This is a two-part post.

Firstly on memes:  this is a useful concept.  Sadly some people have picked it up in an incomplete way, and use it as a disparaging term - as if a meme were in some way not 'real'.  Atheism is as much a meme (at least in its proselytising form) as a religion, catch-phrase, iconic work of art, political orientation, etc.

Secondly on belief:  there seems to be a problem understanding the distinction between 'not believing that' and 'believing that not'.  We really need to pin down what 'believing' is.  Try this: believing is a mental state that connects two concepts; these states are combinable (via some process of logic, to be defined) to produce new beliefs and to guide the conversion of stimuli into actions.   Taking the effects of beliefs (the last two clauses) at a behaviourist level, then 'not believing that'  has NO outcome - no new beliefs or actions.  'Believing that not' WILL produce new beliefs and guide actions.  This I think corresponds quite well to the weak/strong distinction that we are struggling towards in the definition of Atheist.  Either may question the claims for the existence of a god.  The weak atheist will do it in a spirit of investigation, maybe even with a presumption that the claims are unjustifiable (this doesn't necessarily affect the weak/strong classification - but does cause confusion!).  The strong Atheist will have a more aggressive motive, whereby 'his' meme is seen in conflict with the theist meme.

Thank you for bringing this onto the new forum.

I forgot to say when I wrote my first post about the memorial that the names in the book of remembrance were read out as a sort of recessional.  We included all the names of those who posted here, and Aidan (whose forum name I am sorry we lost on the changeover).

Thank you all, and thank you Patton for doing this.  I have now printed this consolidated entry off for Jenny.  She sends her regards and thanks too.

Mr Patton I have many reasons to respect and revere you, but, with all respect due to your kindness, this is the most dreadful nonsense.  If you can give such a hideously bad argument and then just shrug your shoulders that it may be rejected, implies a great deal about your reasoning abilities.

Formally, the argument is the same as "those who have seen the tartan waltzing squid testify to its existence".  It SHOULD fail to convince.

Interesting and quite neat, as far as it goes.  But note that you are (naturally) using first, second and third person pronouns.  What you are omitting from your summary is the intersubjective.  There is a world that is composed of the 'pooled' constructions of all us individuals.  How that works, both with us-as-individuals, with the world as a separate entity, and with us as a mereological classification... that might just be the place to start answering some of the questions that are stupefying us-as-individuals.

Language - with all its benefits and drawbacks.

Most of the people you appear to be disageeing with are using the term 'animal' in a quite specific (no pun intended), precise, standard way.  You appear to be using it, and terms like 'species', in a different way.  So, without overthrowing the whole biological classification system, could you explain the differences between humans and animals, human species (of which you seem to think there are many) and non-human species?   

dingue by name but not by nature.  I do however disagree with this.  Reasons are subjective.  Any reference to 'the universe' can only be objective (unless one is a total idealist).  I happen to think that the O includes the S (but could be wrong): however, just because the Objective universe includes reasons, there is no entailment that is performs/does 'reasoning'.   

Sure, "intelligent life brings sens to the creation of the Universe" but only from its own point of view - the universe itself doesn't have one.

The inverted spectrum arguments make an assumption that 'seeing' colours is something more than the brain registering nerve excitation coming from the eyes.  There is no evidence of this.  Also to believe that something is possible because it cannot be proved impossible is not just scepticism, but also usually involves a category error.  Scepticism is of course totally self-defeating: you cannot prove that your thinking has not been messed about with in the very act of thinking abut the sceptical argument.

I think you are right about the importance of early development in the visual cortex for us to discriminate and remember colours - there is plenty of experimental evidence to this effect (e.g. the blind kitten experiments).  It is the actuality of things like this that, by the way, make a mess of some of the other qualia arguments, such as the What Mary Learns stuff from Jackson.

Again, I do not have the pleasure of understanding you. I believe I have a good grasp of english (even american english!) and also a pretty good academic record in matters like this - but "the universe's overall purpose is to transcend and include for that which is old and new" is meaningless nonsense.

The posters who suggest that human mental structure projects order onto the universe are probably close to right - but we need to realise that the duration of humanity is an infinitisimally small.  Take a well-known analogy for entropy:

War and Peace has (lets say) 1,000 pages.  There is only one perfect ordering for those pages, shuffle them once and there will still be great chunks which are ordered, but the disorder will have increased.  Shuffle another twenty times and the disorder is much more. But there may still be sections of pages in the right order.  Shuffle a million times...  it is even possible that a few pages that were disordered return to 'order'.  The fact that we can discern order in out tiny scope and vague focus is no proof that order exists or that entropy is decreasing.  (I discussed this with my Dad, who immediately took on his location as 'a counter-entropic eddy in spacetime':  at any point in spacetime local order can increase or decrease, but overall the direction is one-way).

I note that your messiah has put up a good self-promotion on wiki.  You are of course entitled to your view on this shambolic rubbish - as am I.

I don't know how to put this any more politely, sorry, but I couldn't disagree with you more.

Third Law Thermodynamics simply states that entropy increases.  the universe DOESN'T get more orderly it gets more disordered.  It it this increasing entropy that gives us the unidirectional nature of time - eggs smash, they don't unsmash; suns explode, they don't unexplode; temporarily ordered matter becomes disordered - people die and decompose.   The universe doesn't have a 'purpose' to exist - its initial conditions will either ensure its continued existence ad infinitum or its eventual collapse - but 'it' doesn't 'know' what will happen any more than a falling stone 'knows' whether it will hit a solid or fluid end.  And you can't have purpose without intent and you can't have intent without belief/desire.

