Theory of Evolution.

[Timsup2nothin]

I'm not sure I follow. If you're saying that taking advantage of imperfect models often leads to problems, I don't think anyone would disagree - except that I don't think that even perfect models avoid the chance of things going badly wrong. The disaster at Fukushima, for example, didn't happen because nobody knew that tsunamis and earthquakes could cause reactors to fail catastrophically, but because people decided it wasn't worth the cost of protecting them against those things. However, I think as a net effect we certainly gain much more from taking advantage of science than we lose from it. If we're going to chalk up climate change, nuclear meltdowns and BSE as 'bad' consequences of 'trying to understand the world', we have to match them against the fact that doing just that feeds people and keeps them away from lead pipes, asbestos and smallpox.

Consequences of "trying to understand the world" make no difference. Trying to understand the world is human, we can't help ourselves, and will continue to try no matter how much bad consequence accumulates. And we will continue to reflexively explain why we simply must keep at it even if every example in the reflexive answer could just as easily be used to explain why we probably shouldn't have started in the first place.

That human need to explain away fear is the source of gods and science. But all the explaining of how "highly evolved" we are hasn't affected reality in the least. It just makes us feel better, much like building a henge to help keep track of the sun god did for my ancestors.

 

[Flying Pig]

I'm not sure the phrase 'highly evolved' has been used by anyone in the business of explaining the world in many years, or at least not by anyone worth their salt. Understanding the world and acting on that understanding, though, absolutely has affected reality - as all the people evacuated before being hit by natural disasters, or fed by modern crops and livestock, or cured by modern medicine would witness. I suppose you could call that the fundamental difference between a scientific explanation, sun gods and henges. A scientific explanation is one that allows us to predict, and therefore is one that can be put to use.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

You seem to be saying that saving some people, or finding ways to produce larger numbers of people, affects reality. No one has to say highly evolved. It's an inherent assumption of that 'modern medicine' that we are of course superior to the bacteria.

Remember a while ago when I said the one constant is human arrogance?

By the way, a henge is a very good predictor of many things that are important in the life of agrarian peoples...does that make the tracking of the sun god a science instead of a pagan religion?

 

[Flying Pig]

I think you could say that there was a glimmer of the scientific method in there - though it breaks the basic rule of never saying that a more complicated system is at work than the evidence absolutely demands. However, if you're talking about building a henge and dancing around it so that the sun god will be kind, that's different, and that's the sort of thing I assumed you were talking about.

'Superior to' the bacteria in what sense? I'd contest 'more powerful than' - you can probably only get it down to 'more worthy of life than', which isn't the same. The whole idea of something being 'highly evolved' is ridiculous, because evolution is necessarily a matter of being adapted for a given set of circumstances. There is no such thing as being 'highly' or 'lowly', 'better' or 'worse' evolved in the abstract, only 'better' or 'worse' adapted to the circumstances in which an organism finds itself.

You seem to be saying that saving some people, or finding ways to produce larger numbers of people, affects reality

I am.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I am.

Objectively, or subjectively?

By the way, how is "oh, god does that" more complicated than the theory of gravity?

 

[Kyriakos]

That's not idealism. That's Kantianism. Idealism is the denial that there are any objects outside the mind at all.

Hmm..

I am not aware of that meaning, although i rarely use the term and prefer exact references such as the versions in the Eleatics or Plato. But is it certain that idealism connotes only that nothing outside the mind is an object?

(which, given some specific elaboration, still can mean that 'real' things exist independently of the mind, but they are not grasped at all and surely not as 'objects', due to our particular human point of view which inherently creates the notion of an object).

Still, i am interested in your elaboration

 

[Timsup2nothin]

(which, given some specific elaboration, still can mean that 'real' things exist independently of the mind, but they are not grasped at all and surely not as 'objects', due to our particular human point of view which inherently creates the notion of an object).

Or the notion of a process, such as evolution.

 

[Plotinus]

Hmm..

I am not aware of that meaning, although i rarely use the term and prefer exact references such as the versions in the Eleatics or Plato. But is it certain that idealism connotes only that nothing outside the mind is an object?

"Idealism" means the view that there's nothing outside the mind at all. All existing things are either minds or dependent on minds for their existence.

