Posted on 05/24/2006 2:05:53 PM PDT by flixxx
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Religious arguments have permeated debates on the role of the law in medical practice at the beginning and the end of life. But nowhere has religion played so prominent a role as in the century-old quest to banish or marginalize the teaching of evolution in science classes. Nor has new genetics research that supports evolutionary theory at the molecular level dampened antievolution sentiment.1 Requiring public-school science teachers to teach specific religion-based alternatives to Darwin's theory of evolution is just as bad, in the words of political comedian Bill Maher, as requiring obstetricians to teach medical students the alternative theory that storks deliver babies. Nonetheless, stork lore is not religious lore, and the central constitutional objection to banning evolution from the public-school curriculum or marginalizing it is that this would violate the "establishment clause" of the First Amendment, which provides that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The United States has had two waves of religion-inspired antievolution activism, and a decision by U.S. District Court Judge John E. Jones III made just before Christmas 2005 marks the end of the third wave.2
(Excerpt) Read more at content.nejm.org ...
Er, don't know about b-sharp. We seem to differ on some things. But this is not what I'd call the "realist view".
I take realism to be the view that the world we perceive -- while allowing for all sorts of imperfections in acts of perception -- is the world as it really exists. That is to say that objects of perception completely and immediately possess, in reality -- and in this reality, as opposed to some separate and superior realm like Plato's world of Ideal Forms -- all of the properties and processes that give rise to our perceptions of them.
If observer phenomena are one of these properties, then so they are and so be it. I don't see how the observer problem presents any fundamental challenge to realism.
What use are the atrophied back legs occasionally found on whales?
The evidence for the change from a land dwelling Arteriodactyl to aquatic Cetacean is quite complete, including vestigial features and significant shared DNA. Don't make the mistake of assuming all vestigial features on all organisms are useful because a few have changed their function and have found new use.
This is what is called scientific realism, in contradictinction to philosophical realism. My source for this view is Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos, The Non-Local Universe: The New Physics and Matters of the Mind, 1999, Oxford University Press.
It's a great read and I highly recommend it!
Whatever someone wrote in a book, that distinction begs the question.
Real objects have these features (non-locality, quantum entanglement, etc, although worth bearing in mind that these phenomena, although undoubtedly genuine, are VERY difficult to manifest. They require very special experimental conditions and elaborate measures to isolate the systems involved).
So the phenomena are there. Whether the phenomena argue for an idealist or realist ontology is a separate question. You can't just point to the actuality of the phenomena, combine that with a (historically archaic) pat definition of "realism," and say, "aha, so this contradicts realism"!
You have to say why these phenomena contradict realism or support idealism.
In light of your point about Reimann geometry I will grudgingly give you Mathematics and Geometry.
Interesting that you chose to address the most easily refuted point. Why didn't you address the most basic of my points, that consciousness/reason has an easily verified material basis?
"So the geometry "went on the shelf" and stayed there for many decades. Until Einstein came along, and "picked it up off the shelf," as it were; for Reimann's geometry was perfect to the explication of relativity theory.... And the rest, as they say, is history."
" I gather that your expectation is there to be always a “one-to-one correspondence” between the predictions of physical theory and the actual facts of physical reality to which the theory applies. Which is the same thing as saying (in a nutshell) that the facts of reality are entirely independent of the presence or absence of an observer. This is called the realist view. It is also the Newtonian view. But as Niels Bohr points out, Newtonian classical mechanics is a "special case" of quantum mechanics, which is the actual "complete description" of physical processes.
Bohr really said that? Doesn't seem to jibe with Schrödinger (1935), de Broglie (1956), Dirac (1939) and Penrose (1989) who considered QM to be a provisional theory.
"And QM has shown that the one-to-one, neat correspondence between physical laws and the actual facts of physical reality is not what we find at quantum scales. The observer problem is front and center; quantum non-locality and superposition mitigate against our expectations in fundamental ways."
Note that you specified at 'quantum scales'. The translation of QM between quantum and macroscopic scales is problematic. As far as the non-locality and superposition is concerned, Wigner's suggestions that consciousness is above complex quantum linear superposition is not held by all physicists.
" Well, FWIW b_sharp. Thank you so much for writing!"
You are very welcome. Thank you for responding.
de Broglie, L. (1956) Tentative d'interpretation causale et nonlineaire de la mechaniqe ondulatoire
Dirac,P.A.M. (1939). The relations between mathematics and physics. Proc. Roy. Soc., Edinburgh, 59,122
Penrose, R. (1989). The Emperor's New Mind
Schrödinger, E (1935)In Quantum theory and measurement
Really? Where do we differ?
Riemannian geometry is the natural geometry for the surface of a sphere. Riemann invented it (the general theory, Gauss had knowledge of particular versions) in the course of applying calculus to the description of geometry.
Only to those unfamiliar with the subject. There is no "observer problem" except in the postmodern Sorbonne-Vasser version of QM. All of this comes out of a mathematical model of physics. Of course, most people are unfamiliar with ordinary Newtonian physics too.
