Isn't the critical fact of emergence that the emergent properties cannot be predicted from or traced back to, the properties of the constituents? The properties of water can be, at least in this case. — T Clark

That was the original holist proposal really, back around the 1920s level of understanding with guys like Broad, Smuts, Alexander and Lloyd Morgan. Back before there were mathematical models that could predict - at least by simulation - emergent properties as the result of collective behaviour.

So back when modelling was stuck with simple linear equations, then that kind of emergence might as well be magic. Properties may as well pop out as there was no maths that could predict them.

But then with computers and non-linear maths becoming a practical thing, we have had an explosion in the modelling of such emergence. In a sense, the reductionists have claimed back that part of what holism was trying to steal away. :)

But then with computers and non-linear maths becoming a practical thing, we have had an explosion in the modelling of such emergence. In a sense, the reductionists have claimed back that part of what holism was trying to steal away. :) — apokrisis

I hate to ask you this. I already have "Life's Ratchet" on my reading list, along with references from other posters, but could you give me a reference or two.

So in one breath, you seem to accept physical to mental causality, but say emergence as a mechanism feels too mysterious. — apokrisis

Um, since when did correlation mean emergence? You'd have to explain that bit of straw man.

Well that's a good place to start I would say as I agree that "emergence" of the reductionist "pop out global property" kind is rather too simplistic and magical. — apokrisis

We agree on something.

That is exactly why I then take a systems science or semiotic approach to accounting for the causality involved. — apokrisis

Though you do not account for mental events, just how their physical correlate interacts in its realm. Or you jump over the gap and presume the very thing to be explained, thus conveniently skipping that hard part.

But then in the next breath you are quite taken by panexperientialism, an utterly different ontology. — apokrisis

I don't think so. Actual occasions would be the experiential aspect of what is measured.

It allows you always to deny any attempt to provide a deflationary account of "the mind" as you reserve the right to invoke mystical being at any point. — apokrisis

What do you mean by deflationary? Reductionist?

I just gave Marty some references on the kind of emergence that goes beyond reductionist modelling still. But if you mean just references to the reductionist modelling of emergence, then there are tons of really good popularisations.

James Gleick's Chaos and Roger Lewin's Complexity are still great.

Don't tree-occasions, grass-occasions, snake-occasions, and all the other related occasions in a body produce, by means of a network of plant, animal, and mineral interactions, an ecosystem. Or am I misunderstanding what you're trying to say. — T Clark

I couldn't begin to answer this in a style that would do justice to Whitehead's process philosophy so I'll quote from this website https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2009/03/07/objectiles-and-actual-occasions/:

When Whitehead calls actual occasions “drops of experience” great care must be taken not to be mislead by his choice of language. Ordinarily we think of experience as something restricted to living and sentient beings. Experience here refers to the way a sentient being receives the world. For Whitehead– and I think this is one of the least meritorious dimensions of his metaphysics —all entities are drops of experience. Whether we are speaking of a rock, a subatomic particle, or a human being, these actual occasions are drops of experience. Objectiles are drops of experience not for us, but for themselves. That is, just as a human being might be said to be the sum of their experiences, a rock is the sum of its experiences. “…In the becoming of an actual entity, the potential unity of many entities in disjunctive diversity… acquires the real unity of the one actual entity; so that the actual entity is the real concrescence of many potentials” (22).

“Disjunctive diversity” refers to a set of existing objectiles or actual occasions independent of one another. Whitehead remarks that

[t]he ultimate metaphysical principle is the advance from disjunction to conjunction, creating a novel entity other than the entities given in disjunction. The novel entity is at once the togetherness of the ‘many’ which it finds, and also it is one among the disjunctive ‘many’ which it leaves; it is a novel entity, disjunctively among the many entities which it synthesizes. The many become one, and are increased by one. In their natures, entities are disjunctively ‘many’ in process of passage into conjunctive unity. (21)

Concrescence refers to the manner in which things grow together to form a unity. Consequently, in the case of a tree, we can see how the manner in which the tree is a conjunctive unity of a disjunctive diversity belonging to the field that it inhabits or in which it becomes. The disjunctive diversity relevant to the becoming of the tree consists of photons of light, water, carbon dioxide, minerals in the soil, etc. These photons of light, molecules of water, carbon dioxide, and minerals are themselves actual occasions. The tree itself is a concrescence or assemblage of these other actual occasions producing a conjunctive unity that is itself a novel entity. The tree is “built” out of these other elements, but is also something new in relation to these elements.

