On 11/9/2012 12:25 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 09 Nov 2012, at 00:01, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 11/8/2012 10:22 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 08 Nov 2012, at 14:45, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 11/8/2012 6:43 AM, Roger Clough wrote:
Hi meekerdb
So how does Platonia's perfect necessary classes restrain or
contain this world of contingency ? Or does it ?
Hi Roger,
That is exactly my question! How does Platonism show the
contingent to be necessary? As far as I have found, it cannot show
necessity of the contingent. In the rush to define the perfect, all
means to show the necessity of contingency was thrown out. This is
why I propose that we define existence as necessary possibility; we
have contingency built into our ontology in that definition. ;-)
In which modal logic?
Hi Bruno,
Why is there a formal modal logic implied in my remarks? I do not
think in a formal math form. I think visually and proprioceptively.
Ideas have 'texture' for me. ;-) Good theories have a different
'feel' than wrong theories for me. Maybe this is just an intuitive
form of thinking but it has served me well so far.
It might suit well your 1p-intuition. Good for you. But you can use
that for public communication.
Dear Bruno,
Please never forget that I am a philosopher, a 'lover of
knowledge'. I have seen a weakness in the tacit ontological assumptions
of many philosopher, mathematicians and scientists for a long time as I
have done my studies. They consistently neglect the effect of mutual
agreement between many entities. I thought that I was just wrong in this
presumption until I studied semiotic theory and the work of Peirce.
After reading the writings of David Bohm and other scientific
contrarians I am convinced that I am correct.
Necessity and possibility have been controversial notion from
Aristotle to Feys and Kripke (say). After Kripke, we can give a
mathematical meaning, and btw, the first remarkable fact is that those
modal notion have transfinities of mathematical meaning, but then we
can be more precise.
Yes. I am studying Kripke, Hinttikka and others on this.
You define existence, which is simlple and rather well handled in
elementeray logic, by very complex controversial notion. So I can't
understand them.
I am trying to construct a notion of existence that is not
contingent on anything, not a theory, not a physical implementation, not
on the possibility of measurement or observation. Many philosophers,
including that knavish Kant and Schopenhauer and even Satre, have
pointed out that the existence of an entity cannot be contingent on
anything. Some, like Ayn Rand, tell us that we can only claim that
existence exists, but this reduced the concept to a empty tautology. My
proposal is that we can think of existence as necessary possibility and
thus have a concept that can be ontologically primitive - in that it is
not contingent. This allows it to be ontologically neutral in that it
has no properties or particularities or distinctions or any other
feature that would make it subservient on some special condition.
Like for "primitive", that you want having objects without properties.
This just makes no sense for me.
This is what my definition of existence requires. To define object
in my system you must simultaneously define the means that the
properties can be distinguished from all possible properties for that
class of objects. In this way we might get closer to an ontology that is
not language dependent. I am just taking a page from the Book of Modern
Physics where we are told that physical laws and effects much be
formulated in a way that does not depend on some special coordinate
system or observable basis.
That you seem to repeatedly advocate is an ontology that is theory
dependent. Just as your notion of truth is theory dependent, so too are
the results or implications of comp. This is deeply problematic for me.
What you say directly contradict Gödel's theorem, which shows, at
many different levels the necessity of the possible.
OK, I'll bite your metaphorical bait. What does Gödel's theorem
tell us about the necessity of the possible at most ontologically
fundamental level?
We even get that for all (true) sigma_1 sentences (the "atomic
events in the UD execution) p -> []<>p,
Can you see that this is just a statement in a particular language?
In arithmetic. All the modalities like [] and <> are entirely defined,
either directly by an expression in arithmetic, or by appeal to well
defined infinities of arithmetical expressions.
Yes, all of which is dependent on a particular set of formal
theoretical definitions.
We should be able to refer to the very same ideas using different
languages!
Perhaps, but then you must give the dictionary.
I have been trying to do exactly that. Have you seen the
definitions that I have already written? For example, I define a
"reality" as that which 3 or more observers (that can communicate with
each other about) agree to be empty of contradictions. Do you have any
idea why I require at least 3 observers? Do you understand that I am not
assuming that observers are human or similarly sapient? I am defining an
observer as a sheaf of an infinite number of computations (all of which
generate bisimilar content of first person experience) that can be
located by some other observers as existing persistently in some space
(where a space is a set with some additional relational structure).
Truth is, after all, independent of any particular representation!
One thing: that "p -> []<>p" reads to me as "the necessary possible
existence of p implies the existence of p".
?
"p -> []<>p" is for, p being any sigma_1 arithmetical proposition: p
implies box diamond p", with the box being defined in the Z1* or X1*
logic, and playing the role of observable with "probability 1".
I miss-wrote my reading above. It would read: "the necessary
possibility of p implies the existence of p". I don't see the need to
refer to a particular formal model of math.
As to the idea of atomicity in the UD. I understand a bit how Pratt
considers a logical algebra to be atomic, in that it cannot be
reduced to a structure with fewer components and cannot have
components added to it without altering its Satisfiability, but I do
not know what 'atomicity' means to you.
