Re: Faith and Science (was comm.)

Posted by Russ Abbott on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Re-comm-was-Re-FW-Re-Emergence-Seminar-BritishEmergence-tp3654051p3661390.html

I didn't say I had a definition. In fact, I said that I was having a very hard time putting words to it. But does that mean that one should give up on it?  We can't do much with consciousness (or the term I prefer, subjective experience) either, but I'm not willing to dismiss it as virtually meaningless.

Please remember that my participation in the discussion came after Eric, Miles, and Glen [one 'n'], seemed very dismissive of reality. That seemed quite strange to me. Our current inability to get our arms/head/words around something isn't automatically grounds to dismiss it. Most of what we have figured out about the world started out as very poorly formulated.

-- Russ_A

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 12:14 AM, russell standish <[hidden email]> wrote:

You tell me. Just what is the notion? Reality could mean:

1) What kicks back. Johnson's stone, or Doug's hammered thumb
2) Elementary particles
3) Force Fields
4) A universal dovetailer (Schmidhuber's Great Programmer)
5) Platonia of mathematical forms
6) Kant's noumenon
7) Standish's Nothing (aka Library of Babel)
8) Real in the sense I am real (RITSIAR)
...


and that's just what I pulled out of my head in a brief moment. The
... indicates that there are many, many, more subtle variants. Most of
these versions of reality are incompatible with each other.

The truth is that the word reality has been debased so much it is
virtually meaningless, unless very carefully qualified.

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 09:55:10PM -0700, Russ Abbott wrote:
> Just because someone uses a word nonsensically, does that make the word
> nonsense?
>
> I still don't get it. Why are so many people so anxious to dismiss the word
> *reality *-- and with it the corresponding notion?
>
> -- Russ_A
>
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 9:38 PM, russell standish <[hidden email]>wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 06:36:18PM -0700, Russ Abbott wrote:
> > >
> > > And it has nothing to do with whether there is a God. I don't understand
> > the
> > > connection. Reality is. (That's the end of the previous sentence.) God,
> > if
> > > there is any such thing, is by definition outside the realm of what is.
> > And
> > > I say that because those who believe in God -- at least those who are
> > > sophisticated about it -- are very careful to keep God away from any sort
> > of
> > > empirical investigation or verification.
> > >
> > > -- RussA
> > >
> >
> > The only connection is analogical. There's probably almost as many
> > conceptions of god as there are people on the planet. Similarly, there
> > seems to be about as many conceptions of reality. Consequently, both
> > terms are really superfluous to doing science.
> >
> > --
> >
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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> > Mathematics
> > UNSW SYDNEY 2052                         [hidden email]
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> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >

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--

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Mathematics
UNSW SYDNEY 2052                         [hidden email]
Australia                                http://www.hpcoders.com.au
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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