On 12 Jul 2014, at 22:34, John Mikes wrote:
Thanks, Bruno, for your thoughtful response. - However: you wrote
"...This might mean that you are not aware of the discovery of Gödel
and Tarski which show the transcendence and independence of the
arithmetical reality with respect to us (and provably so with the
computationalist hypothesis)..."
to be 'aware' is not equivalent to 'accept'. I do not shortchange
REALITY into the (any - Peano?) math-aspect of it.
Nobody can know what REALITY is, but we can make theories and test
them, and refute them and so learn.
Similar exclusion for restricted (sigma-?) truth definitions.
If you exclude them then you are losing your agnosticism. You miss
that the mathematician did NOT expect to find those degrees of
insolubility in arithmetic. You look at arithmetic like if it was
necessarily a reduction and a knowledge of us, when it is just an
ignorance of us.
Ontological reality IMO is restricted to the inventory of our
'ontological' worldview as of yesterday.
Only a short time with Pythagorus, but then we get deluded again
shortly after the last neoplatonist died.
You cannot use your ignorance to refute a theory. If you use your
ignorance to deny a possibility to a third entity (here the universal
numbers), then you are no more agnostic.
My agnosticism (and I paraphrase it more widely than the usual)
includes the "firm belief" (call it knowledge?) that we DO NOT KNOW
everything (yet?)
Indeed. We even DO NOT KNOW everything about the NUMBERS and their
COMPUTABLE and NON COMPUTABLE relations.
The study of this is like looking with Hubble, it makes us only
feeling more ignorant.
but the so far unknown/unknowable parts DO influence our known world
and the processes within.
Absolutely. And that can even be proven in my current pet scientific
theology.
I feel it a cop-out to hide behind some (digital, or not)
unidentified machine to state that such machine DOES know what we
don't.
Never said that. It is more you who seems to say that you know what
they don't.
If that disqualifies me from YOUR definition of 'agnostic as of the
'comp' domain - I humbly accept.
Well, if you believe that we are not Turing emulable, it means that
you are not agnostic with respect to comp.
To accept the arithmetical truth - that is 'inexhaustible and far
beyond us' - would make me a fantast, a dreamer.
Those are still definite arithmetical proposition, just with many
alternating quantifier being non reducible to simpler statements. That
inexhaustible ocean is the object of different branch of math.
I am not a mathematician (in spite of my first Ph.D. - chem-phys-
math - of 1948) and prefer to stay within my ignorance.
I feel uneasy when ignorance is used to claim superiority on possible
other beings, or to pretend that some religion or belief are false.
It is even more a pity given that I explained (what is not that simple
of course) that universal numbers can refute all third person
theoretical reduction of what they are. They already say "don't
confuse me with my body or with any 3p description possible", if you
listen carefully.
No problem with staying within your ignorance, but frankly here you
seemed to NOT IGNORE that machines or numbers are condemned to
dumbness and non sensibility for ever.
Agnosticism normally open the mind to different alternatives. Here it
looks like you close your mind to a possibility. It is not
agnosticism. I think.
Bruno
John M
On Sat, Jul 12, 2014 at 4:08 AM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 11 Jul 2014, at 21:58, John Mikes wrote:
Liz, you missed my words about 'atheist' and 'agnostic'. Fighting
AGAINST something reqires SOME concept of the enemy, so an atheist
'requires' SOME concept of 'a' (any) god as a target.
This is very well said.
- MY - agnostic, however, does not find any such 'target' reasonble
so the totality has to be built on some different basis. Who knows
on what kind of?
I call it an infinite complexity, not on arithmetical basis as
Bruno advised, since arithmetic ways of thinking are HUMAN logic
and the totality is much much wider than what such restrictive
boundaries would allow.
But this, I don't really follow.
This might mean that you are not aware of the discovery of Gödel and
Tarski which show the transcendence and independence of the
arithmetical reality with respect to us (and provably so with the
computationalist hypothesis). Or that you confuse the arithmetical
reality with Peano Arithmetic. I can understand that Peano
Arithmetic is "Human Logic", and it fails indeed to capture the
whole truth, as any theory does. But it is exactly because we know
today that all theories fail to capture the arithmetical reality
that we have an incentive to be *agnostic* on the question if there
is anything else beyond the arithmetical reality which we should
postulate/assume to explain consciousness and matter.
Then the sigma_1 (computable) fragment of that reality is the same
for all entities, human of not, as those propositions can be put in
the form: "This or that machine stops or does not stop", and it
would make no sense that a machine stop for some alien and not for
some others. Then with comp, we can restrict the ontological reality
to the sigma_1 truth.
If you have a reason to believe that there might be more in the
ontological reality (more than the sigma_1 truth), then you have a
reason to believe that we are not supported by digital machine,
making you NOT agnostic on the comp theory.
Since 'a' god does not fit into my agnosticism, no bible could have
been written by it. Scripture etc. is a nice remnant of times when
people had too much time on their hand and a fantasy-world with
very few restrictive items.
Then power usurped the general belief of the public and exploited
it. We are still living within such.
Yes, unfortunately, and this will be with us for still a long time.
Please add to every one of my sentences in ( - ) "I dunno".
That is wise, but by asking more than arithmetic (the reality, not
the theories), you seem to miss a "I dunno". Keep in mind that
before Gödel, we thought that arithmetic was computable, but now, we
know that only a tiny part is computable. That part is enough (when
we postulate comp), but for the internal epistemologies, we need the
"complete" arithmetical reality which is probably beyond all
theories, made by humans or aliens, or even a vast variety of divine
entities (divine here means "non-machine emulable"). The
arithmetical truth is inexhaustible. It is far beyond us.
Best,
Bruno
JM
On Wed, Jul 9, 2014 at 7:27 PM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote:
It sounds like you are describing an agnostic. An atheist seems to
be against (often some specific collection of) gods. An agnostic
just says I don't know anything about that, and until some evidence
comes up I won't consider the possibility worth discussing.
Hence
Agnostic - there could be a teapot orbiting the Sun, although I
consider it highly unlikely
Atheist - there definitely isn't a teapot orbiting the Sun.
Sorry to re-re-re-repeat myself, as you say it's a well worn subject.
PS could it be Brent quoting Bruno?
PPS their initials are suspiciously similar. I remain agnostic on
whether they are really the same person (but consider it highly
unlikely).
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