Central School of Speech and Drama
On The Need For A Renaissance: The resynthesis of art, philosophy and science
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MartyGull
'Just as human consciousness is an 'emergent property' of particles and processes which are, in themselves, insentient, might 'God' be an emergent property of human consciousness? The 'sacred' is an abstract concept, not a physical 'reality'. But so is 'love'. Does love 'exist'? Most people would accept love's existence as an axiom of humanity, even though its substance, nature and meaning (or even 'truth') are subject to much doubt and debate. If we replace the term 'God' (with its connotations of a supernatural creator, omniscient and omnipotent) with 'a sense of the sacred', we may be closer to finding the 'meaning' of life. Meaning is in art and aesthetics, not in unquestioning dogma. Art as entertainment distracts us from reality. Art, as a sense of the divine, brings us closer to it. We need both. Now more than ever. A collaborative, surreal, satirical, tragicomic piece of musical political theatre about a gullible martyr would seem to be a fine way of linking the two. As the Chinese politely curse, "May you live in interesting times..." We do...'

Extract from The ‘Meaning’ of Life at http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=145359468827583

See also 01. Marty Gull - Open Invitation for Collaboration on a New Musical Art Form at
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=141706402526223
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replied to:  MartyGull
MartyGull
Replied to:  'Just as human consciousness is an 'emergent property' of particles and...
'I need to determine where in this swamp of unbalanced formulas squateth the toad of truth' (The Big Bang Theory)

Depends on what you mean by 'truth'. 2+2=4 may be true, but that doesn't mean anything other than 2+2=4. It is an axiom. To ask what it means is meaningless. You either accept it or you don't. If you do, it doesn't mean anything. And if you don't, then (mathematically) you can't say anything else. Read up on Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems Only in aesthetics and ethics will you find meaning - and (I suspect) it is meaning that people want from their truths, rather than mere pedantic consistency.

(For a 'simple' explanation, read up on Objectivism, Subjectivism and Relativism, and sophisticated variations thereof in 'Humour in the Holocaust - Instalment 1 of 7 - Chapter 1: Introduction. What are laughter,comedy and humour?' at
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=145385445491652 – about halfway down).

Maths is not a meaningful language because its notation has no subtext or context. It communicates nothing. However, its self-referential expansion to develop consistent patterns of logic (which some find elegant and beautiful, expressing infinite complexities in pithy formulas – like poetry but with numbers) hints at something deeper... Truth is intangible. Like the humble electron, it is affected by our clumsy measurements. Once you realize that it cannot be grasped, only then have you truly understood it. Truth, like humanity, is inherently paradoxical, a probability waveform. Confused? If so, good. Like quantum theory, if you think you understand it, then you don't! That's a good starting place for science and art...

'... as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.' – Albert Einstein.

Started to do some introductory reading on 'information theory'. The basic idea seems to be an extension of logical positivism. We can't ever know what things 'really' are. We can only know information – basically computer logic/OR gates, binary code, 1 and 0. So all science really does is reduce everything to 1 or 0. I suppose it's the reductionism of scientific knowledge that irritates lyricist physicists. I think that poetic, imprecise language and undefinable feelings of awe come closer to the 'truth' than pithy mathematical formulas. But if I was building a telescope or a spacecraft, I'd rather rely on the engineer's precise calculations than the bodge merchant waxing lyrical. Like most writers, I flit between instruction manuals and myths!

'Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.' – Don Hirschberg

Depends on what you mean by 'religion'... For myself, I would say this: if you are religious then you believe that things in the natural world HAVE a meaning and a purpose (given to them by something supernatural like a god or gods); if you are atheistic then you believe that things may be GIVEN a meaning and a purpose only be sentient beings in the natural world (or not, as you wish). This means that Atheism is not the LACK of belief but simply a different FORM of belief, the primacy of the tangible over the intangible. Tangibility is a very sticky subject, as the physical world and the senses are not as intuitive as many people think. The attached debate map on Probability, Statistics and Bikinis will give the intrepid reader some idea of the rhizomatic epistemological crosswiring needed to jumpstart a consistent argument.

See 8. Debate Map at
http://weedle.com/teacher-of-drama-film-media-philosophy-writing+westcliff-on-sea-united-kingdom+chris.port

63b45731d7cb411e82eaf794580a1063.docx

We are somewhere between the world of the senses and the world of the mind. Although, if there isn’t really such a thing as ‘I’, I don’t really have too much of a problem with an equally ‘non-existent’ god...

