JASPERS’ WORKS APPLIED TO RICHARD DAWKINS’FIFTH CONTINUUM, OCTOBER 17, 2006—EPISTEMIC POSTURING OF DIS-EASED EMOTIVE AFFECTIVE STATES, CONSCIOUSNESS AND MIND: further preparation for handling objective research through epistemic triangularity; a special application of epistemology to torture-trends |
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FIFTH CONTINUUM--EPISTEMIC POSTURING OF DIS-EASED EMOTIVE AFFECTIVE STATES, CONSCIOUSNESS AND MIND: further preparation for handling objective research through epistemic triangularity; a special application of epistemology to torture-trends...opacity and transparency illuminated. 20. Gnostic Tales, Huxley’s coining of “agnostic”, (Glasersfeld’s “agnostic” stance, triune certitude)—In approaching Richard’s Ancestor’s Tale there is one more useful use of “tale” to be considered. This tale amounts to a continuation of mysticism through the penetration of nominalism affecting, in a complementary sense, the reality of determinable basic epistemic building blocks (the reduction of poetical expressions, i.e, de-terming, or coming to the transparency of terms). This other tale is what is known within Church-doctrine history as the Clementine tale. It’s a bunch of writings using Clement of Rome similarly to the way Richard uses Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. It is used to establish a theocratic way of thinking also similar to Richard’s religiously indoctrinating evolutionism. The Gnostic form of thinking is found in Richard’s works, mixed with a bit of the guarded agnosticism of Huxley. Huxley claims to have coined the word “agnostic”, but all he did was use the biblical Paul’s reaction to a contemporary Gnosticism. Agnosticism is a system of thinking that substitutes contemporary technical state of artful expressions of certitude for revelational and philosophical faith. Richard uses a triangularity procedure to establish direction. In this Fifth Continuum triangularity thinking is used with regard to Clement’s Tales, Richard’s Tales, and to Chaucer’s Tales. The Tales tend toward religiously establishing knowledge at the expense of faith--taking on a Triune-Gnosticism. Richard’s triangularity works like a sneaker wave inundating by means of revelation wholly dependent on institutionally--religious and secular--confirmation of what constitutes epistemic truth. 21. This Fifth Continuum will observe Richard’s leap within special knowledge to other transcendent (abstracted, extrapolated) knowledge. It’s Gnosticism. It is a Gnostic-cosmic or “origin-sin” way of thinking such as Richard’s constant metaphysic of certitude that is something about which he is so certain it must be propagated and imposed on the world by way of technically advanced vanity-like press processes purchased by affluence. A manifested smirking arrogance adds to the danger that the Simonyi-Oxford-Chair poses. That “there is nothing more certain than” (Dawkins’) the origin of humankind (the thinker) is a waffling between science and Gnosticism (See Jaspers in Ph. Faith and Rev. p. 118f). Gnostic and agnostic thinking needs to be seen historically. There was an effort on the part of Huxley to establish a competitive dogma that was based more on knowledge than the loose ascent to authority in the form of institutional religion, that is, vatic authority as represented by the attitude of the Catholic forces encompassing Wilberforce. Huxley invented the word “agnostic” within a deeply involved historic context; so, whenever the word is used its historical significance should be considered. Images of the origin of consciousness are “merely metaphoric tautologies for nonknowledge” (Jaspers, Perennial p. 62). We can see such tautologies in the recent poetical contributions of Weedon to Herbert’s “Karl Jaspers Forum”. Herbert propounds such tautologies too, first by misusing Jaspers’ concepts of encompassings regarding the encompassings. He reduces the mystic of the encompasssings with talk about the certitude of “experience” rather than the freedom inherent in boundless consciousness. Richard metaphysically trails off his tales in tautological fashion. The aberration from philosophical logic to metaphysical logic occurs when the research of natural phenomena exhausts into oblivion and then the void is filled by mental-shoestring flights of fancy regarding the origin of consciousness using evolutionism’s terms (i.e., Richard’s defaulting constant is the nominal expression “Darwinian evolution”). 22. Richard’s gene-origin bias might be genetic in a phenotype and a genotype sense—Pheno here is used as in phenomenology and geno as in something more generic and presumptively generatively more subject to objectivity. I am here cultivating, i.e., nurturing a constant protesting attitude in preparation for entertaining Dawkins’ metaphysics of physics. A general protesting attitude is applied toward natural phenomena enlightened by phenomenology as method. I want to zero in on what seems to me to be predispositional bias (see p.47, Tale) but what Richard refers to in terms reflecting that he is being intellectually fair regarding sober cognition. It’s questionable whether he takes seriously the thought that he might be wrong for it would reflect upon his public image, neo-darwinian leadership, and the need to be accountable while avoiding simony. The word “predisposition” here carries the meaning that his upbringing, that is, his inherited conscience is phenotypic, e.g., having an affinity toward the use of alcohol to anesthetize or numb oneself against intellectual honesty. Reference here is to chemical-social lubrication through the “convivial bar”. Such is more than hinted at in “Tale” where he states that some might wish they had “evolved” greater tolerance for alcohol. On p. 34 of Tale he propounds: “It is known that certain genetic alleles make our livers less capable of breaking down alcohol than we might wish.” In other words a reduction in tolerance for alcoholic anesthetization is not preferred. This apparent penchant might involve a commitment to social-chemical lubricants to limit guilt-restraints toward developing multiple superficial companionships. It is questionable that socially inebriated scientists contribute to humane and sober science. The bias for anesthetizing consciousness and conscience is seen in his dedicatory remarks about a personage and the importance of the convivial bar. Alcohol