subject:"Re\: Evil \?"



Tom Caylor wrote:

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> > Tom Caylor wrote:
> > > So the solution to the problem of evil *starts* with the theological
> > > solution, as I said above, the solution to the separation between us
> > > and who we really are meant to be.  Since we were made in the image of
> > > the personal God, then with the G(Logos) we can be brought into
> > > relationship with Him again.  This is the core to the solution of evil.
> > >  Now this does not automatically imply that evil is immediately solved
> > > down in the 5th through 8th hypostases, i.e. the concrete problem of
> > > evil.  But the solution to evil must first start at the level of our
> > > human persons.
> > >
> >
> > I want to correct myself when I said "the solution to evil must first
> > start at the level of our human persons."  It starts with the personal
> > God.  I was just saying that personal redemption/healing comes before
> > "physical" redemption/healing.  Romans 8 actually addresses this
> > "matter" too in verses 18-22.
> >
> > Tom
>
> What does the Qur'an say about the matter? After all, every word in that
> document was written down precisely as dictated by God in the original
> Arabic, and it is more recent than the Old or New Testament.
>
> Stathis Papaioannou

This is sort of a contingent question for this List, since you could
look it up for yourself if you really wanted to know.

Tom

Sura 14:48
"The day will come when this earth will be substituted with a new
earth, and also the heavens, and everyone will be brought before GOD,
the One, the Supreme."


Stathis,

I apologize for my words of irritation.  That was wrong.

Tom


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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)



Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

> Tom Caylor wrote:
> > So the solution to the problem of evil *starts* with the theological
> > solution, as I said above, the solution to the separation between us
> > and who we really are meant to be.  Since we were made in the image of
> > the personal God, then with the G(Logos) we can be brought into
> > relationship with Him again.  This is the core to the solution of evil.
> >  Now this does not automatically imply that evil is immediately solved
> > down in the 5th through 8th hypostases, i.e. the concrete problem of
> > evil.  But the solution to evil must first start at the level of our
> > human persons.
> >
>
> I want to correct myself when I said "the solution to evil must first
> start at the level of our human persons."  It starts with the personal
> God.  I was just saying that personal redemption/healing comes before
> "physical" redemption/healing.  Romans 8 actually addresses this
> "matter" too in verses 18-22.
>
> Tom

What does the Qur'an say about the matter? After all, every word in that
document was written down precisely as dictated by God in the original
Arabic, and it is more recent than the Old or New Testament.

Stathis Papaioannou


This is sort of a contingent question for this List, since you could
look it up for yourself if you really wanted to know.

Tom

Sura 14:48
"The day will come when this earth will be substituted with a new
earth, and also the heavens, and everyone will be brought before GOD,
the One, the Supreme."


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RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2007-01-05 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

Tom Caylor wrote:
> So the solution to the problem of evil *starts* with the theological
> solution, as I said above, the solution to the separation between us
> and who we really are meant to be.  Since we were made in the image of
> the personal God, then with the G(Logos) we can be brought into
> relationship with Him again.  This is the core to the solution of evil.
>  Now this does not automatically imply that evil is immediately solved
> down in the 5th through 8th hypostases, i.e. the concrete problem of
> evil.  But the solution to evil must first start at the level of our
> human persons.
>

I want to correct myself when I said "the solution to evil must first
start at the level of our human persons."  It starts with the personal
God.  I was just saying that personal redemption/healing comes before
"physical" redemption/healing.  Romans 8 actually addresses this
"matter" too in verses 18-22.

Tom

What does the Qur'an say about the matter? After all, every word in that 
document was written down precisely as dictated by God in the original 
Arabic, and it is more recent than the Old or New Testament. 

Stathis Papaioannou
_
Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail.
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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2007-01-05 Thread Bruno Marchal

Tom,

It seems you are doing to the arithmetical hypostases what Augustin did 
to Plotinus's hypostases, including a relation between the three 
primary hypostases and trinity (criticized by many scholars, note).
Roughly speaking, I can agree, except that I cannot put any singular 
name in a theoretical frame (except for reference on previous work).

I must go, and I will elaborate this later.

Bruno

Le 05-janv.-07, à 10:01, Tom Caylor a écrit :

Bruno Marchal wrote:

OK. Now, if you accept, if only just for the sake of the argument, the
mechanist hypothesis, then you will see there could be an explanation
why you feel necessary to postulate such a personal God. But then I
must agree this explanation is more coherent with
"theories/philosophies" in which that "God" is so much *personal* that
it looks like the "first person" canonically associated to the 
machine.
In that case your "personal God" would be the "machine third 
hypostase"

or "Plotinus universal soul". It is the unameable self (re)defined by
Bp  &  p.

If we are limiting ourselves to some finite machine or person, say
myself, and thus the third hypostase is simply my first person
experience, that is not the same as my personal God.

However, if we are talking about the "largest" person possible, then
the third hypostase (Bp & p) is based on the first hypostase (p) where
p is ALL TRUTH.  Then if we take the first hypostase to be the
impersonal Arithmetic Truth, or any impersonal truth, then the third
hypostase based on that (Bp & p) seems to be akin to the World Soul of
pantheism mentioned my Smullyan in "Who Knows?" p. 20.  I presume this
is akin to the universal soul that is sometimes referred to in MWI
discussions about all of us belonging ultimately to the same person,
since we all eventually have every experience.

However, this is not the same as the personal God's Soul, or what I
mapped to the Holy Spirit.  The third hypostase I referred to in my
Christian interpretation of the hypostases was based on the first
hypostase corresponding to God the Father, or "I am that I am", or
"Yahweh".  (more on naming below)  This is the personal God, not an
impersonal god.  Without a personal God at the top (by definition!)
there is no impetus for downward emanation.  Numbers don't care about
us and our plight with evil!  With only numbers or other impersonal
things, we are forever stuck with evil.

> If someone
> wants to research the historical record sufficiently to convince
> themselves one way or another about the Bible or Jesus' 
resurrection,
> that's great, and I can give them some sources, but it's probably 
too

> contingent for this List.

Perhaps. The problem is that I just cannot take an expression like
"Jesus is the Son of God" as a scientific proposition. It could be
true, it could be false without me seeing a way to resolve it. On the
contrary, I can find in the talk by Jesus general pattern which makes
sense, and, indeed, 2/3 of Christian theology is probably compatible
with the comp hyp. Somehow, any literal interpretation of *any* text
(even PA's axioms !) should be considered with systematic suspicion.

Notice that I used the word "convince themselves" rather than "proof".
(I used proof later on, but that was a mistake when talking with you,
because I wasn't using it in the sense of a mathematical logic proof,
like an inference from axioms.)  The reality of the personal God in His
three Persons fulfilling the first four hypostases is obviously greater
than any truth that is accessible within the realm of mathematical
provability (G) of finite persons or machines.  You can see that
through your statement that goodness is based on truth, so in a sense
the personal God is even "bigger" than all Arithmetical Truth.  This
makes sense also from my statement that you need more than truth at the
core, but also love and communication.  So trying to "prove" God in
some logical inference sense would not only be "harder" than trying to
prove all Arithmetical Truth, it's even a category error since that
wouldn't address love and communication.  Trying to "prove" God in this
step-by-step way is actually equivalent to trying to become God.  Not
only will we be forever short of seeing God, but we will be missing the
love and communication aspect.  So in a sense, putting our hope in just
numerical truth is like hoping in only one dimension when more are
required.

The word "convince" is meant to convey something akin to convincing
ourselves of the truth of Church's Thesis.  It is like a machine at
level G convincing itself of truth at the G* level.  It is like the
"circumstantial evidence" that Smullyan refers to (p. 5).  The great
thing is this:  Say p=(all that the personal God is).  Then Bp is the
Logos, which has both the divine level, say G*(Logos), and the human
level, say G(Logos), so that G(Logos) is the Word that "became flesh
and dwelt among us", the Son of God.  Now let G(Tom) = all of the truth
that I can prove.  Now of cour

Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)



Tom Caylor wrote:

So the solution to the problem of evil *starts* with the theological
solution, as I said above, the solution to the separation between us
and who we really are meant to be.  Since we were made in the image of
the personal God, then with the G(Logos) we can be brought into
relationship with Him again.  This is the core to the solution of evil.
 Now this does not automatically imply that evil is immediately solved
down in the 5th through 8th hypostases, i.e. the concrete problem of
evil.  But the solution to evil must first start at the level of our
human persons.



I want to correct myself when I said "the solution to evil must first
start at the level of our human persons."  It starts with the personal
God.  I was just saying that personal redemption/healing comes before
"physical" redemption/healing.  Romans 8 actually addresses this
"matter" too in verses 18-22.

Tom


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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

Bruno Marchal wrote:

OK. Now, if you accept, if only just for the sake of the argument, the
mechanist hypothesis, then you will see there could be an explanation
why you feel necessary to postulate such a personal God. But then I
must agree this explanation is more coherent with
"theories/philosophies" in which that "God" is so much *personal* that
it looks like the "first person" canonically associated to the machine.
In that case your "personal God" would be the "machine third hypostase"
or "Plotinus universal soul". It is the unameable self (re)defined by
Bp  &  p.

If we are limiting ourselves to some finite machine or person, say
myself, and thus the third hypostase is simply my first person
experience, that is not the same as my personal God.

However, if we are talking about the "largest" person possible, then
the third hypostase (Bp & p) is based on the first hypostase (p) where
p is ALL TRUTH.  Then if we take the first hypostase to be the
impersonal Arithmetic Truth, or any impersonal truth, then the third
hypostase based on that (Bp & p) seems to be akin to the World Soul of
pantheism mentioned my Smullyan in "Who Knows?" p. 20.  I presume this
is akin to the universal soul that is sometimes referred to in MWI
discussions about all of us belonging ultimately to the same person,
since we all eventually have every experience.

However, this is not the same as the personal God's Soul, or what I
mapped to the Holy Spirit.  The third hypostase I referred to in my
Christian interpretation of the hypostases was based on the first
hypostase corresponding to God the Father, or "I am that I am", or
"Yahweh".  (more on naming below)  This is the personal God, not an
impersonal god.  Without a personal God at the top (by definition!)
there is no impetus for downward emanation.  Numbers don't care about
us and our plight with evil!  With only numbers or other impersonal
things, we are forever stuck with evil.

> If someone
> wants to research the historical record sufficiently to convince
> themselves one way or another about the Bible or Jesus' resurrection,
> that's great, and I can give them some sources, but it's probably too
> contingent for this List.

Perhaps. The problem is that I just cannot take an expression like
"Jesus is the Son of God" as a scientific proposition. It could be
true, it could be false without me seeing a way to resolve it. On the
contrary, I can find in the talk by Jesus general pattern which makes
sense, and, indeed, 2/3 of Christian theology is probably compatible
with the comp hyp. Somehow, any literal interpretation of *any* text
(even PA's axioms !) should be considered with systematic suspicion.

Notice that I used the word "convince themselves" rather than "proof".
(I used proof later on, but that was a mistake when talking with you,
because I wasn't using it in the sense of a mathematical logic proof,
like an inference from axioms.)  The reality of the personal God in His
three Persons fulfilling the first four hypostases is obviously greater
than any truth that is accessible within the realm of mathematical
provability (G) of finite persons or machines.  You can see that
through your statement that goodness is based on truth, so in a sense
the personal God is even "bigger" than all Arithmetical Truth.  This
makes sense also from my statement that you need more than truth at the
core, but also love and communication.  So trying to "prove" God in
some logical inference sense would not only be "harder" than trying to
prove all Arithmetical Truth, it's even a category error since that
wouldn't address love and communication.  Trying to "prove" God in this
step-by-step way is actually equivalent to trying to become God.  Not
only will we be forever short of seeing God, but we will be missing the
love and communication aspect.  So in a sense, putting our hope in just
numerical truth is like hoping in only one dimension when more are
required.

The word "convince" is meant to convey something akin to convincing
ourselves of the truth of Church's Thesis.  It is like a machine at
level G convincing itself of truth at the G* level.  It is like the
"circumstantial evidence" that Smullyan refers to (p. 5).  The great
thing is this:  Say p=(all that the personal God is).  Then Bp is the
Logos, which has both the divine level, say G*(Logos), and the human
level, say G(Logos), so that G(Logos) is the Word that "became flesh
and dwelt among us", the Son of God.  Now let G(Tom) = all of the truth
that I can prove.  Now of course this is not as "big" as G(Logos), and
probably (I'm sure!) isn't even as "big" as G(Bruno).  However, you can
help me to discover areas of G(Tom) that I'm not aware of.  In fact,
the G(Tom(half asleep)) or the G(Tom(before Bruno helped me)) may not
be as big as the G(Tom(awake)) or G(Tom(after Bruno helped me)).  So
G(Tom(awake)) contains some of G*(Tom(half asleep)) minus G(Tom(half
asleep)).  (Actually, sometimes it's the inverse where I realize
someth

Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2007-01-01 Thread Bruno Marchal




Le 29-déc.-06, à 10:57, Tom Caylor a écrit :



Just to clear this up, my above statement was not meant to be an
argument. I purposefully used the word "entail" rather than "imply".  I
wasn't saying that you cannot believe in some kind of truth without
believing in the personal God.  However is makes sense *from my
perspective* (of belief in the personal God) that you do not have a
basis for any truth on which personhood can be based, which *from my
perspective* (which I *have* been arguing for in general) needs more
than the impersonal core.



OK. Now, if you accept, if only just for the sake of the argument, the  
mechanist hypothesis, then you will see there could be an explanation  
why you feel necessary to postulate such a personal God. But then I  
must agree this explanation is more coherent with  
"theories/philosophies" in which that "God" is so much *personal* that  
it looks like the "first person" canonically associated to the machine.  
In that case your "personal God" would be the "machine third hypostase"  
or "Plotinus universal soul". It is the unameable self (re)defined by  
Bp  &  p.








The card records facts. To judge them historical is already beyond my
competence. Why the bible? Why not "the question of king Milinda" ?



My approach on the Everything List has been to argue for the necessity
of the personal God as the ultimate basis for Everything.



See just above.




If someone
wants to research the historical record sufficiently to convince
themselves one way or another about the Bible or Jesus' resurrection,
that's great, and I can give them some sources, but it's probably too
contingent for this List.



Perhaps. The problem is that I just cannot take an expression like  
"Jesus is the Son of God" as a scientific proposition. It could be  
true, it could be false without me seeing a way to resolve it. On the  
contrary, I can find in the talk by Jesus general pattern which makes  
sense, and, indeed, 2/3 of Christian theology is probably compatible  
with the comp hyp. Somehow, any literal interpretation of *any* text  
(even PA's axioms !) should be considered with systematic suspicion.







But I do have response to your comment on
universal-ness below.

I agree I was too loose in my use of hypercomputation as an analogy.
Actually the direction of the "spanning" was downward, going from G*
(celestial) to G terrestial, described by the Greek work kenosis
(emptying).  This does not mean that God the Father (the personal
fulfillment of the first hypostase), or the Holy Spirit (...second
hypostase) discontinued to exist, but that the Logos became flesh and
dwelt among us, so that we could see his grace and truth.  Again, this
does not mean that we cannot believe and seek truth, and have a feeling
that we are on the right track, without a relationship with the
personal God.  This means that the ultimate source of all truth made
himself known to us on a human level and solved the problem of evil.



Again this can have some symbolic sense. Literaly it is enough I know  
just one suffering Dog to feel uneasy with the idea that the concrete  
(not the theological) problem of evil is solved.







Death itself is the ultimate effect of evil: separation/isolation from
everything and everyone.  Jesus proved his divinity by raising
*himself* from the dead.



A very big advance in modern and serious parapsychology is that humans  
are easily fooled by humans. How could you say Jesus has proved  
something? Even if someone appear and can change water in wine and  
makes miracles etc. I would not take this as a proof. Remember I even  
think there is just no proofs concerning any reality. Proofs belongs to  
theories. Facts does not prove. Facts confirms or refute beliefs  
(theories).









For any belief I have I try to figure out if I would have had that
belief in completely different context. "Jesus" or "Nagarjuna" does  
not

survive such a test. For example I would not have believed in Jesus in
the case I would have born in the time of Plato, nor would I believed
in Euler would I have born on a different planet, but it make sense
that I would have believed in the content of their message. This  
forces

us to make the argument the most universal possible, the less
culturally influenced.



I am not saying that God's communication is an exhaustive communication
of all truth, i.e. all facts (scientific, historic, etc.) that it is
possible for us to know.  It was a message saying, "I am here. I love
you. I am your source of meaning. Here is my hand to rescue you from
darkness/meaninglessness and death/isolation.  Your
meaning/relationships are actually, ultimately, based on something:
Me."



But how could I know if jesus was not refering to the universal "me",  
in which case I can make sense of what he said both relatively to Plato  
or Plotinus theory and with the comp hyp. If Jesus meant literally  
himself, then, well I wait someone can even address a theory in whic

Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2007-01-01 Thread Bruno Marchal




Le 29-déc.-06, à 16:41, Jef Allbright a écrit :



Bruno -

It appears that you and I have essential agreement on our higher-level
epistemology.


It is possible. Note that in general those who appreciates the 
hypotheses I build on, does not like so much the conclusion, and vice 
versa, those who like the conclusion does not like the way I got them 
...







But I don't know much about your "comp" so I'll begin reading.



"Comp" is the old "mechanist philosophy" (Question to Milinda, Plato, 
Descartes, Hobbes) revisited after the "creative explosion": the 
discovery of the universal "turing" machine and the computer 
theoretical laws they obey.
I propose also a reasoning (the Universal Dovetailer Argument (UDA)) 
showing that, contrary to a widespread belief (since the closure of 
Plato Academy in 525 after JC), digital mechanism is epistemologically 
incompatible with the belief that the mind emerges from some primary 
substantial matter, but on the contrary the appearances of matter 
emerges globally from an internal view of the number theoretical 
reality. The UDA necessitates only a passive understanding of Church 
thesis. Then I translate UDA in the language of a Universal Machine, 
and thanks to the work of Post, Markov, Godel, Boolos, Goldblatt, 
Visser etc. I show constructively how to derive the particular case of 
"certainties" on the observation results (= more or less the 
"probability one" bearing on our computational extensions) and I have 
shown that those "probability one" gives arithmetical interpretation of 
some quantum logic. I am working now to show why "nature" look like a 
*quantum* computer in our immediate accessible neighborhood. I 'm stuck 
on some mathematical difficulties and the progress are slow.






> With increasing context of self-awareness, subjective values > 
increasingly resemble principles of the physical universe.
Apparently you are even more optimistic than me. I just wish you are 
correct here. It is fuzzy because the term "resemble" is fuzzy.


Yes, I was writing in broad strokes, just to give you the pattern, but
not the detail that has been mentioned earlier.  Humanity certainly
could be within an evolutionary cul de sac.



Yes.









Since all events are the result of interactions following

the laws of the physical universe,
Hmmm... It is out of topic, but I don't believe this at all. Better I 
can show to you that if "I" (or "You") are turing-emulable, then all 
events, including the apparition and the development of the physical 
laws are the result of the relation between numbers.


