Part Three - Value
Is the Good something that exists in the world? The Existentialists thought not. 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. They anthropomorphized the sun or the "bright sky" as God. Dark and night were stigmatized as evil and "fallen."
Philosophers have ever longed to discover a cosmic good. The ideal source of the good is remote as possible from the Earth in space and in time, for Kant a transcendental God outside space and time, for Plato a timeless Good to be found in Being itself, for his student Aristotle a property of the first principles that set the world in motion.
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 it has one outstanding characteristic of such a God, it is Providence. We have discovered that which provides. It provides the light, it provides life, it provides intelligence.
Celebrating the first modern philosopher, René Descartes, we call our model for value the
Ergo. For those who want to anthropomorphize on the slender thread of discovering the natural Providence, call it
Ergod. No God can be God without being
Ergodic.
Ergodic processes are those that resist the terrible and universal Second Law of Thermodynamics, which commands the increase of chaos and entropy (disorder). Without violating that inviolable law overall, they reduce the entropy locally, bringing pockets of cosmos and negative entropy (order and information-rich structures). We call all this cosmic order the
Ergo. It is the ultimate sine qua non.
For Teachers
To hide this material, click on the Normal link.
For Scholars
To hide this material, click on the Teacher or Normal link.
Normal |
Teacher |
Scholar
Part Two - Freedom 
