Working Notes: Current Working Notes These notes are the contents of a whiteboard in Tinderbox that I'm using to map out my (more . . .)

Embracing Uncertainty: My conceptual leap some years ago was to abandon the search for a Truth and to embrace uncertainty. Decision Theory (more . . .)

Where does TOC fit?: Once I had found that systems theory helped explain the uncertainty at the heart of the Decision Theoretical approach to (more . . .)

About this site

Essays

Current Working Notes

My personal website is at ODBlog . I write about decision theory at my site On Deciding . . . Better . This site is a hyperlinked set of essays using Tinderbox.

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I've sketched a postmodern approach to truth that is pragmatic and but radical in its embracing of uncertainty. I do not hide the fact that I am an observant Jew. It might seem that my rejection of a single, abstract knowable truth is at odds with religious belief. I will argue that, on the contrary, manifestations of God have, at least in my tradition, been seen as residing in the uncertain and unknowable.

For me, rejection of simple materialism and rejection of abstract truth creates a great deal of room in which God can operate. I fact, my choice to believe in my tradition and my actions within it of prayer, ritual and observance are all means of relating to the uncertain and unknowable.

I will argue that God exists in a non-material, emergent sense, not as real as either a material or abstract entity, much as my personal identity arises out of my body and brain, directing events in the material world, so to does our experience of God emerge from the material world to the absolute highest level, not of the material world but not independent of it either.

Copyright 2003 by James J. Vornov