AI and cognitive psychology rant (getting more and more OT - tell me if I should shut up)

[Michele Simionato]

jjl at pobox.com (John J. Lee) wrote in message news:<87n0bl2ig3.fsf at pobox.com>...
> mis6 at pitt.edu (Michele Simionato) writes:
> > In the last couple of centuries we have
> > lost our faith in God (fortunately/unfortunately) so now there is
> [...]
> 
> Again, I think the statistics are against you, Michele!  Most people
> on the planet believe in a God.  Most Americans believe in a God.
> Dunno for sure about Europeans, but I'd be surprised if it were
> otherwise.

My fault, I was too concise and I didn't express clearly what I meant.
Here is what I had in mind when I wrote "In the last couple of centuries 
we have lost our faith in God ...":

1. the "we" has to be qualified as "we scientists and educated people";
2. the "lost our faith in God" has to be interpreted as "lost our faith
   in God as a way of scientific explanation of reality".

Look at the context: I was talking about Berkeley, who had the possibility to
recur to God as a way of ensuring realism; this possibility is (fortunately/
unfortunately) precluded to modern science, just in the same sense that we 
cannot invoke angels as an explanation for the motion of planets.

I was by no means implying that most of people (or most of modern scientists)
are unbelievers. This would simply be not true. I meant that there is a
consensus in the modern scientific community that we cannot use God as a 
way of scientific explanation. Things were different at the time of Berkeley.

Also I had in the back of my mind the idea that in the Germany of the
twenties, after the World War I, there was quite a luck of faith in
the traditional concept of God (see books such as "Demian" by Herman 
Hesse, for instance) and it is not strange, in that historical/philosophical 
context that somebody came out with concepts like the indetermination principle
or the refusal of realism. I would not expect those concepts coming out
in the context of victorian U.K., for instance. Not that I am advocating
the view that Physics is determinated by the sociological context, but
certainly it is influenced by it. Vice versa, the sociological context can 
be influenced by Physics (expecially after we made the bomb).


          Michele Simionato