It is here that we get Whitehead’s famous doctrine of “prehensions”. The term “prehension” refers to relations among objectiles or actual occasions or the manner in which one objectile draws on aspects from another actual occasion in its becoming or process. “…[T]wo descriptions are required for an actual entity: (a) one which is analytical of its potentiality for ‘objectification’ in the becoming of other actual entities, and (b) another which is analytical of the process which constitutes its own becoming” (23). When Whitehead speaks of “objectification” he is referring to the manner in which some aspect of another actual occasion is realized or integrated in another actual entity. Thus, for example, the tree becomes or continues its adventure in space-time through a prehension of light, but in prehending photons of light it transforms these prehensions through photosynthesis. Thus Whitehead will say that, “…every prehension consists of three factors: (a) the ‘subject’ which is prehending, namely the actual entity in which that prehension is a concrete element; (b) the ‘datum’ which is prehended; (c) the ‘subjective form’ which is how the subject prehends the datum” (ibid.). The ‘subject’ prehending in my above example is the tree, the datum prehended are the photons of light, and the result of photosynthesis is the ‘subjective form’ this datum takes in the becoming of the tree. — Objectiles and Actual Occasions blog by larvalsubjects

I couldn't begin to answer this in a style that would do justice to Whitehead's process philosophy so I'll quote from this website https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2009/03/07/objectiles-and-actual-occasions/: — schopenhauer1

Boy, I really don't understand, but I appreciate your effort. We should probably leave it at that.

Um, since when did correlation mean emergence? — schopenhauer1

You did it again. As soon as you feel pinned down to a specific position, you switch the story.

You just about grudgingly tied the correlational story of this mind stuff that tracks the fortunes of the matter stuff - as it becomes complexly organised and shows new "emergent" features - then immediately pull back from the causal implications.

You almost admitted to the causal link - in saying the mental is somehow "wrapped up" in the physical, and therefore more than merely just some "correlation". Now you have to rescue your ghost in the machine by a hasty retreat.

Mind and matter can travel in the same bus, eat in the same restaurants, but never actually be found in the same section of those places. There must be no actual mixing of the races.

Though you do not account for mental events, just how their physical correlate interacts in its realm. Or you jump over the gap and presume the very thing to be explained, thus conveniently skipping that hard part. — schopenhauer1

So you will repeat to your last dying breath. I get that.

But here I am asking you to show the firm ground to your own questioning. Not having much luck so far.

What do you mean by deflationary? Reductionist? — schopenhauer1

Naturally immanent and not transcendently supernatural.

You almost admitted to the causal link - in saying the mental is somehow "wrapped up" in the physical, and therefore more than merely just some "correlation". Now you have to rescue your ghost in the machine by a hasty retreat. — apokrisis

But this wrapped up could be the very experientialness of matter itself, perhaps. I don't see how it can be wrapped up in any other way other than being a strict dualist- the mystical kind you don't like. If you claim that mental is always there, then you are either a panpsychist or you are a dualist. Dualism means that there is some sort other stuff outside of nature. Panpsychism, to use a word you like, is "immanent" in nature at the least, as its equated with it and not transcendental or some other realm.

Mind and matter can travel in the same bus, eat in the same restaurants, but never actually be found in the same section of those places. There must be no actual mixing of the races. — apokrisis

Actually that is the opposite- if panpsychism has it, they are a neutral monism of sorts.

Naturally immanent and not transcendently supernatural. — apokrisis

And I think that panpsychism is immanent. To propose mental events comes on the scene magically seems to be mystical mysterious theory. That is something you would not want to get on board with I'm sure, but unintentionally, you may be doing just that.

