On 2/2/2012 1:07 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 01 Feb 2012, at 21:48, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 2/1/2012 3:06 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I don't get it.
Many people have discussed this idea that Existence, in-itself,
is primitive and neutral (has no properties or divisions). It is not
original with me. For example, Bertrand Russell's discussion of
neutral monism and Russell Standish's ToN explain it well.
There might exist phenomenological hermeneutic of the monist kind, but
this, once we chose to do science, is a private affair, which can
inspire but cannot be communicated.
Hi Bruno,
I do not understand what "phenomenological hermeneutic of the
monist kind" is.
So by a neutral monist theory, its is meant a theory which does not
assume mind, nor matter, and explain them from something else. That
something else needs to be able to be described in first order logic,
at least. It should have terms for the existing objects, and axioms
for the laws to which those objects obey. Without those two
components, we can do nothing.
Neutral monism does not assume that mind or matter have primitive
existence. Neutral monism considers that both Mind and Matter emerge
from a common neutral ground that is, in-itself, neither. My proposed
dualism becomes neutral monism in the limit of lower levels of entities
(assuming well foundedness
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well-founded_relation>). This is different
from "material monism" that assumes that the material physical would is
primitive, or "ideal monism" that assumes that Mind is primitive. Your
ideas seems to be a form of Ideal Monism.
What I ask is a scientific theory, by which I mean a first order
logical theory about what you assume to exist, and then theorems
justifying the other form that "existence" can take.
All that does not contradict itself and is thus necessarily
possible exists, thus I claim that existence is necessary possibility.
That's an old idea in philosophy. It is the indexical idea that
existence is consistence seen from inside. In first order logic it
makes a lot of sense, given that consistence is equivalent with the
existence of a model.
And in AUDA, the necessity of the possibility of p, BDp, is the
consequence of sigma_1 truth, and its leads to an arithmetical
quantization. Here Bp is for (Bew(p) & Diamond("1=1")), and Dp is
(Diamond(p) v Bew(f) 'relative consistency)). p is sigma_1.
Once you are using notion of necessity or possibility, being precise
forces you to suggest in which modal logic you are working, and how
you justify it. There are infinities of modal logics.
UDA justifies the use of the self-reference modal logic, and their
variants. Gödel's results (and Löb's one, and Solovay) don't let
many possible choice for the ideally correct machines. The variant
described above are the one needed to find the correct physic
(correct with respect to comp, if you get UDA).
I don't know if comp is true or not, but comp makes theoretical
computer science a lantern to find the key. It allows a mathematical
formulation of many subproblems of the (comp) mind body problem.
[SPK]
On these particulars we can agree. Our only disagreement is that
you seem to consider that Arithmetic is at the same level as bare
Existence and I see bare existence as neutral and that both logics
(including arithmetic) and physicality are non-primitive.
[BM]
Then tell me what you mean by "Existence", and show me how you derive
logics, arithmetic and physicality from that.
Unfortunately, people mature enough in logic know that you can't do
that. No formal arithmetic can be deduced from anything less than itself.
[SPK]
It is a basic axiom of ontology, but not the only one. It is a
necessary but not sufficient part of any ontology. I do not understand
how the idea that I am discussing is confusing to you! Existence (noun)
exists (verb). I am not claiming that it alone is stipulated. What does
the word "exist", as in "A number exists" mean? What does the word
"existence" in the following sentence "the existence of numbers in
independent of any particular person or persons knowledge of them" mean?
Am I being unclear?
Our beliefs in the natural numbers is authentically mysterious. But
with comp we can, and we must, explain everything from them. And it
works, because arithmetic emulate the ... self-referential resonance
of numbers, which appears to be very rich and full of surprise.
[SPK]
I reject that our belief in numbers is "mysterious" as we can
easily match up one set of objects with another set of different
objects. We can observe physical objects, we can distinguish between
them as they are present in differing locations or, if present in the
same location, are located at differing times. Objects can have a wide
variety of properties that our observations can determine. This is
kindergarten material, Bruno, why are we tripping all over it as if it
where a conundrum or requiring many years of meditation and training?
Have you noticed that I claim that the duality that I am considering
vanishes at the level of Existence itself?
[BM]
I have still not the slightest clue of what you mean by "Existence".
[SPK]
Is it possible for you to think of the most primitive ontological
level, prior to even hypostases? What is "at" that level? Bare and
naked Existence, undifferentiated, unnamed and raw. It is obviously
neutral with respect to properties and it cannot be a property for if
Existence where a property then it could not be a fundamental primitive
as it would necessarily supervene on something deeper.
This is because we cannot consider Existence to be partitioned
without specifying a basis for the partition, in other words our
ontological models have to start at our level of substitution and
cannot remain coherent if we subtract out our existence as entities
that can distinguish, for example, 0 from 1.
