[sciborg2]

Well, there can be anything as we've not figured it out yet. Could be Camu was right ( God is either not-all-powerful or evil, for which he was more suspectful of the latter if there was indeed a god/God ).

Interesting - do you have a Camus passage in mind regarding the possibility of an Evil God?

Appears I misquoted him a bit, but here is where I pulled that from:

Knowing whether or not man is free involves knowing whether he can have a master. The absurdity peculiar to this problem comes from the fact that the very notion that makes the problem of freedom possible also takes away all its meaning. For in the presence of God there is less a problem of freedom than a problem of evil. You know the alternative: either we are not free and God the all-powerful is responsible for evil. Or we are free and responsible but God is not all powerful. All the scholastic subtleties have neither added anything to nor subtracted anything from the acuteness of this paradox.
- Camus

Can't God give us free-will and so He/She/It is only indirectly responsible?

[TaoHorror]

Can't God give us free-will and so He/She/It is only indirectly responsible?

So the question is, how much of the evil in the world should god/God be responsible for? I think all of it even if we have free will ( for which I think we do ). We don't exist in a vacuum - so even though I'm making decisions from myself and not other/others, there is a myriad of influences I didn't choose. I didn't choose to be alive, nor when/where/from whom I show up here. I didn't chose my dna or know the any of the random events I would encounter. My circumstances were derived elsewhere ( disease, mental illness, random victim of violence, etc ). So while I may have free will, I get to chose so little. I'm not accountable for much given my limited cognition, my circumstances and faced with so much unknown - and I'm expected to operate without error - or at least with a level of error acceptable to Heaven? Hmm, don't think so.

[sciborg2]

Can't God give us free-will and so He/She/It is only indirectly responsible?

So the question is, how much of the evil in the world should god/God be responsible for? I think all of it even if we have free will ( for which I think we do ). We don't exist in a vacuum - so even though I'm making decisions from myself and not other/others, there is a myriad of influences I didn't choose. I didn't choose to be alive, nor when/where/from whom I show up here. I didn't chose my dna or know the any of the random events I would encounter. My circumstances were derived elsewhere ( disease, mental illness, random victim of violence, etc ). So while I may have free will, I get to chose so little. I'm not accountable for much given my limited cognition, my circumstances and faced with so much unknown - and I'm expected to operate without error - or at least with a level of error acceptable to Heaven? Hmm, don't think so.

Ah this is an interesting question of what it means to be free - to quote Sartre, "Freedom is what you with what is done to you."

Though I would agree that this doesn't let God off the hook, but I am not sure a God that is the Ground of Being would have a moral impetus. It may simply be a kind of metaphysical lynch pin, serving as Aquinas's Supreme Intellect determining the effects of causes, the Active Intellect of the Ancient/Medieval world that holds fundamental/universal mental objects like the logical syllogisms, etc...

As for Heaven, I hear it's easy to imagine its non-existence...

"For I have seen the virtuous in Hell and the wicked in Heaven. And I swear to you, brother, the scream you hear in the one and the sigh you hear in the other sound the same."

[H]

I had half-written a response to this the other day, but ended up not posting it, because I wasn't exactly clear as to what I was saying.

I'm still not 100%, but I don't really agree with this article.  What, in this case, is "meaning" to which there is a taboo?  Is meaning here being used for "intentionality?"  The things is that I don't think there is intentionality a priori.  Which means, there is no "meaning" a priori.

Maybe I am missing the point here, but indeed, if "science" should be somehow, Naturalistic, then, no, I don't really think that it should "presuppose"  something like "meaning."

[sciborg2]

I had half-written a response to this the other day, but ended up not posting it, because I wasn't exactly clear as to what I was saying.

I'm still not 100%, but I don't really agree with this article.  What, in this case, is "meaning" to which there is a taboo?  Is meaning here being used for "intentionality?"  The things is that I don't think there is intentionality a priori.  Which means, there is no "meaning" a priori.

Maybe I am missing the point here, but indeed, if "science" should be somehow, Naturalistic, then, no, I don't really think that it should "presuppose"  something like "meaning."

What do you mean by Naturalistic?

[H]

What do you mean by Naturalistic?

"In philosophy, naturalism is the "idea or belief that only natural (as opposed to supernatural or spiritual) laws and forces operate in the world.""

