I was reading in bed last night getting ready to go to sleep. As my eyes were closing, I hear a loud screeching sound. My eyes opened and wondered whether a character from my book was coming to get me. I laughed as I began to realize what was making that noise.
An Owl.
I love owls. They are mysterious creatures to me. Their eyes open wide staring at you like they can see into your soul. It is a bit unsettling, I will admit, but I still like the affect. Their cries in the night unsettle me. It disturbs my comfort with the material world around me reminding me there is something more. It is no wonder that people have often associated the owl with wisdom or a messenger. Fanciful? Maybe. but I still like the idea. Yet another reason why JK Rowling is so cool.
But seriously, about owls. In Columbus where I live, apparently there is now an invasion of owls. No one is quite sure why this might be the case. There is an article in the Columbus Dispatch about it.
Anyway, what's not to like about owls? Well, unless you are walking alone in the woods at night. I have heard that the screams from the owls can kinda freak you out. And, I am guessing the eyes in the night are kinda scary too. But then again, maybe it reminds us by the prickling of our skin, the hair raising on the back of our necks, and our heart racing when we hear the owl, that there is something more. Something beyond what we cannot see but is just as real.
AJ Ayer, a philosphy professor of language did not think so. He thought that language could only convey something true if it was talking about something scientifically verifiable. At least, that is how I understand his theory so far. So, if i say, the Owls eyes or hoots remind me of something other that cannot be seen. I am just speaking my feelings about it, not what is really true. Or if I say a waterfall is beautiful, it is only my feelings, not any real sense true.
Confusing? Of course it is. And in reality, the philosophy behind it is all wrong. How? with a simple question, can Professor Ayer tell me if his statement about science his feeling or can it be proven? Isnt it a vicious cycle? Isnt the theory self refuting? I dunno. I hope I am not doing him a disservice. I hope I am stating his theory correctly. It seems his feelings about science go beyond his own theory.
Personally, I am gonna still be freaked out and love owls. Those are my feelings. They can only be true for me, right?
2 comments:
I like it! I especially liked the part about the self-refuting philosophy. I'm interested in self-refuting theories of mind. My favorite book on this is Miracles by C.S. Lewis. It's pretty old, but it is prescient in its understanding of this topic. Most of my ideas are from it. It's better to be right than original.
One of the main points of the book is how materialist neuroscientists develop theories of mind that reduce it to ONLY neurons firing, and in so doing, disprove the existence of thought. But in order to create this theory, they used thinking. So they use thinking to prove that there is no such thing as thinking. In the words of GK Chesterton: "There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped" (from Orthodoxy. The chapter called "Suicide of Thought" is also uncanny in its prescience and insight.)
The materialistic theory goes like this: A neuron receives signals and if it reaches a threshold, it fires. If these neurons are arranged in complex networks, mind, reason, and consciousness emerge.
But this is wishful thinking. Neurons are going to do what they are going to do and that's that. Fantastic, complex behaviors may "emerge" from a complex network - behaviors that may even fool a human into thinking the biological machine is fully human. But although the complexity of behaviors emerging from a highly complex network may be impressive, it is only a quantitative gain, not a qualitative one. The materialistic neuron machine is completely deterministic. It therefore has no free will. It therefore cannot reason in the truest sense. It can receive inputs and give outputs (which may be very interesting), but the machine cannot know truth. It can only do what it in fact does.
Some people claim that a materialististic brain is not deterministic because quantum physics is not deterministic. Quantum physics is not deterministic, but quantum physics only describes very tiny things. Pool balls, however, are deterministic. Neurons are tiny, but they are more like pool balls than electrons in their behavior. Francis Crick, in his book "The Astonishing Hypothesis," even insisted that quantum physics need not be invoked. Just plain old chemistry will be needed to explain the brain. And even if we believe quantum physics holds the key to mind, how does its probabalistic nature fix our problem of knowing truth? It has just made matters worse.
If you are a materialist, where is this mysterious force called "my will" that makes a neuron zig instead of zag? If there is no such thing as forces outside of nature, then neurons are simply doing what they do. I have read of several neuroscientists who acknowledge the absence of free will. They say that having the illusion of free will helps me survive and so has persisted through the eons. But what about their own scholarly work? What gives them the priviledged position of objective observer? Their theory that destroys free will also destroys thought. But they used thinking to to create their theory. So they've knocked the legs out from under themselves.
The only rational, consistent way to live, then, is to acknowledge that there must be something outside of nature working on our brains (to make us zig instead of zag). This something is called our will. So in every human brain, a miracle is going on. Our will and reason is bending nature to its desires. Note that reason must be outside of nature because of the asymmetrical relationship between nature and free will. Reason can manipulate nature, resulting in a book or a house. In contrast, nature can only bring reason down. Any irrational effect on pure reason makes that reason suspect: "You're only saying that because you're tired." "You only believe that because you're a man." Or, "You're only saying that because neurons in your head are firing a certain way right now, which is interesting, but it has nothing to do with truth."
So humans have a will that is outside of nature. But humans are not self-existent. We only exist because our parents procreated. We are derivative. Therefore, it makes sense that our wills are derivative. They could be derivative of something that itself is derivative, but this only pushes the problem back one step. Our wills must ultimately spring from a will that is self-existent. A self-existent will sounds like one way to describe God to me.
This is getting long and I need to go and I've realized that this topic is out of my reach to discuss well, but one last quote from Orthodoxy that is pertinent:
"In so far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are both of the same primary and authoritative kind. They are both methods of proof which cannot themselves be proved. And in the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum."
"...But in order to create this theory, they used thinking. So they use thinking to prove that there is no such thing as thinking."
--Nice. I think points like this are constantly overlooked in philosophical discussions, especially when it comes to belief in God. Reminds me of a quote by Cornelius Van Til in his essay "Why I Believe in God":
"Now, in fact, I feel that the whole of history and civilization would be unintelligible to me if it were not for my belief in God. So true is this, that I propose to argue that unless God is back of everything, you cannot find meaning in anything. I cannot even argue for belief in Him, without already having taken Him for granted. And similarly I contend that you cannot argue against belief in Him unless you also first take Him for granted. Arguing about God's existence, I hold, is like arguing about air. You may affirm that air exists, and I that it does not. But as we debate the point, we are both breathing air all the time. Or to use another illustration, God is like the emplacement on which must stand the very guns that are supposed to shoot Him out of existence."
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