The problem with such displays of common sense is that they are so uncommon. For someone trained, as I am, as an engineer, and who therefore flatters himself as more-or-less capable of understanding science, the blather from both sides of this argument is galling.

Q: Is the earth getting warmer? A: Well, as best we can measure it (which isn't very well), sure looks that way. But there is contradictory data, and we don't know quite what to make of it. Q: Well, then, if it's getting warmer, why? A: Well, we know from the geologic record that sometimes the earth gets warmer, and sometimes it gets colder, but we're not sure why. Got lots of theories, but none seems to tell the whole story, so we're still working on it. Turns out that climate is pretty complex. Q: Well, is man causing the warming? A: (Holding impatience in check), Well, if it is getting warmer, it's plausible, even likely, that man may have something to do with it, but we're still trying to figure that out, too. And if it turns out to be the case, that still leaves open the question of how much man is causing.

The detached, almost disinterested tone of those answers - which are the only correct answers that can be given at this time - drive those who don't understand the way science really works straight up the wall. They want answers, by God, and they want them now!! So, of course, ideologues of all stripes are only too happy to supply them, along with all sorts of pseudo-scientific slop to justify what are really nothing more than political positions. All exacerbated by a media only too happy to publish the next "the world is going to end next week" story, or the rebuttal to that story - hey, whatever works to pay the bills and keep the lights on.

Sigh. Could we all just calm down a bit? The world isn't going to end next week, and the secret to man's success is that big brain that allows him to adapt to almost any conditions (OK, an opposable thumb helps, too). We've got the time and resources to work through this and come up with a good way out of our current predicament, all so we can find ourselves in another one, if we're lucky. Hysteria, over-reaction and half-baked laws based on half-baked ideas won't solve a thing, and, if history is any guide, just might make matters worse.

I think the problem is far worse. I spent forty years in engineering energy systems: a score of nukes, two score of fossil fueled power plants, decades assessing advanced technologies, some $2 + Bn in investments. They work. I am certain that scientists lie through their teeth, for ego, power, money, the usual. They are no more ethical than corporate CEOs, or priests. Thus all of them must be taken with a grain of salt. Cynicism is my watchword; it was not always so.

The US is in a dangerous situation due to two generations of horrible education in math and science. I have learned that to debate an attorney, who simply does not comprehend basics, is futile. I note that the vast majority of Congress are lawyers. America now has EPA science, and Exxon science, leading to diametrically opposite conclusions. By the definition of science, to know, this is impossible. Thus it is sad to listen to leaders using ad hominum logic on opponents, e.g deniers, tree huggers, when you know both are technically ignoramuses. For this reason, I ignore any thing Al Gore has to say.

The primary social result of the environmental movement, e.g. climate change, has been to disgrace science and engineering, as valid honest professions. This is lethal to our survival as a free nation. We will not remain free if the present hiatus on energy technologies continues. Some hold that is the purpose of the conflict. They are more cynical than I.

"They see a problem in the atmosphere and they know enough physics to know more pollution is bad for us."

I can't speak for all scientifically literate conservatives, and I don't want to. But, it is statements like the one quoted above that makes it pretty easy to dismiss man-made global warming hysteria. (There are many other reasons, but let's stay on topic since you did not really touch on the others.) Simply put, CO2 is not a "pollutant" Carbon is the essence of life. We are made of it. When combined with oxygen in the form of CO2, it is one of the more stable and essential molecules. Without it, we would die. Plants love it more than we. Without it, we would have nothing to eat. So, when you start the argument with the premise that CO2 is somehow "bad", those of us with a bit of scientific knowledge think to ourselves "moron" and the rest of your argument falls on deaf ears.

Just thought I'd mention it.

Obviously, nuclear power has risks but they pale in comparison to the risks we run by continuing to generate most power on this planet by burning fossil fuels with unrestricted CO2 emsission into our atmosphere. Here in the US, we need work very hard on conservation of energy but we must wake up and begin to replace and expand our nuclear power generation capacity asap. There are no realisitc alternatives to power our economy now and we cannot afford to wait any longer.

From what I know, Greenpeace and its ilk have damaged our future as much as the fossil fuel lobby. I think they cannot give up their rabid opposition to nuclear power because it's such a reliable way to scare people into paying attention to them and giving them money.

Did you realize that it is not April 1st? Even as an April 1st joke, your post is not that funny...

The thought of US companies setting up more nuclear power plants is just scary. The thought of the US Navy having more nuclear powered ships and shore facilities seems a good idea to me. Admiral Rickover took nuclear safety seriously and the high standards he set remain. Energy companies do not have the same history, nuclear or not.

The CO2 problem is more dire than nuclear waste, yet we want nuclear waste to be safe for thousands of years when the CO2 problem is approaching critical levels now. On one side we want absolute guarantees of safety on the other we have guaranteed disaster.

Conclusion; my fear of nuclear power is fear of the greed is good corporate culture. That and there is so much we could do with efficiency and so very cost effectively.

Dear Hank, you must create a third category of people when it comes to their opinion about your political opinion. I think that you're neither a hired gun of Big Oil, nor a hardcore pinko commie, but you are an opportunist who is always eager to abandon your natural conservative roots in favor of any hardcore pinko Dorigo-like commie whenever you find it convenient. ;-)

The study statistically showing that climate alarmists are scientifically illiterate imbeciles - and that they become even more idiotic and fearmongering when they try to distinguish themselves from the smart skeptics whom they're so jealous about - is OK but surely not excessively original or novel. Cheers, LM

A tiny bit of science literacy

1. You can't tell a cycle from a trend with data that's short compared to the cycle you want to exclude. (The discriminating matrix eigenvalues explode, making no possible measurement good enough.)

2. You can't solve the Navier Stokes equations. (In three dimensons, flows tend to shorter and shorter scales, making no possible resolution good enough. But you need the tiny flows because they provide a sort of ersatz viscosity for larger flows. Anybody who claims to solve them is using a fictional viscosity. [In two dimensions, flows tend to larger scales.])

So actual science is lost immediately by the measurements and models.

Look for curiosity, not authority, to find science.

You can't tell a cycle from a trend, to repeat. Set up the matrix yourself and see.

A cycle can't be man-caused.

The point of the hockey stick was to get past this mathematical truth, by showing explosive growth. Alas the hockey stick is dead and we're back at zero evidence, zero, of AGW.

Enter models, which unfortunately are made up.

the paper makes the assertion that if policy-makers admitted that multiple strategies for combating climate change (rather than relying so heavily on a reduction of CO2 emissions) exist and are worth exploring ("technologies that furnish a substitute for and that offset the effects of greenhouse-gas-producing energy sources... alternatives, such as nuclear power and geo-engineering"), then perhaps belief in climate change would converge to expectation. It seems like a bit of stretch, but I'm curious as to what you have to say about that.

In general, this study is pretty fascinating. the authors are saying that climate scientists have reached a limit in regards to improved scientific communication and its effect on beliefs. they are not to blame for the toxicity of this polarizing debate.

Gerhard,
You've made an interesting point in your reply to Arakiba about how "the author is correct" in weeding out the tree hugging environmentalists on the one hand and those ideological on the other. Unfortunately I think you muddle your own point when you say "Until we start discussing real ideas instead of ideologies, then we are doomed to keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again." Your mistake is to claim this in context of both "conservative and progressive" effectively eliminating the "real ideas" we need in order to stop "repeating the same mistakes over and over again." Your dismissal of "core values" as being essentially wrong for both sides is to saw off the limb you are sitting on because if there are only two perspectives to take then one must be true. If I assume you think there is a third perspective where these "real ideas" reside then of course I have to ask how can there be a middle ground between right and wrong ideas? Simply put truth is conformity of the mind to reality.

So essentially your position, that you are "definately not a 'conservative'" leaves you being an anti-conservative which is what the labels liberal and progressive encompass. My point here is that there are ultimately only two perspectives one can hold on any matter of reality and this is either the one in conformity to it (that is truth) or the other which is to hold to what is false. I consider overall the conservative position is the former in that what is being conserved is the truth of one's perspective. The conservative position is often stated in context of being a traditional perspective and as such what is being conserved is what has always been held true because it is what has always been true. It is so-to-speak a perennial perspective.

So what we are dealing with here is a philosophical appraisal of one's reading of a scientific position. In effect what you are doing is to critique another person's scientific view of reality but in such a way as to try to eliminate labels you have come to dislike, which in turn leaves you in a vary precarious position of having to create a new and unnamed label, or maybe I would better call it an unqualified position since you at least claim you are not a conservative. I say this because as you do clarify your position you will find it must essentially fall into the traditional conservative view or that of it's contrary... the liberal progressive one. It cannot be otherwise unless you have found a position somewhere inbetween truth and falsity? And I might add that you cannot claim your position is just scientific because such a world view does not have within it, the capability of judging itself, since that would be an inherently philosophical proposition. All said you have to land in one of these two camps and if your view is not conservative then...

