysics compels one to admit a mechanistic reality which does not allow any basis for values is an old discredited view that most critical, informed philosophers and writers no longer hold.  But I do admit it is a tactic to which traditional theists and idealists often resort in their attempt to show that moral decency requires a metaphysics that includes a law-giving deity or includes objective values (whatever those might be?).

You had also stated:

“My scientifically-minded colleagues seem to embrace the idea that God is dead while refusing to face up to the idea that everything is permitted. They try to be at least as moralistic as religionists, but this moralism is suspicious in that it lacks a foundation in their perception of reality”

To which I replied:

So, we refuse to face up the reality that everything is permitted?   So, on our materialistic, naturalistic view of the world we have to admit that there are no grounds for rejecting as morally evil the genocides of a Hitler or of a Stalin?  And I thought the old line for Dostoevsky that “if there’s no God everything is permitted”  was just the frustrated utterance of a Dostoevsky who could not relinquish his version of Russian Orthodox dogma.

Your statement also reminds me of the man who complained that  others refused to acknowledge that he could levitate, while giving no evidence whatsoever that he could levitate.  Yes, Spanos, given your view of what follows from the view that there is no God, we refuse to face up to the idea….    But, dear fellow, where have you and anyone made anything close to a compelling case for that implication.

Surely history does not give you any basis for saying that God-deniers are moral nihilists and cannot behave in morally decent ways.  And surely your statement that non-believers are trying “to be as moralistic as religionists” comes across as a joke, since a good case can be made for seeing just the reverse: non-believers often show much higher moral behavior than God-believers.  History is an obvious witness to the low morality, blood thirsty behavior,  and hypocrisy of many of your so-called “religionists.”

By the way, Spanos, your religionists don’t have any objective basis for your values either.  Like all humans, experience and cultural conditioning lead you to designate certain values as high values, whose basis is then assigned to some putative objective basis (a deity or some fantastic metaphysics) which you or your religious teachers have also dreamt up.  This works to an extent; but is not nearly as good as a rational, humanistic basis for moral values, one which harmonizes well with a scientifically-based metaphysics.

You say that European philosophers with their dark views of humanity devoid of a transcendent order to keep them in check display more courage than their contemporaries who don’t emphasize that view of things.  Maybe, who knows?  But a realistic, existentialist view of humanity need not fall into the nervous “fear and trembling” that is displayed by those who need the big “parent in the sky” to guide and reassure them.  Many existentialists who were atheistic did not fall into that kind of cowardly despair.

Letter from Vietnam – by Robert Richert

Robert Richert

The My Lai Massacre and the Behavior of Soldiers in the Field

According to Wikipedia, My Lai (pronounced, me lie) “…was the mass murder conducted by U.S. Army forces on March 16, 1968 of 347 to 504 unarmed citizens in South Vietnam, all of whom were civilians and majority of whom were womean, children, and elderly people.  Many of the victims were sexually abused, beaten, tortured, and some of the bodies were found mutilated.  While 26 US soldiers were initially charged with criminal offenses for their actions at My Lai, only William Calley  was convicted. He served only three years of an original life sentence, while on house arrest”. 

 Excerpt from my letter home – December 26, 1969

           “I read with disgust the article in the November Time Magazine about the My Lai incident.  What kind of person would fire a magazine of 16 rounds into a little boy?  I’ve seen guys, who after seeing their buddies get blown away, feel like shooting at anyone with slanted eyes, but they didn’t because their reason dispelled their emotions.

          During the day, the farmers we see plowing their fields are innocent civilians.  At night, however, some of them are out setting booby traps.  But, we cannot hold an entire village, especially children, responsible for those among them who are VC.  Many of the civilians that we believe are VC sympathizers may just be scared civilians who pay taxes to and are harassed by the VC who come at night to the villages.  Most of these people are loyal only to themselves and their families.  They live in fear of destruction by VC and GI”.

This famous massacre occurred at  Son My village, Son Tinh district of South Vietnam by units of the Americal Division, the Division to which I was assigned one year and three months later.  On a few occasions our unit patrolled areas just a few miles south of Son My village.  However, the incident didn’t become public knowledge until sometime after March, 1969.  Thus, news of the massacre never reached us while I was in the infantry.  I first learned about it shortly before sending my December 26th, 1969 letter home.  At that time I had just been reassigned out of the infantry and into an artillery unit.

One had to be there to understand the mind-set of the average American infantry soldier in Vietnam.  During basic and infantry training in the U.S., the drill instructors made us sing as we marched or ran.  One song often repeated was, “I want to go to Vietnam, I want to kill a Charlie Cong…”   We were not encouraged but also not discouraged to use words like, “dink, gook”, or “slope”, to describe the enemy.  Dehumanization of the enemy is a psychological tactic that governments use to motivate young minds to want to go to war and once in combat, to make it easier to kill.

General Westmoreland was head of U.S. forces in Vietnam during the first few months of my tour.  Under his ‘leadership’, the paramount factor in assessing our success in combat was body counts.  Gruesome as it seems, winning a battle was measured by the numbers of piled dead bodies.  The army never admitted it, but Westmoreland’s tactic sometimes translated down the line to, “Kill as many gooks as you can”.  Of course, most of us knew that randomly shooting civilians, especially women and children, was considered a war crime and morally reprehensible.  Indeed, we were taught this in our infantry training before going off to war.  However, the Viet Cong didn’t wear nicely starched uniforms with shiny brass buttons.  They dressed in civilian attire.  The farmer, his wife, and sometimes his children waving at you during the day, at night might be out planting mines or booby traps, or ambushing our infantry forces.  The ambiguity about who is civilian and who might be Viet Cong created an extremely stressful situation for those of us in the field.  Also, unlike in previous wars, no clear cut battle lines were drawn.  We were constantly on guard, constantly aware that at any time we could be attacked; even in relatively safe rear areas.  Believe me, this causes one considerable stress.  Many soldiers expressed hatred toward all Vietnamese, and sometimes would act on that hatred.  Soldiers who normally treated the Vietnamese people civilly upon seeing their buddies get blown away in a firefight might become enraged killers seeking vengeance­—upon anyone.  While I considered the Vietnamese as primitive and inferior, I never developed hatred toward them.  I am not claiming moral superiority, only that I did not experience the horror of seeing my best buddy die next to me in a firefight.  That experience will warp anyone’s psyche, even the most mild-mannered amongst us.  During my six months in the infantry, I never witnessed soldiers kill civilians without provocation, but heard many stories of such.  Considering the circumstances, I have no reason to doubt that they happened.  I did see my share of uncivil behavior, and I will now share several examples.

