Dear Stephen,
On 07 May 2013, at 22:59, Stephen Paul King wrote:
Dear Bruno,
As a former and recovering fundamentalist Christian, I am 100% in
agreement with your words above. I merely wish that I could
communicate better with you.
Thanks for telling Stephen.
Bruno
On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 11:53 AM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 29 Apr 2013, at 11:32, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 10:42 AM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
wrote:
You might take a look at my Plotinus paper which suggest a lexicon
between
Plotinus and Arithmetic. Plotinus might have appreciated it as
Neoplatonism
announces a coming back to Pythagorean ontology. One of the
Enneads of
Plotinus, "On Numbers" is a crazily deep analysis of the role of
numbers in
theology.
This one?
Marchal B., 2007, A Purely Arithmetical, yet Empirically Falsifiable,
Interpretation of Plotinus' Theory of Matter
Yes.
Theology is just the science of "everything", which by definition
includes
God and Santa Klaus. A statement saying that such or such God does
not exist
is a theological statement.
It is just my agnosticism which make me use the term in the most
general
sense. Then, in the frame of this or that hypothesis, we can get
such or
such precisions.
I like how you explain it. From a pure "marketing" standpoint, you
might avoid a lot of unnecessary intellectual resistance by using a
different term. On the other hand, some of your colourful personality
would not come through, so who am I to say...
Lol ... I can understand. But the resistance is both more
superficial (and boring), but has some deep aspect, and using the
word "theology" has helped me to make that clear.
In fact I have been encouraged to use the word "theology" because it
makes things clearer, and it was well seen in my university (based
on free-exam). I got problem, unrelated to this, and I have been
proposed to defend the work in France, and there, I have been asked
to remove anything referring to theology. In particular I have used
the term "psychology" in place of theology, but this has led to
other confusion, and an even greater resistance, making me realize
the existence of a fundamentalist atheism.
The main advantage of using the term "theology" is to prevent the
reductionist interpretation of mechanism, and it is a way to recall
that science has not yet decide between Plato and Aristotle, which
proposes deeply different view on everything, including the type of
God rationally possible. Eventually it made me realize that atheism
is really a slight variant of christianism, when you compare to
Plato. Of course some atheists can be uneasy with this, but then it
means that they are not aware of the mind-body problem.
I thought, perhaps naively, that most scientist where aware that
science was deeply agnostic, and that if we do research on the mind-
body problem, such agnosticism was the key to make progress.
Eventually I understood that the Platonist conception of reality is
deeply hidden in our culture, and that atheists are much more
opposed to it than most intellectual having has some confessional
religious background (something which has astonished me, but
confirmed everyday since). This made atheism *theologically* more
flawed than christianism.
Now, from a computer science view, "theology" is just what is true
about machine. We know that this is bigger than what the machine can
prove, and that is enough from a clear definition standpoint. The
original term was biology, but this led to confusion too.
Since a long time, I read hundred of theologians from different
confession and religion, and well, it fits remarkably with the
subject, and with what I am talking about. And it is quite
interesting to compare machine's theology (and machine's science)
with the different existing religions.
I tend to believe that most non natural human suffering comes from
that sad fact: the withdrawal of theology as a science, and its
political institutionalization. Many fundamentalism would not exist,
especially the atheist one, with which I have been confronted even
without knowing that. Of course this doe not concern the "agnostic
atheism" as the word can sometimes have a larger (but confusing)
meaning.
In fact I call that theology, because it *is* theology. It concerns
afterlife, the soul, the origin of realities, the existence of
divine (non Turing emulable) entities, gods and goddesses, etc...
and I am all against introducing new words when older words already
exist, because that create big and unnecessary confusions. It helps
also to refer to the theology of the Platonists and Neoplatonists. I
read quite remarkable book on that subject.
I am aware some resistance can come from the use of that word, but
it seems to me the advantages, notably clarity, are more numerous
than the disandvantages. I might be wrong, but I am not yet convinced.
There is not scientific evidence whatsoever of this. Nor do I
think it
can be. People like António Damásio (my compatriot) and other
neuroscientists confuse a machine's ability to recognise itself
with
consciousness. This makes me wonder if some people are zombies.
Careful!
Some people don't think, but are still conscious, most
plausibly. I guess
you were joking.
I meant the opposite: people who think but are not conscious. I'm
half-joking.
OK (I was half serious) :)
You are right about Damásio. he confuses [] p and (([] p & p).
Not sure I understand. Doesn't []p => p ?
Yes, but only God knows that.
Precisely (but I will give the detail on FOAR): if B is Gödel's
provability
we have that G* proves []p => p, but G does not prove it. You can
guess it
as if G prove [] f => f (with f = the propositional constant
false, and "=>"
the logical implication), then it would mean that the machine
proves ~[] f,
and so the machine would proves its own consistency, contradicting
Gödel's
second incompleteness theorem. But G* proves it, and proves that
the machine
is correct: []p => p.
This is capital. It is Gödel's incompleteness which makes
provability
obeying the logic of believability, and which gives sense to the
Theaetetus'
definition of knowledge for machine.
Ok, I need to read more.
If interested, you might subscribe to Russell Standish's FOAR group,
where I intend to come back on this.
I agree on intelligence, but I don't feel less conscious when
I'm
sleepy. Just differently conscious. I'm a bit sleepy right now.
That's something amazing with consciousness. It exists in
different
modes.
We are not trained to develop vigilance during sleep, but sleep
produces
a
lot of intriguing altered state of consciousness.
Yes, it's so frustrating to not be able to come back with the full
memories.
For REM dreams and non-REM conscious episode, it is a question of
a (lot of)
training, but some plants can help.
For example calea zacatechichi (legal everywhere except in Belgium),
I've seen that once mentioned before in the context of lucid
dreaming.
I am a bit skeptical about Calea zacatechichi. Studies on mice have
shown that it perturbs only the non REM dreams, and I have not found
any convincing report that it might lead to lucidity. It can be part
of a ritual helping some placebo effect making higher the
probability to develop lucidity in dream, though. Coffee is more
efficacious, but careful as it can lead easily to insomnia.
Calea zacatechichi is also incredibly bitter. Calea tea is almost
non swallowable at all, and the bitterness stays in the month for
weeks. If you want get rid of some friends, just offer them a cup of
calea zacatechichi ! :)
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in
the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/everything-list/K7E-Vfwj4QU/unsubscribe?hl=en
.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to [email protected]
.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
send an email to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
