On 21 Jan 2015, at 19:46, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
In the end... if you cannot doubt god because of the way you define
it... then not only you're not atheist (seems obvious)... but you're
not agnostic either, you're what is called a believer...
No problem with this. Actually, it is because I am a believer that I
am not afraid of the use of reason, free speech, critical
thinking, ... in theology, and it is because I am a believer that I am
really shocked by the way the humans misuse the natural animal's faith
in some reality.
Lao-tseu is totally right on this. The wise stay mute. Only the non
believer can asserts answers.
The same with machine: the propositional theology is given by G* minus
G. It is the catalog of the solutions of
[]x -> ~x
Those truth which goes without saying, and get awry when said, and
which paves the road to hell with the good intentions.
I am a believer. I would not do research if I was not a believer. But
I am a scientist, and I know I can suggest only public theories and
test them. I can't made public ontological commitment (consider this
post as private!).
Most strong-atheists are believers too, as most believe in things like
Big-Bang, Energy, Wave, and they "blasphem" in the greek-machine
theological sense (equivalent with asserting a proposition from G*
minus G) when they invoke those beliefs' contents as beyond doubt,
that is as "non hypotheses" or "obvious".
With the general sense of God, we are all believers. It is quasi-
trivial for the humans, ("quasi", it still involves consciousness and
some reality), but it is not completely trivial to prove this for all
ideally correct machines. You need incompleteness and the fact that
(löbian) machines can justified their own incompleteness in the
conditional way.
I would like to add an explanation here, which is that the general
theology is a science, not the application of a theology to oneself.
To each machine M, ideally arithmetically sound, you can associate its
proper theology
G*(M) minus G(M)
where G*(M) and G(M) is the interpretation of the logic G*, and G, in
the machine turing-universal language.
In particular, []A is interpreted by "the machine M asserts A", in his
own language, for A some specific proposition.
Then if the machine asserts any proposition of G*(M) minus G(M), the
machine get inconsistent and can assert anything.
But Löbian machine knows this, and actually, can justify why it needs
to be like that in case they are correct. Their own theology is not
speakable, but they can deduce the truth of them, and their
mathematics, from assumption of self-correctness, keeping the
interrogation mark and explaining that they do not pretend to prove or
justify those beliefs, which are more like hope.
So theology, among the sciences, has a special status: it *cannot* be
applied normatively. Like a sacred text should be (!). It can inspire
us, and it is hard (for me) to not find that discourse (G* minus G)
tremendously interesting. It shows that the introspective machine find
a transcendental reality in her head, but has to stay mute about it,
or talk on it in a derived way, and insist that it is conditional,
like insisting we make the computationalist hypothesis, and that it
requires an authentic act of faith (the "yes" doctor).
And this is valid for the other "proper" true but unprovable part of
the hypostases, with the corresponding nuances (X1* minus X1, Z1*
minus Z). Note that S4Grz1* = S4Grz1. The first person knowledge do
confuse proof and truth, in her perspective. That knowledge implies a
self which has no name/description: we don't know who we are, and we
can know that if we introspect oneself deep enough. It might explain
the distinction between the "little ego" and the "higher self" made by
the mystics.
Bruno
Quentin
2015-01-21 19:30 GMT+01:00 Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>:
On 21 Jan 2015, at 01:40, meekerdb wrote:
On 1/20/2015 10:17 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
The more I think about it, the more I doubt that these subjects were
simply "abandoned" in an innocent fashion. The problem is that
beliefs about fundamental reality are at the foundations of
political power, and the powerful know this, even if only intuitively.
Read Craig A. James little book, "The Religion Virus" for a history
of religion from that standpoint.
The term religion is too large for such analogy.
In a recent article of the french journal "La Recherche" there is a
paper which shows that historians debunk Ernst Mach idea that
science progressed *against* christianity, and that on the contrary,
the root of modern science might relied in the idea that nature was
a mechanism made by God. I already knew the more obvious relation
between computationalism and christian's self-finiteness belief.
With the greek One, religion is what science is for. The goal is
going near truth, the tool is science. The goal evolves as much as
the tool in the process.
Yes, since always. That is why we are mucky to be in a place where
scientists have regained some freedom in some domain, but clearly
not in all (theology and human science are still not done with the
scientific attitude).
We're in a mucky place because a lot of theologians promote mucky
religions. :-)
And you can expect this will continue if we don't let theology going
back to academy.
When atheist politicians say that we must respect the Vatican, they
are agreeing on some border of power. They are saying, ok we can't
have absolute power but we can negotiate peace with the Vatican.
Vatican and bishops love atheism, because atheists are their allies
in preventing seriousness in theological matter.
Incidentally, I went to a lecture by a theologian last night. He
gave a definition of theism, the same as mine: Belief in a
supernaturally powerful person who cares about human behavior and
wants to be worshipped. And he went on to say that all serious
theology is a-theistic.
No problem with that. Science by itself is agnostic, but as much
about primary matter than any reality, we can only try religion, and
change of religion, or change religion. A religion is a conception
of reality, and it is based on the belief that there is a reality,
that we can share some aspect of it, and discuss about the way to
unify all the views and reflexion we can have on it.
Now, you frighten me a bit about which theologian you are listening
too, and I give you a tip, go back to the time theology was a
science, that is before +523 in occident (and of course, if you
study the theologians since, you will see many "saying sentences
like above, but only in context of being able to develop other
interesting ideas: that is, not all modern theologian believe in
such naive theist god). But officially: the field is sick
(authorianistist) since +523 in Occident, and about the eleventh
century in Middle-East.
Strong-atheism is a religion, and is dishonest when not saying so,
as it is the belief in a primary physical universe or matter, object
of the laws described in the book of physics.
That might be true. We don't know. But we can know that this view is
problematical if we assume there is no magic in the brain or in
matter.
It is nice because it illustrates the existence of a realm, a simple
one conceptually (a tiny part of arithmetic), where the laws of
physics originate.
The difficulty to accept this is similar with the difficulty some
accepted evolution. Perhaps.
Read history of science. Humans pervert science all the time, for
short run purpose, or for power purpose. For all of them we must
distinguish the object of study from the humans theories which can
always be wrong, if not escape the well guided practice (laic
academy, laic school, agnostic presentations, encouragement of
doubting, even mocking, *all* authorities, etc.).
Bruno
Brent
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