Hi Metazoan,
I appreciate the clarity of your posts. To begin with I want to address some things you said to Nickolai before moving to ‘our’ dialogue.
You wrote:I'm not sure who the 'we' is referring to, as the set 'we' does not contain me, it is a little puzzling. It is irrelevant how many people think something is true, it does not make it true.
‘We’ does indeed refer to you, but to a ‘You’ only as an ‘Other’ – an assumed subject. Thus, there would not be a ‘we’ without an ‘I’ and ‘You.’ The ‘I’ includes the ‘You’ – ‘You’ as an alterity, into the ‘We.’
You wrote:These are invalid deductions; life is just a four letter word. The word does not modify life, it is just a handle to aid communications. The manner in which you use the word must be consistent with the idea to which it is attached.
There is no doubt that ‘life’ is just a four letter word. But the word itself, being diachronic, not only modifies, and changes what ‘life’ means over time, we cannot ‘talk,’ study ‘life’ without this ‘word,’ concept. For example, what life meant, what life was, say five hundred years ago (generally speaking) – was life before God, has changed to a quantified life – before the discourse of science.
Hence, we view the world through language. We interpret the world through epistemological structures of language/text. ‘We’ view life through our construction of what life is, life could mean one thing now and another later. Thus texuality not only mediates communication, it governs how ‘we’ view reality – 'there is no outside text' – as it infamously goes. There is no realm of 'ideas' outside language. Even the scientific discourse is subjected to language, for surely you 'read' what a scientist wrote about his findings etc.
Therefore the word, the ideas that we can only have through the word, from the word, is how ‘we’ view the world. ‘You’ and/or ‘I,’ we may use the word life – but for us to separate the signifier ‘life’ with its signified – the concept of life is itself is impossible – since the word encompasses both. For example, we cannot step outside of the texuality, outside language into the realm of concepts, to talk about ‘-------‘ since the ‘-------‘ is ‘nothing’ – that is we cannot speak about life without ‘life’ as a signifier and signified.
There is no realm of ideas without the ‘sign,’ the ‘word’ life - that splits its signifier and signified up - the signified - the concept itself is problematic but that's another post. Although the application of the word itself is arbitrary (referentially speaking), the use of it is always controlled, through such discourses as dictionaries, and other cultural power centres - such as educational facilities, that define the 'I' - the subject. Thus ‘Life’ is more than just a word, it is part of the textuality that shapes our ontology. To reiterate there is no 'life' outside the culturally constructed 'word' 'life.'
You wrote:This is MY definition. What I think has no bearing on what IS life or non-life in an objective sense, just on what I THINK is life or non-life.
If it is all ‘I think’ in a subjective sense – and ‘I think’ is only subjective then how can you ever argue that there is an 'objective,'
since you only view the supposed ‘objective’ from a subjective viewpoint? There is no separation between ‘what life is’ in its objective sense and your definition of what ‘life’ is. Both are from the subjective point of view. So this distinction between ‘what is’ and ‘my definition of life’ encompasses only your own subjective view of life. Moreover, if you say ‘life’ might mean other things to my definition, this ‘Other’ meaning of life is already contaminated by how, you, the subjective constructs (through a certain discourse) the meaning of ‘life.’ This ‘Other’ of ‘life’ is an ‘Othered’ assumption of what life means and is still within culturally constructed subjectivity – to borrow from Lacan. Thus this assumed distinction of ‘what life is’ in the objective sense to when you say "my definition of life" itself is a mistake. They are both subjective. However, I am not arguing the Cartesian 'I think.' Since despite the subjectivity, the 'I think' itself is a construction of a discourse, and so is 'life' as argued above.
You wrote:If it is purely metaphysical then all this talk is meaningless. If you can get a handle on it by all this changing definition lark then it can't be metaphysical by your definition.
I think what Nickolai means here is that the foundations of the scientific discourse is metaphysical. If one operates within the scientific discourse then one believes in its axioms – its truth statements, then there is meaning although the meaning rests on the foundation of metaphysics. Thus there exist and is derived from the so called truth statements of that discourse.