Somebody reckoned the instant after its creation saw the universe at maximum entropy - maybe, we have no good theories there.  But Inflationary Cosmology proposes that after its great expansion - say one Planck duration after gravity became a repellent force - the new spacetime fabric was at its greatest ORDERED state - i.e. its LEAST entropic.

It seems to me that we probably need to decide from the start what we mean by ‘rational’.  If we mean that to indicate that we do things ‘for a reason’ then we have have to admit that many higher animals are ‘rational’ – they have desires and perceptions that combine to drive them to action.   I guess the topic is really suggesting that there is something special about the way humans react to events – and I suspect that that’s right.  I once thought that the special thing was the way in which we could put our desires, and projects and plans, ‘on hold’ – just waiting for the right situation to occur before we progressed them.  But there seems to be evidence that other animals can do that – studies of chimpanzee ‘social climbing’, for example.  What I think gives the difference in degree that humans have is the way we can entertain many visions of how things may turn out, and can either take one line that best satisfies our occurent desires or judge that it is better to suppress the desire in order to better satisfy it later – a sort of control over timing.

This certainly gives our species an advantage over other species.  The predator can of course decide not to go ahead in an attack, since the physical danger may be too great, but the human potential victims can plan defences and traps and offensives that the simple predator cannot match.   So it’s good for us to give value to this sort of rationality – it benefits the species.  But whether it is a paramount value, or, to follow the first posts line, whether that makes a difference to ‘democracy’ seems an empty question. 

To begin with, rationality is the servant of our ‘lusts and desires’ – it helps us satisfy them.  At best, it is pari passu: BOTH make us what we are.

Secondly, democracy is but a device to maintain power for the powerful – as such it is a conflicting influence rather than one to demand the support of rationality.  It may be instrumental in helping the underclasses break away from tyranny, but in no way stops the powerful from their over-exercise of power.

Thirdly, democracy as practised in most of the countries we call democratic is as far from rationality as deciding on which mate you prefer – just follow any electoral campaign in any of the western countries: no appeal is made to rational faculties (how to make decisions as to preferable outcomes, how to prioritise what is desirable, how to get the best out of those activities that can be influenced by our actions). 

Fourthly, does anyone believe that a purely rational person is ‘human’?  Who wants to be Mr Spock (who wasn’t even totally rational)?  Rationality (and the term still needs some more definition than I’ve given it) is without doubt a human characteristic – but the ONLY one?   Human essence isn’t a democratic race where the aspect voted for by the most people is the ‘best’.  Try that and you’ll get the usual ‘democratic’ results – the hero with feet of clay, the ‘mission accomplished’ dope with no exit strategy, the disillusion and reality check that follows on from over-valuing the ordinary.

I think the best direction for this topic is in trying to define just what we mean by rationality.

Hello
Can I introduce myself? I’m Callum, I’m Old Silver Linings son.  On the old forum somebody asked for Jenny to say what happened at the congregation in Dad’s memory, and since I’m sorting out his papers and things and am probably the most likely to carry on contributing here the lot fell on me.

The congregation was at the college chapel – with not a hint of irony.  Dad always recognised our human need for ritual and wouldn’t have minded having his send-off in a ritual place.  It was well attended by a lot of academics – all his department of course – and lots of outside friends.  Pretty full in fact.  Jenny asked Mum to sit with her in the main family row – nice gesture I thought. She’d obviously been talking and they’d arranged for her to do a reading that was very schmaltzy – about how love is what remains when you stop being ‘in love’.   There were the usual tributes from colleagues, and from some of his past students – of course he never was a proper member of staff but did loads of support and tutoring.  Some of his old business colleagues were there and one gave a nicely humorous account of a time when they worked on a project in Portugal.  Best of all was that Felipe got there from Venezuela.  He told the assembly about how Dad had paid for him (and Marana and Thoc) to get an education and how much they had all benefited – all professionals now in different disciplines.  Felipe’s a property and human rights lawyer – and Dad was SO proud of him, it just suited his anti-globalisation, anti-big-battalion views.   Apart from that we had a few musical interludes -  a movement from one of the Brandenburgs (the one with flute and violin… can’t remember which now) and Nimrod for us all to wipe tears away and a tongue-in-cheek record of Hi Ho Silver Lining (he always rued missing the hippy revolution!). 

That’s it.  He was a good guy.  Super Dad – taught me all he knew and ruined my life (joke) by making interested in philosophy (this was years before he went back to college to study formally).  Always had quite a rivalry to get equal qualifications!  But I reckon his degree was better since he got it in his 60s – its easier thinking when you’re younger – well it looks like that now I’m older.   He didn’t indoctrinate though, I have to say – Alison’s almost a NUN.  And Jenny’s kids are all different in their views, and we all think that he was the main influence on our lives – I don’t quite get how he managed to help each of us develop in our own way.  Certainly find it hard to be one thing to one of my kids and something different to the other.  I suppose Dad was just himself and was open and supportive and just let us fly.

Jenny sends her regards and wishes you all well.

Callum


By the way, on the question of saving some of his posts (the better ones I hope!)  I think we would be honoured if you did that, and I don’t think any honest people would pay attention if some asses tried to screw up his memory. 

By the way again, I just tried to get to the second page of one of these topics and the link doesn’t work properly.  I think it needs a ‘.html’ putting on the end.  In fact I think I’ve something to write on that topic.