On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 11:46 AM John Clark <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 8, 2018 at 2:02 PM Jason Resch <[email protected]> wrote: > > *> Numbers come from relationships upon which objective statements can be >> made* >> > > Without matter and the laws of physics there could be no objective > statements or statements of any sort because there would be nobody around > to make them. > But we're talking about ultimate foundations of reality, not what people might be able to say about this or that. Objective reality precedes the statements which might be made about it (assuming there is anyone around to make such statements). > > >> > *For example, I can make and prove a statement about a number with a >> million digits. * >> > > You could also say the English language word "cow" has 3 letters, but > that is only because it is the cultural convention of a minority of bipedal > mammals on a small planet, and the same is true of representing numbers > with digits in the language of mathematics. > Are you disagreeing? I thought in the past you had made a similar argument that numbers are greater than the number of things that can be counted, because you could always count the number of ways you could uniquely arrange those items, leading to a bigger number, ad infinitum. For example. You start with 3 objects. You could arrange them in 3! = 6 ways. If you then arranged those arrangements, you would have 6! ways of doing that, etc. In any case, I don't see how arithmetical truth and relations can be based on counting when we use mathematical relations concerning numbers far greater than things we can count all the time. e.g. The trust of the web server through which I am composing this e-mail is makes use of certain properties of a particular 2048-bit (~616 digit) number. There are "only" 10^80 (an 80 digit number) or so particles in the observable universe. > > >> > *You can build computers and programs out of equations concerning the >> arithmetical relationships that exist between numbers. * >> > > But such a "computer" is unable to DO anything because it is unable to > change in space or time, for that you need physics, > > You are packing a lot of assumptions into your word "DO". You mean the numbers cannot affect the movement of particles in this universe. This argument sounds a bit like Searle's argument who expected simulations of rain storms to result in water leaking out of the computer running the simulation. You see the flaw in his reasoning, don't you? You have not shown that the arithmetical programs cannot simulate conscious beings which would perceive themselves to exist within those simulations. > > *Do we live in a Diophantine equation* >> > > No. > > What is your argument? Jason -- 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.
