Glen, Eric, If "reality" is complete, must not then (assuming that it is at least as complex as arithmetic), aka Godel, it be also inconsistent?
Grant Sent from my iPhone > On Dec 28, 2015, at 11:23 AM, glen <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On 12/28/2015 06:30 AM, David Eric Smith wrote: >> A language that is not even internally consistent presumably has no hope of >> having an empirically valid semantics, since evidently the universe "is" >> something, and there is no semantic notion of ambiguity of its >> "being/not-being" some definite thing, structurally analogous to an >> inconsistent language's being able to arrive at a contradiction by taking >> two paths to answer a single proposition. > > It's not clear to me that the presumption is trustworthy. Isn't it possible > that what is (reality) does not obey some of the structure we rely on for > asserting consistency (or completeness)? In other words, perhaps reality is > inconsistent. Hence, the only language that will be valid, will be an > inconsistent language. Of course, that doesn't imply that just any old > inconsistency will be tolerated. Perhaps reality is only inconsistent in > very particular ways and any language that we expect to validate must be 1) > inconsistent in all those real ways and 2) in only those real ways. > > Further of course, inconsistency is a bit like paradox in that, once you > identify an inconsistency very precisely, you may be able to define a new > language that eliminates it. ... which brings us beyond the (mere) points of > higher order logics and iterative constructions, to the core idea of > context-sensitive construction. There is no Grand Unifying Anything except > the imperative to approach Grand Unified Things. > > And this targets Patrick's argument against the idealists (e.g. libertarians > and marxists). The only reliable ideal is the creation and commitment to > ideals. Each particular ideal is (will be) eventually destroyed. But for > whatever reason, we seem to always create and commit ourselves to ideals. > Old people tend to surrender over time and build huge hairballs of bandaged > ideals all glued together with spit and bailing wire. Any serious > conversation with an old person is an attempt to navigate the topology of > their iteratively constructed, stigmergic, hairball of broken ideals ... and > if that old person is open-minded, such conversations lead to new kinks and > tortuous folds ... which is why old people make the best story tellers. > > But I can't help wondering why music is dominated by the young. [sigh] > > -- > -- > ⊥ glen ⊥ > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
