The opposition between dualism and monism is a false one. I've made clear enough that consciousness is the form of some physical entities. How does that fall into either dualist or monist metaphysical categories? Surely it's an alternative that recognizes the reality of consciousness while not attributing to it some special non-physical status or subsistence.

Now, you say that my view amounts to the view that everything is physical, just that some physical entities are also conscious. Well, uh, okay. If you want to call that monism, fine. Note that I've also said that for something to be physical is simply for something to be stuff-having, whatever the ultimate constituents of this stuff turn out to be.

Of course, you're coming along with some metaphysics where, apparently, there are beings that are not stuff-having, that they transcend such stuff. All you are asked to do at this point is actually establish the grounds for believing that there are any such beings. It simply doesn't suffice to make the assertion that consciousness is some non-stuff-having existent given the perfectly reasonable Aristotelian explanation I've given regarding the metaphysical status of consciousness.

You've come up with a new notion: that I am dualistic if I recognize that some entities are determined while others are free. That's a bizarre use of the concept of dualism, as there is no opposition (false or otherwise) being posed. It is not related to some physical/non-physical (false) opposition. Indeed, it's based on some very ordinary observation and understanding, not inventing categories out of thin air (like you've invented with the notion of the non-physical, something which we've never observed or known) and opposing them.

I maintain that your view is infected by scientism when you import notions from the physical sciences into your philosophy of mind. You maintain this unfounded view that things that the physical sciences (paradigmatically, physics itself) study are deterministic, and therefore that if something is physical it's deterministic. I trust that you do see the fallacy in argumentation here.

Near your closing you attribute to me the strange position that I have "faith" (!) that science will show that life, consciousness and volition are ultimately physical in origin. Uh, that's a distortion of what I said. I said that I have a good deal of confidence in the ability of science to one day be able to provide an explanation of the existence of these phenomena in terms of physical causes. But I've also made clear that science isn't going to encroach on what we as philosophers already know via ordinary observations: we already know that life, consciousness and volition are aspects of physical entities as form is to content, so this isn't even really any question. The question remaining is up to science, to provide some picture as to the how that this is so. You then come up with some kind of assertion -- an assertion of faith, it would appear -- that something about the "principles of irreducible complexity and specified complexity demonstrate that will not be the case." Strangely enough, I don't recall your actually providing an argument to this effect, but there is a further problem, namely, that such an argument probably appeals to some specialized field of the sciences that studies complex systems. I couldn't possibly begin to claim any expertise in these fields. Maybe you've got some argument as to how there is a compelling philosophical reason to rule out complexity as a product of natural forces operating deterministically (without some outside agency purposefully directing the process). I'm most leery of what might purport to be such a philosophical argument, but I am all ears, if it's actually philosophical and doesn't appeal to the authority of scientific theory. I note that you're already using some suspect language: "irreducible" complexity. I don't know how to interpret that as a philosopher; for starters, I don't see any reason to regard irreducible complexity as some obstable to the natural-determinist understanding.

BTW, I've heard the general gist of the "irreducible complexity" argument before, actually in one of my very first courses taken at a college. The prof. was Stephen C. Meyer. Perhaps you've heard of him? Much as I enjoyed taking his courses, I've had the impression that he and the other ID-folks haven't done too well to make inroads in the scientific-level debates. Philosophically, I have little to say in response to arguments that amount to, "This system is so vastly complex, it had to have had an intelligent designer." Philosophically, I don't deal in articles of faith.

Myself, I don't see the discussion necessarily at an end, though I definitely see the burden of argument squarely upon your position.

This is a third-person (since Bill has never engaged the substance of my posts to this thread) comment.

Bill writes, "perhaps what you mean by everything being physical, while acknowledging the non-deterministic nature of consciousness, is that the ultimate origin of everything is physical (or natural) as opposed to mental (or supernatural). That way you would be a dualist in your recognition of that some things are deterministic and others non-deterministic..."

Determinism and non-determinism arise from the operation of the same laws of nature, so this position is not in any meaningful sense dualistic.

"... but monist regarding origins. That's philosophically coherent..."

Necessarily coherent, because necessarily true. This is the only metaphysical position consistent with Objectivist epistemology (Objectivism's epistemological axioms won't fit on any other metaphysical foundation.)

Bill writes, "you have faith that science will show how life, consciousness, and volition are ultimately physical in origin. I've argued already that the principles of irreducible complexity and specified complexity demonstrate that will not be the case."

This is not faith. This is the only coherent conclusion that can be induced from available evidence. As for "irreducible complexity and specified complexity," those are not principles but unprincipled swindles. The fossil record shows how allegedly "irreducibly complex" systems, such as the inner ear, arise from simple (and completely understood in terms of genetic algorithms) evolutionary processes of assimilation and co-evolution.

Again I appreciate that you took the time to respond to my remarks.

However, I'm afraid that this discussion has become fruitless. You are knocking down a strawman when you attribute Cartesian dualism to me because I recognize consciousness is not physical because it does not function deterministically.

Furthermore, I don't know what to make of the fact that you agree that consciousness does not function this way, but claim that it is still physical -- yet you say you are not a monist. There are not a lot of choices here: Everything is physical or everything is mental (monism) or it's some mix of both (dualism).

The only way I can square what you've said is perhaps what you mean by everything being physical, while acknowledging the non-deterministic nature of consciousness, is that the ultimate origin of everything is physical (or natural) as opposed to mental (or supernatural). That way you would be a dualist in your recognition of that some things are deterministic and others non-deterministic, but monist regarding origins. That's philosophically coherent, though wrong.

Even if that is your position, there's no further purpose in discussing it. You've made it clear a few times now that you have faith that science will show how life, consciousness, and volition are ultimately physical in origin. I've argued already that the principles of irreducible complexity and specified complexity demonstrate that will not be the case.

So, Chris, we're at the end of our conversation. I found it worthwhile. Thanks for your time.

Regards, Bill

ergo writes:

Consciousness is NOT, and cannot be physical, unlike has been claimed by some here. Consciousness itself is not anything. Consciousness is merely an attribute of a thing, i.e, the brain. Consciousness is awareness, and as such, it is entirely what it consists of.

I wouldn't put it like that. I would say that consciousness is a faculty of awareness. It is the form of certain living organisms.

Consciousness is the contents of consciousness.

I don't think so. The content of my consciousness when I look at a cat is the cat. That doesn't mean that the cat is my consciousness or part of it. Rather, the form-content distinction comes in here: I am aware of the cat in a certain form. Lower animals are aware of reality (the content) in perceptual form; we are capable of awareness in conceptual form.

Thus, existence precedes consciousness because without entities, there would be no *content* of awareness. And if there are no contents of awareness, there is no awareness, i.e., there is no consciousness.

Well, that's a nice way of stating the axiomatic primacy of existence, but kind of getting off the beaten path of this discussion. The question had to do with physical or non-physical (and whether that's a proper way of framing the relevant distinction). You're onto the right path in saying that consciousness is an attribute of something, i.e., it's an attribute of us. (Not an attribute of the brain, of us. We are the conscious entity, not the brain. Did the ancients have much of any knowledge about entities such as brains? No, though they did have an everyday working knowledge of the nature of us.)

Further, determinism does not preclude volition and free will.

If determinism(1) means being necessitated to take one and only one act (and thereby the only possible act available to an entity) by causes from without, then it does preclude free will. Perhaps the question is what necessitates my taking this action and not that. In terms of the Objectivist-Aristotelian conception of causality, the cause would be me. If you define determinism(2) to mean that an entity necessitates its actions, well, then, I myself determined me to act in such and such a way, from causes entirely internal to my own being. That strikes me as a rather non-standard definition of determinism, which makes all these "free-will discussions" seem like lots and lots of clearing up of semantics, but not a lot besides such wanking. After all, any philosopher who understands anything already understands that we have free will, so what's the debate about? Whether free will is compatible with some definition we supply for "determinism"? Gee, really interesting.

Randomness and chaos precludes volition and free will. Humans, as volitional beings, are causal agents. But that does not mean that our act of choosing an action from a given set of actions is not deterministic. It is certainly NOT random or chaotic, but it can be deterministic.

Okay, though I don't know what point this would be a response to. Obviously the alternative to determinism (in the first sense) isn't randomness and chaos.

I submit that you're the one holding onto a false dichotomy. I don't know what you mean by "physical monism." I'm not denying the reality of consciousness, and we can make a distinction between existents that are conscious and those that are not. As ergo puts it, in perhaps the best way it might be put, consciousness is an aspect of some physical existents such that we can distinguish them from others. (As for the rest of ergo's post, I don't know how he/she is using the term "deterministic.")

Your false dichotomy is implied in the notion that unless we go about treating consciousness as something non-physical (whatever that's exactly supposed to mean), we're stuck with a scientistic understanding of consciousness. Uh, no. Science has its own domain by which it can study the phenomenon of consciousness. Philosophy has its own domain, that takes the reality of consciousness as an axiomatic given, and discovers the principles of consciousness, specifically human consciousness, in philosophical terms. That doesn't mean we make some jump to some mystical-level, non-scientific perspective on consciousness.

Now, since philosophy lays the groundwork for everything else, science can proceed properly only if it, also, takes the consciousness, including volitional consciousness, as a given. The rest, science is free to investigate and discover as it can on its terms. If science is capable of providing a fully physical reduction of the phenomenon of volition, then so be it. The philosophical domain remains unaffected, seeing as the philosophical domain takes the fact of our being volitional and says "So what now?" in the face of that. And hence are born the disciplines of epistemology and ethics.

What you seem to be implicitly doing, Bill, is demanding of philosophy something it can't deliver, and then posing scientism as the alternative to whatever strangeness you might be offering as an alternative. Already you've introduced your strangeness in the form of the claim that consciousness is non-physical, which reeks of Cartesian dualism despite your protestation. Once you do that, you've got the modern philosophy of mind all over again: the project of squaring a circle. You speak of "mind-body unity" but come at it wrong: assuming that they're somehow separate and distinct but somehow have managed to have been united in a certain way. Now, that's something that Rand never did. She didn't treat them as square and circle and then proceed to find some argument showing that they're actually together after all. But neither did she go the route of "monism" denying that consciousness is a specific kind of existent. (Note that I didn't say entity.) And there are all sorts of specific kinds of existent that, by virtue of that specificity, don't become non-physical.