Atheism is a belief, but it is neither a religion nor a philosophy.

Good opening gambit ****. I hope everyone has a glass of vodka to hand... I agree that atheism is not a religion (although there are some sophist lines of argument that could be used to demonstrate a 'family resemblance'). These would be specious, however. My main big thing point is that atheism is a positive belief system rather than just a negative rejection of a belief system. I suppose I'm creating a distinction between 'devout' atheists (those who have pondered the issues and made a philosophical choice) and 'casual' atheists (those who just can't be bothered with thinking and see religion as either nutty or naff). I don’t think we need waste too much time and thought on casual fashion atheists since they have little of interest to contribute to the debate. Atheism may not (yet) be a recognized school of philosophy, but it does require philosophical thinking to become an active choice rather than a lazy opt-out. I suspect Dawkins et al are beavering away to make atheism a consistent philosophical doctrine. But I agree it’s not quite there yet. How’s the vodka going down ****? :-)

Atheism is not a religion, being a very very very strong Atheist i can tell you that my Atheism covers more than religion for me, i also do not believe in ghosts, santa, tooth fairy, unicorns, gremlins, ogres, fairies etc etc, Atheism is just a word that tells people that's what my opinion is, its not a religion at all... ever....ever.... never ever :). For me its just a word i use so people know what i think without going into detail and explaining every aspect and why i came to that conclusion :D

I would argue that a passionate atheist must deal with profound consequences for their views on life, morality, meaning etc (whether they initially realize it or not). They have a much tougher task ahead of them than dogmatic deists. The ma...in comfort of religion is that, regardless of the suffering and injustice of the natural world, there is some supernatural plan at work. There will be some form of divine judgment and justice. It will all 'come out in the wash', so just try to be a nice person and all will be well. Marxists despise and reject this comfort as a con-trick and a false cosiness, the so-called ‘opium of the people’. Once this comforting narcotic outlook is rejected, there are some soul/mind-chilling consequences of ‘reality’ to deal with. I would argue that a passionate atheist must go through the same traumas of belief as the most angst-ridden religionist experiencing a ‘crisis of faith’. At heart, atheism is the belief that human beings must make the best of this life because that’s all there is. It is a huge responsibility, and the scale of the task is daunting. Atheism, if devout (and yours does seem to be in the sense of heartfelt rather than religious) takes great courage (and an advisable sense of absurd). I think the closest I’ve come to an atheist ‘school’ of philosophy is in the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ (Samuel Beckett, etc.). It’s funny, painful, liberating and chastening. Like looking at the stars. Makes you think sometimes... :-)

I don't believe that such a thing as a devout atheist can exist. Atheism is merely a reaction to a religion. Without religion, it could not exist. Imagine how many things don't exist, which we haven't imagined. We can only disbelieve in them once they have been imagined. I don't see how anyone can be devout about something which is both entirely reactionary entirely reliant upon opposition in order to exist. A Christian can be devout without atheists to compare themselves to. An atheist can't be devout without a Christian to compare themselves to. What you're really discussing, I feel, are things which are somewhat removed from theology itself. I see no reason to give religion credibility it doesn't deserve by opposing it against atheism as some kind of equal rival. I don't even like the idea of calling myself an atheist for this reason. Simply, take god out of the equation, and discuss philosophy, not atheist philosophy.

****, you're walking into a philosophical MINEFIELD with some of those terms! I think Dawkins would get quite upset hearing you describe atheism as 'merely a reaction to religion'! Instead, he would probably argue that it is a justified true belief based on rigorous, testable, painstaking research and logic, whereas religion is empirically untestable and has failed to address the rational inconsistencies in its own belief system. Equally, I think it is unfair to dismiss religion as undeserving of credibility. For all its faults (and I agree, there are MANY faults with religion) there can also be great wisdom and compassion and, indeed, great art. The various religions are, to some extent, schools of philosophy in that they consider some of the deepest questions of life. Where they fail by modern philosophical standards is that they ultimately require their adherents to accept their doctrines on the basis of good faith rather than logical consistency. This is where it all gets TERRIBLY complicated. The usual cop-out is to claim that perhaps it is more logical to interpret religions as artistic and moral parables rather than literal ‘truths’. However, this does seem a bit hypocritical as religions don’t usually promote themselves as ‘art’! Wittgenstein (the later) pulled up his ladder at that point. My main concern is that people THINK and DEBATE rather than settle for easy answers. If you haven’t already seen it, I strongly recommend the film ‘The Ninth Configuration’ which addresses many of the issues we have been discussing. Whether you agree or disagree with the film’s premise and conclusions, I think it is a fascinating, emotional and thought-provoking film. I think the You Tube links are buried somewhere in my notes...

