tisdag 29 december 2009

Charles S. Peirce on determinism (was: The metaphysics of contingency)

Dear Dino

I agree 100%!!!
And to Thomas, I'm not trying to play any games with words whatsoever. I just try to clarify our respective positions in this debate for us all to better understand science and scientific theory and how it relates to Mazdayasna. OK?

Brotherly love
Alexander

2009/12/29 Special Kain

«Were the ends of a person already explicit, there would be no room for development, for growth, for life; and consequently there would be no personality. The mere carrying out of predetermined purposes is mechanical. This remark has an application to the philosophy of religion. It is that genuine evolutionary philosophy, that is, one that makes the principle of growth a primordial element of the universe, is so far from being antagonistic to the idea of a personal creator, that it is really inseparable from that idea; while a necessitarian religion is in an altogether false position and is destined to become disintegrated. But a pseudo-evolutionism which enthrones mechanical law above the principle of growth is at once scientifically unsatisfactory, as giving no possible hint of how the universe has come about, and hostile to all hopes of personal relations to God.»

«Try to verify any law of nature, and you will find that the more precise your observations, the more certain they will be to show irregular departures from the law. We are accustomed to ascribe these, and I do not say wrongly, to errors of observation; yet we cannot usually account for such errors in any antecedently probable way.»

http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/necessity/necessity.htm


--- Special Kain schrieb am Di, 29.12.2009:

Von: Special Kain
Betreff: AW: [Ushta] Re: The metaphysics of contingency (was: Science applied to Ahura Mazda and Asha)
An: Ushta@yahoogroups.com
Datum: Dienstag, 29. Dezember 2009, 9:47


Dear Tomash

Compatibilism simply means that determinism and contingency aren't mutually exclusive. Both phenomena can, even though logically contradicting, coexist at the same place at the same time: within the very same world. The thing with tychism is that it conveys the idea of absolute chance: it's not only our limited understanding of the world's nature nor errors in statistical measurement techniques, but the world's very own nature that is probabilistic.
The point here is that we can't tell what's true: the world's nature vs. statistical measurement techniques. So, according to instrumentalism, we could simply say that BOTH claims are EQUALLY true, since the consequences are pretty much the same. And all our knowledge about the world and its forces and workings are based on experience: reality as we know it isn't independent of our experiences, whether that's conducting research or reading scientific books and talking with scientists and researchers.
So rather than talking in terms of determinism/ indeterminism or compatibilism/ incompatibilism I prefer the words tychism, necessarism and probabilism.

Ushta, Dino

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