misuse can loosen inhibitions, including sexual, and inhumane conduct. In the absurd extreme, refuge can be found in pass-out or even blackout states to help one cope with uncomfortable feelings resulting from, for instance, subjection others to torture. Take for example Richard’s description of alleles (p. 26 in Genes) to describe the gene pool (convivial bar?). Here he uses a sexual analogy, a variety of sexual encounters: “In particular, something like the detaching and interchanging of pages and wads of pages from loose-leaf binders really does go on…” It is not easy to own up to bits of suggestive game playing and confess to its appeal in capturing the attention of the youthful students. The older one gets, the more verbal but less careful and more objective one might become about wishing for a return to being subject to base procreative urges. His expertise in the use of suggestive scientific verbiage increases as the base urge diminishes—an urge that seems like a constant in his origin-sin. 22.1. One hears this sort of phenomenological gesturing in group-therapy sessions where one patient will envy those who have greater tolerance or those who have not lost toleration for a drug’s effect. Richard verbalizes the possibility of bias, or what he considers insignificant and harmless guilt feelings toward his Gnosticism, but this could be but a selfish-gene gesture to sustain the popularized selfish-gene concept, and might include an opportunity to slip into a conscience-statelessness. My continued efforts here on this Web Page amounts to a holding action against militant anti-reason, anti-humane and anti-life thinking. It involves is a stand against the hordes of pilgrims whose pathway is maintained, i.e., paved and paid for by those given no anesthetics during prolonged suffering. Pre-paved pilgrim-routes exist outside responsible consciousness and in opposition to inherited conscience and conscientiousness—whether these are pathways paved with blood to a literal Jerusalem, literal Rome, or literal early Canterbury literature, or literal origin-sin, i.e., holy ground painlessly experienced due to the painful experience of others. 22.2. Epistemic seat--The evangelical reaction to the Oxford controversy avoided confrontation on the evolutionism-gang’s turf. It extends to German protestant thinking in the form of Luther’s reformation and English enlightenment and includes Jaspers’ criticism of Darwin. It did not confront the epistemic-complex presumed as simplistic by the more domineering and loud naturalists. The evangelical collaboration short-circuited due in part to the lack of the epistemic ingenuity needed to react to the presumptuousness of the painless mystical vitalism of the naturalists. Epistemic ingenuity was sacrificed to Peter, and Paul’s ingenuity was suppressed in the sense that pseudo-Petrine (Roman) authority replaced the Pauline admonition to be prepared to give answer for what one knows untrue, and what one believes true. It was thought best to simply preach the gospel without having to personally go to Athens (Paul’s mission to Mars’ Hill) and confront metaphysical forces with philosophical wisdom. Even during recent evolutionism trials, those with evangelical fervor--appearing inadequate to deal with physics, chemistry, and biology--interfered with the holding action of others in such a way as to support evolutionism by default. Their efforts inadequately attempted a holding action against evolutionism by compounding the violation of the separation of church-and-state by the tactics used by evolutionism, i.e., dogmatic religious certitude. The Evangelicals had used natural revelation apologetically as proof for biblical revelation, but with too little protestant attitude and too much Catholicity. Rather than show how evolutionism is a violation of the separation-clause of the US and States’ Constitutions an effort was made to intervene by way of another reactionary violation but with less technical glossolalia and less understood science (the learned ignorance side of science). Again, such modernistic glossolalia is seen in Richard’s bias because without it his first and most popular book would be affected; its nominalism (the verbalized “selfish gene”) compromised. But he was and is more wrong than right; the general impression offered to the epistemologically uninformed is that modern state-of-art genetics prove that life’s origin and thinking-humankind’s origin is the most certain thing known and knowable even though dependent on time-space tools of measurements. In contrast: the ground of consciousness cannot be temporally or spatially located or allocated (see Glasersfeld’s recent Oct. 7. 2006, TA79, C44 on “time flow” on Herbert Muller’s Website) for such confinement begs the epistemic question—the question of mind’s limits within consciousness. The source of humankind’s consciousness cannot be known without restraining consciousness. If the source becomes known, freedom of consciousness flounders on the shores of experience. Richard uneasily avoids floundering by a protestant’s hint of humility in the clause “maybe I am biased…” Biblical theology and biblical philosophical wisdom is encompassed by timelessness and spacelessness. 23. Beware! Richard’s move toward biblical concepts to establish personal credulity, an origin-sin of biblical proportion--In 1976--revised in 89--Richard published his popular book The Selfish Gene. He includes on the cover of the revision the New York Times’ kudus “the sort of popular science writing that makes the reader feel like a genius”. That dogmatic statement preconditions the mind of the non-technical but want-to-be biologist and encourages an unwarranted feeling of confidence. The truth of this quote is in its fallacy; an inferior feeling-state within complex reality is not resolved by a fixed feeling of superiority. Remember, the statement is on the cover of his revised edition and any humbling effect is ineffectual due to the extant that it’s a reinforcement of the first edition’s evolutionism (that humankind’s origin is known) and he wants credit for a universally acceptable description. It is going to take some in-depth understanding to comprehend how, after speaking with such authority on genes, that in 2004 in Tale he zeros in on the fundaments of genetics. Turning to the back cover of the paperback Gene (again the revised) he says “the selfish