> On 6 May 2020, at 12:58, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > Am Mi, 6. Mai 2020, um 10:41, schrieb Bruno Marchal: >> >>> On 5 May 2020, at 21:25, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List >>> <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> On 5/5/2020 4:54 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: >>>> Physics works very well, to make prediction but as metaphysics, as the >>>> Platonist greeks understood, it simply does not work at all. It uses an >>>> identity thesis between mind and brain which is easy in one direction, but >>>> non-sensical in the other direction. It is not a matter of choice: if >>>> mechanism is true, the many physical histories must emerges from the many >>>> computations in all models of arithmetic, or in the standard model (as you >>>> prefer). >>> And you use the identity theory of all possible computation and >>> reality...which has no evidence in support of it and I see no reason to >>> believe. >> >> The existence of all computations is a theorem of arithmetic. If you >> understand 2+2=4 and similar, you can understand that all computations >> are emulated in (all) model(s) of arithmetic. That arithmetic is >> assumed in all theories made by physicists. But when you add an >> ontological physical universe, we have no mean to restrict the >> statistics on all computations on the “physical” computations without >> adding some magic in the theory. >> >> So, it seems you are the one adding an ontological commitment, to make >> magically disappear the consciousness of the relative number in >> arithmetic. >> >> The reason to believe this is just Mechanism. I have not find a reason >> to believe in a physical universe having an ontological primitive >> status, which would be a reason to believe in non-mechanism (and to >> reject Darwinism, molecular biology, even most physical equations, >> whose solutions when exploitable in nature are up to now always >> computable. >> >> We just can’t invoke an ontological commitment when we do science, >> especially in theology or metaphysics, unless some evidences are given >> for it. But there are no evidence at all. People confuse the real >> strong evidences for physical laws with evidence for laws who would be >> primary. >> >> You seem to have understood this better sometimes ago. I Hope you are >> not having any doubt that the arithmetical reality (not the theories!) >> emulate all computations, and that a universal machine (with oracles) >> cannot feel the difference between being emulated by this or that >> universal machinery. > > Yes, I have no problem with any of what you say above.
OK. > > What I have been wondering about is something else: what exactly is meant by > "primitive"? It depends on what you are interested in. To solve the mind-body problem, the first difficulty is to formulate it, and for this the notion of “primitiveness” is required, for what we will take for granted to proceed. Basically X is considered as primitive if we have some reason to consider X as non explainable from something else, and judged as being more simple (technically/conceptually, … there is some matter of debate here of course). Most materialist agrees that biology is explained, or explainable in principle by chemistry, itself explainable by particles/force physics. (And I agree with them on this). Then if they are metaphysical materialist, they will have to explain psychology from biology, say, and usually they do believe that such an explanation is possible (and of course, we know or should know that this is impossible: but before judging this, it means that for a materialist (who believes that matter cannot be explained entirely from a simpler ontological assumption), if interested in the Mind-Body problem, he has to develop a phenomenology of mind coherent with its taking matter as primitive. Similarly, a monist immaterialist (who assumes only immaterial relations, of the type mind or of the type number, or whatever) has to develop (extract, isolate, justify in a way or in another) a phenomenology of matter, or of matter conscious appearances in its theory of mind. A dualist has a even harder task, as he will take both mind and matter as primitive, and will have to derive a phenomenology of interactions between both. Today, few (serious) people believe that this could be meaningful. “materialism” is just naive physicalism: the idea that physics is the fundamental science. This makes matter into a primitive thing, and the theories will have to assume some primary physical elements, like atomes, or now, particles, or strings, etc. Mechanism leads to a neutral monism, where neither matter, nor mind, is taken as primitive, as they are explained (wrongly or correctly, we might not it is wrong through new expriements) from simpler (elementary arithmetic without induction). The beauty here (grin) is that fr the natural numbers, or more generally, for the universal machinery/machines, we can prove in all inductive extension of those machineries that they cannot be explained by anything which is not a universal machineries itself, so the numbers, with addition and multiplication and a bit of induction can explained that they have to be primitive. A physicalist might say that the superstrings are Turing universal, so we can take the super-strings as primitive, but then to explain consciousness, if he assumed Mechanism, he will have to justify the appearances of sperstrings from its primitive, and this will be very confusing if he start from the strings for the starting (primitive) universal machinery. Physics is "machine independent” (in the language of computer scientist): it means that it does not depend on the choice of the phi_i (the universal machinery). With mechanism, no universal machine can know which computations support it, among an infinity of computations. It is even a priori a non countable infinity, as the first person are determined by all oracles. And any first person prediction, and thus any reading of any experimental device, must be explained by a statistics on the first person indeterminacy where the domain of “reconstitutions” is basically the set of all true sigma_1 sentences, structured by the self-referential relevant modes. An explanation is always a reduction of what we don’t understand (like mind and matter) to something that we do understand or at least can accept as granted (like 0 + 0 = 0, 1 + 0 = 1, 2 + 0 = 2, … and others, like 2 + 0 = 2 -> Ex(2+x = 2), etc ). Consciousness is explained by being an invariant indubitable truth which is also non provable and non definable (without invoking some notion of truth) that all machine discover when looking inward (which is what G* proves, so that is proven by all (arithmetically sound) universal machines, although in the conditional way, like “assuming I am not wrong up to now then …, or assuming Mechanism, then …). Mechanism is the assumption that this invariant is also invariant for any relative digital functional substitution made at *some* level (it is a self-finitist local and relative assumption). > Does there have to be any X such that "primitive X" is true? This is a real > question, not a rhetorical one. You will fall in Brent’s virtuous circle (still a bit vicious to me). Or in ZF + the non foundation axiom, like Stephen Paul King pressed me to do, although here you still have a notion of set taken as primitive, at least. With Mechanism, we get free such sort of circles, and spirales (!), in the phenomenology,. They are capable of being explained with the “simple" natural numbers. Taking such circle as primitive, is like deciding to avoid the search of an explanation to them, and like to avoid the experimental testing. Eventually you might been led to philosophical relativism and dilute truth (and causality, responsibility) etc. I can imagine a materialist psychologist claiming that the natural numbers are not primitive but explainable by a cultural anthropo-evolutionary genetic, say. But 1) he is confusing the human natural number theories with arithmetic, and 2) he is cheating, as his explanation will make only sense by an implicit acceptance of some universal machinery equivalent to the belief in RA, so, he is just confusing level of explanation. Yes, the human number theory is a fascinating subject, and it sustains the idea that 2+2=4 is “really absolutely” true, as all humans agree on this, and even many other mammals, actually. But that is a different subject matter than the one number theory is build for. This one avoid the philosophy of numbers by using the axiomatic method. It should be obvious that with mechanism, the discovery of the numbers by the numbers is part of the meta-arithmetic that Gödel’s showed embeddable in arithmetic. The real bomb is still Gödel’s 1931, even if it is the two theorems of Solovay which sums it all in G, and G*. > > Hope that you (and everyone else) are doing well! I wish you (and everyone) the best Take care. Bruno > Telmo > >> Bruno >> >> >> >> >> >> >>> >>> Brent >>> >>> -- >>> 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/dc764642-dd49-70b2-e84f-363efe66582c%40verizon.net. >> >> -- >> 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/965BBF35-DF8E-4F03-AF43-F9B0D843A1A3%40ulb.ac.be. >> > > -- > 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/96161ef4-ce79-43e0-98a0-288cff950049%40www.fastmail.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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