As a side note, you should read that quote I provided in the last post to T Clark. I think its closer to your Pericean logic than you might think.

But this wrapped up could be the very experientialness of matter itself, perhaps. I don't see how it can be wrapped up in any other way other than being a strict dualist- the mystical kind you don't like. — schopenhauer1

So explain to me how this story of correlation actually works then. If the material becomes convolutedly organised in a way that produces emergent organisation and global properties, why does the mental follow suit? Is it being caused to do so by the material changes. Or does it just like going along for the ride for some reason?

Classic correlationism is monadology. So what is this new version that you appear to be suggesting exactly?

And if instead you are claiming panexperientialism or some kind of dual aspect monism, then maybe you can now claim a free ride. But you get into other kinds of idiocy. If experience is a property of matter, then in what sense does it do anything (as properties are normally about the capacity for doing things). Panpsychism becomes just epiphenomenalism by another name unless it is causing matter to behave. So your correlationism looks right out of the window if you want to grant actual occasions the power of agency.

It's not up to me to make sense of the many positions you want to dance between. Although I would agree that none of the ones you have indicated so far in fact bear much critical examination.

Actually that is the opposite- if panpsychism has it, they are a neutral monism of sorts. — schopenhauer1

Yes. Of course. :-}

And I think that panpsychism is immanent. — schopenhauer1

Making the dualism immanent is not a good solution. Naturalism is about nature as a coherent unity.

Before I answer your questions, can you first read the quote I had earlier to T Clark about Whitehead's process philosophy. I'd like to know your take. It is probably a better explanation that one I would give regarding similar subject matter. Here it is again:

When Whitehead calls actual occasions “drops of experience” great care must be taken not to be mislead by his choice of language. Ordinarily we think of experience as something restricted to living and sentient beings. Experience here refers to the way a sentient being receives the world. For Whitehead– and I think this is one of the least meritorious dimensions of his metaphysics —all entities are drops of experience. Whether we are speaking of a rock, a subatomic particle, or a human being, these actual occasions are drops of experience. Objectiles are drops of experience not for us, but for themselves. That is, just as a human being might be said to be the sum of their experiences, a rock is the sum of its experiences. “…In the becoming of an actual entity, the potential unity of many entities in disjunctive diversity… acquires the real unity of the one actual entity; so that the actual entity is the real concrescence of many potentials” (22).

“Disjunctive diversity” refers to a set of existing objectiles or actual occasions independent of one another. Whitehead remarks that

[t]he ultimate metaphysical principle is the advance from disjunction to conjunction, creating a novel entity other than the entities given in disjunction. The novel entity is at once the togetherness of the ‘many’ which it finds, and also it is one among the disjunctive ‘many’ which it leaves; it is a novel entity, disjunctively among the many entities which it synthesizes. The many become one, and are increased by one. In their natures, entities are disjunctively ‘many’ in process of passage into conjunctive unity. (21)

Concrescence refers to the manner in which things grow together to form a unity. Consequently, in the case of a tree, we can see how the manner in which the tree is a conjunctive unity of a disjunctive diversity belonging to the field that it inhabits or in which it becomes. The disjunctive diversity relevant to the becoming of the tree consists of photons of light, water, carbon dioxide, minerals in the soil, etc. These photons of light, molecules of water, carbon dioxide, and minerals are themselves actual occasions. The tree itself is a concrescence or assemblage of these other actual occasions producing a conjunctive unity that is itself a novel entity. The tree is “built” out of these other elements, but is also something new in relation to these elements.