For the sake of my argument I might better have said that all
interactions seem to follow a consistent set of rules (which we see as
the laws of the physical universe.  It seems that you have some theory
of a more fundamental layer having to do with numbers.



Yes. I have many reasons to believe the laws of physics emerges from 
the laws of numbers. My basic belief in this relies on computer 
science/ cognitive science and quantum mechanics. But since the last 
years I got independent evidences for this from knot theory, prime 
number theory, integer partition theory. What is funny (and still 
mysterious but less and less when looking in the details) is the 
presence of the number 24 (or of its divisors) each time a deep 
relation appears between number theory and physics. I will send an easy 
illustration soon or later.


Happy 2007,

Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/


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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases

2006-12-30 Thread Brent Meeker

Tom Caylor wrote:

Brent Meeker wrote:

Tom Caylor wrote:
>
> I tried to address everything but ran out of time/energy.  If there is
> something I deleted from a previous post that I cut out that you wanted
> me to address, just bring it back up.
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> Le 26-d c.-06,   19:54, Tom Caylor a  crit :
>>
>> >
>> > On Dec 26, 9:51 am, Bruno Marchal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> >> Le 25-d c.-06,   01:13, Tom Caylor a  crit :
>> >>
>> >> > The "crux" is that he is not symbolic...
>> >
>> >>
>> >> I respect your belief or faith, but I want to be frank, I have no
>> >> evidences for the idea that "Jesus" is "truth", nor can I be 
sure of

>> >> any clear meaning such an assertion could have, or how such an
>> >> assertion could be made scientific, even dropping Popper 
falsification

>> >> criteria. I must say I have evidences on the contrary, if only the
>> >> fact
>> >> that humans succumb often to wishful thinking, and still more 
often to

>> >> their parents wishful thinking.
>> >>
>> >
>> > If you are not sure of any clear meaning of the personal God 
being the

>> > source of everything, including of course truth, this entails not
>> > knowing the other things too.
>>
>>
>> Is that not an authoritative argument?
>> What if I ask to my student an exam question like give me an argument
>> why the square root of 3 is irrationnal. Suppose he gives me the
>> correct and convincing usual (mathematical) proof. I could give him a
>> bad note for not adding: "and I know that is the truth because 
truth is

>> a gift by God".
>> Cute, I can directly give bad notes to all my students, and this will
>> give me more time to find a falsity in your way to reason ...
>>
>
> Just to clear this up, my above statement was not meant to be an
> argument. I purposefully used the word "entail" rather than "imply".  I
> wasn't saying that you cannot believe in some kind of truth without
> believing in the personal God.  However is makes sense *from my
> perspective* (of belief in the personal God) that you do not have a
> basis for any truth on which personhood can be based, which *from my
> perspective* (which I *have* been arguing for in general) needs more
> than the impersonal core.
>
>>
>> The card records facts. To judge them historical is already beyond my
>> competence. Why the bible? Why not "the question of king Milinda" ?
>>
>
> My approach on the Everything List has been to argue for the necessity
> of the personal God as the ultimate basis for Everything.  If someone
> wants to research the historical record sufficiently to convince
> themselves one way or another about the Bible or Jesus' resurrection,
> that's great, and I can give them some sources, but it's probably too
> contingent for this List.  But I do have response to your comment on
> universal-ness below.
>
>>
>> > My whole argument is that without it our hope eventually runs out 
and

>> > we are left with despair,

Speak for yourself.

My above statement is in the context of an a long explanation I've put
forth in previous posts regarding the conclusions of modern philosophy.
I explain below that I am referring to nihilism when I use the word
"despair".  This is not my own fabrication, but comes from the wording
used by the modern existentialist philosophers.

>> unless we lie to ourselves against the
>> > absence of hope.

So are you lying to yourself because otherwise you would despair?

Again, this is in the context of what I've said before about
reductionism and existentialism.  The "lie" refers to having to act "as
if" (originated with Kant) certain things like free will are real even
though we "know" they are not, in order to avoid nihilism.  Again, some
examples are of people who maintain a view along these lines are Marvin
Minsky (Society of Mind), Steven Pinker (How The Mind Works), Dennett
(who holds that language about purpose, intention, feelings does not
belong to science, but is indispensable to ordinary discourse), and
even eliminative materialists (Searle; Daniel Wegner's "The Illusion of
Conscious Will") concede that a concept of self remains a convenient
fiction that in practice we can't do without.  These examples were
given in Nancy Pearcey's book Total Truth, although I don't agree with
everything she says.

But none of those people are nihilists.  They just deny that there are values 
independent of individual's values.  And Dennett has defended a compatibilist 
free will in at least two books.

Tom

>>
>> Here Stathis already give a genuine comment. You are just admitting
>> your argument is "wishful thinking".
>>
>
> I was being too poetic ;)  By "despair" I meant nihilism, the belief
> that there ultimately is no meaning.  

But your argument still is an appeal to wishful thinking.

I am arguing that the ultimate
> source of meaning has to be personal.  I'm just saything that my
> argument is of the form, "If meaning is not ultimately based on the
> personal God, then there is no true meaning,

Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-30 Thread Tom Caylor

Brent Meeker wrote:

Tom Caylor wrote:
>
> I tried to address everything but ran out of time/energy.  If there is
> something I deleted from a previous post that I cut out that you wanted
> me to address, just bring it back up.
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> Le 26-d c.-06,   19:54, Tom Caylor a  crit :
>>
>> >
>> > On Dec 26, 9:51 am, Bruno Marchal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> >> Le 25-d c.-06,   01:13, Tom Caylor a  crit :
>> >>
>> >> > The "crux" is that he is not symbolic...
>> >
>> >>
>> >> I respect your belief or faith, but I want to be frank, I have no
>> >> evidences for the idea that "Jesus" is "truth", nor can I be sure of
>> >> any clear meaning such an assertion could have, or how such an
>> >> assertion could be made scientific, even dropping Popper falsification
>> >> criteria. I must say I have evidences on the contrary, if only the
>> >> fact
>> >> that humans succumb often to wishful thinking, and still more often to
>> >> their parents wishful thinking.
>> >>
>> >
>> > If you are not sure of any clear meaning of the personal God being the
>> > source of everything, including of course truth, this entails not
>> > knowing the other things too.
>>
>>
>> Is that not an authoritative argument?
>> What if I ask to my student an exam question like give me an argument
>> why the square root of 3 is irrationnal. Suppose he gives me the
>> correct and convincing usual (mathematical) proof. I could give him a
>> bad note for not adding: "and I know that is the truth because truth is
>> a gift by God".
>> Cute, I can directly give bad notes to all my students, and this will
>> give me more time to find a falsity in your way to reason ...
>>
>
> Just to clear this up, my above statement was not meant to be an
> argument. I purposefully used the word "entail" rather than "imply".  I
> wasn't saying that you cannot believe in some kind of truth without
> believing in the personal God.  However is makes sense *from my
> perspective* (of belief in the personal God) that you do not have a
> basis for any truth on which personhood can be based, which *from my
> perspective* (which I *have* been arguing for in general) needs more
> than the impersonal core.
>
>>
>> The card records facts. To judge them historical is already beyond my
>> competence. Why the bible? Why not "the question of king Milinda" ?
>>
>
> My approach on the Everything List has been to argue for the necessity
> of the personal God as the ultimate basis for Everything.  If someone
> wants to research the historical record sufficiently to convince
> themselves one way or another about the Bible or Jesus' resurrection,
> that's great, and I can give them some sources, but it's probably too
> contingent for this List.  But I do have response to your comment on
> universal-ness below.
>
>>
>> > My whole argument is that without it our hope eventually runs out and
>> > we are left with despair,

Speak for yourself.

My above statement is in the context of an a long explanation I've put
forth in previous posts regarding the conclusions of modern philosophy.
I explain below that I am referring to nihilism when I use the word
"despair".  This is not my own fabrication, but comes from the wording
used by the modern existentialist philosophers.

>> unless we lie to ourselves against the
>> > absence of hope.

So are you lying to yourself because otherwise you would despair?

Again, this is in the context of what I've said before about
reductionism and existentialism.  The "lie" refers to having to act "as
if" (originated with Kant) certain things like free will are real even
though we "know" they are not, in order to avoid nihilism.  Again, some
examples are of people who maintain a view along these lines are Marvin
Minsky (Society of Mind), Steven Pinker (How The Mind Works), Dennett
(who holds that language about purpose, intention, feelings does not
belong to science, but is indispensable to ordinary discourse), and
even eliminative materialists (Searle; Daniel Wegner's "The Illusion of
Conscious Will") concede that a concept of self remains a convenient
fiction that in practice we can't do without.  These examples were
given in Nancy Pearcey's book Total Truth, although I don't agree with
everything she says.

Tom

>>
>> Here Stathis already give a genuine comment. You are just admitting
>> your argument is "wishful thinking".
>>
>
> I was being too poetic ;)  By "despair" I meant nihilism, the belief
> that there ultimately is no meaning.  I am arguing that the ultimate
> source of meaning has to be personal.  I'm just saything that my
> argument is of the form, "If meaning is not ultimately based on the
> personal God, then there is no true meaning, because..."

If meaning is personal, and I'm a person, then I create meaning.  To postulate a personal 
God to supply "ultimate" personal meaning seems otiose.  It's like the 
first-cause argument for God.  If God can exist uncaused then why not stop the regress 
with an uncaused universe

Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-29 Thread Brent Meeker

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

Tom Caylor writes (quoting Bruno Marchal):

[TC]

> > My whole argument is that without it our hope eventually runs out and
> > we are left with despair, unless we lie to ourselves against the
> > absence of hope.

[BM]

> Here Stathis already give a genuine comment. You are just admitting
> your argument is "wishful thinking".

[TC]

I was being too poetic ;)  By "despair" I meant nihilism, the belief
that there ultimately is no meaning.  I am arguing that the ultimate
source of meaning has to be personal.  I'm just saything that my
argument is of the form, "If meaning is not ultimately based on the
personal God, then there is no true meaning, because..."

I realised when I was about 12 or 13 years old that there could not be 
any ultimate meaning. I was very pleased and excited with this 
discovery, and ran around trying to explain it to people (mostly drawing 
blank looks, as I remember). It seemed to me just another interesting 
fact about the world, like scientific and historical facts. It inspired 
me to start reading philosophy, looking up words like "nihilism" in the 
local library. It also encouraged me to question rules, laws and moral 
edicts handed down with no justification other than tradition or 
authority, where these were in conflict with my own developing value 
system. Overall, I think the realisation that there was no ultimate 
meaning was one of the more positive experiences in my life. But even if 
it hadn't been, and threw me into a deep depression, does that have any 
bearing on whether or not it is true?

Right!  Until you realize there is no ultimate or absolute values you worry 
that your values might be in conflict with those absolute values.  I was 
nineteen when I realized it - I was old enough to realize that most other 
people were not going be pleased to hear about my discovery. :-)

Brent Meeker

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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-29 Thread Brent Meeker

Tom Caylor wrote:

I tried to address everything but ran out of time/energy.  If there is
something I deleted from a previous post that I cut out that you wanted
me to address, just bring it back up.

Bruno Marchal wrote:

Le 26-d c.-06,   19:54, Tom Caylor a  crit :

>
> On Dec 26, 9:51 am, Bruno Marchal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Le 25-d c.-06,   01:13, Tom Caylor a  crit :
>>
>> > The "crux" is that he is not symbolic...
>
>>
>> I respect your belief or faith, but I want to be frank, I have no
>> evidences for the idea that "Jesus" is "truth", nor can I be sure of
>> any clear meaning such an assertion could have, or how such an
>> assertion could be made scientific, even dropping Popper falsification
>> criteria. I must say I have evidences on the contrary, if only the
>> fact
>> that humans succumb often to wishful thinking, and still more often to
>> their parents wishful thinking.
>>
>
> If you are not sure of any clear meaning of the personal God being the
> source of everything, including of course truth, this entails not
> knowing the other things too.

Is that not an authoritative argument?
What if I ask to my student an exam question like give me an argument
why the square root of 3 is irrationnal. Suppose he gives me the
correct and convincing usual (mathematical) proof. I could give him a
bad note for not adding: "and I know that is the truth because truth is
a gift by God".
Cute, I can directly give bad notes to all my students, and this will
give me more time to find a falsity in your way to reason ...

Just to clear this up, my above statement was not meant to be an
argument. I purposefully used the word "entail" rather than "imply".  I
wasn't saying that you cannot believe in some kind of truth without
believing in the personal God.  However is makes sense *from my
perspective* (of belief in the personal God) that you do not have a
basis for any truth on which personhood can be based, which *from my
perspective* (which I *have* been arguing for in general) needs more
than the impersonal core.

The card records facts. To judge them historical is already beyond my
competence. Why the bible? Why not "the question of king Milinda" ?

My approach on the Everything List has been to argue for the necessity
of the personal God as the ultimate basis for Everything.  If someone
wants to research the historical record sufficiently to convince
themselves one way or another about the Bible or Jesus' resurrection,
that's great, and I can give them some sources, but it's probably too
contingent for this List.  But I do have response to your comment on
universal-ness below.

> My whole argument is that without it our hope eventually runs out and
> we are left with despair, 

Speak for yourself.

unless we lie to ourselves against the
> absence of hope.

So are you lying to yourself because otherwise you would despair?

Here Stathis already give a genuine comment. You are just admitting
your argument is "wishful thinking".

I was being too poetic ;)  By "despair" I meant nihilism, the belief
that there ultimately is no meaning.  I am arguing that the ultimate
source of meaning has to be personal.  I'm just saything that my
argument is of the form, "If meaning is not ultimately based on the
personal God, then there is no true meaning, because..."

If meaning is personal, and I'm a person, then I create meaning.  To postulate a personal God to supply "ultimate" personal meaning seems otiose.  It's like the first-cause argument for God.  If God can exist uncaused then why not stop the regress with an uncaused universe - which has the additional advantage of obviously existing. 

Brent Meeker

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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-29 Thread Brent Meeker



Stathis Papaioannou wrote:






Jef Allbright writes:


My personal experience is that there's no paradox at all if one is
willing to fully accept that within any framework of description there
is absolutely no difference at all between a person and a zombie, but
even the most philosophically cognizant, being evolved human organisms,
will snap back to defending the existence of a 1st person point of view
even though it isn't detectable or measurable and has absolutely no
effect on the physical world. 


Like quarks it's unobservable, but it is in the ontology of a model that has good empirical support.  Detection and measure are often indirect. 



I don't know about "no effect" on the external world. If the mental 
supervenes on certain physical processes, that means that without these 
physical processes there can be no mental, and without the mental there 
can be no physical processes. It works both ways.


Right.  Zombies may well be impossible.

Brent Meeker

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RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

Thanks Bruno.  Much of your terminology at this point escapes me.

I do see that a small part of our differences below are simply due to the 
imprecision of language (and my somewhat sloppy writing.)

I also sense that at the core of much of this discussion is the idea that, although we are 
subjective agents, we do create objective effects within any practical context.  If I intend to 
swat a fly, my sensing of the fly's position is incomplete and contingent and my motor control is 
subject to error, but I act, and the fly is "objectively" dead, within any reasonable 
degree of certainty.  I find that the concept of "context" is essential at all levels and 
extends in the Godelian sense that we are fundamentally limited to operating within a limited but 
expanding context.

Perhaps your terminology states this more elegantly, I can't tell.

Time for me to go do some reading from your site.

- Jef

Bruno Marchal wrote:

Hi Jef,

Please, don't hesitate to skip the remarks you could find a 
bit too technical, but which could help others who know 
perhaps a bit more on G and G*, which are theories which I 
use to tackle many questions in this list. You can come back 
on those remarks if ever you got time and motivation to do so.

Le 28-déc.-06, à 21:14, Jef Allbright a écrit :

>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>>> Although we all share the illusion of a direct and 
immediate sense 
>>> of consciousness, on what basis can you claim that it actually is 
>>> real?
>>  Because we cannot doubt it. It is the real message, imo, of 
>> Descartes "diagonal argument": it is the fixed point of 
doubt. If we 
>> decide to doubt everything, we will find ourselves, at some stage, 
>> doubting we doubt of everything. The same for relativization: we 
>> cannot relativize everything without an absolute base on 
which that 
>> relativization is effective.

>
> Here is a subtle, and non-traditional thought:
>
> Classical philosophy always put the Reasoner at the center of the 
> structure of reasoning. But with our more developed awareness of 
> evolution, evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, it 
is becoming 
> clearer that this pure "Copernican" view of reasoning is 
invalid.  We 
> now can see that every Reasoner is embedded within some a priori 
> framework such that there is an intrinsic bias or offset to any 
> subjective construct.  When we are aware that there is fundamental 
> bias, it is clear that one can not validly reason to the point of 
> doubting everything.

All this makes sense to me. I can interpret your terms in the
(post-godelian) mechanist theory of mind/matter. The "bias" 
is given by our "body" itself, or our "godel number" or any 
"correct" 3-person description of ourselves (like the 
artificial digital body proposed by the digital 
computationalist doctor).

> When all that is in doubt is removed, we don't arrive at zero as is 
> classically thought,

... before Godel & Co. Classical philosophy is different 
before and after Turing, Post, Church, Godel, Markov, 
Uspenski, Kolmogorov, etc.

> but at some indistinct offset determined
> by our very nature as a reasoner embedded in a real environment.

Here there is a technical problem because there is just no "real 
environment"; but it could be easily resolved by replacing "real 
environment" by "relatively most probable computational histories".

This is more coherent with both the comp hyp and quantum mechanics.

> Understanding this eliminates the pressure to deal with conceptual
> identities leading to meaningless absolutes.

I am not sure which "meaningless absolutes" you refer too. In 
the comp 
theory many simple truth can be considered as absolute and indeed 
communicably so (like arithmetical truth, piece of set theoretical 
truth, ...). Also the first person (which admit some precise 
definition) is related to some absolutes.

>
> This understanding also helps resolve other philosophical 
"paradoxes"
> such as solipsism, meaning of life, free-will and others 
hinging on the

> idea of a subjective center.

Hmmm here I think you are a bit quick. But I have no problem 
with many 
philosophical paradoxes, although the theory solves them with 
different 
degree of quality. "Free-will" is due in part to the 
availability, for 
enough rich universal machine, of its "ignorance space". Somehow I am 
free to choose going to the movie or to the theater because 
... I don't 
know what I want  Once I know what I want, I remain free in the 
sense of being self-determinate about my (future) action.
For the modalist: The 3-description of that difference space is given 
by G* (truth about the self-referential ability of the machine) and G 
(what the machine can prove about its self-referential 
ability). But G* 
minus G admit modal variants, so that the ignorance space, like the 
whole of arithmetical truth differentiates with the change of 
point of 
view. This indeed shed light on many paradoxes (and, BTW, can also be 
used to

RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)



Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
I realised when I was about 12 or 13 years old that there 
could not be any ultimate meaning. I was very pleased and 
excited with this discovery, and ran around trying to explain 
it to people (mostly drawing blank looks, as I remember). 
It seemed to me just another interesting fact about the 
world, like scientific and historical facts. It inspired me 
to start reading philosophy, looking up words like "nihilism" 
in the local library. It also encouraged me to question 
rules, laws and moral edicts handed down with no 
justification other than tradition or authority, where these 
were in conflict with my own developing value system. 
Overall, I think the realisation that there was no ultimate 
meaning was one of the more positive experiences in my life. 
But even if it hadn't been, and threw me into a deep 
depression, does that have any bearing on whether or not it is true?