Ratjaws@aol.com

Gerhard,
I appreciate your response and the thought you've put into it. To start off I will say there is one comment you made that particularily gets at the point I was making, I quote: "Certainly we can have all manner of objective knowledge through science, but it can never tell us how to live. It is in that respect, that we will always lack the full knowledge our belief systems keep telling us we have." This statement is very instructive in that what you refer to as "full knowledge" is what I meant by the term philosophy. You used this phrase in context of another, that is "objective knowledge through science" stating explicitly we cannot know how to live based on scientific knowledge alone, and so I fully agree with the gest of your whole point here. Furthermore you imply the culturally acceptable stance that scientific knowledge is objective, a point I will address later.

Where you misunderstand me is in saying that politics is about arguing over who is right and who is wrong, and the root cause of such disagreement is ideological, or in your words "the 'truth' is that there are no sides, except for ideological posturing." Politics is about truth just as much as mechanics, economics or science are, only politics deals with a particular area of reality that involves people living together in a civil manner called a civilization. In fact if a society becomes uncivil, as we see within numerous modern Muslim societies now experiencing their "Arab Spring," the roots of this unrest can be traced back to a misunderstanding of reality and as such a lack of truth. In other words their ideology that God wants unbelievers to convert against their will.

This brings me back to relativism and your assertion that "so anyone beginning from the notion that they possess the 'truth' is already wrong. We cannot know the 'truth,' because all of our knowledge is incomplete." First, in order for me to know I am typing on this computer I don't have to possess all other knowledge. In other words we don't need to be omniscient in order that the knowledge we do possess is certain. Second, to state one cannot know truth, which is the primary tenet of relativism, one makes a proposition of truth and therefore contradicts themselves. I also notice you make this statement preceeding that assertion that "we can have all manner of objective knowledge through science," and just prior to this you state "we have a problem since there is no objective way to establish the 'truth'" because "someone can rationalize an opposing argument." You further say in that same context "it would be unacceptable in science." My point is that relativism or the refusal to admit there is an opinion that can be correct, that is the ability to possess truth, is unexceptable in all fields of knowledge including the natural and physical sciences, philosophy and theology. If I were to agree that truth is not possible to attain in any of these fields then I'd simply have to give them up and if I were to try to do this I'd have to walk around trying not to think about anything at all, thus denying my very nature as a human person whose essence is to desire to know.

So to the point, you cannot deny there is such a thing as a right opinion, one that conforms itself to reality (and it's corollary, that one can also hold to a wrong opinion), then state there is no way to get at objective truth (which you invoke to deny a right opinion), thus participating in the very relativism you suggest you do not partake of when denying epistemological reality. On the contrary, there are only two positions one can take when making a statement that expresses their knowledge and only one of them can concur with truth. There is no third state as you claim, no inbetween as I said before and even if we dropped labels like conservative/traditional and liberal/progressive the very fact that we express something with our words means it must fall into one of these two categories, the only difference being they are unnamed. I agree with you that the aforementioned categories are broad and oft-times misused, and in fact they come out of politics, but the fact that they are being used more and more to express general ideas, these ideas meant to indicate which side one is on (a shorthand if you will), still does not detract from the fact that there is a truth that can be expressed and that dichotomy you suggest, between right and wrong, is a real one. Sure I assume, just as anyone assumes reality before they say anything, but my assumptions are based on truths that are either self-evident, in which case they are principles, or they are evident in a way that can be known through careful attention to detail (that is to reality).

Note with this last statement I appeal to both science, of which our subject of the environment revolves in all of its quantifiable and measurable characteristics, and philosophy, of which must be invoked if we are to make any statement about what you say is "how to live," or in other words statements of meaning and purpose. Our science in fact, our asking questions about the environment is meaningless if we don't at some point ask such all-important and pressing questions. In fact why else do we discuss Global Warming if not because it has been claimed to be a danger to our lives if we ignore it? If we cannot know truth, if we cannot establish a right or wrong in this then what is the point? We waste our time and energy which could used elsewhere in doing something "fun!" In this case we'd remain oblivious as most people seem to be when it comes to issues like the enviroment but this is not why we discuss our subject. We have a purpose and this is to look for meaning in our subject.

It is possible here that I should clarify one issue and this is what I am not saying. I am not suggesting that liberals/progressives have no truth. Nor do I mean to suggest that conservatives/traditionalists lack error. On the contrary the adherents of sides have truth but its important to see that the conservative side sees reality to a far greater degree of clarity, this is AS IT IS, than the less conservative side, and this is why I call myself a conservative. I've chosen this particular stance because it is more reasonable. Now let me apply what I've just said to our subject in context of science and philosophy. For instance the liberal side tends to discount metaphysics in favor of physics. I know of some who go so far as to thumb their nose at any philosophical meddling in physics and as a result they cannot see the errors they make in their science. It has been rightly suggested by one participant here that our educational system has left us without qualified engineers to deal with the science of climate (among other areas). I whole heartedly agree and add that our modern focus on the material sciences has left us with even fewer qualified philosophers who can use their insight into reality to see the flaws in arguments of environmentalists, many of whom claim "the sky is falling," and unless we act now with intrusive government regulation and the subsequent coersive taxation necessary to fund that enlarged government to oversee it, will self destruct! Al Gore comes to mind here as chief spokeman for these liberal minded "progressives" who see human beings as the cause of our environmental concerns and actually believe less humans in the world would be a better thing (although they refuse to volunteer themselves as the first to go!). I know from what you said so far that you've heard all this and shrink back at the mere suggestion of such unsound thinking.

Unfortunately this kind of mindset is in every area of science and has always been there from the start, just as it has been in politics and religion and as many other fields as there are knowledge. Take for example those in quantum physics who suggest from their view that there are "multi-verses," "wormholes" in space and time travel. These same "scientists" claim that a particle can "know" what another particle is doing and in this way seek to explain the "quantum strangeness" of subatomic behavior. These ideas came out of the Copenhagen meeting where Einstein attended and some of the more nebulous consequences of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle were presented. True, overall science is not adversely affected by such absurd explanations simply because "the proof is in the pudding," or in other words, sound science is ultimately judged by what it can do for us technologically rather than by some of it's adherents' fantastic claims. Still, it also remains true that we act upon what we know and if one takes seriously that an atomic "particle" can be conscious of another then there is no guarantee of going down the right road when it comes to future research. Likewise for those who study the environment. How else can one explain their plain disregard for common sense in science if one is to reject the sound thinking of a philosopher who knows from the start that one must interpret the "facts of science" in a way that is in accord with reality and... Not! ...in a way that goes against it.

In fact science does not even prove all it works with before it performs its tests. The scientist must assume a world exists around them in order to use their method. And so, as a philosopher I assume this same thing. I assume self-evident truths that cannot be questioned, such as matter exists or a inanimate "particle" of matter cannot think without some other principle to cause it to do so . I start with first principles that cannot be otherwise (like the principle of non-contradiction; a thing cannot exist and not exist at the same time) and work up from there adjusting my science to conform to reality in the way it must. Otherwise I do not have science but a sort of fiction. I also assume the environment around me exists and works in a particular way that I can study and know with a degree of certainty, such that I don't have to keep going back to square one to reprove what I already know is true. I build what I know about reality from the more firm to the less firm. I move from a philosophical basis up to the scientific level were I become less focused on the abidingness of being and more on it's changeable characteristics. So I as a conservative have unshifting ground on which to work and I hold to this as a tradition passed on to me that cannot be altered. My scientific understanding may shift but it's philosophical and logical roots cannot! Here lies the core difference between what I call a liberal and a conservative. The liberal mind does not necessary admit there are degrees of certainty of knowledge up to and including the kind that is certain. The liberal mind sees objective scientific knowledge as opposed to ontological and epistemological knowledge, as if the roots of scientific knowledge, philosophy itself, can be flawed and uncertain. This same liberal mind pits scientific knowledge against prescientific or metaphysical knowledge. This is a mistake that has real consequences in real life. In short the liberal mindset is why we have environmental extreemists who can seriously think a computer model is the same as reality. How else can you explain this?

