Defense of Hinman's Argument: Organizing Principles

Joe Hinman has posted a new article defending his "Transcendental Signifier Argument".  This is an argument for God that Joe has developed based on Jaques Derrida's philosophical concept of the "transcendent signified", and which I have criticized in a previous post of my own*.  In my review of Joe's argument, I pointed out that the argument is not logically valid, and that it is based on a gross misunderstanding of Derrida's philosophy.  I'm not going to rehash all that here.  But Joe has now provided more detail on what appears to be only the first two premises of his argument, and this alone is worthy of further discussion.  As I read through this article again, I realize that although he only discusses the first two premises, he actually is is defending the entire argument, because those two statements make his case in its entirety, and the rest are nothing more than intellectual fluffery.  I'll explain why.

First, to put it in context, let me restate Hinman's entire argument, expressed as a syllogism:

1. Any rational, coherent, and meaningful view of the universe must of necessity presuppose organizing principles (Ops)
2. OP's summed up in TS
3. Modern Thought rejects TS outright or takes out all aspects of mind.
4. Therefore, Modern thought fails to provide a rational, coherent, and meaningful view of the universe.
5. minds organize and communicate meaning
6. Therefore universal mind, offers the best understanding of TS
7. Concept of God unites TS with universal mind therefore offers best explanation for a view that is Rational, Coherent, and Meaningful (RCM). - Hinman 

OP 's make sense of the universe and explain hierarchies of conceptualization.
- Joe starts out with a definition of 'organizing principle', and he gives some examples of organizing principles: "effects need causes, conclusions are mandated by premises, meaning in language is organized by rules of grammar."  So organizing principles have to do with how meaning or understanding is structured in the mind.  This concept seems rather trivial, except for one little thing.  He makes the assertion that there must be a hierarchy (or hierarchies) of organization.  Joe never defends that assertion, nor does he present any example of how any such hierarchy would be developed.  I think it is generally understood in cognitive sciences that meaning is achieved through a web-like structure of association, rather than a hierarchy.  And this agrees with observations of brain function.  Specific clusters of cognitive function can be lost due to damage, but that isn't consistent with a hierarchical structure of conceptualization, where a whole sub-structure of the hierarchy (which could be quite large) would be dependent on a single point.  So it seems to me that this assertion of the hierarchical nature of conceptualization is unjustified, and not consistent with a scientific view of how meaning is achieved in the human brain.

Secondly, the argument is not based upon the assumption laws imply a law giver.
- Joe emphasizes that he does not equate the laws of nature to the prescriptive laws that people create, but rather, they are descriptive of the behavior of things in nature.  So physical laws are not the edicts of some law-giver.  And that's fine, but Joe does see natural laws as part of this hierarchy of organizing principles.  And that implies that they are conceptualized somehow in a mind.  And without that mind (in Joe's view), the laws of nature would not exist.  So he's being somewhat disingenuous by saying that there is no law-giver.  If they are regarded as organizing principles (as Joe seems to think), there must still be a mind that conceives the laws of nature.  The assertion that they are descriptive rather than prescriptive doesn't change that.  And it is worth noting that Joe is not just talking about the human understanding of the laws of nature.  As the discussion progresses, it becomes evident that he transitions from conceptualization of ideas to actualization in physical reality.  More on this to come.

Western thought has always assumed Organizing principles that are summed up in a single first principle (an ἀρχή) which grounds any sort of meaning: the logos or the transcendental signified (TS).
- This appears to be the basis of Joe's justification for the second premise of the argument.  The question that immediately comes to my mind is What western thought?  The Greek word 'arche' (ἀρχή) referred originally to the beginning or origin of the universe - the universe arose from the chaos in early cosmogonies.  Some Greek philosophers later used the word to refer to a "first principle".  The concept of 'logos' has certainly existed in philosophy for a long time, but it hasn't always been equated to a single over-arching principle as the ground of meaning.  It seems to be primarily in religious philosophy where it was regarded as a single ground of all meaning.  In other words, it was equated with God.  The term 'organizing principle', in modern-day usage, does not imply a "single first principle" in the sense of the logos in religious philosophy.  It is merely a central concept (one of many) around which some particular conceptual framework is built.  Note also that it does not imply a hierarchical structure, or the need for any overarching principle that ties everything together.  So while Joe can cite 320,000,000 references to the term 'organizing principle' in Google, he cannot claim that all those references mean the same thing that he does, as it is used in his argument.