It's encouraging when one sees that one is not entirely alone in
breaking free of the patterns of popular thought.  


I came to a similar realization at a similarly young age, and when I
tried to share my wonderful and powerful new idea I received not just
blank looks, but reactions of concern that I intended to abandon all
morality. At that point I learned that I had better not discuss these
ideas, but continued to read and think with the belief that while there
was no absolute meaning, at least the scientific method could provide
explanation.  


It took me until my early twenties to realize that science was also
fundamentlly incomplete. I then had an experience I call "passing
through the void and coming out the other side" seeing that everything
is just as before despite lacking any absolute means of support or
justification.  It was intensly and profoundly liberating.  I saw
clearly that I could never know any absolutes, but being an inherently
subjective being, my subjective awareness was absolutely appropriate.

Since then, paradoxes of self, personal identity, free-will and morality
became clearly resolved, extending to a theory of collaborative social
decision-making that becomes increasingly moral as it promotes
converging values over diverging scope.

- Jef

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RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)



Stathis Papaioannou wrote:


Jef Allbright writes:

My personal experience is that there's no paradox 
at all if one is willing to fully accept that within

any framework of description there is absolutely
no difference at all between a person and a 
zombie, but even the most philosophically cognizant,

being evolved human organisms, will snap back to
defending the existence of a 1st person point of
view even though it isn't detectable or measurable
and has absolutely no effect on the physical world.


I don't know about "no effect" on the external world. If the 
mental supervenes on certain physical processes, that means 
that without these physical processes there can be no mental, 
and without the mental there can be no physical processes. 
It works both ways.


But to claim that it works both ways would seem to invalidate the claim
of the absolute primacy of the subjective experience.

This is a slippery concept, made more difficult due to the evolutionary
imperative to protect the Self (at least long enough to successfully
propagate the genes), and consequentially reinforced by our language and
culture.

I've enjoyed your thoughtful and good-natured comments, and at this
point, having nothing further to add, I'll step back and try to read and
work through Bruno's "comp".

Best regards,

- Jef


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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)




Le 29-déc.-06, à 10:57, Tom Caylor a écrit :


I tried to address everything but ran out of time/energy.  If there is
something I deleted from a previous post that I cut out that you wanted
me to address, just bring it back up.



No problem, Tom. In fact I will print your post and read it comfortably 
at home and comment tomorrow or Monday.


Happy New Year!

Bruno


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RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

Bruno -

It appears that you and I have essential agreement on our higher-level
epistemology.

But I don't know much about your "comp" so I'll begin reading.

- Jef  

Bruno Marchal wrote:

> With increasing context of self-awareness, subjective values 
> increasingly resemble principles of the physical universe.

Apparently you are even more optimistic than me. I just wish 
you are correct here. It is fuzzy because the term "resemble" 
is fuzzy.

Yes, I was writing in broad strokes, just to give you the pattern, but
not the detail that has been mentioned earlier.  Humanity certainly
could be within an evolutionary cul de sac.

Since all events are the result of interactions following 

the laws of the physical universe,

Hmmm... It is out of topic, but I don't believe this at all. Better I 
can show to you that if "I" (or "You") are turing-emulable, then all 
events, including the apparition and the development of the physical 
laws are the result of the relation between numbers.

For the sake of my argument I might better have said that all
interactions seem to follow a consistent set of rules (which we see as
the laws of the physical universe.  It seems that you have some theory
of a more fundamental layer having to do with numbers.

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

I'll take a look.

- Jef 

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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)




Le 28-déc.-06, à 21:54, Brent Meeker a écrit :  (to Jef)

I think "objective" should just be understood as denoting subjective 
agreement from different viewpoints.



Curiosuly enough perhaps I could agree if you were saying "physically 
objective" can be understood as denoting subjective agreement.
But frankly I do not believe that 17 is prime depends on any agreement 
between different viewpoints (but the definition of 17 and prime of 
course).
But about physics I agree. And I know that you know how Vic Stenger 
extracts a big deal of physics from invariance for change of 
referential systems.



 I'd say experience is always "direct", an adjective which really adds 
nothing.  An experience just is.  If it has to be interpreted *then* 
you've fallen into an infinite regress: who experiences the 
interpretation.



I can understand why 1-experience seems direct, but I am not sure this 
really make sense. As I said to Jef, infinite regression in computer 
science can be solved.



To call it an illusion goes too far.  I'd say the self is a model or 
an abstract construct - but it models something, it has predictive 
power.  If you start to call things like that "illusions" then 
everything is an illusion and the word has lost its meaning.


OK.

Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/


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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)



Hi Jef,

Please, don't hesitate to skip the remarks you could find a bit too 
technical, but which could help others who know perhaps a bit more on G 
and G*, which are theories which I use to tackle many questions in this 
list. You can come back on those remarks if ever

you got time and motivation to do so.

Le 28-déc.-06, à 21:14, Jef Allbright a écrit :



Bruno Marchal wrote:

Although we all share the illusion of a direct and immediate sense 
of consciousness, on what basis can

you claim that it actually is real?

 Because we cannot doubt it. It is the real message,
imo, of Descartes "diagonal argument": it is the
fixed point of doubt. If we decide to doubt everything,
we will find ourselves, at some stage, doubting we doubt
of everything. The same for relativization: we cannot
relativize everything without an absolute base on which
that relativization is effective.


Here is a subtle, and non-traditional thought:

Classical philosophy always put the Reasoner at the center of the
structure of reasoning. But with our more developed awareness of
evolution, evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, it is becoming
clearer that this pure "Copernican" view of reasoning is invalid.  We
now can see that every Reasoner is embedded within some a priori
framework such that there is an intrinsic bias or offset to any
subjective construct.  When we are aware that there is fundamental 
bias,

it is clear that one can not validly reason to the point of doubting
everything.


All this makes sense to me. I can interpret your terms in the 
(post-godelian) mechanist theory of mind/matter. The "bias" is given by 
our "body" itself, or our "godel number" or any "correct" 3-person 
description of ourselves (like the artificial digital body proposed by 
the digital computationalist doctor).





When all that is in doubt is removed, we don't arrive at
zero as is classically thought,



... before Godel & Co. Classical philosophy is different before and 
after Turing, Post, Church, Godel, Markov, Uspenski, Kolmogorov, etc.





but at some indistinct offset determined
by our very nature as a reasoner embedded in a real environment.



Here there is a technical problem because there is just no "real 
environment"; but it could be easily resolved by replacing "real 
environment" by "relatively most probable computational histories".

This is more coherent with both the comp hyp and quantum mechanics.




Understanding this eliminates the pressure to deal with conceptual
identities leading to meaningless absolutes.



I am not sure which "meaningless absolutes" you refer too. In the comp 
theory many simple truth can be considered as absolute and indeed 
communicably so (like arithmetical truth, piece of set theoretical 
truth, ...). Also the first person (which admit some precise 
definition) is related to some absolutes.






This understanding also helps resolve other philosophical "paradoxes"
such as solipsism, meaning of life, free-will and others hinging on the
idea of a subjective center.



Hmmm here I think you are a bit quick. But I have no problem with many 
philosophical paradoxes, although the theory solves them with different 
degree of quality. "Free-will" is due in part to the availability, for 
enough rich universal machine, of its "ignorance space". Somehow I am 
free to choose going to the movie or to the theater because ... I don't 
know what I want  Once I know what I want, I remain free in the 
sense of being self-determinate about my (future) action.
For the modalist: The 3-description of that difference space is given 
by G* (truth about the self-referential ability of the machine) and G 
(what the machine can prove about its self-referential ability). But G* 
minus G admit modal variants, so that the ignorance space, like the 
whole of arithmetical truth differentiates with the change of point of 
view. This indeed shed light on many paradoxes (and, BTW, can also be 
used to show invalid many reasonings in cognitive computer science).







If you want (like David
and George) consciousness is our criteria of "absolute
(but not 3-communicable) truth". I don't think we can
genuinely doubt we are conscious, although we can doubt
on any content of that consciousness, but that is different.
We can doubt having been conscious in some past, but we cannot doubt 
being conscious here and now, whatever that means.

<...>
The "truth" here bears on the existence of the experience, and has  
nothing to do with anything which could be reported by the 
experiencer.


On this basis I understand your point, and as long as we are very
careful about conveying which particular meaning of "knowing",
"certainty", and "truth" we are referring to, then there will be little
confusion.



OK.





But such dual usage leaves us at risk of our thinking
repeatedly falling into the singularity of the self, from which there's
no objective (and thus workable) basis for any claim.



Here I disagree. The only risk I see, i

RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-29 Thread Stathis Papaioannou




Tom Caylor writes (quoting Bruno Marchal):

[TC]

> > My whole argument is that without it our hope eventually runs out and
> > we are left with despair, unless we lie to ourselves against the
> > absence of hope.


[BM]

> Here Stathis already give a genuine comment. You are just admitting
> your argument is "wishful thinking".


[TC]

I was being too poetic ;)  By "despair" I meant nihilism, the belief
that there ultimately is no meaning.  I am arguing that the ultimate
source of meaning has to be personal.  I'm just saything that my
argument is of the form, "If meaning is not ultimately based on the
personal God, then there is no true meaning, because..."


I realised when I was about 12 or 13 years old that there could not be any 
ultimate meaning. I was very pleased and excited with this discovery, and ran 
around trying to explain it to people (mostly drawing blank looks, as I remember). 
It seemed to me just another interesting fact about the world, like scientific and 
historical facts. It inspired me to start reading philosophy, looking up words like 
"nihilism" in the local library. It also encouraged me to question rules, laws and 
moral edicts handed down with no justification other than tradition or authority, 
where these were in conflict with my own developing value system. Overall, I 
think the realisation that there was no ultimate meaning was one of the more 
positive experiences in my life. But even if it hadn't been, and threw me into a 
deep depression, does that have any bearing on whether or not it is true?


Stathis Papaioannou
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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-29 Thread Tom Caylor

I tried to address everything but ran out of time/energy.  If there is
something I deleted from a previous post that I cut out that you wanted
me to address, just bring it back up.

Bruno Marchal wrote:

Le 26-d c.-06,   19:54, Tom Caylor a  crit :

>
> On Dec 26, 9:51 am, Bruno Marchal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Le 25-d c.-06,   01:13, Tom Caylor a  crit :
>>
>> > The "crux" is that he is not symbolic...
>
>>
>> I respect your belief or faith, but I want to be frank, I have no
>> evidences for the idea that "Jesus" is "truth", nor can I be sure of
>> any clear meaning such an assertion could have, or how such an
>> assertion could be made scientific, even dropping Popper falsification
>> criteria. I must say I have evidences on the contrary, if only the
>> fact
>> that humans succumb often to wishful thinking, and still more often to
>> their parents wishful thinking.
>>
>
> If you are not sure of any clear meaning of the personal God being the
> source of everything, including of course truth, this entails not
> knowing the other things too.

Is that not an authoritative argument?
What if I ask to my student an exam question like give me an argument
why the square root of 3 is irrationnal. Suppose he gives me the
correct and convincing usual (mathematical) proof. I could give him a
bad note for not adding: "and I know that is the truth because truth is
a gift by God".
Cute, I can directly give bad notes to all my students, and this will
give me more time to find a falsity in your way to reason ...

Just to clear this up, my above statement was not meant to be an
argument. I purposefully used the word "entail" rather than "imply".  I
wasn't saying that you cannot believe in some kind of truth without
believing in the personal God.  However is makes sense *from my
perspective* (of belief in the personal God) that you do not have a
basis for any truth on which personhood can be based, which *from my
perspective* (which I *have* been arguing for in general) needs more
than the impersonal core.

The card records facts. To judge them historical is already beyond my
competence. Why the bible? Why not "the question of king Milinda" ?

My approach on the Everything List has been to argue for the necessity
of the personal God as the ultimate basis for Everything.  If someone
wants to research the historical record sufficiently to convince
themselves one way or another about the Bible or Jesus' resurrection,
that's great, and I can give them some sources, but it's probably too
contingent for this List.  But I do have response to your comment on
universal-ness below.

> My whole argument is that without it our hope eventually runs out and
> we are left with despair, unless we lie to ourselves against the
> absence of hope.

Here Stathis already give a genuine comment. You are just admitting
your argument is "wishful thinking".

I was being too poetic ;)  By "despair" I meant nihilism, the belief
that there ultimately is no meaning.  I am arguing that the ultimate
source of meaning has to be personal.  I'm just saything that my
argument is of the form, "If meaning is not ultimately based on the
personal God, then there is no true meaning, because..."

>
> By "these words" I was referring to the John quote from the Bible.  The
> actual fulfillment was Jesus (the Word/Logos).  He spanned the infinite
> gap, like you said above, perhaps analogous to hypercomputation,...all
> in one step.

Note that most notion of hypercomputation does not make it possible to
escape the G/G* logics, and when they do escape it, the price is the
abandon of personhood.
This is a general argument which is independent of the comp hypothesis:
to escape the G/G* (and the related hypostases) you have to "abandon"
your self or the person-hood (personal-ness I would like to say).

I agree I was too loose in my use of hypercomputation as an analogy.
Actually the direction of the "spanning" was downward, going from G*
(celestial) to G terrestial, described by the Greek work kenosis
(emptying).  This does not mean that God the Father (the personal
fulfillment of the first hypostase), or the Holy Spirit (...second
hypostase) discontinued to exist, but that the Logos became flesh and
dwelt among us, so that we could see his grace and truth.  Again, this
does not mean that we cannot believe and seek truth, and have a feeling
that we are on the right track, without a relationship with the
personal God.  This means that the ultimate source of all truth made
himself known to us on a human level and solved the problem of evil.

> This is why Jesus was the Word, the Logos.  God simply shouting words
> out of the sky or something would have this problem.  This is why I
> said that the incarnation was primary in God's communication to us.

OK, but why not Nagarjuna instead? What is so special about Jesus
(beside our culture) ?

Death itself is the ultimate effect of evil: separation/isolation from
everything and everyone.  Jesus proved

RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-29 Thread Stathis Papaioannou







Jef Allbright writes:


My personal experience is that there's no paradox at all if one is
willing to fully accept that within any framework of description there
is absolutely no difference at all between a person and a zombie, but
even the most philosophically cognizant, being evolved human organisms,
will snap back to defending the existence of a 1st person point of view
even though it isn't detectable or measurable and has absolutely no
effect on the physical world. 


I don't know about "no effect" on the external world. If the mental supervenes 
on certain physical processes, that means that without these physical processes 
there can be no mental, and without the mental there can be no physical processes. 
It works both ways.


Stathis Papaioannou
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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)




Le 27-déc.-06, à 23:40, Jef Allbright a écrit :



Bruno Marchal wrote:


Le 27-déc.-06, à 19:10, Jef Allbright a écrit :



All meaning is necessarily within context.

OK, but all context could make sense only to
some universal meaning. I mean I don't know,
it is difficult.


But this can be seen in a very consistent way.  The significance of an 
event is proportional to the scope of its effect relative to the 
values of the observer.




I can agree (could depend about the meaning of "significance").





With increasing context of self-awareness, subjective values 
increasingly resemble principles of the physical universe.




Apparently you are even more optimistic than me. I just wish you are 
correct here. It is fuzzy because the term "resemble" is fuzzy.







Why? Because making basic choices against the way the universe 
actually works would be a losing strategy, becoming increasingly 
obvious with increasing context of awareness.



OK. I think I do agree with this from some global context. But machine 
and nature can make terrible detour and as I said it would be 
presomptuous from my part to say I am sure life or physical universe 
are not such a detour. I don't believe this, but I cannot be sure of 
remnant wishful thinking.







Since all events are the result of interactions following the laws of 
the physical universe,



Hmmm... It is out of topic, but I don't believe this at all. Better I 
can show to you that if "I" (or "You") are turing-emulable, then all 
events, including the apparition and the development of the physical 
laws are the result of the relation between numbers.





the difference between events and values decreases with increasing 
context of awareness, thus the significance, or meaningfulness of 
events also decreases.



Except that by incompleteness the gap remains always infinite. No worry 
for the disparition of meaningfulness, thus. (Actually this shows that 
the number question is perhaps less out of topic than I want it to be 
for the "moral" threads).






With an ultimate, god's eye view of the universe, there would be no 
meaning at all.



Unless that God is personal (cf Tom Caylor), or just deeply 
inaccessible (cf consequence of comp).






Things would simply be as they are.



Yes. That is an argument for the zero-person aspect of the big 
wholeness. I do agree with you on this (but diverge from Tom exactly on 
this).






From the point of view of an agent undergoing long-term development 
within the universe, its values would increasingly converge on "what 
works", i.e. principles of effective interaction with the physical 
world, while the expression of those values would become increasingly 
diverse in a fractal manner, optimizing for robust ongoing growth.



A named God hides another One, and a "Physical Universe", conceived as 
an explanation per se is just a Name for a God. I hope and think 
plausible that we have indeed the power to make what you say "largely 
true", but the devil hides in the details ...






Further, there's a great deal of empirical evidence
showing that the subjective experience that people
report is full of distortions, gaps, fabrications,
and confabulations.

But this is almost a consequence of the self-referential
ability of machine, they can distort their own view, and
even themselves. I talk about universal machine
*after Godel* (and Post, Turing,..


I'm in interesting in following up on this line of thought given 
available time.



Thanks for telling. No problem.  You can find papers in my URL, when 
you have the time.


Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/


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RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-28 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

Brent Meeker writes:

> This is very similar to the arguments of people with religious 
> convictions, who will cite evidence in support of their beliefs up to a 
> point, but it soon becomes clear that no matter how paltry this evidence 
> is shown to be, they will still maintain their belief. The difference is 
> that these people do not change their way of thinking in response to 
> antipsychotic medication.

Have you tried it?

The local Mental Health Act forbids involuntary treatment of someone for their 
religious beliefs, but there are grey areas, for example in cases of religious 
conversion, where the family claims the patient has gone mad but the patient 
and his new friends insist he is just exercising freedom of worship. I have to 
admit, in all such cases I can recall the family is correct, even when there are 
no other obvious signs of mental illness, and the patient continues to deteriorate 
unless treated. I guess the family pick up on subtle changes in personality in 
addition to the religious conversion. But where a patient is started on an 
antipsychotic and has an incidental, long-standing religious (or other odd) 
belief, the medication seems to make no difference to that belief. 

Functionally, a (primary) delusion seems to bypass the mechanism whereby 
we take in empirical evidence, process it logically, and arrive at a conclusion 
or belief: that is, delusions create a ready-made belief, in the same way as 
hallucinations create a ready-made perception in the absence of a sensory 
stimulus. Normally acquired religious beliefs differ in that there is "empirical 
evidence" which is "logically processed", even if that evidence is that it says 
so in the Bible and your parents taught you that the Bible doesn't lie. We 
have drugs for psychosis but there is no drug that stops you being gullible. 

