Re: evidence blindness
Colin, list, I've looked back over your previous posts. It seems like scientists (I'm not one) talk about consciousness in two different senses, in two different roles -- consciousness for clear and sure apprehension of logic evidence, and consciousness as a phenomenon, an appearance. It's not so surprising that that which is always needed by us, glued to us, for things to appear, is itelf very difficult to make appear as a phenomenon. The most obvious contrast whereby one becomes conscious of one's consciousness is the contrast between consciousness and unconsciousness -- being awake really is different from being dreamlessly asleep. And while we don't remember an experience of dreamless sleep itself, we do remember stages between wakefulness and such sleep, stages and gradations which come arbitrarily near to the dreamless sleep. This gives us some perspective on consciousness. We rely and build on consciousness but that's a different thing from developing theories and hypotheses _about_ consciousness in those of its respects which are not obvious to us -- those of its respects whereof we're not clearly and firmly conscious. If there were no such non-obvious respects, then there'd be no point developing theories and hypotheses about consciousness. There are a lot of things which we surmise and can't resist surmising. In real life, one of those many surmises is that others are conscious as I am. Maybe some sociopaths can manage denying it, but a normal person who actually denies it will find it hitting him or her like a ton of bricks if s/he gets emotionally close to somebody. And of course there's no evidence like the evidence consisting in a ton of bricks hitting the observer! The fact of forceful kinds of evidence reaching out and pushing the observer around, is a reason why phenomenal contents doesn't sound like a faithful rephrasing of scientific evidence even in the first place. Scientific evidence is a commonsense-perceptual kind of thing, not just a spectator-sensory thing. Yet, in a sense, not only anti-solipsism, but also every perceptual judgment, is a surmise. Why should it be difficult to observe consciousness in a scientifically useful way as one observes many everyday objects of perceptual judgments? Well, one _can_ observe one's own consciousness sometimes in scientifically useful ways -- for instance, when consciousness is affected by circumstances, stress, drugs, and lots and lots of other things -- and one can use others' reports on their conciousness under various conditions, etc., and there's plenty of mind/brain science involved in dealing with such reports and with physiological anatomical correlations etc. Consciousness is tricky. I really can't observe another's inwardness as I can observe my own. Maybe some day technology will make it possible. Anyway, normally, when something has an inside and an outside, there are a series of stages whereby one can pass between them, see them as bound together, each as the other side of the other, and establish just what is thing X's outside, and what is some further but non-essential layer, a husk, etc. This is not so easy when thing X is consciousness. The phenomenologist child psychologist Merleau-Ponty was very interested in this question, and discussed attempts of consciousness to bridge that gap, through left hand touching right hand, etc. I remember when I was a kid doing that, trying to catch my own touch somehow, one hand touching the other, trying to complete some sort of circuit. It appears that the thing which is most familiar of all is also the strangest of all. The obvious side of consciousness is firm enough for people to do science based on it as _verificative basis_. The mysterious side is uncertain enough that it's hard for people to know where to begin in terms of _explaining it as a phenomenon_ -- explaining what? -- they disagree even about that, how to objectify it. So far all I'm saying is that consciousness is really weird and we need to recognize that. I agree that it's inconsistent to insist on grounding scientific behavior in conscious experience while insisting that conscious experience is too incoherent in conception to be treated as a phenomenon. But that doesn't stop it from being a very weird and difficult phenomenon to study. I wouldn't say that we see consciousness. We see things. The meanings of words like see and observe are formed on the basis of common-sense notions whereby one sees a horse, rather than, say, an event in one's sensory-neural system or in any other sense sees one's seeing. One doesn't see the channel or the medium or whatever, one sees the thing through it. A perceptual psychologist may habitually say that sensory-neural events are all that you really perceive, but that's just a forcefully unusual way of speaking (and thinking) in order to draw your attention toward subtle phenomena. Well, maybe it's not an unusual way
Re: evidence blindness
Colin, Stathis, Brent, 1. I think we need to distinguish a cybernetic, self-adjusting system like a sidewinder missile, from an inference-processing, self-_redesigning_ system like an intelligent being (well, not redesigning itself biologically, at least as of now). Somehow we're code-unbound to some sufficient extent that, as a result, we can test our representations, interpretations, our systems, habits, and codes of representation and interpretation, rather than leaving that task entirely to biological evolution which tends to punish bad interpretations by removal of the interpreter from the gene pool. There's something more than represented objects (sources), the representations (encodings), and the interpretations (decodings). This something more is the recipient, to whom falls any task of finding redundancies and inconsistencies between the message (or message set) and the rest of the world, such that the recipient -- I'm unsure how to put this -- is the one, or stands as the one, who deals with the existential consequences and for whom tests by subjection to existential consequences are meaningful; the recipient is in a sense a figuration of existential consequences as bearing upon the system's design. It's from a design-testing viewpoint that one re-designs the communication system itself; the recipient role in that sense is the role which includes the role of the evolutionator (as CA's governor might call it). In other words, the recipient is, in logical terms, the recognizer, the (dis-)verifier, the (dis-)corroborator, etc., and verification (using verification as the forest term for the various trees) is that something more than object, representation, interpretation. Okay, so far I'm just trying to distinguish an intelligence from a possibly quite vegetable-level information processs with a pre-programmed menu of feedback-based responses and behavior adjustments. 2. Verificatory bases are nearest us, while the entities laws by appeal to which we explain things, tend to be farther farther from us. I mean, that Colin has a point. There's an explanatory order (or sequence) of being and a verificatory order (sequence) of knowledge. Among the empirical, special sciences (physical, material, biological, human/social), physics comes first in the order of being, the order in which we explain things by appeal to entities, laws, etc., out there. But the order whereby we know things is the opposite; there human/social studies come first, and physics comes last. That is not the usual way in which we order those sciences, but it is the usual way in which we order a lot of maths when we put logic (deductive theory of logic) and structures of order (and conditions for applicability of mathematical induction) before other fields -- that's the ordering according to the bases on which we know things. The point is, that the ultimate explanatory object tends to be what's furthest from us; the ultimate verificatory basis tends to be what's nearest to us (at least within a given family of research fields -- logic and order structures are studies of reason and reason's crackups; extremization problems in analysis seem to be at an opposite pole). Well, in the end, nearest to us means _us_, in our personal experiences. Now, I'm not talking in general about deductively certain knowledge or verification, but just about those bases on which we gain sufficient assurance to act (not to mention believe reports coming from one area in research while not putting too much stock in reports coming from another). We are our own ultimate points of reference. Quine talks somewhere about dispensing with proper names and using a coordinate system spread out over the known universe. Which universe? The one we're in. As a practical matter, the best answer to the question which planet is Earth is the one we're on. What's more, we do have experiences bearing upon our experiences. We get into that sort of multi-layered reflexivity -- and I don't mean just in an abstract intellectual way. Experiences vary in directness, firmness, reliability, etc., among other things. In these senses and more, Colin is right. One unmoors oneself from personal experience only at grave risk. 3. The problem is that it seems possible to distinguish verification, verificatory experience, etc., from consciousness. We learn sometimes unconsciously, we infer conclusively yet sometimes unconsciously, etc., we test and verify sometimes unconsciously, non-deliberately, etc. Reasoning is what we can call conscious inference. Testing doesn't have to be fully conscious and deliberate any more than interpretation does. The point is, is the system of a nature to learn from that which tests the system's character, its design, structure, habits, etc.? Learn, revise itself, etc., consciously or unconsciously. Any time one enters a situation with conjectures, expectations, understandings, memories, one
Re: why can't we erase information?
It does seem a little confusing how to quantify information when the universe itself is regarded as a computation. Some flies buzzing around the horses may make a difference in the horse race. If the flies are erased, then that issue is settled, which seems to count as a decrease of uncertainty and therefore as an _increase_ of info. How does one arrive at a result for net change of info? The settlement of questions by imaginary erasure of all 'extraneous' factors, elimination of 'details,' reductive abstraction, etc., seems to be a basic working step for treating a scenario under a probability-theoretic viewpoint. Would the real erasure of those factors count in the same way as an increase of information? It seems like an increase of info at least in the case where we do remember the real things that we've erased or annihilated. Anyway, trying to arrive at a result for net change of information seems to require adopting some meta viewpoint, though I don't know, I'm not well versed in information theory. On the other hand, when we treat things as being samples surfaces of more opaque things even when we do know somewhat about what is or isn't under those surfaces, then factors/details which have been settled tend to get put into question or veiled such that it's uncertain what difference they make, and that's a decrease in info which seems to be a basic working step for treating a scenario under a statistical-theoretic viewpoint. When we feign ignorance about how things will be affected, that's an imaginary addition possible factors. Would a real adding of possible factors, uncertainty, count as a decrease in info? It seems like a decrease of info at least in the case where we do remember that those factors weren't previously there. Are these problems real? Maybe a universe doesn't allow for change of information that requires some sort of meta viewpoint to calculate. On the other hand, maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about. Best regards, Ben Udell - Original Message - From: Wei Dai [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sunday, April 09, 2006 3:11 AM Subject: why can't we erase information? If we consider our observable universe as a computation, it's rather atypical in that it doesn't seem to make use of the erase operation (or other any operation that irreversibly erases information). The second law of thermodynamics is a consequence of this. In order to forget anything (decrease entropy), we have to put the information somewhere else (increase entropy of the environment), instead of just making it disappear. If this doesn't make sense to you, see Seth Lloyd's new book Programming the Universe : A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes On the Cosmos for a good explanation of the relationship between entropy, computation, and information. Has anyone thought about why this is the case? One possible answer is that if it were possible to erase information, life organisms would be able to construct internal perpetual motion machines to power their metabolism, instead of competing with each other for sources of negentropy, and perhaps intelligence would not be able to evolve in this kind of environment. If this is the case, perhaps there is reason to hope that our universe does contain mechanisms to erase information, but they are not easily accessible to life before the evolution of intelligence. It may be a good idea to look out for such mechanisms, for example in high energy particle reactions. However I'm not sure this answer is correct because there would still be competition for raw material (matter and energy) where intelligence can still be an advantage. Anyone have other ideas? --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Why is there something rather than nothing?
Norman, Stephen, Brent, list Why is there something rather than nothing? When I heard that Famous Question, I did not assume that nothing was describable - because, if it was, it would not be nothing. I don't think of nothing as an empty bitstring - I think of it as the absence of a bitstring - as no thing. Given that definition, is there a conceivable answer to The Famous Question? Norman [Samish] Yes, there is an answer! Because Nothingness can not non-Exist. Stephen [Paul King] I guess that's why the Hindus have only a creator (Brahma), a preserver (Vishnu), and a destroyer (Shiva), and not also an existence preventer. Or in the words of Norm Levitt, What is there? Everything! So what isn't there? Nothing! Brent Meeker Here are a few: Q: Why there is something rather than nothing? Sidney Morgenbesser: Even if there were nothing, you'd still be complaining! http://crookedtimber.org/2004/08/03/sidney-morgenbesser http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Morgenbesser 66~~~ Suppose there were nothing. Then, pace the physicists, there would be no laws; for laws, after all, are something. If there were no laws, then everything would be permitted. But if everything is permitted, nothing is forbidden. So if there were nothing, nothing would be forbidden. Nothing, in other words, is self-forbidding. Therefore THERE MUST BE SOMETHING. This epiphany came to me while I was shaving... ~~~99 -- Jim Holt by Jim Holt, _Slate_, March 1, 1997, http://www.slate.com/id/3715/ That seems to slide into saying that the reason that there isn't nothing is that everything just overwhelms it. That's been my intuitive take -- there's just so inexhaustibly much that it tips the balance against nothingness. I'm unsure whether such an intuition means anything. I've wondered how to say everything exists in logic. I don't know whether the following is logically interesting, much less whether it's original, but it might be mildly amusing. In standard first-order logic, the phrase everything exists would be taken to trivially mean “that, that is, is, or the like. Is there a way to say it in a non-trivial sense in first-order logic at all? Is it an idea that can be logically expressed at that basic level? What would it mean if it can't? I'm not a logician, but there does appear to be a way to say it in a specially restricted kind of first-order logic, by use of a special kind of quantificational functor. As for whether this leads to a coherent logical idea in less restricted logic, you be the judge. The result is, at least, a kind of statement which seems to lead to an area of logical issues raised by the Everything Exists picture, in any case, with regard to saying that every potential particular definite individual is actualized somewhere and somewhen, or the negative, that the world in all times and places lacks some particular definite individual. Now, in defining the existential particular quantification, one may start with a finite universe of objects named by constants a through h, and say “There is a such that...Ja...or there is b such that...Jb...or... [etc.] ...or there is h such that...Jh” and agree to write this as Ex ...Jx Then one drops the substitutionalist requirement that x shall range over only named objects a, b, c, etc. Then the variable x is no longer _substitutional_ but instead is _objectual_. To get to our new special functor will be a matter of replacing the repeated or with a repeated and. Let’s define a functor Æ such that Æx ...x is equivalent to There is a such that...a...AND there is b such that...b...AND... [etc.] ...AND there is h such that...h In effect one is saying that every name names something. Now, what happens when the substitutionalist requirement is dropped? In considering just what it is that x now ranges over, and whether the objectual statement Æx ...x... is contingently or formally true or contingently or formally false or formally or contingently undecidable or (despite its fraternal-twin relationship with the existential particular) just plain ill-defined, one is led to consider some of the logical problems which arise in any case in entertaining the general idea that “everything exists.” In other words, we seem to arrive at some of the right problematics. Then if you negate it, you're saying that there lacks a something, some particular thing is failing to exist. If you say ~Æx Jx, you're saying that something's missing or it exists but isn't J (e.g., but isn't jumping). So you could say [AxJx] ~[ÆxJx] (Note: Æx should NOT be called the existential universal which would instead be properly applied to whatever is equivalent to the conjunction or predicative combination of the existential particular and the hypothetical universal, where you say, e.g., there's some food that’s good, and any food is good or there's some food that's good such that any food is good or “there’s food
Re: Why is there something rather than nothing?
I think that an alternative that deserves more consideration than it usually gets (though I don't embrace it, I just consider it), is the idea that existence, though not contradictory, is a non sequitur -- that there's something brute arbitrary about it. Some people hold the view that others look for too much symmetry, regularity, etc., in things. Maybe the fact that there's something rather than nothing is a kind of raw, insistent asymmetry, where asymmetry gets to have its place or locus in even the most fundamental questions. This obviously echoes the idea of a whole universe or whole multiverse a quantum fluctuation, but seems somewhat more radical. Best, Ben Udell - Original Message - From: Norman Samish To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Monday, March 06, 2006 2:48 PM Subject: Re: Why is there something rather than nothing? Thanks to all who replied to my question. This question has bothered me for years, and I have hopes that some progress can be made towards an answer. I've heard some interesting concepts, including: (1) Numbers must exist, therefore 'something' must exist. (2) Something exists because Nothingness cannot non-Exist. Perhaps the above two are equivalent. With respect to (1) above, why must numbers exist? With respect to (2) above, why can't nothingness exist? The trivial answer is that even nothing is something. However, I don't think that this addresses the real question. A state of pure NO THING would forbid even the existence of numbers, or of empty space, or of an empty set. It would be non-existence. Non-existence seems so much simpler than the infinity of things, both material and immaterial, that surrounds us. So why are things here? (I'm grateful that they are, of course.) Is this a self-consistent, if unanswerable, question? Norman --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Why is there something rather than nothing?
