Le 05-janv.-06, à 06:06, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit :
>
> It is worth repeating that "machine theology" would be a bad choice of
> words quite aside from the debate that has been generated on this
> thread about the meaning of atheism etc.
OK, this is another point.
> This is because of the negative reaction the term "theology" would
> inspire in the (English-speaking, at least) scientific and
> philosophical community. I think even the savvier crackpots would
> avoid that word! It may not be fair, but that's the way it is.
I must think about that. I am not entirely convinced because it could
be that the bad reaction is due to ... some basic theological error.
It is very nice that all of you try to convince me that the term
"theology" should be avoided, although I am not yet sure that I can
avoid it, and remaining at the same time a little bit honest if not
just consistent.
Also, the fact that using "theology" makes you (all of you(*)) so
nervous means perhaps that it is perhaps *urgent* we use it together
with more serious connotations so that with some luck we will be able
to finish the 3d millenium with the needed modesty to proceed.
Have you heard about Godel's proof of the existence of God? Godel did
take the definition of God given by St-Anselm and formalised it in the
S5 modal logic (actually the one proposed by Tom Caylor in its recent
post!).
I don't take this, personally as a proof of the existence of God. This
is because I don't believe in St-Anselm definition of God (nor even
that God is definable), nor do I "believe" in the S5 modal logic. But I
*do* believe that Godel did prove that theology can be done in the
scientific way, with definitions and proofs, etc.
See a sketch here:
http://www.stats.uwaterloo.ca/~cgsmall/ontology.html
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Received on Thu Jan 05 2006 - 10:52:57 PST