Usually, our infantry unit went out on foot patrols.  One day, our company was working with a track vehicle unit.  We were riding on top of the tanks and armored personnel carriers (APC) through a small Vietnamese fishing village along what we called Highway 1.  This Vietnamese lifeline meandered along the entire coast of Vietnam from north to south, and at this location consisted of a two lane paved road.  Highway 1 was a busy throughway and many pedestrians moved about along the side of the road.  We soldiers usually rode on top of the tanks and APC’s because if we struck a landmine, we would be thrown off rather than injured or killed inside due to concussion.  One of the men in the track unit stood up and while laughing throughout, started throwing 50 mm shell casings indiscriminately into the crowd; at women, children, and old people.  One of these five inch long shells struck an old man in the leg.  He winced in terrible pain and then glared at us with a look of hatred I won’t ever forget.  I couldn’t help but wonder, “Will this civilian now be motivated to go out at night and plant booby traps and mines”?  I also remember how guilty I felt for not speaking out against this irresponsible behavior.  After all, those of us in the infantry were the most likely to suffer the wrath of abused civilians like that old man.

Early on in my days in the infantry, our company leader was a gung-ho captain, not unlike the character portrayed by Robert Duval in the movie, Apocalypse Now.  He hated the Vietnamese and was quite aggressive.  One day we were set up in an area along the coast near a civilian populace.  Sitting around with nothing to do, many of us were bored.  Just to show off and amuse himself, the captain began shooting his M-16 rifle at large rocks very close to some Vietnamese teenagers and children walking nearby.  He laughed about scaring the hell out of them.  It worked and they ran off!  I was disgusted by the captain’s reckless act, but kept my mouth shut.  I was in no position to question his ‘authority’.

Vietnamese civilians were subject to a curfew.  None were supposed to be out after dark, except in a few designated areas.  One evening our company set up in the late afternoon away from a populated area near a lake.  As the sun was going down we noticed a lone fisherman in a rowboat out in the middle of the lake.  This was the time he should have been heading in for the night.  Our crazed captain ordered the machine gunner to load a belt of tracer rounds.  Tracers are bullets that leave a red-orange trail as they exit the barrel.  About every fifth round in a belt is a tracer, thus the trail appears like a series of orange dashes.  The purpose of tracers is to enable the gunner to hone in on a target.  The captain proceeded to practice his marksmanship while having fun shooting at the man in his boat, which was about 1,000 feet away.  Hitting a target at that distance with the 60 is quite a challenge.  We could see the tracer rounds arc downward and zero in on this defenseless fisherman.  I saw the water around him splash and I think he jumped out in order to hide on the far side of his boat, but I’m not sure.  The captain acted like a kid at a carnival shooting gallery.  By the time our captain let up after 10 minutes or so, the sun had set behind some hills.  Darkness was beginning to settle in so I have no idea if the Vietnamese man was struck or managed to find his way safely to shore.

On yet another day out in the field and under the same gung-ho captain, our unit captured two North Vietnamese Army (NVA) soldiers.  I couldn’t believe how young they were; 15 or 16 at best.  They were seated and tied up back to back.  I, along with another soldier, was assigned to keep watch until a chopper could arrive to pick them up.  We stood a few feet away with our rifles pointed right at them.  One of the prisoners was actually smiling, and I remember thinking, “Doesn’t this guy know what’s going on”?  That is not as far-fetched as you might think.  Sometimes the NVA soldiers were so doped up that they didn’t know up from down!  Or perhaps these kids were just too young and naïve to grasp the gravity of their situation.  Anyway, I was really concerned that our gung-ho Captain was going to order us to shoot these two young prisoners.  He was crazy enough to do it!  As I recall, I mentioned this to my fellow soldier, and he expressed the same anxiety.  In this awful war, I heard that many a would-be prisoner ended up shot in the head or thrown out of a helicopter in flight; sometimes just for the hell of it!  We two guards faced potential peer pressure from other aggressive soldiers and a direct order from a superior.  The situation was quite tense.  Thankfully, the order to kill the prisoners never came.  I sighed in relief.  However, I have no idea what I would have done had he given that dreadful order; an order in defiance of military codes of conduct.  I would like to think that I would have declined such an illegal order, but I can’t honestly say that I would have mustered the courage.  The nature of combat is such that ugly scenarios and shameful acts are inevitable.  To this day I am at peace that our captain didn’t give the order to kill the boys and that I wasn’t faced with an agonizing wartime dilemma.

I contrast the attitude of this aggressive captain with that of a new Second Lieutenant that arrived about one month before I left the infantry.  By this time, the aggressive captain had gone home; good riddance!  The new lieutenant was quite concerned about his safety—not from the enemy, but from us!  He told us that during his training back in the states, rumors were rampant about disgruntled soldiers ‘fragging’ their superior officers.  Fragging is an expression describing an incident in which a soldier surreptitiously tosses a hand grenade into the dwelling of his despised officer.  It also refers to any manner of killing an officer by an enlisted man for the sake of revenge.  Sensing the Second Lieutenant’s anxiety, I sought to reassure him.  I told him that like most rumors, the extent to which these incidents occurred was exaggerated.  Although I heard about fraggings and was certain that they happened, as far as I knew, perhaps one had occurred in our unit during my previous five months in the infantry.  Unlike this rookie officer, many Second Lieutenants came to Vietnam breathing fire.  They were anxious to prove themselves, earn medals, and become the next George Patton.  This aggressiveness did not sit well with most of us in my unit.  We just wanted to stay away from danger and bide our time until it was time to go home.  I advised the second lieutenant not to be gung-ho.  Instead, listen to the wisdom gained by those of us that had been in the field for a while.  He showed openness to my suggestions.  In the short time I knew him he learned to relax and became admired by members of our platoon.  I cannot remember his name, but I hope that he survived the war.

