Theometer

Richard Dawkins proposes a "spectrum of probabilities" for answering the question, "How much — or how little — do you believe in God?":

1.0   Strong theist. 100 per cent probability of God.

2.0   De facto theist. Very high probability but short of 100 per cent.

3.0   Leaning towards theism. Higher than 50 per cent but not very high.

4.0   Completely impartial. Exactly 50 per cent.

5.0   Leaning towards atheism. Lower than 50 per cent but not very low.

6.0   De facto atheist. Very low probability, but short of zero.

7.0   Strong atheist.

So like the Fahrenheit scale and Celsius scale, there is the Dawkins scale. (As you notice, it goes up from total belief to total unbelief, so it's really the measure "How high is your unbelief in God?") One can translate one's place in his spectrum into degrees Dawkins: 5.0 could be 50° Dawkins, etc. When someone asks you the question, you would answer with a simple number in degrees, e.g. I'm 57° Dawkins, and that's that. Dawkins himself has said he's at 6.9: So Dawkins himself is 69° Dawkins.

Philosophers muddle over the distinctions between belief and knowledge, agnosticism and atheism. But it's really just a lot of language that confuses. The Dawkins scale just makes simple what should be a simple thing to express.

W.V. Quine wrote that all of our conceptual world is a web of beliefs — a network of beliefs connected by logical dependencies — and beliefs can be revised within this web in such a way as the whole settles into some acceptable state that we live with. And degrees of beliefs are common in expressing the strength and weakness of beliefs in this web. Beliefs then propagate their values throughout the web updating the values of other beliefs.

Some people are averse to being completely absolute either way (10° or 70° in the Dawkins scale). So many atheists may just be like Dawkins (69°). After all, there are some things even more unbelievable than God: like Republicans' supply-side economics!

What's your temperature?



This post is the fourth in a series of seven for the 7 Day Blogging Challenge for Bloggers from +Jenson Taylor.

Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951)

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence
      by means of language.
(Philosophical Investigations, 1953)

Two philosophical camps emerged from the last century: The first camp views philosophers as those who endeavor to answer profound and fundamental questions, or to construct systems for doing so. The second camp views philosophers instead as uber-kibitzers.

The first camp is usually called analytic, and mimics the methods of science and mathematics in its practice. The second camp is usually called continental (since its legacy goes back to some philosophers of Germany and France vs. Britain and America), and operates more like literary criticism.

The second camp watches in amusement as the first camp tries to hold a mirror up to the world: to find a representation in language — either English (or French, German, ...) or mathematics — of what the world really is. The second camp says there is no mirror outside of the natural world — outside of the brains of the philosophers. Since the language one wants to use in philosophy is itself part of the natural world, it cannot be given any privileged status.

Wittgenstein could be looked at being at the center of the second camp that includes Nietzsche, Derrida, Rorty, Price, and even Hume and Quine. Language — and therefore philosophy — is ultimately ambiguous and bewitching.

Even the above quote of Wittgenstein is ambiguous: Do philosophers use language to battle the bewitchment of our intelligence, or is language the cause of it?


This post is the third in a series of seven for the 7 Day Blogging Challenge for Bloggers from +Jenson Taylor.

Transfinity

Let me let you in on a secret: There are no infinitely large sets in mathematics. Or infinitely divisible lines or spaces. (According the philosophy of mathematics called intentionalism, that is.)

Now whether there are such things in nature, one may speculate about. But from the point of view of quantum theory, there is a smallest size (Planck length) and time interval (Planck time). And inflationary cosmology says our universe likely has a finite number of particles, albeit an incredibly large number of them.

How does the idea of infinity enter mathematics? It enters by the language of nesting quantifiers.

Take one of the axioms of arithmetic of natural numbers:

(forall (m) (if (natural m) (exists (n) (and (natural n) (succ m n)))))

Here I'm using a formulation of the axioms with S-expressions for the object language. (succ m n) says n is the successor of m.

