Ontology of the Soul Part 3

Identifying the Entity Called "Soul", Part 3

Ontology is the science of identifying fundamental principles, the doctrine of making distinctions between: 1) "entities", i.e., existents; 2) the qualitative attributes of entities; and 3) the relationships between 1) and 2).

Catholics, who believe human life is endowed at conception with a soul say it is the animating cause, the volition, of the zygote, (if not the sperm). The Catholic Encyclopedia (CE) says "'soul' denotes the source of our vegetative activities" [as much as it is the source of our minds]. [click, then scroll The Religious Identity of "Soul"]

The antithetic argument is that human volition begins with the first syllogism. All other determinations of when the soul begins falls between these two extremes.

These two extremes are the basis for this topic of making the identification of the entity we call the soul. This attempt must be made because it is the basis for the debate about abortion and the cloning of stem cells with their subsequent destruction, and whether it is murder to engage in either act.

We began with a comment by Jean Kazez in Abortion Sense and Nonsense (Talking Philosophy - The Philosophers' Magazine Blog), which brought up an ontological question about the human fetus: what is it? Religion deplores abortion for killing a soul.

Kazez wrote: "A 5-day old embryo composed out of undifferentiated, pluripotent cells is not a complete person like you and me. A 2-month-old fetus, even with its complete set of rudimentary organs, is not a complete person like you and me." The soul is the obvious deciding factor in answering what a fetus is, because a fetus without a soul would be the object of many more abortions, and abortion would not be the object of fierce debate.

Yesterday in Ontology of the Soul Part 2, I showed how the Catholic Church defines the animating volition of humans as a principle called the "substantiality of the soul."

I also showed how the Church defines substantiality as "a genus supremum [which]cannot strictly be defined by an analysis into genus and specific difference..." The CE could only define it this way by making the reader draw his/her own inferences in this matter since it gave no definition whatever of substantiality, but rather made it referential to all the other things it did say about soul and substance.

It thus was made clear that the most powerful and ancient Christian Church cannot define "genus supremum". As a matter of fact, that definition is an entry missing from its pages. It is left as a floating abstraction.

The Church obviously prefers not to ontologically identify the entity soul, while at the same time describing its volitional qualites as those which 'animate' even the vegetative parts of the human being. No wonder it defines the soul as a 'principle.'"

The Secular Identity of the Entity Called "Soul"

Qualities, when identified, will necessarily lead one to an ID of the genus of the entity that possess those qualities, unless the qualities are themselves not concretely identified. The definition given by the CE of soul is not concrete.

In the same sense that the CE says soul is both mind and non-mind (vegetative,) Naturalism.Org, a humanist/naturalist website that says it depends on science to determine the views of its adherents describes it this way:

"[H]uman minds and behavior are indeed explicable as physical, chemical, biological, psychological and social processes subject to law-like cause and effect relationships at various levels. [ ] [T]here’s no scientific evidence that we possess an immaterial soul or mental 'supervisor' that has a contra-causal, libertarian free will, that somehow intervenes in and trumps natural causality." http://www.naturalism.org/misrepresenting.htm

This is a secular view, based on determinism, and the website's contributors are well-known authors, speakers, philosophers, professors, etc. But the site's description of this "immaterial soul" that we do not possess is is defined as "physical, chemical, biological, psychological and social processes subject to law-like cause and effect relationships at various levels."

This sounds as though scientific naturalism is defining as "genus non-supremum" something we might call the "principle of the non-soul". After all, if these processes do not consist of contra-causal libertarian free will, it is certainly not sui-generis, which the religiously defined qualities of the soul would make it. Yet, they would at the same time appear to be made of "substance," made of "physical" processes.

But what if the soul is actually all the processes that scientific naturalism says it is, yet volitional, meaning dependent on one's own mental initiative irrespective of all the physical processes?

To define it as being within the genus of substance does not deny the theory of religious substantiality when the soul is housed in the physical body, that the naturalist description of the processes might actually be the physicalized nature of the soul.

Why should there be an insistence on my part, as a part of the law of Identity, i.e., "the aspect of existing as something in particular, with specific characteristics", that the soul should exist? http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Metaphysics_Identity.html

To repeat from Part 1 of this discussion, something is self-evidential. What is not evidential is that this something is physically material; it takes science to prove that the processes of physiology, body chemistry, and psychology relate to that which is self-evidential.

It is also not self-evidential that this something is transcendental, i.e., extending beyond physiologial life in either direction; nor is it self-evidential that it ought not be given metaphysical value as a "mental supervisor," and as an intimate part of the ego by which we can make sense of our moral abstractions.

Scientific naturalists deny the metaphysical value of what they admit is self-evidential. They does so because scientific naturalism operates on the metaphysical belief in determinism. Since random forces, such as existence itself, intrude into our power to operate willfully, then--say scientific naturalists--we have no libertarian free will. It is true that we do not have libertarian free will, in the sense that they mean it.

They mean that we cannot cause the sun to stop shining, cannot cause our hunger to go away, cannot cause the cancer in our bones to vanish, and cannot make a pot of gold appear at the end of the rainbow--at will.

The comment about the gold is not meant to be facetious. If contra-causal libertarian free will is the scientific definition of the form of will we are said not to have, then it necessarily follows that if we did have it we could turn anything into gold, cause heaven to come to earth, and do all things that empirical reality will not allow us to do.

