Günther Greindl wrote: > Brent, > > I wonder, what do you mean with materialism (I ask this having been a > materialist myself)?
I didn't use the term - it is one being attributed to me simply because I question the adequacy of logic and mathematics to instantiate physics. > > Physics only describes relations. (see for instance here > http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/structural-realism/) > > I gather you accept MWI, so quite a lot of relations hold. I don't accept any such esoteric theories - I merely entertain them. > > The question is, why the quantum (as Wheeler, I think, put it)? Bruno's > COMP gives a very elegant _explanation_. I agree it is elegant, but whether it can really explain the world remains to be seen. > > Also, with COMP, the mind-body problem indeed disappears. We have > computations within computations within computations. (And I think that > Bruno is correct when assuming that there is no _lowest_ level). But the problem reappears as the body-problem. Why is materialism so successful as a model of the world? > > It needn't even be a pure idealism, but rather Russelian neutral monism > - some states more or less conscious - the degree of consciousness > depending on the degree of self-reflexivity (see for instance here for a > theory of consciousness which works well with COMP: > http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-higher/) > > > Back to the ontological problem of the "grounding": materialism is in > essence the thesis that there is, at bottom, a "substance", which has no > independent properties, but serves as instantiator for other properties. It seems somewhat gratuitous to call this a "substance". I'd say materialism holds (on simple empirical grounds) that some things exist and some don't. > But why should such a strange thing exist? Why should some things exist and others not - because if everything existed there would be no distinction between "exist" and "not-exist" (I know that's a stilly argument, but it is similar to the kind of logic chopping I sometimes see from the proponents of "everything exists"). >Why not let the relations > stand for themselves? Especially for an MWI-theorist; if you only accept > a single world, matter does seem much more plausible - going through > diverse transformations, that being all there is, and located somewhere > in an otherwise empty spacetime or whatever - but those are all very > naive intuitions which modern physics has moved beyond (and all the more > so critical reflection on the results of modern physics). I think I'm as qualified to speak for modern physics as you and I don't think it has "moved beyond". MWI is attractive for several reasons, but it is well short of Tegmarkia. > > A big question: why should there be such a thing as a lowest level, a > grounding? While for a materialist, the imagination of "turtles all the > way down" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down > is quite strange, computations all the way down is very intuitive. Well, > awe-inspiring intuitive ;-)) Think of the fractal video Bruno sent out > a little while ago. I think Tegmark grounded his "everything" by supposing that the lowest level was uncomputable. > > What explanatory power does matter hold? None, I conjecture. Please give > at least one so we can discuss. Materialism has been very effective in not only explaining, but in predicting things. That doesn't prove it's right, but I could ask what explanatory power does "everything exists" hold. Remember that a theory that could explain anything, fails to explain at all. For myself, I find Bruno's theory very intriguing. It is more specific than Tegmark's and so I believe has more hope of making contact with empiricism. But for me that is the proof of the pudding - not logical arguments about how nature "must be". Brent --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
