If one subscribes, as I do, to a polydoxic, tehomic panentheism, what does that say and not say?

Without discussing that stance, in particular, let's explore some norms for the interface of
theology and metaphysics, in general, first.
Our interpretations of reality's regularities will influence our theopoetics.
As metaphysical realists, we affirm reality's givenness, kataphatically, aspiring to descriptive
accuracy via affirmations. As metaphysical fallibilists, we acknowledge these constructions,
apophatically, negating the ever-cascading, yet ever-collapsing, root metaphors, which interpret
those descriptions, which model but do not explain reality's rules or regularities.
As fallibilists, we recognize that our epistemic states, variously interpreting a given reality as
determinable or indeterminable, converge on reality's ontic states, which may be variously
determined or indetermined, but we do so in an inescapably anthropometric way. This presents a
challenge as we hope to avoid anthropomorphic projections of our epistemic states onto reality's
ontic states.I would argue that, whether in science, philosophy, metaphysics or theology, in
every great school or tradition, there have been saving remnants offering prophetic criticisms,
urging an ongoing dialectic of kataphasis and apophasis, whether, for example, 1) Popper via
falsification or alternating conjecture and criticism; 2) Godel via incompleteness theorems; 3)
Scotus via the formal distinction; 4) Peirce via a modal ontology that prescinds from necessity
to probability; 5) emergentisms, which modestly avoid supervenience; 6) Hawking, who has
lately gathered the godelian implications for physics; 7) apophatic cohorts of every great
religious tradition and so on.
If human epistemology remains ineluctably anthropometric and human axiology remains
properly anthropocentric (although more suitably attenuated, nowadays, by a hierachy of
intrinsic values, which extends moral considerability throughout reality's pan-, physio-, bio-,
phyto-, zoo- and anthropo-semiotic spheres), then our participatory imaginations,
understandably, will remain challenged by the constant intrusion of an anthropomorphic
imaginary.
This challenge, then, presents in our tendencies to rush to closure, to prove too much, to say
way more than we can possibly know, to tell untellable stories. Paradoxically, the taming or
domestication of this regnant anthropomorphism will require the unleashing and uncaging of its
anthroposemiotic imaginaries that they may wander free and wonder much in the pansemiotic
wilds.
Concretely, then, what might a more thoroughly pansemiotic imaginary look like?
In my experience, it will look 1) less hierarchical and more egalitarian; 2) less reliant on the
privileged and institutional and more attendant to the marginal and noninstitutional; 3) less
pervasively de/constructive and more ubiquitously reconstructive; 4) less preoccupied with
evidential theodicies and more satisfied by logical defenses; 5) more focused on belonging and
desiring, orthocommunally and orthopathically, while less focused on behaving and believing,
orthopraxically and orthodoxically; 6) less focused on philosophical theology, metaphysically,
while more focused on theologies of nature, liturgically; 7) granting hermeneutical primacy to

the pneumatocentric and agapic, polydoxically, recognizing the plurality of sophiological

trajectories even given a singular soteriological account of human authenticity and conversions;
and so on.
There's a tension between the goals of deemphasizing theodicies and emphasizing defenses,
while, at the same time, focusing less on philosophical theology and more on theologies of
nature. After all, philosophical theologies articulate logical defenses, while theologies of nature
celebrate evidential resonances, which precisely reinforce the plausibility of those defenses. I
will try to explicate and resolve this tension more concretely, below.
In taking account of godel-like constraints on physical theories, Hawking suggested that, when
confronted with a choice between consistency and completeness, the good money is on
consistency. Similarly, the more sage atheological critics have retreated in recent years, many
indeed surrendering, conceding that logical defenses of God, properly nuanced, will inevitably
succeed; they have drawn back from their ramparts, where they've attacked the conceptual
consistency, logically, whether of classic, open, process or other interpretations, and now lob the
weaker philosophic ordnance of evidential implausibility. It is in this latter sense, then, that I
suggest we accept our theo-logic victory, whether we're flying the battle flag of Augustine,
Plantinga or Griffin, aware that neither the noncognitivists nor ignostics nor atheologians have
ever demonstrated any unreasonableness of faith, logically. Philosophical theology has, as ever
and always, done its job of (re)establishing the life of faith as a forced, vital and live option that
can be eminently reasonable, logically, and supremely actionable, existentially.
It in the above sense, then, that I suggest that philosophical theology, beginning from reason,
has done its job. In a real sense, its task is done; its work is finished. When I recommend
emphasizing defenses, then, that's only in the sense of engaging the noncognitivists, ignostics
and atheologians on that ground, logically, while not being drawn into epistemic battle,
evidentially. There's an old pedagogical saying --- we don't teach pigs to fly because, for
starters, they cannot fly and, besides, it annoys the pig. So, when I suggest we focus more on
theologies of nature but less on theodicies, there's no contradiction, because I'm all for
evidential reverie, liturgically, just not evidential repartee, metaphysically. The reason is that
plausibility and implausibility are way too weakly probabilistic, trafficking in a dyadic cycling
of only abductive hypothesizing and deductive clarifying unable to avail themselves of any
robustly inductive testing, which is necessary to complete the epistemically virtuous cycling of
triadic inferences. More succinctly, any final adjudication of competing logical conceptions and
interpretations regarding primal and/or ultimate realities, even of their initial, boundary and
limit conditions, can not, in principle, be delivered in terms metaphysical necessity, i.e. in terms
of explanatory adequacy regarding reality's rules, axioms and regularities. Instead, science,
probabilistically, models such rules but does not explain them.
This is not only true for any cosmogony that extends, interpretively, for our cosmological
descriptions. It applies across our emergentist heuristic. It's the case for any quantum
interpretation that extends from the descriptions of quantum mechanics. So, too, regarding the
biopoietic origins of life, those descriptions remain open to a/biogenic interpretations. Our
neuroscientific descriptions extend, interpretively, to a plurality of philosophies of mind.

Descriptions of symbolic human consciouness extend, interpretively, to any number of

anthroposemiotic accounts.
Whether quantum, cosmic, biopoietic, zoopoietic (sentient) or anthropopoietic (sapient) origins,
our emergentist heuristic, eschewing invocations of supervenience, which remain question
begging for strong, trivial for weak, emergences, provides only conceptual placeholders,
epistemic bookmarks, where explanatory adequacy eludes us. These bookmarks remain on the
blank pages of our probabilistic, scientific, descriptive modeling narratives. They won't be filled
in by plausibilistic, metaphysical, interpretive explanatory metanarratives. This is to recognize
that epistemic states of in/determinable realities might be ontologically suggestive of various
putative ontic states of in/determined realities, but they should not, a priori, be considered
decisive.
More concretely, coming full circle back to out theopoetics and theologies of nature, what I am
suggesting is that we engage them widely and wildly with an aim to celebrate the metaphorical
imagery of our descriptive sciences and interpretive metaphysics, fired by our pneumatological
imaginations, all to enhance our devotions, liturgies and psalmody, but letting such cascading
metaphors collapse prior to any temptation to employ them logocentrically in any evidential
theology or apologetic. In a peircean normativity, aesthetics precedes ethics which precedes
logic. The highest and best use of our theopoetic adventures is thus an affective attunement to
oneself, to others, to God, to the cosmos, via the cult-ivation of an evaluative dis-position and
not, rather, the articulation of descriptive or interpretive pro-positions, which cannot aspire to
robustly probabilistic argumentation.
Philosophical theology has done, already, what it can to make the life of faith logically
consistent, externally congruent, internally coherent, existentially actionable and a host of other
virtuous epistemic criteria. Such reason takes us only so far, where forced, vital and live options
beckon a leap of faith. Suitably chastized by the epistemic inadequacies of plausibilities and
implausibilities, evidentially, we'd do very well not to overinvest, theopoetically, in one 1)
quantum interpretation or another (Bohm vs Copenhagen vs ...); 2) cosmogony or the next
(cyclical, oscillating, singularity, un/bounded, in/finite, ...); 3) biopoietic or another (abiogenesis
or vitalism or ...); 4) philosophy of mind or another (physicalist or csc as primitive or ...); 5)
anthropopoietic or another (anthropic principle or irreducible complexity or ...). A robust
panentheism needn't place God along reality's seams, evidentially, when it has already affirmed
that S/he's been dyed into its fabric, theo-logically.
I am sympathetic to anti-theodicies but wonder, sometimes, if they are but the obverse side of an
evidential coin that has no evidential purchase, anyway, whether heads or tails, in the same way
that nominalism and essentialism moreso represent the same wrong question than they do any
coherent answers. If our logical defenses have already secured for us an opening for faith, our
evidential theodicies only concede more epistemic force and normative significance to
atheological implausibilities than they actually warrant. Let us celebrate our metanarrative
consistencies without lamenting their ineluctable incompleteness, for that, pragmatically, is
where the good money has always been wager, the best life has always been lived.
This is to suggest, also, that our anxiety to overcome every form of insidious -ism cannot finally
determine our choice of quantum interpretation, our cosmogony, our biopoietics, our philosophy

of mind or our anthropic principles. Which aspects of reality are eventually found
in/determinable, in/determined, probabilistic or necessary, brute or question begging, will
always make for richer psalmody, greater affective attunement, more consoling evaluative
dispositions, devotionally and liturgically. The phenomenological taxonomy of our epistemic
states, though, does not gift us an infallible metaphysical map of reality's ontic states, not for
proximate realities, not for primal realities and especially not for ultimate realities. If theodicy
problems, present, it's not because we have the wrong answers, evidentially, but only because
we've asked the wrong questions, logically, which includes the use of incoherent, inconsistent,
incompatible god-conceptions, proving too much, telling untellable stories, saying way more
than we can possibly know, rushing to metaphysical closure.
Most concretely, now, those who've most consistently grappled with the putative divine
attributes are the cyber-interlocutors of Tripp Fuller's "Homebrewed Christianity," whose
emphases have been, logically, on conceptual clarity and consistency: Bracken, Cobb, Caputo,
Keller, Oord, Clayton, Yong and their ilk, whose appeals have been, evidentially, in a word,
muted, apophatically tempered, but whose celebrations have engaged every cascading metaphor
ceremoniously, kataphatically enriched, even as those analogies inevitably collapse into the
luminous darkness of faith.
I intuit a vague panentheistic reality, where a creatio ex profundis brings
coeternal kenotic and tehomic fields into relationship, each field a dynamic,
open, relational reality of ever-emergent novelties, which participate in an
eternal fugue of peircean 1ns, 2ns and 3ns, each with its own inviolable
logic of in/determinables and/or in/determined realities.

Where these tehomic and kenotic fields overlap a creatio ex nihilo presents
as a cosmic reality, wherein we participate.

In my view, the tehomic logic accounts for emergent teloi, which include the
teleomatic, ententional regularities (pansemiotic), the teleonomic purposive
realities (biosemiotic sentience) and teleodynamic purposeful realities
(sapience). Tehomic emergence, then, would account for free (enough) will
and anthroposemiotic value-realizations.

The triadic (trinitarian) kenotic field (erotic, philic, agapic) with that divine
logic you described, variously constrained (exactly how & to what degree
remaining a mystery) by the tehomic logic, co-participates in the cosmic
field, eternalizing every trace of emergent truth, beauty, goodness and unity
in a way that, eschatologically, will be utterly efficacious, while ineluctably
unobtrustive, cosmically. Proleptically, we witness these kenotic influences
in various degrees.

Suffering can be transformed, agapically, good soteriologically harvested,

but is otherwise part of a tehomic logic. What the kenotic field, God, can do
to eliminate or alleviate it, without violating tehomic or agapic logics, God
does do, invariably. THAT this is so is a vague creedal stance; HOW & WHY
otherwise properly invites both metaphysical and theological skepticism.

Patterns that we encounter in both tehomic and kenotic fields, as well as the
cosmic field, where they interpenetrate, reveal both, high and low,
frequencies and amplitudes, of interactivity such that 1) low frequency, low
amplitude a-pathetic indifference and 2) high frquency, high amplitude
pathetic interference yield, instead, to 3) low frequency, high amplitude
interventions and, more the predominant pattern, 4) high frequency, low
amplitude influence. This pattern predominates in nature, such as
throughout evolution, in human relationships, such as in codependency, and
in divine interactivity, such as in kenotic dynamics, the agapic Spirit,
coaxing, luring, inviting, seducing but never coercing the emergence and
eternalization of truth, beauty, goodness, unity and freedom.

Well, that's hard to set forth in a Reader's Digest condensed version, but I
hope you intuit the resonances. My stance is, more succinctly, a polydoxic,
tehomic, pan-semio-entheism, which affirms both a creatio ex profundis, the
kenotic initiative, and ex nihilo, the cosmic emergent.

The interventions, above, are sym-pathetic, the influences, em-pathetic. Reality, generally
eschews a-pathetic indifference or co-dependent, pathetic interference. Influence and
intervention present on a continuum of the axis of co-creativity. Indifference and interference
present on the axis of codependency. Whats coaxed forward is human authenticity (Lonergans
conversions).

Regarding regularities and invocation of Peirce:

Successful references, metaphysically, remain --- not only necessary, but --- sufficient for
human value-realizations even as we aspire to and strive for ever more successful descriptions,
whether in science, philosophy or theology.
We thus describe, in moments of poetic kataphasis, that which has been, provisionally,
ontologically "suggested" by our various axiological realizations. Then, in moments of
apophatic negation, we thus prescind from these specific descriptions back to our vague

references, knowing in this moment of unknowing, saying in this moment of unsaying, that
nothing has been, finally, ontologically "decided."
This was philosophically intuited in Scotus' formal distinction and in Peirce's thirdness, where
our modal ontology prescinds from the possible, actual and "necessay" to the possible, actual
and "probable."
What's going on here is a holding of tension or a certain ontological agnosticism regarding
reality's regularities, between stochasticity and nomicity, between patterns and paradox, order
and chaos, symmetry and asymmetry, chance and necessity, random and systematic, whereby
our epistemic in/determinacies aren't a priori interpreted, ontologically, as necessarily due to
either indetermined or determined realities (or various degrees or blends thereof).
This is to recognize that an in/determinate epistemic state might suggest an in/determined ontic
state but not in a decisive metaphysical fashion, thus a plurality of interpretations is invited,
poetically. A reality that remains utterly incomprehensible, apophatically, nevertheless presents
as eminently and infinitely and richly intelligible, kataphatically.Our kataphatic descriptions
serve, then, as conceptual and axiological placeholders, as fecund heuristic devices, marking
those epistemic states that confront us at given ontological junctures, where explanatory
adequacy eludes us.
For example, whether quantum origins, cosmic origins, biogenic origins, sentient origins
(consciouness) or sapient origins (symbolic language), our descriptive modeling attempts and
phenomenological taxonomies must not be mistaken for explanations. Quantum mechanics
invites a plurality of interpretations. Cosmological data invite a plurality of cosmogonies.
A/biogenesis posits a plurality of interpretations of how the robustly biosemiotic emerged from
the merely physiosemiotic. Neuroscience invites a number of philosophies of mind. If the
origins of sentience remain problematic, the so-called hard problem, how much more
problematic are the origins of sapience and anthroposemiotic symbolic language?
Thus the epistemic humility of Scotus' formal distinction and Peirce's modal phenomenology
instructs us in science and, if there, how much more in metaphysics and, if there, how much
more in theology?"

below is redacted correspondence of my friend across the big pond, Lambrusco

Whatever Pascal really intended,
we best draw a distinction between speculative and practical reason.
I would interpret both Pascal's Wager and Wm. James' 'forced option' as forms of
practical reason.
James also described this 'option' as 'vital.' We might say, then, that this option has
momentous existential significance.

James also described it as a 'live' option. For me, this is where speculative reason comes
in. Pascal's Wager, in my view, could not reasonably argue against one's use of
speculative reason per se. For an option to be 'live,' then, it must at least be equiprobable
vis a vis competing interpretations.
There are indeed competing metaphysical interpretations that refer to ultimate reality.
Whatever other epistemic virtues they might enjoy, they don't enjoy falsifiability, aren't
empirical or robustly probable but merely plausible. In that sense, interpretations of
ultimate reality can compete, leaving us with several 'live' options.
At this point, we 'leave' our spculative reason behind, but only because we have
dutifully exhausted its resources. Which forced, vital and live option do we choose?
We turn to practical reason and an existential disjunction, to live AS IF this or that. So,
our practical decision, our wager, moreso has 'performative' but less so informative
significance.
This equiprobability or equiplausibility principle suggests --- when we encounter a
coiled object on the floor of a dimly lit cave, unsure whether it's a snake or a rope --that we jump over it, for that's the safer course. We've nothing to lose by leaping over it
if it's a rope, much to gain if it's a snake!
If there's an illuminating epistemic fire burning in that cave, we are obliged to use the
light of reason to delimit, probabilistically, which options are truly live.
------------------------------------------------We do not know whether the concept 'nothing' successfully refers to reality, whether
temporally or atemporally?
Also, implicitly presupposed in the question 'why not rather nothing?' is the principle of
sufficient reason [PSR]. We do not know whether it successfully refers because we
cannot a priori know whether reality as a whole begs an explanation. (Fallacy of
Composition may or may not apply, who knows?)
Our ability to navigate reality successfully evolved in a milieu of sufficient
probabilities. Those probabilities remain metaphysically vague. They have epistemic
significance as regularities, but that, alone, doesn't tell us whether they also have
ontological significance as 'regulators.' If they are regulators, think laws (nomicity, it's
called), we still don't a priori know whether they're emergent, local and ephemeral
versus primitive, universal and eternal.
Put more simply, in a modal ontology of possibilities, actualities and probabilities, we
do not know whether those putative probabilities, which are often called 'necessities,'
successfully refer to reality either.

Without 1) the PSR, 2) eternal laws, 3) modal necessity or 4) reality as a whole begging
an explanation, the concept ---'nothing' --- makes no reference?
To make this an atheistic argument rather than what I suppose is just a metaphysical
agnosticism, one would have to move from the logical, rational sphere where this matter
cannot be adjudicated to the evidential and press weaker claims, perhaps suggesting the
implausibility of those implicit metaphysical presuppositions that make the question
prima facie reasonable. In other words, challenge the 3 N's that ground the PSR:
nomicity, necessity & nothing.
------------------------------------------------The defenses argued against the logical problem, for the most part, succeed because the
claims are too strong.
Most fall back, then, to weaker claims by advancing evidential arguments suggesting
various degrees of implausibility. From a common sense perspective, implausibility
succeeds to a degree in persuasion. Philosophically, that type of rhetoric is less
interesting to me because it's just not robustly probabilistic.
Theodicies that respond to evidential arguments can become even more problematic.
For starters, they often seem to me to trivialize the enormity of human suffering,
immensity of human pain and horror of both personal and natural evil. Also, they sound
blasphemous to me in their arrogant presumption to comprehend the divine will.
Still, those --- who argue that the remedy, a theological skepticism, makes God way too
inscrutable --- are wrong. If God is, in part, utterly incomprehensible, it doesn't follow
that She's not, at the same time, intelligible enough for humans to discern His nature,
generally and vaguely. Whether one confronts the evidential problem of evil or its
corollary problem of good, explaining either God's nonintervention or interactivity, one
best simply affirm, for example, THAT, while miracles can happen or good can come
from evil, following both inscrutable divine and natural logics, the when, where, HOW
and why or why not warrants a certain agnosticism regarding specifics.
All that aside, having said nothing new --- some may find of interest: Others and my
own reading of Genesis takes its references to the deep, the abyss or the tehom as
implying --- not a creatio ex nihilo, not as classically conceived, anyway, but --- a
creatio ex profundis.
As such, our cosmic experiences putatively derive from a co-eternal interactivity
between a tehomic realm (chaos, formless void, etc) and agapic realm (truth, beauty,
goodness, unity, freedom = love), both constrained by their eternal logics, God not
omnipotent in the classical sense (think Hartshorne, Whitehead, Griffin) but "powerful
enough" to coax Her eschatological (fullness) realities forth, eternalizing every trace of
human goodness, every beginning of a smile, all wholesome trivialities.