There were times that my unit became engaged in a firefight emanating from a village.  When we were attacked, we fired back, sometimes into flimsy bamboo constructed hooches.  I could only hope that elders, women and children were evacuated or hiding underground in tunnels.  In the firefight or shelling incidents that I experienced, we never found any women and children among the dead, thank goodness!  After one brutal artillery shelling, we entered a village and I expected that we would find dead bodies everywhere.  To my surprise, we didn’t find anyone—alive or dead!  It was as if the villagers were warned ahead or just vanished into the Twilight Zone; it was an eerie experience.  I remember how guilty I felt on the single occasion we burned down a village after one of these firefights.  I also remember how some of the men seemed to relish setting the fires.  The Vietnamese people worked very hard to build and maintain their dwellings, crude as they seemed to us.  The platoon leader rationalized this act as a military necessity, but I suspect it was revenge—or worse, just sport.

The ambiguities about the purposes for our involvement in Vietnam, who is civilian and who is V.C., the lack of clearly drawn battle lines, and Westmoreland’s policy of compiling body counts, was a recipe rife for the abuse of the civilian populace by American soldiers.  I believe that Westmoreland’s body count policy led to many unnecessary and terrible deaths.  I retain zero respect for that man, and I hope that history does not honor him.

It is easy sitting in a comfortable living room sipping coffee to condemn atrocities and other uncivil behavior by American soldiers involved in this war.  I plead with my readers to consider:  When young men and women are sent into the insanity that is war, especially with all of the ambiguities of Vietnam, how can we expect them to behave sanely?

All of the above being said, even in combat some acts are just too horrific to be swept under the rug.  My Lai is one of those.

 

Some Disconnect on Darwinian Evolutionary Theory

Juan Bernal

The following exchange resulted when a philosophical acquaintance, call him Pablo, asserted that “the Darwinian revolution in biology … only challenged orthodox religious explanations.”  He also objected to a few other statements that I made concerning Darwinian thought.

I offer them as examples of common misunderstandings – especially among some philosophers — of some aspects of Darwinian evolution by natural selection.
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Against the claim that Darwin only challenged orthodox religious explanations,  I pointed out that many historians and commentators on Darwin argue the contrary: namely, that Darwin’s work, Origin of the Species,  faced a variety of resistance,  only part of which stemmed from religious doctrine.  Undeniably, Darwin challenged orthodox religious accounts of life on earth (origin and maintenance); and religious doctrine was a big factor in the thinking of most people.  But more importantly to the history of biological science, Darwin’s evolutionary science also challenged prevailing theories and beliefs of secular scientists and other people who did not base their views on religion at all. The idea of fixity of life species was a far broader idea than just something gotten from religious doctrine.

To this Pablo replied that he disagreed and repeated his view that

most of the scientists before Darwin thought the fixity of species were fixed because of notions got from the Old Testament. Granted, there may have been some who were not biblically influenced, but, by far, most were. Give me a few examples of those who did not get there views on species from the Old Testament. I don’t think you will find many compared to the many who did.

But doesn’t it greatly oversimplify things to say that philosophers and scientists who continued to believe in the constancy of species and in some kind of intelligent design did so only because of their belief in the Old Testament account of creation?   The philosophical and scientific situations were much more complex than that.

As Ernst Mayr, Daniel Dennett, and others have pointed out, essentialism and finalism (teleological ideas) prevailed among many scientists of the time and surely among most philosophers (since Plato and the ancients advanced that perspective on reality) even after belief in the creation story of the Old Testament had largely been abandoned. Below I include some quotes from Ernst Mayr’s great book, The Long Argument – Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought.

“Even the geologist Charles Lyell, whose work profoundly influenced Darwin — was a theist who believe that species were created by God’s hand. In all the writing s of the naturalists, geologists, and philosophers of the period, God played a dominant role. (Mayr, 12,13) . . “The reason why Lyell, like Henslow, Sedgwick and all the others of Darwin’s scientific friends and correspondents in the middle of the 1830s , accepted the unalterable constancy of species was ultimately a philosophical one. The constancy of species – that is, the inability of a species, once created, to change — was the one piece of the old dogma of a created world that remained inviolate after the concepts of the recency and constancy of the physical world had been abandoned.” (op.cit., Mayr, 17)

Under the essentialist philosophy all living species were fixed and eternal. This philosophy had long been the prevalent one and had very little to do with religious belief in creation:

“Essentialism had dominated Western thinking for mare than 2000 years, going back to the geometric thinking of the Pythagorians. . . . Essentialism, as a definite philosophy, is usually credited to Plato, even though he was not as dogmatic about it as some of his later followers, for instance the Thomists. . . .
“All of Darwin’s teachers and friends were … essentialists. For Lyell, all nature consisted of constant types, each created at a definite time. “There are fixed limits beyond which the descendants from common parents can never deviate from a certain type. . . It is idle … to dispute about the abstract possibility of the conversion of one species into another … (Lyell 1835: 162) For an essentialist there can be no evolution: there can only be sudden origin of a new essence by a major mutation or saltation.” (Mayr, 40-41)
“Virtually all philosophers up to Darwin’s time were essentialists. Whether they were realists or idealists, materialists or nominalists, they all saw species of organisms with the eyes of an essentialist. They considered species as “natural kinds,” defined by constant characteristics and sharply separated from one another by bridgeless gaps. The essentialist philosopher, William Whewell stated categorically, “Species have a real existence in nature, and a transition from one to another does not exist.” (1840, 3:626) For John Stuart Mill, species of organisms are natural kinds, just as inanimate objects are, and [kinds are classes between which there is an impassible barrier.]”
“Essentialism’s influence was great in part because its principle is anchored in our language, in our use of a single noun in the singular to designate highly variable phenomena of our environment, such as mountain, home, water, horse, or honesty. . . The simply noun defines the class of objects. Essentialistic thinking has been highly successful, indeed absolutely necessary, in mathematics, physics, and logic. The observation of nature seemed to give powerful support to the essentialists’ claims. Wherever one looked, one saw discontinuities — between species, between genera, between orders and all higher taxa. Such gaps as between birds and mammals, or beetles and butterflies, were mentioned often by Darwin’s critics.” (Mayr, 40-42)

