On 01 Dec 2013, at 12:32, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2013/12/1 Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
On 01 Dec 2013, at 09:51, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2013/12/1 Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
On 30 Nov 2013, at 22:37, meekerdb wrote:
I can conceive of (with apologies to H. L. Mencken), Agdistis or
Angdistis, Ah Puch, Ahura Mazda, Alberich, Allah, Amaterasu, An,
Anansi, Anat, Andvari, Anshar, Anu, Aphrodite, Apollo, Apsu, Ares,
Artemis, Asclepius, Athena, Athirat, Athtart, Atlas, Baal, Ba Xian,
Bacchus, Balder, Bast, Bellona, Bergelmir, Bes, Bixia Yuanjin,
Bragi, Brahma, Brent, Brigit, Camaxtli, Ceres, Ceridwen, Cernunnos,
Chac, Chalchiuhtlicue, Charun, Chemosh, Cheng-huang, Clapton,
Cybele, Dagon, Damkina (Dumkina), Davlin, Dawn, Demeter, Diana, Di
Cang, Dionysus, Ea, El, Enki, Enlil, Eos, Epona, Ereskigal,
Farbauti, Fenrir, Forseti, Fortuna, Freya, Freyr, Frigg, Gaia,
Ganesha, Ganga, Garuda, Gauri, Geb, Geong Si,
Guanyin, Hades, Hanuman, Hathor, Hecate (Hekate), Helios, Heng-o
(Chang-o), Hephaestus, Hera, Hermes, Hestia, Hod, Hoderi, Hoori,
Horus, Hotei, Huitzilopochtli, Hsi-Wang-Mu, Hygeia, Inanna, Inti,
Iris, Ishtar, Isis, Ixtab, Izanaki, Izanami, Jesus, Juno, Jehovah,
Jupiter, Juturna, Kagutsuchi, Kartikeya, Khepri, Ki, Kingu, Kinich
Ahau, Kishar, Krishna, Kuan-yin, Kukulcan, Kvasir, Lakshmi, Leto,
Liza, Loki, Lugh, Luna, Magna Mater, Maia, Marduk, Mars, Mazu,
Medb, Mercury, Mimir, Min, Minerva, Mithras, Morrigan, Mot, Mummu,
Muses, Nammu, Nanna, Nanna (Norse), Nanse, Neith, Nemesis,
Nephthys, Neptune, Nergal, Ninazu, Ninhurzag, Nintu, Ninurta,
Njord, Nugua, Nut, Odin, Ohkuninushi, Ohyamatsumi, Orgelmir,
Osiris, Ostara, Pan, Parvati, Phaethon, Phoebe, Phoebus Apollo,
Pilumnus, Poseidon, Quetzalcoatl, Rama, Re, RheaSabazius,
Sarasvati, Selene, Shiva, Seshat, Seti (Set), Shamash, Shapsu, Shen
Yi, Shiva, Shu, Si-Wang-Mu, Sin, Sirona, Sol, Surya, Susanoh,
Tawaret, Tefnut, Tezcatlipoca, Thanatos, Thor, Thoth, Tiamat,
Tianhou, Tlaloc, Tonatiuh, Toyo-Uke-Bime, Tyche, Tyr, Utu, Uzume,
Vediovis, Venus, Vesta, Vishnu, Volturnus, Vulcan, Xipe, Xi Wang-
mu, Xochipilli, Xochiquetzal, Yam, Yarikh, YHWH, Ymir, Yu-huang,
Yum Kimil and Zeus. But I see no reason to believe any of them exist.
Which means it is up to you to prove that none of those Gods can
exist.
Just because I, or someone else, can conceive of them? Is that how
you accept the burden of proof - you must either believe in
whatever anyone conceives of or else provide a disproof?
Well, you are the one saying that no Gods exist,
No, I said I see no reason to believe in them.
That makes you agnostic, not atheist. I recall you that agnostic =
~[]g (& ~[]~g). Atheist = []~g.
You said that being able to conceive of gods makes it hard to
disbelieve in God.
Once you accept that we are ignorant on the origin of the physical
universe, you can be open to different sort of explanation. "God"
points on an explanation is not physical, but it does not mean it
takes some Fairy tale into account. The God of comp is the God of
the Parmenides, which is the base of the neoplatonist theology
(Plotinus, Proclus). Such a conception is close to Augustin and the
christian mystics, the Soufis, the Kabbala, and the East
spirituallity.
I'm saying it is only when you conceive of something that you can
say you fail to believe it exists. Otherwise you don't know what
you are denying.
That's my exact point.
so you are the one pretending having a clear referent for each of
the name above, and you are the one acting like if you knew that
none exist.
