Hi John,
Le 25-janv.-06, à 04:07, John M a écrit :
Bruno:
thanks.
I can't wait for your writing about Plotinus I could
not read even about him any reasonable text.
I can understand. Somehow, like the words "God" and "theology",
Plotinus has been in part appropriated by the Christians. For example
in the little popular book on Plato, Plotinus is sum up in three
sentences saying that Plotinus was the founder of Neoplatonism
(actually Plotinus was just saying that he was a Platonist and "neo" is
just used by historians for its period: 200-300 century) and that it
combines Plato's philosophy with a heightened emphasis on God and
Salvation, and that the Enneads of Plotinus foreshadowed the great
Augustinian Synthesis of Plato and Christianity.
This is somehow correct but put the fundamental differences between
Plotinus and the Christians under the rug.
I bought and read the penguin Plotinus book. It is an abridged version
of the whole Enneads of Plotinus. I first realised the missing of its
proof of the "immortality of the soul", a quite important thread of the
Everything List, then I realised the missing of its treatise on Number,
which is the interface with comp and with the Pythagorean and with the
list. What is striking is that it gives the whole Fifth Ennead (the
main one which introduces the basic metaphysics/theology), except for
one chapter, the one which, according to another commentator, is the
more in opposition with Aristotle and the Christians. Indeed for the
Christian God, or the ultimate TOE's object if you want, is a thinker.
With Plotinus there is a second God, and a third, and Plotinus insists
quite a lot that the first God cannot be a thinker, only the second and
a part of the third.
My problem now is that I am not sure I should use Plotinus to explain G
and G*, or to use G and G* to explain Plotinus. I make an attempt
below. It is clear that seeing the relationship between both can help
to understand the main fundamental differences between Plato and
Aristotle, and how they will evolve toward very different view of the
"Everything". To put it roughly, with Plato-Plotinus: matter is
secondary and mind is primary, or even: physics is secondary and math
is primary. With Aristotle and the Christians it will be the inverse,
leading to some schizo ontology: a willing God related to a material
non thinking naturalist framework, a sort of super mind-body problem.
What you write about 'experimentally testable" (I am
not a Popperian) ...
*as* a communicating scientist, I am. But during the research phases I
am not.
... raises the question: is it not some
misunderstood - primitive observation with those
restricted model-based instruments we use and some
(similarly narrow-vision) sweated out explanation in
our math based "science"?
Here I do have a problem with you. I agree so much with you on this
point that it is my basic starting point. But then I use our
terrestrial math to build upon that idea, at some higher level.
This is something made possible by the discovery of (modern) logic and
its many logics.
We think in figments, observe and explain figments,
built a world of science on figments and call the
errors a paradox, a given, an axiom, chaos, or just an
emergence.
... if not a universe or a multiverse. Certainly so with comp, and with
"we" being the lobian entitities.
This is why I picked up the expression "perception of
reality". I rather spend my available time in some
accepted ignorance and leave mosre smarts to the
grandkids of our grandkids.
I definitely do not base contemporary thinking on
ideas generated upon a cognitive epistemic inventory
of millennia ago, not even 50 years ago. We learn and
should not dismiss it. I am younger now at 84 than a
graduate student who knows all the obsolete wisdom.
I like to find or intuit what is common between us now and us millennia
ago.
With comp (or much weaker) there is something common to any
self-observing honest entity, and which is beyond time and space:
indeed time and space *appears* from that.
That is what the UDA should convey in some intelligible way. And that
is what G and G* can mathematically describe, i.e. the discourse(s) of
the self-observing honest entity.
Let me describe an audacious, probably, arithmetical (even Pythagorean,
I think) interpretation of Plotinus' hypostases.
The word "hypostase" is a nice word to avoid the word "god" or "gods"
in serious talk, I mean in "rational theology". "hypostase(s)" means
basic(s) or fundamental(s).
Plotinus introduces three primary "divine" hypostases: the One, the
(divine) Intellect, the All-souls, or Soul. He talks also about a non
divine terrestrial intellect, which can participate in discursive
reasoning and get opinions. The One is arguably Plato's Good from the
Parmenides.
Now Godel's theorem has shown that for any proving machine (which will
play the role of the discursive terrestrial intellect) there is an
unavoidable gap between "Truth on the machine" and "Truth provable by
the machine on the machine". At the elementary mathematical
propositional level, the "provability of p" (Bp) obeys to the modal
logic G, as far as we ask the machine to be able to justify its
opinion, and obeys to G*, as far as we only ask the machine to intuit
in some way or another the true proposition, including the non-provable
one.
There is still a problem to get Plotinus Hypostases from that, which is
that the notion of truth is not definable in the language of the
Loebian entity (Tarski theorem). But there is a trick which is due also
to Tarski, and whixh consist to define the truth of some sentence
directly by the proposition itself: like in saying that the string "the
snow is wite" denote a truth because actually the snow is white. More
generally "p" is true when p.