There's more nuance than would be charitable to share in a single post, but any
interested might investigate a TEHOMIC panentheism, wherein God neither makes
rocks so big He cannot pick them up nor human wills whose freedom Godde can take
away.
------------------------------------------------The question relies on indispensable methodological stipulations to various epistemic
and metaphysical presuppositions.
Beyond the principles of identity, excluded middle, noncontradiction and sufficient
reason ...
In addition to a modal ontology of possibilities, actualities and probabilities ...
Moving past nomicity, necessity and common sense notions of causation ...
We can still ask which root metaphor one presupposes for one's metaphysic?
If one sticks with a static notion like substance or
[i]being[/i], then, the only way I could ever make sense of the question was to rephrase
it [i]why is there not rather something else?[/i].
I haven't [i]a priori[/i] and cursorily dismissed the concept's meaningfulness on literal
grounds precisely because I suspect some Thomist will come along and nuance it in
some essentialistic, substance ontology that I don't want to have to inhabit in order to
defend my own arguments. I'd rather hop around on the surface of common sense than
head down some ontological rabbit hole. I don't have an ideological dog in that hunt, so
don't feel strongly about 'nothing' one way or the other. :up:
Besides, just because most of the metaphysical presuppositions listed above might be
indispensable methodological stipulations, necessary, if we're going to advance our
probes of reality, that doesn't mean they have to be considered metaphysical necessities.
For example, I stipulate to the PSR as I continue my probes, but I have no idea if it will
really hold universally. I also stipulate to methodological naturalism, but don't commit
to a philosophical naturalism.
By not conflating my methodological stipulations with their implicit metaphysical
stances, I remain open to ontological surprises. Just because abandoning PSR and/or
naturalism might thwart my future probes of reality doesn't, necessarily, make them
eternal metaphysical verities? Our root metaphors, for their part, are even more pliable.
Many, nowadays, don't employ static, essentialistic approaches like substance or being.
Instead, metaphors that are dynamic and relational --- like process, event or experience
--- seem to last longer before collapsing.

I have often wondered what [i]nothing[/i]

might refer to in a question like [i]why is there not rather no-thing, which is to really
ask, why is there not rather no process or no becoming[/i]?
At stake are notions of causation, including not only efficient but minimalist
conceptions of formal and final. What gets set aside is material causation. I'm willing to
leave that open, not imagining that [i]nothing[/i] cannot successfully refer just because
my methodological stipulations suggest that's the case. Our methodological stipulations
to certain metaphysical presuppositions may be ontologically suggestive but we're
proving too much to claim they're necessarily decisive?
------------------------------------------------Heading down the rabbit hole, then ...
1) A lot of metaphysics turns on one's chosen [b]root metaphor,[/b] e.g. being vs
becoming, substance vs process.
2) Even after opting for a root metaphor--- let's stay with being --- we must determine
whether another is speaking a) [b] univocally[/b], b) [b]equivocally[/b] or c)
[b]analogically[/b] of being as one moves from a descriptive physics to a normative
metaphysics.
3) The former employs a modal ontology of possibility, actuality and probability, which
has an implicit grammar. Noncontradiction [PNC] and excluded middle [PEM]
variously hold or fold in these categories. For a) [b]possibilities[/b], only PEM holds.
For b) [b]actualities[/b], PEM and PNC hold. For c) [b]probabilities[/b], only PNC
holds.
4) Still, the grammar of that modal ontology, alone, does not drive us, algorithmically,
to ontological conclusions, whether from physical or metaphysical premises. We must
first define our root metaphor, in this case being, revealing our univocal, equivocal or
analogical predications.
What often happens, then, is that our ontological conclusions are not flowing from our
modal logic or metaphysical premises, alone, but can be found already buried in our
definitions, for example, of being and nonbeing.
Let's see what happens to our modal ontology and its grammar when we tinker with our
definitions.

From a vague phenomenological perspective, which brackets metaphysics:

1) mere possibilities can be conceived in terms of the clearly a)[b]instantiated[/b]
(actual), b) [b]noninstantiated[/b] (pure) or c) [b]virtual[/b] (neither, but 'as if' actual).
2) mere probabilities (uniformities, tendencies, regularities) can be conceived in terms
of a) [b]nomicity[/b] (deterministic), b) [b]stochasticity[/b] (indeterministic) or c)
[b]propensity[/b] (neither, but virtual, cf. Popper, Peirce, Scotus).
5) Any given belief that a given concept may or may not successfully refer to reality is a
trope contained in a philosophical fortune cookie. That cookie and its tailored message
have already been baked to order. They will thus match those tastes that would best go
with the metaphysical selections that one has already made off the above-listed Chinese
Menu of epistemic and ontic entrees.
To make these distinctions more concrete, let's look at an example of how we can
reimagine and redefine concepts and what practical implications might flow therefrom.
Let's avoid the equivocal and analogical predications that lead, via their implict
metaphysical presuppositions, to concepts like absolute nonbeing, both because they're
more controversial and, to me, less interesting. Also, let's remain agnostic regarding the
nature of the possibilities (non/instantiated) and probabilities (nomicity/stochasticity) in
play and tinker only with a definition or interpretation.
Instead of imagining the origin of our space-time-mass-energy plenum in terms of a
spatial singularity, let's employ, instead, a [i]temporal[/i] point. Because the taking of
the square root of negative one produces a complex number, metaphysically mapping as
a higher dimension, it will physically manifest as asymmetric temporality (the
proverbial arrow of time). So far, so good.
This avoids many of the problems with spatial singularities, such as classical theory and
relativity breaking down as we approach T=0. It allows for quantum effects on a cosmic
scale, due to an infinestimally small cosmos. Interesting solution.
But what type of quantum effect or event?
Particles arise in vacuums by borrowing surrounding energy. To conserve energy, such a
spontaneous particle and anti-particle annihilate each other within a quantum time limit,
remaining virtual, while net energy remains the same. Here, [i]no-thing[/i] might refer

to an absence of spatiotemporal observables, epistemology modeling ontology. It clearly

doesn't refer to the presupposed energetic milieu.
Now, in classical theory, black holes allow no thermal energy escape. What if black
holes could evaporate by allowing the emission of quantum radiation?
If, when a spontaneous particle pair arises, should one escape the black hole, while the
other gets trapped, they will both become [b]real[/b], the former carrying mass-energy
away, spatio-temporally, and asymmetrically (arrow of time), the latter shrinking the
black hole.
Conceptually, then, by using the square root of negative one, we can model a cosmic
origin that's conceivably consistent with both classical and quantum theory. It requires
some nonuniformity, however small (which I like to conceive as chaos).
Metaphysically, while there would be no problematic T=0 and our conceptualizations of
efficient causation would need tweaking, the T at singularity would be symmetric,
which, of course, seems absurd.
What could this mean regarding our conventional understandings of the relationships
between initial, limit, boundary and final conditions?
We see the 'Arrow of Time' operating for thermodynamic, cosmological and
epistemological realities. What would be the relationship between the Quantum Arrow
of time, which seems to have arrowheads on both ends, and our other experiences of
reality, which have an ontologically penetrating arrowhead on one end and an
epistemologically stabilizing fletching of feathers on the other?
It seems that the Arrow, informationally, comes from increasing correlations, which
model equilibrations of entangled states. States collide, energy disperses, objects
equilibrate. Time's arrow, then, while reversible in theory, for all practical purposes,
remains asymmetric because there are way too many mixed states, exhibiting an
advance toward equilibrium, and far too few pure states, which are 'ordered' and not
ravaged by entropy.
A finite, unbounded universe could exhibit an eternal flux between pattern and paradox,
the random and systematic, symmetry and asymmetry, order and chaos, contingency and
necessity. But not between being and nothing, unless a putative nonspatial, atemporality

would refer to [b]nothing[/b]. But that would still be only in the sense of being,
energetically, [b][i]something else[/i][/b].
Finally, new questions beg if one posits the singularity this way. Why was the initial
state far from equilibrium? Does the concept [i]intial[/i] successfully refer?
------------------------------------------------In my view ...
Why is there not rather nothing? or Why is there not rather something else? or It's not
HOW things are but THAT things are which is the mystical? or It's neither how things
are nor that things are but that THESE THINGS are which is the mystical?
Which of these questions make sense, in whose metaphysic?
A given metaphysic, as an interpretive stance, provides a normative heuristic, which
could variously foster or hinder human value-realizations but doesn't add new
information to our systems. It can demonstrate the reasonableness of our questions
regarding many realities but, properly received, leaves those regarding first and last
things begging.
I precisely wondered, when the Higgs boson news broke, whether it spoke to my
questions regarding the putative asymmetries near any singularity, however it's
conceived.
While metaphysical speculations regarding putative ultimate realities remain especially
problematic, those regarding penultimate realities remain indispensable heuristic
devices.
Abductive-transductive inference, meaning analogical inference to the best explanation,
coupled with deductive clarifying, paves the way to the next best round of inductive
testing. In abduction or retroduction, we can look at various effects as might be proper
to no known causes and reason analogically how the unknown cause is like or not like
those that are known.
This is what happens when folks argue whether this universe as a whole begs
explanations not provided by its parts. We do face Godelian-like constraints in formally
formulating a Theory of Everything [TOE].
But the practical upshot of incompleteness is not that we necessarily could not taste and
see the truth of our axioms, only that we could not prove them in a closed, formal
symbol system. I have never gone through the Principia with Russell & Whitehead, and
one would need to go at least halfway, in order to satisfy myself regarding the axioms
that ground 2+2=4. We cannot [i]a priori[/i] say whether the axioms of some future TOE

will be interesting, controversial or seemingly trivial. We will evaluate it, pragmatically,

based on the values which we'll be able to cash out or not.
The anthropic principle, as it stands, rests on a conceptual confusion between chance
and coincidence. Unless and until we learn a lot more about the initial conditions of the
universe, we don't know what should be reasonably "expected" regarding our existence.
So, we shouldn't rush to closure regarding either metaphysics or epistemic probes. We
should cave neither to mysterianism nor naive realism. We should aspire to proceed
fallibly but inexorably.
If we dispatch metaphysics, we'll abandon highly theoretic sciences, too. We aspire
beyond descriptive accuracy to explanatory adequacy, the latter evaluated by pragmatic
metrics. I say let a thousand quantum interpretations bloom for our quantum mechanics,
then cash out their values, or pluck their friits, if any, . in advances in quantum
computing, energy production or who knows what.
Let QM birth quantum interpretations, neuroscience birth philosophies of mind and
cosmology birth cosmogonies. Until we negotiate those interpretations, how could we
presume to adjudicate primal much less ultimate realities?
We always hope the merely plausibilist can become robustly probable for any given
reality. I don't have a quarrel with competing plausible interpretations of any reality,
whether proximate, primal or ultimate. My concern is with how much normative
impetus (especially for others' behavior) some aspire to exert vis a vis our consensus
regarding rules of evidence and burdens of proof.
What does another want to demand of me based on their interpretation of reality, based
on what epistemic warrants or normative justifications?
That's a political reality. Thank the founders for nonestablishment and free exercise and
pity those who don't enjoy same!
------------------------------------------------

My juxtaposition of those various takes on the mystical, posed as an interrogatory, only

means I'm agnostic regarding same, over against either a god of the gaps mysterianism
or a scientistic, logical positivism.
Once again, I'm metaphysically agnostic regarding that, over against either Russell or
those who invoke the principle.

A problem arises in any invocation of a strong anthropic principle. (The weak version is
trivial.) The problem results, in part, from a need to clarify the conceptual confusion
between coincidence and chance. Coincidence is something that pertains to the present
or past. Chance has meaning only when information is lacking. So, we distinguish the
two in temporal terms. If we are considering an event a priori, chance is in play. If we
consider it a posteriori, we have coincidence (something which, however, over the
course of a lifetime --- even of a multiverse --- might otherwise be considered likely).
So, the concept of probability has no validity vis a vis a coincidence and statistical
science thus pertains to chance and not coincidence. Probability deals with the
epistemically-unavailable, is an empirical notion subject to empirical methods and is
assigned to arguments with premises and conclusions (and not rather to events, states or
types of same). I suppose that if we knew enough about the universe's initial conditions
we could imaginatively (conceivably) walk ourselves back to T=0 and invoke chance,
but we don't thus have such an informed grasp of what should or should not be expected
of this reality.

------------------------------------------------Knowledge typically advances by formulating interpretive heuristics using abductive

hypothesizing and deductive clarifying. This precedes any inductive testing.
We must evaluate these interpretations using a host of criteria for epistemic virtue.
For starters, we can look at the concepts they employ, concepts that will have been
negotiated in various communities of earnest inquiry. Those concepts which have thus
been negotiated and out of which a great deal of pragmatic value has been cashed out,
are [i]theoretic[/i]. Those that remain still in negotiation are [i]heuristic[/i]. Those that
are nonnegotiable, like first principles, to which we must at least methodologically
stipulate, are [i]semiotic[/i]. Those not negotiated are [i]dogmatic[/i].
Our interpretations are normative, not descriptive, are explanatory attempts not
empirical measurements. If they are heavily laden with theoretic concepts, they likely
enjoy a greater degree of explanatory adequacy ... with heuristic concepts, less ...
with dogmatic concepts, even less.
So, while quantum mechanics, neuroscience and cosmology are descriptive, quantum
interpretations, philosophy of mind and cosmogony are interpretive. At the frontiers of
those disciplines, good heuristic devices can pave the way to the next best scientific
tests.
Beyond these penultimate realities, interpretations abound regarding reality's first and
last things, ultimate realities. Such interpretations are much more heavily laden with
heuristic concepts (e.g. metaphysics) and dogmatic concepts (e.g. religions). It's not to
be expected that such interpretive stances would enjoy the same degree of explanatory
adequacy as scientific theories or meta-theories --- not due to a lack of epistemic virtue,
but --- due to the nature of the realities under consideration.

Overlapping magisteria.
Mysterianism is a philosophic stance, mostly used in philosophy of mind. It's
descriptive not pejorative. While rejecting scientism, I also reject any [i]a priori[/i]
epistemic surrenders or rushes to closure that declare some type of, in principle,
ontological occulting. I think it was Chesterton who suggested that we don't know
enough about reality to say that it's unknowable.
As with other traditions, Buddhism's not monolithic but has different schools.
Below is a position statement I constructed with a Buddhist practitioner from an
extensive dialogue. She said that I properly interpreted her outlook. So, FWIW:
Many have been threatened by some buddhist-like conceptions of self and with other
no-self teachings. What they seem to most fear is self-annihilation or self-dissolution or
loss of self or loss of the individual or loss of personal identity or loss of selfsignificance.
Aurobindo and certain Buddhists do not deny what they refer to as the "empirical self,"
which is very much consistent with the conventional distinctions we draw between
individuals. As empirical selves, for example, we are still called forth in solidarity with
and compassion for one another. We still recognize moral obligations and practical
responsibilities toward one another. We can still even affirm a continuity of identity of
each individual, both temporally and eternally.
The no self conception is thus moreso an adjectival description and not an ontological
denial of the self. What we experience as individual empirical selves might be
considered "fractures" of the Divine Self. These fractures have no static essence per se,
metaphysically, but do present, empirically, as perduring individuals, who remain
recognizable as a dynamic process, which is related to and confluent with other everchanging processes, movements and energies. This conception of a person thus presents
moreso as an active moving target, which is in constant change and flux.
This divine fractured self perdures eternally. We can affirm an eternal Immutable Self as
well as individual streams of consciousness or karmic bundles, which, even in the
afterlife, we would recognize as each other, as the individuals we knew, so to speak, on
this side (even notwithstanding reincarnations and so on).
The divine fractured "S"elf expressed in our individual "s"elves are individual
peepholes on reality, seen by individual streams of consciousness, experienced as
distinct karmic bundles, complementing and supplementing the singular, all seeing Self

as discrete psychic perspectives, enriching the Immutable One's experience of Self

precisely via this fracture into mutable souls. Such wholeness and fracture both perdure
eternally in dialogue, the mutable and Immutable mutually enriching each experience.
This particular conception by Aurobindo would not be wholly inconsistent with a
Christian panentheism. The Oneness of the Immutable Self could correspond to what
we experience as a univocity of being (Scotus) and divine energies (Eastern Orthodox,
hesychasm). The love with which we all Love is, itself, the love of the divine,
immutable self, Who is One.

------------------------------------------------Because humans, for the most part, are similarly situated, we tend to share evaluative
dispositions and normative propositions toward many descriptive realities. We can thus
couple any given shared prescriptive premise to a given descriptive premise, then
reason our way to a normative conclusion. The move from the given to the normative,
descriptive to the prescriptive, is to an ought, in large measure, is not especially
problematical, for all [i]practical[/i] purposes. The same is true for Hume's problem of
induction, because we are situated in and evolved in relationship to a spatiotemporal
sphere of regularities, which needn't hold absolutely or universally, only provisionally
and locally.
Practical upshots of the Humean critique would certainly include epistemic humility.
But we are proving too much and rushing to closure if, theoretically, we [i]a priori[/i]
conclude for or against telos, nomicity or sufficient reason, on one hand, or
purposelessness, stochasticity or brute existence, on the other. Theoretically, we thus
have competing tautologies that differentiate axiomatically. They can't be adjudicated in
terms of logical validity, so we all fall back to weaker evidential arguments, which
cannot be adjudicated in a robustly probabilistic way, only advanced by plausibilistic
appeals.
One can agree that Pascal's Wager operates in a system where the axioms refer to telic
ultimate realities but would be meaningless in a nontelic system. However, doesn't
Pascal's Wager refer, meta-systemically, to one's choice between one axiomatic system
and another? Couldn't Pascal be acknowledging an ontological undecidability, hence a
deontological vagueness, which merely asks one to stipulate to telos for argument's sake
before deciding on essentially pragmatic grounds? This is to say that the Humean
critique could apply moreso to one's theory of knowledge but needn't presuppose one's
theory of truth, that it's epistemically impactful but not ontologically decisive.
-----------------------------------------------We can stipulate to a theory of truth, speculatively, for argument's sake, or normatively,
for all moral and practical purposes.

