On 29 Aug 2011, at 13:01, benjayk wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
I guess you would change your mind on this if you knew about first
order logic.
Above the choice of the theory, which can always been considered as
emotional, the working *in* the theory, not only does not depend on
emotion, but it does not even depend on the interpretation of the
theory. Formalized theory are machine, their working is independent
of
us.
OK, still you said yourself the choice of the theory is emotional
which was
included in saying we can't cut off theory from emotion.
Sure, you chose a theory like you chose a machine, and like you chose
a partner in life. It is love temperate by reason.
I have never completely hide that I find comp 'elegant'. I find
elegant that the roots of the inconceivable freedom relies already in
addition and multiplication of numbers. The mixing of addition and
multiplication destroy all totalitarianism (but can produce them
too!). I 'like' that arithmetic is full of life and dreams, and I fear
the nightmares there too.
So I like comp, but this typically makes me more skeptical about its
truth.
To remain 3-cold asks for some 1-effort.
We start from 1-motivation, and arrives (luckily) to 1-appreciation/
satisfaction.
But the 1-joy is multiplied if we can give a 3-path for that. The
value of the work requires honesty, and honesty requires the 3-coldness.
Reason is the best tool for the heart's demand.
But like with money, people confuse the mean and the target. Roughly
speaking they tend to confuse heart and reason.
It is a bit grave, because reason is God-independent, but the heart is
not. The confusion leads to complete emotional irrationalism
(fanaticism, fundamentalism, intolerance, etc.), or to its opposite,
the the 'lack of faith', sense crisis, existential crisis, relativism,
the reject of the fundamental and its (wrong) association with
possible fundamentalism.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Nevertheless I think truth and goodness are
very intimately related.
Plato and Plotinus identify God and the Good. Now, this is
related to
very subtle point with the comp hyp.
Like you, and like all Platonist, I certainly wish and bet they
have
very intimate relations.
Now that I think about it, if reality is good, preconceptions of
what it
should be will tend to cloud that. So as long as we are attached to
the
belief that reality has to be good, it probably won't reveal its
full
goodness.
This may be the reason that many people lack belief in God. They
intuit that
it, ultimately, if there is any Truth, it need not be believed in!
Not sure I understand. "God" does not "need" we believe in It.
Right, so it makes sense to not believe in it.
That does not follow.
And I am not sure it makes sense to not believe in it, except when you
give it a name.
(But then it means just that you don't believe in &é%$€##. It does
not mean that you don't believe (more or less consciously) in the one
which has no name.)
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
At least
I saw it in me, that when I am dogmatic on not using coercion
towards
myself, this sometimes leads to greater (but more unconscious)
coercion!
If I really think I have to do something, it might be better to
coerce
myself to do it, rather than suffering the consequences of not
following my
own sense of responsibility.
OK. I was thinking about coercion on others. But social life can
explain acceptance of form of coercion, but not argument by
authority,
or any dogma, in any matter.
It is subtle. Sometimes authorities can be helpful, because people
have
nothing else to follow!
Yes. Authorities are helpful, and very important.
I was just talking of argument per authority. Those are never used by
authorities, only by fake authority and people lacking faith and
self-
confidence. Except in urgent and catastrophes situation.
Many people need authorities to tell them what is "true", so we need
arguments from authority as well, otherwise these people had nothing
to
clutch to.
I agree. We need authorities, but that's not dogma.
They can't believe because the argument is good, they can just
believe it if it comes solely from authority.
Not on the fundamental matter. If they do that they will be victim of
bandits, manipulators, prohibionists and they will become slave.
This does not mean that they cannot trust some experts, and some other
people, by some sort of personal judgment and reputation, but not
really in the fundamental matter.
I am talking in general. In the human affairs, all general statements
admit many exception. Don't take me too much seriously.
Just saying that in the fundamental inquiry, dogma are problematic.
In science (when working well) there is no dogma, nor any ontological
commitment. There are only ontological requirements in hypothetical
theories.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
That can happen too, but does not contradict what you were saying.
It is important to keep this in mind in real life. I have seen people
dying form disease, mainly because their friends made them guilty of
it. They think : "If you are sick, you must have done something
wrong". But this is a wishful thinking to appease their own fear of
the disease. This is a rare thing which I don't follow in some
buddhist school: that if something bad happen to you, it is due to an
error you have made in some preview life. But this eliminate too much
contingencies a priori. They may be right, or they may be wrong. I am
just very *agnostic* on this. With comp, we cannot avoid a part of
contingency, like the WM duplication already illustrates.
OK. I am not at all saying that we suffer for doing wrong. Sometimes
we do,
but more often than not, we don't, and the worst suffering usually
occurs
when you did nothing wrong. I am more saying that we might suffer
for a
purpose, and in a way to help us develop, not due to contingencies.
Even with 'biology', 1-suffering has a 3-purpose: the maintenance of
life and survival.
Just that I take the idea that suffering have some grand purpose, like
in some religion, a bit dangerous, because it "justifies" the
existence of suffering, and it leads to a critic of happiness. This
generates unnecessary guiltiness.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Somehow they really don't want them to
exist.
Which is of course still a form of wishful thinking. To take desire
for reality.
Yes. True spirituality means a lot of responsibility. It means you
will
never be able to escape the inner demons... Even if you happen to die
without suffering much during your life.
And you say you are optimistic ?
Bruno Marchal wrote:
By "preserve" I meant "over-protecting". Hiding painful truth. This
can be justified with dying people, and with little children ...
perhaps. But experience and logic explains this lead to catastrophes.
Ah, OK. Then you are right. We do indeed hide painful truth through
"reason". I think our heart knows that the truth is painful. Very
painful.
After all the heart is what experienced all the pain that we've been
through.
OK.
But really it is both, the heart cannot confront all the pain at
once, so it needs to hide painful truth sometimes, until we can face
it.
OK.
The problem relies only when the hiding will just make the pain higher
later, as it is often the case in deny and delusion with respect to
our more probable history.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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