[BM]
This does not follow logically. We, the distinguishers of 0 and 1,
certainly exist at some level, from some point of view. But that
existence might be derivable (and is derivable) in arithmetic, once we
assume comp.
[SPK]
We must assume existence as prior to even numbers, for numbers are,
at least, differentiated aspects of existence. A "differentiated aspect
of existence" is a thing, it is not existence per se. You are thinking
of existence as being dependent on something else. It simply cannot be
dependent as it is neither a property or emergent. It seems that you
need to take a review course in Ontology!
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-ontology/#Ont
Some aspect of it are not derivable, and yet are still true and
existing, and can be meta-justified for simpler machines than us, so
that we can grasp them indirectly, including our incompleteness with
respect to those truth, and which comes from our local relative
finiteness.
[SPK]
That a logical sentence is true and that it exists are completely
different situations that must not be conflated or considered at the
same level. You seem to tacitly assume that numbers have properties
completely independent of the ability of any entity of knowing of them.
This is what I call the error of "implicit meaningfulness". A string of
numbers, combinatorials, hierarchical sets or whatever, stripped of all
relation to the possibility of physical instantiation, is less than a
"ghost of a departed quantity", it is vacuous and vapid.
This is obvious Platonism, and it fails for the same reason that
Plato's theory of Forms fails. It cannot account for knowledge, even in
the /Theaetet/ian sense, because prior to the consideration of what
"Bp&p" is as different from "%r*0" or "Pb&b" or "1234" or ... as a
possible meaningful statement, it has no meaning. This is the inevitable
flaw of idealism: taking Mind or Consciousness as a singular primitive
removes the possibility of distiguishing what something *is* from *what
it is not*. Additionally, absent the ability that space and time provide
to multiply representations of values, concepts, and other mental
objects, there is simply no more than undifferentiated oneness. The
ability to distinguish "this" from "that" requires the physical and
cannot be sustained in its absence.
For example, in your result you use the notion of teleportation and
digital substitution. Both of these concepts require the multiplicity of
place and time that the physical world gives to be coherent, therefore
your result cannot even be considered absent the physical. The idea of
"implementing the UD" requires that it is possible for a physical system
to implement it. This does *NOT* mean that the physical is primitive in
the ontological sense, but neither does the UD itself exist as a
primitive "idea". Neither ideas nor physical objects can be fundamental
primitives as they require each other for their actuality.
You wrote in
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.htm :
"Instead of linking [the pain I feel] at space-time (x,t) to [a machine
state] at space-time (x,t), we are obliged to associate [the pain I feel
at space-time (x,t)] to a type or a sheaf of computations (existing
forever in the arithmetical Platonia which is accepted as existing
independently of our selves with arithmetical realism)."
This assumes that the "arithmetical Platonia" has specific
properties that involve distinctions between them to follow simply from
the necessary possibility of the sentence "Arithmetical Platonia
exists". This is a hollow and empty statement as absent the
disctinctions that the physical world provides, there can be no Platonia
except as a abstraction within the thoughts of conscious entities. You
are assuming that you can have all of the gifts of consciousness without
having to pay the price of consciousness. Sorry, Bruno, there is no free
lunch. The mere existence of numbers does nothing at all to indicate
their properties.
If not, like Craig, perhaps like Rex Allen and Benjayk, you are
postulating that comp is false.
No, I am not. I bet that comp is TRUE, but I don't see COMP as
requiring that the physical world is supervening on numbers (up to
isomorphisms) as primitives. I am trying to point out the obvious and
even trivial fact that comp is meaningless and mute as an explanatory
model or "result" absent the physical world with its chalkboards, paper,
computer screens, etc. Its existence, per se, has nothing to do with its
meaningfulness. You wrote: "Physics is given by a measure on the
consistent computational /histories/, or /maximal/ consistent extensions
as seen from some first person point of view." What exactly is this
"First Person point of view" if there is nothing that can act as such by
your account?
You wrote: "Laws of physics, in particular, should be inferable
from the true verifiable "atomic sentences"." Inferable by *what* or
*whom*? The Atomic sentences themselves can do nothing at all, must less
"infer" anything from themselves because they have no means to reflect
back upon themselves. Even a Godel Number must be different from that it
is representing in some way. "The number seven is prime" is meaningless
if we cannot write it down somewhere and somehow and evaluate its
implications.
If that is the case, I encourage you to make that precise, and to
study comp and computer science to even just define "non-comp".
That will not be easy. AUDA works, for example, for many transfinite
sequences of weakening of comp.
However one might "weaken comp" it still requires the possibility
of implementation in a substrate no matter how universal it might be.
Universality merely makes the computation free from specific physical
implementations, it does *NOT* obviate the need for the possibility of
physical implementation. Ideal monism still fails because it contradicts
the requirement that it be meaningful. Something cannot be said to be
meaningful when there is no object (that it is not) to whom it has a
meaning. To claim the opposite is to claim that "I can have meaning to
my self but I have no self".
Onward!
Stephen
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