James,
The idea of an" immortal soul" was never part of the Hebrew Bible (The Old Testament). Consequently, Christ, a Hebrew, and the early christians, did not get that idea from the Hebrew tradition. They got it from Plato's teachings. Part of what Plato said about this immortal soul, was that, being immortal, it had no beginning; hence it has already experienced an eternity of time, and has already experienced everything there is to be experienced. Hence, it already knows all that can ever be known. When such a soul enters a newly born body, that body does not, at first, remember any of of this accumulated knowledge. What we call "learning" is simply a matter of learning to "recollect" some of this already existing knowledge, triggered by that body's own experiencing of the world.
You stated that:
"I am saying that normally we view the outside world correctly because we already know how. I am also saying that we cannot learn this talent from the information provided to us by the outside world. The talent for understanding is available before the understanding becomes possible. It is made available through the same means that we are made available. "
To me, what you are saying, does not seem to differ substantially from what Plato said 2400 years ago. The details may differ, but the general principle is identical.
In your previous posts, you stated that:
"My point being that St. augustine showed the logical proof that you must already know that which you are to become aware of..." and "Correct answers are the goal. "
But how do you measure "correctness"? The modern "scientific method" provides an answer. It may not be the perfect answer, but it has been demonstrated to be superior to any other answer that has ever been given.
In regards to this, here are some excerpts from my posts in another FQXI blog:
Consider the distinction between "precision" and "accuracy".
"Precise" means that repeating the measurement will yield precisely the same result. It has nothing to do with how closely the measurement approximates some supposed "true" value.
"Accurate", on the other hand, is concerned with how closely the measurement approximates the "true" value.
Now here is the catch-22. Precise measurements can be made with little or no a priori information about what is being measured, But accurate measurements cannot; How would you know whether or not it even is "accurate", if you do not already know the "true" answer?
Aristotle is often viewed as the father of formal logic. Math employs this logic as follows:
State some "starting points", such as axioms or postulates.
Use "deduction" to derive some logical consequences of those axioms.
The axioms, as such, are neither true nor false. They are merely "interesting" or "uninteresting", depending upon whether or not they lead to interesting deductions.
Science, for Aristotle, was much the same:
State some assumptions, like "the cosmos is perfect", "the most perfect form is a perfect sphere", then deduce that the moon etc. must be a perfect sphere.
Unfortunately for Aristotle, and modern physicists that make the same mistake, in science, unlike math, the "truth" or "false" of the "starting points", are of interest. That is the most important distinction between math and science.
The truth/false question about the starting points cannot be resolved, ever, via deduction. So attempts to demonstrate their truth via induction, were made. But all such attempts failed.
Consequently, the "scientific method" rejects all such assumptions, axioms etc., as valid "starting points". In their place, it simply uses observations as the "starting points".
Observations are what they are, and like the "starting points" in math, they are neither true nor false.
But unlike math "starting points", the "starting points" of science, have other problems; they might be "repeatable" or not. They might be subject to misinterpretation or not. And attempting to use them, in science, is impossible, without dealing with the "Problem of Induction", as described by David Hume, a couple of centuries ago; "repeatable" observations necessarily assumes that the future will resemble the past.
From these scientific "starting points", theory merely "fits" mathematical equations to the observations, to create a concise, quantitative description of those observations. Then, as Karl Popper noted, good science, as opposed to pseudo science, makes risky predictions about yet-to-be made-additional-observations, collected under different circumstances (in the distant future, at very different temperatures, pressures, energies etc.), that can be falsified, or not, by future observations.
In summary, for science, "correctness" equals "precision", not "accuracy". This avoids the problem noted by St Augustine; there is no "true" or "false", there is only repeatability. If the observations cannot be repeated, then there is no science. If the theory cannot reproduce the observations, then it is bad theory.
Rob McEachern
