Month: April 2008

More Blackmore on The God Delusion

Checking out Sue’s web site, I see this contribution passed me by.
Article on Comment is Free (UK Guardian)
Podcast of debate with Alister McGrath, author of ‘The Dawkins Delusion’. (Bristol Uni & RichardDawkins.net)

I have to say the text of the piece posted before the debate seems to have it pretty well right, so I’m going to have to read / listen to the whole debate and comment threads. Sounds like Blackmore and Dawkins have been listening to their critics and their “atheism” is ever more sophisticated. (Here is the last substantial thing I wrote on this.)

[Post Note – Having fully read the article – I do find I agree with the gist of it, in the same way I was positive about Sam Harris, in the earlier post referenced. As with all these debates the danger is one of over-simplification – what Rayner would call simplistication.

She says “In a society that strives for honesty and openness, that values scientific and historical truth, and that encourages the search for knowledge, [religious faith] is outrageous …” I’d say that the striving for honesty and openess is not actually that unequivocal – she herself mentions the game theory angle, but reality of the lives of individuals and groups is more complicated than that. I’d also say that “values” in scientific and historical truth are not simple matters of science and history. And I’d say that there is more to it than the “search for knowledge” – there are quests for wisdom and value too, to name but two. She even mentions the value-deficit in the costs of the religious meme. Anyway, I’m pretty sure given an environment where “wiggle-room” is not seen as a sign of weakness in argumentation, Sue would further acknowledge these complicating aspects of the debate, as indeed Harris does.

Even more positively Sue ends with what is really a Quine, which is a great Hofstadterian place to build evolutionary uderstanding of the full picture. “Mostly Harmless” Meta-Logic.

She says ” … belief in God is not just a harmless choice; it is a dangerous delusion.”

I would say that the idea that {the idea of belief in God is either a harmless choice or a dangerous illusion} is not just an (entirely) harmless choice; its a (partly) dangerous delusion.

Dichotomy kills.]

Temes – Techno-memes or what ?

I see Sue Blackmore coined the idea of a third level of replicator above genes and memes, termed (so far) “temes” in her recent presentation to TED2008.

Not entirely convinced yet that this form of technology enabled memes are fundamentally different to memes. As she says herself, in discussing whether “artificial-meme” might be a better name “But really they are no more artificial that we are.”

Meme’s have benefitted from being technology enabled since the printing-press or maybe even the tabula-rasa or papyrus scrolls – whatever  – maybe even the use of myths and symbols in story-telling ? This is really just a debate about what technology is, and our parochial human perspective of intelligence and communication.

It’s really the same debate as to whether Strong-AI need be considered “artificial” if it is indeed “intelligent”. The artifice is in a non-human-bio-physical substrate brain, and the debate as to whether such an intelligence is possible without a substrate that is actually living – artificial life. I’m beginning to believe the latter – that AI may prove impossible without AL (which would be wonderfully consistent with neither actually being “artificial”, and with quality evolutionary theory and experience of life before intelligence to date.)

Anyway, the term may be useful pragmatically; as we so often find “fundamental” definitive distinctions are rarely black-and-white anyway.

An aside … joining up the dots increasingly between Quality (a la Pirsig), Wisdom (a la Maxwell), Inclusionality (a la Rayner), and more recently IdentityTheory, and find the convergence between The Edge / Third-Culture and TED becomes ever greater. These latter two initiatives are on a much grander scale than the former 3 or 4, but the agendas converge – “Third-Culture” is as good a catch-all umbrella as any for these syntheses of classically scientific and traditionally romantic understandings of humans in the cosmos.

Like Their Style

Social Justice Blog. One of several blogs at IdentityTheory.Com. Here’s a sample.

“AIDS has now been around for a quarter of a century, and the U.N. is holding a three-day conference on the virus. A group of 14 nations, led by France, is going to implement an airline tax to help pay for AIDS drugs. The U.S. Government is not willing to participate because they feel it’s more rational to try to convince everyone to be a virgin.”

The whole (agenda) elephant in one. One to watch. Note – the Joseph Epstein interview in the earlier Wisdom Research post was from IntentityTheory.Com

Web Traffic

Two observations …

The last 2 or 3 months …. been getting repeated bursts of direct hits from “Limelight Networks” in Tempe, AZ. No idea why – are they testing out some content crawler at Uni of Az ?

Last couple of years …. I get constant search hits from people all over the world – east as well as west – looking for “rational comprehensive planning“. Something I ranted about way back. My considered view is that “rational planning is irrational action” – after Chris Argyris, Nils Brunsson, etc, oh and years of personal experience. Or if Tom Peter’s is your preferred management guru … “Ready fire aim” beats “Ready aim fire” in any non-trivial situation – guided missiles beat slings and arrows. How complicated can it be ? The dynamic fluidity of iterative feedback-driven processes.

