On 02 Apr 2017, at 22:41, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 4/2/2017 6:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Words are used to make definition, but the definition are
semantical, or axiomatical, and point usually on thing which are
not number. The words "consciousness" or "trith", as word, are easy
to define (they are just special sequence of letters taken in some
finite alphabet". When we say that consciousness, truth, or god,
are not definable, we mean that the concept cannot be defined by
any sequence of letters.
Exactly. You can define words like "chair" as referring to chairs,
things which have certain forms and functions you can point to. You
can only define "consciousness" ostensively by appealing to other
people's use of words like "aware", "feel", "recall",
"perceive",..and their actions.
So we agree on this, except that I would say that for consciousness
you need to refer to your own experience, and project it on other to
make sense to words like "aware", etc.
Now, if it is easy to define consciousness in that quasi-ostensive
self-projection in other, then the God, or the One of the Platonists
is even easier to define: it is whatever has made possible and perhaps
necessary any conscious appearance, and those projection meaningful.
The greek intellectuals have used the word God to say "Reality", and
they have avoided the use of the term "Reality" itself to avoid
confusion with the physical reality (what we see, observe;
measure, ...). The confusion is easy here as nature has programmed us
to take what we see as reality. They were aware that "Reality" might
not be the physical reality thanks to the quasi-obvious dream argument
of the chinese, indian, greeks and other which did illustrate the
point already.
Platonism is not just the "world of ideas" assumption (which is a
beginning of a theory/solution-of-the-riddle), it is, before all
things, the doubt that the physical reality is the fundamental
reality. They were inspired by the Pythagorean who were already close
to mathematicalism, even arithmeticalism. If you read Plato, you see
that his question is "Is God the physical reality or the mathematical
reality or something else?". Put in a way not mentioning the term
"god", the question is akin to "does consciousness and matter arise
from a physical reality, or a mathematical reality, or something else.
Bruno
Brent
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