More Definitions

Nicolas, I think we need to focus on definitions again.

First, let's return to the ethics. The scientific view is that ethics is a set of rules that people abide by in order to live together harmoniously.

In theory, we might create a new society by devising specific goals for that society, and then dictating the corresponding ethical rules to all of its constituent persons.

If humans were programmable computers, I might be in favor of this sort of purely synthetic architecture. In the real world, people are not programmable, and we have to share a very small planet. It's virtually impossible to create a new society that is independent (non-interacting) with others. In effect, the world is one big society, and the constituents can't agree on what the goals of the society should be. In fact, most people wouldn't say there were any goals at all.

At this point, we want a system of ethics that enables us to thoughtfully alter our society's goals. When people are fighting for survival, they cannot be thoughtful. This means ethics that respect human rights, improve our standards of living, promote education, and allow society to survive long enough to avoid extinction.

Knowledge

According to LP (in my formulation), the understandable world follows laws of physics. Science is the way to determine these laws. Once a scientific model is found to work in a given domain, it always works. Newton's laws are still used to build cars and bridges, despite being less applicable than Einstein's theories of relativity.

What is knowledge? Knowledge consists of three things:

1. Analytic facts that are derived from axioms using logic.


2. Empirical facts.


3. Scientific theories that are shown to predict accurate experimental outcomes over a certain domain and with a certain level of precision.

Belief

What is belief? Belief is a personal decision to accept knowledge as adequate for decision-making. I might believe that I will get my car back after I lend it to my brother. We believe flying is safe because a lot of people do it and we trust the FAA to police the air transportation industry. If we have participated in experiments ourselves, we can believe the theories we verify. This definition of belief meets your requirement that verification be possible.

Trust

As you say, trust in another person is a measure of the expected behavior of that person. Trust is never total. For example, I may say that my trust in John Kerry is 98% when it comes to nuclear non-proliferation. That means I estimate a 2% chance that he won't help and may hurt. Depending on what is at stake, I might want better odds. That's when I need verification. When the stakes are high we demand verification. That's why we have independent organizations as watchdogs.

Can I afford trust my friend to pay for his share of our restaurant tab? Sure. I can afford to lose money once or twice before I no longer trust him. At an interpersonal level, we frequently neither want nor require verification.

One more comment about this. There is a cost to verification. We may choose to trust something or someone because we deem the cost of verification too high AND the cost of bypassing the trusted party too high. I may not trust the quality of the food at the supermarket. However, I don't have the resources to test the food for toxins (verify), and I don't have time to grow my own organic food (bypass). Instead, I opt to trust the supermarket food.

You argue that verification is detrimental to trust. Do you mean that verified action requires no trust? For example, do you mean that if I never use a credit card, I never build a credit rating?

Is this bad because, if the verification mechanism breaks down, there is no trust to back it up?

If so, does this hold for any aspect of our society that depends on modern conveniences? Should we all have vegetable gardens in the event that the normal food supply fails?


Completeness

Completeness is the decompression of a natural language statement into a scientific one. It's really that simple. If a statement is not completable, then we cannot agree on an equivalent scientific statement. If a person cannot agree that their proposition is equivalent to some scientific proposition, then their proposition is poetry. This is not metaphysical. It is an acknowledgement that the proposition has nothing to do with experience (empiricism).

Scientists are not "pursuing metaphysical goals". They assume that it is possible to learn about the universe, then follow the only course of action consistent with the fact that the universe can be understood. There is simply no way to understand the world otherwise.

Miracles

This posting is brought to you by the miracle of the transistor!!!

If miracles are natural (i.e., not supernatural), then yes, it is part of physics. If aliens land on Earth and use some technology to bring a dead person back to life, hey, that's a miracle.

Unfortunately, miracle has another meaning. People use it to mean that the laws of physics are suspended by a supernatural force. According to LP, propositions about the supernatural are meaningless.

Did the Jesus of the New Testament walk on water? If he did, then he had some serious technology. To the extent that we can talk about this, we are talking about feats of technology, not the supernatural.

Now, religionists will insist that their stories are not about technology. After all, who wants to bow down before a technological wizard, even if he did create this particular universe?

[I'm off on a tangent here, but why would a being so powerful want to force us to acknowledge that he is superior when it's so blatantly obvious? That would be like me forcing a two-year old to acknowledge that he can't beat me at tennis. I just don't understand any of the supposed motivations here.]

The Unabomber

I'm sorry, but I don't think that LP has anything to do with this. As you say, it is social maladjustment that is the cause of the problem. A person such as the Unabomber will use any justification that is at hand. If a man watches a surgical procedure on TV and is inspired to perform illegal surgeries on unwilling victims, is surgery to blame? I don't see it.

doctor(logic)