On Sun, Sep 15, 2013 at 9:54 AM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 14 Sep 2013, at 04:25, Craig Weinberg wrote: > > > > On Friday, September 13, 2013 9:42:54 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: >> >> >> On 12 Sep 2013, at 18:22, Craig Weinberg wrote: >> >> >> >> On Thursday, September 12, 2013 11:56:12 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: >>> >>> >>> On 12 Sep 2013, at 11:33, Telmo Menezes wrote: >>> >>> > Time for some philosophy then :) >>> > >>> > Here's a paradox that's making me lose sleep: >>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexpected_hanging_paradox >>> > >>> > Probably many of you already know about it. >>> > >>> > What mostly bothers me is the epistemological crisis that this >>> > introduces. I cannot find a problem with the reasoning, but it's >>> > clearly false. So I know that I don't know why this reasoning is >>> > false. Now, how can I know if there are other types of reasoning that >>> > I don't even know that I don't know that they are correct? >>> >>> >>> Smullyan argues, in Forever Undecided, rather convincingly, that it is >>> the Epimenides paradox in disguise, >> >> >> It's the symbol grounding problem too. From a purely quantitative >> perspective, a truth can only satisfy some condition. The expectation of >> truth being true is not a condition of arithmetic truth, it is a boundary >> condition that belongs to sense. >> >> >> i think you mix first person truth, that we can sometimes apprehend (like >> knowing that we are conscious here and now), and third person truth, which >> does not depend of any entity *sensing* them. > > > How do you justify the assumption of entities that do not depend on any > phenomenological participation though? > > > That is called "realism". I guess you know I am realist about facts like "14 > is not prime" and the like. We have discussed already on that, and I think, > agree that we disagree on that. > > > > Certainly there are truths which are independent of *our* sensing as > individuals, or as human beings, or as fleshy objects or temporal spans of > felt experience, but how can we know, or rather why should we jump to > conclusions that there are things that simply 'are' independently of a > sensed experience (note I omit 'entity', since it is not clear that an > experience must be felt by a particular being (it could be felt by a class > of beings, an era of being, or an eternity of being). Third person truth is > not anchored in the firmament of fact, it is simply a lowest common > denominator of sensitivity among all participants. > > > I am OK with this, but as I defined entities from what I am realist about, I > prefer to make it simple and refer to an arithmetic independent of us. > > > > > If third person truth were sense independent, what would be the point of > having sense actually experienced? > > > The presence of far away galaxies does not depend on us (human beings), but > we still need sense (Hubble) to acknowledge their existence.
But the precise details of the galaxies may be indeterminate until someone looks, à la Schrödinger's cat no? Of course with things like the MWI or FPI "existance" is no longer such a clear term. Or is it? > How would it create sensation mechanically, and how would whatever is used > to attach first person phenomena to third person phenomena be itself > attached to either one? > > > Through two things: self-reference and truth. the first in technically > manageable, the second is not. But we have both once we assume the > independent truth of arithmetical relations. > > > > > >> >> >> >> >> Computers cannot lie intentionally, >> >> >> >> Hmm... That is your usual anti-mechanist propaganda. > > > It's not too late to discover a new perspective... > http://multisenserealism.com/2013/09/12/why-computers-cant-lie-and-dont-know-your-name/ > >> >> >> >> >> they can only report a local truth which is misinterpreted as being false >> in some sense that is not local to the computation. >> >> For the same reason, computers cannot intend to tell the truth either. As >> in the Chinese Room - the output of a program is not known by the program to >> be true, it simply is a report of the truth of some internal process. >> >> >> You confuse a person, and a program or body responsible for that person >> being able to communicate with you (that might explain why you believe a >> computer cannot think. Of course when we say "a computer can think", with >> comp we mean only that a computer can have an activity making it possible >> for a person to think relatively to some universal number/machine. > > > My intuition is to support the use of 'personal' to describe private > physics, but the word person seems too loaded to me. I am ok with everything > that I see around me now being 'personal' in some sense, but I do not see > that every line and curve, every sparkle and shadow arc is a 'person' or > collection of persons. Also I think that the universal number has no reason > to feel, but a universal feeling has every reason to count. > > > I know that is what you feel. I have explained why numbers feels this to, as > the truth here has to be logically counter-intuitive. Young machines have > hard to believe that they are machines, and eventually this asks for a > strong philosophical, even theological, bet. That is why "mechanist > proselytism" is forbidden. > > > >> >> >> >> >> >> The interesting part is that besides being true locally, the computer's >> report is also true arithmetically, which is to say that it is true two ways >> (or senses): >> >> 1) the most specific/proprietary sense which is unique, private, >> instantaneous and local >> 2) the most universal/generic sense which is promiscuous, public, eternal, >> and omni-local >> >> The computer's report is, however not true in any sense in between, i.e. >> in any sense which relates specifically to real experienced events in space >> time. >> >> Real events in spacetime (which occur orthogonally through mass-energy, or >> rather mass-energy is the orthogonal cross section of events) are: >> >> 3) semi-unique, semi-private, semi-spatiotemporal, semi-local, >> semi-specific, semi-universal. >> >> >> I am quite skeptical about "real events in spacetime". I can ascribe a >> local sense to that, but not an absolute one. I don't buy even weak >> materialism. It contradicts most things I find much more plausible >> (consciousness, persons, souls, dreams, monism, ...). > > > I'm trying to make an informal reference without getting too deeply into > what is meant by real. I agree that spacetime is not absolute - it is the > polar opposite. Spacetime is the conditional, the local. > > > OK > > > Still though, the point I'm making is that computation is ultra-local and > ultra-nonlocal, but rather than assuming that it includes every shade in > between, I think all signs point to the contrary. Quantum jumps, and what it > is jumping across is 'reality' - accumulated experiences...every shade in > between. Digital vs analog is a good analog for the real thing, which would > be more like digital+analog vs {the superpositioned/proto-divergence of all > experiences}. > > > OK. That fits mechanist theology. > > Bruno > > > > Thanks, > Craig > >> >> Bruno >> >> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ >> >> >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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