So I don't know where this leaves you, Bill. You made the claim that consciousness is non-physical (and a non-physical entity at that), and that position is as good as dead in the water. And, now, it appears we get nothing more than stipulation that some phenomenon is non-deterministic then it's non-physical. Well, you offer something purporting to be a reason:

The difference is that I label the stuff that functions non-deterministically as non-physical for the reason that there is no explanation in terms of matter and mechanics for the cause and operation of such non-deterministic entities, namely consciousness.

Except that isn't a reason: it's an unfounded assertion. Who knows whether science has come to an explanation of the operations in terms of matter and mechanics. But what's the philosophical relevance whether it has or not? From our everyday timeless layperson philosophical standpoint, we know enough to know that we're physical beings who possess the faculty (or werewithal, or whatever term is appropriate) of volition. It would be unfounded for us from this perspective to say that there is no explanation of the workings of this faculty in terms of matter and mechanics. By the same token, contra the scientistics, there is the reality that whatever science discovers, the integrated unity of mind-body that is us exercises moral agency and responsibility.

I see nothing anywhere in here that makes this otherwise startling leap (not so startingly considering the state of modern philosophy, mind you, but otherwise quite bizarre) that now we're dealing with something non-physical "in" us. I can't read your comments any other way than some kind of assertion to a ghost-in-the-machine theory, which is dead-in-the-water Cartesianism. Except that this kind of leap and assertion has no basis in -- you guessed it! -- fact or observation. Or in any "aprioristic" philosophical reasoning. Descartes may have thought his aprioristic reasonings were sound, but that's only if he ignores Aristotle, whose own "aprioristic reasonings" about us as integrated soul-body substance make perfect sense.

Later in your posting you make a reference to scientism as the belief "that the only objective knowledge is that which is reducible to a falsifiable statement." That may well be the fundamental error in scientism, though it may also be a faulty modern understanding of scientific epistemology. Actually, what scientific method should enshrine in principle is a forbidding of the arbitrary to enter into consideration, i.e., any claim should be able to state the conditions under which it could be verified, not falsified. For instance, some cockamamie story of a resurrection would manage to conveniently elude any effort at actually being pinned down to stating the conditions and terms upon which it could be verified.

That leaves all kinds of things, not the domain of scientific method, per se, open to verification: namely, things like moral truths. You'll note that something that is true, be it a moral truth or a truth of any other sort, can't be falsified. That's quite plain and straightforward: if it's true, it can't be proven false. So what's all this about "falsifiable" claims being the only scientifically valid ones? I'm already suspicious about this when Popper seems to be the origin of this idea, and I never had the impression that Popper was some kind of modern Aristotelian. And there are ways of demonstrating moral truths that probably don't meet the test of "falsifiability" in any sense in contemporary scientific method. They can't be falsified if they're true; they can't be "tested" in the same way that scientific theories get tested. A scientistic will thereby dismiss moral claims as outside the domain of knowledge. But then again, is contemporary scientific method about knowledge, or is it about method? Even if it's about both, science doesn't get any footing without epistemology to set the terms.

All that said, let's take your statement:

Scientism is the belief that the only objective knowledge is that which is reducible to a falsifiable statement. Thus, the attraction of physical monism. That which is physical is that which we can have objective knowledge of through science (again broadly construed in the Quinean sense). So, if we are to have objective knowledge of consciousness, it must be physical -- even if we don't know how right now.

This doesn't apply to my, or Rand's, or an Aristotelian view. I say that we have objective knowledge about the nature of our consciousness; it is knowledge available to us as laypersons. However, it's you who seems to be bringing in the irrelevant-to-this-knowledge distinction between physical and non-physical. About the extent of what I've even said is that whatever is physical is whatever is stuff-having, and everything we know about is stuff-having, including us. Now, by us, I mean certain kinds of beings who are conscious and with volition. By us, I mean integrated beings of mind and body. Our volitional consciousness is our form or mode of existence. Now, true to my Aristotelian roots, I don't take form to be something separable from matter, or somehow "fused" with matter, the origin of said fusing being some kind of inpenetrably mysterious I-know-not-what. I take it as a ordinary observation that we are physical beings who exist in a certain form.

Now, you're the one who is somehow deriving from this some kind of duality between physicality and non-physicality, in order to "explain" the nature or activities of our consciousness. You seem most uncomfortable (should I call it the argument from uncomfortableness?) with the idea that I'm a stuff-having entity and that I needn't explain my volition via reference to some non-stuff-having entity residing "in" me somewhere (and that this distinct entity is the one doing the decision-making)? Except that the "me" that's doing the decision-making isn't some distinct entity (this Cartesian "I" or "mind," as it were) residing in my body, but, simply, me, in the very ordinary, everyday sense of the term. Sorry, Bill, if you're still uncomfortable with such ordinary understanding, my job as philosopher doesn't extend to resolving your uncomfortableness.

Consciousness is NOT, and cannot be physical, unlike has been claimed by some here. Consciousness itself is not anything. Consciousness is merely an attribute of a thing, i.e, the brain. Consciousness is awareness, and as such, it is entirely what it consists of. Consciousness is the contents of consciousness.
Thus, existence precedes consciousness because without entities, there would be no *content* of awareness. And if there are no contents of awareness, there is no awareness, i.e., there is no consciousness.

Further, determinism does not preclude volition and free will. Randomness and chaos precludes volition and free will. Humans, as volitional beings, are causal agents. But that does not mean that our act of choosing an action from a given set of actions is not deterministic. It is certainly NOT random or chaotic, but it can be deterministic.

Thanks for the response.

"There's nothing in the process of classification that requires any integration of all those particulars into a general conclusion that all (i.e., all physical, i.e., "stuff"-having) entities behave deterministically."

This makes my point. The difference is that I label the stuff that functions non-deterministically as non-physical for the reason that there is no explanation in terms of matter and mechanics for the cause and operation of such non-deterministic entities, namely consciousness.

You say that this lack of explanation is OK, because that ignorance does not preclude us from recognizing the non-deterministic nature of consciousness. Correct. However, you insist that consciousness must be physical because the alternative is Cartesian dualism.

Sorry, but Cartesian dualism is a host of errors to which physical monism is not the correction. You pose a false dichotomy. The reason you do, I believe (and by all means set me straight if I'm out in left field), is that you are making an epistemological error: Scientism.

Scientism is the belief that the only objective knowledge is that which is reducible to a falsifiable statement. Thus, the attraction of physical monism. That which is physical is that which we can have objective knowledge of through science (again broadly construed in the Quinean sense). So, if we are to have objective knowledge of consciousness, it must be physical -- even if we don't know how right now.

I see no reason to make that assumption about consciousness.

Regards, Bill

Chris - you write, "I thought you were the one that was saying that scientism was a dead issue after the '70s?"

As I wrote before: among intellectuals. Those whose attemps at intellectual life consist of reading secondary sources, particularly secondary sources from the 1970s and before, tend to get stuck. Bill here is a case in point...

In building artificial systems it is desirable to create systems whose behavior is completely predictable, and thus can be guaranteed to behave as desired. For this reason the physics that is taught to technicians tends to omit discussion of systems described by sets of non-linear equations with multiple solutions. Hence the popular but false notion that physical systems are unavoidably deterministic.

I thought you were the one that was saying that scientism was a dead issue after the '70s?

Physical science does indeed have its domain -- it's restricted to those entities we've observed and classified as behaving in predictable ways, as you say. (Even the wave function of QM is stable and predictible, if I understand right, whether or not you go the route of real ontological indeterminism there, vs. just kind of empirical predictive uncertainty, which seems to have been the favored answer by many Objectivists to QM weirdness. Thing is, the observed quantum weirdness and "indeterminacy" is consistent with both empirical-uncertainty as well as ontological-indeterminacy interpretations. Thing is, Oism needn't be troubled by ontological-indeterminacy given that it doesn't subscribe to determinism, hence its affirmation of volition. And yet, the QM wave functions can be predicted and mapped just fine. Not so with volitional human behavior.)

This thread is also instructive in that despite his stated Aristotelian and anti-scientistic commitments, Bill hasn't really properly integrated his Aristotelianism. The scientism and mind-body duality here are rationalistic -- in the Randian as well as Hayekian senses of the term. (The Hayekian sense is more a sub-category of rationalism in the broader sense uncovered at root by Rand/Peikoff. Keep in mind that Hayek uncovered the conceits of only some socialists and perhaps only partially at that. Hayek is useful but his usefulness is quite limited and rather easily and succinctly captured in a few basic points. Basically something like: "Intellectuals who think they know best how to construct a proper social order from the armchair are conceited." That's only one minor aspect of Rand's critique of socialism. Even if they were capable of so constructing society, what then for Hayek? Anyway, Hayek is useful in bringing to light a lot of scientistic thinking applied outside of the physical sciences, and damn near coined the term himself. Interesting that he's got arch-altruist Comte also pegged as a scientistic, though I rather doubt that Comte himself was particularly influential on our mainstream intellectuals.)

I have a straight-forward question for you. If consciousness is a physical phenomenon, then how does volition function non-deterministically?

This question presents a problem if we already accept that to be a physical being is to behave deterministically. (There's a whole sub-field of philosophical discourse on what exactly "behave deterministically" means. This hasn't been a particularly favored sub-field of discourse for me, and it probably stems from bad preconceptions brought to the debate that make it an issue at all in the first place, which are likely brought about by the tendency to think rationalistically and dualistically. I've yet to go through the process of untangling this sub-field and sweep out the specific misconceptions. But the whole sub-field strikes me as a big waste of time spent on pseudo-problems. I think "behave deterministically" in its intent is clear enough: that beings like us would be necessitated to behave in some way exclusively by causes external to us, rather than a moral agency internal to us that selects amongst genuine alternatives.) Here, I see an implicit premise that's unwarranted or yet to be argued for. And, frankly, I don't foresee any real argument for it forthcoming. It's basically an assumption that wouldn't ever get any grounding in anything we know via a proper logical process of thought. It's basically a rationalist point not grounded in any observation.

