The Creator: Ultimate Central Planner?

Alright, so I was having a discussion about the existence of God/The Creator/ and kept getting strawmanned as an atheist. (At this point I have no reason to believe either way because it seems that in the end it doesn't really affect me, or how I conduct myself)

{As a sidenote: I keep getting told that I'll understand it when I'm older and come to this way of thinking. But the thing is I've heard the same thing about all the arguments for the state and we all know those turned out to be BS. It just seems like such a copout.}

 

The person I was talking to kept bringing up Nature and how it MUST be clear that all of this couldn't have just happened. As they put it; " An ipod has as much chance of appearing out of thin air right here as nature has of coming about by itself".

 

See, here's the kicker for me.  And I tried to explain my hang up as best I could.

 

It seems to me that Nature or The Natural Order of Things, (whatever you want to call it) works in a very decentralized manner. There isn't a central planner directing all of the actions of the entire ecosystem.

So if life at its simplest is decentralized, it just seems very hard for me to turn around and then say that everything was done by one all powerful central planner. It doesn't seem like you can plan dectralized order because by its very nature if you plan it, it ceases to be decentralized; right?

 

Help me out here.

Help me out here.

If a general [=central planner] organizes a dozen commando missions behind the lines with the flexible assignment to "wreak havoc" [=decentralized], is there some contradiction?

Smiling Dave:

If a general [=central planner] organizes a dozen commando missions behind the lines with the flexible assignment to "wreak havoc" [=decentralized], is there some contradiction?

Isn't that ultimately centralized, though? The commando missions were organized by the general, after all.

Autolykos:

Isn't that ultimately centralized, though? The commando missions were organized by the general, after all.

I think it's best to view centralization and decentralization as a sliding scale. The commando missions would be more centralized if the general micromanaged them instead of letting the commandos decide how to accomplish their mission. Likewise, the missions would be more decentralized if the general didn't come up with the targets of the missions and the commandos were the ones to decide their own missions.

That's why I made sure to say "ultimately centralized" rather than just "centralized".

Autolykos:

That's why I made sure to say "ultimately centralized" rather than just "centralized". 

I'm still right and you can't take that away from me! 

I wasn't trying to!

The mistake is in assuming that the Creator sits somewhere in a capital (in Heaven) and uses strings to rule over the world.

Another way it could be is that everything in the world IS the Creator, or at least an aspect of Him. So, from our point of view, of course, everything is decentralized. Every atom has its own properties and behaves according to them. In an ecological system, the energy is dispersed through the system in the most efficient way by each animal doing what's best for it and all competing.

But all the atoms and all the animals and all their properties (and space and time) are being constantly created by the Creator ex nihilo.

Imagine a computer game, in which you have thousands of NPCs doing each his own things on the battlefield. You point to the computer game and say: "There is no central general telling each soldier to go here and there, etc. There is no Creator." But the Creator is the game itself. The computer, the code, the source of electric power, etc. (Also, the human behind the computer game, etc., etc. There are many different levels in the Divine.)

 

Also, to say that it has no effect on your life is BS. Of course it has effect on your life. It is possible to be agnostic in theory, but not in action. If I tell you that eating pigs spiritually disconnects you from the Creator, you may not know theoretically whether it's so or not and declare your ignorance, but in practice, you either eat pigs (acting as if what I was saying is BS) or not.

Isn't that ultimately centralized, though?

Of course it is, and that's exactly my point. A close reading of the OP, and translating my parable with the following code, will resolve the OP's contradiction.

General = God

Commandos = humans.

Wreak Havoc = live

God was definetly a central planner, He even forcibly deleted my thread on why the North Korea should be allowed to buy nukes on a free market.

What if I told you that capital "G" God = nature, and that nature never just is, but in a constant cycle towards equilibrium.

Thus, nature is and isn't, it's happening, and a rebuttal to your central divine planning friends, that it came into being, and if it was created by God then God must have been in a void, or nonexistent, and only created just as the Universe, and thus created just as nature was created, but was egotistical enough to claim that HE did it all.