As I take a firm philosophical stance in the changing field of science, I know my conclusions will be true about those changes because underneath is an abidingness that allows me to know. Said in another way as a conservative I know my metaphysics "sees" the immutable aspects of reality while my physics observes the mutable. Thus I know because of the changeability within the scientific perspective, cause and effect are real, and that I can make inferencial judgments back into the past, if necessary, with a degree of certainty about that change because I also know that behind this flux of nature lies what is essential and that this is what gives changing reality it's quiddity or "whatness." Simply put I know I can know. I need not doubt as the Cartesian mind doubts and from this I know the difference between fantasy and science. I can be certain if I change a cause in this way it will have an effect in that way. I also know that even though this material being changes it is still that particular being that I can point to and this is important if I don't want to get lost in a sci-fi world mistakenly calling it science as many physicists and too many environmentalists do. I know air and water pollution when I see it and I also know the lack of substantial evidence in the fringe Global Warming claims. I know weather operates in cyclical patterns and global temperature change is a phenomena composed of many smaller cells that can be studied and conclusions drawn from. I know theory has to refer back to a reality that is either knowable or I waste my time theorizing. We can have and do have in some aspects of our knowledge certainty and we have this because that is the nature of our mind and reality itself (nature is intelligible as the philosopher says). Again if not we "think" in vain, if one can even call it that, and not only is philosophy a waste of time but so too is science.

Furthermore I don't play games with truth telling others that science gives objective truth while all other forms of knowledge are subjective, or worse not valid knowledge at all. Rather I know the truth of science is both subjective and objective. There are real objects I know and as such they are subject to my mind. The object I can know is in my mind the subject of that which is known. Said in another way there is a real unity between what's in my mind and that being which I know. If this were not so I would be caught in either idealism, where I can only know my mind (subjectivism), or empiricism where what is out there I cannot really know (objectivism). Either way of thinking is an error in perspective that our "scientific" culture has imbued in us collectively speaking. Scientism as it is called is what predominately drives the environmental movement in it's extremities (as well as other pseudo-scientific enterprises like the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum physics). On the other hand the scientific method is what drives credible scientists who study the environment (as well as quantum phenomena) to refrain from making rash judgments that lead to believing in imminent catastrophe without tangeable evidence. To be sure they withold their judgment when their knowledge is less than certain.

Finally, you brought up the moral aspect of science when you touched on the subject of abortion. In establishing the truth or falisty of a person's particular statements of knowledge one need not "engage in name-calling" or in "arbitrarily declaring one side to be 'evil'." Nor must I compromise my principles by concluding that "both sides believe in the 'truth' of their position" because such a generalization is to merely avoid an answer. In fact it is you who are posing a false dichotomy with such compromise. That two people both seek truth is good and evident. That each attains truth to some degree is also evident. But to admit that one may lean more toward truth and the other more away from it is not to "engage in name-calling" as you suggest but to accept the reality that not only can we grasp truth but we can also error in judgment. To recognize this is not to be arbitrary but is to unite with the world around us in the mode of knowing (as a philosopher would say). It's to acquire truth! As soon as you use phrases such as "individual 'truths'" and "higher societal 'truths'" you step into an epistemological relativism that is not worthy of your intellectual nature. If this path is followed ardently you end in a moral relativism that can eventuate into the kind of atrocities that Hitler and Nazi Germany fell prey too (to name but one occasion in history). Nor is truth democratic as you suggest in that we all voice our opinion and the majority opinion is the way the world is. On the contrary we discover truth and either conform our mind to it, and by way of cause and effect conform our acts to the way we think, or we reject it to our own detriment as well as to the detriment of others around us. How else can we justify the fact that we reject certain arguments of the Global Warming crowd? Weou do so because the way we see the reality of our environment is correct and to that extent we disagree with others rather than compromise our principles that enable us to see correctly. Nor does our Constitution, as great a document it is, determine the truth or falsity of a position. What it does is setup a framework that within, allows a freedom for those of us who subsist under it, to dialogue freely and hopefully, come to common agreement that ends in truth, in other words the U.S. Constitution cannot guarantee we arrive at truth. Nor does the Constitution protect one from the consequence of wrong opinion even though it allows one to maintain that erroneous opinion. The problem with your argument here is that you confuse the two, and in context of our subject we argue not about the "right" to be wrong about the environment, or conservative/liberal issues, but about the end of those arguments. The consequences here concern us and this is why a right and wrong position must be sought after and clarified as to why it is such. Think for a moment the consequences of implimenting the liberal view of lessening the carbon footprint in American law. How devastating would the legislating of this ideology be on our already failing economy? This idea does not come from the conservative camp.

You've also argued on a pragmatic and utilitarian basis, both of which are levels high up on the scale of importance when it comes to judgment of truth. In fact they reside above the level of even science which itself resides above philosophy; the lower being the more encompassing principles that support the higher. Consider that if the majority decides based upon principles disregarding the lowest the end result is that the majority can decide upon error as their consensus. Are they then protected from the evil of the error in their thinking? I suspect you will agree this is a foolish view to take. That we want to achieve similar results doesn't necessarily make both our means good (nor does an evil means make an end good). Both end and means must be good in order for an act to be good. Simply put compromise of truth is always an evil and is never to be strived for or agreed upon by a majority... or even a minority. Also truth apprehended personally is not opposed to truth held collectively. Truth is necessary always and everywhere because it is to conform a person or a society to the reality around them. Truth is one. Truth is not divisive, rather error is. Logic itself is meant for the intellect to arrive at truth and avoid error. The problem is I constantly hear scientific minded people claim all that is necessary to obtain knowledge of our world is the scientific method and logic, yet implicit in their assertion is that truth is irrelavent. On the contrary such Soliphism was recognized back in Aristotle's day when the very concepts of logic were being formed. If we use logic without notice of the truth of it's content our knowledge may be well ordered but erroneous and as such is dangerous to draw conclusions from and thereby impliment.

You said "Whether your views on abortion are conservative or liberal is irrelevant to any discussion about the economy." I vehemently disagree with you because the most fundamental issue of the economy in your question concerns trust and so the question must be asked... that if someone is willing to unjustly kill another person, are they trustworthy? This is what is at the core of the abortion issue and our Constitutional "right to life," of which our government is supposed to protect. It is not about secondary issues such as "choice" or "freedom" and one runs aground if they presume that any government can grant us our "right to life." Our right to exist comes from outside of us, it is a self-evident truth as the Declaration states, and is found apart from any form of consensus, government or otherwise. As such our "right to life" is a fundamental and inviolable right. If we allow some persons to take another life indiscriminately, that is without a just cause (as in a police or military act), then we ultimately find it has an effect on the economy in how it affects trust. Would you hire a gangster known to have murdered other people to work on your car? Even if he was a capable mechanic I would not because I would not trust interacting with him which has to occur in order for a monitary transaction to take place. Goods and money are exchanged and the fact that they have value while one person in the transaction devalues what is more valuable, that is human life, is a hinderance to any economic transaction (is there honor among thieves?). This is why when I vote my first criteria before all other is whether the candidate is prolife. If they are not they will not get my vote no matter how good they are with fiscal policy, etc... Because of this I believe an abortionist should not hold any public office including that of dog catcher. As a side note at a higher level of argument the effect of abortion can also be considered in the fact that there is one less person to interact with. An economy is built on people and the more you have the more vibrant an economy will become. The less amount of people there are in a pool the less amount of customers can be drawn from them. Steven Moser and other economists (Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams) have derived from this the demographic principle which is the opposite position of the popular mind. China's "one child policy" is therefore a hinderance to its becoming a world economic power, and although it has such a huge populace that the effects are lessened, it still does not invalidate the principle. A smaller society will see greater impact than a larger and this spills over into a serious problem our world will face in the very near future. What has been called the replacement level, 2.1 children per family, is a large factor in the demographic death of a population and this in turn effects an economy. If that number is less than nominal as it is with all modern nations, except for Poland and the Philippines, then not enough persons will enter the world to replace those who are being lost to mortality. The result is the demise of a people and with it their interaction in the global economy. In fact America faces it's own 1.7 CPF rate in good measure as part of the problem we have with maintaining our social security programs. This is seen where baby boomers have come of age while the monitary base that supports them has been dying off. The fact that baby boomers have had few children is now affecting their economic situation surrounding retirement, not to mention their children's future situation. Unfortunately we don't hear too much about this in the debate forming around welfare and entitlement reformation in politics. Also the relation of national defense to population has an indirect affect on an economy in that any group of people who refuse abortion and contraception will continue to grow their population. Muslims who by faith refuse these so-called reproductive technologies may not have to lift a finger militarily in order to take over the population they occupy because they are not dying off at the rate of their hosts. This in turn affects the economy of the nation they occupy in whatever way they see fit (hint: the imposition of surah law).

