Le 17-juil.-12, à 19:09, meekerdb a écrit :
On 7/17/2012 12:32 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 16 Jul 2012, at 19:37, John Clark wrote:
On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>> Theology is about believing in something when there is
absolutely bsolutely no reason for doing so, it is called "faith".
> Then the danger of cannabis belongs to faith,
Yes, absolutely.
OK.
> The definition you give of "theology" seems to me to be the
definition given by the fear sellers and the bandits.
I don't know what that means.
For the greeks "theology" was the search of the truth, considered as
unknown. It was by definition the search of the fundamental theory of
everything. The term "Gods" was close to the notion of concepts,
including natural phenomena. The term "God" was used for the
ultimate concept, and this was the base of dialog and research.
I think you are remaking the Greeks in your image. First, they had
many gods, so "God" could not have referred to a single fundamental.
Not for the neoplatonist, like Plotinus, Proclus, Damascius, etc.
Second, their attitude toward the gods was as political as it is now -
they condemned Socrates to death for the impiety of being a truth
seeker.
Right. But this makes my point, except it points also that the
"theological trap" was present at the time of the greeks, but this I
hace already argue with Pythagorus. But when I say "greeks" I often
make precise that I am talking of the minority of intellectual who
create science and the genuine theological field. That is people like
Socrates, not those who condemn it.
They come up with mathematics and science. But, as we know, there is
a temptation by the political world to control what is considered as
fundamental as a foundation for controlling the people, and
theology/religion has become the "opium of the people". To oppose
science and theology has been useful to save natural science from
dogma, but we have not yet succeeded to save theology for the dogma,
but this is part of human history. The fear sellers are those who use
theology as argument from authority, by building on legend involving
temporal relation between the atemporal and
terrestrial power, which has prevent theology to remain done with the
scientific attitude. The problem is that it looks like science is
serious and religion frivolous, but that separation makes science
into a new theology. Basically science has followed the religious in
making primitive matter like it was fact. But even Aristotle was
aware that is was a religious/metaphysical hypothesis, in need of
being approached with scientific skepticism.
>I am not sure why you credit them on anything.
Nor that.
I feel like you give credit to the definition of theology given by
the Roman Church,
And all other Christian churches, and Muslims, and Mormons, and
Scientologists, and Jews. My dictionary defines "theology" as the
study of God and his relation to the world; especially by analysis of
the origin and teachings of an organized religious community.
This is a post Aristotelian definition, taking for granted *some*
theology. Forget your dictionary, because the theory that they present
is refuted by comp. That is the whole point.
Use of the word "his" is already incompatible with your idea of a
fundamental theory of the world.
What "his"? What "world"? I don't understand this remark.
instead of using the term in its more general sense, which is well
illustrated by the non necessary exclusively christian history.
> On the contrary, I would even defined God/Religion by what you
still believe in once you succeed in abandoning *all* argument from
authority.
So 2+2 = 4 is God/Religion.
We can doubt even that, but I appreciate you don't. Still, we have to
assume it explicitly (or other axioms) to progress, and we are
already in the theoretical realm.
Face it, you throw around the words God, Religion and Theology all
the time but without any clear non-contradictory definition of any
of them, nor can you come up with a example that is not completly
ridiculous.
Theology is the search of truth, but with the awareness that a part
of it is not rational, like the beliefs in a primary physical
universe or a god.
What do you mean by 'not rational'? Does it mean without proof, or
without evidence?
Without "proof" nor even consistent axioms.
I have used the term "biology" and "psychology" in place of theology,
but then it generates more confusion, especially in AUDA where we
separate clearly what is provable and what is not provable by
self-observing machines.
Why not use "philosophy" or just "science".
To take into account the difference between G and G*. To remind that
"saying yes" to the doctor needs an act of faith, and that you have the
right to say no to the doctor, and that comp cannot be enforced. I
might use science, if it was understood that fundamental science cannot
be separated from religion.
The closest you have come is that when arguing with a atheist like
me "theology" is a convenient insult you can throw if the atheist
says something you disagree with.
But I do not use it as an insult. Atheism is a respectable belief.
But it is dishonest to pretend that it is not a religious belief.
Atheist accepts the definition of God given by the Church, and makes
the theological proposition that such a God does not exist.
But it does not make the assumptions to attribute to it below.
Atheism is just a-theism, the failure to believe in a personal god.
Not for the atheists nearby. They vindicate that the believe that there
is no God. What you describe is simply agnosticism. I know in the US
that some atheists includes the agnostic in their camp, but it makes
the position confusing.