One problem with cosmological arguments that is commonly overlooked even by nontheists is the problem of the counterfactual. It's supposed to be surprising that anything exists but the question is: as opposed to what?? It seems that we know what it Is to not exist but do we really? I would argue that absolute nonexistence is actually inconceivable by the human mind. The problem is that we are reasoning about the Absolute in that we are reasoning as if we can look at things from the divine perspective which we cannot.

This is a good topic, IMO.

Anyway, for my thoughts on the op's idea...it kind of makes sense due to the fact that the articles of confederation actually mentioned the "great governor of the world" while the social nationalists (that is, the Federalists) didn't.  One could say that there has never been a world govt because it is trying to be the supreme being and is therefore a revolt against the laws of nature.

Clayton,

I don't think the cosmological arguments actually try to understand literal non-existence. I think they take existence of the external universe as given and attempt to give a justification for its existence rather than take it as given (this where the heart of these kinds of debates lie).

On a side note I think we can begin to understand literal non-existence by way of analogy- e.g it's like a vacuum.

To the OP,

I don't think the libertarian position rests on the superiority and/or existence of decentralised planning as against central planning but rather the superiority of competitive vs monpolistic planning. See this paper on a different perspective on the calcualtion debate.

On a side note I think we can begin to understand literal non-existence by way of analogy- e.g it's like a vacuum.

Actually, I think this is precisely the problem... we reason about non-existence as if we have some literal notion of what it would mean for there to be some region of space with literally nothing inside of it. It turns out that the energy density of the vacuum is a massive number and physicists have precious little idea what to make of this besides yammering on about black holes, antimatter, and other such nonsense.

The root problem lies in forsaking causality. An absolute vacuum would be a region of space which is neither causally affected by nor causally affecting the rest of the Universe. Whether it is "empty" or not is actually beside the point. It is its role in altering the state of affairs in the Universe - and, in turn, being altered by states of affairs in the Universe - that is crucial.

Non-existence is paradoxical on its face - it is a state of affairs that is no state of affairs, that is, it is not affected by nor affects any other state of affairs. Now, the paradox doesn't prove that non-existence is impossible (and, thus, that existence is necessary)... this would be a cheap, trick escape from the argument. The fact is that it is paradoxical because we simply aren't omniscient. We don't know enough to know what nothing really is. In order to understand what nothing is, we would have to first understand what everything is, in order to understand what everything is not (nothing). But to understand what everything is, we would have to be omniscient. Because we are not the Absolute, we are not omniscient. Because we are not omniscient, we don't understand what the everything is and because we don't understand what the everything is, we don't understand what nothing really is.

Clayton -

I agree in a strict sense with most of your post. I still don't see why analgous reasoning if handled with the parameters of the strict sense is problematic- I'm not saying non-existence is a vacuum but like one.

Even if I agreed with everything you wrote above it still doesn't invalidate cosmological arguments for the reason above.

I think that it shows that cosmological arguments are essentially circular arguments in disguise. If we cannot comprehend what nothing is, then there's no point in asking why there's something rather than nothing, that is, why there's something rather than something-else-which-we-can't-even-say-what-its-properties-are-or-are-not. And if there's no point asking, then any answer given to the question is just a non-explanation masquerading as an explanation, in that it provides no new information on the matter nor any insight regarding the logical consequences of one's assumptions. The type of arguments that satisfy these criteria are called circular arguments.

Clayton -

But as I said before cosomological arguments per se do not need to conceive of nothingness itself but as just a way of giving justification for existence itself. It would seem odd to strive for justification for particular types of existence, for example how can it be that monkeys exist, but stop at existence of the external world unless one can come up with a way of arguing that the external universe provides justification for itself (most probably a panentheist argument).

I'm not trying to make mankind omnisicient but trying to give a framework to understand what we already know. 

I've been thinking about epistemology lately especially rationalism vs empiricism. The former in its pure form is just tautological as Wittgenstein shows "clearly" in the Tractatus (also since the rationalist thinkers thought in time the source of their a prioristic knowledge was experience)  and the latter is a mass of data with no way of interpreting it hence none can lead to knowledge. So we must have both at the same time.

