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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (12188)	4/25/2002 12:46:12 PM
From: Bill Fischofer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 28931

Thanks for the reference. Another site worth exploring is cs.umaine.edu which is Greg Chaitin's home page. Chaitin has made seminal contributions in the field of algorithmic information theory which has surprising relevance to this thread. For example, in the page you reference Anderson lists "explanatory power" as one of the key criteria for evaluating philosophical systems. Yet as we consider what we mean by "explanation" it becomes clear that this leads us down a road into Chaitin's lair. In a nutshell, Chaitin has vastly elaborated the results pioneered by Goedel on the limits of formal systems which are really the basis for all rationality. Whenever we reason we are using logic to filter experience and in its essence Chaitin shows how limited and inadequate such filters must always be. Mathematics itself it seen to be seething with untamed and untamable randomness. And yet, such randomness is precisely the substrate needed to permit the operation of free will. We create the axioms and the implications of those free choices are made manifest in our experience. In this we begin to perceive the process of self-creation itself.