This is why the metaphysical emphasis placed on our lack of libertarian free will is of no consequence to the argument of whether man has free will. Free will is in the rationality of man, not the accidental circumstances surrounding his being.

"On the one hand, does man possess genuine moral freedom, power of real choice, true ability to determine the course of his thoughts and volitions, to decide which motives shall prevail within his mind, to modify and mould his own character? Or, on the other, are man's thoughts and volitions, his character and external actions, all merely the inevitable outcome of his circumstances?" CA

Taxonomically, free will is of the genus arbitrium with respect to reason, and of the specie liberum, with respect to the will which can be turned toward either good or bad ends. Peter Lombard, Libri Quattuor Sententiarum, 1150

Free will, then, is the doctrine that human beings are free to control their own actions, actions not determined in advance by God or fate. It is, therefore, tied inexorably to the soul.

The soul, as we have discovered, is at one end of the spectrum considered placed by God in the fertilized egg immediately at conception, thereby releasing the potential human to be free of fate at birth. At the other end of the spectrum volition, the actions of freedom, are declared to begin with the first syllogism.

This second idea is tied to tabula rasa, the idea that nothing exists in the mind apriori, that all knowledge, including knowledge of one's own volition, is born of experience.

This is logical, since a child is most certainly not volitionally free of his empty but growing mind, of his inability to feed and clothe himself, of his lack of language, his environment, and his genes, not to mention his nutruring.

Since free will is Liberum arbitrium, and since that was initially a Catholic concept, then the soul is either the liberator, or freedom from determinism sows the seeds of the soul.

In our last look at this subject tomorrow, we will see how freedom from determinism is the link in our search for the answer to whether or not the fetus has a soul. We can then answer the question: Does the fetus have a soul?

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Ontology of the Soul Part 2

Identifying the Entity Called "Soul", Part 2

The task in separating abortion sense from nonsense is decided in the metaphysics of classifying the various stages of the existence of an "incomplete" human. At what point in its existence does it become "complete enough" to be unalienably endowed with the rights of individual sovereignty? see The Ontological Taxonomy of the Human Soul

Ontology is the science of identifying fundamental principles, the doctrine of making distinctions between: 1) "entities", i.e., existents; 2) the qualitative attributes of entities; and 3) the relationships between 1) and 2).

So can the existence of the human soul be identified by the doctrine of ontology? "The New Advent" Catholic Encyclopedia (CA) makes the central argument of the ages when it says, "The question of the reality of the soul and its distinction from the body is among the most important problems of philosophy, for with it is bound up the doctrine of a future life."

However, the ontological argument is missed by most people--not whether the soul has to do with future life; that is theological and is in the realm of religion and faith--but rather the argument of what the soul is as an entity; whether or not the soul actually exists (the qualitative elements), and whether it is distinct from the body if it does exist (the relationship).

It is self evident to most people that the soul exists. It is self-evident because we are aware of it. Identifying what exactly it is that most people are self-evidentially aware would appear to be the first task. But that must be put off until the attributes, the qualities, are identified. How we may know something exists is by the qualities of the existent. A thing with no qualities whatever cannot, by definition, exist.

"The New Advent" gets it right with the relationship part, identifying "the ultimate internal principle by which we think, feel, and will, and by which our bodies are animated."

Principle is not the word I would use. A principle is taken by most of us to mean a fundamental truth, and calling the soul a truth, while accurate in one sense because of its self-evidentiary nature, is not the same as an intellectual principle. Most people use the word principle in its intellectual sense, as in the principle of marital fidelity, or the principle of not coveting what is not yours to have.

My "Webster's" lists the first definition, however, as "the ultimate source, origin, or cause of something." So the "New Advent" gets it right, but for the purpose of this discussion I will substitute the word motivation.

As the fundamental motivation of human animation, we must make a distinction between involuntary and voluntary animation. A newborn life involuntarily moves: animals such as giraffes and horses stand up; birds peck at the inside of their shell until they free themselves; humans take a breath and then usually begin to cry.

The child has no choice but to take a breath. It is the difference between life and death, and the involuntary nature of life is to do whatever is necessary to stay alive. There is no conscious motivation on the part of any creature to do what the hard-wiring of its brain tells it to.

It is only after a creature gains motivation attached to some form of consciousness, the form present in its specie, that it can act in a way that may have nothing to do with sheer survival. It applies to other species than just humans. Why did a dog recently refuse to leave a burning house until it had rescued all the helpless newborn kittens inside? Why did a monkey befriend a white tiger cub abandoned by its mother? Why did two silverback gorillas, in two separate incidents in two separate zoos, rush to protect from the other gorillas human children who fell into their pits?

There is clearly a difference between voluntary and involuntary volition. So we cannot say at the present point in this discussion that the soul did or did not animate the newborn of any species. Catholics, who believe human life is endowed at conception with a soul would say it does animate the newborn. [see Continuation] The antithetic argument is that human volition begins with the first syllogism. All other determinations of when the soul begins falls between these two extremes.

