On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 7:59 PM, Stephen P. King <stephe...@charter.net>wrote:
>
> Dear Cowboy,
>
> One question. Was the general outline that I was trying to explain
> make any sense to you? Without being obvious about it, I am trying to
> finely parse the difference between the logic of temporal systems and the
> logic of atemporal systems - such as the Platonic Realm - such that I might
> show that reasonings that are correct in one are not necessarily correct in
> the other.
>
This was not obvious to me, and going over the posts, I see how you're
leaning that way... but why not just say that, then? Don't get me wrong, I
love Joycean labyrinths as much as the next guy, but if the topic is on
some level tending towards sincerity, then I don't see the benefit "in not
being obvious". Then again, I'm a Captain Obvious type. Should get the
shirt.
> One problem that I have discovered (I thank Brent for bringing this up!)
> is that in our reasoning we set up constructions - such as the person on
> the desert island - that blur the very distinction that I am trying to
> frame. We should never assume temporal situations to argue for relations
> that are atemporal unless we are prepared to show the morphisms between the
> two situations.
>
>
Isn't this already physical framework when you seem to be arguing for time
as primitive ("n incompatible with comp to begin with, after which you seek
to carve out a distinction, when you've already mixed at the base?
> Bruno would have us, in step 8 of UDA, to "not assume a concrete
> robust physical universe". He goes on to argue that Occam's razor would
> demand that we reject the very idea of the existence of physical worlds
> given that he can 'show' how they can be reconstructed or derived from
> irreducible - and thus ontologically primitive - Arithmetic 'objects' {0,
> 1, +, *} that are "operating" somehow in an atemporal way.
>
UDA does not contradict itself here. Restraints on processing power, on
memory and print capacities, implying time as some illusion emanating from
eternal primitives, don't exist when framed non-constructively, more like
sets of assignments, rather than operations in your sense, by which you
seem to mean "physically primitive operations" on par with ontologically
primitive arrow of time. Isn't this like cracking open the axioms, and then
complaining that the building has cracks in it?
> We should be able to make the argument run without ever appealing to a
> Platonic realm or any kind of 'realism'.
>
It's hard for me to see bets being made without some cash/investment/gap of
faith on the table.
> In my thinking, if arithmetic is powerful enough to be a TOE and run the
> TOE to generate our world, then that power should be obvious. My problem is
> that it looks tooo much like the 'explanation' of creation that we find in
> mythology, whether it is the
> Ptah<http://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/ptah.html>of ancient Egypt or the egg
> of Pangu <http://www.livingmyths.com/Chinese.htm> or whatever other myth
> one might like. What makes an explanation framed in the sophisticated and
> formal language of modal logic any different?
>
>
Nothing, at its base. Appearances and looks can deceive, as numbers can too.
> I agree 1000000000% with your point about 'miracles'. I am very
> suspicions of "special explanations' or 'natural conspiracies'.
>
Same here. My point with humanism + natural sciences, including standard
model, is that you have to be straight about your wager: there's my magic
primitive right there, warts and all.
Its deceiving to, on the one hand assert "no miracles" whatsoever, and then
ask for it at the instant of Big Bang. "Human" in this sense is both
deceptive through error and useful for power.
> (This comes from my upbringing as a "Bible-believing Fundamentalist" and
> eventual rejection of that literalist mental straight-jacket.) As I see
> things, any condition or situation that can be used to 'explain' some other
> conceptually difficult condition or situation should be either universal in
> that they apply anywhere and anytime or are such that there must be a
> particular configuration of events for them to occur. This principle (?)
> applies to everything, be it the Big Bang initial state/singularity or
> consciousness.
>
> One point about the Big Bang. It seems to me that if we are
> considering conditions in our current physical universe that involve
> sufficiently small scales and/or high enough energies that there should be
> the equivalent to the Big Bang initial conditions, thus the Big Bang should
> be considered as an ongoing process even now and not some epochally special
> event.
>
You argue both comp ("universal, anywhere, eternal") and physically
primitive universe ("current physical universe", "ongoing process" etc).
That's why I ask above why you burn your money before you put it on the
(comp) table and claim the game is rigged? Just because "eternal is
foundation", doesn't imply that process isn't possible on some higher
level. Your alluding to mysticism points towards different ways you can
frame temporal and "atemporal" systems. There's not "a difference", there
are many, which is perhaps a fruitful avenue of inquiry.
I do agree with you on the straight-jacket problem. But extreme limitation
is also liberating.
Cowboy Obvious
--
Onward!
Stephen
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