Mod Idea: Simulating surfaces -> Borg Technology -> Twinkie Physics -> Worldviews

[Krsqk]

"Gravity, magnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force (the 4 fundamental forces of nature, IIRC) did not "come to be" at any point; they were always in effect."

Which, again, is based on your pre-determined worldview. A creationist would say that those forces were created along with everything else. My point was that the "order in nature without outside intervention" argument fits both sides equally well.

[Fyron]

Well... one must always keep an open mind and not allow their pre-determined worldview to prevent any sort of growth. Just accepting something on blind faith is, IMO, kinda dumb. And no, I do not accept evolution and such on blind faith.

[Will]

Originally posted by jimbob:
Well it sounds like your brain has warmed up quite well in this thread. I hope you do well on your exams!! What are you studying anyway?[/QB]

Right now, the little pieces of paper say "Computer Science". I'm going to be changing them to "Computer Engineering/Computer Science", just to have that little extra breadth. I'll probably swap in another major or a minor sometime.

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Here's where I think your use of the principle fails. You have already stated you believe that the exsistnace of God to be unprovable, and by applying the razor you say the lack of proof means that God does not exsist. That seems to me to be very circular logic at best. And it also assumes that everything is "knowable" by us, an assumption which I do not accept, although I cannot refute, and which you cannot support. Only time will tell I suppose on that point.

I can see where you think it fails, since the Razor would tend to support whichever view weilds it right My reasoning behind it falls more on extrapolating from previous beliefs (though I didn't say that... I need to work on this communication stuff). Originally, people didn't understand how the sun and the moon rose every day; so, they said it was gods that did it. Once we found out how the sun and moon actually appear to rise, that was thrown out. It seems that whatever is not understood has the label "GOD" slapped on it, and makes everything all right. So, right now, we don't really understand how this whole universe shebang got started. It seems to me that the reflexive action is to slap on the label, and everything will be all right. I see no reason why this would be any different than wrongly (we think )explaining the rising of sun and moon as divine influence.

As for not all mysteries of the universe being knowable, I think this allows for that. There's always some other intricacy of the interactions throughout the universe that will need to be explained. Especially what 42 is the answer to. Then, once we figure that out, we will all be destroyed, and a new universe even more bizzare than this one will be created. Of course, this has probably already happened...

[Krsqk]

"Well... one must always keep an open mind and not allow their pre-determined worldview to prevent any sort of growth. Just accepting something on blind faith is, IMO, kinda dumb."

Depending on your definition of open mind. It seems nowadays that it means "Accept everybody and everything without any sort of value judgment." As long as it means "Keep your eyes open and your brain engaged," I don't have a problem with that.

Oh, and most people who operate solely on blind faith aren't well informed about much of anything, including their faith.

[Wardad]

My God has a sense of humor. OH BOY, does he ever have a sense of humor!!!

[E. Albright]

Originally posted by Krsqk:
RE: Language as interpretation

E. Albright, you are exactly right. However, if something is written down, it must be interpreted in the context in which it was written.

For example, if I write a book about someone who plays with acid, it makes a major difference if I'm writing it during the 1860s or the 1960s. All language is subject to that change, although not usually in that magnitude.

Ouch. The deconstructionist in me wants to jump on this and scream bloody murder over your apparent favoring of writing over other forms of communication, but I think it'd be irrelevant (and said disconnected deconstructionist Albright parts might be extracting an interpretation from your speech that you never intended to put there, but that's not what I'm driving at...).

On the other hand, if you agree with what I'd earlier stated re: speech as a necessarily interpretive act, you subvert your argument that "it must be interpreted in the context in which it was written." If all communication is interpretive, you cannot judge something in its "real" context, unless you have firsthand experience with it [ and at this point my nascent phenomenological instincts want to scream bloody murder, 'cause your firsthand experience is still interpretive, subjective and intentional (ah, quelle joie to deal with Continental philosophy!) ], because your conception of the context is formed by the accounts of others (i.e., by other communications) and is thus naught but a subjectively interpretation...

The point that your above comment raises doesn't, IMO, go any distance to being able to redeem the notion that one can definatively know the "meaning" of a text, which is to say that it is insufficient to negate the fallacy of intentionality { i.e., the assertion that "one can, by reading a text [ and if we let Derrida have his way (as we probably shouldn't ), all communications are 'texts' ], discern with certainty the message that the author intended to communicate" is ultimately indefensible }.

The gist of the above critical babbling is that, even if one "[ interprets a work ] in the context in which it was written", one cannot hope to state authoritatively that one is interpreting it "literally". The idea of iterpreting something "literally" suggests that there is a single, definate and correct way to interpret any given work, and hélas, there is no way to justify this assertion...

(Yes, it's good to try to take a work's historical context into account. But this doesn't grant the interpreter a magical looking-glass with which to discern the "true" meaning of the work. Rather, it allows the interpretation of the work to be more consistent with the interpretation of other works derived from the same context...)

E. Albright
(An obviously less-than-completely reformed former deconstructionist)

[ Edit: typing errors ]

[ December 16, 2002, 13:53: Message edited by: E. Albright ]

[Krsqk]

That's fine and all, coming from a deconstructionist, but some of us ordinary people believe that once upon a time, words had meanings. Furthermore, in the past, there were books called dictionaries which sought to solidify the meaning of words, instead of aid in the progression (or digression) of their meanings, as seems to be popular today. It is reasonable to assume that the Bible translators in particular, and authors in general, used words that directly communicated their intent, in keeping with the established meanings of those words. In short (Short? Do I know what short means? }, I think that lack of 100% certainty (where rounding up to 100% is not permitted) is not reason for discounting the probability of successfully interpreting a text.

I'm not sure if I even know what I just wrote--time for a snack break.

[edit] Oh, and I don't necessarily favor writing over other forms of communication; my original point was just that written text retains the meanings from its time of writing, allowing one to interpret it with reasonable certainty.

[ December 16, 2002, 14:38: Message edited by: Krsqk ]