On 10 Feb 2014, at 08:00, Chris de Morsella wrote:
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]
] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal
Sent: Sunday, February 09, 2014 12:34 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Suicide Words God and Ideas
On 08 Feb 2014, at 20:06, Chris de Morsella wrote:
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]
] On Behalf Of John Clark
Sent: Saturday, February 08, 2014 8:01 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Suicide Words God and Ideas
The invention of language was obviously of great benefit to the
species called Homo sapiens, but like all tools it is not perfect
and sometimes the brain can waste a great deal of processing power
spinning its wheels over questions of words rather than ideas. For
example, a recent poll showed that 70% of people in the USA thought
that if a dying patient agreed then doctors should be allowed to
"end the patient's life by some painless means"; however only 51%
thought that doctors should be allowed to help a dying patient who
wanted to die "commit suicide". Another example would be those who
DON'T believe in a omnipotent omniscient intelligent conscious being
who created the universe and is responsible for morality but DO
believe in "God".
Well said John - and in this (if not on all things)
>> Even on his argument, that nobody understand but him, against
step 3? Then I invite you to attempt to explain it to us.
Was not speaking to any specific instance of communication (or
attempted communication perhaps) but rather weighing in on the
somewhat unpredictable outcome of symbolic communication when the
very symbols employed can when parsed through some other brain/mind
create unexpected outcomes based on a different understanding or
emotional resonance with some word phrase. The thing I ask is do
words exist outside the mind? Sure they can be recorded outside the
mind and words form a good part of our cultural meta-mind... but
between moments of conscious residence in an observer or actors mind
what is the word beyond a modulated waves vibrating air or high
contrast shapes on a paper or screen?
The word jumps from paper or from the air-waves into our minds, and
along the way, in this voyage of perception from vibrating
stereocilia inside the cochlea through many distinguishable phases
of auditory brain processing... or through the eyes; the retina and
the visual processing. Even before there is any sense of the word
the brain has just heard or seen it has already been working hard
(and who knows even begun pre-coloring the sensorial outcome at some
deep visceral level) and when finally sense consciously arises - the
debate is still unsettled on how this happens in the brain I believe
(I like the hypothesis of synchronized neural firing networks as a
mechanism for rising above a very noisy background, which the brain
is).
In any case, how or what the intended recipient of this communicated
symbol ultimately experiences is not always predictable. It is
because words (and other imprecisely defined symbols) are in fact
reified as they travel from mind to mind - in some ways like digital
data gets serialized then deserialized into streams or packets as it
crosses process boundaries, but far more dependent on the unknowable
(though predictable to some degree) outcome of any symbol as it is
reified in a given mind.
Communication only occurs after the perilous journey across the gulf
between minds has been completed and the outcome of that voyage
creates an effect in the receiving mind that is within a tolerable
range of the expected effect that was hoped for by the sender. It is
a fragile process depending on associative algorithms that are
unique and largely opaque in each mind.
But does it applies to step 3?
Comp is not "symbolic". You don't ask the doctor for a metaphor in the
skull, but a real concrete digital computer imitating the behavior of
your brain at the molecular level. From biology, we can conceive the
possibility (and indeed, many take such view as granted and obvious).
Then the reasoning is based on that possibility, and lead to some
conclusions, which are no proved per se, but still proved in the
context of that assumption.
You don't answer the question. Do you understand John Clark's argument
against step 3 (and please not again John Clark reformulation of it,
as it introduce irrelevant identity questions, and abstract from
relevant distinction, like the 1p and 3p points of view).
we agree - language is an imprecise and sometimes tragically
misleading tool, albeit one most powerful in helping our species
build out the vast assemblage of the various human cultures.
The importance of clearly communicating cardinal terms cannot be
overstated.
But that's what we do in science. The remark seems make more sense in
some type of philosophy and in some type of religion, if not of course
in politics.
>>I agree. That is why I have given a clear and general notion of
God. It does not make physics into a religion, in a general sense,
but it makes physicalism into one, a bit like 0 is a number (which
means numerous!).
All rests upon on nothing... or is that no thing?
All rests upon nothing physical, if you want. But we still need to
assume something, like numbers and the * and + laws, or the
combinators and their own laws.
Nothing is everywhere, unburdened by being; soaring, by going
nowhere J
Hmm...
Words are symbolic vehicles, conveying meaning across the
discontinuous gulf between minds. Not only must the minds in the
communication chain, share an agreement of their symbolic meaning -
in order for them to work as intended, but as you pointed out the
choice of words used to convey a thought can have a profound effect
on the outcome.
>>But in the choice of a word meaning, you cannot satisfy everyone.
With "god" you make nervous the atheists, for example. But that is
normal, as atheists want some precise God to be able to say that
they don't believe in it, like if in science we could learn from a
statement refuting fairy tales. In fact, it helps the maintenance of
the fairy tales.
Living as I do in a country infected with our own American Taliban,
and they are every bit as hateful, spiteful, hypocritical and death
worshipping a bunch as their Afghan namesake the word God sets up a
certain sympathetic resonance in my mind that disturbs the force. I
understand your intent - or believe I do - but never the less find
it difficult to escape the coloration that this word god has in me.
It feels so Southern Baptist... so evangelical.
I feel sorry for you. I know some woman who has been raped by a black
skinned person. She took more than 10 years to stop fearing blacks. It
is sad for her, and it is sad for the black people. It is a remnant of
the big role played by association in the quick decision process
making. (She is cured, and even married a black man later, perhaps to
cure herself, I don't know).
Also, I agree, much easier to demolish the big bearded pater
familas, sitting on a magical cloud than some ineffable presence.
Ineffable presence, or just useful concept to state diplomatically
that we might be agnostic on the god of some fundamentalist atheists
living near by, where I was asked to finish a thesis, and where
fundamentalist atheists warn me that they would do everything possible
to abort the project.
They behave so much like religious dogmatics, that they helped me to
realize how much atheism is close, not just to Aristotelian theology,
but from the fake religion which have used Aristotle as a pretext for
authoritative argument. For them you have no right at all to doubt
their religion, and they did prove this to me very well (PhD refused
without any dialog, diffamation, etc.). I have defended it in another
country, got a price, but they succeeded in making that price
disappear, showing they have international influence.
Fundamentalist atheists hates agnosticism much more than the
believers, and are indeed quite strong believer.
Worst, they often invoke science in the most dishonest way possible.
Also, when I teach modal logic and explain the difference between
atheism and agnosticism, most of the time people agree they did the
confusion, and that they are agnostics, and not atheists at all.
One exercise I engage in is to parse what I read for words whose
purpose is to color meaning rather than describe some fact. "News"
reports are an excellent place to discover this treasure trove of
the use of adjectives and coded phrases meant to trigger emotional
responses and to generate firm opinions.
Right, bt very often, changing the words can also have some perverse
effect and is confusing about the intended concept. Concepts, like
theological concepts are by their very nature rather hot. It is not
just the words.
True
OK.
Just reassure me about your possible understanding of Clark's
refutation of the step 3, unless you are not really interested in the
logical consequence of comp. But as you said you agree with "perhaps
all Clark post", and that he wrote a lot of posts where he pretend to
refute a step in a reasoning, I might be interested if you elaborate
on this.
Bruno
Chris
Bruno
Chris
John K Clark
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