On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 11:13:10 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 3:30:46 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> 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, agrays...@gmail.com 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, agrays...@gmail.com 
>>>>> 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, 
>>>>>>> agrays...@gmail.com 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
>>>
>>
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirality_(chemistry)  ?
>

What's your point? AG 

>
> - pt 
>

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