Although these ideas were consistent with Biblical accounts of the origin and nature of living forms, essentialism was not a philosophy gotten from Biblical accounts of creation at all. It developed apart from belief in the Old Testament account of creation. Many scientists and philosophers who held to it did so independently of any belief in Genesis. Hence, they were reluctant to accept Darwin’s claim that species changed and even gave rise to new species on the basis of philosophical and what they saw as scientific reasons, not the doctrine gotten from the Old Testament.

Among these philosophers and scientists we find: British philosophers of science: Wm Whewell, JS Mill, J. Herschel — other philosophers holding to teleological views of biology: Leibniz , J.G. Herder, I Kant — scientists: German biologists of the19th century: K E von Baer, Eduard von Hartmann held the teleological concepts of biology. Natural theology (study of nature to reveal God’s design leading to perfection), with its emphasis on design (leading to perfection) was strong in England at the time of Darwin, “all of Darwin’s teachers and peers particularly Sedgewick, Henslow, and Lyell were confirmed natural theologians. This was Darwin’s conceptual framework when be began to think about adaptation and the origin of species.” (Mayr, 55) None of these philosophies: essentialism, teleology, and natural theology were simple applications of the Old Testament.

Pablo also objected to my statement that many people in Darwin’s time could simply not accept the idea that human beings – with their great mental capabilities, moral,  and religious aspirations – could be explained as evolving from earlier forms of animal life. This difficulty which characterized much of the thinking of the middle nineteenth century, and which is still present today, did not always arise from religious doctrine.

Pablo remarked:

Well, I think you’re exaggerating a bit. There were some Greek thinkers who suggested evolution so it wasn’t really that new of a suggestion.

Of course, the idea of evolution was not originated by Darwin.  But I failed to see the relevance of this to the issue of the great difficulty that many people — not only religious people — have in accepting the idea that humans evolved from earlier species. Yes, the idea of evolution has been floating around, at least since the time of Empedocles and  Epicurus.  Many people, including the grandfather of Charles Darwin, had proposed a theory of evolution. But these were mainly just philosophical ‘theories’ which did not rise to the level of scientific hypothesis, supported by empirical evidence and subject to testing, as was the case with Darwin’s theory natural selection.
Pablo also asserted that “… the notion of Darwinian evolution is far simpler and inferior a hypothesis to what was accomplished by Einstein and the founders of QM. ”
Again, I did not see the relevance of these remarks. The issue at hand was one relating to biological evolution. What do Einstein’s relativity physics and QM have to do with that?
I had also stated that scientists of the time (naturalists, geologists, etc. and even skeptical philosophers like David Hume) simply could not accept the idea that a natural, material process like natural selection could explain the presence of human life and human reality. As an example of this reluctance to apply the theory to natural selection to human beings, I noted that even Wallace, co-founder of natural selection, who could comfortably accept evolution from earlier life forms in the case of non-human animals, balked at the idea that this also might apply to humans.

Pablo replied:

I find that surprising (if true). Perhaps he wasn’t familiar with the thoughts of Empedocles (5th century B.C.E.) and others.

Again, what was the relevance here?   Neither Hume’s inability to see natural evolution as explanatory of life forms nor Wallace’s difficulties concerning Darwin’s Descent of Man had anything to do with their alleged ignorance of the Empedocles or any other pre-Darwinian evolutionary theory (of which there were numerous). Wallace, like many others since Darwin’s book on the descent of humans, simply could not fathom how a natural, materialistic process like natural selection could ever give rise to human beings with their intellectual and moral capabilities. Wallace was comfortable with a naturalistic account of the evolution of non-human animals; but with humans, he drew the line, so to speak.

Meditation on Maternal Assertiveness – By Virginia Bernal

Meditation on Maternal Assertiveness Upon the Birth of Her Baby To be read repeatedly in preparation for the birth.

Research-based writing, by Virginia Bernal, IBCLC

————————————-

This life within me is my child

My body nurtures him, (you can replace with “her”.)

Protects him,

Keeps him warm.

At the time of birth I will still be the best provider

Of warmth,

Protection,

Nutrition.

I will firmly request that my baby be placed on my chest,

To nest here skin to skin,

Here to set his breathing rhythm,

So my baby can best transition to life outside the womb.

In my baby’s first hour I will remember, I am the best provider

Of warmth, Protection, Nutrition.

If a nurse wants to put the baby in a warmer,

I will say,

I will keep my baby warm

Next to my skin, covered with warm blankets.

My chest will respond to baby by getting

Warmer or cooler as baby needs.

My baby’s temperature will be more stable

Being undisturbed, skin to skin with me, his mom.

If a nurse wants to take baby away to weigh and give protective medications,

I will say,

Those procedures can wait an hour or two.

Now my baby needs the protection my body gives:

Protection against the stress of separation,

Protective exposure of his immune system to all my friendly germs,

Protection that will last many years because we grow

Strong bonds of love at this our first acquaintance.

If a nurse wants to feed my baby with a bottle,

I will say,

My body provides the best first food for my baby.

By allowing my baby to rest on my chest till ready to feed,

His blood sugar will be more stable,

My first milk, colostrum, will be more available

Once he starts his first attempts to suckle at my breast.

If a nurse says she must take the baby away because it is hospital policy,

I will remember,

The hospital custom of separating mothers and babies

Is fairly new—of about a hundred years,

And despite good intentions, there is harm in doing so.

But the need of physical closeness,

Of no separation,

Has been the health-giving practice of eons of time.

If a doctor says I am too tired or sleepy due to medications I received,

I will say,

My body has labored so much, it needs

To be rewarded by feeling my baby’s weight upon my chest.

