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Natural Order and Science
#21
RE: Natural Order and Science
(February 16, 2016 at 6:47 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Metaphors imply -nothing-.  Metaphors are narrative, not logical, devices.

We are creatures of metaphor, and exclusively so, are we not?  Or do you think that the way you symbolize ideas about things and express them actually represents the facts of anything in their most essential terms?
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#22
RE: Natural Order and Science
Not without a hefty amount of equivocation. In any case, your response would seem, to me, to indicate that we agree here. I think that the manner in which we express our ideas says things about the way we express our ideas...not, as Chad implies..and as you and I object to.."the facts of anything in their most essential terms".
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#23
RE: Natural Order and Science


Dying to live, living to die.
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#24
RE: Natural Order and Science
(February 16, 2016 at 9:59 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Not without a hefty amount of equivocation.  In any case, your response would seem, to me, to indicate that we agree here.  I think that the manner in which we express our ideas says things about the way we express our ideas...not, as Chad implies..and as you and I object to.."the facts of anything in their most essential terms".

--edit--

Your last post ended up being more a springboard than the thing I answered.  If the quote and my response to it seem to have a disconnect, that's why



Here's the thing, though.  The metaphor isn't just a tool.  It's what we are-- Benjamin is probably no more real or any less a metaphor than Achilles or Zeus.  What if it is the metaphors that are the reality, and that all the "stuff" in the universe is in a constant scramble, falling over itself to express those metaphors as they unfold in time?  A photon as a metaphor, as an imagined representation of paradox in action, makes sense-- as a concrete thing, not so much.

My question is this, and I don't believe anyone has a good answer: how are we to tell the difference?  What would be the mechanism, or the process, of determining whether things are top-up or bottom down?  Given a perfect parity between physical objects, their properties and the rules that guide them, how can we decide whether the physical properties we describe are ABOUT stuff, or whether the stuff is really just the mechanism which the properties use to manifest themselves?

This question comes up a lot in our views about almost everything.  Is a human being the expression of DNA, or is DNA the possession of the human being, to be carried like a torch until reproduction?  Is "table" the reality, with all the little QM parts just being coerced due to their simple nature into doing their little dance in the right configuration, or were they the only reality all along?  These views, I think, are mutually exclusive, and yet they are both viable.  They are both true, and at the same time not really true.

Are we just spinning the yin/yang wheel and picking sides for no other reason than just having nothing better to do?
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#25
RE: Natural Order and Science
Metaphors are beautiful... the ultimate way of explaining things by leveraging what you already know/represent. A is to B as X is to Y saves a lot of explanation and I think in neural terms makes for a very efficient form of learning in that A only needs to be associated with X (and B with Y) and the rest - the relationships - already exist. Kind of similar to leveraging the power of musical memory in poetry by making it rhyme... latching memories onto others.
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#26
RE: Natural Order and Science
I need to make my video about how arguments are not evidence. And metaphors/analogies aren't even arguments, either. They are ways of trying to explain an argument better. They are not the argument.

So if someone just has logical arguments and conclusions, and doesn't in any way validate those conclusions against reality, they are exploring an imaginary abstract world. It may or may not have any bearing on our world, depending on how well the argument's initial assumptions model it. With no evidence and no predictions to test, there's no way to tell.

I notice the OP doesn't even bother writing "therefor God" at the end, because he knows we know that is the implication. It's Allah, in this case. If anyone was wondering. I've dealt with this guy before.
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#27
RE: Natural Order and Science
(February 16, 2016 at 11:59 pm)Emjay Wrote: Metaphors are beautiful... the ultimate way of explaining things by leveraging what you already know/represent. A is to B as X is to Y saves a lot of explanation and I think in neural terms makes for a very efficient form of learning in that A only needs to be associated with X (and B with Y) and the rest - the relationships - already exist. Kind of similar to leveraging the power of musical memory in poetry by making it rhyme... latching memories onto others.

