On 6/2/2019 12:52 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 1 Jun 2019, at 17:54, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 6/1/2019 12:30 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
No. The early definition of Earth was a flat surface, and people believed this
by ostentation.
Now you're just twisting words. Ostensive definition is by pointing. One
can't believe a proposition by ostentation.
Semantic play. If you are right, then we cannot believe that ostensive
definition makes sense.
Ostensive definitions are semantic.
OK.
But no sound machine can define its semantic. Ostensive definition requires an
act of fait in some undefinable reality.
You point down where you're standing and say "Earth"...that's how children
learn words. And having defined Earth as that which we stand on we have not believed
anything about it's overall shape.
Exactly like the god of the (Neo)platonists. They assume some Reality (called
God) at the origin of everything, and they do not assume much more, but propose
theories and means to make sense of them.
You seem to be in a bubble of rationalism. Everything is about axioms
and assumptions and words. Ostensive definitions point outside that
bubble. They are fuzzy, but they are not assumptions...they are based
on, consist of, evidence.
When a theologian has the scientific attitude, no one could know what is his
personal opinion on that matter. He only propose principles or theories, shows
the consequences and the means to test the theory.
Here the materialist often fails, as they talk like if they knew primitive
matter exists,
A straw man. Nothing I wrote referred to /*primitive*/ matter.
Brent
and never propose anyway to test that idea. It is normal, because there are
evidence and reason why the brain has not been prepared/“programmed”, through
evolution, to handle the metaphysical subtleties.
Bruno
Similarly, even Christians have argued that God cannot be omniscient and
omnipotent when they discovered that those notion were inconsistent. The
correspondence between cantor and a bishop shows that christians can have a
conception of God quite similar to the neoplatonician one, still in the 19th
century. Only atheists defends the fairy tale religion, I guess to just mock it.
I got problems with "atheist scientist” which are shocked by the vocabulary.
For a very long period, the terms which shocked them was not God, but
“consciousness” or even “mind”. That is because they confuse physics and
metaphysics, and that is rather natural after 1500 years of metaphysical
brainwashing.
If you have just one evidence for a physically *primitive* reality, you can
show it to us.
Can you show one evidence for anything being *primitive* reality?
Yes. But you might need to revise some of my papers. If all of S4Grz1, Z1* and
X1* depart from nature, that would be an evidence that the physical reality is
primitive.
As you often say in other contexts, belief in a primitive reality is a matter
of faith…
Belief in any reality different that the consciousness here and now require
faith. But being primitive or not is theorisable and testable
except more cautious scientists call it an hypothesis, not a leap of faith.
There is a subtle difference between faith and hypothesis. It is typically the
difference between reasoning with the mechanist hypothesis (and stating neutral
or mute about the personal belief we can have or not), and saying “yes” to the
doctor in a concrete real life situation. Faith is when some aspect of your
first person experience depends crucially on the truth of an hypothesis. It is
the difference between jumping from a cliff with an elastic, and just assuming
the elastic is good enough without jumping.
The ostensive physical reality itself is no more an evidence that physics is
the fundamental science that the sharable introspection would be an evidence
that reality is psychological.
You use the word "fundamental" as though it were a sacred benediction. You
don't know what is fundamental...or even if anything is fundamental. So you are merely
inventing a pseuedo-religion of physicalism in order to criticize it and pretend you are
above it.
?
Fundamental, primitive … means “has to be assumed”.
Then I would say nothing is primitive. That's the point of my virtuous circle.
We believe that he principle X is fundamental or primitive if we believe that
it cannot be recovered from other principle.
Physicalism assumes that some physical principle have to be assumed to get a
physical reality, like vitalism assumed that some aspect of life cannot be
recovered, even in principle, by another science like chemistry or physics.
No. Physical things don't have to be assumed, they are defined ostensively.
It is only the theorizing that hypothesizes principles.
I guess you agree that vitalism is abandoned, and that most scientist accept
that biology can be reduced to quantum mechanics, even if only in principle.
With mechanism, the same occurs for the physical reality. It is explain, in
principle, by very elementary arithmetic.
When interested in fundamental studies, that is part of the subject: what are
the simple principles that we have to assume to explain the whole picture.
But you've then already assumed there is a hierarchy of explanation.
Brent
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