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Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?

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Re: Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?

#261

Post by satvikpendem »

telmo wrote: post #259
satvikpendem wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not actually refuting the main point based on this story. Yes, mathematics is not necessarily a reflection of the physical universe. It can be, in cases like addition, but it doesn't necessarily need to be. Which was the parent's point.

> mathematics is not necessarily a reflection of the physical universe Nobody knows if it is or not. It could also be that the physical universe is a reflection of mathematical truth. > It can be, in cases like addition, but it doesn't necessarily need to be. Which was the parent's point. Again, nobody knows if it what you claim is true or not. What we do know is that all scientific models are based on math, and if t…

You are misunderstanding my point. Mathematics is not related to the natural world at all. 1 plus 1 will equal 2 regardless of whether there is a universe to experience it. It turns out certain types of math are useful to us, it doesn't mean that all types are. For example, infinite numbers exist, but the natural world cannot have an infinite or infinitessimal amount of things, there are upper and lower limits. Does that mean infinities don't exist? Of course not.

Re: Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?

#262

Post by tgv »

luckyandroid wrote: post #16
mynameisash wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you think about it, the universe is conscious, because our conscious minds are part of it This seems like quite a leap. Parts of the earth are conscious, so is the earth conscious? Parts of the universe are alive, so is the universe alive? Every member of my family is conscious*, but I wouldn't say that "my family" is conscious. *Solipsism notwithstanding

The universe is a system. We a part of that system. So any traits we have are inherently traits that the universe has, even if parts of it don't share it. A human has a hand, the hand is part of the human, but the rest of the human is not necessarily a hand.

Syllogistic errors 101. Your ruthless logic tells us a (normal) human has one nail and five fingers, is made of keratin and is not conscious. Ergo, the universe has one nail and five fingers, is made of keratin and is not conscious.

Only logical conclusion: God is a manicurist.

Re: Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?

#263

Post by pqs »

wrzuteczka wrote: post #246
kmmlng wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, this line of thought seems compatible with the description of God in the bible to me. If you put aside all your preconceived notions of some dude in the sky and simply read the bible for what it is, you'll find things like "I am what I am", "I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end", etc. The Cristian God is called the Father. And what is a father but a source? The first link in a causal…

Whose understanding of Christianity? Modern day American tech workers? Because that is the traditional understanding. It sure was how Christianity was understood by st. Augustine, st. Thomas Aquinas and st. Anzelm. And how Christian philosophers still understand it today.

I don't understand the down voting. I also believe that the idea of the Christian god that most (non-Christian) people have is quite naive and distinct to the idea of God in the great Christian thinkers, such those mentioned by the comment.

Re: Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?

#264

Post by robbiep »

seigando wrote: post #216
robbiep wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What examples of nature are you talking about then? The time a dog was nice to you? Nature is literally indifferent to our existence

Maybe that dog wasn't indifferent to yours.

That isn’t an answer to the question and doesn’t in anyway nullify the broader concept of nature as indifferent - animals are merely part of nature and my experience from truly being in raw primal nature is that, of course things react to you, as you are also in nature, but in those circumstances the forces of survival outweigh any anthropomorphism that humans would normally attribute to the interactions we more normally encounter in our garden environment

Re: Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?

#265

Post by KMag »

anomosmarxist wrote: post #240
jl6 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is a mathematical model and doesn’t necessarily reflect the physical universe, similar to how a perfect sphere doesn’t necessarily reflect the shape of the Earth.

true, but also for some math isnt a model but a discoverable part of nature. depends on who is doing the philosophical arguing there. we dont know for sure, ironically because of godel? therefore its a true part of nature?

As with many such philosophical arguments, I think it's useful to split the word into two definitions, and the philosophical argument vanishes into a semantic argument. There are two definitions for mathematics. One definition is the rules that have existed as long as time itself, and the other definition is the subset of these rules that humans have discovered.

Re: Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?

#266

Post by telmo »

satvikpendem wrote: post #261
telmo wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mathematics is not necessarily a reflection of the physical universe Nobody knows if it is or not. It could also be that the physical universe is a reflection of mathematical truth. > It can be, in cases like addition, but it doesn't necessarily need to be. Which was the parent's point. Again, nobody knows if it what you claim is true or not. What we do know is that all scientific models are based on math, and if t…

You are misunderstanding my point. Mathematics is not related to the natural world at all. 1 plus 1 will equal 2 regardless of whether there is a universe to experience it. It turns out certain types of math are useful to us, it doesn't mean that all types are. For example, infinite numbers exist, but the natural world cannot have an infinite or infinitessimal amount of things, there are upper and lower limits. Does…

> Mathematics is not related to the natural world at all.

