On 20 Jan 2014, at 20:18, Edgar L. Owen wrote:
All,
There are obviously a lot of very intelligent members here who are
well read in modern science. I think everyone would agree with this.
However the usual MO of group members (true of most groups) is
simply to argue for their own theories and to criticize those of
others, and as a result no one changes their views and no
significant progress is made.
Let me humbly suggest that we can do better than that...
What would really be nice if we could work together cooperatively,
in the way that actual working science teams do, to build consenses
towards areas of agreement.
The way this works is that first we see what we can agree upon,
state that clearly in a way all can agree upon, and take that as the
basis for further progress.
Second work to clearly define areas of disagreement and actively
analyze and clarify them to prune the disagreements to the minimum
possible.
Third, devise mutually acceptable tests to resolve these
disagreements.
Fourth, run the tests and add the results to the areas of agreement.
Fifth, use this process iteratively to progress to the maximum areas
of agreement possible towards agreement on the most comprehensive
theory possible.
Now obviously this is probably more doable among small groups that
already have significant areas of agreement to start with. But as
each of these groups make progress defining what they do agree upon
they can then join to debate the areas of agreement and disagreement
between groups and how best to resolve those differences.
For example I was pleased to learn that Stephen and I agree that
block time is BS, even though Stephen doesn't seem to actively want
to argue that here. So e.g. Stephen and I could try to clearly
define our area of agreement here and when we clarify that we could
then debate it with the supporters of block time and the UDA who
believe differently once they clarify their areas of agreement.
My basic point is that instead of just forever arguing our
differences, it would be great to actively work on defining and
clarifying the theories that we could agree upon. It seems to me
that would be a truly worthwhile mutual endeavor that would progress
all our understandings.
How about it guys? Anyone interested in working on this?
But this is what some of us keep asking you to do since the beginning.
You have just not answered any posts where we ask you what are your
hypotheses.
You are also using the term "obvious". But the "obvious" things are
what we assumed, or derived from other obvious thing which are
explicitely assumed. And we don't present an assumption as an obvious
truth, but simply as an assumption. It is more polite and leads to
much more clarity.
Then, the UDA is something which has been already peer reviewed,
during a period of more than 30 years, as the scientists who did the
job have to study other fields than their own. Don't take this as an
argument of authority, but as the fact that even when you convince
scientists of something, a result can be ignored, or misunderstood. It
is normal when science handles what is considered as being
"philosophical" or "theological".
Then, many people get at least an idea of the UDA, and it seems to
contradicts directly your assumption. So I suggest that the simplest
way to convince us would be in showing at which step of the UDA
reasoning you think that your theory will be in conflict with UDA.
I am open to the idea that there is flaw in the reasoning, despite let
us say hundreds of independent verification by different scientists of
different domain (physicians, logicians, computer scientists) have
been done.
My thesis was initially rejected in some university, but the jury
decided to let the decision in the hand of a unique literary
philosopher. I have defended it without problem in another university,
by asking explicitly to have no literary philosophers in the jury (no
problem with analytical philosophers, or with serious philosopher of
science, although there many seems worst than the literary one).
I made a lot of works to explain that result, which is of course not
easy, and counter-intuitive. The least you can do is to study the
posts and build your theoretical defense from that.
A problem I see with your attitude, is that you just ignore the
critics already done, notably on your conception of SR. Your answer
seems to illustrate some absence of doubt in your (still very unclear)
assumptions.
Let me ask you just one question. Does it makes sense in your approach
to accept the proposition of a doctor who estimates that you will die
clinically unless you accept a transplant of your brain by some
artificial machine. Could that machine be a computer, or be emulated
by a computer? You said already "no" and "yes" in different posts. So
what?
Consider the posts by Craig. He said clearly "no" to that question,
making his assumption (existence of a primitive sense) coherent. But
he used his assumption to justify his negation of comp, but that is
usually invalidated by the fact that machines get the same conclusion
than his. His assumption are also quite fuzzy, but there has never
been any trouble with him, notably because he does never insult or
patronized others.
Personally, I would encourage people to study a bit of logic, so that
they can put their assumptions either in predicate logic, or at least
represent them in some other theory which has already been explained
in predicate logic (like set theory, or category theory, or
arithmetic ...). This is the only way to make them really sharable by
anybody. of course the relation with reality are different, and this
must be explained through experience capable of refuting the theory
(in theory, not necessarily in practice, so string theory is
'acceptable').
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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