Therefore the proper procedure (IMO) for epistemology then is to accept propositional statements which are intuitive as basic (since they're intuitive they have content). Obviously this could be seen as "unscientific) but it's our only option. The question then is what is intuitive. I'm thinking of beginning with the proposition of Francis Schaeffer that the "World is a glorious ruin"- it is both wonderful and depraved at the sametime. The next question then what gives grounds for the possibility of that being the case.

The only other option to this it seems to me is to accept propositions as intuitive but seek no justification for them which is essentially pragmatism- or as I call it throwing in the towel.

 

 

Smiling Dave:

Of course it is, and that's exactly my point. A close reading of the OP, and translating my parable with the following code, will resolve the OP's contradiction.

General = God

Commandos = humans.

Wreak Havoc = live

What definitions of "centralized" and "decentralized" are you using, Dave? And what do you think is the OP's contradiction?

OP's has two contras:

The first one:

I'm accepting the OP's definitions.

Centralized: There is one person calling the shots, planning everything. [Actually he is vague here. It may mean one person "directing"  everything that happens, whatever directing means. It may mean one person "planning" everything. It may mean one person "did" everything. Since "planning" is the most difficult to refute, I'll go with that one].

Decentralized: The negation of Centralized, see above.

1. The world looks decentralized, meaning it looks as if no one person planning everything that happens here. ["It seems to me that Nature or The Natural Order of Things, (whatever you want to call it) works in a very decentralized manner."]

2. But if it looks that way, it is that way. ["There isn't a central planner directing all of the actions of the entire ecosystem."]

3. Thus the world is decentralized. ["...life at its simplest is decentralized"]

4. Which means, by definition, that it is not centralized. Which contradicts the possibility of it being centralized, obviously. ["So if life at its simplest is decentralized, it just seems very hard for me to turn around and then say that everything was done by one all powerful central planner."]

The refutation I offered is that 2 is wrong. I gave an instance of a planner whose plans will look unplanned.

Now you mention it, 2 is an inherently weak assumption in the first place. There are plenty of examples in real life of an inexpert eye seeing no planning at all in a carefully planned event. Need we look further than the many events conspiracy theorists claim to have been planned by conspirators to look unplanned, and succeeded.

Second contradiction:

OP's defintions:

Centralized: Something planned.

Decentralized: Negation of Centralized.

1. An ordered thing implies it was planned ["...order...you plan it"]

2. Thus, by defintion, it is centralized. ["...if you plan it, it ceases to be decentralized; right?"]

3. But a thing cannot be both centralized and decentralized. [Law of excluded middle].

4. Therefore there is no such thing as decentralized order.

If we accept 1, and the definitions, this one has no flaw. But it is just playing with words. It makes no assertion about the world.

There is no step where he says, for example, "the world is ordered", or "the world is not ordered".

OK, time to fess up. I did not originally have the above in mind.

My definition of centralized allowed for one person calling the shots when it comes to strategy [=defining and planning for the ultimate goal], with every individual given freedom as to tactics [=the local details].

Decentralized would then mean no one person in charge of strategy either.

Thus the scenario I described would be centralized, with one person totally in charge of strategy, but would look decentralized, because strategy is usually invisible.

For example, if a central bank has a strategy to cause price inflation, and it then prints money and lends it to the govt. The bank takes no further action. Price inflation happens as a result of this strategy, with every other actor totally free to do as he chooses. And when the price inflation happens, no one can identify its source except by brilliant insight, an insight disputed to this day. That's what I mean by strategy being invisible.

 

But as I said before cosomological arguments per se do not need to conceive of nothingness itself but as just a way of giving justification for existence itself. It would seem odd to strive for justification for particular types of existence, for example how can it be that monkeys exist, but stop at existence of the external world unless one can come up with a way of arguing that the external universe provides justification for itself (most probably a panentheist argument).

 

But that's precisely it - I can conceive of non-monkeys, and I can conceive of monkeys being something other than they are but I don't think I can actually conceive of "non-existence" or "the Universe as something other than it is." This is not even because there is something metaphysically necessary about the Universe but, rather, because unlike monkeys or baseballs, the Universe is the only thing I am aware of that is what it is. To my knowledge, there is nothing like the Universe except the Universe. There is no external reference, no population of similar-yet-different peers against which to compare and contrast the attributes of this Universe. That is, the cosmological argument assumes that the pronoun "this" can be meaningfully applied to the word "Universe." There is no reason to believe this isn't just a trick of language.

