I assume naturalism yes, as I have no warrant, no evidence whatsoever for the supernatural. I don’t have a mind body problem; emergence covers all the major developments, well there are only two aren’t there? Chemistry to biology and biology to the brain state of mind. As with no mind body problem, I have no physical spiritual one. I see only the monism of matter and its energies, or just fields if you prefer. I’m intrigued by your singular physical-spiritual reality making relationships between them possible. Dualism as you say. An unnecessary proliferation of entities for me.
Your natural isn’t mine. Yours is more extended, elaborate. I have no one way transcendent relationship. When I was a non-knowledge believer, I believed in miracles counter to nature. Nature hasn’t changed for me except that it is no longer grounded in an intentional agent. I just do simpler at every ‘choice’. God would have no choice whatsoever in how universes work. And obviously have no choice but to instantiate them and their matrix according to the prevenient laws of nature. Because that’s what He’s always done.
As for no vitalism, dualism requires it, even your attenuated form. The Spirit enabling us to abstract. That’s vitalism. When all we needed were vowels. Your narrative is full of contradiction for me. I’m obviously too literal minded.
T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
62
This is one aspect I find intriguing within the discussion of evolution and morality, as well as tangential topics like consciousness. I sometimes see people who I would assume are dualists arguing that evolution would need to explain the the origin of morality or consciousness. To me, that would be something that a monist would argue. On a related note, it is interesting to hear how people connect their own DNA to who they are as a person, and how that informs their reaction to the possibility of human genetic modification. While we tend to think we are more than our DNA, we also view modification of our genomes as something that could change something fundamental about us. Like many things human, it’s a knotted mess of wonderful irrationality, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Life would be rather boring if we were 100% rational.
Since I don’t believe in any divine design of living organisms, I don’t see anything divinely sacred about our DNA as it is. But am a bit more wary of genetic modification than technological modification because it implies too much control over other people. Technological modification is something we can choose for ourselves but genetic modification mostly implies control over the unborn and I think we have more than enough power over them already. Also while I don’t see any factor of divine design involved needing respect, there is still some need of respect for the lessons of evolution. One of those is the importance of random variation, and that is another thing which genetic modification trespasses against. Just the control over the sex of the unborn can have devastating effects in some cultures.
Not dualism. This is monism. And for every monism there are effective dualisms. It is like discovering that ice and liquid water are the same molecule. It is monism because both are the same stuff. But there is an effective dualism because ice and liquid water are not the same. But advantage of effective dualism is that we know what makes them different.
As for my physical-spiritual monism, it suggests a singular pre-energy stuff which can have different forms including the space-time measurable quantity known as energy in physics and the space-time structure itself also known as vacuum energy. Accordingly the difference between physical things and non-physical things is that physical things are part of this space-time mathematical structure of the physical universe while non-physical things are not a part of this structure. I remind you that physicists have discarded the notion of absolute time (and space). Instead these are seen as measures which are local and properties of something particular rather than anything universal.
No matter how much your way of thinking may depend upon such a premise, your assertion does not make it true. It does not logically follow whether we are talking about effective dualism or metaphysical dualism. Vitalism is about the cause for life. Dualism is about the relationship between mind and body. These are two completely different things. Metaphysical dualism does of course make the mind something non-physical, but I have rather clearly refuted this. I have explained I don’t believe any such thing. And your use of the word “attenuated” to run roughshod over philosophical distinctions in a very black and white redneck fashion like you are calling all who think differently “commies” is just a kind of willful ignorance, which I cannot have a great deal of respect for.
Your choices are of course your own, even choices about what you want to spend time thinking clearly about. There are many things on which I will simply say, “I am not interested in that.” And you certainly have the right to do the same. I know only too well that the principle use of reason is NOT so much to come up with our conclusions but rather to rationalize them, and this serves the purpose of consistency more than justification. Whatever we choose, it only makes sense to make an effort to make other choices consistent with those we have already made.
I have considerable respect for a great many things but yes this does have limits. And I certainly have greater respect for some things than others. I typically champion science, Christianity and atheism more than other things… and existentialism, and pragmatism, and the ideals of a free society – though in many of these I am selective… not all Christianity nor all atheism, for sure. I find it quite difficult to respect creationism, communism, Gnosticism and the romanticism of previous eras like the dark ages. Does your respect have no preferences or limits? I do not think this is grandiose but normal.
Most respectable. Aye, I struggle with, am frustrated by, certain modes of being here. Ones stoicism, ones attempt to be Rogerian, falter, not with world views per se, but with their presentation, or my perception of it. As I struggle/d with you. With your apparent contradictions, paradoxes, having your cake and eat it. The argument and the ‘man’ (and it nearly always is male) are always perichoretic, inextricable. As I struggle with you and your brilliance, for I am mediocre, I also struggle with relentless, unlearned, I-bet-a-dime Martini from Cuckoo’s Nest responses. My perception is that you are all fundamentalists, all on that spectrum, yours is the most refined. And I almost certainly, in my mediocrity, do you a disservice, you don’t actually evince fundamentalism in adherence to a text. Even @RichardG may not with regard to his ‘critique’ of evolution. Your brilliance still seems in the service of, post hoc of, some un-transferable Jungian non-epistemological knowledge, as is his. I’m just the guy on the bus. But we’re actually doing art criticism, justifying how we feel here, apart from the superb knowledge based responses to unreason, that can’t work
[What I crave for here is camaraderie, where our pronounced otherness is actually appreciated as essential to the squad, that we are actually comrades in arms against a common foe. Death.]
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T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
67
Those sentiments are shared by the global scientific community. As you state, it is a matter of consent which is a huge centerpiece of bioethics. This is why current research into genetic modification is focused on treatments that won’t be inherited, and of course only given to those who can consent (i.e. not the unborn).
I am reflexively wary of the Naturalistic fallacy, but those are certainly aspects worth considering.
Which, BTW, is why they made Spock in Star Trek only half-Vulcan – a purely logical being would be boring (besides impossible to write script for). Of course as the show’s world grew, they decided that Vulcans started out quite emotional and the logic was an added discipline.
I read a piece of fan fiction a few years back where the law limited genetic modification to one tweak per offspring. Part of the story revolved around whether replacing the DNA for a human eye with that for an octopus eye constituted more than one tweak.
Only in the sense that scientists are: we stick to the data set, the data in this case being the scriptures. The theologian’s problem is different, though: it is as though the data were written down subjectively rather than objectively, so as Pul wrote “we see through a glass dimly”.
T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
71
There was an episode where Spock and Data met. Spock realized that he was trying to be less human and more like Data, and Data realized he was trying to be less like Spock and more like humans. Either way, both were a great way to delve into the human experience, IMHO.
I don’t mean it as an attack. But I do mean it. Objectively you all adhere, to one degree or another, on a metaphoric-literal spectrum, to the text. You are all creedal, orthodox, ToDoA. I take your analogy of scripture as data, once you exercise faith, as being fair. And yes, it was subjectively recorded by individuals of faith, with remarkable objectivity at times, with little touches that look remarkably authentic, but with extremely little historical corroboration, none whatsoever for any of the supernatural claims, no cross casting, but that wouldn’t, doesn’t matter as it was guided by the Spirit. And that isn’t in the slightest bit dismissive of me. I embrace everyone I’ve ever been, despite being unfaithed.