It is here that we get Whitehead’s famous doctrine of “prehensions”. The term “prehension” refers to relations among objectiles or actual occasions or the manner in which one objectile draws on aspects from another actual occasion in its becoming or process. “…[T]wo descriptions are required for an actual entity: (a) one which is analytical of its potentiality for ‘objectification’ in the becoming of other actual entities, and (b) another which is analytical of the process which constitutes its own becoming” (23). When Whitehead speaks of “objectification” he is referring to the manner in which some aspect of another actual occasion is realized or integrated in another actual entity. Thus, for example, the tree becomes or continues its adventure in space-time through a prehension of light, but in prehending photons of light it transforms these prehensions through photosynthesis. Thus Whitehead will say that, “…every prehension consists of three factors: (a) the ‘subject’ which is prehending, namely the actual entity in which that prehension is a concrete element; (b) the ‘datum’ which is prehended; (c) the ‘subjective form’ which is how the subject prehends the datum” (ibid.). The ‘subject’ prehending in my above example is the tree, the datum prehended are the photons of light, and the result of photosynthesis is the ‘subjective form’ this datum takes in the becoming of the tree. — Objectiles and Actual Occasions blog by larvalsubjects

One cannot speak of Whitehead's philosophy without referring to most primordial element if his philosophy. Without this primordial element, his metaphysics is incomplete if not totally empty.

Following is an excerpt which describes the necessity of any Creative Force in a complete metaphysics, which was why it is primordial Whitehead's process metaphysics.

http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/bce/whitehead.htm

Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)

The Necessity of God and the Divine Natures

"The system thus far described is incomplete in that it cannot adequately explain the foundations of the creative advance into novelty which characterizes the universe. As Hosinski points out, there are three questions which remain unresolved (see Hosinski, 156-163). The first relates to potentiality. If actual occasions merely prehend the objective forms of the past, the world would be a very dull place."

"The second as-of-yet unanswered question regards the origin of subjectivity. One can explain the steps involved in the development of a subjective aim in the process of concrescence, but one still needs to locate the origin of the initial subjective aim."

"The final question which remains unanswered is as to the order and value evident in creation. Whitehead asserts that there must be certain categorial conditions which undergird the unfolding of the creative process."

"The answer to these questions as to the origins of potential, the initial subjective aim, and order and value is God. God is the atemporal actual occasion which provides the world with its aims and with the eternal objects which guide creation. God must be an actual occasion, for according to the ontological principle, the reality of the initial aim, general potential and order and value must issue forth from an object of experience. God is not an afterthought to the system, but rather an integral part to its operation and description of both process and reality. God is the reason (and therefore the entity) which makes the existence of other actual entities possible. God "provides the limitation for which no reason can be given: for all reason flows from it. God is the ultimate limitation, and His existence is the ultimate irrationality" (SMW, 257). This is not to suggest that God is truly irrational, but God is the precondition for the existence of rationality."

Before I answer your questions, can you first read the quote I had earlier to T Clark about Whitehead's process philosophy. I'd like to know your take. — schopenhauer1

Sure. In strangulated language, Whitehead is making the essential systems argument. The whole shapes its parts, the parts (re)construct that whole. You have a causal interaction in which the material system forms a functional relation. A tree turns photons (as free energy) into some material structure that is meaningful to "it" as an autonomous lifeform. And you can situate that tree within the physical world where that also makes sense. A tree is like a more sophisticated tornado in that it is a form that survives as entropy "blows through it".

So Whitehead is trying to employ a systems ontology. We even get a nod towards triadicism.

The tree is the global entity that embodies a purpose - it is the general habit that "prehends". The photon energy is then the "datum" - the external material flow it seeks to regulate. And that photon energy gets turned into the material structure needed to compose the tree, maintain that regulatory structure.

So you have the basic causal logic that describes a hierarchically-organised system - the kind of structure that emerges dissipatively in nature as a material process.

But then Whitehead just pastes "mental" over everything in unwarranted fashion. Everything gets labelled as "experiential".

As I've said, you take it obvious that the "mental" exists. You know that because you believe you know that there is also this other thing called the "material". The material only explains half of reality - by definition. The mental is the half that it does not explain - again by definition.

So there is this baked-in ontology to be blindly applied. The existence of a dualism is taken at face value. The game therefore becomes to shoehorn that division back into nature at some fundamental level. And Whitehead plays that game. No need to justify that photons have experience. They must do once ontic dualism is presumed.