It seems to me that you use the term ideology interchangeably with truth. As you suggest "the 'truth' is that there are no sides, except for ideological posturing." At other times those two terms contend with each other as examplified by this comment:

"The point being that such labels are only pertinent to the "die-hards" that insist on trying to shape our society into a particular ideology, while neglecting the fact that that ideology was already established a few hundred years ago. In addition, they foolishly presume that their brand of "truth" will last forever"

So according to this statement the ideas we have are what you called individual truths that may or may not have a correspondence with reality. Accordingly our best bet is to find some common ground democratically and settle for what we can in order that we may live to some degree in peace. The trouble is without truth there is no agreement and without agreement we cannot live together. To assert there is no such thing as truth (your ultimate implication in all this) is again, to make an assertion of truth. This is as we say in philosophy, a self-contradictory proposition. It's circular reasoning in logic, something that even a scientist can recognize. To my mind truth is the possession of ideas that are in accord with reality. An ideology is a negation of truth. Ideologies oppose truth and are to be avoided rather than compromised with. What the founders of our country gave us in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution is not simply another ideology or a number of ideologies that were agreed on, rather truth in conformity with human nature. Namely that we are intellectual beings who because we can know can choose between goods. We can distinguish between what is and what is not and in doing so choose what is while rejecting what is not. In choosing between existent things we determine their good and decide which degree of good is more valuable to us at this particular moment. Our founders therefore recognized that human beings need to be free and setup the structure of our government to give us that freedom. Note here that this freedom is for the good and never evil. Freedom involves our will (a synonym for "love") in choosing, and the will is the intellect's appetite for the good we find in being. So our freedom requires knowledge, that knowledge must be true and certain, without which we are not free but enslaved by lack of good (evil). We are not free to the degree we don't have knowledge and so if there is no such thing as truth, that is if we cannot know the world around us, then we cannot choose and thereby live free.

Also you don't see that I use the terms conservative and liberal in a context broader than politics. On this last point it's true a college does not ask what my political persuation is (most don't at least... but should!) but you don't realize that I do ask this question of my schools. I suspect I may be an exception to the rule which is yet another sign of our time but I don't want to waste my time in an academic setting where truth is supposed to be taught but is not, or at least may not be. In these two labels I attribute an ideal form to each, that is, authentic conservatism embodies all that is true while it's antithesis, liberalism, encompasses what is false. That's the norm and in real life people tend to volley between the two world views (so the distinction between the idea and those who hold such ideas). Therefore even within your view, what little I know of it so far, are elements of truth of which we can agree on. Beyond that you hold to ideas that I cannot agree with, one of them being this idea that "there is no objective way to establish the 'truth'" except through the scientific method (implied in your words "Certainly we can have all manner of objective knowledge through science"), where otherwise "any decision reached must be by consensus" as you say, "would be unacceptable." I consider a democracy to need truth as much as science or any other human endeavor, without which we'd be like zombies roaming the world never really amounting to anything, at least not doing anything constructive. I fact we find the animal kingdom to varying degrees is like what you seem to think we are in that they do not search for truth but merely strive to exist as best they can in their limited way. They don't do harm to themselves because they have sense knowledge and instinctively will to stay alive. We have this but also intellective knowledge that goes the next step further to ask questions like "why am I alive?" or even more profoundly "should I give my life for the good of this person I love?" Again our democracy (more accurately a Republic) allows us to freely search for truth. It does not give us truth or guarantee we will even acquire it. Conservativism is a movement that seeks to ensure we attain truth while liberalism is a movement that has it's start in rejection of and counters the conservation of truth. From this rough definition I could then say that while conservativism is the recognition of an aspect of real human nature (an idea or ideal), liberalism is the denial of it and thus it is an ideological position... that is as you said, an "idealogical posturing" if you will.

Ratjaws@aol.com

Gerald,
Your reply is very good. Your answers and the questions posed within these answers are also very good. My first thought in digesting your reply is "define subjective?" You lean so heavily on this premise that before we can go on in this discussion it must be defined so I can appropiately respond.

ratjaws@aol.com

Gerald,
I include this excerpt from Professor Stanley Jaki's book because in the debate over Global Warming we are dealing with a cosmology similar to the one Prof. Jaki addresses, only on a smaller scale than that of the universe. The universe being the totality of consistently interacting things is a whole cosmology. Global weather is a vast environment, with I dare say, thousands of variables that need to be accounted for before one can come up with a viable model. Hence the need to import Prof. Jaki's insight on the wider view into the more localized yet extremely vast and complicated world each of us experiences daily and is studied with our scientific method. Attached to that method is a world view that cannot be ignored without inadvertant consequence because as we all know "ideas do have consequences." Therefore I quote:

Laying of mines under the cosmic citadel
In an age when almost any play with truth is condoned until one is caught in the mischief, almost perfectly innocent could seem the game which the quantum mechanical explanation of alpha-tunnelling played with reality In that perspective the alpha particle is strictly unobservable as it slips through the mountain, or tunnels under it. Therefore if unobservability means nonexistence, the existence of the alpha particle should be taken to be interrupted for the time of its tunnelling. This inference was not perhaps drawn in view of the extreme "smallness" of the mischief, namely, the very short time which the tunnelling takes. Yet the difference between "existing" and "non-existing" should have seemed strictly infinite, infinitesimally short as might be that duration. At any rate, no doubt arose about the reality of those tunnels that must exist if alpha particles pass along them,
although no physicist ever thought those tunnels were observable. Yet, if in order to deflect criticism the physicist claims the liberty of taking tunnels for mere metaphors, he should not complain if he is reminded that physics is not poetry. As will be seen, there is more to the foregoing critical remarks about tunnels than a warning against slipping back into metaphors based on long discredited mechanical models.

What should the physicist, respectful of logic do when he has on hand a marvelous computational technique, quantum mechanics, which is also a technique that implies the impossibility of certain observations? He should simply say aloud that his use of probability functions bars him from making statements about reality as such. To admit this demands, however, a great deal of intellectual humility. The very last thing a human being will grant is that his method, spectacular as it may be, cannot be applied to concrete individual reality apart from which reality is a mere abstraction. Indeed, modern physicists have not been eager to recall Maxwell's words that "one of the severest tests of a scientific mind is to discern the legitimate application of scientific method.(10) Maxwell would start turning in his grave on hearing an Einstein (to say nothing of physicists of lesser stature), who owed him so much, take that method for the sole source of objective knowledge, and reduce the noblest, most sacred and most indispensable principles of human life, individual and social, to the level of mere subjective experiences.(11) No wonder that most physicists have taken the easy way out when their method has brought them face to face with reality as such. For over half a century they have been merrily falling back on innocent-looking adverbs, such as "almost," whereby they pour soothing oil on conceptually troubled waters. Steady recourse to purely palliative methods is, however, bound to weaken sensitivity to a situation which, in the long run, reveals an explosive character.

Tunnels, it is worth noting, have repeatedly served for placing explosives under the nerve center of the enemy's defenses. One such incident forms the high point of a historical novel by a Hungarian author about the siege laid by the Turks in 1552, to the fortress of Eger in north-central Hungary.(12) From a distance of over fifty years, when I first read that novel, I still feel something of the almost unbearable suspense of waiting for the novelist's answer to the big question: would or would not the defenders notice that a tunnel was being bored right under their citadel? They detected it but only by being exceedingly watchful. They shut out all noise from the citadel's deepest cellar where they held their ears against drums that would amplify the sound of digging and boring deep below.

The story matches the story to be unfolded in this chapter, though not without a twist. Whereas in that Hungarian story the boring of the tunnel was done by enemies, in the story riveted on alpha-tunnelling the potentially destructive operation was started by insiders, that is, physicists themselves, and perfected by them as the years and decades went by. In fact, most physicist-cosmologists take it for a supreme achievement that the tunneling has now reached under that citadel of physics which is the scientific understanding of the universe itself. They maintain their euphoria in spite of the fact that in the process the universe may appear to be blown into incoherent pieces, or may simply appear the mere byproduct of the physicists' thinking, as blissful a wallowing in incoherence as such thinking may be.

It would have been superhuman, of course, to foresee in 1928 such cosmic consequences for a misguided interpretation alpha-tunnelling as accounted for by quantum mechanics. Even two decades or so later Einstein (and a very few other prominent - physicists) still suspected no such consequences as they deplored the "dangerous game" which the "Copenhagen people" were playing with reality.(13) Nor did those in Copenhagen, such as Bohr and Heisenberg, have cosmology in mind when they rejected in the name of quantum mechanics any concern about reality as such, that is, about ontology, as unscientific and unphilosophical, to be avoided at all cost in physics.(14) Yet if modern scientific cosmology has reached the point where it may be deprived of its very object, the universe, it is because the champions of the Copenhagen quantum mechanics, hardly ever distinguished from the science of quantum mechanics, have succeeded in selling the idea that doing very good science justifies doing philosophy very badly.