My baby and my tired body do good things for each other.

We need each other to transition to our new life.

If I am too groggy, let my partner watch over us,

Be our protector, his vital role as we grow a family.

If my family members want to hold baby in the first hours after birth,

I will say,

There will be plenty of time for you to enjoy baby.

This first hour is important for baby and me.

We need to be together for baby’s warmth, protection and nurture,

And to grow our love.

If I were to need to birth by way of cesarean surgery,

I will ask,

To have my baby as soon as possible, in the recovery room.

If my baby were to be born with serious problems,

Such as trouble with breathing,

Or severe prematurity,

Then I will resign myself to a delay, till my baby is ready for skin to skin care.

But I will not forget that whatever my baby’s condition,

Vigorous and healthy (the most likely case),

Or needing intensive care (an unlikely event),

I will not forget that my baby is mine,

And providing for his needs will be my priority, my pleasure, and my right.

In my baby’s first hours and days I will be the best provider

Of warmth,

Protection,

Nutrition.

The best provider of Love.

Contra the Moral Utility of Belief in a Soul

Juan Bernal

A few weeks ago while discussing people’s belief in an immortal soul I declared that there wasn’t any evidence or good rational ground for affirming that belief.  An email correspondent  — who had previously asserted that there was good evidence for soul’s survival of the body’s death –- asked me, “Why did so many people, in the past and present, believed in soul?”  He also stated that nobody had any good grounds for thinking that people in the past, who believed in the reality of immortal souls, did not have any rational grounds for such belief.  He declared that, after all, we weren’t there when ancient cultures and peoples of past centuries adopted belief in souls; so we really could not say anything about the reasons, evidence underlying such belief.

By happenstance this very issue came up in another setting.  A book discussion group,  of which I’m a member,  has been looking at Steven Pinker’s recent book, The Better Angels of our Nature – Why violence has declined.   In chapter four (pp. 129-188), Pinker takes up what he calls the humanizing process in Western Europe and in the USA which mainly ended the routine brutality and killing of human beings that marked ancient and medieval periods.

In leading up to his account of the humanizing process that occurred in much of Western Europe starting the late 18th century, Pinker takes time to describe the incredible violence and bloodletting that often was based on irrational superstitious thinking and on religious doctrine.  These early sections of the chapter are titled “Superstitious Killing: Human Sacrifice, Witchcraft, and Blood Libel,” and   “Superstitious Killing: Violence against blasphemers, heretics, and apostates.”   Here Pinker recounts the genocides that resulted from the Catholic Crusades, and the great number of deaths that resulted from various long, bloody religious wars between European states and principalities; the high number of deaths brought about by the persecutions, tortures, and executions of non-believers by religious authorities —- all adding up to millions of people slaughtered, tortured, and executed, by the various “Reformations” (Catholic and Protestant); by the Inquisitions in Spain, Italy, and the New World.

Considering that all of this took place at a time when belief in an immortal soul was nearly universal, we surely are struck by a paradox.  Given all that brutality and bloodletting were  perpetuated by believers in an immortal soul, the question arises:  “Why do people think that belief is a good thing?  What ethical or moral value can such belief possibly have if cultures and ages in which that belief prevails are so bloody and violent, and dangerous to life and limb?

Pinker has some interesting things to say relevant to those questions. In his attempt to understand why people finally began to break the cycles of violence and death in the 17th century, and finally began to tolerated those who preferred to dissent from the prevailing religious doctrines, such as that concerning the value of an eternal soul.  He writes:

“What made Europeans finally decide that it was all right to let their dissenting compatriots risk eternal damnation and, by their bad example, lure others to that fate? Perhaps they were exhausted by the Wars of Religion, but it’s not clear why it took thirty years to exhaust hem rather than ten or twenty. One gets the sense that people started to place a higher value on human life. Part of the newfound appreciation was an emotional change, a habit of identifying with the pains and pleasures of others. And another part was an intellectual and moral change: a shift from valuing souls to valuing lives. The doctrine of the sacredness of the soul sounds vaguely uplifting, but in fact is highly malignant. It discounts life on earth as just a temporary phase that people pass through, indeed, an infinitesimal fraction of their existence. Death becomes a mere rite of passage, like puberty or a midlife crisis.

The gradual replacement of lives for souls as the locus of moral value was helped along by the ascendancy of skepticism and reason. No one can deny the difference between life and death or the existence of suffering, but it takes indoctrination to hold beliefs about what becomes of an immortal soul after it has parted company from the body. The 17th century is called the Age of Reason, an age when writers began to insist that beliefs be justified by experience and logic. That undermines dogmas about souls and salvation, and it undermines the policy of forcing people to believe unbelievable things at the point of sword (or a Juda’s Cradle).”  [Page 143]

 

Of course, Pinker is not the first to so describe the nature of religious doctrine concerning the immortal soul.  Decades ago (1950s), the American philosopher, Walter Kaufmann, remarked  in various books  that the other-worldly nature of Christian doctrine de-valued human life on this earth, or turned attention away from the brutality, suffering, death, and gross injustice that characterized most lives when the grand other-worldly religion dominated, with its dogma of the immortal soul.

———————-

So my reply to my email colleague’s question  –  Why do I think ancient people adopted the belief in an immortal soul?  —  is that the ancients and medieval people were generally  indoctrinated to believe the dogma of an immortal soul, along with other dogma about the fate of the soul after death.  In the Christian period, when they were not so indoctrinated or resisted the indoctrination, they were terrorized into believing (or at least outward assent to the belief).

Thus, I reaffirm my conviction that belief in an immortal soul is just the product of particular religious cultures and ages, and has never been grounded on rational evidence.

Mulling about some puzzles on ‘objective reality’

Juan Bernal

We occasionally hear what sound like daffy ideas from theoretical physicists when they unwisely encroach on hard philosophical problems: e.g., the notion that consciousness creates the universe, sometimes called  “biocentrism.”   Another is the  assertion that space-time is not an objective feature of the universe (world), but is something dependent on the cognitive faculties of the creatures like us.  This strikes some as being a bizarre claim.

