(18th January 2017, 05:14)Jörmungandr Wrote:You at least tacitly acknowledge that people can find ordered patterns the universe. Indeed. And those patterns are extremely precise, highly detailed, and coherent. It seems strange to me that you would dismiss the whole of human knowledge as casually as one would a pancake with the face of Jesus on it. Your answer to why the universe appears to be ordered is simply that it appears to be so. That is not really an answer. It’s empty rhetoric.(17th January 2017, 16:42)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:What is your explanation for the fact that the universe has a rational order?Does it have rational order, or does reason find meaning in ordered patterns? Last we visited this subject, you said you were of the "opinion," that our ability to pick out patterns in the underlying chaos of the universe is suggestive of a proscriptive order. Just what is that "opinion" based on?
On what do I base my opinions about proscription? Why not say that science only produces are models and descriptions? My opinion is based on another question: what is the nature of the thing described? With respect to natural science, inductive reasoning adequately justifies the belief that the apparent order of the physical universe reflects an actually ordered fundamental reality, since, as I previously mentioned, the descriptions only become more detailed, the findings more precise, the models more nuanced, and the predictions more accurate with every improvement in the experimental and conceptual tools Mankind uses observe and interpret the natural world.
There appears to be an epistemological limit with respect to whether reality, at the most fundamental level, is orderly or chaotic. Beyond that limit people can only guess. I acknowledge as much. That is not to say that the question is esoteric. Each guess, or existential choice, comes with a price. I only ask that people recognize the implications of their choice with respect to important values, such as human rights, personal autonomy, meaning & purpose, and their obligations to others. As a general rule I think you understand and accept those implications.
(18th January 2017, 05:14)Jörmungandr Wrote:(17th January 2017, 16:42)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:What is your explanation for why people have the rational capacity to discern that order?Because it is useful to the survival of our species. That's all that evolution requires for there to be a selective advantage to preserving this feature. But you already know this.
That answer doesn’t address the sense of my question. You’re just saying that it works. So what? Many species survive and thrive without rationality. Claws work because they are sharp. Camouflage works because it blends with the background. What is it about reason that makes it work? I say, reason works because it produces real knowledge of external reality. You frequently seem to pooh-pooh this notion. The senses are unreliable, you say. Our interpretations are biased, you say. And that is true to some extent. So also is our sense of time unreliable and subjective. That is why we invented clocks and calendars to correct our limitations. In the same way, we have developed conceptual tools from symbolic logic to the modern scientific method to overcome fallacious thinking and interpretive bias. We have developed physical tools, from rulers to microscopes, to supplement and correct the senses. But none of that matters, you say, if the efficacy of the tools themselves is suspect since they are the products of conceptual bias and deceptive senses That kind of radical skepticism leads nowhere. And it comes with a price, a very steep one at that.
(16th January 2017, 23:19)Natachan Wrote:Evidence is anything that is concordant with and exclusively indicative of one conclusion.That rules out the majority of scientific theories.
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