[lit-ideas] Re: Must the Word be Literate?
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 17:54:28 +0100 (BST)
--- John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 10/6/07, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > 1) Why assume there is no looseness in the world i.e. assume determinism?
> >
> >
> > Why, indeed?
I did raise Popper's book on indeterminism, "The Open Universe", and failed
to rehearse its arguments despite wearying indications to the contrary:-
again I commend it to anyone on the list - it is the best single thing I have
read on the topic and is worthwhile [ok, imo it a masterpiece] even if just
for showing how the traditional forms of the debate are the product of
longstanding confusions (for example, it shows how the idea that 'every event
has a cause', even if true, does not entail determinism [a confusion that can
be traced back to Hume and his successors]; it is particularly acute in
distilling the allegedly 'scientific' from the 'metaphysical' forms of
determinism; and it presents an argument-cum-proof as to why, even if
determinism is true, this can never be shown and certainly science cannot
ever show it [otherwise, to pluck an example, science could predict its own
future developments].
All that aside, just a comment, derived from memory and partly from a
footnote in TOU:-
The idea of a deterministic God who does not play dice creates certain
paradoxes:-
(a) when combined with the doctrine of 'God's omnipotence' it leads to the
paradoxical question: "Can [an omnipotent] God revoke his own [deterministic]
rules?" Ans. If he can, the universe is not fully determined (since it's
subject to God's revocation). If He can't, He's not omnipotent - because He
lacks the power to revoke what He has already decided. A paradox.
Of course there is a metaphysical flip-side:-
(b) when combined with the doctrine of 'God's omniscience', the doctrine of
'God's omnipotence' leads to the question: how can a God who is all-powerful
[so that he can revoke his previous decrees], be omniscient in that he can
know whether he will or will not revoke [i.e. if he knows the result of any
potential revocation, that certain knowledge must preclude a power to decide
otherwise, just as a power to decide otherwise must preclude his
omniscience]. A paradox.
In the above we might see how it is easier to combine omniscience and
determinism than it is to combine either with 'omnipotence': but, while it
might seem we just not mention omnipotence so much, if God is an all-knowing
God of a God-determined universe, and is not all-powerful, then we might ask
what kind of God is He? A pre-determined God? A God who only knows what He is
pre-determined to do (and therefore does not 'know' what lies behind what He
is determined to do)?
Donal
FRS. FBA. ETC.
But here you stand on the side of Voltaire, who, following
> the Great Lisbon Earthquake, satirized Leibniz's view that this is the best
> of all possible worlds in Candide. Leibniz's answer, as I understand it is
> that nothing in the world happens unless God wills it and God knows what
> God
> is doing. Thus, everything follows with perfect, implacable logic from
> God's
> premises. Our failure to recognize the logic is due to our being monads
> further down the Great Chain of Being, with our knowledge obscured in
> proportion to our distance fr God.
> To us of little faith and modern confusions, this view of things may appear
> absurd. It is, however, a straightforward extrapolation of Predestination,
> a
> world view still widely embraced at the time Leibniz was writing, when
> Calvinism was, in more than one sense, the rage.
>
> John
>
> --
> John McCreery
> The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
> Tel. +81-45-314-9324
> http://www.wordworks.jp/
>
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