gene is also the subtle gene…and…holds out the hope that our species—alone on the earth—has the power to rebel against the designs of the selfish gene...this book is a call to arms.” This call by Richard is too little due to his immanentalism, and too late to avoid a charge of plagiarizing the author of the biblical Geneses. Richard’s immanentalism takes over and restrains his holistic potential, for humankind is not of earth alone, but has fulfilled some fragment of human potential seen in the ground of that potential by being an occupant on other celestial bodies. He would consider such celestial accomplishments as evolution in a reversed sense of progress but not regression, for the pilgrimage into the past cannot follow the same steps—exact theoretical steps being as impossible as Achilles and the tortoise is impractical. Note that Richard’s power-to-rebel could be a manifestation of the power to protest; the call-to-arms quote above is a statement without quotations marks and no clear author, but regardless it represents Richard’s approval. I suspect he wrote it, for I am familiar with the tactic. The point is that he reveals his mission. It is a call to arms in a great leap of rebellion against…the selfish gene that is also a subtle gene. There’s nothing new here except a well-financed grab for unmerited credit. The effort to take credit for the subtle-gene concept smacks of a manic complex. It’s imperative that he is seen, and photographable as both selfish and smirking. But mostly now upon reflection in Tale he sees himself as rebelling against selfishness, as though he has authored a Golden Rule, and all not in the name of the imageless God but Richard’s technical nominalism, his neo-Darwinism. 23.1. He seems to bog down in a paragraph on p. 47. Here he belatedly admits the need to “clear up a possible confusion over the meaning of the word gene.” He should have started with that allele of thought (like Jaspers says that Kant might have been more effective if he had started with the antinomies) so that readers would know his and Simonyi’s apparent mission: the violation of the unavoidable dichotomous nature of thought and gene, and the allele involved. Moreover it neglects the allele of consciousness and conscientiousness. The reader should beware of the exploitation of parallel thinking to enforce the serial ontological fixation process to establish some non-epistemic but absolutely artful singular definitive truth regarding origin. Such is a forewarning about artificial intelligence. Like atomic energy, artificial intelligence can be a tool for good and evil. Artificial intelligence might uncover terrorists’ plots or become the instrument of terror, or could increase reactive terrorism. Richard’s language about a “call to arms” when complemented by his “evolutional” progressive singularity amounts to dangerous serfdom-terms and implies that there now exists a grand inquisition chair finally occupied during humankind’s “great leap foreword”. Artificial intelligence not only cannot mimic pain, the Oxford chair intentionally minimizes it in its tales. 24. Factoring pain into the gene-allele definitions—Richard first defines gene from the molecular geneticist perspective, which he considers a strict meaning. By strict I think he means empirical in the somatic medical sense, and…less…useful to him for escaping empirical limits via metaphysics. The molecular biologist definition is similar to Jaspers’ from the psychopathologist perspective. It ideally (motivations to aid and comfort the diseased) involves the sympathetic and empathetic attitude; the molecular biologist, ideally speaking, is concerned with the cause and alleviation of pain and suffering regarding the individual and not social ills except in so far as individuality is distributed, i.e., individuals considered collectively. That perspective is mostly medical and individual even though infectious and affecting pandemics. The perspective is not so much the social dimension of, say, a more-than second-order cybernetic artificial-intelligence programming—except in that computer technology, like the atomic bomb, can be harmful to civilization as seen in the struggle and need to stay ahead of its misuse. Richard bemoans the deliberate viral infections by computer hackers, while he does not see that what he considers “proper use” can be in effect hacking at individual freedom, e.g., imposing evolutionism, a socialism imposed through the use of first and second order cybernetics. The microbiologist might be more prone to seeing that the individual needs to be healthy and finely tuned for immediate handling of complex reality and the responsible use of artificial intelligence. The tinkering thinker needs to be attuned psychopathologically, especially when handling individual and social-programming proposals. The factor of pain must be fundamental. Pain seems to be woefully disregarded in Richard’s Darwinism. In Jaspers, pain is an ultimate situation: it is not to be sought though unavoidable and revealing as well as inhibiting. Case in point: the ideological and artificial “St” Thomas compared to the greater suffering of the real saintly Thomas burned at Oxford. 25. The gang’s gene-terms, the development of graffiti demarcation (“MRCA”)--In my view, comparing the microbiologist’s definition with Richard’s social school of thinking, genetic microbiology is good for direct contact with the infinitely complex reality and is essential to protesting despair and fatalism in the form of secular or religious vatic control. Richard compares genetic microbiology with his school’s definition, i.e. “sociobiologists, behavioral ecologists or ethologists”…and he says, “a well-established habit with my kind of biologist and I shall occasionally follow them.” Here we see again how microbiology can be…less…useful to Richard’s shallow epistemological scholasticism. Here metaphysics is held in reserve as a window of escape though it sounds like altruism. One can interpret this to mean that one or the other definition will be employed, especially the latter for it represents the “kind [of biologist] to which I belong” he says. I say that the distinction needs to be made clearer by comparing attitudes and the threat to individual freedom. I have seen, so far, that Richard does not approach pain and suffering and even directs pilgrim traffic away from suffering pilgrims and their