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A Review
of
Chapter 8
of
Daniel C. Dennett's

Breaking the Spell
by Doug Renselle

Doug's Pre-review Commentary

Start of Review



Dedication Introduction Note

1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Appendix Index

Move to any Chapter of Doug's Critical Review of Daniel C. Dennett's Breaking the Spell,
or to beginning of its review via this set of links
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Chapter 8...............Belief in Belief


We are doing BtS's chapter reviews incrementally
(which means you have to wait for each increment - this one has taken a month, at least, a price we pay for incremental delivery...)
We publish each increment and then reread them with you! We also re integrate each new increment with its preceding whole!
Expect editor's changes to each new increment over a period of weeks after publication.

 

Section 1 - You better believe it

Section 2 - God as intentional object

Section 3 - The division of doxastic labor

Section 4 - The lowest common denominator?

Section 5 - Beliefs designed to be professed

Section 6 - Lessons from Lebanon: the strange cases of the Druz and Kim Philby

Section 7 - Does God exist?


So far Doug has been showing how Dennett's belief in his own belief in science is, appears to us as, his own religion. It is fascinating to us when we and he say it like that. His belief in his belief in science is an individual belief, a gnostic belief. But he likes to put it in a social context so that he can feel like a part of a paradigmatic group, a OSFA catholic belief in belief group: 'science.'

Before we commence our review of Dennett's Breaking the Spell, Chapter 8, allow a bit of review by Doug in terms of what is better about science, what is better about religion, what is worse about single paradigm science, and what is worse about monistic catholic religion. Purpose here is to compare science and religion qualitatively using a fairly simple juxtaposition of those four terms, like this:

Science
vis-à-vis
Religion

Religion
vis-à-vis
Science

Better

  • Science admits its own provisionality.
  • Science shows that evolution is real (this is scientific dyslexia, however, since science requires reality to hold still in order to measure it; an evolving reality cannot hold still).
  • Science, within its abstracted, reified, objective, materialistic, and unreal modeling environment, however limited by its local and naïve facts, principles, and laws, "does something." (We see this as inarguable: without science Earth would not be experiencing marvelous and incredible technical revolutionings we experience directly nowings. However there is a complementary fact: science could have taken unlimited pathways and we are currently experiencing only one of them whose basis of reason and thought is dialectical objectivity.)
  • Real religion recognizes that humans are individual spiritual beings and that individual spiritual belief and faith is above any reified 'scientism.'
  • Religion takes for granted reality's predominant subjectivity and only apparent objectivity.
  • Religion allows and nurtures humanities' spiritual complement and memeos of that which are ultimately beyond any manufactured scientific 'model' of an only apparent objective actuality.
  • Religion, especially Jesus' Essene Gnosticism, in Doug's view, is closer to quantum reality than classical dialectical 'science' can ever be. Read Elaine H. Pagels' opus to see why Doug expresses this elect view.

