Le 18-juil.-12, à 19:26, John Clark a écrit :
On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 8:12 AM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
wrote:
If doubt is not productive then it is not reasonable, if a physicist
or chemist or biologist or geologist or astronomer doubts
"physicalism" then there is nothing more for him to do and he might as
well burn his books go home and stare at his navel or just play video
games all day.
No problem. It just mean that they are not interested in foundations.
> Let g be the proposition that God exists. And let
And let "God" be anything more powerful than myself, or the mystery of
the universe, or the joy in life, or a oak tree, or anything I think
is important, then I agree all those Gods exists. But if "God" is a
omnipotent omniscient being who created the universe then I don't
think God exists.
Most catholic theologians have already abandoned the idea of an
omniscient and omnipotent being, since Thomas. I use "god" (singular)
with whatever is the reason/cause of existence. If it is the Muslim
God, or a physical universe, or arithmetic, let it be. I don't have the
answer, that is why I do research. The problem is that such a God has
ben used exclusively as political authoritative argument, so we can
have doubt about it. That is sure. Now, in fundamental science, to
assert tat God exists is often a way to say assert from authority that
"my God does exist", with God being very often the physical universe.
> you are the one who continue to mock free-will, despite many of
us have given new precise, and compatibilist, definition of it
That definition must be very very new indeed, I mean it must have been
created in the last few seconds because I've been on this list for
over half a year and I have never seen anybody do anything even close
to that.
I can show you the posts. Actually I have just recall that definition
today.
And I don't even demand precision, at this point I'd be happy with
even a vague hint of a hint of what the hell you mean by making the
"free will" noise and how it differs from plain ordinary "will" which
I do understand.
See my answer to Alberto Corona. It is the same as the usual
indeterminacy based answer, but with the "indeterminacy" weakened into
self-indterminacy, in the Turing sense. I have explained this many
times. It might be the will. I have never insisted on the "free"
qualifification, and I have often defend your point on this.
> I am using Plato's conception of God, as he handle it in the
Parmenides and Timaeus, and that Hirchberger sums up by saying that
Plato's notion of God is "Truth".
You're in love with the word but not the idea so you've redefined the
word "God" so radically that only a idiot would be a atheist because
then he would be saying that truth does not exist.
Some people go that far.
I have a really radical idea, if you want to talk about truth why not
use the word (drum roll please) "truth"?
Because the use of the word God, there is less risk as being taken
literally. The "truth" about a machine cannot be defined by that
machine. As I said, God has no name, and it is better to use it only as
a sort of analogy pointing on that unameable, than using a word which
might be taken to much literally. What I just explain here can be
derived from the discourse of the Löbian machine, by the theorem of
Tarski.
If you're interested in communicating ideas (and if you weren't you
wouldn't bother writing anything at all) then you must admit that
"it's true that 2+2=4" does a better job than "it's God that 2+2=4".
It is equivalent, except that God is known to be just a fuzzy pointer
by a lot of religious people, and truth is confused with provability by
a lot of people, including intuitisonist who vindicated that confusion
for philosophical reason.
You'd have to be disingenuous or incredibly naive to write a word like
"God" and not expect the reader to form associations with the greatest
monument to folly the human race has ever produced.
I am not sure of that. I doubt science would exist without first a lot
of legends and talk on where we come from. God is a question, not an
answer. You hate the notion, or perhaps just the name, probably due to
your education. I have been lucky having atheists and then agnostic
parents, perhaps. the fact is that I do compare the mathematical
discourse with many good old and recent text by honest theologians,
like Plato (of course) but also like the catholic "Jean Trouillard".
And philosophy is more than a silly game of giving common words
unusual definitions, or at least it should be.
However I realize that language is always in flux so if God now means
truth we need a new word for the old meaning of God, a omnipotent
omniscient being who created the universe; what word do you suggest?
A contradiction.
I have a idea, the word "truth" isn't doing anything anymore its job
being taken over by "God" so "truth" could now mean a omnipotent
omniscient being who created the universe.
Platonist prefer to talk of emanation, or even emergence instead of
creation. Plotinus question the idea that God is a person, and that he
has will. God is what we search, not an answer. With comp, arithmetical
truth can be considered as an omniscient (very relatively, for
arithmetical truth "know" few things on analytical truth, but with comp
it is enough) being responsible for all number's experiences.
We should do what mathematicians always do: search for principle on
which we can agree, and then define God semi-axiomatically by anything
satisfying the constraints. In presence of other hypotheses, like comp,
we might be able to refine the notion. I already gave you my axioms for
"God":
- it is responsible for our existence (like the physical universe for a
physicalist, or consciousness for a mentalist/idealist)
- it is unnameable (like many traditions).
So now I can say I do believe in God but I don't believe in truth. I
hope there are not too many other words you want to exchange meanings
because this is getting a little complicated, it might be easier to
learn Chinese.
You just seem unaware of the semi-axiomatic method. You have a too much
precise conception of God, but this comes from your education, I guess.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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