When we suggest one cannot reason from an is to an ought, we recognize that our
descriptive, evaluative and normative probes of reality are [i]methodologically
autonomous[/i], each asking distinctly different questions. We are not, however,
suggesting that they are not otherwise [i]axiologically integral,[/i] each necessary but
none, alone, sufficient, for every human value-realization.
We are not saying that one cannot couple descriptive (pre)suppositions, evaluative
dispositions and normative propositions in one's premises and then reason one's way to
prescriptive conclusions. Folks might reasonably disagree, however, regarding the
ultimate grounds of our descriptions (truth or Truth), evaluations (beauty or Beauty) and
norms (goodness or Goodness).
Those ultimate grounds operate axiomatically, so, we encounter godelian-like
constraints, unable to prove those axioms within the very systems they axiomatize. We
are confronted with a choice between consistency and completeness. The good money's
ordinarily opting for incompleteness.
This doesn't mean that we cannot formulate a system that is both complete and
consistent, however. It only means we cannot prove that we have.
Hume's critique, then, has an epistemic force similar to godelian constraints. He cannot
[i]a priori[/i] maintain that one cannot reason from an is to an ought, only that one
cannot know whether one has necessarily done so.
Pascal's Wager invokes such ontological, hence deontological, uncertainty. It invites
one, existentially, to live as if our existential orientations to truth, beauty and goodness
are grounded in putative transcendent imperatives of Truth, Beauty and Goodness. One
may live with the epistemic uncertainty and ontological vagueness implicit in both
Hume's critique and godelian incompleteness but still opt, existentially and practically,
and not unreasonably, to live as if our shared evaluative dispositions and normative
propositions are indeed grounded more deeply than our evolutionary inheritance. Or
not.
As for Pascal's specific gains and losses vis a vis what's at stake, that invites critique.
But the structure of the Wager survives, in my view, based on generic equiprobability
principles, which guide practical reason.
-------------------------------------------------

In a thermodynamic environment, far from equilibrium, dissipative structures arise,

morphodynamically, with novel boundary conditions formed. From the interaction of
morphodynamic structures, novel dissipative structures and boundary conditions arise,
which can interact --- not just thermodynamically and morphodynamically, but --teleodynamically.
The teleodynamic refers to downward causations. Teleodynamic realities interact
semiotically with novel boundary conditions provided by signs and, for humans, alone,
symbols.
This is the narrative called emergence. It's a descriptive heuristic, not robustly
explanatory.
People distinguish between weak and strong emergence, but the former distinction
remains trivial, the latter, question begging.
One takeaway is that semiotic science employs a minimalist telos, but doesn't suggest
whether or not its downward causations would violate physical causal closure.
The emergence of consciousness, in my view, could well have been entirely physical,
so, too, with life.
Without knowing the initial thermodynamic conditions, it's not possible to place odds.
Emergence isn't inconsistent with
telos or Telos.
------------------------------------------------The notion of divine simplicity was introduced as a strategy to preserve utter
transcendence.
Of course, affirmative predicates of God are analogical, not univocally predicated
between God and creatures. Any literal predications must be expressed as negations.
At best, though, the classical theist approach remains a question begging tautology
grounded in an essentialistic substance ontology employing [i]being[/i] as its root
metaphor.
Since the environs that we inhabit presents moreso as a dynamical, processive and
relational reality, it would make more sense to employ affirmative analogues from some
other ontology using some other root metaphor. Questions would still beg but the
approach would be more coherent, internally, and congruent, externally.
The classical approach addresses infinite regress and sufficient reason but introduces
causal disjunctions. How could a Being related to beings, only analogically, cause
anything?
The answer relies on an atemporal conception of cause, which may or may not refer.

Even if one can situate divine simplicity, coherently, within an ontology, and I'll
stipulate it can be done, in my view, it doesn't make God more intelligible because that
type of metaphysic isn't an adequate heuristic for reality as most experience it.
I only use the Razor to decide between systems that have already achieved explanatory
adequacy. Arguably, aside from interpreting it in terms of not unnecessarily multiplying
ontologies, metaphysically, epistemically, it can refer to going with that inference that
one has abductively formulated with the greatest facility (facile or simple as in "ease"
not vs complex).
------------------------------------------------Not all interpretive explanatory accounts, however, provide the same degree of
modeling power?
Theoretic interpretations differentiate from metaphysical heuristics --- not by strict
demarcation criteria, not in kind, but --- in degrees.
Whether a given interpretation is more closely related to the robustly, probabilistic
probes of descriptive sciences or the weakly plausibilistic hermeneutics of normative
philosophies can be determined, analytically, by its discourse.
Scientific and metaphysical interpretations might share such epistemic virtues as logical
consistency, internal coherence, abductive facility and interpretive consonance, but
scientific theories, further, will discourse primarily with a terminology that employs
concepts that have been negotiated in a community of inquiry that --- not only
empirically measures and inductively tests, but --- pragmatically cashes out the
modeling power of those concepts.
This enhanced modeling power thus further differentiates theoretic from metaphysical
interpretations in terms of conceptual warrant, interdisciplinary consilience,
hypothetical fecundity, pragmatic utility, existential actionability, evidential
measurability, phenomenal predictability, popperian falsifiability and other normative
criteria of good scientific research programs.
Not all scientific theories can demonstrate all of these criteria, but they can be
distinguished from metaphysical heuristics using most of these criteria. The theory of
evolution is clearly a scientific interpretation while both intelligent design and
philosophical naturalism are metaphysical interpretations, so to speak, meta-theoretic.
The whole notion of irreducible or specified complexity lacks probabilistic significance
from the get-go.

------------------------------------------------The theory of evolution involves several core hypotheses in relationship to a host of

auxilliary hypotheses in an expansive web of coherence. Its predictions are legion and
impactful across the entire spectrum of pure and applied sciences, including modern
medicine and agriculture. It doesn't rise and fall on anomalies or with every unexplained
phenomenon.
The theory's not inconsistent with either creation accounts, classical theisms and
panentheisms or with philosophical naturalism and materialist monism.
This isn't terribly controversial in most circles. When it does get litigated by the few,
judicially, the courts manage to sort through the distinctions I've set forth and make the
right call.
The problem results, in part, from a need to clarify the conceptual confusion between
coincidence and chance.
Coincidence is something that pertains to the present or past. Chance has meaning only
when information is lacking.
So, we distinguish the two in temporal terms. If we are considering an event a priori,
chance is in play. If we consider it a posteriori, we have coincidence (something which,
however, over the course of a lifetime --- even of a multiverse --- might otherwise be
considered likely).
So, the concept of probability has no validity vis a vis a coincidence and statistical
science thus pertains to chance and not coincidence. Probability deals with the
epistemically-unavailable, is an empirical notion subject to empirical methods and is
assigned to arguments with premises and conclusions (and not rather to events, states or
types of same).
I suppose that if we knew enough about the emergence of life or of consciousness, much
less the universe's initial conditions, then we could imaginatively (conceivably) walk
ourselves back to life's beginnings, the dawn of consciousness or even T=0 and thereby
invoke chance, but we don't thus have such an informed grasp of what should or should
not be expected of these realities.
------------------------------------------------That's why we distinguish between descriptive sciences, which employ a
[i]methodological[/i] naturalism, and interpretive metaphysics, not all which employ a
[i]philosophical[/i] naturalism.
As long as no one confuses what belongs in science books and what belongs in
philosophy books, there's no rub for me.

Philosophically, the emergentist paradigm, in my view, serves as the paragon of

interpretive heuristics vis a vis complexity. It precisely has room for formal and final
causations, especially from the perspective of semiotic science. It takes note of
[i]downward[/i] causation in nature, but doesn't [i]a priori[/i] suggest whether it would
necessarily violate physical causal closure or not.
I embrace an emergentist stance, myself, but remain metaphysically agnostic regarding
the origins of the universe, life and consciousness. I find that the affirmation of
teleodynamics makes reality much more intelligible as a heuristic device even though,
obviously, it doesn't gift us with a great deal of explanatory adequacy.
Allowing a design inference into descriptive or theoretic sciences is not the proper
antidote to [i]scientism[/i]. Instead, scientism and ID theory both need to be chased back
across the quadrangle to the philosophy department.

------------------------------------------------Dynamical whole-part constraints.

Check out the thinking of Alicia Juarrero.
Essentially, new constraints emerge, in far from equilibrium environments, as we
traverse thermodynamic, homeodynamic, morphodynamic and teleodynamic layers of
complexity. These dynamical constraints, boundary conditions, exert various downward
causations.
These are analogous to Aristotelian versions, what can be considered only a minimalist
telos.
The emergentist paradigm can be variously interpreted, whether from an eliminativist,
epiphenomenalist, nonreductive physicalist or even dualist stance. The emergentist
heuristic essentially refers to [i]something more (or else) coming from nothing but[/i],
but doesn't necessarily require one set of primitives vs another. For example, some add
consciousness along side space, time, mass and energy as a primitive.
My sneaking suspicion is that consciousness is emergent not primitive, that a
nonreductive physicalism fits reality best. But, I remain agnostic and none of this
matters to me, for all [i]practical[/i] purposes.
------------------------------------------------Questions beg.

Explanatory adequacy eludes.

Some laws may be eternal, necessary. Others emergent, ephemeral.
Some regularities may result from nomicity, others from stochasticity. We bracket them,
metaphysically, as propensities. This is to recognize that regularities may have ontic
significance in addition to epistemic.
We can't [i]a priori[/i] say, and no one has [i]a posteriori[/i] demonstrated, whether or
not reality's initial, boundary or limit conditions derive from clear necessities or mere
regularities, or even vague probabilities.
Any, who wave these questions away as nonsensical or who claim they require one type
of answer or anther, are proving too much.
------------------------------------------------It's claims are modest because that's all that's epistemically warranted. As a heuristic
device, it provides conceptual placeholders and frames up our questions, but doesn't
pretend to explanatory adequacy.
Of course, beyond the formal causes, the tacit dimensions and boundary constraints, a
minimalist telos, a more robust telos emerges with human consciousness.
By acknowledging the intelligibility of these causations, we better justify invoking them
analogically for heavier metaphysical lifting in this or that philosophy.

Metaphysics provide interpretive heuristics, which may or may not be true, without
adding new information to our systems. Their sheer multiplicity reveals their still-innegotiation status. They gift us, when well formulated, with good questions. Not
answers.
Life's higher goods, which are intrinsically rewarding, are [i]givens[/i] and in no need of
an apologetic or justification to be realized. A good heuristic, though, can be tested
pragmatically. Certain amplifications of epistemic risks can augment human valuerealizations.
------------------------------------------------Sciences describe. Cultures evaluate. Philosophies norm. Metaphysics & religions
interpret, as do those fast & frugal heuristics gifted by evolution, which we refer to as
common sense.
We interpret reality, existentially, in a robustly participatory manner (beyond any mere
cognitive map-making).

The normative mediates between the descriptive and interpretive to realize the
evaluative.
Our methods differ in the questions they ask, which makes them autonomous.
What's that? Describe it.
What's that to us? Evaluate it.
What's the best way to acquire or avoid that? Norm it, morally & practically.
Given any relevant epistemic indeterminacy and ontological vagueness, how shall we
interpret this reality (including proximate, penultimate or ultimate realities)?
Existentially, we will [i]live as if[/i] ... thus and such is the case.

No, my pragmatic criteria apply only to a theory of knowledge, not a theory of truth. In
other words, it does not equate truth with utility. It suggests, rather, that a useful belief
has a greater chance of also being true, hence is weakly truth-indicative.
------------------------------------------------Our discourse implicitly relies on various metaphysical presuppositions, which function
as indispensable methodological stipulations. While it would be silly to deny that such
presuppositions are ontologically suggestive, at the same time, we haven't been able to
demonstrate that they're ontologically decisive.
So, scientifically, we bracket the nature of regularities, using probabilities for all
[i]practical[/i] purposes. Metaphysically, many different (reasonable) interpretations
compete, in varying degrees of plausibility.
Any who suggest that epistemology, in many instances, successfully models ontology,
in varying degrees (as it seems you are suggesting?), are certainly not being
unreasonable.
-------------------------------------------------

Actually, it seems you have begun to grasp what I mean, when you suggest [i]If we
know the numbers we can work out the probability[/i].
We don't know the numbers, so can't calculate the odds, that any given dissipative
structure might arise far from thermodynamic equilibrium.
Scientific theories remain rather domain specific and cannot (yet) be facilely cobbled
together into a Theory of Everything. They suffer explanatory gaps. Scientific theories
don't rise and fall based solely on explanatory gaps. Instead, they gain theoretic

resilience from making innumerable unfalsified predictions and gifting us with

countless practical applications, unlike, for example, the Design Inference.

------------------------------------------------While scientific theories do go beyond mere descriptions to introduce a modicum of

explanatory adequacy, hence introduce interpretive heuristics, metaphysical
interpretations employ root metaphors. The theory of evolution brackets metaphysics,
which makes it consistent with substance, process, relational, dualist, monist, idealist,
neutral, materialist and all manner of other interpretive metaphysics. Descriptive and
theoretic sciences employ a methodological not a metaphysical naturalism.
The theory of evolution employs no root metaphor and neither presupposes nor
excludes, implicitly or explicitly, any specific ontology.
There's no justification, then, for characterizing the theory of evolution as
predominantly metaphysical, weakly scientific. There's even less justification for
characterizing ID theory as remotely scientific rather than robustly metaphysical.
This issue makes for a great foil regarding methodological demarcation criteria,
generally, but, specifically, isn't terribly interesting to me.
------------------------------------------------The abuse of something, in this case a scientific theory, is no argument against its proper
use.
Enlightenment fundamentalisms, for example, as have presented in the forms of radical
empiricism, logical positivism, theological ignosticism and scientism, are no more
defensible, philosophically, than religious fundamentalisms, as have presented via
fideism, metaphysical rationalism, arational gnosticism and dogmatism.
The culture wars are being waged between ideologues who employ bad epistemologies,
immersed in category errors, who confuse methodological stipulations with
metaphysical commitments and conflate descriptive models and interpretive metaphors.
------------------------------------------------I wholeheartedly resonate with your common sense and intuition regarding human
consciousness and intentionality. As the symbolic species, humans interpret reality in a
qualitatively different way, semiotically, from other animals.
Interestingly, even in birds, we see hard-wired forms of abduction, what we experience
as [i]inference to the best explanation[/i]. Humans employ abduction, however, both

instinctually and inferentially, in both hard- and soft-wiring, both algorithmically and
nonalgorithmically.
At issue, for us as a species, is how much of our interpretation of reality takes place
algorithmically, quasi-algorithmically or nonalgorithmically. There's likely a normal
range of percentages for each. At issue for each of us, as individual persons, is how to
optimize this mix, harnessing both our conscious and unconscious, inferential and
instinctual, faculties. There are age-old practices, disciplines and asceticisms in all of
our Great Traditions, which are ordered to such an optimal awareness, mindfulness and
wakefulness.
The only takeaway from PFT for me was the recognition of just how great a role our
unconscious can play in problem-solving, knowing it's also being formed and reformed
by robustly intentional stances and pervasively conscious processes but in varying
degrees from one person to the next. It's one thing to recognize this degree of human
algorithmic and quasi-algorithmic interpretation (and most people likely grossly
underestimate it), however, quite another to deny a meaningful role for truly
nonalgorithmic, robustly conscious intentionality. As you observe, that's ludicrous.
------------------------------------------------For starters, most of the biologists I know, including the author of the most widely used
text in cell biology, do not even employ the descriptor neo-darwinian, considering it an
anachronism, but speak of modern synthes[i]es[/i] in biology, acknowledging the
diversity of mutually critical approaches. Which brings up my second point --- that your
understanding of what scientific theories entail is idiosyncratic, apparently confused
with metaphysical interpretations.
Precisely because scientific theories are vague interpretive heuristics, they don't
ambition the degree of explanatory power you seem to require of them. They, instead,
enhance our modeling power of reality, [i]relying[/i] on certain rules without
[i]explaining[/i] them. So, again, your overemphases on explanatory gaps to discredit
the modern biological syntheses don't strike at the theories' modeling power resiliency.
Furthermore, your confirmation bias is betrayed by your inventory of problematics,
which wholesale ignores the web of coherence provided by the [b]uncountable[/b]
examples of practical applications of our modern biological syntheses.
Finally, scientific theories, as interpretive heuristic devices, especially those that are
broadly interdisciplinary, aren't tossed aside due to explanatory gaps or experimental
anomalies. Isolated, auxilliary hypotheses that get disconfirmed get replaced. They
aren't fatal to the syntheses, as you continue to insist.
Most of all, though, theories don't get tossed aside until there are better ones to take
their place. What [i]scientific[/i] theory do you have in mind?
It may turn out that our methodological naturalism may ultimately fail us precisely
because reality's implicately ordered by initial, boundary or limit conditions that, in
principle (ontologically), elude our physical measurement systems, or due to technical

methodological constraints (epistemologically), or entropic erasures. What would make

no sense at all would be to [i]a priori[/i] concede such epistemic defeat, to shut down
inquiry. So, just because we persist in a line of inquiry, methodologically, that stipulates
to naturalist presuppositions, doesn't mean anyone's thereby [i]a priori[/i] committed to
naturalist metaphysics. Science brackets metaphysical stances.
------------------------------------------------LambruscoE wrote on Dec 8, 2015 - 9:00 PM:

We've located an impasse. What we have in common, phylogenetically, are many

biosemiotic features, including certain sign interpretations. What we witness, then,
might be more broadly conceived as [i]interpretation[/i], even abductive processes or
logical structures. While this mimics human abductive inference, animals can't interpret
symbols, only icons and indices.
-------------------------------------Didn't we just agree on the distiction between the abuse and use of something, whether
science, generally, or a theory, particularly?

------------------------------------------------I already located our impasses 1) at the level of methodological categories, how one
conceives scientific theories versus metaphysical interpretations and 2) how theories
function. It would be pointless to argue evidentially for and against a stance, where I not
only object to its premises but don't even agree with its definitions.
Regarding the latter, you rather idiosyncratically set the evidential and explanatory bars
inordinately higher than science's conventional standards and relatively modest
epistemic aims.
Resultingly, you attack your own caricature of evolutionary principles, the applications
of which are so abundantly accessible that any dispassionate inquirer can readily tally
them without my assistance, the principles of which don't lend themselves to ontological
distinctions, micro vs macro.
------------------------------------------------My own interpretive stance has been influenced by both Eastern & Western traditions.
My attitude likely overlaps greatly with yours.

My only interest in this thread concerns demarcation criteria vis a vis science and
metaphysics.

------------------------------------------------This math is [i]deeply[/i] flawed. Selection is not random. Quite the contrary, it involves
deterministic processes. Even nonliving morphodynamics involve deterministic
processes. Thus, there's an [b]orthograde[/b] (against entropy) [i]ratchet[/i] dynamic,
dramatically increasing various probabilities.
That particular study by Axe wasn't published in a mainstream peer reviewed journal,
likely because it wouldn't have survived. Besides, contrary to this example, ancestral
reconstructions have indeed been used to change enzyme/binding specificity.
As far as life's origins, establishing odds against any specific life-form isn't informative
or interesting. We need to know the odds, rather, against any life-form. The odds that a
specific protein won't likely win the lottery pale in comparison to the odds that
[i]some[/i] protein might.
Infinity inschminity.
------------------------------------------------Not sure exactly how materialists might self-describe re: your other descriptions, but
since there are several materialist versions of philosophy of mind, it seems there
wouldn't be a single philosophy of intention either.
------------------------------------------------Engaging in interpretation, beyond description, is a necessary condition in setting forth
a theory or metaphysic, but not a sufficient condition to make an interpretation
metaphysical. I already set forth the criteria that distinguish scientific theories from
metaphysical interpretations. Those criteria have convinced courts of competent
jurisdiction ever since [i]Scopes[/i]. And those boundaries are well established in
academia and commercial enterprises. I may be setting the probative bar too low but I
don't aspire to convince everyone else.
No, I refer to the criterion that scientific theories are inadequate if they suffer
explanatory gaps. They recognize explanatory gaps! This is especially the case for
overarching theories, which have various auxilliary hypotheses coming and going in
competition across a broad interdisciplinary spectrum. Besides, these overemphases on
gaps are also fallacious arguments from ignorance.

