Re: [epistemology 0] Digest for epistemology@googlegroups.com - 5 Messages in 3 Topics

[michael atovigba]

einseele was wonderful when he said: science is the serious sister of fiction, sentenced to look for the truth; that: science is too serious to my understanding.

I believe anything the mind can see and/or mention exists: with time that could be proved scientifically! That may sound fictional, but should be the truth. for, science seems to be just a kid while fiction is the ancient uncle who sees far ahead when science is still counting on its fingers trying to see, touch, feel  in the name of empirical evidence, before believing like the Biblical Doubting Thomas. No wonder, after many years many scientific theories fail to stand the test of time, then scientists begin to look  for new theories. Science continues to crawl behind fiction.

Atovigba.

On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 9:18 AM, <episte...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

  Today's Topic Summary

Group: http://groups.google.com/group/epistemology/topics

• Second Enlightenment (F3) [1 Update]
• What is the material basis of Consciousness ? [2 Updates]
• Second Enlightenment (F1,F2) [2 Updates]

 Topic: Second Enlightenment (F3)

Georges Metanomski <zg...@yahoo.com> Dec 14 07:29AM -0800

 
==========
Reminder:
The basic structure of the present thread is:
X1. Scientific Revolution
X2. Ontology
X3. Ideology
X4. Social awareness
X5. Establishment
 
with X=F/S respectively for the first/second enlightenment. Indeed,
we start by the first as guidance to the formulation of the second
and warning of errors to be avoided.
=============
The present post is limited to the step F3- Ideology of the first
enlightenment.
 
Ideology is the best known domain of the First
Enlightenment, due to its impact on subsequent revolutionary
events and changes of social and political structures.
However, chronology did not respect the foundations order:
Kant came too late for Voltaire, Diderot, Montesqieu and
Rousseau. Lacking consistent foundations, the ideology
reflects uncritically current controversies: its apparently
rational form and declarations conceal noumenal utopianism.
It radically detached itself from the Scientific Revolution
and its phenomenal principles.
However brilliantly Voltaire ridiculed Dogmatism, his
criticism was negative, without suggesting any substitute.
Diderot and the Encyclopedia advocated rather arbitrarily
the social utility and attacked tradition without formulating
any positive remedy. Montesquieu believed dogmatically that
all consisted of perpetual rules or laws and argued, not less
dogmatically, that England's constitutional monarchy was an
ideal model of society, that women were inferior and that the
essential inequality of people justified slavery.
Noumenalistic Utopia of Rousseau had the greatest and most
direct influence on the French Revolution.
 
Oblivious of its rational roots, the ideology of
the First Enlightenment slipped almost entirely into dogmatic
irrationality.
===========
Reaction of dogmatism.
 
Failing to eradicate dogmatism, first enlightenment collapsed
under its reactionary assaults which went on uninterrupted
till 19th century dominated by dogmatic obscurantism.
 
French revolution triggered by enlightenment's ideology
radically denied its roots replacing Rousseaus with
Robespierres.
 
Dogmatic reaction reached its apogee in "Great German
Idealism" starting with Fichte's concept of Romanticism.
 
While enlightened rationality sees reflection as interplay of
imagination and inference, romanticism ablated the latter, leaving
Reason standing on one imaginary, emotional leg.
 
Romanticism is known mainly as esthetic current praising
spontaneous improvisation, but in that aspect it had no
noticeable practical impact. It's true that romanticist
artists followed innovated rules, but they applied them as
meticulously as their predecessors. Chopin did not learn
his music from Fichte. He applied partially new, but not
less strict rules than Mozart or Bach and deemed that
good improvisation presupposes skill gained by years of
rigorous training. The same holds for Liszt, Tchaikovsky,
Pushkin, Mickiewicz, Byron, Delacroix, Gainsborough and all
romanticist artists.
 
Romanticism impacted principally the Socio-Political. Fichte,
the father of Romanticism, preached Nationalism and became
the flagship of Nazism. His famous student, Hegel, became,
with a bit of Engels' assistance, the prophet of Gulag empires.
All in all, about 200 million were romantically and idealistically
slaughtered and the underlying dogmatic fanaticism gets every
day stronger.
 
Georges.


