Still reading Collingwood:
Idealism, in the sense in which it leads to theism, is the doctrine that the world is made, so to speak, of mind, and is regarded as the opposite of materialism or the doctrine that the world is made of matter. Both these theories begin by abstracting the object of knowledge from the subject, and both go on by inquiring into the nature of the object in this abstraction, regarded as a thing in itself. Both agree in committing the fundamental error of separating the metaphysical inquiry as to what the world is in itself from the psychological inquiry as to how we come to know it. Idealism in this sense leaves unreconciled the opposition between subject and object, and therefore sets the object outside the subject, but, feeling that this opposition must somehow be reconciled, it tries to bridge the gap by ascribing to the object some kind of consubstantiality with the subject, turning it into another mind, a society of minds (spiritual pluralism) or an infinite mind (theism). With anything which deserves the name of idealism in this sense, we have nothing to do except to reject it. We do not ask whether the world, considered in isolation from our mind, is material or mental, because we are engaged on a consistent attempt to get rid of these abstract separations and antitheses. We hold that the scientist’s world, so far as it exists, really is material, in the sense that, so far as he is a scientist, he believes in its reality as material, and that, so far as he succeeds in being a scientist, he is right so to believe. But we hold that this material world, regarded as material, is not fully intelligible, and that to describe it as the object of scientific thought is to fall into the error of supposing that scientific thought can maintain itself as a stable attitude towards a real object. The scientific attitude cannot be thus maintained when we try to grasp it, it dissolves in our grasp. Hence the theory that the world or any part of the world is material is not so much a false theory as a theory that nobody holds, though some people delude themselves into thinking that they hold it. The material world of science is thus not in the last resort a world of animate objects or minds or the like it is in the last resort an illusion, and its ‘mental’ character is just the fact that, like all illusions, it is a figment of the mind which tries to conceive it. In the same way, any object considered in abstraction from a mind which knows it is neither material nor mental, but an illusion, a false abstraction. Thus we certainly do not say that the objective world in itself is mental. If we are asked what it is apart from a mind that knows it, we shall answer that it is not ‘apart from’ such a mind; it is ‘with’ it in the sense of being known by it. If we are asked what it would be apart from such a mind, we shall answer that the very question imphes (implies?) the suggestio falsi that we can describe that which by definition is unknown. Our enemy is abstraction. We object to materialism only because it represents a claim to ultimate truth made on behalf of a concept which is flagrantly abstract. For the same reason we object to theism. Theism is a form of realism, of the abstract separation between the knower and the known. Philosophically, we object to it for this reason, because it fails to live up to the ideal of concrete thought, but we object to it on religious grounds as well. Religion cares nothing for philosophical theism, because religion is not interested in argument. The existence of its God does not require, and does not even admit, proof. For since religion does not define what it means by God, it is impossible to discover what we are to prove. We have to offer our own definition of the term, and whatever definition we offer will necessarily be rejected by religion, because the refusal to admit that God can be defined is vital to the religious consciousness, and to attempt such a definition is already to pass outside the sphere of religion and to falsify, from the religious point of view, our relation to God For the true God, the object of love and worship, we have set up a false God, the object of understanding, and what we prove is always this false God, never the true. Thus religion rejects its would-be friend, theism, as decisively as its would-be enemy, atheism. They fight over its head, and it goes calmly on its way ignoring them, knowing that the only God in whom it is interested is safe in his heaven and unaffected by the storms of controversy raging round his empty name. But theism, outcast from religion, is no less definitely an outcast from philosophy. This, in spite of repeated attempts to deny it, is notorious enough. Every one whose intellectual conscience is keen and untainted by sophistry, every one who has a fine sense of values in philosophical work knows instinctively that the importation of God into an argument breaks the rules of the game, upsets the table instead of working the moves out to a finish.
Collingwood, R. G.. Speculum Mentis . Read Books Ltd.. Kindle Edition.
