On 09 Jul 2013, at 22:58, John Mikes wrote:
(See below): I do not fall for Brent's quip that you want to impose
your extended (non-religious?) religion on us, so I continue.
Whatever you call 'religious' is continuation of millenia-long
habits, hard to break. The Hindus have different ones - yet it IS
religion.
Atheists? Atheism? comes within the package. I am agnostic, BUT not
in the God-related sense - agnostic of anything all we can state as
'knowable'. Including proof, evidence, and - yes -
appearance, (of course "testability" included) what you use FOR the
mind-body fantasy. It appears to our human 'mind' (in our latest
human logic). What I am agnostic about.
But logic and proofs are for communicating theories, that is beliefs.
Not knowledge. Logic is the most agnostic things we can met.
*
Now about my 'Steckenpferd': natural numbers. I asked you so many
times to no avail.
?
You hide behind "it is SSOOO simple that you cannot explain it by
even simpler cuts" or something similar.
I explained why it has to be like that. But we can agree on some
axioms that I have given.
In my 'narrative' I figured that pre-caveman looking at his HANDS,
FEET, EYES, and found that PAIR makes sense. (2, not 1). Then (s)he
detected that PAIR consists of - well, - a PAIR, meaning 2 similars
of ONE. And (s)he counted: ONE, ONE, PAIR (=TWO.)
Quite possible.
The rest may not exceed the mental capabilities of conventional
anthropologists. Here we go into the NATURAL numbers. Some other
animals got similarly into 3, 5, maybe the elephant into even more.
Some birds can count up to 36. They begin to make aggressive sonf when
they heard 36 songs of their species in the neighborhood. I read this
a long time ago, ---I have not verified this.
Then came the originators of the subsequent Roman (what I know of)
numbering - looking at a HAND counting fingers. The group on a palm
looks like a V, so it represented 5. With 2 drawn together at their
pointed end for 10 (No decimal idea at this point). Four was too
much, to count, so they took 1 off from the V: IV, (repeated later
as IX etc.) and when it came to 4 X-s they got bored and drew only 2
lines recangulary together for 50, -- 40 similarly marked as XL (49
as IL).
Remember: subtracting was different in ancient Rome, you also
included the start-up figure and subtracted it like 9-3 = (9,8,7) =
7 as the original old Julian calendar counted the dates, e.g. today:
July 9: "ante diem septimum (7) Idus Julii" (the 7th day before the
Idus of July) because July is a MILMO month when the Idus is not on
the 13th as usual, but on the 15th). And NO ZERO, please.
So I doubt that the 'natural numbers' created the world.
That expression is misleading. All theories assumes the natural
nulmbers, and what I show, is that if we are machine, it is
undecidable if there is anything more. If we are machine, arithmetic
(number + their addition and multiplication laws) is enough to explain
the origin of a web of dreams and how the physical realities becomes
apparent for the relative number points of view. And my point is not
that this is true, but that this is empirically refutable.
Humans created the natural numbers. Just like they created the not-
so-naturals (irrationals, infinites, you name them).
Is that not anthropocentrism? And where the humans come from?
Bruno
John M
On Tue, Jul 9, 2013 at 5:25 AM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
wrote:
John,
On 08 Jul 2013, at 23:03, John Mikes wrote:
After some million years of 'mental' development this animal
arrived at the 'mental' fear. Usurpers exploited it by creating
superpowers to target it with assigned intent to help, or destroy.
The details were subject to the 'founders' benefit of enslaving the
rest of the people into their rule.
Such unquestionable tyranny lasted over the past millennia and it
takes a long, hard, dangerous work to get out of it. The USA
Constitution (18th c.) stepped ahead in SOME little political and
economical ways, yet only a tiny little in liberating the people
from the religious slavery: a so called 'separation' of state and
church (not clearly identified to this day).
The problem is that once we separate religion from state, people
still continue to be "religious" (authoritative) on something else.
But it was a progress. Now we know that we have to separate also
health from the state.
Th French revolution similarly targetted the religion, yet today -
after numerous vocal enlightened minds - the country is still
divided between Christian and Islamic fundamentalist trends.
Yes (even more clearly when including atheists in the christians).
In my view an 'atheist requires a god to disbelieve (deny?).
Indeed. Many atheists seems to take more seriously the Christian
Gods than most christians theologians, who can seriously debate on
the Aristotle/Plato difference.
Matter is figmentous and the 'origins' are beyond our reach.
It is certainly beyond any form of certainty, but simple theories
(conjecture, ides, hypotheses) might exist. In particular the idea
that we are machine can explain the origin of mind and matter
appearances, in a testable way, except for the origin of the natural
numbers which have to remain a complete mystery beyond reach of all
machines.
Physical is a level of human development and there is infinite
unknown - unknowable - we don't even guess.
OK.
Just musing
Thanks for that,
Bruno
John M
On Mon, Jul 8, 2013 at 4:03 PM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 08 Jul 2013, at 19:53, meekerdb wrote:
On 7/8/2013 1:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 08 Jul 2013, at 02:45, meekerdb wrote:
On 7/7/2013 6:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 07 Jul 2013, at 07:28, meekerdb wrote:
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/06/god_is_not_great_christopher_hitchens_is_not_a_liar/
I love Christopher Hitchens. I agree with many points. He is more
an anticlerical than an atheist to me ...
Everybody called him an atheist. He called himself an atheist. I
think you just don't like the term.
"atheism" is different in America and in Europa, although I have
realized now that some atheists in America might be similar, but
not Hitchens. Many people confuse agnosticism and atheism. Some
atheists maintains the confusion to hide that they are believers
(in "matter" and in the non existence of God).
I don't know any atheists who are shy about their belief that
matter exists and God doesn't.
That is the problem.
Many people, and dictionaries, confuse agnosticism="that whether or
not God exists is unknown"
That's the usual mundane sense of the word.
with agnosticism="that whether or not God exists is impossible to
know".
That's a technical view by some philosophers.
I agree with Sam Harris that "atheist" is not a very useful
appellation because it only describes someone in contrast to
"theist". It just means they fail to believe in a God who is a
person and whose approval one should seek.
Pebbles and chimpanzees fails too, but are not atheists in any
reasonable sense. Most vindicative atheists really believe that god
does not exist, and then they believe in a primitively material
universe, even a Boolean one (without being aware of this in
particular).
Also, many religions and theologies have other notion of Gods.
As Harris points out we don't invent words like awarmist to
describe one who fails to believe there is global warming or
anummerist to describe someone who's not sure about the existence
of numbers.
Yes. I heard a catholic bishop, taking about a book written by a
Belgian atheist, saying that the atheists are "our allies", "they
keep advertising for us and (our) God" Then, at least around here,
"Matter" is such a dogma that you can get problem when you dare to
doubt it, "apparently" --- because they don't practice dialog, and
ignore the embarrassing questions.
They don't practice science in the matter. For them you are just
mad if you doubt ... basically the same theology of matter than the
christians. Greek theology is allowed to be studied by historians,
not by mathematicians. The atheists I know fight more the agnostic
(in the mundane sense) than the radicals of any religion. Political
correctness makes easy to defend 2+2=5, and impossible to defend
2+2=4.
We are all believers, and when a machine pretend to be a non
believer, it means "I know", and she will impose her religion to
you, by all means.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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