On 23 Oct 2014, at 05:34, LizR wrote:
IMHO this slightly understates the problem of an infinite causal
chain:
The idea of an eternally existing universe - for example in the form
of an eternal cycle of Big Bangs - might turn out to be a
scientifically legitimate hypothesis. It might even turn out to be
true. But it still doesn't answer the question why there is anything
at all. It doesn't answer the question why there is this infinite
series to begin with. It might be objected that this question makes
no sense because in an infinite series of causes there simply is no
first cause. But this objection assumes that the ultimate cause of
the universe must be temporal, existing in time, like the universe
itself. But why can't the ultimate cause be non-temporal? This,
indeed, is what contemporary physics suggests about the cause of the
Big Bang: since not only space and matter but also time itself only
came into existence with the Big Bang, the cause of the Big Bang
must be timeless. This notion of a non-temporal cause is also
inescapable for the infinitist solution. A temporally infinite
series of causes has no first cause in time, but it must have an
ultimate cause outside of time, a non-temporal cause.
Assuming the laws of physics allow such an infinite chain to exist,
I think a more important question is where do those laws originate?
That is, the "something" that we're wondering about includes
whatever makes what physically exists the way it is.
Do you agree that computationalism provides an answer, in the sense
that it explains why
1) there is no primitive universe (so no origin problem),
2) universal machine cannot avoid the discovery of a physical universe
and easily take it as primitive,
3) that such physical reality has a first person plural (locally it
looks like third person physical) and pure first person non sharable
aspects (so this explains, in some sense, the existence of the qualia,
and the quanta appears to be sharable one among groups of universal
machines).
4) all this in a testable way. In particular, the physics would not be
quantum like, computationalism would be no more plausible. Both
Gödel's incompleteness theorem and QM saves computationalism and its
solution of the mind body problem.
I m not sure at all such a naïve classical theory is true, but the
point is that it is testable, and it gives the most we can hope,
because of
5) Logicians can already explains why we cannot explains where the
numbers (or the base universal machine you prefer) comes from. We have
to assume it to even address the question. Almost by definition,
anything capable of explaining the existence of a universal machine,
is Turing universal itself.
This reduces the mind-body problem to our belief in elementary
arithmetic, together with an explanation why the question "where
elementary arithmetic comes from?" provably unanswerable.
This seems to me to explain why here is something (theological,
physical, psychological, biological) from what we accept in high
school algebra, up to the possible refutation by nature.
Arithmetic (not logic per se) can be seen then as an atemporal
"cause", but from inside, machine needs to bet on larger and larger
part of the arithmetical and the analytical truth. The view from
"inside" is inexhaustible, and refutes all effective theories.
Hmm.. To get all this needs some amount of computer science and
mathematical logic, and "philosophy of mind".
Bruno
Bruno
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