Idealism, in the sense in which it leads to theism, is the doctrine that the world is made, so to speak, of mind, and is regarded as the opposite of materialism or the doctrine that the world is made of matter. Both these theories begin by abstracting the object of knowledge from the subject, and both go on by inquiring into the nature of the object in this abstraction, regarded as a thing in itself. Both agree in committing the fundamental error of separating the metaphysical inquiry as to what the world is in itself from the psychological inquiry as to how we come to know it. Idealism in this sense leaves unreconciled the opposition between subject and object, and therefore sets the object outside the subject, but, feeling that this opposition must somehow be reconciled, it tries to bridge the gap by ascribing to the object some kind of consubstantiality with the subject, turning it into another mind, a society of minds (spiritual pluralism) or an infinite mind (theism). With anything which deserves the name of idealism in this sense, we have nothing to do except to reject it. We do not ask whether the world, considered in isolation from our mind, is material or mental, because we are engaged on a consistent attempt to get rid of these abstract separations and antitheses. We hold that the scientist’s world, so far as it exists, really is material, in the sense that, so far as he is a scientist, he believes in its reality as material, and that, so far as he succeeds in being a scientist, he is right so to believe. But we hold that this material world, regarded as material, is not fully intelligible, and that to describe it as the object of scientific thought is to fall into the error of supposing that scientific thought can maintain itself as a stable attitude towards a real object. The scientific attitude cannot be thus maintained when we try to grasp it, it dissolves in our grasp. Hence the theory that the world or any part of the world is material is not so much a false theory as a theory that nobody holds, though some people delude themselves into thinking that they hold it. The material world of science is thus not in the last resort a world of animate objects or minds or the like it is in the last resort an illusion, and its ‘mental’ character is just the fact that, like all illusions, it is a figment of the mind which tries to conceive it. In the same way, any object considered in abstraction from a mind which knows it is neither material nor mental, but an illusion, a false abstraction. Thus we certainly do not say that the objective world in itself is mental. If we are asked what it is apart from a mind that knows it, we shall answer that it is not ‘apart from’ such a mind; it is ‘with’ it in the sense of being known by it. If we are asked what it would be apart from such a mind, we shall answer that the very question imphes (implies?) the suggestio falsi that we can describe that which by definition is unknown. Our enemy is abstraction. We object to materialism only because it represents a claim to ultimate truth made on behalf of a concept which is flagrantly abstract. For the same reason we object to theism. Theism is a form of realism, of the abstract separation between the knower and the known. Philosophically, we object to it for this reason, because it fails to live up to the ideal of concrete thought, but we object to it on religious grounds as well. Religion cares nothing for philosophical theism, because religion is not interested in argument. The existence of its God does not require, and does not even admit, proof. For since religion does not define what it means by God, it is impossible to discover what we are to prove. We have to offer our own definition of the term, and whatever definition we offer will necessarily be rejected by religion, because the refusal to admit that God can be defined is vital to the religious consciousness, and to attempt such a definition is already to pass outside the sphere of religion and to falsify, from the religious point of view, our relation to God For the true God, the object of love and worship, we have set up a false God, the object of understanding, and what we prove is always this false God, never the true. Thus religion rejects its would-be friend, theism, as decisively as its would-be enemy, atheism. They fight over its head, and it goes calmly on its way ignoring them, knowing that the only God in whom it is interested is safe in his heaven and unaffected by the storms of controversy raging round his empty name. But theism, outcast from religion, is no less definitely an outcast from philosophy. This, in spite of repeated attempts to deny it, is notorious enough. Every one whose intellectual conscience is keen and untainted by sophistry, every one who has a fine sense of values in philosophical work knows instinctively that the importation of God into an argument breaks the rules of the game, upsets the table instead of working the moves out to a finish.
Collingwood, R. G.. Speculum Mentis . Read Books Ltd.. Kindle Edition.
) engineering the blood clotting mechanism. I would look at the mechanism as a functional unit, connected to various other mechanisms of varying complexity. So I’d first design a basic, stand-alone blood clotter to satisfy the fundamental requirement: inducing clogging when the blood needs to be clogged, but then only when it needs to. Let’s say my contraption passes the first test under stable, stationary conditions and would already qualify as IC due eg to the many non-trivial intra-dependent factors in play.
