On 20 Jan 2014, at 18:32, meekerdb wrote:
On 1/20/2014 12:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
And to answer this properly, you have to define "physical
existence of Brent" without using arithmetic.
Brent:=the being who typed this sentence. (Or next time you're in
California, come by and I'll give an ostensive definition - and a
cup of coffee.)
Thanks very much for the coffee cup, I appreciate. But frankly this
will not work. If I need to define number by invoking a being
typing a sentence in a post dated the 19 janvier 2014, oops: I am
using some numbers here.
You didn't ask to define a number, you asked to define "physical
existence of Brent".
The existence is defined by the use of "E" in the (first order)
logical theory of what I assume to exist.
You assume Brent, and I assume the number. You need to define number
from Brent, and I need to define Brent from number.
And 19 January 2014 can easily be defined as when Brent typed the
above message.
And how will we interpret it?
I think you (understandably as a logician) are so immersed in the
axiomatic method that you lose of sight of its connection to the
physical world.
It is because physics fails on the mind-body problem, when it does not
simply eliminate person and consciousness, that I study comp, and
there logic is very useful.
Definitions become nothing but relations between symbols if you
never ground them in pointing.
But pointing on something does not make it real, as we know since the
greco-indian dream argument.
Don't ask someone who want to compute 2+2=4 to come in California
and drink four cups of coffee, if all computers have to do that I
am afraid the net will become extremely slow ...
I find much more plausible that I can explain numbers behavior, and
Brent's brain and ideas, from elementary arithmetical axioms, than
explain arithmetic from Brent and other humans ideas. Come on ...
I'm quite sure you can explain Brent's brain and ideas without using
any number bigger than 10^100.
OK, but then you make the ultrafinitist move of step seven. You need
to reify a little universe, and you get the ad-hocness suggested by
the step 8. You need to invent something nobody can ever point to,
like primitive matter (and how do you define it) to prevent a
reasoning to go through. That is what the creationist does with
evolution, by reifying God.
It is begging the question or abandoning the problem. The mind-body
problem is very hard, and it asks indeed for a serious revision of
theology (not physics, this one needs only to be re-justified on more
serious grounds that inferring from things we point too). With comp,
the physical laws have a reason. That is what I like in comp: it
explains why they are physical laws, and this constructively, making
it testable.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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