Note though, I am not saying that this is "correct."  In fact, even Karl Popper was apt to point out the inherent "flaw" in this idea:
"A naturalistic methodology (sometimes called an "inductive theory of science") has its value, no doubt.... I reject the naturalistic view: It is uncritical. Its upholders fail to notice that whenever they believe to have discovered a fact, they have only proposed a convention. Hence the convention is liable to turn into a dogma. This criticism of the naturalistic view applies not only to its criterion of meaning, but also to its idea of science, and consequently to its idea of empirical method.

— Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery

However, I don't think, as Popper would later go on to espouce, that an "grounding" of "falsifiablity" really changes to scope of things in this context.  In the sense of, that we should not really be, scientifically, presupposing a given "meaning" or "intentionality" inherent in Noumena.  That seems to be to be the very realm of Phenomena...

[sciborg2]

What do you mean by Naturalistic?

"In philosophy, naturalism is the "idea or belief that only natural (as opposed to supernatural or spiritual) laws and forces operate in the world.""

Note though, I am not saying that this is "correct."  In fact, even Karl Popper was apt to point out the inherent "flaw" in this idea:
"A naturalistic methodology (sometimes called an "inductive theory of science") has its value, no doubt.... I reject the naturalistic view: It is uncritical. Its upholders fail to notice that whenever they believe to have discovered a fact, they have only proposed a convention. Hence the convention is liable to turn into a dogma. This criticism of the naturalistic view applies not only to its criterion of meaning, but also to its idea of science, and consequently to its idea of empirical method.

— Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery

However, I don't think, as Popper would later go on to espouce, that an "grounding" of "falsifiablity" really changes to scope of things in this context.  In the sense of, that we should not really be, scientifically, presupposing a given "meaning" or "intentionality" inherent in Noumena.  That seems to be to be the very realm of Phenomena...

Interesting. I do think science can proceed as a metaphysically neutral exploration of a subset of reality, so long as we don't confuse it with the totality.

[H]

Interesting. I do think science can proceed as a metaphysically neutral exploration of a subset of reality, so long as we don't confuse it with the totality.

Well, science (at least physics, biology and chemistry) would seem to be concerned with "thing-in-themselves" rather than things-as-appearing.  So, for example, what we would want is the "rules of gravitation" as-they-are, not as-they-appear.  Because, as seems to be the case, what we "see" as gravity's function on earth (basically Newton) is not gravity's function as-it-is, which apparently is what Eisenstein's Relativity gives us.

So, science's sort of "evolutionary" approach, because we cannot (along the Kantian lines) get at the Noumena, as Noumea in-itself, we sort of "peel back" the phenomena and draw closer and closer to Noumea-in-itself, even though, like Zeno's paradox, we will never get there.  Still, the idea seems "correct" at an "effective" level, that is, the level of "usefulness."

So, what the hell am I getting at?  I'm not sure.  But maybe it's that "meaning" (to me) is Phenomenological, that means (to me) eminently Subjective and so, it not a specifically quality of Noumena in-themselves, rather, Noumena as they appear, Phenomenologically.  And so, I think it is "correct" to a degree to specfically not "presuppose" meaning, in the same way that it would seem "correct" to me to not presuppose that objects only exist Phenolomenologically (even though there is no way to prove that).

I'm not sure I am even making sense now though.

[sciborg2]

Well, science (at least physics, biology and chemistry) would seem to be concerned with "thing-in-themselves" rather than things-as-appearing.

I would dispute this. Take this passage from Smolin's Time Reborn:

'We don't know what a rock really is, or an atom, or an electron. We can only observe how they interact with other things and thereby describe their relational properties. Perhaps everything has external and internal aspects. The external properties are those that science can capture and describe - through interactions, in terms of relationships. The internal aspect is the intrinsic essence, it is the reality that is not expressible in the language of interactions and relations.'

[H]

Well, science (at least physics, biology and chemistry) would seem to be concerned with "thing-in-themselves" rather than things-as-appearing.

I would dispute this. Take this passage from Smolin's Time Reborn:

'We don't know what a rock really is, or an atom, or an electron. We can only observe how they interact with other things and thereby describe their relational properties. Perhaps everything has external and internal aspects. The external properties are those that science can capture and describe - through interactions, in terms of relationships. The internal aspect is the intrinsic essence, it is the reality that is not expressible in the language of interactions and relations.'

