Dawkins' Atheist Bus

[jambo]

Well I daresay a physicist, chemist or astronomer would consider consciousness to be rather outside their field of expertise, but to a neurologist, a cognitive psychologist or a theoretical computer scientist, it might be their main area of research. Likewise cosmologists, in as much as they're trying to understand where the universe came from and ultimately why it even exists at all, are studying nothing if not existence itself.

Yeah but you know what she's saying to them?

 

[waffle]

Sure, not to get into needlessly quibbling over terms but that would of course be referred to by some as a pantheistic position, as you acknowledge. At any rate that's pretty much what I understand and meant when I used the term, specifically wrt what k-punk has written on the subject. I don't really think there necessarily has to be a difference between the idea that god is all and that of a radical immanence, unless we are just being snooty about terms and imagining that if a fellow doesn't immediately outline at exhaustive length every last nuance of a concept then he/she must of course be a barbarian crudely imagining the presence of a little man inside a rock or something. There isn't always time for that.

AS a certain teleological cyborg said, "No Problemo". My necessarily aphoristic/clumsey summary of Spinoza's materialism was a reply to, in addition to your query about its antecedence to the BWO, your other one about defining the 'material' as such.

It is a really nice conception though, very elegant. My own feeling is that it's probably not the whole story. I'm not sure we're in a position to really get a handle on what that might be.

Well, that is one question on which an Absolute answer is possible: of course not, we can never get the whole story - because we're not God, not the eternal abstract machine, just part assemblages with possible access points to that 'whole story' [some might call an access point a Revolution ]. The 'best' we can set out to do is what Kris in Tarkovsky's/Lem's Solaris tried to do: can we make contact with an inhuman cosmos, with radical otherness, AND, can we simultaneously face up to our unconscious reality, to our desire (to the truth of what we are)?

 

[waffle]

Nomadthesecond, responding way upthread to pomo flamer Mr T's substitution of personal abuse and slander for rational argument, writes:

And we're off--patly dismissing any idea we do not understand! Classic move on Dissensus.

Do I know as much about physics as you do? No. Because I am not in graduate school for physics. Chances are similar that I, because I spent 8 years studying it, know more about 20th century theory and philosophy than you do. This doesn't make me "better" than you, it simply makes me more informed about a certain topic. If you feel insulted by that, I can't possibly understand why.

Also, post-modernism is not a "philosophical" point-of-view, it's a theoretical one. And, as has been pointed out before on here in discussions you participated in, almost no one identifies as a "post-modernist"--it is mostly a derogatory and dismissive term used by opponents of moral relativism.

Would it not be more productive to try to understand what Waffle is saying before people fly off the handle about it? I mean come on we all know that willfully ignoring what someone's actually saying because it's outside your personal area of expertise is not a great intellectual strategy.

Can't we let Dissensus be somewhat more rational than most places? I think so...

Sound advice, then instantly ignored by those you were addressing.

Appeasing the Mr T's of this forum only results in their further self-aggrandizement (though Josef K, god love him, might make some softly-softly progress with T's "I sees what I sees and I knows what I knows" empiricist fundamentalism on the "Another Collapse" thread), in their further confidence in resorting to yet more personal abuse and in irrationally constructing yet more strawmen self-projections to snigger at. Having run out of actual arguments, T and Co now imagine Waffle (an avatar, not a person, for we are many ...) to be HMTL as if that somehow undermines any of Waffle's (or HMTL's) arguments. Just lazily labeling someone as effectively the ANTICHRIST is sufficient in and of itself to dismiss anything they say (I've emailed HMTL and his response is most revealing about T, Idlerich, and the other smug 'liberal' post-political fundamentalists who post here; it saves much time sifting through the archive. He believes it's rather sad how the forum has so overwhelmingly degenerated, has been hijacked by right wing smugonauts, and with the full cooperation of the passive-aggressive, self-appointed moderators who only ever make an appearance to defend these trolls and then hysterically threaten or ban anyone who challenges their anti-Dissensus ideology. But I'm inviting him to make a 'guest post' via this avatar, so that will keep you 'safe' in your paranoia).

If nothing else, this thread has further confirmed and elaborated on how empiricist fundamentalists are joined at the hip to religious fundamentalists.

 

[IdleRich]

T and Co now imagine Waffle (an avatar, not a person, for we are many ...) to be HMTL as if that somehow undermines any of Waffle's (or HMTL's) arguments.

