On 12 May 2014 11:17, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > On 5/11/2014 4:01 PM, LizR wrote: > > On 12 May 2014 07:13, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On 5/11/2014 12:54 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: >> >>> Yes, the rest follows, but the negation of the rest follows too, unless, >>> like Peter Jones, you add a criterion of primitive physical existence to >>> what is needed for consciousness. But then the movie graph can show that >>> they attribute a magical role to that primitive matter. The idea, for them, >>> is that there is a primitive matter, and that "the primitive character" is >>> not Turing emulable. >>> >> >> But if the entangled and holistic character of the world requires that >> the Turing emulation extend to essentially all of it then "primitive >> matter" just means "exists in the emulation". Turing *emulation* is only >> meaningful in the context of emulating one part relative to another part >> that is not emulated, i.e. is "real". That's why I think the MGA doesn't >> prove what you think it does. It is still the case that something playing >> the role of "primitive matter - per Peter Jones" is necessary in every >> world, and that role is to pick out what exists from what doesn't. >> >> If materialism is correct, this is tautologically true. If it isn't, it > isn't. > > No, my view is that it is necessarily true. That if you have a world, > even one in arithmetic, it must have some things that exist and some that > don't (otherwise you have the "white rabbit" problem) and those things that > exist in the most fundamental sense are what we call "material", i.e. > "primitive material" is just a marker we use to say what exists in a > world. It's not primitive mathematics or primitive arithmetic because > those are too profligate - their kind of existence entails much more than a > world; it entails all possible worlds within an axiomatic system. >
Ah, OK, I see what you mean. However, I'm still not sure if this is necessary ... the white rabbit problem may be solved by the requirement that a mathematical structure be self consistent, or something similar. (A theory that generates the world from something like a mathematical structure but then requires that some parts of it be more real than others sound suspiciously epicyclical!) I'm told the worlds of the MWI include a vanishingly small proportion of weird universes because decoherence gets rid of mixed states. I don't know enough to say whether this is a viable explanation, I just have to accept it - but this, or something like it, may be responsible for making the white rabbits vastly improbable (there was something similar in Theory of Nothing - which I see gets a plug from Max Tegmark in his latest book, by the way, which I hope is to the good). I can't recall how TON got rid of them (something to do with extra bits beyond those needed to specify a stable universe being self-cancelling or not easily visible, or...?) -- 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/d/optout.