(forall list-of-variables expression)
(exists list-of-variables expression)

are interpreted in the standard way as the universal and existential quantifiers.

But suppose a domain of quantification is added after each quantifier:

(forall P list-of-variables expression)
(exists Q list-of-variables expression)

where P and Q are the domains over which the variables range.

Then the above axiom becomes:

(forall P (m) (if (natural m) (exists Q (n) (and (natural n) (succ m n)))))

The interpretation is that when domains of quantification are nested, then the domain of the inner quantification is a superset of the domain that encloses it (Q ⊃ P) — i.e. the inner-more you go, the bigger the sets get. And not only that, but all domains of quantification are finite! (When the domains are the same as in standard logic one is "committed" to an infinite set of natural numbers, but this is not the case for nesting domains.)

If one has an entire mathematical theory (expressed as a collection of S-expressions in this language) then one is talking about variables ranging only over finite sets, but one gets bigger and bigger finite sets as needed in any practical application of the theory. A book by Shaughan Lavine (based on work by Jan Mycielski, discussed in previous posts January 25, 2009 and January 8, 2012) likens this to getting bigger and bigger bags of beans when needed. (I guess it would help to be a bean counter.)

So whatever mathematicians told you about infinity: Take with a grain of salt — or a bag of beans!



This post is the second in a series of seven for the 7 Day Blogging Challenge for Bloggers from +Jenson Taylor.

Markup

Because of ebook reading devices (ereaders) and epublishing technology, writers today are also their own publishers, a revolution like that created by Gutenberg's printing press. The intermediaries between author and reader are eliminated: editor, publisher, typesetter, printer, distributor, dealer. They have been replaced by software and the Internet.

But authors want to make their books look good on ereaders and have full control over how the customer interacts with them. This means that today's writers not only write — they code. And for ebooks, that means coding with a markup language (HTML), styles sheets (CSS), and programming scripts (JavaScript, Dart, ...).

To take one example, poets used to lament that long lines in their poems did not look right when they appeared on an ereader due to the size of the display screen or the resizing of the text. (The long line should reflow as a hanging or negative indent, as seen in print publications of the long-line poems of Whitman and Ginsberg.) Then they discovered all that had to be done is to code long lines with

<div style="padding-left: Xem; text-indent: -Xem;">a very long line</div>

with X = 1, 1.5, 2 or whatever amount they wanted.

Writers are now discovering other ebook coding features: CSS regions, fixed-layout EPUB, MathML (or better, TeX math mode to MathML via MathJax), and on to interactivity with JavaScript or Dart.

This may be more than most writers need — or want — but for for many just some basic HTML and CSS code is all that's needed.

Writers: Don't fear markup! It's one of your best friends.

Writers tomorrow are good coders.



This post is the first in a series of seven for the 7 Day Blogging Challenge for Bloggers from +Jenson Taylor.

The Acts Of The Holy Ghost ~ Scene 6

• Judea. JESSE is wandering and thinking. H.G. appears.
•  
• JESSE
• Dad! What are you doing here?
• H.G.
• I think you need a boost to your ratings. I have some things up my sleeve I think could help you.
• JESSE
• Like what?
• H.G.
• Just some stuff your Father and I came up with. Here's some salve that can heal the blind. You just rub in on their eyes and ... voilà!
• JESSE
• I can't make it on my own, eh?
• H.G.
• Just a little help. People will flock to you after this.
• 
  [Fade to black. Light to THE COUNCIL room.]
• CAI
• There stories going around that this JESSE guy is practicing sorcery. As if his teaching isn't enough ...
• THE COUNCIL (member)
• I think we neeed to find out more about this. We need an insider within his little group to tell us what is going on.
• CAI
• I hear Judah can be bought for the right price. He seems the most distant.
• THE COUNCIL (member)
• I'll see what I can do ...
• 
  [Fade to black.]

The Acts Of The Holy Ghost ~ A Play In One Act