Hi guys, Regarding Descartes.....
There has always been, and still is, a turf war between science and religion, each wanting to claim superiority over the other. And there's a bit of fear because most people believe that there's only one truth or that truth comes in only one form, either in science or in the Bible. But IMHO this is a woefully confused debate on both sides, because the Bible is not a science textbook, it is a manual of spiritual and moral practice. IMHO early genesis is a spiritual allegory, not a textbook on cosmology. It was written not for scientists, for scientists do not have any concept of meaning, but a spiritual manual for the children of God. By allegory I don't mean that the Bible is fiction, for higher truths cannot be conveyed very well in scientific language, they are better suited to poetry and allegory. And science cannot convey meaning at all. Meaning can only be conveyed in story form. Not that the story is false, but that meaning requires a story form. Roger , rclo...@verizon.net 8/17/2012 Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so everything could function." ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-15, 12:09:45 Subject: Re: Misusing Descartes' model On 8/15/2012 4:31 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 14 Aug 2012, at 19:14, Roger wrote: Hi Jason Resch ? You got it right. Descartes never troubled to explain how two completely different substances-- mind and body-- could interact. And Leibniz was too hard to understand. And it was also easy to follow Newton, because?odies acted "as if" they transferred energy or momentum. ? In Descartes' model, God was external to the mind/body issue, being essentially left out. Not in the meditation. God is needed, actually the goodness of God is needed to avoid the dream argument consequence. When you feel something real, it is real, because God will not lie to you, basically. I don't follow Descartes, on this, but his text "In search of the truth" makes me think that Descartes was himself not quite glad with this. Dear Bruno and Roger, ?? We can avoid the intentionally not a liar question by noticing that a physical world requires incontrovertibly (no contradictions) so that there could be persistent objects. My conjecture is that this obtain automatically if all interactions require a "floor" or level where all statements that might be communicated are representable by a Boolean algebra. I suspect that the "substitution level" of COMP is a version of this idea. So using the Descartes model, God (or some Cosmic Mind), who actually did these adjustments, could be left out of the universe. And mind was then treated as material. ? At the time of Descartes and Leibniz, there was a fork in the road, and science took the more convenient path of Newton and Descartes (materialism), which works quite well if you gloss over the unsolved mind/body problem --- until you look for a self or a God or a Cosmic Mind. Not there, as in Dennet's materialism. ? No wonder scientists are mostly atheists, since God doesn't fit into their model of the universe. While in Leibniz, God is necessary. for the universe In my opinion, Descartes too, but was perhaps willingly unclear to avoid problems with the authorities. ?? Many writers in that epoch had to moderate their words, especially given the example that was made of Giordano Bruno. -- Onward! Stephen "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed." ~ Francis Bacon -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