These two extremes will be the basis for this topic of making the identification of the entity we call the soul. Continuation

McCain and Obama On Iraq’s Opposition To Granting Amnesty To Terrorists

In 2006 the U.S. Senate debated an amendment, Vote 177, that commended the government of Iraq for affirming its position of not granting amnesty to terrorists who attack U.S. armed forces. This occurred at a time when the situation in Iraq was bleak and terrorist activity high, in the year prior to the onset of the “surge” and the new counterinsurgency strategy successfully executed by General Petraeus. For the Iraqi government, during this time, to affirm its position that terrorists who attack U.S. armed forces should not be granted amnesty, was a commendable act of courage by Iraqi leaders. This courage deserved our support. John McCain voted FOR this amendment. Barack Obama voted AGAINST this amendment, as did his running mate, Joe Biden. To see other votes profiled in the ACT! for America Congressional Scorecard, please click here. Visit our News page

ACT for America P.O. Box 6884 Virginia Beach, VA 23456 www.actforamerica.org

ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America’s national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam. We are only as strong as our supporters, and your volunteer and financial support is essential to our success. Thank you for helping us make America safer and more secure.


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Ontology of the Soul

The Ontological Taxonomy of the Human Soul

Jean Kazez in Abortion Sense and Nonsense (Talking Philosophy - The Philosophers' Magazine Blog) brought up an ontological question about the human fetus: what is it?

"The problem is," she says, "that’s a very hard question. A baby-in-the-making is not exactly like anything else we’re familiar with."

Ontology is the science of fundamental principles, the doctrine of identifying categories, making distinctions between: 1) "entities", i.e., existents; 2) the qualitative attributes of entities; and 3) the relationships between 1) and 2).

One method for illustrating ontological identifications is "taxonomy." Aristotle used the system of taxonomy in his study of flora and fauna. It is ontological based on empirical observation or proof of either the genus or the specie(s) of an entity. Such observation or proof requires "making distinctions" between such entites as the chimpanzee and its cousin, the bonobo, to use only one example, and in making the distinction between them the relationship is made.

A specie, when further divided, itself becomes a genus with its own specie(s). But when such divisions occur each genus is given its own categorical name, e.g. family, tribe, order, (see below) until the very last division is the one we categorize as "species."

An example of taxonomy as illustrating ontology is the description of Homo sapiens as a specie; its genus is Homo. But Homo is the specie of the genus "tribe." Tribe is the specie of the genus "family", etc.

The entire ontological process begins with identifying an entity, then going backward in connecting it to the first genus at the top of the hierarchy. This makes the identification a matter of deciding where the species fits into the entire puzzle of classifications.

It also means the genera (genuses) must already have been identified. It was easy for men to classify themselves into a genus denoting "life". It then became the task to identify the classifications between "life" and "man". Where in the hierarchy did man's best friend belong? Where did the ox belong? Obviously the ox, the dog, and the man all had something in common, but just as obviously there were differences that separated them from each other. Making those identifications created new genera and new species labels.

Kazez writes: "A 5-day old embryo composed out of undifferentiated, pluripotent cells is not a complete person like you and me. A 2-month-old fetus, even with its complete set of rudimentary organs, is not a complete person like you and me."

The ontological task then becomes to identify just what "a complete person like you and me" is; and what an embryo is; and what a fetus is. Some of the scientific categorization has long since been finished: the embryo is scientifically different from a zygote, both of which are scientifically different from a fetus.

But in the end, ontology is a branch of metaphysics, and "zygote," "embryo," "fetus," "chimp," and "bonobo" are all metaphysical classifications, made by identifying metaphysical differences between them, differences based on scientific descriptions, but identified by metaphysical values.

One of the difficulties of nailing down a classification, either of genus or of species, is where to draw the line. What line of demarcation, either scientifically or metaphysically, is there between a zygote and an embryo?

In 2003, National Geographic News reported "that chimpanzees are so closely related to humans that they should be included in our branch of the tree of life," according to biologists at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit, Michigan. This would change them from Pan troglodytes into Homo troglodytes.

"However, experts say many scientists are likely to resist the reclassification, especially in the emotionally-charged and often disputed field of anthropology." http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/0520_030520_chimpanzees.html (They seem to have forgotten to mention the disputations religion would put up.)

Studies indicate that humans and chimps are between 95 and 98.5 percent genetically identical. But there is more to classification according to such similarities, similarities which either do not seem to take metaphysics into account, or operate by a different set of metaphysics. However, no one can get around the fact that it is a metaphysical decision to separate species strictly by scientific standards, even if the decision makers believe they are leaving (contestable) metaphysics out of the picture.

Morris Goodman, a co-author of the chimp study, said that how we group organisms is flawed from the historical point. Aristotle began grouping species according to their "degree of perfection," with man as the pinnacle. Doing it in this manner is a metaphysical decision.

Genetic relatedness becomes a big factor in the ontological process of identify, now that genomes are quickly identifiable. The metaphysical question is whether or not that is the only thing you should take into account. Anthropologist Bernard Wood at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., said a genus should consist of very similar species, that share attributes such as behavior and (mode of movement)," he said.

Ontological classifications should account for the differences as much or more than for the similarities, even though any differences may be acceptable within the classification. Chimps move differently, have different nutritional needs, live in social orders that are not like humans; but they have a rudimentary language, can learn to solve problems like a human of about the age of six, and, in the model of "it takes a village," are tribally protective of their young.

When the white man first identified the chimp in taxonomy, the decision was almost made at that time to include it in the genus Homo. Perhaps it was too politically explosive at the time to do so. It was the era of the beginning of fierce anti-Darwininism. It could not have been politically correct at that time, anymore than it is today.

