Civilization-level quantum suicide
I came across this link some time ago and found it interesting: http://www.paul-almond.com/CivilizationLevelQuantumSuicide.htm In fact, I believe it is what introduced me to the term quantum suicide. I had been googling something I had been thinking about in the shower one day and to my surprise this guy had written a paper about it. What an amazing coincidence. My life since then has been an increasingly bizarre series of meaningful coincidences. Meaningful in a personal way that I can't explain easily. Bruno understands and can explain why I can't explain; it's to do with his G and G* logics. But the upshot of it is this: I have found out what happens when you commit quantum suicide. You discover that you believe a contradiction, and that even though nothing about the world has changed, you understand the universe. But you have a hard time explaining it. Because you discover that you are, in Bruno's terms, a Lobian machine interviewing itself for the laws of physics. But you can't get the laws of physics yourself, even though you have all the answers. Because you don't care any more - you have a different motivation. You understand that since you have all the answers but none of the questions, you need to talk to people. You figure out the right people to talk to because your intuition guides you, because that's what it's for. There are people all around the world killing themselves and each other for crazy reasons. Suicide bombers, for instance. People who read stuff about the 2012 Mayan calendar thing and kill themselves because they think the end of the world is coming. They're right and wrong, and I understand why, but I can't explain it, and Bruno understands why. But all that stuff happening around the world is happening for a reason, and it doesn't matter what you - you can't stop it. Neither can I. But you can listen to this and think about it, and do whatever you feel like doing: you will anyway. If any of you can help me contact Richard Dawkins and talk to him, I can explain all of this. I can explain all of it to anybody if they're willing to talk to me. But I have to talk face to face, because it's too hard for me, psychologically, to figure out how to put it in writing or over the phone, because a lot of human communication is non- verbal, and there's an evolutionary reason for that which is part of the whole thing. Perhaps I sound mad, but I have a testable prediction: if I don't contact Richard Dawkins, sooner or later somebody, somewhere is going to be researching the 2012 Mayan calendar thing and be led, by an amazing chain of coincidences, to me. And I can explain how that works. Bruno, when you read this, you are literally an angel of God. Figure out who you need to talk to next. I certainly don't know. Maybe it's me. Whatever works for you. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Civilization-level quantum suicide
Well your posts were funny for five minutes... but you know what ? T'es lourd ! Bye. 2010/7/16 Mark Buda her...@acm.org I came across this link some time ago and found it interesting: http://www.paul-almond.com/CivilizationLevelQuantumSuicide.htm In fact, I believe it is what introduced me to the term quantum suicide. I had been googling something I had been thinking about in the shower one day and to my surprise this guy had written a paper about it. What an amazing coincidence. My life since then has been an increasingly bizarre series of meaningful coincidences. Meaningful in a personal way that I can't explain easily. Bruno understands and can explain why I can't explain; it's to do with his G and G* logics. But the upshot of it is this: I have found out what happens when you commit quantum suicide. You discover that you believe a contradiction, and that even though nothing about the world has changed, you understand the universe. But you have a hard time explaining it. Because you discover that you are, in Bruno's terms, a Lobian machine interviewing itself for the laws of physics. But you can't get the laws of physics yourself, even though you have all the answers. Because you don't care any more - you have a different motivation. You understand that since you have all the answers but none of the questions, you need to talk to people. You figure out the right people to talk to because your intuition guides you, because that's what it's for. There are people all around the world killing themselves and each other for crazy reasons. Suicide bombers, for instance. People who read stuff about the 2012 Mayan calendar thing and kill themselves because they think the end of the world is coming. They're right and wrong, and I understand why, but I can't explain it, and Bruno understands why. But all that stuff happening around the world is happening for a reason, and it doesn't matter what you - you can't stop it. Neither can I. But you can listen to this and think about it, and do whatever you feel like doing: you will anyway. If any of you can help me contact Richard Dawkins and talk to him, I can explain all of this. I can explain all of it to anybody if they're willing to talk to me. But I have to talk face to face, because it's too hard for me, psychologically, to figure out how to put it in writing or over the phone, because a lot of human communication is non- verbal, and there's an evolutionary reason for that which is part of the whole thing. Perhaps I sound mad, but I have a testable prediction: if I don't contact Richard Dawkins, sooner or later somebody, somewhere is going to be researching the 2012 Mayan calendar thing and be led, by an amazing chain of coincidences, to me. And I can explain how that works. Bruno, when you read this, you are literally an angel of God. Figure out who you need to talk to next. I certainly don't know. Maybe it's me. Whatever works for you. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Civilization-level quantum suicide