transforming powers. And that is where the socio, eco, ethos coheres with Richard’s mission to impose a system of evolutionism that distracts from a primordial issue—that issue being the diversifying effects of protesting the pain of a unionizing catholicity. Disease, discomfort, insufferable pain, is easily avoided by his “evolutional” fundamental ontology, though he occasional uses language invoking some concern as a concerned individual member of humankind, but the concern easily defaults into his evolutionism, e.g., darwinianism is clerically radicalized by “Darwinian evolution”. Perhaps we can see where this radicalization shows up in another avoidance of limits through a presumption of some principle designated as “MRCA” (most recent common ancestor). In this formula, research and data is not the mission, but rather the shaping of a universal conscience regarding…the…origins of “species”—of which one, he holds, is humankind but mysteriously a species not by “chance” he says. After a diminutive origin is pseudo established, he proposes a solution based upon the problem--see 16.4 above regarding his identification of miracle with what is genetic. 26. Consumer beware of Richards’ sidewinder biblical spins—If one remains sensitive and in the protesting mode, hints can be found that Richard is giving elemental (fundamental) expressions to biblical concepts in such references to miracles. It is also opening a door for Canterbury-Catholicity via “St” Thomas Beckett. His realizing rationalities’ limits (reason’s limits), if true intents and purposes were confessed, could be the a mimicking of the biblical uncertainty about reality, including its high degree of reverence, and including the awareness of fate or chance, and the need for an attitude, a providential acceptance come what may. Or it could be simply rationalism clerically clothed in a collar of certainty unbecoming to science. Unbecoming to science it might be, but couched in modern technological terminology, a neo-nominalism that deceives the masses into thinking they are geniuses if they mimic the group’s sounds and make mention of an authoritative name (Darwin) or look with adoration upon a special priesthood—Richard being the chief. The nominalism can result in waffling of biblical proportions to the extent that Catholicity would re-file artificial claims about “evolving” the bible. Contributing to the claim is the later-Richard’s subtle but explicit expressions, but perceived in terms friendly to biblical conceptual meanings. The twist would be a phenomenological sort of literalism set on a roll through atheism (mystic terms substituted for biblical terms) and evolutionism (the miracle of “evolution”) for which Richard has gained notoriety--but only because of the use of prestigious name dropping (the personage side of nomenalism). In other words the protestant standard would be subject to vatic-recall due to faulty logos. It is the one danger involved when phenomenology becomes less a method and more a principle. Personage jargon continues: 27. Richard’s “First Rendezvous”: Origin-indulgences toward consciousness, a genetic presumption toward “the” blossoming of consciousness—I think Richard violates individual conscious potential and avoids consciousness by taking established freeways of escape designed to lead to some central authority—and bypasses the epistemic questions. He does this specifically on p. 35 of Tale within one sentence; it is also a single paragraph that one might refer to as the “great escape saint-clause”: He defers in two ways; first to an author that Richard thinks considered the “whole question of Upper Paleolithic cave art, and what it can tell us about the flowering of consciousness…[my ellipsis] in Homo sapiens”. That “whole question” is something any well educated and balance artist can play around with—even those with injury to one side of the brain and yet not take it too seriously unless given religiously to an agenda. Second, he defers to Big-Ben time-thinking when poor little Richard is feeling too inadequate for the occasion such as when inferences are made just the other side of where statistical probability ends while engaged in tracing genes to the singularity (his MRCA=most recent common ancestor). 27.1. The personalistic-escape is attempted through yet another personage who speaks about the emergence of a “Great Leap Forward” that pilgrims find themselves converged upon within in the great trek backward. Keep in mind that Richard has spoken with fairness about how “evolution” should not be confused with what is normally thought of as progress. His caution regarding the concept of progress is similar to mine as expressed in my debate with J.S Johnson and with Herbert Muller. The latter admitted in effect that no one using the mind would be in a right frame of mind if not presuming an attitude of progress. J.S. Johnson, being more of a realist was more open to process and talking less about progress while using mental tools assumed to be the result of progress. But his progress is implied in his knowledge about the origin of society’s golden rule. Richard later puts a spin on genetic processes, redefining progress as cell replication in some selfish probable move toward sustaining a direction. What Richard and J.S. Johnson cannot avoid is the necessary presumption of having…progressed…to the point where one can see the absolute truth of their evolutionism and its justification for being propagandized as tested and standardized truth to students of life and anthropology. The alternative is that humankind’s origin when thought about is a question immediately absorbed in the dichotomous thinking process--and the method of phenomenology applies. Singularity and its absolute certitude is then immersed in the swirl of complex reality where only the abnormal stands out and becomes subjected to cause-effect/effect-cause circular thinking. So, the so-called “Great Leap Forward” and consciousness participates more in the mysterious than those individuals Richard used to start the backward trek—those few most recent common ancestor lineage whose probable connection is quickly lost in critical empirical thinking. The illogic is that because I can trace my lineage to a single parent or parents before it feathers away into obscurity, when extrapolated absurdly (Absurd reductionism--reductio ad absurdum p.40) it somehow means I have unusual looking cousins beyond the Big-Ben first chime. Gang howling conduct occurs then when Richard gets further authority from the “many archaeologists” who call it an “event”. Note how this cantilevering into metaphysics is easily elevated to a principle in the great backward leaping formula “MRCA” (most recent common ancestor). 