Re: Darwin's Appendix

On Sep 1, 4:40 pm, mi...@xxxxxxxxxxx (Micha Berger) wrote:
Amitai <chr0...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
If the gap is too big for communication to bridge, what's the point of
trying to communicate? Perhaps it isn't too big, but only if we can
agree on what we mean by proof.

While taking my time to mull over your long post, many of the points
raised in it have been answered more or less as I would have, so I
will address them as briefly as possible and concentrate on those that
have not been answered (or of which I might have missed the answers).

My unbridgable gap comment is because Steve, Shelly and I went
around this
topic in circles for over half a year, and a few months later he
still
mischaracterizes my position. So why go back on the merry-go-round
again?

Thanks for the recap.

(Re wikipedia: It's actually pretty good on non-contentious topics.
Wouldn't rely on it for Middle East history, or the really
contenscious
issues like whether to use vi or emacs.)

I might consult Wikipedia to ascertain the date of, say, the U.N.
decision on partition of Palestine but I would be very careful to
distinguish between fact and opinion.

Amitai, here's a brief list of some of the key points of my
position.

I believe it all started when I said that my own belief system is
the
reverse of Maimonides', and more like the words "naaseh venishmah
--
we will do and we will listen", that first comes following
halakhah,
and the Torah is something you "hear" from the experience of doing.
"
And this presumably makes you a Kantian, with "na`aseh venishma`"(no
"h") as your categorical imperative.

The reliability of the Torah (Written and Oral) is something I
accept on
the basis of first-hand experience of following halakhah as it
evolved
through from Sinai to my own rebbe. And because I've come to
conclude
it is trustworthy, I believe its claims about its own origins.

Are you implying that since your conviction is a consequence of
practice it is not based on faith but on experience? Nevertheless,
saying that you have proven it to yourself - as you have elsewhere -
is taking the term "proof" out of its normal context.

M opens the 2nd section of his Guide with a proof that a Creator
exists
and makes his way from there and into the 3rd section to explain
why
keep Shabbos. In my own experience, what appears to divide those
who
find proofs a Creator convincing vs those who don't is that the
first
group have religious experiences that convince them that there is a
Deity.

This reversal between M and myself is simply that M's philosophy
was
in the Greek mode, and mine is after Kant's "Copernican Revolution"
in
philosophy. Kant flipped everything around, and so I face the
opposite
direction than does a medieval scholasticist.

Thus, the mitzvah of Shabbos (as one powerful example) truly is an
os
(sign) that G-d created the world; not just a commemoration.

The surety that we have that gravity follows a consistent law is
that
we've experienced it so many times. Well, someone who follows
halakhah
also has numerous experiences backing his impression that it
reflects
and was shaped by knowledge of a larger truth about the human
condition.

As M's proof of God's existence fails to convince me ...and - not
being observant - I have had no religious experience, I cannot connect
to either position. I am convinced that what you write about yourself
is true because I believe you, but you have not proven it to me.

The only difference between the two is that a rock falling is an
empirical
event, and a religious experience is someone watching their own
mind. Thus
the latter is much harder to reproduce in others, and you can't
just
prove the correctness of the halachic process as a means of
acheiving
its goals to others.

It has been pointed out by someone else (Steve?, Matt?) that the "only
difference" makes all the difference in the world. You claim that one
is harder to reproduce than the other, implying that the difference
between the two is quantitative. I say that it is qualitative; they
cannot be compared.

Which is why I likened it to Shelly's knowledge of his own love for
his
wife. He can't prove it to me, but does that mean he personally is
any
less sure of it?

This has been answered many times: Conviction does not require proof.

Other such postulates that we gain through non-empirical experience
that
I raised as examples:

2- There is an argument that all objects fall at the same rate that
proceeds as follows:

Picture a ball. It falls with an acceleration g.
Take the same substance, shape it as a dumbell. To make it really
interesting, put 3/4 of the weight on one side. Barring wind drag,
it
too must fall at the same rate -- acceleration = g.
Now mentally thin the bar that connects the two weights of the
dumbell,
it's now a flexible sting. Now the string vanishes to 0.
At what point would the two weights of the dumbell start falling at
their own individual accelerations rather than at the weight of the
original ball?
Thinking about it, you realize that the only consistent answer is
if
each weight and the original ball all fell at the same
acceleration, g.