Of course, it's supposed to be confusing, one is supposed to ponder it in its aporia. I didn't consider a naming operator. Objectual quantification, which I've taken Quine at his word that it's the standard kind, does not require that everything in the variable's range be indicable, able to be singled out, by names, definite descriptions, or, for that matter, trails of physical evidence, much less that the singling out need to be registrable on a common central list. I just noticed that by the simple expedient of replacing the existential particular's or with and in the expansion, one gets a quantification that seems paradoxical when treated as objectual, such that one wonders what it could mean outside the context of a regimented system of names, descriptions, objects, and what sort of limits, short of such a regimented system, one would have to impose in order to get something meaningful out of it. Those happen to be like some of the questions that arose in my mind when I first encountered the claim that everything exists. Does it mean that everything that is legitimately indicable, by any sign or evidence such as would be grasped by an observer, exists? If the indicated thing seems to contingently or necessarily not to exist in our universe, for instance, where an indication of it nevertheless appears, then must it exist in some other universe? Can something impossible in our universe be legitimately indicated by something in our universe? Penrose talks about how not only counterfactuals but impossibles could be factored into particle behavior. Then there's an added consideration that, if this objectual omniversal quantification is confusing, why doesn't its close relative, the objectual existential particular, seem anywhere near as confusing? Are there similar issues there, only in concealed form? Probably such similar issues are held legitimately at bay, but it seems strange, anyway. Ben Udell - Original Message - From: Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Monday, March 06, 2006 4:45 PM Subject: Re: Why is there something rather than nothing? Benjamin Udell wrote: In standard first-order logic, the phrase everything exists would be taken to trivially mean “that, that is, is, or the like. Is there a way to say it in a non-trivial sense in first-order logic at all? Is it an idea that can be logically expressed at that basic level? What would it mean if it can't? I'm not a logician, but there does appear to be a way to say it in a specially restricted kind of first-order logic, by use of a special kind of quantificational functor. As for whether this leads to a coherent logical idea in less restricted logic, you be the judge. The result is, at least, a kind of statement which seems to lead to an area of logical issues raised by the Everything Exists picture, in any case, with regard to saying that every potential particular definite individual is actualized somewhere and somewhen, or the negative, that the world in all times and places lacks some particular definite individual. Now, in defining the existential particular quantification, one may start with a finite universe of objects named by constants a through h, and say “There is a such that...Ja...or there is b such that...Jb...or... [etc.] ...or there is h such that...Jh” and agree to write this as Ex ...Jx Then one drops the substitutionalist requirement that x shall range over only named objects a, b, c, etc. Then the variable x is no longer _substitutional_ but instead is _objectual_. To get to our new special functor will be a matter of replacing the repeated or with a repeated and. Let’s define a functor Æ such that Æx ...x is equivalent to There is a such that...a...AND there is b such that...b...AND... [etc.] ...AND there is h such that...h In effect one is saying that every name names something. Now, what happens when the substitutionalist requirement is dropped? In considering just what it is that x now ranges over, and whether the objectual statement Æx ...x... is contingently or formally true or contingently or formally false or formally or contingently undecidable or (despite its fraternal-twin relationship with the existential particular) just plain ill-defined, To me this seems confusing because you're not distinguishing between names and objects. Let yNx be the relation y names x. Then your functor is equivalent to Ex(xNx). But that is really no different that Ex(yNx) unless you postulate that there is an operator that produces a canonical name of an object, i.e. given x then x is (by construction) a name for x. But if you use such a naming operator then you've already assumed that every name so generated names something. The question is the converse; whether every name names something. The usual way of addressing this is to reinterpret the name as a definite
Re: belief, faith, truth
accepted meanings; you don't want people taking it as a representative sample of how you deal with ideas. And, as I said in some old post, the words themselves don't care about you or what you meant to do or meant to mean, and the words themselves will trap you if you give them an inch. Since you're talking not only about metaphysics but also about machines as metaphysicians, maybe there's some way to coin a word there. Metaphysicianology sounds looks awful. Metaphysicistics. Better, but not much better. Machine metaphysicisms. Metaphysicology. Metaphysicalistics. Those are, at least, pronounceable. I'm not doing too well. It's definitely easier to criticize your word choice than to supply you with a better word choice. Still, if plain old metaphysics is out of the question because of the reception which it gets, then theology would seem even more out of the question. Best, Ben - Original Message - From: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Monday, February 13, 2006 11:36 AM Subject: Re: belief, faith, truth Le 30-janv.-06, à 22:07, Benjamin Udell wrote, in part, sometimes ago (30 January): Most people, however, do have some sort of views, which are or have been significant in their lives, about what are traditionally called metaphysical questions -- God, freedom, immortality, psycho-physical relationships, etc. Many have one or another kind of metaphysical faith. It seems increasingly clear to me that Bruno is doing a machine metaphysics, or a computer metaphysics, or a metaphysics of, by, and for computers or machines Yes. I am interested in what machines (and other entities) can prove about themselves. And also about what is true about themselves, but that those machines/entitities cannot prove, but can deliver as true in a way or another. The propositional parts of those discourse has been captured by the modal logical systems G and G* respectively (Solovay 1976). (I can't remember why Bruno opts for machines instead of computers.). I use computer for universal machine. Ordinateur in french. All loebian machines I talk about are universal machine. All universal machine believing in classical tautologies and in the laws of addition and multiplication, and in some induction formulas is lobian. It's a shame that the word metaphysics is ruled out by (if I remember correctly, it was in a post a while back) reaction of intellectuals in Belgium. In Belgium, in France and in other countries, I'm afraid, among most scientists, I mean. I rule out also metaphysics because I don't know what it means. Historically it concerns the books which were on the sides of the books on physics in the texts by Aristotle (but is this a legend?). In metaphysics, meta has not the same sense that meta in computer sciences and mathematical logics. Create confusions. Moreover, machine metaphysics is kind of catchy in its alliterative way. Sure. Look: digital machine metaphysics is a branch of metamathematics! Metaphysics is not religion but instead a philosophical study of questions which are among the important ones in religion. Philosophy, however, can be applied in living, so the distinction is not a barrier impenetrable in practice (or, therefore, in theory either) I don't even really believe in any precise frontiers between all those things. It is useful only for the curriculum vitae and for searching job and getting social profile, but any fundamental questioning is up to eventually move frontiers or suppress some. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: belief, faith, truth
Jeanne, I can't speak for the others here, but, in my case what drew me here was the subject of multiverses/universes. My interest is in amateur one in philosophy. However, I think that there is a convergence of philosophical AI interests, to which many older philosophers seemed a bit blinkered or at least somewhat indifferent, possibly because of traditional classifications, largely Comtean and tree-like, of fields of research, which fail to attend to inter-family bands of common research interests. Maybe to some extent the linguistic-analytic school's views of philosophy did likewise by tending to place philosophy outside the normal system of research and by placing subjects like ontology metaphysics largely outside of philosophy or any serious research. It's a convergence which, in my case, dawned on me years ago, from a philosophical viewpoint, on the basis of issues of classification of research, at a time when I knew next to nothing about AI (I still know rather little). It simply occurred to me that ontology, whether in the sense of ontics (what things exist?) or of ontology (traditional philosophical sense -- philosophical structure of kinds of being) -- would be relevant to a sufficiently intelligent computer program, so I googled on ontology and lo and behold, found programming AI stuff involving ontologies all over the place. What Bruno is doing involves both ontology epistemology. Apparently it's been obvious to them for quite a while to computer scientists, is in sci-fi, too. In the 1974 movie _Dark Star_ (which I didn't see till many years later) one of the astronauts teaches phenomenology to the ship's computer in order to get it doubt itself. That scene is a bit silly and campy, but it's hard to watch it without considering the issues of philosophy FOR artificial intelligences. You didn't ask about this, but the convergence of both sets of interests with that of grand cosmologies or whatever they're called, seems to have some root in the fact that assertions about the ultimate nature of everything tend to lead us into reasoning on -- and about -- the basis of views about the nature and roles of knowledge, inference, observation, etc., themselves. It's already a broad subject; the sciences of reason -- of reason's crackups -- stretch from the maths of order and conditions of math induction's applicability, to deductive theory of logic, to philosophy, and to the studies of intelligent life as we've known it -- human social studies (which I suppose will recognize AI as a new housemate or roommate as it advances). That's a cross-family band marked by some degree of distinctive overall research interest. (I would be interested to know whether the disciplines which study order (including among the real numbers, among alephs, etc.), and deductive ! theory of logic, have anything like the reputation for dysfunctionality or pathology which philosophy the human social studies have among less abstract more empirical fields.) The Heisenberg uncertainty principle helps science by leveraging the limits of knowledge into producing lots of information, both practical theoretical, about physical events. One can discern nowadays an effort in something like a hope of leveraging the character limits of knowledge and inference and the kinds of systems or creatures which have them, into yielding information about the big questions. Anthropic principles, quantum immortality debates, etc., seem among examples of such efforts. Best, Ben Udell - Original Message - From: Jeanne Houston [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Sunday, February 05, 2006 11:38 AM Subject: Re: belief, faith, truth I am a layperson who reads these discussions out of avid interest, and I hope that someone will answer a question that I would like to ask in order to enhance my own understanding. There is an emphasis on AI running through these discussions, yet you seem to delve into very philosophical questions. Are the philosophical discussions applicable to the development of AI (i.e., trying to grasp all aspects of the mind of man if you are trying to develop a true copy), or are they only interesting diversions that pop-up from time to time. My thanks to anyone who wishes to respond. Jeanne Houston - Original Message - From: Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 2:02 PM Subject: Re: belief, faith, truth
Re: belief, faith, truth
Brent, list,
I've edited my previous post, added some corrections notes, and pared down a
lot of the stuff from previous posts. At this point I'm sending it on a for
what it's worth basis -- I'm a little tired of it myself!
I've also thought to try to put this back in its original context but there
isn't much, it's become something of a longueur. The context had been a
discussion of theory practice, and how it is that we can't wait in practical
matters for the kind of theoretical near-certainty which theoretical
researchers seek multi-generationally, and must occasionally even act with
total conviction despite significant uncertainty, so let's not get scornful of
all practical action on sole account of the excesses of a portion of it. I had,
in a complicated way, said that all of us, just like the religious among us,
care and have values regarding the principles, strengths, powers, starting
points, etc., by which we move, act, and live, and that Bruno was right to
point to things which stand out in religious people but which are in all of us.
(I disagree for various reasons with Bruno that we're all religious but I do
think that most of us have views that can fairly be called metaphysical.)!
I pointed out that we could not have an applicational knowledge of such
things ('ruling arts' or 'governing arts') without valuing of such things, any
more than we can have know-how without care-how, or affective art without
gratificational valuings, or maths sciences without valuings of knowledge,
evidence, logic, etc.,, which, as abstract as it sounds, ultimately conjures up
an earthly picture of a common systematic set of fields which we're variously
tilling. think I knocked Rorty somewhere there. Anyway, there, as in other
places I seem to discern echoes of Tegmark's four Levels, though not so much as
in divisions of research fields into families.
Brent asked, But is the value of logic and evidence inherent or only
instrumental? and it took off from there. It's pretty much like asking whether
the value of truth is inherent or only instrumental. Now, I don't know how to
read it except as, is the value of logic and evidence an end value or only a
means value -- is it something at which we are satisfied, culmination and
climax, an end or ending, or is it a way of getting there? Is truth's value
that it's pleasing or that it's useful? My answer is that the value of logic
evidence ( truth) is neither one nor the other per se, though they can and
inevitably do take on such values as means and ends (as ends especially in
research disciplines!), and that the means-end dichotomy is kind of starved,
looks sounds starved, and a little knowledge of the ideas the words tends
to corroborate that. The basic value of evidence logic is not in production
or consumption but in assimiliation, rumination, integration; not in fa!
cilitation or satisfaction, but grounding support and making us know, and is
the value of the holding in completeness after a culmination; and their most
elementary relationship with means and ends is as checks in their supporting
and legitimizing or confirming an end or result as having been attained as
first seems, as the splashed headline claims, etc. You can see this in the
Helmholz-Poincare picture of the creative process: saturation is the beginning;
incubation the means; illumination the culminative end; and verification the
check. In fact, we don't need to ask whether something has value as a means,
value as an end, etc.; we could just as well ask whether it has legitimacy
or soundness as a means, legitimacy or soundness as an end, legitimacy
or soundness as a check. That extra layer of value, legitimacy, or
whatever, consists of essentially the same set of conceptions, merely with
different words, as in the first layer. It occurs to me that I !
don't know why Brent asked about intrinsic value versus instru!
mental v
alue of logic evidence in the first place.
Anyway, FWIW at this point, here's my previous post with some corrections
notes, and paring down of stuff from earlier posts.
[Ben] At this point I'm not talking about aspiring. I'm talking
straightforwardly about being in control, making decisions -- at least for
oneself. Some want more power than that. Some have more power than that and
don't want it. Some have all that and want still more. Parents reasonable
want control over their children. Most of us have had the opportunity to test
our self-control, resist destructive temptations in life, etc. There's
nothing any more or less dualist (I don't know what you're getting at)
about self-governance than about self-awareness or any other reflexive sort
of thing. Making one's own choices, being free to do that, having the
backbone to do it, etc., these are everyday issues.