Stathis Papaioannou
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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases

2006-12-28 Thread Brent Meeker



Jef Allbright wrote:


Brent Meeker wrote:


Jef Allbright wrote:


Bruno Marchal wrote:

Although we all share the illusion of a direct and immediate sense 
of consciousness, on what

basis can you claim that it actually is real?
 
Because we cannot doubt it. It is the real message,

imo, of Descartes "diagonal argument": it is the
fixed point of doubt. If we decide to doubt
everything, we will find ourselves, at some stage, doubting we doubt 
of everything. The same for

relativization: we cannot relativize everything
without an absolute base on which that relativization is effective.


Here is a subtle, and non-traditional thought:

Classical philosophy always put the Reasoner at
the center of the structure of reasoning. But with
our more developed awareness of evolution,
evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, it is becoming clearer 
that this pure "Copernican"

view of reasoning is invalid.  We now can see that
every Reasoner is embedded within some a priori framework such that 
there is an intrinsic bias or

offset to any subjective construct.  When we are
aware that there is fundamental bias, it is clear
that one can not validly reason to the point of doubting everything.  
When all that is in doubt

is removed, we don't arrive at zero as is
classically thought, but at some indistinct offset determined by our 
very nature as a reasoner

embedded in a real environment. Understanding this
eliminates the pressure to deal with conceptual identities leading to 
meaningless absolutes.


That sounds good, but could you give some concrete
examples. Talk of "bias" and "offset" seems to
imply that there really is an absolute center -
which I think is a very dubious proposition.
 
I don't know what other examples to give at this point, other than the

comparison with the Copernican model.  Knowing the actual center of our
highly multidimensional basis of thought, even if it were possible, is
not necessary--just as we don't need to know our exact physical location
in the universe to know that we should no longer build theories around
the assumption that we're at the center, with the unique properties that
would imply.



This understanding also helps resolve other
philosophical "paradoxes" such as solipsism,
meaning of life, free-will and others hinging
on the idea of a subjective center.


If you want (like David and George) consciousness
is our criteria of "absolute (but not 3-communicable) truth". I 
don't think we can

genuinely doubt we are conscious, although we can
doubt on any content of that consciousness, but that
is different. We can doubt having been conscious in
some past, but we cannot doubt being conscious here
and now, whatever that means.

<...>

The "truth" here bears on the existence of the
experience, and has nothing to do with anything which
could be reported by the experiencer.


On this basis I understand your point, and as long as
we are very careful about conveying which particular
meaning of "knowing", "certainty", and "truth" we are
referring to, then there will be little confusion.  But
such dual usage leaves us at risk of our thinking
repeatedly falling into the singularity of the self,
from which there's no objective (and thus workable)
basis for any claim.


I think "objective" should just be understood as denoting subjective 
agreement from different viewpoints.


Yes, although we can say that a particular point of view is completely
objective within a specified context.  For example we can have
completely objective proofs in mathematics as long as we agree on the
underlying number theory.  In our everyday affairs we can never achieve
complete objectivity, but I agree with you that multiple points of view,
in communication with each other, constitute an intersubjective point of
view that increasingly approaches objectivity.



My personal experience is that there's no paradox at all
if one is willing to fully accept that within any framework
of description there is absolutely no difference at all
between a person and a zombie, but even the most
philosophically cognizant, being evolved human organisms,
will snap back to defending the existence of a 1st person point of 
view even though it isn't detectable or measurable

and has absolutely no effect on the physical world.
It is virtually impossible for many people to see that even IF the 
1st person experience actually exists, it can't be

described, even by that person, except from a third person
perspective. That voice in your own mind, those images in
your imagination, none can be said to be experienced without
being interpreted.  The idea of direct experience is incoherent.
It always carries the implication that there's some other
process there to have the experience.  It's turtles all
the way down.


That sounds like a simple contradiction to me!??  I'd say experience 
is always "direct", an adjective which really adds nothing.  An 
experience just is.  If it has to be interpreted *then* you've fallen 
into an infinite r

RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-28 Thread Jef Allbright



Brent Meeker wrote:


Jef Allbright wrote:


Bruno Marchal wrote:

Although we all share the illusion of a direct 
and immediate sense of consciousness, on what

basis can you claim that it actually is real?
 
Because we cannot doubt it. It is the real message,

imo, of Descartes "diagonal argument": it is the
fixed point of doubt. If we decide to doubt
everything, we will find ourselves, at some stage, 
doubting we doubt of everything. The same for

relativization: we cannot relativize everything
without an absolute base on which that 
relativization is effective.


Here is a subtle, and non-traditional thought:

Classical philosophy always put the Reasoner at
the center of the structure of reasoning. But with
our more developed awareness of evolution,
evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, it 
is becoming clearer that this pure "Copernican"

view of reasoning is invalid.  We now can see that
every Reasoner is embedded within some a priori 
framework such that there is an intrinsic bias or

offset to any subjective construct.  When we are
aware that there is fundamental bias, it is clear
that one can not validly reason to the point of 
doubting everything.  When all that is in doubt

is removed, we don't arrive at zero as is
classically thought, but at some indistinct 
offset determined by our very nature as a reasoner

embedded in a real environment. Understanding this
eliminates the pressure to deal with conceptual 
identities leading to meaningless absolutes.


That sounds good, but could you give some concrete
examples. Talk of "bias" and "offset" seems to
imply that there really is an absolute center -
which I think is a very dubious proposition.
 
I don't know what other examples to give at this point, other than the

comparison with the Copernican model.  Knowing the actual center of our
highly multidimensional basis of thought, even if it were possible, is
not necessary--just as we don't need to know our exact physical location
in the universe to know that we should no longer build theories around
the assumption that we're at the center, with the unique properties that
would imply.



This understanding also helps resolve other
philosophical "paradoxes" such as solipsism,
meaning of life, free-will and others hinging
on the idea of a subjective center.


If you want (like David and George) consciousness
is our criteria of "absolute (but not 
3-communicable) truth". I don't think we can

genuinely doubt we are conscious, although we can
doubt on any content of that consciousness, but that
is different. We can doubt having been conscious in
some past, but we cannot doubt being conscious here
and now, whatever that means.

<...>

The "truth" here bears on the existence of the
experience, and has nothing to do with anything which
could be reported by the experiencer.


On this basis I understand your point, and as long as
we are very careful about conveying which particular
meaning of "knowing", "certainty", and "truth" we are
referring to, then there will be little confusion.  But
such dual usage leaves us at risk of our thinking
repeatedly falling into the singularity of the self,
from which there's no objective (and thus workable)
basis for any claim.


I think "objective" should just be understood as denoting 
subjective agreement from different viewpoints.


Yes, although we can say that a particular point of view is completely
objective within a specified context.  For example we can have
completely objective proofs in mathematics as long as we agree on the
underlying number theory.  In our everyday affairs we can never achieve
complete objectivity, but I agree with you that multiple points of view,
in communication with each other, constitute an intersubjective point of
view that increasingly approaches objectivity.



My personal experience is that there's no paradox at all
if one is willing to fully accept that within any framework
of description there is absolutely no difference at all
between a person and a zombie, but even the most
philosophically cognizant, being evolved human organisms,
will snap back to defending the existence of a 1st person 
point of view even though it isn't detectable or measurable

and has absolutely no effect on the physical world.
It is virtually impossible for many people to see that even 
IF the 1st person experience actually exists, it can't be

described, even by that person, except from a third person
perspective. That voice in your own mind, those images in
your imagination, none can be said to be experienced without
being interpreted.  The idea of direct experience is incoherent.
It always carries the implication that there's some other
process there to have the experience.  It's turtles all
the way down.


That sounds like a simple contradiction to me!??  I'd say 
experience is always "direct", an adjective which really adds 
nothing.  An experience just is.  If it has to be interpreted 
*then* you've fallen into an infinite regress: who 
experienc

Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-28 Thread Brent Meeker



Jef Allbright wrote:


Bruno Marchal wrote:

Although we all share the illusion of a direct and immediate sense of 
consciousness, on what basis can

you claim that it actually is real?
 
Because we cannot doubt it. It is the real message,

imo, of Descartes "diagonal argument": it is the
fixed point of doubt. If we decide to doubt everything,
we will find ourselves, at some stage, doubting we doubt
of everything. The same for relativization: we cannot
relativize everything without an absolute base on which
that relativization is effective. 


Here is a subtle, and non-traditional thought:

Classical philosophy always put the Reasoner at the center of the
structure of reasoning. But with our more developed awareness of
evolution, evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, it is becoming
clearer that this pure "Copernican" view of reasoning is invalid.  We
now can see that every Reasoner is embedded within some a priori
framework such that there is an intrinsic bias or offset to any
subjective construct.  When we are aware that there is fundamental bias,
it is clear that one can not validly reason to the point of doubting
everything.  When all that is in doubt is removed, we don't arrive at
zero as is classically thought, but at some indistinct offset determined
by our very nature as a reasoner embedded in a real environment.
Understanding this eliminates the pressure to deal with conceptual
identities leading to meaningless absolutes.


That sounds good, but could you give some concrete examples.  Talk of "bias" and 
"offset" seems to imply that there really is an absolute center - which I think is a very 
dubious proposition.


This understanding also helps resolve other philosophical "paradoxes"
such as solipsism, meaning of life, free-will and others hinging on the
idea of a subjective center.


If you want (like David
and George) consciousness is our criteria of "absolute
(but not 3-communicable) truth". I don't think we can
genuinely doubt we are conscious, although we can doubt
on any content of that consciousness, but that is different.
We can doubt having been conscious in some past, but we cannot doubt 
being conscious here and now, whatever that means.

<...>
The "truth" here bears on the existence of the experience, and has  
nothing to do with anything which could be reported by the experiencer.  


On this basis I understand your point, and as long as we are very
careful about conveying which particular meaning of "knowing",
"certainty", and "truth" we are referring to, then there will be little
confusion.  But such dual usage leaves us at risk of our thinking
repeatedly falling into the singularity of the self, from which there's
no objective (and thus workable) basis for any claim.


I think "objective" should just be understood as denoting subjective agreement 
from different viewpoints.


My personal experience is that there's no paradox at all if one is
willing to fully accept that within any framework of description there
is absolutely no difference at all between a person and a zombie, but
even the most philosophically cognizant, being evolved human organisms,
will snap back to defending the existence of a 1st person point of view
even though it isn't detectable or measurable and has absolutely no
effect on the physical world.
It is virtually impossible for many people to see that even IF the 1st
person experience actually exists, it can't be described, even by that
person, except from a third person perspective. That voice in your own
mind, those images in your imagination, none can be said to be
experienced without being interpreted.  The idea of direct experience is
incoherent.  It always carries the implication that there's some other
process there to have the experience.  It's turtles all the way down.


That sounds like a simple contradiction to me!??  I'd say experience is always 
"direct", an adjective which really adds nothing.  An experience just is.  If 
it has to be interpreted *then* you've fallen into an infinite regress: who experiences 
the interpretation.



The essence of Buddhist training is to accept this non-existence of Self
at a deep level.  It is very rare, but not impossible to achieve such an
understanding, and while still experiencing the illusion, to see it as
an illusion, with no actual boundary to distinguish an imagined self
from the rest of nature. I think that a machine intelligence, while
requiring a model of self, would have no need of this illusion which is
a result of our evolutionary development.



To call it an illusion goes too far.  I'd say the self is a model or an abstract 
construct - but it models something, it has predictive power.  If you start to call 
things like that "illusions" then everything is an illusion and the word has 
lost its meaning.

Brent Meeker

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RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-28 Thread Jef Allbright



Bruno Marchal wrote:

Although we all share the illusion of a direct and 
immediate sense of consciousness, on what basis can

you claim that it actually is real?
 
Because we cannot doubt it. It is the real message,

imo, of Descartes "diagonal argument": it is the
fixed point of doubt. If we decide to doubt everything,
we will find ourselves, at some stage, doubting we doubt
of everything. The same for relativization: we cannot
relativize everything without an absolute base on which
that relativization is effective. 


Here is a subtle, and non-traditional thought:

Classical philosophy always put the Reasoner at the center of the
structure of reasoning. But with our more developed awareness of
evolution, evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, it is becoming
clearer that this pure "Copernican" view of reasoning is invalid.  We
now can see that every Reasoner is embedded within some a priori
framework such that there is an intrinsic bias or offset to any
subjective construct.  When we are aware that there is fundamental bias,
it is clear that one can not validly reason to the point of doubting
everything.  When all that is in doubt is removed, we don't arrive at
zero as is classically thought, but at some indistinct offset determined
by our very nature as a reasoner embedded in a real environment.
Understanding this eliminates the pressure to deal with conceptual
identities leading to meaningless absolutes.

This understanding also helps resolve other philosophical "paradoxes"
such as solipsism, meaning of life, free-will and others hinging on the
idea of a subjective center.


If you want (like David
and George) consciousness is our criteria of "absolute
(but not 3-communicable) truth". I don't think we can
genuinely doubt we are conscious, although we can doubt
on any content of that consciousness, but that is different.
We can doubt having been conscious in some past, but we 
cannot doubt being conscious here and now, whatever that means.

<...>
The "truth" here bears on the existence of the experience, and has  
nothing to do with anything which could be reported by the 
experiencer.  


On this basis I understand your point, and as long as we are very
careful about conveying which particular meaning of "knowing",
"certainty", and "truth" we are referring to, then there will be little
confusion.  But such dual usage leaves us at risk of our thinking
repeatedly falling into the singularity of the self, from which there's
no objective (and thus workable) basis for any claim. 


My personal experience is that there's no paradox at all if one is
willing to fully accept that within any framework of description there
is absolutely no difference at all between a person and a zombie, but
even the most philosophically cognizant, being evolved human organisms,
will snap back to defending the existence of a 1st person point of view
even though it isn't detectable or measurable and has absolutely no
effect on the physical world. 


It is virtually impossible for many people to see that even IF the 1st
person experience actually exists, it can't be described, even by that
person, except from a third person perspective. That voice in your own
mind, those images in your imagination, none can be said to be
experienced without being interpreted.  The idea of direct experience is
incoherent.  It always carries the implication that there's some other
process there to have the experience.  It's turtles all the way down.

The essence of Buddhist training is to accept this non-existence of Self
at a deep level.  It is very rare, but not impossible to achieve such an
understanding, and while still experiencing the illusion, to see it as
an illusion, with no actual boundary to distinguish an imagined self
from the rest of nature. I think that a machine intelligence, while
requiring a model of self, would have no need of this illusion which is
a result of our evolutionary development.

- Jef

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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-28 Thread John Mikes

On 12/28/06, Johnathan Corgan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

On Fri, 2006-12-29 at 00:37 +1100, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

> Sure, it's a defect in the brain chemistry, but the delusional person
will give
> you his reasons for his belief:

[...]

> This is very similar to the arguments of people with religious
convictions, who will cite
> evidence in support of their beliefs up to a point, but it soon becomes
clear that no
> matter how paltry this evidence is shown to be, they will still maintain
their belief.

I do wonder how many non-religious beliefs are the same way, i.e.,
incorrigible in spite of the absence of evidence, or even contrary to
evidence, simply because they are convenient or permeate one's
surrounding culture.

> The difference is that these people do not change their way of thinking
in response to
> antipsychotic medication.

Which is fascinating to behold, as I have witnessed this very same, in
both directions, on many occasions, as patients have gone on and off
their medication.  They will also go to great lengths to justify their
change in belief structure when it's obvious it's the effect of the
chemical on their disease process.

There is a subtlety to the religious qualification you make above,
however.  There are indeed religious-oriented delusions which go away on
medication, but they tend to be ones that were only acquired through the
course of the patient's illness.  Those acquired through detailed
indoctrination in youth tend to be unaffected, as you mention.

-Johnathan

--

to Johnathan's
" I do wonder how many non-religious beliefs are the same way, i.e.,
incorrigible in spite of the absence of evidence, or even contrary to
evidence, simply because they are convenient or permeate one's
surrounding culture."

JM:
"Evidence" is tricky. An acceptance may be controlled by personal
experience, but also by one's belief system. FOR ANOTHER INDIVIDUALITY
(included: belief system) some 'hard evidence' may sound silly, and vice
versa in an argument. Convenience is a good point IMO. This is in my opinion
the futility of discussions (like this one here) about argumentation between
different belief systems.
Chemicals work on the strength of connecting parts (polarity change?) and so
whatever looked unshakable, seems by those 'chemicals', in the changed
connectivity volatile (and vice versa). (Chemicals don't 'make' thoughts -
they work on the conveying tools).

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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-28 Thread Brent Meeker



Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
...
This is very similar to the arguments of people with religious 
convictions, who will cite evidence in support of their beliefs up to a 
point, but it soon becomes clear that no matter how paltry this evidence 
is shown to be, they will still maintain their belief. The difference is 
that these people do not change their way of thinking in response to 
antipsychotic medication.


Have you tried it?

Brent Meeker

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RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-28 Thread Johnathan Corgan



On Fri, 2006-12-29 at 00:37 +1100, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

Sure, it's a defect in the brain chemistry, but the delusional person will give 
you his reasons for his belief: 


[...]

This is very similar to the arguments of people with religious convictions, who will cite 
evidence in support of their beliefs up to a point, but it soon becomes clear that no 
matter how paltry this evidence is shown to be, they will still maintain their belief. 


I do wonder how many non-religious beliefs are the same way, i.e.,
incorrigible in spite of the absence of evidence, or even contrary to
evidence, simply because they are convenient or permeate one's
surrounding culture.

The difference is that these people do not change their way of thinking in response to 
antipsychotic medication.


Which is fascinating to behold, as I have witnessed this very same, in
both directions, on many occasions, as patients have gone on and off
their medication.  They will also go to great lengths to justify their
change in belief structure when it's obvious it's the effect of the
chemical on their disease process.

There is a subtlety to the religious qualification you make above,
however.  There are indeed religious-oriented delusions which go away on
medication, but they tend to be ones that were only acquired through the
course of the patient's illness.  Those acquired through detailed
indoctrination in youth tend to be unaffected, as you mention.

-Johnathan


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RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-28 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

Brent Meeker writes:

> It's a strange quality of delusions that psychotic people are even more 
> certain of their truth than non-deluded people are certain of things 
> which have reasonable empirical evidence in their favour. 

Yet this seems understandable.  The psychotic person is believing things 
because of some physical malfunction in his brain.  So it is easy to see how it 
might be incorrigble.  The normal persons is believing things because of 
perception, hearsay, and logic.  But he knows that all of those can be 
deceptive; and so he is never certain.

Sure, it's a defect in the brain chemistry, but the delusional person will give 
you his reasons for his belief: 

"Someone entered my home while I was out yesterday and shifted a CD from 
the desk to the coffee table.

"Is it possible that you moved it yourself and forgot?

"No, I'm certain I didn't move it myself.

"Was there any sign of someone breakung in?

"No, they must have had keys.

"Had you given anyone the keys?

"No, but they might have copied them without my knowledge, or maybe they're 
just good at picking locks.

"Was anything else taken or disturbed?

"Not that I could tell, but I can't be certain.

"Why would anyone do such a strange thing?

"I agree it's strange, and I have no idea why anyone would go to such lengths 
to annoy me. There are some crazy people out there, you know!