You wrote:I find it difficult to be sure I get your meaning, but I'll have a go, let me know if I have misunderstood.
You got my meaning.
But you haven’t here...
I wrote:when you say 'you don't have to define toast to make toast,' you already know/have defined toast.
You wrote:What I meant by that was: You don't have to define when bread becomes toast for bread to become toast.
This statement still doesn’t work. First at the point in time when you are saying it – you already know what toast is or you have some idea of what toast is – the characteristics that make it toast. Then you retroactively apply this meaning of toast and claim that could have made toast even without the knowledge of what toast is. For example, imagine now if you don’t know the noun: ‘--------‘ how can you say that you made it without having knowledge of what it is – you simply made something – and something could be anything. Thus when I say that you view evolution through the hypothesis of evolution – what I am arguing is that you are viewing a ‘temporal succession of events’ if such a thing exists, through the knowledge of evolution – of what you read about somewhere – or learned. Another example, say you want to get to point B from A, and you have
no knowledge of where point B is, you will never know how to get there, or if you are there, you won't know its point B until you
learn it. Thus you statement is faulty beccause you already know point 'B' and say you could have gotten to point B without knowledge of point B. If your claim were correct, first you would start off not knowing point B. Retroactively claiming something in the past that you say is possible from the knowledge of the present is a mistake.
You wrote:I believe the 'process of evolution' is a specific instance of positive feedback because it passes the test of behaving in a way consistent with that description. My hypothesis is one I view through my perception of positive feedback.
But earlier you wrote:
You wrote:I try to observe phenomenon through what I think is called the 'scientific method'. I could be wrong but it is about objectivity, repeatability and stuff.
‘I believe’ surely is subjective, then viewing a so called ‘objective, repeatable test’ is still subjective. My point is that there is no objective science, outside the scientific discourse, its own axioms - which is itself assumed to be objective - as an 'Othered' objectivity created from the subject/subjectivity.
You wrote:'Evolution as a theory of the process of the evolution of species by natural selection' holds considerable merit with me due to the evidence I see that is based upon my perception of the 'scientific method' being applied to my understanding of positive feedback, mutation, mitosis and other stuff.
And later:
You wrote:I do not insist on any theory being demonstrated with certainty. I believe Newton's laws of motion are wrong, it does not mean that I don't use them. )
I wrote:This is why evolution lacks merit because it can't be demonstrated with certainty - only with possibility.
My point here was not only to argue why ‘evolution’
lacks merit as opposed to
having merit, but to also show that my view on evolution is in a sense subjectively constructed and evaluated. In doing so, I wanted to show that merit is simply a qualitative judgement, that ‘my merit’ and ‘your merit’ are equally valid in a subjective sense - as opposed to objective.
Thus when you ask:
You wrote:Are you saying that Newton's laws of motion lack merit?
I can only answer from a subjective point of view – since this in itself is a qualitative question to me, not whether Newton was right or wrong quantative sense – but then again right and wrong are also qualitatively/quantative decided on subjective criteria (based in a certain discourse) – but that aside. Newton may be right – but I may still hold that he lacks merit. He may lack merit in part of his theory, but may have merit in another part. Thus merit is only a description of how I view it through a specific criterion, specific to the subject, as Rorty argues ‘anything can be made to look good or bad by being redescribed.’ Thus anything has the possibility to lack merit or have merit, just because I argue that ‘evolution’ lacks merit through my use of the criteria of certainty – doesn’t mean I think everything lacks merit on the bases of that specific criterion.
Things may fit that criterion and still have merit. There is no one fits all here. I only say ‘evolution’ lacks merit there because science presents itself as ‘objective’ and rigorous (generally speaking) and therefore certain in their own constructed ‘evidence,’ in their ‘tests.’
You wrote:Merit is not binary; some things hold more merit, in my eyes, than others.
Merit is a binary because if you make
qualitative judgements – you will say whatever the thing is - such as evolution, that there is the ‘
presence’ of merit as opposed to the ‘
absence’ of merit - or vice versa. Or some things have
‘more’ merit as opposed to something else that has
‘less’ merit. Thus here we enter the metaphysics of presence/absence.
