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(February 16, 2016 at 7:46 am)paulpablo Wrote: The argument of where do the laws of the universe come from has always seemed stupid to me, unless I'm understanding it incorrectly.
Is it because they are called laws that you think it must be like a law involving the police and the government? So you're saying well we have these laws but who put them there?
The scientific laws of the universe are principles which usually describe or predict things, the way things behave independent of any outside supernatural force, they're governed by non sentient physical forces.
The laws exist only because things have certain properties and react certain ways predictably, not because god is like the universe policeman shaking a club menacingly at anything that dares to disobey the laws of gravitation or relativity.
You are understanding it correctly, Theses people actually think there is a law that something like gravity must follow, that has been put in place to make gravity do what it does. Otherwise gravity would be running wild, causing chaos and anarchy, lol.
February 16, 2016 at 8:12 am (This post was last modified: February 16, 2016 at 8:15 am by bennyboy.)
Harris, given ANY thing, we expect it to exist in the context of framework. If you look at the framework in turn as a thing (which it is), then you'd expect it to be part of another framework. In comes infinite regress, right?
You say that chance does not produce information. This is fair enough, because no state is "information" unless someone is around to make use of it. However, your mistake is a misunderstanding of the philosophical implications of evolution. Evolution is the creation of patterns through chance crossed with the variable persistence of those patterns in their environment.
It is fairly clear that everything in our universe is as it is because of the interactions of the stuff in the universe. So we are left to ask-- why is the universe such that it arrived at me, sitting here typing this message?
The correct answer to this is "I don't know." Anything beyond that is speculation, and in the case of a religious academic, pedantic speculation. We can all try to extend what little we DO know into the unknown and see what ideas it brings. You know something about intelligent life, information and patterns. Others know something about physical properties, scientific principles, etc. But BOTH sides, when attempting to look beyond the bounds of the observable, are just making shit up. And that goes for the physicalists, here, too, not just you.
February 16, 2016 at 9:14 am (This post was last modified: February 16, 2016 at 9:33 am by I_am_not_mafia.)
(February 16, 2016 at 1:32 am)Harris Wrote: In short, all science is founded on the assumption that the physical universe is ordered and rational.
No it doesn't. 'Ordered' and 'rational' are concepts laden with connotations of intention and intelligence. Saying that the universe is rational is nonsensical. Only something with intelligence can be rational or irrational. The universe is not intelligent.
Science describes what happens based on observation and can use these descriptions to infer what will happen next. That is all.
The universe wasn't ordered moments after the big bang, it was just radiation.
What you find with non-equilibrium thermodynamics is that ordered islands of complexity can develop within a sea of chaos. Yet entropy continues to increase as a result of this.
(February 16, 2016 at 1:32 am)Harris Wrote: “If you equate the probability of the birth of a bacteria cell to chance assembly of its atoms, eternity will not suffice to produce one” Page 356, volume 2 A Guided Tour of the Living Cell Christian De Duve
Refuted a myriad times on this forum already. You are using a strawman argument. No one is arguing that a bacteria cell assembled its atoms merely by chance. You are looking at a bacteria cell now and assumed that it spontaneously came into existence. The first cells would have been more primitive and may not have reproduced.
The very word 'chance' is misleading. If you have a completely random process over aeons of time using a whole soup of chemicals then you will be exploring a search space. This means that any configuration that more effectively minimises free energy will be settled upon. In the same way that a crystal does not develops by a process of self organisation and not by chance. Yet each snow flake is unique.
(February 16, 2016 at 1:32 am)Harris Wrote: “A code system is always a result of a mental process (it requires an intelligent origin or inventor). It should be emphasised that matter as such is unable to generate any code. All experiences indicate that a thinking being voluntarily exercising his own free will, cognition, and creativity, to produce a code. There is no known law of nature, no known process, and no known sequence of events which can cause information by itself in matter.” Pages (64, 67, 79, and 107) “In The Beginning Was Information,” Dr. Werner Gritt, (information specialist)
Meaningless word salad. At best taken out of context. Code system? Also logically inconsistent. If a code system cannot be created without a mental process, then what created the initial mental process that created the code system? Did it not itself use a code system? And if not then why are you using the example of a code system (whatever one is).
This paragraph is laden with such ambiguous terms. For example, what exactly is free will? Are you talking about classical information or information in terms of quantum mechanics?
