On 6/6/2020 4:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 5 Jun 2020, at 21:42, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Bruno quotes:
"Of this reality, as I explained […], I take a 'realistic" view. At
any rate (and this is my main point) this realistic view is much more
plausible of mathematical than of physical reality, because
mathematical objects are so much more what they seem. A chair or a
star is not in the least like what it seems to be ; the more we think
of it, the fuzzier its outlines become in the haze of sensations
which surrounds it; but '2' and '317' has nothing to do with
sensations, and its properties stand out the more clearly the more
closely we scrutinize it. It may be that modern physics fits best in
the framework of idealistic philosophy---I do not believe it, but
there are eminent physicist who say so. Pure Mathematics, on the
other hand, seems to me a rock on which all idealism founders: 317 is
prime, not because we think so, or because our minds are shaped in
one way rather than another, but because it is so, because
mathematical is built that way."
`--- G. H. Hardy, "A Mathematician's Apology", Cambridge University
Press, 1940 (1998)
Exactly why we should recognize that mathematics is made-up. We
understand it clearly because there is nothing to it except what we
put in.
Why would we give 1,000,000 $ to someone solving a conjecture on the
prime numbers, is we get only what we put in?
Sometimes it is very hard to find what we get out of what we put in.
And why arithmetic. Why not say this for physics?
I do say it. Physical theories are stories we make up.
I don’t see an argument. You are just saying that the physical reality
is primitive. That’s begging the question entirely.
I've never said that.
Physics is a wonderful science, but metaphysical physicalism is
refuted … since Plato. And it is refuted constructively by Turing type
of Digital Mechanism, so we can do the test, and the test confirms
Mechanism, and confirms Plato’s refutation of physicalism (with a
different vocabulary, though).
When metaphysics is done with the scientific attitude, it is better to
avoid starting from any ontological commitment, just using the axioms
needed to define the concept in which we are ready to believe at the
start, like the notion of digital machine, when we assume digital
mechanism.
That's a very theological approach. Decide what we believe at the start.
Brent
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