[Brent] I guess I've lost the thread of this discussion. You're saying people
value/want self-control - but sometimes they don't. Sometimes they
Re: belief, faith, truth
Brent, list, [Ben] At this point I'm not talking about aspiring. I'm talking straightforwardly about being in control, making decisions -- at least for oneself. Some want more power than that. Some have more power than that and don't want it. Some have all that and want still more. Parents reasonable want control over their children. Most of us have had the opportunity to test our self-control, resist destructive temptations in life, etc. There's nothing any more or less dualist (I don't know what you're getting at) about self-governance than about self-awareness or any other reflexive sort of thing. Making one's own choices, being free to do that, having the backbone to do it, etc., these are everyday issues. [Brent] I guess I've lost the thread of this discussion. You're saying people value/want self-control - but sometimes they don't. Sometimes they have self-control - but sometimes they don't. I gather that a non-trivial decision means one between choices that evoke negative emotions, i.e. no good choices. Really, I've been talking about means, ends, other such elements, and trying to place them into familiar contexts, such as that of wanting them and having them. You've been adding an unncessary conceptual layer by referring to them as values, general ends, as if this were some substrate or genus shared by them. If something is a means, then it has value as a means, but what have you added by saying this? And it's an arbitrary choice of complication. You could say that a given thing, as a means, also: 1. is a decision point of some consequence in its role as a means 2. is used in various ways in its role as a means 3. is an end in being a means (i.e., its being a means, its manner of being a means, gives it instrumental value), 4. is a check in being a means (i.e., its being a means, its manner of being a means, makes it telling and evidentiary). Now, if you say, you mean it can have evidentiary _value_?, I'll respond it can and very likely will have that, too, though it's not what I said or meant. Then when I talk about decidings, you want to conceive of deciding as a value too., etc. To say that something has value, is to say that it is an end (an end to some extent, the extent varying as the value). To say that something has value as a means is to say that that thing is an end, because it is a means to some further end. It's true and important but it's distracting you. It's as if there were four ice cream cones including a chocolate one, and you added a second scoop, chocolate, to each of all four. Chocolate is cool, chocolate is deep, yet, and yet, they're not all chocolate, though they're quite capable for chocolate. When you asked, But is the value of logic and evidence inherent or only instrumental? you were asking, are logic and evidence an end in themselves or are they a secondary end, an end whose achievement is mainly a means to a further end? You had said it response to my saying, Now, valuings and ideals are a side of the theoretical which tends to get minimized in the context of the practical-theoretical distinction, just as the difference in the practical between decision-making and performance tends to get sloughed over also in the context of practical-theoretical distinction. But there's no knowledge based on logic evidence without valuing of logic evidence... It may be that, in order to clarify my notion of 'end,' I should say culmination, a kind of ending -- not just 'telos' but 'teleiosis,' reaching the end, actualization. The check is the confirming it, a kind of solidification and holding in completeness. Now, when we pick or take something, sometimes it's so direct that we don't think of means as being saliently involved. But often enough there are these intermediate stages we go through, and intermediating things. If the decision is regarded as a kind of main cause, those middles appear, relative to the situation of interest, as intermediate causes, helpers, facilitating causes. Of course they're also intermediate effects. In any case we regard them as means. If the goal is achieved, effected, sometimes it's so directly obvious that we don't think of any checks as being involved. But often enough there are these collateral and at least a bit later things or events to which we look. If the goal is regarded as a kind of main effect, those things or events on the side or further in time appear, relative to the situation of interest, as side effects, after-effects, evidentiary effects. Just as in advance one may have desired hoped for the end, one may have imagined and anti! cipated the collateral effects, the evidences. One then also will have hoped for them, but only because one hopes for them as signs of the goal's having been achieved. They aren't means to the goal, they're beyond and in addition to the goal in a rather similar sense as the means are beyond and in addition to the beginning, the deciding
Re: belief, faith, truth
Bruno, Bent, list, Sometimes I use the word opinion to refer to a theoretical belief, as opposed to a practical belief. In those terms, if I believe something, then I'm willing to act practically, on the basis of that belief under potentially discorroborative circumstances as they currently appear, at least as they appear, even if I'm not fully certain about them. If I have an opinion, I'm willing to act theoretically, modify a theory, etc., on the basis of that opinion under potentially discorroborative circumstances as they currently appear. This distinction between opinion and belief is only suggested by common usage and is not actually well established. For instance, a medical opinion may be the basis for grave practical steps. C.S. Peirce often discussed opinion or belief in terms of the willingness to act upon it and insisted on distinguishing between theoretical practical beliefs. This is a little more complicated in the case of researchers, since researchers tends to end up with practical matters and even the shapes of their lives dependent on theoretical issues and developments. Mendel believed strongly enough in his genetic theory to at least fudge his data somewhat, for a better fit. And even where it doesn't raise issues of integrity, the nexus of practicality and theory still arises for the researcher in terms of career choices, funding, etc. (not that I know a lot about this sort of thing, but it does seem to be there). So it does seem a bit of a juggling act for the serious researcher -- straining his/her mental sinews to give his/her theory the best possible shot, yet not persisting stubbornly in it when it is definitely disconfirmed, because the point, strictly speaking, is not to decide the truth but instead to be decided by the truth, and the real dedication must be to the quasi-leisurely, multi-generational project of seeking to be determ! ined by the truth, not some rushed conclusion. In practical matters we are justified in rushing sometimes, and in taking into account arguments that would be quite out of place in a theoretical context. And none of those researchers who scorn invariant personal solemnity in public forums means to convey a lack of seriousness as if their theoretical research were just a hobby. One probably could make the same distinction between theoretical practical knowledge (recognizing something as theoretically / practically confirmed enough that one would act theoretically / practically on its basis under even surprising potentially discorroborative circumstances, i.e., under the widest range reasonably imaginable), theoretical practical understanding (an interpretation on the basis of which one will likely be disposed to act in potentially discorroborative circumstances likely to arise), and theoretical practical assumptions (on the basis of which one has acted or been disposed to act, theoretically / practically, in potentially discorroborative circumstances that have arisen. In the chafing between science and religion, some of us recurrently scorn a religious tendency toward intense belief about matters of physical fact on insufficient bases of evidence and logic. However, in practical matters sometimes one must decide and act with total conviction on the basis of insufficient information. Occasionally it's in for a dime, in for a dollar, such that half-way or hesitant measures are far worse than decisive action or total inaction. We can't really mean to broad-brushingly scorn all that sort of thing on account of some portion's excesses, because, if we're true to such scorn, then we'll vitiate ourselves. Now, valuings and ideals are a side of the theoretical which tends to get minimized in the context of the practical-theoretical distinction, just as the difference in the practical between decision-making and performance tends to get sloughed over also in the context of practical-theoretical distinction. But there's no knowledge based on logic ! evidence without valuing of logic evidence, there's no artistic understanding of effects without gratificational valuings, there's no know-how without care-how, and there's no discipline of community planning, education of character, no ruling arts or governing arts as they've been called, without a certain thing found also at religion's core -- valuings and carings in regard to the sources, powers, principles whereby one moves and acts. Bruno tends to point to that which stands out in religious people but is common to all people and he has a good point, even if there are usually also differences. Best, Ben Udell - Original Message - From: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Monday, January 30, 2006 9:06 AM Subject: Re: belief, faith, truth Le 29-janv.-06, à 20:02, Brent Meeker a écrit : I largely agree with Stathis. I note a
Re: belief, faith, truth
Tom, Brent, Bruno, list, Bruno wrote Brent agreed, I think everyone has religious faith... I don't think that I could go along with that, at least not in the strict sense of "religion" -- true enough, religion has, at its core, valuings with regard to power and submission, ruling and being ruled, and also self-governance. But in the strict sense of "religion," there's usually, at the core, some beliefs, some claims, of miracles, magical events, etc. Not everybody believes in that sort of thing. Then in another sense, but a less strict one, a "religion" can be a set of life-shaping beliefs immune to nontrivial revision despite all contrary experience. I don't think that absolutely everybody has a life-shaping set of such beliefs. Or maybe they all do, but it doesn't seem hands-down obvious that they all do. Most people, however, do have some sort of views, which are or have been significant in their lives, about what are traditionally called metaphysical questions -- God, freedom, immortality, psycho-physical relationships, etc. Many have one or another kind of metaphysical faith. It seems increasingly clear to me that Bruno is doing a machine metaphysics, or a computer metaphysics, or a metaphysics of, by, and for computers or machines (I can't remember why Bruno opts for "machines" instead of "computers."). It's a shame that the word "metaphysics" is ruled out by (if I remember correctly, it was in a post a while back) reaction of intellectuals in Belgium. Moreover, "machine metaphysics" is kind of catchy in its alliterative way. Metaphysics is not religion but instead a philosophical study of questions which are among the important ones in religion. Philosoophy, however, can be applied in living, so the distinction is not a barrier impenetrable in practice (or, therefore, in theory either). As to universals, as Brent says they're "ruled out" way too often. it's that old Saul Steinberg "View of the World From Ninth Avenue" thing again. Intellectual foreshortening. http://www.hwscience.com/HWJS/archives/friendrank/friendrank_files/image003.gif Some look at decision-making ( related "ruling arts" aka "governing arts") about lives living, and see the custom-tailored, the singular, as the goal and object(ive). This is true in the same sense as it is true that "know-how," practical/productive arts, strive not for the singular and one-time but the reliable repeatable, though still the somewhat specialized -- not the universal, theoretical, etc. -- and it is true in the same sense that affective arts tend to strive for totalities, universes, worlds in terms of which certain qualities take on special and vibrant values -- and it is true in the same sense that universals are the object of maths sciences. It's true in those senses, as far as they go, which is not unlimited. Instead, those senses are limited, and, for instance,it is patently obvious that, in _subject matters_, the research disciplines vary every which way in typical scope -- physical, chemical, and life sciences have concrete singulars in their unreduced, unabstracted-away idiosyncrasies as their _subject_, howsoever universal the _object_ of such sciences is. And what's more, the disciplines of research vary even in the scopes of their elementary objectives. - The goal of empirical research is to learn more particulars -- _is_ therea tenth planet, _is_ there an earth quake in store for some island,_are_ there more fossils ofintermediates stage between whales and land mammals, etc.-- and ona kind of higher level, to learn about universals as specially applicable to them. Those universals are no more interesting to such empirical research than the concreta which they help explain and predict, so economically. - The goal of statistical theory is to draw inductive conclusions from samples to _total populations_, not universals--yet, on a kind of higher level, to learn about the _universals_ which apply to them., across them, etc., in statistical study. I'm not sure how best to distinguish these "levels" and they don't seem divided by impenetrable barriers -- last I heard, there's evidence that lightspeed has changed relative to other fundamental quantities, and so lightspeed, though a universal,is seen as a big, developingevent -- a kind of universal event (which ina sense it always was). It's just a piece of intellectually unjustified but intellectually practiced foreshortening, to hold that all this diversity of typical scopes is unique to the disciplines of research. Much less are disciplines of research concerned only with universals, which is just a silly idea. In decision-makings and leadings, in performance and means, in ends and satisfactions, and in checks and knowledge, and in the respective disciplines ofthose things, there are or at least can be the full variety of scopes involved some way or otherin terms ofsubject matter, or some kind of objective, even though
Re: belief, faith, truth
Brent, list Your explication seems to turn on a pun. End as something of value doesn't imply a beginning. To the contrary an end or goal or terminus generally entails a beginning. A person interested in this subject from a theoretical viewpoint does have to confront that. It may help to have some acquaintance with past thought on the matter. Sure, people care about (value) all kinds of things; even the words used to describe things - see recent debate over theology vs metaphysics - some inherently, some instrumentally, and some mixed. But I'm not sure I'd call those powers - I guess you mean something like motivations. I mean like power, control, force, things that make things happen or not happen, things that decide what happens. People want to decide and determine things, not just be means to things or to be the ends, Pygmalions or prey, of others. They care about their relationship, such as they believe it to be, their relationship to the power of the universe itself. The power of the universe itself? What would that be? Are you going all mystical on me? I'm talking about religious people and people who at least have religious tendencies. Religion is a common phenomenon with a lot of history to it. These are sources, beginnings, leaderships, principles, (Greek) _/arches/_. This is not mere instrumentality. Deciding and determining is not a mere means, the decider employs means to ends. The decider in that sense is the beginning, the leader. Not if no one follows. The leader of one's own process. As in, being in charge, in situations where being in charge is not a given. This situation includes basic aspects of one's life. _/Arches kai mesa/_, beginnings/leadings, and means. It's the difference between (a) **will character** and (b) **ability competence**. Aristotle wrote his ethical treatises about character in a broader sense than exclusively that of morality, and character in that broader sense is what it's about. It's a shame that Aristotle didn't also write treatises about ability and competence, _/hikanoteta/_. Now, a carpenter, for instance, is not simply a means to carpentry, a means for carpented things to actualize themselves. Has anyone every suggested such a thing? You have commited yourself to that view in dividing everything into means and ends (instrumental value and inherent value). Since you hold that view, you must say that the carpenter's decision to do a job is a means to that job or the end of that job. Yet it is plain that the carpenter's decision is the carpenter's means and it is plain that the job is not a means for the carpenter to decide to do the job. This shows the inadequacy of means-ends as a dichotomy, a division of a whole into two. The carpenter tries and deliberates, pursues, chooses or accepts (or rejects), and adheres to (or renounces) his/her underlying decisions even to do the work at all, throughout the process. Is all this volition a means? Somebody else's means, perhaps; the market's means perhaps, and so on. But it isn't the carpenter's means, it's the carpenter's leading, deciding, etc. which, by means, tools, resources, s/he carries out. This striving and deciding is most clearly seen as no mere means in contexts where control is truly at stake. I would suppose that a carpenter has pride of workmanship and so there is inherent pleasure in doing his job well. His choice of this tool or that is partly instrumental relative to that pleasure. But he also does carpentry as a means to food, shelter, etc. So what? You're confusing the decision-making with the goals and values and feelings, as if, given a set of goals, the decisions were already made, or get made automatically, and as if people's decision-making were a trivial process. But goals and values and feelings sometimes conflict, in multifarious ways. Sometimes there is no clear answer and one has to decide anyway. In the carpenter's sawing, hammering, etc., the exercise of skills and abilities, control is not really at stake. But in the carpenter's will and decision-making, control of the situation among various factors in the carpenter is at stake. I think I understand the words, but the sentence leaves me blank. The carpenter may be of more than one mind on what to do. I don't mean that the carpenter has a multiple personality. I mean that the carpenter may be of more than one mind in just the sense that more than one mind is commnly used. Some element in the carpenter's mind will have to gain the upper hand. This will embody certain interests and efforts rather than others by the carpenter in his/her life. Or maybe the carpenter will solve diverse problems together with creative solution. Now, one is free to devise an epicycle-filled anthropo-nomy in order to describe intelligent beings while classing volition and decision-making as mere means, but it's not particularly useful.
Re: belief, faith, truth
Brent, list, Your explication seems to turn on a pun. End as something of value doesn't imply a beginning. To the contrary an end or goal or terminus generally entails a beginning. A person interested in this subject from a theoretical viewpoint does have to confront that. It may help to have some acquaintance with past thought on the matter. OK, I'll bite. I sometimes consider having something to eat a value. What beginning does that entail? Wondering whether to eat, how to go about it, whether it's worth it right now, etc. Weighing and deciding. A mini-contest in one's head, or perhaps in discussion or argument among a group about whether they shall eat now or later. To the extent that this decision-making sets precedents, has ramifications for the group's future decision-making, etc., it has political significance. Deciding who or what gets to decide, by what steps to decide, etc. This shows that the word political is less broad than the word economic since it's easy to conceive of economic issues for a man alone on a desert island. One can't do likewise with the word political, or even the phrase political-or-martial, one has to speak more broadly about power issues -- the man's control over things on the island, the man's self-control, capacity to govern and pace himself and exert himself to prepare for things, etc. There's no mot juste for all this. Sure, people care about (value) all kinds of things; even the words used to describe things - see recent debate over theology vs metaphysics - some inherently, some instrumentally, and some mixed. But I'm not sure I'd call those powers - I guess you mean something like motivations. I mean like power, control, force, things that make things happen or not happen, things that decide what happens. People want to decide and determine things, not just be means to things or to be the ends, Pygmalions or prey, of others. OK, they value autonomy - I guess that's why some get so exercised over the compatibilist view of free will. People value beginnings, means, ends, i.e, make general ends of all three. Actually it would be better and less complicated conceptually if we take off the value wrapping instead of straightway getting into multiple conceptual layers. I mentioned people wanting to decide determine things, just in order to place it in a familiar context. I'm not talking about something unfamiliar. There are all kinds of issues with power and freedom and independence. Power over others, avoidance of being under others' power, etc. Ruling, being ruled, ruling oneself. Well, there's ruling and then there's governing. Anyway, the politics of everyday life, some of it mild and minimizable, some of it not. They care about their relationship, such as they believe it to be, their relationship to the power of the universe itself. The power of the universe itself? What would that be? Are you going all mystical on me? I'm talking about religious people and people who at least have religious tendencies. Religion is a common phenomenon with a lot of history to it. These are sources, beginnings, leaderships, principles, (Greek) _/arches/_. This is not mere instrumentality. Deciding and determining is not a mere means, the decider employs means to ends. The decider in that sense is the beginning, the leader. Not if no one follows. The leader of one's own process. As in, being in charge, in situations where being in charge is not a given. This situation includes basic aspects of one's life. That seems to be a dualist position in which YOU are something apart from your processes. Or do you mean aspiring to power over others - which some find very gratifying? At this point I'm not talking about aspiring. I'm talking straightforwardly about being in control, making decisions -- at least for oneself. Some want more power than that. Some have more power than that and don't want it. Some have all that and want still more. Parents reasonable want control over their children. Most of us have had the opportunity to test our self-control, resist destructive temptations in life, etc. There's nothing any more or less dualist (I don't know what you're getting at) about self-governance than about self-awareness or any other reflexive sort of thing. Making one's own choices, being free to do that, having the backbone to do it, etc., these are everyday issues. _/Arches kai mesa/_, beginnings/leadings, and means. It's the difference between (a) **will character** and (b) **ability competence**. Aristotle wrote his ethical treatises about character in a broader sense than exclusively that of morality, and character in that broader sense is what it's about. It's a shame that Aristotle didn't also write treatises about ability and competence, _/hikanoteta/_. Now, a carpenter, for instance, is not simply a means to carpentry, a means for carpented things to
Re: Mathematics: Is it really what you think it is?