Now this conclusion was reached centuries before anyone could
establish
an experiment that actually eliminate wind drag.

This example proves nothing.
As long as the two balls were connected by anything, they would fall
at the acceleration of the center of mass. If the connecting rod were
rigid and one ball would not be exactly below the other, the "attempt"
of the heavier ball to fall faster would induce oscilations like a
pendulum. If they were cnnected by a spring, vibrations would be
induced as well. If Galileo could have observed such a system of two
falling balls and demonstrated that these internal motions did not
occur, he could have proved his point without climbing the Tower of
Pisa.

3- Just as the conservation of momentum was accepted even though
experiments couldn't eliminate friction and actually demonstrate
that
conservation.

Plotting the results of experiments with a constantly decreasing
perturbation - here friction - and extrapolating to zero yields the
ideal relation. This is a very common and perfectly reiiable procedure
in physics and chemistry.

4- And just as Einstein's gedankeneksperiments are used to prove
points.

Without going into detail, let me say that they prove points about the
theory, not about reality.

5- The notion that in a flat space, two lines with the same slope
would
never meet (or: would "meet at infinity") could never be
demonstrated.
There is no flat space (space isn't Euclidean) and one couldn't
construct> > infinite ideal lines > (width = 0, slopes match exactly,
no curvature> > anywhere in the lines, etc...) And yet, that >
postulate is accepted

Euclidean geometry is a system based on axioms that are neither
"right" or "wrong". Other geometries (e.g., Reimanian, Lobachevskian)
are based on different axioms. Euclidean geometry is universally
accepted because it works in the domain of our everyday experience.

There are non-empirical ways of accepting postulates that aren't
true by
definition or other tautologies. (Roughly what Kant calls the
"synthetic
a priori".)

And in fact, kind of like what Des Cartes stated in his Cogito (I
think,
therefore I am), the substance of our own consciousness is the one
thing
we can be /least/ wrong about. We could be mislead by our senses.
But
we can't we can't have wrong ideas about how we consciously think
or
feel. (Of course, there is more to thought and emotion than the
conscious
layer, and about as that we can be -- and often are -- wrong.)

I therefore concluded that the fact that for me following halakhah
set
up a positive feedback loop is a postulate I can rely on as much as
any
other, and can draw conclusions from.

This revealed a fundamental difference in how I view subjectivity
from how Steve and Shelly do. To me, the word "subjective" comes
from
judgments made about an object that are in reality a statement
about
two predicates -- myself and the object. If I explicitly state both
predicates, the statement is either true or false in the same sense
of
truth as other statements.

This is fine for yourself, but not in communication with others who
accept the dictionary definition of "subjective" and "objective".

E.g.:
Subjective:
Vivaldi's Summer, from the Four Seasons, is beautiful.

I might question this, as it meets certain generally accepted
aesthetic requirements, but am not prepared to debate it.

Objective:
1- I find Vivaldi's Summer to be beautiful.
2- Vivaldi's Summer contains features which I (and many others)
judge as beautiful.

The interesting thing about the second formulation is that those
features
objectively exist regardless of whether you share that judgment,
and
regardless if the people discussing Summer can actually articulate
what
they are. And so we've proven the existence of something about a
piece
of music that we haven't even yet defined!

1- As a statement of your opinion, I would agree that this is
objective.
2- Without the parentetical inclusion, it is essentially a looser
restatement of 1; with it, the degree of its objectivity would be
greater if you were a musicologist.

I argued that "the experience of Shabbos" is of type 2, my finding
it
meaningful is a second step, my judgment of that experience. And
thus,
I am using a postulate that is either objectively true -- or not.
It's
not a matter of opinion nor subjective, opinion only enters it when
I
make a judgment about the experience.

Accepted. As regards "the experience of Shabbos" you are certainly as
reliable an expert as a musicologist would be about Vivaldi.

