File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_1997/phillitcrit.9709, message 80


From: open1-AT-execpc.com
Date: Tue, 09 Sep 1997 22:26:10 -0700
Subject: Re: PLC:Prejudice, Logic and God


henry sholar wrote:
>
> Dennis,  have you ever tried reading Heidegger's
> _Identity and Difference_ while
> under the influence of lysergic acid?
>
> Seriously  tho, i question the "scientific" background.
> I question the verasity of "explanation."
>
> does this mean we're unable to negotiate?  you choose
> reality, i choose Maia, we shake hands and walk away?
>
> The background as i understand it
> (from Heidegger and the head-slapping Wittgenstein)
> is one of praxis, good old skills and practices that make
> sense culturally and in a holisitic manner for differing
> groups of folks.  also, language games (as the head-slapper
> has suggested to us) are differently formatted according
> to the skills and practices of the "experts"  able to enter
> into different conversations.
>
> it seems to me that eventually the issues get down to the
> "human" "sciences" what claims can be made in those
> arenas that are not essentially reductive, invasive, and
> oppressive.
>
> kindest regards,
> henry

The use "background" that I had in mind is that of Peter Auchinstein and others in the
philosophy of science community.  It is the set of propositions accepted by the
scientific community and used in the HDM. Together with the the experimental facts
pretinent to the specific problem under study, and the hypothesis being forwarded, it
forms the basis for deducing the consequences to be tested.

This "background" certainly overlaps that implicit in the praxis of various cultural,
but it has been subjected to greater scrutiny, is more culturally independant, and is
fitted at a more logically demanding praxis.

Reg Lilly wrote:
>
> open1-AT-execpc.com wrote:
>
> > The fact is that these linguistic issues have been considered and resolved long
> > ago.  As a counter-example to the claim that we are unable to "invent a system of
> > language then use that system to prove that anything represented by the contents
> > of that language exists outside the system," I need only point to the logic that
> > establishes the existence of irrational numbers.  Just as we can show the need for
> > a non-rational number to make our mathematics consistent, so we can establish the
> > need for a non-finite being to make our ontology consistent.
>
>    This is a category error.  Irrational numbers hardly "exist outside the system"
> of symbolic language (mathematics) which they serve to complete, a system of
> language that is our creation, as Saicho says; the reality of non-rational numbers
> and mathematical logic are not different.

Yes.  They are quite different.  As will be recalled, Russell's program of reducing
mathematics to logic failed.  Those unfamiliar with the facts might look at Penrose's
_The Emperor's New Mind_ for a presentation suitable to lay persons.

Mathematical objects are intentional objects, and logical rules are rules to dealing
with intentional objects. Still, the category mistake here is to confuse objects with
the rules for dealing with objects.  For example, categorized monitary amounts are
objects dealt with in the tax code, but the tax code is no more categorized monitary
amounts than categorized monitary amounts are the tax code.  Certainly they are
related to each other, and the tax code may even establish new categories, but the
code does not therefore become the amounts or vice versa.

The point I was making is that non-rational numbers were not explicitly known in the
earliest formulations of arithmetic, but emerged as necessities not merely for
linguistic consistency, but for dealing with the physical world.  Examples are pi and
e, the basis of the natural logirithms.  Thes kinds of surds were an unpleasant and
uncomfortable surprise to their earliest discovers, but they implicit is what was
known about quantity, just the existence of non-finite being is implicit in what is
known about being.

> The question is deriving the necessary
> existence of one sort of being (infinite, 'real' being) from a very different sort
> of being (finite being, linguistic being).

It is amazing how striking unsupported claims can be on first blush.

Both finite and infinite being are real and linguistic in the same ways.  They are
real in the same way, in that they both are defined by a capacity to act in the same
arena.  They are lingustic in the same way, in that they are both signified by the
same sets of signs used by the same linguistic communities.

> Your ontology may need a 'signified'
> called 'god' for it to be consistent, but that doesn't mean anything outside your
> ontological system of signifiers that corresponds to it.

My claim was that the scientific background is the shared ontology that reqires God
for its completion.  Nothing claimed here militates against that.

We all know that there are groups like creationists who do not share the ontology
implicit in the scientific background.  By an act of will, anyone can choose to join
one of these groups, and no appeal to data or logic will be of the least use in
dissuading them. Such acts of will are not motivated by data or logic. So, I
am not surprising or shocked that my conclusions do not mean anything to those not
accepting the scientific background.

