On 09 Oct 2014, at 17:17, Jason Resch wrote:
On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 9:30 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
On 10/8/2014 5:07 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 2:50 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 10/8/2014 10:40 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 07 Oct 2014, at 20:17, meekerdb wrote:
On 10/7/2014 1:17 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 06 Oct 2014, at 20:15, meekerdb wrote:
Here's an interesting interview of a philosopher who is
interested in the question of whether God exists. The
interesting thing about it, for this list, is that "God" is
implicitly the god of theism, and is not "one's reason for
existence" or "the unprovable truths of arithmetic".
How do you know that? How could you know that.
I read the interview. For example
D.G.: I'm not a believer, so I'm not in a position to say. First
of all, it's worth noting that some of the biggest empirical
challenges don't come from science but from common features of
life. Perhaps the hardest case for believers is the Problem of
Evil: The question of how a benevolent God could allow the
existence of evil in the world, both natural evils like
devastating earthquakes and human evils like the Holocaust, has
always been a great challenge to faith in God. There is, of
course, a long history of responses to that problem that goes
back to Job. While nonbelievers (like me) consider this a major
problem, believers have, for the most part, figured out how to
accommodate themselves to it.
It's obvious that Garber is talking about the god of theism. If
he were referring to some abstract principle or set of unprovable
truths there would be no "problem of evil" for that god.
On the contrary, computationalism will relate qualia like pain and
evil related things with what numbers can endure in a fist person
perspective yet understand that this enduring is ineffable and
hard to justify and be confronted with that very problem.
But under computationlism it's not a problem. The is no
presumption that a computable world is morally good by human
standards.
Under computationalism, all possible worlds and all possible
observers exist and there's nothing God can do about it. God can no
more make certain observers or observations not exist than make 2 +
2 = 3. However, a benevolent theistic god under computationalism
(with access to unlimited computing resources) could nonetheless
"save" beings who existed in other worlds by continuing the
computation of their minds.
You say "could" as though he had a choice, meaning He's not part of
the computable world and is not one of the "all possible observers".
He/They are of the all possible observers.
Seems to me that he will have to both save everyone and also torture
everyone in hell.
Some comp theistic gods may do such things, but I think such "evil
gods" would be comparatively rare.
It might depend partially of us. Of course the solution is fixed out
there in the atemporal arithmetical reality, but we are not *living*
there, currently, and so it might concretely depend on us, here and
now. There are question which makes no sense asking God about, we have
to do some work before.
I think that ethically, computationalism is close to harm reduction,
no proselytism, investment in education and research. In judgments,
proof is mandatory politeness (like in some jurisdiction, and like
Paul Valéry said so well(*)).
Bruno
(*) Translation: "Remember simply that between humans there is only
two relations: logic or war. Always ask for proofs, proof is the
elementary politeness we ought to each other. If one refuses, remember
that you are under attack, and that one will try to impose you
obedience by all means. [With proofs] you will be surprised par the
softness or the charm of anything, you will develop a passion for the
passion of an other" (Paul Valéry).
"Rappelez-vous tout simplement qu'entre les hommes il n'existe que
deux relations : la
logique ou la guerre. Demandez toujours des preuves, la preuve est la
politesse élémentaire
qu'on se doit. Si l'on refuse, souvenez-vous que vous êtes attaqués,
et qu'on va vous faire
obéir par tous les moyens. Vous serez pris par la douceur ou par le
charme de n'importe
quoi, vous serez passionnés par la passion d'un autre." (Paul
Valéry).
Jason
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