But speaking practically, "The problem is," Wood said, according to NatGeoNews, "if you call the chimp Homo troglodytes, you deny yourself [those differences] to help guide you through the tree of life."

Being "guided through the tree of life" is the end purpose of metaphysics itself.

To demonstrate the nature of divisions, this is the taxonomy of animal life: (For plant taxonomy visit http://www.botanik.univie.ac.at/iapt/index_layer.php )

Homo sapiens sapiens (Man) is (the only sub-species)
of Homo sapiens, now extinct.
Homo sapiens is the species.
Homo is the genus.
Hominini is the tribe.
Himinidea is the family.
Primates is the order.
Mammalia is the class.
Chordata is the phylum.
Animalia is the kingdom.
Eukaryota is the domain.

The task in separating abortion sense from nonsense is decided in the metaphysics of classifying the various stages of the existence of an "incomplete" human. At what point in its existence does it become "complete enough" to be unalienably endowed with the rights of individual sovereignty?

What divides Americans so deeply on this issue is the ontological description of the human soul.

"The time when the body receives a soul is a major factor in the debate on abortion. Catholics believe that a person gets a soul at conception, thus any form of abortion is the murder of a human being. Some Protestants believe that a body gets a soul at birth and that abortion is not killing a human being, rather part of the mother." http://www.school-for-champions.com/religion/soul_or_body.htm

So the entity "soul" is determined at various points in the development of a woman's fertilized egg by a man's sperm, and these various points are admittedly either religious, or secular. Some determinist/naturalists don't even believe in the soul.

But those facts make it clear that any attempt to define the soul as an immediate endowment of conception is a religious notion, not a secular one.

And that is where ontology must be able to decide just what kind of entity the soul is, and then how such an entity originates. Tomorrow we will investigate the ontology of the soul.

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Beck on Obama

Why Does Obama Use the Language of Marxism--

If He is No Marxist?

What, according to Barak Obama, was the fundamental failure of the civil rights movement?

At the time he made the statements below, in 2001, Obama was the Illinois senator from the 13th district and a senior lecturer from the University of Chicago.

OBAMA: "...the victories and failures of the civil rights movements and its litigation strategy in the court [ ] succeeded [in vesting] formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples..."

Now, that's a good thing. The Constitution was meant to vest people with their rights. It is one of the reasons the Supreme Courts of some States have overturned the laws as written on gay marriage. But if the laws are written otherwise, as in the State of Michigan, the Court can do nothing about it.

A Court that does what it can is not an "activist Court." An "activist Court" is one that goes beyond what either a "common reading" or an "originalist" reading would render. see Power Reserved to the People, Respectively

OBAMA: "...but the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.
"The Warren court -- wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted and Warren interpreted it in the same way that generally is a charter of negative liberties." [italics added]

How many times must the evidence demonstrate
that Obama uses the words of Marxism? If he is no Marxist, why use the language
of Marxism? Obama is lying--by ommission. When he, or Joe Biden, are asked about
Obama's Marxism, no one deny's that he is. They deflate the question by saying
what it is that Obama is trying to accomplish and they do it using words that
everyone likes to hear--but they don't deny it.

The redistribution of wealth is socialism. Marx did write the phrase spoken by that Florida newscaster when she questioned Biden: "From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs." That means take from those who can be taken from; give it to those from whom nothing can be taken. This is the doctrine of economic justice Obama spoke of.

Obama says that the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. In other words, we (the government) are not going to take your guns, we're not going to take your speech. This is what the Progressive movement tried to do under FDR. They want to get rid of those things and tell you what they will do for you. Universal housing, universal healthcare, universal jobs. This is a fundamental change. This destroys the work of the founding fathers. This takes us from a small government to an oppressive government. All liberties come from them. All blessings come from them. It is only negative liberties for the state. It is putting restrictions on the state, not on people. He's flipping power.

It is no longer We the People. He also says something that doesn't make sense. In one breath Obama talks about the essential constraints placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution and at the same time suggests that the Court should have broken free of the essential constraints, constraints put there in the Constitution by the Founding Fathers specifically to prevent men such as Obama from attempting to subvert the individual sovereignty they called unalienable.

Adapted freely from Glen Beck: Frightening Obama. Thank you, Glen. I know you won't mind a little assistance in your good fight.




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Power Reserved to the People, Respectively

Eliminate Constitutional Clause and Give Power back to the People, Respectively

"The best way to limit the federal Leviathan is to have Congress and the presidency controlled by different parties," said Ilya Shapiro of the blog of the Cato Institute. http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/10/24/a-plea-for-divided-government/

Wrong. That statement of Shapiro's demonstrates the similarities between the so-called conservatives and the out-and-out liberals.

The best way to limit the federal Leviathian is to stick to the origins of the Constitution. That is called "originalism," or sometimes "original intent". Wikipedia explains it this way:

"In the context of United States constitutional interpretation, originalism is a family of theories central to all of which is the proposition that the Constitution has a fixed and knowable meaning, which was established at the time of its drafting."

This does not in any way prevent it from being applied to American law in any decade or any century. The original intent can--and ought--to be applied because that was the intent of those who wrote it. They provided us with the means to change their intentions, and that means was not to ignore their intentions. That means was not to place any meaning on their words that fit our purposes. That means was to either nullify by Amendment where necessary, or alter by legislation where allowed, the intention of their words.