Worse

  • Science reifies reality making it actual and then declares 'actuality' is 'reality' and is all there is to reality. Science wears its own self-imposed blinders.
  • Science claims to know what is true by 'verifying' only apparent absence of change as 'proof' of what is 'true.' Science views 'identity' and ideal 'state' as unchanging metric repetition. Latter are two bases of dialectical formal mechanism and its spawn: objective logic and mathematics. Simply, using CTMs, 'science' 'verifies' apparitions.
  • Science adheres unitemporal context, motional state, cause-effect, 1-1 correspondence, two-valuedness, invariant geometrical interval, and determinism thus 'scientific predictability' as its predominate logical tools of reason and validation, among others. (All are, in general, bogus! Doug.)
  • Science uses a disciplinary matrix to make sure that all scientists adhere a scientific monism based upon state-ic accretive knowledge
  • Science as a society, as a scientific community, insists on scientific catholicism and seeks a Grand Unifying Theory (GUT), a Theory of Everything (ToE): one size fits all, OSFA. Notice similarity of that to current classical, dialectical notions of One Global Society (OGS). Earth societies still believe in a belief of catholic monism: OSFA. Maltuition 'tis. Doug.
  • Science leaves most humans feeling cold and empty, emotionally stultified, spiritually bankrupt.
  • Religion declares its own dogmatic absoluteness. Religion proselytizes and evangelizes self as absolute, nonprovisional. (This, on its face, is simply a lie! No religion is or can be absolute, period! No human has individual intellectual and spiritual qua to assess absoluteness. No society, group, union, organized science or religion has qua to assess absoluteness. Any claim of infallibility by any individual or group is simply an epistemic, anthropocentric lie, period! Anyone, scientist or religionist who claims absolute knowledge is lying. We can demonstrate this via our Bases of Judgment, our extreme bandwidth sensory limitations, and other ways: those are what Quantonics does. Not only is human knowledge limited, but it is changing and it will always be changing, as long as humanity 'exists.')
  • Religion demands that belief and faith are not, may not be provisional.
  • Social religion insists on religious catholicism: our religion is the religion.
  • Religion naïvely and uni-context-locally views reality as a one time, one state unilateral creation event AKA "design" (i.e., explicitly not an animate process) whose product is state-ic, immutable 'existence,' whose alpha-omega terminal, bistable dialectical 'opposites' are "heaven" and "hell."
  • Religion practiced and studied for a long time, leaves most humans feeling hopeless, useless, incapable of doing, since as Dennett writes, orthodox religion turns its followers into indecisive, "God will make all your decisions for you," "helpless innocents." That bullet item is why Doug claims society is evil. We are all individuals. Attempts to socialize individuals lead to cloning of thought. Cloned thought is catholic thought which disallows individual freedom of thought and free will, and that is about as evil as one can be. Catholicism turns individual freedom of thought into mental slavery. Be aware that Gnostic Jesus abhorred mental slavery! We call it "intellectual rape and abuse." Doug - 4Jun2006.

There. We have some better and some worse comparisons twixt dialectical science and dialectical religion. But what about their similars?

To us, their most grievous similar mistake, which both science and religion share with most of Earth humanity is reason based in dialectic.

Their next most grievous similar mistake, to us, is their attempts to metastasize both scientific and religious thought as social thought. What is social thought? A tragedy of commons sense!

In our view, socialized dialectic disables both religion and science. Thence we boot: socialized dialectic at Millennium III's beginning disables Earth humanity! Socialized dialectic IS Big Brother, folks! Doug - 6Jun2006.


Of all chapters we have reviewed so far, excepting perhaps chapter 3, this one, chapter 8 "is where the rubber meets the road," as Dennett says it. There is much here to ponder. Dennett makes some cogent and powerful points. He is mostly and somewhat securely justified in his view that classical 'science' permits humankind to 'do something.' (If we followed religion exclusively as 'catholics' and 'Muslims' wish, all we would be doing is praying and lighting candles...while terrorizing other 'infidel' religions...read Hermann Hesse's (in retrospect, a potential gn¤stic) Magister Ludi epilogue...1, 2, 3 , re 1, 'The Rainmaker:' Knecht's 1st reincarnation and his experiences with Turu...) And we agree with Dennett too, classical science permits humankind to do many things reasonably well. Our point however, which Dennett rejects, is that quantum 'science' offers a powerfully superior pragmadigm (our use of pragma here is in its original Greek semantic of action; analogously in Latin, fluxio and fec (make) und (waves)) which will make what classical science declares impossible (e.g., anti gravity transport), possible! Dennett cannot see that due his metastatic socially communized dialectical blinders. Doug needles and cajoles classical science and society for their dialectical predilections and social proselytizing. Why? Doug issi k~now~ings quantum sophist rhetoric (real pragmatism!) is better than classical dialectic! Quantonics is Dougings' evidencings of that (closer to) genuine quantum reality. That is why Doug rejects most of Dennett's dialectical reasonings as "bogus." Dialectic is bogus! Dialectic prevents its practitioners, as Heraclitus said, from understanding quantum reality's logos: we call it "qualogos," i.e., qua (capability of understanding) logos (spiritual, pneumatic, stindyanic, everywhere~included~middle~associative quantum~language AKA religiously as "the word"). Dennett's dialectic prevents him from understanding quantum reality's logos, its qualogos! (Here, qua logos also means "in capacity of electively quantum understanding and communicating language, words, and messages of quantum reality." See Heraclitus.)