Marc, Bruno, Russell, Hal, list, First, a general note -- thanks, Hal, for the link to your paper on the Universal Dovetailer. I have gotten busy with practical matters, so I've gone quiet here. I hope to have time to pursue the UD soon. As to a sensory modality for mathematical objects. The senses and related cultivated intuitive faculties are for qualities and relations that are not universal but merely general (i.e., they're not mathematical-type universals but they're not concrete particulars/singulars either). So to speak, the senses etc. are sample takers, they sample and taste the world. The senses and their cultivated forms and also their extensions (instrumental technological), taking samples, lead to inductive generalizations, and the most natural scientific form of this process is in those fields which tend to draw inductive generalizations as conclusions -- statistical theory, inductive areas of cybernetic information theory, and other such fields (I'd argue that such is philosophy's place, too). Mathematics is something else. Its cognitive modality seems to be imagination, or imagination supported and constrained by reason. Edgar Allen Poe: The _highest_ order of the imaginative intellect is always pre-eminently mathematical, and the converse. http://www.eapoe.org/works/essays/a451101.htm first paragraph's, last sentence. It is to be admitted that Poe counted mathematics as calculating, but, on the other hand, he probably vaguely meant more by calculating than many of us probably would. Imagination becomes the road to truth when the mind considers things at a sufficiently universal level. I.e., two dots in my imagination are just as good an instance of two things as any two things outside my imagination. The imagination along with its extensions (e.g., mathematical symbolisms, the imaginative apparatus of set theory, etc.), supported, checked, balanced by reason, produces fantastic bridges, often through chains of equivalences, across gulfs enormously _divergent_ from a sensory viewpoint. It would all be indistinguishably universal but for abstractions (e.g., sets) whereby one can say that some of these universals are more universal than others, some are unique (as solutions to families of problems, etc.), and the world in its wild variegation (of models for mathematics) can be, as it were, re-created. To say that mathematics is real doesn't imply that it consists of sensory qualities or of the concrete singulars cognized in their historical and geographical haecceity (or thisness) by commonsense perception. It does imply that the kind of cognition which leads to mathematical truth is a cognition of a kind of reality, the reality, whatever it is, of which mathematical statements are true. Of course if we say that only singular objects are real, then there's no mathematical reality. But insofar as such objects are _really_ marked by mathematical relationships, mathematics has enough reallyness to count as reality, unless one wants to multiply reality words to keep track of syntactical level. None of this is to say that the senses ( related intuitive faculties) have nothing in common with imagination. Both of them involve capacities to form creative impressions, to expect, to notice, and to remember. Both of them objectify map, both of them judge measure, both of them calculate or interpret, and both of them recognize (dis)confirm. The mathematical imagination continually honors, acknowledges, and recognizes rules variously old and newly discovered of the games or contracts into which it enters soever voluntarily and whimsically. Now I have to count on the subway's being on time -- if only I didn't have to work! Best, Ben Udell - Original Message - From: Marc Geddes To: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, January 27, 2006 4:08 AM Subject: Mathematics: Is it really what you think it is? Open question here: What is mathematics? ;) A series of intuitions I've been having have started to suggest to me that mathematics may not at all be what we think it is! The idea of 'cognitive closure' (Colin McGinn) looms large here. The human brain is not capable of direct perception of mathematical entities. We cannot 'see' mathematics directly in the same way we 'see' a table for instance. This of course may not say much about the nature of mathematics, but more about the limitations of the human brain. Suppose then, that some variant of platonism is true and mathematical entities exist 'out there' and there is *in principle* a modality ( a method of sensory perception like hearing, sight, taste) for direct perception of mathematics. We could imagine some super-intelligence that possessed this ability to directly perceive mathematics. What would this super-intelligence 'see' ? Perhaps there's something of enormous importance about the nature of mathematics that every one has over-looked so far, something that
Re: Mathematics: Is it really what you think it is?
Marc, list, The heck with the train. I'll do chores today instead. I should add to that which I said below, in order to respond to Marc's remarks a bit more specifically. Insofar as any sensory form of mathematical objects will have some sort of flavors in whose terms the senses sample the world, it would actually be kind of restrictive to have a sensory modality for mathematical objects per se. The point of mathematics is the transformability, the rationally supported and constrained imaginative metamorphizability, across sensory senselike information modalities as well as across particular concreta. In a sense, we already have a sensory/intuitive modality or two for maths -- the cultivated sense for space(s) and the cultivated sense for symbols. There'd be no point to regarding one or the other as the one true general model the mathematical reality in itself. Mathematicians will tend sooner or later to try to get beyond that set of flavors or hues or etc., that specialized model. I do certainly agree that the human mind is limited such that there are, very likely, intelligences next to which we're canine or much lower than that. At least, it's hard to disbelieve that there could be and that the possibility is there. But the simplest meanings of this in turn are that our imaginations, intellects, senses, and commonsense perceptions are limited, and that all of them require invite cultivation and extensions in mathematical or scientific research -- and in many other things as well. Now, one can easily suppose these cognitive powers to become so increased that they would be rather unlike anything which we have experienced. But I see no reason to suppose that they would _necessarily_ become comparatively more sense-like than imagination-like or commonsense-perception-like or etc. My guess is that a mind so strengthened would have increased freedom to employ all those modalities variously, integratively, etc. It seems likewise to me that the simplest meaning of the ascribing (I don't mean the limiting) of reality to all established subjects of research, in their full range including maths, is the ascribing of capacities to discover learn about reality to cognitive modes in _their_ full range -- rather than some squeezing of all levels of reality into the subject matters of the sensory modalities, out of a narrow interpretation of reality and a somewhat questionable association of sensory modalities with concrete singulars rather than with the qualities flavors in terms of which the modalities sample taste the world. Yet I think that that idea -- sensory faculties for everything -- actually has some foundation to it as well. For instance, the intuitive sense of a thing's meaning or value as, for instance, a symbol of something else, is a kind of sense-doing-the-job-of-intellect. An intuitive sense of a thing's validity, legitimacy, or soundness as a kind of observational p! roxy for something else, is a kind of sense-doing-the-job-of-imagination. But this sort of thing is only to the extent that the full range from mathematicals to flavors, tendencies, kinds of appearances, to concrete individual things/events, can be squeezed in as subject matters of _any_ of those cognitive modes as employed as scientific/mathematical roads to truth -- (Level IV) imagination (universals), (Level III) intellect (universes, total populations, etc.), (Level II) sensory related intuitive faculties (flavors, non-universal generals, qualities, etc.), and (Level I) commonsense perception (singulars embedded in their concrete historical tapestry -- singulars not as constituting a universe or gamut such that it is supposed that nothing else exists -- instead, singulars among more singulars). For my part, I doubt that platonic entities undergo real change, but they're so rich that they might as well change -- finite minds like ours will never exhaust them, or at least I tend to suppose not. Anyway FWIW that's my story and I've been sticking to it, so far. Best, Ben Udell - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, January 27, 2006 8:17 AM Subject: Re: Mathematics: Is it really what you think it is? Marc, Bruno, Russell, Hal, list, First, a general note -- thanks, Hal, for the link to your paper on the Universal Dovetailer. I have gotten busy with practical matters, so I've gone quiet here. I hope to have time to pursue the UD soon. As to a sensory modality for mathematical objects. The senses and related cultivated intuitive faculties are for qualities and relations that are not universal but merely general (i.e., they're not mathematical-type universals but they're not concrete particulars/singulars either). So to speak, the senses etc. are sample takers, they sample and taste the world. The senses and their cultivated forms and also their extensions (instrumental technological), taking
Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue
Russell, list, [Ben] The dovetailer keeps sounding like a powerful idea. I do remember that it has often been mentioned here, but somehow I failed to pick up a sense of what it was really about. Was there a message to the Everything-List in which it was explained so that non-experts can understand it? I'm not asking you to track that message (or series of messages) down, but if you or somebody remembers around which month it was, that should be enough for me to find it. Or is there a link to a Webpage with such an exposition? [Russell] Do a Google search, or a search on the everything list archives eg Google everything list dovetailer. I know that the phrase has been used in very many posts, I thought it might take me a long time. Anyway, Bruno has narrowed it down. [Ben] Level III varies across quantum branchings. Level II varies across times and places along a single quantum branch in such a way that its features come out the same as Level III's features. [Russell] This is not my reading. Level II universes vary their fundamental physical constants, eg G, alpha and so on. [Russell] Level I universes merely vary in time and space, but sufficiently separated as to be causally independent. That's exactly what I meant. I think the terminology has gotten me into trouble here. G, alpha, etc. vary across Level II, across its various inflationary bubbles. Level II's features are the same as Level III's features. Level III embodies a variation-across-quantum-branchings of constants, initial conditions, etc., variations which Level II has across the various Level I universes or Level I multiverses (I did think that my using the word universe instead would get me into trouble!) which Level II contains along a single quantum branch. Or maybe talking about different Level I multiverses still implies that I'm speaking only of Level I variation, not Level II variation. Anyway, I mean variation of constants, etc. With regard to quantum branching, this kind of variation is quite like the kind of variation exhibited by hits in a repeated experiment within a single Level I multiverse, with one big difference: the pattern of a sufficiently repeated experiment's hits is s! ufficient to tell us the probability distribution for the particle in that experiment in that Level I multiverse, but is not an adequate sample of variation across a Level II multiverse, since it does not reflect variation of fundamental constants, initial conditions insofar as these might affect the constants, etc. A pattern of hits representing only Level II variation is just the pattern which we can't observe -- it's the pattern made across various inflationary bubbles -- they are such hits. Anyway, given a mathematical structure distinguishable topologically or perhaps infinite-graph-theoretically, there are still variations of constants, initial conditions insofar as these might affect the constants, etc., which are reflected in variations of probability distribution for a given experiment's result across a Level III multiverse's quantum branchings of the genesis of an inflationary bubble and across a Level II multiverse's various inflationary bubbles along a sing! le quantum branch. Maybe we could approximate some such variat! ion by v arying the experimental conditions, I'm unsure how to think about that. Would it be bad for Tegmark if there were no probability distribution for a multiverse's having one mathematical structure instead of another? Maybe that's where variational or optimizational principles would come in. [Ben But I haven't noticed anybody here talking about variational principles or optimizational equations in any connection, much less in relation to Level IV. (While there is an obvious echo of optimization in applying Occam's Razor to Level IV's mathematical structures, this doesn't seem to involve any application of mathematical extremization, variations, Morse Theory, etc., so it seems not really the same thing. It's certainly not the only echo between a mode of inference (present instance: surmise, simplest explanation) and a mathematical formalism (extremization, shortest paths, etc.).) [Russell] Extremum principles come up mostly in Roy Frieden's work. No-one has managed to integrate Frieden's stuff into the usual framework of this list, so little mention has been made of it, but I do mention it in my book. The hope is that some connection can be forged. I'll try looking into him. Best, Ben Udell
Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue
Russell, list, Thanks for pointing out Roy Frieden and EPI. At first skim, it reminds me vaguely of the argument by C.S. Peirce (there's that name again) that space was curved. The idea was that it would take infinite precision of measurement to establish that space were perfectly Euclidean all the way down, and that, given all the scales and ways in which it could be curved, and the single and unique way for it to be Euclidean, it was overwhelmingly likely to be curved. I'm not sure how such an argument holds up in consideration of things like the Planck radius, or in Frieden's or EPI's terms, but the general notion is that of inferring physical laws or spatial geometries from measurement issues. In Peirce's case, the idea seems to have involved considering what would be established by research indefinitely prolonged, which ultimate or indefinitely far destination Peirce equated with truth, though in most cases Peirce considered it to be findable mainly only by actually doing the research. [Russell] Extremum principles come up mostly in Roy Frieden's work. No-one has managed to integrate Frieden's stuff into the usual framework of this list, so little mention has been made of it, but I do mention it in my book. The hope is that some connection can be forged. [Ben] I'll try looking into him. Best, Ben Udell
Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue
Russell, list, When I said: But I haven't noticed anybody here talking about variational principles or optimizational equations in any connection, much less in relation to Level IV. I meant that as being part of why I feel out on a limb (rather than in the sense of some sort of chiding toward people here for not discussing those subjects enough.) Best, Ben Udell - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: EverythingList everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2006 1:04 PM Subject: Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue
Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue-faith
Bruno, list, Thank your for clarifying with regard to semantics and truth-preservation, enough for me to do a little homework. I searched around the Internet and see that you're quite right, I've wandered into semantic-vs.-syntactic issues with my talk of truth preservation in inference. How did I get into this? For what it's worth, here's how: Here and elsewhere I've started mentioning truth preservation and falsity preservation because it has seemed a concise and striking way to sum up (in terms of formal implicational relations between premisses and conclusion) a four-way distinction among kinds of inference. So in a sense it was my choices in rhetoric that got me into this. My argument is with some who see three basic kinds of inference -- deductive, inductive, and abductive, and not so much with people who count two, since they'll probably grant at the very least some importance, albeit smaller, to a further subdivision. Basically, I've wanted to moot, by resolving in a simple and systematic way, the excessively chewed-over issue of _formal_ reducibility of certain kinds of inferences to others, and to do so while pointing out that such definitions don't at all completely capture what's interesting or valuable about the thereby defined kinds of inference, not in _only some_ cases (surmise and inductive generalization, regarding which the objections may be anticipated) but instead in _all_ cases (i.e., also strict aka reversible deduction and equipollential aka reversible deduction (which includes the mathematical induction step in its usual application, i.e., to a set whose well-orderedness has already been granted)). This sort of thing, taken further, would lead to why I joined the Everything-List -- correlations between families of research and the four Levels. Best, Ben Udell - Original Message - From: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Everything-List List everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Saturday, January 14, 2006 8:43 AM Subject: Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue-faith Le 13-janv.-06, à 19:13, Benjamin Udell wrote in part: I'm wondering whether we mean the same thing by truth preservation. I mean the validity of such arguments as exemplified (in trivial forms) by p, ergo p and pq, ergo p or whatever argument such that the conclusion is contained in the premisses. Or maybe I've been using the word deductive in too broad a sense? Actually it is the contrary. What you describe is classical truth preservation, which occurs with the classical deductive rules (so that they are sound and complete). In general truth preservation is a semantics dependant concept, where semantics can sometimes be given by some mathematical structures. I don't want to be too technical at this point. (Mathematically a semantics is a subspaces' classifier) How did you guess that I currently have patience and time on my hands? :-) Thanks for witnessing the interest. I wish only I would have more time for now. I have the patience I think :-) http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue-faith
Sorry, had to make a few corrections. 1. [correction] ...my definitions don't at all completely capture... [instead of vague] ...such definitions don't at all completely capture... 2. [correction] ...'strict' aka 'non-reversible' deduction... [instead of mistake] ...'strict' aka 'reversible' deduction... This is an after-second-cup-of-coffee post and should be more reliable. The corrections are incorporated below. Again, sorry. - Best Ben Udell. - Original Message [corrected] - From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Everything-List List everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Saturday, January 14, 2006 12:26 PM Subject: Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue-faith Bruno, list, Thank your for clarifying with regard to semantics and truth-preservation, enough for me to do a little homework. I searched around the Internet and see that you're quite right, I've wandered into semantic-vs.-syntactic issues with my talk of truth preservation in inference. How did I get into this? For what it's worth, here's how: Here and elsewhere I've started mentioning truth preservation and falsity preservation because it has seemed a concise and striking way to sum up (in terms of formal implicational relations between premisses and conclusion) a four-way distinction among kinds of inference. So in a sense it was my choices in rhetoric that got me into this. My argument is with some who see three basic kinds of inference -- deductive, inductive, and abductive, and not so much with people who count two, since they'll probably grant at the very least some importance, albeit smaller, to a further subdivision. Basically, I've wanted to moot, by resolving in a simple and systematic way, the excessively chewed-over issue of _formal_ reducibility of certain kinds of inferences to others, and to do so while pointing out that my definitions don't at all completely capture what's interesting or valuable about the thereby defined kinds of inference, not in _only some_ cases (surmise and inductive generalization, regarding which the objections may be anticipated) but instead in _all_ cases (i.e., also strict aka non-reversible deduction and equipollential aka reversible deduction (which includes the mathematical induction step in its usual application, i.e., to a set whose well-orderedness has already been granted)). This sort of thing, taken further, would lead to why I joined the Everything-List -- correlations between families of research and the four Levels. Best, Ben Udell - Original Message - From: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Everything-List List everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Saturday, January 14, 2006 8:43 AM Subject: Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue-faith Le 13-janv.-06, à 19:13, Benjamin Udell wrote in part: I'm wondering whether we mean the same thing by truth preservation. I mean the validity of such arguments as exemplified (in trivial forms) by p, ergo p and pq, ergo p or whatever argument such that the conclusion is contained in the premisses. Or maybe I've been using the word deductive in too broad a sense? Actually it is the contrary. What you describe is classical truth preservation, which occurs with the classical deductive rules (so that they are sound and complete). In general truth preservation is a semantics dependant concept, where semantics can sometimes be given by some mathematical structures. I don't want to be too technical at this point. (Mathematically a semantics is a subspaces' classifier) How did you guess that I currently have patience and time on my hands? :-) Thanks for witnessing the interest. I wish only I would have more time for now. I have the patience I think :-) http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue
at least mental notice of it, especially in a scientific manner. Seeing and noting. Consciousness itself is also in a sense an experience, insofar as it involves a cognitive/affective subjectedness to things beyond one's entire control. In some way, with the talk of observers, I was thinking of experiencers. Perhaps you're taking experience in the sense of the experience sharable among members of a community, such that my personal, unsharable experience doesn't count as empirical. I sometimes trip over differences in meaning across traditions. Anyway, how would I know of (or believe in) my quantum immortality except by inference from abstractions? What sort of personal, non-sharable knowledge would one have of quantum immortality such that the knowledge of it is comparable with the knowledge of consciousness? Is it a subjective sense that it's somehow possible for oneself not to exist? -- i.e., not a consciousness of immortality, but a consciousness of an underlying impossibility of mortality? Something like that? [Ben] Nevertheless, I've liked the idea of distinguishing an inclusive 1st--2nd person we, both addressor and addressee, from an exclusive 1st person addressor-only, so I'm glad to see it pop up in this context. [Russell] I think we can credit Bruno with this distinction :) I'll count that credit as established. Best, Ben Udell - Original Message - From: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, January 13, 2006 12:13 AM Subject: Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue On Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 11:12:13PM -0500, Benjamin Udell wrote: Russell, list, Tegmark's 4 level Multiverse (actually the Multiverse is only one of the levels) does not really have viewpoints at each level. In my book, which largely follows the tradition of this list, there is 3 viewpoints identified: 1st person, 1st person plural and 3rd person. The 3rd person corresponds to the bird viewpoint of the Multiverse, or Tegmark Level 3 'verse. Calling it a viewpoint is a stretch of the language since necessarily observers must be embedded in the Multiverse. Where does Tegmark say that the Multiverse is only one of the levels? Which one? Multiverse was coined by David Deutsch to refer to the many worlds of MWI. This corresponds to Tegmark's level 3 parallel universe. I follow this terminology, as do many others on this list. We also tend to use the terms Plenitude or Platonia to refer to his Level 4 parallel universe. The other levels have not been christened so to speak. Tegmark uses multiverse to refer to any type of parallel universe - which I think contradicts usual usage. What is meant by viewpoint? Tegmark's elementary description of the four levels sounds like the outline of four viewpoints, with frog and bird marking the extremes of a four-step set of gradations. Level IV is associated with pure maths. Level III is associated with alternatives among cases, which marks it as associated with maths of logic, information, probability, etc., despite what Tegmark says about logic's being the most general and underlying thing in maths. Level III is more abstract than Level II and actualizes alternate outcomes across quantum branchings, while Level II actualizes alternate outcomes in various times and places along a single branch, so that the two levels come out the same in their features. Level II seems associable with statistical theory, some areas of information theory, and some other fields deal in a general way with gathering data from various actual places and times and drawing ampliatively-inductive conclusions from parts, sampl! es, etc., to totalities. Level I, with its possibly idiosyncratic constants, initial conditions, historical dependencies, seems associable with physical, chemical, life sciences and human social studies. So those seem four viewpoints with distinctive content and associations, though not the kind of content which the idea of viewpoint seems to have received on the everything list, which is decidedly not to say that there's anything wrong with the kind of content given on the everything list to the idea of viewpoint. Is it Tegmark's view, that the bird's eye view is associated particularly with Level III, or does it depend on ideas as developed on the everything list? Why wouldn't a view be associated with Level IV as well? (I thought that, at least in Tegmark's view, the bird's eye view _was_ Level IV). The term bird/frog viewpoint is Tegmark's, which he used in his 1998 paper. I can well imagine applying to his 2003 multilevel scheme. The association of 3rd person viewpoint (not bird viewpoint) with the Multiverse is mine, and is justified on the basis that all observers must be embedded in quantum mechanical many worlds structure. This result is derived by assuming a level 4 plenitude, and is given in my 2004 paper Why Occams Razor
Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue-faith
Bruno, list, [Ben] Bruno, list, If I understand you correctly, then you mean, more generally: G* \ G will correspond to any true conclusion that the machine can draw by other than deductive (= truth-preservative)inference. [Bruno] Yes. Except that if deduction are generally thought indeed as truth preservative, truth preservation is far more general than deduction. If I get the time and the patience of the lister, I could one day introduce you to some typical lobian entity which are NOT machine for illustrating more concretely such phenomena. The incompleteness phenomena itself illustrates that truth preservation is much more general than deduction. I'm wondering whether we mean the same thing by truth preservation. I mean the validity of such arguments as exemplified (in trivial forms) by p, ergo p and pq, ergo p or whatever argument such that the conclusion is contained in the premisses. Or maybe I've been using the word deductive in too broad a sense? I tend to think, for instance, of the reductio ad absurdum as deductive in a broad sense, because I'm trying to differentiate simply in terms of truth-(non)preservativeness and falsity-(non)preservativeness of the overall reasoning process in which such a piece of reasoning takes place. How did you guess that I currently have patience and time on my hands? :-) Best, Ben Udell
Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue-faith
Bruno, list,
If I understand you correctly, then you mean, more generally:
G* \ G will correspond to any true conclusion that the machine can draw by
other than deductive (= truth-preservative)inference.
Best, Ben Udell
- Original Message -
From: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: Everything-List List everything-list@eskimo.com
Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 10:03 AM
Subject: Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue-faith
Le 09-janv.-06, à 18:30, Benjamin Udell a écrit :
By ampliative induction I mean, not mathematical induction.
Nice! I hope you will be patient enough to see that this is a good
description of G* \ G.
G characterises the self-referential discourse of the lobian machine,
which is fundamentally a machine capable of using mathematical
induction(+).
G* \ G will correspond to anything true that the machine can guess
without using mathematical induction.
Bruno
(+) IF a property is such that 1) it is true for 0, and 2) if true for
n it is true for n+1; THEN it will be true for all numbers.
More compactly: {P(0) [for all n: P(n) - P(n+1)]} - for all n
P(n).
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue
Bruno, list, It occurred to me that I ought not merely to wing it on the meaning of theology as a word. There are various places online to look it up, but this is an interesting one and, anyway, some may find this to be an introduction to a good resource. From the Century Dictionary http://www.global-language.com/century/ (About the really rather useful Century Dictionary: http://www.leoyan.com/century-dictionary.com/why.php ) (Requires installing software) Century Dictionary, Vol. VIII, Page 6274, Theologus to Theorbo (DjVu) http://www.leoyan.com/century-dictionary.com/08/index08.djvu?djvuoptspage=66 , (DjVu Highlighted), (Java) (JPEG) theology (the¯-ol' o¯-ji), n. [ ME. theologie, OF. theologie, F. théologie = Pr. teologia = Sp. teología = Pg. theologia = It. teologia = D. G. theologie = Sw. Dan. teologi, LL. theologia, Gr. theología, a speaking concerning God, theológos, speaking of God (see theologue), theós, god, + légein, speak.] The science concerned with ascertaining, classifying, and systematizing all attainable truth concerning God and his relation to the universe; the science of religion; religious truth scientifically stated. The ancient Greeks used the word to designate the history of their gods; early Christian writers applied it to the doctrine of the nature of God; Peter Abelard, ill the twelfth century, first began to employ it to denote scientific instruction concerning God and the divine life. Theology differs from religion as the science of any subject differs from the subject matter itself. Religion in the broadest sense is a life of right affections and right conduct toward God; theology is a scientific knowledge of God and of the life which reverence and allegiance toward him require. Theology is divided, in reference to the sources whence the knowledge is derived, into natural theology, which treats of God and divine things in so far as their nature is disclosed through human consciousness, through the material creation, and through the moral order discernible in the course of history apart from specific revelation, and revealed theology, which treats of the same subject-matter as mad! e known in the scriptures of the 0ld and the New Testament. The former is theistic merely; the latter is Christian, and includes the doctrine of salvation by Christ, and of future rewards and punishments. In reference to the ends sought and the methods of treatment, theology is again divided into theoretical theology, which treats of the doctrines and principles of the divine life for the purpose of scientific and philosophical accuracy, and practical theology, which treats of the duties of the divine life for immediate practical ends. Theology is further divided, according to subject-matter and methods, into various branches, of which the principal are given below. Ac Theologie hath tened me ten score tymes, The more I muse there-inne the mistier it seemeth. Piers Plowman (B), x. 180. Theology, what is it but the science of things divine? Hooker, Eccles. Polity, iii. 8. Theology, properly and directly, deals with notional apprehension; religion with imaginative. J. H. Newman, Gram. of Assent, p. 115. --Ascetical theology. See ascetical. --Biblical theology, that branch of theology which has for its object to set forth the knowledge of God and the divine life as gathered from a large study of the Bible, as opposed to a merely minute study of particular texts on the one hand, and to a mere use of philosophical methods on the other. --Dogmatic theology, that department of theology which has for its object a connected and scientific statement of theology as a complete and harmonious science as authoritatively held and taught by the church. --Exegetical theology. See exegetical. --Federal theology, a system of theology based upon the idea of two covenants between God and man--the covenant of nature, or of works, before the fall, by which eternal life was promised to man on condition of his perfect obedience to the moral law, and the covenant of grace, after the fall, by which salvation and eternal life are promised to man by the free grace of God. Kloppenburg, professor of theology at Franeker in the Netherlands (died 1652), originated the system, and it was perfected (1648) by John Koch (Cocceius), successor of Kloppenburg in the same chair. See Cocceian. --Fundamental theology, that branch of systematic theology which vindicates man's knowledge of God by the investigation of its grounds and sources in general, and of the trustworthiness of the Christian revelation in particular, and which therefore includes both natural theology and the evidences of Christianity. --Genevan theology. See Genevan. --Historical theology, the science of the history and growth of Christian doctrines. --Homiletic theology. Same as homiletics. --Liberal theology. See liberal Christianity, under liberal.
Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue
theology. On the other hand, if you have a certain appetite for trouble, then maybe theology is the way to go, assuming that you don't simply thereby drive away your desired audience. Also, some kinds of fame are always unexpected and often regretted. You don't want to win the wrong kind of lottery. Some popular columnist or pundit happens upon your theory, vituperates semi-literately against it for thousands or millions to read, and suddenly you're a Bad Guy to thousands or millions who know nothing about you. In more general form, it's one of the ! oldest and most common stories: You'll be on unfamiliar turf and your habits and instincts on unfamiliar turf may end up mis-serving you. Anyway, the bad-celebrity problem can happen even within academe. [Bruno] the UDA argument explains only but completely that if the comp hyp. is true then necessarily matter emerges from mind. Because this sounds so weird I have begin a derivation, at first just in order to illustrate what that could mean. It would be interesting to see such a clarification of the Universal Dovetailer Argument. [Bruno] The problem is that physics does never really address the mind-body problem Yes, but I was referring to the fact that, even aside from that issue, it seems fairly presumable that physical science is incomplete. Can you show that the UDA shows that the physical arises from the mental, no matter how incomplete our knowledge of physical principles and laws? Or can you at least show that the UDA shows that the physical arises from the mental under, let's say, most families of physical theories which we may come to hold? [Bruno] Well I already distinguish the mind from the soul. The mind is a very general notion comprehending all imaterial notion from the number PI to the game of bridge and anything not reasonnablu described by pieces of Stuff (even nations and person belongs to mind). Well, that clarifies. I've read Rucker's book _Mind Tools: The Five Levels of Mathematical Reality_, though not his book Infinity and the Mind which you mention further on. But I get the idea. A question arises for me here and elsewhere. To what extent do you hold with Tegmark's Four-Level Multiverse view and to what extent is your theory logically linked to it? I ask this because, for instance, in such a Four-Level world, I'd expect not just two salient views (bird's eye frog's eye, 3rd-person 1st-person, etc.), but four. I'd expect not just mind-matter dichotomies but 4-chotomies. And so on. In some cases, one may argue that one distinction across the 4-chotomy is more important than the other, say in the case of inference, where arguably the truth-perservative versus truth-nonpreservative is a more important distinction, more like a chasm, than is the distinction between falsity-preservative and falsity-nonpreservative, but I'd still want to know about that the four-way distinction because its relevance should not be presumptively precluded, especially in a Tegmarkian four-level Multiverse. For me there it's partly a matter of some non-maximal degree of sur! eness on my part, and partly a matter of my motivation; I take an interest in patterns of four-way logical distinctions, though I do wander from that interest in an interesting place like this. Best, Ben Udell - Original Message - From: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 10:52 AM Subject: Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue Le 11-janv.-06, à 17:57, Benjamin Udell a écrit : Bruno, list, Well, on the basis of that which you say below (much of which I unfortunately only vaguely understand), where you don't focus it all decidedly on the particular issues of faith and belief, it actually does now sound more like some sort of theology. It has various elements of theology in the broader or more comprehensive sense. Thanks for telling. Note that it is all normal you only vaguely understand my last post, because it is a very concise summary. The thing that it seems to be missing is gods or God. Considered as theology, it seems like a wheel sorely missing its hub. The neoplatonician use often the term God for ultimate explanation, and also use often (but it is an idiosyncrasies) the names of the greek Gods for concept (EROS = love, THANATOS = death, etc.). Strictly speaking, it has nothing to do with the judeo-christian notion of God. Still, I like to define axiomatically God by something so big that it escapes any attempt to define it, except perhaps in some negative way. In that sense I could argue that the God of comp theology can be identified either with either the ultimate explanation, the root of everything or even with the unnameable SELF which caracterizes the comp first person. Perhaps the chapter of God will be a necessary blank page in comp treatise. Now, I think that GOD as a term has much more
Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue
Russell, list, Tegmark's 4 level Multiverse (actually the Multiverse is only one of the levels) does not really have viewpoints at each level. In my book, which largely follows the tradition of this list, there is 3 viewpoints identified: 1st person, 1st person plural and 3rd person. The 3rd person corresponds to the bird viewpoint of the Multiverse, or Tegmark Level 3 'verse. Calling it a viewpoint is a stretch of the language since necessarily observers must be embedded in the Multiverse. Where does Tegmark say that the Multiverse is only one of the levels? Which one? What is meant by viewpoint? Tegmark's elementary description of the four levels sounds like the outline of four viewpoints, with frog and bird marking the extremes of a four-step set of gradations. Level IV is associated with pure maths. Level III is associated with alternatives among cases, which marks it as associated with maths of logic, information, probability, etc., despite what Tegmark says about logic's being the most general and underlying thing in maths. Level III is more abstract than Level II and actualizes alternate outcomes across quantum branchings, while Level II actualizes alternate outcomes in various times and places along a single branch, so that the two levels come out the same in their features. Level II seems associable with statistical theory, some areas of information theory, and some other fields deal in a general way with gathering data from various actual places and times and drawing ampliatively-inductive conclusions from parts, samples! , etc., to totalities. Level I, with its possibly idiosyncratic constants, initial conditions, historical dependencies, seems associable with physical, chemical, life sciences and human social studies. So those seem four viewpoints with distinctive content and associations, though not the kind of content which the idea of viewpoint seems to have received on the everything list, which is decidedly not to say that there's anything wrong with the kind of content given on the everything list to the idea of viewpoint. Is it Tegmark's view, that the bird's eye view is associated particularly with Level III, or does it depend on ideas as developed on the everything list? Why wouldn't a view be associated with Level IV as well? (I thought that, at least in Tegmark's view, the bird's eye view _was_ Level IV). Both of the 1st person viewpoints correspond to the frog viewpoint, the difference being the 1st person plural is an objective viewpoint - all things in the 1pp vpt will be agreed upon by 2 or more observers, whereas the 1p vpt is subjective, containing items such as quantum immortality that are _necessarily_ subjective. The idea of quantum immortality doesn't seem like something that you could call an experience. If you found yourself alive even after what seemed an unlikely long period of time, after a series of periodic extraordinary escapes, any other observers would agree that you're still alive -- in other words, you'd still be alive from the 1pp vpt. Only in the case where _no records_ remain of your much earlier existence, nothing but your personal memory of it, would quantum immortality seem possibly like an experience, an especially subjective one. The quantum immortality idea seems like, not an experience, but an idea requiring one's intellectually adopting some sort of 3rd-person view. Nevertheless, I've liked the idea of distinguishing an inclusive 1st--2nd person we, both addressor and addressee, from an exclusive 1st person addressor-only, so I'm glad to see it pop up in this context. Best, Ben Udell I have tried to identify 1pp with G and 1p with G*, but I'm really unsure that the analogy is sound. Cheers On Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 01:18:21PM -0500, Benjamin Udell wrote: A question arises for me here and elsewhere. To what extent do you hold with Tegmark's Four-Level Multiverse view and to what extent is your theory logically linked to it? I ask this because, for instance, in such a Four-Level world, I'd expect not just two salient views (bird's eye frog's eye, 3rd-person 1st-person, etc.), but four. I'd expect not just mind-matter dichotomies but 4-chotomies. And so on. In some cases, one may argue that one distinction across the 4-chotomy is more important than the other, say in the case of inference, where arguably the truth-perservative versus truth-nonpreservative is a more important distinction, more like a chasm, than is the distinction between falsity-preservative and falsity-nonpreservative, but I'd still want to know about that the four-way distinction because its relevance should not be presumptively precluded, especially in a Tegmarkian four-level Multiverse. For me there it's partly a matter of some non-maximal degree of s! ur! eness on my part, and partly a matter of my motivation; I take an interest in patterns of four-way logical distinctions, though I
Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue
Bruno, list, Well, on the basis of that which you say below (much of which I unfortunately only vaguely understand), where you don't focus it all decidedly on the particular issues of faith and belief, it actually does now sound more like some sort of theology. It has various elements of theology in the broader or more comprehensive sense. The thing that it seems to be missing is gods or God. Considered as theology, it seems like a wheel sorely missing its hub. At this point, in terms of descriptive accuracy, this hublessness seems the hub of the matter. So it sounds like a kind of psycho-cosmology, or -- well, not a psychophysics, but, in order to suggest your computationalist primacy of the soul -- a physiopsychics (in English, if the adjective is physicopsychical, it's a little less suggestive of paranormalism, which is strongly associated nowadays with the adjective psychic.) (C.S. Peirce held that matter is congealed mind. Though he thought that space would turn out to be curved, he was pre-Einstein and saw matter as a kind of spentness and barrenness rather than as a tight lockup of energy.) Your theory may be empirically refutable but, if it survives such tests, what is there to support its affirmation? Is derivability of physical laws from laws of mind really enough? An information theorist, John Collier, said at the peirce email forum peirce-l that he had managed to derive each two among logic, information theory, and probability theory, from the third remaining, though I don't know whether he ever published these derivations. Have you shown that your laws of mind cannot be derived from physics in a way that shows that the nonderivability is not merely a result of our insufficent knowledge of physical law? You may also encounter some flak on your conception of mind. For what it's worth, for my part, I would hold that a key factor in intelligence, at least, which learns and grows, is an evolvability factor, a kind of sufficient un-boundness to its codes and its methods and systems of interpretation, in order to be able to test those codes, methods, systems and to do so not only by trial and error but more sophisticated kinds of learning and testing, such that memory and active recollection take on particular importance. Do your laws of mind take evolvability into account? Maybe they don't need to, though, depending on what you mean by mind. I tend to think that the mind must involve the retention and evolvability factor in some radical way, but it's quite vague to me how that would work. Maybe there are things which could fairly be called mind though I would never have thought of them that way. If I understood your theory I might also try to challenge the idea that the soul is both ontologically AND epistemologically primary. Actually I wouldn't use, for my views, the term primary in a strong foundationalist sense, I just mean that, for various reasons, I regard the (sequential) order of knowledge to be the opposite of the (sequential) order of being. Of course, in logic, some oppositions seems to reverse themselves across changes of level, so who knows, I'm not totally convinced about my own views either. Best, Ben Udell - Original Message - From: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2006 10:38 AM Subject: Re: Paper+Exercises+Naming Issue Hi Benjamin, List, I will comment your long post, taking into account some posts from its sequel (to avoid repetition). But I will try to make a sort of synthesis so that people will be able to recast the present thread, concerned with the theology-naming issue, and the more general goal of the list which consists globally in the search of a TOE (Theory of Everything) and more particularly consists (at our present stage) to find a measure on the computational histories. For this I need to summarise my own contribution in the list, which consists mainly in explaining results I got in the seventies, published in the eighties (in obscure journals or proceedings though) and eventually defended as a PhD thesis in France in 1998. This includes many things from the necessity of distinguishing first and third person notions, the first person comp indeterminacy, the comp immortality and its theoretical confirmation through the quantum suicide and quantum immortality, but mainly all this can be sum up into the reversal result. This is the result that IF we assume the computationalist hypothesis in the cognitive science then the physical science cannot be fundamental and are derivable from the laws of mind. With the comp hyp. the laws of mind can be taken as the laws of computation and computability, although a precise formulation would lead, well, to our current naming issue. The reduction of physics appears to be both epistemological and ontological. That means that not only physics will appear
Re: ROSS MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE - The Simplest Yet Theory of Everything
Some years ago a U.S. judge ruled that business methods could be patented, perhaps he wanted to create a legacy for himself, anyway then he kicked the bucket. Rulings and case law have proliferated since then. (Testing out a new legal principle on that old case-by-case basis, ka-ching, ka-ching.) Congress still hasn't cleaned the mess up. So, if business methods can be patented, then why not intellectual methods? That's an even more terrible idea. Maybe I should patent or copyright it in order to prevent anybody from carrying it out. Of course Penrose in Britain was granted a copyright (which I hear has expired) for the concept of the Penrose Tile -- the ability to create an acyclic pattern using only two tiles. He started proceedings against somebody for that (they settled out of court). - Original Message - From: Johnathan Corgan [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2005 2:01 PM Subject: Re: ROSS MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE - The Simplest Yet Theory of Everything ohn M wrote: Seriously: there are countries where a patent can be granted only if a working model can be produced (this is against the perpetuum mobile deluge of patents). It may be valid for a TOE as well. The patent process is designed to provide an inventor with certain legal rights regarding the use of his invention by others. To attempt to patent a scientific theory (regardless of its scientific merits or lack thereof) in the guise of a model process is both frivolous and bizarre. I am at a loss to understand the motivations of the original poster in doing this. On the other hand, I did not intend to shut down discussion of the actual hypotheses presented. -Johnathan
Re: ROSS MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE - The Simplest Yet Theory of Everything
You're right, I shouldn't say that a copyright is granted. The issue in copyrights is establishing that one in fact has the copyright, i.e., that one is the originator of the work or that one has obtained rights to it, and that it's something such that the government should recognize it as being subject to copyright law. I've never heard of a pattern as something akin to a patent or a copyright, and a quick check of dictionary.com didn't clarify. Is it a concept used in Britain and/or Australia? - Original Message - From: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2005 5:35 PM Subject: Re: ROSS MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE - The Simplest Yet Theory of Everything On Wed, Oct 05, 2005 at 06:51:42PM -0400, Benjamin Udell wrote: Of course Penrose in Britain was granted a copyright (which I hear has expired) for the concept of the Penrose Tile -- the ability to create an acyclic pattern using only two tiles. He started proceedings against somebody for that (they settled out of court). Surely not a copyright. And copyrights are not granted, they're invested in the work once created. Perhaps you mean a pattern, if not a patent. -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics 0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02
Re: More than one kind of 'causality'?
Marc, The most noticeable characteristic of what mental causality may amount to, seems to be the causal or quasi-causal play of decisions, achievements, satisfactions, understandings, etc., in terms of the logical evidentiary dependences among them, and between each of them and other things. The dependence is ultimately on things which, in themselves, strike us as being _side effects, after-effects_, the like: signs, indications, similarities, implications, evidences, etc., but which, as chosen, achieved, liked, fancied, expected, noticed, remembered, etc., (quasi-)determine or solicit us in manifold ways in our further decisions, performances, satisfactions, understandings (the effects are certainly not confined within minds, either). E.g., as we can see in the ways that markets behave, the factoring in of "information" or expectations/knowledge so on. All this is in addition to other kinds of dependence embodied in people and society. At this point I would suggest doing an inventory of kinds of dependence, including complex dependences. I can think of at least three others besides the one above: corrective dependence (via feedback), including very precisely corrective dependence, on _output or "final" conditions_, seen especially in organisms generally; statistical dependence, including proximity-proportionate dependence, on _intermediate-stage conditions_, seen especially in matter generally; and a dependence, including sensitive dependence of transition rules (which sounds like the stuff of some sort of inverse-optimizational problems to me, but I haven't seen that said, I'm no expert on any of this), on _initial conditions_, seen especially in dynamic systems generally. Since the question of what are the most fundamental dependences may vary with how commonsensical, how imaginative, etc., one is willing to be (not to mention, onwhat one actually knows), I usually end up with no opinion at all about what, if anything, is most basic in the biggest picture. But all these kinds of dependence seem rather general, -- feedback dependence is not confined to biology, for instance -- and for my part, I don't know how to characterize them with regard to causation except to say that they're at least causationlike. When you speak of forces and agent-minds, I get the feeling that you're thinking of Tegmark's Level I, and this stuff might be general enough to think of in association with Level II -- I don't mean the broad structure of Level II, I mean that the generality may be appropriate for the sort of diversity which one might expect across Level II, at least "our" Level II inflationary multiverse. (Meanwhile, actually, I've no firm view on whether there's a Multiverse, Tegmark's or otherwise.) But anywaythe kinds of dependencemay be things, or point to things, which you might want to take into account in your model. If the Multiverse of which you're thinking is Tegmark's, then I would note that it has four levels. I suppose that it could be that it is as you have it, or seem to have it, that two kinds of causality are apparent at Level I, and a third kind, a logical-consilience kind ofcausality,reaches across all levels. Yet, in such basic issues, one might wonder whether to look for more regularity or symmetry than that, though I admit that, in the biggest picture, there needs to be a "place" for asymmetry too. Regards, Ben Udell - Original Message - From: Marc Geddes To: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 4:00 AM Subject: More than one kind of 'causality'? Here's a speculation: The model I'm working with for my theory seems to suggest 3 different fundamental kinds of 'cause and effect'. The first is physical causality - motion of physical objects through space. Thesecond is mental causality - agents making choices which effect agents The third iswhat I call 'Multiverse causality', a sort of highly abtsract 'causality' close to the notion of logical consistency/consilience - that which ensures that knowledge has a certain ordered 'structure' to it . Anyone have any thoughts on this?-- Please vist my website:http://www.riemannai.orgScience, Sci-Fi and Philosophy---THE BRAIN is wider than the sky,For, put them side by side,The one the other will includeWith ease, and you beside. -Emily Dickinson'The brain is wider than the sky'http://www.bartleby.com/113/1126.html
Re: Summary of seed ideas for my developing TOE - 'The Sentient Centered Theory Of Metaphysics' (SCTOM)
Marc seems unclear between unperceivable and unperceived, maybe clearing that up would help. If everything real needs some sort of perceivability, then everything real would need not only to be interpretable and decodable, but also to be verifiable, confirmable, corroborable, etc., by interpreted signs' (not symbols per se, just anything significant) recipients on the basis of earlier/current/later experiences. Evolution confirms/disconfirms in a way; but percipient intelligent organisms prefer to check our interpretations before evolution gets a chance to find them wrong and to discard them by discarding us from the gene pool. If reality needs perceivability, not merely decodability by something plantlike and unlearning, then it needs not only interpretability (meaning, value, etc.), but also observability-in-light-of-interpretations and verifiability (validity, cogency, soundness, etc.) as to meaning. This seems more or less the view of typical working scientists (of whom I'm not one) -- if it's beyond all observability by anything whatsoever, even in principle,! then is it even real? One can argue about it. But if we're talking about a requirement for actual perception, then we're talking about a need by reality for actual observation, verification, etc. (and ultimately more science than seems possible for us finite creatures to produce). Bishop Berkeley might like it, though. Regards, Ben Udell - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 6:07 PM Subject: Re: Summary of seed ideas for my developing TOE - 'The Sentient Centered Theory Of Metaphysics' (SCTOM) OK, you said All comments welcome. You asked for it. First, there's a lot to read here, so I assumed you were presenting the basic gist of your ideas in the first few paragraphs, and so I have a few comments about those paragraphs. I commend you for trying to explain values as part of the framework. I've whinced before when I've read some thought experiments on this list that depended on accepting the existence of such ideas as good and bad. I believe in the existence of good and bad, but one needs to support his/her belief in good and bad and not take them as a given. It seems that your limitation of reality to meaningful existence is actually rejecting Mathematical Platonism. Why is consciousness required to make a mathematical truth real? I thought that you are trying to deal with all of existence, not just meaningful existence, since your theory tries to explain how the most fundamental properties of existence facts fit together into a unified metaphysical framework. And yet here you limit existence to what we can perceive. The core assumption is that existence without perception is meaningless. Reality requires not only raw data but something to *interpret* that data, to supply meaning to it. This can only be done by consciousness of *some* kind. If something was hypothesized to exist that could in no way directly or indirectly affect the conscious perceptions of *any* possible observer, then in what sense could it be said to exist at all? Even if it could be successfully argued that it did have some kind of abstract philosophical existence, it could never have any possible value to sentient minds. For the purposes of understanding general intelligence, it suffices to define that which exists as that which could directly or indirectly ( i.e. in principle) affect the perceptions of *some* possible conscious observer. So you've eliminated the whole realm of unperceived reality in the superset of existence. You've eliminated the motivation to bring unperceived reality into the realm of perceived reality, since the former does not exist. Reading these metaphysical theories doesn't really impress me when I realize that these theories really don't have anything new in them that the ancient Greeks (for instance) didn't have. Of course the big gap in all of these theories, which I believe will never be filled, is the integration of consciousness (in general) into physics. Even if we integrate human consciousness into it (which I don't think is going to happen), that doesn't cover the whole gammit of what consciousness is in the whole universe. Who knows, there's so much we don't know about stars (and they are so big) that perhaps some stars have consciousness of some kind that is outside of the definition of how we would define it, but may be even more enlightened about the universe, and yet we may never know. Tom
Re: White Rabbit vs. Tegmark
I don't see what practical difference there is between saying all universes exist and we need to think with logical consistency about the subject and all logically possible universes exist. Whatever the case, a related point might be worth considering: whether logic is the only such invariant involved. Level IV is supposed to involve variations of mathematical structure. But would there be various universes for various structures in deductive mathematical theories of optimization, probability, information, or logic? If probability theory supplied various different structures for different universes, it could certainly complicate the measure problem -- one could be contending with various theories of measure itself as sources of differences between various universes. If, on the other hand, all these mathematics (and they amount together to a great deal of mathematics, maths often regarded as applied, but also often regarded as mathematically deep) place no additional constraints, nor broaden the variety of universes, then they seem correlated not to Level IV, but perhaps to Level III, since Level III (if I understand and phrase it correctly) neither adds constraints nor broadens the variety of universes on top of what one already has at Level II, and also since they seem to be mathematics of the structures of the kinds of alternatives which MWI says are all actualized. Best, Ben Udell Hal Finney writes: Brent Meeker writes: I doubt that the concept of logically possible has any absolute meaning. It is relative to which axioms and predicates are assumed. Not long ago the quantum weirdness of Bell's theorem, or special relativity would have been declared logically impossible. Is it logically possible that Hamlet doesn't kill Polonius? Is it logically possible that a surface be both red and green? I agree. We went around on this logically possible stuff a few weeks ago. A universe is not constrained by logical possibility. Our understanding of what is or is not a possible universe is constrained by our mental abilities, which include logic as one of their components. If I say a universe exists where glirp glorp glurp, that is not meaningful. But it doesn't constrain or limit any universe, it is simply a non-meaningful description. It is a problem in my mind and my understanding, not a problem in the nature of the multiverse. If I say a universe exists where p and not p, that has similar problems. It it is not a meaningful description. Similarly if I say a universe exists where pi = 3. Saying this demonstrates an inconsistency in my mathematical logic. It doesn't limit any universes. More complex descriptions, like whether green can be red, come down to our definitions and what we mean. Maybe we are inconsistent in our minds and failing to describe a meaningful universe; maybe not. But again it does not limit what universes exist. To summarize, logic is not a property of universes. It is a tool that our minds use to understand the world, including possible universes. We may fail to think clearly or consistently or logically about what can and cannot exist, but that doesn't change the world out there. Rather than expressing the AUH as the theory that all logically possible universes exist, I would just say that all universes exist. And of course as we try to understand the nature of such a multiverse, we will attempt to be logically consistent in our reasoning. That's where logic comes in. Hal Finney
Re: Induction vs Rubbish
Patrick Leahy wrote: 66~~ * White Rabbit: cognizable universes require a high degree of regularity for the survival of SAS (not to mention evolution), as above. Hence induction in any cognizable universe will work most of the time (which is all it does anyway), for a sufficient set of properties of the world. The key point is that this is not *every* property, and not all of the time. Hence there should be universes in which SAS can survive pretty well, but contain a wide variety of phenomena which cannot be unified into a simple theory. An extreme case is the rubbish universe proposed against Lewis, in which the extra phenomena are completely undetectable. Lewis takes this as a serious objection and counters by arguing that it is not possible to say that such universes are more likely. As scientists, I guess we would only take seriously detectable rubbish. NB: whatever the measure you use, unless extremely artificial, the rubbish almost certainly would have much higher entropy than talking Whi! te Rabbits. Think of reality has having snow, like a badly-tuned TV. ~~99 The induction-friendly universe with so much detectable rubbish that a wide variety of phenomena cannot be unified into a simple theory sounds like a universe where induction works but surmise, or inference to the simplest explanation, faces grave difficulties and too often fails. In other words, in difficult cases, efforts toward surmise -- i.e., rambling speculations about half-formed ideas that probably won't pan out to anything -- really will lead too often too far astray to be practicable, and cogent everyday surmises would be few and far between -- not everyday or quotidian at all. A greatly increased difficulty in the formation of explanatory hypotheses would, it seems, hamper not only science but SASs in general. Would intelligence and commonsense perception tend, on balance, to be useful in such a world? It sounds like a world which would allow vegetable-like systems (i.e., essentially mindless in the usual sense) but be severely punitive toward SASs inclined to t! ry to be shrewd or clever and to try, for instance, to infer particular entities or events or universal laws (as opposed to prolonged tendencies) as explanatory reasons, or to try to play architect instead of subsisting on the continuation of tendencies. It also sounds like the evolution or natural architecting of even merely vegetable-like systems would likely be under pressure to play it a lot safer than it does in our world, so that the systems thus evolved would tend to be not only vegetable-like but also a lot more generic than those which we see. I guess I'm trying to argue (unconfidently) or suggest, for what it's worth, that induction-friendly but much-detectable rubbish universes with SASs are induction-friendly but surmise-unfriendly universes with SASs, and that their measure would be rather small. Best regards, Ben Udell - Original Message - From: Patrick Leahy [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Alastair Malcolm [EMAIL PROTECTED]; EverythingList everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2005 9:11 AM Subject: Re: Induction vs Rubbish On Wed, 25 May 2005, Russell Standish wrote: On Tue, May 24, 2005 at 10:10:19PM +0100, Patrick Leahy wrote: Lewis also distinguishes between inductive failure and rubbish universes as two different objections to his model. I notice that in your articles both you and Russell Standish more or less run these together. I'm interested in this. Could you elaborate please? I haven't had the advantage of reading Lewis. If what you mean by by the first is why rubbish universes are not selected for, it is because properties of the selected universe follow a distribution with well defined probability, the universal prior like measure. This is dealt in section 2 of my paper. If you mean by failure of induction, why an observer (under TIME) continues to experience non-rubbish, then that is the white rabbit problem I deal with in section 3. It comes down to a robustness property of an observer, which is hypothesised for evolutionary reasons (it is not, evolutionarily speaking, a good idea to be confused by hunters wearing camouflage!) In that case, how am I conflating the two issues? If I'm barking up the wrong tree, I'd like to know. It's the second point where I think you conflate two problems. My distinction is a little different from Lewis' anyway. From my pov, it's a matter of degree, but one which makes a qualitative difference: * Failure of induction: the past fails to predict the future. This occurs in universes a la Hume where physical laws only appear to have been followed by some massive fluke. Also in universes which always had no, or very little, regularity. I claim that as soon as regularity breaks down to this extent, SAS cease to exist, so no matter how common these cases are, we
Re: An All/Nothing multiverse model
Norman's answer sounds pretty good to me. I also checked http://www.nothing.com/ found maybe or maybe not nothing there. Something's also at http://www.something.com - Ben Udell. - Original Message - From: Norman Samish [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Hal Ruhl [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 15, 2004 6:10 PM Subject: Re: An All/Nothing multiverse model Hal, I'm way out of my depth, but if I'm correctly interpreting what you are saying, it looks to me that your multiverse model cannot be valid. This is because it answers the question Why does anything exist? with the answer Because it's not possible to conceive of Nothing, since the concept of Nothing is Something. However, this answer requires Something that conceptualizes. Suppose that Something is not there? If there were Nothing, there could be no Something. Norman
Re: Subjective measure? How does that work?