The answer to the question of why we, in the 21st Century ought to follow the spirit of their words is because that spirit is the spirit of Americanism. We can keep the spirit but change the words that transfigure what they saw in the 18th C. into what we see in the 21st. To ignore their intent is "rule by men", not rule by law.

Original intent theory is interpretation of the Constitution consistent with what was meant by those who drafted and ratified it.

The original meaning theory, which is closely related to textualism, is the view that reasonable persons living at the time of its adoption would have declared the ordinary meaning of the text to be. It is with this view that most originalists, such as Justices Scalia and Thomas, are associated.

Just this year the Supreme Court proved that originalism could be used effectively, when it ruled on the Second Amendment right to bear arms. The Court effectively nullified the first clause which made the Amendment appear to require a "well maintained militia" to enable the right to bear arms. The Court, after reviewing hundreds of documents from the Colonial period, decided that it was never the intention of the drafters and signers of the Constitution to limit arms to the maintanance of a militia.

By ruling in this way, the Court proved that originalism will sometimes benefit the America of the 21st Century. Had it declared that it was indeed the intent of the Colonialists to limit the right to bear arms to the militia, it still would have made the correct decision if the historical facts supported the decision. But at that point it would have been up to Congress to write a new amendment that would override the "militia clause" of the Second Amendment.

Originalism is the way the Constitution is supposed to work. If history does not support the facts of life as they exist today, as the Constitution was written, then it is within the right of the people to amend the Constitution.

Originalism, besides limiting the size and scope of the federal government, will return to the States that which is not "prohibited to" them, and which "are reserved to the States respectively"; which will subsequently return to We, the People, what is not prohibited to us and is reserved to each of us respectively. [Tenth Amendment]

What is reserved to each of us respectively is sovereignty of self, otherwise called individual sovereignty. Laissez-Fairre: the Economics of Individual Sovereignty

No one on the right or the left is going to convince me to believe that being a "citizen of the United States" is better than being a "Citizen of the Several States" of the united States. It is not better to be part of a government Leviathian than to be part of a semi-autonomous region.

This does not mean an Afghani or Iraqi style autonomous tribalism--it never did, and it will not--not so long as all the people of all the "several States" remembers that there are limits to what is achievable when home rule is brought closer to "home."

The "citizens of the United States" clause of the 14th Amendment should be struck down. That would eliminate most of the Federal power over the States. We were never intended to be citizens of the "United States". The Continental Congress did not set it up that way. They deliberately limited the size and scope of the Federal government. Since Senator John McCain wants to cut funding for all but what he or Congress or someone deems is "necessary," this is the route he should take.

Of course it would take a Libertarian who is strong as Ronald Reagan to do such a thing.

I don't think McCain is even a libertarian. But he should return as much power to the States as he can without mandating, as Reagan did, that the States pick up the Federal slack.

Picking up that slack is not downsizing--it is passing it off on the States.

Give the power back to the States, don't mandate anything except to follow the remaining and existing Federal statutes (or sue the Federal government over it, the legal way of resolving disputes,) and when we all see power returning to the People, we will not only be empowered again politically as we once were; but we will be empowered psychologically as we have not been since before the Civil War.

Note: originalintent.org is one of several organizations dedicated to "Restoring the Republic...One Citizen at a Time."

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Objectivism v. Determinism is Romanticism v. Naturalism

The Metaphysics of Determinism

Determinism is the doctrine that every fact in the universe is guided entirely by law. As such, it is a metaphysical proposition that denies or invalidates or ignores the laws of the workings of human thought. It does so by categorizing the laws of deduction and induction as "fully caused" by genetics, environment, memes, and other cancelations of free thought, i.e., free will.

Determinism, then, is the denial of free will on the grounds that life exists! Psychologically it means that the will is not free but determined by mental states and at the same time by physical conditions, since the former cannot exist without the latter.

Daniel Dennett would have us believe that free will exists, even when he himself believes it does not. He says is necessary for men to believe in the belief of free will so that determinism will not cause them to think they have no will at all! [1]

Such belief in the belief of free will is "designed to prevent any plunge into pessimism that determinism might engender among those who suppose we must have free will for life to be worth living." 3 Strikes Against Fatalism

This is not something men must be taught overtly or learned as knowledge through empirical experiences.

"You can much more easily believe that it is proper, that it is good and virtuous and beneficial, to believe that the Ultimate Cosmic Sky is both perfectly blue and perfectly green. Dennett calls this 'belief in belief'." Eliezer Yudkowsky; http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/07/belief-in-belie.html

Yudkowdky was not making of fun of Dennett's theory of "belief in belief." "I think even Dennett oversimplifies how this psychology works in practice," he writes.

"Many religious 'believers,' Dennett argues -- and he doesn't mean just politicians at Sunday morning services -- don't so much believe in the metaphysical claims of their chosen religion as commit to a 'belief in belief.' Most Christian believers in God couldn't articulate the Ontological or Cosmological proofs for God that are advanced in Christian tradition." http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/2007/03/daniel-c-dennetts-breaking-spell.html

Deterministic adherents of scientific naturalism (SN) do not believe man has free will; they believe in "determinism," the idea that men are "fully caused", i.e., "entirely the product of genetics and upbringing..." [Tom Clark; Naturalism.Org]

I have been making the case for months in this blog that Clark, Dennett, Susan Blackwell and dozens of others are wrong. I have given many arguments as to why they are wrong. I have not said before today that they are wrong metaphysically, but they are correct in one respect so far as epistemology is concerned.