I think there is something about the way that you can't get the letters of your own (pseudo)name in order that is quite illustrative of your general limitations mr Hundredmilliontimelife. It's probably wrong of me to admit this but I do take some pleasure in the way that your mixture of stupidity and effort makes you so unhappy. You try so hard for so little and if you weren't so unpleasant about it it would be tragic. Oh well...

 

[mistersloane]

. But I'm inviting him to make a 'guest post' via this avatar, so that will keep you 'safe' in your paranoia).
.

Sometimes I think I want to marry you, and then other times I think I am married to you, it's very disturbing. Good to have it/you/them back though, regardless of whether we're married or not.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Hahaha, oh dear, now he's talking about himself in the third (or is that hundredmillionth?) person - surely the first sign of, oh I don't know, being a hopelessly mad wanker I suppose.

Edit: if this place is so awful, why bother coming back here? Are you a sucker for punishment or something? I can only imagine your repeated bannings fulfil some kind of masochistic urge or persecution complex...

 

[nomadthethird]

Anyone who doesn't think that religion, and especially Christianity in the west, has not been reduced to a set of lifestyle choices masquerading as absolute truths and decrees handed down from God on high on paper (and endlessly translated, and re-translated, and back translated) isn't really paying much attention.

I don't know much about Dawkins, but from what I've seen he seems not to realize that it doesn't help to drag science down to the level of fundamentalism. I'm not saying that I don't mostly agree with him re atheism, but it's not impossible to agree with someone and also believe that they're a little off-base when it comes to their evangelistic efforts.

 

[waffle]

Anyone who doesn't think that religion, and especially Christianity in the west, has not been reduced to a set of lifestyle choices masquerading as absolute truths and decrees handed down from God on high on paper (and endlessly translated, and re-translated, and back translated) isn't really paying much attention.

Marcel Gauchet has an interesting analysis of this, with 'religious identity' as a re-territorialization in the face of global capital's obliteration of social structures, including the accompanying derision of all beliefs.

Blind to Globalization's Impact on Identity

The West Is Blind to the Impact of Globalization on the Economy and on Morals
Interview of Marcel Gauchet
Le Monde

Europeans' problem is that they can no longer understand what religion means in societies where it still maintains a structural power. They've forgotten their own past. For them, religion has become a system of individual and private beliefs. Now the rest of the world does not operate that way. It also is not spared the "departure" of religion which accelerates with globalization. But this "departure" of the religious organization of the world, destroyed by urbanization, Western-style economism, liberal thought, technical efficiency and consumption cohabits with an aspiration to rediscover traditional religion.

Aren't you struck by the rise in derision toward all religion?

Yes. There's some new quality to derision as it has been practiced, say, the last two or three decades in Europe. It illustrates the "departure" of religion that we talked about. We've gone beyond anti-religious criticism like we once knew, which expressed hostility on principle to a system one fought as contrary to the spirit of freedom. The opposition could be very violent, but it supposed a sort of agreement: you believe in the authority of revelation, but we believe in the autonomy of reason. The dissension was inexpiable, but there was an implicit consensus with regard to the stakes and the grounds of the confrontation - including recourse to deadly ridicule.

With derision, we step out of this implicit agreement. What is rejected is the very ground for belief. That's what makes it more hurtful for a religious awareness than traditional anti-clericalism or atheism, which could clash, but which had strong foundations. With derision, religious awareness is abused in its most profound being: the sense of certain significance to existence, the sense of ultimate questions before death, and beyond that, salvation. Religious people are overridden by a smug superficiality.

The political world is not spared either ...

No, of course not. Nothing that is taken seriously is spared. Derision has become a sort of criteria for hyper-modernity. For very prosperous societies, we should undoubtedly see that as the reflex of a spoiled child. It is an ideological epiphenomenon that pushes the liberal faith of our societies to the limit: everything goes along on its own on, so why ask dramatic questions? Seriousness is quite out of fashion ... It goes without saying that the more committed one is in one's faith or political action, the more this rejection of seriousness hits you in the face. And then imagine the reaction in societies where the difficulty of existence still preserves all its weight ...

And from the comments section of Lenin's Tomb's criticism of the advert:

"the preposterous motto that adorns the banner of Richard Dawkin's official website: "A Clear-Thinking Oasis"."

I hate to break it to Dawkins, but oases probably can't think at all.

Richard Dawkins sings John Lennon:


Imagine the possibility that there is in fact no heaven:

It isn't, one feels, terribly difficult to do.