Homo Rapiens

A 3 year old post from Dave Pollard, that I spotted on a cross-hit, probably due to the fact that he self-referenced in a more recent post. Entitled “The End of Philosophy” and inlcuding a reading list with a lot of common ground here. The particular post concerns a review of a book called “Straw Dogs” [no connection] by John Gray. Worth a look ?

He quotes Gray

Homo rapiens is only one of very many species, and not obviously worth preserving. Later or sooner, it will become extinct. When it is gone Earth will recover. Long after the last traces of the human animal have disappeared, many of the species it is bent on destroying will still be around, along with others that have yet to spring up. The Earth will forget mankind. The play of life will go on.

I think that’s true, so long as we don’t destroy the biosphere on our watch. David Deutsch has a more positive spin, that humans (and any other high intelligence life, we’ve not yet encountered) actually has tremedous power and influence on the path of evolution whilst we’re a part of it. Whatever we destroy, evolution will continue from what’s left. Be a pity if it had to start again from a pre-biological cosmos ?

I know where I want “us” to get, but I wouldn’t want to start from there 😉

Lost in Space

There’s something about the image in this news story of the Mars Orbiter encountering Phobos – “Stunning” – the caption says it. The “real” thing, in all its simplicity – not one of those ubiquitous computer simulated graphics. You just get the sense that it is exactly what it is – a lump of rock hurtling through the darkness. The scarring of both new, fresh and old, abraided impacts tells its story.

Sweeping the Yard ?

Couldn’t help smiling and thinking of the “Loggin’s Spoof” on MoQ when I saw this news story.  It’s mainly about the physical exercise aspects of the activity, rather than the involvement in the task itself, but who nows ? Many a true word.

Post Note 2020:
How Cleanliness Can Affect Your Mental Health

Newton Modified

Noticed this “news” story about MoND – “Modified Newtonian Dynamics” the same week as “In Our Time” had Newtons Laws of Motion as its subject matter – no idea if there is any connection – I’ve not listened to the edition yet, but I’ve noticed several different plugs for it on different philosophical discussion fora.

[Post Note – this quote from Melvyn’s newsletter …]

One thing that still intrigues me is the idea that you can derive the laws of motion without experimental evidence.  In this regard there was a lovely quotation from Descartes speaking of Galileo: “he builds without foundations”.  Galileo, so I believe Raymond Flood said, declared that whatever causes gravity isn’t worth worrying about. 

What matters is getting the measurements right and understanding how it works.  As long as you get the measurements right, what happens happens. 

Not unlike the American Indian idea of the Great Mystery in the sky.

Wisdom Research

Tickled me that this “Wisdom Research Network” initiative, associated with the Wisdom Research programme at Chicago University, is now in 2008 called the “Arete Initiative”.

Chicago >> Arete
>> Pirsig >> Quality
>> Values >> Maxwell >> Wisdom
>> Rayner >> Inclusionality >> Fluid >> Dynamic Quality …

… is it just my mind that works this way ?

[Post note. Apparently not …

I see Pirsig picked-up on the Chicago education thread (see comment referring to a Robert Birnbaum interview with story writer Joseph Epstein, Jew to Jew as it were.)

Bob refers to this quote :

 … like a lot of serious booksellers, he was a failed Ph.D. He was a failed Ph.D. in philosophy from Chicago. A student of guy named Richard McKeon who left corpses all over the city. Pascal would not have gotten his Ph.D. from McKeon. Aristotle wouldn’t have. Nobody. He was a miserable character and he made it so hard for everybody. It’s like you and I trying to get a Ph.D. from Martin Bormann.

Understandable given Bob’s legendary relationship with McKeon (see ’60 to ’63 in the Timeline). My favourite is in the next paragraph :

 … I have come to think that a good student is not that impressive a thing to be. A good student can tell you seven reasons for the Renaissance. Big fucking deal. [laughs] He can tell you that materialism is naturalism. Because in order to have naturalism you have to have three things that satisfy materialism and so on. I sensed, in my crude kid way, this really wasn’t where the action is.

How true. Actually the interview is a good read … much on the “church of reason” in education and on “education in culture”. Can see why Bob liked it. Wise words.

PS .. and Arete ?  Bob uses this Greek term for “excellence” in his thought processes of arriving at his Metaphysics of Quality, and his boat in the book Lila, he named “Arete”.]