Let's begin with this quote, the same quote Tom Clark uses to defend this deterministic theory of the causes of man:

"The [belief in the] lack of free will, sometimes called determinism, maintains that peoples' decisions are the result of an unbroken chain of prior occurrences; each action is caused by the previous one; individuals don't really have choices." – news story from The Vancouver Province, 2/28/08.

Clark is no where near being an anomaly within the large and influential brotherhood of SN. As a matter of fact, besides the many well-known names listed on his website, Clark told me, "There are several contemporary philosophers that also take this view, among them Derk Pereboom, Tamler Sommers, Joshua Greene and Bruce Waller."

The reason that the determinism found in SN is wrong--and you must understand that determinism is the entire basis for their system of beliefs, that their castle is built on this acre of sand--is because it isn't metaphysically of any consequence.

To paraphrase Ayn Rand (whose Objectivism scientific naturalists abhor), it is a nightmare view of existence to believe the unbroken chain of prior occurrences must be "the constant and primary concern of their lives." The Ethics of Emergencies; "The Virtue of Selfishness"; Rand

Why do I say it is the constant and primary concern of their lives? Because of what Clark says in many other places in his various web pages. To quote:

A) "When hearing about determinism, or the idea that we are fully caused to be who we are, people often jump to the conclusion that if this were true they would lose power and control. This is demoralizing. [ ] This conclusion, of course, is mistaken. People and their wills aren’t disempowered when we explain them in terms of antecedent causes." [Not their "wills"; merely their "free" wills.]

B) "Getting clear about this is crucial, since science is in the process of dismantling the myth of the ultimately self-made self." [italics added]

C) "But it’s important to see what’s demoralizing isn’t the empirically and logically well-supported conclusion that we don’t have contra-causal, libertarian free will..."

D) [Determinism's critics] "cannot articulate a clear, scientifically defensible account of how contra-causal, libertarian free will might work."

E) "Human beings act the way they do because of the various influences that shape them, whether these be biological or social, genetic or environmental."

Clark doesn't mean in E) that we incapable of thinking and making decisions about those influences; his point is, we can't escape those influences. Well, duh!

There is much more, on almost every page. I think, however, that a defensible account, as Clark calls for, does not rely on science. The right answer does not require science. Why? Because the science that Clark and others use has nothing to do with the metaphysical value of having and using whatever will they admit we do have.

What they do with their empirical science, which by the way seems to be acceptable truth, is apply it to the subject of our wills as non-contra-causal. Basically, contra-causal means that we can overcome whatever it is that causes us to make a decision, such as answering a ringing phone, taking a sick child to the doctor, eating when we are hungry, sleeping when we can no longer keep our eyes open, etc.

Clark, Dennett and the other determinists are epistemologically correct in this proposition. Mean are not free to escape the fact of existence and of everything that happens in existence. But to make it the essential fact of a doctrine is to give metaphysical equality to both the choices we freely choose to make when we choose to make them, and to the non-contra-causal causes that force us to choose to make a choice or not. The freedom which the determinists admit we do have is a metaphysical positive force, and the things that are prior to choice, things which we cannot change, can only be explained as causes when they are prior to being.

Since "fully caused" is the deterministic proposition that "being" is a "process", man cannot have "being" without the necessity of making choices. His "being" at this very moment has more metaphysical force in existence than the natural forces that brought him to make his choice. Those natural forces can only be explained in terms of his "being." It cannot be explained the other way around, since two or more men may arrive in the same place through different choices made against the backdrop of different natural forces.

In other words, the natural forces over which we have no control, which are deterministically said to "fully cause" us, can only be explained by the result achieved by our choice, which is to say that "being" is the definition of the causes. The causes are not the definition of the "being."

A woman from the roughest neighborhoods of Detroit, and the pampered son of a Houston oilman, can both end up in the same place, let's say Hollywood, and that will be the state of their being. That state cannot be attributed to the "non-contra-causal causes" because they would have gotten there anyway, if that was what they envisioned for their "being," i.e., for their existence.

But the correct response to being "non-contra-causal agents" is to say that without those things which we cannot contra-cause, there would be no such thing as life itself. Determinism seems to be a straw man argument that because we cannot contra-cause the factors of life that "fully cause us to be who we are," that we are somehow supposed to see ourselves in a different light--which is exactly the point of their entire base of philosophical literature. They want us to see ourselves in a different light, both epistemologically and metaphysically.

I'd like to know what the point of that is. I still cannot figure out why knowing that we rise because the cock crows and wakes us, or that we eat because we are hungry, or that we rob a store because we think we have no other choice in a desperate need for cash, is supposed to make us think differently about ourselves.

I think these are things we've always known. Victor Hugo proved it with his novel "Les Miserables", described this way in Wikipedia:

"The story starts in 1815, in Toulon. After five years of imprisonment in the bagne of Toulon for stealing bread for his starving sister and her family..."

So, in 1862 Hugo was telling a story--with overt moral lessons he wanted to demonstrate--that people do things because they need to (steal bread); because they stupidly steal (silver) from the Bishop of a church; that they accidently steal (a child's coin) when they don't know it; that they are forced to sleep on the street when innkeepers refuse to allow felons (the bread theft) at the inns; that people can turn their lives around and do good for others only to have it ripped away from them by petty officials and civil unrest and mistaken identies and by loved ones who mistake your actions for poor character rather than for a poor raft of choices that life forced one to make.