Kantianism is a step towards idealism, because it holds that objects as we know them are at least partly mind-dependent, but it's not full-blown idealism. Compare e.g. the philosophy of Kant (who believed in a "thing in itself" distinct from the phenomenal object) to those of Fichte and Hegel (who did not).

Neither the Eleatics nor (certainly) Plato were really idealists, though later Platonism had tendencies towards idealism in that it saw ideal forms as being ontologically prior to material objects. But you couldn't really call any ancient Platonist or anyone else an idealist in the modern sense, with the possible exception of Gregory of Nyssa. (There's something of a debate about whether Gregory should be considered an idealist or not - I've argued that he should, but colleagues disagree...)

 

[Flying Pig]

Objectively, or subjectively?

By the way, how is "oh, god does that" more complicated than the theory of gravity?

It adds in an entity - God - which the evidence does not need. Indeed, I suppose we're not stopping at a narrow definition whereby God is synonymous with 'the thing that causes the sun to move', but attaching the usual set of attributes to him. So the argument becomes 'the sun moves, which is evidence for the existence of an anthropomorphic deity who created the world and sets a moral code for us to live by.'

 

[Kyriakos]

"Idealism" means the view that there's nothing outside the mind at all. All existing things are either minds or dependent on minds for their existence.

Kantianism is a step towards idealism, because it holds that objects as we know them are at least partly mind-dependent, but it's not full-blown idealism. Compare e.g. the philosophy of Kant (who believed in a "thing in itself" distinct from the phenomenal object) to those of Fichte and Hegel (who did not).

Neither the Eleatics nor (certainly) Plato were really idealists, though later Platonism had tendencies towards idealism in that it saw ideal forms as being ontologically prior to material objects. But you couldn't really call any ancient Platonist or anyone else an idealist in the modern sense, with the possible exception of Gregory of Nyssa. (There's something of a debate about whether Gregory should be considered an idealist or not - I've argued that he should, but colleagues disagree...)

But the 'thing in itself' is already a notion at least as early as Parmenides, if not prior (not sure about Heraklitos). And Parmenides main view is that humans likely only can think or sense falsehoods/illusions, and yet a 'reality' exists outside of human point of view. The term (auto-katheauto antikeimeno, etc) is found literally tens of times in the main platonic dialogues.

TBH i am not seeing how 'idealism' only means 'nothing outside the mind exists', cause that is rather reducing the questions, given that if reality is only particular pov-mind tied and thus only relative (a view attributed by Plato to many presocratics, notably Protagoras and Heraklitos), this still does not examine what the world itself is, given it is not obviously part of the mind unless it is theorised that 'all is One', as in the Eleatics (and again this may mean different things).

Furthermore, i thought that idealism is a neologism formed out of the false translation of Platonic Eide to 'Ideas', given that the Eide are SPECIFICALLY made distinct from the 'ideas' in the dialogue with Parmenides, which has this as the core issue. Eide are argued to exist outside human sense or even human ideas, and are eternal.

 

[Plotinus]

Well we don't know precisely what Parmenides thought, but he certainly wasn't an idealist, because as you say he thought that things have real existence outside the mind.

An idealist needn't believe that reality is relative, though. On one interpretation of his later writings, Leibniz was an idealist, but thought that there is an objective reality, because every mind perceives the same things but from a different point of view, thanks to God's oversight.

"Idealism" doesn't come from "idea" in the Platonic sense, but in the Cartesian and Lockean sense of mental objects. This is why it is often thought to be solely a modern, post-Cartesian development and one that would have been alien to ancient thinkers, because they didn't have that concept of ideas at all. (Though if I'm right that Gregory of Nyssa was an idealist, this is wrong.) An idealist is one who believes that mental objects are the only things that exist, apart from minds. So to an idealist the question of "what the world itself is" is either answered simply by "the world consists of ideas" (that would be Berkeley's answer) or is simply a non-question because there is no such thing as "the world itself" (I think that would be Hegel's answer, though he would take a lot longer to say it). A theological hyper-idealist like Jonathan Edwards would answer "God", because he thought that literally everything (including even creaturely minds) are merely mental objects in God's mind.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

It adds in an entity - God - which the evidence does not need. Indeed, I suppose we're not stopping at a narrow definition whereby God is synonymous with 'the thing that causes the sun to move', but attaching the usual set of attributes to him. So the argument becomes 'the sun moves, which is evidence for the existence of an anthropomorphic deity who created the world and sets a moral code for us to live by.'