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. Shaka, when the walls fell. Temba, his arms wide. Smile

I like the point of learning on a neural level. I see knowledge as a context of information created by neural information. The brain does try to understand new things in terms of what it has already experienced.
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#28
RE: Natural Order and Science
(February 17, 2016 at 9:04 am)Mathilda Wrote:
(February 16, 2016 at 11:59 pm)Emjay Wrote: Metaphors are beautiful... the ultimate way of explaining things by leveraging what you already know/represent. A is to B as X is to Y saves a lot of explanation and I think in neural terms makes for a very efficient form of learning in that A only needs to be associated with X (and B with Y) and the rest - the relationships - already exist. Kind of similar to leveraging the power of musical memory in poetry by making it rhyme... latching memories onto others.

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. Shaka, when the walls fell. Temba, his arms wide. Smile

I like the point of learning on a neural level. I see knowledge as a context of information created by neural information. The brain does try to understand new things in terms of what it has already experienced.

Yep, so do I Smile ... contexts being the result of bidirectional connectivity and inhibition in the cortex. Attractor dynamics and bias. Beautiful things, contexts, allowing for bootstrapping and pattern completion, but they can be a force to be reckoned with. I was talking about this in another thread... say you've got a hidden object game where the objects you have to find are deliberately placed out of context, it becomes very hard to overcome your bias and assumptions to find them... but that's the point of the game  Wink But playing such a game really shows it in action and is very enlightening.
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#29
RE: Natural Order and Science
(February 16, 2016 at 11:33 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Here's the thing, though.  The metaphor isn't just a tool.  It's what we are-- Benjamin is probably no more real or any less a metaphor than Achilles or Zeus.
Idk.....Benjamin, to me..... lol, seems more real and less metaphor than either of those two.

Quote: What if it is the metaphors that are the reality, and that all the "stuff" in the universe is in a constant scramble, falling over itself to express those metaphors as they unfold in time?  A photon as a metaphor, as an imagined representation of paradox in action, makes sense-- as a concrete thing, not so much.
Metaphors are tools we use to describe things, they aren't a fundamental particle - or anything even remotely approaching it. Recall for a moment how metaphor was initially invoked. That our inability to describe natural order without metaphors regarding proscription implies a proscriptor or the incoherency of any other conclusion. This wouldn't be true even if we couldn't describe the natural order any way other than proscriptively...which we can and do. The abject -ignorance- of that statement is insulting to the very laws it purports to reference. They are descriptive to begin with.

You, instead, are wondering if things are less physical than they might seem. You needn't use the term metaphor; you have better terms, and the very concept of a metaphor has been abused enough as it is.
Quote:My question is this, and I don't believe anyone has a good answer: how are we to tell the difference?
When I use a lion metaphor to describe something, that doesn't turn whatever I've described into a lion, nor does it make a lion appear, nor does it make whatever I've described subject to any logical implications of lionhood or lion presence (and this one is important in context).  That's just a couple of ways  to tell.  

Quote:What would be the mechanism, or the process, of determining whether things are top-up or bottom down?  
You mean........ how could we tell whether or not raindrops are being driven by a rainmaster?  That you ask this as if it were a profundity leads me to suspect that we're unlikely to see eye to eye on this one.  Fairies might paint the dew on the morning flowers as well. Meh.

Quote:Given a perfect parity between physical objects, their properties and the rules that guide them, how can we decide whether the physical properties we describe are ABOUT stuff, or whether the stuff is really just the mechanism which the properties use to manifest themselves?
We could wonder and hope on the one hand, or do work on the other.  You know my preference.  

Quote:This question comes up a lot in our views about almost everything.  Is a human being the expression of DNA,
yes?

Quote:or is DNA the possession of the human being, to be carried like a torch until reproduction?  
yes?

Quote:Is "table" the reality,
yes?

Quote:with all the little QM parts just being coerced due to their simple nature into doing their little dance in the right configuration, or were they the only reality all along?  
yes?

You see paradox where there is none.  

Quote:These views, I think, are mutually exclusive, and yet they are both viable.  They are both true, and at the same time not really true.

Are we just spinning the yin/yang wheel and picking sides for no other reason than just having nothing better to do?
None of those things you mentioned were mutually exclusive, they were frame shifts in subject.  From expression, to possession.  From reality, to scale.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#30
RE: Natural Order and Science
[Image: zcuo8.jpg]
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