You're trafficking in either-or and all or nothing conceptions for realities that present in
degrees.
And you're dealing with an idiosyncratic conception of theories. Theories are variously
formal due to the nature of the realities they interpret. Theories can present syntactical
interpretations, like axiomatic propositions. They can also employ semantical
interpretations, like classes of models. They also include pragmatic interpretations
regarding how [i]they can be [b]used[/b][/i].
Indeed, the quintessential example for how theoretic interpretation works can be seen
precisely in the topic under consideration --- [b]population genetics[/b]:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/structure-scientific-theories/
As for common descent, it has been so widely corroborated across so many diverse
[i]lines of evidence[/i] over a century and a half that it enjoys the normative impetus of
a [i]fact[/i] --- not something I find terribly interesting in a philosophy forum. Some of
those lines of evidence are summarized here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
The pseudo-scientific number games being played by some all commit the same errors,
1) confusing coincidence and chance and 2) arbitrarily setting bayesian priors in the
place of unknown initial and boundary conditions:
http://infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/addendaB.html
Evolutionary theory, possibly, even if implausibly, [i]could be wrong[/i], but it would be
the most [i]useful fiction[/i] ever enjoyed!
------------------------------------------------That sounds right. That's one conclusion that follows in any move from a
methodological to a philosophical naturalism. The former keeps gods out of the gaps,
while the latter installs nontheisms and/or nihilisms at the perimeters.
------------------------------------------------Scientific research into the origins of the universe, life and consciousness employ
physicalist, biopoietic and evolutionary paradigms --- neither because science [i]a
priori[/i] commits to nor [i]a posteriori[/i] has demonstrated the explanatory adequacy
of physicalism, abiogenesis and materialism, but --- because those are the only
methodological paradigms practicable.
As science moves from the theoretic to the meta-theoretic, it [i]does[/i] approach, often
crosses, the threshold of metaphysical interpretation. Theoretic cosmology does become

interpretive cosmogony. Quantum theory does become quantum interpretation. Theories

in neuroscience & cognitive science do become philosophies of mind.
Those who would annihilate metaphysics should take heed that, in the same instance,
they'll be doing away with our highly speculative sciences, too. Scientific theory and
metaphysics belong to the same interpretive continuum. Overlapping magisteria slice in
both epistemic directions.
Any interpretive paradigms that rely only on abductive hypothesizing and deductive
clarifying without the benefit of inductive testing compete plausibilistically
(evidentially) and logically (consistency & validity) but not in a robustly probabilistic
way. That goes for materialism, too.
As for Dawkins, yes, he attacks caricatures. At the same time, no too few worship same.
So, there's some hygienic value there. He's no Camus or Nietzsche, though.
------------------------------------------------I'm treating this normatively. So, there [i]should[/i] be an uneveness as each particular
interpretive approach to each particular problem in any given domain will vary in its
degrees of being scientific and/or metaphysical. And it's a dynamical situation, too, as
methodological advances change the horizons of the un/knowable.
I gather, though, that the uneveness you refer to suggests that, notwithstanding the
norms I discussed above, sociologically, attitudes don't reflect those norms?
Obviously, that varies from one sociodemographic cohort to the next? I think a clear
majority of scientists are philosophical naturalists, but a very substantial minority are
only methodological naturalists. While fewer people participate in organized religion, a
clear supermajority, worldwide, participate in spiritual practices and are open to more
than physical descriptions of reality? I doubt seriously many nonscientists give much
thought at all to philosophy of science? Best I can tell, a great many scientists seem
philosophically illiterate? I have no real grasp of such sociologic metrics, so used a lot
of question marks ???
------------------------------------------------In my view, we know enough from both science and our own phenomenal experience to
do anthropology without becoming overwrought about competing metaphysical
interpretations. Metaphysically, physicalist conceptions of consciousness or even of the
soul threaten neither human freedom nor human value-realizations. Similarly,
physicalist conceptions of cosmogony don't obviate theological approaches.
This is to suggest that methodological naturalism, even when coupled with a physicalist
metaphysic, anthropologically and/or cosmologically, remains a solid philosophical step
removed from eliminativist and reductionist accounts.
Now, as far as norming anyone's approach to ultimate realities, in a pluralistic world,
free exercise and nonestablishment works well here in the USA. If those who take a

more enchanted stance toward reality seem to be having a rough go of things in the
public marketplace of ideas, I suggest they focus more on getting their own rampantly
fundamentalistic houses in order and less on Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris,
who engage facile caricatures. In other words, quit emulating those caricatures! The
world, per my stance, remains pervasively enchanted, just not for all the reasons many
seem to imagine.
Edit to add url's:
Those interested might check out
1) metanexus.net
2) counterbalance.org
3) ctns.org
------------------------------------------------I agree that religions, going beyond metaphysics, can augment both human freedom and
human value-realizations, if that nuance or conception is worth anything to you.
But I would maintain that the anthropology we can derive from science, phenomenal
experience, common sense and common sensibilities, including philosophy but
bracketing metaphysics, is both necessary and sufficient to establish human freedom
and human value-realizations.
This is to recognize that people can live both a good and a moral life without religion.
If we have an impasse, that's fine. I just wanted to more precisely locate it as well as to
clarify both what I was saying and not saying.
------------------------------------------------I'll leave you with this teaser. While I think any anthropology worth its while would
have to affirm our radical human finitude, my theological anthropology doesn't do [i]the
Fall[/i].
--------------------------------------That's right. Faith, properly approached, takes one [i]beyond[/i] but not [i]without[/i]
reason.
Religions generally address both [i]creedal[/i] and [i]moral[/i] realities, the former
characterizing reality's first and last things or [i]ultimate realities[/i], the latter
pertaining to this, that and the other thing or [i]proximate[/i] realities. While creedal
realities tend to rely on alleged special revelations, moral realities are transparent to
human reason.
Creedal beliefs aspire much more to successful references to --- much less to successful
descriptions of --- ultimate reality and generally entail an existential disjunction or a
[i]living as if[/i] ultimate reality is friendly, as if all may, can, will and shall be well.
Such an evaluative disposition toward ultimate realities, which can also inform one's
affective attunement to others, the cosmos, even oneself, is transmitted by and
celebrated within interpretive communities.

In such communities, right belonging (orthocommunal) and right desiring

(orthopathic) tend to enjoy a formative primacy over right behaving (orthopraxic), much
less right believing (orthodoxic). A [i]polydoxic[/i] perspective, gifted by modern
interreligious dialogue and comparative theology, interprets the diverse creedal stances
of the Great Traditions, as well as indigenous religions, as complementary references to
--- not conflicting descriptions of --- ultimate realities.
When it comes to human references to ultimate realities, we inescapably fall back on
logical consistency and evidential plausibility and our interpretations compete, some
clearly better than others. Even among the best equiplausible interpretations we will
find agnostic, theistic, nontheistic and atheistic accounts, none which deserve
stigmatizing.
When it comes to proximate realities, both practical and moral, normatively, our
interpretations incorporate evidential probability. Robustly probabilistic reasoning
guides us morally and practically. It helps us discern the best disciplines, asceticisms
and practices to foster our intellectual, affective, moral and social growth and
development, in other words, to realize our human authenticity. One doesn't need to be
on any particular creedal path to realize such values.
So, when we talk about the rules of evidence in the context of failing or succeeding, we
always inquire further: failing to do what? Burdens of proof are normative rules which
ask: [i]What do you want to do with that evidence?[/i].
Religious beliefs regarding creedal realities thus enjoy free exercise but are curtailed by
nonestablishment. Interpreted as evaluative dispositions toward ultimate realities, they
can be celebrated as both private and communal [i]reverie[/i]. Those regarding moral
and practical realities, however, require higher burdens of proof (because they aspire to
coerce others' behaviors, whether prescriptively or proscriptively), which is why
essentially religious moral claims do fail, evidentially, should not serve as a public
[i]referee[/i] (of others' behaviors) and cannot justify coercive strategies.
------------------------------------------------Biosemiotics describe how living things interpret signs. When synthesized with an
emergentist stance, it would recognize [i]downward causations,[/i] which can be
characterized as analogous to Aristotelian formal and final causations, but it doesn't
[i]explain[/i] them metaphysically. For example, they may or may not violate physical
causal closure. Biosemiotics combined with emergentism remains metaphysically
agnostic and is not robustly explanatory. It serves as a vague heuristic device and
provides some conceptual placeholders, precisely where questions continue to beg.

-------------------------------------------------

Beyond biosemiotics, which includes phyto-, zoo- and anthropo- semiotics, some
[i]complexity[/i] thought speculates about a putatative [i]physiosemiotics[/i], which
implicates a [b]pansemiotic[/b] perspective.
A pansemiotic stance would be consistent with a [i]teleonomic[/i] account
([i]purposive[/i] integration or adaptation not [i]purposeful[/i] intention) of at least some
of the universe's regularities.
While science, as a methodological naturalism, would remain metaphysically [i]
[b]a[/b]gnostic[/i] regarding the putative nomicity of regularities, that's quite different
from the metaphysical [i][b]i[/b]gnosticism[/i] urged by the [i]scientistic[/i] cohort. In
the first instance, science leaves the question to be framed by philosophy. In the latter,
scientism says the question's not even meaningful or is a pseudo-question.
We'll continue to probe the origins of the quantum, of the universe, of life and of
consciousness, scientifically. Complexity approaches will continue to frame these
explanatory gaps, philosophically, and the questions they raise are legitimate.
If I've interpreted you correctly, at least in part, you are protesting metaphysical
ignosticism regarding these questions. I would agree, wholeheartedly, that such a stance
is philosophically indefensible.
------------------------------------------------Is your stance epistemological, ontological or both? Are there specific philosophies of
mind you [I]a priori[/i] reject? or not? or even accept?
I ask in the interest of seeing how your stance toward the mind might interface with
your metaphysical framing of life's origins?
------------------------------------------------It's not sentimentalism to recognize the difference between fully determined
mechanisms and partially determined organisms. Mechanistic accounts of organisms are
necessary, because organisms are, in part, determinate, but they are insufficient
precisely because organisms are, in part, indeterminate. Arguably, this could mirror the
fabric of the cosmos. Pervasive indeterminacy, in principle, would prevent complete
reducibility. That's one reason we refer to methodological naturalism and not
methodological [i]physicalism[/i]. Some scientists don't get this distinction, which can
make for bad science.
Those who draw inspiration from Robert Rosen's work may also find the following
authors stimulating: James Coffman,
Joyus Crynoid, Terrence Deacon,
Jesper Hoffmeyer, Alicia Juarrero, Donald Mikulecky and Evan Thompson.
See Crynoid's [i]The Scientific Misconception of Life[/i]
http://hubpages.com/education/The-Scientific-Misconception-of-Life

Consider Coffman's abstract, below, of

[i]On the Meaning of Chance in Biology[/i], Biosemiotics, December 2014, Volume
7, Issue 3, pp 377-388
[quote=Coffman]
Chance has somewhat different meanings in different contexts, and can be taken to be
either ontological (as in quantum indeterminacy) or epistemological (as in stochastic
uncertainty). Here I argue that, whether or not it stems from physical indeterminacy,
chance is a fundamental biological reality that is meaningless outside the context of
knowledge. To say that something happened by chance means that it did not happen by
design. This of course is a cornerstone of Darwins theory of evolution: random
undirected variation is the creative wellspring upon which natural selection acts to
sculpt the functional form (and hence apparent design) of organisms. In his
essay Chance & Necessity, Jacques Monod argued that an intellectually honest
commitment to objectivity requires that we accord chance a central role in an otherwise
mechanistic biology, and suggested that doing so may well place the origin of life
outside the realm of scientific tractability. While that may be true, ongoing research on
the origin of life problem suggests that a biogenesis may have been possible, and
perhaps even probable, under the conditions that existed on primordial earth. Following
others, I argue that the world should be viewed as causally open, i.e. primordially
indeterminate or vague. Accordingly, chance ought to be the default scientific
explanation for origination, a universal null hypothesis to be assumed until disproven.
In this framework, creation of anything new manifests freedom (allowing for chance),
and causation manifests constraint, the developmental emergence of which establishes
the space of possibilities that may by chance be realized.[/quote]
------------------------------------------------Metaphysics and science remain in a dynamical dialog. The sciences rely, implicitly, on
formal categories and relational structures, which a metaphysic explicitly unifies,
introducing abstract concepts to refer to such unifications. Those categories and
structures include modalities, entities, essences, properties, causalities, primitives (like
space, time, mass & energy), mereologies and such.
The most highly speculative theoretical sciences shade into metaphysics on a continuum
that reflects the different degrees in employment of abstract concepts in any given
interpretive discourse.
Science not only describes but interprets. Those interpretations are explanatory. Those
explanations are theories. Those theories are scientific.
Very highly speculative theories introduce novel unifying abstract concepts. The fewer
of these employed, the more scientific. The more of these employed, the more
metaphysical. Some interpretations are indeed more scientific. Abiogenesis employs
fewer abstract concepts than ID, so is more scientific. At the same time, any biopoietic

interpretation that ignores complexity theory and mereological relationships would be

bad science.
So, these specific demarcation criteria (number of conceptual placeholders) do
distinguish between biopoietic and ID accounts. There are other criteria we've also
discussed that further distinguish between a scientific and metaphysical interpretation.
But, even if one stipulated for argument's sake that the design inference is sufficiently
scientific, it employs a woefully inadequate analysis of relevant im/probabilities, which
makes it, at best, bad science.
------------------------------------------------I share your critique of scientism.
I affirm the need for an [i]expanded[/i] evolutionary synthesis, generally, supplemented
by holistic and emergentist perspectives, also, specifically, framed by a semiotic
interpretation. (I say expanded and supplemented but never conceived it
mechanistically, myself.)
This synthesis would remain agnostic regarding both the universe's primitives (space,
time, mass, energy plus ???) and the nature of its regularities (nomicity vs stochasticity).
This is to suggest, perhaps, that, ontologically, I reject no serious metaphysic, [i]in
principle[/i]. Epistemologically, I take a fallibilist stance, where I recognize the reality
of any given epistemic uncertainty, [i]provisionally[/i], but don't suggest it will
necessarily remain, [i]in principle[/i].
Concretely, for example, I wouldn't [i]a priori[/i] rule out panpsychism or even
consciousness as a primitive. My sneaking suspicions, however, are that consciousness
is an emergent reality, consistent with a nonreductive physicalist stance. Since I don't
have to choose, I don't.
I appreciate that a mechanistic account is not sufficient to describe human moral
realities.
A semiotic emergentist evolutionary synthesis, in my view, is sufficient, whatever the
natures of our universe's primitives and regularities. Our phenomenal experience,
common sense, common sensibilities and good old fashioned [i]reductio ad
absurdum[/i] reveal what we need to know about our free will and how to be moral.
---------------------------------------------Just to clarify, do you accept the distinction between the neo-darwinian synthesis [i]per
se[/i] and its [i]materialist conception[/i]?
In other words, it's one thing to suggest that the evolutionary synthesis is clearly wrong
but quite another to recognize that it's merely inadequate to this or that task? And,
further, that methodological naturalism, itself, doesn't require a mechanistic paradigm?

------------------------------------------------LambruscoE wrote on Dec 16, 2015 - 11:25 PM:

D'accord.
BTW, I fat-thumbed that [i]0 of 1 persons found this post helpful[/i].

------------------------------------------------Have you come across the neologism - [i]ententional[/i]?

Terry Deacon coined it as a reference to a broad range of phenomena that exhibit
[i]aboutness[/i]. It would include end states, goals, functions, purposes, life, teleology,
intentionality and so on.
Also, are you familiar with the distinctions that ethologists and others have drawn
between teleomatic, teleonomic, teleodynamic and teleologic?
The above distinctions are controversial and their definitions vary. Below are my own
idiosyncratic parsings.
The [b]teleomatic [/b] refers to mechanistic phenomena governed by physical laws. The
ententional [i]aboutness[/i] of teleomatic realities vis a vis end states might include the
2nd law of thermodynamics or, perhaps, a principle like entropy maximization.
The [b]teleonomic[/b] refers to organismic phenomena governed by programs
(computational & algorithmic). The ententional [i]aboutness[/i] of teleonomic realities
might include [i]intentional aboutness[/i], adaptations, functions, abductive [i]instinct[/i]
and [i]purpos[b]ive[/b][/i] behaviors with determinable end states.
The [b]teleodynamic[/b] refers to organsmic phenomena partially determined by
programs but otherwise responding to the environment with an open-ended processing
of sensation, perception, emotion & motivation that's nonalgorithmic,
noncomputational.The ententional [i]aboutness[/i] of teleodynamic realities might
include robust intentionality, symbolic language, abductive [i]inference[/i], triadic
inference (abduction, induction & deduction) and [i]purpose[b]ful[/b][/i] behaviors.
The [b]teleological[/b] for me refers to any putative [i]primal telos[/i], which would
account for reality's [i]regularities[/i], sorting probabilities in terms of necessity,
nomicity, determinacy, stochasticity, indeterminacy and so on, clarifying the
relationships between chance & necessity, the random & systematic, chaos & order,
paradox & pattern, the asymmetric & symmetric and so on.
Any explanation of the origin of life must go beyond the teleomatic to the teleonomic as
organisms go beyond the mechanistic. Any explanation of the human mind must go

beyond the teleonomic to the teleodynamic as the mind goes beyond mere
programmatic, computational algorithms.
Both merely ententional and clearly intentional phenomena, as well as teleomatic,
teleonomic and teleodynamic realities, are wholly consistent with a teleology conceived
as [i]primal[/i] telos. They're also consistent with an [i]emergent[/i] telos, whichever
root metaphor one employs for one's metaphysic.
------------------------------------------------I just read that Feser blog response to Coyne that you referenced above. Basically, he
was saying the same thing I was trying to say (with my dense prose, neologisms and
abstract categories). Feser basically unpacks the same ideas and provides concrete
examples that are much more generally accessible (which takes a lot more words but
can often be worth it!).
You refer to [i]logos[/i]. Yes, that works well. Check out Peirce's [i]Neglected Argument
for the Reality of God[/i], wherein he refers to God as the [b]Ens Necessarium[/b].
Same line of thought.
addendum: Peirce's argument reminds me of the metaphysical move some make when
extrapolating the Principle of Sufficient Reason beyond a methodological stipulation to
an ontotheological conclusion. Such stipulations may be ontologically [i]suggestive[/i]
but they certainly are not [i]decisive[/i]. After all, it's not unlike the move from a
methodological to a philosophical naturalism. Hence, all the usual questions come to
bear: [i]fallacy of composition[/i] apply or not? [i]brute[/i] fact or not?
------------------------------------------------Terry Deacon identified the [i]computational[/i] fallacy, which results from the failure to
distinguish, semiotically, between animal and human sign interpretation, the former
merely iconic and indexical, the latter also symbolic. He further identified the
[i]genetic[/i] (Dawkins) and [i]memetic[/i] (Dennett) fallacies, which treat genes and
memes as [i]replica[b]tors[/b][/i], when they are, instead, mere [i]replicas[/i].
Clarifying those misunderstandings may not do much, however, to cure anyone's
anxiety regarding the grounding of moral realities.
Most moral approaches seem to converge, methodologically, in their analyses of acts,
intentions and circumstances. They tend to reason from is to ought, from the given to
the normative, from the descriptive to the prescriptive, by coupling shared prescriptive
premises to shared descriptive premises and then reasoning to a normative conclusion.
The shared prescriptive premises, sometimes referred to as self-evident, derive from
shared evaluative dispositions, which are grounded in our collectively being similarly
situated as radically social beings, who experience, empathetically, a great deal of
human solidarity and compassion, transkin even. Not to say we're not variously
tribalistic, which contributes to tensions and tears at the fabric of solidarity. But, for the

most part, our existential orientations to what we call truth, beauty, goodness, unity and
freedom needn't be grounded in transcendental imperatives in order to work.
As it is, those who rely on foundational epistemologies, authoritative appeals and
transcendental theories of truth don't agree, anyway, regarding which authority or
foundation grounds our stances regarding good and evil, right and wrong, true and false.
Even with a foundational theory of truth, a properly fallibilist theory of knowledge
should inject enough epistemic humility into our moral reasoning. After all, shouldn't
any de-ontology be at least as modest as its ontology is tentative?
------------------------------------------------You have precisely located where the religious impulse often derails. The matrix I
employ uses an axis of speculative to affective and another of kataphatic to apophatic.
An overemphasis on the 1) affective and kataphatic produces [i]pietism[/i] and
[i]fideism[/i]; 2) speculative and kataphatic produces [i]rationalism[/i]; 3) affective and
apophatic produces [i]quietism[/i]; 4) speculative and apophatic produces
[i]encratism[/i].
These epistemic vices apply to one's meta-philosophical outlook every bit as much as
they describe one's [i]mythos[/i] vis a vis putative ultimate realities.
There are varieties of rationalism, wherein the speculative impulse avoids self-critique
and/or apophatic criticism, which we know as the epistemic vices of radical empiricism
and logical positivism, which also manifests as scientism, which further leads to
theological ignosticism, all of which are philosophically indefensible.
It is one thing to take the stance of philosophical naturalism, which can certainly be
internally coherent, logically valid and evidentially plausible vis a vis primal and/or
ultimate realities. It's quite another to suggest, however, that religious stances cannot,
similarly, be epistemically warranted and normatively justified, that believers must
somehow be cognitively impaired and are necessarily unreasonable.
The religious-like impulse to banish [i]telos[/i] from methodological naturalism, which
is understandable and could have been hygienic even --- had it not gone too far --- vis a
vis scientific inquiry, unfortunately, robbed the epistemic frontiers of our most highly
speculative theoretic sciences of the more robust explanatory heuristics provided by the
concepts of formal and final causations (suitably parsed as ententional, intentional,
teleomatic, teleonomic, teleodynamic, primal and emergent telos), which can help us
better frame up our questions regarding the origins of the quantum, the universe, life
and consciousness, much less our evaluative dispositions and meta-philosophical
suppositions.
------------------------------------------------I suspect that a dynamical, process approach would enhance our modeling power of
reality as compared to the more essentialist, substance metaphors. Hartshorne spoke of a

[i]nonstrict identity[/i], which resonates, seems to me, with some Buddhist conceptions
of the [i]no self[/i], which don't deny our experiences of an [i]empirical[/i] or
[i]practical[/i] self, but conceives it as more of a dynamical reality (as well as
every[i]thing[/i] else).
------------------------------------------------If we model the universe with a temporal rather than spatial singularity, time could be
fundamentally symmetric, only emergently asymmetric? Hawking conceived of just
such a model?
Or any given probability, for that matter. Thus we distinguish between in/determinate,
in/determinable, un/determinable, over- and under- determined. We don't [i]a priori[/i]
know when we are epistemically thwarted by some temporary methodological
constraints or permanently so due to some, in principle, ontological occulting.
While Hawking notes there are Godel-like constraints on any putative Theory of
Everything [TOE], the theoretic takeaway is not that a successful TOE couldn't be
formulated, only that its axioms couldn't be proved in a closed formal symbol system.
One practical upshot might be that we could [i]see[/i] the truth of such axioms or find
them more versus less interesting. Few of us have to travel halfway through the
[i]Principia[/i] with Russell & Whitehead, where they eventually prove the axioms of
2+2=4, in order to see the truth of those axioms.
All that said, we mustn't confuse our maps for terrain, our models for reality, our
equations for the fire breathed within. When we encounter effects as would be proper to
no known causes, we might devise successful references to unknown causes even while
successful descriptions evade us.
This is all just to suggest an optimistic stance for our methodological naturalism since,
as GK Chesterton suggested, [i]we don't yet know enough about reality to say that it's
unknowable.[/i].
------------------------------------------------Religion, properly conceived, would take one [i]beyond[/i] our positivist and
philosophic horizons of human concern but not [i]without[/i] them. This is to suggest
that it can be pulled off with one's epistemic virtue intact, just like any other interpretive
metanarrative, whether implicit or explicit.
------------------------------------------------LambruscoE wrote on Dec 18, 2015 - 10:18 PM:
There's a plurality of models.
------------------------------------------------I precisely meant to imply that probability's not necessarily incompatible --- not only
with determinism, but --- other explanations.