Another bit of the puzzle, the one raised in this thread, is that I
don't
think scientific proof is particularly absolute. It is even
possible
that the sun will explode, some physical phenomenon we don't yet
know of
suddenly pushes the earth too far from the sun for the sun to look
like
more than a star, the magnetic poles reverse and some
electromagnetic
effect turns the earth's spin into a wobble, and the sun won't rise
tomorrow. It is likely? No. Is it provably not going to happen?
Also not.

It is provably not going to happen beyond all reasonable doubt, which
is good enough for me.

Scientific theories are twice removed from observation. The
formulae
give a pattern to the observation, and the theory provides a
conceptual
reason for the formula. (Except in the case of QM, where many
physicists
concluded that we must just stop at the formula. Much to Einstein's
dismay.)

The theory and the formula are one. The formula is the mathematical
formulation (excuse the redundancy) of the theory. Einstein was
worried about the absence of causality, but that's a separate
matter.

Newtonian gravity is still far more intuitive than what Einstein
did to
how velocities add. The day before General Relativity was proven,
the
notion that gravity is a field filling the space between two masses
was at
least as firmly accepted as relativity is today. And while the math
making
the predictions is very close to correct, that field was total
fiction.

The essence of Newtonian mechanics is in the equations. The "ether"
was a rationalization. After it was expunged from the theory, the
equations still retain their validity, except for the submicroscpic
and cosmic domains.

AND, a non-professional's belief in a theory is a third step
removed. After all, none of us saw much of the evidence for
evolution
first-hand, in this domain too we (meaning: Amitai, Shelly, Steven,
Micha, and everyone else convinced by science books and other
literature)
are relying on the reliability of sources. C.f. Reliabilism

So why exactly is my belief in the theory of evolution different in
kind
than my belief that G-d created the halachic system?

I think that you believe that they are, but that you are wrong. I
believe that the latter is absolute and the former is grudging. That
however is *my* belief, which I have no intention of imposing on
anyone.

1- The postulate being based on internal evidence vs external? Already
discussed.

2- That it's less sharable, and therefore other people may be
convinced
of the reality of different evidence? It's a consequence of #1, and
also as already discussed, shouldn't change my own confidence in my
own experience. (Or is Shelly less likely to sacrifice himself for
his
wife because he can't prove to me the reality of his love?)

Nobody is asking you to change your confidence in your own experience.
You are only being asked to recognize that, as it is not shareable, it
cannot be proven.

3- That one is proven and the other not? Actually, barring the
above
issues, they are both derived off their postulates in similar ways.
And both involve our relying on sources that served us well in the
past.

We are back to the meaning of "proven".

I therefore objected to Shelly's insistence that I *must* use
different
terminology, calling one "fact" and the other "belief", or "proof"
vs
"faith".

I don't like calling Evolution fact, but it is certainly a proven
theory. Proving something to yourself is not "proof". If you don't
like "belief" or "faith" - though i can't see why not - use
"conviction".

Amitai

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

--
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The Transition--the last hurdle
    ... >>> or right beside the ball as they did at address. ... >>> leg and then swinging, they take the club back and swing. ... >>weight forward, but they fail to get it to their front heel. ...
    (rec.sport.golf)
  • Re: Newtons inverse-square force law from Einsteins equation
    ... i found your 2000 post, Richard, and i have a neophyte question. ... As time passes the ball changes volume; ... define acceleration 'a' in terms of change in Volume 'V' as: ... and spherical surface area '4*pi*r^2 ' are considered. ...
    (sci.physics.research)
  • Re: Some propellantless propulsion fun
    ... For how much time is the ball accelerated? ... in the wall so it will have the entire 10 meters to travel. ... I specifically asked you how long the acceleration ... detect motion, so it will not be in the box. ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: My swing video....beat me up
    ... Your transition weight shift is weak. ... Even when you can make the move with no ball down, ... This is my swing. ... You're always getting better, Larry. ...
    (rec.sport.golf)
  • Re: About absolute reference frame......
    ... straight line (relative to the inertial frame of the centrifuge's ... The centripetal force is real, ... playground ball across the rotating platform while you stand on it. ... usually by measuring acceleration ...
    (sci.physics.relativity)
Loading