2012/7/10 meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> > On 7/10/2012 10:49 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: > > There is something deeply religious in many scientifics in his quest to > expand their Truth. And there is also something very philosophical indeed. > But they ignore both. They ignore their beliefs and their positivistic > metaphisics, born in the disputes between nominalists and realists during > the middle ages. And there is no stronger faith than the faith that see > himself as aboslute truth about everithing, that ignores its shorcomings > and its history, and that show contempt or even denial of entire parts of > the reality. > > This furious scientist proselitism us understandable and it is > even healthy, because the idea of a objective scientist with no emotions > is hypocrite. > > That shows once again that faith is something a society can not live > without,. because faith in ultimate, unexplained truths is the prerequisite > for any coordinated social action. And the truths upon which a society > build itself is its most valuable treasure. > > This seems of topic, but I suggest something to discuss here: shared > human conscience. We live in a shared virtual conscience. It is shared > because we share the context and it is virtual because it depends in the > context of shared beliefs: beliefs in the myths and histories that created > our country, beliefs in some moral laws, beliefs in the prestige of some > special humans: priests, scientifics, political figures of the past and the > present. We can not verify our beliefs because we have no time and no > knowledge to do so. So we resort to faith. faith in authority: being > scientific, political or anything. common faith and legitimated authority > is necessary to live with others and thus whenever a society is build, it > needs it. > > > I think you are confounding faith and trust. >
Trust is a stress reduction word, a secularization form of faith. Just like fraternity instead of charity (that means "love"). it was introduced in Europe after the French revolution. http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=faith%2Ctrust&year_start=1720&year_end=2012&corpus=0&smoothing=3 The german people in the 30´s had faith or trust on Hitler (and here comes Hitler again). It does not matter.You can see that the relation of trust with reasonable facts is less tan tenable. The "duck" epistemology of trust is the same as faith. The etimology of trust in many languages: (allmost all the latin derived languages) is the same as faith. because the faith is the essence of trust. you trust your friends because you belive that you know how your friends act and thing. The mental operation of trust and faith are the same when you lose your faith in something you loose your trust on it and viceversa. Moreover, people have not infinite abilities. they are limited because our brain is limited and not general purpose. we have a mental organ for keeping and changing beliefs and trust or whathever you may call it (let´s call it social capital habilities). For that matter ideologies and religions are the same in psychological terms. A group of ecologists singing in a Al Gore´s conference and a group of christians like me staring at the window of Vatican have the same brain areas excited. But also an ignorant who praise science looking at Stephen Hawkins. A phisicist ignorant in common law of philosophy or History or Morals, or game theory or evolutionary psychology or Theology or ignorant in our traditions and now they came to be not only is sure that he would say nonsense when talking about things that really matter for our lives, but for sure it could become as dangerous as the anthropologist that gave support to Hitler. knowledge in a limited field does not mean knowledge in what is important. Hawking is simply going beyond what its knowledge authorizes him to talk about. People tend to extrapolate its self confidence from one field to another. But what is worst, our mind can not distribute our trusts, we tend to grant trust to people no matter what they talk about, specially when most of our limited knowledge comes from people like him. That is part of the economy of computation and our tendency to form closed groups of mutual trust based on common beliefs to optimize our social capital. Upon a group is stablished and belief is consolidates, we the humans are in disposition to defend it with lies, rejection of facts and violence. No matter how "scientific" of true (all believe that they are) is the set of beliefs. That is the nature of our evolved mind. So be careful. > Trust is something society, and all of us, cannot live without. But > trust doesn't mean belief without evidence. As Ronald Reagan famously > said, "Trust, but verify." Faith means trusting and never trying to > verify. That we can live without. We have trust in authorities who have > proven trustworthy in the past. We bet on many things even though we never > have certain knowledge, but that doesn't mean we have no knowledge or that > we should not test our knowledge. > > > > And the assault of the foundational social truths and the core beliefs > of the people is central for any battle for power > > > Exactly what happens when beliefs are faith and are divorced from > empirical test - then all that remains is a struggle for power to impose > arbitrary beliefs to be held on faith. > > Brent > > > > Do the hawking Theory of everything says something about this? I´m > soure, because it is about everyhing, Isn´t? > > > > 2012/7/7 Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> > >> >> On 07 Jul 2012, at 15:31, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: >> >> My comments to Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, >>> especially to the statement from the book >>> >>> “Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is >>> dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, >>> particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of >>> discovery in our quest for knowledge.” >>> >>> http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/07/philosophy-is-dead.html >>> >> >> >> I am not so much in favor of "professional philosophers", which does not >> mean that some of them do good ... science (like Maudlin, Slezak, even >> McGuin: it is real reasoning). >> >> But that statement looks like the blind arrogance of physics, which >> ignores the mind body problem systematically for years. >> >> Consciousness might be the grain of sand which will remind us that we >> might try to be a bit more modest. >> >> To say that scientists have become the bearer of the knowledge quest is a >> truism becoming false when the scientist put a problem under the rug. >> >> Bruno >> >> >> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ >> >> >> >> >> -- >> 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 >> everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. >> >> > -- > 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 > everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. > > > -- > 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 > everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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