> On 11 Dec 2018, at 20:53, [email protected] wrote: > > > > On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 7:30:32 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote: > > > On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 1:02:52 PM UTC-6, [email protected] <> > wrote: > > > On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 6:44:34 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote: > > > On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 12:32:51 PM UTC-6, [email protected] <> > wrote: > As for physicists being materialists in the sense of believing there is > nothing underlying matter as its cause, I have never heard that position > articulated by any physicist, in person or on the Internet. AG > > > > Victor Stenger > Materialism Deconstructed? > https://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/materialism-deconstructed_b_2228362.html > > <https://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/materialism-deconstructed_b_2228362.html> > > > I was once a member of Vic's discussion group. Vic believed in the reality of > matter, in the sense that if you kick it, it kicks back. But he didn't deny > the possibility that there could be something more fundamental underlying > matter. This denial is what Bruno claims is the materialist position, but it > surely wasn't Vic's position. You know this, of course, being a member of > that group. Right? AG > > - pt > > > I hosted Vic in Dallas in 2014 for a talk. I got to know him fairly > personally . > > Homages to philosophical materialism ("matter is the fundamental substance in > nature") is in his books. Timeless Reality in particular. > > One can be open-minded, or ironist in Rorty's definition [ > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironism> > ], and he was that. > > But despite all the "models" talk, I would confidently say he was always a > hardcore materialist. > > - pt > > Show me one instance, just one, where Vic denied something causal and unknown > underlying the existence of matter? This is Bruno's model of materialism > among physicists but it clearly doesn't apply to Vic. AG
You might read my favorite book by Vic, which is “The comprehensible cosmos”. There, it shows something very platonist-like: he shows that physics can be derived from few principles. Unfortunately, he seems to ignore the mind-body problem, and so he does not explain how that physical reality can select our consciousness in way corresponding to what we observe. So there is still a bit of magic in his explanation, or of lack of rigour (by not seeing that he uses some non-mechanist theory to allow a physical reality to do that selection, instead of deducing his first physical principle from arithmetic and machine’s psychology, as we have to do with mechanism. That is even more apparent in his less interesting books like “God the paling hypothesis, (where I agree with the content, but find it bad because he identifies theology with the current theology which assumes a creator but also a creation). So Vic approach is still materialist or at least physicalist. But he was on the right track, and would have understood that his attempt to comprehend the cosmos was only a beginning: to work well, he would need to derive the cosmos from machine statistical experience in arithmetic. Bruno > > -- > 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] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list > <https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list>. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout > <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.