One might ask Bob, what is the measure of Universes in which a Bob finds M but heeds M' without being suicidal or at least hazardous to his own health? At any rate, Bob could hardly have reached in sound mind body the cognitive height of many-worlds ideas without heeding M instead of M'. Why not stick with them's what brung you, Bob? (Also, it seems to me that Bob might well have to be at least partially heeding familiar M in order to function well enough to try to heed M'.) Of course, Bob could quip, Denial is not just a river in Egypt. To some extent, we all stick to one or another interpretation in spite of the interpretation's apparent incoherence, in spite of apparent contrary evidence. The fact that the incoherence or contrariness may be merely apparent is the temptation (we revise core ideas more reluctantly than others, rightly so) -- the temptation to go wrong persist even against a wind of disconfirming information. There is no surefire formula to avoid errors in any of these directions. There's open-mindedness (good) there's flakiness wishy-washyness (bad.) There's respect for what has stood the test of time so far (good) there's dogmatism (bad). (As a practical matter, as regards knowingly to play by a different set of rules than that of the reality which one lives -- it seems to me that psychologically biologically we are constituted so that we can't do that unless we are insane, unlikely to be argued back to sanity.! ) - Ben Udell Hal Finney writes: Wei Dai writes: Now suppose that two people, Alice and Bob, somehow agree that a measure M is the objectively correct measure, but Bob insists on using measure M' in making decisions. He says So what if universe A has a bigger measure than universe B according to M? I just care more about what happens in universe B than universe A, so I'll use M' which assigns a bigger measure to universe B. What can Alice say to Bob to convince him that he is not being rational? I don't see what the answer could be. How about if she whacks him on the head? Maybe that would knock some sense into him. Seriously, she could confront him with the reality that in the universe branch they are in, measure M works, while M' does not. Reality, whether in the form of a knock on the head or more peaceful interactions, is not subjective. Now, true, there would be branches in the multiverse where M' worked while M did not. Believers in objective measure would say that those branches are of low measure and so don't matter, but as you point out, Bob can argue symmetrically that this branch where he is stuck with Alice and M has worked is also, to him, of low measure. But we can solve this conundrum while retaining symmetry. Rationality should demand allegience to the observed measure. It is irrational to cling to a measure which has been rejected repeatedly by observations. If classical definitions of rationality don't have this property, we should fix them. Bob is irrational to hold to M' in a universe whose observations reveal M. Now, this will demand that in White Rabbit universes, ones where the quantum or thermodynamic laws just happen to fail due to bad luck, a rational person would have to abandon his (correct!) belief in a lawful universe and come to believe (incorrectly!) in miracles. However this is actually a reasonable requirement, since we are stipulating that such miracles have been observed. Hal Finney
Re: Modern Physical theory as a basis for Ethical and Existential Nihilism
Stathis is right. The moral axiomatic system will have to show that in moral/ethical issues we must allow ourselves to be guided by facts logic. **But even if it succeeds in showing that, one already has to have agreed to be guided by facts logic in order to be guided by the moral axiomatic system's argument.** One can read the dialogue (I forget which one) in which Socrates argues with somebody who believes that might makes right. Socrates engages his interlocutor into following the facts logic enough to follow his (Socrates') arguments. But in the end Socrates fails to convince him because in the end his interlocutor will not yield to facts logic. One can hold Socrates' particular arguments to be faulty but still see how it could all happen. Now, one may argue that up to a certain point it is impossible to ignore facts logic without being insane. That is true. But only up to a point. Otherwise we wouldn't have the saying, Denial is not just a river in Egypt.. (In! deed, logic facts are sometimes difficult to heed, we have to be sometimes quite toiling active in order to receive them, get them right, heed them -- to _allow_ them to determine us, our understanding behavior, in ways that they would not otherwise do, often against pressure for us to do otherwise.) - Ben Udell Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Let me give a clearer example. Suppose I say that I believe it is a good and noble thing for the strong to oppress the weak, even to the point of killing them; and that if I were in charge I would promote this moral position in schools, through the media, and with changes to the criminal law, so that eventually it becomes accepted as the norm. How are you going to argue against this? You can't point out any errors of fact because I haven't made any empirical claims (other than the trivial one that this is what I in fact believe). You may try to point out the dire social consequences of such a policy, but where in the above have I said anything about social consequences? Frankly, I don't care what the effects of my policy are because I consider the destruction of weaklings in as painful a manner as possible of the greatest importance, and if God is just, I believe that I will go to heaven for having stuck to my moral principles. I know that many people would be horrified by w! hat I propose, but I am certainly not the only one in history to have thought this way! The point is, you cannot argue against my moral position, because I don't present any arguments or make any claims. All you can do is disagree with me and state an alternative moral position. Wei Dai wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: If I stop with (a) above, I am simply saying that this is how I feel about suffering, and this feeling is not contingent on the state of affairs in any actual or possible world [there, I got it in!]. (a) as stated is ill defined. In order to actually reason with it in practice, you'd have to define what activity, cause, net, human, and suffering mean, but then it's hard to see how one can just have a feeling that statement (a), by now highly technical, is true. What about a slightly different variation of (a), where the definition of human or suffering is given a small tweak? How do you decide which of them reflects your true feelings? The mere presense of many similar but contradictory moral statements might give you a feeling of arbitrariness that causes you to reject all of them. Difficulties like this lead to the desire for a set of basic moral axioms that can be defined precisely and still be seen by everyone as obvious and non-arbitrary. Again, maybe it doesn't exist, but we can't know for sure unless we're much smarter than we actually are.
Re: Modern Physical theory as a basis for Ethical and Existential Nihilism
Morality, ethics, virtue, etc. imply a struggle for control -- at least within oneself, but often more widely. If morality had a set of obvious axioms, such as to lead to firm reliable answers to all moral questions in practice, it would be know-how, not morality. For everything there is a season a time, according to Ecclesiastes, but neither Ecclesiastes nor anything else always tells us just when those times seasons are. opportunity _ _ _ _ _ _ risk safeness _ _ _ _ _ _ _ futility ***For everything*** hope _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ fear confidence _ _ _ _ _ _ despair ***there is a season*** courage _ _ _ _ _ _ _ prudence due confidence _ _ _ _ realism ***and an out-of-season*** rashness _ _ _ _ _ _ _ cowardice complacency _ _ _ _ _ defeatism (Note: the above structure entails that Aristotle's doctrine of virtue as a 'mean' between two extremes is at best a sloppy heuristic that captures a sense of maintaining some sort of poise or grace under pressure.) Even when we agree on what the evil is -- a forest fire approaching the town for example -- still to fight it, may require the moral virtues of courage due confidence, lest in one's heart one succumb to cowardly or defeatist thoughts about the fire. To refuse to fight it instead to flee in one's car may require the moral virtues of prudence realism -- lest one succumb to rash or complacent thoughts about the fire. Sometimes boldness is good, sometimes caution is good. Courage is appropriately hopeful action despite pressure not to be hopeful. Pressure -- a struggle, as I said. Most traditional virtues can be defined in such manner. Why would one be under such pressure but through conflict among one's own values? The moral value system is not independent self-contained but depends on non-entirely-moral values -- the value of the town, the trees, etc. -- on knowledge on understanding things about oneself others. The moral value of the town is based on consideration! s of which many are themselves not moral or not directly moral. Morality cannot provide easy answers when easy answers cannot be provided for many relevant non-moral or not purely moral questions -- e.g, what are the stakes? what are the threats? what are the opportunities? Applying our axiomatic moral/ethical mathematic will probably land us in still more moral/ethical quandaries. We are left asking, when, specifically, singularly, are these seasons times of which Ecclesiastes speaks? Of course we're left asking. How could it be otherwise? Furthermore, from a risk-management perspective, opportunity equals risk. Safeness equals futility. As Freud said, life presents a choice not between pleasure pain, but between both neither. Any moral system will set up opportunity/risk situations where the risk is that of violating the morality. If we're talking not just about morality in the usual narrow sense, but in the sense of excellence, the virtues of character, then morality guarantees trials tests for those who would be moral. (That doesn't make morality bad -- a bad morality is one that tends to assure that those who seek to be moral shall lose.) And to the extent that we disagree about human nature, disagreements about morality may run corespondingly deep. - Ben Udell - Original Message - From: Wei Dai [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2004 9:00 PM Subject: Re: Modern Physical theory as a basis for Ethical and Existential Nihilism Stathis Papaioannou wrote: If I stop with (a) above, I am simply saying that this is how I feel about suffering, and this feeling is not contingent on the state of affairs in any actual or possible world [there, I got it in!] Wei Dai responded: (a) as stated is ill defined. In order to actually reason with it in practice, you'd have to define what activity, cause, net, human, and suffering mean, but then it's hard to see how one can just have a feeling that statement (a), by now highly technical, is true. What about a slightly different variation of (a), where the definition of human or suffering is given a small tweak? How do you decide which of them reflects your true feelings? The mere presense of many similar but contradictory moral statements might give you a feeling of arbitrariness that causes you to reject all of them. Difficulties like this lead to the desire for a set of basic moral axioms that can be defined precisely and still be seen by everyone as obvious and non-arbitrary. Again, maybe it doesn't exist, but we can't know for sure unless we're much smarter than we actually are.