Here we are... On The Problem of Evil... Watch one of my favourite films (another influence on Marty)
The Ninth Configuration
http://www.facebook.com/notes.php?id=100001403528442¬es_tab=app_2347471856#!/note.php?note_id=148466198516910
I particularly like Part 6 of 11 (9’27”) – Hamlet and Insanity for Dogs (5:00-8:34)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS15hKv0UEASee More

I disagree with you about Dawkins, and actually I disagree with you for the precise reasons that you give...
The scientific method is built on peer review. Exactly as you described, atheists reviewed the empirical and statistical evidence for and against both religion and atheism, and found religion wanting. It is in exactly this sense that I mean it is a reaction to religion. Moreover, an awful lot of painstaking research goes into criticising and reviewing scientific theories, most of which turn out to be false. The amount of work gone into proving it false is irrelevant, surely. x is false, but I don't become a 'believer in disbelieving x'. It just falls by the wayside as another disproven theory. If false theoryx isn't imagined, then it has no need to be disproven. I'd like you to not imagine something, then to disprove it :) Atheism - ESPECIALLY in the way that Dawkins and co go about it, is entirely reliant on religion...as can be seen by the combative nature of all of those guys...

When I say that religion is not even a valid rival of atheism, I mean this in a strictly scientific sense. I am all for the philosophy behind religion, but religion without god is just that...philosophy.

Leaving aside the semantic quibble of whether atheism is ‘reactionary’ (yes it is, chronologically and methodologically, but the current resurgence of religious fundamentalism is a political reaction to Enlightenment values) we’re now blundering into an ontological quagmire. Even logical consistency (as exemplified by mathematics) has some shaky claims on ‘truth’.

Truth, logic and consistency are human constructs. We attribute importance to them for various practical, moral and aesthetic reasons. Pattern recognition and consistency have evolved in our species because they were useful survival traits.... So, once, was religion. Whether it is now a help, a hindrance or a harm is currently the subject of much heated debate. The real question is whether science and religion are actually talking about the same thing. Dawkins is happy to allow artistic fiction to tell us meaningful truths about life (he is a cultured, aesthetic writer) but he is not happy to allow religion to do the same because (a) he believes it is a fiction posing as a truth, but more importantly (b) because he believes it is harmful. Art, if you like, is a ‘good’ lie and religion is a ‘bad’ lie. Even in its benign, compassionate form, he believes that religious belief acts as the thin end of the wedge for irrational indoctrination (often without choice) and, ultimately, an intolerance of scientific methodology. In essence, there is no middle ground or fence to sit on. I agree with most of what he says, but I do see some gaps in communication. We have a good old dialectic here: science versus religion, each making moral claims about what is ‘good’ for humanity. Is there a synthesis, or do we have to jump one way or the other? I would plead for some breathing space to allow Wittgenstein’s ‘language games’ to develop a more ‘artistic’ dialogue. Stop worrying about ‘reality’ (whatever that may be) and start analyzing how we communicate.

A guy in the street asked me if I believed in ever lasting life. I said no. He asked me if I'd ever thought about it. I said "yeah, when I was a child." He asked me if I believed in God. I said" I don't have time for this. I'm late for work...." He said "God will always have time for me and that it's never too late to find time for him." I said "fair enough mate but I really can't stand here having a protracted conversation with you, I've got somewhere to be." He said "we all have a place to be and..." I interrupted him and said "look mate I said I CAN'T have a protracted conversation with you and now you are causing me to do exactly that. I don't care if God exists or he doesn't. It makes no difference to me in the slightest. I believe in sex, drugs and rock n roll." He laughed. It wasn't really a joke. How rude of that man to laugh at my beliefs when I never took the Michael out of him for clearly being mentally challenged.