27.2. The great leap forward is not to be confused with Jaspers’ views on the phenomenal simultaneity of his “axial” period. Jaspers is more empirical (relies on extant records) and relevant to recorded history. The alternative thinking here includes the view that humankind has always been uniquely different, and this seems reasonable in as much as without the freedom to think there would be no question. But the whole question is resolved for Richard when the whole question is considered by the personage he defers to in 27 and 27.1. above. Note the slip behind a “personage”. 27.3. Note again Richard’s affinity with nominalism. It is that respect for the title “many” that should not be questioned. The Great Leap Forward capitalized, opens the door for a nominalism’s capitalizing on the “soul” in the Vatican sense at some space and time, thinking’s basic empirical tools. To take another leap beyond consciousness--an easy escape from individual responsibility--Richard and the gang, cantilever off consciousness via nominalism; i.e., Darwinian evolutionism mysteriously spoken results in language coming into being simultaneously with consciousness while spinning in circularity—a swirl of primordial soup made from a pigeon that starved to death (to use one of Abe Lincoln’s anecdotes to point at superficiality). The leap supposedly took place at the great first Rendezvous “around 40,000 years ago” a conjured apparatus upon which to attach the tool for unit measurement by the mind of consciousness, and the mental form of space-time. And it is a leaping dependent on the mystique surrounding the origins not only of language but agriculture. This theoretical anthropomorphizing is not that impressive: My Grandfather Wood who arrived in Michigan from Pennsylvania by horse and buggy with a mussel-loading rifle and two pistols, survived in part first by hunting, planting, and herding eventually—depending on the availability of other conventional tools (and occasionally finding a place in the industrial revolution). Farming techniques included identifying guns and cows with peculiar names, but that does not represent a great leap forward. It is not a cow cowing to an evolutionism, or a transformation from process to progress resulting in undue feelings of certitude regarding consciousness development. He was a hard working person but could not in fairness lay claim to a great leap forward for general humanity. There were humbling events: we have family photos, and a newspaper document of two milking cows that were called “twins” because that is what they were biologically, and because there was no mistaking them from other cows for their horns grew downward and crowded their eyes. I could distinguish them by differentiation: one hand-milked easier. Richard’s easy reliance on cave art or images amount to presumed precursors of language. Here we have nominalism again clod hopping complex reality. This nominalism can lead to a point where Catholicity can reclaim the transforming influence of the bible as part of its own “evolved” system after its “evolution” is established along with state mandated education. 28. The “MRCA” Formula—The fallacy of the most recent common ancestor and unrelated cousins—Richard claims his backward tracing of ancestry is more reliable than the traditional foreword method for it begins in the here and now with genetics and goes backward rather than forward, e.g., to what he refers to as our “cousins the apes”. It is strange that my cousin might not be my neighbor or one of another race but yet it is permitted for Richard to think forwardly to establish a cousin-relationship while showing how quickly biological kinship feathers away or is lost going backward. As a matter of selfhood-conceptuality and honest introspection, one cannot really establish relationship with either the one to the many or all the individual self-images one might have of oneself. Epistemic honesty supersedes bios and logistics (biology). Richard assures the reader that he begins with genetics serving only as an analogy and nothing more. He starts here and now because of the need to admit consciousness as the primary dimension of scrutiny, i.e., cognizing. He does not start with the limits of thinking about consciousness, but with the assumption that thinking is dependable as such and with too little self-scrutiny. The reason he uses genetics in a parallel sense is because the linear or serial inherited factors reach a kissing-cousin state quite quickly, and guesswork is launched into with some degree of conscious disregard for the limits of thinking. So a first rendezvous does not occur 40,000 or even 5,000 years ago but at best only within several biological generations. From the gene perspective, as in microbiology, cousin interbreeding is more familial than primordial. The first meeting with our ancestors is in the degree of conscience at the periphery of always-immediate consciousness. 28.1. But, Richard’s bias is not prone to contrition when he refers to apes as our cousins as well as all forms of life, and this conclusion is not arrived at in the same way as the miracle formula (“MRCA” which ought not be properly repeated as though it is a principle). The most recent common ancestor is almost immediately dissolved as an argument in the same way that I can trace my own genetic lineage back only a few generations. Jaspers once wrote that “man cannot be derived from something else, but is immediately at the base of all things” (p.59 Perennial Scope) and mentions anecdotally that it would be interesting to see the ape that first noticed that it wasn’t an ape any more. If one looks at a photo of Richard, such as on the back jacket cover of Tale, one can see the look of one who thinks he alone best propounds the idea from a novel-nominalism perspective. 