The novel entity is at once the togetherness of the ‘many’ which it finds, and also it is one among the disjunctive ‘many’ which it leaves; — schopenhauer1

Here is the essence of the systems view. The fundamental dichotomy it is talking about is differentiation~integration. So local degrees of freedom in interaction with global states of constraint.

As a causal logic, it might be hard to get your head around. But it is basic to neuroscience understanding. It was what Gestalt psychology demonstrated. As a process, awareness is about doing both together. Integrating and differentiating. Awareness is the high contrast "representational" state that forms by lumping and splitting at the same time. The sharper the supporting detail, the more vivid the coherent whole.

So yes, the functional logic is all about this interaction between two complementary directions of action - integration and differentiation, or the emergence of constraints and degrees of freedom. Normal causal analysis gets hung up on wanting to argue "either/or". But systems causality is irreducibly "both".

However it is a functional logic that is agnostic about whether it is applied either to the "mental" or the "physical". It is prior to the kinds of dualistic pronouncements that reductionist thought is wont to make.

You have already decided reality is ontically divided into two disconnected categories. But I say wind that back. Start again and show your working out. Consider that the problem here is a product of your analytic tool kit. There could be a holistic understanding of causality - one that is triadic, and indeed semiotic - which avoids the strife that dualism creates.

So Whitehead is annoying just for his strangulated language. But he is grasping after a systems causality - just like many others were in his day. However he then just slapped dualism all over this half-articulated picture.

Which of course is why he is remembered. Giving into dualism like that suits many folk's agendas, especially the theistic and anti-science ones.

Yep. The story has to be told in a way that slips God and soul-stuff in through the back door even when talking about causality from a systems perspective. The Church was hardly going to take the set-back of the Enlightenment lying down.

But then Whitehead just pastes "mental" over everything in unwarranted fashion. Everything gets labelled as "experiential". — apokrisis

Because he is honest to himself. He doesn't run away from the obvious not does he concoct wild tales to cover up what is there.

Yep. The story has to be told in a way that slips God and soul-stuff in through the back door even when talking about causality from a systems perspective. The Church was hardly going to take the set-back of the Enlightenment lying down. — apokrisis

So did Einstein when he spoke of the God of Spinoza. It is called intellectual honesty.

http://www.wayofspinoza.com/einstein-shares-his-belief-in-spinozas-god/

I am not completely satisfied with the answer, but again, at least it accounts for mental occasions and does not get it from magical fiat. — schopenhauer1

Yeah I could see that as a motivation.

It seems to me though, that once everything's mental, explaining why some things appear not to be is the new Hard Problem of Unconsciousness. Of course we don't have to deal with a bunch of rocks and clouds insisting that they don't have qualia dammit, so there's that.

The whole thing feels sketchy to me, but I couldn't guarantee there's a metaphysics that wouldn't, so I guess I'll leave it be.

Ah religion. Aren't you always popping up every 10 seconds to tell us it's a "just so" story like science?

You know nothing about Whitehead or what he perceived. You only know your tales about Cosmic Purpose that allow you to hide your spirituality under a rug.

However it is a functional logic that is agnostic about whether it is applied either to the "mental" or the "physical". It is prior to the kinds of dualistic pronouncements that reductionist thought is wont to make. — apokrisis

This to me is an empty statement. How is this answering the question? A tap dance around the hard problem I am sure.

You have already decided reality is ontically divided into two disconnected categories. — apokrisis

I don't think disconnected. Clearly connected. All us occasions of experience. Experience that interacts and prehends other experience is just what we call the objective, duh ;)!

There could be a holistic understanding of causality - one that is triadic, and indeed semiotic - which avoids the strife that dualism creates. — apokrisis

But with words such as dissapative, downward causation, etc., you have never proved much to solve the problem. What are mental states then? Oh that's right, you are going to follow the Daniel Dennett routine of denying that mental states exist, but then never explaining the illusion itself. Of course!

