On 27 Jun 2008, at 20:52, Tom Caylor wrote:
>
> On Jun 8, 2:43 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>> On 06 Jun 2008, at 23:35, Tom Caylor wrote:
>> ...
>>> One consistent configuration is that we are all immortal and that
>>> part
>>> of this immortal being is something that is outside of what we can
>>> observe scientifically, including other persons' deaths.
>>
>> I am with you. But we can address scientifically the question "does
>> self-introspecting machine refer correctly to something they can
>> recognize as being something they cannot observe in a third person
>> communicable (scientific, objective) way and yet still *know* that
>> they can make the experience of it (for example through prays,
>> reflexion, meditation, 1-self-introspection, starvation, accidents,
>> drugs, or some other (hopefully) genuine 3-self-manipulations, ...)?
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
> If the basis of everything is a Person, then this can make my above
> statement make sense.
Yes. As I said. Although perhaps from different motivation or reason.
But as you know the platonist (who believes in A V ~A) universal (who
believes in all true Sigma_1 sentences) Lobian (who knows that)
machine has three "unique" Gods available for her.
- The ONE, Plato's notion of Truth, which has to be searched for, and
which can hardly be said to be a "person", at least a priori. For each
machine such a "truth" is unnameable or non definable by the machine.
- The INTELLIGIBLE, which splits into two (its terrestrial part,
described respectively by G and its "divine" part described by G* , at
the level of propositional logic). The terrestrial part is a sort of
cold, objective, scientific, person. The divine part, is not so easily
amenable to personhood. The universal machine and Plotinus agree that
this is a difficult question! Aristotle is very ambiguous here, imo.
- The SOUL, or universal self or universal mind. It is the knower, the
unnameable self, (the one described by the logic S4Grz). This one is
the closer to the notion of "God as a person". Perhaps even the
*unique* person (yet an open problem here). But it is closer to the
eastern notion of God, than to the western notion. it is the one you
can recognize within. The one about which Alan Watts talked about in
most of its book, including "Beyond Theology", "The Book", "Joyous
Cosmology", for examples. He is the subject of first person immortality.
They are dream technics which can help you to "remember", by,
curiously enough perhaps, forgetting everything else.
And there are plants which can accelerate the process (like Alan watts
explained in "Joyous cosmology"). This leads to a Botanical form of
entheogenic computationalism, where you say "yes to the doctor-plant!"
Entheogen: means "reveals the God within".
Actually, those who find Plotinus' way of talking a bit laborious or
those who dislike his vocabulary, can read as well the trip reports of
entheogenic experiences. This is especially clear with the trips made
under Salvia Divinorum. See for example:
http://www.sagewisdom.org/experiences.html
Personally I have used mainly cafeine, (and sometimes other stuff) for
helping to generate realistic-enough dream's state, when it does not
prevent sleep altogether (!). See my chapter on Dreams in "Conscience
et Mécanisme": "Le cerveau, le rêve et la réalité" if you want more
on dreams as a mean to get "altered state of consciousness" for the
purpose of illustrating the UD proof. Cafeine does not help for
getting the amnesia, alas, but the amnesia can be prepared by some
yoga or meditation exercises. A minimal understanding of the notion of
dream is of course an important prerequisite to get the sixth step of
the UDA.
I don't recommand you to try Salvia Divinorum though, but if you do,
verify it is legal in your country. It is illegal in Australia,
Belgium, South Korea and in some US states.
In case you do, follow the user's manual: The User's Guide in PDF
format. I could come back on this one day.
Of course the UDA pill is enough to get the things "scientifically",
that is in the modest (based on sharable theory) and communicable
(polite) manner. But some experience with consciousness could help a
lot, I guess.
Or (re)read directly Plato and Plotinus, or perhaps any "mystic".
> Can we really have a scientific understanding
> of a person?
It depends what you mean by "scientific understanding". We never
understand our theories, that is why we invent them. Scientific
understanding is always reduction of set of beliefs into other set of
beliefs. We understand only "trivially" the initial chosen beliefs.
> This would by definition be one person having a
> scientific understanding of their relationship to another person.
I think you are confusing two levels. We can build a theory (and
indeed all comp theories are necessary like that) where we can, after
choosing some axiomatic for the notion of person, explain why we
cannot understand scientifically (by third person verifiable facts)
the notion of person (first person).
Mechanism cannot put the "mystery" under the rug, it can only help us
to contemplate it by eliminating the pseudo-mysterious marmelade, like
Matter, Universe and other fairy tales.
>
> Actually, I think that this is a downfall of many relationships among
> persons.
It is what eliminative materialism leads to. At least this is in
contradiction with Mechanism. (BTW I say Mechanism instead of
Computationalism, just to recall we should not attach ourselves to
words. By Mechanism, in our list context, I mean Digital Mechanism, or
comp, like Judson Webb, or like in: Conscience et Mécanisme).
"Mechanism" is also shorter, and I'm tired saying "comp" all the times.
> The scientific understanding requires repeatability.
I don't think so. Evolution and history are not repeatable, yet can be
approached with the scientific (modest) attitude. Remember that
science, in which I include theology, is mainly essentially "just"
that: modesty and doubts. It *has* to be such if Mechanism is correct.
That is what my work is all about.
> The
> goal of modern science (which is what we mean by science) is control,
That is engineering, or more general form of constructive science.
Real science, I mean knowledge driven inquiry, is more on the side of
"let it go". If you try to control what is fundamental, you make it
running away. With platonist third person science, the more you know,
the bigger your own ignorance appears to be. Alan watts, again,
describes very well all this in "The wisdom of insecurity". That is
why I called sometimes the second incompleteness modal formula: "Dt ->
~BDt", the "Lao-Tseu, Watts, Valadier formula. It is a deep law of
contrariety about fundamental things, like consistency, reality,
control, security, etc. Valadier is a french Jesuit, who wrote
impressive theologial book on that idea with respect to moral.
>
> which requires repeatability. Love (the mysterious force of good
> relationship between persons) does not "work" within a scientific
> framework.
Hmmm... Perhaps in the current materialist and reductionist conception
of "science". I invite you to read Plotinus' treatise 50 on Love.
There is also an interesting thesis by Agnès Pigier (published by
VRIN, Paris 2002): "Plotin, une métaphysique de l'amour, l'amour comme
structure du monde intelligible". For Plotinus: Love (amour) comes
from the meeting between "logos" and "indeterminacy".
Please, remember that mechanism and materialism are metaphysically,
epistemologically, or even "common-sensical" incompatible (cf UDA).
OK? This seems not yet well known. Ask question on UDA if residual
doubts persist on this. I know how this can be counter-intuitive in
the naturalistic aristotelian framework, but yet the UD Argument does
not leave much choice here.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list.domain.name.hidden
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list-unsubscribe.domain.name.hidden
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Received on Sun Jun 29 2008 - 14:38:49 PDT