FISers, John, Bruno: First, John's comment.
Obviously my comment was not "vapid" otherwise you would not have responded to it! :-) :-) :-) As to metaphysics (first principles): I wrote: >> Your notion of metaphysics appears to so extremely narrowly restricted that >> you can exempt your own highly metaphysical writings from your definition of >> metaphysics. In fact, the traditional usage of the term "metaphysics" is >> not narrowly restricted. > > Metaphysics has to do with two things, ontology and necessity Your response amply demonstrates my point. Let use look at the Apple dictionary definition of "metaphysics" " the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space. • abstract theory or talk with no basis in reality" Your view is that "Metaphysics has to do with two things, ontology and necessity" is remote from the dictionary definition. Many physicists use the term "First principles" as a substitute for the term for "metaphysics". Clearly, Shannon understood the difference between 'first principles" and his theory of "communication theory". With regard to my personal view of metaphysics, my public persona is that of a scientist. I have attempted throughout my scientific life to separate sharply my metaphysical and spiritual values from the hardcore reality of the sciences. If you wish to interpolate what my metaphysics might be, read my papers. See for example: "Introduction to the Perplex Number System," Dis. Applied Math. 2009. "Algebraic Biology" Axiomathes, 2009 "Ordinate Logics of Living Systems" 2009 (Book Chapter, Vrobel, Rossler, ed.) as well as numerous earlier publications. If you study the logic of these papers, you will find numerous assertions with deep metaphysical implications relating to "abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space." If you study these papers, you will find numerous differences with your personal metaphysics. If you lack copies of these papers, send me an email and I will forward copies to you. Per Pedro's request, I will not continue this discussion in this forum. Bruno: You write: > Indeed, there is nothing metaphysical about this. It is a theorem in applied > science (the step 8 of the Universal Dovetailer Argument has to use a bit of > Occam razor). If we are machine, the physical reality is a statistical > appearance, resulting from information selection among multiple computations > which can be proved to be emulated (not just described) in arithmetic. This > can already be used to explain some weird aspect of nature (the quantum). Your first sentence: > Indeed, there is nothing metaphysical about this suggests a metaphysics that is even narrower than John's. > It is a theorem in applied science (the step 8 of the Universal Dovetailer > Argument has to use a bit of Occam razor). This sentence (theorem of applied science?) is merely a personal metaphysical claim about a personal belief about a putative "formal logic" (e.g., theorem) of science. I am not aware of any formal logic for science or biology or medicine. > If we are machine, the physical reality is a statistical appearance, > resulting from information selection among multiple computations which can be > proved to be emulated (not just described) in arithmetic This sentence offers yet another metaphysical view as a belief about the nature of man, computation, information etc. The conjecture is relevant to metaphysics IFF man is a machine. But man / metabolism is not described by mechanics. The arithmetic of metabolism is a special form of graph theory not directly related to Pythagorean arithmetics (metrics). The notion of "emulation" pre-supposes some form of isomorphism between calculation relating man (mind) and machine. Most mathematicians find this to be an intractable problem. Even if I suppose that such an isomorphism exists (which I do not), I would still have the problem of establishing initial conditions before any calculations could be made. This appears to be a physically intractable problem. > This can already be used to explain some weird aspect of nature (the quantum). Weird? Perhaps from your metaphysical perspective of mathematics. Nature is as nature is. Perhaps it is not nature that is weird... My conjecture, Bruno, is that your philosophy of information theory is a purely mechanical one. If you wish to persuade others that your beliefs are relevant to metabolism, biology, medicine, mind, etc, you must show how this is to be done. Obviously, you must start with encoding the messages of life into a mechanical representations BEFORE the Turing computations can even be considered. The difficulty of making this logical encoding is addressed by C S Peirce in his "trichotomy". I gave a paper on "Third Order Cybernetics" at the Vienna conference last year. I will send you a copy of the slides which will illustrate some of the theoretical and practical problems intrinsic to the mechanical vs biological view of nature if they are of any interest to you. Best wishes in your journey. Cheers Jerry May 27, 2013, at 11:00 AM, [email protected] wrote: > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: Collier's Metaphysics (Jerry LR Chandler) > 2. Re: Collier's Metaphysics (John Collier) > 3. Re: Collier's Metaphysics (Bruno Marchal) > > From: Jerry LR Chandler <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [Fis] Collier's Metaphysics > Date: May 26, 2013 10:27:07 PM CDT > To: John Collier <[email protected]> > Cc: John Collier <[email protected]>, "[email protected]" > <[email protected]> > > > From: John Collier <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [Fis] Collier's Metaphysics > Date: May 27, 2013 1:08:54 AM CDT > To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> > > > Another vapid criticism with no argument. Give me an idea, Jerry, give me an > idea. You obviously think I don't have it, so it would be rude of you to just > say this sort of thing and refrain. List some things that are involved with > metaphysics that I have missed. > > Otherwise I will have to assume that you cannot do this. > > John > > At 05:27 AM 2013/05/27, Jerry LR Chandler wrote: > >> On May 26, 2013, at 10:46 AM, John Collier wrote: >> >>> I don't have much idea. >> >> >> I concur. >> >> Jerry > > > ---------- > Professor John Collier [email protected] > Philosophy and Ethics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South Africa > T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F: +27 (31) 260 3031 > Http://web.ncf.ca/collier > > > > > > From: Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [Fis] Collier's Metaphysics > Date: May 27, 2013 3:41:00 AM CDT > To: fis Science <[email protected]> > > > > On 27 May 2013, at 08:08, John Collier wrote: > >> Another vapid criticism with no argument. Give me an idea, Jerry, >> give me an idea. You obviously think I don't have it, so it would be >> rude of you to just say this sort of thing and refrain. List some >> things that are involved with metaphysics that I have missed. >> >> Otherwise I will have to assume that you cannot do this. > > > Indeed, there is nothing metaphysical about this. It is a theorem in applied > science (the step 8 of the Universal Dovetailer Argument has to use a bit of > Occam razor). If we are machine, the physical reality is a statistical > appearance, resulting from information selection among multiple computations > which can be proved to be emulated (not just described) in arithmetic. This > can already be used to explain some weird aspect of nature (the quantum). > > Some people tend to dismiss this without studying the (mind-body) problem. > This is a quasi tradition since Aristotle, but it is not science. > > With Mechanism, we can attribute a subject to some object, but we cannot > attribute one object to one subject, only an infinity of objects. We can > already confirm that aspect when looking close to any piece of matter. > > The self-multiplication of machines, explains the origin of information, from > the machines (or relative numbers) points of view. Elementary computer > science shows the very rich structure that the universal machine are forced > to put on that information. > > This makes also the mechanist or computationalist hypothesis testable (and > already partially tested). > > Bruno > > > > >> >> John >> >> At 05:27 AM 2013/05/27, Jerry LR Chandler wrote: >> >>> On May 26, 2013, at 10:46 AM, John Collier wrote: >>> >>>> I don't have much idea. >>> >>> >>> I concur. >>> >>> Jerry >> >> >> ---------- >> Professor John Collier >> [email protected] >> Philosophy and Ethics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South Africa >> T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F: +27 (31) 260 3031 >> Http://web.ncf.ca/collier >> >> _______________________________________________ >> fis mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > >
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