28.2. Comparing “constructivism” with Richard’s neo-darwinianism--Richard is more correct than incorrect in starting from the current empirical base of the vivid side of consciousness and brain activity. One difference with Richard’s view and Darwinian thinking about the origin of species is that Richard is approaching the epistemic ground of legitimate questioning with the advantage of current state-of-art technical apparatuses and language—which he exploits. But he understandably minimizes, as a popular and well-financed “Oxford” author on naturalism and vitalism, the epistemic question. Whatever constructivistic tendency he seems to display amounts to a defensive rationalism, a systematic logic, and his defense’s offensiveness is due to a constructive harmless and ethical biblical principle though he does not want to admit it. He shares in the extremism of radical constructivism when couched in terms of evolutionism, but departs from the immediacy of Herbert’s fundament of experience except the latter’s departure from experience occurs in his evolutionism too. Herbert’s default on encompassing on-going experience is a wholly insufficient understanding of what Jaspers means by the Encompassing of the encompassing and the Transcendent and the biblical imageless God. 28.3. The Humboldt humanist/naturalist tradition—As previously mentioned, Jaspers states a preference for naturalists who do not get bogged down in origins, such as Darwin did says Jaspers (and I say as Dawkins does). Herbert has a …feeling…for such a need to avoid pitfalls inhibiting to reason but cannot describe or monitor the staggeringly difficult program properly—without assuming some judicial force (such as explicit in his formulae). He has recently proposed a new critical program that is not new except in an implied need for closer screening via the hierarchical classification of the authors and critics. He proposes that certain authors’ (specialists) could be critiqued apparently on his “Karl Jaspers Forum” but preeminently by authors who publicize in journals, and conditioned by an arbitrated sort of interdisciplinary example, then it is to be opened to public criticism. It appears to me there’s a continuation for a potential for undisciplined arbitrariness in the proposal as real as Herbert’s misunderstanding of Jaspers’ science and philosophical logic. The proposal amounts to an uneasy marriage of a republic to an ill represented democracy, a dismissal of the meaningfulness of opacity and an easy permissiveness that is talked about in terms of…transparency. 28.4. Alexander Riegler, an apparent “constructivist”, comments on Herbert’s proposal (see his Short Note 70, a response to Herbert’s Short Note 69). It seems to me Alexander is uneasy too from his special constructivistic perspective and properly asks how authors’ contributions are going to be determined or valued. His comment takes the form of a question though he probably means it in an affirmative manner. I suppose the question proceeds from a constructivistic perspective, i.e., a forgotten primordial thinking that leans toward individuality and begins with at least the human if not humane. I am spinningly continuing a train of thought with regard to pain and suffering (depicted in the inhumane recurrent trends toward torturing or at least the careless use of the word). His question to Herbert refers to the Humboldt tradition. The Humboldt tradition, as I brought to understand it, includes the efforts of the Humboldt brothers, Wilhelm and Alexander, the former humanistic and the latter naturalistic. The tradition involves an objectivity that surrounds both the subject (human) and object (human and humane observation, research) in as pure an educative environment as possible. It involves the traditional environment that is constructive and should not be seen as an unfolded development of thinking, that is: It should not be associated off the cuff with what is known as the “constructivist” school. Alexander Riegler’s comment to Herbert’s proposal may point to their mutual view that commercially oriented education (as being gradually implemented even in European universities) focuses on a rather goal-orientated curriculum and that commercially oriented research makes the necessary luxury of interdisciplinarity impossible (the italicized words here are not my own and the source is not cited for fear of my misapplication). The italicized words are to distinguish them from any assumption of agreement with my position regarding the Simonyi-Dawkins’ collaboration, that; it is not only commercial and inhibiting to research and humanity but now is in a forced-collusion with political-economic forces in the name of God and religion. My position is that it is doing harm both to objectivity and faith (e.g. atheism, anti-religion, and now humankind’s provincial-origin vatically sanctified--as Rome is a social-political State of questionable sorts and economically engaged internationally, (and with Islamic States’ ambassadors responding to “papal” beckoning in full-dress regalia). 28.4. I am uncomfortable with Herbert’s proposal due in part to the constant exploitation of the name of Karl Jaspers and the limited comprehension of his philosophical logic relative to faith and revelation. The discomfort is due to Herbert’s emphasis on experience; it rings familiar with some of Jaspers’ words (and some of John Locks’) but only when superficially considered. Constructivistic thinking by some “constructivists” is subject to the same criticism, but no reference to Jaspers is made except in so far as Alexander is carrying the discussion into Herbert’s “Karl Jaspers Forum”. It seems to me Alexander is experiencing some discomfort from his special constructivistic perspective and properly asks how authors’ contributions are going to be determined or valued. If this is not a serious question, but only a collaborative effort to subject Jaspers to “constructivism”, my objection is that Alexander makes no link to the structures of Karl Jaspers on a so-called “Karl Jaspers Forum” and that void suggests that Karl Jaspers and “constructivist” are on the same level. His question to Herbert refers to the Humboldt tradition, which participates in the humanities. 29. The danger of Dawkins’ use of biblical concepts—Richard says “nobody knows whether the first gene was made of DNA, and I bet it wasn’t” (Tale 563) and then he defines progress as: each change tends to continue in the direction of its predecessors (501f) and is not a matter of luck. Here one can find the replication idea in the biblical inspired idea of God making Adam (a possible general term revealed to mean the first or origin-thinking about self-hood in a special sense and humankind in the general sense), replicating more of the imageless than what can be imagined, and in the New Testament second Adam that Paul refers to regarding Jesus’ suffering and immortality we have the imageless fulfilled in so far as imaginable in the situation of pain in the potential transformation of humankind’s conscience. The visiting UFO officials Richard frivolously refers to might be looking more for the behavioral results of the pain suffered by the son of man and God, rather than whether one agrees with Richard’s evolutionism. Perhaps it will be found that Richard against his will has been drawn to the biblical view, the view expressed by Jaspers, that humankind