I suggest considering the origins of god, because the whole "anthropomorphic deity, creator of worlds, setter of moral codes" is your addition, not mine. God is, ultimately, a word used to patch over the incomprehensible so people don't have to deal with it being incomprehensible (incomprehensible is another such word). While the alternative, create a theory, has attractions, being 'simpler' is not one of them. The falsehood of science is that if you create enough theories there isn't going to be any incomprehensible left, so basically it just substitutes the word science for the word god as the patch. It's a favorite patch because in the complex thicket of theories the incomprehensible is sufficiently hidden that it gets easy to pretend it isn't still there.

 

[Kyriakos]

Well we don't know precisely what Parmenides thought, but he certainly wasn't an idealist, because as you say he thought that things have real existence outside the mind.

An idealist needn't believe that reality is relative, though. On one interpretation of his later writings, Leibniz was an idealist, but thought that there is an objective reality, because every mind perceives the same things but from a different point of view, thanks to God's oversight.

"Idealism" doesn't come from "idea" in the Platonic sense, but in the Cartesian and Lockean sense of mental objects. This is why it is often thought to be solely a modern, post-Cartesian development and one that would have been alien to ancient thinkers, because they didn't have that concept of ideas at all. (Though if I'm right that Gregory of Nyssa was an idealist, this is wrong.) An idealist is one who believes that mental objects are the only things that exist, apart from minds. So to an idealist the question of "what the world itself is" is either answered simply by "the world consists of ideas" (that would be Berkeley's answer) or is simply a non-question because there is no such thing as "the world itself" (I think that would be Hegel's answer, though he would take a lot longer to say it). A theological hyper-idealist like Jonathan Edwards would answer "God", because he thought that literally everything (including even creaturely minds) are merely mental objects in God's mind.

That position you mention by Leibniz is likely very close to the Protagorian position, at least the one that Socrates attributes to Protagoras. The latter's work titled 'On Truth' is lost, but we do know (from Plato as well) that it began with the famous sentence "Man is the meter of all things, and of those that exist (he is the meter) that they exist, and of those that do not exist (he is the meter) that they do not exist".
Also the popular presocratic notion of "substance" is usually in a similar vein. For example in the dialogue 'The Theaetetos', Substance is defined as 'that which enables a being with a point of view to form a sense of an object', and although apparently it is not something argued to belong solely to either POV being or object, it is again distinct from either Eleatic (and Platonic, which is similar) view about an eternal reality of over-things/eide/god/changeless one, and a view in which there is just an endless pit of species POV (Protagoras).

However it is likely as well that even Protagoras does not claim that there has to be no 'eternal reality'. He did appear to claim (if Socrates is not just trying to make him sound bad- which he often does cause he hated and envied him) that man cannot really examine reality in regards to matters such as gods, cause there is simply too little time and too little resources. Although obviously this would have to connote that the view was not that inherently divine/real things cannot be known by a finite being's POV, which again i am not sure if Protagoras actually was in any way against.

(btw, Wiki 'defines' idealism as a more catch-all term, and states that it is the views where no knowledge is mind-independent or true regardless of the observer, which is not quite as species-solipsist - for lack of a better term! - as what you noted as idealism).

PS: not sure why you claim that ancient thinkers did not have "that" (?) sense of 'mental objects'? Socrates frequently discusses mental objects, and there are a lot of metaphors in the dialogues for that, eg the creator of wax figures for the memory and recalling of mere mental images and not the actual material thing to which we tie some meaning, etc.

 

[Formaldehyde]

LOL...now THERE is a unsupportable leap of theory.

Just because I don't abjectly worship them as the emblems of the great mysteries as my ancestors did their shamans and their ancestors did the moon doesn't mean that I "don't care for them." The biggest difference between me and most people is that I accept their limitations.

Right.

"Like the theory of gravity, the theory of evolution is irrelevant."

It doesn't take "abject worship" to appreciate the vast benefits which science has directly brought to modern society. It just takes some reasonable amount of exposure to it during the educational process which hopefully everybody undergoes.