Successful qua tends to blind its stake holders (here we see success as inuring maintenance of status quo inertia vis-à-vis educing evolutionary pragma and relentless adaptation) to imminent and emerscent qua and its emersos of qualogos. Contemporary mythos examples include unilateral application of social pattern of value 'war' not working against terrorists in a global Earth community of communities, and businesses like GM, Ford, Micro$oft, countless steel companies, and so on: status quo is n¤t qua for longevity. To use Dawkins' own terminology, status quo is not an evolutionarily stable strategy, ESS. Why? Quantum reality is flux, and that demands that qua immerse itself in dynamic and emerscent memes. But dialectic is about state-ic notions...

Allow us to get tougher. Ask this question: "Does classical science work in general?" A simple, even classically-factual answer is "No." Why? Classical science is n¤t general: its dialectical logic is n¤n general.

That is why quantum theory was invented! Trouble is, classicists used dialectic to invent a dialectical quantum theory called "quantum mechanics." What classicists like Dennett have been incapable to and perhaps, like Dennett, refused to grasp is that reality is n¤t mechanical, reality is n¤t dialectical. Classical scientific 'modeling' of reality as dialectical guarantees their models' incompletenesses and inconsistencies, uncovered via 'scientific' application in nature, which classical scientists refer as

  • "oxymora, sophisms" (Plato and Aristotle),
  • "paradice,"
  • "inexplicables" (protagonists in Gary Taubes' Darwin's Chip),
  • "Murphies,"
  • "inequalities" (JS Bell, et al.; "Bell's Inequalities," turn out to be just another way of looking at quantum uncertainty, but in this case, manifesting itself non classically, macroscopically.),
  • "nonsense" (Einstein re: quantum 'action at a distance,' and 'uncaused cause,' etc.),
  • "absurdities" (Feynman in his QED),
  • etc."

Doug - 2Jun2006.

But "Why?" Answer: "Classical science is ihncomplete." All formal, mechanical, objective systems are ihncomplete: n¤t universal. Classical science is n¤t 'catholic.' It is locally, provincially, parochially and thus naïvely un realistic

But "What makes classical science ihncomplete?" Answer: "Dialectic." Any either-or view of reality is an exclusive view of reality. Dialectic excommunicates subjective reality thus mandating dialectic's own ihncompleteness.

Another simple fact: "Quantum phil¤s¤phy, 'science' and 'religion' are more c¤mplete than classical, dialectical science and religion." Quantonics' version of quantum_reality quanton(quantum_subjective_reality,apparently_objective_reality).


In this chapter Dennett emphasizes dox: belief. Too, he emphasizes understanding. He says we shouldn't believe, rather, we must know. Science knows. Religion believes. Science understands. Religion doesn't understand.

But what we get out of all this is that if you understand (i.e., think you understand, believe you understand) then doesn't that imply that you know? And if you know based upon understanding, isn't that belief? Of course, this is all classical hyperBoolean dialectica and syllogisms. To students of Quantonics it is apparent that 'know' is state-ic, immutable know ledge, rote tote running on automatic, know ledge. Ditto 'understand.' Ditto 'belief.' And all that assumes one global context of reason, dialectical reason, two-valued reason.

In his section 3 title he uses a word we seldom see: doxastic. In Greek 'dox' means to teach, teaching. Dennett interprets it, perhaps too specifically, as believe. (But to teach, do we not have to believe? Dennett teaches doesn't he? He proselytizes 'science' doesn't he? He preaches 'science' doesn't he, at least in Breaking the Spell that is apparent to Doug.)

