On 15 Sep 2017, at 20:03, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 9/15/2017 5:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 14 Sep 2017, at 14:39, ronaldheld wrote:
On Thursday, September 14, 2017 at 8:01:16 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal
wrote:
On 14 Sep 2017, at 13:22, ronaldheld wrote:
This should cause some discussion. Maybe belongs in the "is math
real" thread, but that one is large??
Ronald
What is your opinion?
The author believes that PI does not existed 100,000 years ago.
It looks like he believes that 100,000 existed 100,000 years ago,
making hard for me to understand why PI would not exist, and in
which sense, as PI is not a function of time.
Then the author seems to believe in a primary physical universe,
and does not seem aware that this is an assumption too, and indeed
arguably much stronger than assuming arithmetic.
The main problem is that the author does not put its assumption on
the table, and take for granted that existence is physical
existence. That does not make sense with mechanism (probably), but
to be franc, I am not sure this makes sense even without
mechanism. He confuses also mathematical theory and mathematical
reality, it seems.
What do *you* think? What would be your primary assumption?
My feeling is that it is a waste of time to guess what exists or
not before saying what we are willing to assume as primitively
true, or what is the metaphysical background accepted.
Bruno
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<1709.03087.pdf>
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Well, his use of 100000 years does not fit with some little things
he states. I am not the best person to comment, one because we
should get more opinions. AFAIK his view is that mathematics
(applied) does not fit the "real world" as well as others have
claimed. he also assumes that lesser animals cannot do any math
besides counting low integers.
He seem to believe that mathematical object does not exist
physically, and in that sense, I can agree. The platonists usually
think something very close, like the idea that there is no physical
circle, and thus no PI, "on earth". In the terrestrial plane,
appearance of circles and PI are mere approximation of the "divine
PI in the sky, or in the mind of God, or in the mind of
mathematicians". The question is then about the terrestrial plane:
is it fundamentally real, or is it a delusion due to the infinitely
many "video-games" executed in arithmetic? The question is never is
this real or not, but is this fundamentally or primarily real of not.
Now, I can understand an intuitionist doubting about discontinuous
function, or about non computable real number, but to say that PI
does not exist, without saying precisely what exists, does not make
much sense to me. Pure primary matter has never been
observed, nor even defined, nor even really used in physics or even
in metaphysics (except to stop thinking on the mind-body problem).
In fact I never see the term anywhere except on this list - where
you use it as a strawman.
That is because most people confuse the notion of matter (which is
neutral a priori on its primitive character) and the notion of
primitive matter, which has lead to Aristotle "Naturalism", or its
slightly more general physicalism. In the theologies today, it is
often an "unconscious" assumption, and a sort of default hypothesis.
But when doing metaphysics seriously, it is of the upmost importance
to be clear on those matters.
So, most conception of primary matter is already mathematicalist:
primitive matter is just what is denoted by the elementary terms of
the theory (string, particles, fields, ...), but all those notion
presumes the natural numbers, intuitionistically or classically.
The paper here seems to assume a physical reality, but never try to
make that precise, and so is poorly convincing, and a bit naive on
the fundamental issue, I would say.
That is because scientists don't start from assumptions but from
observations,
That is not clear-cut. Observation involves a dialog between many
brain cells which reflect some theorization.
And it is just assuming Aristotle metaphysics to claim scientists or
inquirer have to start from observation. In all case we need some back
and forth between observation (do you see what I see) and
introspection (do you believe what I suspect?).
which are necessarily less precise than axiomatic systems
Indeed. Less precise than brains,, machines or numbers.
An axiomatic system is just a manner to finitely encapsulated a (semi)-
computable set of beliefs.
- but have the advantage of being real.
No one doubt this. The problem is to account of them coherently with
some theory of mind. With mechanism that notion of real is made real
by virtue of sum on infinities of computations, which might explain,
correctly or wrongly, the origin of the physical laws, and this time
with an understanding of the different role of quanta and qualia.
Mechanism has no problem with physics, only with physicalism. It
remains in great part testable mathematics.
Bruno
Brent
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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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