------------------------------------------------When distinctions are drawn between spatial and temporal singularities in speculative
cosmology, I never gathered that was done over against the notion of space-time. I took
it to mean there might be competing ways to model the nature of space-time. For
example, when modeling the universe as finite but unbounded, we'd employ one set of
mathematical axioms for time (e.g. imaginary numbers, square root of negative one),
while other models might describe it differently? Thus I've come across such
distinctions as the [i]spatialization[/i] of time versus the [i]temporalization of[/i] space,
the former modeling boundary conditions per Hawkings' [i]history of time[/i], the latter
corresponding, perhaps, to our conventional notions. But I can better see, now, the
possibility for category errors in drawing such facile comparisons, especially by
approaching it from the perspective that, as you say, imputes neither intrinsic meaning
nor objective existence to same. I'm still trying to learn the right questions, much less
evaluate the myriad answers.

------------------------------------------------QM doesn't seem weird to me. The competing interpretations can get rather interesting,
though!
This isn't to deny that other interlocutors might not over-reach metaphysically.
For my part, I'm quite willing to concede the internal coherence, logical validity and
some degree of plausibility of a materialist monism, as a [i]provisional[/i] closure.
There's nothing, in principle, that stands in the way of materialists reciprocating such
concessions to competing stances?
If, when one adopts a materialist stance, however, one is also overtaken by the urge to
annihilate metaphysics, telos and action under uncertainty, then highly speculative
theoretic sciences, teleonomic paradigms and decision theory norms will suffer,
unnecessarily so, as epistemic collateral damage. Such [i]hege[/i]monistic urges were
philosophically purged, last century, but those epistemological whack-a-moles --logical positivism, radical empiricism and theological ignosticism --- keep popping up
in different ways?

------------------------------------------------LambruscoE wrote on Dec 19, 2015 - 6:25 PM:

See #247 re: the putative relationship between temporality and intentionality. How one
conceives telos, whether as primal and/or emergent, leads to different inferences re:
design. So, too, re: time.
------------------------------------------------Even if one stipulated, for argument's sake, that conceptions of past and future were
only [i]emergent[/i] references to nature, couldn't they still successfully model our
spatio-temporal reality?
We must disambiguate each conception and define whether it's being predicated
univocally, analogically or equivocally between our physical and metaphysical models.
To the extent that certain of our physical conceptions represent emergent descriptions of
nature, while others represent fundamental descriptions, the former would be predicated
only analogically between our physical and metaphysical models, while the latter might
be predicated univocally.
More concretely, this is not at all to suggest that conceptions like intentionality,
temporality and various causes would, necessarily, not successfully refer,
metaphysically, if they were taken to be physically emergent. Rather, it would mean that
those metaphysical references refer only analogically.
One practical upshot would seem to be that, methodologically, we might make a
successful reference to such a putative reality but remain a step or more removed from a
successful description of that reality. In any event, our claims would be weaker (hence,
more defensible?).
This, of course, applies to any Design Inference and what might be the precise nature of
a design, purpose, final cause or designer, for example, if the telic conception represents
an emergent rather than fundamental reference to nature, or vice versa.
------------------------------------------------I most resonate with those who represented semiotic stances. The most salient
distinction between animal and human biosemiotics presents when humans interpret
symbols, beyond the interpretation of icons and indexes, of which animals are capable.
Within an emergentist paradigm, brains certainly exhibit teleomatic features, explained
per [i]mechanistic[/i] physical laws, and teleonomic features, explained in terms of
[i]organismic[/i] programs (algorithmic, computational, determinable). Human brains
also exhibit teleodynamic features, which are noncomputational, exhibiting downward
causations that wouldn't, necessarily, violate physical causal closure but which derive
from boundary constraints, analogous to Aristotelian formal causes.
Teleomatic properties are [i]about[/i] end states (e.g. maximizing entropy). Teleonomic
properties are about end goals (purposive) and would include [i]instinctual[/i]
abduction. Teleodynamic properties are end-directed (purposeful) and higher order,
which is to recognize that they include [i]inferential[/i] abduction (as well as, triadically,

induction and deduction). The acquisition of language, which may have co-evolved with
the brain and which is largely social, is integral to higher order cognition.
The Libet experiments, in my view, refer to teleomatic and teleonomic brain activities.
So, too, jumping out of the way of that London bus. Folks may grossly underestimate
how much human brain activity exhibits teleonomicity. Throwing oneself in front of
that London bus, however, requires teleodynamic brain activity.
Directly, though, the evolutionary role of consciousness has [b]not[/b] been explained
yet. Those heuristic conceptions --- teleomatic, teleonomic and teleodynamic --- are,
indeed, placeholders for rather intractable explanatory gaps. At least until we reconcile
the quantum and gravity, maybe beyond that even, we don't know how those gaps might
close, reducing to new physical accounts, or intractably perdure, nonreductively.
---------------------------------------That might roughly describe [i]one[/i] interpretation of the data for [i]some[/i] brain
activities, but the case hasn't been made that it's an exhaustive description of [i]all[/i]
brain activities.
Misspelling? You meant, rather, scienti[b]s[/b]tic?
Scienti[b]f[/b]ic refers to a methodology, not an ideology.
Many draw a distinction between physicalism and naturalism. Scientists generally
employ a methodological [i]naturalism.[/i]
An emergentist stance, which would be agnostic to philosophy of mind, so, not
inconsistent with a physicalist interpretation, recognizes the unpredictable novelty that
presents as dissipative structures interact. Not all levels of complexity can be described
by mechanistic accounts due to emergent whole-part constraints. Still, as ontological
density increases and complexities transist from the mechanistic to the organismic, their
activities can be described via programs that are clearly algorithmic, computational,
determinable, even though purposive. Human realities require both these mechanistic
and organismic accounts, which are necessary but not sufficient to account for our
experience of purposeful, noncomputational brain activities.

All of these properties exhibit final causation, just of different types. One might
question, then, whether we have introduced distinctions that make a difference. The
same is true for the distinction between [i]ententional[/i] and [i]intentional[/i], a
neologism introduced by Terry Deacon as discussed on the [i]abiogenesis[/i] thread.
Ententionality refers to a broad range of phenomena that exhibit [i]aboutness[/i] and
includes end states, goals, functions, adaptations, purposes, life, teleology, intentionality
and such.

Deacon also coined the term teleodynamic, which per his usage seemed to include
teleonomic properties, but I have parsed it to draw a distinction between it and Ernst
Mayr's ethological conception of teleonomic.
The differences between these concepts are nomological, specifically located in how we
model the rules that operate at each discrete level of complexity.
We model thermodynamic processes, homeodynamics, for the most part, utilizing the
2nd Law. For morphodynamics, we use physics, broadly conceived to model physicochemical, teleomatic end-states.
We model teleonomic properties with reference to programs, whether developed by
phylogenetic (via selection) or ontogenetic (via experience or social interaction)
activities or even a quasi-autonomous, electro-mechanical apparatus via human
programming. To oversimplify, behavioristically, we're essentially talking S ----> R
or stimulus ----> response, although the algorithms can get increasingly complex.
We refer to teleonomic properties as purpos[b]ive[/b], but teleodynamic properties as
purpose[b]ful[/b].
Here emerge human realities, which, while partly determined and uniquely bounded,
exhibit robustly autopoietic, intentional behaviors. Freedom, for its part, is not an all or
nothing, either-or, reality, but presents in degrees. The human will is undeniably plenty
[i]free-enough[/i] to enjoy manifold and multiform value-realizations, broadly
categorized in terms of truth, beauty, goodness, unity and freedom.
I don't ordinarily bother refuting facile philosophical tautologies and reductionistic
accounts by employing formal arguments or even im/plausibilist appeals, but approach
them the same way I do [i]solipsism[/i].That which lacks existential actionability,
pragmatic utility or robust normativity, both prudential and moral, gets tossed into the
philosophic wastebin via good old fashioned [i]reductio ad absurdum[/i]. I'd rather
watch football than construct a sylly syllogism to prove I'm not a brain in a vat or alienprogrammed robot with an umwelt.
------------------------------------------------I first encountered such distinctions in biology, then realized, later, they were
philosophically freighted.
The fast and frugal heuristics of common sense gift us a great deal of modeling power,
evolving in relationship, as I like to say, to [i]this, that and the other thing[/i] or
[i]proximate[/i] realities. When it comes to various [i]first and last things[/i] or
[i]ultimate[/i] realities, which include horizons for the emergence of quantum, cosmic,
living and conscious realities, while formalizing our models and arguments gifts us
enormous heuristic utility, in my view, the logical structures of common sense remain
indispensable. I refer, here, to instinctual abduction, inferential abduction (including
what some call retroduction as well as transduction or analogical reasoning), fuzzy-type

logic, which is more like set theory, less like algebra, and cumulative case-like, informal
reasoning. The epistemic virtue that's required when considering primal, ultimate or
horizon realities, is much less realized by syllogistic approaches, much more realized by
avoiding any [b]rush to closure[/b] when otherwise giving free reign to abductive
inference.
Formal, syllogistic logic remains an enormously powerful tool, but, starting with a false
premise, one can proceed free of fallacy, very efficiently, to an erroneous conclusion,
which is why the greatest logicians can end up further from the truth in a nanosecond
than the local village idiot could ever aspire to travel in a lifetime. This is precisely why
I harp on definitions so much. Many times, one's conclusions might not be explicitly
obvious in one's premises but are otherwise implicitly embedded in one's very
definitions. Disambiguation searches out our predications as we engage one model vis a
vis another to discern whether they're employed univocally, equivocally or analogically,
much less successfully.
Well, the teleonomic operates in social organisms both phylogenetically, via selected
adaptations, and ontogenetically, via experience & social interaction, which involve
nonsymbolic biosemiosis.
I think the epistemic virtue of an emergentist stance precisely resides in its avoidance of
either an epistemic or ontic rush to closure via its bracketing of metaphysics. This is to
say that I employ an emergentist + semiotic + methodological naturalist paradigm rather
minimalistically. For example, the cards I will not, necessarily, play, at one level of
complexity or the next, include concepts like supervenience, or distinctions like weak or
strong emergence, the latter begging questions, the former rather trivial.
I've a friend who refers to emergence as [i] something more from nothing but [/i]. I like
to say [i]something more from something else[/i]. The questions that beg remain
[i]nothing but [b]what[/b]?[/i] and [i][b]what[/b] else?[/i] ... etc!
So, I don't [i]a priori[/i] rule out consciousness being a primitive, along side space-time,
materio-energetic realities, anymore than I rule out physicalist or naturalist conceptions.
I do rule out the [i]consciousness [b]explained[/b][/i] absurd.
Intentionality and temporality remain indispensable conceptions, along with final
causation (but finality first [i]vaguely[/i] conceived, then dutifully disambiguated vis a
vis various levels of complexity or ontological densities).
We don't know enough about reality's initial, boundary and limit conditions, in my view,
to infer probabilistically what should or should not be expected, emergently. Strong
anthropic principles rely on a conceptual confusion between coincidence and chance.

Indeed, we go beyond mere description, evaluation and normativity whenever we

[i]interpret[/i] reality.
Interpretation existentially engages reality, perhaps in response to some equiprobable
existential disjunction ( In the shadows, is that a snake or rope? Uncertain, I shall jump
over it and leave it alone!), perhaps in response to some Jamesian forced, vital and live
option, perhaps in response to what Walker Percy distinguished as [i]news[/i] versus
information, always with [i]performative[/i] significance.
Philosophy, then, amounts to a life lived, hopefully well, whether one ever articulates
one's common sense and common sensibilities explicitly or, still competently, well
executes one's implicit sneaking suspicions even a tad unawares.

-------------------------------------------------

The emergentist concepts of teleomatic, teleonomic or teleodynamic provide a weak

heuristic, not a robustly theoretic explanatory attempt. They have more value, perhaps,
as conceptual placeholders regarding what we [i]don't know[/i], rather than offering
proofs for what anyone (wrongfully) imagines that they do.
We may describe various levels of complexity using different probabilistic models. So,
when I describe a system as teleomatic, teleonomic or teleodynamic, I refer to epistemic
states, probabilistically, acknowledging (urging even) distinctions between various
modeling attempts. I leave the ontic states of those systems open to interpretation. (This
applies to quantum, cosmic, biopoietic and anthroposemiotic horizons of emergence).
Is it reasonable to suspect, however, that the methodological differences between these
models might implicate ontological differences? Yes, but those differences remain
[i]suggestive[/i] not [i]decisive[/i] and, in no way, provide explanatory adequacy.
These distinctions, for me, unpack as follows:
Science models the states of any given system probabilistically, describing epistemic
states per degrees of in/determinability and/or un/predictability.
Some deterministic chaotic systems (deterministic in principle, unpredictable in practice
--- watch the local weather-girl) might be observationally indistinguishable from some
stochastic systems. And, there's no reason, in principle, why deterministic realities
cannot emerge from indeterministic realities or vice versa or why [i]stochastic
nomicity[/i] couldn't model some ontic states. Any given state might be epistemic, ontic
or even [i]epi-ontic[/i] (as our measurements even interfere).

Therefore, epistemic states and probabilities for any given system wouldn't necessarily
provide information regarding the ontic states of those systems per degrees of
in/determinism. So, the relationship between the epistemic and ontic states of systems
can often remain open to interpretation.
Certain states might therefore reasonably be interpreted as [i]adequately[/i]
in/determined. Others, perhaps, absolutely so. I don't feel I'm being unreasonable, for
example, when interpreting the human will as [i]free enough[/i]!
Thus quantum mechanics invites various interpretations; cosmology yields various
cosmogonies (e.g. eternal vs emergent temporality); biopoietics invite origin of life
hypotheses; and consciousness invites philosophies of mind. There are different theories
of probability, too!
Various emergentist conceptions seem to square with differences in our probabilistic
modeling attempts of various states of systems at various levels of complexity, but
precisely leave the ontic states to be interpreted by philosophy, and hopefully, to
eventually be described & measured empirically and tested inductively by science.
Note: Perhaps check out what the medieval, Scotus, called the [i]formal distinction[/i]
or what CS Peirce called [i]thirdness[/i], both which remind me of a modal ontology
wherein the categories of possibilities and actualities are employed, but where they
otherwise effectively prescind from a category of [i]necessity[/i] to that of
[i]probability[/i], which means that, while noncontradiction continues to hold, excluded
middle folds. Probability is thus taken seriously, much along the lines of what I've
suggested above, including such putative categories, for example, as an ontic
indeterminism.
-----------------------------------------------My approach to emergence has nothing to do with indeterminism, as it doesn't go
[i]ontic[/i].
------------------------------------------------I don't offer this over against what you've said, especially as I gathered elsewhere your
distinction between the methodological and ontological.
To enlarge that distinction, I offer the following clarification, because science, in my
view, is a necessary but insufficient condition for rationality. This is to suggest that,
ontologically, questions beg and it remains to be seen --- not only how, but --- if the
origins of quantum, cosmic, biopoietic and anthroposemiotic realities will ever obtain a
consensus ontological interpretation.
You describe, above, an indispensable methodological stipulation, not an necessary,
[i]beyond a doubt[/i], metaphysical ontology. N'est pas?

When we encounter effects as would be proper to no known causes, we abductively

refer to their putative causes, retroductively, reasoning backwards from consequents to
antecedents, and transductively, employing analogical conceptions. Very weak,
inferentially, abduction aspires, nevertheless, to the best explanation.
For example, we cannot know, [i]a prori[/i], which inferences from part to whole,
mereologically, commit the fallacy of composition. Thus, the universe as a whole could
be an empirical effect, proper to no known causes. We can't [i]a priori[/i] say that this
consequent must necessarily be caused by a physical antecedent, ontologically.
Neither the principle of sufficient reason nor methodological naturalism (nor an
empirical physicalism) mean that reality writ large must be wholly comprehensible in
order to be partly intelligible or must be thoroughgoingly naturalistic or physicalistic,
metaphysically. They only mean that we would otherwise be epistemically unfortunate
if they are not.
Whether any given equiprobable interpretation of a putative ontic state can be
normatively justified as rational and existentially actionable is a separate consideration
for any given abduction, physically.
Similarly, whether any given equiplausible interpretation, ontologically, can be
normatively justified as rational and existentially actionable is a separate consideration
for any given abduction, metaphysically. Neither a metaphysical nor theological
ignosticism are philosophically defensible because that type of positivism would do
violence, also, to highly speculative theoretic sciences.
Again, not over against, only as a clarification, because I note you critiqued positivism
in passing.
The Postmodern Critique, in my view, didn't drastically modify the Enlightenment, but
it did introduce a novel thought, [i]self-criticism[/i], which innoculates metaphysical
realisms against [b]naivete.[/b]
------------------Probabilities and plausibilities reflect epistemic not ontic states.
------------------------------------------------A [i]provisional[/i] ontology.
Epistemology relies on implicit metaphysical [i]presuppositions[/i], but we cannot [i]a
priori[/i] know whether they successfully refer only locally, like the rules of one's
neighborhood fantasy football club, or universally, which is to say, fundamentally or
emergently.

