RE: An atheists guide to reality
March 7, 2014 at 1:09 pm
(This post was last modified: March 7, 2014 at 1:16 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
Equilax, since “significance” speaks to two closely related thoughts, it muddies your thoughts about it.
Firstly, the word carries with it the connotation of “lasting value”. Anyone can see that apart from an afterlife, mankind’s achievements are, to borrow a line from Kansas, “dust in the wind.” When confined to the brief span of their days, the meanings people assign to the things of their life vanish with them. In some sense, atheists can take comfort in this notion and the sense of liberty it can give them. As a former atheist, I say this from personal experience.
Other people, including non-atheists, get the meaning of their lives through, as Woody Allen said, “…their work, their families, and the idea that future generations will know more.” These people try to borrow meaning from the future. But the future does not exist, except as a current hope. And a current hope falls within the vain striving for “lasting value”, as shown in the paragraph above.
As it relates specifically to the OP, Alex Rosenberg focuses more narrowly on the semiotic relationship between signs and that which they signify. In semiotics, pictures and ideas are about things because we assign meaning to them. For example, a picture of Mount St. Helens is about the actual Mount St. Helens. The letter D-O-G mean the same in English and the letters C-H-E-I-N in French because they both point to the same kind of animal. In contrast to this fact, physical things, in themselves, have no intentionality. For example, rocks, trees, and chemical reactions, are not “about” anything, i.e. they do not point to anything beyond themselves. They exist simply as rocks, trees, and chemical reactions.
Rosenberg argues, and I agree, that since physical things do not have meaning, then any philosophy of mind that makes mental properties identical to the brain and its physical states, undermines the notion very of meaning. It sets up an infinite regress. Marks, like words & pictures, dramatic life events, and scientific “evidence”, are signs that take their significance from other signs that take their significance from others signs, and so on. In physical monist philosophies, the brain is just another sign among signs. In physical monist theories, which nearly all the AF atheist accept, the knowing subject is an illusion, a uniquely compelling one, but an illusion nonetheless. Anyone with an open mind can see the incoherence of this notion: who exactly is having the illusion!
Clearly, intentionality is a part of reality, whether fundamental to it or emanating into it. Either way, I do not know what else to call this source of intentionality other than God.
So, Esq, no matter how strenuously you assert the opposite, you cannot escape the fact that atheism entails nihilism.
Firstly, the word carries with it the connotation of “lasting value”. Anyone can see that apart from an afterlife, mankind’s achievements are, to borrow a line from Kansas, “dust in the wind.” When confined to the brief span of their days, the meanings people assign to the things of their life vanish with them. In some sense, atheists can take comfort in this notion and the sense of liberty it can give them. As a former atheist, I say this from personal experience.
Other people, including non-atheists, get the meaning of their lives through, as Woody Allen said, “…their work, their families, and the idea that future generations will know more.” These people try to borrow meaning from the future. But the future does not exist, except as a current hope. And a current hope falls within the vain striving for “lasting value”, as shown in the paragraph above.
As it relates specifically to the OP, Alex Rosenberg focuses more narrowly on the semiotic relationship between signs and that which they signify. In semiotics, pictures and ideas are about things because we assign meaning to them. For example, a picture of Mount St. Helens is about the actual Mount St. Helens. The letter D-O-G mean the same in English and the letters C-H-E-I-N in French because they both point to the same kind of animal. In contrast to this fact, physical things, in themselves, have no intentionality. For example, rocks, trees, and chemical reactions, are not “about” anything, i.e. they do not point to anything beyond themselves. They exist simply as rocks, trees, and chemical reactions.
Rosenberg argues, and I agree, that since physical things do not have meaning, then any philosophy of mind that makes mental properties identical to the brain and its physical states, undermines the notion very of meaning. It sets up an infinite regress. Marks, like words & pictures, dramatic life events, and scientific “evidence”, are signs that take their significance from other signs that take their significance from others signs, and so on. In physical monist philosophies, the brain is just another sign among signs. In physical monist theories, which nearly all the AF atheist accept, the knowing subject is an illusion, a uniquely compelling one, but an illusion nonetheless. Anyone with an open mind can see the incoherence of this notion: who exactly is having the illusion!
Clearly, intentionality is a part of reality, whether fundamental to it or emanating into it. Either way, I do not know what else to call this source of intentionality other than God.
So, Esq, no matter how strenuously you assert the opposite, you cannot escape the fact that atheism entails nihilism.