There are plenty of ideas for research:Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design (PCID)
Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design (PCID) is a quarterly, cross-disciplinary, online journal that investigates complex systems apart from external programmatic constraints like materialism, naturalism, or reductionism. PCID focuses especially on the theoretical development, empirical application, and philosophical implications of information- and design-theoretic concepts for complex systems. PCID welcomes survey articles, research articles, technical communications, tutorials, commentaries, book and software reviews, educational overviews, and controversial theories. The aim of PCID is to advance the science of complexity by assessing the degree to which teleology is relevant (or irrelevant) to the origin, development, and operation of complex systems.
Cordially,
Sounds postmodern. Ignoring constraints like science.
Yet, are "abstractions" and "consistencies" themselves "part of the physical world"? How much does an abstraction weigh? What is it's volume?
If it doesn't does that mean that it doesn't exist? As mentioned above, the laws of physics exist immaterially only in the sense that they are an abstraction of material interactions. Consciousness, and reason, are only recognizable in their interaction with the physical world, whether that be bioelectrical/biochemical interactions within the brain or their expression through language (including body language) and other modes of communication. Both consciousness and reason have physical consequences without which we would not recognize either.
Again, speaking of consciousness and reason as "interacting" with the physical world is to speak of them as having existence and yet being separate and somehow not part of the physical world. In the physicalist view, how can something exist that is not part of the physical universe? Consciousness and reason may have "physical consequences" but at the same time, if that that is all they ARE, ie, nothing but a physical consequence of some other physical consequence, then what does it mean to speak of them as separate and distinct from the physical world? It seems like a contradiction in terms. The physicalist's thought that TRUTH itself, and LOGIC, and REASON are ultimately nothing but concatenations of atoms, the product of physical forces of either chance or necessity, claims for itself a validity that is not credible if thoughts themselves are nothing but the by products of brute physical forces, the accidental concatenations of atoms in a brain.
Cordially,
Cordially,
Just no research.
This looks more like a library newsletter than a science journal.
Well; the ToE says that these are BECOMING legs and whales will walk on land!
There should be MUCH more INCOMING, new parts than OUTGOING,old parts, don't you think??
"The Scenarios are researchable. No one promised that science would be easy or fast, or that you could solve problems without sweat", as one person has noted.
Using Intelligent Design Theory to Guide Scientific Research
Cordially,
Hi Stultis! Whoa, we need to back up a little to see why the above statement actually posits a false dichotomy. In the history of philosophy, Realism is fundamentally understood in contradistinction, not to Idealism, but to Nominalism. And the fundamental criterion of classification between the two is the stance of each with respect to the problem of universals.
Nominalism holds that universals are not real entities either in the world or the mind, but names which refer to groups of classes of individual things. The Realist position holds that universals have a reality of their own, an extra-mental and extra-physical existence. The more definite, fixed, and eternal the status of the universals, the more absolute is the Realism.
In an earlier post, you alleged that Plato was, not a Realist, but an Idealist (implying that Aristotle was the Realist, and Plato some fuzzy-headed contemplator of fictional Ideas and Forms).
They must be teaching classical Greek metaphysics in strange ways these days; because in the history of philosophy, Plato is regarded as an "absolute Realist," and Aristotle, a "moderate Realist." And of course, both men held that universals are "real." Plato placed them in a transcending realm; and actually, it can be shown that Aristotle did not disagree with this position. However, with Aristotle we see a "shift of attention," as Eric Voegelin put it, from the transcendent to the immanant. He saw the universals, "forms," as embodied in creature itself, and thought that Plato was "duplicating" form by stipulating its transcendent reality. Yet at the same time, Aristotle did not deny that universals exist as "extra-mental," real entities. Further, he regarded the universal called being as truly existing "outside" or transcending particular empirical entities, and independent of the mind.
So I don't see how a consideration of Idealism even enters our discussion. To me, Idealism historically has tended to dissolve into ideologies -- as with the system constructed by the great German Transcendental Idealist G. Hegel.
Plato, however, never constructed a "system," and neither did Aristotle.
Had these men done so, it is probable that the foundations they laid for all philosophy and science since their era could not have been laid in the first place.
What this has to do with present questions, I confess I'm not at all sure.
My suspicion is that if not you, Stultis, then many others here at FR (and among adherents of neo-Darwinism more generally) are actually not Realists, but Nominalists. Because you deny the real existence of universals: Natural entities are either configurations of matter alone, or they do not exist. We can sort them into classes, and give them names; but the salient fact (on this view) is that they are purely physical in nature, just "matter in random motions" without any sort of formal guide to the system. End of story!
So where do we go from here?
Thanks for writing, Stultis!
Now you have modified materialism with "methodological", which is fine, but not the same the same as the philosophical materialism to which the ISCID referred.
Cordially,
Your explanation of the terms and their histories comports with my understanding as well. Thank you so much for the excellent post!
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