Tom Caylor writes:
Bruno, I have been doing a lot of reading/thinking on your former posts on the Hypostases, other reading on Plotinus and the neo-Platonist hypostases, and the Christian "interpretation" of the hypostases. There is a lot to say, but I'll start by just giving some responses to your last post on this. On Dec 11, 8:46 am, Bruno Marchal > I agree that the problem of evil (and thus the equivalent problem of > Good) is interesting. Of course it is not well addressed by the two > current theories of everything: Loop gravity and String theory. With > that respect the comp hyp can at least shed some light on it, and of > course those "light" are of the platonic-plotinus type where the notion > of goodness necessitates the notion of truth to begin with. I say more > below. The discussions over the last two weeks on Evil, and just how to define good and bad, underscore how puzzling this problem can be. I agree that at the base of this is the question, "What is Truth?" I am not satisfied with the Theaetetus definition, or Tarski's "trick". I believe the answer to the question, "What is Truth?" which Pilate asked Jesus, was standing right in front of Pilate: Jesus himself. The Christian definition of truth goes back to the core of everything, who is personal. As I've said before, without a personal core, the word "personal" has lost its meaning. In the context nowadays of impersonal-based philosophy, "personal" has come to "mean" something like "without rational basis". But when the personal IS the basis, not an impersonal concept of personal, but the ultimate Person, and with man being made in the image of that ultimate Person, we have a basis for truth, personality, rationality, good...
I'm not sure that this is what you meant, but there is in a sense an objective basis to the personal or subjective, which is simply that when I say I feel or desire something, this is an empirical statement: either I do feel it or I am lying. Also, there is an objective explanation for why I have the feeling in terms of neurophysiology, evolution and so on. But this is not enough for some people and they think, for example, that there must be more to "love" than just particular feelings and the scientific basis for these feelings. But this mysterious love-substance would appear to make no difference whatsoever. The evidence is that if certain chemical reactions occur, the love feeling also occurs, and these chemical reactions occur because they have evolved that way to assist bonding with family, community and so on. That explanation covers everything, and the love-substance remains superfluous and undetectable, inviting Occam's Razor to cut it down.
Stathis Papaioannou _________________________________________________________________ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
