On 5/23/2012 4:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 23 May 2012, at 01:22, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 5/22/2012 6:01 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2012/5/22 Stephen P. King <stephe...@charter.net
<mailto:stephe...@charter.net>>
No, Bruno, it is not Neutral monism as such cannot assume any
particular as primitive, even if it is quantity itself, for to
do such is to violate the very notion of neutrality itself. You
might like to spend some time reading Spinoza
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/> and Bertrand
Russell's discussions of this. I did not invent this line of
reasoning.
*Neutral monism*, in philosophy
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy>, is the metaphysical
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics> view that the mental and
the physical are two ways of organizing or describing the same
elements, which are themselves "neutral," that is, neither physical
nor mental.
I don't see how taking N,+,* as primitive is not neutral monism. It
is neither physical nor mental.
If mathematical "objects" are not within the category of Mental
then that is news to philosophers...
If mathematical "objects" are within the category of Mental then that
is news to mathematicians...
And it is disastrous for those who want study the mental by defining
it by the mathematical, as in computer science, cognitive science,
artificial intelligence, etc;
Are we being intentionally unable to understand the obvious? Do we
physically interact with mathematical objects? No. Thus they are not in
the physical realm. We interact with mathematical objects with our
minds, thus they are in the mental realm. Not complicated.
even more perplexing to me; how is it that the Integers are
given such special status,
Because of "digital" in digital mechanism. It is not so much an
emphasis on numbers, than on finite.
So how do you justify finiteness? I have been accused of
having the "everything disease" whose symptom is "the inability
to conceive anything but infinite, ill defined ensembles", but
in my defense I must state that what I am conceiving is an
over-abundance of very precisely defined ensembles. My disease
is the inability to properly articulate a written description.
especially when we cast aside all possibility (within our
ontology) of the "reality" of the physical world?
Not at all. Only "primitively physical" reality is put in doubt.
Not me. I already came to the conclusion that reality cannot
be primitively physical.
You are unclear on what you posit. You always came back to the
"physical reality" point, so I don't know what more to say... either
you agree physical reality is not ontologically primitive or you
don't, there's no in between position.
We have to start at the physical reality that we individually
experience, it is, aside from our awareness, the most "real" thing we
have to stand upon philosophically.
The most "real" things might be consciousness, here and now. And this
doesn't make consciousness primitive, but invite us to be
methodologically skeptical on the physical, as we know since the
"dream argument".
The only person that is making it, albeit indirectly by
implication, is you, Bruno. You think that you are safe because you
believe that you have isolated mathematics from the physical and from
the contingency of having to be known by particular individuals, but you
have not over come the basic flaw of Platonism: if you disconnect the
Forms from consciousness you forever prevent the act of apprehension.
You seem to think that property definiteness is an ontological a priori.
You are not the first, E. Kant had the same delusion.
From there we venture out in our speculations as to our ontology.
cosmogony and epistemology. is there an alternative?
So you start from physics? This contradicts your neutral monism.
So you do need a diagram to understand a simple idea.
Without the physical world to act as a "selection" mechanism
for what is "Real",
This contradicts your neutral monism.
No, it does not. Please see my discussion of neutral monism
above.
Yes it does, reading you, you posit a physical material reality as
primitive, which is not neutral...
No, I posit the physical and the mental as "real" in the sense
that I am experiencing them.
You can't experience the physical. The physical is inferred from
theory, even if automated by years of evolution.
We cannot experience anything directly, except for our individual
consciousness, all else is inferred.
Telescoping out to the farthest point of abstraction we have ideas
like Bruno's. I guess that I need to draw some diagrams...
Not ideas. Universal truth following a deduction in a theoretical
frame. It is just a theorem in applied logic: if we are digital
machine, then physics (whatever inferable from observable) is
derivable from arithmetic. Adding anything to it, *cannot* be of any
use (cf UDA step 7 and 8).
You are free to use any philosophy you want to *find* a flaw in the
reasoning, but a philosophical conviction does not refute it by itself.
If you think there is a loophole, just show it to us.
why the bias for integers?
Because comp = machine, and machine are supposed to be of the
type "finitely describable".
This is true only after the possibility of determining
differences is stipulated. One cannot assume a neutral monism
that stipulates a non-neutral stance, to do so it a contradiction.
Computationalism is the theory that your consciousness can be
emulated on a turing machine, a program is a finite object and can
be described by an integer. I don't see a contradiction.
I am with Penrose in claiming that consciousness is not emulable
by a finite machine.
This contradicts your statement that your theory is consistent with
comp (as it is not, as I argue to you). You are making my point. It
took time.
You have no idea what "my theory" is.
This has been a question that I have tried to get answered to
no avail.
You don't listen. This has been repeated very often. When you
say "yes" to the doctor, you accept that you survive with a
computer executing a code. A code is mainly a natural number,
up to computable isomorphism. Comp refers to computer science,
which study the computable function, which can always be
recasted in term of computable function from N to N.
And there are no other theory of computability, on reals or
whatever, or if you prefer, there are too many, without any
Church thesis or genuine universality notion. (Cf Pour-Hel,
Blum Shub and Smale, etc.)
I do listen and read as well. Now it is your turn. The
entire theory of computation rests upon the ability to
distinguish quantity from non-quantity, even to the point of the
possibility of the act of making a distinction. When you propose
a primitive ground that assumes a prior distinction and negates
the prior act that generated the result, you are demanding the
belief in fiat acts. This is familiar to me from my childhood
days of sitting in the pew of my father's church. It is an act
of blind faith, not evidence based science. Please stop
pretending otherwise.
"evidence based science" ??
Yes, like not rejecting the physical necessity involved in a
computation.
There is no physical necessity involved in a computation, no more than
in an addition or multiplication. You will not find a book on
computation referring to any physical notion in the definition. This
exists only in philosophical defense on physicalism. The notion of
physical computation is complex, and there is no unanimity on whether
such notion makes sense or not. With comp, it is an open problem, but
it does a priori make sense.
Oh my, can you not see that the book on computation itself is
physical and is thus a case of the necessity of a physical
instantiation? You can not seriously tell me that the most obvious fact
here is not visible to you.
I reject Platonism on these grounds; it is anti-empirical.
As Brent pointed out, it depends on the theory. Comp is platonist, but
makes precise prediction (indeed, that the whole of physics is given
by precise theories based on self-reference). This illustrates that
platonism can be empirical.
What ever.
--
Onward!
Stephen
"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
~ Francis Bacon
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