No, I still think there’s a difference, although the omnipotence suggestion might have been an overly hasty way of explaining it. One side has moving parts, the other is just a big lump of magic.
When a statement is meaningful, we can think of an experiment that confirms it such that the experiment is also built out of meaningful statements. For example, my experiment to confirm the cake-in-the-sun is for a person on August 1 to go to the center of the sun, and see if it tastes delicious. So, IF Y is in the center of the sun, AND IF Y is there on August 1, AND IF Y perceives a sensation of deliciousness, THEN the cake-in-the-sun theory is true.
Most reasonable people will agree that “Today is August 1st” is meaningful, “This is the center of the sun” is meaningful, and “That’s delicious!” is meaningful, so from those values we can calculate a meaningful value for “There’s a cake in the center of the sun August 1st”. If someone didn’t believe that “Today is August 1st” is meaningful, we could verify it by saying “IF the calendar says ‘August 1’, THEN it is August 1st” in which we specify a way of testing that. If someone doesn’t even agree that “The calendar says ‘August 1’” is meaningful, we reduce it to “IF your sensory experience includes an image of a calendar with the page set to August 1st, THEN the calendar says ‘August 1’.” In this way, the cake-in-the-sun theory gets reduced to direct sensory experience.
To determine the truth value of the uncle statement, I need to see if the Absolute has an uncle. Mmmkay. So. I’ll just go and....hmmmm.
If you admit that direct sensory experience is meaningful, and that statements composed of operations on meaningful statements are also meaningful, then the cake-in-the-sun theory is meaningful and the uncle theory isn’t.
(I do believe that questions about the existence of an afterlife are meaningful. If I wake up an hour after dying and find myself in a lake of fire surrounded by red-skinned guys with pointy pitchforks, that’s going to concentrate my probability mass on the afterlife question pretty densely to one side.)
No, I still think there’s a difference, although the omnipotence suggestion might have been an overly hasty way of explaining it. One side has moving parts, the other is just a big lump of magic.
When a statement is meaningful, we can think of an experiment that confirms it such that the experiment is also built out of meaningful statements. For example, my experiment to confirm the cake-in-the-sun is for a person on August 1 to go to the center of the sun, and see if it tastes delicious. So, IF Y is in the center of the sun, AND IF Y is there on August 1, AND IF Y perceives a sensation of deliciousness, THEN the cake-in-the-sun theory is true.
Most reasonable people will agree that “Today is August 1st” is meaningful, “This is the center of the sun” is meaningful, and “That’s delicious!” is meaningful, so from those values we can calculate a meaningful value for “There’s a cake in the center of the sun August 1st”. If someone didn’t believe that “Today is August 1st” is meaningful, we could verify it by saying “IF the calendar says ‘August 1’, THEN it is August 1st” in which we specify a way of testing that. If someone doesn’t even agree that “The calendar says ‘August 1’” is meaningful, we reduce it to “IF your sensory experience includes an image of a calendar with the page set to August 1st, THEN the calendar says ‘August 1’.” In this way, the cake-in-the-sun theory gets reduced to direct sensory experience.
To determine the truth value of the uncle statement, I need to see if the Absolute has an uncle. Mmmkay. So. I’ll just go and....hmmmm.
If you admit that direct sensory experience is meaningful, and that statements composed of operations on meaningful statements are also meaningful, then the cake-in-the-sun theory is meaningful and the uncle theory isn’t.
(I do believe that questions about the existence of an afterlife are meaningful. If I wake up an hour after dying and find myself in a lake of fire surrounded by red-skinned guys with pointy pitchforks, that’s going to concentrate my probability mass on the afterlife question pretty densely to one side.)