In all likelihood, no hell below us;

Above us, I suspect, only sky.


Imagine all the people

Were as rational as I.


You may say I'm at Oxford,

But I'm not the only one.

Perhaps one day you'll join us

For a sherry and a bun.

 

[nomadthethird]

Oh, I get it now! Dawkins is a classist

 

[Mr. Tea]

With derision, we step out of this implicit agreement. What is rejected is the very ground for belief. That's what makes it more hurtful for a religious awareness

*world's smallest violin*

"the preposterous motto that adorns the banner of Richard Dawkin's official website: "A Clear-Thinking Oasis"."

I hate to break it to Dawkins, but oases probably can't think at all.

Oh, how chortlesome!

Is that the best they can come up with - intentionally confusing a noun with a present participle? Pathetic.

 

[waffle]

Games People Play

In this game there is no unreasonable limit to the number of subjects who may participate nor are there any temporal or 'discursive' limitations on any of those participants within an assumed symbolic order, its formal structure entirely a function of each deluded player striving to bait and suppress what it believes the Other’s desire actually is so that s/he might capture that desire, invariably and ineluctably betraying their own desire as the inter-exciting libidinal crapshoot spirals into ritual hysterical frenzy [each structurally frustrated player believing the Other - all other participants- to be insane lunatics in order to preserve their own 'inner fascist']. The following succinctly describes the formal sequence in 'operational', inter-subjectivist terms (via Poetics):

Let us consider the nature of insult. I insult you; you take offense. If I have insulted you effectively, you will take offense in spite of your determination to rise above my petty jibes: the insult is effective to the extent that it causes its target to feel offended in spite of himself. Later you will curse yourself for responding so hastily and angrily to what were, after all, only words. You will, if you are exceptionally disciplined, own that your response was unworthy, that you should not have allowed yourself to become besides yourself with fury. I will then insult you again, making artful use of the humiliation I have already inflicted, and if my aim is true you will again fly into a rage. I enjoy a power over you that you do not wish to grant me, and would withhold from me if you could.

Now, from my perspective as a skilled verbal abuser, my words do indeed appear to have a causal power: I can make you feel bad, I can provoke a reaction and deprive you of your equanimity. Of course I can only do this because I know what will make you feel bad, because I have some knowledge of your vulnerabilities, your affective triggers (yo momma!). The early stages of verbal combat often involve a search for those triggers, a series of more or less effective sallies. So this causal power does not operate on an inert object, but on a psychic system that cathects and binds stimuli precisely in order to avoid being thrown out of equilibrium. If I keep plugging away with the same old taunts, you may eventually become immune to them; but you may do this by internalising the gibe, accepting its essential verity, making it a persistent feature of your inner mapping of the world - in a word, “ontologising” it. The insult loses its immediate power to wound because it tells you nothing you don’t already “know”; but the attendant humiliation is now permanent, a part of who you “are”.

With (the truth of) their desire eventually thwarted and betrayed by having been colonized and interpellated by this mutual acting out/supression of the fantasy of what the Other desires, all the players soon exhibit pathological symptoms (a giant boil growing out of their neck, frantically pacing up and down their street for 3 hours every day, repeatedly walking under ladders, shouting abuse at farm animals, etc) ...

 

[swears]

^^^ real talk

 

[nomadthethird]

In this game there is no unreasonable limit to the number of subjects who may participate nor are there any temporal or 'discursive' limitations on any of those participants within an assumed symbolic order, its formal structure entirely a function of each deluded player striving to bait and suppress what it believes the Other’s desire actually is so that s/he might capture that desire, invariably and ineluctably betraying their own desire as the inter-exciting libidinal crapshoot spirals into ritual hysterical frenzy [each structurally frustrated player believing the Other - all other participants- to be insane lunatics in order to preserve their own 'inner fascist']. The following succinctly describes the formal sequence in 'operational', inter-subjectivist terms (via Poetics):



With (the truth of) their desire eventually thwarted and betrayed by having been colonized and interpellated by this mutual acting out/supression of the fantasy of what the Other desires, all the players soon exhibit pathological symptoms (a giant boil growing out of their neck, frantically pacing up and down their street for 3 hours every day, repeatedly walking under ladders, shouting abuse at farm animals, etc) ...

This is why, if I insist on going online, I use it to talk to myself about myself. What other people say to insult you says more about their own neuroses, hang ups, egotism, blindness, whatever, than it does yours. Always. Interesting to watch, even more fun to use like a bunch of mirrors set up just so they regress infinitely and all you see are little yous reflected on each surface.

