> On 1 Jun 2019, at 09:51, Bruce Kellett <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Sat, Jun 1, 2019 at 5:30 PM Bruno Marchal <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > On 31 May 2019, at 20:50, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List > <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> > wrote: >> On 5/31/2019 1:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: >>> No. The early definition of Earth was a flat surface, and people believed >>> this by ostentation. >> >> Now you're just twisting words. Ostensive definition is by pointing. One >> can't believe a proposition by ostentation. > > Semantic play. If you are right, then we cannot believe that ostensive > definition makes sense. > > > > Fundamental, primitive … means “has to be assumed”. > > We believe that he principle X is fundamental or primitive if we believe that > it cannot be recovered from other principle. > > Physicalism assumes that some physical principle have to be assumed to get a > physical reality, like vitalism assumed that some aspect of life cannot be > recovered, even in principle, by another science like chemistry or physics. > > I guess you agree that vitalism is abandoned, and that most scientist accept > that biology can be reduced to quantum mechanics, even if only in principle. > > With mechanism, the same occurs for the physical reality. It is explain, in > principle, by very elementary arithmetic. > > When interested in fundamental studies, that is part of the subject: what are > the simple principles that we have to assume to explain the whole picture. > > And accepting some set of fundamental principles is just to adopt a > hypothesis -- not necessarily an act of faith.
I agree. > Faith, characteristically, enters when we stake our life on something. OK. > So your "mechanism" is very much an act of faith, Yes. That is the main reason why I prefer “theology” in place of “psychology”. That is confirmed by the proof/truth gap due to machine incompleteness (which applied also on many non mechanical arithmetical beings). If the “doctor” says “we know that the brain is machine”, it is automatically a “con artist” (or someone talking colloquially to be short). > since it requires staking your life on the knowledge and skill of the Dr. But > physicalism is not an act of faith, because our life in no way depends on > whether we adopt that hypothesis or not. That is right. But the mechanist hypothesis, with our without the personal act of faith, leads to the abandon of physicalism (or rationalism). Once we assume mechanism, a believer in physicalism has to explain how a “physical ontological reality” prevent us to belong (in the first person undetermined sense) to arithmetic. It is a fact that all computations are implemented and running, in the block-time sense, in arithmetic. If we assume that the substitution level is so low that only a digital copy of the entire universe can make me “survive”, we get an approximation of physicalism in Mechanism. Lowering the substitution level makes physicalism looking correct, but with quantum mechanics, the evidence is that our substitution level might be given by the Heisenberg uncertainty relations. Bruno > > Bruce > > 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 view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLRCm4MRxbrhGXw1f%2BdTQWQ%2B%3D-ry8Pbk6%3DG81SNNpBTiyQ%40mail.gmail.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLRCm4MRxbrhGXw1f%2BdTQWQ%2B%3D-ry8Pbk6%3DG81SNNpBTiyQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/D8255308-162F-4689-9136-71A3E6383BA0%40ulb.ac.be.
