Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia; Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.
Post 107.March 08, 2020
The God Problem
A Self-Created Cosmos?
For Howard Bloom, the “problem of God” is that there is no God. So, how can we explain what he calls “cosmic creativity”? By that, he means the on-going emergence of novelties in a supposedly mindless mechanical system. The implicit epistemo-logical question of Special Creation versus Self-Existence eventually led him to speculate on “how a universe designs itself”. This is also the mystery addressed in the Enformation-ism thesis, and the Intelligent Evolution1 essay. Since I was deeply impressed by Bloom’s broad knowledge and deep wisdom as displayed in The Lucifer Effect, I approached this sequel with optimism. And I was not disappointed. Although he might not agree, I found his postulated process of self-creation, to be amenable to my own hypothesis of Evolutionary Creation via En-form-ation. The only significant disagreement is in the necessity for a First Cause to kick-start the construction, or computation, of a world from literally nothing, but Potential & Program; Power and Plan; Energy & Laws. In my worldview, the axiomatic Programmer had the Intention (Will) and Method (Rules) necessary to create an ongoing evolutionary process of self-construction for a contingent world.
In Barbara Ehrenreich’s Foreword, she suggests that Bloom’s search for a non-theistic agency in the world may have been triggered by the definitive denial of agency in modern Science. “The assumption of Western Science has been that the universe, or physical world, is dead . . . In practice this has meant that science is on a mission to crush all forms of agency.” Yet, she points out that the mechanistic model of reality cannot account for the non-linear non-robotic aspects of the world, such as the observation that “animals do not always perform according to mechanistic expectations — that among other things, they play.” This, despite Descartes’ opinion that animals are soulless machines. On the other hand, though, she notes that, “however grudgingly, the scientific worldview is being re-animated, which is not to say the world is being ‘re-enchanted’. “ Therefore, she concludes that, “agency, meaning also desire and will, is, in some form, everywhere.”
Note that she said “agency” not “agent”. An agency is an organization or organism, while an agent is a person who takes an active role in a process or production. Throughout history, people have proposed a supernatural agent as a reasonable explanation for why new forms emerge from within old things. Or from no-thing : “how does the universe invent a big bang?” Bloom admiringly calls the physical universe “an invention engine”. And scientists are constantly amazed when they turn over a rock and find something unexpected. But, he avoids the religious implications of an Intelligent Designer, by describing the process of evolution itself as The Inventor. This concept is similar to my own notion of Intelligent Evolution1 , except for my logical inference that an inventive process must be teleological and intentional. In ordinary usage, a Process is defined as a systematic series of actions directed to some end. In our real-world experience, every time-bound process has a beginning and an end. And every creative procedure has a creator with an intention. As a secular Jew though, Bloom is wary of the god-concept, due to its misuse throughout history. But, perhaps he wouldn’t object to my abstract notion of a metaphysical Enformer, with none of the usual physical human moral defects.
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Self-Creation
From the Preface:
“This is a book about metaphysics.”
Metaphysics : 1. The branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space.
2. Deprecating : abstract theory with no basis in reality.
Although it is based on scientific evidence, and reviews the contributions of scientists and mathe-maticians over the ages, this book is really about Philosophy, about Ideas, about Meaning. Which is why Bloom wanted to be up-front about his subject matter. The conclusions expressed are not generally accepted scientific facts, but his own novel view of the amazing organism we live in, and how it grew from a tiny egg/seed into a universe of Meaning.
1. Intelligent Evolution : The Enformationism world-view and the BothAnd philosophy are based on a composite personal under-standing of how the world works. It’s a blend of both empirical scientific facts and theoretical religious myths. It accepts the general concept of natural evolution, but offers a detailed hypothesis to explain how that cause & effect process began from an ultimate act of causation. The thesis developed from that kernel will seem un-scientific to some, and blasphemous to others. But it’s intended to be a reasonable theory derived from commonly accepted facts, plus a few notions from the cutting-edge of 21st century knowledge. http://gnomon.enformationism.info/Essays/Intelligent%20Evolution%20Essay_Prego_120106.pdf
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