"Would anything convince you that you had made a mistake? For example, if you 
had video evidence showing that nothing strange had happened on the day of the 
incident?

"I'm absolutely certain the CD was moved, and I don't believe in ghosts! Someone 
who went to such lengths to annoy me would probably be able to alter video recordings, 
so no, that wouldn't convince me I was crazy, as you seem to be implying. 

This is very similar to the arguments of people with religious convictions, who will cite 
evidence in support of their beliefs up to a point, but it soon becomes clear that no 
matter how paltry this evidence is shown to be, they will still maintain their belief. 
The difference is that these people do not change their way of thinking in response to 
antipsychotic medication.

Stathis Papaioannou
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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-28 Thread Bruno Marchal

Le 27-déc.-06, à 20:11, Jef Allbright a écrit :

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

Jef Allbright writes:

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

But our main criterion for what to believe should be
what is true, right?

I'm very interested in whether the apparent tautology
is my misunderstanding, his transparent belief, a simple
lack of precision, or something more.
Thanks for the compliments about my writing. I meant that what we  
should believe does not necessarily have to be the same as what is  
true, but I think that unless there are special circumstances, it  
ought to be the case.

I agree within the context you intended.  My point was that we can  
never

be certain of truth, so we should be careful in our speech and thinking
not to imply that such truth is even available to us for the kind of
comparisons being discussed here.  We can know that some patterns of
action work better than others, but the only "truth" we can assess is
always within a specific context.

I think we agree. Those "context" are always "theoretical", with a  
large sense for "theory". It could be an explicit theory, like quantum  
mechanics, ... or an implicit build in belief like our instinctive  
inference that our neighborhood exists or make sense. This last is a  
"theory", which according to a more explicit one (Darwin) is a many  
millenia relative (and thus contextual) construct.

Brent Meeker made a similar point: if someone is dying of a terminal  
illness, maybe it is better that he believe he has longer to live  
than the medical evidence suggests, but that would have to be an  
example of special circumstances.

There are plenty of examples of self-deception providing benefits  
within

the scope of the individual, and leading to increasingly effective
models of "reality for the group.  Here's a recent article on this
topic:
 > We might never be certain of the truth, so our beliefs should  
always > > be tentative, but that doesn't mean we should believe  
whatever we > > fancy.
> > Here it's a smaller point, and I agree with the main thrust of  
the > statement, but it leaves a door open for the possibility that  
we might > actually be justifiably certain of the truth in *some*  
case, and I'm > wonder where that open door is intended to lead.
I said "might" because there is one case where I am certain of the  
truth, which is that I am having the present experience.

Although we all share the illusion of a direct and immediate sense of
consciousness, on what basis can you claim that it actually is real?

Because we cannot doubt it. It is the real message, imo, of Descartes  
"diagonal argument": it is the fixed point of doubt. If we decide to  
doubt everything, we will find ourselves, at some stage, doubting we  
doubt of everything. The same for relativization: we cannot relativize  
everything without an absolute base on which that relativization is  
effective. If you want (like David and George) consciousness is our  
criteria of "absolute (but not 3-communicable) truth". I don't think we  
can genuinely doubt we are cons

Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)



Stathis Papaioannou wrote:



Jef Allbright writes:

> I said "might" because there is one case where I am certain > of the 
truth, which is that I am having the present > experience.


Although we all share the illusion of a direct and immediate sense of
consciousness, on what basis can you claim that it actually is real?

Further, how can you claim certainty of the "truth" of subjective
experience when there is so much experimental and clinical evidence that
self-reported experience consists largely of distortions, gaps, time
delays and time out of sequence, fabrications and confabulations?

I realize that people can acknowledge all that I've just said, but still
claim the validity of their internal experience to be privileged on the
basis that only they can judge, but then how can they legitimately
contradict themselves a moment later about factual matters, e.g. when
the drugs wear off, the probe is removed from their brain, the brain
tumor is removed, the mob has dispersed, the hypnotist is finished, the
fight is over, the adrenaline rush has subsided, the pain has stopped,
the oxytocin flush has declined... What kind of "truth" could this be?

Of course the subjective self is the only one able to report on
subjective experience, but how can it *justifiably* claim to be
infallible?


I can't be certain that my present subjective state has anything to do 
with reality. I can't even be certain that having a thought necessitates 
a thinker (as Bertrand Russell pointed out in considering Descarte's 
cogito). However, I can be certain that I am having a thought.



To be certain of the truth of something implies being able to see it
objectively, right? Or does it equally imply no questions asked?


It's a strange quality of delusions that psychotic people are even more 
certain of their truth than non-deluded people are certain of things 
which have reasonable empirical evidence in their favour. 


Yet this seems understandable.  The psychotic person is believing things 
because of some physical malfunction in his brain.  So it is easy to see how it 
might be incorrigble.  The normal persons is believing things because of 
perception, hearsay, and logic.  But he knows that all of those can be 
deceptive; and so he is never certain.

Brent Meeker

This is also 
the case with religious beliefs, which the formal psychiatric definition 
excludes from being called delusions because they are consistent with a 
particular culture, i.e. the believer did not come up with them on his 
own. So it would seem that certainty does not always have much to do 
with objectivity.


I'd say that certainty excludes objectivity.

Brent Meeker

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RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

Jef Allbright writes:

> I said "might" because there is one case where I am certain 
> of the truth, which is that I am having the present 
> experience.

Although we all share the illusion of a direct and immediate sense of
consciousness, on what basis can you claim that it actually is real?

Further, how can you claim certainty of the "truth" of subjective
experience when there is so much experimental and clinical evidence that
self-reported experience consists largely of distortions, gaps, time
delays and time out of sequence, fabrications and confabulations?

I realize that people can acknowledge all that I've just said, but still
claim the validity of their internal experience to be privileged on the
basis that only they can judge, but then how can they legitimately
contradict themselves a moment later about factual matters, e.g. when
the drugs wear off, the probe is removed from their brain, the brain
tumor is removed, the mob has dispersed, the hypnotist is finished, the
fight is over, the adrenaline rush has subsided, the pain has stopped,
the oxytocin flush has declined... What kind of "truth" could this be?

Of course the subjective self is the only one able to report on
subjective experience, but how can it *justifiably* claim to be
infallible?

I can't be certain that my present subjective state has anything to do with 
reality. I can't even be certain that having a thought necessitates a thinker 
(as Bertrand Russell pointed out in considering Descarte's cogito). However, 
I can be certain that I am having a thought.

To be certain of the truth of something implies being able to see it
objectively, right? Or does it equally imply no questions asked?

It's a strange quality of delusions that psychotic people are even more certain 
of their truth than non-deluded people are certain of things which have reasonable 
empirical evidence in their favour. This is also the case with religious beliefs, which 
the formal psychiatric definition excludes from being called delusions because they 
are consistent with a particular culture, i.e. the believer did not come up with them 
on his own. So it would seem that certainty does not always have much to do with 
objectivity.

Stathis Papaioannou
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RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-27 Thread Jef Allbright

Bruno Marchal wrote:

Le 27-déc.-06, à 19:10, Jef Allbright a écrit :

All meaning is necessarily within context.

OK, but all context could make sense only to
some universal meaning. I mean I don't know,
it is difficult.

But this can be seen in a very consistent way. The significance of an event is proportional to the scope of its effect relative to the values of the observer.

With increasing context of self-awareness, subjective values increasingly
resemble principles of the physical universe. Why? Because making basic
choices against the way the universe actually works would be a losing strategy,
becoming increasingly obvious with increasing context of awareness.

Since all events are the result of interactions following the laws of the
physical universe, the difference between events and values decreases with
increasing context of awareness, thus the significance, or meaningfulness of
events also decreases.

With an ultimate, god's eye view of the universe, there would be no meaning at
all. Things would simply be as they are.

From the point of view of an agent undergoing long-term development within the universe, its values would increasingly converge on "what works", i.e. principles of effective interaction with the physical world, while the expression of those values would become increasingly diverse in a fractal manner, optimizing for robust ongoing growth.

Machine have many self-referential abilities. I can
develop or give references (I intend to make some
comments on such book later).

Further, there's a great deal of empirical evidence
showing that the subjective experience that people
report is full of distortions, gaps, fabrications,
and confabulations.

But this is almost a consequence of the self-referential
ability of machine, they can distort their own view, and
even themselves. I talk about universal machine
*after Godel* (and Post, Turing,..

I'm in interesting in following up on this line of thought given available time.

- Jef

RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)




Brent Meeker writes:


Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> 
> 
> Tom Caylor writes (in response to Marvin Minsky):
> 
>> Regarding Stathis' question to you about truth, your calling the idea

>> of believing unsound seems to imply that you are assuming that there is
>> no truth that we can discover.  But on the other hand, if there is no
>> discoverable truth, then how can we know that something, like the
>> existence of freedom of will, is false?
> 
> That's easy: it's logically impossible. When I make a decision, although 
> I take all the evidence into account, and I know I am more likely to 
> decide one way rather than another due to my past experiences and due to 
> the way my brain works, ultimately I feel that I have the freedom to 
> overcome these factors and decide "freely". But neither do I feel that 
> this free decision will be something random: I'm not mentally tossing a 
> coin, but choosing according to my beliefs and values. Do you see the 
> contradiction here? 


Yes, but it's a contrived contradiction.  You have taken "free" to mean independent of 
you where "you" refers to your past experience, the way your brain works, etc.  As 
Dennett says, that's not a free will worth having.


Indeed, but it's how people often think of free will. It's even how I think of 
it, without reflecting on its impossibility.


Stathis Papaioannou
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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)




Le 27-déc.-06, à 19:10, Jef Allbright a écrit :



Bruno Marchal wrote:


Le 27-déc.-06, à 02:46, Jef Allbright a écrit :

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:


But our main criterion for what to believe should
be what is true, right?


I'm very interested in whether the apparent tautology
is my misunderstanding, his transparent belief, a simple
lack of precision, or something more.
I don't see any tautology in Stathis writing so I guess I miss 
something.

Apparently something subtle is happening here.

It seems to me that when people say "believe", they mean "hold true" 
or "consider to be true".





OK then, and it makes sense which what follows. Our disagreement 
concerns vocabulary (and perhaps machine). Your notion of pragmatism is 
coherent with the idea of truth as the "intended purpose" of belief.







Therefore, I parse the statement as equivalent to "...criterion for 
what to hold true should be what is true..."
I suppose I should have said that the statement is circular, rather 
than tautological since the verbs are different.




If he had said something like "our main criterion
for what to believe should be what works, what seems
to work, what passes the tests of time, etc." or had
made a direct reference to Occam's Razor, I would be
comfortable knowing that we're thinking alike on this
point.
This would mean you disagree with Stathis's tautology, but then how 
could not believe in a tautology?


If someone states "A=A", then there is absolutely no information 
content, and thus nothing in the statement itself with which to agree 
or disagree. I can certainly agree with the validity of the form 
within symbolic logic, but that's a different (larger) context.


Similarly, I was not agreeing or disagreeing with the meaning of 
Stahis' statement, but rather the form which seems to me to contain a 
piece of circular reasoning, implying perhaps that the structure of 
the thought was incoherent within a larger context.



 From your "working" criteria I guess you favor a pragmatic
notion of belief, but personally I conceive science as a
search for knowledge and thus truth (independently of the
fact that we can never *know* it as truth,


Yes, I favor a pragmatic approach to "belief", but I distinguish my 
thinking from that of (capital P) Pragmatists in that I see knowledge 
(and the knower) as firmly grounded in a "reality" that can never be 
fully known but can be approached via an "evolutionary" process of 
growth tending toward an increasingly effective model of what works 
within an expanding scope of interaction within a reality that appears 
to be effectively open-ended in its potential complexity. Whereas many 
Pragmatists see "progress" as fundamentally illusory, I see progress, 
or growth, as essential to an effective world-view for any intentional 
agent.



except perhaps
in few basic things like "I am conscious" or "I am convinced
there is a prime number" etc.)
To talk like Stathis, this is why science is by itself always 
tentative. A scientist who says "Now we know ..." is only a

dishonest theologian (or a mathematician in hurry ...).


I agree with much of your thinking, but I take exception to exceptions 
(!) such as the ones you mentioned above.

All meaning is necessarily within context.



OK, but all context could make sense only to some universal meaning. I 
mean I don't know, it is difficult.





The existence of prime numbers is not an exception, but the context is 
so broad that we tend to think of prime numbers as (almost) 
fundamentally real,



Well, here I must say I take them as "very real" ...




similarly to the existence of gravity, another very deep regularity of 
our interactions with "reality".



I think gravity is a consequence of the "prime number" (but this is 
presently out-topic), but ok, gravity is quite important ...





The statement "I am conscious", as usually intended to mean that one 
can be absolutely certain of one's subjective experience, is not an 
exception, because it's not even coherent.  It has no objective 
context at all.  It mistakenly assumes the existence of an observer 
somehow in the privileged position of being able to observe itself.


Machine have many self-referential abilities. I can develop or give 
references (I intend to make some comments on such book later).



Further, there's a great deal of empirical evidence showing that the 
subjective experience that people report is full of distortions, gaps, 
fabrications, and confabulations.


But this is almost a consequence of the self-referential ability of 
machine, they can distort their own view, and even themselves. I talk 
about universal machine *after Godel* (and Post, Turing,..




If instead you mean that you know you are conscious in the same sense 
that you know other people are conscious, then that is not an 
exception, but just a reasonable inference, meaningful within quite a 
large context.




No. But I confess that when I say I know I am conscious (here and now)

Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)



Jef Allbright wrote:


Stathis Papaioannou wrote:


Jef Allbright writes:


Stathis Papaioannou wrote:


But our main criterion for what to believe should be
what is true, right?


I'm very interested in whether the apparent tautology
is my misunderstanding, his transparent belief, a simple
lack of precision, or something more.


Thanks for the compliments about my writing. I meant that what we 
should believe does not necessarily have to be the same as what is 
true, but I think that unless there are special circumstances, it 
ought to be the case.


I agree within the context you intended.  My point was that we can never
be certain of truth, so we should be careful in our speech and thinking
not to imply that such truth is even available to us for the kind of
comparisons being discussed here.  We can know that some patterns of
action work better than others, but the only "truth" we can assess is
always within a specific context.


Brent Meeker made a similar point: if someone is dying of a terminal 
illness, maybe it is better that he believe he has longer to live than 
the medical evidence suggests, but that would have to be an example of 
special circumstances. 


There are plenty of examples of self-deception providing benefits within
the scope of the individual, and leading to increasingly effective
models of "reality for the group.  Here's a recent article on this
topic:

Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases



Jef Allbright wrote:
...
The statement "I am conscious", as usually intended to mean that one can 
be absolutely certain of one's subjective experience, is not an 
exception, because it's not even coherent.  It has no objective context 
at all.  It mistakenly assumes the existence of an observer somehow in 
the privileged position of being able to observe itself.  Further, 
there's a great deal of empirical evidence showing that the subjective 
experience that people report is full of distortions, gaps, 
fabrications, and confabulations.
If instead you mean that you know you are conscious in the same sense 
that you know other people are conscious, then that is not an exception, 
but just a reasonable inference, meaningful within quite a large context.
If Descartes had said, rather than "Je pense, donc je suis", something 
like "I think, therefore *something* exists", then I would agree with 
him. 


Bertrand Russell wrote that Descartes should only have said, "There's thinking."  
"I" is an inference.  :-)

Brent Meeker

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RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-27 Thread Jef Allbright

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

Jef Allbright writes:

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

But our main criterion for what to believe should be
what is true, right?

I'm very interested in whether the apparent tautology
is my misunderstanding, his transparent belief, a simple
lack of precision, or something more.

Thanks for the compliments about my writing. I meant that 
what we should believe does not necessarily have to be the 
same as what is true, but I think that unless there are 
special circumstances, it ought to be the case.

I agree within the context you intended.  My point was that we can never
be certain of truth, so we should be careful in our speech and thinking
not to imply that such truth is even available to us for the kind of
comparisons being discussed here.  We can know that some patterns of
action work better than others, but the only "truth" we can assess is
always within a specific context.

Brent Meeker 
made a similar point: if someone is dying of a terminal 
illness, maybe it is better that he believe he has longer to 
live than the medical evidence suggests, but that would have 
to be an example of special circumstances. 

There are plenty of examples of self-deception providing benefits within
the scope of the individual, and leading to increasingly effective
models of "reality for the group.  Here's a recent article on this
topic:
 > We might never be certain of the truth, so our beliefs 
should always 
> > be tentative, but that doesn't mean we should believe whatever we 
> > fancy.
> 
> Here it's a smaller point, and I agree with the main thrust of the 
> statement, but it leaves a door open for the possibility 
that we might 
> actually be justifiably certain of the truth in *some* 
case, and I'm 
> wonder where that open door is intended to lead.

I said "might" because there is one case where I am certain 
of the truth, which is that I am having the present 
experience.

Although we all share the illusion of a direct and immediate sense of
consciousness, on what basis can you claim that it actually is real?

Further, how can you claim certainty of the "truth" of subjective
experience when there is so much experimental and clinical evidence that
self-reported experience consists largely of distortions, gaps, time
delays and time out of sequence, fabrications and confabulations?

I realize that people can acknowledge all that I've just said, but still
claim the validity of their internal experience to be privileged on the
basis that only they can judge, but then how can they legitimately
contradict themselves a moment later about factual matters, e.g. when
the drugs wear off, the probe is removed from their brain, the brain
tumor is removed, the mob has dispersed, the hypnotist is finished, the
fight is over, the adrenaline rush has subsided, the pain has stopped,
the oxytocin flush has declined... What kind of "truth" could this be?

Of course the subjective self is the only one able to report on
subjective experience, but how can it *justifiably* claim to be
infallible?

To be certain of the truth of something implies being able to see it
objectively, right? Or does it equally imply no questions asked?

- Jef

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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases



Bruno Marchal wrote:



Le 26-déc.-06, à 19:54, Tom Caylor a écrit :



On Dec 26, 9:51 am, Bruno Marchal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Le 25-déc.-06, à 01:13, Tom Caylor a écrit :


The "crux" is that he is not symbolic...




I respect your belief or faith, but I want to be frank, I have no
 evidences for the idea that "Jesus" is "truth", nor can I be
sure of any clear meaning such an assertion could have, or how
such an assertion could be made scientific, even dropping Popper
falsification criteria. I must say I have evidences on the
contrary, if only the fact that humans succumb often to wishful
thinking, and still more often to their parents wishful thinking.




If you are not sure of any clear meaning of the personal God being
the source of everything, including of course truth, this entails
not knowing the other things too.



Is that not an authoritative argument? What if I ask to my student an
exam question like give me an argument why the square root of 3 is
irrationnal. Suppose he gives me the correct and convincing usual
(mathematical) proof. I could give him a bad note for not adding:
"and I know that is the truth because truth is a gift by God". Cute,
I can directly give bad notes to all my students, and this will give
me more time to find a falsity in your way to reason ...