 

 Topic: What is the material basis of Consciousness ?

archytas <arch...@live.co.uk> Dec 14 03:25AM -0800

 
Georges turning the question upside down trick is a good one here. We
are always talking about 'some shit that was before' - I'd leave it in
these graceless terms. I'm sort of with you at base Carlos, but I can
do little with a change in particle spin as changing information in
the sorry world I would put right (or perhaps retire from in
disgust)! I would say some particles carry information, as in when we
blow them up into other particles at CERN or Fermilab - though there
is clearly more to this. Books do require readers, yet one can
envisage a time in which 'reading' has gone but the books remain and
their meanings logically and painstakingly reconstructed (perhaps as
one can imagine Georges quipping, 'only to find there was nothing
worthwhile in them')! Alternate notions of information were around in
biology when I still did any. This was usually to split into a
material world and a world of information. I have no sense of contact
with the latter without the former. I used to like notions of
consciousness as emergent properties of life, but we could be tuning
into to something pre-existent of life, the development requiring
both. Your account is reductionist, though none the worse for that.
I can see where it goes in terms of what we might call 'unstable
computing', but can't grok with it on a wider basis.
 
I'm sure we'd both be aware of the category leap once I start saying
I'm sure most people don't really know what information they give out
when they are saying anything, its reception is likely to be equally
vacuous or mundane and that misinformation is everywhere. I doubt
there is a 'Georges' Razor' to apply (though something like one
applies in science in terms of getting a better grok on what we are
dealing with). My guess is to go with defeasible reasoning, another
computer connected term.
 
Reasoning is defeasible when the corresponding argument is rationally
compelling but not deductively valid. The truth of the premises of a
good defeasible argument provide support for the conclusion, even
though it is possible for the premises to be true and the conclusion
false. In other words, the relationship of support between premises
and conclusion is a tentative one, potentially defeated by additional
information.
 
Much has been wittered already on the nature of consciousness. I find
myself interested in what reductionist science is telling us because
there is little to believe in religion and tradition. This still
leaves me interested in my consciousness of this vast universe,
plethora of them 'whizzing' above my head but unseen and potentially
contactable by gravity measurements and so on. Not only might there
be a world of information that is immaterial, there could be material
worlds not material to us. In a more day-to-day sense, we might make
more of what we refer to as consciousness, if we could develop
understandings about decision-making supposedly occurring very quickly
before apparent rational intervention, facts that might let us bring
new argument to rationality and how we are conscious.
 
 


 

einseele <eins...@gmail.com> Dec 14 06:15AM -0800

 
A wonderful article Neil, as from time to time you send for us to
enjoy.
You and Georges have something in common (believe it or not). You both
like to write. :-)
 
Writing is may be the mother of all arts (although she wanted to be
like music).
Poor Science she does not admit she also wants to be literature.
Instead she decided to tell us: Look, I'm not kidding, this is
serious... Science is the serious sister of Fiction, sentenced to look
for the truth, or something like that. Fiction instead, does not need
her sister's frustrations
 
And talking about mothers we also have Nature, does she write as
well?
 
I believe so. DNA is since human beings so declared, a text.
Who/what writes and who/what reads.
 
I like to be reductionist here, I believe that everything is writen
and read by the same, this email, all books, DNA, CERN conCERNS, etc
 
Allow me to quote you here "...I would say some particles carry
information..."
 
Upside down I would say information plays with particles
 
There is no God here, there is a vacuum instead. The answer to the
question "who reads DNA?" is better answered by Fiction. Science is
too serious to my understanding
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


 

 Topic: Second Enlightenment (F1,F2)

archytas <arch...@live.co.uk> Dec 13 11:57PM -0800

 
Your model of Kant would burn rather well, as straw does. Good points
amongst the rather apparent distaste for him. In terms of needing an
ontology, most scientists appear not well versed or interested and get
along quite well on tropical fish reasoning lines - Einstein was a
case in point in terms of the wonderful work he did with others on the
texts and experimental reports of his day (John Stachel's 'Einstein's
Miraculous Year'). Overall, modern reliableism offers more, but does
not address social awareness, which is mentioned but not pursued
above. Defeasible logic also goes some way towards working with what
is empirically applicable and falsifiable, moveable with what we come
to know.
 


 

Georges Metanomski <zg...@yahoo.com> Dec 14 01:30AM -0800

 
> well, as straw does.  Good points
> amongst the rather apparent distaste for him.
===================
G:
I said:
***
While his ontology lost for us all avail, his method
and attitude are excellent example and guidance for
those who, in our days, seek to understand the Second
Enlightenment.
Example of sincerity, rigor and respect for Science.
Guidance resumed in "Sapere Aude", "Dare to Reason!".
***
That's rather admiration for IMO the greatest philosopher
who went astray due to his contemporary context and to
his own sincerity.
===================
Neil:
> what we come
> to know.
================
G:
Not bad, but off topic. We are here at F1, F2.
Einstein will come with second enlightenment (S1, S2) of which
he was the bedrock.
Social awareness will come after Ideology.
Logical challenge of the second enlightenment pertains to
its ontology S2.
 
Thanks for your comments.
Georges.
==============
 


 

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