---------------------------------------------There is neither an [i]a priori[/i] nor [i]in principle[/i] assumption of unintelligibility,

only a recognition that intelligibility could be thwarted for all [i]practical[/i] purposes
and that we may have no way of [i]a priori[/i] or even [i]a posteriori[/i] knowing it,
should that happen.

------------------------------------------------It's also speculatively provisional, because both physical and metaphysical claims are,
properly considered, [i]fallibilistic[/i].
Metaphysical claims employ root metaphors, like substance, process, experience, etc
Dynamical accounts of regularities in a process metaphysic, which employs conceptions
like nonstrict identity, wouldn't be inconsistent with a continuum of epistemic states
representing degrees of intelligence along an axis of in/determinability, on one hand, on
the other, a continuum of ontic states representing degrees of causation along an axis of
in/determinism. Universally, then, intelligibility, itself, wouldn't, necessarily, hold.
Fallibilism would, however.
That's a theory of [i]truth[/i], which is distinct from a theory of [i]knowledge[/i].
Rational discourse can rely on a correspondent theory of truth even while only holding
to a coherentist, fallibilist theory of knowledge, or even pragmatism. This is to
recognize, again, that both epistemic state in/determinability and ontic state
in/determinism represent polar realities that present in degrees without threatening the
axioms of one's implicit, provisional, metaphysical presuppositions.
The [i]essence[/i] of metaphysical realities --- ultimate, primal and proximate --- or the
prevaling epistemic and ontic states of the environs wherein one evolved?
------------------------------------Do you not accept that there are a plurality of interpretations for quantum mechanics,
cosmogenesis, biogenesis and philosophy of mind as well as probability theory, itself,
precisely regarding epistemic, ontic and epi-ontic distinctions?
I was conflating nothing. I recognize both epistemic and ontic states. In the context of
equiprobability and equiplausibility there's no reason to misintepret those as anything
but epistemic descriptions.

------------------------------------------------You conflate a theory of knowledge with a theory of truth, which leads to a rather naive
realism rather than a fallibilist epistemology.
I've got news for you. Abductive inference is precisely what you were praising in
armchair thinkers. Inference is optimally triadic. Abductive hypothesizing and deductive
clarifying can spin their epistemic wheels without inductive testing ever hitting the
ontological road. The point was that abductive hypothesizing about ultimate realities
can only be considered either arational, nonrational or irrational by someone who
idiosyncratically narrows his definition of rationality, which keeps implicitly driving
your conclusions per the very epistemic vices you have explicitly disclaimed: radical
empiricism, logical positivism, theological ignosticism. Empirical falsifiability sets the
contours for neither rational discourse nor metaphysical hypotheses. You do realize that
metaphysics traffic in hypotheticals, not eternal verities? And that Popperian
falsification can't be, well, falsified! And is an overly narrow and idiosyncratic view of
empirical methodology and philosophy of science?
My point regarding abduction is that you cannot vote it out of one type of discourse or
domain without crippling its pragmatic utility in another, precisely due to overlapping
magisteria.
Your demarcation criteria continue to be either arbitrary or derived from idiosyncratic
definitions. Not all rational discourse is descriptive. Not just scientific interpretative or
theoretic discourse is rational.
Quantum mechanics admits quantum interpretations. Cosmology admits cosmogonies.
Biopoietics admit origins of life interpretations. Neuroscience admits philosophies of
mind. Such interpretive discourse has heuristic value helping us frame up our questions
prior to articulating falsifiable hypotheses, both in practice and in principle. Emergentist
thought, same. Philosophical theology, same. Conventional philosophy considers all of
this rational discourse. Some folks provisionally close on various monisms, dualisms,
pluralisms,
ontologically
and/or
realisms,
idealisms
and
pragmatisms,
epistemologically, all of them rationally.
You keep referring to your axioms and I could tell you were immersed in some
tautology, which is fine. It doesn't establish the boundaries of rational discourse,
however.
Again, there was no reason to interpret my reference to equiprobability or
equiplausibility as ontic rather than epistemic. You're disingenuously suggesting a
conflation. I was talking about normative justifications and existential actionability

when dealing with uncertainty, such as: Is that a rope or snake? and not: Is that virtual
reality superpositioned as a rope and a snake? You know, so I could jump over it vs pick
it up?
I have no problem with your holding fast to noncontradiction. Your problem is that you
overuse excluded middle.
In effect, you end up with a de facto modal ontology of actual and necessary. You want
to interpret probability, presupposing only an ontic determinism, which waits patiently
to be discovered by an epistemic uncertainty that will inevitably lose its un-ness, one
fine day.
Even the medieval Franciscan, Scotus, knew better than this, so introduced his formal
distinction. Charles Peirce drew inspiration from same and elaborated [i]thirdness[/i],
where excluded middle folds, but noncontradiction holds.
Epistemic, ontic or epi-ontic, in/determinability and/or in/determinism?
Can't say [i]a priori[/i]!
Check out Peirce's pragmatic, semiotic, fallibilism. It will open one's paradigm beyond
the syntactical, indexical and iconic to the robustly pragmatic and semantic. Without
using excluded middle, except for actualities, probabilities will get translated into
discourse that employs
[i]in principle[/i] a lot less
and
[i]for all [b]practical[/b] purposes[/i] a lot more.
It will turn a naive into a critical realism and infallibilistic metaphysical presuppositions
into provisional methodological stipulations that needn't present absolutely or
universally, all or nothing, either-or.
You mistake the Postmodern [i]Critique[/i], which deserved a response, for its
perversion into a [i]system[/i], which is indeed incoherent. The proper response, in my
view, is to drop your foundational epistemology for a nonfoundational brand, or at least
embrace a much more critical realism. Or, try Peirce's semiotic.
------------------------------------------------Yes, I had grasped that and wanted to take the opportunity to reinforce how I employ it.
Emergentism takes many forms, some which presumptively smuggle in rather reductive
presuppositions. If anyone hasn't gathered yet, I only employ metaphysical
presuppositions as provisional methodological stipulations. I embrace a fallibilist

metaphysical realism while being ontologically agnostic. Most human valuerealizations, in my view, via an axiological epistemology, can be adequately explicated
by an ontologically vague modal phenomenology, relying on informal, cumulative caselike reasoning. In short, I think our common sense and common sensibilities remain our
greatest epistemic resources but derail us if we rush to closure, which may be our most
ubiquitous epistemic vice.
A great deal of critical thinking goes into informal reasoning. Arguments which, alone,
may be rather weak, when otherwise stranded together in a cable of intertwined
inferences, can gain epistemic resilience and gift us with fairly good modeling power. I
think that cable metaphor originated with Peirce.
Thanks SO much for saying THAT, because, quite candidly, well ... sometimes, one has
to quit beating one's head against the wall just because it feels good when one stops.
------------------------------------------------Most who reify PSR, then reason syllogistically to Necessary Being, predicating same
in a deist, pantheist or classical theist sense, if I am interpreting that situation correctly.
He deftly avoids that route, however, with his own PSR reification by [i]a priori[/i]
commiting to an ontological physicalism, the primitives of which remain undefined,
awaiting a unifying root metaphor, while presupposing complete causal closure. !#=.$%
thus, best I could gather, believes in a Necessary Being, physically predicated. It's not
incoherent per se. He just wrongly imagines that all competing interpretations are
irrational, which is too strong a position to defend, just like his philosophy of mind, just
like his philosophy of science.
Here's my parsing:
Presently, the epistemic indeterminability of reality's various layers of complexity
remains intractable. Such indeterminabilities remain consistent with varying degrees of
either determinism or indeterminism or both.
Reality could dance to a cosmic fugue of chance and necessity, the random and
systematic, order and chaos, symmetry and asymmetry, pattern and paradox.
Specific ontic indeterminisms could well include quantum, cosmic, biopoietic,
consciousness and anthroposemiotic origins, as well as reality taken, mereologically, as
a whole.
Even if reality presents as:

1) a dynamical system,
2) in a series of ontic states, whether
3) temporally, nontemporally or even atemporally, whether of
4) a materio-energetic or some other conserving nature,
5) each such ontic state naturally explicable in terms of antecedents and consequents
per
6) axiomatic, nomological descriptions, which, conceivably, may even variously
specify
7) degrees of ontic in/determinism for each state, although otherwise still
8) [i]generally[/i] causal ...
It doesn't [i]a priori[/i] follow that:
9) this system's nomicity and series of ontic states,
10) when taken as a whole and lacking explanation, will necessarily either
11) [i]require[/i] an explanation or
12) present as an inexplicable [i]brute[/i] fact.
Neither would it [i]a priori[/i] follow that, while:
13) specific indeterminisms may lack explanation,
14) the system could not otherwise present as [i]generally[/i] causal, hence
15) largely intelligible, when measuring most discrete states.
If such a system, while:
16) taken as a whole, wouldn't necessarily be either explicable or inexplicable,
17) still, should it turn out to be explicable, then

18) it would be subject to Godel-like constraints,

19) the incompleteness of which may turn out to be more or less interesting, whether inprinciple or for all practical purposes, which is to recognize that we could well
20) see the truth of the system's axioms, even if otherwise unable to formally prove
them or, perhaps,
21) [i]not,[/i] which could mean that our search for a Theory of Everything will
entertain us until it all ends in ecological whimpers, nuclear bangs, solar eruptions or
eschatological glories.

-----------------------------------------------At best, entropy maximization might be a necessary cause in any comprehensive

scientific description but it's certainly not sufficient. Neither does it even exhaustively
describe all types of final causation. Hence the appeal to semiotic accounts, however?
One system's ententional (aboutness) [i]ends[/i] can serve as another system's
intentional means.
Would you accept the following nuance?
While controversial, atemporal causation, in my view, remains an indispensable
concept. I would agree that it's [i]incomprehensible[/i], in terms of not offering a
complete understanding, but still partly [i]intelligible,[/i] metaphysically.
It requires analogical reasoning, so, to be sure, the dissimilarities between atemporal
and temporal causes would certainly outnumber any similarities. Still, while we couldn't
describe its [i]nature[/i], we could appreciate some of its [i]character[/i]. In other words,
we could speak rationally of its [i]properties,[/i] per a possibly succesful [i]reference[/i]
to a putative system, even while otherwise unable to successfully [i]describe[/i] its
[i]identity[/i]. These types of references have long been made in theological philosophy
and more recently in highly speculative theoretic cosmology.
-------------------------------------------------

Excuse the digression, but I wanted to point out that I used the phrase, [i]eschatological
glories[/i], precisely to express the hope I nurture for peaceful endtimes (as contrasted
with dreadful scenarios)!
------------------------------------------------I employ an axiological epistemology, one formulation of which suggests that the
[i]normative[/i] mediates between the [i]descriptive[/i] and the [i]interpretive[/i] to
realize the [i]evaluative[/i].
While, for example, normative philosophies, descriptive sciences, interpretive
worldviews and evaluative cultures might each be methodologically [i]autonomous,[/i]
insofar as they ask distinctly different questions of reality, they remain, however,
axiologically [i]integral[/i], inasmuch as each is necessary but not sufficient for every
human value-realization.
[Note to Peirceans: This decodes into 3ns mediates between 2ns and interpretations to
effect 1ns. It affirms the irreducibly triadic nature of meaning-making and pragmatics.]
The reason I bring this up is because I find this conversation stimulating, especially with
its [i]pragmatic turn[/i], especially regarding humanity's evaluations, affective
dispositions and emotional connections.
Essentially, we're talking about right behaving ([i]orthopraxic[/i]) mediating between
right believing ([i]orthodoxic[/i]) and right belonging ([i]orthocommunal[/i]) to realize
right desiring ([i]orthopathic[/i].)
I'll tie this together (re-ligate) religiously.
While we properly describe reality teleologically, recognizing teleomatic, teleonomic
and teleodynamic properties, we might question whether such [i]aboutness[/i], whether
merely purposive or clearly purposeful, makes any claims on us. After all, we ground all
normativity, whether practical or moral, in [i]telos[/i].
What about the converse? When we [i]describe[/i] a reality and reference its telic
nature, it follows that we'd next interrogate its [i]normativity[/i] that we may respond to
that practical or moral reality, existentially, via a suitable [i]interpretation[/i].
If the normative necessarily mediates between the descriptive and interpretive, what in
the world, then, might represent the evaluative aspect of teleomatic realities, generally,
maximum entropy production or the 2nd law, specifically? Even if entropic realities,
which represent laws (3ns), have undeniable normative impetus, what could be their
axiological significance?
There are those who suggest that, beyond biosemiotics, which include phyto- , zoo- and
anthropo- semiotics (plants, animals, humans), the telic nature of nature's laws (still 3ns,

for the Peirceans) suggests a physio-semiotics, which would include teleomatic systems
(like the weather, climate, and [i]nos environs writ large[/i]).Thus, our cosmos presents
as [i]pansemiotic[/i].
The take-away that I'm driving toward is this: Humankind has long conceded moral
significance to human realities, anthroposemiotically, some significance to animalkind,
zoosemiotically, less significance to the plant kingdom, phytosemiotically, much less
physiosemiotic realities, which weren't considered semiotic or telic.
Beyond any normative impetus for our pervasively telic reality grounded only in its
extrinsic values, what it's worth to us, might we not better accord some intrinsic value,
also, to all of nature? This would be consistent with an enlightened self interest, to be
sure. But, evaluatively, we could reconnect with nature, grow in intimacy and solidarity
with nature, cultivate a compassion not only for every sapient or sentient reality but for
every semiotic reality?
Cultivating a more robustly orthopathic stance, affective attunement, evaluative
disposition or emotional connectivity to all of nature comports with a secular religious
naturalism as well as with those great traditions which celebrate, this week, their God
finding our Earth a fitting dwelling.
If we can get the evaluative right, orthopathically, we'll build a better normative
consensus, orthopraxically. We've already set forth a compelling descriptive narrative?
Perhaps we can broaden our orthocommunal sensibilities to include pansemiotic
realities, for their own sake, as well as our own, our fates inextricably intertwined.
------------------------------------------------I do admit that, for example, when I set forth a paradigm with a putative atemporal
series of causes, I still found it useful to use terms like antecedent and consequent. :)
Also, many who do atemporal metaphysics find a conception of [i]absolute time[/i],
eternally, to be an almost indispensable conception, even if weakly analogical. I still
side with those who find atemporal causation [i]somewhat[/i] intelligible but certainly
consider your stance eminently reasonable.
------------------------------------------------LambruscoE wrote on Dec 24, 2015 - 5:44 AM:
You say [i]privileged[/i], but don't you refer to what we'd both agree is quite possibly an
[i]emergent[/i] not fundamental reality? At any rate, different conceptions of putative
primal realities could still lead both of us, neither unreasonably, to competing
interpretations.
Even within our temporal reality, I wouldn't accord axiological primacy to a normative
primitive. Even as I commend valuing the teleomatic, for example, I would still
relatively value semiotic realities in terms of their ontological density, subscribing to an
aesthetic teleology. The greater the number of bifurcations that form a dissipative

structure, the greater the number of permutations that threaten its existence; the more
complex, the more fragile; the more fragile, the more beautiful.
I would thus value a semantical, meaning making, symbol using, purposeful,
anthroposemiotic reality over a syntactical, indexical, end-state, physiosemiotic reality.
Norming doesn't enjoy primacy over valuing in our epistemic, hermeneutical cycle.
First, we describe reality, asking [i]What's that?[/i]. Then we evaluate it, asking
[i]What's that to us?[/i]. I say [i]us[/i] because we're radically social animals. Then we
norm it, asking [i]What's the best way to acquire or avoid it?[/i] We only ever inquire
about a norm after an evaluation, which takes into account the ontologically relevant
(layer of complexity) telic dimension. We finally interpret the reality, existentially,
acting on our descriptions, evaluations and norms.
------------------------------------------------I do recognize the question begging nature of the aesthetic turn.
I had given some further thought to this before seeing your response and crafted the
following note to self: Emergence interprets reality vaguely, not constrained by
physicalist descriptions. So, the fundamental vs emergent distinction, here, relates any
two levels of complexity as either the [i]something else[/i] or the [i]nothing but[/i] out
of which it emerged. Specifying thermodynamics as fundamental laws of physics, then,
doesn't address their origin. Whether thermodynamics, generally, and the 2nd law,
particularly, holds or not, hasn't been answered to my satisfaction. Would it apply to a
universe as a whole or not? To a universe with a singularity or not? To a universe with
a boundary or no boundary? To a universe as an open or closed system? With reference
to planck time or not? imaginary time or not? real time or not? Not that the answers to
those questions really matter one way or the other to my [i]aesthetic teleology[/i],
wherein teleomatic realities, which are merely ententional, enjoy moral
[i]significance[/i] not moral [i]agency,[/i] which is clearly intentional. Lacking moral
agency, they give us nothing as agents to emulate, [i]morally,[/i] only something to
value, [i]axiologically,[/i] and to be mindful of, [i]practically.[/i]
As we draw a distinction between higher and lesser goods, the latter enjoyable in
moderation, the former without limitation, we might observe that the higher goods
precisely refer to our anthroposemiotic probes of reality. We interrogate reality
descriptively per our sense of truth, evaluatively per our sense of beauty, normatively
per our sense of goodness, interpretively per our sense of unity. We experience this
hermeneutical cycling as intrinsically rewarding, as an epistemic means to our
existential imperatives which has transmuted to a rewarding end, in and of itself.
Reductively, then, we observe how bird plumages correlate with food sources. One
adaptive attractant, evolved in relationship to feeding behaviors, re-emerged in
relationship to breeding behaviors. The evaluative pursuit of a given coloration becomes
aesthetically rewarding, experienced as an end, in and of itself, although certainly also a
means to feeding and reproduction.

Our interpretive semiotics reward us, as our descriptive, evaluative, normative and
interpretive probes of reality become their own rewards, ends unto themselves, in need
of no justification or apologetic, valued per a [i]just-because-ishness[/i].
Hence, truth, beauty, goodness and unity get experienced as higher goods, intrinsically
rewarding. We needn't appeal to some transcendental ground to make our deontological
moves from the given to the normative. Rather, we couple our shared prescriptive
premises (as would derive from our shared evaluative sensibilities) to our shared
descriptive premises (as would be derived from our sciences and semiotics), then reason
our way to shared normative conclusions (both practical and moral).
Because the symbolic species distinguishes itself as a meaning maker, evaluatively,
what I call an aesthetic teleology needn't be conceived in terms of transcendental
imperatives but cannot be denied as existential orientations. We describe, evaluate,
norm and interpret realities, cycling truth, beauty, goodness and unity hermeneutically,
abductively inferring that there might be Truth, Beauty, Goodness and Unity. That
abductive inference remains question begging, of course, though not unreasonable. Any
aesthetic telos, whether merely teleonomic, as in a bird's plumage, or robustly
teleodynamic, as in [i]Homo aestheticus[/i], remains otherwise emergent.
------------------------------------------------In my last response I drew a distinction between the assignment of moral
[i]significance[/i] versus the ascribing of moral [i]agency[/i]. I addressed the
relationship between life's higher and lesser goods, between existential and
transcendental imperatives. In my view, self-transcendence, fosters human authenticity.
Intellectually, we avoid a rush to closure by asking if there might be more to this reality
than I have described. Affectively, we ask whether there might be more to this or that
reality than my feelings presently suggest, evaluatively. Morally, we ask whether there
are goods at stake beyond my horizon of concerns, normatively. Socially, we ask
whether there might be other interpretations of this reality than those gifted by my own
interpretive community. Religiously, even, we ask whether other conceptions of
ultimate realities might not speak to our ultimate concerns, transcendentally.
Abraham Maslow, Bernard Lonergan and Viktor Frankl all came around to recognizing
that the pursuit of self-actualization frustrates its own ends, that self-actualization
ensues, rather, as a by-product of self-transcence. Those intellectual, affective, moral,
social and religious turns of epistemic humility refer to what Lonergan called secular
conversions, which lead to human authenticity. He recognized, similarly, that
authenticity was a by-product of self-transcendence, that sustained authenticity could
only be realized via [i]being in love[/i].
This is all to recognize that we are radically social animals, that we begin already inside
interpretive communities with evaluative sensibilities, normative approaches and
descriptive, participatory imaginations. Any notion of self must begin anthropologically
in that social reality. Only out of such shared interpretations and evaluations and norms,
do we ever launch our descriptive probes, which have only ever established that
teleodynamic, teleonomic and teleomatic realities emerged. The [i]out of what[/i]

question remains open, but does invite provisional closures. It doesn't lead, yet, to
apodictic certainties.
------------------------------------------------You refer, in my view, to formal causations, how the self is partly bounded, partly
determined. I agree.
The self is also autopoietic and free, beyond being partly determined, partly bounded.
Hence, beyond static, essentialist conceptions of self, we best conceive it as dynamical
and per a nonstrict identity.
I'm not sure what you mean above, though, regarding the similarity, sameness,
individuality. Ever heard of Peirce's [i]haecceity[/i]? It might be of interest.
Erratum: not Peirce but Scotus
------------------------------------------------Questions beg for now and other reasonable pictures compete. That would make for an
interesting success. I wonder at the nature of such a picture's axioms and what we'd
think and how we'd feel about them!
No, it might be rooted in divergent anthropological stances or CSP's [i]logic follows
ethics and both follow aesthetics[/i].
Essentially, I described an axiological epistemology within the framework of the
normative sciences of logics, aesthetics and ethics, as methodological approaches,
which remain agnostic to the metaphysical natures of truth, beauty and goodness,
relying only on our shared vague conceptions of many of their characteristics. This
stance remains consistent with evolutionary epistemology and naturalist accounts.
I'll say this much. However one pictures reality, whichever root metaphors one
employs, in some way, various realities, however otherwise transcendent, must share
some type of unitary nature, must require some univocal predications between them.
This wouldn't [i]a priori[/i] mean there couldn't also be equivocally and/or analogically
predicated features, too, such as might apply to interpenetrating fields or matrices.

