On 23 Jan 2014, at 19:50, meekerdb wrote:
On 1/23/2014 2:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 23 Jan 2014, at 00:45, meekerdb wrote:
<snip>
What makes you sure that the idea that all programs terminates is
not also an idealisation (about a finite universal reality)?
Also, if all programs terminate, there is no more real numbers. I
guess you will say that there are idealisation. You seem to
"know" that there is a concrete reality, but the comp approach to
the mind-body problem asks to, temporarily perhaps, doubt such
"certainty".
Of course I'm not *certain*, all theories are defeasible outside
of Platonia.
Inside too.
But it seems like a well supported theory; at least as certain as
"you can always add one more".
All right. But the you see the conflict. You cannot have both, and
that is the point. I don't pretend that we can always add one. I
assume that because it is the only way to give sense to comp. You
just agree that comp is false, which is out of my topic.
Are you equivocating on "comp"? Is it not just the theory that ones
brain could be replaced by a digital computer? You often write the
above as though all of your argument follows from that saying "yes"
to the doctor.
Together with Church thesis (and thus with the idea that a machine (in
Turing sense) stops or not stops.
But that is not clear to me.
It depends on the context. Only when I explain the consequence of
comp, comp is defined by the step 0 ("yes doctor" + CT). But then, in
most discussion, comp means the definition/assumption *and* its
consequence.
It seems that it *also* assumes arithmetical realism and that "you
can always add one more."
You need that to convince yourself that the set of partial computable
function is close for the diagonalization, which is the conceptual
reason to trust it. Or just to define the machine in the Turing sense.
In (N, +, *) it is just a matter studied in high school to understand
that we can always add one more.
and that the scope of substitution is not the whole universe.
To simplify step 1-6, and most reasoning, but step seven eliminates
this.
You critics of comp is valid, if you assume that there is a bigger
natural number.
We do agree. But then, explain me what is the (small) physical
universe, where does it come from, and why it hurts?
Explain to me why QM is in complex Hilbert space and not real or
quaternion.
I am not sure of that.
I don't insist, because I am a long way to prove that in comp, but I
think the comp-QM needs the octonions.
you invent a new arithmetic, just to block an explanation. Is that
not gross wishful thinking?
No, the *new* arithmetic is just a recognition that Peano's
arithmetic is an idealization
In your aristotelian theology. But when working on the mind-body
problem, it is better to abandon all prejudices on this. Indeed with
comp, it is the concrete laptop which appears as an (unconscious
preprogrammed) idealization.
For some people, like Hardy, the number 8 is more concrete that the
planets you can count. Our brain makes us believe the contrary, but he
uses a complex universal machine to fail us on this.
and one that we don't necessarily need to describe the world. After
all people used arithmetic for centuries without assuming you could
*always* add one more.
Not Euler, not the mathematicians. Natural numbers don't make sense
without this.
People, for millenia used the grounds without assuming a big ball.
Science can be counter-intuitive, and indeed, science was born (in
occident) from taking some distance with the WYSIWYG animal's belief.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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