I'm not trying to make mankind omnisicient but trying to give a framework to understand what we already know.

But a framework is only useful if it adds something that wasn't already there. I don't think the CA adds anything. It's just a trick of language.

I've been thinking about epistemology lately especially rationalism vs empiricism. The former in its pure form is just tautological as Wittgenstein shows "clearly" in the Tractatus (also since the rationalist thinkers thought in time the source of their a prioristic knowledge was experience)  and the latter is a mass of data with no way of interpreting it hence none can lead to knowledge. So we must have both at the same time.

 

Yes, I think this is the ultimate conclusion of the universals versus particulars debate. Without particulars, universals are disembodied, meaningless forms. Without universals, particulars are jumbled, unrelated, pointless "facts".

Therefore the proper procedure (IMO) for epistemology then is to accept propositional statements which are intuitive as basic (since they're intuitive they have content). Obviously this could be seen as "unscientific) but it's our only option. The question then is what is intuitive. I'm thinking of beginning with the proposition of Francis Schaeffer that the "World is a glorious ruin"- it is both wonderful and depraved at the sametime. The next question then what gives grounds for the possibility of that being the case.

*shrug - 10 years ago, I was actually a Schaefferian, believe it or not. I've since moved on from all Calvinistic tendencies and am now frankly humanistic. Man is the pinnacle of beauty. As Protagoras said it: Man is the measure of all things.

The only other option to this it seems to me is to accept propositions as intuitive but seek no justification for them which is essentially pragmatism- or as I call it throwing in the towel.

Well, I think there are some preliminary steps that are necessary today that weren't necessary, say, 200 years go. First, you have to profess whether you are pursuing the truth or not. If not, then you can have your postmodernism or nihilism or whatever. If you are interested in pursuing the truth, then you need to set an end or goal. Why do you want to pursue the truth? I think we can give a systematic answer to this (the ultimate end of all human action being satisfaction) and, from this answer, we can derive some preliminary principles of aesthetics, ethics, metaphysics and even natural science. From here, we can go further and fill in the details of human nature through empirical study.

I think that individual satisfaction is the closest thing to an "ultimate principle" that there can be. No greater reason can be offered for anything than "it satisfies me... this is what I want." So, it is from this principle - the principle of the individual's own satisfaction - from which all other principles, even principles of truth and beauty, flow. The pursuit of truth only matters because it serves my ends. Of course, this doesn't mean I can make the truth what I would like it to be any more than I can make the Universe what I would like it to be. I am no postmodernist. But it does mean that the act of pursuing truth is only meaningful or weighty because I place meaning and weight upon it.

Clayton -

Clayton:

But that's precisely it - I can conceive of non-monkeys, and I can conceive of monkeys being something other than they are but I don't think I can actually conceive of "non-existence" or "the Universe as something other than it is." This is not even because there is something metaphysically necessary about the Universe but, rather, because unlike monkeys or baseballs, the Universe is the only thing I am aware of that is what it is. To my knowledge, there is nothing like the Universe except the Universe. There is no external reference, no population of similar-yet-different peers against which to compare and contrast the attributes of this Universe. That is, the cosmological argument assumes that the pronoun "this" can be meaningfully applied to the word "Universe." There is no reason to believe this isn't just a trick of language.

I think we are going to have to agree to disagree here despite hating that phrase. I again fail to see how analgous reasoning is unjustified in this context especially when it is an innate human question about the external world.

Clayton:

Well, I think there are some preliminary steps that are necessary today that weren't necessary, say, 200 years go. First, you have to profess whether you are pursuing the truth or not. If not, then you can have your postmodernism or nihilism or whatever. If you are interested in pursuing the truth, then you need to set an end or goal. Why do you want to pursue the truth? I think we can give a systematic answer to this (the ultimate end of all human action being satisfaction) and, from this answer, we can derive some preliminary principles of aesthetics, ethics, metaphysics and even natural science. From here, we can go further and fill in the details of human nature through empirical study.

