On 27 May 2013, at 21:50, Jerry LR Chandler wrote:
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.
No, I am just saying that I am proving propositions, once you accept
some definition, natural in the frame of the mechanist *hypothesis*/
*theory*. All what I say can be verified (and has been verified).
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.
Of course. I might have been clearer on this. But IF you accept some
definition, and some postulates, if only for the sake of the argument,
like the existence of a level of description of a body so that
consciousness would be invariant for a digital substitution made at
that level (a very weak form of computationalism), THEN you can prove
relation between theorertical cognitive science, theoretical physics,
theoretical computer science, arithmetic, mathematical logic. It is is
in that sense that I talk about theorem in applied science. Obviously,
we cannot prove anything about reality.
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.
Not at all. It is a reasonable assumption from what we know. Unless
you believe in the collapse of the quantum wave, there is no evidences
that biology or neurology, or even most of natural science is not
emulable by a Turing machine.
Some people believe that the entire physical universe is Turing
emulable, but this is easy to debunk, as comp makes physics not Turing
emulable, and if the universe is Turing emulable, then comp is true,
and thus wrong, and so, with or without comp, physics cannot be
entirely Turing emulable.
The conjecture is relevant to metaphysics IFF man is a machine.
Mechanism is my working assumption. I just put clearly the cards on
the table.
But man / metabolism is not described by mechanics.
Proof?
That is doubtful, because the interaction between the quantum fields
used to describe what we know today at that level of description, are
all Turing emulable. Probably not in practice, but I reason in a theory.
The arithmetic of metabolism is a special form of graph theory not
directly related to Pythagorean arithmetics (metrics).
That would violate Church thesis. OK you work in another theory. It is
not a question of being related, but of being emulable, in a precise
mathematical sense (relying on Church thesis, which is one half of
"digital mechanism" or computationalism.
The notion of "emulation" pre-supposes some form of isomorphism
between calculation relating man (mind) and machine.
Certainly. But the reasoning need no more than the idea that we can
survive with an artificial brain (or body, environment, etc. The
reasoning works with a very large notion of brain: *you* decide).
Most mathematicians find this to be an intractable problem.
There is a key theory of ideally correct machine's "believability" or
"provability". Thanks to incompleteness, "correct probability" behaves
like believability, from the machine points of view, and we can apply
the Theaetetus' definition of knowability', and define "knowledge" by
the true beliefs. The machine cannot see its own correctness, and
cannot prove the equivalence. The knower is not definable by the
machine (except at this meta-level, betting on comp), and this
explains why indeed this is intractable from the machine's points of
view. But it is partially tractable, and even decidable, at the
logical propositional level, and this provides key informations.
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.
The point is not to apply any of this. But to explain where the
physical reality comes from, and why it can hurt.
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...
Of course. Here weirdness means that if you are physical realist (as I
am), and believe relativity plausible, and that there is no non-
locality, nor indeterminacy, then quantum mechanics implies the
fundamental reality is a sort of a web of many parallel dreams.
Quantum computers exploits this, actually. And comp implies this from
purely logical, and arithmetical, reason.
My conjecture, Bruno, is that your philosophy of information theory
is a purely mechanical one.
Not at all. On the contrary, I show that from inside arithmetic, the
numbers develop non mechanical theory of consciousness and matter.
There is a sort of Skolem paradox: arithmetic, viewed from inside, is
much bigger than arithmetic.
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.
This is not my goal. But I can intervene when people makes incorrect
argument against digital mechanism, or when they talk like with the
19th century conception of machine. The discovery of the universal
machine is the motor of my analysis.
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.
Using one sort of machine to model another sort of machine, is always
risky. But betting that at some level, such machine use simple to copy
and emulate relations, is different. There is no pretension in
understanding anything, and only to show the consequence, which in
short soccer term is "Plato 1, Aristotle 0". In comp "nature" is the
border of something vaster, and invisible (like math).
Machines have a natural (neo-neo) Platonist theory of mind and matter,
accepting the less debatable definitions in analytical philosophy.
That's why I study comp, because the question get formulable in
mathematics, even in arithmetic, but of course they are way above the
computable, and are "weird" for the Aristotelians.
You can send me the paper, I will take a look. This is my last post of
the week.
I explain all the math in the FOAR list right now, if you are
interested.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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