From: gts (gts@optexinc.com)
Date: Wed Sep 04 2002 - 18:46:24 MDT
Dan Fabulich wrote:
> gts wrote:
>> I'm not convinced that such 100% subjective confidence is not
>> attainable. If you show me a 100% reliable technology for
>> ensuring my immortality then I will feel 100% confident that
>> my immortality is ensured if I use the technology.
> On that point: too bad. 100% subjective confidence is not
attainable...
Or perhaps you were expecting a different and more hard-core flavor of
Bayesianism. :)
I am first and foremost an empiricist, and where Bayesianism may
conflict with empiricism I am likely to bend in favor of empiricism.
This is the reason that I placed so much emphasis on the empirical
evidence supporting your claim to be 23 years of age. (Granted, you
could forge your birth certificate, but I'm assuming here that we are
not playing mind games with one another. :)
I often use language that would suggest directly or indirectly that I am
certain of a given fact (e.g., given the evidence of your birth records,
I am "certain" that you are 23 years of age) but this is really only a
matter of the convenience of language. If I were to make the painstaking
effort of writing empirically then I would write something similar to
this: "Given the empirical of evidence of your birth certificate, the
hypothesis that you are not 23 must be rejected in favor of the
hypothesis that you are 23."
As I think you may agree, all supposed "truths" about the world,
including the "truth" that you are 23, are in reality only "working
hypotheses." Most importantly, two competing hypothesis about the world
cannot be true. We are thus forced to accept one hypothesis as
(contingent) "truth," which is a rather black and white proposition
despite the inherent uncertainty of knowledge. And there is where you
find me writing about my 100% confidence in an immortality machine
proven to be 100% reliable.
> You'll never get 100% confidence about *anything in the world*,
> say nothing of immortality.
Strictly speaking that is true. However the question is whether we
should accept or reject the hypothesis that immortality is achievable
given the empirical evidence that molecules decay spontaneously via
quantum tunneling. The hypothesis itself is either 100% true or 100%
false.
> Actually, I'm not so ready to let the point drop this easily. If you
> can't say that you're immortal because you don't have 100% subjective
> confidence, you can't say that you're mortal either; you
> don't have 100% subjective confidence in that.
But I am not attempting to say that I am mortal.
> In that case, as I believe the saying
> goes, of which we cannot speak, we must remain silent.
Yes. "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." -Ludwig
Wittgenstein.
-gts
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:16:42 MST