What don't you accept about his proof? It's valid. — Shwah

Turning the crank of tautology detector won't get you what you want. I happen to be trained in math, and it's the discipline in which one never knows nor needs to know what one is talking about, for only structural properties matter. If you want to leap from some formal exercise to a statement about reality, you need a justification of those formal principles, and of course you have to give your symbols a meaning in the world of flesh and blood. There's a difference between a king on a chess board and a king of the Jews.

You can't deny a God-like being doesn't exist if you accept his proof is the point and the op is about atheism.
Also I'm clearly not interested in talking about my religion with you lol — Shwah

I don't accept his 'proof,' and I'm trying to emphasize the absurdity of getting from symbols dancing on a page metamagically to your bag ditty gad from the fury tails in yore dirty old books.

In the USA, I don't see the silencing of theists or really any kind of supernatural theorists. You can even believe that extraterrestrial reptiles who eat children run the world and they won't lock you up. You can blog about the flatness of the earth as you fly around the globe. As far as I can tell, religious folks are often resentful of the intellectual minority who dare to challenge or mock not silence such theories.

In any case, the validity is in a God-like being and that's the baseline here. — Shwah

So, putting it bluntly, do you go from Gödel's 'proof' to a religion with specific content? Does your God prohibit incest ? (Asking for a friend.) If so, what's the trail from proof to prohibition? Do you need only to get your foot on the first rung? Is logic a disposable ladder?

"mental ideality" is intentional, that is, always about non-mental reality (i.e. consciousness of what transcends consciousness); otherwise, exclusive concern with "mental ideality" lacks substantive (i.e. non-arbitrary) content and spirals into masturbatory solipsism. — 180 Proof

Yes. Well put. Some want the hole in the donut without the dough.

I'm saying that most folks want a personal god who cares about them and that the gods cooked up by logicians and metaphysicians tend to be uselessly abstract, scratching only a metaphysical itch which is rare in the first place. The alternative to this, which is maybe more common, is that believers in Jehova or Allah or Jesu ( the personal god in some ancient story ) try to drag in abstract logic chopping and ignore that, at best, this gets them only an indeterminate deity and not the avatar of their sweaty and pugnacious tribe.

Once one enters the realm of reason and logic, the game is already lost perhaps (or beginning to be won), for reason is essentially universal, and a god subject to logic is already the slave of man or his self-flattering pocketmirror.

Only when the strangeness of beings oppresses us does it arouse and evoke wonder. Only on the ground of wonder-the manifestness of the nothing-does the "why?" loom before us. Only because the "why" is possible as such can we in a definite way inquire into grounds and ground things. Only because we can question and ground things is the destiny of our existence placed in the hands of the researcher.” — Joshs

Nice quote !

What? Those hairless apes that immediately cooked their own planet? — apokrisis

Nice!

A problem with your Göd above, neglecting the question machinery with which he it is lowered upon the world state, is its abominable blankness and blandness. I could be wrong, but I assume the goal is a benevolent bloke with his hands on the controls who'll make exceptions for the righteous, give 'em a tit for a tat, a pet for a this or that. Derive if thou canst from then hair a god worth the conjuring.

That's my entire stock of knowledge about chewing. — Cuthbert

Love the quote!

Thesis a chew sorry. (This is a true story. ) We are chew chew drains. A chew place bikini. The moral of the story is oral. There is chew munch spoke to say what is gong.

Await my friend. The so eagerly looked for truth will be revealed once and for all. — EugeneW

<smile>

His worldview seems to be similar to my own Enformationism, in which Information (meaningful relationships) is the Ontological Primitive. However, I locate that "primitive" in the mind of the Programmer, not in the multiple minds of her avatars or creatures. — Gnomon

This sounds like a variety of deism. The philosophical problem, which I don't think you've address, is the trust you put in the word 'mind' to do so much lifting for you. If you look into philosophers that your own ancient foes (scientism's scimitar welding scions) also fear and despise, you might be surprised at what you find (for instance 'Went-gone-slime.') There are understandings of the world that are neither visions of only junk nor visions of only dreams.