About that Copenhagen philosophy it is still widely believed that its origins postdate the publication in April 1927 of Heisenberg’s famous paper with the uncertainty relation in it. (15) According to that relation there is an inherent limitation to the accuracy that can he achieved in measurements. The limitation, of no consequence in everyday measurements, is noticeable on the atomic level and even more so as deeper and deeper levels of matter, that is, particles much smaller than atomic dimensions, are under investigation. From this Heisenberg immediately jumped to the conclusion that causality thereby had definitively been disproved.(16) Heisenberg should have rather warned that the principle of uncertainty had a permanent validity only on the suppositions that Planck's quantum would forever remain a quantum that could not be divided and that non-commutative algebra, too, would forever remain indispensable in dealing with atomic and subatomic phenomena.

This is not to suggest that even today there are any signs about a need to revise those suppositions. Yet had that potential revisability been pointed out by Heisenberg, he would have merely recalled a basic truth about physics, which is the revisability of any of its theories, however successful. With that revisability in focus, physicists might have also been awakened to the all important fact that physical theory is not about "being" as such, or ontology, but only about the quantitative aspects of things already existing. When a physicist shuts his eyes to this, he places himself on a slippery slope, where plain sorcery with words is the downward dynamics.

Heisenberg could hardly foresee sorcery being hatched as he wrote up his famous paper, although he relied there on a sleight-of-hand with philosophy as its victim That very few objected (17) merely showed the widespread belief that in doing philosophy it was more important to satisfy the prevailing consensus, if not plain mood, rather than the dictates of elementary logic. Heisenberg’s sleight-of-hand echoed the widely shared assumption that causality in a physical process depended on its exact measurability. The assumption was the fruit of the philosophical impoverishment that had been growing in the Western mind in the measure in which it had been overawed by the quantitative successes of physics.

Had Heisénberg sensed something about the inherent limitations of the method of physics, he would have refrained from stating that the inability of the physicists to measure nature exactly showed the inability of nature to act exactly. He would have needed only a modicum of philosophical sensitivity to note that the apparent truth of the foregoing statement depended on taking the same word exactly in two different meanings: one operational, the other ontological. His confusion about those two different meanings meant an indulging in that elementary fallacy which the Greeks of old called rnetabasis eis allo genos. That fallacy was duly pointed out in the courses in introductory logic that were part of the curriculum in philosophy, without which no doctor's degree in any subject could be granted in German universities when Heisenberg received his own in physics. in 1925.

-------------------------
(10) The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, vol. 1, p. 759.
(11) A. Einstein, The World as i See If (New York: Covici Friede, 1934), p. 29.
(12) I refer to the novel, Egri csillagok ("The Stars of Eger"), by Géza Gárdonyi (1863-1922), first published in 1901.
(13) Letters on Wave Mechanics: Schrödinger, Planck, Einstein, Lorentz, ed. K. Przibram (New York: Philosophical Library, 1967), p. 36.
(14) C. A. Hooker, "The Nature of Quantum Mechanical Reality: Einstein versus Bohr," in R. G. Colodny (ed.), Paradigms and Paradoxes: The Philosophical Challenge of the Quantum Domain (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972), pp. 67-302. The Philosophy of Niels Bohr: The Framework of Complementarity by H. J. Folse (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1985) is a lengthy effort aimed at saving Bohr from the charge of being a sheer phenonemonologist, wholly unconcerned about ontological reality as existing independently of the observer. ¡t is admitted by Folse that "Unfortunately, Bohr never makes clear in what sense we can have knowledge of the reality which causes our experiences" (p. 241). Folse takes lightly the fact that Bohr skirted that issue over many years, although on many occasions he was challenged to come clean philosophically. Quite unsatisfactory is the appraisal of ontology in The Metaphysics of Quantum Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987) by H. Krips, which begins with a chapter aimed at showing the "realist" nature of Bohr's philosophy of quantum mechanics. Krips agrees (p. 27) with Bohr that "indeterminacy is not merely due to lack of measurement" and fails to see that a realism which is truly ontological is incompatible with partial affirmations of reality. As to Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (Cambridge: University Press, 1987), a collection of essays by J. S. Bell, ontology is not spoken of there at all.
(15) W. Heisenberg, "Uber den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik," Zeitschrift fur Physik 43 (1927), p. 197.
(16) Ibid. "The invalidity or at least the meaninglessness of the law of causality seems to be firmly established through recent developments in atomic physics," so Heisenberg stated in his more popular article, "Uber die Grundprinzipien der Quantenmechanik," Forschungen und Fortschritte 3 (10 April, 1927), p. 83. Two years later, in his Chicago Lectures, Heisenberg argued that "the resolution of the paradoxes of atomic physics can be accomplished only by further renunciation of old and cherished ideas. Most important of these is the idea that natural phenomena obey exact laws -- the principle of causality." Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930), p. 62.
(17) P. Frank, Das Causalgesetz und scine Grenzen (Schriften zur wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung, Band 6; Wien, 1932). H. Bergmann, Der Kampf um das Kausalgesetz in der jüngsten Physik (Smamlung Vierweg, Heft 98; Braun- schweig, 1929). An earlier phase of the dispute, provoked by the wave theory of matter, is reflected in the writings of A. Gatterer, Das Problem des statistischen Naturgesetzes in Philosophie und Grenzwissenschaften (lnnsbrucker Institut für scholastische Philosophie. 1 Band, 1 Heft; Innsbruck, 1924) and of V. F. Lenzen, "The Philosophy of Nature in the Light of Contemporary Physics," University of California Publications in Philosophy 5 (1924), pp. 24-48.

From: God and the Cosmologists by Stanley L. Jaki, Real View Books, Fraser Michigan, 1998, pgs. 122-126

You, as well as others I talk to in the many fields of science, call into question the subjectivity of my perspective, a view I openly admit is philosophical, yet you don't see your own perspective is a philosophical view too. This is important precisely because the very subjectivity you claim I may be guilty of you have no way of protecting yourself against because the scientific method by itself cannot give such protection. This is so because science itself presupposes the existence of the things it studies. If you were to meet me by the tree in my front yard and perform scientific tests on it you would in no way be proving that tree exists by those tests and measurements. You might take a "core sample" from the tree back to your lab and run every kind of test known to tell of it's makeup, that it has an outer bark and an inner fiberous wood, contains water and other elements. You could tell me how this tree draws in water and nuriousment from the ground through it's roots, air and sunlight through it's leaves, and through a process of photosynthesis converts those ingredients of matter and energy into food that eventually becomes this tree. You could further our knowledge of this tree with better equipment like an electron microscope, focusing down beyond the molecular structure to it's atoms and it's very subatomic makeup. In all this you are not proving that tree exists because in order for you to even decide to do these scientific tests you have to know of the tree's existence. Knowledge of it's existence came prior to any scientific discovery that can be made about it. This means science cannot provide us with all knowledge.

Nor is this all there is to the question of how we know that tree exists because it becomes even more sticky once we realize that those scientific tests expose something very subtle about the matter that makes up that tree, and in fact about the whole environment around it. Our instruments and measurements all reveal to us that tree is in a constant state of flux. It has been said about the human body that it changes it's makeup over a period of time such that what we once were materially we are no longer. As time goes on the material our body is made of eventually undergoes a complete change, and so likewise for this tree, and all other material beings we can know. All persons, animals, insects, plants and even inanimate objects like rocks and sand, stars and suns, planets and moons and galaxies full of matter are all constantly changing. And they never stop this flux of being! Even at death our body, once alive and changing in an ordered way, begins to change, only disorderly. This change all around us never ceases and so has lead many thinking people, such as Hindus and the early Greek Philosophers, both of whom come from different schools of thought, to realize that this constant change leads to ambiguity and uncertainty.

The question becomes how can one looking at beings that are constantly changing know anything at all since what it once was it is no longer? How does one even point to a flux? The answer has to do with how our mind operates which can be broken down into it's three acts:

1) Simple Apprehension - An act by which the mind becomes cognizant of an essence without affirming or denying anything about it.
2) Judgment - An operation of the intellect composing or dividing by affirming or denying.
3) Inference - An act of the mind by which from truths already known the mind comes to know other truths (ratiocination).