This is essentially saying we begin with the action axiom.  It is indeed intuitive but I don't think human nature is as introspective as that which is why statements about the external world carry more moral and aesthetic weight e.g the world is a glorious ruin.

Clayton:

I think that individual satisfaction is the closest thing to an "ultimate principle" that there can be. No greater reason can be offered for anything than "it satisfies me... this is what I want." So, it is from this principle - the principle of the individual's own satisfaction - from which all other principles, even principles of truth and beauty, flow.

That said what you state about ends is quite true but it does not follow that we must reduce the reason to solely individual satisfaction especially if we accept Long's constuitive means: those actions which are part of the end e.g playing notes is part of playing the Moonlight Sonata. This then allows for a web of actions or character traits which are required to flourish which can be distinguished from each other thereby avoiding a crude rational egoism. So for example it could be the case that to attain individual satisfaction you need to glorify God since satisifaction is brought out, or co-existent, with the glorification- as such there are shared non-arbitrary ends for all of man.

Clayton:

The pursuit of truth only matters because it serves my ends. Of course, this doesn't mean I can make the truth what I would like it to be any more than I can make the Universe what I would like it to be. I am no postmodernist. But it does mean that the act of pursuing truth is only meaningful or weighty because I place meaning and weight upon it.

I can't see how this can mesh. How can individual satisfaction be the ultimate principle and then truth be "independently" ascertainable?

Clayton:

*shrug - 10 years ago, I was actually a Schaefferian, believe it or not. I've since moved on from all Calvinistic tendencies and am now frankly humanistic. Man is the pinnacle of beauty. As Protagoras said it: Man is the measure of all things.

It's somewhat irrelevant to the thread but I'd be interested in how you became a humanist from a sort of Calvinist.

I again fail to see how analgous reasoning is unjustified in this context especially when it is an innate human question about the external world.

Well, imagine for a moment that the Universe, at root, is every logically possible form. We only observe an infinitesimally small part of this Universe and we only observe it at a level where it appears to us that the Universe consists of a definite subset of all logically possible forms. We falsely imagine that our observable nook of the Universe is characteristic of the whole Universe.

If this is the case, then it is a mistake to speak of "this" Universe because there is no other conceivable Universe... the Universe already contains all logically possible forms and any counter-factual Universe you attempt to conceive is already a subset of the real Universe.

I am not asserting that this is the case, merely that it could be the case and, therefore, that it is possible that "this Universe" is actually a trick of language. It's not obvious that we can meaningfully speak of "this" as opposed to "that" Universe.

On the Calvinist to humanist thing, it's basically a result of realizing that it's deeply mistaken to think of the human being as "fundamentally flawed" except in a very specific sense relating to the rapid changes that have occurred in the human environment since the Agricultural Revolution. The story of the Fall misattributes the cause of the Fall to a wrong choice made by man (to taste the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, that is, to become a moral agent). That is, the Biblical story of the Fall says that man himself is to blame (Original Sin) and his suffering is primarily the consequence of this one bad choice.

The fact is that no one is to blame for the suffering that has arisen as a result of man's displacement from Paradise (tribal, pre-Agricultural life), especially not the collective of all humanity (the Bible is big on collective punishment). His suffering is merely the result of the fact that he has been displaced from Paradise and his displacement from Paradise is no one's fault. In the words of KoRn: "It's evolution, just evolution." The means for our salvation (alleviation of suffering) are in our own hands (reason, action) and merely require the will to operate them.

This is a picture that is diametrically opposed to the Calvinist  view of things (as well as the Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican or any other orthodox or semi-orthodox Christian doctrine I am aware of). In the Christian view, you are to blame for your present state as a result of Adam's lapse and God's collective punishment of humanity for that. And not only are you to blame but you can't do anything to save yourself from your punishment and suffering, whether on this Earth or in the world to come. The only remedy available to you is God's grace, that is, to throw yourself upon the mercy of the King, Jesus Christ. This is a message of paralysis of the will and psychological disengagement from cause-and-effect in the real world. If I were a more cynical man (try to imagine that!), I would say that Christian doctrine is the most carefully devised meme designed to persuade as many people as possible to voluntarily enslave themselves, thus alleviating the powers-that-be of the need to apply coercive force to enslave that segment of the population.

Clayton -