Thank you oh so much for your kind words re: my "take" on the "observer problem!"
Linear thinking — instrumental reason — is "bean-counting" thinking that ever ignores the context in which events occur. It just wants to find out what happens between A and B; as if the context in which the relation of A and B occurs is irrelevant.
Which most definitely is not the case. Without some larger context — without which events cannot occur — how can A and B be brought into relation in the first place? Without such relation, cause-and-effect processes do not occur. This seems clear enuf to me.
And I expect, clear enuf to you, too, my dearest sister in Christ. [But please correct me if I'm wrong about this.]
The method of my madness behind making such a statement is my reliance on Aristotle's laws of causation. I note that the currently regnant scientific method addresses only two of Aristotle's four causes, the material and the efficient. Most scientists (I gather) get a case of hives just thinking about first and final causes — and so they have been effectively abolished from the purview and practice of science....
It seems the enormous prestige and influence of "scientific thinking" in our world today has infiltrated all modes of human thought. It is taken as the "best model" for discovering and analyzing the world and human existence.
The problem with that is neither life nor consciousness is explicable on the basis of material (matter) and efficient (energetic exchange) causes only.
Taken together, material and efficient causes by themselves can describe inorganic and mechanistic behavior in Nature very well. But they can explain nothing essential about those parts of Nature called biological organisms; for they only answer the question, "What does a thing look like?" They cannot answer the question "Why does this thing exist?" Which is to ask: "What caused it?" (its formal cause) and "What purpose does it seek to fulfill?" (its final cause).
In Metaphysics, Aristotle famously said that the final cause — peras, "limit," or "goal" — is the cause "for which all the other causes exist." It is that purpose or goal towards which the formal cause was primed in the first place.
I gather scientists routinely hate this sort of thing; for it suggests the operation of a cause "from the future" — which Newtonian mechanics absolutely forbids.
This might strike a reader of these lines as an exercise in pure, abstract wool-gathering. But to any such person, I would reply: Aristotle's model of causation — Formal–Material–Efficient–Final — is fully realized in the most basic and necessary biological functions of living organisms.
So, how come "orthodox" Neo-Darwinists routinely ditch the Formal and Final causes?
You know me, dearest sister in Christ — an my detestation of the absurdly reductionist Darwinian evolutionary view of biology.
Biology is supposed to about the "science" of Life. But Darwinists will not touch Life (or Mind) with a ten-foot pole. They are content to dwell on material and efficient causes only; and thus manage to produce a plausible account/description of the speciation of already existent organic life. Where that life "came from," its origin; and towards what end or purpose or goal it is was primed for, they consider not only inadmissible questions, but totally irrelevant ones.
While I'm whacking the Darwinists, and contemporary biological science as it is generally practiced nowadays, let me add one more thing: Since Darwin's revolutionary On the Origin of Species [1859] was published, there have been not one, but two, world-transforming scientific revolutions: Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, and Niel's Bohr's [et al.] Quantum Theory.
Has anybody out there noticed that the biological sciences have taken the stunning findings of these great thinkers into effect???
Certainly, I haven't. And yet, if biological organisms have a material basis (which I do not dispute they have), then certainly, one would think that the observations of the quantum theorists have definite bearing on biological questions.
WRT Relativity theory, I would argue it definitely has a direct bearing on biological issues as well. It is generally understood that relativistic effects only become "tangible" as a phenomenon approaches the speed of Light. Which seems remote enough to us for all practical purposes.
But what is fascinating to me is increasingly, I've been reading scientists specializing in physics (not biology!) who have suggested that biological entities, ultimately, are "organized" by means of non-local causes.
Which gets us back, not only to quantum theory, but also to relativity theory.
If Darwinism as it is presently understood could be adjusted so to take into effect these stunning discoveries from physics, what would it look like?
My best guess: We will never know, 'cause Darwinists — slaves to the observer problem — think that relativity and quantum theory are completely irrelevant to their problems.
They will find only what they seek. Within an amazing constrained, reduced understanding of the natural world.
Well, JMHO, FWIW.
It is so good to hear from you again, my dearest sister in Christ!
Which most definitely is not the case. Without some larger context — without which events cannot occur — how can A and B be brought into relation in the first place? Without such relation, cause-and-effect processes do not occur. This seems clear enuf to me.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Logic will get you from A to B.
Imagination will take you everywhere. - Albert Einstein
** If the spirit does not imagine, what does?..
And I expect, clear enuf to you, too, my dearest sister in Christ. [But please correct me if I'm wrong about this.]
Indeed, I often say that in the absence of time, events cannot occur and in the absence of space, things cannot exist. Both are required for physical causation.
Those who want to deny God are stuck with that context of physical causation. According to CMB measurements going back a half century, there was a beginning of real space and real time. Ergo there was a Creator ex nihilo.
And of course I very strongly agree with you on biology trying to ignore first and final cause which is absurd since biological systems service a purpose, often leading to the survival of a higher autonomous organism of which the system is a part and also of which it is obviously not "aware" in the mental sense.
I would strongly recommend Rosen's "Life Itself" to those who cannot accept these insights from the philosophical or theological experts. Perhaps Rosen's math would convince them?
Thank you oh so very much for your illuminating essay-posts, dearest sister in Christ!