... we do not have an understanding of what organizes the OP. Yet modern science still seeks a logos or a TS that would bind them all together and unite them in one over arching principle.
- Well, actually it doesn't.  Joe speaks about skeptical scientists who deny this top-level organizing principle, and implies that they don't know what they're talking about.  But Joe knows better.  He describes self-organizing structures in nature, and says that the laws of physics are organizing principles.  In fact, the remainder of the article is devoted to giving examples of organization (of structures) in nature.  He says, "There is an organizing principle grounding and influencing anything organized."  although Joe doesn't say in this article what the top-level organizing principle in science might be, he has on other occasions stated that the "theory of everything" in particle physics is what he's talking about.  And that might sound good, except that (as scientists keep trying to tell him) it isn't really the single organizing principle for all of science and everything we understand about the world.  It only applies to particle physics.  It doesn't give us any kind of grounding for understanding psychology, or chaotic dynamical systems, or mathematics, or any number of fields of human knowledge that aren't based on an understanding of particle physics.

And here's where we run into a major issue with Joe's argument.  As I mentioned earlier, Joe has morphed his discussion of organizing principles - taken from Derrida's philosophy regarding human understanding of concepts - to the physical reality of organized structures in nature, based on physical laws.  To put it another way, Joe has equivocated between organization of concepts in the mind and organization of physical structures.  He pretends that these are one and the same thing, but they aren't.  Derrida certainly wasn't talking about physics.  His concept of the "transcendent signified" would apply to organizing principles, but he denied that there was any single top-level organizing principle.  And in science there are physical laws that describe how things work in nature, but it would be a mistake to say that the conceptual human understanding of physical laws is what governs the formation of natural structures.  Joe has failed to distinguish between meaning in the mind and the underlying reality of the world.

To top it off, Joe must force-fit his own theistic beliefs into this mixed-up framework of conceptual and physical structure.  He insists that there must always be a top-level reference to which everything else is subordinate.  But that goes against what we know.  Derrida made no such assumption, and cognitive science makes no such assumption with regard to the formation of meaning.  Furthermore, scientists recognize no single top-level law that is the basis of every branch of science.  The whole idea of this single top-level reference point comes from theology.  It is the logos, or God.  And sure enough, that is exactly what Hinman means by the term "transcendental signified" - the top-level organizing principle.  His argument begs the question, as he force-fits his theistic assumptions about the single ground of meaning into the whole discussion of organization in nature.  Organizing principles implies organization.  Organization implies structure.  Structure implies hierarchy.  Hierarchy implies a top-level reference point.  The top-level reference must be God.  This is the true form of Joe's argument, and he allows no deviation from this chain of reasoning.  Could meaning be organized in a network, as science tells us, rather than a hierarchy?  Joe won't entertain the notion.  Because if he did, his question-begging argument would fall apart.

As a final note, I said that in this article Joe seems to be defending only the first two premises, and that does appear to be the case, because none of the others are mentioned or discussed in any substantial way.  Yet Joe still manages to put together his case (as illogical as it is).  What does that tell us about statements 3 through 7 of his argument?  I called them intellectual fluffery.  They don't really add anything new to the argument that wasn't already expressed or implied in the first two statements.  The whole argument could simply be replaced with this:

1. Any rational, coherent, and meaningful view of the universe must of necessity presuppose organizing principles (Ops)
2. OP's summed up in TS
3. The TS is God.

* Please see my earlier article for more information on Derrida's philosophy, and how Joe misunderstands it.