What we do observe, is entities behaving in certain ways, and we conceptually classify them accordingly. There's nothing in the process of classification that requires any integration of all those particulars into a general conclusion that all (i.e., all physical, i.e., "stuff"-having) entities behave deterministically. In fact, we know that can't be so, given the way that we observe entities like us behave, and given our own internal knowledge about our volition. Indeed, there's actually no other conclusion to reach based on such common-sensical observation: there are physical beings that behave non-deterministically. So your question simply flies in the face of this.

I would urge some premise-checking to figure out what led to your opposing your concepts the way you did. By what process of observation and integration of those observations could you have come to the view that to be a physical phenomenon is to be a deterministic one?

As to the how part, that's not a question for a philosopher qua philosopher to answer. It's simply an irreducible given that our volitional consciousness functions non-deterministically. But the philosopher can certainly question the unfounded assumption that consciousness is not inherently (or, rather, inherently not) an aspect of a physical system. In fact, a philosopher of an Aristotelian orientation simply has to challenge that assumption qua Aristotelian. Cartesian dualism got the modern philosophy of mind (and philosophy more broadly) off on a bad foot because of its very anti-Aristotelian, rationalistic assumptions.

(Did I mention that Hume, considered the arch-empiricist, is actually an arch-rationalist in the broader scheme? Tons of floating, unchecked-premise deductivism through and through, all with its implicit pretense to apodeictic certainty in form, whatever his famous denials of objective certainty in content. The analytical [read: rationalist] mainstream to this day still emulates Descartes in Hume in broad methdological terms.)

Bill asks, "If consciousness is a physical phenomenon, then how does volition function non-deterministically?"

Consciousness is an informational phenomenon. Because information exists only as attributes of mattergy, the relevant natural laws are those that describe interactions among attributes of different physical entities. The systems of equations that restrict the possible future values of those attributes are sometimes non-linear, and have multiple solutions.

In building artificial systems it is desirable to create systems whose behavior is completely predictable, and thus can be guaranteed to behave as desired. For this reason the physics that is taught to technicians tends to omit discussion of systems described by sets of non-linear equations with multiple solutions. Hence the popular but false notion that physical systems are unavoidably deterministic.

I have a straight-forward question for you. If consciousness is a physical phenomenon, then how does volition function non-deterministically?

Regards, Bill

I know you think you can read minds, even those thousands of miles away from you. However, there is a more likely explanation for not responding to you earlier.

You're a pathetic, self-pitying man who has twisted himself in ugly ways to rationalize his disgusting narcissism, such as your scapegoating of Christians as mass-murderers. I would no more engage you in a serious conversation than a Jew would a Nazi.

So pack up your filthly little thoughts and don't darken my doorway again.

Bill

The relation of mattergy to information and consciousness was addressed in the second posting on this thread. Until the last few postings Bill ignored that posting, in the sense of not reacting to it at all. Now Bill, in apparent hope that everyone has forgotten the facts in that posting by now, is flatly contradicting the laws of reality that I referred to. This is a dishonest technique of apologetics, and shows with clearly - as if it were not already obvious - that Bill does not seek truth, but is hoping for conversions, "by hook or by crook" - in this case, for conversions among readers with a short attention span.

The correlation of a non-physical entity -- e.g. consciousness [...]

Hold it right there! It's a dualist metaphysics that regards consciousness as non-physical. The only defining feature of consciousness metaphysically is that it is conscious of or about existence -- which doesn't preclude itself being a kind of physical phenomenon. It would simply be a kind of physical (whatever) that's conscious, that's all.

I know a large number of philosophers have trouble with that idea. Part of the problem is that a lot of them are working under the influence of Descartes, who got the whole discussion of the mind-body relation off on the wrong foot. The proper discussion begins with Aristotle, who viewed the relation between consciousness and a (conscious) material body as that of a type of relation between form and matter, a composite substance. Descartes treated them as separate substances.

To say that consciousness is the formal principle of a conscious entity is not to say that consciousness is non-physical -- quite the opposite, actually. And it deals efficiently with the supposed "problem of interaction (or causation)." A conscious act on our part is simply us -- as mind and matter operating in unison -- doing what we, as the kind of entity we are, do. There's nothing mysterious or problematic about this.

Already you got off on the wrong foot in this discussion with your implicit Cartesianism, which is more rationalism at work.

P.S. as reply to your second posting, Bill: How would consciousness, as formal attribute of a conscious entity, itself be an entity?

Chris,

When I speak of an entity, I speak of an existent which can be discussed in terms other than merely the quality of another existent. For example, a red rubber ball is an entity. The red color of the ball is not entity, but an existent, because it is comprehensible only as a quality of the ball. However, the rubber material of the ball can be discussed as an entity, because we discuss it in non-trivial terms as something other than a quality of the ball.

I raise this issue, because I think there's more than hair-splitting here if you insist that consciousness cannot be an entity as I have defined the word. To get to the point -- if you say that consciousness is only comprehensible as a quality of a live human body, that carries with it materialist implications. So I am interested to know if that is what you mean, or are we simply using different meanings for the word "entity".

Regards, Bill

Greg & Chris,

The correlation of a non-physical entity -- e.g. consciousness -- with a physical one -- a human body -- does not mean that one caused the other. The fact that their interaction affects each other is not evidence that one entity is caused by the other.

For example, there's a radio and a radiowave. They interact. The radio receives the wave, and music is emitted from the radio. The fact that their interaction produces a physical effect on the radio leaves no suggestion that the wave caused the radio or vice versa. Indeed, it tells us nothing about the cause of either. From their interaction alone, we cannot reduce a radio to radiowaves or a radiowave to radios.

The same is true of the physical changes of the body (such as the electro-chemical activity of the brain) and the thoughts in our consciousness that result from the interaction of the body and consciousness. This tells us nothing about the cause of either.

Regards, Bill

The existence of the phenomenon of volition is reducible to matter. Particular volitional acts, inasmuch as they might be uninterestingly said to reduce to matter, are reducible to moral agency (again, the existence of which is reducible to matter). Saying that we're material beings (i.e., integrated beings of mind and body) doesn't involve the denial of the reality of choice and responsibility. To say that it does would be a simplistic straw-man.

P.S. Life, consciousness and volition are not entities, as Bill erroneously claims. They are real phenomena, the existence of which are reducible to matter. When the scientists step in and give their explanation of things on their terms, they'll be more than happy to explain in evolutionary or whatever terms that volition arose due to its adaptive advantages. (It's scientistics, though, who'll try and run their experiments showing that particular acts of volition are just products of neural-electric discharges or whatnot; while a proper material reduction might simply be that the first physical manifestation of a volitional act is neuro-electrical discharge, the reality of moral agency is not erased in the slightest bit.)

P.P.S. Re: Bill's P.S. to Greg: Consciousness can cause physical entities -- i.e., can cause certain arrangments of matter to be materialized. It doesn't cause the "stuff" that is thus arranged.

Bill I never meant to imply that consciousness cannot cause mental entities. I mean that consciousness cannot create existence (as in matter).

All types of information (including thought and all forms of consciousness) has to take up some kind of physical space. There is no way around this fact. So the bottom line is that all things even your arbitrary thoughts of 'god' do exist in the physical world to the extent that this "information" is stored in your brain. This isn’t deduced from just "ordinary experience"; we’re talking about the known laws of physics here.

This in no way jeopardizes volition; it just means that you have to have a brain before you can make choices.

I agree that the primacy of existence is not trivial if it means primacy of matter. But what is the justification for the primacy of matter in light of the existence of life, consciousness, and volition?

Although ordinary experience shows a correlation between these non-physical entities and particular bits of matter, there is no evidence that matter causes them. Correlation, no matter how compelling, is not causation. The bottom line is that life, consciousness, and volition are not reducible to matter (as I take it you agree, Fred).

We know this, because if these entities were fundamentally physical then we could objectively identify them through measurement as we do matter and they would be subject to the physical laws of causation as matter is. So if matter cannot account for life, consciousness, and volition, the primacy of matter can be nothing more than an assumption – and a dubious one at that.

Regards, Bill

P.S. to Greg: Regarding knowledge, I don’t think that it is controversial among Objectivists that consciousness can cause mental entities which are just as real as physical entities.

Bill, of course "matter is prior to consciousness". Consciousness cannot exist on its own, independent of matter. You can't have consciousness floating around by itself as just consciousness without any material component. Our own consciousness is connected to our (material) brains. Granted, it is not equivalent to or the same as our brain (I'm not suggesting reductionism), but that doesn't mean that it can exist apart from the brain.

I do agree with you however that consciousness can bring knowledge into existence (and other creative works)but keep in mind that knowledge is *of the material world*. Even our knowledge of ourselves is ultimately knowledge of the physical world, as ultimately are all our thoughts.

As Ayn Rand said, consciousness must be consciousness of something. Consciousness cannot be conscious only of itself.

Bill I really don’t think it’s trivial at all. In fact if more people were aware of such a simple concept it would probably help solve a lot of issues in the world today.

As for consciousness bringing about knowledge I would say that the knowledge has always existed and consciousness discovered it not created it. Something like music or literature isn’t an example of consciousness creating existence either since it’s just new a arrangement of materiel that has always existed.

And it’s not that consciousness is "nothing" it’s that you don’t give it anywhere to exist. For consciousness (any consciousness) to be, it has to be somewhere and consciousness of something. So for something to possess identity it has to exist, therefore it’s no mere assumption that, "only that which is material (or correlated with it) can possess identity" it is a perceptually verifiable fact.

The only way I have seen you attempt to go around this problem is by splitting up the universe into two parts. One part your ‘god’ created and the other ‘part’ has always been here or is in another dimension or something (you don’t really talk much about the other part).

What you don’t seem to get is that even if there is one dimension or a million, they all sum up to a whole that we call existence. And existence exists.

