On 27 Jan 2014, at 19:56, meekerdb wrote:
On 1/27/2014 3:20 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 27 Jan 2014, at 06:55, meekerdb wrote:
On 1/26/2014 9:19 PM, LizR wrote:
On 27 January 2014 17:31, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
On 1/26/2014 6:44 PM, LizR wrote:
On 27 January 2014 14:08, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
On 1/26/2014 3:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I have provided the definition. Should I repeat?
God is the transcendental reality we bet on, and which is
supposed to be responsible for my or our existence.
Sounds like "physics" to me.
If physics is transcendental, a lot of people may be wasting
their time trying to find a TOE.
Depends on what "transcendental" things have to transcend.
Bruno's fond of pointing out that physicist just assume that
matter is fundamental but don't define it. Of course they might
say, "It's whatever we find to be fundamental...and we're calling
it doG."
Transcendental does have a lot of meanings, depending on who's
using it, but generally I'd take it to be something like "beyond
our understanding", hence my (tongue in cheek) comment.
I think Bruno has a point. Well, at least, I'd be disappointed if
physicist decided that they couldn't explain matter etc, and that
they should just "shut up and calculate" from now on.
Refer to my discourse on solving "the hard problem". If you
calculate stuff accurately and predict stuff that surprising,
people will think you've explained it.
By definition, that can solve only the easy problem. You just
dismiss the hard problem.
Yet, the hard problem is 99,9% solvable, but with the price that
physicalism is wrong. net adavantage, we do get an explanation, not
only for consciousness, but also for the origin of matter.
Here I 'm afraid you tend to be an eliminativist, here.
That's the main point.
I'm afraid so.
Science has advanced and people *suppose* that it has explained
gravity and electromagnetism and atoms and descent of species and
lots of other stuff. But what it has done is show their relations
and made accurate predictions AND *eliminated* the things people
asked to be explained: Newton didn't explain what pushed the planets
around.
He was tormented by that problem. We have progressed of course,
notably through QM and SR.
Darwin didn't explain how animals adapted.
But Mendel, Morgan, and then Watson and Crick, Jacob and Monod, and
QM, completed the picture. We have progressed.
Maxwell didn't explain the luminiferous ether. Just like we can't
explain to Edgar how gravity gets out of a black hole. Science
advances a lot by "eliminativism".
Yes, and most of the time, such eliminativism is a progress. WE
eliminate the terms of the obsolete theories, like phlogiston, or like
the cold and hot atoms of Lavoisier, or the N rays, etc.
To eliminate persons and consciousness is different: that is a deny of
key data.
Beside being humanly morally dubious, it is the contrary of science.
To eliminate the mind, can be a useful methodological simplification:
we don't need consciousness to send a man on the moon, or to study the
ring of Saturn. But to solve the mind-bod problem, and keep the comp
theory in the cognitive science, we have to eliminate primitive
matter, not consciousness (that's my point).
We have to eliminate what cannot be used, not the data in need of
explanations.
Bruno
Brent
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
send an email to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