A scientist, and by implication science in general, predominately uses the latter two acts of mind as he does his job of research. Said in another way the scientist must use his faculity of reason (ratiocination) to study and pull apart his subject. This faculty is discursive and takes apart what it scrutinizes. Before he can do this he first must come into the presence of the object he is studying, in our case the tree in my front yard, and with a simple act of apprehension come to know that object exists. As the definition above indicates when one does this they make no judgments, they do nothing required of the scientific method because they could not until they first knew that object (the tree) existed. In our case at this point there exists a real unity between the tree and our mind. The tree in all it's essence has communicated itself to our minds. And note the word communication comes from the Latin; cum-, with + municare, union or "union with." This unity gives us a real knowledge of the being in our presence in a way that we are said to be conscious of the tree. The term conscious also comes from the Latin; con- or cum-, with + scientia, knowledge meaning "with knowledge." The scientific endeavor at it's core is about the world around us communicating itself to our minds in a real and certain manner.

So, if my knowledge were to be purely subjective as you suggest then I would have fallen into the philosophical heresy known as Idealism. I've related this concept to you before but it simply means that whatever is outside my mind for me to know I cannot really know, but instead, I form an image in my mind of what I want it to be irrespective of what it actually is (there is no correspondence). That idea in my mind may or may not be related to this real being in the outside world we call a tree and so there is no union between my mind and that object. Idealism as I said, leaves one in a world "created" by their mind and so is the essence of subjectivity. Without real unity between the knower and the known there cannot be true knowledge. Idealism (and as you say subjectivity) is one extreme to be avoided, and I would add at all costs. The other is Empiricism where only what is observable can lead to valid knowledge. Since what is observable is what comes to us through our five senses, and that involves all the changeable aspects of our world, then it means all we can know is that which science gives us and thus we cannot know about essences. If we don't know what is essential to being then we don't know principles. If we don't know principles then we can't have a firm foundation upon which we can base all our other reasoning. In other words the first act of mind I laid out above is not valid knowledge and therefore we can never prove what we observe exists. We are already at a far remove from it. This philosophical position traps one in the material world in such a way that there cannot be unity between the knower and the known. Like Idealism we don't truly know our world because in order to do so there must be a real union. It leads to Materialism where one thinks the only reality is the material world that excludes anything immaterial. It could be called an objectivism because it leaves the human mind out making the visible objects in the world all imporant at the expense of what we know. It leads to a sort of science that truncates reality sometimes called Scientism.

The antidote to these extremes is simply to remain in the center where we accept and continue to realize that there is a knower and a known in every act of knowing. It's been called Realism, and the particular brand I subscribe to is Thomist or Moderate Realism. This world view has it's roots in pagan Greek thought but is also to be found in other cultures in a different manner, such as that of ancient China or India. Suffice to say a balance must be struck by never letting go of these two elements in all knowledge: there exists the knower and the known. One cannot get around this truth and to try to do so they fall into one of the two extreme heretical perspectives. When one holds to this communication of one being to another they then leave open the door of what Aristotle called the categories, ten total, the first is substance and the other nine are the accidens of being. The two most important accidental categories to our every day experience and our scientific culture are quantity and quality. Quantity is that which the scientist "sees" and works with and quality is that which is carried by quantity. Thus because a scientist deals with the quantifiable aspects of being he can make use of measurement and mathematics to form knowledge of real beings like that tree in my front yard. Color or shape, being nonquantifiable aspects of being, that is being qualities, must be converted to quantity in order to be scientifically analyzed. Therefore the green leaves or brown bark on the tree in my front yard are not readily measurable until we devise a way (generally an instrument) to quantify the "greenness" or "brownness." Once we do we can make artifacts of color and reproduce it in our images on the screens of our test equipment. We can "see" into matter the reasons color physically exists and alter matter at different levels to alter color. But note here that as we do we are not destroying the being we study because these accidental qualities are not essential to them. Likewise for quantity which comes more directly to us than quality. The tree being one corporeal body can be broken down into it's constituent parts and subsequently be manipulated by our scientific techniques. We have been able to work at an everyday level with technology to change trees, cut them up and make houses and furniture, but are now learning how to go down to a level that is genetic and impose change. What needs to be realized here is that such change is of it's nature NOT substantial and as a result cannot alter the essential nature of say, my tree. Even at the genetic level we work with tree, with wood and whatever other characteristics it's "treeness" implies. This is an example of a philosophical limit put on the scientific understanding of matter and all being composed of matter.

Now this change is closer to that of the essence of the tree but it is not and never will move over into that category I above called the substance level. And here lies a crucial key in understanding the quantum enigmas we've already experienced, as delinated by Prof. Jaki above, as well as our environmental problems. We as intellectual beings experience the essential nature or substantial level of a being with the first act of mind I described above (not by reason as is mistakenly taught in most schools). Therefore a scientist will never discover the essence of what makes a tree a "tree," that is it's universal character, because the scientific method cannot achieve this. When it comes to primary essences the scientific method is impotent. It cannot because this method deals only with the categorical accidens of quantity (primarily) and quality (secondarily). It cannot because the human mind moves from these changeable aspects of being to it's abiding (unchangeable) aspects not by just changing the method we approach being with, but by a change in the intellectual level we operate on. We abstract or pull from being it's substantial aspects in one seeming instantaneous act thereby ingesting in the way of knowing it's core essence. At this level we are using our power of simple apprehension. Note there is no subjectivity here because there are no judgments being made at this level of knowing. It is at this level we cannot error in our knowledge and where certainty arises. It is this you miss when you judge my philosophical view to be "subjective" at the same time as you deny you have any view at all except that of scientific. Your supposition is wrong from the start and cannot be reconciled with the way reality is and the human mind operates. Your philosophical view therefore hinders you in seeing what I am telling you is true. In order to see I am correct in what I am saying you must come over to my perspective and look for yourself and this simply means you must become fully human and not deny to yourself this intellective power we call simple apprehension or abstraction (and sometimes called intuition which can imply other things). It is therefore sound philosophical thinking that begins with common sense (where sound science begins too) that will enable you to recognize this tree in my front yard and from there be able to use your lesser intellectual powers to discover it's changeable characteristics with the scientific method. But you cannot know it's more important aspects like it's "treeness" or what we call it's quiddity or "whatness" without a proper perspective. It cannot be any view, but like good science which must conform to it's method, your philosophy must be that which includes all of reality in it's method. If the method is deficient then your perspective will be deficient.

Now, if you embrace your intellectual powers fully as I have tried to show above you no longer need to worry about this subjectivity precisely because it is avoided by the union of the knower and the known. In other words as you enter the presence of that tree in my front yard you will exprience it in all it's essence. You will know what is accidental to it and what is substantial. You will literally be united to this tree's essence which has been carried quite invisibly to your mind via your senses, that is by it's shape and color and smell and how it feels and the sounds it makes. All of these very real aspects of it's changeableness carry with them those aspects that are not mutable but constant and abiding. Those things that make it a tree and not a dog or rock are what is essential to it (it's universal nature or quiddity) and those things that make it this particular tree and not some other tree are the mutable aspects. Now the fact that your mind is united to my tree is what makes it not just a subjective experience. There is a one to one correspondence between what you know and that tree. Because of this real unity you can now come to me, both of us out of the presence of the tree, and describe it to me. You can really pass on what you know because you really know it. It is knowledge subject to you at this moment yes, but knowledge of a real being that exists apart from your knowledge, AND, exists in your mind in the mode of knowing! As such you can pass it on to me, or more importantly to someone who has never experienced that tree, and as you do they will really and truly be united with that same tree that you are. This is because the union you gain with that tree, which was communicated to you by it through it's accidents carrying it's essence, can then be communicated to another being, whom like you, has an intellect with the capacity and capabilities you do. In other words you can communicate with another person all that tree is with your words and gestures. Your knowledge is real and communicable.