The primacy of existence is true but trivial. Its primacy does not demonstrate that matter is prior to consciousness, or vice versa.

As for consciousness not bringing anything into existence, you overlook knowledge.

Finally, you state that "nothing" can bring anything into existence. Since when is consciousness nothing?

Regards, Bill

I can think of two indisputable reasons existence takes primacy over consciousness.

1. Consciousness has identity – it is consciousness of existence.

2. Consciousness has dependence – on its being to exist.

If you can even demonstrate the POSSIBILITY that existence finds its source in a form of consciousness, I’ll eat my hat.

No example of consciousness has ever demonstrated the ability to create existence; not because it has not been observed yet but because it is contrary to the nature of consciousness.

And to say that that something can possess identity without also being "material (or correlated with it)" further beggs the question of how "nothing" can exist in the first place?

Yes, Henry, that is the mantra.

What it reveals to me is an entrapment within a materialist frame of mind. While Objectivism is properly categorized as a naturalist, not a materialist, philosophy, I don't see how it escapes collapse into an essential materialism by precluding as objective knowledge the formal and final causes of an entity. (That is, as fundamental elements of its nature as opposed to elements subordinate to the material and efficient causes.)

For example, Objectivism declares that the primacy of consciousness is an error. Maybe it is, but what is the basis for that conclusion other than a materialist presumption? "Existence exists" doesn't get there, because consciousness exists. "A=A" doesn't hack it either, unless the question is begged by assuming only that which is material (or correlated with it) can possess identity -- a consequence of reducing objective knowledge to only the material and efficient causes of an entity.

It is one thing for an Objectivist to say that a materialist assumption makes more sense to him than the alternative. It is another to ignore that it is nothing more than an assumption upon which a belief (e.g., atheism) rests and so declare that the alternative (God exists) is irrational. The former is honest and the latter is self-delusion.

Regards, Bill

Hi, Henry.

It looks like I can surrender the honor of the skunk at the party to you. Thanks.

As for wasting my time, be assured I haven't. I'm not interested in converting anyone. My only hope is to relieve a little of the ignorance many Objectivists are laboring under (as I once did). Besides, encountering questions from bizarre angles provokes me to think more deeply about my beliefs. Furthermore, my big splash here was at the invitation of Linz to post an article on the subject.

That out of the way, you put your finger on something I want to take note of: "If most 'Objectivists' had any sense of proportion whatsoever, they'd admit that the issue is NOT whether the Government schools teach 'intelligent design' or Darwinism -- the issue is whether the Government schools are legitimate at all."

Excellent point, Henry. I've argued the same many a time. This demonstrates the obsession too many Objectivists have with what people think (those evil theists) rather than what they do (taxing us into oblivion for socialized education). It reveals a totalitarian cast of mind, which Kelly demonstrated by claiming I assaulted her by what I think.

Rand must be rolling over in her grave.

Regards, Bill

Since you asked for me so specially and so politely, how can I resist?

To an Objectivist, atheism is as "peripheral" as not believing in reincarnation, Ouija boards, or elves. However, the insistence that only reason can produce knowledge is as fundamental as anything in Objectivism.

And you miss the whole point of the argument. The universe -- containing as it does all causes and all effects -- cannot have a "cause." By our definition of things, this "universe" cannot be treated as just any old physical object -- there is nothing left over to be a "cause" of it -- we made sure of that by including everything, even the stuff we don't know about, in the concept "universe" -- except, of course, the thing you went to that argument trying to prove in the first place -- "God."

"What 'caused' everything?" is a nonsensical question.

Even so, being a "cause to the universe," even assuming you somehow got this idea to make sense to me, and even a "cause" that provides some artificial structure you might claim is there, doesn't get us anywhere near Christianity yet, does it? This "God," what is it, and how do we know? Why not sixteen or forty-seven gods? Why one, nice God? Why one with a purpose? Why not a series of finite and limited gods, procreating generation after generation of gods? Why not some evil gods and some good ones? Why not a committee of coldly logical gods (like Vulcans from Star Trek) working out a dispassionate calculus of death for us all? Why the one from the historically dubious Bible? Why immortal souls? Why heaven or hell except to assuage our own yearning for justice? (Somebody stop me!)

Which black hole of dishonesty did you crawl out of?

Wm

People laugh at "intelligent design" because of its mystical premises and unprovable claims. It fails both Rand's Razor ("name your irreducible axioms") and Occam's Razor ("All other things being equal, the simplest explanation should be given the most consideration.") Asking the question 'who designed the designer' gets us into one of those messy GEB style infinite recursion issues too.

Hat Tip to Luke Setzer

Wm

1. Y'ever notice that reflexive "atheists" don't bother, past a certain point of rehashing the same arguments over and over:

"But, if God made us, who made God????"
Good question. Do they ever pursue it? Nah.
"I don't want to discuss this stupid, boring, lame, evil topic with the stupid evading dissenter, because he's irrational anyway, so let's all just have "fun" with it! Yeah, baby -- anything you don't want to bother debating can be sent far, far away by just closing your eyes really tightly and mumbling "invisible pink unicorn, invisible pink unicorn!"
And besides, why debate with an irrational, evading scumbag?
It's much easier for the so-called "Objectivists" to lockstep along, chanting, "we're all independent, rational, productive achievers! That's why we debate Frank O'Connor's drinking problem."

Pitiful.

Hey, y'all -- let's shift the topic over to something vitally important like "Did Ayn Rand ever mistakenly scream out N.B.'s name while she and Frank O'connor were gettin' it on?" There's probably a footnote in her journals about that one.

(Let's go ask "Prince"-acutor Valliant!

Bill:
You shouldn't have even tried. This topic -- like a few others -- is just too sacrosanct to "Objectivists" to even be broached. Anything other than "preaching to the converted" is bound to fall on deaf ears, or at most to be met with the reflexive sort of denigration that happened here so far.

See, despite the absurd handwaving claims that "atheism is a peripheral issue" in Objectivist circles -- it's not. Notice, for example, the prominence of the following topics:

1. "intelligent design" (which is to be regarded NOT merely as an alternate theory, but as a disgusting sacrilege.) Any disputing -- or even hypothetical questioning of Darwinism (for example) here will be met with the sort of reflexive, incredulous snottiness that environmentalists direct toward those who dispute any aspect of the "global warming" theory.
If most "Objectivists" had any sense of proportion whatsoever, they'd admit that the issue is NOT whether the Government schools teach "intelligent design" or Darwinism -- the issue is whether the Government schools are legitimate at all.
But wait, Objectivists are all about rationality, right?
Sure. That's why Kelly Elmore went into that screed about you being a "dangerous person". Change "religion" to "the patriarchy" and you'll get something that resembles the inanity of your typical militant feminist screed. The a priori assumption is that "relgiions" are all the same, and that the only way one could come to defend a 'religious' idea is through intentional dishonesty, evasion, moral cowardice, or stupidity.
No debate is even possible between the two sides on this issue, because the majority side --- the "atheistic" and therefore presuptively 'rational' side -- already "knows" that your opposition is either because your stupid or evil.

If you dare dispute the pronouncements of so-called environmental "scientists" or even mention Halton Arp, your opponents are apt to call that "pseudoscience" and dismiss you a priori as a "crackpot".
Same deal here. No debate is even possible with the opposing side, because they are dedicated to the premise that you cannot have arrived at your belief in the Judeo-Christian God, except by means of "faith" (which Peikoff explicitly defines as "belief in absense of, or in contradiction of, evidence."
So, Bill, don't even waste your time. You'd have more chance of sucess in convincing an radical feminist lesbian member of "Earth Liberation Front" to embrace laissez-faire capitalism. (Which is to say, not much at all.)
Ciao, all -- let the reflexive cat-hissing begin.

Chris, I understand being busy. I look forward to your response.

Marcus, Please identify the "false dichotomy" I have posited between science and religion, unless you don't want to waste your time. You won't find it.

Robert, I note the laughter among your ranks. But I must say it strikes more as a Keating sneer of fearful ridicule than a Roarkian gusto of joy.

Regards, Bill

I do still have in mind to get to a response to your latest. I'm taking a brief break, as it were. Later.

...you have still not addressed the argument.

Have I forced you into an evasion?

You accepted a false dichotomy between various scientific theories and God as an explanation for your existence. Then, you believed that you had solved the dichotomy by equating the two together. Clever, but not in the least bit original. Just look up those dreamers, Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking, for example.

And I have to admit ... having a staggeringly high IQ and blazing typing speed, I really didn't waste much time with it.

Although I'm surprised no one said ...

The devil made me do it!

Mr. Tingley asks, "What's wrong with you? Why have you wasted any of your time making the assinine comments you have?"

I can only guess they've concluded that this thread is useless, and are trying to have a bit of fun, since there's nothing else of value to be gained.  Looking at the statements so far from this thread, seeing how half the compelling arguments have been missed, ignored or evaded, and adding the evidence from the Autonomist Forums, NoodleFood comments, and VulcanMercy websites, some folks have clearly concluded that no one's getting through to anyone, or changing anyone's mind here.

"Why have you wasted any of your time..."  Essentially to recover from the feeling that the actual discussion was the waste of time.

Lol, Joe, even if there were a hell...all the fun people would be there!

Bill, the truth is, there are some things I cannot make myself take seriously. And that includes "god or unicorns or leprecauns or gremlins, or whatever wild thing you've made up." (Thank you, Kelly!) I would no more argue against the existence of god than I would argue that black cats aren't unlucky, or that the moon isn't made of cheese.

Melissa

"I aim to misbehave."

Sometimes, I'm not addressing the person who started a thread. Sometimes I think they are evaders and nutcases and kind of boring. Sometimes I don't want to convince them; I only want to make fun of them. To quote my favorite literary heroine: "I do not laugh at what is wise and good. I laugh at folly and conceit, whims and inconsistencies." I'm glad that Melissa and Joe do that too.

