-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of meekerdb Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2015 7:49 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to dialectics?
On 1/7/2015 7:23 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of meekerdb > Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2015 12:12 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory > to dialectics? > > On 1/7/2015 3:22 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: >> On 06 Jan 2015, at 20:21, meekerdb wrote: >> >>> On 1/6/2015 1:48 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: >>>> On 03 Jan 2015, at 06:05, 'Roger' via Everything List wrote: >>>> >>>>> Even if the word "exists" has no use because everything exists, it >>>>> seems important to know why everything exists. >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> But everything does not exist. At the best, you can say everything >>>> consistent or possible exist. >>>> >>>> Anyway, as I said, the notion of nothing and everything, which are >>>> conceptually equivalent, needs a notion of thing. That notion of >>>> thing will need some thing to be accepte >>>> >>>> It is often ambiguous in this thread if people talk about every >>>> physical things, every mathematical things, every epistemological things, >>>> every theological things, ... >>>> >>>> So, we cannot start from nothing. >>>> >>>> We light try the empty theory: no axioms at all. But then its >>>> semantics will be all models, and will needs some set theory (not >>>> nothing!) to define the models. The semantics of the empty theory is a >>>> theory of everything, but in a sort of trivial way. >>>> >>>> Computationalism makes this clear, I think. We need to assume 0 (we >>>> can't prove its existence from logic alone, we need also to assume >>>> logic, if only to reason about the things we talk about, even when they do >>>> not exist). >>> What does it mean to "assume 0". Is it to assume a collection of >>> things >> No. If we assume a collection, we would do set theory, or something. >> We might assume some intended collection at the metalevel, but if we >> build a formal theory (a machine), we will not assume a collection at the >> base level. >> >> >> >>> such that every element has a unique successor (per some ordering >>> relation) and there is one element that is not the successor of any other >>> element, which we call zero? >>> That seems to assume things too. >> Assuming zero means here that we add a symbol ("0") in the language >> alphabet, and we assume some logical formula. The non logical symbol >> that we have introduced are "0, s, + and *", and we assume some formula like: >> >> ~(0 = s(x)), for any x (the x are always supposed to denote the >> object of our universe, here the intended standard natural numbers) >> also: >> >> 0 + x = x >> 0 * x = 0 >> >> We don't assume anything else (about zero). > > So 0 is just a mark on paper, a symbol that is not a symbol "of" anything > such as the empty set. > > I get the feeling that '0' has a lot more meaning for Bruno than merely being > a vertically oriented oval drawn on a paper (or computer screen), that it is > a symbolic notational reference to a rather profound concept, which eluded > the world for much of its recorded history. It wasn't until the fifth century > A.D. in India that mathematicians fully conceived of it giving it conceptual > existence, though it was used earlier as a kind of decimal place holder as > far back as 300BC or thereabouts -- in Babylon. It was the Italian > mathematician Fibonacci who introduced the concept back into the church > darkened intellectual deserts of Europe in 1200 AD. Placeholder type zero's > -- to differentiate an empty number column seems to have been adopted in > ancient Sumer. It is only however much later that the concept of zero was > really understood. >>As a place holder is meant "no units" or "no tens"; it meant none of some >>specific category. You imply that "the concept is really understood" >>differently now, but I have my doubts. Bruno reifies all the natural numbers >>and all of arithmetic; which is fine as a theory, but it's not a proof of >>existence. Most of the time our modern zero is pretty much the Sumerian placeholder zero, but there is a deeper conceptual meaning beyond being a symbolic marker. Yes, being a marker, is certainly one attribute of zero and even its most common one, but does this mean that this placeholder concept, is the alpha and the omega of what we understand by the concept of '0'? -Chris 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/d/optout. -- 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.
