On 14 Feb 2011, at 09:40, Stephen Paul King wrote:
From: Jason Resch
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2011 2:24 AM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Maudlin & How many times does COMP have to be false
before its false?
On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 12:52 AM, Brent Meeker <meeke...@dslextreme.com
> wrote:
On 2/13/2011 10:13 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 10:46 AM, Brent Meeker <meeke...@dslextreme.com
> wrote:
On 2/13/2011 5:21 AM, 1Z wrote:
On Feb 12, 3:18 am, Brent Meeker<meeke...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
What do you think the chances are that any random object in
Plato's heaven, or any random Turing machine will support
intelligent life?
1 in 10, 1 in 1000, 1 in a billion?
Zero.
Does that allow us to argue:
1) A universe selected from an uncountably infinite number of
possibilities has measure
0
2) Our universe exists so it has measure>0
3) Our universe is not selected from uncountably infinite
possibilities
4) MUH indicates any universe must be selected from uncountable
infinite possibilities (since all
of maths includes the real line, etc)
5) MUH is false.
Hmmm. I think we argue that objects in Plato's heaven and Turing
machines are not the right kind of things to support life.
I am very puzzled by this statement. You could help me understand
by answering the following questions:
Why couldn't there be an accurate simulation of life on a Turing
machine?
Because a Turing machine is an abstraction. If you mean a
realization of a Turing machine, then I suppose there could be a
simulation of life on it.
How can entities within a universe that exists in Plato's heaven
distinguish it from a universe that does not?
I doubt that Plato's heaven exists. So no universes would exist in
it.
Brent
Exists is a funny word. It seems to embody knowledge and opinion
from one observer's viewpoint based on their own limited experiences
and interactions within their local portion of reality. If Plato's
heaven is such a thing that contains all possible structures, does
the fact that it contains all possible structures hold true whether
or not it exists? If there are universes existing abstractly inside
Plato's heaven, and some of those universes contain conscious
observers, does ascribing the property of non-existence to Plato's
heaven or to those universes make those observers not conscious, or
is the abstraction enough? What properties can something which is
non-existent have?
It seems there are two choices: 1. Things which are non-existent can
have other properties besides non-existence. E.g., a non-existent
universe has atoms, stars, worlds, and people on some of those
worlds. Or 2. Non-existent things cannot have any other properties
besides non-existence. It sounds like you belong to this second camp.
However, this seems to lead immediately to mathematical realism. As
there are objects with definite objectively explorable properties in
math. 7's primality and parity are properties of 7. But how can 7
have properties if it does not exist? If non-existent things can
have properties, why can't consciousness be one of those
properties? What is the difference between a non-existent brain
experiencing a sunset and an existent brain experiencing a sunset?
Please explain as precisely as possible what it means for something
to not exist.
Jason
No facts about it if it is non existent?
***
{SPK]
Allow me to add a comment to this brilliant argument. Following
Jason’s description of Platonia, Plato’s heaven, it would seem to
include all possible descriptions of itself and thus is in a way
like a set that contains all subsets of itself including at least
one subset that is identical to itself. Is this not a paradox?
Not at all. UD* contains many UD* which contains many UD* ad
infinitum. There is no paradox because UD* is infinite. It is no more
paradoxical than the Mandelbrot set, which is "made of" Mandelbrot sets.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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