> One may never exchange the reality of the signifier for the reality of the
> signified.

Certainly.  Who would claim that the reality of a signifier is the reality of the
signified, unless, per chance, the signifier in question is self-reflexive?
Signifiers, as we have discussed, are defined by their capacity to evoke intentions of
something beyond their intinsic nature.  This capacity to evoke of intentions is quite
different from the intentions evoked, and again from the objects of the intentions
evoked.

But, the point of logical discourse is to evoke intentions that show how realities are
dynamically linked.  The signs evoke intentions, and intentions are projections of the
realities they intend.  Thus, by logical discourse, we can make present to the
awareness of willing and open recipients projections of the realites intended.  For
those who are not open, we can do nothing.

>   For example, to calculate the mass of our solar system and say there must be a
> planet that exists in order for our calculations to square is hardly to prove that
> planet exists.  It may lead to researches that discover that planet, but that is
> quite another matter.  Or, searches for it may reveal that those calculations were
> wrong in myriad ways.

It is not clear how this exemplifies anything that precedes.

The point of the prior paragraphs was that signs bear no intrinsic relation to
extramental realites, but reflect the interconnections a subjective ontology, and that
logic is not "applicable" but merely an isolated self consistent schema.  Now we are
asked to consider how thought relates to reality -- as though it instantiated what
went before -- when in fact the example assumes a connection with reality that was
previously denied.

Having said that, let me take the example on its own merits.  What we have here is a
typical example of the HDM, with the hypothesis being that that a discrepancy in
gravitation claculations can be explained by the presence of a new planet.  The
background includes the stipulation that logic is applicable, that facts require
dynamical factors to explain them, that signs can adequately reflect the realities of
interest, and that our perceptions can be veridical.  All of these elements of the
scientific background have been rejected over the past few weeks in this forum.

While the proof I presented and this case share a commitment to the background, they
differ in that the present case proposes a hypothesis that is logically independent of
the background, while the proof does not.  It is the hypothesis that leads to the need
for verification or falsification.  In the absence of hypothetical elements,
verification or falsification are unnecessary.  This is just the case in the deduction
of non-rational numbers and in the deduction of a non-finite capacity to act.

>         So, you and your ontology may need god, but your need is no proof for the
> existence of god.

Any proof is a transformation of premises into conclusions by logically valid
operations.  That Mr. Lilly choses to label the premises "your ontology" is of no
consequence.  As anyone who has ever taken Logic 101 knows, the consequential
questions are: (1) are the premises true and (2) are the logical operations valid.

> Heidegger, for instance, agrees that ontology always must have
> recourse to theology, but what this proves is not the existence of god; rather, it
> show[s] that ontologizing is a way of thinking that always ends up in the same
> place, with an ultimate/highest being -- god.  Far from this inevitability being a
> proof for the existence of god, it can be taken as an argument against ontologizing.

Indeed.  If the answers do not conform to one's preconceptions, it is best not to ask
the questions.

> Or more brutally, Nietzsche too says reason discovers god because it needs god, but
> what in fact is proven by this need is not the existence of god, but of the
> shortcomings of reason; need is no demonstration, it is an emptiness.

It is interesting that Nietzsche should have inherited Luther's view of a reason
vitiated by Original Sin.

Let us suppose that, in his reflections, Nietzsche actually saw that his reason was a
great emptiness.  How could this lead any one to grant Nietzsche the habit of assent
which is authority?  Yet, we see the name of Nietzsche used here, not in the 
acknowledgement of an intellectual debt for an argumet given, but in a raw appeal to 
authority.

> Your method
> seems quite backwards, a bit like the tailor who tells the client about an
> ill-tailored suit that 'If you just walk hunched over like this, it fits fine!'

If reasoning from what we know to what we did not know is backward, then I suppose
that forward is to reason from what we do not know in the hope of coming to what we do 
know.

> Rather than inventing god to serve you ontological productions, why not trying
> thinking and making sense of things without god?  Or is there no sense apart from
> god?

Of course inventing is precisely what I am not doing.  An invention is the coming to
be of something that was not there previously.  Discovery, which I am engaged in, is
making manifest a reality that was previously obscure.

Dennis Polis


   

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