————————

It seems that one could offer the following rebuttal:  It does not follow that that the spatial-temporal dimensions arise from the subject’s cognitive processing because we must presuppose the spatial-temporal dimensions to make sense of experience of the physical world.

——–

The starting point of our epistemological theories should not be a conscious subject isolated from the social, physical world. Ultimately this notion is an incoherent one.  The starting point should be a mindful, social and corporeal subject (a conscious animal), in a natural, social world, interacting with other like creatures and engaging in cause-effect interaction with the natural, social world.

——–

The epistemological tradition from Descartes through the classical empiricists — Locke, Berkeley, Hume — to Immanuel Kant is based on an erroneous idea that the possibility of knowledge of the external world (external to the subject) needs to be proven.

——-

There’s something terribly wrong with the claim that, for any ‘X’, we can say what ‘X’ really is only in terms of

  • a possible experience of ‘X’ (i.e., ‘X’ must be an object of phenomenal experience);  or
  • a description of ‘X’ in terms of (Kantian) categories of the understanding.

There something terribly wrong with the assertion that any question of the form [What is a real ‘X’?] has to be answered in terms of the notion of ‘X-in-itself, i.e., ‘X’ as other than an object of phenomenal experience.

Recall that for Kantian thought, ‘X as an object of possible phenomenal experience is an object describable in terms of

  •  the intuitions of space and time, and
  •  the categories of the understanding.

———————

Ordinarily when we try to say what ‘X’ really is we do not do so in terms of Kantian noumena, i.e., thing-in-itself.  Rather we state things carefully, after additional reflection, study, and investigation (after we carry on with empirical inquiry).

——–

The world of physical phenomena (objects, forces, energy) is a spatio-temporal world.

——–

According to Kant, our experience of the physical world is temporally and spatially ordered. The cognitive mind provides this spatial-temporal template by which our phenomenal world is ordered. The world independent of this ‘subjective’ ordering (i.e., noumena, world-in-itself) falls outside the scope of our knowledge.

——-

But there is nothing we can say about this putative world-in-itself. We cannot legitimately say it is the world-as-it-really-is.

At best, this notion of a noumenal world is a limiting concept.

To see noumena as the way things-really-are is to erroneously interpret a limiting concept as having metaphysical import.

———

Insofar as we can coherently think or talk about it, the so called “phenomenal world” is the real world, i.e., the reality of human existence and human experience. We should not be confused by the fact that his notion of reality can be analyzed and refined.  Physicists, for example, can apply their theories and mathematical models to give us a refined, abstract picture of this world.  But that resulting picture (the scientific picture that science achieves) is a picture  (a model) of the world of experience.  It is not a picture of the world-in-itself.

———-

The world existed long before humans arrived on the scene. Can this be seen as the legitimate idea of the world-in-itself?

There is a world that humans inhabit and experience. When humans think about or conceptualize this world, they do so in terms of spatial extension, temporal dimension, and basic categories (concepts) like object, force, causal relations, etc. . .  (and in terms of transactions between the subject and the world).  We apply those basic intuitions and concepts to the world of experience in our conceptualization of that world.

That this is an appropriate application is something that flows from the nature of the real world, a nature characterized as a spatial, temporal, physical world.

 

Extra-Ordinary Claims & Miracles

Juan Bernal

To be credible someone making an extra-ordinary claim, e.g. my neighbor can levitate, we would ask for evidence sufficient to the claim.  It  wouldn’t do to go on mere hear-say or my sincere insistence that my claim is true.

Extra-ordinary claims call for extra-ordinary evidence, or as David Hume stated: “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.”

“Suppose .. that the fact which testimony endeavors to establish partakes of the extra-ordinary and the marvelous: in that the evidence resulting from the testimony admits of a diminution, greater or less, in proportion as the fact [purported ‘fact’] is more or less unusual.”

(David Hume, Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, “Section X  “Of Miracles,”  Part I”, 1748)

David Hume is regarded as  a classical empiricist.  Knowledge, if we have any, comes by way of experience.  Along with this is the assumption that there are regularities in experience and nature.

It is surprising to critical thinkers that anyone would question the principle that measures the status of a belief to the evidence supporting it.   The more extra-ordinary (marvelous, miraculous, magical) the purported event, the less weight carried by ordinary evidence (e.g., human testimony, reports, etc.).

It is not sufficient to well-grounded belief to affirm belief in miracles (e.g. a resurrection from death, or a feat of levitation) on testimony and reports of such events. Much more is called for if we’re to see such belief as rationally and empirically well-grounded.

Skepticism, not credulity, is the attitude of the rational person in the face of such extra-ordinary claims.

——

What could possibly be a philosophical rebuttal to this position skeptical of miraculous claims?

Some might raise technicalities about Hume’s suggestion of an appropriate proportion of evidence to belief.  These would be questions as to the precise measured proportion: What objective standard could we apply to determine exact proportionality?

Some might object that supernatural possibilities that fall outside of human empirical knowledge are not judged in terms of evidence usually applicable only to ordinary events.

Some might bring up the fact that extra-ordinary claims in the sciences were not required to conform to a “proportionality of evidence” and were not rejected because of insufficient evidence for an extra-ordinary claim.

We can reply to each in turn.  First Hume did not propose an exact science (with precise method and measurement) for evaluating extra-ordinary claims.  Instead, he offered a practical, common sense guide for proceeding, i.e., a general “rule-of-thumb,” in a manner of speaking.

——————————————-

Many events which are seen as miraculous can be shown to have natural explanation and may result from illusion or hallucination.  Those which cannot be readily explained do not automatically fall into the category of the miraculous.  On the one hand, they might be events that await further investigation.  On the other hand, they might be tagged (for now) as things we cannot presently explain.   But our inability to explain or understand the event does not imply that miracle or magical event has occurred.  All that is implied is that we do not presently have an explanation to give.

(Miracle:  The intervention of a supernatural being into a natural or social happening, many times a happening that is beneficial for humans.)