Hence the ubiquity of relativism and subjectivism which is all-pervasive in modern philosophy. — Wayfarer

There's plenty of that to be had, but there's also presentation of a fragile absolute. If the ego or subject has been revealed as a tired and tangled fiction, that hardly sounds like subjectivism. Cultural relativism is a more plausible complaint. Many philosophers these days will, I think, grant that we can only see by the light of our imperfect, inherited torches. This is just a mutation of the Kantianism that Hegel raged against and yet assimilated to radicalize it against its own modesty. (The view-from-nowhere is a piece of our view-from-somewhere. Here be dragons! )

The anxiety over contingency is nonetheless a valid anxiety because without some necessary being - such as God - the drive towards the intelligibility of the universe, which is the foundational drive of science, hits a brick wall with existence itself, which remains radically unintelligible, without explanation, unless it is related in some way to necessary being. — Neil Ormerod, The Metaphysical Muddle of Lawrence Krauss

This recognition (correct or not) of brute fact or pure contingency seems to be 'the mystical' for young Wittgenstein and 'the nausea' for young Sartre's Roquentin. Also there's Hilbert's we must know, we will know. Philosophy begins in wonder and yet we're instructed also to be astonished at nothing. These imperatives are like dueling twin brothers. Be not astonished is perhaps that 'restlessness' I referenced in the face of the arbitrary. The wise child's why slices infinitely thin. Is it not in the very structure of our inquiry that some kernel remain 'true for no reason'? The only alternative, which I think is cheating, given its ineffability or outright unintelligibility, is to melt into a somehow self-explained divinely intelligent necessary being.

But as I understand it the theory of relativity supersedes Newtonian physics in some respects, but it doesn't overturn it, as Copernican theory overturned Ptolmaic cosmology. It just showed that Newtonian laws have a limited range of applicability. — Wayfarer

That limited applicability is due to the model 'not noticing' or 'accounting for' the bending of space by mass (it's been awhile, perhaps a physicist can chime in.) An analogy might be fitting a quadratic model to data that's generated cubically, where the generating function is 'basically' or almost quadratic in the region in question. Or consider the description of a scene by a color blind person. For many purposes this is fine. Animals with color vision, as I understand it, tend to need it, perhaps to gauge the difference between edible and poisonous fruit, etc. It should be noted that measurements are noisy or approximate and that no model fits a data set perfectly.

Reading them, one gets the impression that they want very much to leave this world. — Constance

Reminds me of Nietzsche's vision of all the life-hating old men and their blasphemies against the river that ever runs over (life.) On the flip there's an imperial lust for cultural conquest and a polymorphously preverse lust for 'this meal over flush.' It may be philosopher of immanence are some of 'em erotomaniacal messengers whose shine is the quest young murk or the muted pose thorn.

Well, that does put a damper on going to the state fair, and everything else, really. What survives? The question insinuates itself into every corner of existence, into language itself, then the self itself. At this point, you're either mentally ill, or you're enlightened. — Constance

As I see it, nonconformity is only ever partial if it's at all intelligible. I agree with Rorty and others that metaphors are mad, essentially senseless until assimilated by a mutating dance. Is Hooligans Wink a work of madness? It takes us back to Vico's divine men, poets without distance from their ghost-gushing imaginations, living therefore a thunder-hunted world of fairy tails. The proximity of madness and enlightenment reminds me Cambell's talk of the shaman as an ambiguous figure, a sort of necessary evil for the tribe, the one who forays beyond the fence, a bastard John Snow, secretly a king (unacknowledged legislator of moon kind.)

Were they not, if they were even slightly different, society as we know it would collapse. — Agent Smith

No big deal, but I think the logic is flowing backwards here. You try to derive the synchronization of action in the world from the synchronization of qualia. It's a typical philosophical prejudice, which makes it familiar enough to seem reasonable, but you are building the world on ghosts. Think of us as evolved, social animals who only survive by appropriately synching our behavior. What matters is action in the world, and I believe we've evolved mentalistic talk to distribute 'praise' and 'blame' and 'duty' and so on (high-level coordination of individual bodies which can work without supervision for a relatively long time.) I don't deny qualia, but I rather futilely try to point out their nullity for serious inquiry.

I still feel there's a deep issue behind all of this with regards to contingency and necessity. It seems to me when it is said that laws could have been otherwise, that this distinction is being lost. But of course it's a very big question. — Wayfarer

It is a big question indeed. You mention necessary beings, and I think we crave (at times anyway) an escape from contingency and pragmatic conjectures into a completely knowable world designed by an idealized humanlike intelligence (for if not humanlike then not comprehendible by us). Sartre might be hinting at this from another angle. We want the impossible combination of freedom and substance (to be human is to want impossibly to become God, be 'done' with everything but still alive.)

I'd be interested in some examples. — Wayfarer

Look up a bit and see the issue with Mercury, which helped support Einstein against Newton.

It baffles me why you want to think of things this way. — Daemon

Respectfully, to challenge a popular anthropomorphic prejudice, for one thing.

To respond automatically is to respond without understanding. — Daemon

Experienced drivers can concentrate on high-level strategic decisions (like the best path to mom's given the traffic and weather) while trusting the now-automatic harmony of a set of lesser skills (flipping on the turn signal, checking the rearview when changing lanes, etc.)