I referred to how we [i]experienced[/i] these so-called transcendentals. I had already

suggested a pragmatic paradigm.

That's not one of humankind's prevailing evaluative dispositions, so, I doubt it'll ever
gather significant shared normative impetus. Perhaps you could better urge this
metanarrative thru song or myth?

CSP considered argumentation regarding ultimate realities a fetish. I don't see why that
wouldn't include the [i]a priori thermodynamicization[/i] of reality. Not to worry, he
certainly would abide same as a fallibilist metaphysic or provisional closure.
Proselytizing and theodicizing best yield to evangelizing (modeling not tutoring values),
not for fear of their consequences to oneself but because they offend charity toward
others.
------------------------------------------------I think it's Loyal Rue who offers the distinction between telic realities that implicate
only [i]because of[/i] and not, rather, [i]so that[/i] explanations. This speaks to the
distinctions between teleomatic and teleonomic, ententional and intentional realities.
Thermodynamics will only ever yield, as they only ever have, [i]because of [/i]
explications. From our regnant, ubiquitous, ineradicable, humanist perspective, they
can't jot or tittle ever become prescriptive [i]so that[/i] norms. The communities of
inquiry, including all of the great traditions, indigenous religions and secular
humanisms, pretty much unanimously draw distinctions, oh, just for instance, between
such as by-products, waste-products and end-products.
I do recall this much. CSP drew a distinction between an argument and argumentation.
The former refers, basically, to the abduction, the formulation of the argument.
The latter refers to what I would describe as a nonvirtuous cycle of abductive
hypothesizing and deductive clarifying without the benefit of inductive testing.
I believe this may be contained in his Neglected Argument for the Reality of God. He
specifically avoided the concept [i]being[/i] in reference to God, which I generalize to
any metaphysical (being) argumentations regarding ultimate realities (God).
----------------------------------------------CSP emphasized two distinctions in God-talk that obtain in any metaphysical discourse
regarding ultimate realities --- that between 1) existence and reality and 2) argument and
argumentation. He wrote that it [i]would be fetichism to say that God exists[/i], yet
formulated an argument for the [i]reality of God[/i]. Justice Belcher discussed the forms
of that methodological fetish which confuses natural science and mathematics. The
philosophic take-aways aren't found in the various definitions of fetish, which could
become a red herring, but in the substance of the relevant peircean critiques, which
suggest that we often run into extraordinary error in rendering our vague vernacular
conceptions precise and that we often [i]prove too much[/i], say way more than can

actually be known and tell untellable stories, for example, when saying precisely what
the order in the universe consists in.
A proper formulation of an [i]argument[/i] establishes the rational acceptability of a
belief, whereas an [i]argumentation[/i] aspires to compel belief in the truth of its
conclusions. Metaphysical arguments have established many rationally acceptable
beliefs regarding ultimate realities, but no metaphysical argumentations have compelled
beliefs in their conclusions regarding same. Still, many [i]prove too much[/i], imagining
they have [i]a priori[/i] demonstrated metaphysical necessities.
Justice Belcher, in his introduction to [i]Philosophical Writings of Peirce,[/i] similarly,
points out: "This attitude is inimical to philosophies in which intuitive cognition is
fetish, whether in the form of self-evident [i]a priori[/i] principles or in that of infallible
perceptual apprehension. By the queer yet understandable twists of philosophic history
such view-points have in their different ways purported to be scientific, apriorism
[b]confusing natural science and mathematics.[/b] (emphasis mine)
[quote=Peirce from Answers to Questions Concerning My Belief in God (c. 1906; CP
6.494-521)]
No words are so well understood as vernacular words, in one way; yet they are
invariably vague; and of many of them it is true that, let the logician do his best to
substitute precise equivalents in their places, still the vernacular words alone, for all
their vagueness, answer the principal purposes. This is emphatically the case with the
very vague word God, which is not made less vague by saying that it imports
infinity, etc., since those attributes are at least as vague. I shall, therefore, if you
please, substitute God, for Supreme Being in the question. I will also take the
liberty of substituting reality for existence. This is perhaps overscrupulosity; but I
myself always use exist in its strict philosophical sense of react with the other like
things in the environment. Of course, in that sense, it would be fetichism to say that
God exists. The word reality, on the contrary, is used in ordinary parlance in its
correct philosophical sense. It is curious that its legal meaning, in which we speak of
real estate, is the earliest, occurring early in the twelfth century. Albertus Magnus,
who, as a high ecclesiastic, must have had to do with such matters, imported it into
philosophy. But it did not become at all common until Duns Scotus, in the latter part of
the thirteenth century began to use it freely. I define the real as that which holds its
characters on such a tenure that it makes not the slightest difference what any man or
men may have thought them to be, or ever will have thought them to be, here using
thought to include, imagining, opining, and willing (as long as forcible means are not
used); but the real thing's characters will remain absolutely untouched. Of any kind of
figment, this is not true. So, then, the question being whether I believe in the reality of
God, I answer, Yes. I further opine that pretty nearly everybody more or less believes
this, including many of the scientific men of my generation who are accustomed to
think the belief is entirely unfounded. The reason they fall into this extraordinary error

about their own belief is that they precide (or render precise) the conception, and, in
doing so, inevitably change it; and such precise conception is easily shown not to be
warranted, even if it cannot be quite refuted. Every concept that is vague is liable to be
self-contradictory in those respects in which it is vague. No concept, not even those of
mathematics, is absolutely precise; and some of the most important for everyday use are
extremely vague. Nevertheless, our instinctive beliefs involving such concepts are far
more trustworthy than the best established results of science, if these be precisely
understood.
[b]For instance, we all think that there is an element of order in the universe. Could any
laboratory experiments render that proposition more certain than instinct or common
sense leaves it? It is ridiculous to broach such a question. But when anybody undertakes
to say precisely what that order consists in, he will quickly find he outruns all logical
warrant. Men who are given to defining too much inevitably run themselves into
confusion in dealing with the vague concepts of common sense.[/b][/quote]
------------------------------------------------Of course, for starters, I would subscribe to a realist, triadic, semiotic, social, relational
metaphysic of experience in a [i]turn to community[/i] that employs an equiprobability
principle, which prescribes the most life-giving, relationship-enhancing, conversionfostering, existentionally actionable response optimal in relationship to every given
forced, vital and live option one encounters.
The metrics, then, would guage humankind's collective intellectual growth, affective
attunement, moral achievement, social responsibility and ideological polydoxy, which
would correspond to how well individuals, societies, cultures and communities of
inquiry, all as communities of value-realizers, variously describe, evaluate, norm,
interpret and transcend realities they encounter.
Alas, the metrics are fuzzy, variously over- and under-determined, such remaining the
case in our social sciences, even biological sciences, but less so for the physical
sciences.
So, while it may disappoint some that I employed by-products, waste-products and endproducts only analogically, using a manufacturing metaphor more amenable to a
reductionistic thermodynamic paradigm, don't doubt that there are metrics but only
recognize that they are categorically apt to the relevant ontological densities, layers of
complexity and orders of emergence under consideration.
Entropic processes would represent naught but boundary constraints to our robustly telic
human value-pursuits. Sustained human authenticity would comprise our end-product,
love, per those sociologic metrics. By-products might include human happiness and
hope. Waste-products might include , well, nothing, especially if all things can work
together for the good!
-------------------------------------------------

You've advanced a tautology, which may or may not be true but which adds no new
information to ANY of our systems. And not all tautologies are equally taut.
Your circular reasoning doesn't present explicitly in your premises. Instead, your
argument's conclusions are embedded in your overly broad conception of final
causation, which per my own tautology, includes [b]pseudo-teloi.[/b]
[quote=Tom Short points out] I think, nevertheless, that Peirce erred in 1902 by dening
nal causation too broadly. His caution of 1898, when he introduced the term nious
if, he said, teleological is too strong a word was better. [b]For the nal state of
maximum entropy is not one that the Greeks would have recognized as a form of order.
[/b] It is, instead, a modern representation of that chaos from which they saw order as
emerging. Nor would we, today, be tempted to describe it in teleological language. It is
quite otherwise with organic features. Let us therefore call teleological those
anisotropic processes only that result in forms of order. These are the ones that, in
Peirces account but not Aristotles, are due to selection (from among alternatives due
largely to chance). A nal cause, then, in Peirces but not in Aristotles sense of that
term, is a type for which selection is made. The selection can be made consciously and
deliberately, as by a human agent, or, in Darwins phrase, naturally, by no agent at all.
As Peirce suggested, though for the wrong reason, this conception of nal cause
includes but is broader than our ordinary idea of purpose.[/quote]
These peircean distinctions by Short remain consistent with Mayr's teleomatic
(mechanistic) and teleonomic (organismic & purposive) distinctions, as well as my
appropriation of Deacon's teleodynamics for anthroposemiotic realities (purposeful).

[quote=Short expanded in his notes]In the 1902 writings on which we have drawn,
Peirce wrote, Final causality cannot be imagined without efcient causality; but no
whit the less on that account are their modes of action polar contraries; again, Final
causation without efcient causation is helpless. Such has been our theme, about
anisotropic processes generally: their particulars are mechanical; they would have no
existence otherwise. Peirce added, Efcient causation without nal causation ...is
worse than helpless...; it is mere chaos. That is in line with the Greek conception of
chaos or Boltzmanns of entropy, as conforming to the laws of mechanics but bereft of a
patterned result. However, Peirce continued, and chaos is not even as much as chaos,
without nal causation; it is blank nothing. But, surely, there can be efcient without
nal causation. As Aristotle noted, rain does not fall for a purpose, e.g., to make crops
grow. It just does fall, of necessity.[/quote]
It's, at least, controversial to interpret peircean conceptions of final causality as
inclusive of entropy maximazation, in particular, thermodynamics, in general.

[quote=Short further explicates]But a laws governance of events does not conform to

Peirces own description of nal causality: it does not consist in a process exhibiting
variability of means. And therefore we cannot identify it with selection for a type of
result. On Peirces own grounds, then, the relation of mechanistic law to events, while
indeed ideal, is not teleological. [/quote]
cf. Peirce's Theory of Signs, T. L. Short (2007)
http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521843201
I'm not suggesting your logic's inconsistent or that my interpretation's the only
reasonable stance. I'm just pointing out the location of our impasse. Your conversation
with @MU takes place on a different plane for, seems to me, that you both more
broadly construe telos and intentionality or purposefulness than I.
------------------------------------------------I have no problem with the argumentation [i]per se[/i], as far as your advancing a
descriptive tautology. I'm extremely curious how you imagine it enjoys a shred of
normative impetus or modicum of evaluative appeal. No, I don't buy your facile
psychologizing regarding supposed implicit evaluative dispositions. I'm engaging your
thought only as an interesting foil but otherwise dismiss it out of hand, informally, via
1) reductio ad absurdum, 2) inordinate vulnerability to both pragmatic and moral parody
and 3) failure to gain traction across diverse communities of earnest inquiry and valuerealization.
------------------------------------------------Induction? In whose lifetime?
You are precisely engaging in a nonvirtuous cycle of abductive hypothesizing and
deductive clarifying with no practical prospect of the inductive rubber hitting the
epistemic road. You leapt across planck's moat to inhabit a metaphysical castle few
others find philosophically inhabitable. Your epistemic promissory notes for reconciling
QM and gravity, explaining vaccuum fluctuations, singularities (or not), boundaries (or
none), open or closed systems, generalizing thermodynamics , etc appear to me to have
philosophic junk bond status as far as cashing out any peircean pragmatic value.
------------------------------------------------We may be a lot closer than I have gathered. Human authenticity refers to
developmental trajectories such as those described by Piaget, Erickson, Kohlberg and
others.
Even sustained authenticity refers to anthropological realities interpreted in a naturalist
frame.

What's the difference your distinctions make? Practically, what would humankind do
differently? Morally, what ought humankind do differently?
You touched upon this regarding energy conservation earlier I believe, for example?
Perhaps you could expand on concrete norms or point me to other resources.
------------------------------------------------Why must we conceive these as mutually exclusive?
I agree that we must strike a balance between overly optimistic and overly pessimistic
anthropologies. As for re-establishing norms, however, won't that require
a novel aesthetic appeal?
------------------------------------------------Although 3ns cannot be prescinded from 2ns, conversely, 2ns can be prescinded from
3ns. Hence, there can be no prescission of final from efficient causality, but efficient
causality can indeed be prescinded from final causality. In so doing, however, the
dyadic account loses a degree of rationality, explaining only the [i]post hoc[/i] but not
the [i]propter hoc[/i], which implicates regularities and laws. So, I wouldn't want to [i]a
priori[/i] surrender rationality by drawing a flat out distinction, between one system
process and another, such as [i]completely mechanistic and ideal[/i] versus [i]fully
teleological and real[/i]. Instead, maintaining an irreducible triadicity, I'd presuppose
that every event and process involve an element of objective chance, efficient causation,
and final causation.
Not entirely over against Short, maybe just nuancing our differences, I continue to
distinguish [i]teloi[/i] by degrees. To wit:
[quote=Menno Hulswit]Granted, in mechanical processes the degree of deviation
from the deterministic laws is minimal, and thus the degree of finality is very low. But
even so, the fact remains that in some way, all processes are teleological, even though
there is a difference in the degree of finality. Mechanical processes are teleological
processes with a negligible degree of finality. Final causation in mechanical processes
may be viewed as a degenerate kind of final causation.
http://www.digitalpeirce.fee.unicamp.br/hulswit/p-telhul.htm[/quote]
We can't [i]a priori[/i] say, and no one has [i]a posteriori[/i] demonstrated, whether or
not reality's initial, boundary or limit conditions derive from clear necessities or mere
regularities, or even vague probabilities. Why wouldn't the same apply to any putative
end state?

Science thus models the states of any given system probabilistically, describing
epistemic states per [i]degrees[/i] of in/determinability and/or un/predictability.
From a vague phenomenological perspective, which brackets metaphysics, mere
probabilities (uniformities, tendencies, regularities) can be conceived in terms of a)
[b]nomicity[/b] (deterministic), b) [b]stochasticity[/b] (indeterministic) or c)
[b]propensity[/b] (neither, but virtual, cf. Popper, Peirce, Scotus). While the practical
upshots of the Humean critique would certainly include epistemic humility, we would
be proving too much and rushing to closure if, theoretically, we [i]a priori[/i] conclude
for or against telos, nomicity or sufficient reason, on one hand, or purposelessness,
stochasticity or brute existence, on the other. Some laws may be eternal, necessary.
Others emergent, ephemeral. Some regularities may result from nomicity, others from
stochasticity. We bracket them, metaphysically, as propensities. This is to recognize that
regularities may have ontic significance in addition to epistemic.
After all, some deterministic chaotic systems (deterministic in principle, unpredictable
in practice) might be observationally indistinguishable from some stochastic systems.
And, there's no reason, in principle, why deterministic realities cannot emerge from
indeterministic realities or vice versa or why [i]stochastic nomicity[/i] couldn't model
some ontic states. Any given state might be epistemic, ontic or even [i]epi-ontic[/i] (as
our measurements even interfere). Therefore, epistemic states and probabilities for any
given system wouldn't necessarily provide information regarding the ontic states of
those systems per degrees of in/determinism. So, the relationship between the epistemic
and ontic states of systems can often remain open to interpretation. Certain states might
therefore reasonably be interpreted as [i]adequately[/i] in/determined. Others, perhaps,
absolutely.
All that considered, STILL:
Mechanical processes and thermodynamics, exhibit only a [i]degenerate[/i] kind of final
causation, wherein the degree of deviation from the deterministic laws is [i]minimal,[/i]
and where the [i]degree of finality is so very low[/i] as to be teleologically
[b]negligible[/b].
It would seem, therefore, that any deontological ascription of evaluative significance
and normative impetus to such a degenerate, minimal, negligible degree of [i]telos[/i],
while logically consistent, in principle, could only ascribe a commensurately minimal,
[b]negligible degree of evaluative significance and normative impetus, pragmatically.
[/b]
And that's exactly what we discover in our communities of inquiry and valuerealization: They ignore the 2nd Law, except for its practical constraints. And certainly
wouldn't substitute its ententionality for their own intentionality!
[b]Negligible teloi can only birth negligent metanarratives.[/b]
What about entropy as the notion of a multiplication of [i]microstates[/i]?

I've seen that.

Otherwise, I view [i]entropy as information[/i] as a mere analogue to its physical
conception.
------------------------------------------------To be clear, though, I subscribe to the view that naturalist, semiotic accounts are both
necessary and sufficient to foster every human value-realization and to realize those
values in abundance.
Any quibbles, as it seems you have imputed, are not grounded in a transcendent
metanarrative (not that I don't own such an abduction). I remain metaphysically agnostic
regarding quantum, cosmic, biopoietic, consciousness and anthroposemiotic origins. I
only subscribe to a vague phenomenological perspective using peircean categories,
epistemically, but am not at all immersed in any thoroughgoing peircean metaphysic, if
he arguably has one.
It's a [i]substrate[/i] of intentionality, which reveals very little regarding the
[i]content[/i] of same.
Semiotics does no such thing. Onto-semiologists boil existence down to a root metaphor
of information, which may or may not be true but it's way too strong a position to
demonstrate.
Instead of turtles, its triads all the way down? No, semiotics, properly considered, is an
epistemic logic not an onto-logic.
Your caricature relies on a failure to disambiguate telos, employing a broad conception
which I reject.
I don't combine my emergentist stance with a given metaphysic. Neither do I [i]a
priori[/i] assign in/determinist properties to probabilities or in/determinabilities. Weak
emergence is trivial, while strong emergence remains question begging.
Emergence does, however, implicate novelty.
Laws can evolve. So, too, novel boundary constraints. You are not being serious when
you facilely caricature my stance, especially given the background context of my other,
rather exhaustive, posts. The distinctions that some of us draw, such as between
teleomatic, teleonomic and teleodynamic processes, precisely employ the conceptual
placeholders at explanatory gaps, such as regarding the origins of life, of consciousness,
of human symbolic language. If you want to employ a root metaphor employing
entropic processes or information, that's fine. But I know you don't pretend that it has
eliminated the explanatory gaps that would resolve quantum interpretations,
cosmogonies, a/biogenesis, philosophies of mind or human language origins.