Dennett explains all this, personally, in section 5 of chapter 8, especially page 232 plus or minus a page or two.

In Greek 'aster' means [bright] star. Examples are doxology: "study of teaching." Orthodox: "right, correct teaching." Doxastic, in Dennett's use appears as "effusive praise of glorious apparition." Teaching emerges in this case as "pushing by example." Music just happens to be one way to push religion, or anything one wishes to push for whatever polemic. In Quantonics, our view is that pushing and shoving is worseship and pulling via attraction is bettership whether we're speaking of religion, science, politics, products, memes, etc.

To us, after seven chapters, it is obvious that Dennett's science is his God, so we can answer section 7's query immediately for Dennett: "Yes! Dennett, your God is science. Your house of wors[es]hip is academe and, just like religion, its redundant and wasteful infrastructure." To us, academe's redundancy is unnecessary assuming we have reliable communications similar www's internet.


Section 1 - You better believe it

As his Chapter 8 mast quotes Dennett offers us more dialectic:

Anonymous says that God honors our belief in Him: "I think God honors the fact that I want to believe in Him, whether I feel sure or not." A Fred Alan Wolfe account of an informant in Wolfe's The Transforming of American Religion.

Denis de Rougement, in The Devil's Share, writes "The proof that the Devil exists, acts and succeeds is precisely that we no longer believe in him."

De Rougement's sentence is more quantum than Wolfe's quote. Why?

Before we answer why? allow us to make another, simpler, observation. Do these two sentences offer dichon(God, Devil)? Do most people view God as not Devil and vice versa? Do most people view God as mechanically separate from the Devil and vice versa? Do most people view God as positive and Devil as negative and thus mathematically opposite one another?

Now allow us to paraphrase de Rougement, "The proof that 'negative' flux is absent is that quantum reality is wholly positive." Only positive flux 'exists' in quantum reality. There is no negative flux (~Devil) in quantum reality.

Here is text and a picture of what we intend.

Why? How do we make 'darkness' in quantum reality? By interfering 'positive' flux with itself, while realizing that there is no such 'thing' as classically-negative quantum flux. Quantumly then from a stupid dialectical conspective, the Devil is God interfering with himself. Quantumly, though, "There is n¤ Devil." Doug - 7Jun2006.

Regular readers know how Doug loves oxymora, especially subtle (perhaps not so subtle?), ostensibly subtle oxymora.

Dennett offers us one in his reference to Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: "Good reason[s]." Let's keep this one simple: if your 'reason' is dialectical, it demonstrably isn't 'good.' Doug - 7Jun2006.

On page 202 of Breaking the Spell, Dennett takes on a philosophical notion of free will. As a good atheist he says we do not have any free will and quotes Paul Davies saying "...it may be a fiction worth maintaining."

Classicists like Dennett and Davies simply do not fathom quantum reality, are apparently incapable of fathoming quantum reality. They are determinists, radically mechanical Dawkinsian clockwork certain dialecticians. But reality isn't deterministic in any classical sense and reality isn't a simple unitemporal three space. Further, reality isn't 1-1 correspondent cause-effective!

Actually we do have quantum free will, but so does all of reality! So we must think in terms of ensembles of heterotemporal free wills and their ensemble stochastics.



Quantum Ensemble Free Willings

Here we see, using our Wingdings lower case 'v' symbol for Pirsigean MoQ Value, how an small
ensemble of quantum free willings quantum~entangling and EIMA coobsfecting among themselves.

That graphic only shows reality's actual quantum c¤mplement of this ensemble of quantonic interrelationshipings.

Doug views each 'quadrant' as a local quantum~cohesive individual, a la, Mae-wan Ho's quanton(coherence,autonomy).

Notice macroscopicity of abundant quantum uncertainties!

Quantum~free~will is an agent of quantum~uncertainty!

Doug - 8Jun2006.

HotMeme Flux is free will, folks! HotMeme

Flux is crux folks! Quantum reality is flux folks. Flux is stochastic, folks! Waves are likelihood omnistributionings folks! Free willings are likelihood omnistributionings folks! Doug - 7-8Jun2006.

