> On 12 Dec 2018, at 22:30, [email protected] 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, [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 > > > > > > 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.
Just to be clear, I am only an arithmetical realist, like anyone who believe that 2+2=4. Then I do not do philosophy, in the sense that I would defend some truth. I just try to solve the mind body problem, and shows that with the HYPOTHESIS/THEORY of Mechanism, it reduces into justifying the laws of physics from a theory of consciousness or machine self-reference. It works, so I take this hypothesis as plausible, bit if tomorrow someone shows a departure of the mathematical physics in the head of the machine with the observation, I will take that into account. Bruno > 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] > <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.
