Mercurial > hg > BCS
view brian_2025-03-03.txt @ 75:97049d69a728
on to section 2
author | Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk> |
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date | Mon, 10 Mar 2025 17:19:57 +0000 |
parents | 4426e1a7ddd5 |
children | 3df8b3fecd09 |
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Four Working versions of GA in the files (A--D), plus the reference version Plan was to read those. But haven't. Again. So maybe we should do that together. But larger things have been on my mind. Did reread most of the reference version. It struck me as extremely compressed, dense. A lot of mulling and consideration has been cmopressed in a small amount of prose. Maybe I/we should just read through it and "let the thing breath", [that is, try to expand that sort of density where we find it]. One consideration of whether the religious (not theological) sensibility/attempt to tie the paper to religious themes -- how much weight should that have? For the moment that sensibility has been in the driver's seat. Not sure if that's best. Another possibility is to let the metaphysical content be given voice, and then to comment on their potential relation to religious sensibilities. In other words, give more emphasis to the world views and ease up on the religious impliciations. So, let this be an exposition of the metaphysics, and leave the religious connection until later. The undone homework is the get ahold of what the narrative arc of the paper is. It's not clear to me as it stands, but the above distinction is maybe necessary for giving some clarity. Brian will have a look at classifying some paragraphs wrt to whether the are primarily addressed towards exposition of the world view, or exposition of its relation to religious sensibility. ===== 4 March ===== Brian has looked at sections 1&2 of the reference version. Doing a classification seemed good, color-coding for yellow for relig-sens, blue for exposition of world-view and green for the relationship. Section 2, pp 6--13, is almost all green. On 2nd reading, Brian says "mostly redundant". ----- Let's say that this thing should be less compressed, more relaxed, easier to access for a non-academic audience 1) Forget the 'G' part and r-s, just give a non-academic version of the world-view, just stated, not so much defended; 2) Another, given that, what are the implications for not r-s as such, but the issues which have been dealt with by the religious traditions I worry about both of these - that a sort of secular summary (i.e. 1) will just devolve into a secular summary of 03 (Objects book) So given limited time, we focus on (2), relating the world-view to r-s. Because although that's what R-V is trying to do, but it's pretty bad at it. -------- Trying to mine/milk "the current state of science" to prop up or ... the new world-view (ref. O3) and from that to derive morals. But a) the current state of science is not well enough articulated to give the reader a sense of the new world-view b) and it doesn't actually make the connection to lead the reader to a morality More seriously, the curret state of science doesn't so much compel the new world view as make room for it Does this mean that O3 needs to be updated to take account of what has happened since (e.g. LMMs). And to articulate the new world view. So how, given that we can't "full on" deliver the new wv here, what is the minimum necessary to declare victory -- what GA might/should do is to just _state_ the nwv, w/o trying to convincingly/thoroughly argue for it. ================10/3===== The picture of science as it stands is not clear enough/compelling enough to support the morals I want to draw from it. ---------New section 1------- Look, these two sets of sensibilities can't be treated as independent anymore, because the subject matter of r-s have in fact been domesticated by scientific results. For example, the views that C. was attributing to FK, are that these two world-views. Maybe 'Quietist' should be 'Compatabilist', because FK was saying science is (just) an articulation of the glory of God's creation. _Ad maioram Dei gloriam_ [HST summarises: The Quietist says "yes, the scientists are doing a great job on Question 1, and it gets better all the time, but that has nothing to do with Question 2: for that I have the Church"] >>>>>>>>>>side tracks???>>>>>>>>> Is there anything like a consensus/received wisdom as to what those two forms of understanding are? On the science side, people might assume that it's causal explanations (mechanism). The (r-s?) critique of that might be that the pure mechanism story can't even account for physical objects, to say nothing of intentionality/reference/social/purpose/beauty/love/humaneness. Call the Scientific world=view the scientific _register_. We've shifted from what can be said in the scientific register to what the scientific register is incapable of explaining. [HST: The Scientific ideological _claim_ wrt the s-r is that it's complete and sufficient. The Compatablilist position is that it's self-consistent, but _not_ sufficient. ] [HST: what's the other one?] [HST: write a two-page version? A skeleton] <<<<<<<<<<end of side tracks>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> The ideological claim wrt the s-r is that it's complete and sufficient. This (that these forms of thinking are distinct) is no longer a tenable division. [I.e. the compatibilist is mistaken] These two sets of world-views are no longer tenably opposed. Because people are trying to corral a whole bunch of topics into the scientific ones. There are many topics which classically had been thought to fall into the [r-s] category which are being explored in something like the scientific one. So, bottom-line, the whole distinction needs to be rethought. -----End of new section one----- Next would be an informal account of the structure of intentionality? If we look at that the structure of intentionality in light of physical science it will turn out that the intentional stuff has properties that are associated with [r-s]. So the essentially infinite structure and complexity of the world, the fact that descriptions are partial and inadequate. Or, [BCS] has spent the last 50 years trying to formulate a theory of intentionality compatible with the physical sciences, but it turns out that the character of intentionality that you get if you do that has many properties that have classically been assumed to lie within [r-s]. Or, the story [BCS] is trying to tell here is _BCS's_ world-view. It's not necessarily anyone else's. What is it? a) A story about intentionality that's compatible with physics; b) A recognition that if this is the character of intentionality, and if we are currently using it, in other words, go ... What does the world look like from within that view of intentionality? OR 1) This is a place where BCS can state / give voice to his view of intentionality; 2) There's a kind of first-person perspective which he's shifting to, as opposed to a third-person perspective. Perhaps not necessary, but it's at least lurking... ---------------- For discussion with Jill: 1) Jim's visit; 2) Repayment to Catharine 3) BCS to New Brunswick in August