On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 6:57:33 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote: > > > > On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 10:07:13 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote: >> >> >> 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 >>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>>> *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 ], 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 >> >> >> >> > > It is interesting that you raise the part of Stenger's writings that have > to do with things like symmetry, point-of-view invariance (POVI) in the > foundations of physics. That is the part I didn't get at all at the time > (now some years ago) and I don't get it (I reject it) even more now. It was > like *So you are a Platonist now?* :) >
*I brought up POVI, not Bruno who IS a Platonist. POVI is simple; there can no "laws of physics" to discover if they depend on which direction one is looking. AG* > > > > > - pt > -- 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.
