From: David MOREY (us@divadeus.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Sat Sep 06 2003 - 17:02:05 BST
Hi Matt
Just read your Yellow Brick Road essay.
This seems excellent to me. I entirely agree
that science needs to look at teleological
explanation. Have your views changed much
since this essay? My own position on this was
formed before reading Pirsig. Also your comments
about science and values seem very useful.
I am more concerned to oppose mechanistic
and deterministic explanation than reductionism,
but these often sit closely together, I accept not necessarily,
and oppose the physicalist term more than the idea of reductionism
as simply trying to bring all kinds of explanations into coherence with
each other. Coherence is surely good/useful. Dawkin's bringing in
free will at the end is very indefensible I agree. I prefer to think in
terms of just freedom and I think it has to be from the start, in other
words indeterminacy. Have you read Prigogine's 'The End Of Uncertainty'
this sees indeterminacy as very much supporting a theory of different
pattern levels
like Pirsig. Yes nature/nurture is a 2 kinds of determinism argument, and I
want to
move to a indeterminacy/freedom/dynamism is basic position, I see this as my
basic ontology. And this indeterminacy/freedom/dynamism implies purpose I
believe
and therefore teleological explanation. Why are there any static patterns?
Because
dynamic purpose has laid them down, after that we are simply experiencing
patterns/repetition.
What is freedom/purpose? I think purpose has to imply that there are a
number of alternative
futures and that somehow one is chosen over the many possible. As Prigogine
says the 'possible
is richer than the real'. Think many worlds theory in quantum mechanics, the
future is open, but the
future presents a number of futures made possible by the present situation,
and the rolling forward of our
world is a sort of collapse (perhaps wave function collapse) of the rich
possible future into the finite
present. This is choice/purpose. I stand at a junction faced with many
possibilities but take one specific
one. What about teleology and non-human being? Well what is going on in
Young's double slit
experiment? Are the electrons free to hit in a number of places? Is there a
sort of choice? Do combined
atoms have a range of macro-properties they could exhibit in a different
universe? Does light demonstrate
purpose when it takes the shortest path as argued by Arthur M Young in his
Reflexive Universe.
I find Darwin, random mutations and natural selection, very unconvincing
explanation for the complexity
of life. See R.Sheldrake A New Science of Life, Bede and Jeremy Narby's The
Cosmic Serpent.
Life is too complex. A wasp that paralyses a caterpiller to insert its eggs
into? I just can't see how
random ever gets arond to that in any length of time? The absense of
teleological purpose in our understanding
is why we are living in a kind of dark ages. How they will laugh that we
ever restricted our thinking to this extent,
like we laugh at the flat earthers.
So have you moved much from the Yellow Brick Road essay because I feel that
it is more
radical than your turn to Rorty in the fallen priest. What do you say?
NB Have you read Charles Taylor's Sources Of The Self on the sources of
value/values.
Regards
David Morey
----- Original Message -----
From: "MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT" <mpkundert@students.wisc.edu>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 10:18 PM
Subject: Re: MD A metaphysics
> David,
>
> David said:
> So what is physicalism when it is anti-reductionist?
> Does anyone hold this view other than you?
> Does Rorty talk about it anywhere?
> Post quantum theory what is a non-reductionist physicalist?
> I thought physicalsim depended on the ontological concept of matter.
>
> Matt:
> Pretend there are numbers in front of each of those lines.
>
> 1. When physicalism is anti-reductionist, it is a language game. It is
simply a way of speaking. It makes no pretensions about how the way the
world really is. It simply says some things about what works, about how it
helps to think about things when trying to predict and control, say, chairs
and rocks.
>
> 2. and 3. You know, flattery will get you no where with me (or
everywhere, I keep forgetting which). I'm not so intelligent as to come up
with non-reductionist physicalism. The genesis of the idea of non-reductive
physicalism began in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature with Rorty's
discussion of the Anitpodeans (don't have the book, can't remember where).
It became an official, titled position with Rorty's essay, "Non-Reductive
Physicalism" in Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. I think it is safe to
say that there are at least two avowed non-reductive physicalists: Rorty and
Donald Davidson. The aforementioned paper is one of a series of essays in
which Rorty draws out consequences of Davidson's work that Davidson either
hasn't yet done or doesn't do for his own reasons. But, unlike some of
Rorty's other interpretations of Davidson, I haven't read anything about
Davidson not being comfortable with non-reductive physicalism, so I think it
is safe to say that they agr
> ee.
>
> As for people other than me, Rorty, and Davidson, I'm sure there are a
growing number of neopragmatists out there. I'm not positive, but I don't
think non-reductive physicalism is one of his more controversial positions,
so I imagine it is more congenial to his readers. But, I could be wrong. I
haven't done any surveys.
>
> 4. I imagine that physicalism after quantum theory looks a lot like
Newton after Einstein and then after Heisenberg. In other words, its fine
for some things (like predicting the movement of a rock), but not for others
(like predicting where an electron is going to land).
>
> 5. Nope. No position requires an ontological commitment unless you want
it to. And if you want it to, then you are begging the question over me,
just as I am to you.
>
> Matt
>
>
>
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