Right. Of course I don't have clear referent of each one, but
someone did. They were worshiped and prayed to and sacrificed
for. But being able to conceive of them is what makes it possible
say I don't believe in them - otherwise I wouldn't know what I was
failing to believe. It doesn't make it harder to disbelieve; it
makes it *possible*.
We have been naive on thunder, sun, moon, and many things.
Obviously we have been naive on God too, but that is not a reason
to abandon the idea, which is basically the idea that the physical
universe has a non physical reason.
Atheists, like fundamentalists often talk like if they were not
ignorant in those matter. but in science, not only we are ignorant,
but the very subject is denied by some scientists (when atheists).
People like Gödel and Einstein where pissed of by "free-thinkers"
and "atheists", because they were quite aware of their dogmatic
attitude. I would have read them about that subject, I would have
been less naive, and probably run away from them.
Atheism and fundamentalist theism is really the same. Same God,
same Matter. And same violent responses against the doubter and the
agnostics. Same visceral negative attitude against the application
of the scientific attitude in the theological field.
I'm fine with applying the scientific attitude to the theological
field.
That is my only point here, besides the study of machine's or
number's theology (G* minus G).
And it is characteristic of science that it does not confirm
theories, but sometimes refutes or makes theories very improbable.
The theory that the world was created by a superperson who cares
about humans and judges them and will reward or punish them and
answer prayers, the theory known as "theism", has been tested and
found false.
If that is true, we abandon that notion of God, and then we can
come back to the original scientific conception of God: the Unknown
origin of the Universe.
I'm ok with that, why calling that "god" ?
Contemporary philosophers call it God. I use the most common term.
If I could really choose I would use a more feminine name, as "God"
as a masculine connotation which annoy me a lot. The greek "Theos"
means panorama, and is the etymology of "theorem": a result which
gives a panoramic view summing the main things.
You want to be followed and *misunderstood* by all christians/
muslims/jewish on earth ?
I want to be understood by all agnostic scientists. In science we
use the common vocabulary, and we provide technical simplification.
When I use the term "biology" instead of "theology", not only this
dismissed the G*/G distinction, but I was attacked by people saying
that is was theology, and they were right. Using "theology" prevents
the work to be labeled "theology" with the negative connotation. I
follow both Cantor and Gödel on theology. I have also remark that
good willing believer have far less problem with my reasoning,
including the fact that I reason on that subject, than with self-
labeled atheists. I certainly feel closer to believer than
disbeliever (who still believes in a transcendental reality, but
take it for granted, and are unaware that physics is not the same
field as metaphysics and theology).
Then you you read the Muslim, Jewish and Christian theologian
(instead of the "sacred texts"), you can discover that they are very
often quite rational and serious on the matter, and I have been
inspired by many of them.
When you write "god", they don't follow what you have in mind,
My talk is addressed to all Löbian machine. The vocabulary appears
to be a problem only the atheists believers, and of course by any
fundamentalist, that are the people who are opposed to come back to
accepting our "scientific" ignorance in the matter.
as such, using god your way is totally misleading because most of
the people who read you won't have your meaning in mind.
That is true for all terms. What term should I use? I cannot use
"reality" or "truth", because that would be the same error than the
atheists with the term "universe".
Physics studies the universe,
but physicalist metaphysics study the consequence that God = the
Universe (the universe is the explanation of everything)
likewise comp conclude that God = Truth, but that is a consequence,
not an assumption.
In all case those are different things.
As such, you should restrain from using that word, it's useless.
What term would you suggest?
What about "ultimate reality" ? Because that's what you say it
means... It's neutral, does not have all the connotations linked
with the word god... and eventually, that's what you want to convey.
But I have not much problem with the connotation with the word God. I
don't listen to fundamentalists. I reject the answer but I appreciate
the questions.
Then, one of the most beautiful coherent mystic and rationalist
theology, the neoplatonist or Plotinus one, get an arithmetical
interpretation when applying the platonist definition of knowledge
(Theaetetus) on machine self-referential arithmetical provability
(Gödel, Löb, Solovay).
If a machine equates God with "ultimate reality", or "ultimate truth",
or "arithmetical truth", despite she is "correct", she became
inconsistent. She asserts some G* minus G proposition, on herself, in
the inconsistent way.
God as no description and "ultimate reality" looks already too much to
a description. You will tell me that "arithmetical truth" is also a
description. I will tell you that this is indeed the subtle point:
from inside arithmetic, machine's cannot rationally believe that God
is arithmetical truth (no more than they can rationally believe that
they are (consistent) machine).
All we can say is that if comp is correct, god or the ultimate reality
is arithmetical truth, but if a machine believes or proves that god or
the ultimate reality is arithmetical truth, or *any* 3p thing, she
will be inconsistent. That explains the hotness of the subject.
G* minus G is meta-theology, it says what can be true but not
rationally believed or asserted as such by machine.
