On 3/2/2022 2:34 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 10:54:50 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote: On 3/2/2022 1:42 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 10:07:22 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote: On 3/2/2022 12:58 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 9:11:34 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote: On 3/2/2022 2:41 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 4:28:48 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote: On 3/1/2022 4:00 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 12:17:43 AM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote: On 3/1/2022 1:59 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:On Tuesday, March 1, 2022 at 8:14:31 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com wrote:But before we can assess whether something has a consistent description we need to specify the description precisely. With a vague description we may be missing an inconsistency lurking somewhere in it or there may appear to be an inconsistency that is not really there. For example, if we try to describe a quantum object in terms of classical physics the description will not be precise enough and the assumptions inherent in those terms will be contradictory. The ideal description would reveal the complete structure of the object down to empty sets but we can't physically probe objects around us to that level.I think that's a cheat. It's not that classical physics was imprecise. It was just wrong. QM and Newtonian mechanics even have different ontologies. If you're wrong about the subject matter no amount of logic will correct that. Logic only explicates what is implicit in the premises. It's a cheat to appeal to an ideal description when you have no way of producing such a description or knowing if you have achieved it or even knowing whether one exists . It's not a cheat, it's a complete mathematical description. Every mathematical structure can be ultimately described as a pure set. Classical physics and quantum physics have not been described as pure sets and so they are not complete mathematical descriptions. The fact that it is not feasible for us to achieve such a description of physical structures doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.And the fact that you can form a sentence using the word doesn't mean it exists either. Which word?"Complete" mathematical description. I said it because according to set theory every mathematical structure can be reduced to a pure set. So a pure set would be a complete mathematical description of any object. It basically means that an object is analyzed down to its smallest parts (empty sets). This internal structure of the object also establishes all the object's relations to all other objects, including for example the relation of "insurability" between a car and insurance providers.Which means you are assuming the world is a mathematical structure. In other words begging the question. Yeah, I am assuming that things constitute collections - that's what a mathematical structure is. What other kind of structure can there be?Don't you see that "things" and "collections" are concepts we impose on the world. Didn't you notice when the whole ontology of the world shifted from particles to fields? No? Did you see metphysicians rushing to revise their world views? And the concept of "collections" obviously corresponds to the world. After all, how could it be otherwise? If there are two somethings they automatically constitute a collection of two somethings. Particles or fields, whatever - they have mathematical descriptions and mathematical descriptions are in principle reducible to pure sets.One of their mathematical descriptions used to be that two different something could not be in the same place at the same time. That two identical things must be the same thing. It's just logic.But mathematics doesn't demand that you can't associate different sets with the same location in a topological space. They chose to describe objects that cannot be associated with the same location in spacetime because it worked in classical physics... until more precise measurements showed that some objects in our world (bosons) are not like that. Two things with all the same properties are one thing. Two exact copies are not the same thing because they differ in one property - their position in reality (and thus in their relations to other things).Yes, all mathematical descriptions can be reduced to sets and relations. I'm told they can also be reduced to categories, but haven't studied category theory. Russell and Whitehead thought they can be reduced to logic. And things admit of mathematical description. But you've leaped over all that to things*are *their mathematical description. Things correspond to a mathematical description.
Then we agree that things and their mathematical descriptions are not identities. I contend that the difference is that some mathematical descriptions have no referent.
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