On 16 Jul 2010, at 14:13, Mark Buda wrote: I came across this link some time ago and found it interesting: http://www.paul-almond.com/CivilizationLevelQuantumSuicide.htm In fact, I believe it is what introduced me to the term quantum suicide. I had been googling something I had been thinking about in the shower one day and to my surprise this guy had written a paper about it. What an amazing coincidence. My life since then has been an increasingly bizarre series of meaningful coincidences. Meaningful in a personal way that I can't explain easily. Bruno understands and can explain why I can't explain; it's to do with his G and G* logics. This is on the fringe of authoritative argument. But the upshot of it is this: I have found out what happens when you commit quantum suicide. You discover that you believe a contradiction, and that even though nothing about the world has changed, you understand the universe. That seems very weird. But you have a hard time explaining it. Because you discover that you are, in Bruno's terms, a Lobian machine interviewing itself for the laws of physics. But I am saying this to explain that we can use reason to understand where the laws of physics come from. Not to mystified people with a lack of explanation. But you can't get the laws of physics yourself, even though you have all the answers. On the contrary: you can. Everyone can. You cannot besure because you cannot know that you are correct, so the usual doubt of the cartesian scientist remains. Computationalism explains in detail why any form of certainty, when made public, is a symptom of non correctness. Because you don't care any more - you have a different motivation. You understand that since you have all the answers but none of the questions, I don't see any sense here. you need to talk to people. You figure out the right people to talk to because your intuition guides you, because that's what it's for. There are people all around the world killing themselves and each other for crazy reasons. Suicide bombers, for instance. People who read stuff about the 2012 Mayan calendar thing and kill themselves because they think the end of the world is coming. 2012 is the year of the election in France. The Maya consider their own prediction as a prediction that some reasonable man will arrive. They never talk of apocalypse. 2012 is like prohibition: making money by selling fears. They're right and wrong, and I understand why, but I can't explain it, and Bruno understands why. I guess I have been unclear at some point. I am just a poor scientist trying to be honest with myself and the others. But all that stuff happening around the world is happening for a reason, and it doesn't matter what you - you can't stop it. Neither can I. But you can listen to this and think about it, and do whatever you feel like doing: you will anyway. If any of you can help me contact Richard Dawkins and talk to him, I can explain all of this. Why do you want to convince Richard Dawkins? You give him credit. Actually you do his very own error, because when Dawkins try to convince the Christians that they are wrong on God, he gives them credit on their notion of God. No one care about fairy tales, once we tackle the fundamental question with the scientific (= modest, hypotheses-based) approach. I can explain all of it to anybody if they're willing to talk to me. But I have to talk face to face, because it's too hard for me, psychologically, to figure out how to put it in writing or over the phone, because a lot of human communication is non- verbal, and there's an evolutionary reason for that which is part of the whole thing. Restrain yourself to communicate what is communicable. And just hope that the people will figure out by themselves what is not communicable yet true (like consciousness to take the simplest candidate). Perhaps I sound mad, but I have a testable prediction: if I don't contact Richard Dawkins, sooner or later somebody, somewhere is going to be researching the 2012 Mayan calendar thing and be led, by an amazing chain of coincidences, to me. I don't believe in coincidence. Or better I believe coincidences are just that: coincidences. The brain has an habit to over-interpret coincidences, and if you search them, you will find more and more, and you will take the risk of believing anything, that is to become inconsistent. The prohibition of drugs is based on similar form of unsound reasoning. And I can explain how that works. Bruno, when you read this, you are literally an angel of God. Figure out who you need to talk to next. I certainly don't know. Maybe it's me. Whatever works for you. I talk to universal machines, because I know everyone is at least such a machine, and this is used for showing that what I say can be understood by any one having enough patience and good-willingness. I am not for introducing
Re: Does time exist?
