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Re: Intelligent Design vs. Darwin

I've been away from the computer over the weekend, but this is a pretty fascinating discussion.

Jamie Rose wrote:
There is confusion between why and how ; conflation of
actions/outcomes with 'purpose' (aka Aristotle's siblings
group of 'causes'). And all because we are driven to
understanding or to satisfaction with rationale, when
it comes to our awareness of life and being.

I think poor Aristotle had his methodology hijacked by the church, back a few centuries ago. I have a lot of respect for Thomas Aquinas and what he was able to achieve (in the 1200's, no less!) in making science OK in the eyes of the church, but one of the casualties has been Aristotle and particularly his fourth category of analysis of systems (Final Causation). Instead of being "Why does this system exist?" in a scientific sense, it became a question of religious import. Then the machine metaphor came along, with Descartes at the helm, in the 1600's and cemented the idea-- because all machines are created by an outside force, for various reasons pertaining to the source of creation (people... the literal clock-makers). So, if all systems are seen as being "just like machines" then Aristotle's fourth category of causation, when used as a mode of analysis of some natural system, like the universe itself, would bring us an answer pertaining to the proverbial "Clock-Maker" (God). Horrors!

I don't think that Aristotle can be blamed for all that. Obviously, my father didn't, either, because he settled on Aristotle's method as a far better means to arrive at useful information about natural systems than any that were developed by scientists/thinkers which came after him. It was untainted by politics, in its original form. So, Aristotle's Fourth category is merely a means to examine things like; where efficient cause is coming from.

Jamie Rose wrote:
I think that the 'reasoned conclusions' would be quite
different in a universe where we were sentient but never
died or ceased to exist 'as is'. No one would care about
the eternal questions because ther would be no pressure
'to find out before the ability to find out were taken away'.

I'm not so sure about that. I tend to think that just the opposite would be true. Because no matter how much one could learn, over the eons, there would still be unanswerable questions. Like Spock's assessment of V-ger in the first Star Trek movie: He said that V-ger has amassed all this knowledge and power and yet the consuming question that plagues him is one that logic cannot help answer. "Is this all that I am? Is there nothing more?"

I don't think death is the driver of such a "need to know"-- I think life is.

Judith

Web address: http://www.rosen-enterprises.com
BioTheory: An electronic journal of general science based on the Relational (Rosennean) Complexity Paradigm
On Nov 20, 2005, at 5:10 PM, James N Rose wrote:

David,

The way I see it is that we are products of the nature of
the intrinsic logic and performance potential of being.
RR and many of us realized that under neutral analysis
(if that be possible - and we hope/presume it is), that
several difficulties existed/exist in the current opinion
sets of humans trying to figure out the 'why' of existence.

There is confusion between why and how ; conflation of
actions/outcomes with 'purpose' (aka Aristotle's siblings
group of 'causes'). And all because we are driven to
understanding or to satisfaction with rationale, when
it comes to our awareness of life and being.

I think that the 'reasoned conclusions' would be quite
different in a universe where we were sentient but never
died or ceased to exist 'as is'. No one would care about
the eternal questions because ther would be no pressure
'to find out before the ability to find out were taken away'.

If you'll all excuse a sideways meandering of thought here
for a moment - if there is a god, and it were important for
created sentience to appreciate creation and the scope of being,
then extinction was/is a needed part of the scenario.

We seek 'immortality', but if immortality were all that there
were, what sentience would give a damn spending the time to
contemplate 'eternal' issues and values? None, I think.

Not that a 'rush to embrace death' is any logical conclusion to
this thought stream, but just like Doug Adam's one minute whale
in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, existence seems an awful
waste if insufficient contemplative time exists for any
creature capable of it.

And by extrapolation, it becomes dicey to glorify an afterlife
over life, because it puts life at self-risk from that idolation.

Heaven and afterlife are not just ideals in the sentimental sense,
but "idols" in the bibilical sense. And that deity warned humans
not to worship idols .. be they material -or- immaterial (note that
god never over-specified any distinction in that tract).

Don't worship 'images'. physical -or- mental

Just appreciate life - the BULK of the 10 commandments in that
particular religions group - and value existing in the etheric -
the REST of the commandments.

Explore being and all that it is and do it with an eye towards
knowing you're with companions and not egoistically alone.

Those of us doing that in an open and adventurous way tend
to see more distant horizons, appreciate relationships that
go beyond the near and the practiced. We respect order but
are refreshed by 'more'. And are definitely restless to not
stay pidgeon holed by other people's pronouncements that their
models of existence are ultimate and unquestionable.

RR was a premiere example of us. We are embarked on extending
the collateral challenge: finding the right words and concept
relations to have all time-subsequent worlds of people move
into this way of thinking - as a practiced way of life.

Which includes - 'knowing' the Rosenean (or similar) thoughtways
is one thing; pragmatically applying them is something else.

Otherwise, Rosenean wisdom will be useful only for historical
hindsight evaluation purposes. I presume there's more potential
in it than that. Projective planning in the ilk of Asimov's
Sheldon (Foundation Trilogy) is what we are capable of.

BUT ... and this is an -enormous- exclusion ... the E X P L I C I T
impication of Rosenean thought versus the clever but conventional
Asimovian version (and all other current conventional thinking,
(unfortunately)) is that living existence requires an openness
and -not- reductionist (completely closed/ordered) future states.

"Potential" is vaster and more self opportunistic than any
along-the-way evaluation of it. To pre-define the future is to
amputate potentials it just might be capable of, but which
reside just over the far side of a mind's prescience to appreciate.

Reductionism disvalues systems 'doing their thing'. And that is like
advocating selective systemic abortion for some premeditated sake.

Then again :-) natural selection culls systems -anyway-, so who's
to say my logic isn't misfounded. (lol)

Jamie