On 03 Sep 2010, at 15:55, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
on 03.09.2010 10:10 Bruno Marchal said the following:
On 02 Sep 2010, at 19:23, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
on 02.09.2010 17:57 Bruno Marchal said the following: ...
Science is only collection of theories, and statements derive in
those theories, and intepretation rules, and confirmation modus
operandi. Only layman and engineers have to hope that their
theories fits enough a reality. The theories and the reasoning
can be presented informally or formally. Rigor has nothing to do
with formalization, but a lot to do with clarity. It is also
better that the theory/assumption are shared by many, because ...
it is more fun.
How would you define what a physical law is?
Empirically: physical laws are the laws which can relate what I can
observe and share with others.
How to distinguish then a law and a correlation?
By doing the correct statistics, we can *infer* laws from observation.
But this needs always some theory in the background.
Assuming digital mechanism, after the UDA reasoning, the physical
laws are no more primitive laws, inferable from observation, but they
emerge from the coupling consciousness/reality itself emerging from
the additive/multiplicative structure of numbers. The laws of physics
are no more fundamental. The emergence is enough constrained as to
make the mechanist assumption testable. If we are in a 'matrix', we
can verify it. (mechanism entails we are in a matrix, actually in an
infinities of matrix, existing platonistically in the structure of
numbers+addition+multiplication. Note that this makes the ultimate
physical laws much more solid: such laws are shown to have a reason.
Let me continue with my question. So we have observations and then
we make some model.
Before mechanism, I insist. Mechanism says that physical laws have to
deduced from number theory/computer science. In principle we need no
more observation than the "trivial" assessment of our own
consciousness, and then some introspective work. This is not
practical, but the goal is to solve conceptually the mind body
problem, not to predict physical phenomena.
The conceptual advantage of mechanism is that it gives directly the
correct physics (correct with respect to mechanism!). With observation
we can never be sure that the laws are only local, if not based on
lucky correlations, or hallucinated.
It could be of empirical nature or we say that this model is a law.
How do we know when a model becomes a law?
Never. But in science we never know. We may believe in a theory, for a
time. Or we may derive a laws from another theory, on which we already
*bet*. It is always a sort of bet. Science search truth, but never
know when it finds it. Of course the more you derive from simple
hypotheses, the more you can be confident for the theory, but it is
confidence, never certainty.
Actually, this is a theorem of "machine psychology" : assertable
certainty is *only* a symptom of madness.
The reason I am asking is that recently I have read The Elegant
Universe by Brian Green about the superstring theory. For some
reasons physicists insist that they can find Equation of
Everything.
Physicists have a tradition of putting mind and consciousness under
the rug, and they usually confuse everything with
everything-physical. This has been a fertile methodological
simplification, but it breaks in front of the 'hard consciousness
problem', or the mind-body problem.
Could you please recommend some modern books in this respect?
Say I have just listened to audio book
Best of the Brain from Scientific American: Mind, Matter, and
Tomorrow’s Brain
http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2010/09/what-crazy-scientists-make-with-brain-nowadays.html
and they have found an effective way to treat depression: plant an
electrode to some brain area (area 25) and put a voltage. Could it
be also a way in the future to solve the mind-body problem? A couple
of electrodes, some voltage pattern, and that's it?
Not at all. If we accept mechanism, we have to abandon the
Aristotelian idea that there is a primitive universe, and that physics
is the fundamental science. We have to backtrack on Pythagorus, Plato
and Plotinus. The relation between consciousness and brain is far more
subtle than the materialists believe. In a sense the brain does not
create consciousness. The brain makes it possible for consciousness to
be manifested relatively to some computational histories. We may find
correlation between brain activity and some problem like depression,
but this is just the art of the physician, or the shaman (plants are
still better than electrode today). It does not address the
fundamental issues.
For books, you could take a look for books here:
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/web/resources
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/web/auda
Have a good day,
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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