On Thursday, April 23, 2015 at 3:24:22 AM UTC+2, Brent wrote: > > On 4/22/2015 6:06 PM, LizR wrote: > > I can't see how his categorisation works. Existence is generally > considered to be a property of "kicking back" - of something existing > independently of us, and not conforming to whatever we'd like it to be. For > example. a planet is generally considered to exist - we can observer it (or > land things on it) and discover unexpected results - Mars is *not* > covered in H.G.Wells' Martian civilisation or Ray Bradbury's crystal > cities, no matter how much we might want it to be. God (in the conventional > sense of supreme being who created the universe) is sometimes considered > not to exist because it's a concept that gets modified to account for new > scientific discoveries - few Christians nowadays consider that God created > the Earth 6000 years ago, or directly caused it to be entirely flooded, for > example. > > Roberto Unger and Lee Smolin are trying to claim that something can > exist (kick back - or as they put it, have rigid properties) yet not have > existed prior to being thought of by human minds. It seems hard to > reconcile these properties. Something thought up that describes something > that exists could reasonably be called an accurate scientific theory; > something thought up that describes something that doesn't exist could > reasonably be called fictional (or a failed scientific theory). I can see > no reason why a fiction should have rigid properties. Conversely, if the > subject of some theory kicks back, it's reasonable to consider it a > (possibly) accurate theory describing something that should be considered > (at least provisionally) real. > > > So is chess real? >
If we want to be that fuzzy, assuming something can have "rigid, verifiable objective properties" but not before humans can think of it, then the answer is "yes, chess exists, but it's a different game from 3 days ago when Anand beat Wesley So with algorithm that started with Knight to B8 on the 10th move of a Spanish". As stated in the article, there's always the risk of confusing some set of rules with the implications of that set of rules. But this itself "kicks back" too with the claimed discovery of "rigid/prior existence or not" categories as well. Consequently, this classification was not true a moment before the authors thought of it, becoming true, when the authors did their magic. This would be consistent by giving single universe/time/human primacy, but also has the ring to it, of people trying to sell us "the world revolves around the human and time but not before we thought of it". How convenient, one may smile plausibly. Quote: "Both the records and the mathematical objects are human constructions which are brought into existence by exercises of human will; neither has any transcendental existence. Both are static, not in the sense of existing outside of time, but in the weak sense that, once they come to exist, they don’t change” (pp. 445-446). That's a statement of faith/dogma with pretensions of un-transcendental truth, which is as unclear and esoteric as how they appear to start their reasoning. We can't have it both ways unless we really, really will it... then it shall be evoked humans! Ok, I guess they're running out of time and I should by the book of un-transcendental truth to see the light that isn't lit before they thought of it? Uhm, no sale here at the moment, although it seems a nice try, even if perhaps a bit naive on theological subtleties, fictions and truth. PGC -- 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.