For a personal God, taking on our form (incarnation), especially if
we were made in the image of God in the first place, and showing
through miracles, and rising from the dead..., his dual nature
(God&man, celestial&terrestial, G*&G) seems to make a lot more
sense than something like a cross in earth orbit.  For example,
giving a hug is a more personal (and thus a more appropriate) way
of expressing love, than giving a card, even though a card is more 
verifiable in a third person sense, especially after the hug is 
finished.  But we do have the "card" too: God's written Word, even 
though this is not sufficient, the incarnate hug was the primary

proof, the "card" was just the historical record of it.


The card records facts. To judge them historical is already beyond my
 competence. Why the bible? Why not "the question of king Milinda" ?







There can be no upward emanation unless/until a sufficient
downward emanation is provided.

In

Christianity, the downward emanation is "God loves us", and
then the upward emanation is "We love God".




Plotinus insists a lot on the two ways: downward emanation and
upward emanation. The lobian machine theology is coherent with
this, even if negatively. It is coherent with Jef idea that pure
"theological imperatives" can only be addressed by adapted "story
telling" and examples, like jurisprudence in the application of
laws. But then there is a proviso: none of the stories should be
taken literally.



I agree with the use of stories.  Jesus used stories almost
exclusively to communicate.  Either the hearers "got it" or not.
But this does not imply that stories are the only form of downward
emanation.


Of course not. Real stories and personal experiences,  and collective
 experiences and experiments ... All this can help the downward
emanation.



The incarnation was the primary means.  Otherwise, who would have
been the story-teller?  What good are stories if the story is not
teaching you truth?


Look, I cannot take for granted even most mathematical theories
although their relation with a notion of truth is much more easy than
any text in natural language. Stories can be good in giving example
of behavior in some situation, or they can help anxious children to
sleep. Stories are not written with the idea of "truth". The bibles
contains many contradiction. And, if really you want take a sacred
text as a theory of everything, there is a definite lack of
precision.




How do we know that the ultimate source of stories is a good 
source.  Jef and Brent and others seem to be basing their truth on 
really nothing more than pragmatism.



Jef perhaps. I am not sure for Brent which seems to admit some form
of realism (even physical realism).


I do infer from experience that there is some reality.  Sometime ago, Bruno wrote: 


"Hence a Reality, yes. But not necessarily a physical reality. Here is the 
logical dependence:
NUMBERS -> "MACHINE DREAMS" -> PHYSICAL -> HUMANS -> PHYSICS -> NUMBERS."

Maybe my interpretation of this is different than Bruno's, but I take it to mean our 
explanations can start anywhere in this loop and work all the way around.  So numbers can 
be explained in terms of physics (c.f. William S. Cooper) and physical reality can be 
explained in terms of numbers (c.f. Bruno Marchal?).  These explanations are all models, 
representations we create.  They are tested against experience, so they are not 
arbitrary. They must be logical since otherwise self-contradiction will render them 
ambiguous.  Whether any these, or which one, is "really real" is, I think, a 
meaningless question.

Brent Meeker


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You

RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-27 Thread Jef Allbright

Bruno Marchal wrote:

Le 27-déc.-06, à 02:46, Jef Allbright a écrit :

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

But our main criterion for what to believe should
be what is true, right?

I'm very interested in whether the apparent tautology
is my misunderstanding, his transparent belief, a simple
lack of precision, or something more.

I don't see any tautology in Stathis writing so I guess I
miss something.

Apparently something subtle is happening here.

It seems to me that when people say "believe", they mean "hold true" or "consider to
be true".

Therefore, I parse the statement as equivalent to "...criterion for what to hold true should be what is true..."

I suppose I should have said that the statement is circular, rather than
tautological since the verbs are different.

If he had said something like "our main criterion
for what to believe should be what works, what seems
to work, what passes the tests of time, etc." or had
made a direct reference to Occam's Razor, I would be
comfortable knowing that we're thinking alike on this
point.

This would mean you disagree with Stathis's tautology, but then how
could not believe in a tautology?

If someone states "A=A", then there is absolutely no information content, and
thus nothing in the statement itself with which to agree or disagree. I can certainly
agree with the validity of the form within symbolic logic, but that's a different
(larger) context.

Similarly, I was not agreeing or disagreeing with the meaning of Stahis'
statement, but rather the form which seems to me to contain a piece of circular
reasoning, implying perhaps that the structure of the thought was incoherent
within a larger context.

From your "working" criteria I guess you favor a pragmatic
notion of belief, but personally I conceive science as a
search for knowledge and thus truth (independently of the
fact that we can never *know* it as truth,

Yes, I favor a pragmatic approach to "belief", but I distinguish my thinking from that of (capital P)
Pragmatists in that I see knowledge (and the knower) as firmly grounded in a "reality" that can never be
fully known but can be approached via an "evolutionary" process of growth tending toward an increasingly
effective model of what works within an expanding scope of interaction within a reality that appears to be effectively
open-ended in its potential complexity. Whereas many Pragmatists see "progress" as fundamentally illusory, I
see progress, or growth, as essential to an effective world-view for any intentional agent.

except perhaps
in few basic things like "I am conscious" or "I am convinced
there is a prime number" etc.)
To talk like Stathis, this is why science is by itself always
tentative. A scientist who says "Now we know ..." is only a

dishonest theologian (or a mathematician in hurry ...).

I agree with much of your thinking, but I take exception to exceptions (!) such as the ones you mentioned above.

All meaning is necessarily within context.

The existence of prime numbers is not an exception, but the context is so broad that we
tend to think of prime numbers as (almost) fundamentally real, similarly to the existence
of gravity, another very deep regularity of our interactions with "reality".

The statement "I am conscious", as usually intended to mean that one can be absolutely certain of one's subjective experience, is not an exception, because it's not even coherent. It has no objective context at all. It mistakenly assumes the existence of an observer somehow in the privileged position of being able to observe itself. Further, there's a great deal of empirical evidence showing that the subjective experience that people report is full of distortions, gaps, fabrications, and confabulations.

If instead you mean that you know you are conscious in the same sense that you know other people are conscious, then that is not an exception, but just a reasonable inference, meaningful within quite a large context.

If Descartes had said, rather than "Je pense, donc je suis", something like "I
think, therefore *something* exists", then I would agree with him. Cartesian dualism has left
western philosophy with a large quagmire into which thinking on consciousness, personal identity,
free-will and morality easily and repeatedly get stuck in paradox.

Paradox is always a case of insufficient context. In the bigger picture all
the pieces must fit.

- Jef

Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

Le 26-déc.-06, à 19:54, Tom Caylor a écrit :

On Dec 26, 9:51 am, Bruno Marchal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Le 25-déc.-06, à 01:13, Tom Caylor a écrit :

> The "crux" is that he is not symbolic...

I respect your belief or faith, but I want to be frank, I have no
evidences for the idea that "Jesus" is "truth", nor can I be sure of
any clear meaning such an assertion could have, or how such an
assertion could be made scientific, even dropping Popper falsification
criteria. I must say I have evidences on the contrary, if only the 
fact

that humans succumb often to wishful thinking, and still more often to
their parents wishful thinking.

If you are not sure of any clear meaning of the personal God being the
source of everything, including of course truth, this entails not
knowing the other things too.

Is that not an authoritative argument?
What if I ask to my student an exam question like give me an argument 
why the square root of 3 is irrationnal. Suppose he gives me the 
correct and convincing usual (mathematical) proof. I could give him a 
bad note for not adding: "and I know that is the truth because truth is 
a gift by God".
Cute, I can directly give bad notes to all my students, and this will 
give me more time to find a falsity in your way to reason ...

For a personal God, taking on our form
(incarnation), especially if we were made in the image of God in the
first place, and showing through miracles, and rising from the dead...,
his dual nature (God&man, celestial&terrestial, G*&G) seems to make a
lot more sense than something like a cross in earth orbit.  For
example, giving a hug is a more personal (and thus a more appropriate)
way of expressing love, than giving a card, even though a card is more
verifiable in a third person sense, especially after the hug is
finished.  But we do have the "card" too: God's written Word, even
though this is not sufficient, the incarnate hug was the primary proof,
the "card" was just the historical record of it.

The card records facts. To judge them historical is already beyond my 
competence. Why the bible? Why not "the question of king Milinda" ?

> There can be no upward
> emanation unless/until a sufficient downward emanation is provided. 
 In

> Christianity, the downward emanation is "God loves us", and then the
> upward emanation is "We love God".

Plotinus insists a lot on the two ways: downward emanation and upward
emanation. The lobian machine theology is coherent with this, even if
negatively. It is coherent with Jef idea that pure "theological
imperatives" can only be addressed by adapted "story telling" and
examples, like jurisprudence in the application of laws. But then 
there

is a proviso: none of the stories should be taken literally.

I agree with the use of stories.  Jesus used stories almost exclusively
to communicate.  Either the hearers "got it" or not.  But this does not
imply that stories are the only form of downward emanation.

Of course not. Real stories and personal experiences,  and collective 
experiences and experiments ... All this can help the downward 
emanation.

The
incarnation was the primary means.  Otherwise, who would have been the
story-teller?  What good are stories if the story is not teaching you
truth?

Look, I cannot take for granted even most mathematical theories 
although their relation with a notion of truth is much more easy than 
any text in natural language. Stories can be good in giving example of 
behavior in some situation, or they can help anxious children to sleep. 
Stories are not written with the idea of "truth". The bibles contains 
many contradiction. And, if really you want take a sacred text as a 
theory of everything, there is a definite lack of precision.

How do we know that the ultimate source of stories is a good
source.  Jef and Brent and others seem to be basing their truth on
really nothing more than pragmatism.

Jef perhaps. I am not sure for Brent which seems to admit some form of 
realism (even physical realism).

> This is not poetry.  Heidegger said to listen to the poet, not to 
the
> content, but just to the fact that there is a poet, which gives us 
hope

> that there is meaning.  However, unfulfilled hope does not provide
> meaning.

Hope is something purely first-personal, if I can say. So I have no
clue how hope does not provide meaning. Even little (and fortunately
locally fulfillable hope) like hope in a cup of coffee, can provide
meaning. Bigger (and hard to express) hopes can provide genuine bigger
meaning, it seems to me. I am not opposed to some idea of ultimate
meaning although both personal reasons and reflection on lobianity 
make

me doubt that communicating such hopes can make any sense (worse, the
communication would most probably betrays the possible meaning of what
is attempted to be communicated, and could even lead to the contrary).

Even poetry must be based eventually on some meaning.  Even minimalism
or the Theatre

Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)




Le 27-déc.-06, à 02:46, Jef Allbright a écrit :



Stathis Papaioannou wrote:


But our main criterion for what to believe should be
what is true, right?


I find it fascinating, as well as consistent with some difficulties in
communication about the most basic concepts, that Stathis would express
this belief of his in the form of a tautology.  I've observed that he 
is

generally both thoughtful and precise in his writing, so I'm very
interested in whether the apparent tautology is my misunderstanding, 
his

transparent belief, a simple lack of precision, or something more.



I don't see any tautology in Stathis writing so I guess I miss 
something.





If he had said something like "our main criterion for what to believe
should be what works, what seems to work, what passes the tests of 
time,

etc." or had made a direct reference to Occams's Razor, I would be
comfortable knowing that we're thinking alike on this point.



This would mean you disagree with Stathis's tautology, but then how 
could not believe in a tautology?





But I've
seen this stumbling block arise so many times and so many places that
I'm very curious to learn something of its source.


From your "working" criteria I guess you favor a pragmatic notion of 
belief, but personally I conceive science as a search for knowledge and 
thus truth (independently of the fact that we can never *know* it as 
truth, except perhaps in few basic things like "I am conscious" or "I 
am convinced there is a prime number" etc.).
To talk like Stathis, this is why science is by itself always 
tentative. A scientist who says "Now we know ..." is only a dishonest 
theologian (or a mathematician in hurry ...).


Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/


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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)




Le 27-déc.-06, à 01:52, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit :

But our main criterion for what to believe should be what is true, 
right? We might never be certain of the truth, so our beliefs should 
always be tentative, but that doesn't mean we should believe whatever 
we fancy.



This is a key statement. There is a big difference between knowing what 
truth is, and believing in truth. I am not sure the term "belief" can 
make sense for someone who does not believe in (some) truth, quite 
independently of us knowing what truth is.
We hope our belief are true. We even believe that people believe in 
their belief, and that means "believe that their belief are true" by 
default. We would not lie to an old sick person about its health if we 
were not connecting belief and truth (even wrongly like in such a 
"gentle lie").
The very reason why we can (and should!) say that our beliefs are 
always tentative is that we can guess some truth (or falsity) behind 
them.


Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/


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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)




Le 26-déc.-06, à 23:59, [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit :



I regard the idea of "believing" to be unsound, because it is a
pre-Freudian concept, which assumes that each person has a "single
self" that maintains beliefs.



Is this not a bit self-defeating? It has the form of a belief. Now I 
can still agree, it depends of the meaning of "single self".






A more realistic view is that each
person is constantly switching among various different "ways to think"
in which different assertions, statements, or bodies of knowledge keep
changing their status, etc.



In that case I can completely agree. Even by modeling a machine's 
belief by formal provability Bp by that machine, in the ideal case of 
the self-referentially correct machine, like Peano Arithmetic, it will 
follow that the "ontically equivalent" modalities Bp & p, Bp & Dp, etc. 
obeys different logics so that they embodies different epistemological 
status (and they are easy to confuse).
Now, when we are building a (meta)theory of "belief" we have to stick 
on some possible sharable belief (in number theory, computer science, 
perhaps physics: all that will depend on the hypotheses we accept) and 
build from it. If not we could fall in exaggerated relativism.





Accordingly our "sets of beliefs" can
include many conflicts--and in different mental contexts, those
inconsistencies may get resolved in different ways, perhaps depending
on one's current priorities, etc.



OK. I would say that if someone can acknowledge the existence of a 
conflict between beliefs, then he/she/it  does acknowledge implicitly 
that he/she/it bets on some *self*-consistency. If not he/she/it could 
just accept its contradictory beliefs without further thoughts.


Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/


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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)



Stathis Papaioannou wrote:



Tom Caylor writes (in response to Marvin Minsky):


Regarding Stathis' question to you about truth, your calling the idea
of believing unsound seems to imply that you are assuming that there is
no truth that we can discover.  But on the other hand, if there is no
discoverable truth, then how can we know that something, like the
existence of freedom of will, is false?


That's easy: it's logically impossible. When I make a decision, although 
I take all the evidence into account, and I know I am more likely to 
decide one way rather than another due to my past experiences and due to 
the way my brain works, ultimately I feel that I have the freedom to 
overcome these factors and decide "freely". But neither do I feel that 
this free decision will be something random: I'm not mentally tossing a 
coin, but choosing according to my beliefs and values. Do you see the 
contradiction here? 


Yes, but it's a contrived contradiction.  You have taken "free" to mean independent of 
you where "you" refers to your past experience, the way your brain works, etc.  As 
Dennett says, that's not a free will worth having.

Brent Meeker


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RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases




Brent Meeker writes (quoting Tom Caylor):


> Dr. Minsky,
> 
> In your book, Society of Mind, you talk about a belief in freedom of

> will:
> 
> "The physical world provides no room for freedom of will...That concept

> is essential to our models of the mental realm. Too much of our
> psychology is based on it for us to ever give it up. We're virtually
> forced to maintain that belief, even though we know it's false."

Whether it is false depends on what you mean by free will.  Dennett argues persuasively 
in "Elbow Room" that we have all the freedom of will that matters.  Our actions 
arise out of who we are.  If you conceive yourself comprehensively, all your memories, 
values, knowledge, etc. then you are the author of your action.  If you conceive yourself 
as small enough, you can escape all responsibility.


We have the freedom of will that matters, but we don't have the freedom of 
will that we think we have, namely that we don't have to act according to our 
biology and environment, and moreover that if we flout these it is not by just 
choosing to act randomly. That is what I *feel* my freedom consists in, but 
rationally I know it is impossible. 


Stathis Papaioannou
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RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)




Tom Caylor writes (in response to Marvin Minsky):


Regarding Stathis' question to you about truth, your calling the idea
of believing unsound seems to imply that you are assuming that there is
no truth that we can discover.  But on the other hand, if there is no
discoverable truth, then how can we know that something, like the
existence of freedom of will, is false?


That's easy: it's logically impossible. When I make a decision, although I take all 
the evidence into account, and I know I am more likely to decide one way rather 
than another due to my past experiences and due to the way my brain works, 
ultimately I feel that I have the freedom to overcome these factors and decide 
"freely". But neither do I feel that this free decision will be something random: 
I'm not mentally tossing a coin, but choosing according to my beliefs and values. 
Do you see the contradiction here? EITHER my decision is determined by my 
past experiences, acquired beliefs and values etc., OR it is not, and if it is not, 
it is by definition random and unpredictable. (You can also have random but with a 
certain weighting according to determined factors, like a weighted roulette wheel, 
but that is a variation on random.) So my feeling that my free will is nother has to 
be wrong. Still, I'm very attached to that feeling, just as I'm very attached to 
certain moral values, and life itself, despite knowing that these are ultimately 
meaningless. 


However, the belief in freedom of will seems to be a belief that is
rather constant, so there seem to be some beliefs that provide evidence
for an invariant reality and truth, not necessarily freedom of will,
but something.  And I think that looking for ultimate sources would be
circular (as you've said on the Atheist List) only if there were no
ultimate source that we could find.  Do you agree with this statement?


Ultimate sources are also a logical impossibility. Suppose we discover that God exists. 
Well, what's the purpose of God? Where did he get his moral rules and why should 
we accept them as good? Who made him? Of course, you will answer that the buck 
stops with God, no-one made him, he is the ultimate good and the ultimate purpose. 
But you can't just *define* something to stop the circularity because it makes you 
dizzy. If you could, you may as well just stop at the universe itself, sans God.


Stathis Papaioannou
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RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

Jef Allbright writes:

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

> But our main criterion for what to believe should be
> what is true, right? 

I find it fascinating, as well as consistent with some difficulties in
communication about the most basic concepts, that Stathis would express
this belief of his in the form of a tautology.  I've observed that he is
generally both thoughtful and precise in his writing, so I'm very
interested in whether the apparent tautology is my misunderstanding, his
transparent belief, a simple lack of precision, or something more.

Thanks for the compliments about my writing. I meant that what we should 
believe does not necessarily have to be the same as what is true, but I think 
that unless there are special circumstances, it ought to be the case. Brent 
Meeker made a similar point: if someone is dying of a terminal illness, maybe 
it is better that he believe he has longer to live than the medical evidence 
suggests, but that would have to be an example of special circumstances. 

If he had said something like "our main criterion for what to believe
should be what works, what seems to work, what passes the tests of time,
etc." or had made a direct reference to Occams's Razor, I would be
comfortable knowing that we're thinking alike on this point.  But I've
seen this stumbling block arise so many times and so many places that
I'm very curious to learn something of its source.

The question of what is the truth is a separate one, but one criterion I would 
add to those you mention above is that it should come from someone able to 
put aside his own biases and wishes where these might influence his assessment 
of the evidence. 

> We might never be certain of the truth, so our beliefs should 
> always be tentative, but that doesn't mean we should believe 
> whatever we fancy.

