Quentin, I appreciate your sequencing:
"*maths => physics => consciousness => human maths"*
except for the obvious question that arose in my (agnostic) mind:
what OTHER "maths" can we, humans think of with our (human) minds that
would not qualify as "human maths"? Even - as I believe - Bruno leaves the
question open and assigns such to his unidentified (universal?) machines
WITHOUT atempting to verify, 'understand' or 'explain' those marvels. The
most is: 'which MAY BE true (or not).
On Sat, Jul 12, 2014 at 3:45 PM, Quentin Anciaux <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
> 2014-07-12 21:17 GMT+02:00 meekerdb <[email protected]>:
>
> On 7/12/2014 1:23 AM, LizR wrote:
>>
>> Brent,
>>
>> You left me hanging a week or so ago, and never got back to me about
>> something I'm interested in finding out more about.
>>
>> On 2 July 2014 23:14, LizR <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2 July 2014 17:06, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 7/1/2014 9:42 PM, LizR wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 2 July 2014 15:46, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> OK, so how does that work? Like I said, I don't understand it.
>>>>> Intuitively, saying that A causes B and B causes A doesn't appear to make
>>>>> sense,
>>>>>
>>>>> It's not a causal relationship, it's an explanatory "->".
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Sorry I should have said "explains" although I thought it was obvious
>>>> I was using causal in an explanatory sense, not a physical one. Anyway,
>>>> please continue the explanation.
>>>>
>>>> You don't understand what is meant by "physics -> biology" or
>>>> "biology -> evolution -> mathematics" or "mathematics -> physics"?
>>>>
>>>> Yes I do.
>>>
>>> And there you stopped. I'm still waiting for you to continue the
>> explanation.
>>
>> To refresh your memory, you said:
>>
>> OK, except I think the chain is:
>>> arithmetic -> information -> matter -> consciousness -> arithmetic
>>
>>
>> To which I objected that I couldn't see how this makes sense globally,
>> even if each local step makes sense. You appear to be claiming that there
>> is no such thing as a fundamental explanatory level. Since this flies in
>> the face of 3+ centuries of scientific progress (based on reductionism,
>> which assumes there *is* a fundamental explanatory level)
>>
>>
>> It's just that I noted that fundamental physics has become almost
>> entirely abstract and mathematical, so that people like Tegmark and Wheeler
>> started to speculate that the mathematics *is* the physics. Lists like
>> this that subscribe to everythingism Bruno's "comp" and Tegmark's MUH
>> completely erase the boundary between math and physics. The 3+ centuries
>> of reductionist physics are also 3+ centuries of explaining things through
>> synthesis of simpler (and presumably better understood) things. At the
>> same time I think mathematics is a human invention, a certain way of
>> looking at the world made precise in language. Humans and their inventions
>> are explicable by evolution, biology, physics,...and mathematics. So maybe
>> the circle closes. The usual objection of a circular explanation is it
>> leaves stuff out, especially if it leaves out all the stuff you understand
>> and just explains mystery X in terms of enigma Y. But if the circle is big
>> enough, if it encompasses everything, then either there's some part you
>> understand and that allows you to reach all the rest; or you don't
>> understand anything and there's no hope for you.
>>
>>
>> , not to mention what most people would regard as logic (or at least
>> common sense), this looks like a fairly radical revision of our theories of
>> knowledge.
>>
>> So I'd be interested to know more, if you're prepared to continue
>> explaining.
>>
>>
>> As I said, I don't have my own TOE. I just put forward the virtuous
>> circle of explanation based on a suggestion of Bruno (which he's disavowed)
>>
>
> Because I think he never saw it as a circle, it is IMHO this:
>
> maths => physics => consciousness => human maths
>
> There is not circularity here... human maths is only a part of the total
> mathematical reality, what we discover about it... but that doesn't circle
> back ISTM.
>
> Quentin
>
>
>> as a counter example to the idea that reductionism must either bottom out
>> or be like infinite Russian dolls.
>>
>> Brent
>>
>>
>>
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>
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