Hear Hear!
On 8/17/2012 2:32 PM, Roger wrote:
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 <mailto: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 <mailto:stephe...@charter.net>
*Receiver:* everything-list <mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>
*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燽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,
牋� 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.
牋� Many writers in that epoch had to moderate their words,
especially given the example that was made of Giordano Bruno
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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.
--
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.