Here it's a smaller point, and I agree with the main thrust of the
statement, but it leaves a door open for the possibility that we might
actually be justifiably certain of the truth in *some* case, and I'm
wonder where that open door is intended to lead.

I said "might" because there is one case where I am certain of the truth, which 
is that I am having the present experience. Everything else, including the existence 
of a physical world and my own existence as a being with a past, can be doubted. 
However, for everyday living this doubt troubles me much less than the possibility that 
I may be struck by lightning.

Stathis Papaioannou

---

In response to John Mikes:  

Yes, I consider my thinking about truth to be pragmatic, within an
empirical framework of open-ended possibility.  Of course, ultimately
this too may be considered a matter of faith, but one with growth that
seems to operate in a direction opposite from the faith you express.

- Jef

> 

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Re: Evil ?

Tom Caylor wrote:

On Dec 26, 7:53 pm, Brent Meeker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Tom Caylor wrote:

> On Dec 26, 3:59 pm, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>> I regard the idea of "believing" to be unsound, because it is a
>> pre-Freudian concept, which assumes that each person has a "single
>> self" that maintains beliefs.  A more realistic view is that each
>> person is constantly switching among various different "ways to think"
>> in which different assertions, statements, or bodies of knowledge keep
>> changing their status, etc.  Accordingly our "sets of beliefs" can
>> include many conflicts--and in different mental contexts, those
>> inconsistencies may get resolved in different ways, perhaps depending
>> on one's current priorities, etc.

> Dr. Minsky,

> In your book, Society of Mind, you talk about a belief in freedom of
> will:

> "The physical world provides no room for freedom of will...That concept
> is essential to our models of the mental realm. Too much of our
> psychology is based on it for us to ever give it up. We're virtually
> forced to maintain that belief, even though we know it's false."

Whether it is false depends on what you mean by free will.  Dennett 
argues persuasively in "Elbow Room" that we have all the freedom of 
will that matters.  Our actions arise out of who we are.  If you 
conceive yourself comprehensively, all your memories, values, 
knowledge, etc. then you are the author of your action.  If you 
conceive yourself as small enough, you can escape all responsibility.

> Are you saying that we must use an unsound idea (belief)?

> Regarding Stathis' question to you about truth, your calling the idea
> of believing unsound seems to imply that you are assuming that there is
> no truth that we can discover.  But on the other hand, if there is no
> discoverable truth, then how can we know that something, like the
> existence of freedom of will, is false?

> However, the belief in freedom of will seems to be a belief that is
> rather constant, so there seem to be some beliefs that provide evidence
> for an invariant reality and truth, not necessarily freedom of will,
> but something.  And I think that looking for ultimate sources would be
> circular (as you've said on the Atheist List) only if there were no
> ultimate source that we could find.  Do you agree with this statement?

It would be futile - but not circular.  It is circular to argue that 
belief is evidence for the thing believed.

Brent Meeker

I was providing a belief as evidence not for free will but for some
invariant reality/truth, e.g. the source of actions in your words, "who
we are".

OK.  But we know of many beliefs that are false and people sometimes act on 
false as well as true beliefs.  Since it is circular to argue that a belief is 
evidence for the thing believed, then it is also circular to argue from belief 
in general to the existence of truth in general.  A fortiori it is circular to 
argue from a single belief, belief in free will, to the existence of truth in 
general or to any true statement, except that some people believe in free will.

Brent Meeker

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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases

2006-12-26 Thread Tom Caylor



On Dec 26, 7:53 pm, Brent Meeker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Tom Caylor wrote:

> On Dec 26, 3:59 pm, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>> I regard the idea of "believing" to be unsound, because it is a
>> pre-Freudian concept, which assumes that each person has a "single
>> self" that maintains beliefs.  A more realistic view is that each
>> person is constantly switching among various different "ways to think"
>> in which different assertions, statements, or bodies of knowledge keep
>> changing their status, etc.  Accordingly our "sets of beliefs" can
>> include many conflicts--and in different mental contexts, those
>> inconsistencies may get resolved in different ways, perhaps depending
>> on one's current priorities, etc.

> Dr. Minsky,

> In your book, Society of Mind, you talk about a belief in freedom of
> will:

> "The physical world provides no room for freedom of will...That concept
> is essential to our models of the mental realm. Too much of our
> psychology is based on it for us to ever give it up. We're virtually
> forced to maintain that belief, even though we know it's false."



Whether it is false depends on what you mean by free will.  Dennett argues persuasively 
in "Elbow Room" that we have all the freedom of will that matters.  Our actions 
arise out of who we are.  If you conceive yourself comprehensively, all your memories, 
values, knowledge, etc. then you are the author of your action.  If you conceive yourself 
as small enough, you can escape all responsibility.



> Are you saying that we must use an unsound idea (belief)?

> Regarding Stathis' question to you about truth, your calling the idea
> of believing unsound seems to imply that you are assuming that there is
> no truth that we can discover.  But on the other hand, if there is no
> discoverable truth, then how can we know that something, like the
> existence of freedom of will, is false?

> However, the belief in freedom of will seems to be a belief that is
> rather constant, so there seem to be some beliefs that provide evidence
> for an invariant reality and truth, not necessarily freedom of will,
> but something.  And I think that looking for ultimate sources would be
> circular (as you've said on the Atheist List) only if there were no
> ultimate source that we could find.  Do you agree with this statement?



It would be futile - but not circular.  It is circular to argue that belief is 
evidence for the thing believed.

Brent Meeker


I was providing a belief as evidence not for free will but for some
invariant reality/truth, e.g. the source of actions in your words, "who
we are".

Tom


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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases



Tom Caylor wrote:


On Dec 26, 3:59 pm, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

I regard the idea of "believing" to be unsound, because it is a
pre-Freudian concept, which assumes that each person has a "single
self" that maintains beliefs.  A more realistic view is that each
person is constantly switching among various different "ways to think"
in which different assertions, statements, or bodies of knowledge keep
changing their status, etc.  Accordingly our "sets of beliefs" can
include many conflicts--and in different mental contexts, those
inconsistencies may get resolved in different ways, perhaps depending
on one's current priorities, etc.


Dr. Minsky,

In your book, Society of Mind, you talk about a belief in freedom of
will:

"The physical world provides no room for freedom of will...That concept
is essential to our models of the mental realm. Too much of our
psychology is based on it for us to ever give it up. We're virtually
forced to maintain that belief, even though we know it's false."


Whether it is false depends on what you mean by free will.  Dennett argues persuasively 
in "Elbow Room" that we have all the freedom of will that matters.  Our actions 
arise out of who we are.  If you conceive yourself comprehensively, all your memories, 
values, knowledge, etc. then you are the author of your action.  If you conceive yourself 
as small enough, you can escape all responsibility.



Are you saying that we must use an unsound idea (belief)?

Regarding Stathis' question to you about truth, your calling the idea
of believing unsound seems to imply that you are assuming that there is
no truth that we can discover.  But on the other hand, if there is no
discoverable truth, then how can we know that something, like the
existence of freedom of will, is false?

However, the belief in freedom of will seems to be a belief that is
rather constant, so there seem to be some beliefs that provide evidence
for an invariant reality and truth, not necessarily freedom of will,
but something.  And I think that looking for ultimate sources would be
circular (as you've said on the Atheist List) only if there were no
ultimate source that we could find.  Do you agree with this statement?


It would be futile - but not circular.  It is circular to argue that belief is 
evidence for the thing believed.

Brent Meeker

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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-26 Thread Tom Caylor



On Dec 26, 3:59 pm, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

I regard the idea of "believing" to be unsound, because it is a
pre-Freudian concept, which assumes that each person has a "single
self" that maintains beliefs.  A more realistic view is that each
person is constantly switching among various different "ways to think"
in which different assertions, statements, or bodies of knowledge keep
changing their status, etc.  Accordingly our "sets of beliefs" can
include many conflicts--and in different mental contexts, those
inconsistencies may get resolved in different ways, perhaps depending
on one's current priorities, etc.


Dr. Minsky,

In your book, Society of Mind, you talk about a belief in freedom of
will:

"The physical world provides no room for freedom of will...That concept
is essential to our models of the mental realm. Too much of our
psychology is based on it for us to ever give it up. We're virtually
forced to maintain that belief, even though we know it's false."

Are you saying that we must use an unsound idea (belief)?

Regarding Stathis' question to you about truth, your calling the idea
of believing unsound seems to imply that you are assuming that there is
no truth that we can discover.  But on the other hand, if there is no
discoverable truth, then how can we know that something, like the
existence of freedom of will, is false?

However, the belief in freedom of will seems to be a belief that is
rather constant, so there seem to be some beliefs that provide evidence
for an invariant reality and truth, not necessarily freedom of will,
but something.  And I think that looking for ultimate sources would be
circular (as you've said on the Atheist List) only if there were no
ultimate source that we could find.  Do you agree with this statement?

Tom Caylor


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RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-26 Thread Jef Allbright



Stathis Papaioannou wrote:


But our main criterion for what to believe should be
what is true, right? 


I find it fascinating, as well as consistent with some difficulties in
communication about the most basic concepts, that Stathis would express
this belief of his in the form of a tautology.  I've observed that he is
generally both thoughtful and precise in his writing, so I'm very
interested in whether the apparent tautology is my misunderstanding, his
transparent belief, a simple lack of precision, or something more.

If he had said something like "our main criterion for what to believe
should be what works, what seems to work, what passes the tests of time,
etc." or had made a direct reference to Occams's Razor, I would be
comfortable knowing that we're thinking alike on this point.  But I've
seen this stumbling block arise so many times and so many places that
I'm very curious to learn something of its source.

We might never be certain of the truth, so our beliefs should 
always be tentative, but that doesn't mean we should believe 
whatever we fancy.


Here it's a smaller point, and I agree with the main thrust of the
statement, but it leaves a door open for the possibility that we might
actually be justifiably certain of the truth in *some* case, and I'm
wonder where that open door is intended to lead.

---

In response to John Mikes:  


Yes, I consider my thinking about truth to be pragmatic, within an
empirical framework of open-ended possibility.  Of course, ultimately
this too may be considered a matter of faith, but one with growth that
seems to operate in a direction opposite from the faith you express.

- Jef



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RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-26 Thread Stathis Papaioannou











From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)
Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2006 14:59:17 -0800


I regard the idea of "believing" to be unsound, because it is a
pre-Freudian concept, which assumes that each person has a "single
self" that maintains beliefs.  A more realistic view is that each
person is constantly switching among various different "ways to think"
in which different assertions, statements, or bodies of knowledge keep
changing their status, etc.  Accordingly our "sets of beliefs" can
include many conflicts--and in different mental contexts, those
inconsistencies may get resolved in different ways, perhaps depending
on one's current priorities, etc.


But our main criterion for what to believe should be what is true, right? 
We might never be certain of the truth, so our beliefs should always be 
tentative, but that doesn't mean we should believe whatever we fancy.


Stathis Papaioannou
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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases



[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


I regard the idea of "believing" to be unsound, because it is a
pre-Freudian concept, which assumes that each person has a "single
self" that maintains beliefs.  A more realistic view is that each
person is constantly switching among various different "ways to think"
in which different assertions, statements, or bodies of knowledge keep
changing their status, etc.  Accordingly our "sets of beliefs" can
include many conflicts--and in different mental contexts, those
inconsistencies may get resolved in different ways, perhaps depending
on one's current priorities, etc.


I'm not sure what you're thinking of.  Do you think of beliefs as 
all-or-nothing?  Can you give some examples?

Brent Meeker


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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-26 Thread [EMAIL PROTECTED]



I regard the idea of "believing" to be unsound, because it is a
pre-Freudian concept, which assumes that each person has a "single
self" that maintains beliefs.  A more realistic view is that each
person is constantly switching among various different "ways to think"
in which different assertions, statements, or bodies of knowledge keep
changing their status, etc.  Accordingly our "sets of beliefs" can
include many conflicts--and in different mental contexts, those
inconsistencies may get resolved in different ways, perhaps depending
on one's current priorities, etc.


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Re: Evil ?



John Mikes wrote:
Brent, you don't REALLY put strange (implied?) words in my mouth, but 
that gives the impression to the innocent byreader that I said anything 
like that.

BM:
"Did I claim that we had reached a complete inventory??"
JM:
No, you only said:
"> It is only your opinion that the inventory is *necessarily* incomplete."
Presumably not YOUR opinion, implying completeness of our (cognitive) 
inventory.
I apologize for a typo: what I wrote 1006 was meant indeed 2006(AD), if 
this number has some connotations in our minds. Now if (as you seem to 
agree) we increase our cogniotive inventory even to date, it is 
"necessarily" incomplete. QED


Of course I agree that it is incomplete.  But you seem to assume that it can never be 
complete - that even if reductionist physics bottoms out with a single unified field,  
our "inventory" will be incomplete because it will not include all the complex 
relations of those elementary inventory items.  I think this is begging the question 
against reductionism.


*
BM:
" Does the fact that we don't now know everything prove that there are 
things we will never know?"

JM:
You cannot paste this nonsense onto my neck. However we have limited 
means in our mental arsenal - what you may call "material" tools eg. the 
'brain' -  which does not imply our capability to collect an 
unrestricted, limitless (I almost wrote: infinite)
knowledge-base (=cognitive inventory). 


Is this what you meant to write?:  ~[limited means -> ability to collect 
unlimited knowledge-base)]  It certainly seems true - but trivial.


Such consideration, however, does 
have nothing to do with *proving* what you asked upon the condition you 
used.

*
BM:
"Does the fact that  a reductionist analysis is incomplete imply that a 
wholistic theory is correct?"

JM:
Are you asking me, or are you just ironic? So far I did not experience 
in your writings logical flaws, I valued your opinion for that. I read 
in your sentence an affirmative to the incompleteness of a reductionist 
analysis, so we agree. I pointed to this as a flaw that may be deducted 
from not thinking wholistically enough.


I think reductionist/wholistic it is a false dichotomy.  Reductionist theories are only 
successful when they explain the more wholistic theory (which looked at from the other 
end is called "emergent"); as statistical mechanics explained thermodynamics 
and biochemistry is aiming to explain life.  Physicist are motivated by wholism, as in 
the current effort to find a unifying theory of quantum gravity.  But a theory that does 
not reduce the phenomena will be as much a mystery as the phenomena itself.

Brent Meeker 



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Re: Evil ?

2006-12-26 Thread John Mikes


Brent, you don't REALLY put strange (implied?) words in my mouth, but that
gives the impression to the innocent byreader that I said anything like
that.
BM:
"Did I claim that we had reached a complete inventory??"
JM:
No, you only said:
"> It is only your opinion that the inventory is *necessarily* incomplete."
Presumably not YOUR opinion, implying completeness of our (cognitive)
inventory.
I apologize for a typo: what I wrote 1006 was meant indeed 2006(AD), if this
number has some connotations in our minds. Now if (as you seem to agree) we
increase our cogniotive inventory even to date, it is "necessarily"
incomplete. QED
*
BM:
" Does the fact that we don't now know everything prove that there are
things we will never know?"
JM:
You cannot paste this nonsense onto my neck. However we have limited means
in our mental arsenal - what you may call "material" tools eg. the 'brain'
-  which does not imply our capability to collect an unrestricted, limitless
(I almost wrote: infinite)
knowledge-base (=cognitive inventory). Such consideration, however, does
have nothing to do with *proving* what you asked upon the condition you
used.
*
BM:
"Does the fact that  a reductionist analysis is incomplete imply that a
wholistic theory is correct?"
JM:
Are you asking me, or are you just ironic? So far I did not experience in
your writings logical flaws, I valued your opinion for that. I read in your
sentence an affirmative to the incompleteness of a reductionist analysis, so
we agree. I pointed to this as a flaw that may be deducted from not thinking
wholistically enough.
Would you be so kind to explain to me what is the 'wholistic theory'? I am
working 'on it' but so far it is only a name - not even an identifiable
domain.
*
Finally:
BM:
"Until 1859 we couldn't explain the origin of species.  Should Darwin have
concluded that the problem was insoluble?"
JM:
I don't feel like editing good old Chuck,. I did not edit even my
contributing authors when I was editor in chief of Ion Exchange and
Membranes mag. I value DARWIN for his advanced thinking within his era, do
not judge his pre-1859 ideas in our 3rd millennial positions.
*
I hope I gave a 'civil' response without any aggressivity.

John Mikes





On 12/25/06, Brent Meeker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:



John Mikes wrote:
>
>
> On 12/25/06, *Brent Meeker* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > wrote:
>
> ...
>  >
>  >
>  > JM:
>  > Are you sure there is NO [unlimited] impredicative - non
>  > (Turing-emulable),  all encompassing  interrelatedness? (which I
> did not
>  > call a "whole")
>
> Sorry.  You called it a "totality".
>
>
> Thanx, makes a difference. I consider a "whole" identified (maybe it is
> my feeble English). Is it  an essential point:
>
>  > and which sure is not 'the whole' with 'everything
>  > included into its boundaries', eo ipso NOT a "whole".
>
> No I am empathically *not* sure - but I agree with Darwin who wrote,
> "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it
> is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so
> positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by
> science".
>   --- Charles Darwin, The Ascent of Man
>
>  >
>  > The separately quoted 2nd part of my sentence points to my doubt
> about
>  > "physics" (or any other 'science', for that matter) whether they
are
>  > capable in a 'synthetic' effort to encompass ALL interrelations
> into a
>  > buildup step when many of them still may be undiscovered?. A
>  > reductionist 'synthesis' works on the available inventory and
> ends up
>  > with an "Aris-Total"-like incompleteness (i.e. that the 'total'
> is more
>  > than the 'sum' of the parts.). Just as a reductionist analysis is
>  > inventory-related and so incomplete.
>
> It is only your opinion that the inventory is *necessarily*
incomplete.
>
>
> Is it? try to compare our (cognitive etc.) inventories of 3000BC,
> 1000AD, 1006AD, and tell me which year did we reach omniscience?
> John

Did I claim that we had reached a complete inventory??  Tell me in which
year did our knowledge cease to increase?

Until 1859 we couldn't explain the origin of species.  Should Darwin have
concluded that the problem was insoluble?  Does the fact that we don't now
know everything prove that there are things we will never know?  Does the
fact that  a reductionist analysis is incomplete imply that a wholistic
theory is correct?

Brent Meeker


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Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-26 Thread Tom Caylor

On Dec 26, 9:51 am, Bruno Marchal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Le 25-déc.-06, à 01:13, Tom Caylor a écrit :

> The "crux" is that he is not symbolic...

I respect your belief or faith, but I want to be frank, I have no
evidences for the idea that "Jesus" is "truth", nor can I be sure of
any clear meaning such an assertion could have, or how such an
assertion could be made scientific, even dropping Popper falsification
criteria. I must say I have evidences on the contrary, if only the fact
that humans succumb often to wishful thinking, and still more often to
their parents wishful thinking.