Now Plotinus' three primary hypostases can be described in the
following way:
p
Bp
Bp & p
You recognize perhaps my "theaetetical variants" in the last two lines,
as you will recognize them in the "secondary hypostases" (although
Plotinus would not express it like that). Note that what is different
is the presence of the "indeterminate factor Dp (diamond p):
Bp & Dp
Bp & Dp & p
Now, it is the gap between G and G* which makes all those "person point
of views" in general differents. They define different logics. And not
only that: each hypostases can be seen through G* or through G. That
is, from the true and provable respective points of view. So there is
two logics per hypostase, the terrestrial (G) and the divine (G*). In
the detail: the "truth" hypostasis, represented by p and which plays
the role of the unameable One (Plato's Good), is not sensible to the
gap between G and G*, given that it is independent of the Intellect
(Platonism).
You got the Theaetetus from G. And what I learned in Plotinus, is that
you get the "Parmenides" from G*.
The second hypostase, Bp, which plays the role of the intellect, will
split into a terrestrial and celestial version. Indeed it is the one
responsible for the gap between G and G* (by Godel, Lob, Solovay
theorem). The intellect is Bp as seen by G*. It is the truth ON the
entity.
The third hypostase is a combination of the two preceding one. Bp & p.
At the terrestrial (provable) level it corresponds to the main
definition of knowledge by Theaetetus. At the celestial (level) it
corresponds to the same thing! That is, the knower is a fixed point of
the Earth-Heaven transformation (the function SOL programmed in Lisp
here:
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/G.html
for those who want play with it). The second hypostase is the first
person, it does not distinguish truth and provability.
The secondary hypostase, Bp & Dp, corresponds to some first plural
person point of view, with explicit interrogation on others and on
indetermination/matter, captured by the possibility (consistency) modal
connector Dp (which is just ~B~p). G and G* distinguish them. The same
for Bp & Dp & p.
You see that G and G* does not only distinguish the loebian logics
given by Bp & Dp and Bp & Dp & p. But G and G* describe for each such
nuances (hypostases) two logics, again a terrestrial and a celestial.
Than, Plotinus' Matter, despite his contempt for it, and despite the
fact his theory is mainly an abstraction of Aristotle matter theory
(minus Aristotle reification of particulars) appears in the celestial
(G*, truth) level of last three hypostases, and indeed it is there that
the quantum logics appear.
Note that (by tarski theorem) the first, the second, and the fifth
hypostates are "ineffable", not descrpitibe or definable by the loebian
machine. But then by the Tarski trick we can talk about them, and
lobian machine can show that a stronger machine can prove the theology
of some weaker machine, and even prove its own, but then without
conveying any persuasion.
Have a good time
You too, best,
Bruno.
--- Bruno Marchal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Le 20-janv.-06, à 16:04, John M wrote (in part):
thanks for your approval to my post on 'belief'.
To
this one, however, I think you mix up "evidence"
with
"assumption". The beautiful sunshine is "assumed"
to
be God's gift for us, it is a 1st person idea if
we
like it, or find it burning, to assign it as a
gift or
a curse. It is our "perception of reality" anyway.
I stand with my Popperian example - which you did
not
address in my post - about 'proof and
falsification'.
I did elsewhere. Also I think we could have perhaps
some vocabulary
problems.
I agree that some believer in God does assume that a
beautiful sunshine
is a God's gift to us. Here I was more alluding to
Plato's view of God
as "the Good", and I was talking about someone who
makes such a
personal experience of beauty, in front of that
sunshine, that he takes
it as a, personal or first person for sure,
experience of the
Good/God/whatever (sort of mystical experience if
you want).
Of course it is not a proof (as in pure math), nor
an evidence in the
Popper sense of confirmation. Nor can a
reconstitution of oneself
during a teleportation be a proof of comp, nor can
quantum suicide
provides any proof that QM, or Everett, or comp are
true. First Person
Knowledge is just incorrigible and unfalsifiable,
and as such
unscientific. Science is concerned only with third
person discourses,
or, arguably, with first person plural discourses
(the one which I
defined explicitly through duplication of
populations of individuals).
Now I don't think it is really important to be so
precise in the
beginning. At some point I will be obliged to say
many
counter-intuitive propositions and explain how in
some important cases
first person truth can indirectly lead to 100%
falsifiable third person
propositions, but it is not easy to explain. Well, I
wouldn' t have
believe myself a large part of what I want to
explain if that wouldn't
have been confirmed by the Lobian interview.
Nevertheless, I am
realizing now that many "rational mystics"
(including the Neoplatonist
pagan theologians) are closer to the lobian machine
than I would have
thought before reading Plotinus. I am still
searching more confirmation
because if this is confirmed (I have some criteria)
it would put some
new light on the discussion.
I will try to sum up this in a new thread on
Plotinus (and
neoplatonism, more generally).
At some point I will explain how I am getting
(apparently) an
arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus, and on some
part of Plato's
Parmenides. My work would make Plotinus theory of
matter 100%
experimentally testable.
Of course there is nothing miraculous that honest
introspector converge
toward the lobian discourse, given that this is the
discourse of the
self-referential correct machine.
I don't know if that relation with Plotinus will
help me selling my
stuff, but this is another problem (for a future
different thread).
What some Christian theologians dismissed in Plato,
they will dismiss
it in any TOE.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