Your bullshit relies on equivocation and is disingenuous sleight of hand.
The response of Alex K. seems representative of the brute fact stance; physical laws describe the physical universe. No one suggests otherwise. He merely asserts that it is and ignores any proscriptive principles underlying our descriptions.
In his OP, Harris either forgets to mention or does not know that his position depends on making just this existential choice in favor of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PRS). Simply stated, the reason things happen as they do is because things happen for a reason. His detractors have made their choice in the other direction taking the natural order as either a brute fact or tacitly accepting the absurd. I have committed to the position that reality is intelligible and knowledge is possible for objective reasons that are not contingent on human perceptions. In another thread I summarized this position thus:
Quote: The underlying assumption of the scientific disciplines is that reality is intelligible. This is to say, cause-effect relationships happen consistently and things exhibit behaviors according to their natures. Science can discover the nature of particular beings, but science lacks the tools to ask about the nature of being itself. Science can discover the causal relationships between things, but it cannot account for why causality works. Generally people who say that only the finding of natural science qualify as knowledge adopt the following stances: 1) no knowable reason accounts for the consistency of cause-effect relationships & 2) no knowable reason accounts for some particular things having a general nature. To them, these are just brute facts contingent on nothing at all…This belief cannot be empirically validated using the tools of natural science. One can certainly take a pragmatic approach and say that facts are ultimately about what appears to work and whatever is happening below the surface doesn’t matter. That only allows for a weakly defined meaning of knowledge…
It is no wonder that Alex sees Harris’s elaborations of the first paragraph as ad hoc. By invoking the anthropic principle, Alex draws on a kind of Kantian idealism that severs the subjective human intellect from an objectively intelligible reality. According to this position , phenomena have no knowable relationship to nomena, even assuming that nomena of some kind exist. I take Kierkegaard’s “blind faith” as a powerful response to Kant (and by extension to Alex); rational people must live ‘as if’ reality is intelligible and knowledge can be attained, but reason can neither confirm nor deny why this should be so.
But the choice has consequences. When someone commits to an absurd reality, in which no reason connects how things appear with they actually are, he or she foregoes the ability engage productively with others over fundamental issues. To assert that the efficacy of reason is based entirely on an artifice is to say that knowledge cannot be trusted to inform any shared understandings on which most societies build its consensus about value, responsibility, identity and meaning.
I find it interesting that no one can express the natural order without invoking proscriptive principles. The human mind can no more conceive of physical reality apart from some imposing agency than it can conceive of a one-sided coin. Metaphors of governance and law necessarily imply a governing body that enforces those laws. Something actively constrains the actions of bodies and places limits on the nature of things. Some may see this as just be linguistic quirk. Others will see something fundamental like Aquinas’s 5th Way or some similar principle. Their perspective depends on whether or not they accept the implications of the PSR.
February 16, 2016 at 1:34 pm (This post was last modified: February 16, 2016 at 1:35 pm by Ben Davis.)
(February 16, 2016 at 12:29 pm)ChadWooters Wrote:
The response of Alex K. seems representative of the brute fact stance; physical laws describe the physical universe. No one suggests otherwise. He merely asserts that it is and ignores any proscriptive principles underlying our descriptions.
In his OP, Harris either forgets to mention or does not know that his position depends on making just this existential choice in favor of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PRS). Simply stated, the reason things happen as they do is because things happen for a reason. His detractors have made their choice in the other direction taking the natural order as either a brute fact or tacitly accepting the absurd. I have committed to the position that reality is intelligible and knowledge is possible for objective reasons that are not contingent on human perceptions. In another thread I summarized this position thus:
Quote: The underlying assumption of the scientific disciplines is that reality is intelligible. This is to say, cause-effect relationships happen consistently and things exhibit behaviors according to their natures. Science can discover the nature of particular beings, but science lacks the tools to ask about the nature of being itself. Science can discover the causal relationships between things, but it cannot account for why causality works. Generally people who say that only the finding of natural science qualify as knowledge adopt the following stances: 1) no knowable reason accounts for the consistency of cause-effect relationships & 2) no knowable reason accounts for some particular things having a general nature. To them, these are just brute facts contingent on nothing at all…This belief cannot be empirically validated using the tools of natural science. One can certainly take a pragmatic approach and say that facts are ultimately about what appears to work and whatever is happening below the surface doesn’t matter. That only allows for a weakly defined meaning of knowledge…
It is no wonder that Alex sees Harris’s elaborations of the first paragraph as ad hoc. By invoking the anthropic principle, Alex draws on a kind of Kantian idealism that severs the subjective human intellect from an objectively intelligible reality. According to this position , phenomena have no knowable relationship to nomena, even assuming that nomena of some kind exist. I take Kierkegaard’s “blind faith” as a powerful response to Kant (and by extension to Alex); rational people must live ‘as if’ reality is intelligible and knowledge can be attained, but reason can neither confirm nor deny why this should be so.
