On 20 Apr 2010, at 05:22, Rex Allen wrote:
On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 2:48 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
wrote:
On 18 Apr 2010, at 03:15, rexallen...@gmail.com wrote:
I agree in theory, though I still hold to my "consciousness is
fundamental and uncaused" mantra!
Would you agree that the distribution of prime numbers is "uncaused".
I would say that anyone starting with the same assumptions and using
the same rules of inference would reach the same conclusions.
OK, but only if they are searching all conclusions. If not they could
as well get very different theorems.
I would not go so far as to say that the assumptions, rules of
inference, OR conclusions exist, except as objects of thought.
I guess you mean "don't exist".
I am OK with that. Those things exists at higher epistemological
level, than the basic "Ex" in the base theory.
I can understand that consciousness is fundamental, and "uncaused".
Yet it
is explainable in term of simpler things, like numbers and elementary
operations, in term of high level self-consistency.
I agree that I can use numbers to represent and model aspects of what
I perceive, but this falls far short of "explaining" consciousness.
Actually I was slightly wrong, and consciousness is more better
explained in term of true self-consistency. This is enough to make
consciousness not descfribable by anything in a thurd person way. The
theory explains consciousness including why we cannot explain
consciousness in any third person way. consciousness is only livable,
never describable. Like the first person, well, like all hypostases in
which the letter "p" appears without the scope of an arithmetical
modality.
In the DM theory, consciousness is fundamental, yet not primary.
You can
'almost' define consciousness by the unconscious, or instinctive, or
automated inference of self-consistency, or of a reality (it is
more or less
equivalent in DM).
Fundamental but not primary. Hmmmmmmm. That sounds interesting, but
I'm not sure what you mean by it.
Fundamental means that it plays a big role.
Primary means that we use the notion undefined in the starting
postulate.
If you only know numbers as they appear in your conscious thoughts,
how is it possible to conclude that they are more "primal" than the
only medium in which you know them to exist?
I don't know if anything exist. We cannot know if a theory is true.
But I have been convinced of the truth of elementary arithmetic in
high school, and it is a subtheory of all fundamental theories.
If only two things exist, numbers and consciousness, in some
relationship to each other, how do you decide which is first and which
is second? Numbers cause thought. Thought causes numbers. Why
prefer one over the other?
Because no theory can explain the numbers without postulating them.
This is the failure of logicism. Then comp explains consciousness from
number, including why a gap has to remain. It explains why all
universal numbers arrive at that conclusion from logic + self-
introspection.
If they're co-equal, then it's two sides of the same coin...
For numbers, you need just "0", successors, addition and
multiplication. Then consciousness is explained by the self-
referential abilities of universal numbers (Löbian numbers).
This explain consciousness (cf the 8 hypostases) and this include
matter and the relation matter/consciousness, and this in a testable
way.
It is the whole coupling consciousness/realities which can be
explained by
addition and multiplication (or abstraction and application, etc.)
once we
bet on DM.
Again you use the word "explained". But I think you mean "described".
Hmm... You may say "meta-describe", given that the theory prevent
consciousness to be described, or even associate to any finite things
in a 1-1 way.
It is like "truth"; no machine can describe its truth predicate. There
are none. Consciousness is fractal and beyond description. This
explain the usual difficulties people have with that concept.
Privately, by contrast, we can know some truth (like I'm
conscious), but we
can never communicate them as such.
Can anything fundamental ever be communicated to someone not already
possessing knowledge of it?
You are right. In that sense, numbers are like consciousness. But
numbers are far simpler, and we can, and usually do, agree on the
axioms they have to obey.
That is hardly the case for consciousness. I already said this, and
you answered me that you are not searching a theory, just asserting
consciousness is primary. No problem with that. It means we are not
doing the same kind of research.
I don't *propose* a theory of mind or of matter, I derive them from
the digital mechanist assumption.
More exactly I provide an argumentation showing why we HAVE TO derive
them from that assumption, and in AUDA, I show precisely how to derive
them, and give the first results which can be tested experimentally.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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