On 20 Feb 2014, at 05:06, meekerdb wrote:
On 2/18/2014 7:10 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 02:34:57PM +1300, LizR wrote:
On 19/02/2014, Russell Standish <[email protected]> wrote:
Which ones? How can unobserved facts exist?
You can observe their consequences without observing the facts. E.g.
millions of people have observed that the sun shines without
understanding or knowing about nuclear fusion.
Yes - but obviously nuclear fusion is an observed fact (somewhere in
the Multiverse).
No, it's part of our best theory of the world.
But maybe you mean how can facts exist that are not grounded in
observation at some point?
Yes, that is what I mean. But Brent talked about unobserved facts, so
we'd better let him elaborate what he means.
Facts are often inferred, as who murdered Nicole Simpson, it's hard
to even say what constitutes a fact without invoking a theory. So
sure there are, on the same theory that allows us to infer facts,
facts that are not observed.
I think we're talking past one another. You're talking about
ontology as the ur-stuff that's really real. I'm talking about the
stuff that is assumed as fundamental in a theory.
That's how I define "primitive". It is the intended meaning of the
primitive object assumed in the theory.
That definition allows some unimportant convention. For example, we
might say, with PA, that the primitive object is just 0. And consider
that s(0), s(s(0)), ... are already "emergent". Of we can assume all
numbers, and then say that the notion of prime number is emergent, or
we can accept as primitive all notions definable by a first order
arithmetical formula, in which case "'[]p" itself is primitive, and
yet []p & p is still emergent. By default I prefer to see 0, s(0),
etc. as primitive, and the rest as emergent.
But note this: physicalism or materialism usually assumes some UR
matter as primitive in this sense.
In that case, the two notions referred in your paragraph coincide.
I am not sure what Russell means by a fact needing to be observed to
be a fact. "111...1" (very long but definite) is either prime or not,
despite I will, plausibly, never been able to know or observe which it
is.
Even with comp, there might be entire physical universe without any
self-aware or conscious observers in them, and despite the fact that
matter arise from machine self-reference in arithmetic. Those of
course will be "non accessible to us", but might play some indirect
role in the FPI statistics. Our own computations can be very mong and
eep with martge "period" of non presence of observers. It is hard to
say a priori. I might also miss what Russell intends to mean.
Bruno
Brent
--
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.
