> On 18 Dec 2018, at 23:29, Bruce Kellett <[email protected]> wrote: > > From: Bruno Marchal <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> >>> On 17 Dec 2018, at 14:57, Jason Resch <[email protected] >>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >>> >>> On Monday, December 17, 2018, Bruce Kellett <[email protected] >>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >>> On Mon, Dec 17, 2018 at 7:06 PM Jason Resch <[email protected] >>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >>> On Mon, Dec 17, 2018 at 1:50 AM Bruce Kellett <[email protected] >>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >>> On Mon, Dec 17, 2018 at 5:59 PM Jason Resch <[email protected] >>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >>> >>> What I am curious to know is how how many of these statements you agree >>> with: >>> >>> "2+2 = 4" was true: >>> 1. Before I was born >>> 2. Before humans formalized axioms and found a proof of it >>> 3. Before there were humans >>> 4. Before there was any conscious life in this universe >>> 5. As soon as there were 4 physical things to count >>> 6. Before the big bang / before there were 4 physical things >>> >>> "2+2=4" is a tautology, true because of the meanings of the terms involved. >>> So its truth is not independent of the formulation of the question and the >>> definition of the terms involved. >>> >>> So would you say it was false before it was asked and the terms defined? >>> >>> The true/false dichotomy is not applicable to undefined terms. As in QM, >>> "Unperformed experiments have no results!" >>> >>> Was the 10^100th bit of Pi set only at such time that Pi was defined, or >>> did it have a set value before humans defined Pi? >>> >>> Before pi was defined, the question had no meaning. >>> >>> >>> But was it not in a certain sense inevitable that we would get "3" as the >>> first digit? >> >> Only after Pi is defined, of course. But (of course again) that is true for >> physical objects too. Before the moon is defined, the question “does the >> moon exist” had no meaning. > > That is simply a matter of words. Before there was language, and the word > "moon", one could not form that sentence.
Sure. But that makes not the moon appearing with the human language. Astronomy suggests more something like a collision in space, well before human developed languages. Same with PI. > >> That does not make the moon not existing when the man were not there, nor >> does the human definition of Pi makes Pi different from 3,141592… before the >> human discovered and defined it. The circumference of a circle divided by >> diameter is a transcendant number, independently of the fact that some >> mammals or some alien ever get the fact. > > The problem there is that the idea of a circle is a man-made concept: In you Non Mechanist Aristotelian metaphysics. Perhaps. > there are no perfect circles in nature, With Mechanism there is no Nature. With mechanism, nature appearance is born from the circle, or related, which can be defined/represented in arithmetic, like pi is computable (as the alternate sum of the inverse of the odd numbers). > so there are no existing objects for which the ratio of the circumference to > the diameter is exactly the number we call "pi”. Because you define “exist” by “physical”. I am OK, then. > The arithmetical or mathematical realm did not exist before it was invented. In your theory. Obviously, you cannot KNOW that. But you are free to assume this, and then mechanism is wrong, matter exists, etc. But there is no evidences, and most alleged non mechanist theory of mind, are either still mechanist, or are non intelligible. > "pi" is the ratio of the circumference to the diameter only in the Platonic > realm of perfect forms. Which might be what really exists. Intuitively 2+2=4 seems less doubtable than the moon for many. I can veryfie 2+2=4 for myself with my yes closed during the night. For the moon I have to wake up, go to the window, pray for absence of comedy wether, and still not sure not being in a dream or in video game. Mechanism makes people modest and cautious on the ontology. > We can reject Platonism because there is no evidence, direct or indirect, for > such a realm of forms. The existence of a mathematical reality which kick back is such an evidence. The lack of advance on consciousness study by Naturalists is another evidences. > It could only be by magic that we could ever know about such a realm, > Socrates and Plato notwithstanding. Consequently, these ideas were rejected > because there was no evidence for them. On the contrary, all physicist use all the time elementary arithmetic. Without trying to justify arithmetic from physics. They do the contrary, they justfies their prediction from their belief in number and number relations. But they cannot detect without a much deeper analysis if we are in a dream or not, and that is precisely what Mechanism shows us how to do/ And the result is “no evidence for anything more than numbers”. You cannot confuse physics and metaphysics, because that is the Aristotelian axiom which the empirical data and mechanism put a doubt on. There are no evidence for it at all. Just an habit since long to decide that what we measure, observe, see is the real fundamental things, but that is what makes the use of mathematics in physics seeming unreasonable, and the mind-body problem insuperable. Bruno > > Bruce > > > -- > 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.
