Bruno,
What you haven't really addressed in this post is the PR implications if you
use the
word theology prominently in your writing. You will alienate many scientists
and
academic philosophers even though this may be due to prejudice or
misunderstanding,
and you will alienate what extra audience may be attracted by that word when
they
realise that you are talking about machine consciousness and... maths and
stuff. I
know that the temptation for an intellectual (if you don't mind the term) is to
let the
ideas stand unadorned and be judged purely on their merit, but sometimes even
in
academia the better marketed ideas can push other, perhaps more worthy ones
aside.
Stathis Papaioannou
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: The word theology again (was Hypostases (was: Natural Order
Belief)
Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2006 17:46:43 +0100
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Hi Brent,
Our present discussion with Tom and others is particularly important
for me. I am concentrating myself on the last decisions before writing
the english version of my thesis, probably in the form of one paper +
one book (the difference is that the book should be an, as
self-contained as possible, version of the paper. It is difficult
because the intended audience is fuzzy: physicists have the right
motivations (figure out what is reality), logicians and computer
scientists have the right tools (diagonalizations), neoplatonist
theologians have the right attitude, basic theory and questions, etc.
I still don't know if you have understand the full UDA reasoning, or at
least the seven first steps, nor do I know if this would help
concerning the vocabulary problem. I do think you have not yet
understand the AUDA, as your recurrent remark on Gettier
illustrateswe should perhaps harness this point in a deeper way at
some point.
A contingent problem is that physicists, who are the best placed to
understand my work, has been cooled down by the fact that someone as
brilliant in math as Penrose has been able to be so wrong on Godel's
theorem, and for many people the term Godel means risky!
Now, since I have defended my thesis, I have done two major
discoveries (as people following the list can guess):
1) The interview of the lobian machine directly offers a purely
arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus's theory (of mindmatter).
2) The comp standard model of particles can be derived from some
permutations group related to universal diophantine polynomial. This
has forced me to dig far deeper in number theory, and leads, here too
alas, toward very complex mathematical questions.
In my mind, the 1) really helps, as far as we are open to
neoplatonism. If not, it obviously favorizes rejection. The 2) does
not help at all and I don't know really what to do with that.
Le 05-déc.-06, à 20:05, Brent Meeker a écrit :
I understand that you use God to refer to whatever is fundamental.
That is the idea, but actually I never use the term God, except for
going quick in some answer to post which use the term. The God I
refer to is closer to Plotinus' ONE or to the Chinese TAO, the main
axiom is that it is the biggest unconceivable reality with the property
that you cannot give a name to it, or if you do, you get a
multiplication of approximations which can hide the very idea (but
which can be rich and creative though when distinguished from It).
The arithmetical interpretation of the ONE for the theology of a
lobian machine PA is arithmetical truth. By Tarski theorem it is
unameable by PA, for example.
And that may well be consistent with the way Plato used it.
Hard question of course, but a case can be made that it would have been
accepted by the most pythagoreans among the neoplatonist.
But even among Plato's contemporary's it was probably heard as
referring to the Olympians. And now, a couple of millenia later,
theos, theism, and theology have come to refer to a single
personal God.
The neoplatonist have introduced it, but Plotinus ascribes it to the
Parmenides of Plato. The Timaeus and other text by Plato and even
Aristotle are going in that direction. Note that the neoplatonist are
rationalist, and their use of words is very near the modern axiomatic
like the one used in math. In some late neoplatonist works Gods can
be translated by the concept of concept, property, or even set. But
Plotinus endows monotheism/monism, as I think comp, by its unameable
platonism, does too.
Since the time of Plato other terms have been introduced to
distinguish other fundamentals, deism, pantheism, naturalism.
Deism, pantheism, naturalism are all theological position. This is
perhaps why I need the term theology, in an admittedly larger sense
than the current sense. The UD reasoning shows that the belief in
naturalism is a theological