What can be rationally asserted, is that: IF comp is true then
arithmetical truth plays the role of God for the machine, but no
machine can consistently believes that God is arithmetical truth, for
herself. She can prove that for simpler machine than themselves
(simpler means that the machine as less provability ability in
arithmetic).
Machines get mystical when looking inward, they talk like Plotinus and
the rationalist mystics. Plotinus is quite in pain when he attempts to
explain that the One has no name, and that calling it "the One" is
already a mistake. God named is Not God. That's the first axiom of the
Tao (called Dao nowadays).
I don't know if the 'ultimate reality' is a person, but I am pretty
sure that the relation that a machine can have with 'it' can be, for a
large amount, personal and non communicable, and 'god' can be felt
more like an 'ultimate first person experience', for the mystic machine.
I have no problem with the word "god". I have no problem with the
fairy tale either. I have problem with all those who take the fairy
tales seriously, to assert them literally, or to deny them, which I
think just perpetuate them.
All religion have common points. You might read Aldous Huxley
'Philosophia Perennis'. Alan Watts is not bad, Smullyan is very good
on the Tao. We can focus on them and be open minded in the search of
the solution of the mind-body problem. Using "God" for the ultimate
reality, it seems to me, can in the long run enlarge the listening and
the understanding of what the machines are already telling us.
We can call it X, and what matter is that we agree on proposition on X
like,
X is has no description
If x makes a description of X then shit happens in the neighborhood of
x,
X is responsible for all the questions you can have,
X cannot be invoked in public decision, nor in public proof or
explanation
etc.
Then may be we will be able to formulate and perhaps answer, in this
or that theory (like comp, or not-comp) if X is a person or a thing,
what is the nature of our relation with X, etc.
In some context, "ultimate reality" is OK, but in many context "God"
will better makes the point, like in "God created only the integers".
That rings better than "The ultimate reality created only the
integers". Einstein would not have said that the "ultimate reality" is
not malicious. Well OK, that's easy :)
Bruno
Quentin
People on this list have already provide terms, but it did not work
as well as "God", which is used easily to denote the ultimate
unknown transcendental reality in all culture, where terms like
'universe', 'reality', 'truth' would beg the question.
Aurobindo uses sometimes the term "existence", (see the quote
below(*)), but I have explained to Stephen King why this would be
disastrous given the precise modern use of "existence" in logic and
metaphysics.
Another advantage of using "theology" is to remind that comp is a
religion, meaning that although comp is science, the *practice* of
comp needs a special non provable belief in a form of reincarnation,
and that nobody can impose to you that belief, i.e. an artificial
brain. It helps to understand the comp ethics which is the right to
say "no" to the doctor.
Many religious tradition agrees with most features of the comp "God"
or "Goddess":
- That it is the incomprehensible "reason" of all things.
- that is has no name, no description, no images, etc.
- that it can't be use in science as an explanation (that follow
from the first point above),
- that all creatures are confronted with It (again like
consciousness),
- that it can't be invoked explicitly in terrestrial public decision
(like politics),
- etc.
Is it a sort of person? perhaps, with some large sense of "sort". It
has a personal aspect in the manifestation of soul (the inner God
that we can all awaken, or simply the first person when not too much
sleepy).
Bruno
(*)
"What, you ask, was the beginning of it all?
And it is this ...
Existence that multiplied itself
For sheer delight of being
And plunged into numberless trillions of forms
So that it might
Find
Itself
Innumerably" (Aurobindo)
Quentin
It is discussed in many books, including many treatise written by
theologian, in most traditions. Of course such theologians have
problems with the religious institutions. But that is a point in
their favor, as most institutions perpetuates authoritative
arguments.
But the ONE is not anyone of those, as it has no name.
A god, with a name, that might be a comp reason to disbelieve in
it, or to try to look who is hiding beyond the name.
Exactly! And "God" is a name.
It is a NickName, pointing on the one without name, and in
theology, it is the most common term used. To change its name would
be to give an importance of the name. It is the axiom one about
God, "It has no name", a bit like the tao, which once named is no
more the tao.
No it's not a nickname, that's why it is capitalized.
It is capitalized because it is unique, and a name of something
very often conceive as a person. With comp, the "person" character
of the outer God is an open problem. But the inner God *is* a person.
You just like to use it because some atheists gave you a hard
time. Otherwise you could call it "reality" or "the tao" or
something else not implying theism (see definition above).
Not at all. I use it because all the theologians I read use it, and
this in many variate cultures. If I was using TAO, most people
would believe that I defend specifically Taoism, but what I defend
is more general than that, and closer to the Greek notion explained
in Plato and Neoplatonism.
The problem I got with atheists came before I use any term from
theology, as they were oppose the word "mind", "consciousness", AI,
and even "computer" for many. I still don't know if the problem was
ideological at the start, but apparently it has become ideological.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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