Tuesday, December 04, 2018

Intelligent Christianity creates the foundation for science, while the universities are trying to destroy it

I knew reading America's greatest philosopher, Charles Peirce, would pay off.  He has taught me the root of our current predicament.

You're baffled that supposedly intelligent people now claim there are 56 genders? Peirce informs us that the villain is William of Ockham. You say you're shocked? Isn't Ockham that awesome dude who said that the simpler is more likely to be true? Well, let me educate you. Ockham is an ass.

Plato got it wrong when he claimed that the redness we see in an apple is actually a property that exists in the World of Forms, and is only imperfectly instantiated in a particular apple. In other words, redness truly exists independently of any particular red things.

Then the greatest philosopher in the history of the world, Aristotle, said, "Master Plato, you're off your rocker." He explained that redness is a real thing but it only exists in particular objects.

Later, the Catholic Church fervently embraced Aristotle. Ockham was a devout Catholic, but he got some bad ideas from Muslim fools about God's omnipotence, and ended up concluding that what we call redness is just something humans impose on objects. To Ockham, there are just unique, particular things, and we invent classes and categories.  Do you hear a whisper here?  I can make it out: "Social construction..."

The amazing thing is that modern philosophers took Ockham and ran with it at the same time that modern science was progressing by leaps and bounds based on the old fashioned belief that there are such things as natural classifications. Not just hydrogen and helium, but male and female.

Ockham's view is called "nominalism." Aristotle's is called "realism."  Modern philosophers are generally nominalists, while scientists operate like realists, whether they know it or not.

Until now. Now we see social scientists take Ockham seriously, and it's no surprise that categories that were taken for granted for centuries are now under assault. Nominalists are ANTI-science. They tend to reduce all understanding to dust.

But you science lovers say,"We'll at least they aren't TRUE anti-science people like those evil Catholics." The truth is that in the Roman Catholic church, it is a damn HERESY to be a nominalist. I'm not kidding.

Intelligent Christianity creates the foundation for science, while the universities are trying to destroy it.

7 comments:

  1. So, "Inductivist", what do you make of Solomonoff Induction?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It seems reasonable to me. I kid Ockham.

      Delete
    2. So, all kidding aside, in your 'umble opinion, is Jonathan Haidt an ass:

      https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25346

      Or am I an ass?

      http://jimbowery.blogspot.com/2017/07/ockhams-guillotine.html

      Delete
  2. I disagree with Haidt. (I've had a vaguely negative feeling about him since we occupied adjacent bathroom stalls during a conference a couple years ago). In my view, all organisms, including humans, should ultimately be explained by one theory: evolutionary theory.

    ReplyDelete
  3. William O'Bilvion5:19 PM

    Didn't William of Ockham also say "Do not multiple your entities unnecessarily"?

    Which would put paid to this "Gender" nonsense.

    ReplyDelete
  4. lhtness5:21 PM

    Social constructionism isn't nominalism. It's more like selective-nominalism. You may find of interest "Wrestling with the Social Boa Constructor" in the book "Forms of Desire".

    ReplyDelete
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