Well, that is a good distinction actually.  I do like the idea that everything is relational (which, of course it must be, lest it be "Substance").  What I meant, more so though, was that it is not really concerned with what human consciousness "takes" things as.

So, for example, a scientific definition of "red" is not the experiential quality of "redness."  Or, for example, our experience that gravity functions as if a force, when it can be demonstrated that it is the nature of a curved spacetime.  So, perhaps "appearance" is not a good word to use.  Experiential character, perhaps?

Of course though, such is the case that we don't get immediate access to Noumena, so everything is mediated by consciousness in some way.  The thing is, it would seem to me, is that science wants to limit that as much as is possible.  That is, to get as close to Noumea as we could.  Perhaps math helps do that.

I don't know, maybe I am off the track though.

[SmilerLoki]

'We don't know what a rock really is, or an atom, or an electron. We can only observe how they interact with other things and thereby describe their relational properties. Perhaps everything has external and internal aspects. The external properties are those that science can capture and describe - through interactions, in terms of relationships. The internal aspect is the intrinsic essence, it is the reality that is not expressible in the language of interactions and relations.'

I would go even farther and say that presupposing non-relational internal anything here is making a huge assumption. And an unnecessary one, at that. We can say nothing about it, and so it's beyond the scope of our knowledge or experience, i.e. it's not part of either epistemology or ontology.

[sciborg2]

'We don't know what a rock really is, or an atom, or an electron. We can only observe how they interact with other things and thereby describe their relational properties. Perhaps everything has external and internal aspects. The external properties are those that science can capture and describe - through interactions, in terms of relationships. The internal aspect is the intrinsic essence, it is the reality that is not expressible in the language of interactions and relations.'

I would go even farther and say that presupposing non-relational internal anything here is making a huge assumption. And an unnecessary one, at that. We can say nothing about it, and so it's beyond the scope of our knowledge or experience, i.e. it's not part of either epistemology or ontology.

So it's relations all the way down? It seems there has to be relata?

Also it seems we can say some things about relata, insofar as we can speak of things-in-themselves?

[sciborg2]

Well, science (at least physics, biology and chemistry) would seem to be concerned with "thing-in-themselves" rather than things-as-appearing.

I would dispute this. Take this passage from Smolin's Time Reborn:

'We don't know what a rock really is, or an atom, or an electron. We can only observe how they interact with other things and thereby describe their relational properties. Perhaps everything has external and internal aspects. The external properties are those that science can capture and describe - through interactions, in terms of relationships. The internal aspect is the intrinsic essence, it is the reality that is not expressible in the language of interactions and relations.'

Well, that is a good distinction actually.  I do like the idea that everything is relational (which, of course it must be, lest it be "Substance").  What I meant, more so though, was that it is not really concerned with what human consciousness "takes" things as.

So, for example, a scientific definition of "red" is not the experiential quality of "redness."  Or, for example, our experience that gravity functions as if a force, when it can be demonstrated that it is the nature of a curved spacetime.  So, perhaps "appearance" is not a good word to use.  Experiential character, perhaps?

Of course though, such is the case that we don't get immediate access to Noumena, so everything is mediated by consciousness in some way.  The thing is, it would seem to me, is that science wants to limit that as much as is possible.  That is, to get as close to Noumea as we could.  Perhaps math helps do that.

I don't know, maybe I am off the track though.

Hmmm...some questions ->

What if your red is my blue?

What's a force?

How do you know space-time is "curved"? What does that mean exactly?

Why is the Real, insofar as it is within our scope of scientific observation, amenable to mathematical description? Surely the Noumena, the Thing-It-Itself, has to explain the amenability?

[SmilerLoki]

So it's relations all the way down? It seems there has to be relata?

Yes, since our frames of reference seem to be not one but many, and things start to acquire their properties where those frames are clashing. But even such points are relational, they're just more common because there is a lot of common ground between different human beings.

Hypothetically, other beings, in all likelihood, would see other clashing points, thus basically having another reality(-ies).

[H]

So it's relations all the way down? It seems there has to be relata?

Also it seems we can say some things about relata, insofar as we can speak of things-in-themselves?

Hmm, I don't know.  What could we speak of that would not need something else (related) to explain what it is?  Would this not be "Substance?"  If so, what could it be?