Hi Steven,
You wrote:
Koch is fairly religious (Catholic) - and has recently written about
his religion on his web site - and without making aspersions upon
his integrity I do find that a number of scientists in the field
that are prepared to accept such magic are also religious. As a
result they may, in fact, be predisposed to the argument that "God
did it."
My own view is that these appeals to magic as the product of
intellectual laziness. :-)
You are of course entitled to your own views, but I feel you are
being a bit harsh on scientists/ philosophers who might happen to
hold personal religious beliefs in your comments, especially when you
mention people by name, as you do above.
Seems lkike a bit of a "blow beneath the belt" to me.
Both Peirce and Whitehead certainly believed that holding religious
beliefs and maintaining a responsible and coherent scientific
attitude were fully compatible with one another.
Now, it may not be absolutely necessary to believe in God in order to
do good science or philosophy, but on the other hand, it is not
absolutely necessary either to believe passionately in science in
order to live our lives and do our daily work well, and treat other
people with tolerance and respect.
Belief in science and religious beliefs have each their different
potentials and each fulfill their own specific human/social functions
- for good and for bad (remember Giordano Bruno and eugenics)
I think where serious problems often arise is when the sentiments or
passions that might move people to believe in God (or not) become
confused with the sentiments that might move people to believe (or
not) that a consciencious pursuit of scientific practice in the
course of time will provide us with the objective or "true" knowledge
about the world that we desire/ need in order, not only just to
survive, but also to live our lives together well...
As Peirce put it (all good) "logic is based on a social principle",
since for him, any workable logic presupposes ethics, which in its
own turn presupposes aesthetics.
I would consider either agnosticism or athieism to be valid
metaphysical positions based on specific sentiments that may be as
strongly held as those metaphysical positions based on specific
sentiments that may valorise religious beliefs.
You wrote too:
Crick's "Astonishing Hypothesis" (the name of Crick's book on the
subject) is emergence and identity theory - and the continuing focus
of Crick's younger partner (Crick himself died recently) Christophe
Koch at CalTech is neuronal according to Koch's recent book (as I
recall).
All theories dependent on emergence and identity are essentially
appeals to magic - despite the wide popularity of the argument
(including the popular appeals by Wolfram, Kurzweil et al.).
However, in the generally accepted scientific paradigm (when it
works), any hypothesis ("astonishing" or not) will always come to be
"read" as a very provisional assertion regarding some (presumably
reasoned and argued) opinion, or set of opinions, about "the way
things may well be...".
The current norms of the community of science hold that the practical
consequences of any such assertions must be shown to hold
consistently over time on the basis of some future systematic
empirical inquiry in order to be taken seriously.
If not, the hypothesis in question is not likely to become widely
accepted as potentially valid/useful by the wider community of
inquiry.
Whether any given theory is "an appeal to magic" -- a term which I
would provisionally take to mean "potentially appealing to the
eye/sentiments/mind but also potentially deluding -- or not, it is
often only time -- coupled with the degree of individual and
collective interest and energy the scientific community actually
turns out to devote to systematic inquiry into the problem in hand --
will show.
I always tend to hold with Peirce that we should never try to "block
the way of inquiry", however wild other people's speculations may
seem to be. But of course we need some kind of filters that help us
sort out the chaff from the wheat.
So, in a sense, we will always have to put our trust in the wider
"market of ideas" (assuming that all ideas can flow and be discussed
as freely as possible), and in the informed common sense of our
"peers"
Best regards
Patrick
At 12:03 -0700 28-06-2006, Steven Ericsson Zenith wrote:
Crick's "Astonishing Hypothesis" (the name of Crick's book on the
subject) is emergence and identity theory - and the continuing focus
of Crick's younger partner (Crick himself died recently) Christophe
Koch at CalTech is neuronal according to Koch's recent book (as I
recall).
All theories dependent on emergence and identity are essentially
appeals to magic - despite the wide popularity of the argument
(including the popular appeals by Wolfram, Kurzweil et al.).
Koch is fairly religious (Catholic) - and has recently written about
his religion on his web site - and without making aspersions upon
his integrity I do find that a number of scientists in the field
that are prepared to accept such magic are also religious. As a
result they may, in fact, be predisposed to the argument that "God
did it."
My own view is that these appeals to magic as the product of
intellectual laziness. :-)
With respect,
Steven
Jim Piat wrote:
Make of that what you will :-)
With respect,
Steven
Dear Steven,
I think Crick of DNA fame was also seeking consciousness in the
microtubials. What troubles me most about the search for the
neural basis of consciousness is our lack of a coherent and
satisfying working definition of consciousness. I doubt we will
find the neurological basis of something we can't identify in the
first place. The effort begs the question. Moreover neurons may be
a necessary without being a sufficient condition for consciousness.
Just one layman's opinion.
Cheers,
Jim Piat
---
Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED]
---
Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
Patrick J. Coppock
Researcher: Philosophy and Theory of Language
Department of Social, Cognitive and Quantitative Sciences
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
Reggio Emilia
Italy
phone: + 39 0522.522404 : fax. + 39 0522.522512
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
www: http://coppock-violi.com/work/
faculty: http://www.cei.unimore.it
the voice: http://morattiddl.blogspot.com
---
Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