When that agreement with the biblical view is made clear and its connection to the biblical ground becomes something seemingly universal by the intellectually honest, its truth will be compromised immediately through vatic authority; the bible as a fundamental modal reflecting a distinctive cultural standard for the protesting of Catholicity will be another spoil-of-victory, but it will be a victorious untruth. Taking biblical literature literally is to be clearly distinguished from taking one catholic interpretation for literal truth. The conflicts will continue to take the form of whether individuals have greater potential for the meaningful grasping of the biblical lessons or whether conventions and consensus determine its value. That is not “constructivistic” as much as biblical. 30. Epistemic stemming of ill-affective state’s of consciousness and mind—This fifth continuum will include warnings about psychopathic borderline thinking relative to intentional programming such as exhibited by the Simonyi-Dawkins team. It is important to not take too early a leave from the epistemic category of critical thinking in preparation for handling data as strained through consciousness and the mind. The importance is enhanced strangely by a Comment (TA 90, C 7) by Bill Lyon, posted “8-19-2006” on Herbert Muller’s “Karl Jaspers Forum”. Bill mentions how in dreams the observer and the observed are “inextricably intertwined and how minds are susceptible to reality. He states that kicking a stone to determine reality is “exceedingly naïve”. Bill may have always worn shoes, but myself as a growing child might get one pair of shoes for the winter while going barefoot all summer. Remembering several painful toe-stubbing events clearly demarcate fanciful discomforts from painful fact. Bill does say that his background, and I take it his specialty, may be distressful to some readers, or words to that effect. Bill’s Comment shows clearly the dichotomous situation with regard to distinguishing one reality from another. But the pain factor is given too little consideration. The same form of differentiation is seen above respecting intentional-programming regarding the painful death of martyrs. There’s a modifying difference between prolonged agony and limited misery (Richard’s Canterbury Tales vs. the burning of martyrs). There’s a difference between imagined discomfort and enhanced raw cybernetic pain, artificially anesthetized neural system compared to a nervous system fully exposed. Pain and suffering is systematically handled in Jaspers evaluation of ultimate situations: Pain is unavoidable but not sought, has a dual aspect--as seen in the difference between Thomas of Canterbury and Thomas of Oxford; human unkindness can be illuminating for humankind, and its unavoidability can be seen as necessary for balancing existence—i.e., must not be ignored but seriously scrutinized and confronted.) 30.1. Cybernetic pain and consciousness gets us to Jaspers’ General Psychopathology. Here Jaspers makes a comparison between normal painless states of general reality with the “painful” intellectual data regarding the “extreme poverty” and “difficulty” the pathological have in functioning in normal reality. Jaspers refers efforts to compare schizophrenic patients’ complaints with the sort of thinking that occurs during fatigue or while falling asleep. He points out that such are indeed only mere comparisons, and by saying that, one grasps how easily and inadequately understood comparisons can quickly deteriorate into absolutes regarding origins and disease. He warns that in the case of fatigue or falling asleep there is a primary change of consciousness and compares this with “archaic thinking” which involves a development of the mind—not as an ultimate singularity of predetermined origin; he includes one of those parenthetical imperatives: “([the human mind] as a product of culture not as biological inheritance)”. Jaspers is making sure it is understood that schizophrenia has an empirical dimension unlike that of dreams and cannot be compared though there’s some shared value in treating other diseases. One may be a disease and the other not a disease of empirical intensity (existential discomfort, i.e., normal anxiety). Jaspers is also being cautious about the fallacy of using the disease or any disease as something biologically inherited and not treatable or changeable in the sense that culture can change minds and be mindfully modified. 30.2. Epistemic triangularity—Epistemology involves the sort of triangularity needed before confronting data the way Richard depicts data. There is the normal compared to the abnormal compared to the ground. It is an archaic, or primordial, or historical triangularity, whether comparing the first point in Genesis (Being in a present without consciousness) with the second (manifest consciousness) and third (disease, suffering) whether thinking or working foreword or backward. Singularity is reached safely when the ultimate ground is invisible but temporal and spatial objectives are lucid due to acknowledged limits. 