Sorry about taking my time, been absurdly busy lately. Hopefully I'll have a bit more time these following weeks.
Freitag wrote:
Ok, I guess I was interpreting your meaning as a macroscopic 'we cannot know' but I suspect now that it is the microscopic instead.
Sort of like the different models of atoms. Since we are already talking about something we can't directly see, our first model of atoms was that things were made of 5 elements and only in theory could be cut down to small size.
Not sure I completely understand your distinction here, but perhaps I can clarify a bit on what I think are the limits of our knowledge.
It is important to see that the limit of knowledge from my point of view is not a perceptual limitation, like a limitation to certain wavelength or sizes; it is rather a more fundamental boundary. This boundary can be seen by understanding the logic of perception (what it really means to perceive something). Instead of starting with the idea that whatever correspond in our minds with reality is real or true (and hence avoiding that reality/experience relation) I look at what a nervous system is, and (it is implicit here that I believe that it is the nervous system (brain) that knows so I'm sure you can see how this relates with my views on the mind/body problem) what a nervous system is actually doing from a logical approach.
Now if my explanation is unclear, just ask about the parts that you do not understand. It is already a great strain for me to even try to put this down in words and this is probably not the best medium to explain over, so please be patient and if anything is unclear, feel free to ask.
Now if we look at a nervous system, no matter how complex or simple we can see that the way it functions is a property of how it is wired (I think we can all agree on this). From this, we can see that the reaction that any input will elicit is purely a matter of how the nervous system is wired. From this I think that the following conclusion can be drawn, first of all that the nervous system is not an information handling device, as input is purely internally defined and secondly that representationalism is false, as it seems to me that any representation is impossible—there is no "solid point" in reality (as all input is internally defined) that the nervous system could possibly represent.
So you might ask what prevent this from becoming full blown solipsism, well there are two things which maintain a certain degree of intersubjectivity between human beings, the way our brains are coded in our genes and that we interact. Genetics make sure that our brains are similar enough and social interaction works somewhat like the interaction of the cells of our bodies—while they have a life of their they take part of a greater unit. Reality could be seen as this "greater unit" among people (in the "reality as it is to us" way, and not in the ontological sense).
Freitag wrote:
This article may cover the differences between our positions?
New Scientist usually injects a secular slant to every story - but knowing the bias allows you to filter the real information from it. I included the meaningless editorial comments at the end of the article for the sake of completeness.
Well d'Espagnat says that classical physics can describe the world "as it really is" and maybe I'm misinterpreting what he means, but it sound to me as if he means that classical physics deal with reality in itself. This is of course quite different from my view, as I treat all physical theories as dealing with experienced reality, in distinction to reality in itself.
Unlike classical physics, d'Espagnat explained, quantum mechanics cannot describe the world as it really is, it can merely make predictions for the outcomes of our observations. If we want to believe, as Einstein did, that there is a reality independent of our observations, then this reality can either be knowable, unknowable or veiled. D'Espagnat subscribes to the third view. Through science, he says, we can glimpse some basic structures of the reality beneath the veil, but much of it remains an infinite, eternal mystery.
I think that d'Espagnat is making a huge epistemological mistake here (which quite conveniently opens up the way for all sorts of supernatural speculation). If reality is veiled, does it mean that it is unknowable or not? Thus, we can see that the "veiled" position is after all just a red herring; knowable does not just mean that we know it today or even with today's tools. Classic mechanics was knowable back in Aristotle's time, just as any future physical theory is part of our possible knowledge. This may seem to be just an issue of semantics, but it is easy to see what kind of confusion the idea of a "veiled reality" opens the door to. No scientist in his right mind would say that there is nothing we do not know, that there are no creeks left to explore in reality.
Lets see what happens to god once we apply in my opinion the appropriate analysis to the question:
Now God is either knowable (possible knowledge) or unknowable. If god is knowable, I do not see why the scientific method should be ruled out as a tool to find him, sure He may prove to be elusive but the same thing seems to be true for many other scientific problems. If God is knowable, there is also no reason to have any faith. But what if god is unknowable? Then we have another problem, as there is nothing we can ever know about god, all speculation is then strictly nonsense.
So what do religious people want, God as a scientific hypothesis or God as nonsense?
But let's not turn this into a debate about god.