If you are not sure of any clear meaning of the personal God being the
source of everything, including of course truth, this entails not
knowing the other things too.  For a personal God, taking on our form
(incarnation), especially if we were made in the image of God in the
first place, and showing through miracles, and rising from the dead...,
his dual nature (God&man, celestial&terrestial, G*&G) seems to make a
lot more sense than something like a cross in earth orbit.  For
example, giving a hug is a more personal (and thus a more appropriate)
way of expressing love, than giving a card, even though a card is more
verifiable in a third person sense, especially after the hug is
finished.  But we do have the "card" too: God's written Word, even
though this is not sufficient, the incarnate hug was the primary proof,
the "card" was just the historical record of it.

> There can be no upward
> emanation unless/until a sufficient downward emanation is provided.  In
> Christianity, the downward emanation is "God loves us", and then the
> upward emanation is "We love God".

Plotinus insists a lot on the two ways: downward emanation and upward
emanation. The lobian machine theology is coherent with this, even if
negatively. It is coherent with Jef idea that pure "theological
imperatives" can only be addressed by adapted "story telling" and
examples, like jurisprudence in the application of laws. But then there
is a proviso: none of the stories should be taken literally.

I agree with the use of stories.  Jesus used stories almost exclusively
to communicate.  Either the hearers "got it" or not.  But this does not
imply that stories are the only form of downward emanation.   The
incarnation was the primary means.  Otherwise, who would have been the
story-teller?  What good are stories if the story is not teaching you
truth?  How do we know that the ultimate source of stories is a good
source.  Jef and Brent and others seem to be basing their truth on
really nothing more than pragmatism.

> This is not poetry.  Heidegger said to listen to the poet, not to the
> content, but just to the fact that there is a poet, which gives us hope
> that there is meaning.  However, unfulfilled hope does not provide
> meaning.

Hope is something purely first-personal, if I can say. So I have no
clue how hope does not provide meaning. Even little (and fortunately
locally fulfillable hope) like hope in a cup of coffee, can provide
meaning. Bigger (and hard to express) hopes can provide genuine bigger
meaning, it seems to me. I am not opposed to some idea of ultimate
meaning although both personal reasons and reflection on lobianity make
me doubt that communicating such hopes can make any sense (worse, the
communication would most probably betrays the possible meaning of what
is attempted to be communicated, and could even lead to the contrary).

Even poetry must be based eventually on some meaning.  Even minimalism
or the Theatre of the Absurd is based on some form to attempt to
communicate meaninglessness.

I am glad that your aren't opposed to some idea of ultimate meaning.
My whole argument is that without it our hope eventually runs out and
we are left with despair, unless we lie to ourselves against the
absence of hope.

> The content of these words speak of the *actual* fulfillment
> of the hopes of the Greeks expressed in their hypostases.?   Are you talking 
about mystical enlightening experiences. Like
losing any remaining doubts about immortality because you have already
seen the whole of the eternal tergiversations all at once ?

By "these words" I was referring to the John quote from the Bible.  The
actual fulfillment was Jesus (the Word/Logos).  He spanned the infinite
gap, like you said above, perhaps analogous to hypercomputation,...all
in one step.

>> > We have seen his
>> > glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father,
>> full of
>> > grace and truth." (John 3:1,2,3,14)  So the particular finite form
>> that
>> > we have, God somehow took on that same form.

> It is the ultimate irony that Jesus was taken to be blaspheming when he
> said he was "one with the Father" and "before Abraham was, I AM", for
> "no one can say that they are God". the mistake is the missing
> phrase at the end: "...except God".

OK. I mean, here, that we can agree on an important disagreement,
making both of us

Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order & Belief)

2006-12-26 Thread Bruno Marchal

Le 25-déc.-06, à 01:13, Tom Caylor a écrit :

It looks like I might have timed out.  Hopefully this doesn't appear
two times.

On Dec 24, 8:55 am, Bruno Marchal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Le 24-déc.-06, à 09:48, Tom Caylor a écrit :

> Bruno,
> ...
> I believe the answer to the question, "What is Truth?" which Pilate 
asked

> Jesus, was standing right in front of Pilate: Jesus himself.

Hmmm Perhaps in some symbolical way.

The "crux" is that he is not symbolic...

I respect your belief or faith, but I want to be frank, I have no 
evidences for the idea that "Jesus" is "truth", nor can I be sure of 
any clear meaning such an assertion could have, or how such an 
assertion could be made scientific, even dropping Popper falsification 
criteria. I must say I have evidences on the contrary, if only the fact 
that humans succumb often to wishful thinking, and still more often to 
their parents wishful thinking.

> The Christian definition of truth goes back to the core of 
everything, who

> is personal.  As I've said before, without a personal core, the word
> "personal" has lost its meaning.  In the context nowadays of
> impersonal-based philosophy, "personal" has come to "mean" something
> like "without rational basis".

Of course that *is* a pity. It is bad, for human, to develop such
"self-eliminating" belief.  It is not rational either.

I agree.  cf my examples (Skinner...) in response to Stathis.  But how
do *you* define rationality and persons?

A richer lobian machine (like ZF) can define those notions with respect 
to a simpler lobian machine (like PA), and then lift the "theology" of 
the simpler machine to themselves (a third lobian machine or entity, 
richer than ZF, can justified such induction.
Then rationality can be defined by relative provability or 
representability in some shared theories. This leaves open the 
interpretations of those theories which ask for us implicit faith in 
our own consistency or relative correctness.
The notion of persons are defined by each hypostases (third person = 
Bp, first person = Bp & p, etc.).

You also seem to reduce it,
to numbers.

It is a reduction only if you already defend a reductionist conception 
of numbers, and this can be considered as doubtful from the study of 
numbers, especially from the "things" that can emerge from their 
"collective behaviors" (arithmetical relations).

I think the sophistication of incompleteness simply hides
the fact that it is still a "castle in the sky".

Like any falsifiable but not yet falsified theory.

By the "direction" of replacement I didn't mean chronologically, like
Plato replaces Aristotle.

... in Plotinus, ok.

I meant that the impersonal core replaced
the real personal core, independent of Aristotle's views.
You have said before that the Christians emphasize matter more than
mind, as opposed to the Platonists and neo-Platonists.  There may have
been a few Christians who reclaimed a belief in nature, like Thomas
Aquinas, when the mind/grace was being emphasized too much.  But, as
can be seen in the Christian "interpretation" of the Greek hypostases,
the core of Christianity, being rooted in the Hebrew God who is the
source of all things/persons, is really first of all a downward
emanation, like the neo-Platonists thought.   There can be no upward
emanation unless/until a sufficient downward emanation is provided.  In
Christianity, the downward emanation is "God loves us", and then the
upward emanation is "We love God".

Plotinus insists a lot on the two ways: downward emanation and upward 
emanation. The lobian machine theology is coherent with this, even if 
negatively. It is coherent with Jef idea that pure "theological 
imperatives" can only be addressed by adapted "story telling" and 
examples, like jurisprudence in the application of laws. But then there 
is a proviso: none of the stories should be taken literally.

> He (the Holy Spirit) fills in
> the gaps when we cannot find words to talk to him.

Like G* minus G does for any self-referentially classical machine. 
(The

lobian machine).

Yes. By the way, you said to Brent that "you" know that you are lobian.
How do you know?

OK, sorry, I was assuming (weaker-)comp. Any machine or even larger non 
godlike entity believing in a sufficient amount of arithmetical truth 
is lobian. Actually a lobian machine, as I have define it, is just a 
universal machines knowing that she is universal (more precisely such a 
machine/entity can prove that if p is "accessible by its own local 
provability ability, then she can prove that fact.

I can take this as a poetical description of the relation between the
internal modalities or the hypostases.

This is not poetry.  Heidegger said to listen to the poet, not to the
content, but just to the fact that there is a poet, which gives us hope
that there is meaning.  However, unfulfilled hope does not provide
meaning.

Hope is something purely first-per

Re: Evil ?

John Mikes wrote:

On 12/25/06, *Brent Meeker* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> wrote:

...
 >
 >
 > JM:
 > Are you sure there is NO [unlimited] impredicative - non
 > (Turing-emulable),  all encompassing  interrelatedness? (which I
did not
 > call a "whole")

Sorry.  You called it a "totality". 

Thanx, makes a difference. I consider a "whole" identified (maybe it is 
my feeble English). Is it  an essential point:

 > and which sure is not 'the whole' with 'everything
 > included into its boundaries', eo ipso NOT a "whole".

No I am empathically *not* sure - but I agree with Darwin who wrote,
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it
is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so
positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by
science".
  --- Charles Darwin, The Ascent of Man

 >
 > The separately quoted 2nd part of my sentence points to my doubt
about
 > "physics" (or any other 'science', for that matter) whether they are
 > capable in a 'synthetic' effort to encompass ALL interrelations
into a
 > buildup step when many of them still may be undiscovered?. A
 > reductionist 'synthesis' works on the available inventory and
ends up
 > with an "Aris-Total"-like incompleteness (i.e. that the 'total'
is more
 > than the 'sum' of the parts.). Just as a reductionist analysis is
 > inventory-related and so incomplete.

It is only your opinion that the inventory is *necessarily* incomplete.

Is it? try to compare our (cognitive etc.) inventories of 3000BC, 
1000AD, 1006AD, and tell me which year did we reach omniscience?

John

Did I claim that we had reached a complete inventory??  Tell me in which year 
did our knowledge cease to increase?

Until 1859 we couldn't explain the origin of species.  Should Darwin have 
concluded that the problem was insoluble?  Does the fact that we don't now know 
everything prove that there are things we will never know?  Does the fact that  
a reductionist analysis is incomplete imply that a wholistic theory is correct?

Brent Meeker

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Re: Evil ?



John Mikes wrote:

Tom Caylor wrote:

This looks like Tarski's trick to me.  It is an act of faith any
time we take what we say as truth.
On 12/24/06, *Brent Meeker* < [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> wrote: "When I take what I say to be true

based on evidence it is not a matter of faith" JM: it is based on
your faith in your evidence and its truth. 


"My" evidence, being empirical, can be checked by others.  Hence I needn't threaten with hellfire or obfuscate with metaphor - I can let the evidence speak for itself.  If I'm right I'll be confirmed - if I'm not I'll change my opinion.  


A religious person accepts
as evidence "God said so" - of course it is based on HIS faith, and
so are physicists evidencing by collapse of wave function, .by
calculations on the inflation after the BB, and other kind of 
'scientists' (believing) in the tenets of their (today's) science,

just as (in Ptolemy-time) on the flatness of the Earth.


If a religious person has considered the evidence and decided that some writing in a holy 
book, or a voice out of the clouds, is God speaking, I'd say that's not faith.  But the 
Abrahamic religions have explicitly rejected "evaluation of the evidence" and 
raised blind faith to a virtue.

“When we come to believe, we have no desire to believe  anything else, for we 
begin by believing that there is nothing else  which we have to believe….  I 
warn people not to seek for anything  beyond what they came to believe, for 
that was all they needed to  seek for. In the last resort,  however, it is 
better for you to remain ignorant, for fear that you  come to know what you 
should not know….  Let curiosity give place to  faith, and glory to salvation.  
Let them at least be no hindrance, or  let them keep quiet.  To know nothing 
against the Rule [of faith] is  to know everything.”
--- Tertullian

"Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of
his Reason."
  --- Martin Luther

Brent Meeker


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Re: Evil ?

2006-12-25 Thread John Mikes


On 12/25/06, Brent Meeker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


...
>
>
> JM:
> Are you sure there is NO [unlimited] impredicative - non
> (Turing-emulable),  all encompassing  interrelatedness? (which I did not
> call a "whole")

Sorry.  You called it a "totality".



Thanx, makes a difference. I consider a "whole" identified (maybe it is my
feeble English). Is it  an essential point:


and which sure is not 'the whole' with 'everything
> included into its boundaries', eo ipso NOT a "whole".

No I am empathically *not* sure - but I agree with Darwin who wrote,
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is
those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert
that this or that problem will never be solved by science".
  --- Charles Darwin, The Ascent of Man

>
> The separately quoted 2nd part of my sentence points to my doubt about
> "physics" (or any other 'science', for that matter) whether they are
> capable in a 'synthetic' effort to encompass ALL interrelations into a
> buildup step when many of them still may be undiscovered?. A
> reductionist 'synthesis' works on the available inventory and ends up
> with an "Aris-Total"-like incompleteness (i.e. that the 'total' is more
> than the 'sum' of the parts.). Just as a reductionist analysis is
> inventory-related and so incomplete.

It is only your opinion that the inventory is *necessarily* incomplete.



Is it? try to compare our (cognitive etc.) inventories of 3000BC, 1000AD,
1006AD, and tell me which year did we reach omniscience?
John

Brent Meeker





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Re: Evil ?

John Mikes wrote:

On 12/25/06, *Brent Meeker* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> wrote:

John Mikes wrote:
 > Tom Caylor wrote:
 >  > This looks like Tarski's trick to me.  It is an act of faith
any time
 >  > we take what we say as truth.
 > On 12/24/06, *Brent Meeker* < [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 > >> wrote:
 > "When I take what I say to be true based on evidence it is not a
matter
 > of faith"
 > JM:
 > it is based on your faith in your evidence and its truth. A religious
 > person accepts  as evidence "God said so" - of course it is based
on HIS
 > faith, and so are physicists evidencing by collapse of wave
function,
 > .by calculations on the inflation after the BB, and other kind of
 > 'scientists' (believing) in the tenets of their (today's)
science, just
 > as (in Ptolemy-time) on the flatness of the Earth.
 >
 > Tom Caylor wrote:
 >  >This is unsupported without an ultimate
 >  > Person who gives the ultimate source of bringing truth into
existence
 >  > through words.
 > BM:
 > "This is pure magic mongering - as though some special "ultimate"
person
 > can bring something into existence by words."
 > JM:
 > Unless you have 'faith' in that "ultimate person" - I take Brent's
 > side here.
 > *
 > BM:
 > Critics of reductionism ignore the contrary process of
 > synthesis.  Physics does not *just* reduce things to atoms, it also
 > shows how things are synthesized from atoms and their relations.
 > JM:
 > "relations" is a big word (Do you have a good meaning for it?)

Multi-place predicates.  Note that some physicists (David Mermin,
Carlo Rovelli) propose that we formulate quantum mechanics as
"relations without relata".

JM:
Cute proposal.  Paraphrase: Interconnection between 2 nothings?  Or: 
functions without substrate? Or abstracted: efficiency without effect?

 >IMO it
 > includes the impredicative - non computable interrelatedness of the
 > totality we cannot include into our limited reductionist  models.

Just because our models are limited does not justify the conclusion
that there are things that cannot be modelled.

JM:
and who's conclusion is that? not mine.  Please read  carefully:
" we cannot include [the unlimited totality] into our limited 
reductionist  models."

That allows for everything to be (limitedly) modeled.

 > Nor
 > can "physics" consider all of it in a 'synthetic' opposite.

All of what?  Are you sure there is a "whole"?

JM:
Are you sure there is NO [unlimited] impredicative - non 
(Turing-emulable),  all encompassing  interrelatedness? (which I did not 
call a "whole")

Sorry.  You called it a "totality".

and which sure is not 'the whole' with 'everything 
included into its boundaries', eo ipso NOT a "whole".

No I am empathically *not* sure - but I agree with Darwin who wrote, "Ignorance more 
frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not 
those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be 
solved by science".
 --- Charles Darwin, The Ascent of Man

The separately quoted 2nd part of my sentence points to my doubt about 
"physics" (or any other 'science', for that matter) whether they are 
capable in a 'synthetic' effort to encompass ALL interrelations into a 
buildup step when many of them still may be undiscovered?. A 
reductionist 'synthesis' works on the available inventory and ends up 
with an "Aris-Total"-like incompleteness (i.e. that the 'total' is more 
than the 'sum' of the parts.). Just as a reductionist analysis is 
inventory-related and so incomplete.

It is only your opinion that the inventory is *necessarily* incomplete.

Brent Meeker

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Re: Evil ?

2006-12-25 Thread John Mikes

On 12/25/06, Brent Meeker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

John Mikes wrote:
> Tom Caylor wrote:
>  > This looks like Tarski's trick to me.  It is an act of faith any time
>  > we take what we say as truth.
> On 12/24/06, *Brent Meeker* < [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > wrote:
> "When I take what I say to be true based on evidence it is not a matter
> of faith"
> JM:
> it is based on your faith in your evidence and its truth. A religious
> person accepts  as evidence "God said so" - of course it is based on HIS
> faith, and so are physicists evidencing by collapse of wave function,
> .by calculations on the inflation after the BB, and other kind of
> 'scientists' (believing) in the tenets of their (today's) science, just
> as (in Ptolemy-time) on the flatness of the Earth.
>
> Tom Caylor wrote:
>  >This is unsupported without an ultimate
>  > Person who gives the ultimate source of bringing truth into existence
>  > through words.
> BM:
> "This is pure magic mongering - as though some special "ultimate" person
> can bring something into existence by words."
> JM:
> Unless you have 'faith' in that "ultimate person" - I take Brent's
> side here.
> *
> BM:
> Critics of reductionism ignore the contrary process of
> synthesis.  Physics does not *just* reduce things to atoms, it also
> shows how things are synthesized from atoms and their relations.
> JM:
> "relations" is a big word (Do you have a good meaning for it?)

Multi-place predicates.  Note that some physicists (David Mermin, Carlo
Rovelli) propose that we formulate quantum mechanics as "relations without
relata".

JM:
Cute proposal.  Paraphrase: Interconnection between 2 nothings?  Or:
functions without substrate? Or abstracted: efficiency without effect?

IMO it
> includes the impredicative - non computable interrelatedness of the
> totality we cannot include into our limited reductionist  models.

Just because our models are limited does not justify the conclusion that
there are things that cannot be modelled.

JM:
and who's conclusion is that? not mine.  Please read  carefully:
" we cannot include [the unlimited totality] into our limited
reductionist  models."
That allows for everything to be (limitedly) modeled.

Nor
> can "physics" consider all of it in a 'synthetic' opposite.

All of what?  Are you sure there is a "whole"?

JM:
Are you sure there is NO [unlimited] impredicative - non (Turing-emulable),
all encompassing  interrelatedness? (which I did not call a "whole") and
which sure is not 'the whole' with 'everything included into its
boundaries', eo ipso NOT a "whole".

The separately quoted 2nd part of my sentence points to my doubt about
"physics" (or any other 'science', for that matter) whether they are capable
in a 'synthetic' effort to encompass ALL interrelations into a buildup step
when many of them still may be undiscovered?. A reductionist 'synthesis'
works on the available inventory and ends up with an "Aris-Total"-like
incompleteness (i.e. that the 'total' is more than the 'sum' of the parts.).
Just as a reductionist analysis is inventory-related and so incomplete.

I consider

> Stathis's words on his "chemistry" as his domain-concept of relations
> between people etc., otherwise I would have argued (on my turf) about
> chemistry's "occurrence" vs our figment how to depict and explain into
> patterns (even drawn into 2D formulation upon the atomic illusions in
> chem. science) the figment we have about certain primitively observed
> phenomena. All in the sense of "physical" edifice-evidence we have
> ""FAITH"" in.

I cant' discern any meaning in that.

JM:
so noted.  Stathis P, to whom this par refers to maybe can. If you kindly
specify elements you would like to read more about, I will happily oblige
(if I can).

Brent Meeker

John Mikes

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Re: Evil ?