Mixer, Pinker, Crazy Combos 8 comments

12 Oct 2009 @ 17:28, by Max Sandor Here are my replies to unanswered questions from the live videocast (internet) audience Oct. 9th, 2009 at the CPFL Cultura in Campinas, Brazil [link] . Time ran out after an interview at the Cafe Filosofico last Friday and some questions from the Internet community remained unanswered. The topic was "The Triad of Religion, Science, and Philosophy" in which I outlined this triangular relationship, its impact on our current civilization and approaches how to resolve or at least diffuse its problems. In the following, I post the answers that I would have most likely given as they are of interest by themselves: [to Ana] We need to de-confuse what was 'confused' (confused in the sense of melted together). But before separating religion, science, and technology and perceive this triad in a systemic fashion, we still need to apply linear thinking to outline the terrain, like enumerating the paradigms involved before juxtaposting them for comparison in order to construct a saner system. And, yes, we need to be careful about our methods employed and not lose awareness of what is confusing (melting together), of what is mixing, of what has been merged, of what is integrating, and what is a juxtaposition. [to Carlos Lopes] As far as the Darwinian-Chomskian academic Steven Pinker is concerned, I just can't decide if he is a couragous visionary or a scientific opportunist. My own grandchild, from the age of 2 years on forward, 'falsifies' his theories at the rate of 3-5 times per day. It seems clear that he dismisses questions about ethics, dignity, art, and any kind of aesthetics at large as 'misfiring of synapses', a phenomenon that evolution will eventually weed out completely in his opinion. But his theories have nothing to do with Digital Physics. Him borrowing concepts from there would be tilting his position indeed - from a visionary to being simply just another scientific opportunist, making him truly a 'mixer' of paradigms. All of this to satisfy theories that any parent or grandparent can observe being falsified every single day in real life. To juxtapose Darwin and Chomsky is as good a match as Popper with Positivism. Witness the spin-boasting of some American politicians a few some years ago: "We define what reality is, and then it will be happening". Frameworks like that do not leave room for considerations of ethics nor aesthetics. [to Ronaldo] The word spirituality is not very well defined, it is a catch-all that should be avoided. Technology are merely the tools and means of achieving the goals defined by humanistic or scientific endeavours and in itself is 'neutral'. This can be a blessing and a curse at the same time. For me, mathematics is an approximation of the ultimate truth of existence by means of abstraction. If one is calling this ultimate truth 'God' would imply that 'God' in this sense 'is' absolute rationality. It also implies that in this world of relativities, the 'Absolute', and therefore 'God as such' is unobtainable, unreachable. As a scientist I'm a monotheist in the above sense (believing in the existence of an 'absolute rational truth'), as an engineer I'm a pantheist (the world as a system of forces), and as a practitioner of Ifá I'm simply a pragmatist (If it works, it works!). [to Mario] I'm dwelling in a sacred bosque called Nemus Sandorianus, Euclid was living in his orchard of one-dimensional trees, Rosa in the Grande Sertao - all of us are right from our own perspective. [to Márcio] Dignity is the most basic element within the human experience. Without dignity, any progress, and achievement is utterly worthless. As such it is void of any specific location or allocation. Rather, dignity must be underlying every meaningful process.

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