On 6 April 2015 at 08:10, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > On 4/5/2015 9:12 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > If you mean something else by physical, I have no idea what you mean. > > > It is what is studied by physics, mainly through empirical means: the > measurable quantities in laboratories. > > Aristotle (well mainly its followers) assume that the physical reality > is irreducible, so that we have to assume primitively physical objects, > like atoms, particles, 3d spaces, or today, strings for example. It makes > physics the fundamental science (physicalism). > > I was just saying that arithmetic is not a branch of physics, that > numbers, sets, functions, are, by virtue of their definitions, not > physical. More below. > > > That's like saying electrons are not physical because they're defined by > Dirac's equation. "Physical" just means we can interact with it in our > common, non-solipist world and reach intersubjective agreement about it. > It's no more magic than supposing prime numbers exist because they're > defined by axiom systems. >
The difference is between "physical" and "primitively physical" - as I would think Bruno knows?! We all agree that the physical universe exists, the question of interest is whether it's primitive, as opposed to being derived from something more fundamental. -- 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.
