On 11/1/2012 11:23 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
[SPK] Bruno would have us, in step 8 of UDA, to "not assume a
concrete robust physical universe".
?
Reread step 8. Step 7 and step 8 are the only steps where I explicitly
do assume a primitive physical reality.
In step 8, it is done for the reductio ad absurdum.
Dear Bruno,
I have cut and pasted your exact words from SANE04 and you still
didn't understand... From:
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.pdf
<http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.pdf>
"...what if we don't grant a concrete robust physical universe?"
"Actually the 8th present step will explain
that such a move is nevertheless without purpose. This will make the
notion of concrete and
existing universe completely devoid of any explicative power. It
will follow that a much
weaker and usual form of Ockham's razor can be used to conclude that not
only physics has
been epistemologically reduced to machine psychology, but that
''matter'' has been
ontologically reduced to ''mind'' where mind is defined as the object
study of fundamental
machine psychology."
My claim is that _/*neither physical worlds nor numbers (or any
other object that must supervene on mind) can be ontologically
primitive*/_. Both must emerge from a neutral ground that is neither and
has no particular properties.
[SPK] He goes on to argue that Occam's razor would demand that we
reject the very idea of the existence of physical worlds
Only of primitive physical worlds. And you did agree with this. I just
prove this from comp. That's the originality. A bit of metaphysics is
made into a theorem in a theory (comp).
Can we agree that physical worlds emerge somehow from sharable
aspects of multiple sheaves of computations?
[SPK] 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. We should be able to make the argument run without
ever appealing to a Platonic realm or any kind of 'realism'. 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?
I use the self-reference logic, for obvious reason. Again, this
entails the sue of some modal logics, due to a *theorem* by Solovay.
All correct machine whose beliefs extend RA obeys to G and G*. There
is no choice in the matter.
That is not changed or involved by my argument.
[SPK] I agree 1000000000% with your point about 'miracles'. I am
very suspicions of "special explanations' or 'natural conspiracies'.
(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
But even in your theory anywhere and anytime must be defined by
something more primitive, given that you agree that physics cannot be
the fundamental theory, given that the physical reality is not primitive.
The concepts of "where" and "when" (positions in a space-time)
would seem to be rendered meaningless if there is no space-time (or
observers/measurements to define it), no? OH, BTW, I don't think that we
disagree that "physics cannot be the fundamental theory". Physics
requires measurements/observations to be meaningful. Where I agree with
you is in your considerations of 1p and observer indeterminacy. Where
you and I disagree is on the question of resources. Resources are
required for computations to "run" so there has to be the availability
of resources involved in *any* consideration of computations. Ignoring
these considerations by only considering computations as Platonic
objects is wrong, IMHO.
You seem to be OK with computations as purely timeless objects (in
Platonia) that are such that somehow we finite entities can create
physical objects that can implement (in their dynamical functions)
instances of such, while I claim that computations are equivalence
classes of functions that physical systems can implement *and* abstract
objects. I see these two views as two poles of a spectrum. There is a
lot more detail in my considerations that I do not have time to go into
at this time...
My Theory of comp: Sheaves of Computations/arithmetic - define ->
particular physical states *and* sheaves of physical states - allow ->
particular computations. They are mutually supervenient, neither is
ontologically primitive. Both emerge from a property neutral ground.
Bruno
--
Onward!
Stephen
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.