Dagny Taggart committed manlaughter with a gun at point-blank range against a poor slob of a military guard who had no idea of the mess he was in--because he didn't have the power to contra-cause the mess he was in. Neither did Dagny have the power to contra-cause the fact that she was forced to kill the young man. But, without such forces of life, there would be no "being." Rand and Hugo knew that when they wrote in the Romantic style. They used what will their characters possessed to create the beings that they were, and that they were to become.

The fictional writings and the art of the determinists is rightly called "Naturalism."

As Rand stated, "...that which you call 'free will' is your mind’s freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character." Galt’s Speech, For the New Intellectual

Without the forces of life itself which you cannot "contra-cause," there would be no choices at all to make. The poor guard had the power to think or not: Dagny gave him the choice twice, and when he refused "to think", she killed him without a second thought of her own. Dagny was acting Romantically; the guard was acting Naturalistically. See where it got him?

Who needs science to demonstrate that nothing can be contra-caused, that nothing should be contra-caused, and that determinism is metaphysically impotent precisely because nothing should be contra-causable?

Anything that is out of your control is non-contra-causable in its nature.

But just because each of us is "fully caused", as deterministic scientific naturalism would have us call ourselves, does not mean this: "It may strongly seem as if there is a self sitting behind experience, witnessing it, and behind behavior, controlling it, [but] this impression is strongly disconfirmed by a scientific understanding of human behavior." [ibid Clark]

So, now there is no "self", but there is experience; there is no "self" but there is behavior which has something "controlling it". What could it be if not "self"?

But I have to admit, never in my life did I ever think my will was divorced from existence; in other words, I never believed it was "free" will in the sense that determinists want to prove it is not free.

If Hugo, and Rand, and I and millions or billions of others already know our "free" will is not "free" of reality, what's the point of arguing it?

[1] Chapter Eight, "Belief in Belief" in "Breaking the Spell"; Daniel Dennett

If you think Obama

is definitely going to win,

you might want to read this:

Signs Pointing To A McCain Victory

Berg lawsuit over Obama citizenship dismissed; didn't have standing

Previously Federal Suit to Determine Obama's U.S. Citizenship; Obama Hires Terrorist Organization to Defend Him

The Philip Berg lawsuit against Barack Obama in which he claimed that BHO wasn't eligible to be president due to not being an American citizen has been tossed. According to judge Barclay Surrick, Berg didn't have standing, saying:
If, through the political process, Congress determines that citizens, voters, or party members should police the Constitution’s eligibility requirements for the Presidency, then it is free to pass laws conferring standing on individuals like Plaintiff. Until that time, voters do not have standing to bring the sort of challenge that Plaintiff attempts to bring in the Amended Complaint. MORE 24Ahead.com



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Headlines for Objective Naturalists

HEADLINES FOR OBJECTIVE NATURALISTS

Thanks to the "right to privacy," we enjoy privacy not as a right, but as a privilege.

As a first-born, black-sheep son who has been criticized for so much of his life, Bush reacted by hardening his willpower to the point at which any criticism would only encourage him in the opposite direction.

Everyone has not only the right, but the responsibility, to research the veracity of political claims, to consider the consequences of inaction, and to vote.

Obama's plan is deceptively attractive, while in reality it is a huge wrecking ball that will capsize the already listing ship of our economy.

A lot of people aren't content to simply sit back and wait for Obama to win. Instead, they want to get involved and help him finally seal the deal. [SARCASM]

Wallsten won't release a tape that would be damaging to Barack Obama. Gateway Pundit spoke with him (link)

The best way to limit the federal Leviathan is to have Congress and the presidency controlled by different parties.

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Naturalism Denies Free Will; Assumes "Locality" of Abstractions

Liberalism and "Spatial Locality" of Abstractions

On the website Objectivism Online.Org, a young man asked a question about "spatial locality of abstractions" within the brain. It was an insightful question. Not many people would think about such a thing.

In spite of the fact that Ayn Rand was specifically asked about such a thing in her book "Philosophy: Who Needs It", I wasn't thinking of placing that "spatial locality" in the brain. I thought, "Of course its in the brain. The philosopher in the book who asked about it has to mean something else." What that "else" was I didn't give a second thought. I just knew that abstractions were not "out there"; they were in my head.

After all, Rand said as part of her answer that abstractions "are mental entities [,] or put it this way: a phenomenon of consciousness."

That is what I would have answered myself, that abstractions exist, but not in any empirical way unless they related directly to an object about which one drew the abstractions; even then, it's not the abstractions that would have empirical existence. Abstractions are in the mind.

She also said, "[W]e can call them 'mental entities' only metaphorically or for convenience. It is a 'something.' For instance, before you have a certain concept, that particular something doesn't exist in your mind. When you have formed the concept of 'concept,' that is a mental something; it isn't a nothing."

But in the conversation string, someone who calls herself "Dragon Lady" answered the question about "spatial locality" this way:

"When you're talking about a memory, a thought, or an emotion, you're talking about the *experience* of that mental entity. You don't *experience* any of those things as a conscious awareness of neurons firing in a specific location in your brain. The *thought* is conceptually distinct from the neurons just as the mind is conceptually distinct from the brain."