So Bill, the point wasn't to make myself feel all atheistic in the face of your powerful arguments for god or unicorns or leprecauns or gremlins, or whatever wild thing you've made up. The point was to laugh at you (and my point earlier in the thread was to point out how truly bad this stuff is to the less judgemental on this forum).

Kelly

Say what you want amount mimes, but at least they're quiet. Hey Godboy, where do you stand on Hell? Got a reservation yet? I gave mine up years ago, no plans to reschedule. It's all yours.

Oh, Bill, you're right. We are all just closed-minded and ignorant. Instead of taking you seriously, and trying to argue you out of your self-delusion, we choose to be a bit silly, and brighten each others' days.

Shame on us.

I'm going to go pray for forgiveness...

Melissa

"Shiny. Let's be bad guys."

What's wrong with you? Why have you wasted any of your time making the assinine comments you have? They are utterly devoid of substance, except to make clear that you think I'm wrong -- in fact, evil, according to some of the more deluded among you.

Do you think I care? Who are you talking to? Each other? Are you so threatened by a contrary voice that you need to affirm to each other the validity of your beliefs? You know, you folks remind me more of a congregation of backwoods Bible-beaters damning the world outside than self-reliant, independent-minded men and women.

What a shame.

Regards, Bill

“...I can easily restate your argument: Everything with a beginning has a first cause. We are ignorant of the Universe's first cause. Therefore, it must be God.”

It appears I have reduced you to knocking down strawmen. I’m truly sorry for sinking you into such a wretched state.

Regards, Bill

... but at least you stepped up to the plate. So let me thank you for tackling all of the issues I raised. Now let me pay you the respect of not pulling punches and explain why I think you missed the mark.

To refute my Points #2 and #3, you began: “The universe has a history, i.e., a sequence of events caused by entities. As to the ‘universe having a structure,’ I simply point out what I mean by universe, ontologically speaking, namely: the sum of all entities.”

Yes, I know how you have been using the word “universe”. You know I have been using the word in another sense, as in an astronomical structure called the cosmos, which would be a subset of what you call the universe. You have argued that my use is incorrect because the cosmos has no structure, which you curiously supported with this analogy …

“All that we infer from [clusters and superclusters] moving apart is that they were once all together in some sense, in no more different way than that they're ‘together’ on that continuum akin to the entities on the surface of a sphere. That's about the best that we can understand the totality of these entities; do we treat the surface of a sphere as an entity?”

Yes we do if that sphere is the structure holding galactic clusters and superclusters in that arrangement. Of course, by my reckoning this structure would be one composed of space and time. You wrote, “Space and time are not irreducible existents”, so you appear to have categorically ruled out the possibility that spacetime is a “fabric”. Yet quantized space and time that can be twisted and stretched is a hypothesis that holds a tremendous power of explanation of how the cosmos evolved, and we have already obtained hard evidence of this possibility from mapping variations in the primordial cosmic background microwave radiation. Again a hypothesis is not a fact, but a judicious review of the facts points in my direction, not yours.

But I’m not sure if all this matters anyway. The issue for you does not seem to be metaphysics – i.e., whether or not the cosmos is temporally finite – but epistemological – i.e., we can’t know if it is. To wit, you state, “What we don't know, have never observed, etc., is the stuff of the cosmos never having been in existence ("never" in a temporal or a logical sense -- i.e., that its possible for it not to exist). That's just rationalistic hooey.”

How? By this rationale, I could not conclude that the United States had a beginning because it has always been around for as long as I existed. You then go on, “You're the one saying to base our ideas on observation of the facts.” Yes, that’s right. Our ideas are conclusions drawn from the facts. By its nature, a conclusion is provisional to the extent that there might exist a presently unknown fact that would refute it. That is why you are wrong when you say, “Citing the Big Bang theory as an authority on anything in philosophy is the very scientism you eschew, yes?” The Big Bang hypothesis (it’s not properly a theory) is a conclusion not a fact. It may be a sound conclusion, but there are limits to what we can claim to know in terms of science. Piling one hypothesis on top of other another does not result in scientific knowledge no matter how firm the factual foundation is. However, there is aesthetic knowledge with which we can apprehend a truth if not comprehend it with the certainty of science. I’ll further discussion of that when I address epistemology. Suffice it to say I am not in the grip of scientism because I take into account the facts, theories, and hypotheses of science.

Well, let’s wrap up this whole business of the universe as a structure as an entity … You concluded, “I pretty well knocked down your usage of it above to suggest time as having a ‘beginning’ even though a sphere surface doesn't.”

Well, Chris, you didn’t. Analogizing the four-dimensional spacetime of the cosmos with your three-dimensional sphere, I think you find this to be true: If I point a vector inside that sphere, say in the direction of the past, its intersection with the surface will mark the “beginning”. My Point #2, and so my Point #3, remain standing.

Let’s go onto to Point #4. Your argument against is: “The physical stuff of the universe, as far as I we could ever know, never ‘came from’ anywhere. We do irreducibly observe that there is stuff that takes on whatever arrangement it presently has. Arrangements go in and out of existence, but we note that different arrangements use the same stuff. I'll note that you're the one speaking of some (non-physical) entity that has no beginning and no cause, and not showing us it.”

Whoa! You can’t gripe about how I claim the cosmos is an entity because, by your lights, it is nothing but a collection of entities and then turn around assign the qualities of an entity to a collection you call the “physical stuff”. If you can talk about your “physical stuff” as having no beginning, then I can by your terms talk about the cosmos as having one. In any event, this is question-begging. The Big Bang hypothesis shows how all particles of matter and energy, the ultimate individual physical entities, had a beginning. The scientific evidence supports that conclusion. You haven’t addressed how that conclusion is wrong.

Now if your point is that particles come and go but the “meta-stuff” they are made of is an entity without cause, that’s an interesting idea, but where does it come from? Why isn’t this idea akin to the same idea that physicists are investigating that spacetime is the fabric of the cosmos? Whatever the case, how does it refute my statement that the cosmos had a beginning? There is no physical entity that you can identify that has no beginning, that has no cause. Of course, it is finite quality of physical entities that led me to consider a non-physical entity, namely life, as the uncaused cause of the cosmos. My Point #4 stands.

Onto Point #5. You said, “Actually, point #5 is the shining point of floating rationalism. Here, you jump back to eschewing scientific evidence and theory, which does happen to be coming to an understanding of life's origins. You're now the one saying, in all your rationalistic glory, that life can't be accounted for by non-life origins. Philosophy per se doesn't really speculate on the origins of life; qua philosophers we go on the same data-set that Aristotle did. Nowhere in that data-set does anything point to a divine Creator of life.”

Punt.

“But one thing we do seem to know with recent scientific knowledge is that the solar system and earth have a finite history, roughly five billion years' worth. Short of mysterious magical interventions that would defy all our common-sense experience, it's reasonable to conclude that by some process during that timespan, life emerged.”

Indeed, it did – on Earth.

“How that happened, is up to scientists to discover.”

If they can.

“I'm rather amazed that you say that science has not come up with a lick of evidence to account for life's emergence.”

Because scientists haven’t. If they have anything, I would love to know what it is, because it’s a fascinating subject.

“Not only have you not come up with a lick of evidence yourself that non-life accounts for it, my understanding is that science has been hard at work coming to a detailed accounting of the evidence. Sooner or later, it most likely will have a quite full and detailed picture that life emerged through wholly natural processes.”

I’m not sure why I’m supposed to come up with the evidence that non-life can beget life. It’s not the argument I’m making. Meanwhile, your faith in science is noted.

“Which [religionists] do seem to say anyway, but that makes their evolution-denial tactics quite disingenuous. And makes the magical-interventionist stories about virgin births and resurrections all that much more unreasonable on their face.”

All irrelevant regarding my Point #5. By the way, I find your easy stereotyping of the four or five billion people who are religious curious. What is the objective basis for saying all “religionists” do as you say they do? Never mind, I don’t want to get sidetracked on nonsense.

“Are you in denial that science has the wherewithal to come up with a most-reasonable story that in the space of five billion years, there are processes by which life emerged? Or that science is making at least baby steps in coming to the basics of this story?”

You have not made the case that non-life begets life is the “most-reasonable story”. All you’ve done is a lot of hand-waving and question-begging. You simply assume that it must be so, therefore science will eventually determine that. That’s rationalism.

“Quite some tall order you got there. Not quite as tall as an order to provide a philosophical ontology that would explain the existence of a God, but still. Interesting that you place the onus upon philosophical ontologists to come up with a proof about life's origins.”

That’s rich, Chris. My Point #5 is dismissed out of hand because of the assumption that life must have had physical origins, and I’m the one out-of-bounds for noting the complete absence of evidence in that regard. Besides, I didn’t ask for proof. I asked for a philosophical rationale.

To sum up, as noted at the outset, you’ve punted on this one. My Point #5 stands.

“What would Aristotle be able to do in the face of such a request?”

Think for himself, as we should do.

Regards, Bill

"I nominate this thread "Most uninentionally entertaining thread on SOLO.""

I second!

Melissa

"Shiny. Let's be bad guys."

Christianity in a nutshell: Some guy dies, a few townsfolk claim to see his zombie, so now we are supposed to feast on his corpse every Sunday.

Watching a Christian try to hide the fact that the resurrection/eucharist nonsense is basically the plot of a George Romero movie is alway entertaining. I nominate this thread "Most uninentionally entertaining thread on SOLO."

- Mike

"Observe that we are tolerant, but only of honesty, not of evasion." - Ayn Rand

Could you imagine arguing with a crazy mime? Trying to have a discussion with a man unwilling to use intelligible speech who is also crazy? Come to think of it, it would be very much like arguing with a christian!

Melissa

"Shiny. Let's be bad guys."

Mimes ... heh ... I feel better already! 

I always thought it was crazy man, but Crazy Mime does have a certain charm...either way, better to argue with a crazy mime than a Christian...

You might also learn that, at least according to Mr. Tingley, humans choosing to live as animals, tyrants, or criminals are quite able to live, and live well, be comfortable, and die peacefully.

News to me - somehow, (I thought) I'd rationally determined that such choices lead to both existential and psychological disaster, and, at a minimum, unthinking brutes or exploiters were necessarily tortured souls.  Shows how much I know.

