On 5/6/2017 10:07 AM, David Nyman wrote:
On 4 May 2017 9:31 p.m., "Brent Meeker" <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 5/3/2017 11:22 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 3 May 2017 10:47 p.m., "Brent Meeker" <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 5/3/2017 2:34 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
Le 3 mai 2017 11:23 PM, "Brent Meeker" <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> a écrit :
On 5/3/2017 1:32 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
This an extreme reductionist view, i.e. if X is the
fundamental ontology then only X exists. But that
leads to nonsense: "If the standard model is
fundamental ontology then football doesn't exist."
But it's true, football does not exist in any
ontological sense, and we are talking about ontology.
So neither Sherlock Holmes nor Donald Trump exist.
That's certainly a relief.
What about ontology don't you understand?
I don't understand why atoms imply that things made of atoms
don't exist.
Ok, this the heart and core of the disagreement. Noone is saying
that things made of atoms don't exist and your saying this is
just setting up an easy straw man for you to pointlessly knock
down. So what do you suppose that Quentin and I are saying here?
I'll repeat it. "Extreme reductionism" as you call it (and what
other kind is there unless you believe in some form of causally
effective top-down emergence?) is the search for the ontological
building blocks of a theory which themselves will remain
unexplained but in terms of which all other ontological
composition will be understood. That at least is the ambition. So
if we say that atoms are the building blocks then the claim is
that everything else is to be understood as the interactions of
atoms (this is meant to be illustrative only).
So what then is the status in the theory of "everything else" if
such entities are merely ontologically composite and consequently
at that fundamental level indistinguishable from the
interactions of their components? The answer (obviously) is that
their "concrete" or substantial emergence is perceptual, or
epistemological as we like to say here. I suspect the fact that
some people find this so hard to accept is not some intellectual
barrier to understanding, since the distinction is in fact rather
obvious, but because of a distaste for taking epistemology as a
fundamental determinant of reality.
Maybe some people, but one of my slogans is "Epistemology precedes
ontology."
Of course when we speak of epistemology here it's not merely its
final neurocognitive stages we should have in mind, but the
entire process of epistemological emergence of perceiving
subjects and their environments from the posited ontological
basis. For this of course we need an adequate theory that takes
both aspects and in particular their peculiar entanglement into
account. And indeed it is only the ultimate explanatory success
of such a theory that can justify the ascription of "existence"
to anything above the level of the ontological base because, as
you will recall, the whole point of the reductionist thrust is
that this base is capable of explaining the evolution of its
states entirely in its own terms, without any necessary reference
to composition or emergence.
I agree with that, except I would have ended the sentence at
"anything". It is the explanatory (plus predictive) success that
justifies the existence of the ontological base as well as the
theory built on it. That's what I mean by epistemology precedes
ontology.
I would esteem it a courtesy if you would address the above
argument directly, as distinct from changing the subject in line
with your preferred way of thinking, as I would truly like to
know what you think is wrong with it. As Bruno says, a different
argument is not the same thing as a counter-argument.
My "counter-argument", i.e. why I'm not convinced by Bruno's
argument is two-fold. First, I don't see any predictive success
and only a little explanatory success. And I see some predictive
failure - although it's like string theory in that it seems
difficult to say exactly what it predicts about human
consciousness. Second, as an argument it is not a logical
inference, it is a reductio. It starts from a physical classical
computer can be substituted for you brain with no profound effect
on your consciousness. Then it purports to conclude that the
physical aspect of the computer is irrelevant and simply the
mathematical existence of computation in Platonia is enough to
realize your consciousness. Which is OK, but I think the
consequence is overstated. It is the mathematical existence of
your thoughts AND the world they are about that is necessary to
maintaining your consciousness. So it becomes a (better, more
explicit, more comprehensive) version of Tegmark's computational
universe hypothesis. Looked at another way it is saying the world
is everything that is true in a model of some axioms (either Peano
or Turing or...) and if you think this doesn't explain something
about the world you're wrong because it explains everything
explainable and then some. But what explains everything fails to
explain at all.
I've never really been convinced by that slogan, frankly. Isn't QM, in
a certain sense, supposed to encapsulate the explanation for
everything? (I know it doesn't, but bear with me here). What I mean is
that the point of a fundamental theory is supposed to be that it
provides a unique basis for every explanation that, as it were,
supervenes on it. In any case, if QM for example were indeed the TOE,
then that would be the case whether we could explain it or not.
Of course it's just an aphorism. It means that if you have a theory
that explains why X and also why not-X, it's not really explaining
either one. A TOE is supposed to only explain the X's that are observed.
Thanks for your interesting remarks above (really) but in point of
fact you didn't address my question. You originally said "I
don't understand why atoms imply that things made of atoms don't
exist." I gave you my view on the matter and asked you if you would be
kind enough to tell me what you thought was wrong with it without
changing the subject, but AFAICT you did in fact change the subject.
If I ask you kindly again would you make another stab at it?
Perhaps it's just a difference in semantics. I don't regard
reductionism as making the thing reduce unreal, anymore than I would
regard synthesis as nullifying the base ontology.
Brent
David
Brent
David
Brent
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