Wittgenstein and Heidegger and others have IMO successfully challenged the admittedly tempting idea of the primacy of the theoretical and related concepts. Rorty, influenced by thinkers like these, understands a naturalist to see "no breaks in the hierarchy of increasingly complex adjustments to novel stimulation – the hierarchy which has amoeba adjusting themselves to changed water temperature at the bottom, bees dancing and chess players check-mating in the middle, and people fomenting scientific, artistic, and political revolutions at the top." I find a continuum more plausible in this case. Making 'understanding' an invisibly subjective/intuitive thing hides it from a scientific/objective approach and leaves us stuck in the mud of 'doesn't it seem to you that...?'

Perhaps nothing is necessary. Reality is overrated. Why is the film industry a multi-billion dollar enterprise? — Agent Smith

Oh we love love our fantasies. I'm mostly with Blake and Vico myself. We secrete the reel world chew gather, poetically. We undergo self help noses, each of us a stuff where developer. Keep your ice built for very tails or a mouse itch in a puddle. The shoe mud go on, wither or not flu ossify nose rats wheel.

It seems that whatever I think of, I can position myself apart from it, in an act of reflection. This reflective self is always NOT the role being played. But cannot be observed or even conceived. — Constance

I don't think you are quite following me, though you make some good related points with which I agree. Try to imagine the so-called unity of individual consciousness or of the metaphysical subject as a prejudice or an invention that's been so successful that it's become too obvious almost to question. If there is a genuine unity on the scene, it is perhaps that of 'reason' or the system of interdependent concepts which is a community's primary property. In other words, the unity is that of the softwhere, which is (so runs my speculation) projected onto the visually singular skull. Invoking Heidegger's 'one' as conceived by Dreyfus, we end up with 'one is one around here.' Those who find less or more than one ghost in their mud are mad.

But it can be approached phonologically in the analysis of the structure of experience. If you want to go there, it does get interesting. Let me know. — Constance

Intriguing. I am attached (at least on this forum) to that which gives itself at least partially to language. I am inclined to respect the revelatory or disclosive or inventive aspects of what is called thinking.

That's why your "criticisms thereof" are not "ingested". They may be food-for-physical-belly, but not nourishment-for-metaphysical-thought. Your error is what Popper called the "Demarcation Problem". Hence, you are shooting at pseudo-science, and hitting thin air. — Gnomon

It's as if you can visualize only one dialectical opponent, whose lance is ever the accusation that what you're doing isn't science. To this rude rider your offer your rote retort.

The intensity of withdrawal? Not many would talk like this around here. — Constance

Agreed. Is there something sociopathic-shamanic about the philosopher? A controlled touch of madness?

I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. This is my dream; this is my nightmare.

but at the fringe of intelligible thought itself: metaphysics. — Constance

'Fringe' sounds right on it.

this nostalgia should not be historically conceived. — Constance

I was thinking not of nostalgia but of a withdrawal of conformity sufficient unto the day to see the Right way as merely the tribe's way. I think of dogs trained by wireless leashes.

there is that "childhood sense of adventure" Kierkegaard talks about in The Concept of Anxiety — Constance

Intriguing. Do philosophers (the 'special' kind) refuse to crow up? (Peter Pun asks Windy.)

There is something to the nothing, but here, one has left analysis. Now the matter turns of the revelatory. — Constance

Perhaps analysis computes with the metaphors provided by revelation once they've cooled and congealed?

Awareness: factually informed condition; cognizance. — Galuchat

Ah, I was probably riding my hobby horse and thinking about qualia.

Thanks for clarifying.

Scientific laws exist where logical necessity meets physical causation. — Wayfarer

I think you know that Newton (Kant's inspiration, I think) was wrong, and that science deals in tentative hypotheses and models that work well enough so far. Is that not already a refutation of this claim ? At the very least your usage of 'law' looks nonstandard.

Science distinguishes a law or theory from facts. Calling a law a fact is ambiguous, an overstatement, or an equivocation. The nature of scientific laws has been much discussed in philosophy, but in essence scientific laws are simply empirical conclusions reached by scientific method; they are intended to be neither laden with ontological commitments nor statements of logical absolutes.
...
Laws differ from scientific theories in that they do not posit a mechanism or explanation of phenomena: they are merely distillations of the results of repeated observation. As such, the applicability of a law is limited to circumstances resembling those already observed, and the law may be found to be false when extrapolated.
...
Like theories and hypotheses, laws make predictions; specifically, they predict that new observations will conform to the given law. Laws can be falsified if they are found in contradiction with new data.
...
The fact that laws have never been observed to be violated does not preclude testing them at increased accuracy or in new kinds of conditions to confirm whether they continue to hold, or whether they break, and what can be discovered in the process. It is always possible for laws to be invalidated or proven to have limitations, by repeatable experimental evidence, should any be observed. Well-established laws have indeed been invalidated in some special cases, but the new formulations created to explain the discrepancies generalize upon, rather than overthrow, the originals. That is, the invalidated laws have been found to be only close approximations, to which other terms or factors must be added to cover previously unaccounted-for conditions, e.g. very large or very small scales of time or space, enormous speeds or masses, etc. Thus, rather than unchanging knowledge, physical laws are better viewed as a series of improving and more precise generalizations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_law

I enjoy metaphors, but if misused, they result in category error and/or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness (reification). — Galuchat

I very much agree that we ought beware. I take one of the big insights of 20th century philosophy to be 'watch out for the metaphors (pictures) that quietly imprison you.' On the other hand, I suspect that analogy is something like 'the core of cognition.'