Let's move on to section 2...


Section 2 - God as intentional object

Simply, Dennett shows us here, using his own "good reasons" why his belief in his own belief that God doesn't exist is so real and true for him personally. (We see, at least a glimmer of, individualism on Dennett's part.)

You have to worry about someone, who rejects others' beliefs methodologically, using fallacious dialectical "good reasons."

Ah... 'Tis but method of 'ethical' "disciplinary matrixed" academe...

"Stux is crux" say he...


Section 3 - The division of doxastic labor

Dennett writes that in religion and science we have "experts," those who understand and thus know and thus believe, and "lay people," i.e., hive drones who non expertly receive objective know-ledge. Experts decide what us drones need to believe is 'true' (actually Dennett says it is not possible to believe unless one understands) and tell us what that is enabling us to avoid any decisions about first principles and in that dialectically-enabling way, luxuriously run on automatic. "The first scientist was the first rogue who met the first hive drone." (Can't resist using, paraphrasing Voltaire in these situations. )

Most academics like Dennett view this as proper societal 'hierarchy.' Actually it's, anti individual, social hegemony. Socially, Dennett's science says, "Our way to think and understand is the way to think and understand." Dennett is vehemently religious on this point!

He describes it deliciously like this:

"Here, one might say, is the ultimate division of labor, the division of doxastic labor, made possible by language: we lay people do the believing — we sign on to the doxology — and defer the understanding of those dogmas to the experts! Consider the ultimate talismanic formula of science:

e = mc2

"Do you believe that e = mc2? I do. We all know that this is Einstein's great equation, and the heart, somehow, of his theory of relativity, and many of us know what the e [energy] and m [mass] and c [speed of light] stand for, and could even work out the basic algebraic relationships and detect obvious errors in interpreting it. But only a tiny fraction of those who know that 'e = mc2' is a fundamental truth of physics actually understand it in any substantive way. Fortunately, the rest of us don't have to; we have expert physicists around to whom we have gratefully delegated responsibility for understanding the formula. What we are doing, in these instances, is not really believing the proposition. For that, you'd have to understand the proposition. What we are doing is believing that whatever proposition is expressed by the formula 'e = mc2' is true." Page 218. Our brackets. We effaced a footnote. Our bold violet to semaphore a dialectical inanity.

Dennett believes that equation without, he says, understanding it. Dennett just admitted to scientifically "running on automatic." He calls that expression a fundamental truth of physics.

But is it a fundamental truth of reality? Or is it a social-dialectically state-mental assumption? In our view it is more social than real. Doug - 7Jun2006.

If we square light speed and move mass at that speed to achieve 'e,' what have we done? We have violated another of Einstein's physical truths: "no object can travel faster than speed of light."

As we have shown elsewhere, instead of Einstein's e = mc2, we should use Planck's e = N•ih. where N is quantum~wave number, i is imaginary number, and h-bar is h/(2•).

Einstein made some bad assumptions. He should have paid closer attention to Leibnitz' conjecture that mathematics had lost its bases for objectivity and that geometry should, rather, be viewed subjectively. Leibnitz had powerful quantum intuitions. But Einstein went ahead and claimed that he could retain 'scientific' objectivity via use of "invariant geometric interval." Trouble (right here in River City) is that quantum reality offers no classical 'notions' of invariance, no scientific objectivity. Period!

He also assumed that classical reality was available: everything we needed to know about reality, to Einstein, was and is available for human, anthropocentric "man is Protagoras' measure of all things," sensory and sensible assessment. See graph just below.

Dennett believes in Einstein's e = mc2. He trusts it. Why? Someone else, an expert (a Voltairean rogue liar), was delegated to think for him, and he socially finds that attractive. We do not. And we think Dennett has just shown himself unworthy of trust. Why? He trusts others to do his thinking for him, but he believes "helpless innocents" are fools for allowing religious 'experts' to do similarly for them.