So Whitehead is annoying just for his strangulated language. But he is grasping after a systems causality - just like many others were in his day. However he then just slapped dualism all over this half-articulated picture. — apokrisis

Because without the so-called "dualism" the problem is not even dealt with. Either your version of Peircean logic is simply magical mental fiat, with leprechauns and all with their magic "illusion" making, or you think information is somehow experiential, which is more Whitehead's approach.

Oh that's right, you are going to follow the Daniel Dennett routine of denying that mental states exist, but then never explaining the illusion itself. — schopenhauer1

As usual, when you are under pressure to defend your claims, you divert to ad homs like eliminative materialism. Telling.

God is the reason (and therefore the entity) which makes the existence of other actual entities possible. God "provides the limitation for which no reason can be given: for all reason flows from it. God is the ultimate limitation, and His existence is the ultimate irrationality" (SMW, 257). — Rich's quote

Hi, Rich. I can't help but point out that this looks like slapping the name "God" on brute fact. He is that "for which no reason can be given." How many times did you claim in our discussion that this postulation of (epistemic) brute fact was "lazy"?

You also accuse apo of "hiding his spirituality under a rug." But I asked you if you were a theist and you didn't answer. You just repeated the same mantra about what philosophy should be. IMO, you should just argue theism if that's your position. I still maintain, though, that there's not much content in most versions of "the philosopher's God." Such "Gods" tend to be no more than the terminus of actual conceptual content. They anthropomorphize and mask the threat of global contingency.

Hi, Rich. I can't help but point out that this looks like slapping the name "God" on brute fact. — t0m

Whitehead calls it God. Bergson the Elan Vital. Einstein "the God of Spinoza". Peirce the Mind. The ancients The Dao.

It is the Creative Force that is peering out of the eyes that gives the Universe potentiality and novelty.

There is no getting away from it unless one plays the spiritual hide-and-seek game of Thermodynamic Purpose and Cosmic Goals within thousands of words of saying nothing. It is always there.

Thanks for the directness. I'll even say that we ourselves are certainly describable as "creative force," the "mind," and so on. I'll even say that something like "meaning making" is "always there." One might say that "being-there" is a self-interpreting entity. I also like the Tao Te Ching. As far as I can tell, I was "thrown" into a state of always already "being there" with a past, creatively fashioning a future from this past. In short, I think can agree on some things, if not on the terminology.

Yet I also believe that the world was here before I was. I've seen pictures of myself as a baby, I don't remember being a baby. So there's a tension between these visions. I can live with this tension. At best (seems to me) we can weave the little stories we use locally into an always grander and more cohesive total narrative. Must the fact of our personal experience of creative evolution negate narratives of the emergence of this personal experience that are woven in with physical science? I don't think so. The total experience of life is always richer than any usefully reductive narrative applied locally. Metaphysics is a genre of poetry even. It is itself a manifestation of this same creative evolution. Sometimes I get the sense that you would like the creativity to stop, since you're sometimes dismissive of truly creative posts.

As usual, when you are under pressure to defend your claims, you divert to ad homs like eliminative materialism. Telling. — apokrisis

As odd and disconcerting as it seems to have mind being there like "turtles all the way down", your informational theory does not work without that concept. You exhort me to not think in nouns but "processes" and I agree and give you some details with Whitehead's ideas as a basis. But then, you don't like the idea of processes being experiential. But this is where your hidden dualism lies, because eventually one process is going to be experiential (i.e. mental events/ minds) and you will to have explain WHAT that is compared to the rest of the processes. Either the processes have an inner aspect, or it is all just "dead" interactions or purely-mapping (i.e.information transfer) if you want to try to be Peircean about it. Now, you are going to make a grand move to invoke DOWNWARD CAUSATION (read that with resounding echoes)- the core of emergentism, and the core of its failings when related to mind-body problem. Downward causation works in physical systems as the radical difference is not there. It is still using the language of math/physics/mapping. Instead now we have experientialness- a completely different phenomena that doesn't speak in quantities and maps, but qualities and first personhood. In other words, as I keep saying, you are getting an emergent phenomenon illegitimately from quantity to quality (what I call magical fiat). I don't think you mean to do this, but you are doing this.