 

[mistersloane]

Interesting to watch, even more fun to use like a bunch of mirrors set up just so they regress infinitely and all you see are little yous reflected on each surface.

Chatrooms are the big tabula rasa, or maybe the object left behind, created?, when we found the symbolic in the real.

 

[nomadthethird]

Chatrooms are the big tabula rasa, or maybe the object left behind, created?, when we found the symbolic in the real.

Totally.

Something I love to do is to just glide right into a chatroom (well, I used to use yahoo chat in like 1995...) or message board I've never read and just start an extended monologue with myself. At first, people usually think I'm trying to talk to them. Then eventually they see that I'm basically only using their words as x-factors in the monologue as if they fly into my line of view out of nowhere and become incidentals that I can use to create another tangent for my own indulgence.

It's always amused me that some people think message boards and chat rooms are "degraded" forms of communication, while at the same time they think blogs are on the same level that a book is, a sacred object. As if blogs aren't *the* most masturbatory activity you could possibly engage in...

 

[3 Body No Problem]

What is the question?

The question was: why you think scientific explanation and teleological explanation are mutually incompatible? I asked several times, in Post 96 for example.

Genetic code does not have a 'goal', unless you wish to re-subscribe to teleology once again. That's a retrospective purposive illusion.

This I disagree with this, and this disagreement illustrates what I think is the core of your misunderstanding. Genetic code <b>does</b> have replication as its purpose.

But it all depends on the semantics of "goal" or "purpose": If you assume by fiat that only humans can have goals or purposes, then you are trivially right, but I take these terms to have more genereal meaning (as pointed out in earlier postings): a system S has a goal G, if S contains within itself a representation of G and organises its behaviour in the face of perturbations from the environment so as to reach G. The study of such "teleological mechanisms" has been termed Cybernetics by Norbert Wiener, although that name is no longer in fashion. In that sense genes clearly have the goal of self-replication, as they contain a blueprint that describes themselves and guides their self-reproduction. That

• self-replication is possible as a purely mechanical natural (or blind) process, and
  
• that this process evolved purely out of the chaos of matter moving about (order-from noise!)

is one of the amazing empirical discoveries of 20th century science. Maybe it's time for you to divulge what you mean by "purpose, goal, telos".

Here is an example of a self replicating computer program (called Church's Y-Combinator):

(f(xx)))(λx.(f(xx))))
​

Here is another one:

char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main() {printf(f,34,f,34,10);}%c"; main(){printf(f,34,f,34,10);}
​

I could go and use an alternative description, like "these programs print something on screen, and otherwise just blindly executes", but what is the interest in this latter description? It's trivial and says nothing, i.e. it carries no information. It misses the fundamental fact that the programs do contain self-description and hence have
the purpose of self-replication (when operating in a suitable environment). This peculiar goal informes their structure, in fact their structure is dominated by this goal. Once one understands the goal of self-replication, one can ask scientific questions about the nature of self-replication: what features do all self-replicating entities have in common etc.

The mistake you make, I believe, is that you automatically assume that every goal has to have a sentient being having this goal. Hence you think that when scientists describe the goal of evolution as (for example) replication of genes, they assume or imply that there are sentinent beings holding that goal in their heads. This ain't so. Matter can organise itself into causally active representations of future states (aka goals). It's amazing, and may be hard to comprehend, but still true.

What's it called 'evolutionary psychology' for, then, and not, say, evolutionary/genetic human biology (or biosocial engineering)?

Your point being?

And aren't you depoliticizing here somewhat? ["No, it's not the debilitating social anxiety resulting from having lost his job, from having no say in his socio-economic environment, it's a chemical inbalance in his BRAIN and all we gotta do is find the rogue gene that's responsible, the little bugger, and that other one that's causing him to get strange ideas about his boss' offshore bank accounts, and yeah his sexual orientation too ..."]. BF Skinner is wetting himself.

And aren't you depoliticizing here somewhat? ["No, his need to breathe is not resulting from the sustained pysiological need for oxygen and from having no say in the creation of his biological makeup, it's all capitalism's fault that he needs to eat. All that evil advertising created the libidinal structure that sets up the postmodern superego constantly commanding him to breathe! It's the debilitating social anxiety resulting from having lost his job, from having no say in his socio-economic environment, that makes him crave air, and all we gotta do is find the rogue banker responsible, the little bugger, and that other one that's causing him to get strange ideas about his eating thrice a day, and yeah about wanting to have sexual too ..."]. Pol Pot is wetting himself.

