Hi Benjamin,
Bruno, list,
I've looked over Bruno's recent replies and, though I don't understand
much about Bruno's work or modal logic, etc., I wish to attempt a few
general remarks.
If Bruno is, as he puts it, "[searching for] a general name for a
field which studies fundamental type of faith, hope, fear, bets,
etc.," then there are set of Ancient Greek words like _pistis_ (faith,
belief, confidence), _pistos_ (confident, faithful), _pisteuticos_
(deserving of faith or belief), etc. So he could call it Pistics
(sounds awful in English, though, because of that to which it sound
similar) or Pisteutics, etc. Or maybe there's some form of this word
with a prefix which would make it sound less like, well, um, "piss"
plus a suffix, and, having considered it, I do think that that's an
issue. Ancient Greek is too unfamiliar to me, otherwise I'd try to
come up with such a word myself, keeping in mind the next paragraph:
Well thanks. Pistology perhaps? I must say I like to use already
existing terms, but I am still trying to understand why people seems so
negative for the term "theology" ... I do think, perhaps unmodestly,
that my approach belongs to the Classical Platonic Theology from
Pythagoras to Proclus. (Of course Pythagoras comes before Plato but can
be considered as its one of its main important precursor.)
What kind of belief? The focus in religion and theology on faith,
belief, etc., seems (e.g., in "Credo quia absurdum") to arise from a
stubbornness in the belief despite resultant seemingly contradictory
or inadequate interpretations and understandings, and despite
seemingly contradictory or inadequate confirmations, corroborations,
knowledge ("knowledge" in the everyday sense).
Even just with the quantum hyp., or more deeply (I think) with just the
comp hyp. I would say that we can say the same things about the notion
of matter, or the notion of a primitive or primordial universe.
... Except that it is far more "easier" (cf UDA) to explain the
epistemological contradictory nature of "matter" than of "God", which I
take as being PERHAPS just a more general notion of reality, like our
common (with comp) unnameable ignorance, or even the
Platonico-Aristotelian notion of Self, etc.
Today's physics take for granted implicitly a major part of Aristotle
theology: the religious idea of Nature, and the idea of linking souls
to bodies in some one-one manner.
This is a special kind of belief, not the most general kind, and we
tend to distinguish it in English by calling it "faith" though "faith"
does have other meanings. It tends to be motivated by valuations not
pertaining primarily to investigating and establishing the character
of the world. For Bruno, the question is, does he mean a kind of
belief which, howsoever motivated, is stubborn? (in the face of
resultant contradictory or inadequate understandings and in the face
of contradictory "knowledge" or inadequate knwledge). For what it's
worth, I think that the name most suitable will have the meaning!
of this kind of belief.
You don't need to be stubborn to belief (or hope) in God, especially if
you are willing to take seriously pre-christian theology. Of course if
you define God by a white male senior sitting on a cloud, it seems to
me reasonable to suppose some level of stubbornness indeed.
Are religion and theism just about belief? Maybe I'm wrong, because
there's a lot of background here on the everything-list threads that I
don't understand, so maybe I'm interpreting things in the wrong light,
but there seems to be a tendency here to regard religion as if it were
fundamentally a cognitive discipline -- as if it consisted in a set of
cognitive beliefs about facts.
Not at all. I would say the driving force is just truth, or even Truth.
Then the theology of machine is entirely dependant of the gap between
proof and truth, which you can seen as a gap between cognitive ability
and the Truth.
Perhaps I am just talking in a premature way, and I should explain more
on the Godel-Lob provability-truth gap (G* \ G).
Note that the "Truth About-a-Lobian-Machine" is an unnameable notion BY
the lobian machine, and it verifies my favorite axiom of "..." which
is that it has no name.
Note that I am not identifying God with Truth or with the Self. But in
the whole family of Platonic thought, such notion are frequently
related.
Religion has been many things and in some societies has taken many
forms in being involved in every aspect of life. But the core toward
which it seems sometimes to retrench, seems to be affectivity and
valuing with regard to decision-making, power, submission, governance
and self-governance -- including valuing with regard to the greatest
powers in one's life and in the universe.
Science too, including affectivity, at least in practice.
(All the same, I fully admit that religion can get involved quite
widely, in valuings with regard to competence and work, and with
regard to feelings and gratifications, and with regard to cognition
and knowledge -- and, also, it can get involved in a variety of
cognitively based disciplines with regard to those just-listed
subjects, so as to influence, e.g., education and community planning,
productive arts, affective arts {painting, literature, music, drama,
cinema, etc., etc.} and, among the maths and sciences, cosmology, as
well; and religion can get involved in the arenas -- political,
economic, cultural, discussional, and in non-conflictual practices of
corresponding kinds.)