Science may be true or false (just because that's the nature of verbal and mathematical language), whereas; awareness is always true. — Galuchat

My question is whether the bolded part is more a statement about reality or a statement about grammar/logic (and the relationship between these kinds of statements).

It's impossible not to notice! Great! It was clear immediately you like language. Words are the closest to miracles! Oh wonderful words! Keep them symbols coming buddy! Paint you black on white art on my screen. — EugeneW

Damn, you're a sweetheart! I truly appreciate the encouragement.

Men are simple folk. Women, no, they remind me of Rube Goldberg machines, they do! — Agent Smith

I suppose, I suppose. Though perhaps we are simple in one way to be all the more complex in another.

I wonder why we're hell bent on finding linear correlations. — Agent Smith

Dirt cheap. Easy to grok. Two parameters. Sum up millions of points with a couple of 64 bit floating point numbers. You can do a sine wave model with 2 or 3 parameters and get a dirt cheap curve. Or a quadratic model, even cheaper to calculate. The basic idea is a 'family' of functions which only vary in their 'settings' (parameters.) How many knobs do I have to twist? How many dimensions much I search through for good settings? Neural networks can have billions of dimensions, but SGD can (amazingly) hack this search space if one is willing to foot the bill for it...

We're not close. We're are on top of each other! That's exactly how I have put it. The mound side though seems to roar its tail in the dark. The dark side of the medal. — EugeneW

Well put, friend! Glad we're sing high to high.

Coin or con? — EugeneW

Both!

The shine says wet point!

(I'm working lately at an experimental prose style that is dense with suggestiveness. For the most part, it's carefully compacted and not just random or careless. The basic idea is to play against idioms in the collective consciousness. I'm inspired by James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, others. Joyce wrote 'every talk has his stay,' which plays on 'every dog has its day,' giving 'talk' the extra meaning of an organism, a worldview, which eventually passes away, replaced by another way of seeing and feeling the world...)

As the accuracy of measurement increases, do we have to switch between theories like it was done in your example with Mercury's precession? — Agent Smith

As I understand it, it's logically possible that a theory keeps on working indefinitely as we crank up the 'resolution' of our measurements.

The point is that lots of models can fit the same set of data points (which are generated via a randomly generated law with a varying amount of noise.) The model is 'underdetermined' in this sense. This is where factors like economy, coherence with the rest of our beliefs, and beauty come in.

The outside world is as private (public) as the inside world is public (private). Both are as public as private. Mutually knibbling, gnawing, and biting each other. — EugeneW

That's sort of what I mean by 'mound' and 'mutter.' This has 'mind'/'mound' contaminated with stuffishness and 'matter'/'mutter' contaminated with language (mindishness).

The mind/matter or mental/physical distinction is perfectly serviceable and evolved for a reason. It's just that certain metaphysicians want to make it some absolute thing instead of a fuzzy inherited tool that has its limitations.

As Sean Dough might say, 'mound and mutter are two sites of the same con.'

.

Nonphysicalism hanging by a thread. It's the last stand. Do or die! — Agent Smith

Indeed! Except I'm just as happy to 'deconstruct' the 'thing-in-itself' or 'noumena' or any proposed essence of the 'physical.'

Genes? — Agent Smith

Now you just need to show me a correlation, except that one side of that correlation is...private and impossible to show by definition. Do you see it ?

Note that I do not dispute that you can fish for correlations between different kinds of public entities. But it's nonsense to speak of mathematically linking public entities to 'ghosts' that defined precisely as that which can never be made manifest to others.

Think of it this way : a scientist says...listen fellows, so there's this stuff that only I can see and ... clearly there's a relationship of this only-I-can-see-stuff with the peanut butter consumption in Minneapolis.

The temptation is to derive synchronization of sign use from synchronization of qualia, but I find it more plausible to derive the intuition that qualia are synchronized from the synchronization of sign use. Consider the movie Her. Folks will fall in love with operating systems soon enough, simply because the sweet talk will sweet enough.

I thought I made the case for our private experiences being similar (enough for government work) or even exactly identical. — Agent Smith

Without a single data point?

You assume that similarity of biology implies similarity of 'private experience.'