-----Original Message-----
From: Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
To: everything-list <[email protected]>
Sent: Sat, May 17, 2014 1:35 pm
Subject: Re: The Evolutionary Tree of Religion
On 17 May 2014, at 10:10, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
> But it is worth to reflect on the mere idea of "Agnosticism" that
> comes from Kant and his approach to metaphysics. Kant did not
invented
> it, but it is was the logical consequence of his philosophy and
almost
> every western agnostic is kantian despite that he does not know this
> fact.
>
> It is very important to follow historically the development of that
> way of thinking to know what this philosophy mean and what more
things
> besides God (a lot, and very important) you are living without.
Very generaly, we can say that a believer M is agnostic with respect
to a proposition A if M does not believe A *and* does not believe ~A.
If G is for God exists, someone agnostic obeys ~[]G and ~[]~G. He does
not believe in God and he does not believe in the inexistence of God.
Either because he is not interested in the question, or because he
waits for more information, and better precision, or he believes may
be that it is in God nature than humans can't decide, whatever.
Atheists, or at least strong Atheists, are believer, as they tend to
believe or assert the non existence of God (instead of the "I don't
know" of the agnostic).
Many are believing, or taking for granted, in a primitive material
universe, but in science, i think we should be agnostic on this too,
especially in front of the debate on the meaning of QM, and the mind-
body problem.
I understand that agnosticism about space and time can be related to
Kant, but for "god" , "matter", "energy", that seems to me less clear.
Bruno
>
> 2014-05-17 0:06 GMT+02:00, John Mikes <[email protected]>:
>> Dear Liz, thanks for your care to reflect upon my text and I
>> apologize for
>> my LATE REPLY.
>> You ask about my opinion on Tegmark's "math-realism" - well, if it
>> were
>> REALISM
>> indeed, he would not have had to classify it 'mathemaitcal'. I
>> consider it
>> a fine sub chapter to ideas about *realism* what we MAY NOT KNOW at
>> our
>> present level.
>> Smart Einstein etc. may have invented 'analogue' relativity etc.,
>> it does
>> not exclude all those other ways Nature may apply beyond our
present
>> knowledge.
>> Our ongoing 'scientific thinking' - IS - inherently mathematical,
so
>> wherever you look you find it in the books.
>> I did not find so far a *natural spot* self-calculating 374
pieces of
>> something. and draw conclusions of it NOT being 383. Nature was
>> quite well
>> before humans invented the decimal system, or the zero. And please,
>> do not
>> call it a 'discovery'. Nowhere in Nature are groupings of decimally
>> arranged units presented for processing/registration.
>> Unless you 'discover' within the human mind.
>> Your closing phrase "doesn't mean that it isn't inherently
>> mathematical" is
>> true as to the content it states. It also does not mean that it may
>> not be
>> anything else beyond.
>>
>> It was a pleasure to follow your argumentation.
>>
>> John M
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 7:36 PM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> On 5 May 2014 08:42, John Mikes <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> In "my" agnostic vocabulary the 'real' includes lots of
>>>> 'inconnues' that
>>>> may change whatever we THINK is included - as historic examples
>>>> show.
>>>> I still hold mathematics an exorbitant achievement of the H U M
>>>> A N
>>>> mind
>>>>
>>>
>>> What do you think of Max Tegmark's argument for "mathematical
>>> realism" -
>>> that all the clues we have so far indicate that nature is
inherently
>>> mathematical, and that if we ever find a ToE, and it turns out
to be
>>> "just
>>> a bunch of equations", then there will be no reason to think the
>>> universe
>>> is anything other than those equations - as he puts it, "how they
>>> look
>>> from
>>> the inside" ?
>>>
>>> Obviously this is speculative, of course, in that we don't have a
>>> ToE
>>> yet.
>>> But everything we have learnt about reality so far does appear to
>>> indicate
>>> it has (in some sense) a mathematical nature. If this trend
>>> continues and
>>> we eventually discover a TOE, and it is mathematical, would you
>>> agree
>>> with
>>> Max that maths isn't an invention of the human mind, but something
>>> we
>>> have
>>> discovered about reality? (That it is even, perhaps, ALL that
>>> reality
>>> is?)
>>>
>>>
>>>> The facts WE can calculate from Nature do not evidence a similar
>>>> calculation how Nature arrived at them. (See the early (even
>>>> recent???)
>>>> explanatory errors in our sciences). We are nowhere to decipher
>>>> Nature's
>>>> analogue(?) ways (if *'analogue' *covers them all, what I would
not
>>>> suggest).
>>>>
>>>
>>> Relativity is analogue, quantum mechanics is (perhaps) digital.
>>> However,
>>> assuming that nature is analogue - i.e., continuously
>>> differentiable -
>>> doesn't mean that it isn't inherently mathematical.
>>>
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>>
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>
>
> --
> Alberto.
>
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