Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Back to the Stoics: Dynamical Monism as the Foundation for a Reformed Naturalism

By James Barham
March 2002


 
 
ABSTRACT-The metaphysical naturalism underlying most of contemporary scientific and philosophical discourse stands in need of reformation because it leaves out of account one of the most salient features of the world---the normativity that lies at the heart of life itself, and of all higher human forms of value and striving. In the introduction, "Why Naturalism Needs a Reformation," I agree with Alvin Plantinga that mechanistic naturalism is inherently incapable of accounting for normative phenomena; the question is, however, whether naturalism must be identified with philosophical mechanism, or whether a postmechanistic reformation of naturalism may be possible.  There are two contemporary philosophical programs which reject mechanistic naturalism and take a realistic stance towards teleological phenomena: intelligent design theory and dynamical monism, a philosophical offshoot of self-organization theory. In the second section, "The Design Inference," I briefly discuss intelligent design theory, agreeing with William Dembski that the mechanistic assumptions underlying mainstream science lead ineluctably to the design inference in the case of organisms. However, I regard Dembski’s demonstration as a reductio of the premise that organisms are machines. In the third section, "Teleology and Functionalism," I review a number of reasons for rejecting the dominant functionalist philosophy of mind, in particular the doctrine of the "multiple realizability" of functions. In the fourth section, "Elements of a Dynamical Monism," I briefly sketch an alternative view of organisms as natural teleological systems, drawing on recent work in nonlinear dynamics and condensed-matter physics.  In the fifth section, "Naturalism and Theism," I consider the question of the epistemic status of metaphysical naturalism. I agree that the metaphysical ground of human reason transcends empiricism and rests in some sense on faith. Nevertheless, I reject the epistemic equivalence between science and religious faith. The reason is that science is essentially an extension of the "animal faith" of common sense, and so is grounded in our universal biological nature in a way that religious faith is not, while religious faith is grounded in particular cultures in a way that science is not. In the last section, "Back to the Stoics," I draw on the natural philosophy of the Old Stoics to consider what a more universal form of religious faith compatible with a dynamical monist understanding of life and mind might look like.

 
 
 


Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Hate Crimes Indeed

 July 17, 2013
By Jeffrey T. Brown
American Thinker


 

We are forever being told by the left about how awful this country is for anyone who is not white.  Blacks are being gunned down in the streets by non-blacks.  Except they're not.  Muslims are being discriminated against wholesale, and are afraid to leave their homes.  Except they're not.  Gun owners are violent crazies bent on mass murder, except they're not.  Christians are trying to force their religion on us.  Except they're not.  Tea Party members are racists and violent.  I believe the Breitbart reward for evidence of the accusations of tea party racism remains unclaimed, even in this day of cell phone cameras and video. 
 
. . .  What happened in Florida might have been a hate crime, or many, but not in terms of what George Zimmerman did.  The racial hate crimes were committed by the left, as usual, and they are so numerous and offensive that they render anyone protesting the Zimmerman verdict appear beyond "ign'ant", in the angry words of the Rev. Sharpton.

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Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Slammed-Shut Doors

By Michael David Rawlings

The rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness, including the classic laws of logic, the fundamental operations of human apprehension (the analogous, the univocal and the metaphoric) and the ontological imperatives of origin demonstrate that the conclusion that God must be is perfectly rational, and the unqualified rejection of intelligent design is the stuff of sheer fanaticism, more at the unwitting imposition of a metaphysical naturalism on reality, as opposed to the pre-Darwinian mechanistic naturalism of the likes of Copernicus, Galileo, Bacon, Newton. . . .

Metaphysical naturalism is the philosophy of some masquerading as the only rational or legitimate presupposition for science.  In some cases, it's the arrogance and the sneer of a mind as closed as a slammed shut door.

As for science itself, it cannot affirm or falsify the existence of God; however, this does not necessarily mean that the discoveries of science in the light of reason do not point toward God's existence.  Some mistake the limitations of science for the limitations of reality itself.



As for multiverse theory, the fact of the matter is that there may very well be other universes beyond the cosmological horizon and/or "the other side" of the gravitational energy of a pre-Big Bang quantum vacuum.  And if there are . . . this would have no affirmative bearing whatsoever on the existence or non-existence of God either!  And while the notion of a multiverse matrix may be unfalsifiable, we are searching for patterns of collisions with other universes in cosmic microwave background radiation and for evidence of the gravitational effects of other universes on ours.

In any event, the notion that the rational considerations of a divine origin and design of material existence is incompatible with the concerns or the findings of science is nonsense as Planck himself, the father of quantum physics, rightly observed:  "Both Religion and science require a belief in God. For believers, God is in the beginning, and for physicists He is at the end of all considerations… To the former He is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view."

As for Planck's presumptuous, indemonstrable and teleological repudiation of the mysticism and the miracles of Judeo-Christianity, for example, as if his pronouncement in this wise were anything else but the stuff of just another opinion, as if the fallen state of mankind and Christ's sacrificial atonement unto life everlasting for whosoever will were overthrown by it:  nobody's perfect.

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Friday, July 5, 2013

The Christian Case for Marriage Multiplicity

By John Zmirak
The American Conservative


The ghost of civil marriage does not deserve our loyalty. In fighting for it, we are going against the grain of American individualism and goading libertarians to join our enemies—–who will, as always, use them then toss them aside. Instead, we can make common cause with libertarians and invoke for our self-defense some cherished American principles, such as freedom of association, contract, and even religion.


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