Given what we hermeneut re: Dennett's own prose, we feel obliged to our readers to fairly and honestly assess Dennett as a 'scientific' "helpless innocent." His mentors, his titans of 'thought' appear relegated to micehood. Especially Einstein. Isn't it marvelous how 'social celebrity' can elevate people apparently, allegedly, inappropriately? As religious comparative examplars Billy Graham and el Papa come immediately to mind.

Per Dennett's discussion on understanding, here is what 'science,' at least spectrally, may use as part of its bases of understanding reality:

For more detail on that diagram see our Quantum Sensory Bandwidth Perspicacities and Perspicuities.

Onward...


Section 4 - The lowest common denominator?

We want to distill here.

"What is God?"

Our view is that anyone who answers this question at worst lies, and at best offers an incompleteness so undignified as to glare its own obscenity. Doug - 7Jun2006.

See page 223 of section 4.

About that Dennett writes:

"Alternatively, you can set yourself up as your own authority: 'I know what I mean when I utter the creed, and that's good enough for me!' And that's good enough — these days — for a surprising number of organized religions too. Their leaders have come to realize that the robustness of the institution of religion doesn't depend on uniformity of belief at all; it depends on the uniformity of professing. This has long been a feature of some strains of Judaism: fake it and never mind if you make it (as my student Uriel Meshoulam once vividly put it to me). Recognizing that the very idea of commanding someone to believe something is incoherent on its face, an invitation to insincerity or self deception. Many Jewish congregations reject the demand for orthodoxy, right belief, and settle for orthopraxy, right behavior. Instead of creating secret pockets of festering guilty skepticism, they make a virtue of candid doubt, respectfully expressed." Page 224.

Dennett's first sentence above describes gnosis, quantum~gn¤sis!

If religion 'thinks' like that then it is way ahead of orthodox, however provisional, science! Doug - 7Jun2006.

It describes quantum~individual~pragma~behavior! Except, it is n¤t as Dennett says, "faking it." Science as we show above fakes it by reifying a reality which may not be reified and calling it 'truth.' That's bogus! Gn¤stic faith isn't bogus, science is bogus, dialectical science, that is. Let's quote Heisenberg on this one:


"...one of the most important features of the development and the analysis of modern physics is the experience that the concepts of natural language, vaguely defined as they are, seem to be more stable in the expansion of knowledge than the precise terms of scientific language, derived as an idealization from only limited groups of phenomena. This is in fact not surprising since the concepts of natural language are formed by the immediate connection with reality; they represent reality. It is true that they are not very well defined and may therefore also undergo changes in the course of the centuries, just as reality itself did, but they never lose the immediate connection with reality. On the other hand, the scientific concepts are idealizations; they are derived from experience obtained by refined experimental tools, and are precisely defined through axioms and definitions. Only through these precise definitions is it possible to connect the concepts with a mathematical scheme and to derive mathematically the infinite variety of possible phenomena in this field. But through this process of idealization and precise definition the immediate connection with reality is lost. The concepts still correspond very closely to reality in that part of nature which had been the object of research. But the correspondence may be lost in other parts containing other groups of phenomena."

Werner Karl Heisenberg
in his
Physics and Philosophy
'The Revolution in Modern Science'
Page 200 of 213 total pages (no index).
(Our bold.)

Society, whether scientific or religious, claims it is more honest to believe in what society claims as positive, common sense, traditional sense. But traditional sense, traditional reason, traditional OSFA interpretation based in dialectic, whether scientific or religious is bogus.

Individuals who are individually honest about what they believe and can demonstrate in their own individual way that they individually understand what they believe is gnosis. Society and socialists like Dennett hate this, they hate gnosis. Gn¤stic individuals disintegrate social hegemony via individual free will. Dennett hates free will, too. So does his society.

What Doug has shown you here is that to individually accept on 'trust' what society believes is individual hypocrisy. Only way we know to dump socially induced individual hypocrisy is to gnostically understand what you individually believe and why you individually believe it. USA individuals are learning, now, via Bu()sh()'s 'administration' exemplar that what Quantonics teaches (gravidates) here is closer to reality than what 'government' and 'academe' teach.

