> Don, I was trying to widen the frame of reference, and I am not sure that I
> succeeded. My sense is that you took the opportunity to expand upon the
> point you had in mind but read no further. That's O.K., but in the process
> you raise even more, and more importantly misunderstood, problems.
Yes, I have trouble with this medium. I like to deal with one idea at
a time. All the conversations I've participated in result in an abrupt
end with no idea what might have been the reason(disinterest,
disagreement, etc.).
>>Bruce, I was not joking.
>
> I did not think you were joking. When I said I thought you might have been
> ironic in your comments I meant to imply a kind of judgemental view, which
> appears to be the case. And a judgemental view tends to block perception.
>
Here we go again. You are going to pretend to not be judgemental because
you choose to play the "value free" objectivity game? Sorry for trying to
be honest.
>>Whatever criterea you have for defining
>>"religion" I think science will meet them.
>
> If science met all and any criteria used to define religion would they not
> be identical?
No.
>It is more useful, I think, to consider them as related but
> in ways depending upon various definitions and functions. For instance, I
> would agree that, for some people, faith in scientific methods and
> knowledge provides deep criteria for truth and other values. For others,
> science means only technological know-how, which provides little more than
> techniques for securing money and power, etc. While this may be a religion,
> by most of the criteria of traditional religions it involves the worship of
> false values/Gods.
Science is at least three things.
1) what scientists do.
2)what scientists believe.
3)some collective of ideas accumulated over time in the name of science.
>
>>The Cartesian Reductionist paradigm in effect won over the Church
>>in the battle for controlling minds.
>
> Well, the battle for minds still goes on. Certainly the rise of science has
> been triumphant in many ways. But scientific knowledge provides only
> partial answers to many vital questions. Over the past century or so many
> thinkers (e.g. existentialists but also others) have emphasized that
> (Cartesian) analytic rationality is inherently limited in its capacity to
> comprehend and deal with all the problems of human life. While analytic
> methods have had much success, faith in the idea that all phenomena are
> reducible to physics has not been proven in the event, and there are many
> reasons to doubt that it will ever be. Any any rate, for now, other
> approaches are also necessary.
>
> The main point is that to consider the problem as an "either-or" i.e.
> science or irrationality, is to misunderstand the human condition.
>
So who does this?
>>We work within a belief structure so effective that most of
>>us believe that we don't. Pirsig (sp?) in "Zen and the art of
>>motorcycle maintainence" aptly refered to the "Church of reason".
>
> Most of us most of the time work with a belief structure that we were
> brought up with, but not always because it is so effective. It is simply
> what we are used to, and it seems to be the case that a great many people
> have great faith in belief structures that in fact create all kinds of
> problems for themselves and others. Most of us continue to stick with the
> faiths of our fathers until we are close to catastophe, and forced to
> examine the assumptions we have been making. It is a difficult process, not
> at all one of pure rationality. The belief in the primacy of rationality is
> itself a faith that is today causing many problems (See Voltaire's
> Bastards, by John Ralston Saul).
I was refering to us scientists withj the "we". I don't see how any of
what you say pertains.
>
>>No, its not a joke. And with fundamentalism on the rise everywhere,
>>I won't venture a prediction of the outcome.
>
> Fundamentalism is among other things a symptom of unmet human needs, and
> will not be overcome unless the innate human needs being expressed are met
> in otherwise adequate ways. Most science, including psychiatry and
> psychoanalysis, fails in this.
There is a "fundamentalism" in the scientific religion as well.
>
>>I agree with Bruce, that anyone who refuses to take this
>>seriously is probably going to suffer for it.
>
> Well, this is not what I said or meant. I think that if we all together do
> not take questions related to higher values seriously we will all together
> suffer, but we may suffer in any case, even in the process of coming to
> terms with such values.
The "suffer" I meant was that which comes from neclecting something important,
not that which comes from struggling to understand.
>
> To bring it back to PCP, scientific systems and cybernetics, the key values
> lie not so much in the avoidance of pain and suffering but in being able to
> learn, and to find more desirable and attainable goals and alternatives. I
> think this is what the higher values of creativity and freedom are all
> about. These are also more illuminated by a cybernetic frame of reference
> than by a model of conflict between reason and desire, or between science
> and religious fundamentalism.
As far as I can see we never were away from PCP, etc. and you
suggestion that we were makes my point.
Yours in the farce! Don mikulecky