The conventional view of time is that only one point in time is real, the present, and that that time flows at a certain rate. People believe that in order to experience the flow of time, the past moment must disappear, and a new moment must become real, but this can be logically shown to be unnecessary to experience the flow of time. If the past moment ceases to exist, then it must have no bearing on or be otherwise necessary for you to be conscious in this moment. Therefore the existence or non existence of the past can't be responsible for what you perceive in the present, including one's perception of flowing through time. Furthermore, evidence from relativity has shown there is no such thing as an objective, or absolute present. Every observer with a different velocity has their own conception of what the present includes. Since no reference frame is more valid than any other, and every observer could have their own view, there can be no absolute present, no laser beam reifying a point in time for all beings in the DVD. The appearence of different presents for different reference frames can be explained as a side effect of observers embedded in a four-dimensional universe, with each observer's present being a slice at a certain angle through those four dimensions. Jason On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 8:59 AM, Brian Tenneson tenn...@gmail.com wrote: I was wondering if you could help me flesh out an idea. It's related to the questions is reality dynamic or static, and of determinism versus non-determinism. Also another question that plagues me is What breathes dynamism into static principalities? I view our world as being on a static or dynamic (to be decided later) storage device of some sort. This stored set of scenarios is read by a temporal mechanism, aka transition and change, to give us the impression that things really are dynamic. The reading of the film exposes something that time changes. But if you look at the sum of all instantiations of the film being read, this sum is a fixed set of scenarios. The DVD metaphor. There is a DVD (ie, recording), let's call it DVD#1, which is the film and it is read by a laser and that laser transitions by some temporal mechanism. DVD#1 doesn't change, the way it is looked at changes. This change implies the existence of time relative to DVD#1. In my metaphor, the film, which is DVD#1, is the totality of all observations an any observer could have. Now say someone films me watching DVD#1 and call this a new DVD, DVD#2. DVD#2 doesn't change, the way it is looked at changes. This change implies the existence of time relative to DVD#2, yet DVD#2 is actually static. Continue indefinitely. Let n denote an arbitrary number. We've got DVD#n for all n=1. DVD#n is the DVD created by filming an observer that is observing DVD#(n-1). What significance does the union of all these DVD#n have, if any? It would appear that dynamism and stasis are juxtaposed in an unending hierarchy and saying time exists (ie, reality is dynamic) and saying time does not exist (ie, reality is static), is equivalent to saying the light is on if it is flipped once per second forever. In essence, this hierarchy is like a divergent series (by which I roughly mean union). -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
SV: Civilization-level quantum suicide
Now, Mark Buda is either sarcastic or mad. I think he is pulling your leg here Bruno. -Ursprungligt meddelande- Från: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] För Bruno Marchal Skickat: den 16 juli 2010 16:06 Till: everything-list@googlegroups.com Ämne: Re: Civilization-level quantum suicide On 16 Jul 2010, at 14:13, Mark Buda wrote: I came across this link some time ago and found it interesting: http://www.paul-almond.com/CivilizationLevelQuantumSuicide.htm In fact, I believe it is what introduced me to the term quantum suicide. I had been googling something I had been thinking about in the shower one day and to my surprise this guy had written a paper about it. What an amazing coincidence. My life since then has been an increasingly bizarre series of meaningful coincidences. Meaningful in a personal way that I can't explain easily. Bruno understands and can explain why I can't explain; it's to do with his G and G* logics. This is on the fringe of authoritative argument. But the upshot of it is this: I have found out what happens when you commit quantum suicide. You discover that you believe a contradiction, and that even though nothing about the world has changed, you understand the universe. That seems very weird. But you have a hard time explaining it. Because you discover that you are, in Bruno's terms, a Lobian machine interviewing itself for the laws of physics. But I am saying this to explain that we can use reason to understand where the laws of physics come from. Not to mystified people with a lack of explanation. But you can't get the laws of physics yourself, even though you have all the answers. On the contrary: you can. Everyone can. You cannot besure because you cannot know that you are correct, so the usual doubt of the cartesian scientist remains. Computationalism explains in detail why any form of certainty, when made public, is a symptom of non correctness. Because you don't care any more - you have a different motivation. You understand that since you have all the answers but none of the questions, I don't see any sense here. you need to talk to people. You figure out the right people to talk to because your intuition guides you, because that's what it's for. There are people all around the world killing themselves and each other for crazy reasons. Suicide bombers, for instance. People who read stuff about the 2012 Mayan calendar thing and kill themselves because they think the end of the world is coming. 