Imp,
Chaos and order, since you see it that way, are not polar opposites requiring choice. They are two aspects of a larger range of experience. Ovid, in “The Metamorphosis” actually sees chaos as order in embryo, which is close to what science now theorizes.
If not to choose is a choice, it cannot be contingent on either issue in an either/or false dichotomy. You come on as K’s advocate.
The fact that scientific theories are falsifiable (Popper) has historical proofs. (Flat Earth theory, ether theory, phlogiston (sp.?) theory, etc. ad infinitum.) It does not in any way “damage” the authenticity of science. Since science gets its contants from recurrences of natural phenomena, and makes predictions based on these recurrences, one would have to conclude that nothing changes anywhere in order to support objective absolutes. Not many scientists will support stasis, which is the only belief that allows concepts of either/or.
Ierrellus - I’m curious to know your ‘religious’ position now. Do you still use the label Christian Existentialist or have you moved away from affiliation with monotheistic religion?
Personally, I find this discussion very interesting, but it doesn’t seem to be developing particularly well. Therein lies the rub.
Questions of Morality and Ethics are truly the only philosophical problems that ever mattered. Morality being that kind of rubix cube that no one can quite piece into perfect place.
It’s a wonder…
Colinsign,
All of my life I’ve leaned toward pantheism if only because I feel interconnected with all that is. Always have I felt belonging in this way. Religious indoctrinations have tried to deny me this natural realization, which is why my life has continued to be inundated with moral conflicts.
I thoroughly agree. This thread could have moved into good discussions of morality. But, in order to do so, IMHO, one must shed the erroneous ideas of subjective or objective absolutes. I don’t see that being done here simply because some concept of an absolute is so comforting for beings who are self conscious and who realize the losses flux entails.
Here it is Easter. (Astarte for me.). And again, I am expected to feel so much guilt for being human that I have to hear that some god sacrificed his only son for my inherited culpabilty, when the culpabilty was taught, not inherited.
Science is a bubble of internal coherency within the subjective experience of life. In the words of pink floyd “all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be.” The movie of life that plays before your eyes is the only thing that’s yours. It is at once an entire universe and a prison the size of a singularity. Night is as dark as you feel it ought to be. Imp is right. Once you see that it comes down to choices. As long as you try your hardest to live by the code you establish, you are innocent. Innocent or guilty, the punisher and the punished are one in the same. The choices are wings, the more deliberate, the more soaring and free the subjective feeling. Always do your best and you have nothing to fear. Old people are crazy because anyone who chooses to live that long given the human condition must be a little loony. Imp and my awareness does not correlate with longevity. Better to ignore us.
the errors that science supports are too many as it is.
-Imp
Would you mind expanding on that?
In a general sense or specifically? If the latter, care to cite them?
scientific prediction begs the question.
-Imp
Imp,
Technically, doesn’t every school of thought?
not at all…
-Imp
Imp,
Hume describes only the subjective matrix; he does not do in inductive reasoning for anyone not trapped in such a matrix. Thanks to science you have penicillan, one of a billion examples of the positive contributions of science. As I have said many times before, however, science is not the savior, nor is religion. Neither is science Satan (the adversary). To pit one against the other is a fun intellectual chess game; but it has no winners. It imagines as split into polar opposites things that are not split in any human experience. Hume is being daily refuted by the inductive and deductive combined approaches of current science.
hume is not refuted at all. inductive reasoning is an error. combining deductive and inductive reasoning is an error as well. not trapped in subjectivity? oh please do elaborate on your objective wonderland…
-Imp
An error compared to what? Hypothetical deductive reasoning that has no applicability?
Induction isn’t an error, people just wrongly assume that there is an order of rank when it comes to reasoning…i.e. deduction as an ideal that measures all others.
Thank you, Nihilistic.
Hume refutes himself. Although I cannot know that a future event will be the result of a past event, as in the case of applying inductive reasoning to the empirical world, I must apply inductive logic to deduce the truth of the proposition “the sun might not rise tomorrow.”
At time A it is true that the sun “might not rise tomorrow.”
At time B it is true that I previously, at time A, knew inductively that the sun “might not rise tomorrow.”
If this is not true, then the proposition at time A is nonsensical and cannot be refered to. The logical connection of events leading to the truth at time B must require time A to be the cause of the effect at time B, the effect of the truth of the proposition…the “being true” of the proposition.
has yet to be shown…
-Imp
Thanks, detrop and Nihilistic, for bringing this argument back to what humans actually know and experience. The abstractions Imp. deifies are possible only in a mind that ignores the physical to mental processes we organisms experience. Hume supports the subjectivity is all there is matrix. His opinions are relevant only within that closed box.
it’s about the flawed rules of inductive logic that rule science…
your belief in unseen things called science is no different than anyone else’s belief in unseen things…
enjoy your faith but don’t mistake your faith for anything beside that which it is…
-Imp
Imp,
Science is amoral. It’s what people do with it that can be said to be moral or immoral, hence your expressed anathemas about science do not rise to the considerations of legitimate argumentation. The moral argument is Kierkegaard’s; and it is based on the tenuous assumption of subjective absolutes. Science, at its best claims no such absolutes. It advances from recognition of constants, not infinities.
show me where I claimed science makes moral judgments? morality has nothing to do with it. my supposed hatred of science (which does not exist)not rising to legitimate argumentation has nothing to do with it. hume has yet to be refuted. how you can claim that I hate science when all I (and hume) have done is prove that the assumptions of science rest on an error in reasoning is beyond me…
the habit of constant conjunction merely expresses our subjective expectations…
-Imp
And here is the crux of the biscuit. Its simple. I’ve explained this before somewhere and my words, profound as they are, were ignored or forgotten. I’ll do it one more time for you, Raymond.
At time B, the reference to time A is a memorable induction of reason and is logically connected to the erroneous induction made at time A; the logical process here which validates the proof is the self-referential use of induction to induction…and it therefore becomes deduction. If this is not true, it is you and Hume who are speaking nonsensically, and I need not refute anything because you are proposing a non-problem. The proof is in the pudding.
Let’s try it again…
At time B I bear witness to the induction made at time A. If the induction fallacy is correct, then I could not be sure that I commited an induction fallacy at time A, since it is through induction that I claim the proposition at time A occured. The “empirical evidence” is the reference to the original induction fallacy at time A which, in order to be true, must be regarded as logically connected to my judgement at time B about the proposition at time A.
Your induction fallacies must either be false or regress into a reductio ad absurdem, since to say that at time B my induction was not explicitly caused by the induction made at time A is to ignore the necessary deduction of the fact itself. Fuck the sun. I’m talking about the propositions and the logical connection of reasoning here.
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It cannot be proven that X causes Y.
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It cannot be proven that statement 1. exists unless statement two was made about, and is therefore the cause of the result of statement 2.
statement 1
statement 2
the existence of either is not dependent on the other.
there is no logical connection between events.
-Imp