{"id":142,"date":"2018-12-23T15:44:04","date_gmt":"2018-12-23T15:44:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/?p=142"},"modified":"2018-12-23T15:44:04","modified_gmt":"2018-12-23T15:44:04","slug":"holy-hermeneutics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2018\/12\/23\/holy-hermeneutics\/","title":{"rendered":"Holy Hermeneutics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Re: The God Theory<\/a><\/p>\n

Yes, quantum mechanics has its puzzles, but it works, it predicts and explains, in every single case, no exceptions, whereas the arbitrary flummery the above book (for which I’ve only skimmed the blurb) favors merely fudges, feebly, after the fact. <\/p>\n

There’s nothing wrong with parameter-settings, by the way; they only seem arbitrary because empirical laws are not matters of necessity, the way mathematical laws are, but merely matters of contingency, in other words, “accidents”. And asking “why” about them is only like asking “why” about 2+2=4 in the sense that with 2+2=4 the answer is always the same as the answer for any other mathematical law: “Because otherwise it would be self-contradictory.” Whereas when we ask “why” the cosmological constant is what it is, or why the law of universal gravitation, etc., the answer is merely that if it were otherwise, according to the laws of the way it actually happens to be (as far as we know today) it would not work. <\/p>\n

So contingencies are less satisfying than necessities. One must ask: why not? What is the function of explanation: to describe and predict correctly, objectively, or to give people a soothing subjective feeling? It’s natural to ask for both, but the buck has to stop somewhere, and subjectivity is pretty restless except if it folds in on itself. So it never occurs to us to ask “why” about consciousness, or about god.<\/p>\n

(Consciousness — the fact that we feel — is a cartesian “given” — the given of all givens; god, of course, is merely an invention, without consciousness’s privileged status of being, along with non-contradiction, the only other thing that is not open to doubt.)<\/p>\n

But surely both are more arbitrary than the cosmological constants! Yet they
\nfeel more like answers than questions — to those who are naive and unexacting about such things… <\/p>\n

I often wonder why the naive skeptic does not feel impelled to ask “why” even about the Platonic “law” of non-contradiction: Not, I think, because of either a profound grasp of or an abiding allegiance to logic, but rather because of the kind of subjective glazing-over and tuning-out that happens whenever we confront an argument that involves more logical steps than we can follow. We just say “yeah, yeah, whatever” — too feeble-minded to either grasp or challenge. <\/p>\n

So when we feel inclined to (completely capriciously) reduce all questions, answered and unanswered, answerable and unanswerable, to the one indubitable fact that we can always hold in mind all at once (as long as we are compos mentis, and sober), namely, the fact that we feel, we are simply confessing (without feeling it!) that when we asked for an “explanation” we never really meant, and would never have settled for, something objective, at all: When we ask “why” we are asking for the feeling that our question has been answered.<\/p>\n

P.S. Although I’d never heard of him before, a few quick googlings suggest that the author is a fallen physicist, colloborator of another of the same ilk, “paraphysicist”, and propounder of apparent voodoo about which a layman like myself can only say “yeah, yeah, whatever”… His “digital universe” — in collaboration with wikipedia, apparently — shows how closely “openness” cohabits with the quackery. (I sometimes think god has nothing better to do than to keep orchestrating cruel caricatures of my antics…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Re: The God Theory Yes, quantum mechanics has its puzzles, but it works, it predicts and explains, in every single case, no exceptions, whereas the arbitrary flummery the above book (for which I’ve only skimmed the blurb) favors merely fudges, feebly, after the fact. There’s nothing wrong with parameter-settings, by the way; they only seem … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Holy Hermeneutics”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions\/143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}