 

A Dialogue on the Limits of Science and Transcendent Possibilities

Juan Bernal

I had a long dialogue with a correspondent philosopher [“Otro”] on the issues of what we can know and the limits of scientific knowledge.  It started when I [“Moi”] tried to clarify our basic assumptions:

Moi:  Let me assume that all humans are physical, biological beings with a facility for intelligent language.  I suppose that this imposes limits on the possibilities; for example, it implies that you’re not a disembodied, eternal, spiritual being.  Am I safe in making those presuppositions, or should I leave open the possibility that I’m communicating with a transcendent spirit?

Am I safe in assuming that we’re just flesh-and-blood persons?  Are we in agreement here, or do you wish to think that you might very well be much more (oh so much more!) than a physical, biological being with an over-active brain?

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Otro:  I’m sorry that I did not explicitly answer your question. If you had left out the word “just,” I would be able to agree. I agree that we are flesh and blood persons etc. I do not agree that we are nothing more than that. A book by John Hick (The Fifth Dimension) spells out the alternative to that view, and I generally agree with the alternative as Hick describes it. The following quotation is from the first page of The Fifth Dimension. This might help you to understand the point of view from which I respond to your question. The book presents a more developed and nuanced understanding of what people like me and John Hick think about the idea that we’re just flesh and blood persons.

 We are finite, fallible, fragile fragments of the universe. But because we have an inbuilt need to find meaning we inhabit the universe in terms of a conception of its character – a big picture – either consciously adopted or unconsciously presupposed. In so doing, we are always, whether we realize it or not, living by faith, that is, moving in an immensely important area in which there is no certain knowledge and in which we cannot avoid the risk of being seriously mistaken.

To most of us within our highly technological western culture it has come to seem self-evident that a scientific account of anything and everything constitutes the full story, and that the supposed transcendent realities of which the religions speak must therefore be imaginary. Since at least the beginning of the twentieth century this naturalistic assumption has been an integral part of our culture, and any contrary hopes, dreams, intuitions, senses of transcendence, intimations of immortality, or mystical experiences have been overshadowed by its pervasive influence. But it is a fundamental error to think that the assumptions that our culture has instilled into us, and which we take for granted, are necessarily true. . . . The beginning of wisdom is to become aware of our own presuppositions as options that can be examined and questioned. Otherwise we are wearing mental blinkers without even being conscious of them.

—————————–

Moi:  Thanks, this does give an idea of what you guys believe, but there’s nothing here that is totally new to me. However,  I will point out some ideas that John Hick and others (including you?) often express  which are erroneous.

I don’t believe that naturalistic thinkers and most scientists claim that it “self-evident that a scientific account of anything and everything constitutes the full story.”

As I noted in another email to you, the work of science and empirical inquiry are works-in-progress.  Nobody who reflects carefully on things would say that science has given the “full story.”  This is part of the effort by people like Hick to set up a Strawman argument against science and naturalism.  But even the admission that science does not give the full story does not show the viability of any philosophy (theology?) that asserts those “transcendent realities” which Hick and you so much desire.  The work of science can go on indefinitely (gaining more and more information about the universe and ourselves) without ever showing one shred of evidence for “transcendent realities.”  So this reference to the “full story” and implication of an “incomplete story” is really a red herring.

Another mistake arises with the notion of necessary truth:  that my common-sense assumption is necessarily true.  I never said that it was a necessary truth that we are physical, biological beings; I said it was a presupposition that we all take for granted.  Denying that it is a necessary truth does not you’re your case for supernatural possibilities.  If we’re in a speculative mood and want to muse about transcendental possibilities, we can engage the exercise of “examining and questioning” such presuppositions.  Nobody prohibits such an exercise.  But remember that this is all that’s going on; we’re just indulging a speculative exercise about possibilities.  It has always seemed to me that this is all what  John Hick others like him do amounts to: speculation about possibilities.

Finally, I find it rather bizarre to read the assertion that our common-sense presupposition that we’re physical, biological beings existing in a physical world is a case of having “mental blinkers,” as if you idealists had already established the viability of the transcendental realm from which you could look on the merely physical world as a limited, obscure reality.   This is just the old practice of religious transcendence parading as critical philosophy!

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Otro:  John Hick wrote,

“To most of us within our highly technological western culture it has come to seem self-evident that a scientific account of anything and everything constitutes the full story, and that the supposed transcendent realities of which the religions speak must therefore be imaginary.”

He seems to say that because we think of the scientific account of everything is complete, we infer that “the supposed transcendent realities of which the religions speak must be imaginary.”

But which is the more likely interpretation of what he is saying about the scientific account? Is he saying that we have come to think of it as full in fact, or is he saying that we have come to think of it as full in principle?

————————————

Moi:   My problem with  ”the supposed transcendent realities of which the religions speak ..”  has nothing to do with the belief that science does or does not provide a “complete story” of everything.  I don’t believe this but there no implication that follows which lends comfort to the supernaturalist.

So I find much of what you quote from John Hick to have little relevance.  As you point out it
is not even clear what is meant by the “complete story” given by science.

My skepticism concerning all claims of transcendent existence or transcendent, spiritual
aspect (essence?) of human reality arises from other considerations. It arises from the observation
that there are no objective, publicly verifiable grounds for concluding that there are such
transcendent realities.

Even if we allow, for the sake of argument, some of those claims as hypotheses, we would have a tough time selecting the candidates to select and likely find that they contradict each other. There are so
many and so varied! There are no obvious criteria (agreeable to all) for selecting good candidates.

—————————————-

Otro:  I’m skeptical about your explanation of your skepticism. I think there are probably a lot of things you believe in even though you lack objective, publicly verifiable grounds for them. So other than the fact that it lacks objective, publicly verifiable grounds, there must be something else about the transcendent reality claim that provokes your skepticism.

Assuming as I do that empirical information is ambiguous, one reason why many people reject explanations of empirical data that involve the notion of a transcendent reality is that such explanations are not as effective as naturalistic explanations in stimulating or leading to further progress in science. You seem to put a very high value on science and scientific progress, so maybe that has something to do with your skepticism concerning all claims of transcendent existence.