Melissa states the claim: "This is not merely an honest mistake in premises, and doesn't merit your excellent arguments. It is a deliberate evasion of reality, evil compounded by the fact that Bill claims Rand led him to it..."

Right you are.  But "b - b - b - baby, you just ain't seen n - n - n - nuthin' yet!"

Have you been to Mr. Tingley's home yet? 

Home page, that is.

Ok, I just looked it up. It's "crazy mind."

I've been singing it wrong my entire life!

Though, I do like my version better...it's got imagery.

Melissa

"Shiny. Let's be bad guys."

"Crazy mime?" So that's what he was singing?

Come on, why are you guys still arguing with Bill? He clearly has a higher truth being whispered into his ears by his god, and no use for logic or rationality.

If he has already decided to turn off his brain to the extent of becoming a good little catholic...(Not just a deist, or agnostic, but CATHOLIC)...can you really truly expect to change his mind?

This is not merely an honest mistake in premises, and doesn't merit your excellent arguments. It is a deliberate evasion of reality, evil compounded by the fact that Bill claims Rand led him to it.

How does that song go? "You should never argue with a crazy mime..."

Melissa

Yes - Bill asks us how life could have arisen from non-life.  Ask scientists, who will answer, "We're working on it, and we'll get back to you on that."  But that's unacceptable to Bill, who prefers "God did it."  If WE ask "how" God did it, all we can ever get is a "somehow."

Why is it that the religionist demands an explanation for how life emerged - questioning specifically how it could come from purely physical causes - but the same question isn't asked of God?

God is the explanation for everything.

But God requires no explanation.

Bill:

The latter universe (which I will call “the cosmos” from now on) is not co-extensive with the former. Chris argues that it is, because the cosmos has no history and no structure.

I said nothing of the sort. The universe has a history, i.e., a sequence of events caused by entities. As to the "universe having a structure," I simply point out what I mean by universe, ontologically speaking, namely: the sum of all entities. Cosmology is a study into the specific nature of these entities and their interrelationships.

Well, what can I say? The history of the cosmos is painted in the sky. Its evolution can be charted in time almost back to the Big Bang.

Uh, see, this is where rationalism and empiricism are used together to create a pretty bad ontology and epistemology, mixing and matching categories that are not observed/induced but deduced out of thin air. What we observe are entities -- and the largest structures or superstructures we observe are galaxy superclusters -- and its only these things that behave and evolve in certain observed ways. The error is treating these altogether and the space-time structure that their existence makes possible as a big, single, self-subsistent entity. All that we infer from their moving apart is that they were once all together in some sense, in no more different way than that they're "together" on that continuum akin to the entities on the surface of a sphere. That's about the best that we can understand the totality of these entities; do we treat the surface of a sphere as an entity?

Whether that event is temporally bounded or unbounded, the duration of the cosmos is finite in that direction (in the similar way that the surface of sphere is spatially unbounded but finite).

So what would that mean? If space is unbounded, it doesn't have a "beginning or end" despite its finitude.

You may have guessed that there is already the unwarranted suggestion that space itself can be spoken of as some kind of entity, that can be regarded as "finite." Already I slipped into that usage before I caught myself just now. Speaking of extents to space and time is already treading on thin ontological and epistemological ice. All that there irreducibly are, are entities (stuff arranged in certain ways). Space and time are not irreducible existents. So already you're speaking about space and time in unwarranted ways.

What we don't know, have never observed, etc., is the stuff of the cosmos never having been in existence ("never" in a temporal or a logical sense -- i.e., that its possible for it not to exist). That's just rationalistic hooey. You're the one saying to base our ideas on observation of the facts. Well, that's exactly what I'm doing, and I'm speaking of the universe as a philosopher in the only sense in which one can speak of the universe. The rest I leave to cosmologist, but the Big Bang theory is not going to tell us things that we don't know about the universe qua philosophers (ontologists). Citing the Big Bang theory as an authority on anything in philosophy is the very scientism you eschew, yes?

The principles were already discovered in Aristotle's day, well before anyone knew anything about galaxies. You and I both would do well to stick to the subject where we're actually in our element, as general laypersons. The layperson-level knowledge of current cosmological theory is only as some empirical fill-in; already the best we can do as laymen is liken cosmological language of finitude and unboundedness to a three-dimensional sphere. And I pretty well knocked down your usage of it above to suggest time as having a "beginning" even though a sphere surface doesn't.

This all serves as effective response to what you wrote next:

As for naysaying that the cosmos has any structure, so does not constitute an entity, and so I cannot properly speak of it as having a beginning, this is contradicted by both the standard model of the Big Bang and inflation cosmology. Furthermore, string hypothesis offers some interesting ideas as how that structure may be the same in form if not scale as the fundamental constituents of matter and energy. Of course, hypotheses are not facts, but all of the evidence points to a structure of the cosmos, not against it.

You continue:

And the facts are what we must deal with. I noted the guffawing about my Points #4 and #5.

Actually, point #5 is the shining point of floating rationalism. Here, you jump back to eschewing scientific evidence and theory, which does happen to be coming to an understanding of life's origins. You're now the one saying, in all your rationalistic glory, that life can't be accounted for by non-life origins. Philosophy per se doesn't really speculate on the origins of life; qua philosophers we go on the same data-set that Aristotle did. Nowhere in that data-set does anything point to a divine Creator of life.

I also noted no one citing a single fact to refute them. Show me a physical entity that has no beginning or has no cause. Where is it?

The physical stuff of the universe, as far as I we could ever know, never "came from" anywhere. We do irreducibly observe that there is stuff that takes on whatever arrangement it presently has. Arrangements go in and out of existence, but we note that different arrangements use the same stuff. I'll note that you're the one speaking of some (non-physical) entity that has no beginning and no cause, and not showing us it.

And do the same regarding Point #5. Show me the evidence that life can spring from non-life. Show me how it has physical origins. Well, we all know there isn’t a lick of scientific evidence for this, but maybe we just haven’t found it yet. In that case, make the philosophical argument that life must have had physical origins. Explain the ontology of matter and mechanics that identifies the latent life-bearing qualities of physical entities. Absent that, what argument is there to refute my statement, well-grounded in fact, that only life begets life? Please show me that you have something more than a rationalistic belief that non-life can beget life.

Well, I've already mentioned that qua philosophers we don't make the argument that life as such (not just individual lives) must have had physical origins. But one thing we do seem to know with recent scientific knowledge is that the solar system and earth have a finite history, roughly five billion years' worth. Short of mysterious magical interventions that would defy all our common-sense experience, it's reasonable to conclude that by some process during that timespan, life emerged. How that happened, is up to scientists to discover. I'm rather amazed that you say that science has not come up with a lick of evidence to account for life's emergence. Not only have you not come up with a lick of evidence yourself that non-life accounts for it, my understanding is that science has been hard at work coming to a detailed accounting of the evidence. Sooner or later, it most likely will have a quite full and detailed picture that life emerged through wholly natural processes.

That would be consistent with a minimal theistic or deistic picture of the universe, which is about what the religionists (well, more broadly speaking, theists as such) would have to fall back on at that point. You know, the God that would have set the universe in motion in such a way and with such physical laws that life could emerge unaided by supernatural magic. In fact, I'm surprised that religionists don't stop being in this fucking denial-mode about life's origins and hedge their bets against science providing the story, and say that whatever God is, It is in the realm insulated from natural scientific knowledge. Which they do seem to say anyway, but that makes their evolution-denial tactics quite disingenuous. And makes the magical-interventionist stories about virgin births and resurrections all that much more unreasonable on their face.

Are you in denial that science has the wherewithal to come up with a most-reasonable story that in the space of five billion years, there are processes by which life emerged? Or that science is making at least baby steps in coming to the basics of this story?

To re-quote you:

In that case, make the philosophical argument that life must have had physical origins. Explain the ontology of matter and mechanics that identifies the latent life-bearing qualities of physical entities.

Quite some tall order you got there. Not quite as tall as an order to provide a philosophical ontology that would explain the existence of a God, but still. Interesting that you place the onus upon philosophical ontologists to come up with a proof about life's origins. What would Aristotle be able to do in the face of such a request?

...I can easily restate your argument:

"Everything with a beginning has a first cause. We are ignorant of the Universe's first cause. Therefore, it must be God."

My objection is still valid. This is not a proof, merely a statement of ignorance.

Human beings want to know everything - which is a good thing. Unfortunately, in their desire to know about everything, mystics has easily fooled them into believing that there is a quick fix - by just inventing the details (i.e. God) - and putting them beyond reason.

It is a quick fix, but it limits man's capacity to reason based on evidence. So, ultimately - belief in a God, is destructive and anti-mind.

Bill if I understand you correctly, in your version of creation 'god' did not create existence (the concept that subsumes all other concepts) just the universe?

I see "universe" and "exitence" as the exact same thing. How are they different? How is the cosmos something different than all that exists? I don't follow you.

Gentlemen,

You’re doing a fine job of knocking down strawmen. Much of your philosophizing about the universe being causeless I agree with, because you are using the definition of “universe” that means all of existence. However, I am not arguing about the cause of that universe. As I have stated a number of times now, I am using another common definition of “universe”. The cosmos. The astronomical structure that came into being with the Big Bang. The expanding bubble of spacetime we exist within.

The latter universe (which I will call “the cosmos” from now on) is not co-extensive with the former. Chris argues that it is, because the cosmos has no history and no structure. Well, what can I say? The history of the cosmos is painted in the sky. Its evolution can be charted in time almost back to the Big Bang. Whether that event is temporally bounded or unbounded, the duration of the cosmos is finite in that direction (in the similar way that the surface of sphere is spatially unbounded but finite). So it does make sense, from our interior perspective of the cosmos, to speak of its finite duration – i.e., beginning.

As for naysaying that the cosmos has any structure, so does not constitute an entity, and so I cannot properly speak of it as having a beginning, this is contradicted by both the standard model of the Big Bang and inflation cosmology. Furthermore, string hypothesis offers some interesting ideas as how that structure may be the same in form if not scale as the fundamental constituents of matter and energy. Of course, hypotheses are not facts, but all of the evidence points to a structure of the cosmos, not against it.

