CERTAINTY, LOGIC, MATH AND SCIENCE

     There is a lot of confusion of what constitutes 'proof' in the
world.

     You place a wine glass on a table, and come back the next day and
it has Goober's prints all over it and the wine is gone.

     That is proof that Goober drank it, no?

     Good enough for a court of law?

     You also had a hidden video camera running that captured Goober
walking in, drinking the wine, and leaving.

     Well now we have absolute proof, right?

     Good enough for a court of law?

     Truth is science can only provide theory, not certainty, not proof.

     Courts of law ask for 'beyond reasonable doubt', this does not mean
perfect certainty, one that can not be wrong.

     Perfect certainty is 'beyond a shadow of a doubt'.

     Having been found guilty by a jury is an adjudication that you
probably did it, and not proof that you were in fact the perpetrator of
the crime.

     People like to think that when a jury lays down a verdict, that is
somehow the truth, it serves some purpose for them to believe this.

     You *ARE* guilty because the jury said so.

     Anyhow one might ask what levels of certainty do math and logic
provide?  Both math and logic are usually considered 'sciences', yet
science can not produce a certainty and math and logic certainly can.

     Science is an approach to putting together a workable theory of the
world.  Math and logic are tools that science uses, mostly in disproving
theories, mostly of the universal kind, 'all daisies are black'.  one
white daisy and that theory is dead FOR SURE.

     Thus we can use math and logic to prove that a theory is unworkable
with certainty, but never that a theory is workable.

     Math is derived from logic, so gets its certainty from logic.

     Logic is a description of IS and IS NOT,

     IS and IS NOT are direct observations of the nature of
consciousness, eg.  I AM, red and green ARE NOT identical etc.

     Thus since observations in consciousness can only provide perfect
certainties, the descriptions of consciousness embodied by IS and IS NOT
are also perfect certainties.

     Since logic is merely an extension of that description of IS and IS
NOT, logic also provides perfect certainties, and thus so does math.

     As long as science sticks to making direct observations of
consciousness, it's qualities and their relations, science too can
provide perfect certainties.

     But the second science gets involved in indirect observations and
theory, it has started the walk down the garden path from certain
actuality to uncertain virtual reality.

     Science deals with observations, theories, and predictions leading
to more observations.

     In the absolute last analysis, the observation is always certain,
even though the theories of cause are not.  But those observations
remain certain only to the degree that they are observations about the
scientist's conscious experience of the experiment.

     He can safely talk about seeing the color red, but once he starts
talking about seeing photons of 5000 Angstroms, his observations become
theories in themselves, and thus lose all semblance of certainty.

     We call this process by which observations become theories the
'Theory Sandwich'.  It results from the collapsing of symbol and
referent into one.

     There is always a theory connecting a perfectly certain symbol like
the color red in consciousness, with a perfectly uncertain referent like
a photon of 5000 Angstroms.

     Conscious Symbol -> Theory -> Alleged Physical Referent

     Thus as long as a scientist talks about seeing the color red, he is
on certain grounds because the symbol is MADE of perfectly certain self
luminous consciousness.

     But the minute he starts claiming he has seen red photons, he has
collapsed the conscious symbol onto the alleged physical referent
squeezing the theory out of the middle like a jelly sandwich compressed
too tight.

     Instead of two pieces of bread with theory jelly between, he thinks
there is only one piece of bread and no jelly at all.

     He is pretending there is no symbol and no theory, that the red
photon is a 'fact'.  At that point he is gone, but certainly passes the
grade for a PhD in the Halls of Academentia.

     Homer

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Homer Wilson Smith     The Paths of Lovers    Art Matrix - Lightlink
(607) 277-0959 KC2ITF        Cross            Internet Access, Ithaca NY
homer@lightlink.com    In the Line of Duty    http://www.lightlink.com

Sat Aug 18 23:52:58 EDT 2007