—————————————

Moi:   So now you’re in the business of psycho-analysis, stating what my reasons can and cannot be for something I hold to be the case?

I stated briefly why I’m skeptical about your claims that transcendental realities should not be ruled out.  I stand by those reasons and have little to do with my recognition of the progress brought about by the sciences.  It has more to do with the fact the sciences are by far the best instrument for gaining knowledge of our world that humans have.  It also has much to do with the completely incoherent world that results when we allow that your transcendental possibilities might be real along with the thousands of alternative transcendental possibilities that others dream up.

Of course, there’s much that I believe for which I don’t have objectively, verifiable grounds (as do all people).  But these are very different from belief in a transcendental realm of transcendental beings beyond the reach of science and empirical experience.

Mostly what I hear from you is reminder of possibilities that remain after we consider the limited knowledge that the sciences provide.  I hear from you and people like the Hick the refrain that since the sciences are do not explain everything (are not the full story), the possibility remains that your preferred fantasies of the supernatural can be fact.  Again, that is just relying on rather questionable notions of possibilities to hold on to that which is dear to you.  (Allow me to do some psycho-analysis of the motives for your views.)

——————————————–

Otro:   May I take this as an admission that the knowledge that science provides is limited, and beyond that knowledge lie possibilities which have yet to be explored? If so, do you similarly admit that

  1. science does not at present offer a theory of reality,
  2. and may never do so, since
  3. there may be realities that are forever inaccessible to the methods of science?

Among the realities that could be forever inaccessible to science, one is human reality. The evidence I presented in my previous email about Dr. Parnia’s research on after-death experience suggests mind-body dualism. But, given the inevitable ambiguity of empirical evidence, it may be beyond the ability of science to clinch the case for or against mind-body dualism. Nevertheless, the issue has practical importance. What we believe about it makes a difference to how we live our lives. Either we do or do not live with some sort of expectation of a life after death. So people in effect make a decision about it whether consciously or unconsciously by living their lives in one way or the other. The decision they make could be described as “a preferred fantasy of the supernatural.” Your preferred fantasy of the supernatural portrays the supernatural as empty of anything real. But what right do you have to consider your fantasy better than its alternatives? Is that a conclusion you can support with presupposition-less logic?

————————————–

Moi:   You ask whether I admit that “the knowledge that science provides is limited, and that beyond that knowledge lie possibilities which have yet to be explored?”   Of course, I said as much.  My quarrel with you concerns that inference that you draw from this notion of an incomplete science.

Let me use the analogy of human high jumping.  Although the height that human high jumpers have achieved has risen dramatically in recent decades (now over 8 feet), there is a limit (a physical limit to how high a human can jump).  So possibilities of yet higher jumps remain.  But the book is not wide open on these possibilities, as long as we’re talking about human physiology.  You won’t see anyone ever high jumping 50 feet!  But maybe someone will someday achieve a jump of 9-10 feet.  The same thinking applies to the limits and possibilities of scientific knowledge.  Yes, scientific knowledge is not a completed story.  Yes, more remains to be told (discovered).  But what remains, when it is disclosed, will come under the category of nature as we now know it.  There is no reason for claiming that among those possibilities not yet disclosed are supernatural realities (the sort you yearn for).  That would be like claiming that because human high jumpers are still setting new records, one will eventually jump over a 100 foot barrier unaided!

You also ask whether I admit that

  1. science does not at present offer a theory of reality,
  2. and may never do so, since
  3. there may be realities that are forever inaccessible to the methods of science?

The sciences are not in the business of advancing “a theory of reality.”   Even the scientific theorist is concerned only with proposing specific theories of some aspect of nature (e.g. theories in physics, chemistry, biology, paleoanthropology) and having those theories tested by practicing scientists, who devise experiments to test the theory.  If anyone is in the business of presenting “a theory of reality,” it is the philosopher, or someone taking on that function of philosophy.  But some of those philosophers can offer a theory of reality based on the work and knowledge gotten by the sciences.  I don’t see any reason for supposing that a theory of reality based on scientific knowledge can never happen, since it happens already.

Your third item (“realities forever inaccessible to the methods of science”) just asks for a bit of speculation.  Who knows?  Who cares?  This question may be of interest to someone inclined to imagine a transcendental perspective on reality (a god’s eye view). But for the humanist perspective, which science represents, this question is limited interest.  An affirmative answer (“Yes, Lyle, there such entities forever inaccessible …”) does not have the cash value you imagine it to have.

With regard to your final paragraph, I don’t even know what it means to say that “science clinches the case for or against mind-body dualism.”  Are asking for a deductive proof?   Science has built a very strong case (and continues to do so) against that dualism.  Despite the dualist grasping for straws (a desperate search for anything that might save dualism), there isn’t any established scientific basis for positing a spiritual-mental entity that operates alongside (independently of) the human organism.

Of course the issue has practical importance for many people, in and outside of religious faith, who believe in such non-corporeal existence.  But the fact that people base their lives on that belief and religions carry on their business in terms of that belief does nothing to show that the belief is scientifically (or even rationally) viable.

I don’t think that my flat-footed belief that humans are evolved biological creatures, animals with a large brain, is a “preferred fantasy,” unless you dismiss (as well you might) all the biological-genetic sciences as “preferred fantasies.”

You see as my preferred fantasy of “the supernatural portrays the supernatural as empty of anything real.”  You’re making too hasty a jump here by assuming we can even talk intelligently and coherent of a supernatural realm that may or may not contain real entities.  As usual, you help yourself to the reality of fantastic realm (“SUPERNATURAL REALM”!) and then challenge your interlocutor to prove there’s nothing in it. (?!)   This sounds like one of those ineffectual games which traditional students of metaphysical philosophy love.

With regard to your last question:  What in the world is ” pre-suppositionless” logic unless it is just logic as a formal system?  I could outline the “logic” by which I reach my conclusions, but they surely involve some presuppositions (I have been referring to one of them in this long discussion).  All human arguments do, including those which you concoct based on presuppositions regarding highly questionable (even fantastic) possibilities.