2012 is the year of the election in France. The Maya consider their own prediction as a prediction that some reasonable man will arrive. They never talk of apocalypse. 2012 is like prohibition: making money by selling fears. They're right and wrong, and I understand why, but I can't explain it, and Bruno understands why. I guess I have been unclear at some point. I am just a poor scientist trying to be honest with myself and the others. But all that stuff happening around the world is happening for a reason, and it doesn't matter what you - you can't stop it. Neither can I. But you can listen to this and think about it, and do whatever you feel like doing: you will anyway. If any of you can help me contact Richard Dawkins and talk to him, I can explain all of this. Why do you want to convince Richard Dawkins? You give him credit. Actually you do his very own error, because when Dawkins try to convince the Christians that they are wrong on God, he gives them credit on their notion of God. No one care about fairy tales, once we tackle the fundamental question with the scientific (= modest, hypotheses-based) approach. I can explain all of it to anybody if they're willing to talk to me. But I have to talk face to face, because it's too hard for me, psychologically, to figure out how to put it in writing or over the phone, because a lot of human communication is non- verbal, and there's an evolutionary reason for that which is part of the whole thing. Restrain yourself to communicate what is communicable. And just hope that the people will figure out by themselves what is not communicable yet true (like consciousness to take the simplest candidate). Perhaps I sound mad, but I have a testable prediction: if I don't contact Richard Dawkins, sooner or later somebody, somewhere is going to be researching the 2012 Mayan calendar thing and be led, by an amazing chain of coincidences, to me. I don't believe in coincidence. Or better I believe coincidences are just that: coincidences. The brain has an habit to over-interpret coincidences, and if you search them, you will find more and more, and you will take the risk of believing anything, that is to become inconsistent. The prohibition of drugs is based on similar form of unsound reasoning. And I can explain how that works. Bruno, when you read this, you are literally
The Irrationality of Physicalism
If Physicalism is true, then the belief in Physicalism can’t be rationally justified. If physicalism is true, then our beliefs and experiences are a result of the universe’s initial conditions and causal laws (which may have a probabilistic aspect). Therefore, assuming physicalism, we don’t present or believe arguments for reasons of logic or rationality. Instead, the arguments that we present and believe are those entailed by the physics that underlies our experiences. It is *possible* that we live in a universe whose initial conditions and causal laws are such that our arguments *are* logical. But in a physicalist framework that’s not why we present or believe those arguments. The fact that the arguments may be logical is superfluous to why we make or believe them. Obviously there’s nothing that says that our physically generated experiences and beliefs have to be true or logical. In fact, we have dreams, hallucinations, delusions, schizophrenics, and madmen as proof that there is no such requirement. So arguing for physicalism is making an argument that states that no one presents or believes arguments for reasons of logic. Note that the exact same argument can be applied to Bruno’s mathematical realism, or any other position that posits that consciousness is caused by or results from some underlying process. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: SV: Civilization-level quantum suicide
Now, Mark Buda is either sarcastic or mad. I think he is pulling your leg here Bruno. No. I am being completely serious. I may be mad. I don't think I am. I think I am the most rational human being on the planet right now, and I think if you were to talk to me I could convince you of that. I think all the 2012 Mayan calendar stuff is related to the technological singularity and to my personal life and to the recent gamma ray burst that blinded the NASA satellite. I think I can explain it all. I think you had better pray I'm right. I've been struggling to figure out what's been going on around me for over a year, and I've finally got it worked out. I just need to tell the world. Or not. Because it's going to happen either way, and I don't care. I have a lot of ideas about what might happen. I don't know which of them are true because any of them could be and I'm just one guy. I have all the answers and none of the questions, because I no longer have free will. Or I'm the only one left with free will, take your pick. Or ignore me. But the problem is not going away. Something odd is going on. Would you like to know what I think a civilization-level quantum suicide event might look like? I think it might look like people killing themselves and others for reasons inspired by religious fervor and fear over all the crazy stories flying around about what might happen in 2012. Civilizations don't kill people, people kill people. When you're *in* the civilization approaching the technological singularity, it doesn't look like the one world government has decided to blow up the planet to get infinite computing power. It looks like the end of the world. You can believe whatever you like; you will anyway. I'm pretty certain it will just *look* like the end of the world to a lot of people. Nothing is as seems, even when it is. -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The Irrationality of Physicalism