And the facts are what we must deal with. I noted the guffawing about my Points #4 and #5. I also noted no one citing a single fact to refute them. Show me a physical entity that has no beginning or has no cause. Where is it? At least show me from what we know about physical entities that we can reasonably conclude that one should exist under certain circumstances. Do that, and then we can talk about whether Point #4 is pure rationalism.

And do the same regarding Point #5. Show me the evidence that life can spring from non-life. Show me how it has physical origins. Well, we all know there isn’t a lick of scientific evidence for this, but maybe we just haven’t found it yet. In that case, make the philosophical argument that life must have had physical origins. Explain the ontology of matter and mechanics that identifies the latent life-bearing qualities of physical entities. Absent that, what argument is there to refute my statement, well-grounded in fact, that only life begets life? Please show me that you have something more than a rationalistic belief that non-life can beget life.

Regards, Bill

I took your question seriously and did not ignore it. I believe I answered it in my "Getting Down to Business" post this morning. However, if you are asking about the epistemology of my belief, I will address that in a similar post later on. As I am a one-man show here, your patience will be appreciated.

Regards, Bill

There's one other thought, that you no doubt have also heard many times before. Explanation via gods doesn't add anything to our understanding. To explain means to identify the attributes, actions, etc that produced entity or situation x. Simply to say 'god caused it' explains nothing. Even if one were to accept that empty statement, the task of identifying the specifics still remains.

That's another one. Bringing in God as an explanation for the "origins" of the universe explains nothing at all. In a rational metaphysics, the existence of things is taken a given, not anything requiring some "explanation." Occam's Razor applies here, yes?

Boy, this is good stuff. Your turn:

Physical entities are all "caused," so the only way to avoid an infinite regress is a cause "not physical" -- and that's all we get to know about it, I guess.

Nice how a rationalist can paint himself into these corners. We want to avoid the problem of infinity, though the non-physical "cause" is an infinite Being. All causes must be physical -- except for the cause which isn't physical (though we shouldn't even call it a "cause" -- more like a non-cause, which must exist on the basis of there being causes, i.e., another argument from a positive to a negative). Etc. ad nauseum.

Please answer my question about how you "know" about god existing outside the universe etc.

Jump in here a sec, if I will? Thanks.

I can imagine an argument for the existence of God that runs along lines similar to the argument for the Existentialists' Naught. Basically, God is all these kinds of things that we do NOT observe in reality. God is that which is NOT finite. God is that which is NOT spatial or temporal. God is that which is NOT stuff organized in a certain way. By limiting the and establishing as definite the nature of that which we know, we have also at the same time come to a realization (i.e., knowledge) of what the things we know are NOT. That knowledge is knowledge of God.

It's a nice argument, quite elegant in form. It moves in essence from what we do know as proof for what we don't know. E.g.: We do know about things that are stuff arranged in a certain way. Therefore, there must be something that isn't stuff so arranged. We see stuff being formed from without, so there must be something that isn't formed from without. We see stuff that doesn't meet the definition of perfection along some dimension, so there must be something that meets that definition along all dimensions. And so on. Has about all the rationalistic rigor of Anselm's argument from conception.

Of course, much of what I've been addressing, and Chris too, Mr. Weiss answered it way back at post 91 ...

"it takes a creator to create creators like us."
Wow, what must it take then to create a creator who creates creators?
"[1] All that begins has a cause."
True, but did all that exist begin? Did your creator, for example, begin?
"unless an entity is eternal"
Exactly

As to Fred's question, "If everything must have a beginning what begins the begin?", the answer is clearly: 

Cole Porter!

If everything must have a beginning what begins the begin?

It's a good question, though note that part of Bill's argument -- and it's standard theological stuff -- is that God is external to space and time. It's basically by definitional fiat that God is such that He has no beginning, else it creates that regress, and the buck has got to stop somewhere.

Thing is, when you place temporality, causes, etc. in their proper perspective, what Bill and religionists want to say about God can be said about the universe (the one the specific nature of which is studied by cosmology, the term-setter for that endeavor being ontology, which recognizes that the universe itself is not an entity but the sum of all entities, and so the study of the universe, philosophically speaking, is a study of entities, such as galaxies that are in motion with respect to one another). Properly understood, the universe is not "in" space and time; as a whole it is "out of" space and time, eternal and uncreated. I think that religionists may have a psychological hang-up, though, about the notion of the eternally-existent not being a conscious, purposeful Being. Hence their poetic language about a Godless universe being empty and devoid of meaning. That's more a personal confession than a philosophical argument.

While rationalism (neat-sounding deductions inside our pretty heads) is inappropriate to metaphysics, it's empiricistic and scientistic to invoke cosmology, Big Bang theories, and such. There are ontological principles of Being that can be drawn (not deduced in our heads, but reasoned out from experience) irrespective of the state of scientific knowledge. The Objectivist view on these things is firmly Aristotelian. Regarding space and time, we don't say anything more about the universe than that space and time are within the universe; the universe itself is atemporal, and so to speak of it "beginning" is literally referentless; it makes no sense to us. It's inappopriate to do cosmologizing to speculate on the history of the universe. One of the things I have the creeping feeling that Kant was actually right about, was our inability to do "rational cosmology". In his lectures you have Leonard Peikoff saying things that suggest an "infinite" past, being that the universe is eternal and uncreated, impossible for it to have come into existence or to go out of existence. But -- dare I say it -- the "infinite past" interpretation would be rationalistic, since it doesn't take adequate account of how we actually think about and derive the concept of time. Time is something like a relational concept; we use it to objectively mentally order events. The question that a rationalist-cosmologist would raise is, "Has there been an infinite sequence of events?" But that question doesn't make sense, because infinity is only a potentiality. You could just as well get Zeno right in here and tell us that an infinity of events occurs every split second even with the motion of a single entity, so of course there are actual infinities. (One side-effect of this is to place "infinity" within the universe, BTW. Gee, what happened to God being the only infinite Being?) I submit that these kinds of rationalists are mixing categories, applying concepts to time and events that simply aren't inapplicable. Consider that the most irreducible metaphysical unit isn't an event, but an entity. All there are are entities doing this and that. That's what we observe in reality, and it's what our concept of time reduces to in reality. Here is where Kant goes screwy and concludes unwarranted things. The argument up to then was that we can conceive neither of a finite nor and infinite extent to space and time. That looks very good, though I think it can be deceiving. You've got to remember that Kant treats space and time as forms of intuition as apriori necessary conditions for our constituting objects of experience -- such simple irreducibles as entities. Rand/Aristotle don't proceed from this kind of viewpoint. The best I could do at this point is to say that time is tricky, but space is clearly explicable enough as finite, and cosmological models of the universe I believe simply have to accept that. In the language of scientists, they seem to accept a view of the universe as "finite and unbounded," and the best they can do to explain it to the layman is to make an anology to the finite but unbounded surface of a sphere. The best explanation of time (well, the history of entities causing events) may well be just like this, whatever exactly that would mean or could be analogized to. In any event, it has to be noted that neither so-called "finite past" nor so-called "infinite past" accounts of the universe's history has any room in it for the notion of the universe "beginning." It simply has no referent, for the simple reason that the universe is nothing more than the sum of finite individual existents or entities. Scientifically, we come to understand the formal characteristics of entities as functions of an arrangement of some irreducible particle(. In Aristotelian philosophical parlance, we might refer to this as the prime matter -- and from all I've heard, Aristotle didn't assert that this matter goes into or out of existence; rather it simply is the "stuff" of existence. Philosophically, this isn't materialism; it's simply "stuffism." There's just stuff that takes on certain form, doing this and that. Suitably general and true, and based on what we actually observe with our senses. Long story short, the notion of the universe having a "beginning" has no rational grounds. It's illicit scientistic cosmologizing. Even the right-thinking cosmologists who advance a Big Bang theory can't rightly speak of it as the "beginning of the universe," as the term "beginning" implies temporality, something "prior" to it, which makes no sense as applied to the universe. The best that the Big Bang could establish is that it's the beginning of an elastic-space expansion of the universe (again, space being conceptualized as finite but unbounded, requiring no "void into which it expands"). So what Kant actually only ended up proving is the twittery of rationalists who think they can deduce the nature of space-time, when our answer is implied in and reducible to what's right before our eyes.

Whew. That paragraph (too hurried to figure out the right places to break -- sorry!) did eventually come to an end. See, no actual infinities! Could it be a SOLO-record-setter, though?

And 'god' just has it out for ugly folk, especially retards.

In deducing in my the confines of my happy little head what Bill's Argument from Beauty might look like, the following occurred to me as I was listening to Beethoven's Sixth yet again (this time the lauded '71 Karl Bohm recording). Something like this: Beauty signifies perfection. Nature on its own is just matter in motion and teleologically directionless, and wouldn't have the iniative power to create perfection. Ergo, tah dah!

The Anne Hathaways and Kate Beckinsales are just too damn perfect-looking for nature to have created them on its own. Something's gotta be behind it, just gotta be. Couldn't be no "accident."

[General point about beauty, in this deduction: for there to be an object of beauty or perfection, there must have been a conscious creator of it. In art, the creator is the artist, e.g. Beethoven. Random notes were arranged by him in just the right way. In nature, the creator has a capital C.]

Bill, I've gotta congratulate you. Wow, just look at all those deductions you're pulling off in the confines of your own head. In an advanced school for rationalists, you'd be an easy Ph.D. candidate, at least.

Bill,

You're right, I didn't offer an argument. My very first sentence indicated I wasn't going to. Instead I just had a few comments and a couple of questions.

But consider this argument.

Your argument relies on an ambiguity in the logical quantifier 'all'.

The beginning of each physical entitiy (and non-physical 'entity', too for that matter, if one thinks of some relations, processes, etc as non-physical) has a cause. But the cause of each of those is SOME OTHER existing physical entity.

