On 01 Nov 2012, at 21:21, Stephen P. King wrote:
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
"...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.
How can anything emerge from something having non properties? Magic?
[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?
This is what I have shown to be a consequence of comp.
[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 of ancient Egypt or the egg of Pangu 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.
Comp is just the (theological) belief that I can survive with a
digital brain. The rest is logic.
Both emerge from a property neutral ground.
I have no idea what you mean by this.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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