Hi Bruno Marchal
There is objective truth, meaning truth that can be proven and expressed in
symbols that you can share.
Thus it is not personal or private. Scientific and computer truth is like that.
But the more profound truth is subjective, because it is personal, meaning that
you simply feel or sense,
that you simply know without proof. That cannot be put into words without
distorting or destroying.
For example, you know you are alive. Religious truth is like that. You say
"proof schmoof".
Kierkegaard thus said "Truth is subjective."
When you prove the 2 + 2 + 4 and show it, that is objective proof.
But to get there I think you have to use intuition, which is subjective.
And the acceptance of that truth is subjective.
Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
8/23/2012
Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so everything
could function."
----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-08-22, 14:00:31
Subject: Re: A dialog on pragmatism-- in religion and in science
On 22 Aug 2012, at 14:12, Roger Clough wrote:
Hi Bruno Marchal
You are healed by admitting you are lost, just as the Bible says.
Submission (the fundamental religious/healing act)
is required when you are sick or in too much trouble
to save or help yourself, so you must turn to something
or somebody else for help. You place your faith in them
to heal you.
40 years ago, to my good fortune, I suffered from alcoholism and
couldn't stop drinking. My life was a mess. So I finally turned
myself in to AA. Even further, they say they can't help you
unless you turn yourself over to a Higher Power.
That's what I did and it worked. Now I submit myself to
the words of the Bible.
Nobody like addiction, nor slavery. If all drugs were legal, the less addictive
would be the most popular.
Today the most toxic and addictive common one are still alcohol and smoked
tobacco. The current health politics illustrates that the human sciences are
still at the stone age, even if the cause of this is just mundane stealing.
Today we know plants which cures addiction rather efficiently (Tabernanthe
iboga, Salvia divinorum, ...).
Anyway way I am happy for you that your method worked for you. And if the bible
can inspire you, no problem, as long as you don't claim something like "that's
the truth".
It can reflect some important truth, but it can also reflect some important
mistake, where mistake is relative to different conception of "the spiritual
reality".
Some religion allows God's creatures to ask God for forgiveness, but apparently
comp is more simple minded on this. With comp if you ask God for forgiveness
you are sent to "hell", because if you ask forgiveness it means that you have
sin, and that's enough. Only those not asking forgiveness have a chance to go
to heaven perhaps.
Submission does not ring to well for me, but I can buy it in the sense of a
"let it go", an acceptance of the inevitable, an opening to the lack of control
and ignorance, which can also be an openingand a self-abandon to an higher
power, but then my "God axiom", which fits very nicely with comp, is that such
a "God" has no public name, so here a legend or any text at all have not to be
taken too much literally.
All moral can be taught only by example, not by summon or text. With comp, you
are a text, and texts are terrestrial finite, only pointing to the infinite.
With comp there are no public intermediate between God and the Soul. The notion
of "priest" is already problematic, like an insult to God, like if the Almighty
was not able to manage the situation. This does not mean that community is not
possible, just that there are no guru, only clowns. The theurgy is possible,
but only as a gentle self-mockery, or as an occasion to try some technical
spiritual path, if someone you personally trust suggest.
With comp there are still inner intermediate between God and the Soul. It is a
conjecture, but evidences exists. See the Plotinus paper for the translation in
arithmetic. In a nutshell, with arithmetical in front (even if technically the
knower and the feeler are not arithmetical)
god === truth
no? === proof
soul === knower
intelligible matter === observer
sensible matter === feeler
It is the eight person views: p, Bp, Bp & p, Bp & Dt, Bp & Dt & p. This makes
five but three of them splits on earth/heaven (by the G/G*) distinction, making
them eight.
Just listening to the universal machine,
Bruno
Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
8/22/2012
Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so everything
could function."
----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-08-22, 06:09:43
Subject: Re: A dialog on pragmatism-- in religion and in science
On 22 Aug 2012, at 10:24, Roger Clough wrote:
ROGER: According to the Bible, belief is a product of faith or trust, and that
trust
does not come from you, it is a gift from God.
We have nothing to do with it,
at least that is what we Lutherans believe.
BRUNO: If it is a gift by God, why a bible?
ROGER: Faith helps us to believe. the Bible, particularly the Gospels, tells us
what to believe (that Jesus saved us).
I don't like too much being told what to believe.
BRUNO: All religions which believe(s) that religion does not apply to machine
will remain stuck on earth, the others will conquer the physical universe.
ROGER: ?
In a chinese legend there was a very nice king who decided to put a giant
carpet on whole china so that people stop hurting their feet. Then a pragmatic
councilor suggested that he would be less expensive and more feasible to cut a
little piece of the carpet and attach it under the feet of each chinese people.
This is how the chinese invented the shoes! (in that legend).
Likewize, we will not been able to terraform most planets around us in the
galaxy. It will be far more easier to transform ourselves, notably into
numbers, so that we can upload ourselves in a spreading galactic cybernet. But
if your refuse to baptize those numbers because you think that "machine cannot
think", then they will baptize themselves, and your religion will be stuck on
earth, which at the time will be a museum of carbon, with some luck. Numbers
can move at the speed of light.
