[extropy-chat] John Wright finds God

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <john-c-wright at sff.net>
>
> By supernatural, I mean what is meant in the ordinary sense of the world:
> whatever is not of the natural world. My belief is that the natural world 
> stands
> to the supernatural as the mind to the body. No description of the body 
> and its
> motions, no matter how accurate, is sufficient to describe the meaning 
> which the
> mind puts upon it. As far as biologist is concerned, the determination of 
> a man
> to do a certain act, which he sets in motion his body to do, is 
> supernatural to
> the science of biology: it stands behind it, cannot be explained in terms 
> of it,
> and informs it with meaning. If a man is hallucinating because he is 
> drunk,
> there is a natural explanation for his visions; if he is seeing visions 
> because
> he is visited by a Spirit, there is no natural explanation.
>
### This is indeed quite interesting: You adduce an analogy between 
different levels of abstract, objective (or intersubjective) description 
levels of natural phenomena, and the physical vs. noumenal aspects of our 
existence.

It is true that as far as a the ordinary biologist is concerned, many 
elements of human action are somewhat too complex to be accommodated by the 
conceptual framework of his theories: Yet, the evolutionary biologist will 
explain the meaning of many such actions within the larger context of the 
world, and a cognitive psychologist armed with fMRI and other techniques 
will explain even more. The different magisteria of natural sciences, from 
particle physics to systems theory, are a unity, not a dichotomy or 
plurality: they overlap and provide specialized tools for explanation of the 
physical world at increasing levels of complexity. "Explanation" here is 
meant as formation of models, carried within our mind, or in other devices, 
models that reflect reality, like noumena reflecting aspects of the 
surrounding world. The ability of such models to predict the future forms 
the basis for differentiating between true and false ones, which again 
parallels the criteria we use to assess our noumena - the ones which result 
in incorrect predictions (e.g. delusions of grandeur and might stemming from 
cocaine abuse), are seen as inferior.

Presumably, with increasing sophistication of the natural sciences, acting 
in the orderly progression from the simple to the complex, we will be able 
to explain (in the above meaning), every single action of a human being. The 
"mind" will be brought into the same light that dispelled the vis vitalis 
and provided the understanding of the body as a physical object and of the 
life a cell as a physical process. Predictive models of human action, to be 
correct, will need to encompass all influences impinging on this human, and 
all spirits (even the ones of a non-alcoholic nature) will be described as 
well. In this interpretation, your analogy would not hold: there is only one 
world, and all mysteries (but not values) are reducible to equations and 
formulas.

For me, the "meaning" or importance of the world is noumenal - an equation 
bereft of desire, the ineffable quality that seems to appear whenever 
information is being processed in certain ways inside brains, has no ethical 
subjectship. Thus, I concur with you that there is a dichotomy to the world, 
between objects that merely are, and the ones that feel - but the difference 
in one of attitude, not substance. Perhaps one might find a way of directly 
assessing the presence of noumena in a physical object. Perhaps it might be 
possible to build a device perfectly reproducing all the functions of a 
particular human brain, including a meaningful engagement in the debate 
about the meaning of life, or writing poetry, yet demonstrably devoid of the 
noumena of desire - in that case my attitude towards that physical object 
would greatly differ from my attitudes towards a fellow sentient. But then, 
maybe it's impossible to divorce some ways of processing information from 
their noumenal aspect, my knowledge of these matters is insufficient to 
opine with confidence. The noumenal world would be in either case "natural" 
in the sense of being subject to manipulation and prediction, and by itself 
this would not have any ethical (valuation-related) implications - the main 
ethical issue would still remain the presence or absence of desire.

So, perhaps my views could be described as metaphysical and epistemological 
monism (one, all-encompassing, physical/mathematical, principally knowable 
world) combined with an ethical dualism (value as a noumenal entity, 
ultimately produced by, if not necessarily reducible to, physical 
processes), while you appear to be seeking justifications stemming from a 
more strictly dualist philosophy (a natural vs. supernatural world, with the 
unknowable, spiritual world imbuing the physical with value). This 
philosophical yearning for meaning is perhaps why your experience changed 
you, while, I suppose, I would brush off the Spirit without budging.

Rafal