On 11/1/2012 6:54 AM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:
On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 1:42 AM, Stephen P. King <stephe...@charter.net
<mailto:stephe...@charter.net>> wrote:
On 10/31/2012 6:14 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:
On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 7:59 PM, Stephen P. King
<stephe...@charter.net <mailto:stephe...@charter.net>> wrote:
[SPK]
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?
My argument is that it is impossible to 'derive" Becoming from
Being, but we can derive Being from Becoming. So why not work with
the latter idea? I am trying to get Bruno to admit, among other
things, that he has to assume a non-well founded logic for his
result to work.;-)
I see less and less how you'd be able to do that, as I said, by making
process/linear time primitive in comp, and by assuming physical
universe with so many statements. Quantum Logic is part of the picture
(see SANE 2004).
Hi Cowboy,
I think of it this way: Change is fundamental (ala Heraclitus
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heraclitus/#PhiPri> and Bergson
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bergson/#5>) and Being is its
automorphism <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automorphism>. Is that a bit
more clear? "Linear time" (why 'linear'? Is there such a thing as
non-linear time? Cyclic time is still linear, AFAIK...) is, IMHO, change
+ a measure. Without a measure of change, there is no time; there is
just change. If we take relativity seriously, we might even claim that
there is no difference between change minus measure and staticness... I
should mention that any change that has no measure associated with it is
"zeroth" order change.
Without the means to compare two different things to each other,
does it make any sense to be able to make coherent statements about some
change in one relative to the other. If there is just one thing, how do
we know anything about its possible change(s) unless we are looking at
it and gauging (measuring) its change against some thing else that has
some measure associated - but our observation of it violates the
stipulation of "if there is just one thing".
The idea that somehow the observer is irrelevant in physics and
philosophy is, IMHO, one of the worse errors ever. Sure, we need to
minimize and even eliminate observer bias and preferred reference
framing, but eliminating the observer and replacing it with some
ambiguous 'view from nowhere' is undiluted hogwash. This is where
"realist" chafe me, they act as if the universe of objects is out there
and has definite properties in the complete absence of any clear
explanation for how those properties came to be defined in the first
place. OK, OK, I will stop ranting...
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?
There are simply a pile of concepts that are just assumed
without explanation in any discussion of philosophy/logic/math. My
point is that a theory must be have the capacity of being
communicable ab initio for it to even be considered. When I am
confronted with a theory or a "result" or an argument that seems
to disallow for communicability I am going to baulk at it!
And the possibility that you are baulking at your preconceptions
rather than engaging the theory has never happened to you? Happens to
me all the time.
OK, got any ideas what these might be other than those I have
mentioned explicitly? Philosophically, I am a Heraclitean, at least, as
opposed to a Parmenidean...
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.
Sure.
Then it would be easy for you to directly address the question: why
assume non-comp and then complain about comp's implications of time
and physics arising from dream interaction of universal numbers,
therefore being not primary or existing primitively?
But I agree with comp up to the strong version of step 8! I accept
comp with a weak version of step 8 or, I think equivalently, a weak
version of computational universality: /A computation is universal if it
is not dependent on any one particular physical system/. This implies,
to me, that there is at least one physical system that such a universal
computation can be said to actually run on! This goes against the
Parmenidean/Platonistic idea of computation as static objects in
eternity that are completely independent of physical stuff!
This makes me suspicious of the entire idea of ontological
"independence" but I digress.
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.
Would this not make that deception something in our
understanding and not the fault of numbers? After all, numbers are
supposedly the least ambiguous of entities!
On the surface, but not when you look under the hood. That's a
reductionist bias of number.
Don't get me started on reductionism! I don't believe in it as I
don't believe in ontologically primitive objects that have particular
properties.
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.
I think that we are too eager for explanations and are willing
to play fast and lose with concepts so long as we can hand wave
problems away.
Agreed.
;-)
(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).
It seems to me that we need both to come up with ontological
theories!
I don't need to. Others are good at that. Every song I play/write is
one ontological theory, that sometimes even kids can grasp and smile
at. In ancient Greece, music was a branch of core education. Numbers
and geometry were as important as an understanding of harmony. I am
not idealizing ancient Greece, nor am I saying math = music.
I have found that those ancient Greeks where just as smart as smart
people today.
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.
Freedom from is not freedom to.
I'm not saying UD is without problems or possible flaws; but simply
fail to understand the flaw you are trying to express.
Again: why burn the basement and complain the building has cracks?
I'm trying to do exactly not that...
--
Onward!
Stephen
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