Sometimes I get the sense that you would like the creativity to stop, since you're sometimes dismissive of truly creative posts. — t0m

What distinguishes philosophy from mythology is the former should be peering into existence while the later exercises pure imagination. That is why philosophy occupies different bookshelves from fiction and science fiction in the library.

But what I really object to is pure fiction being hidden under the umbrella of science. Scientists, as of recent, have become quite accept at declaring pure fiction as "fact" in their non-stop drive for billions of dollars in government and industry funding. It's quite pathetic.

Philosophy should be bound by the quest to understand the nature of nature and the nature of life, not by how much money a department can raise from the pharmaceutical/medical industry or the government departments that they control.

. Must the fact of our personal experience of creative evolution negate narratives of the emergence of this personal experience that are woven in with physical science? I don't think so. — t0m

What physical science is attempting to do is to negate personal experiences, and turning it into some sort of illusion, purely to suit its own materialist biases. Only material is real because science can only deal with material? Do we have a new kind of Church with a new set of priests? I object when a search for understanding is replaced with a search for more money and when those who place understanding in a higher regard than money are marginalized, ostracized, and vilified. There is something really wrong with the science industry nowadays which is why I have several friends who quit it. They were disgusted.

James Gleick's Chaos and Roger Lewin's Complexity are still great. — apokrisis

I've read both of those, but I don't remember a discussion that emergent properties can be predicted. It's been a while since I read them, maybe I should take another look along with the other references you gave. After "Life's Ratchet."

Hi, Rich. I can't help but point out that this looks like slapping the name "God" on brute fact. — t0m

I've tried to read all the posts in this thread. Boy, it's hard. If someone has said this before, I didn't pick it up - If some of us think of God as immanent in the world, does that mean that God is an emergent phenomenon from the "brute facts" of the universe?

I'll even say that we ourselves are certainly describable as "creative force," the "mind," and so on. I'll even say that something like "meaning making" is "always there." One might say that "being-there" is a self-interpreting entity. I also like the Tao Te Ching.... Yet I also believe that the world was here before I was. I've seen pictures of myself as a baby, I don't remember being a baby. So there's a tension between these visions. I can live with this tension. At best (seems to me) we can weave the little stories we use locally into an always grander and more cohesive total narrative. — t0m

Thanks for bringing up the Tao Te Ching. As I've said elsewhere, it embarrasses me that everything I say seems to end up back there. I've said this elsewhere too - to me, the ability to believe two apparently incompatible ideas at the same time, the tension you talk about, is the sign of a mature intellect.

What distinguishes philosophy from mythology is the former should be peering into existence while the later exercises pure imagination. — Rich

Many people consider most religions what you describe as "mythology."

What physical science is attempting to do is to negate personal experiences, and turning it into some sort of illusion, purely to suit its own materialist biases. Only material is real because science can only deal with material? — Rich

Generally, I come down with t0m and Apokrisis in this discussion, but I do agree with this. Back to the Tao Te Ching again - It is human awareness, consciousness, that brings the 10,000 things, t0m's brute facts, into existence. Most science misses that completely.

Many people consider most religions what you describe as "mythology." — T Clark

As it may be. I am describing what philosophy means to me.

Back to the Tao Te Ching again - It is human awareness, consciousness, that brings the 10,000 things, t0m's brute facts, — T Clark

That we exist and continue to create is an observation of life. That there is purpose, novelty, and potential is also a matter of observation. It is what is.

A soup of chemicals gathering together and magically/mystically deciding that they are going to have a barbecue with another soup of chemicals is pure mythology. It is conjured up literally out of thin air so that scientists can claim supremacy over material "facts" and "truth" and tuck everything that we experience under the rug of illusion. Everything that science can't explain becomes mystical while at the same time science explains nothing. Just stories.

May I suggest, as Sheldrake suggests, that science is now suffering from its own delusions brought about by the love of money.