On 5/31/2018 11:41 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 30 May 2018, at 20:29, Brent Meeker <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 5/30/2018 3:18 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2018-05-30 11:27 GMT+02:00 Lawrence Crowell
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>:
On Tuesday, May 29, 2018 at 1:25:19 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
You miss my point that no one, no physicists, no
philosopher, starts out by defining "primary matter". It is
your invention as a straw man to be defeated by
computationalism. Some physicists and some philosophers may
suppose that the stuff described by physics is enough to
explain the world we observe; but most also suppose that it
is not "primary". They look for a deeper more unified
ur-stuff and many physicists have followed Wheeler and
Tegmark in thinking of the equations of mathematical physics
as simply defining the ur-stuff.
Brent
This and other old philosophical ideas are of no utility in
physics. There is no physical meaning to terms such as primary
matter.
Primary matter is a metaphysical idea about the reality... so of
course it is of no utility in physics... but physics don't tell us
anything about what is reality.
Yet it tells us about how the world works and what we can and can't
do. So what exactly would it add know "what is reality". This is
exactly like my point about consciousness. When we can predict,
construct, manipulate, consciousness the way we do the physical
world, then the "hard problem" of consciousness will be as irrelevant
as elan vitale is to biology and "primary matter" is to physics.
Everythingism are metaphysical idea about what is reality... so if
your concern is only in utility, philosophy doesn't concern you...
Materialism, physicalim, computationalism, deism etc are
metaphysical, philosophical and about what reality is... physics is
about prediction on the reality, not about what ultimately reality
is... it answers how, not what and why...
The problem is with people equating physics whith physicalism...
they're not the same, one is a metaphysical idea about the nature of
reality.
But I'm suggesting to you that this metaphysical idea is empty if it
has no consequences, but if it does have consequences then it's
physics and not metaphysics.
That does not work with computationalism. You would have to define
“[]p & <>t & p” from scratch,
"From scratch" meaning from some axioms that you approve of. This is
the project of scholasticism.
Brent
"All human progress has come from studying the shadows on the cave wall."
--- Sean Carroll
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