On 6/11/2016 3:50 PM, John Clark wrote:
On Sat, Jun 11, 2016 at 6:14 PM, Brent Meeker <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> As I've said 6.02*10^23 times it's irrelevant if matter is primary or not, matter is still necessary to make calculations or perform intelligent behavior or produceconsciousness.> I think Bruno agrees with thatThat's news to me. If so Bruno should have said that several years ago and a great many electrons wouldn't have had to give up their lives. >> And even if matter isn't primary that doesn't necessarily mean mathematics is. > The question is can one be derived from the other? I think so, but neither may be primary. > William S. Cooper, "The Origin of Reason" makes an argument that mathematics is a way of brains thinking about things that was found by evolution, just like mobility, metabolism, reproduction,...and a lot of other functions.I agree with that, but evolution works according to the laws of physics so a animal who thought 1+1=0 would have fewer offspring than one who believed 1+1=2.
But those aren't laws of physics; at least according to Bruno. 1+1=2 is a necessary truth that is independent of physics and hence "more fundamental". So evolution merely leads to (approximate) beliefs in something more basic than physics and which we use to describe physics.
So we'd agree with ET's mathematics because it's the language of physics.
That's more Cooper's viewpoint. But taking mathematics (i.e. computation/arithmetic) as basic, Bruno uses modal logic to derive some interesting categorization of beliefs.
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