Granted, there are those who do worship science as though it is some surrogate form of religion. But they are scientists themselves, they are incredibly bad ones by definition. Like the rest, they simply didn't pay enough attention during the required public education courses they were supposed to successfully complete to even get a high school diploma.

The only constant is human arrogance.

How ironic.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Formy, did you invent this emoticon:

As often and as randomly as you use it I am wondering if you get a royalty or something.

If you ever take off the "anyone who disagrees with me must have gotten shorted in their education" blinders let me know and we'll talk. Until then, thanks for providing the "true believer" example that makes my point for me.

 

[Flying Pig]

I suggest considering the origins of god, because the whole "anthropomorphic deity, creator of worlds, setter of moral codes" is your addition, not mine. God is, ultimately, a word used to patch over the incomprehensible so people don't have to deal with it being incomprehensible (incomprehensible is another such word). While the alternative, create a theory, has attractions, being 'simpler' is not one of them. The falsehood of science is that if you create enough theories there isn't going to be any incomprehensible left, so basically it just substitutes the word science for the word god as the patch. It's a favorite patch because in the complex thicket of theories the incomprehensible is sufficiently hidden that it gets easy to pretend it isn't still there.

What do you mean by 'the origins of God'? Plotinus is probably waiting for me to foul up here, but all of the oldest religions I can think of - whether Hinduism, ancient Egyptian polytheism, Judaism, Classical Greek and Roman religion or just about anything else - don't stop at 'God' as simply 'the cause of anything we can't explain' - they fill in other attributes. Thus, to say 'God exists because something created the world, and we call that God', doesn't hold water, because you're using the word 'God' to sneak in an awful lot of other beliefs for which that isn't evidence.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

What do you mean by 'the origins of God'?

Ever raised a kid? They provide a great demonstration of what it is to be human.

Kid <looking at dad's dress blue uniform, which anyone with eye's would recognize is black>: Why do you say the sky is blue?
Dad: There are a lot of shades of blue. The sky is usually called 'sky blue,' and that uniform is what is called 'navy blue.'
Kid: Looks black. So if the sky is sky blue what is just blue?
Dad: Well, hmmm...
Kid: What makes the sky blue anyway?
Dad <sensing entry into his wheelhouse>: [Long lecture on wavelengths, absorption characteristics of water molecules]
Kid: Why?
Dad: [more physics]
Kid: Why?
Dad: [more physics]
Kid: Why?
Dad <tiring, and reaching the depths of his current knowledge of physics relating to optics>: I think it's dinnertime.

These are the same conversations that always go on in the heads of humans. But at the end of the conversation is god, or some other word to stop the question train. When the question train started with "Why is the moon looking into my cave tonight?" and the primary emotion behind the question was fear, the man in the cave came to god...so he could sleep. He didn't have to anthropomorphize this 'god,' or assign it a morality, it was just god. When the question "how did the world get here?" came up, of course that got assigned to god.

All the questions that can't be answered eventually get assigned to god, of whatever name. Science makes the train run longer, but it eventually reaches the same station.

 

[El_Machinae]

Ah, you're not using the colloquial use of the word 'god'. Your posts make more sense now.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Ah, you're not using the colloquial use of the word 'god'. Your posts make more sense now.

Thanks for rewarding my perseverance.

 

[brennan]

The acceleration during a free-fall is what is observable, not a 'gravity'. The latter is inferred, which is why it is called a theory. For all we know those forces may not be some pull from a core of the earth in the theorised manner. That objects will fall is observed, thus the various notions of dynamic states. But ultimately this is just a model and not 'real', for many reasons (the more 'deep' of which are that this is just our human sense of movements and falls).

But 'evolution' is even more moved away from a basis, cause it lacks the empirical observation in experiment. And it does seem to have political elements as well, which is why it became a troll-fest in the first place..

And while all our 'science' is ultimately from a human point of view, this does not mean that the degree of validity in inferring stuff is the same in different orders.

That gravity is a force between massive bodies was verified using a torsion balance quite a long time ago. We don't just 'observe that things fall'.

Neither does evolution lack experiment evidence. Bacteria evolve in the lab and in the real world (I assume you have heard of anti-biotic resistance?). The effects of recent speciation events are commonplace, such as the existence of 'ring species' and recently diverged species such as lions and tigers which can only partially interbreed.