It makes also the theological (unprovable) proposition that primitive
matter exists, that physics is the fundamental science, etc.
Maybe physics is fundamental; it underlies chemistry and biology.
But it is already physicists like Wheeler and Tegmark who have
speculated about why this physics instead of that, and whether there
is some more fundamental principle that determines physics.
Personally I don't care what you call it, except I don't think it
should be misleading to educated English speakers - and "theology" is
definitely misleading; although it is perfect if you want to apply for
a Templeton.
It is a way to remind that God(s) or no Gods is not the real debate,
but that the debate is between the Aristotelians Gods (a creator and a
creation) or the (neo)platonist God, which might be only universal
dreamers.
many atheists believes that death is the end of personal life, etc.
And many believe in quantum immortality and many are agnostic on the
point.
Agnosticism is necessary when doing scientific theology.
It is theology.
So is that why your ideas about what is fundamental science are
"theology", because they imply immortality?
It is one of the reason, yes.
Science here observes relation between observable/measurable numbers,
and extrapolate on mathematical relations between them, and possible
interpretation, but remains cautious in any definitive statements,
especially when big problem, like the mind-body problem, is still
unsolved.
So why not just call what you do science? Tegmark obviously thinks
of his proposals to base all physics on computational mathematics as
science and I don't think it has confused anyone.
But he missed the soul! He missed the first person/third person issue.
A bit less since he read some of my papers, I think. (He referred to it
in a draft send to me, but not in the final published version). I have
been told that it is not we'll seen to cite me in some journal. I don't
think think it has anything to do with the use of the term "theology",
which I have withdraw for years. I come back with it to make clear the
problem comes from the dogmatic attitude of some atheist believer
concerning physicalism.
And calling someone that you know doesn't like religion religious is
not exactly a new putdown, I believe I first heard it around 1964.
Even before. Cantor's theory of the transfinite has been dismissed as
theological, but Cantor actually vindicated that it was theology
indeed, and he discussed it with important bishop of his time. When I
use "religion" pejoratively I put quotes, or I use the prefix pseudo.
If materialists were religious, they would be less pseudo-religious,
and insists on the hypothetical nature of their conception of matter.
They would not qualify as crazy someone doubting that primitive
matter exists. In my country it is no secret that my work made angry
atheists, and this only because it put a doubt on what they defend as
a dogma.
Probably what made them angry was your calling it "theology" and
thus implying that it supported organized Christianity.
In my university, people are open minded, and I have been couraged to
use the term "theology". There are many experts on it, and they have
never confused it with Christian theology.
Eliminating the word "theology", like I did in my thesis in France,
has made this even clearer. The problem is not in the words, but in
the conception of reality.
> With comp, I can argue that the "inner God" (alias the first
person, the universal soul, Bp & p, S4GRz1) can play that role for
the ideally correct machine.
And in spite of your frequent use of the word, or more likely
because of it, I am no longer even clear about what exactly your
homegrown term "comp" is supposed to mean.
Put shortly, it is the belief that you can survive with a digital
brain. This can already be seen as a belief in a form of
reincarnation, and the math confirms that ideally correct machine
cannot prove such survival, so it respect the large definition I give
of theology.
All propositions about machines can be translated into proposition
about numbers. You can defined science, or terrestrial science, by
the set of provable proposition, and (proper) theology by the set of
true arithmetical sentence (non provable by the machine). Gödel's
incompleteness makes that set non empty, and actually quite large and
quite complex. Despite not being provable, machines can indirectly
bet on those proposition and develop conceptions of reality.
But they are non-provable relative to some specific set of axioms and
rules of inference. Each one is provable relative to *some* set of
axioms. Which raises a question I am curious about: relative to
Peano's axioms are there any known arithmetical propositions that are
undecidable?
That is an interesting question. You can google on "Paris Harrington"
to find a relatively known arithmetical/combinatorial problem whose
decision is undecidable in arithmetic. But this is not relevant, for in
"machine's theology" we are precisely concerned with the intensional
reading, like with the undecidable self-consistency propositions. G and
G* applies on all recursively enumerable extension of PA, and so
concern the ideally correct machine confronted to the comp doctor
proposition.
Bruno
PS I hope you get that mail. I might be disconnected for a while.
Brent
You might take the time to read Aldous Huxley "philosophia perennis"
which illustrates well what is common in basically all human
theologies. It is just striking how this looks like the discourse of
the ideally correct machine about what is true and partially
accessible,, on her and by her, but not provable by her. The ideally
self-referentially correct machine is mystical/theological at the
start, for logical reason.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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