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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 1/21/2009 7:53 AM (GMT -6) |   | | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 1/21/2009 11:33 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 1/22/2009 1:29 AM (GMT -6) | | | Another good paper...
PDF file link on the page.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life." | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 1/22/2009 4:42 AM (GMT -6) | | Well, that first paper about Whitehead/Einstein is just historical. I thought it would be a bit more philosophical. But it does prove that the two met and discussed metaphysics & relativity.
I especially liked what Einstein had to say about Whitehead:
“I was never able to understand anything Whitehead had written.”
Too funny.
T | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 1/22/2009 8:55 AM (GMT -6) | | Hey Jeff, gimme a one paragraph summary of Porter's philosophy. I know a bit about him historically (Congregational minister, went to Yale, was president of Yale, was a big anti-slavery proponent, liked the mountains in NY), but what did he argue philosophically in a nutshell?
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Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 1/22/2009 9:45 AM (GMT -6) | | There were mutiple points of distinction in his thought. But for the theist, the most important part of his philosophy had to do with how he understood final causes. For Porter, the questions "why" and "what for" were equally fundamental. Thus, teleological thought is categorical just as is causal thought. Regarding causality, we know events don't JUST happen. They are caused. We ask "why" when we are thinking about change. Regarding finality, we necessarily reason inductively on a FINITE sequence of causal sequence when we are trying to infer WHAT, specifically, is the cause of events or phenomena. I.e, there is a beginning, means, and end to any causal sequence the mind is trying to account for. For Porter, the corrollary of such a finite, final sequence is a mind. This is how we conceive of God at such young ages. That corrollary comes to our mind just as an infinite comes to our mind at some point as the corrollary of finite. In that sense, both are intuitive, but it can take a few years before they are "recognized." For example, it is doubtful that infants have conscious thoughts about infinity. But their ability to eventually think, thus, is truly INATE because of the fact that infinite is correlative with finite. Similarly, the mind eventually realizes that finality is only explicable in terms of a volitional mind. For volition is the only final cause that we truly KNOW.
Regarding induction, Porter argues that we believe in the correspondence view of epistemology because we are compelled, categorically, to infer what the impulses of our mind are "for." We infer that those impulses are "for" apprehension. The alternative, for a being that thinks teleologically, categorically, is to infer that the impulses of our mind are NOT for apprehension. If that is the case, me may very well be a MATRIX simulation having no awareness of extra-ego realities, like Neo. But the human mind doesn't seem to be able to think that way consistently. So analogical reasoning is deemed valid because it is what is best for the human mind. Hence, if our impulse to analogical reasoning is adapted to the end of apprehension, then the analogical approach of induction is merely "thinking God's thoughts after Him."
This has implications about the modern ID vs. ateleological evolution debate. For the teleologist, warranted inductive inferences, alone, can tell us when causal sequences are merely naturalistic. Since Porter would argue that induction, itself, is grounded in the category of final causes, he would argue that there are final causes, period. Every Christian supposedly believes that God has acted as a final cause DURING the history of the universe. Thus, no Christian can rationally argue that our universe has functioned deistically since it's beginning. Consequently, he/she can not know whether final causes were involved in the origin of the first cell, or major groups of the biota until there is non-circumstantial evidence for that. To date, there is no such non-circumstantial evidence.
But you will hear folks like Miller and Collins argue, as I posted recently, as though theodicy rules out the views of Dembski etal. IOW, those people aren't even doing real inductive reasoning. Moreover, their view of theodicy is beyond me. Thus, I have no idea how they can rationally defend their claim that we can know that final causes had no role in the origin of life forms.
I understand that Miller must do science via methodological naturalism when working within the NATURAL sciences. But to suppose that because HYPOTHESES must be formed under that constraint that those hypotheses are true merely because they are formed thus is pure non-sense for the theist. The theist can NOT be a methodological naturalist unless he/she thinks God is non-volitional. Thus, whether or not final, intelligent causes were involved in the origin of certain life forms is an open question from the empirical, inductive approach, just as Dembski has argued.
With respect to open theism, Porter's view is squarely on our side, though I don't think he was an open theist. For Porter, the categories of human thought are non-negotiable. We are either designed to apprehend or not. If we are, then the categories are valid. Hence, if our categories compel us to believe that the only way we can be free is if the future is epistemically open (even to God), then that is just the way it is. There can be supra-intuitive relations which we can not comprehend or apprehend by, but these can not contradict what can legitimately be known categorically by humans. We can make category mistakes, but whatever real categorical thought is, it is TRUE.
Post Edited (Similtude) : 1/22/2009 8:52:31 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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