pig

Hmmm...so many things slipping around in this thread right now, I'm not sure how to respond. I'll try with the objectivity issue first. As far as I understand, it seems that one must always start somewhere in trying to make sense of this experience we are all in which we call reality. When attempting to carve up this experience, we have to cleave it somewhere in order to start talking. That very first act of cleaving what I will call "reality" into various forms is the first essential perversion of our understanding. It's absolutely necessary, and yet it inherently sets us up to inevitably describe things inaccurately. As I understand it, objectivity and objective statements are those statements where we try to imbue particular characteristics as belonging wholly to a form which is separate from ourselves. Such characteristics as length, temperature, and hardness are forms commonly used in scientific discussion. We also have subjective statements, which we use to relate to those objects we have created, and would relate things like an object being hot, or simply hard. They don't really have any meaning without the implicit assumption that you, as an observer exist. Beyond all of these descriptions we form, is the actual "thing" we are attempting to describe, which is always somewhat beyond our descriptive abilities.

I suppose that in describing these deities that seem to lie at the heart of most religions, if I understand roach's post concerning the lack of objectivity between various frames of reference - which we can adopt as being theistic and atheistic in this case, the argument would go that because different observers from different frames of reference have different sets of suppositions they are operating with, that in turn its impossible to make accurate statements about each other's visions of truth. I'm not sure I entirely agree with this position (assuming that I haven't just made it up for roach in the first place). It would seem to me that one could look at the assumptions within the different frames of reference, and try to determine which assumptions are most self-consistent. I can see where in the act of doing this, you are of course dragging into play a third set of assumptions, namely your personal set of assumptions regarding how you evaluate the two frames of reference - at that point I would tend to say that you either plough on through, or you throw your hands up in the air and give up on the whole question altogether. Throwing the problem away seems to be fairly useless to me, so that the only recourse is to continue the investigation with the caveat that you're only trying to get an answer that is "good enough."

I think this gives me a departure from which to address Knife's question as to what I meant when I said I try to embrace the realization (or at least, what I perceive as my realization) that this experience in itself is not truly a splintered set of events, but can be thought of as a large unified whole. It seems most useful to me to assume that it clearly operates; anything else seems almost unimaginable. As though it were self defining, in a sense. Through the process of exploration, and what we commonly call scientific method (or maybe scientific method evolved from this process of exploration as the technique which most directly leads to self-consistent results), we have put a pretty face on this experience which allows us to function. However, the truth of the matter is beyond our comprehension, and I like to keep that in mind. Things are undoubtedly going on of which we have no knowledge - this doesn't make them less real, or less important. I suppose that in a nutshell, its eerily similar to some of the Eastern philosophies which get into the concepts that "this is that" and of "just being." Its almost an attempt to connect with and feel content with the fact that regardless of what is going on, things are as they are, and that I am a part of whatever it is.

On the topic of the work of atlan, whose specific work I do not know, but whose general field (not the biology, but the mating of different time and length scales when considering physical models of the scientific phenomena) I have had some experience with, my experience is that much of it probably is inherently epistemological. Many times a mathematical model of a given process has been formulated for old problems, given the scientific understanding developed at some previous time. As new knowledge emerges, more phenomena need to be incorporated into the models. The question of how to do this is quite problematic, and is an area of heavy scientific inquiry. Typically, the time and length scales of various processes are grouped within the larger context, and then are discretized. The "conversations" between the different scales are handled via the passing of boundary conditions, and the way these boundary conditions are handled is subject not only to physical considerations, but also to numerical stability. There is much discussion as to whether or not the question of numerical stability is of any physical merit, and if knowledge of system dynamics can be gleaned from which boundary conditions actually work. It is also of note that much of this is performed for convenience of numerical solution, so as to make use of various parallel computing platforms. One chops up the problem by discretizing in space and/or time, then sends them off to different processors. Sending off different scales and iteratively trying to force a consistent and realistic solution is the newest phase of this effort.

Aside from such considerations, I have read what roach would probably consider pseudo-philosophical treatises which attempt to take relationships from one physical context, and extend them into others. I suppose this happens very often in engineering, where such equations as the Chilton-Colburn analogies are used, or where simple fluid dynamics was taken as an analogous form to diffusion phenomena. It is seen, that on certain continuum scales (where discrete phenomena are not prevalently considered to have significant affects) typically the rate of action is equal to a factor multiplied by the driving force. Such laws show up in the current flow (i=kV), diffusion (flux=D*dc/dx), fluid flow (tau=mu*dv/dx), etc. I've often wondered if such analogies couldn't be used in predicting sociological phenomena (rate of change = X*driving force for change). Its probably already done in mathematical treatises on social evolution; I'm just not familiar with the work. Similar situations might pertain when trying to figure out questions like individual choice vs. predictability of an individuals actions based on social environment. I think I'm making a choice to type this, but is that really a choice? If I boil water on the stove, could individual molecules of water "think" (or some analogous function similar to what we "think" thinking is) they are making a choice to go into the gas phase, when in fact we know they are responding, on average, to a heat gradient. Etc. I guess that gets really to the heart of what I was asking roach - do you see any merit in positing such analogies? Of trying to think about whether molecules might "think" and "communicate" on their scale, while we fit their behavior with empirical models based on our scientific analysis. Ask a scientist how his system works, and he's letting his hair down, you'll catch a ton of anthropomorphism. Could there be any validity to such descriptions, or is it wholly a function of familiarity and convenience? Would aliens observing us in a big telescope be asking themselves the same questions as they lay out probability models as to which route I'll most likely take to work tomorrow?

Now, how this pertains to atheism and theism? I guess I hold that theistic philosophies once were probably very good scientific models, but they seem to have outlived their use. I don't think this changes their function, or that the function they fill(ed) is of no use, but the face of that need is changing. Our descriptions of reality, both objective and subjective, are undergoing the process of change. With the advent of Western post-Enlightenment thought, newer and faster implementation of scientific and information technology, it seems that the concept of personified deities no longer works so well for us. In fact, it would seem that by extending many of the relationships from our scientific approach to thought classification, many of the seeming contradictions in the nature of "God/Gods" simply don't satisfy many people any longer. Perhaps this is from extending analogies of how we see the physical world operate, and applying it to the spiritual plane. Such statements as "If there was a God, I would kill him." seem to presuppose that relations occuring in our realm of experience would pertain to the spiritual plane.

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