This is your personal belief, unless you can justify it. I won't hold my breath, because this discussion has been raging for centuries with no end in sight.

> For example, infinite numbers exist, but the natural world cannot have an infinite or infinitessimal amount of things, there are upper and lower limits.

Nobody knows if the natural world is finite or not. Consider for example the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. We just don't know enough to assert such as thing.

Re: Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?

#267

Post by dsign »

amai wrote: post #252

"The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by 'God' one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity." Carl Sagan

So God is only confusing notation we are better off without.

Re: Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?

#268

Post by jl6 »

KMag wrote: post #249
jl6 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is a mathematical model and doesn’t necessarily reflect the physical universe, similar to how a perfect sphere doesn’t necessarily reflect the shape of the Earth.

Edit: upon reflection, I think maybe you and I are interpreting "The set of natural laws" in the GGP differently. I think maybe maybe you're interpreting this as a statement about how the universe actually works, instead of a statement about the set of laws enumerated by modern science (or any logic-based successor of modern science). The GGP mentioning the axioms of the laws however, makes it clear they're talking a…

I dispute that knowledge obtained through scientific enquiry is rigorously based on mathematics, and therefore I do not believe that results about mathematical provability necessarily imply anything about the limits of scientific knowledge.

Gödel's work was concerned with formally defined abstract systems, and his results demonstrate the limits of mathematical proof within such systems.

But science never proves anything. Science often uses the language of mathematics to express and to quantify ideas, but the core of science is observation, hypothesis-forming, and experimentation. Scientists apply logic to rule out theories, but it's an informal application of logic, not a formal one, because you can never precisely define a theory the way you can precisely define a mathematical object.

Science may appear to be a rigorous discipline, but it is at best diligent, not rigorous - not in the sense that a proof of a mathematical theorem is rigorous. A proven theorem must necessarily be true - that's what the proof demonstrates. Meanwhile, a scientific theory is only conditionally true, inferred from the evidence and hypotheses about the underlying mechanisms of the universe. All scientific truth is subject to revision if contradictory evidence arises.

Science is a system of best guesses based on what we have observed. Some of those guesses have proven very useful, and very reliable at predicting the future. But none of those guesses are fundamentally based on, or necessarily limited by, formal axiomatic systems of logic.

For all we know, there is a low upper bound on the complexity of the universe, and it might be completely explainable and understandable through the lens of science, without getting anywhere near the towering near-infinities of abstract mathematical thought.

Alternatively, if the universe was a formal system about which there were unprovable truths, one could simply add that unprovable truth as an axiom, to form a larger formal system, which itself would have unprovable truths, but as long as the universe was entirely contained within that larger system, you could prove every truth relevant to it, without being limited by Gödel.

If someone is seeking unknowables in the real world, something like the uncertainty principle could be a closer match.

Re: Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?

#269

Post by BreakfastB0b »

glial wrote: post #171
satvikpendem wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is simply a God of the gaps argument [0]. Just because we don't (yet) know how the universe was created does not mean that we must attribute it to some deity. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps

No. He's reclaiming the term 'god'. Spinoza equated god with being or reality - all off it - not just gaps. He did not believe in a personal or interventionist god. "God, that is, Nature..."

Then why use the word “God” that already comes with so much baggage?

Re: Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?

#270

Post by BreakfastB0b »

torstenvl wrote: post #186
satvikpendem wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is simply a God of the gaps argument [0]. Just because we don't (yet) know how the universe was created does not mean that we must attribute it to some deity. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps

I don't think this is GotG. GotG arguments rely on gaps in scientific knowledge as evidence of the existence of the numinous. This argument isn't about gaps in scientific knowledge. It's about gaps in scientific knowability. The argument is Godelian in nature. The set of natural laws is a logical axiomatic system. It cannot be both consistent and complete. Therefore, either the scientific method is fundamentally unre…

Godel has nothing to do with it. Godel’s Incompleteness is just the math version of the Halting Problem, which is just a fancy version of the classic paradox “This statement is false”. Godel showed that even if you outlaw self referential definitions e.g. “This statement is false”, math is rich enough in complexity to simulate itself and thus end up with self referential paradoxes anyway.

It’s not this mystical thing that people make it out to be online.

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