Also note I don't deny degrees here so the better you know the tree the more you will be able to pass it on in the form of knowledge. Hence our science. BUT! ...and here is another key! The fact that you have been present to this tree, and it to you, means you have a real knowledge that can be passed on to other beings of your kind, AND! ...be done without any scientific intervention. I am not saying here that science is unnecessary but that it is not necessary to have both initial knowledge and essential knowledge (and in fact as I said above science cannot give either). With what we call scientific scrutiny we look closer, listen more carefully, smell, touch and taste again and again in order to better and more fully know the being we scrutinize. We make judgements that initially have not been made and can then convey more knowledge of the perfections the being we know (desire to unite with) and communicate. Subjectivity of knowledge is no problem with the real unity of real beings. This only comes into play when we move away from Realism and start denying what the human intellect is capable of... and that is of knowing and knowing with certitude. Rene Descartes helped start this irrational movement toward doubt as the basis of philosophy and its consequence Skepticism. And notice exactly what YOU and I are doing here? We are communicating what we know with each other. We are really and truly sharing our knowledge of reality with each other and not caught in our own heads unable to share. Neither are we using instruments to do this. We are measuring nothing! We are simply talking and in doing so uniting our two minds in a very real and tangeable way. I say tangeable here knowing what is being passed is immaterial, thought that is, but thought is still a kind of entity that can be and is tangeable... meaning real, substantial and essential. In fact as such, because thought is capable of holding and communicating essence it is MORE tangeable than simply communicating "scientific" truth, precisely because the scientific does not use the first act of mind and does not discover essence. The scientific method relies on judgment and even more so on inference, and while those mental acts can and do handle essence once it is known, the scientific method cannot. It can only bring us knowledge of the accidens of nature, those aspects that are mutable and as such it is a knowledge in flux and secondary to being. It is less important than the metaphysical. NOTE HERE... I did not say scientific knowledge is not important but only of lesser importance. In fact scientific knowedge is really an extension and clarification of everyday walking around knowledge. This is because, for instance, we hear a sound, we turn and face the direction it came from. We walk over to it, we get closer, we want to know what it was that made that noise and more about it. This is the beginning of science. It is more accurately described as scientific when we then impose machines in the form of instruments, test equipment, scopes, and computers in order to extend our senses that modern science really comes into play.

One last point, what Prof. Jaki is saying in the exerpt I gave you is not that science is wrong, but that the interpretation of some scientists is wrong. Unfortunately it seems most scientists today have an attraction to, and in varying degrees, to those extremes in world views, Ideologies as you put it, and thereby interpret their "scientific facts" wrong because of it. Many choose their world view because of prejudices, preconceived notions about the world and the universe, so they don't have to face up to realities they dislike. Invariably it does not matter how hard we buck reality because it does not go away. In the first two chapters of Prof. Jaki's book he makes the case that because the universe begs of a first cause, if one gets rid of that universe, then they won't have to deal with that ultimate Cause. This playing with reality has been happening from before modern science started and with the help of philosophers hostile to God has been aiding scientists who have the same mind of wanting nothing to do with a Creator. Unfortunately this is not for science to decide because it is not something it's method can assess. Whether there is a God, a Creator, or not is outside the purview of the scientific method. What is amazing to find out is that with the advent of Newton's input into science many saw a cosmology of an infinite homogeneous universe that effectively did away with the universe, and so as a way to eliminate the ultimate Cause. An infinite universe that had no start simply needs no Creator. This did not come from Newton's deterministic approach to science that works from cause to effect and vice versa. It was imposed on the scientific datum from outside by philosophers hostile to faith and religion. Then came along Einstein and his relativistic theory that turned science on it's head, effectively nullifying the deterministic mindset that wanted to make the whole universe one big machine. What Einstein did without realizing it, by implying with his general theory of Relativity a specifically finite non-homogeneous universe, was to give us back the universe in all it's specificity where each thing in it had relation to another. Unfortunately in that specificity Einstein missed the mark that would have lead him away from his own pantheism and the nebulousity that had been creeping into science which Einstein so disliked. Prof. Jaki points out that while Relativity may seem to make everything even more ambiguous, Einstein gave us within his theory the most absolute of all concepts ever, namely the speed of light. So while the popularizes of Relativity theory follow suit with the popularizers of Newton's theories working hard to eliminate Cause from the picture, Einstein actually brought science "back to it's senses" so-to-speak. Einstein gave us a very specific universe with an absolute that mirrors the absoluteness of that very Cause of the cosmos. Einstein's struggle with pantheism and not seeing clearly that ultimate Cause was rooted in his childhood teacher's philosophical bent, that of Emanuel Kant, who had declared for his own self-centered reasons that "the universe was an unreliable notion (the bastard product of the metaphysical cravings of the intellect) because science could not establish whether the universe was finite or infinite, atomistic or continuous." His reason was disingenuous, so man could become an autonomous being independent of any gods. The point here being the philosophical system we use to view science not only determines one's interpretation of the facts but also determines whether that science will produce fruitful results.

How then does all this apply to climatology and Global Warming? Simply that to the degree one ignores the reality around them, to the degree they truncate it's full richness and depth is to the degree one does bad science. Pseudo-science does no justice to the powers of the human intellect which have the capacity to see in behind the relative to the absolute. This "seeing" is the ability to see reality and separate it from fiction. With scientism (science directed by bad philosophy) one can find "solutions" to non-problems and miss real solutions to real problems. With bad science one can create problems that have the tendency to harm human beings rather than help. With the wrong philosophy one's science becomes bad because it is blind and incoherent. It then becomes as you suggest something that "encompasses anything which originates in our brains alone." Again my point is with the correct philosophical perspective one can "truly get 'inside someone's head'." With the wrong philosophy people are either trapped inside their head or have access to the external world but at the expense most of what is there. The universe becomes lost so-to-speak! The latter Empiricism, Materialism, and Scientism is a real temptation for the scientifically trained mind while the former Idealism is a serious problem for the philosopher who's task is to help interpret the findings of science as well as set limits for it's proper object. The fantastic claims of the Global Warmer's will not be fully revealed for what they are by scientists alone any more than the extravagant claims of the evolutionist can be refuted without a sound metaphysical basis. I reject subjectivism as you seem to but I also am not afraid of it for the reasons I have deliniated above. I am also skeptical of some of the environmentalist's claims while at the same time seriously concerned with that state of our environment. I reject the notion that we must all "act now" or perish in some cataclysmic catastrophe and so I reject the idea that our government should impose on us mandates to lessen our carbon footprint without the certain knowledge necessary to make such appraisal certain. I also reject the materialist claims that human beings evolved from monkeys who evolved from other animals who evolved from inanimate being while at the same time see there could have been an evolution within the animal kingdom if the original forms had within them a potency for these new forms. In the evolutionary scheme I would accept there are two impenatrable barriers, between non-life to life and between general life and intelligent life. I can accept a science that shows how this evolution came about within these limits that are essentially ontological and as such cannot be overlooked without falling downward into a pseudo-scientific abyss. Likewise for our rational grasp of weather in it's local and global arenas. The only sound science able to intelligently discern these very important subjects is one backed by a sound metaphysical premise, without which we play a dangerous game with our lives.

Ratjaws@aol.com

Gerald,
"This statement is irrelevant, since it isn't reality that is questioned, but rather our perception or ability to perceive it. There is no doubt that there is something "real" out there, but that doesn't mean that it is part of our experience. Certainly we can increase the scope of that experience with science and technical equipment, but it would be erroneous to conclude that because there is something that is "real", that is necessarily something that is self-evident, and capable of being used to justify other conclusions. We can know nothing of the sort. The more we discover, the more we can help establish what is "real", but that doesn't mean that it will provide a meaningful context for us to evaluate "reality". It simply means we will have acquired more data."

Ok, allow me to put it this way:
1) Reality exists.
2) We can know it and know it with certainty.
3) Our first act is to know reality in one simple act of apprehension, without recourse to affirm or deny anything about this immediate knowledge.
4) Now that we know we can make judgments about what we know and can affirm or deny something about it. We can also make inferences, that is, from two known truths deduce another truth (ratiocination).

So what I've laid out here is an order to how we know. First we must know of something then we can think about it. Notice in that 3rd step I used the term "immediate" which implies there is nothing inbetween that which we know and our mind. There is no mediation and therefore no mediator. When we come into the presence of something, any being, you can say we know it instantaneously. Also when I say there are self-evident things I don't mean every thing is. Self-evident things are along side those which are not and must be known by our discursive reasoning process but this comes further on down the line in the 4th step. What is self-evident is what is availble to us in the 3rd step. Self-evident truths are those that we CANNOT NOT KNOW if you will.

What you've told me above is that you at least agree with me on the 1st step "reality that is questioned... There is no doubt that there is something "real" out there" but then turn around and disagree saying it's "rather our perception or ability to perceive it... that doesn't mean that it is part of our experience." Ok, I can agree that perception is a very large part of knowing. In fact this is what I am talking about when expounding on concepts like form and matter, substance and accidens, etc. So the 2nd step is in question now. But you keep putting in quotes terms like real, reality and truth and this leads me to believe your mind is not settled on steps one or two. Perception is a very big issue and if misunderstood what we mean by it will only add to our confusion. But unless you affirm without exception that a reality exists that we can know AND know with certainty, then we are back to the 1st step. You decide?