Well, that is precisely what I would not have thought to ascribe to "a phenomenon of consciousness." But that is what the young man was asking.

The Dragon Lady was right. But her answer led me to add an answer of my own to the string, one that I think raises the spectre that there are famous and respected philosophers who take the other view, and who have the power to cause such a question to be asked--and answered--the wrong way.

I once answered a similar question, without having the same understanding of the "spatial" element I now have after reading the question, Rand's answers, and the response by the other reader of the string. That first answer of mine was published two months ago in Memes, Free Will, Strong Naturalism, and Toilet Paper. It isn't incorrect. It just didn't go far enough.

Yet that was a very long answer. Looking at it today I'd say I could probably re-write it to be shorter, but what writer doesn't go back and look at his/her work and see where it could be reworked--over and over? In it's essence it is correct from a metaphysical naturalist view, and I will say from the view of a "student of Objectivism."

go to Liberalism and "Spatial Locality" of Abstractions, cont.

Bigoted, Lying James Dobson to be Honored

I once had a revealing conversation with an A-list news reporter, when I was trying to convince him to cover the scientific distortions of Focus on the Family's James Dobson. He declined to do so because he felt that Dobson lies so frequently that it wasn't news. Wayne Besen - Daily Commentary

Truth Wins Out (TWO) launched a new website today, DumpDobson.com, that calls on the Museum of Broadcast Communications to reverse its decision to honor Focus on the Family’s James Dobson in its Radio Hall of Fame. Unless the museum withdraws its pledge to induct Dobson, TWO will join Equality Illinois and the Gay Liberation Network to protest the awards ceremony, Saturday, Nov. 8, (5:30 PM – 7:30 PM), at the Renaissance Chicago Hotel. MORE

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Something to Blog About

Six Degrees or So of Philosophical Separation

It isn't easy day after day to come up with something new, interesting, or even apropos to the nature of this weblog. Sure, it covers everything under the sun because metaphysics is everything under, over, and around the sun. Metaphysics literally, not figuratively, examines "existence," or as it used to be called, "Being."
Having everything under the sun to talk about still doesn't make it easy to think of something you have not said before, but it is certain that by tomorrow some subject or other will present itself.

Today I can say that yesterday I joined yet another Ayn Rand website. This time it was Objectivism Online.Net. I'm actually using my real name, not something made up, so I'm there to be found, if you are, too.

I didn't do it for the chat room. I'm not a chatter, as users of Yahoo Answers discovered with my alter-ego there. I am no longer active on YA, though I had reached the top of the Philosophy totem pole. I never chatted with anyone in YA. I quit YA because Yahoo doesn't have enough moderators to objectively determine whether a complaint is valid, so they accept all complaints. Their own rules allow the promotion of your own weblog or other website if it has a bearing on the discussion. Obviously this blog has a bearing on discussions of philosophy. Yahoo still continued to delete my answers when someone complained I was "

No, I joined Objectivism Online.Net because I need to get more feedback to the things I say. My friends have no clue what I'm writing about even when they (attempt to) read this blog. They are not metaphysicians or epistemologists. Even the subjects of ethics go over their heads, because I don't seem to be able to write those kinds of pieces that a freshman in philosophy can comprehend.

I think it is a drawback. I think I could do better. I think I could learn to write down without "dumbing down." But once my fingers begin typing, or my pencil begins making script, (I really do prefer pencil most of the time,) I'm off to the races.

The people who read Objectivist material are one component of my audience. Others are ethicists, etc. A third component are simply people who are interested in a particular subject, and who never return a second time to read the blog because that isn't why they read it in the first place.

And I'll be the first to admit, I have not made it entirely easy for my readers. I didn't always use this large type, and I experimented with ways to make the blog more friendly, which often made it unfriendly. Until I discovered this large type, the blog never looked the same from one day to the next.

I still have problems, when something in the automatic html goes awry. I understand just enough html to get me into trouble, and not enough to get me out of most of the trouble I didn't create. But I'm learning. It's getting better.

In the near future I may be writing this on a Mac laptop. I have no experience whatsoever with Apple. I don't know the difference between it and Linux because I've never used Lunux, either.

I'm going back into retail for a while, trading floor space for my merchandise for labor. I'm moving into a wonderful antiques store that is more like your old Aunt Mabel's attic, the kind of stuffed attic you can barely walk through. But nothing is hidden, everything is dusted, and everything is expensive--everything but my products, so what the customers don't spend on antiques they may spend on my merchandise. Service work doesn't suit me as a profession; service is what I give away.

So I do service work for AA in my district. Ayn Rand was right about the Serenity Prayer: "It names the mental attitude which a rational man must seek to achieve." [Philosophy: Who Needs It; Chapter 3]

So I guess even when I can't think of anything to begin a philosophy blog with, I can still end up with philosophy, by means of the "six degrees of separation" method. It may not always be six; but I seamlessly moved from "what to blog about," to joining Objectivism Online.Net; to needing more feedback; to who the readers are who could give me feedback; to improving the look and feel of my website; to html and using a Mac in my new store location; to hating work in the service professions but liking to give it away when I can be of service to people I need for my own recovery; to the mental attitude I need if I am to practice the principles of Objectivism in all my affairs.

Writing philosophy can be fun. I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.





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