On 11 Jul 2012, at 16:32, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 7/11/2012 4:10 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 10 Jul 2012, at 23:33, Stephen P. King wrote:
Hi John,
What I have been doing is exploring the soft underbelly of
physics, those sets of "truths" that are just assumed to be true.
For example, I have become convinced that a lot of the
difficulties in physics are due to its assumption that "substance"
is primitive. There is even an entire article in the online
Stanford encyclopedia on the notion of substance and therein is
laid out the problems for all to see, never-the-less science
staggers on, assuming that "stuff" is the explanation to every
phenomena. The Higgs boson is, IMHO, yet another example of the
"stuff" mentality. The alternative is to consider that "process"
is primitive; that all forms of "stuff" are, ultimately, the
result of some underlying process; there is no such thing as
primitive stuff!
You can see how this kinda dovetails with Bruno's anti-
materialism and yet he seems to just fall over into "immaterial"
stuff. :_(
Where?
Hi Bruno,
Where, you ask? In the postulation of numbers as ontological
primitives!
I do not that. You miss the UDA point. I assume only that there is a
level such that we are locally Turing emulable.
Esse is not percipi. With comp. Esse is more "is a solution to a
diophantine polynomial equation".
You have merely replaced the Atoms of the materialists with the
Numbers of neo-Platonists. :_(
Study UDA and AUDA, it is exactly the contrary. Universal machines,
relatively to the arithmetical truth makes the arithmetical reality
into tuburlent unknowns. And matter still exists but is no more
primitive as being the condition making collection of universal
machines sharing part of the sheaves of all local computations.
UDA is an invitation, or challenge to tell me where you think there is
a flaw, for UDA is the point that if we can survive with a digital
brain, at some levels, then the physical reality is not the source of
the reason why we believe in a physical reality. It is a reasoning
Stephen, I repeated it recently on the FOAR list, please tell me a
number between 0 and 7, or 8, so that we can agree on what we disagree
on.
Have you read any of the debate against the idealism of Berkeley?
From http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/#3.1.1 we find:
"The basics of Berkeley's metaphysics are apparent from the first
section of the main body of the Principles:
It is evident to any one who takes a survey of the objects of human
knowledge, that they are either ideas actually imprinted on the
senses, or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions
and operations of the mind, or lastly ideas formed by help of memory
and imagination, either compounding, dividing, or barely
representing those originally perceived in the aforesaid ways. By
sight I have the ideas of light and colours with their several
degrees and variations. By touch I perceive, for example, hard and
soft, heat and cold, motion and resistance, and of all these more
and less either as to quantity or degree. Smelling furnishes me with
odours; the palate with tastes, and hearing conveys sounds to the
mind in all their variety of tone and composition. And as several of
these are observed to accompany each other, they come to be marked
by one name, and so to be reputed as one thing. Thus, for example, a
certain colour, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been
observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified
by the name apple. Other collections of ideas constitute a stone, a
tree, a book, and the like sensible things; which, as they are
pleasing or disagreeable, excite the passions of love, hatred, joy,
grief, and so forth.
As this passage illustrates, Berkeley does not deny the existence of
ordinary objects such as stones, trees, books, and apples. On the
contrary, as was indicated above, he holds that only an
immaterialist account of such objects can avoid skepticism about
their existence and nature. What such objects turn out to be, on his
account, are bundles or collections of ideas. An apple is a
combination of visual ideas (including the sensible qualities of
color and visual shape), tangible ideas, ideas of taste, smell, etc.
[ The question of what does the combining is a philosophically
interesting one which Berkeley does not address in detail. He
does make clear that there are two sides to the process of
bundling ideas into objects: (1) co-occurrence, an objective fact
about what sorts of ideas tend to accompany each other in our
experience, and (2) something we do when we decide to single out a
set of co-occurring ideas and refer to it with a certain name (NTV
109).
Thus, although there is no material world for Berkeley, there is a
physical world, a world of ordinary objects. This world is mind-
dependent, for it is composed of ideas, whose existence consists in
being perceived. For ideas, and so for the physical world, esse est
percipi."
end cut/paste
In your work you seem to posit that numbers have minds (thus
they can dream)
Because comp define mind by what a computer can do, that is what a
universal machine do. By saying yes to the usual doctor, you were
asked a question involving a digital truncation, I just illustrate
some consequences.
and that their ideas are passive and yet can reproduce all phenomena
that would be explained as being the result of physical acts in
materialism.
I derive that from the assumption that a brain is Turing emulable.
Please try to not attribute me hypotheses when those are derived from
the assumption, or challenge a precise step in the reasoning.
You argue that this reduces all phenomena to passive
hypostatization, but I argue that this is a fallacy of misplaced
concreteness
That is a serious accusation, but you have to provide a proof of that
statement. You just take the conclusion of a reasoning like if I did
have any choice in the matter, as UDA explained. Study it, and from it
try to make your point, please.
as per the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, since you have severed
all ties to physical implementation.
That is vague.
Please understand that it seems that the only place where there is
disagreement between you and I is on the postulation of primacy. I
am arguing that neither matter (atoms) nor ideas (numbers) can be
taken as primitives as they are devoid of causal efficacy.
Follow the explanation in FOAR, each universal number can be see as a
notion of causal efficacy, but most are relative. Theoretical computer
science (and thus arithmetic) if full of causal efficacy, even
physical efficacy for the internal (modal) points of view of the
machines.
The instruction "IF x THEN y ELSE z" seems to me to have already
causal efficacy.
Bruno
Bruno
With process we can get some interesting hints of answers to many
of these questions that vex us so such as the nature of time and
even consciousness. Logic is recast in terms of interactive game
theory (ala Jaakko Hintikka) and physics becomes a question of how
spaces evolve relative to each other (this is already been
understood every since Lagrange and Hamilton).
It all really boils down to "belief systems" as you wisely
point out. :-)
On 7/10/2012 4:28 PM, John Mikes wrote:
Stephen, a 'belief system' may be reassuring.
I spent a lifetime in active R&D exercising conventional science,
till I lost by belief in many figments of it. It came gradually
like one's losing a religious faith: trying to THINK 'outside the
box' and getting nowhere. (First reflection: I am poorly informed
and my conclusions are inaccurate).
Then the extension of our worldview into items still unknown, as
exemplified by the gradual enrichment in our epistemic inventory
over the millennia. We are NOT at the perfection's end...Some
more yet has got to come and I braced myself for surprises.
I cannot recall when and where, but allegedly prof. Higgs
repealed his work at his old age - how sorry it would be if true.
The observations upon which science is based supply only
explained information, accurate and complete to the level of the
'era'. Then explanations are applied based on assumptions,
presumptions, nth level consequences of such and sometimes
recalled/changed.
Bruno's and my agnosticism are based on some basic 'faith' to
start from: his from numerals, arithmetic (I think) mine from a
never learnable infinite complexity of which we only know a
portion.
Everybody has a personal choice whether to include the Higgs
boson in his/her personal worldview. And there are many others...
John M
On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Stephen P. King <[email protected]
> wrote:
Say that it is not so!
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428428/higgs-boson-may-be-an-imposter-say-particle/?ref=rss
--
Onward!
Stephen
"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
~ Francis Bacon
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