On 7/16/2010 1:26 PM, rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: If Physicalism is true, then the belief in Physicalism can’t be rationally justified. If physicalism is true, then our beliefs and experiences are a result of the universe’s initial conditions and causal laws (which may have a probabilistic aspect). Therefore, assuming physicalism, we don’t present or believe arguments for reasons of logic or rationality. Instead, the arguments that we present and believe are those entailed by the physics that underlies our experiences. It is *possible* that we live in a universe whose initial conditions and causal laws are such that our arguments *are* logical. But in a physicalist framework that’s not why we present or believe those arguments. The fact that the arguments may be logical is superfluous to why we make or believe them. Obviously there’s nothing that says that our physically generated experiences and beliefs have to be true or logical. In fact, we have dreams, hallucinations, delusions, schizophrenics, and madmen as proof that there is no such requirement. So arguing for physicalism is making an argument that states that no one presents or believes arguments for reasons of logic. Note that the exact same argument can be applied to Bruno’s mathematical realism, or any other position that posits that consciousness is caused by or results from some underlying process. And in either case the counter argument is the same, c.f. The Evolution of Reason by William S. Cooper. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
RE: Digest for everything-list@googlegroups.com - 6 Messages in 2 Topics
Fred Hoyle suggested the idea of quantum suicide for a civilisation in “October the 1st is too late” written around 1964 I think. That’s the first occurrence I know of it. Charles _ From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of everything-list+nore...@googlegroups.com Sent: Friday, 16 July 2010 7:02 p.m. To: Digest Recipients Subject: Digest for everything-list@googlegroups.com - 6 Messages in 2 Topics Today's Topic Summary Group: http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/topics * Civilization-level quantum suicide [4 Updates] * Does time exist? [2 Updates] Topic: Civilization-level quantum suicide http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/t/e7f6fce4d3f61dc9 Mark Buda her...@acm.org Jul 16 05:13AM -0700 ^ I came across this link some time ago and found it interesting: http://www.paul-almond.com/CivilizationLevelQuantumSuicide.htm In fact, I believe it is what introduced me to the term quantum suicide. I had been googling something I had been thinking about in the shower one day and to my surprise this guy had written a paper about it. What an amazing coincidence. My life since then has been an increasingly bizarre series of meaningful coincidences. Meaningful in a personal way that I can't explain easily. Bruno understands and can explain why I can't explain; it's to do with his G and G* logics. But the upshot of it is this: I have found out what happens when you commit quantum suicide. You discover that you believe a contradiction, and that even though nothing about the world has changed, you understand the universe. But you have a hard time explaining it. Because you discover that you are, in Bruno's terms, a Lobian machine interviewing itself for the laws of physics. But you can't get the laws of physics yourself, even though you have all the answers. Because you don't care any more - you have a different motivation. You understand that since you have all the answers but none of the questions, you need to talk to people. You figure out the right people to talk to because your intuition guides you, because that's what it's for. There are people all around the world killing themselves and each other for crazy reasons. Suicide bombers, for instance. People who read stuff about the 2012 Mayan calendar thing and kill themselves because they think the end of the world is coming. They're right and wrong, and I understand why, but I can't explain it, and Bruno understands why. But all that stuff happening around the world is happening for a reason, and it doesn't matter what you - you can't stop it. Neither can I. But you can listen to this and think about it, and do whatever you feel like doing: you will anyway. If any of you can help me contact Richard Dawkins and talk to him, I can explain all of this. I can explain all of it to anybody if they're willing to talk to me. But I have to talk face to face, because it's too hard for me, psychologically, to figure out how to put it in writing or over the phone, because a lot of human communication is non- verbal, and there's an evolutionary reason for that which is part of the whole thing. Perhaps I sound mad, but I have a testable prediction: if I don't contact Richard Dawkins, sooner or later somebody, somewhere is going to be researching the 2012 Mayan calendar thing and be led, by an amazing chain of coincidences, to me. And I can explain how that works. Bruno, when you read this, you are literally an angel of God. Figure out who you need to talk to next. I certainly don't know. Maybe it's me. Whatever works for you. Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com Jul 16 02:20PM +0200 ^ Well your posts were funny for five minutes... but you know what ? T'es lourd ! Bye. 2010/7/16 Mark Buda her...@acm.org -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be Jul 16 04:05PM +0200 ^ On 16 Jul 2010, at 14:13, Mark Buda wrote: increasingly bizarre series of meaningful coincidences. Meaningful in a personal way that I can't explain easily. Bruno understands and can explain why I can't explain; it's to do with his G and G* logics. This is on the fringe of authoritative argument. commit quantum suicide. You discover that you believe a contradiction, and that even though nothing about the world has changed, you understand the universe. That seems very weird. But you have a hard time explaining it. Because you discover that you are, in Bruno's terms, a Lobian machine interviewing itself for the laws of physics. But I am saying this to explain that we can use reason to understand where the laws of physics come from. Not to mystified people with a lack of explanation. But you can't get the laws of physics yourself, even though you have all the answers. On the contrary: you can. Everyone can. You cannot besure because you cannot know that you are
