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Philosophers
Mortimer Adler Rogers Albritton Alexander of Aphrodisias G.E.M.Anscombe Thomas Aquinas Aristotle David Armstrong Augustine A.J.Ayer Mark Balaguer William Belsham Isaiah Berlin Bernard Berofsky Susanne Bobzien George Boole F.H.Bradley C.D.Broad C.A.Campbell Joseph Keim Campbell Carneades Ernst Cassirer Roderick Chisholm Chrysippus Cicero Randolph Clarke Samuel Clarke Donald Davidson Democritus Daniel Dennett René Descartes Richard Double Fred Dretske John Earman Laura Waddell Ekstrom Epictetus Epicurus John Martin Fischer Owen Flanagan Philippa Foot Alfred Fouilleé Harry Frankfurt Richard L. Franklin Carl Ginet Nicholas St. John Green Ian Hacking Ishtiyaque Haji Stuart Hampshire Georg W.F. Hegel Martin Heidegger R.E.Hobart Thomas Hobbes David Hodgson Shadsworth Hodgson Ted Honderich Pamela Huby David Hume William James Robert Kane Immanuel Kant Tomis Kapitan Christine Korsgaard Keith Lehrer Gottfried Leibniz Leucippus C.I.Lewis David Lewis John Locke John R. Lucas Lucretius Hugh McCann Colin McGinn Michael McKenna Alfred Mele John Stuart Mill Dickinson Miller G.E.Moore Thomas Nagel Friedrich Nietzsche P.H.Nowell-Smith Robert Nozick William of Ockham Timothy O'Connor Charles Sanders Peirce Derk Pereboom Steven Pinker Plato Karl Popper H.A.Prichard Willard van Orman Quine Frank Ramsey Ayn Rand Thomas Reid Charles Renouvier Nicholas Rescher Josiah Royce Bertrand Russell Paul Russell Gilbert Ryle T.M.Scanlon Moritz Schlick Arthur Schopenhauer John Searle Henry Sidgwick Walter Sinnott-Armstrong J.J.C.Smart Saul Smilansky Michael Smith Galen Strawson Peter Strawson Eleonore Stump Richard Taylor Kevin Timpe Peter van Inwagen Manuel Vargas John Venn Kadri Vihvelin G.H. von Wright R. Jay Wallace Ted Warfield Roy Weatherford Alfred North Whitehead David Widerker David Wiggins Ludwig Wittgenstein Susan Wolf Scientists Margaret Boden Neils Bohr Ludwig Boltzmann Max Born Stephen Brush Arthur Holly Compton Abraham de Moivre John Eccles Arthur Stanley Eddington Albert Einstein Richard Feynman A.O.Gomes Joshua Greene Jacques Hadamard Martin Heisenberg Werner Heisenberg Pierre-Simon Laplace David Layzer Ernst Mach Henry Margenau James Clerk Maxwell Ernst Mayr Jacques Monod Steven Pinker Max Planck Henri Poincaré Erwin Schrödinger Herbert Simon B. F. Skinner William Thomson (Kelvin) John von Neumann Daniel Wegner Steven Weinberg |
History of the Value Problem
Does "Goodness" exist? We find this a much more tractable problem than whether God exists. And identifying goodness will discover something often attributed to a God.
The Existentialists thought good did not exist . Most religions place its origin in a supernatural Being. Humanists felt it a human invention. Modern bioethicists situate value in all life. A variety of ancient religions looked to the sun as the source of all life and thus good. If not the sun itself, they anthropomorphized the "bright sky" as God. Dark and the night were stigmatized forever as evil and "fallen."
Philosophers have ever longed to discover a cosmic good. Their ideal source of the good was remote as possible from the Earth in space and in time. For Plato a timeless Good was found in Being itself. For his student Aristotle, Good was a property of the first principles that set the world in motion. For Kant it needed a transcendental God in a noumenal realm outside space, time, and the phenomena.
Can we discover a cosmic good? At least identify the source of anything resembling the Good? Yes, we can.
Does it resemble the Good anthropomorphized as a God personally concerned about our individual goods? No, it does not.
But our source of goodness has one outstanding characteristic of such a God. We can say it is Providence, that which has provided for our existence. We have discovered that which provides. It provides the light, it provides life, it provides intelligence.
Again celebrating the first modern philosopher, René Descartes, we name our model for value and Goodness the Ergo.
We call "ergodic" those few processes that resist the terrible and universal Second Law of Thermodynamics, which describes the increase of chaos and entropy (disorder). Without violating the Second Law, ergodic processes reduce the entropy locally, producing pockets of negative entropy (order and information-rich structures). We will see that ergodic processes radiate away positive entropy, far more than the local reduction, thus satisfying the Second Law.
We call all this cosmic order the Ergo. It is the ultimate sine qua non. All else is chaos.
For those who want to anthropomorphize on the slender thread of discovering the natural Providence, they might call it the Ergod. No God can be God without being Ergodic.
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