On 6 April 2015 at 08:10, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
