(February 4, 2015 at 5:25 am)bennyboy Wrote: There are several different reasons why I consider myself agnostic. One is a general distrust of the human capacity to comprehend truth. One is the great variety of God ideas which make a single answer to a general question too difficult. Another is a leaning toward idealism as opposed to physicalism.First off, thanks for taking my Buzz Lightyear meme in another thread tongue-in-cheek as intended. I only mention it here because I'm going to throw a couple ideas at you for consideration.
When you talk about your distrust in human comprehension of truth, what is your definition of truth? For me, truth hinges on the idea of justified true belief; which has nothing to do with what I'll call ultimate truth (I know, using the same word in the definition of the word you're trying to define. I'll assume you understand my meaning here). Just because we don't know it all doesn't mean what we do know can't be considered truth.
Einstein didn't prove Newton wrong; I'd like to assume you understand my meaning without a lot of explanation. Someday I think someone will come along that will make Einstein look like Newton. Today, even if a majority of people don't understant what F=ma means explicitly they understand it implicity. After 300 years I think the same would be understood of e=mc^2; even though by then the new Newton/Einstein would be 100 years old. Richard Feynman said "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics". Eventually 'Feynman' becomes a grade school insult.
Benny, I'm not being insulting here; just trying to appreciate the difference in approach. I'm comfortable with the human legacy of riding the asymptotic derivative curve towards ultimate truth; whereas you seem more comfortable assuming the end point and taking the integral under the curve and labeling it consciousness. If we reach the same point someday I will congratulate Herschel, Thomson, Rutherford, Chadwick, Neddermeyer, Higgs/CERN and their successors; whereas, you'll smuggly proclaim that Democritus knew it all along with no demonstration of the mechanism.
(February 4, 2015 at 5:25 am)bennyboy Wrote: I believe that the truth is at a border condition: to be found at whatever is under QM, or inside a black hole, or at the Big Bang. And I think that in those conditions, there are so many ambiguities and paradoxes that words probably cease to really mean anything. In other words, I think in those cases, you might come across something you COULD call God, but whether people would choose to do so would still come down to their semantic preferences.
This calls to mind a quote from Anthony Leggett:
Quote:It may be somewhat dangerous to explain something one does not understand very well [the quantum measurement process] by invoking something [consciousness] one does not understand at all!
The reason this quote resonates with me has little to do with Leggett's authority (who the fuck is Leggett?), but that it applies to experts and laymen when considering the intersection of physics and philosophy.
