Re: Truth and Existence

[David Nyman]

Thanks Jason

I love that series! Yes, Minsky makes the point very well. He's obviously
an everythingist of the so-called platonic sort (sorry Brent). "If you have
the idea of the program and its processes, then that's enough to determine
everything that happens in it." This general trend, of some species of
everything-ism with observer selection, seems destined either to fizzle out
as not even wrong or else turn into a paradigm shift that shows our former
views (once again) in a far too parochial light. Probably nothing in
between though.Your points are spot on, and point 3 in particular is I
think very helpful in thinking about otherwise extremely puzzling concepts
that the interviewer was clearly struggling with. As you must know by now
I'm rather partial to Fred Hoyle's way of conceptualising this. There's
something rather compelling for me about his subjectively monopsychic
serialisation of moments. Amongst other things, it makes the much-abused
old philosophical position of solipsism respectable. But also it
rationalises the unobservability of consciousness in the concrete world,
since according to this heuristic it is uniquely an epistemological
characteristic of the universal experiencer. We cannot observe it because
there's no "it" to be observed; instead it is an epistemological term of
art which refers to the "mode of observation" itself, or alternatively the
manner in which an "observable" is subjectively manifested. So at each
momentary juncture, and to that extent only, it becomes epistemologically
"real" or "actual". The sense of actual that Minsky declines to accept, to
the obvious consternation of his host, is by contrast ontological. This
attribution is, as he rightly says, entirely supernumerary and consequently
can add only confusion.

David

On 21 May 2017 at 23:54, Jason Resch  wrote:

> David,
>
> I always appreciate your e-mails. Your comments regarding the term
> "existence" reminds me of what Minsky says of the word (2 minutes 50
> seconds in):
> https://www.closertotruth.com/series/what-are-possible-worlds#video-2729
>
> I agree that humans have an innate prejudice against the reality of things
> we can't see. Even the idea that objects continue to exist when we no
> longer see them has to be learned
> , through repeatedly
> witnessing objects that have fallen out of our sight.
>
> I think this may explain:
> 1. Why humans gravitate towards presentism rather than eternalism,
> (because we don't revisit past points in time), despite what relativity
> tells us  on the matter.
> 2. Why people resist the many worlds interpretation, (because we don't see
> the other branches) against what the mathematics* of the theory should lead
> them to believe.
> 3. Why some find the idea of a singular "universal
> experiencer/person/soul" bewildering, (because we don't recall being
> others), despite the failures
> 
> of conventional theories of personal identity.
>
>
> * “Schrödinger also had the basic idea of parallel universes shortly
> before Everett, but he didn't publish it. He mentioned it in a lecture in
> Dublin, in which he predicted that the audience would think he was crazy.
> Isn't that a strange assertion coming from a Nobel Prize winner—that he
> feared being considered crazy for claiming that his equation, the one that
> he won the Nobel Prize for, might be true.” -- David Deutsch
>
>
>
> Jason
>
> On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 11:06 AM, David Nyman 
> wrote:
>
>> Recent discussions have got me thinking again about these categories.
>> ISTM in particular that there's a lot of probably unhelpful worrying about
>> the application of the term "existence". For example, it's held in some
>> quarters that physics exists in a sense that mathematics or computation
>> doesn't. However, I've become more and more convinced that such confusion
>> arises from a fundamental mis-categorisation of concepts. For example, when
>> we speak of physics we typically don't parse it into its component
>> concepts, but perhaps it's important that we should. In my view, these
>> components are a perceptual or concrete one - the observable part, and an
>> abstract, mathematical or mechanistic component - the theoretical or
>> reductive part. ISTM that any putative "theory of everything" must stand on

A case in point

[David Nyman]

https://insidetheperimeter.ca/a-quantum-case-of-mind-over-matter/

I think this is probably an example of what I was getting at with respect
to the conceptual consequences of theoretical mis-categorisation in my
recent post. I guess you never can tell though.

