John Clark said: "Not exactly. Einstein didn't prove the luminiferous aether didn't exist in the Platonic sense, he just proved it was unimportant. I suppose you could say in the vague way that Greek philosophers love that correct mathematical calculations exist independently of matter, but the trouble is incorrect mathematical calculations exist too, and the only way to differentiate the correct from the incorrect is by using matter that obeys the laws of physics."
I wonder if there are aspects of physics and mathematics, that are "unimportant," both, materially, and conceptually, in the past, or now, today, that will become important much later onward?? As when Fermi produced the idea of the neutrino, in 1932, which in Depression times, were useless, to most physicists, and utterly useless, to the common job-seeker of that time? So, as with today, the Platonic stuff seems "meh!", to many of us nerds, but may be in actuality, something that could really be useful, or important, conceptually, to the kiddies that discover it. Maybe the Platonic is something inherent in the Universe, such as an "operating system" is to laptops, and I-phones? We just find it currently, impossible to 'touch." Spin this conversation to Dark Matter, and Dark Energy, and we have another example. -----Original Message----- From: Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> To: everything-list <[email protected]> Sent: Sat, Apr 22, 2017 5:58 pm Subject: Re: What are atheists for? On Sun, 23 Apr 2017 at 12:52 am, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> wrote: On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 at 6:12 AM, Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On 4/21/2017 3:42 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: >> >> John is accusing you of naive dualism. He says that you claim that >> there is some mysterious substance (he finally called it a "soul") >> that is not copied in your thought experiment. What I claim is this: >> under physicalist assumptions, everything was copied. The problem is >> that physicalism leads to a contradiction, > > > I don't agree that it leads to a contradiction. Can spell out what that > contradiction is? Shortly (sorry for any lack of rigour): If you assume computationalism, the computation that is currently supporting your mind state can be repeated in time and space. Maybe your current computation happens in the original planet Earth but also in a Universal Dovetailer running on a Jupiter-sized computer in a far-away galaxy. Given a multiverse, it seems reasonable to assume that these repetitions are bound to happen (also with the simulation argument, etc.). And yet our mind states are experienced as unique. It follows that, given computationalism, mind cannot be spatially or temporally situated, thus cannot be physical. It is possible - addressing just this argument - that while mind is not localised it still needs to be implemented in a physical substrate. In this case we avoid dualism by reverting things: ok, so it is time and space that are generated by mind. I think. Telmo. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