Dennett offers more great Wolfe and Sanneh quotes in this section.


Section 5 - Beliefs designed to be professed

Do you remember Sokal's ruse paper Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity which appeared in Social Text some decades ago?

We have suggested before that Sokal's ruse was closer to quantum~real than most classicists can fathom.

We have a similar case in this section of Dennett's BtS, Chapter 8. Dennett creates a phony Dr. Faith and has Dr. Faith describe physics for us. Dennett rejects Dr. Faith's words, but we like them: they are very quantum:

"I claim that these claims really aren't so different from what your scientists say. Physicists have come to realize that matter isn't composed of clusters of hard little spheres (atoms). Matter is much stranger than that, they acknowledge, but still they call it matter, even though they mainly know what matter isn't, not what it is. They're still calling them atoms, but they no longer think of them as, well, atomic. They've changed their conception of atoms, their conception of matter, quite radically. And if you ask them what they now think matter is, they confess that it's something of a mystery. Their concept is apophatic, too! If physicists can move from concreteness to mystery, so can theologians." Page 233.

Dennett rejects what his contrived Dr. Faith says just above.

Apophasis is reasoning by denial. In a religious sense it means learning about God via dialectical negation.

Of course, Dennett's intent here is for Dr. Faith to deny classical physics using quantum memeos of physi. This is much like Einstein, Rosen, and Podolsky's 1935 paper which intended to show quantum mechanics "incomplete," but instead helped physicists show that quantum reality is not a classical reality, just as Dr. Faith above describes.

Quantum reality is a wholly positive reality, so any uses of classical negation in quantum reality, are fraught with maltuition (i.e., maltuition: same as what Dennett means by 'rational' thingking).

What Dennett fails to intuit is that quantum reality is emerscence itself while classical reality is concrete itself. Concrete simply isn't real, Dennett! Regardless your religious affiliations and affinities with concrete, regardless any depth of your personal delusions, your belief in and trust in classical 'science' fails massively when we subsume it in an emerscitecting, emerscenturing quantum reality. Doug - 7Jun2006.


Section 6 - Lessons from Lebanon: the strange cases of the Druz and Kim Philby

Dennett shows us some of his own interesting personal life experiences here.

First few pages of this section Dennett makes it clear that he views reality as dichon(actuality, actuality).

Compare that to Quantonics' version: quanton(n¤nactuality,actuality).

See our treatise called SOM Connection.

Here are some one-liners which caught Doug's attention...

On page 238 Dennett writes, "...It has been noted by many commentators that typical, canonical religious beliefs cannot be tested for truth...." In general, neither can science! Why? Again, dialectic is bogus as any scientific basis for reasoning.

On page 239 Dennett quotes Craig Palmer and Lyle Steadman from their 2004 'With or Without Belief: A New Approach to the Definition and Explanation of Religion,' Evolution and Cognition, vol. 10, pp. 138-45. 0; where they are lamenting Rodney Needham's frustration in his work with the Penan in Borneo, "...Clearly, it was one thing to report the received ideas to which a people subscribed but it was quite another matter to say what was their inner state (belief for instance) when they expressed or entertained such ideas...."

Surrounding context of that quote supports Doug's perhaps not so obvious hiatal thought regarding Nobel Prize awards. Have you ever thought about that? Is that about celebrity and societal self-engrandizement re: society's own self-perceived prodigious precocity in its ability to decide who should receive an award? Are folk who decide who receives an award competent to decide? How many of them can actually get inside an awardee's mind and map all research and work validly and verifiably onto said awardee's adeptness, fitness, and accomplishments? Einstein comes to mind. Bardine comes to mind.

If Nobel Prize folk are using dialectic to judge, is that any more valid than scientists, who are receiving awards, using dialect to do their work? Hmmm...?

