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To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (9926)	4/17/1998 3:35:00 PM
From: jhild	Respond to of 71178

Well, I can understand what you are saying, and I have tried to be careful to position my statements so as to be descriptive of my process as relative to me. My analogy is only that. I don't see it as an algebra per se. The calculus of my function to me does not as you might suggest support a monotonic relationship. How can it when my operator (function) is something like "Would I appreciate having this which I am about to do, done to me?", it's almost a guarantee that it is not monotonic. As to absolute anything that seems almost always relative. Our experience of the universe is limited to only the barest blink of mass/space/time possibilities. We can never know anything absolutely. As an engineer I am more comfortable thinking in terms that accept the implied relativity of our physical limits, or the limits of what is being considered. (Sort of like saying F=MA is good enough for my purposes.) So "near absolute" truth or reason is satisfactory for me to be useful. It is far more comfortable to me than the alternative of just accepting some external reason. Otherwise, I could just live by my astrological forecast.

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (9926)	4/17/1998 3:51:00 PM
From: Gauguin	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

Alex, I wonder how God feels about people who are instinctively convinced, or intellectually convinced, or convinced by experience, that He cannot be known by humans. If He expects to be known by idiotic (or brilliant) human machinations and/or pronouncing suppositions, or "texts", or theory, He's in trouble. Deep, deep trouble. I would then be forced to take Him aside and smack him for being so stupid. "Yew idiot." My first inclination is to say that He needs to find a smarter species. Or we need to find a smarter God. One of the two. Supreme Being my butt.

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (9926)	4/17/1998 10:50:00 PM
From: JF Quinnelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

Sounds like Kant. He didn't think you could know reality 'cuz your sense perception gets in the way. But in the end he describes a distinction without a difference. We use reason to remove the veil that our senses may impose on the real world, in order to know the real with our intellects, in order not to be fooled by our senses. In some sense our surest knowledge of what is absolute is contained in relations, mathematical and logical. It's the knowledge of what is absolute in its purest form, with no distortions of sense or measurement. It's surely why geometry held such an appeal to the ancient Greek philosophers. Our modern knowledge of physics revolves around an absolute relation, that of the speed of light in a vacuum. Heisenberg nominated Einstein to the Berlin Academy on the basis of the epistemology contained in Einstein's theories, which Heisenberg thought to be Einstein's greatest achievement. Einstein drove a stake through the heart of the indeterminacy of Kant's cosmology, which ruled until Einstein demolished it and paved the way to objective knowledge of the real world. All of this is better described in Stanley Jaki's The Absolute Beneath the Relative. Berkeley was an Empiricist, and believed the major source of human knowledge comes from the senses. It's a view that seems to belittle objective reality, emphasizing the sensory. It's an epistemology diametrically opposite to the objective reality posited by Einstein, where sensory apprehension has little value as opposed to the objective facts of nature.

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (9926)	4/30/1998 11:33:00 PM
From: Father Terrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

Alex: Just read this piece of claptrap. Congratulations! Immanuel Kant would be proud of you! Father Terrence

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (9926)	5/1/1998 11:40:00 AM
From: BlueCrab	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

Alex -- <<It's a core belief of mine that we are not capable of conceiving or perceiving Absolute Truth.>> How very Heisenbergian. I happen to agree. If we cannot accurately track the motion of a single electron with specificity, how can we hope to "know" accurately the entire universe? Or, for that matter, a grape? If I may speak scientifically for just a second - we build our models, we use them predictively, and if they fail to reproduce accurately the system we are evaluating we change them. A is A? A is a MODEL of A. And when you reach A'''''''''''''' ad nauseum, the result will STILL not be a totally accurate A. But it ought to be pretty damn close.