Telos itself can evolve. The boundary constraints that inform thermodynamics birth new
boundary constraints in morphodynamics which birth novel boundary constraints in
organisms which birth novel boundaries, genotypically and phenotypically, all the way
up our phylogenetic lineage.
Now, to suggest that a robustly purposeful telos remains distinct from its purposive
teleonomic, organismic substrate which emerged from a teleomatic mechanistic process,
in my view, is to say nothing terribly informative (pun) ontologically. It describes,
rather, epistemic states, probabilities, differentials in degrees of in/determinability. It
doesn't describe ontic state properties or natures, but brackets them and any degrees of
in/determinism. I have no earthly idea what emerged from what or how.
But even if I stipulate to a physicalist stance, which best coheres with my sneaking
suspicions, it still would not follow that I have anywhere suggested that human
intentionality is fundamental rather than emergent. No, not even implicitly. No, not even
[i]ipso facto[/i] via an auxiliary consequence of some other argument.
Just because I maintain that an emergent, purposeful telos might be more robustly
teleological than a purposive telonomic process, which is more indeterminable than a
weak teleomaticity, exactly why would it follow that the robust telos would necessarily
be more temporally fundamental than the weak?
I assign an axiological primacy to human values, to pragmatic interests. It's a category
error to confuse that with any putative temporal primacy exhibited by some degenerate
3ns. An axiological anthropocentrism doesn't implicate an anthropic cosmological
principle. It does comport with the emergence of human semiosis which is, well,
inescapably human.
All in keeping with the peircean notion that [i]Logic follows Ethics and both follow
Aesthetics,[/i] we next draw upon his distinction between the normative sciences as
[i]theoretic[/i] and those logical, ethical and aesthetical activities out of which we cash
[i]pragmatic[/i] value. Further, we can discuss and even robustly describe theories of
[i]knowledge, aesthetics and/or ethics[/i], as epistemic and practical methodologies,
apart from any precise theories of [i]truth, beauty and goodness[/i], as metaphysical and
theoretic presuppositions.
In our metaphysical, methodological stipulations, we need refer only to our shared
[i]vague[/i] conceptions of truth, beauty and goodness when doing science, ethics and
morality.
This is not to suggest that making our accounts of primal and/or ultimate realities more
precise via argumentation cannot variously dispose us, evaluatively, to ultimate realities.
We see this all the time.
It is to recognize, however, that, for all practical purposes, such argumentations are too
weak, evidentially, to meet the burdens of proof required for coercive normativity. In
other words, lacking a more universally compelling nature, they can't coerce a logical

consensus in the sense that competing accounts would necessarily be considered

unreasonable; they can't evoke an aesthetical consensus in the sense that competing
accounts would suffer a diminished evaluative appeal; they can't coerce an ethical
consensus in the sense that moral formulations and legal codifications would in any
manner reflect a deontological response to their ontological implications.
Beliefs --- upon which a wo/man is prepared to act --- generally don't employ robust
descriptions of the natures of truth, beauty and goodness. Beliefs employ, instead, vague
conceptions regarding many of the putative properties, characteristics or
[i]predicables[/i] of truth, beauty and goodness. While these vague conceptions remain
in negotiation within and between most communities of inquiry, they overlap enough (in
how they characterize truth, beauty and goodness) to provide great heuristic value. So,
most axiological discourse employs shared vague conceptions of the
[i]characteristics[/i] of truth, beauty and goodness but doesn't otherwise rely on shared
robust descriptions of their precise [i]natures[/i].
Whether one's stance stops at biosemiotics or extends to pansemiotics, whether Tom
Short, John Deely or Stanley Salthe, that particular distinction, as far as precise
conceptions go, gifts heuristic value for theoretic frontiers and has the ability to
variously attune us, affectively, to ultimate realities. It won't, however, enjoy a coercive
normative impetus --- ethically and morally ---because, evidentially, it shouldn't. It
doesn't meet such burdens of proof, which norm what we can do with any given level of
evidence.
The pragmatic turn and semiotics, though, including bio- and anthropo- semiotics,
coupled with science, seem to be indispensable heuristics for navigating the proximate
realities of [i]nos environs[/i]. However, we mustn't confuse a semiotic [i]heuristic,[/i]
which provides a phenomenological taxonomy, with an [i]explanatory account[/i] of
natural information systems, which would describe informational causations.
I say causationS only because, as Terry Deacon's thought reveals, our phenomenological
taxonomy recognizes distinctions between, for example, the various reductions in
[i]shannon[/i] (signal), [i]boltzman[/i] (thermodynamic) and [i]darwinian[/i] (genotypicphenotypic variety) entropies, which, respectively, correspond to syntactic delimitations,
semantic references and pragmatic interests, all hierarchically nested in a recursively
constrained triadic dynamic.
This phenomenological taxonomy represents a [i]logical[/i] accounting of a vague
modal ontology, where, for example, in peircean 1ns, noncontradiction folds but
excluded middle holds; 2ns, both hold; and 3ns, noncontradiction holds but excluded
middle holds. This relates to the telic distinctions between teleomatic, teleonomic and
teleodynamic process, between purposive and purposeful processes, between
ententionality and intentionality, all [i]distinctly different forms of [b]aboutness[/b][/i].
This is to recognize that, while our [i]logical[/i] accounting may be [i]onto-logically[/i]
suggestive, it's nowhere near decisive. [quote=As Deacon recognizes] ... how easy it is
to become seduced by what we might call the [i]fallacy of [b]misplaced aboutness[/b]

[/i]. This is implicit in eliminativist alternatives to Cartesian dualism and it is ubiquitous

in computational conceptions of evolution, mind, language and social processes. It is
an analogue to the Whiteheadian fallacy of misplaced concreteness and involves the
tendency to identify the content or ground of an intentional relationship with some one
or more of the substrates of the process; e.g. in a quantum bit, a computer algorithm, a
DNA molecule, a neural circuit, a word-object correlation, and so on. What the present
analysis purports to demonstrate is that the representational relationship cannot be
vested in any object or structure or sign vehicle, it is not reducible to any specific
physical distinction, nor is it fully constituted by a correspondence relationship.[/quote]
This reminds me of Rafael Capurro's critique of Luciano Floridi's [i]demiurgic
information ecology[/i], where the world's coextensive with the domain of information.
Capurro counters Floridi maintaining that all values are [i]human[/i] values, which
remain at the center of any claims to moral significance as long as we avoid the
[i]fallacy of misplaced aboutness[/i].
I did read a LOT of Stanley Salthe but it was kinda [i]deja vu[/i].:nod:
Actually, I resonated with much of the biology and darwinian critique and wondered if
he would abide the shannon, boltzmann, darwin entropic triadic. He discussed the
teleomatic and teleonomic but departed from same in saying the 2nd Law was the
ultimate final cause, which, in my view, it's [i]finious[/i]. Most of his biology and much
of his social critique seemed philosophically portable to metaphysical places other than
a pansemiotic stance. As I read, where his metaphysic could be abstracted away or
bracketed without affecting the integrality of his system, much of it seemed reasonable
enough. It made me suspect that you and I might be overstating our differences.

------------------------------------------------I take, rather, an eminently defensible anthropo[i]centric[/i] view, affirming a secular

humanism, consistent with pragmatism.
[quote=John Deely]What distinguishes the human being from the other animals is that
only human animals come to realize that there are signs distinct from and superordinate
to every particular thing that serves to constitute an individual in its distinctness from its
surroundings.[/quote]
Humanism, properly considered --- not only takes account of our anthroposemiotic
differentiations from other biosemiotic and pansemiotic realities, but --- norms our
efforts to subdue our animality out of which our [i]sapience[/i] extends, such efforts
including our education, cultures and traditions. Humanism, thus conceived, attends to
peircean thirdness to realize authentically human values. Humanism [i]is[/i]
pragmatism, perceiving that which humans attend to and attending to that which

interests humans, including our existential concerns, which lead us to forced, vital and
live options. Pragmatic humanisms turn attentively to the accumulated wisdom of
educational, cultural and traditional realities (habits, tendencies, 3ns).
An authentically pragmatic humanism retrieves wisdom --- neither ahistorically nor
uncritically ---from humanism's classicist, renaissance, enlightenment and existential
expressions (yes, even overcoming Heidegger's critiques) and presents as a
nonfoundational, fallibilist, postmodern humanism. It requires only our semiotic,
phenomenological taxonomy with only a vague modal ontology and shared vague
conceptions of human values such as truth, beauty, goodness, unity and freedom. It
doesn't require a systematic architectonic or metaphysic.
This humanism remains unapologetically and thoroughgoingly anthropocentric, almost
axiomatically so, axiologically secured by the time-honored, long-established, and
ubiquitously shared evaluative dis-positions and normative pro-positions of
humankind's diverse communities of value-realizers.
I say ironic because this is over against any indefensible anthropo[i]morphic[/i]
pansemiotic, which onto-extrapolates human intentionality to other forms of
[i]aboutness[/i]. I'm sympathetic to a pansemiotic and physiosemiotic view, but properly
nuanced by an emergentist stance that remains ontologically vague and tentative, hence,
deontologically modest.
------------------------------------------------[quote=Tommi Vehkavaara]Thus, the excess vagueness of the adopted metaphysical
concepts and doctrines, that makes them incapable of explaining (or even describing)
anything, is another pitfall that should be avoided (if biosemiotics is going to be a
science). The third pitfall is that we may be drifted to pronounce unnecessarily strong
metaphysical statements (as in [b]physiosemiotics[/b]). As such they are often either
simply false or even if true, so weekly justified (if justified at all) that others do not
have much reasons to become convinced of their truth. The proclamation of
unnecessarily strong statements is strategically unwise if weaker claims are sufficient
for making biosemiotics. The fourth pitfall is that we are driven to believe our
metaphysical convictions as a doctrine, not as the hypotheses or ends but as the
principles or starting points.Limitations on applying Peircean semeiotic. Biosemiotics as
applied objective ethics and esthetics rather than semeiotic, Journal of Biosemiotics,
2005, Volume 1, Number 1, pp. 269-308 [/quote]Per the [i]fallacy of misplaced
aboutness[/i],we avoid any facile conflation regarding ententional and intentional teloi.
While both are [i]rule-governed[/i], only the latter are [i]meaning-constitutive[/i].
Intentionality relates to significance, relevance and interests, beyond any sheer quantity
of information or rule-governance.[quote=Ahti-Veikko Pietarinenn]Normativity has to
do with rule-governed, meaning-constitutive practices and activities, because logic as a
normative science is, according to Peirce, one of the most purely theoretical of purely
theoretical sciencesWhy is the Normativity of Logic Based on Rules? [/quote]In the

continental view, epistemology remains inherently [i]anthropocentric[/i]. In the analytic

view, ontological specificity remains unnecessary. A pragmatic, semiotic realism can
adopt both stances. A taxonomy of vague phenomenological conceptions suffices,
ontologically. It provides those implicit, indispensable metaphysical presuppositions
(modal ontological logic) required for an axiological epistemology. Those
presuppositions require only provisional closures or methodological stipulations, not
ontological commitments.In the normative sciences, while ethics and logic depend, in
principle, on aesthetics, they won't collapse into hedonism if, phenomenologically, we
properly redescribe pleasure and pain.[quote=Richard K. Atkins]As Peirce notes, his
theory is exactly contrary to hedonism, which locates normativity in the feeling of
pleasure. In contrast, Peirces conception of normativity is grounded in the struggle for a
state of pleasure.This is the agreement of the faculties of understanding and imagination
in reaching determinate concepts by which to subsume (and hence understand)
nature.The normative sciences bridge phaneroscopy and metaphysics by bringing the
struggle between the ego and the non-ego into an aesthetic state of quietus, or
agreement. Aesthetics recognizes the state of quietus to be what is admirable in itself.
This is determined by the very nature of judgments and the mutual interdetermination of
the ego and the non-ego. The science of ethics strives to bring the ego and the non-ego
into a state of quietus in conduct. The science of logic strives to bring the ego and the
non- ego into a state of quietus in thought.<------ LambruscoE snipped here ------>Is not
pleasure by definition a feeling?In reply, the feeling is, indeed, consequent on reaching a
state of quietus. However, the feeling is only an epiphenomenon, a symptom, or an
accompaniment of the achievement of quietus. Conceivably, one could reach a state of
quietus (i.e. a state in which the struggle between the ego and the non-ego is minimal)
but this state not be accompanied by a feeling of pleasure. On the Peircean account, the
person would still be in a pleasurable state, even if he does not feel the pleasure. The
feeling of pleasure is the icing on the cake it is an indicator that one has reached a
state of quietus. However, the pleasure itself is the state in which quietus is reached. It is
this state that grounds normativity, not the feeling that accompanies reaching this state.
[i]The Pleasures of Goodness: Peircean Aesthetics in Light of Kants Critique of the
Power of Judgment[/i][/quote]The intentional teloi of human experience are grounded in
our relationships to value-rich ecological objects or [i]affordances[/i] and are attenuated
by intensely pro-social feelings, all within our pragmatic interests, which, due to our
radical finitude, can compete, one value vs another, and conflict, one individual vs
another vs even the common good, requiring various sacrifices.[quote=Ursula
Goodenough and Terrence Deacon]We have our virtues neither by nor contrary to our
natures. We are fitted by our natures to receive them. If brains are amazing, the human
brain is flat-out astonishing. .... No doubt about it: Our symbolic minds allow us to
access mental experiences, like mathematics, aesthetics and spiritual intuitions, that we
have every reason to believe are novel, unique to the human. ...But we suggest that it is
also of utmost importance that we not lose track of our mental evolutionary antecedents.

... Any perspective on the human condition that brushes this fact aside is an incomplete
perspective, --indeed, we would say that it is an impoverished perspective. ... Given that
we have evolved from an intensely social lineage, we are uniquely aware of what it feels
like to be pro-social, and it is this awareness of what it feels like to be moral -- this
moral experience -- that undergirds and motivates the actions of a moral person.? From
Biology to Consciousness to Morality by Ursula Goodenough and Terrence Deacon,
Zygon D 03; 38(4): 801-819 [/quote][quote=Joshua Johnson]Consider it this way:
Shannon entropy is often used to measure the amount of information in an object, by
calculating the degree of randomness contained within any given string of information.
Very random strings may have more Shannon entropy than very structured strings, since
it is difficult to predict the appearance of new bit of information in a random string. But,
even though long random strings could have more information than very short well
structured strings, they may not be very relevant or interesting. Without a capacity to
decide the relevance or structure of various interpretations, the sheer number of
interpretations tells us very little about the significance of the object at hand.<-----LambruscoE snipped here ------>J.J. Gibson theorizes affordances as ecological features
which enable or constrain an animal by virtue of their invariances. He distinguishes
them from the phenomenal theory of gestalt psychology, in so far as affordances are not
dependent upon the observer, but are invariant features of the environment:The
[b]theory of [i]affordances[/i][/b] is a radical departure from existing theories of value
and meaning. It begins with a new definition of what value and meaning are. The
perceiving of an affordance is not a process of perceiving a value-free physical object to
which meaning is somehow added in a way that no one has been able to agree upon; it is
a process of perceiving a value-rich ecological object. Any substance, any surface, any
layout has some affordance for benefit or injury to someone. Physics may be value-free,
but ecology is not. (Gibson)[i]Full Spectrum Aesthetics: Process Ontology,
Normativity,
and
Speculations
on
the
Category
Theoretical
Approach[/i]http://joshuaj.net/cat/marginalia/full-spectrum-aesthetics-process-ontologynormativity-and-speculations-on-the-category-theoretical-approach/
[/quote]
[quote=Marco Stango]Aesthetics, then, deals with habits of feeling evaluated under the
category of nobility (cf. Parker 2003) or absolute admirability. The puzzling aspect of
Peirce's treatment of aesthetics is that esthetics is taken to deal with both the normative
habits of feeling and the Summum Bonum itself. Between the normative habits of
feeling and the normative ultimate ideal there is an immediate and essential link. In fact,
on the one hand, Peirce states that since ethics asks to what end all effort shall be
directed, that question obviously depends upon the question what it would be that,
independently of the effort, we should like to experience, that is the essential question
of aesthetics (CP 2.199). On the other hand, Peirce admits that the moralist merely
tells us that we have a power of self-control, that no narrow or selfish aim can ever
prove satisfactory ; and for any more definite information, as I conceive the matter,
he has to refer us to the esthetician whose business it is to say what is the state of things

which is most admirable in itself regardless of any ulterior reason (EP 2: 253). The first
quotation shows that esthetics aims to fix the good habits of feeling, while the second
quotations makes clear that its object is extended to the definition of the nature of the
Summum Bonum. As we know from the previous chapter, Peirce found that the ultimate
normative ideal of human life, its Summum Bonum, is the development of concrete
reasonableness in the world.Agency and Normativity: A Study in thePhilosophy of
Peirce and Dewey [/quote][quote=Donald Gelpi]Esthetics measures other goods against
supreme excellence and formulates a normative account of the kinds of habits one needs
to cultivate in order to appreciate supreme goodness and beauty. An esthetic perception
of supreme goodness engages the heart rather than the head. In other words, it engages
that appreciative insight into the identity of the good and the true which humans call the
beautiful. Esthetics puts order into the human heart and psyche by teaching it to
appreciate those realities and values that make life ultimately worth living. Esthetic
insight grasps affectively and simultaneously reality's goodness and truth.Esthetics also
gives an ultimate orientation to the other two normative sciences of ethics and of logic.
Ethics studies the kinds of habits of choice one must cultivate in order to live for the
ultimately beautiful. Logic teaches one to think clearly about reality so that one can
make realistic choices that lead one to the appreciation and enjoyment of ultimate
beauty, goodness, and truth. In other words, in Peirce's understanding of normative
thinking both ethics and logic serve the ultimately beautiful as their end.
[/quote]Aesthetically, we distinguish imitation or mimesis, expressivism and
instrumentalism. Ethically, we distinguish the deontological, aretaic (virtue) teleological
and (consequentialistic).Regarding our vague conception of [i]beauty[/i], we approach
aesthetical value realizations 1) intrasubjectively, through formalism or essentialism in
art; 2) intersubjectively, through expressivism or emotionalism in art; 3)
intraobjectively, through mimesis and imitationalism in art; and 4) interobjectively,
through art as instrumentalism.Regarding our vague conception of [i]truth[/i], we
approach noetical value realizations 1) intrasubjectively, through virtue epistemology;
2) intersubjectively, through a semiotic, community of inquiry; 3) intraobjectively,
through correspondence; and 4) interobjectively, through coherence.Regarding our
vague conception of [i]goodness[/i], we approach ethical value realizations 1)
intrasubjectively, through aretaic or virtue ethics; 2) intersubjectively, through
contractarian ethics; 3) intraobjectively, through deontological ethics; and 4)
interobjectively, through teleological or consequentialistic ethics.

tehom, tehomic, panentheism, pansemioentheism, shannon entropy, boltzman entropy,

darwinian entropy, indetermined, determined, indeterminable, determinable, epistemic
state, ontic state, epi-ontic state, chaos, axiological epistemology, aesthetic teleology,
teleomatic, teleonomic, teleodynamic, terry deacon, ursula goodenough, amos yong,
donald gelpi, david ray griffin, john cobb, jack caputo, catherine keller, thomas oord,

tripp fuller, homebrewed christianity, philip clayton, joseph bracken, john haught, john
sobert sylvest, theodicy, anti-theodicy, philosophical theology, theology of nature,
principle of maximum entropy, charles sanders peirce, pansemiotic, physiosemiotic,
biosemiotic, phytosemiotic, zoosemiotic, anthroposemiotic, john deely