Archive

This is called an argument by poverty of the imagination. I find it easy to imagine…

Is that what it’s called? Imagine that.

It seems to me that you can call imagining things whatever you like and it will still be one of the lowest forms of knowledge imaginable. Yet those who engage in Darwinian reasoning claim very high levels of knowledge, sometimes equating their reasoning with Newtonian reasoning or even basic empirical facts. They seem to claim the highest yet when it comes down to it they are engaged in the lowest. Oddly, there is a form of safety in being able to crawl back into hypothetical goo at any given time. One can propose a specification as if it is so, yet given the nature of human imagination it will comport with and “explain” all observations with respect to biological form and characteristics. That’s because it was never a specified form of reasoning about form leading to knowledge about reasons for the formations of things and how form comes into being. For example, if squirrels have a flap of skin which is functional then then that is explained, if they do not then that is also explained just as the whole form labeled “squirrel” is explained no matter what its form is. Or, if you ever stop imagining things, you could try thinking of it this way, what form could squirrels possibly fit which would fall outside of Darwinian “explanation”/imagination. Perhaps if they had a little horn on their head which seemed to be formed exactly like that of another organism? Or perhaps eyes just like a chameleon’s? For how would such a convergence in the form of an eye be created by being blindly filtered by natural selection? And how do you imagine that blindly filtering and preserving fit forms, creates forms and their recognition by sight at any rate?

At any rate, I don’t know who started the “argument by summarizing arguments” but it isn’t actually much of an argument itself. For example, in one of his books Dawkins goes on about the “argument from personal incredulity” as if the mere fact that he can summarize an argument or point out that arguments are created and supported by persons does away with the notion that some things are incredible, improbable or impossible. Ironically, improbability and things of this sort can be measured and logically transferred/communicated to other persons given a philosophy of transcendence, while the way he engages in imagining things in subjective ways based on a philosophy of immanence that seems natural to him cannot be. Ironically, summarizing the other fellow’s argument and imagining that it is a “personal” matter seems to apply to him and his immanent brain events more than anyone else. At any rate, some things are actually incredible and can be objectively specified to be impossible even if those who are credulous and gullible enough to believe in mythological narratives of naturalism make a habit of imagining otherwise.

(Link)

(Archive: link)