Re: The Irrationality of Physicalism
On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 5:13 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: And in either case the counter argument is the same, c.f. The Evolution of Reason by William S. Cooper. Maybe. But it’s not a very good counter argument. Actually, if his thesis is true, I think it helps my argument more than it hurts. The thesis posited by the book is a bigger problem for Bruno's theory that mine. A long-ish response, but there are several quotes from the book that add up in length. So logic reduces to biology. Fine. And biology reduces to...what? Initial conditions and causal laws, that’s what. “Evolution is not the law enforcer but the law giver - not so much a police force as a legislature. The laws of logic are not independent of biology but implicit in the very evolutionary processes that enforce them. The processes determine the laws. If the latter understanding is correct, logical rules have no separate status of their own but are theoretical constructs of evolutionary biology. Logical theory ought then in some sense to be deducible entirely from biological considerations. The concept of scientific reduction is helpful in expressing that thought. In the received methodological terminology the idea of interest can be articulated as the following hypothesis. REDUCIBILITY THESIS: Logic is reducible to evolutionary theory.” So obviously evolution is not a law enforcer or a law giver. It isn’t a causal law, but rather a consequence of causal laws. Cooper claims that logic reduces to evolutionary theory. And what does evolutionary theory reduce to? Initial conditions and fundamental causal laws acting on fundamental entities. Assuming physicalism, the causal laws of our universe applied to a suitable set of initial conditions will, in time, exhibit features that we categorize as “evolutionary”. Some of these evolutionary processes may give rise to entities that have conscious experiences, and some of those conscious experiences will be of holding this, that, or the other beliefs about logic. But those beliefs are a result of fundamental laws acting on fundamental entities, and not associated with any sort of independently existing platonic standard of “logical reasoning”. This is the gist of my post, and seems to be the main gist of his book. We do part company eventually though. I’ll save that part for last. Continuing: “‘How do humans manage to reason?’ Since the form of this question is the same as that of the first, it would be natural to attack it in a similar two-pronged fashion. [...] Somewhere in the latter part there would be talk of selective forces acting on genetic variation, of fitness, of population models, etc. [...] The laws of Reason should not be addressed independently of evolutionary theory, according to the thesis. Reasoning is different from all other adaptations in that the laws of logic are aspects of the laws of adaptation themselves. Nothing extra is needed to account for logic - only a drawing out of the consequences of known principles of natural selection.” Selective forces? What would have caused those selective forces? What do these selective forces reduce to? Why these selective forces instead of some others? Natural selection? Well, there are causally neutral “filters” (metaphorically speaking), but these metaphorical filters are as much a consequence of the universe’s initial conditions and causal laws as the organisms that are (metaphorically) selected. Evolution is a consequence of causal laws, not a causal law itself. In this it is like the first law of thermodynamics - which is a consequence of the time invariance of the causal laws, not a causal law itself. Evolution and the first law of thermodynamics are descriptions of how things are, not explanations. So as I said, if physicalism is true then the arguments that we present and believe are those entailed by the physics that underlies our experiences, and by nothing else. In this view, evolution is also just a manifestation of those same underlying physical forces. And logic is merely an aspect of the experiences generated by the more fundamental activities of quarks and electrons. In this vein, he says: “If evolutionary considerations control the relevant aspects of decision behavior, and these determine in turn the rest of the machinery of logic, one can begin to discern the implicative chain that makes Reducibility Theory thinkable. [...] If the evolutionary control over the logic is indeed so total as to constrain it entirely, there is no need to perpetuate the fiction that logic has a life of its own. It is tributary to the larger evolutionary mechanism.” All we have to do is add that the universe’s initial conditions and causal laws control the evolutionary considerations, and my point is practically made. The main point of contention between my argument and Cooper’s is: “In this way the general evolutionary tendency to optimize fitness turns out to imply, in and of
