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Paul Grobstein's picture

order: from randomness, from ourselves, or both?

Mea culpa.  It hasn't actually been that long.  What previously read "Olshin - 30 November 2007" on the page above should have read, and now reads,  "Olshin - 30 November 2008."  Yes, even time is a brain construction, and hence challengeable.

In a similar vein, I'm not sure there is actually a "battle" between the "order arises from randomness" and the "we create ourselves and the whole universe out there" school.  I, at least, am perfectly comfortable having my cake and eating it too.  Indeed we (our brains) actually "create ourselves and the whole universe" insofar as those are things we talk about, try and make sense of.  There is no way for us to experience what is "out there" except by creating our own stories (verbal or otherwise) about it.  As per Wittgenstein.  But, contra Wittgenstein, we can aspire to tell stories of what is out there as we imagine it might be if we weren't here/there  constructing stories about it.  "Order arises from randomness" is such a story.  And one based on a lot of "empirical" material, ie observations that one is trying to make sense of.  An "answer" to the question of what is "EVERYTHING" may well be beyond empirical methods, but the investigation isn't. 

Like the Zhuangzi quote.  There are some quite amusing similarities to the contemporary philsophical literature on the question of "realism."  And, as per having cake and eating it too, I'm particularly attracted to "Because right and wrong appeared, the Way was injured ..."  Reminds me of Jelaluddin Rumi (13th century Sufi)

Out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

Maybe we need to give up the aspiration to be "right" and the associated concept of "battle," and be content with using whatever we have, both agreements and disagreements, to create new stories, ones that seem to us to open new directions for exploration, and may (or may not) prove to be "less wrong"?

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