Why do we associate religion especially with stubborn beliefs and
certain disputed issues of fact?
Because in our civilisation religion has been jeopardised by the state
and politics. From something which is supposed to free your mind, it
has become a tool for manipulating anybody. But this for me is a
reason to come back to the original questioning and faith/hope, and
then the comp theology (G*) can explain why the "Truth" can only be
find in ourselves, and why the Lobian machine is 100% allergic to any
form of authoritative argument.
At the core of most of those things which we'd call religion in the
strict sense, the sense in which the word "religion" is usually meant
when the context is vague, are claims of miracles, miraculous powers
in impassioned settings. Civilization tends to ask of religion that it
renounce compulsion, tampering and interference, and provocation, but
has tended in some cases to leave the improbable unsupported claims
about facts more or less alone.
Well, I do agree, except that this is not really theology or religion,
it is "theology or religion" betrayed by "politicians" in the context
of a complex human history.
Imagine a country-civilisation where anyone daring to say that the
diagonal of a square is incommensurable with the sides of that square
is exiled if not tortured, and this during centuries. I can imagine
people being tired with the very idea of mathematics, but is that a
reason to abandon mathematics, or even the term "mathematics"? I would
say such an abandon would be a victory for the dishonest manipulating
politicians.
For one thing, many of us who are not religious tend to recognize that
we really don't know much about religion and society, we really don't
know that much about how religion may be needed in society -- we look
at all the bloody religious history and at all the civilizing
influence which major religions have exerted as well and don't know
quite what to make of it all. Those of us who live far from academic
communities are well aware that !
religion has roles in filling gaps in in the everyday lives of many
around us. That's us non-religious types. Most people in civilization
are more or less religious. Anyway, this variously hesitant,
ambivalent, and belligerent confrontation with religion's ill
supported claims about facts may tend to create the impression among
some that this is what religion is about -- those cognitive beliefs
standing unconquered by, and outside of and sometimes opposed to,
science.
The idea I would like to develop is that G is (self) -science, G* is
(self)-theology. At least G* warns us that if we put G* in science,
that would make us inconsistent, and that would lead us to many
problems, most probably of the bloody type.
But it's not at all everything that religion, or theism, monotheism,
polytheism, etc. are about. (There is a kind of philosophical
"panpsychism" which tends to be more cognitive in aim, but that's the
exception). And in fact the secularist-religious conflicts ongoing
today are about all that further stuff, and not just about the
particular factual issues which sometimes are made their arena.
I think this comes from the use of religion as collective identity
labels. That is why 99% of religious pseufo-beliefs are just
inheritated by children from their parents. We got a religion like we
got an identity cart almost. This is contingent.
So, again, I think that Bruno needs a name that carries the meaning of
a kind of belief, and not one that just says "God."
But I just say "theology". Then most people say that "theology" is
related to God, but I take it as related to Truth, whatever it is. In
Plato it is the science of Gods, and eventually of form of
transcendence. With the comp hyp, the diagonalizations lead to a
precise form of transcendence incarnated into the gap between G
(provable provability logic) and G* (true provability logic).
Perhaps I should talk in term of a "toy theology", but then, remember
it is testable.
One added note: "Agnosticism" originally meant holding that it can't
be known whether God exists -- "un-knowledge-ism".
I would be interested if you could give me some links or references. I
was using "agnosticism" in what I think is the modern sense of the
world (to distinguish it from atheism). Plotinus has been confronted
with a sceptical school pretending that human cannot pretend to access
to true knowledge (including possible knowledge of God). That school is
called "Gnosticism", curiously enough.
It is still used, I think, by some in that sense. Anyway, earlier in
philosophical and theological traditions it was used in that sense.
Many also use it to mean that one is simply unsure -- I don't know
whether God exists, but maybe you do, etc. There one simultanously
suspects and doubts that God exists, i.e., neither believes nor
disbelieves, but has some awareness of the question and treats it as
suitable for belief-attitudes.
Yes that's it. And it is transparent with the use of modal logic.
The "religious" believer: Bg (He believes in the existence of God)
The "atheistic believer": B~g (He believes in the non-existence of
God)
The "agnostic": ~Bg & ~B~g (He does not believes in the existence of
God and he does not believe in the non existence of God).
Of course in that sense you can be agnostic for many reasons: because
you don't care, because you are waiting for more (positive or negative)
evidences, or because nobody explains you in what sense the term God
could possibly be used, etc.
I do think that the scientific attitude is agnostic, not only
relatively to God notions, but to anything big, like universe(s), or
... "everything".
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