LMAO I won't waste any of your time ******. But, if nothing else, God is good for nutters and jokes. I've come up with a new word. Apatheist: someone who is apathetic about God. Good luck with the hedonism. Sex and drugs and rock n roll. Now Dionysus, THERE was a god who knew how to have a good time... None of this everlasting life rubbish. Drink, dance, fornicate with serpents, then get torn to bits by sex-crazed women and have your head carried into town by your mum on a pole. Who said religion was boring?

I agree, the problem with religion is that it a) tries to prove science as false and b) is fiction posing as truth. I see no harm with any religion/philosophy that knows its rightful place. And I only know OF the language games...I know no...thing about them. Something I have to look into, I think. Any recommendations for a starting point?

You could try ‘Wittgenstein: Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology & Religious Belief’ edited by Cyril Barrett. Nothing written directly by the mad old boy here. It’s a compendium of notes taken by his tweedy pipe-chewing students in his private rooms in Cambridge in the summer of 1938.

Bertrand Russell on God (1959)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqyVrJtM7Ik

A great man, a lucid thinker, and a twinkle-eyed speaker. Oh bring back ‘talking heads’ TV (and civilized, albeit foolish, smoking). I highly recommend ‘The Problems of Philosophy’ as an introduction to those who want to start thinking clearly about life, the universe and everything. As an analytic philosopher, I think Russell sometimes got ‘truth’ entangled with consistency. Depends on what you mean by ‘truth’. And, like (the later) Wittgenstein, I don’t think you can meaningfully separate ‘truth’ from use. For example, what is the ‘truth’ (or the use) of a chair? To the unthinking universe, it is just some atoms amidst other atoms, which are mostly empty space anyway. To the egocentric cat, it is just a convenient snoozing perch. To human beings, it can be something to relax on, something to eat on, a carpenter’s work of art and beauty, something to sign a war or peace treaty on, something to interrogate a man on, something to kick away from under a man’s feet and hang him. So, what is the ‘truth’ of a chair? Analytic philosophy usually reveals only the truth (or consistency) of the analytical language, not the ‘truth’ of the subject. ‘Truth’ is a human observation, a pattern, Wittgenstein’s ‘family resemblance concept’, not an inherent quality. So, brilliant and lovable as he was, Russell was actually mostly wrong. But he did get a lot right! 9/10 from me :-) He was wise enough to realize that his slightly bonkers protege, Wittgenstein, was a revolutionary philosophical genius. “He maintained, for example, at one time that all existential propositions are meaningless. This was in a lecture room, and I invited him to consider the proposition: 'There is no hippopotamus in this room at present.' When he refused to believe this, I looked under all the desks without finding one; but he remained unconvinced.” Wittgenstein was elusive on the subject of God, though I suspect his ‘ladder’ leads to something metaphysical (I’m now climbing into misty skies of understanding!). "My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)" Then, it gets a bit complicated...

‘A common misconception is that philosophy is something like religion really. A good line to take in the face of this is to observe that philosophy is concerned with the undermining and questioning of dogmas, whereas religion is all about accepting and supporting them.’ (Jim Hankinson, ‘Bluff Your Way In Philosophy’).

(On the ‘Presocratics’) ‘... not all of them came before Socrates, and in any case they formed no coherent school: many of them in fact didn’t even form coherent individuals.’ (Ibid.)

(On the ‘Sceptics’, who didn’t believe anything) ‘It is said that Pyrrho’s scepticism was such that friends repeatedly had to stop him from walking off cliffs, under passing chariots, into rivers, which must have been a full-time job, although they seem to have been pretty good at it, as he lived to a ripe old age. He is said to have visited the Indian Gymnosophists, or ‘naked philosophers’, so-called from their habit of conducting nude seminars. He once got so irritated by repeated public questioning that he stripped off his clothes (perhaps under the influence of the Gymnosophists) leaped into the illusory River Alphaeus, and swam powerfully away, a tactic the hard-pressed bluffer might well consider emulating.’ (Ibid.)
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replied to:  MartyGull
MartyGull
Replied to:  'I need to determine where in this swamp of unbalanced formulas...
Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww

Hmm. I would like to throw Lyotard’s ‘performativity’ and Smolin’s ‘group think’ into Harris’ mix. There is (unfortunately) no inevitability of scientific paradigms converging on Harris ‘factspace’ of empathy and compassion. By way of counter-factual example, see Francis Fukuyama’s optimistically myopic ‘End of History’!

