Dear Bruno,
The discussion has evolved enough now from my original topic as to require
that I restate my thesis and add some new ideas in a new post with a new
subject line, given some new understanding of your ideas. I greatly appreciate
your patience and comments as I have learned a great deal from it. I believe
that we agree on sufficient points to move forward so that I will leave you
comments below stand as a reference for the future. Right now I have one
question: Are you familiar with Jaakko Hintikka's idea of game semantics for
Logic in which (crudely put) on thinks of a proof is related to the existence
of a winning strategy in a 2-person game.
What is your opinion of such, if any?
For examples please see:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-games/
http://www.csc.villanova.edu/~japaridz/CL/gsoll.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_semantics
I ask this because it seems that one of the key points of divergence in our
discussion is related to my use of ideas that are implicit in game semantic
based logics. Additionally there is resent work that seems to strongly support
my crazy idea of how we might solve the measurement problem in QM (which is my
main motivation). Please see:
http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~abranden/icig-05-27-08.pdf This is very much
related to the work of Jean-Yves Girard in his "Geometry of Interaction". By
the way, almost all of Girard's papers are inaccessible to me as I am not in a
university. I know of his work from my study of Pratt's papers.
Kindest regards,
Stephen
From: Bruno Marchal
Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 2010 1:10 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: A paper for your Comments
Hi Stephen,
My thinking here depends on the idea that within a single simulation it
is possible to have what we could take as multiple entities in some 1st person
notion of a simultaneous order. This is where we first see a need to explain
"space".
I don't understand "multiple entities in some 1st person notion of
simultaneous order". You mean a set of people seen by some one, perhaps in a
video game shared by different individuals? In that case, assume the DM
hypothesis, we need a good crunching number machine, or even only the good
relation between some numbers.
OK. Right now, as you read this email, is there a large number of
other objects around you other than your computer monitor, such as a desk,
walls of the room, a chair, etc.? My point is that a simulation, such as the
one that our brain generates, that is the content of our 1st person experience
(!),
is given as a whole but the objects in it can be taken as separate from
each other. We could take it for granted that this content *is* the 3rd person
describable bodies, but I submit that this strictly true because we have the
reality of illusions and hallucinations. We have to have a way to filter for
this.
I am not sure this makes sense with the DM theory (assumption, conjecture,
hypothesis). We have to take into account the infinity of brains (relatively
defined in arithmetic). Typically a brain or a machine does not generate or
create an experience or a consciousness. It helps only to localize it in some
probable computational histories (always an infinities). This might be even
more subtle than that, and that is why I use the self-reference theory + the
definition of knowledge by Theaetetus to tackle that problem mathematically.
Also, the notion of physical object remains to be defined (with mechanism).
Keep in mind that my contribution in the field is rather negative: it shows
that the mind-body problem is two times more difficult than the materialist
believe. Mechanism makes it mandatory to reduce physics to "pure number
theory". My work is a modest argument showing the necessity, when we assume
mechanism, of a reduction of a problem (the mind-body problem) to the problem
of reducing a field (physics) to another field (number theory/computer
science). Then a second part makes the argument more constructive by using
self-reference theory + Theaetus's definition of knowledge.
It is because illusions and hallucinations exist that I am skeptical that
the notion of 3rd person describable is somehow something that is independent
of some notion of observation,
Science discourse have to assume some sharable 3d person notions to start
with. With mechanism we assume arithmetic, computable functions, etc. This is
supposed to be independent of us (realism). But then physical objects have to
be (re)defined in term of first person plural notions. Here Everett QM gives an
hint that such a bizarre idea does make sense. First person plural concerns
multiplied populations (instead of multiplied individuals). This is what the
linearity of QM entails, and that is why I am open to logical approach to
"interaction" in term of linear logical system.
Do you know the work by Jean-Yves Girard "Geometry of Interaction". This
might interest you a lot. But, with the goal of solving the mind body problem
from mechanism, even a logical work like the one by Girard is a bit of a
treachery, and indeed, all those kind of physicalist or physicalistically based
approach to physics are bound to confuse the qualia and the quanta. Yet Girard
selected his theory by appeal to incompleteness: what I show mandatory. What I
say is that should be done explicitly. Then the difference between the
self-reference logics G and G* extends to the difference between intelligible
and sensible, quanta and qualia, sharable and unsharable, etc.
I cannot use Girard, nor Abramski, but such works can be seen as pavage
making easier the mind/matter bridge construction.
but up till now all attempts to consider this have assumed that the
"empty" places between objects was a primitive.
I have not yet any object, nor places. Just an abstract theory of observable,
without time, space nor hamiltonian, but with notion of person, consciousness,
first and first person plural, etc. Time (duration) and space (localization)
have to be derived from the measure, itself derivable from the Z1* and X1*
logics (and perhaps S4Grz1 too)
This kind of thinking goes all the way back to Democritus. People have
focused on the idea of "atoms" and only lately with the issue of "dark energy"
has the emptiness been a subject of conversations. Let me touch back on this
later…
DM has not yet a notion of energy. But the little "fundamental equation of
physics" (p -> BDp) gives some shadow of possible conservation of energy and
repeatability of measurements. But the point is not to give the solution of the
problem of which physics we will find; my point is only that: IF we are
machine, then physics has to be find in the self-referential way.
And this is coherent with the Platonism of Plato, or the neoplatonism of
Plotinus: physical reality is the border of something else.
Provocatively sometimes I say that the physical universe is just a
distraction from the fundamental inquiry. Better to use it with moderation.
snip
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