The usual one in logic. Atomic formula are the formula from which we
build the non atomic. In propositional calculus the atomic formula are
p, q, r, ... In arithmetic, the atomic formula are (t = s) with t and
s beings terms; etc.
Atomic formulas are formulas withing a theoretical formalism that
are irreducible to formulas with fewer propositions, no?
that is the truth of p implies the necessity of the possibility of p,
I do not see that at all! The truth of p is in its referent, it is
what p tells us that is True (or false) and I read the implication
arrow in the opposite direction as you.
I thought it was typo, above. The you read "->" in the opposite sense
of all the logicians. If you dare doing things like that, it will not
help you to be understood. It is better to use the accepted
conventions, or at least, if you change one, to make that clear and
explicit before all things.
I fixed my typo. The arrow "->" is reverse for logical implication,
no? If x then y, tells me that if Y is a fact of the world then x must
be true as well. The logical necessitation of existence flows backwards
by the truth of the precedent. If you read Pratt's papers you might have
seen a discussion of this.
Logical necessitation (the logical form of causality) looks at the
antecedents and implicated precedents in its derivation. Logic does
not and must not be considered to "anticipate" a truth. Truth is the
end result of the process of logic, not its beginning.
This sentence has no meaning. When doing logic, we abstract from
truth. We let truth come back in the model theory, but then it is
defined mathematically, and of course it is not "the truth".
Why not? You assume that something exists without any cause and
that it also has properties without any cause and that you can have
knowledge without any cause wonder why I am asking you to justify that
belief. What might cause me to not agree with you? Oh, I am just
confused and misinformed (in your opinion). OK.
with []p = either the box of the universal soul (S4Grz1), or the box
of the intelligible or sensible matter (Z1* and X1*). The modal
logics becomes well defined, and allows, in Platonia, all the
imperfections that you can dream of (which of course is not
necessarily a good news).
All of these claims are coherent only after we assume that we
exist and can formulate theories.
This is does not make sense. Logicians put all their assumption the
table, and our existence does not figure in them.
So the existence of "us" that are evaluating the assumptions is
never to be explained or even considered. I reject this as inverted
solipsism: instead of the belief that "only I exist", you are in effect
saying that we must believe that "we do not exist". No thanks. Just like
my claim that your equations would not knowable if there where no way to
write them on a chalkboard or any other physical medium, so too are the
content of any assumptions vacuous without the a priori existence of
evaluators of those assumptions.
Maybe you imagine that I am proposing that that physical worlds
exist independent of observers? But how could this be given that I am
demanding that reality, here of a physical world, is observer dependent
- not dependent on any one, but dependent on the totality of the
observers. Reality is "participatory" and democratic.
No one vote can change the total more than by one unit of value,
which for a huge number of observers is a trivial quantity. We can get
away with the naive idea that "the moon exists independent of me" only
because we naively imagine ourselves to be vastly more powerful that any
one else that might be concurrently observing the moon.
Comp floats high up in the Platonic realm on the support of all of
the minds that believe in it.
?
This is how I can believe in comp. I see comp as an existentially
true result but only because many minds (that do the due diligence to
come to understand it) can agree that the result follows automatically
from its postulates and the defined formal theory of modal logic.
You said that you are a beginners and want to learn, but you keep
showing that you don't even want to learn logic. It is a technical
subject.
Excuse me, is it necessary to know how to write a language in order
to understand that language? No! You ignore the consequences of my
disability. see http://www.mathematicalbrain.com/pdf/LANDETAL.PDF for
detailed analysis. My disability is known as "Dyscalculia
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyscalculia>" "a specific learning
disability involving innate difficulty in learning or comprehending
arithmetic. It is akin to dyslexia and includes difficulty in
understanding numbers, learning how to manipulate numbers, learning
maths facts, and a number of other related symptoms (although there is
no exact form of the disability)." You might as well ask Stephen Hawking
to dance a pantomine version of his ideas to "prove" that he understand
it. I have overcome this disability but learnign to think in a different
way, but my disability remains.
Nobody will criticize a formula in differential geometry with a
philosophical argument. same for logic, especially when applied to
philosophy.
Bruno. I am not criticizing a formula in differential geometry, I
am criticizing a philosophical idea that you are advocating. Your are
advocating a form of immaterialism and I am demandign that you explain
how you over come its "body problem". The fact that comp has a body
problem, even if it is arithmetical, is not a surprise to me. I am more
surprised that you admit the problem exists! But you do not seem to want
to find a solution. My proposed solution, within math, is that we
somehow figure out how to define arithmetic bodies by using the Stone
duality, which is a well understood mathematical concept, and some
extensions of the concept of universal computers.
Philosophically, my proposed solution is to pull back from the full
throated endorsement of immaterialism and think about the ways that comp
allows us to define physical worlds. Bodies are merely localizations in
spaces that have some properties that are persistent for some finite
transformations. They could all have identical minds and imagine
themselves to be different from each other because the minds "locate"
themselves differently with respect to each other. The key idea is that
it is a physical world, ontologically primitive or purely an agreement
of some collection of 1p, that allows minds to interact with each other
and validate their beliefs.
We can bet on the Doctor only if we can know for sure that the
Doctor is not a liar.
--
Onward!
Stephen
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