“What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” ('The End of History and the Last Man', Francis Fukuyama, 1992)

I agree with Harris’ inferred advocacy of moral expertise which seems reminiscent of Plato’s philosopher kings. However, politics has always been about the pursuit of power rather than truth, and science is just pissing in the wind when it goes against expediency. That is why I am so wary of giving the language of science any moral authority. In ‘The Postmodern Condition’ (1974), the postmodernist philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard predicted the growth of information technology and the breakdown of the nation state to be replaced by multi-national corporations and scientific discourse. According to Lyotard, science cannot legitimize its own activity. It must turn to narrative (political and philosophical). However, the general decline in metanarratives after the Second World War led science to try and legitimize itself through performativity. What kind of research will generate more research of the same kind? Moral claims on the objective search for truth are soon compromized in the political wheeler-dealing required to secure funding and careers. In ‘The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science and What Comes Next’ (2006), the theoretical physicist Lee Smolin is deeply critical of politics in science and the highly selective decision-processes created by ‘group think’.

Revising Popper with Wittgenstein, anomalous exceptions to a mostly accurate theory do not totally invalidate said theory. They merely indicate the inaccuracy of all generalizations and the advisability of applying a more context-specific theory. For example, Harris’s chess analogy of the law of queen conservation permits occasions when queen-sacrifice is more advantageous. So it is not a physical ‘law’, simply a general guideline. Science does not deal in general guidelines. It deals in non-negotiable physical processes. The language of science is not suited to the negotiations of meaning. The language of art is. I think that may even be the reason for art’s evolution. Morality may have discernable patterns, and data analysis of those patterns may yield valuable insights, but moral decisions are not suited to mathematical formulae.

If ‘values reduce to facts’ then why stop there? Science IS reductionism, an inexorable process of reduction to information theory. Information theory, by the reduction of language to 1s and 0s, has nothing to say. It is data for analysis, digital not analagous. What facts we reconstitute from that data are as analogous to values as freeze-dried rehydrated soup is to ‘the real thing’. To reduce the subjectivity of an experience to a mathematical model unavoidably reduces not only the quality of the experience but also the quality of the facts and their values. Moral values are not equivalent to numerical values, means-testing and points-systems. Claiming that facts are equivalent to values is slippery maths. Early Nazi euthanasia experiments on the mentally ill used rational, utilitarian economic arguments for their moral justification.

All Harris has ‘factually’ claimed is that values are a demonstrable result of biological complexity and sentient consciousness. He has not, however, defined any value system, any moral formula for us to prove that one value is correct while another value is incorrect. He’s just played a very clever language game blurring the linguistic uses of ‘value’ and ‘fact’ until they appear to be little more than synonyms. He has also neatly sidestepped Gödel's incompleteness theorem which proves that no system can prove the consistency of the system itself.

However, to sidestep is not to solve, it is simply to avoid with nimble footwork. There may be a ‘continuum’ of facts whereby we know what it’s like to live in a failed state, but in the ‘real world’ of chaotic interacting incompletely defined systems, science has not (and, I would claim, cannot) define or prove any complete or successful system. Evolution and progress are not synonyms for the same thing. Evolution is a reasonably consistent theory that explains bio-diversity. Progress is a rationally inconsistent attempt to map physical bio-diversity to metaphysical values. Values have no factual physical existence. Ultimtately (as I have said before) they are only as ‘true’ as 2+2=4. Values may be reduced to information theory but, like laughter and consciousness, I quote again from my dissertation: ‘... all theories... may be inherently flawed by their specific cultural context and choice of metaphor. From such a simple relativistic perspective, it may be the case that even our current theories inform us more about our society's pre-occupations with itself than about the ostensible phenomenon under discussion’ and ‘...if we try to explain consciousness and humour in terms of neurophysiology, the 'feeling' of it is somehow left behind.’ I would question whether any moral decision made without feeling is actually a moral decision at all. And if we wish to retain any feeling in our moral decisions, I do not think that scientific arguments should be given priority. An advisory capacity, yes, but the final decision should be holistic. If we defer morality to science we are attempting to sidestep our consciences. Some judgments are better than others, and some decision-takers are better qualified than others. History teaches us more useful morality lessons than science after that. Is history a science or an art? It’s a selection of narratives...
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