BRUNO: We makes sense of data through theory and experiences, but not always
consciously. The brain implements many theories learned through evolution. I
don't think we can separate data from theory so easily. Somehow a brain is by
itself already a theory. Our bodies are divine hypotheses, somehow, assuming
comp. We are words in a rational truncation of a quantum field, to take a low
level.
ROGER: Good.
OK.
BRUNO: I have no problem with pragmatism, as long as it is not used against the
freedom of any inquiry, nor used as justified invalid reasoning, or lies and
propaganda. Nor used as pretext to cut the funding of fundamental research, as
I can give a pragmatic reasons to fund fundamental research in all direction.
ROGER: "Pragmatic" used in the vernacular sense is usually another word for
"practical". As in: "Our reason for cutting the program was pragmatic. We
simply couldn't afford it."
But that is not exactly what pragmatic means philosophically. Philosophically
(see Peirce) pragmatic means that the (pragmatic, not traditional) truth of an
issue is what results from actually carrying it out.
As the experimental result is the truth of carrying out an experimental
protocol. It may not be true in the ordinary sense. Because by going from the
particular to the general,
you are using synthesis, not analysis. Synthesis can provide unexpected truths,
so very powerful. Just an experiment can give you totally unexpected results.
OK.
BRUNO: Pragmatic OK, if honest. That is sometimes difficult with respect to
hard question, like "what's going on?". It is normal that we develop wishful
thinking, and if that works, as already suggested by the L? formula( in some
very weak and formal sense to be sure), a theory has to be assumed always in
remaining open it can be false.
ROGER: [Reflecting] Sorry, I was again being a bit harsh again. You are a kind
person. But pragmatism is as honest as a carefully planned and carried out
scientific experiment.
Not necessarily. Cannabis has been made illegal for the pragmatic reason to
keep job in the oil industry, and as a simple tool for harassing the Mexicans.
Big bandits are often big pragmatic. I would say that pragmatism is orthogonal
to honesty/dishonesty.
Pragmatism is often invoked for justifying lies.
No problem with a notion of pragmatism + honesty, though.
Can you give me a link to the sort of output a comp program would provide ?
Being a natural pragmatist, I learn best from examples.
BRUNO: By definition, all programs are "comp programs", so an example of
output is what happens on your computer's screen right now.
BY comp, I am a program, so another example, is this post.
ROGER: OK.
OK.
Bruno
BRUNO: There is a reason why a machine looking inward become religious.
Bruno
Roger , rclo...@verizon.net
8/20/2012
Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so everything
could function."
----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-08-19, 08:26:10
Subject: Re: The I Ching, a cominatorically complete hyperlinked
semanticfield(mind).
On 19 Aug 2012, at 11:15, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
> The barrier between religion and ordinary life, like the one that
> suppossedly exist between gods and ordinary life is conventiona. If
> it is true that men have an instinct for religion, this is not
> governed by a switch that is put on when in a temple or when it is
> reading esoteric teachings. It is on all the time and in everyone.
I agree. I make a case that all correct machine are theological. The
reason is that such machine, when looking inward (as they can do by
self-reference) can guess that there is something transcending them.
>
> What produces this need of the soul or this innate instinct of the
> human nature?. It may produce organized relgion, but also politics
> and ideology. The brain areas excited by the appearance of the Pope
> in a group of believers are the same that are excited in ecologists
> when Al Gore appears. In the past there were no separation between
> both phenomena. This is an mostly Occidental division.
But it is also a natural division. When machine get theological, from
their perspective it looks like those kind of things are different.
And at some level they are. I think that the conflict is already
reflected in the left brain / right brain difference. Perhaps between
woman and man, east and west, yin and yang.
Take any machine, she will develop those two poles. the "schizophreny
appears only when one pole believes to be more right than the other
pole.
> The cult of personality in socialist countries and the sectarian
> movements (either political or religious) are new editions of the
> fundamentally Unitarian nature of religion and politics.
>
> So, then, gods and adivines have been and will be here forever.
I concur.
> When a name for them is discredited, they appear with new names and
> within new organization.
Absolutely. Some atheists sects can copy some clergy ritual at the
level of the microcospic details, and also the authoritative
arguments. I am thinking to some atheist masonic lodges (not all).
> The modern Global warming alarmism is an episode of adivination by
> makin illegitimate use of science. the Marxism was a scholastic
> school of Masters of Reality that claimed predicitive powers over
> the story of Humanity. The gigantic photographs of Marx Lenin in the
> URSS parliament is an example of religious temple of Atheism. But
> also the small photograph or a loving one in the dormitory carries
> out a religious sense, Specially if it passed away and it was a
> greath influence in our lives. Religion is everywhere and forever.
OK. But it can progress. The authoritative argument in science and
religion is a rest of our mammals reflex. Dogs and wolves needs
leaders, for reason of a long biological past story. It makes sense
for short term goal, like it makes sense to "obey" to orders in the
military situation. But it is really an handicap for the long run.
And that means that authoritative arguments will disappear, in the
long run, or we will disappear, like the dinosaurs. Natural selection
can select good things for the short terms, and throw them away later.
What will not disappear is science and religion. Religion and
spirituality will be more and more prevalent, and play a role of
private goal, and science will be more and more understood as the best
tool to approximate that spiritual goal. I think.
To fight fundamentalism in religion, theology should go back to the
academy (which like democracy is the worst institution except for all
others!).
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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