Let me repeat, the point of studying EP is in essence <B>to determine which parts of human behavoir are socially acquired and which parts are not</B>. This has interesting political ramifications: that homosexuality is probably innate while a propensity for crime is not, are highlights of this research tradition.

I have, funnily enough. And, you know, sorry to have to break it to you like this, but it's complete nonsense.

What is nonsense? Nietzsche's linear narrative? Or the suggestion that it might be inappropriate? If the latter, would you care to venture substantive points supporting your positions?

Have you ever heard of capitalism?

Yes. In my experience, when this term is used (by Libertarians or Marxists-Stalinists), what is being said is rarely interesting. It's a marker for lack of though. Anyway, but not unrelated: what's the connection between Nietzsche's narrative and capitalism? Are you saying that Captialism = God? Or that Captialism = Death of God? And how does any of this connect with the historical accuracy of this narrative, in the light of the fact that religion as we understand it now, is probably a relatively phenomenon, which gained mass currency only after the invention of the printing press?

[like, more children are currently starving and/or diseased than at any time in recorded history?]

Interesting. I don't believe that this is true at all in any substantial sense. It's just wishful thinking on your part! The bare fact that humans live much longer than at any time in human history is fairly compelling evidence to the contrary.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Excellent post, 3BNP.

On the point of self-replicating machines, I'm reminded of something I heard about a theoretical inquiry undertaken by (I believe) von Neumann into whether a machine could design and build other machines more complicated than itself - I think it turned out that it could. Of course, the reduction in entropy so caused would be more than compensated for by the heat and waste materials generated in the process, and exactly the same is true for biological evolution. A fact handily forgotten by creationists who ludicrously try to use science to 'disprove' natural (vs. supernatural) evolution.

Also, a good rejoinder to any complaint that "more people suffer [iniquity X] than at any previous time" is that there are simply far more people in total than there ever have been - due mainly to improvement in things like nutrition and the treatment and prevention of contagious diseases.

 

[waffle]

The question was: why you think scientific explanation and teleological explanation are mutually incompatible? I asked several times, in Post 96 for example.

And it was answered several times; indeed, it was the basis of the critique upthread of Dawkins' humanist-theistic fetish. Science - via evolutionary theory, for instance, among others -has itself refuted teleology.

This I disagree with this, and this disagreement illustrates what I think is the core of your misunderstanding. Genetic code <b>does</b> have replication as its purpose.

Genetic replication is an activity, not a purpose. You're conflating Meaning/Purpose/Teleology with simple operational description of a blind activity. Evolution does not have any goal; it is not a Progress Towards Something.

But it all depends on the semantics of "goal" or "purpose"

It only depends on the generally-accepted definitions of these terms.

Maybe it's time for you to divulge what you mean by "purpose, goal, telos".

In the light of what has already been discussed on this thread, that is a remarkable injunction. Read the thread again.

 

[poetix]

<blockquote>Matter can organise itself into causally active representations of future states (aka goals)</blockquote>

That is an elegant way of putting it, although I do wonder whether "matter can organise itself" doesn't have crypto-teleological overtones - as if matter had an innate propensity to organise itself into replicators...

Interestingly, random mutation is first of all mutation in the <em>representation space</em>: mutated DNA "means" to produce a mutated organism. And the fitness landscape within which that organism will appear "means", in a far weaker but not totally causally inactive sense, to conserve or discard the mutation.

 

[waffle]

[like, more children are currently starving and/or diseased than at any time in recorded history?]

Interesting. I don't believe that this is true at all in any substantial sense. It's just wishful thinking on your part! The bare fact that humans live much longer than at any time in human history is fairly compelling evidence to the contrary.

It's wishful thinking on your part, as with the rest of your post. An estimated 1 billion children currently live in poverty (a number greater than the entire world population in the early 1800s). Is that sufficiently substantial for you? Your far right capitalist ideology is showing: we can let millions starve and die, dismiss their very existence as 'wishful thinking' because, you know, millions are well off and healthy.

[BTW, if you want a simple example to illustrate how (multinational pharmaceutical) capitalism is implicated in the perpetuation of disease and death, consider South Africa, where pharmaceutical MNC self-interest and a neoliberal government, via a refusal to distribute generic drugs, have ensured that an estimated 5 million HIV/AIDS sufferers will die just in this country (the richest in Africa) alone between 2007-2011].