More on that same page, relevant our Nobel Prize scion:

"When it comes to interpreting religious avowals of others, everybody is an outsider. Why? Because religious avowals concern matters that are beyond observation, beyond meaningful test, so the only thing anybody can go on is religious behavior, and, more specifically, the behavior of professing."

Let's paraphrase, "When it comes to interpreting Nobel Prize potential of others, everybody is an outsider. Why? Because Nobel Prize potentia concern matters that are beyond observation, beyond meaningful test, so the only thing anybody can go on is Nobel Prize relevant scientific behavior, and, more specifically, the [scientific] behavior of professing." Here we would view Dennett's professing as professing scientific belief in first principles which canonically (i.e., scientific community "common sensically") supported general scientific efforts and specific scientist's work.

Not much to offer beyond that...


Section 7 - Does God exist?

Doug will just share his margin notes here...

Page 240 re: Voltaire's "If God did not exist, it would be necessary for us to invent him." And so we did!

"If science did not exist, it would be necessary for us to invent it." And so we did!

Four margin notes on page 241:

  1. But 'rational inquiry' is a failed methodology due its mechanical abstraction (see Heisenberg quote above).
  2. If religion is a conjuring trick, science is a conjuring trick.
  3. God as St. Anselm's "Being greater than nothing which can be conceived," is no less conjuring than logic-maths' "C is the set of all sets."
  4. Dennett should be suspicious of 'rational inquiry' as conjuring.

Three margin notes on page 242:

  1. All Gödel sentences are always only partially consistent and never complete.
  2. And no Turing machine is both consistent and complete.
  3. Classical causation is a dialectical delusion.

One margin note on page 244:

  1. If bootstrapping is a trick then Quantum Chromo Dynamics is a trick. See bold text at that anchor: TBCSUD is essentially bootstrapping: i.e., that which 'creates' actuality from n¤nactuality. Protons and neutrons are created from Up and Down quarks!

Three margin notes on page 245:

  1. Near page top from one of his earlier books Dennett states that reality is actuality and that is why he is an atheist.
  2. Near page bottom Dennett calls religions 'evil kleptocracies.' Then we must say society is evil and social science and social religion are evil.
  3. From Doug's perspective Dennett's self-referral as a 'bright' is a tell...'brights' do n¤t believe in and believe in belief in God.

That's it folks,..., for Chapter 8.

Should have Chapter 9 in about a month.

Thank you for reading,

Doug - 8Jun2006


 

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To contact Quantonics write to or call:

Doug Renselle
Quantonics, Inc.
Suite 18 # 368 1950 East Greyhound Pass
Carmel, INdiana 46033-7730
USA
1-317-THOUGHT

©Quantonics, Inc., 2006-2016 Rev. 5Aug2010  PDR Created: 1Jun2006  PDR
(12Jun2006 rev - Add 'Ensemble Free Will' anchor.)
(14Aug2006 rev - Add 'Strictly Doug's Opinion' link in religion column of page top table.)
(31Aug2006 rev - Add page top table 'Science vav Religion and Better vav Worse' anchor.)
(3,8,10Sep2006 rev - Repair singular 'Dennett offer' to plural 'Dennett offers' under sec. 1. Add 'Doxast Einstein' anchor under sec. 3. Add 'Helpless Innocents' anchor.)
(4,27Nov2006 rev - Add anchored statement on availability and [lack of] human qua for availability assessment. Add Section 5 anchor and add EPR link.)
(9May2007 rev - Add near page top link to theory behind Doug's Poisson Bracketing of Science and Religion.)
(23Jun2007 rev - Add 'Dennett's Experts' anchor to Section 3.)
(2Nov2007 rev - Change contact information and hidden HTML header info.)
(9Mar2008 rev - Add 'pesky oxymora' link near page top.)
(9Nov2008 rev - Replace wingdings and symbol fonts with gifs. Reset legacy markups.)
(9Dec2008 rev - Minor reformat.)
(18Feb2009 rev - Add 'What is Gnosis?' link.)
(5Aug2010 rev - Adjust color slightly.)


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