David

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Re: Truth and Existence

[Jason Resch]

David,

I always appreciate your e-mails. Your comments regarding the term
"existence" reminds me of what Minsky says of the word (2 minutes 50
seconds in):
https://www.closertotruth.com/series/what-are-possible-worlds#video-2729

I agree that humans have an innate prejudice against the reality of things
we can't see. Even the idea that objects continue to exist when we no
longer see them has to be learned
, through repeatedly
witnessing objects that have fallen out of our sight.

I think this may explain:
1. Why humans gravitate towards presentism rather than eternalism, (because
we don't revisit past points in time), despite what relativity tells us
 on the matter.
2. Why people resist the many worlds interpretation, (because we don't see
the other branches) against what the mathematics* of the theory should lead
them to believe.
3. Why some find the idea of a singular "universal experiencer/person/soul"
bewildering, (because we don't recall being others), despite the failures

of conventional theories of personal identity.


* “Schrödinger also had the basic idea of parallel universes shortly before
Everett, but he didn't publish it. He mentioned it in a lecture in Dublin,
in which he predicted that the audience would think he was crazy. Isn't
that a strange assertion coming from a Nobel Prize winner—that he feared
being considered crazy for claiming that his equation, the one that he won
the Nobel Prize for, might be true.” -- David Deutsch



Jason

On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 11:06 AM, David Nyman  wrote:

> Recent discussions have got me thinking again about these categories. ISTM
> in particular that there's a lot of probably unhelpful worrying about the
> application of the term "existence". For example, it's held in some
> quarters that physics exists in a sense that mathematics or computation
> doesn't. However, I've become more and more convinced that such confusion
> arises from a fundamental mis-categorisation of concepts. For example, when
> we speak of physics we typically don't parse it into its component
> concepts, but perhaps it's important that we should. In my view, these
> components are a perceptual or concrete one - the observable part, and an
> abstract, mathematical or mechanistic component - the theoretical or
> reductive part. ISTM that any putative "theory of everything" must stand on
> both of these legs or be left seriously lame. Now, the odd thing is that
> most people are convinced that the observables of the first component
> "exist" in a sense they are more reluctant to grant to the ontological
> constituency of the unobservable, abstract or theoretical one. Seeing is
> believing, apparently, in this instance. But surely it is obvious, at least
> after a little reflection, that the observable part isn't properly an
> "existent". It's not in itself a "thing" that can be decomposed into
> constituent parts. That decomposition always takes place in terms of the
> second or theoretical component, which is FAPP the putative existent - i.e.
> the assumptive, reductive ontology of the theory in which the reasoning
> takes place. The second and all subsequently derivative parts lie within
> the domain of an epistemology, not an ontology, and as such are more
> tractable in terms of an adequate theory of knowledge.
>
> If the foregoing is valid (and obviously I think it may well be) then a
> more illuminating criterion to be applied in matters within the observable
> or perceptual spectrum is not whether they exist in an ontological sense
> but rather whether they are true in an epistemological one. By true I don't
> mean necessarily "veridical" in the conventional sense that all, or indeed
> any, inferences that might be drawn from them are thereby accurate. The
> sense of truth I'm using here is more or less equivalent to Descartes'
> realisation that the primary characteristic of experience (pace Brent's
> parsing of the precise grammar of this claim) is that it is logically
> indubitable. Veridicality in the more general sense relies on much more
> than primary perceptual indubitability. But does anyone in fact doubt any
> of this? Well, yes, if their claims are to be taken at face value, the
> school of Patricia Churchland and Daniel Dennett et al do believe that such
> experiences (or in 

Re: ​Movie argument

[Brent Meeker]

Where do you get such nonsense...and why do you repeat it.   U.S. 
schools are all different because they are run by local school boards.  
My mother taught in a two-room Texas county school where the students 
were told to leave their guns outside the door.


Brent

On 5/20/2017 10:14 PM, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:
Ah! Math is the sizzle, and physics is a stake. However, in US 
schools, children are expelled for drawing pictures of guns. 


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