But the choice has consequences. When someone commits to an absurd reality, in which no reason connects how things appear with they actually are, he or she foregoes the ability engage productively with others over fundamental issues. To assert that the efficacy of reason is based entirely on an artifice is to say that knowledge cannot be trusted to inform any shared understandings on which most societies build its consensus about value, responsibility, identity and meaning.
I find it interesting that no one can express the natural order without invoking proscriptive principles. The human mind can no more conceive of physical reality apart from some imposing agency than it can conceive of a one-sided coin. Metaphors of governance and law necessarily imply a governing body that enforces those laws. Something actively constrains the actions of bodies and places limits on the nature of things. Some may see this as just be linguistic quirk. Others will see something fundamental like Aquinas’s 5th Way or some similar principle. Their perspective depends on whether or not they accept the implications of the PSR.
Ahh, the power of anthropomorphic personification.
The response of Alex K. seems representative of the brute fact stance; physical laws describe the physical universe. No one suggests otherwise. He merely asserts that it is and ignores any proscriptive principles underlying our descriptions.
In his OP, Harris either forgets to mention or does not know that his position depends on making just this existential choice in favor of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PRS). Simply stated, the reason things happen as they do is because things happen for a reason. His detractors have made their choice in the other direction taking the natural order as either a brute fact or tacitly accepting the absurd. I have committed to the position that reality is intelligible and knowledge is possible for objective reasons that are not contingent on human perceptions. In another thread I summarized this position thus:
It is no wonder that Alex sees Harris’s elaborations of the first paragraph as ad hoc. By invoking the anthropic principle, Alex draws on a kind of Kantian idealism that severs the subjective human intellect from an objectively intelligible reality. According to this position , phenomena have no knowable relationship to nomena, even assuming that nomena of some kind exist. I take Kierkegaard’s “blind faith” as a powerful response to Kant (and by extension to Alex); rational people must live ‘as if’ reality is intelligible and knowledge can be attained, but reason can neither confirm nor deny why this should be so.
But the choice has consequences. When someone commits to an absurd reality, in which no reason connects how things appear with they actually are, he or she foregoes the ability engage productively with others over fundamental issues. To assert that the efficacy of reason is based entirely on an artifice is to say that knowledge cannot be trusted to inform any shared understandings on which most societies build its consensus about value, responsibility, identity and meaning.
I find it interesting that no one can express the natural order without invoking proscriptive principles. The human mind can no more conceive of physical reality apart from some imposing agency than it can conceive of a one-sided coin. Metaphors of governance and law necessarily imply a governing body that enforces those laws. Something actively constrains the actions of bodies and places limits on the nature of things. Some may see this as just be linguistic quirk. Others will see something fundamental like Aquinas’s 5th Way or some similar principle. Their perspective depends on whether or not they accept the implications of the PSR.
Ahh, the power of anthropomorphic personification.
...and the failure of it.
I started reading a couple of sentences and realised that it was Chad Wooters so didn't bother continuing.
Two responses to Chad which are just ad hom-- not even ad hom, even, because an ad hom attack is still a kind of argument. But I think both Mathilda and Chad have put forward intelligent arguments.
February 16, 2016 at 6:47 pm (This post was last modified: February 16, 2016 at 6:52 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
Meh. The "argument" that Chad put forward is that human beings cannot conceive of reality without an imposing agency. That can't be true, since I and a great many others can conceive of -precisely- that. That no one could "express the natural order" without invoking "proscriptive principles". That can't be true either, since -all- of our declarations of the "natural order" are descriptive, rather than proscriptive........ in the first place. Metaphors imply -nothing-. Metaphors are narrative, not logical, devices.
You have low standards for intelligent argument Benny.
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