tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6533420989959483861.post3350158715725386319..comments2023-10-24T10:55:10.279-04:00Comments on NOOCYTE: On the Limits of Knowledge and the Knowledge of LimitsNoocytehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669229067251260711noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6533420989959483861.post-74808754788720884832010-10-04T02:32:11.903-04:002010-10-04T02:32:11.903-04:00Meeting up on the 15th/16th, alas, would pose a pr...Meeting up on the 15th/16th, alas, would pose a pretty much insoluble problem in logistics, since it would mean heading to NYC for two consecutive week-ends. Drat, but I can't see a way. <br /><br />If, however, you and Mr H should find a way to match orbits for a spell, I would not feel slighted in the slightest.Noocytehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14669229067251260711noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6533420989959483861.post-46480453534367763392010-10-04T02:29:37.242-04:002010-10-04T02:29:37.242-04:001) Which is why I was careful to put the term &qu...1) Which is why I was careful to put the term "militant" in front of "atheist" in this post. I would, far more often than not, treat the terms "militant" and "moron" as all-but interchangeable. <br /><br />I have grown to have a real problem (maybe "only" aesthetic, but a problem nonetheless) with folks choosing to ridicule and dismiss that which they themselves cannot, in all intellectual honesty, entirely rule out. Yet there are militants who do this, routinely, and with a sneer that says that those who don't are deficient in some way. It's bad faith, in the existential sense...and in others, besides.<br /><br />I haven't read Dawkins' book yet, but it's high on the mid-list. <br /><br />2) Interesting point. In practice, though, the terms "por que" and "para que," while technically equivalent, speak to different levels of abstraction, with the "por" having a more "why-ish" resonance, while the "para" lends itself to a more functionalist question.<br /><br />In the end, though, these are issues which transcend linguistics, as you know. I think pretty much anyone will know that the quesion: "<i>por que hay algo en ves de nada</i>" is not one which can be tested in the lab.<br /><br />The scientific approach to a dialectic with nature has borne spectacular fruit, to be sure (he said, typing into a portable computer which would have been reserved for universities and government agencies, scarcely more than a decade ago). But there are broader/subtler questions to which the mind gravitates, which lie beyond the pale of empiricism. It is the very humility before present, pending, and possible data sets which constitutes the finest tradition of scientific thought. That is my point, and the point of the essay I've linked: Don't foreclose on possibilities; the 'verse is a far stranger place then any of us suppose.Noocytehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14669229067251260711noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6533420989959483861.post-22206840191887247252010-09-30T02:44:32.826-04:002010-09-30T02:44:32.826-04:00Two points:
1. Atheists aren't people who ha...Two points:<br /><br />1. Atheists aren't people who have ruled out the possibility of a God. There's a different name for those people: "morons". Rather, atheists (one of the few ideological groups in which I count myself without reservation) argue that we can assign some kind of rough probability to the possibility of the existence of God given the available evidence and that said probability is very low. Dawkins goes into great detail about this in "The God Delusion." Very highly recommended.<br /><br />2. I'm starting to lean in the direction that the what/why distinction is linguistic/semantic rather than truly semiotic. One of the things pulling me in that direction is that Spanish lacks a word for why. As you know, "por que" literally translates as "for what" but substitutes 1 for 1 for the word "why" in English. Unfortunately, Spanish also suffers from syntactically correct double negatives which in my limited experience create more of an impediment to clear thinking than the absence of "why." IAC, my main point is that millenia of technological progress suggest that we can get a hell of a lot done without even answering any "why" questions.<br /><br />BTW, I'm in Queens the weekend of the 15th (the wife won't be arriving until the 17th). Any chance you can make out 1 night so the 3 of us can hang?Mikehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13533030965289316116noreply@blogger.com