faithlessgod - 13 February 2008 12:31 PM

StephenLawrence - 13 February 2008 11:52 AM

Hi Faithless,

I think my first post was written in a misleading way, sorry. I was using purpose as an analogy.

The question what is the purpose needs to be explained in terms of a goal or a function. So it may be meaningless to talk about the purpose of the earth goung around the sun, as the question cannot be answered in terms of goal or function.

The question what is the explanation for the universe being here needs to be answered in terms of what exists and how it works. It may be meaningless to talk about why the universe is here, as the question can’t be answered in terms of what exists and how it works.

Stephen

Sorry to disappoint you Stephen but we are still agreeing Who disagrees with this?

Glad we are agreeing, just wanted to be sure we were agreed on what we agreed

Stephen

The trouble with natural explanations, which is hard to swallow, is that they seem to boil down to “That’s the way it is” don’t they?

Stephen

StephenLawrence - 19 February 2008 02:00 AM

The trouble with natural explanations, which is hard to swallow, is that they seem to boil down to “That’s the way it is” don’t they?

Stephen

The trouble with supernatural explanations, which are too easy to swallow, is that provide over-simplistic pseudo-meaningful non-explanations for the unwashed masses

The cost, apart from being wrong, is that they destroy the wonderful appreciation of how the universe really works, which is far more elegant and meaningful than anything I have heard from a supernatural explanation!

faithlessgod - 19 February 2008 03:41 AM

StephenLawrence - 19 February 2008 02:00 AM

The trouble with natural explanations, which is hard to swallow, is that they seem to boil down to “That’s the way it is” don’t they?

Stephen

The trouble with supernatural explanations, which are too easy to swallow, is that provide over-simplistic pseudo-meaningful non-explanations for the unwashed masses

The cost, apart from being wrong, is that they destroy the wonderful appreciation of how the universe really works, which is far more elegant and meaningful than anything I have heard from a supernatural explanation!

I agree with you.

It’s just I and I suspect many have a yearning for explanations which include why it is, the way it is.

Explanations feel incomplete without this.

Stephen

StephenLawrence - 25 February 2008 04:37 AM

I agree with you.

It’s just I and I suspect many have a yearning for explanations which include why it is, the way it is.

Explanations feel incomplete without this.

I have just started calling this the “Argument from Purpose”. Many if not most “why” questions that are answerable do not need “purpose” as part of the explanation. It is a mistake to confuse meaning and purpose and is a relic of theistic thinking, even among some who have otherwise correctly rejected such beliefs. As we know methodological naturalism has been the most effective system to date to answer why questions.

faithlessgod - 25 February 2008 05:09 AM

StephenLawrence - 25 February 2008 04:37 AM

I agree with you.

It’s just I and I suspect many have a yearning for explanations which include why it is, the way it is.

Explanations feel incomplete without this.

I have just started calling this the “Argument from Purpose”. Many if not most “why” questions that are answerable do not need “purpose” as part of the explanation. It is a mistake to confuse meaning and purpose and is a relic of theistic thinking, even among some who have otherwise correctly rejected such beliefs. As we know methodological naturalism has been the most effective system to date to answer why questions.

Hi Faithlessgod,

I’m not talking about purpose. For me it is very hard to get over the there must be a purpose hurdle but there is good reason to think one should. Purpose has evolved in some conscious beings who can look at potential futures and set goals. There is no reason to attribute purpose to the universe.

To try and show what I mean I’ll use gravity as an example. An apple drops to the floor and a child says why is that? Ah that is gravity we say but all we have done is named the force that the child can see at work. We could give the child Newton’s formula but then all we’ve done is measured it. We could tell the child about bending spacetime but all we’ve done is told the child about what is there and the way it behaves.

What we don’t seem to be able to do is explain why it is there and why it behaves like that. I don’t mean for what purpose, I mean what is the explanation for it’s being there and being like that.

As I say the answer seems to boil down to because that’s the way it is.

Stephen

StephenLawrence - 25 February 2008 07:08 AM

To try and show what I mean I’ll use gravity as an example. An apple drops to the floor and a child says why is that? Ah that is gravity we say but all we have done is named the force that the child can see at work. We could give the child Newton’s formula but then all we’ve done is measured it. We could tell the child about bending spacetime but all we’ve done is told the child about what is there and the way it behaves.

What we don’t seem to be able to do is explain why it is there and why it behaves like that. I don’t mean for what purpose, I mean what is the explanation for it’s being there and being like that.

When said this way these are still questions requesting a non-existent purpose. If the question is why does the apple fall down, gravity is a perfectly adequate answer. If you apply regress to each answer you will eventually hit “because that is the way it is”. Still this does not prevent the preceeding why questions from being suitably answered. That is the way that it is

faithlessgod, you are right and Leibniz is wrong. We don’t need a sufficient reason- no divine one. Thanks everyone.  Rem B.Edwards in “Reason and Religion...” alleges that we beg the question in assuming that ours is simpler while the god-notion is complex.  He says the god-notion explains just as well. He overlooks that that notion reqires ad hoc assumptions which are debatable and god did it makes no sense. He notes that we note that we have nature as a given but declares that idealists maintain that that depends on mind.  I don’t see that as an objection.
Fellow skeptic, John L.Schellenberg alleges that we naturalists have a fulty plank in relying on science as it ever changes, but that is its glory!

When an explanation invokes God, what is the difference between that and “what’s just the way it is”?

Apples fall because space-time is warped in the presence of matter, and that’s just the way it is.

Apples fall because space-time is warped in the presence of matter, and God made it that way.  Why did God make it that way?  That’s just the way He made it—i.e., that’s just the way it is.

The advantage of Naturalism is that it leaves out the unnecessary steps in that description.  You can add God, or the flying spaghetti monster, or Kant’s categories, or Schopenhauer’s will, or Hegel’s Idea, or whatever else you want to add, but it still only pushes the question of “why?” around, rather than answering it.  Ultimately, the question of “why”, if it is not really a question of “how”, is a spurious question.  It doesn’t have an answer, because it is not a legitimate question.  You may as well ask why the apple exists at all, why does it exist as an apple, why are you able to perceive it, why, why why - to no end.  There is no purpose to apples or appleness or falling apples or children who ask “why” (and children ask “why” in a way that does not always presuppose purpose).

Compare idealist versions of the thing-in-itself.  They can never answer what the thing-in-itself is, because they have invented it in order to meet a demand of an idealist system, and not because they have any actual knowledge of the thing-in-itself - knowledge they deny is even possible.  So why say that it exists?  Why is it not enough that the apple is there in front of you, and had (or, for a pragmatist, is even constituted of) whatever properties you can perceive or infer about it and relations it has to other objects, but you must insist that there is some mysterious, nebulous “apple-in-itself” that is the cause of these perceptions and inferences and properties and relations?  Why must there be a noumenon when the phenomenon works just fine on its own?

It seems like “purpose” just a left over from when human beings insisted that the world was filled with spirits and ghosts and daemons and gods.  Now we know a little something about space-time and why an apple will move when it is near some massive object in space-time - the “why” you should be asking is “why do we need a gravity-spirit or gravity-daemon called ‘purpose’ to make gravity work, when it works just as well on its own?”

There seem to be too many of us agreeing here. Albeit a rare thing in forums and not to be scoffed at but where is our opposition on this?