On 4/22/2015 7:38 PM, PGC wrote:
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.
Why isn't is just their hypothetical explanation of how to look at the world - like
Bruno's comp hypothesis? You seem to be holding them to some standard of axiomatic
reasoning when their thesis is to explain the origin of axiomatic reasoning.
Brent
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
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