What if the Theory of Evolution is Right? (Part I)

I remember I found a book in a library in the 1980s by David Bohm, called "Wholeness and the implicate order". One of the strangest books I have ever come across. Just found it on the net:

http://www.gci.org.uk/Documents/DavidBohm-WholenessAndTheImplicateOrder.pdf

MindWalk wrote:

einstein99, I am not sure why you say what you say, in the face of the evidence painstakingly gathered over many years by many scientists. Do you deny that they have gathered evidence? Do you interpret that evidence differently than they do?

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It's hard to proove anything past DNA testing abilities Mind Walk.

Empirism was great at revealing mistakes of rationalism, but it made as many mistakes as the latter. Kant put an end to both of them.

Here is a great book about Kant (the first part): http://www.amazon.com/Transcritique-Kant-Marx-Kojin-Karatani/dp/0262612070

No amount of evidence is sufficient to defeat the most enthusiastically willful blindness.

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

— John Heywood (1546)

Some say he swiped it from Jeremiah 5:21

Delightful!

   Phooey, Barto, Kant is dead. Obsolete, too. Chuck it out.

   Elroch, I have read many dull and boring books in my life. Nowadays, my time horizon is rather limited. So, I must choose wisely. I perused that book and it was a zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

And what "killed" him now?

Science can't really do it, because it is limited empirical facts. To disprove a philosophical theory that goes beyond that you first need philosophy.

I have to agree. And I observe that I am less easy to impress these days.

zborg wrote:

Time for you to follow up with your 5th or 6th juvenile block, @PawnWhacker ?

That you pretend to be an adult is a measure of your shame.

Keep up the Charade...and have a nice day.

I agree with you 100% zborg. pawnwhacker is either a child or a very immature adult who has wasted his life reading trash books and wasting his life reading many books based on lies! I direct the following quote from my friend Ritu to pawnwhacker ... "Your mind is a garden, your thoughts are seeds, you can grow flowers or you can grow weeds". THINK PAWNWHACKER!!!

Zapped ?....Hi !....Where have you been ?

Hello my friend The_Ghostest_Lola. I've been studying the psychiatric problems of a certain insulting monkey causing division of human beings all over the world on this thread. I hope everything has been going well with you. P.S. I really admire your intelligence. P.S. to the P.S. THERE IS A GOD AND THE WORLD WE LIVE ON IS BILLIONS OF YEARS OLD AND GOD CREATED MAN IN HIS IMAGE!!! HUMAN BEINGS ARE THE LAST AND GREATEST CREATION OF GOD ALMIGHTY!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzh4avgiwWU

   btw...that's no way to talk about my friend zborg!

   Anyway, zappy, have a nice day. Some tea, too, to calm your nerves.

   Under a rock?

Science is not truth. Science is a method for finding out truths, and for constructing the best-confirmed model we have of our bodies and of the world we live in.

Of course science tells us about what we perceive (in the broad sense that includes detection by scientific instruments).

Look, I begin from my own mental sensations. My own. Nobody else's. And I make the fundamental metaphysical assumption that there is an objectively existing reality--you know, the one that includes apples and oranges, tables and chairs, lions and tigers, and so on--even though I know that I could be in the Matrix. And I make the fundamental epistemic assumption that my senses give me reasonably reliable (though nowhere near complete) information about objectively existing reality. I couldn't think of other people as having moral worth if I didn't make those assumptions, for without them, I wouldn't have any reason to think that they actually existed, and they can only have moral worth if they exist. Having made those assumptions, I then have reason to think that other people's senses give them reasonably reliable information about objectively existing reality, too. I can trust, to some extent, what they say about the world as evidential. So, I can look at an animal and ask, "Is that a tiger," and the person next to me says, "Yes, I think it is," and his saying so means something to me, because I think he's part of the same world I'm part of and sees the same objects in the world that I see. And this commitment to there being an objectively existing reality which we intersubjectively observe allows me to see the project of science as worthwhile, for science is based on the observations of many people over much time.

But science "sees" more than I see, for scientists can build instruments to detect ultraviolet radiation and infrared radiation and X-rays and microwaves, and so on--scientific instruments can detect what I myself cannot perceive. Human senses are extended by scientific instruments. And I thereby learn more about the world than just what I can see, or what you can see, or what anybody can see. And scientists organize great masses of observational data and notice patterns and regularities in those data and come up with theories explaining and unifying those patterns and regularities, and I understand the world better. Science forms an integrated, well-tested, well-confirmed model of the world, a much better one than I myself can form of the world, since it takes into account all sorts of observations that I myself have not made and all sorts of patterns and regularities that I myself have not noticed. Is it a perfect model? Not yet. Is it the best model we have? Yes. Is it Cosmic Truth? No. Are we getting closer to Cosmic Truth? Well, we hope so--but only if there really is an objectively existing reality of which our senses really do give us reasonably reliable information.

To say that science tells us about what we observe rather than about what is true is both to make the Kantian point that we cannot get at the things-in-themselves, although it would be more accurate to say that although we might be able to get at the things-in-themselves, we cannot know that we really are. It is only to repeat that we are making fundamental assumptions. It is not to undermine science as our best and only way of finding out truths about the world around us.

I suspect that you and I would differ about who is really making contributions to modern philosophy. I am not a big fan of Continental philosophy, generally speaking. I see an awful lot of it as obfuscation and complicated ways of saying either what is wrong or what is meaningless. (I don't know about Badiou or Zizek, not having read either, even though I seem to vaguely recall having looked up Zizek at some point and not being impressed.) What I think philosophy can do is *clarify*, not *obfuscate*.

The point about Kant's responding to Hume is a good one.

pawnwhacker, you keep using the word "dead" in a metaphorical way without telling us what you mean by it. We are asking for clarification. What does it mean to say that philosophy is "dead"?

Elroch, I actually have the Bohm book Wholeness and the Implicate Order. I picked it up many years ago, as it looked interesting. I've only read less than half--I had a lot of trouble with it (and with its deliberately odd language), and although I keep thinking I'll return to it one day, I never do.

I can't help noticing how some people--not just einstein99--seem incapable of answering questions, instead making replies that don't answer the questions. Why is that?

good and very nice