One can not logically move from that to the assertion that the set as a whole has a cause outside the set.

This is only an infinite regression in the sense that the set is very large and we can't enumerate the very long causal chain for each member of the set.

But the reason I very likely won't spend much time dissecting your arguments is that I'm very rapidly moving to the conclusion that no argument whatever would cause you to change your position. You're an intelligent, well-read man and I strongly suspect you've heard it all before. If you're not persuaded of the errors contained in them, it's highly unlikely anything I say would change your mind.

If you're interested, you might pick up a copy of Branden's Basic Principles of Objectivism (Lecture 4, if memory serves) and a copy of Piekoff's Master's thesis. The latter is readily obtainable through NYU, I believe.

There's one other thought, that you no doubt have also heard many times before. Explanation via gods doesn't add anything to our understanding. To explain means to identify the attributes, actions, etc that produced entity or situation x. Simply to say 'god caused it' explains nothing. Even if one were to accept that empty statement, the task of identifying the specifics still remains.

I'm fairly familiar with the history of Philosophy, but I confess I've never heard of 'scientism' before. If this be scientism, make the most of it.

My personal favorite, #4:

"The cause of the universe was not physical. By physical I mean that which is reducible to matter and mechanics. I concluded this first by applying Occam’s Razor to eliminate inconsistencies in what constitutes the physical. All experience shows that everything that is physical had a beginning, therefore had a cause. If the universe was caused by a physical entity, then that entity must have also had a cause. From here we either embark upon an infinite regression or conclude that there exists a physical entity, unlike any other physical entity, that has no cause. In fact, an infinite regression amounts to the same thing, a causeless system of physical entities. Therefore, the belief that the universe had a physical cause requires the belief that physical entities have one of two distinct natures, caused and uncaused. As there is no evidence whatsoever of an uncaused physical entity, I used Occam’s Razor to eliminate that as the cause of our universe."

Physical entities are all "caused," so the only way to avoid an infinite regress is a cause "not physical" -- and that's all we get to know about it, I guess.

Occam's Razor shaves us a thick supernatural beard, see?

If you cannot perceive it, then on what basis do you accept such claims as knowledge of reality?

"Please answer my question about how you "know" about god existing outside the universe"

Silly boy, Ethan, don't you know that not all knowing involves knowing?

Btw, lest you think this is a farfetched interpretation of his view (even apart from him virtually confessing to it), it is precisely what Kant believed and it continues right up to the present day, it's most prominent exponent being Karl Popper. Popper argued that to know does not require...umm...knowing. Why all the fuss and bother about knowing when a good guess will do? We can't do any better anyway since all our purported knowledge is only based on mere appearances.

Bill,

Please answer my question about how you "know" about god existing outside the universe etc.

Ethan

Robert, no I hadn't read that blog before.  I guess great minds think alike!  (And Bill, it's not just "Smith's trick" of arguing that the question is not valid.  It's really not valid, and many of us have come to that conclusion on our own!)

Bill, I don't want to go down this road, because your positing of an entity outside of physical reality is not at all reasonable, but... let's say there is a God outside of physical reality, who caused physical reality.  We can't know anything about him because he exists outside of our realm.  Even more obviously, we can't know that he "wants" to be worshipped.  That idea is just a projection of how a human would feel if we created something great - we'd want to be praised for it.  How can you apply this to an entity that is so different from us that it doesn't even have any physical form?

If everything must have a beginning what begins the begin?

"We don't negate inquiries into the origin of the Earth, the Solar System, or the Milky Way as philosophically invalid. So why is the inquiry into the origin of the cosmos invalid? Only because it may entail an answer requiring more than the scientific method to answer it?"

Before asking why a question's invalid, you're got to have a pretty good grip on why it's valid!  I might study the question of "how did the Milky Way form?" but wouldn't know what to do with "why are there apples, transistors, and Shakespearean tragedies?" much less "why is there everything?"  The question's not just beyond me - it's beyond meaning anything.

May I ask just how limited you regard "scientific method" to be ... specifically, by "scientific method," do you include all that may be detemined beginning with ostensible, verifiable facts of reality, and applying logic?  If so (or if not), what other "methods" are available to us?

To the extent I can follow the remainder of your post, I'd have to answer that I regard life, consciousness and volition to be wonderful, but not wondrous - much less, "godlike or fantastic". 

(Tangetially, I must clarify, my evaluation of life as "wonderful" means it fills me with delight and wonder, and this evaluation & consequent emotion is internally caused - the fact of life isn't wonderful qua life as such, to anything but the individual living things which have, and contemplate, life.)

Clearly what caused the people and things and events of today was ... the things of yesterday.  Things of yesterday?  Caused by last week.  Infinite regress, as a contradiction, doesn't apply to the Universe over time, since what exists (in "any given moment") is all that exists - there's no "past" which is an object (or the sum of all objects), so an "infinite past" implying the existence of anything infinite is erroneous - in this sense, the construct "the past Universe" is purely epistemological.

Quoting Bill addressing Laure & I: "I am aware of Smith's trick ..."

As I have not, as I said, read Smith's book, I don't know his "trick" ... so must assume you think I'm pulling the same "trick".  So I'd doubly confused.

But that's OK, since I must acknowledge that I also don't understand your reply. 

"I am aware of Smith's trick of ignoring the whole issue by arguing the question is not valid."  I am unclear if you're referring to a specific "issue" or "question"

Bill, please explain the difference between the concepts "existence" and "universe".

"'Why does existence exist?' - really, what the heck does that question even mean?"

Fortunately, we don't have to tackle that question. The issue before us is not "Why the universe, as in all of existence, exists?" It is "Why the universe, as in the cosmos, this bubble of spacetime we live in, exists?"

We don't negate inquiries into the origin of the Earth, the Solar System, or the Milky Way as philosophically invalid. So why is the inquiry into the origin of the cosmos invalid? Only because it may entail an answer requiring more than the scientific method to answer it?

Regards, Bill

Laure & Robert,

I am aware of Smith's trick of ignoring the whole issue by arguing the question is not valid. The problem is that absent the foundation the answer to that question provides, either his entire naturalistic edifice collapses into materialism or he must credit to a naturalistic universe qualities that are godlike or fantastic.

I suppose that accepting nothing more than the brute fact "It just is" is OK for a Hobbesian existence. But human beings by nature are capable of much more and to fulfill that nature need to understand the universe better than as a brute fact.

Regards, Bill

Quoting myself regarding: the eternal nature of existence.

"Why does existence exist?" - really, what the heck does that question even mean? (I'd love to give you an answer, but, darn it all, I'm drawing a blank. Always will.) Why is there stuff? Because there was stuff a moment ago. And why was it there a moment ago? Because it existed (in whatever form) before that. Now, do you imagine that at some point, it all just came into being ... just for no reason? Of course not. Or that someone or something (that didn't exist) created it? That that creating thing came from where?

(End Quoting)

To then suggest, well, then, since individual THINGS have to have causes, then the totality must have a cause (huh?), so let's make up a "NON-THING", that is, a SOMETHING ELSE which made all the things ... ah, but we WON'T CALL this new thing a thing, so we can say it didn't have to be created like, well, things ...

Jeez Louise! 

Quoting Laurie: "Why is there stuff...?"

Hmmm ... I just asked & answered that question ... have you been reading NewEdit's LJ Comments???  (http://newedition.livejournal.com/208862.html) 

I haven't read Mr. Smith's book, but if I can figure this stuff out, you can be sure a bright guy like Bill could - if he wanted to.

Jeff, you say you can refute my arguments but don't. I no expert in philosophy, but I don't think that constitutes an argument. (As for beauty, I'll address that as noted a few times now when I get to epistemology.)

Greg, scientists do not make claims about the cause of the universe because they cannot do so as a matter of science. Science is not the only method to knowledge. It is the error of scientism to believe that all objective is scientific. As for you other question, you'll understand better once I address epistemology and ethics.

Marcus, read carefully. I did not argue that everything has a cause. I wrote that everything which begins has a cause. The difference is significant. The latter is verified by ordinary experience.

Fred, seek comfort with the Flatlander wenches Kelly and Claudia until you have a serious question to put to me.

Regards, Bill

I refer you to George H. Smith's Atheism:  The Case Against God, chapters 8, 9, and 10.  He says it all, and any reply I'd make would just be trying to summarize Smith's points. 

Just because we humans can come up with the question "Why is there stuff, instead of nothing?"  does not mean that it's a valid question.

I also want to quote Douglas Adams (of Hitchhiker's Guide fame) on the argument that Earth seems to have been made for us, because I think people might get a kick out of it.  He talks about how Man formed the concept of God in his own image.  From The Salmon of Doubt:

"... And so we have the idea of a God.  Then, because when we make things, we do it with the intention of doing something with them, early man asks himself, 'If he made it, what did he make it for?'  Now the real trap springs, because early man is thinking, 'This world fits me very well.  Here are all these things that support me and feed me and look after me; yes, this world fits me nicely,' and he reaches the inescapable conclusion that whoever made it, made it for him."

"This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in -- an interesting hole I find myself in -- fits me rather neatly, doesn't it?  In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!'"

If I ever feel like amusing myself, I will dissect the dozen or so errors in Bill's argument. (Some have been alluded to: a misunderstanding of the Big Bang theory, an incorrect account of the last 100 years of science, the non-sequiters, the misunderstadning of the Law of Identity, as evidenced by an incorrect First Cause argument, the argument from ignorance, etc. But there are many others, such as the arbitrary splitting into two parts of the universe as everything that exists vs the astronomical universe, etc. Earlier you said that because beauty exists, therefore God. Now it's a fairly typical 'because life exists, therefore God was the creator of the universe.' Or are we saving the beauty argument to establish the existence and identity specifically of the Judeo-Christian god?)

For now I just want to ask:

'And you say you overcame rationalism? How's that?'

Jeff

It still takes one hell of a giant leap to arrive at your Christian 'god' even if one were to buy into your first cause garbage. By the way, by what principal do you dismiss the 'god' of other religions (that also claim to have created existence) that cannot also be used to dismiss Christianity?