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Friday, April 13, 2012

Science and Religion: Proibido Afixar Azulejos!

A Tile saying "Do Not Place Tiles Here!"
Proibido Afixar Azulejos!

The Logic of Science will deal with situations such as "This Statement is False."
If the statement is true, it is false: a paradox with no escape.

The Logic of Religion will deal with situations such as "Make No Statements!" , and leave it to us to figure out whether the command itself to make no statements is an infringement on the "morality" of no-statement-making, and whether that status affects the "moral imperative" to not make statements in the first place.
Again a paradox.
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Postscript at 14:25 EDT
Later in the day, I think that Religion should have "Make No Commands!"; that would be even better.
(Or "Make No Imperatives!")
I think this change better shows up the difference.

And it is probably much better to speak of the Logic of Morals, rather than of Religion.
So we could recast the above post as:
The Logic of Science will deal with situations such as "This Statement is False."
If the statement is true, it is false: a paradox with no escape.

The Logic of Morals will deal with situations such as "Make No Imperatives!" , and leave it to us to figure out whether the command-imperative itself to make no imperatives is an infringement on the "morality" of no-imperative-making, and whether that status affects the "moral imperative" to not make such commands in the first place.
Again a paradox.
I am sorry about the unfinished manner of presentation, but I used the blog as my primary bit of scrap paper to scribble this down, because as soon as I saw the picture above, the possibility of a moral paradox similar to that of the Cretan Liar in classical logic literally "bounced"  into my head.
It is hard, sometimes, to keep a grasp on those bouncing notions.
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