Also your terms "to discover" can be used to mean "come to know" in the way I mean by the first act of the mind (step 3 above) or to "know through the reasoning process" which is by it's nature discursive. In the latter case we are at the 4th step above. To distinguish which way of knowing we are refering to is important because the latter process is deconstructive, that is it takes apart what we know in order to know it better... affirmation as you call it.

In the perceptive act we are dealing with sense cognition and intellectual cognition. Dr. Wolfgang Smith puts it better than anyone else I've ever read when he says:

"The Quantum Enigma
Rediscovering the Corporeal World
If the act of perception does put us in touch with the external world—as I claim—the question remains, of course, how this prodigy is accomplished. In the case of visual perception (to which we may as well restrict our consideration), there exists no doubt the perceptual image of an external object; and yet what we actually perceive is not the image as such but the object, precisely. We “see” the image, if you like, but perceive the object; for in a sense we perceive more than we see, more than is given to us or passively received. And thus perception is not sensation pure and simple, but sensation catalyzing an intelligent act.(9)

It should however be noted that the perceptual act is not rational or ratiocinative: There is absolutely no reasoning involved in perceiving an object. If the perceptual act were ratiocinative, moreover, it would be a matter of interpreting the image as representing an external object; and this would imply, firstly, that the object is conjectural—a concept as distinguished from a precept—and secondly, that the image, for its part, is viewed as image, which it is not. The point is this: In the perceptual act the image is viewed, not as image, but as a part or aspect of the object; it is seen, in other words, as something that belongs to the object, even as the face of a man belongs to the man. The image thus becomes more than an image, if one may put it thus: It is perceived as a surface, a face, an aspect of a thing which immeasurably transcends the image as such.

Now this decisive transition—from image to aspect—is something that reason or reasoning can neither effect nor indeed comprehend—which may well account for the fact that philosophers have experienced so much difficulty in coming to grips with the problem of perception. We have as a rule forgotten that there is an intelligence which is intuitive, direct and instantaneous in its operation, an intelligence which has no need for dialectic or discursive thought, but flies straight to the mark like an arrow; and much less do we realize that this high and forgotten faculty— which the ancients termed “intellect”—is operative and indeed plays the essential role in the act of sense perception. To discursive thought image and object must remain forever separated—cut asunder one could say—for it is the very nature of the ratiocinative faculty to analyse, to break apart. Thus, in the absence of intellect—if we were endowed, in other words, with no more than a capacity for the passive reception of images plus a faculty of reason—authentic perception would be impossible, which is to say that the external world would become for us a mere conception or speculative hypothesis. Like Descartes, we could never see it, never touch it, never hear its sound.

It is by force of intellect that the perceived object is joined to the percipient in the act of perception—assuming, of course, that it is a bona fide or valid perception; for as I have noted earlier, the perceptual act can indeed miscarry, as happens, for instance, in the case of an optical illusion or a hallucinatory perception. As the ancients would put it, the perceptual act can miscarry because it is not purely intellective, but only “participates” in the intellect but these are questions which do not particularly concern us at the moment. For the present it suffices to take note of the fact, that there is a non-ratiocinative mode of intelligence by which the transition from perceptual image to perceived object is effected, and that reason or discursive thought is simply not equal to the task. But of course this does not in the least imply that there is anything irrational in the perceptual act, or better said, in the philosophical acknowledgement that we do actually look out upon the external world.

It might not be out place to observe, in connection with what has just been said on the subject of human intelligence, that the reduction of intellect to reason—which is the fallacy of rationalism—might well constitute the prime offense, not just of Rene Descartes and his more immediate followers, but perhaps of modern philosophy in general. For even the anti-rationalist schools, such as pragmatism and existentialism, seem to presuppose the same reduction, the same rationalist denial of intellect. But be that as it may, once this philosophically fatal assumption has been made we find ourselves caught up in a dichotomy which cannot by any means be bridged. The external world of matter and the internal world of mind, if you will, have then seemingly lost their connection; and this means, of course, that the universe, and our position therein, have become de facto unintelligible. It is the nature of reason to analyse, to cut asunder even, it would seem, what God Himself has joined; no wonder, then, that a Weltanschauung based upon reason alone should turn out to be fractured beyond repair. Intellect, on the other hand, is the great connector; it unites what appears disparate, not externally, to be sure, but by bringing to light a deep and pre-existent bond. To put it in somewhat mythical terms, what “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men” have failed to “put back together again,” the “royal intellect” restores in a trice.

Now the classic example of this marvelous feat is no doubt the ordinary, humble act of sense perception: the act, for instance, of beholding an apple. The chasm between subject and object—the epistemological abyss that had baffled a Descartes and a Kant—is bridged, I say, in a twinkling of an eye; every child can and indeed does pull off the miracle—which does nothing, however, to lessen its magnitude. For it is and remains a marvel—seeing that the apple is outside of us, and we perceive it nonetheless. Or in the words of Aristotle: that in the act of knowing “the intellect and its object unite.”

Let no one, moreover, deny the miracle: that “through” the image (“as through a glass”) we perceive the object itself, the external thing. Let there be no mistake about it: the term of the intentional act is not simply another image, or a subjective representation, but the object itself; what we perceive is the apple, precisely, and not just a picture, or a concept, or an idea of the apple. But of course our perception or knowledge is incomplete: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; …now I know in part” (1 Cor. 13:12)

It is no small thing that transpires thus in these familiar daily acts; for the intelligence manifested therein is mysterious: a power so awesome that its very existence within us belies our usual notions as to what man is, and how he came to be.

(9) Thus we perceive the object as three-dimensional even though the image is plane. The conceivable objection that stereoscopic vision is due to the fact that there are two images is beside the point for two reasons: firstly, because we do not in reality see two images, but only one; and secondly, because even when we look at a familiar object with just one eye, we still perceive it as three-dimensional.
* * *
(The Quantum Enigma by Dr. Wolfgang Smith, Copyright 1995, 1st Edition, Sherwood Sugden & Company Publishers, 315 5th Street, Peru, Illinois 61354, pages 14-16 in part)"

So you should see from this as a Realist I don't take perception the way cultural scientists do as if it is a passive activity involving only the senses. I fully agree with Dr. Smith that the sense act is a catalyst that basically initiates a more intimate act, one that in effect, happens in an instant, in no time at all. This is the intellectual act (intellectus as the Greeks called it) he refers to above and said in another way would be our ability to abstract from what we sense (the category of accidens; changeableness of being) what is substantial to each being we know. One way to realize this is true in everyday life is to think about how every day you go outside through a door. The first time you encountered this wall, which is essentially what a door is to someone who has never gone through one, you knew right away without any doubt it was a barrier. Somehow you discovered it was a barrier that could be overcome and you could open and go through it. It probably was more of a process over time as you grew up seeing your parents and others go in and out it. You came to realize it was something you could do too but it is conceivable that a person who is already grown, who faces a door for the first time, would see it as an inpenetrable wall at first and this in a very immediate way. This would be that first act of apprehension I speak of. In it you realize there is some thing there and that it is a barrier between the inside where you are and the outside where you see others and could be yourself. It's then through the process of discovery and reasoning that you come to know that barrier as a door which can be opened admitting you to the outside. This whole scenario happens all the time everyday with everything that you know and will know. One can't get around it because it is ingrained in our nature. It's only other views of the world, philosophies, or Weltanschauung's as Dr. Smith says in German, that break down our understanding of these acts and confuse them into "realities" they are not. It's Cartesian and Kantian misuse of our imagination, mind and will that leads to such cultural confusion about how our intellectual nature actually functions. These biases are what lead us astray from a position that is in conformity to reality as the Realist view is.

Ratjaws@aol.com

Mr. Campbell,
I appreciate your correction as I did overlook the incorrect spelling of Gerhard's name I've been making all along. It's a somewhat embarassing mistake I make more often than I care to admit, I guess, because I get so concentrated on the subjects I write about. What I don't appreciate is how you corrected me. I hope you don't have a son whom you approach this way as it could lead to relational problems down the road. Criticism should uplift a person; not tear them down. It certainly should not attack them personally of which I think you've crossed the line here. It's the second sentence of your post that is offensive to me. I suggest to you that if a person thinks my repeated misspelling of a person's name some how means my "comprehension is so limited" then it is really they who have this very problem. Even though your comment invokes anger in me it does not change that I took your article in a very positive light and my comments on it were genuine. The question for me now is why your first comment would be an attack on my character rather than critique of my ideas? I can take the latter without emotion and learn from it where I find I'm wrong. Anyhow thanks for the correction even though it seems to have been done in a very unscientific way.

Ratjaws@aol.com