31. How does an admitted and balanced infinitely-complex orientated realist deal with inter-epistemic empirical triangularity—First, it seems to me that quantum-mechanic triangularity involves fundamental forms of thought, forms of thought as the building-block substratum in nature as more basic than biological triangularity. Regardless it, quantum-mechanic-triangularity is an absurd reduction of reality’s unknown complexity. But even biological triangularity is in principle an absurd reductionism in an approach to the origin of life; and humankind’s playfulness regarding origins is a substitute for a non-cognizable absolute. The pathological deviations from uncertainty regarding ultimate origins and goals is a serious epistemic study. As many spins can be made of triangularity as there are infinite dimensions and directional perspectives in a spinning universe most of which is unknowable and ultimately non-predictable but believed to be plotable based largely on inherited information (see *31.1.). The reasoning here is that the infinity of the finite is such that the thinker can stand anywhere to align with points or units of observation to establish certainty though probability ranges. This diversity applies no less to DNA units and margins between units. For instance Richard makes much—in collaboration with his sidekick “Yan Wong” (Rendezvous 26)—of gene participation in neutrality and even more of …almost neutrality…or “nearly” neutral genes, which is an imaging process obviously designed to come up with a so-called molecular clock to establish some predictability for a fixated/mutation law which is less fixable than revisable. What we have here is an effort to deal with what changes and what does not change, and the need to justify a molecular Big Ben that strikes in some determined fashion 39 times at Richard’s preferable points, according to his admitted “quaint conceit” (Tale, p. 457) but within 1,200 million unites (the term “algebra” is used to establish “nearly neutral” genetics and pure-math time-unites to concretize and clinch the matter). In other words, if neutral presumptuousness not does establish…the…triangulated vector in the direction or the goal of a preferred singularity because the position in space and time conceptualization is too loose, then there’s a tightening of the range by way of “almost” neutrality. Then to add poetical sophistication, some quantum-physic-nuance language is used to give credence to the figments of imagination, i.e., using quantum talk about probability and certainty. Let us say that though no forensic-like DNA match can be made to establish a particular link between simian and humankind difference, all the researcher has to do is move within infinite complexity where difference is eliminated through the removal of any triangularity or divergence from serial or linear goalism (I mean what determines triangularity is what diverges from a straight line). This can be accomplished with at least three points with the thinking observer as one point and at least two distinct points. I can take simian DNA and humankind DNA and stand at a point where they either occupy linear or serial interdependency or as observer I can stand at a point between the two, foreword or backward and still be able to exploit probability of mutation to establish a goal of singularity (a singular goal relative to an ontological singular origin). Quantum mechanical engines move in a vector sense but not by singularity due to the probability aspect. Direction is managed by extreme triangulation, i.e., within probability boundaries but with no ultimate direction. One might see a vector within ranges that fluctuate from side to side and it is unpredictable which side and with what frequency within a given range (and then the experimentation is complicated by thinkers’ complementarity which too is inseparable from triangularity). Add to this variability the further uncertainty of ultimate position within a spinning infinite universe, add to this the fact that one can occupy an arbitrary point to fulfill a straight-line perspective, lining up three points or probably “almost” or “nearly” infinite points that could suggest serial or parallel universes. Quantum mechanic’s certainty loses its meaningfulness with regard to the non-pathological in the in-depth epistemic dimension, and add to this the uncertainties that an infinitely complex reality presents, and one is then in a position of seeing the impossibility of “recovering” humankind’s singular empirical origin in the way that Richard expects of his triune out-of-the-atmosphere bits (Darwinism, Dawkins, and neo-Dawkins/Darwinism—spinning on nominalism, i.e., name droppings). It seems to me the final results of such complexity on the epistemic question gets us back to need for faith and revelation, the uncertainty that Glasersfeld unfortunately referred to as “agnostic” after the Huxley tradition. How this complexity and uncertainty can maintain itself respectfully while considering the alleged results of “evolutionism” relative to artificial intelligence remains to be seen needless to say. The useful results of microbiological mechanics will not support an absolute, and not at best but only at its worse support evolutionism. 31.1. Agricultural Tractors and triangularity, traction in reality—I want to conclude the Fifth Continuum’s item 31 with a homespun anecdote (see 19.9 above). Back on the farm, we had a 1940 John Deere that could turn literally on a dime due to the potentiality of its triangularity. The front wheels were aligned close together in a triangular (cambered) way they would work as one wheel, and the rear drive-wheels had a separate brake for each wheel. A dime-spin could be accomplished by a thinker applying one brake while using the steering wheel in the direction of the spin desired (epistemologically speaking with a range from a designed normal directional singularity to triangularity as temporal-arity spatial-arity permitted according to some frame of conceivable infinite relativity). The tractor could actually be steered in a relative straight line by using only the brakes too. But the brakes had another purpose, if one wheel lost traction, braking that wheel shifted traction to the other wheel making for greater control of directionality. 32. Coming homunculus reflections: Dawkins regarding Bio-micro-molecular-quantum-mechanical epistemological homunculus machinations and the use of computer science terms—To be continued… ---------------------------------------- BACK TO: JASPERS’ WORKS APPLIED TO RICHARD DAWKINS’ (JUNE 5, 2006) SECOND CONTINUUM (JUNE 23, 2006), RICHARD DAWKINS V. KARL JASPERS ON CONSCIOUSNESS, FAITH AND MENTAL DISEASE THIRD CONTINUUM (JULY 20, 2006), PANDERING TO “MEME” THE MARTYR SPOILER FOURTH CONTINUUM (AUGUST 2, 2006)—DAWKINS’ APPROACH TO AND WITHDRAWAL FROM THE UNCERTAINTY OF KNOWING THE ORIGIN OF HUMANKIND; Evolutionism’s real issue:
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