I lean towards the position that the capacity of divine persons is on a long upward climb in parallel with celestial civilization, and that the plan of salvation was implemented as soon as it became feasible.

The knowledge of all possibilities does not seem to be required to implement the plan of salvation, so I would say probably not.

I certainly agree that by creatively synthesizing unprecedented events, an LFW agent creates new truths, although typically pretty trivial ones.

I am not at all convinced that natural laws are the sort of thing that can be created, but by and large I am sympathetic to the William James’ suggestion that “truth is something that happens to an idea”.

Jacob,

If history repeats itself verbatim, I would say we have a major problem with the plan of salvation. Eternal progression, not eternal recession, right?

If you would re-read my last comment, my point is that the “newness” in any deterministic system, including so-called chaotic ones, is completely superficial.

Take the universe for example. If it is finite, deterministic, and energy conserving it is subject to the Poincare recurrence theorem, which states that it will return arbitrarily close to its present state after a finite recurrence time, like clockwork, repeating the same history over and over again. What is new about that? Don’t you think God would get bored after watching the second rerun or so? (smile)

A mathematical statement is true by it’s reliance and coherence with certain axioms and theorem’s proven to correspond with these axioms, where coherence is also something that is ultimately somewhat debatable (as the arguments between constructivist, intuitionist, or traditional mathematicians attests—in particular, whether ‘proof by contradiction’ must be valid or whether all proofs must be explicitly constructive…).

So, truth even in mathematics is dependent on a choice (of what axioms to accept, in particular, whether the Axiom of Choice is accepted or not). God, in this sense, is the ultimate example of or embodiment of truth because what he chooses to say (i.e. promises) he chooses to follow through on. God’s words are like axioms, but better than abstract mathematical axioms which may or may not have any bearing on the real empirical, physical world, because God’s “axioms” are implemented in our real, empirical, physical world.

Similarly, because of LFW, we can be independent truths ourselves (a la D&C 93—here is where I’m alluding to Mark’s discussion and thinking of independence in the mathematical/statistical sense of not being spanned by anything else, i.e. increasing in Kolmogorov complexity…), if and only if we learn to be true to our word and cohere (think “live peaceably”) with other truths (like how the Axiom of Choice is a mathematical “truth” in relation to ZF set theory since, as Godel and Cohen proved, it is independent of all the other axioms of ZF).

The point is that truth is not something that coheres to some objective (i.e. determined) reality, because no such reality exists (I think this is obvious from discussion here in terms of time; arguing for “no objective reality” in terms of a so-called “point in time” is much harder…). Rather, truth is something that follows directly from the exercise of LFW. Truth is something that happens, which is why Badiou uses teh terms truth and event practically synonymously.

I think it an important facet. I think our intuitions go with one sense of novelty that may support LFW. However your use goes well beyond that use.

Put an other way even in deterministic systems there’s a lot of “newness.” (Just look at chaotic systems, if nothing else) To accuse determinism of Platonism is just wrong.

(In Perl, if you please…)

[Surely you meant to refer to a Fibonacci sequence where i(n) = i(n-1) + i(n-2).]

I am definitely using a more intense sense of the term “new”. For example, it is trivially demonstrable that the Kolmogorov complexity of a finite deterministic system is constant or decreasing. Increasing Kolmogorov complexity, on the other hand, is one of the things one would expect to see if something truly novel was going on.

Suppose you have a system that displays portions of Mandlebrot sets – every iteration you may have something that looks unique, but after a few iterations you become familiar with the types of patterns that occur, and after that it is just all Mandlebrot set all the time, and you get bored and look for something else to do.

One way of explaining it is that a Mandebrot set generator, though it produces what appear to be very sophisticated patterns, has a low Kolmogorov complexity, and just like any deterministic system, cannot produce an output with a Kolmogorov complexity greater than what it has to start with (including the complexity of the rules themselves).

So a sophisticated observer quickly recognizes that such a system has a rather limited repertoire that is not ever going to change no matter how many iterations the system goes through. The only ways for a closed system to increase its repertoire are non-deterministic: design (LFW) or fortuitous accident (intrinsic randomness).

If there is no LFW and the randomness isn’t instrinsic, the repertoire will be fixed or decreasing. Deterministic systems governed by the Poincare recurrence theorem are typical.

So I think your discussion hinges on an equivocation of novelty.