Comments on: Teleology and Camouflage

By: admin

admin — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:48:08 +0000

If the WP system has extracted an email address from you, it’s doing a good job at protecting your privacy (from me).
My email: ccru00@hotmail.com

By: SuperReward

SuperReward — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 15:57:41 +0000

Do you have an email I could reach you at? A couple of things I wanted to ask you about that might not be relevant/appropriate for a public forum. You should have my email via this form.

By: SDL

SDL — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 15:37:02 +0000

Very helpful. Thanks for the unpacking.

By: Thales

Thales — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 05:02:55 +0000

Very large quantity of galaxies, stars, planets leads to at least one (and maybe only one) habitable planet. Very large quantity of people on that planet leads to at least one person that “you” can experience as “you.” Very large quantity of universes leads to at least one universe that contains the above. It doesn’t seem like a reach.

By: admin

admin — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 02:29:16 +0000

Shivering with metaphysical fevers in the hideous jungles of the impossible … what’s not to like?

By: Thales

Thales — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 02:06:59 +0000

“Can we nevertheless explore the impossible, and advance even whilst not ‘getting it’?”

Sure, I’m not doing anything Saturday night, but neither is whatever lays outside the universe, or, if it is, we’ll never know. We can continue to reduce the elements inside our own universe to meme-sized bites, but the marginal utility of doing so is diminishing while the marginal cost of doing so is increasing.

Regardless, the Watchmaker’s analogy has already been solved — the watches are making themselves. The teleos is survival in real-time. It was really just that simple all along.

By: admin

admin — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 02:06:26 +0000

@ SDL, Nick B. Steves The design-type questions (Teleological Argument, Anthropic Principle, etc.) are fascinating, but my argument here is only incidentally about apparent design, and primarily about the structure of time. The main reason to suspect that the suppression of final causes in modern science is exorbitant, is that it makes time asymmetry ontological, i.e. makes the future wholly dependent upon the past. That is to confuse the time-conditioned necessity that events in the past happen before those in the future, with the crude misconception that time is produced past-first (as if time was mechanically reproduced, in the way something in time might be). Of course, no physicist, if pressed, would subscribe to anything this ludicrous. The consequence, however, of accepting that the origin of time cannot be a beginning, is that the nature of things 'in' time -- whilst ordered in time -- is not decided from 'the start' but rather (as the theologians might say) 'in eternity', or in coincidence with time as such. Heidegger defines time as 'the outside itself in-itself'. When freed from his subjectivism (which, crudely but actually quite adequately speaking, equates time with consciousness), this definition is quite helpful. What time 'is' (in itself) cannot be in time, and is thus outside itself. (The 'Outside' of Outside in is similarly slanted.) Since the nature of time is not something in time, ultimate ('transcendental') temporal conditioning exhibits irreducible aspects of final causality. Quod erat demonstrandum. (But "I'll be back" to this.)

By: fotrkd

fotrkd — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 01:22:29 +0000

I took Nietzsche to be saying precisely that. If consciousness is built (and unstrong) it means (i) we can explore how expansive it can become (what we can incorporate and manipulate) or (ii) that there is the potential for dismantling/escape. Just as with time. The two options don’t have to sit in isolation either.

By: admin

admin — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 01:10:34 +0000

Yes, for sure. Can we nevertheless explore the impossible, and advance even whilst not 'getting it'? That's an experimental question, worth the venture, I think. That Laozi and Nietzsche (even The Matrix) are available to be quoted suggests that paths can be taken, and not entirely random or inconsequential ones. We can be stretched (or twisted?).

By: admin

admin — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 01:01:33 +0000

‘Abolish time’ and you’re still left with a time-like (asymmetric) dimension, so what have you really dismissed? Agreed, time probably isn’t a thing (but then, what’s a thing?).

PS. You’re torturing my spam filter with that ‘SuperReward’ id (but I guess that’s OK — it hasn’t passed the Turing Test yet).