（链接：The Big Questions 边读边评：二（共二））

这是我首次读 The Big Questions 这本书。这也貌似是我首次在阅读的时候刻意记录我的想法或者质疑。

1

I am quite sure that my hopes and dreams exist, but they're not made of atoms. The color blue, the theory of relativity, and the idea of a unicorn exist, but none of them is made of atoms.

I am confident that mathematics exists for the same reason I am confident my hopes and dreams exist: I experience it directly. I believe my dining-room table exists because I can feel it with my hands. I believe numbers, the laws of arithmetic, and (for that matter) the ideal triangles of Euclidean geometry exist be- cause I can "feel" them with my thoughts.

这体现的应该是（「主观」？）「唯心主义」吧？让我想到了「陆王心学」。

2

（作者就 A Conversation with Einstein's Brain 的描述）

Then we consult tables showing how the firing of speech neurons affects the shape of the mouth and the tension in the vocal cords, and we calculate what Einstein is "saying." The process in practice would take many hundreds of millennia, but in principle, there's no reason to doubt that we'd get exactly the same responses that we'd have gotten had we spoken to Einstein himself.

这里貌似严重地忽略了随机性。不过根据我写下时就会转念的规律，我又想，或许随机性可以记录在「函数」里，仅当「函数」被调用的时候才使用（合适的）随机生成器生成所需的随机性。

可是如果考虑随机性（函数, if you like）的坍塌发生在调用函数的时候的话，那么每次在相同的环境（含时空等要素）下（although which 显然不可能）我受到同样的外界信息时我不一定会产生同样的（而会产生具随机性的）反应。

这可能又涉及到「自由意志」了。

3

So I believe your dining-room table, your pornography collection, and your mother-in-law are all mathematical objects - subobjects of a larger mathematical object called the Universe. Is there something odd about observing a mathematical object and perceiving it as physical? No odder, I claim, than observing a physical object and perceiving it as green. Color is not a physical property; it's a property imposed by your nervous system. If your brain can conjure colors into existence, why can't it conjure physicality?

这让我想到了「缸中之脑」。

4

（有空我再来删减引文吧… ）

The Universe (or Life, depending on whether the speaker is
more hostile toward physics or biology) is extraordinarily
and irreducibly complex. Such complexity requires a designer.
Orthodox science foils to account for that designer. Ergo ortho-
dox science is at best incomplete.

...

Here "irreducible" complexity refers to the interaction of
many parts, any one of which is useless without the others. If a
lens is no good without a retina, and a retina is no good without
a lens, how could either have evolved first?

...

Indeed arithmetic must be more complex than life, be-
cause all the complexity of life derives from the complexity of
arithmetic-in particular, the combinatorial patterns that mani-
fest themselves in DNA and protein synthesis.

Of course, some people think life is more than DNA and
protein synthesis; some even claim that life requires an immor-
tal soul. But immortal souls are beyond the purview of science,
whereas the whole point of Intelligent Design theory is that
the irreducible complexity of scientifically observable processes
is already so great as to require a designer. Every one of those
observable processes can be described as an arithmetical pattern.
So if your argument is that anything as complex as life requires a
designer, then you must be prepared to conclude that arithmetic
required a designer.

That's devastating, because almost nobody is prepared to
believe that arithmetic was designed. If God designed arithme-
tic, he must have made some choices along the way; if you're
not making choices, you're not designing. But a choice is not a
choice unless you could have chosen differently, which suggests
that, for example, God could have arranged matters so that two
plus two makes five. And at least in my experience, even people
who claim to be very religious have trouble swallowing that
much omnipotence.

这里出现的补充看起来很 勉强/可疑/值得推敲 。

这里还出现了哥德尔不完备定理。

这里忽略了 Hobson's Choice —— 要么上帝按照「数学」的规律造宇宙，要么压根不造宇宙。

5

...

What about other arguments for the existence of God? One of the most durable is the "ontological argument," devised by Saint Anselm in the eleventh century.

Anselm defines God as "the greatest thing imaginable." Now, existence is really really great, so if God didn't exist, he couldn't be the greatest thing imaginable, now could he? Therefore, by definition God exists! Case closed!

Inspired by Anselm, I am going to prove there is a number that's bigger than any other number. I call this number G, and I define it to be the biggest number ever! Now, if G didn't exist, it could hardly be the biggest number ever, could it? So by defini- tion G exists! Case closed!

Just think of it! The biggest of all numbers! Once you've counted to G you can count no further. If you've got G nickels and somebody gives you another nickel, how many nickels have you got? It can't be G+ 1 because that would be an even bigger number, and that's impossible!

这次是「本体论」第一次出现在我的思考中。可是想了半天，这之中的核心谬误到底是如何做到的——换言之，我的直觉是如何被欺骗的——我还是没能想清楚。直觉与事实不一是一种安全隐患啊！