Re: Modern Physical theory as a basis for Ethical and Existential Nihilism
Sorry. Can't help myself : Is there any point in completing that term paper really? Actually, between the above remark made in fun, the subsequent discussion, there are things in common. Above, the joke is that, if one adopts nihilism the view that nothing is worth caring about, then what value would one place in knowing this or in knowing anything? Ethics pertains to feelings values regarding power, submission, governing oneself, governing being governed, decision-making. Then there are also feelings values regarding other things, including knowledge, what's worth knowing, exploring, etc., standards of evidence, etc. We have no word like ethics for it although one might argue that the word philosophy was originally meant to mean it. These values with regard to cognition knowledge are values which in a refined deepened form motivate science, they dissolve under nihilism, along, therefore, with science itself. But this in turn leads to the dissolution of nihilism, which used scientific ideas. Vicious circle there. The subsequent discussion (below) concerns whether we really decide anything whether there's any scientific basis for values regarding decisions (or anything else). If it's all out of our hands, then we decide nothing, ethics is an illusion. But likewise, if it's all out of our hands, what is our basis for thinking we have any access to truth? It seems that we are determined to believe X or Y just as we are determined to do X or Y. So nihilism is just another determined belief. But if in spite of this there is truth for us to care about which we can do approach, then why shouldn't we think that there are right virtuous decisions for us to care about which we can do approach? (Is it that truth is real but right virtue are not? But that's another argument.) (Also, a random thought: we talk about the deterministic as if we were still talking about a coercive mechanical force imposed on us, rather than about mathematical regularities which we believe hold in principle. One question to ask is, who are we such that we dis-associate ourselves from the particular complex weavings of regularities that we represent?) Pretty amazing for a high-school senior term paper, by the way. - Benjamin Udell --- Eric Hawthorne wrote: Sorry. Can't help myself : Is there any point in completing that term paper really? On a few points. I don't believe in the point of view of nihilism because everything will happen in the multiverse, anyway, regardless of what I do. My reasons are a little vague, but here's a stab at it: 1. I look at us group of human observer SAS's as results of and guardians of emerged complex order in our universe. In fact I believe our universe (its temporal arrow etc) is only observable because it is the set of paths through the multiverse that has all this emerged complex order in it.I believe these potentially observable sets of paths through the multiverse's general disorder are rare (of small measure.) 2. Somehow, all of us human observers are clearly in or observing the SAME set of paths through the multiverse. Now that is significant. It tells us that in the emergent-order paths of multiverse info-state evolution, that those paths are observable consistently to ANY observer that emerges as part of the emerged complex order present in those paths. 3. I see humans (or other intelligent lifeforms) as in some strange ways the smart-lookahead guardians of the particular piece of emergent-order their most a part of (their planet, their ecosystems, their societies, themselves).The reason we emerged (or are still here) is because we have helped make our emergent complex system successful (robust). 4. For some strange reason, I value the most complex yet elegant and robust emergent order (for itself). This is why for example, I'm an environmental activist in my spare (hah!) time. 5. I think if one values elegant, robust complex order, and if one is an active part of the elegant, robust, complex order, who emerged precisely so that a SAS of the emerged system could sense and make sense of the surroundings, and could model and influence the future, and guard the SAS's own existence and that of the whole emerged system of which it is a part, then guard away I say, actively, not nihilistically. Model your world. Predict its different possible futures, and use your emerged (and cultivated, same thing) wisdom to steer yourself, and your society, and your ecosystem, and your planet, away from harm and too-soon reduction to entropy. In the very, very end, it is said, entropy wins (like the house wins in Vegas.) But why not have as good a game as possible before it ends in a billion or trillions of years. 6. Of course, it doesn't make sense to try to protect (and advance in elegance) an emergent order that is indeed truly robust, does it? But my point back there was that we are supposed to be part
Re: Determinism
I agree with Norman too, particularly about boundaries the snapshot style. I would add that, the physical states events that can be detected should implicitly contain the things that we fear may be reduced away. Just because they would not be obvious when represented in physical mathematical terms does not mean that they are not there. Here is an example. When we discover a truth, we may well allow our behavior to depend on it. We look in order to see, we somehow arrange it so that we **heed** the signs. We allow logic, for instance, to be a distinct salient factor in our behavior -- **in our cogitative behavior at least, but usually almost inevitably much more.** And not only logic. Our behavior may arrange to become specially dependent on the properties of the number pi, or on statistical likelihoods apparent in information about the star Vega. We allow support for our behavior to depend on continually renovated occasionally redesigned structures of signs ! evidences conjectured, expected, grasped, remembered etc. These sort of dependencies, then, characterize very particular sets of physical states events -- those of intelligent beings. Physical states events are already models for certain mathematical structures which we apply to understand those physical states events. Somehow, some physical states events are capable of representing others, sometimes many at a time with generality, so on. Capable of representing /or interpreting /or proving or confirming or corroborating or whatever. If mathematics itself is fecund with implicit structures, there is no reason to think that the physical mathematical data on physical states events are not likewise fecund with structures that emerge, as we say, come to light at higher levels. (Or maybe I'm wrong, I'm no physicist.) - Ben Udell From: John M [EMAIL PROTECTED] on 15/01/2004 20:17:49 To: Norman Samish [EMAIL PROTECTED], Doug Porpora [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:Re: Determinism Hi all, I'm trying to catch up the issues discussed, but it is becoming almost impossible. That's why I'm commenting this mail almost 6 days late. About what you wrote Norman, I don't disagree. Physical Man is a sum of physical states and events that can be detected and measured. If applied to all Man will find out that the results will be the same. The difference between each individual is meaningless at the atom level, quantum-state level, etc. But when you start to logically group all of those physical definitions, you'll start to get different results. For example, in a so low level state you can't see the difference bewteen Thought and body. They are all electrical manifestations. When gathering all the small pieces, you start to have a more high level view of the individual. The Thought and body become distinct from each other. If we try only to explain each piece of the puzzle individually, we will have interesting mathematical formulations and theorys, but unusefull to identify the individual completely. When we start to build the puzzle bit by bit, we'll find out that the relations between each! piece have something more to add to the mathematical formula of life. Maybe in a higher level, different blocks of the puzzle have a common meaning for all individuals and can be used as base units to continue building the puzzle, diminishing the level of complexity. In one thing I agree: the start must be on the atom level, quantum-state, etc. What do you all think of this approach? Also, I'm unable to find a meaningful (to me) argument against reductionism. Why is it in trouble? It seems to me that even a complex human being can be defined in concept by discrete quantum states and particles, atoms and electrical charges. Thoughts are therefore NOT infinite because they can be conceptually defined in terms of particles and quantum states, and there are not an infinite number of these permutations. My take on reductionism is the snapshot style (in maybe wider sense than just visual) - considering boundaries for our observation (thinking) and establishing a model of the 'observed' target WITHIN them. In the sense of unlimited interconnection (and a/effecting), such view cuts off connotations beyond said boundaries (be it Q-state, particles, cinsidered permutations, atoms, electrical charges or whatever is one's beef). It is a limited view (model) perfectly applicable for computations. Yet: limited. My trend in thoinking (in the newly (just emerging) 'wholistic' complexity) is the unlimited connectivity - not that I claim to successfully apply it. We all DO think in reductionistic ways - the only way our mind works without implying (mystical?) infinity - so I cannot belittle your opinion. I wonder if Doug thinks in the same lines as I do.
Re: How to u-n-s-u-b-s-c-r-i-b-e
I'm not the moderator have no control over this list. The most appealing explanation of your problem is that you failed to follow the instructions properly. However if, despite sending an email with unsubscribe in the subject line to [EMAIL PROTECTED] , you remain subscribed, why haven't you tried going to the everything-list page at the address that I provided, where you would find the list moderator's email address? I'll save you the trouble. Wei Dai's email address is [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Why don't you write him a polite note saying that you have been unable to unsubscribe, that you would please like to be unsubscribed? If you have already done this have received no reply, then I would feel definite concern for Wei Dai hope that he's all right. Meanwhile, in that case, you might try learning enough about your browser to block messages coming from [EMAIL PROTECTED], or to block messages to you that are also cc'd TO the [EMAIL PROTECTED], or whatever it takes. If you are unable to accomplish this, perhaps you should consider giving up the use of computers. - Original Message - From: Silvia Axinescu [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 19, 2004 2:03 PM Subject: Re: How to u-n-s-u-b-s-c-r-i-b-e I hate u I have been trying to unsubscribe for weeks and it turns out nothing.pls unsubscribe me from your f*g list cause I don't wanna receive any message from U guys EVER Thank you! Silvia Axinescu - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2004 7:19 AM Subject: How to u-n-s-u-b-s-c-r-i-b-e Wei Dai's everything mailing list Webpage at http://www.eskimo.com/~weidai/everything.html has the instruction for unsubscribing oneself, as follows === To unsubscribe, please send an email with the subject unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] === Members might consider moving this post to a separate folder for easy retrieval of contained information.
Corrected: How to u-n-s-u-b-s-c-r-i-b-e
I'm not the moderator have no control over this list. The most appealing explanation of your problem is that you failed to follow the instructions properly. However if, despite sending an email with unsubscribe in the subject line to [EMAIL PROTECTED] , you remain subscribed, why haven't you tried going to the everything-list page at the address that I provided, where you would find the list moderator's email address? I'll save you the trouble. Wei Dai's email address is [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Why don't you write him a polite note saying that you have been unable to unsubscribe, that you would please like to be unsubscribed? If you have already done this have received no reply, then I would feel definite concern for Wei Dai hope that he's all right. Meanwhile, in that case, you might try learning enough about your browser to block messages coming from [EMAIL PROTECTED], or to block messages to you that are also cc'd TO the [EMAIL PROTECTED], or whatever it takes. If you are unable to accomplish this, perhaps you should consider giving up the use of computers. - Original Message - From: Silvia Axinescu [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 19, 2004 2:03 PM Subject: Re: How to u-n-s-u-b-s-c-r-i-b-e I hate u I have been trying to unsubscribe for weeks and it turns out nothing.pls unsubscribe me from your f*g list cause I don't wanna receive any message from U guys EVER Thank you! Silvia Axinescu - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2004 7:19 AM Subject: How to u-n-s-u-b-s-c-r-i-b-e Wei Dai's everything mailing list Webpage at http://www.eskimo.com/~weidai/everything.html has the instruction for unsubscribing oneself, as follows === To unsubscribe, please send an email with the subject unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] === Members might consider moving this post to a separate folder for easy retrieval of contained information.
Re: Is the universe computable?
[Georges Quenot]Some people do argue that there is no arithmetical property independent of us because there is no thing on which they would apply independentkly of us. What we would call their arithmetical properties is simply a set of tautologies that do come with them when they are considered but exist no more than them when they are not considered. [Bruno Marchal]But then what would be an undecidable proposition? You know, about arithmetic, and about machines btw, a lot of people defends idea which are just no more plausible since Godel has proved its incompleteness theorems. Arithmetical proposition are just not tautologies. This is how Russell's and Whitehead logicism has break down. There is a ladder of arithmetical propositions which ask for more and more ingenuity to be proved. Actually arithmetical truth extend far beyond the reach of any consistent machine (and consistent human with comp). There is an infinity of surprise in there. I guess you know that there is no natural number p and q such that (p/q)(p/q) is equal to 2. If mathematical truth were conventionnal, why did the pythagoreans *hide* this fact for so long? So those propositions are neither tautologies, nor conventions.David Deutsch, following Johnson's criteria of reality, would say that such propositions kick back. Since Georges Quenot's objection claims that nothing exists when unconsidered, be it a mathematical structure or concrete singular objects to which it applies, isn't the objection too broad to be singling out any particular physics-based cosmology as objectionable? The objection seems too powerful broad, seems to apply with equal force to all subject matters of mathematics empirical research, from pointset topology to Egyptology. I wouldn't demand that a philosophical objection, in order to be valid at all, offer a direction for specific research, but I'd ask how it would at least help research keep from going wrong, I don't see how the present objection would help keep any kind of research, mathematical or empirical, from getting onto excessively thin ice, except perhaps by inspiring a general atmosphere of skepticism in response to which people pay more attention to proofs, confirmations, corroborations, etc. -- not that any such thing could actually overcome such a ! radical objection. And the objection is stated with such generality, that I don't see how it escapes being applied to itself, since, after all, it is about things relations. If there's nobody to consider concrete things or mathematicals, then there's nobody to consider the objection to considering any unconsidered things to exist. The objection seems to undercut itself in the scenario in which it is meant to have force. Unless, of course, I've misunderstood the argument, which is certainly possible. Best, Ben Udell
Re: Why is there something rather than nothing?
In addition to what Jess Mazer asks, it would also be of interest to know just what is known or believed about the infinite sets of those objects which mathematics does deal with. I've read in E.T. Bell that the infinity of curves or functions is greater than the infinity of the reals. An information scientist at another forum told me that the infinity of the hyperreal numbers is larger than that of the reals, that the infinity of the surreals is larger than that of the hyperreals. Is this true? And does the infinity of curves or functions (of the standard or archimedean numbers) correspond to either the infinity of the hyperreals or that of the surreals? Is it known whether one could possibly define a larger set of numbers than the surreals? One also hears that anything that can be done with nonstandard numbers can be done with standard numbers, as long as it doesn't pertain to the difference between.them. Is the difference between them still regarded as not leading to an! ything of interest? - Ben Udell Does anyone know, are there versions of philosophy-of-mathematics that would allow no distinctions in infinities beyond countable and uncountable? I know intuitionism is more restrictive about infinities than traditional mathematics, but it's way *too* restrictive for my tastes, I wouldn't want to throw out the law of the excluded middle. Jesse Mazer
Re: spooky action at a distance
Or conceivably could an SAS in a classically deterministic universe surmise something like a Level III multiverse, from considerations of the (ontological?) status(es) of terms of alternatives, alternatives of the types studied in logic (e.g. multivalue logic), mathematical theory of probability, (pure) mathematical theory of information -- such disciplines as consider structures of alternatives that exhaust the possibilities (a la p or ~p)? I think so; in principle some mathematician could explore the implications of the Schrodinger equation (or whatever mathematics turns out to underly our universe), just as we play with toy universes such as Conway's Life. Wolfram has spent years looking at cellular automata to try to see which ones might produce structure and, by implication, life and SAS's. Our tools are not strong enough to get very far with this, but in the future we might even simulate universes far enough elong that life evolves. And someone in a deterministic universe might eventually simulate our own. In fact we could be living there, in a sense. That makes sense to my addled head. Another possibility seems to be that an SAS seems fated to describe nature with quantum mechanics. I found this (excerpted below) while Googling around, it's from something by list member Russell Standish, also mentioning list member Bruno Marchal. If it's right, then quantum mechanics is entailed by probability theory combined with one or another set of not-distinctively-quantum-mechanical ideas, including the idea of an observer that seems to be more than just a detector, an observer who can relate various collateral observations together through time (a psychological experience of time in order to do the observations). Anyway, this stuff is apparently old hat around here! I guess I should have been paying more attention. (It's quite remarkable to have the schroedinger equation popping out of a combination of probability theory an assumption of time experience. I hope I'm not off-base to be reminded of special relativity's kinematics coming out of a combination of a finite signal speed limit assumptions of space, time, an observer.) If any SAS by combining probability theory with assumptions of time experience etc will arrive at the schroedinger equation, does this mean that an SAS can't learn of living in a classically deterministic universe even if the SAS does live in one? Or does it mean that probability theory plus observer, time experience, etc. rule out classically deterministic universes in which observations can take place? - Ben Udell A new revolution in physics http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks/docs/revolution/revolution.html Excerpt, regarding the application of the anthropic principle. : 66 So lets try a physicist's approach, which is to assume a few, fairly uncontroversial things about consciousness, without pretending to know the full story, and see how far this gets us. Let us assume two things in particular -- that the observer observes by selecting a partial description from the ensemble, and that there is a psychological experiennce of time in order to do the observations. If one additionally assumes the standard axioms of probability theory, and then crank the handle, Schrödinger's equation pops out, along with most of the structure of Quantum Mechanics[15]! Surprising as this result may be, two other scientists have independently come to similar conclusions, each with a slightly different set of starting ingredients. Bruno Marchal[8,9] started by assuming a particular form of computationalism, as well as what he calls Arithmetic Platonism (essentially a plenitude structure like above), and strong form of the Church Turing thesis, and ended up predicting that the observers knowledge should obey quantum logic. Roy Frieden[7] started with an observer embedded in 4-D Minkowski space-time, and asked what happens out of game where nature tries to hide its true reality from the observer. Probability theory enters through the concept of Fisher Information. In the most general form of the problem, he ends up with the Klein-Gordon equation, a covariant form of the Schrödinger equation. It is as if, in the words of Marchal, Physics is but a branch of (machine) psychology. Even though each of these efforts are tentative, and the details differ, there does seem to be an elephant' that blind men are discovering. The observer was seen to be an integral part of physics as a consequence of quantum mechanics. Do we have the courage to complete the journey and realise that the physics is defined by the observer? 99
Re: spooky action at a distance
As I recall, Tegmark also said that there would be classically deterministic universes, with no quantum physics at all. So, it seems that an SAS in such a universe would have no reason to surmise a Level III multiverse. It makes you wonder what things we SASs don't know about, that might have led us to surmise still further Levels of the multiverse. Or conceivably could an SAS in a classically deterministic universe surmise something like a Level III multiverse, from considerations of the (ontological?) status(es) of terms of alternatives of the types studied logic (e.g. multivalue logic), mathematical theory of probability, (pure) mathematical theory of information -- such disciplines as consider structures of alternatives that exhaust the possibilities (a la p or ~p)? (Note: These fields seem distinguishable from other areas of math also by being concerned with drawing what tend to be irreversibly deductive conclusions -- I mean as distinguished from the reversible equational reasonings which preserve information help allow a same mathematical object to be pursued applied under quite diverse aspects -- so, if there is an area of variational math or optimization which has this irreversible deductions tendency, it should probably be included among them, but I'm not a mathematician don't know whether there is.). - Benjamin Udell - Original Message - From: Hal Finney [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 12:30 PM Subject: Re: spooky action at a distance This list is dedicated to exploring the implications of the prospect that all universes exist. According to this principle, universes exist with all possible laws of physics. It follows that universes exist which follow the MWI; and universes exist where only one branch is real and where the other branches are eliminated. Universes exist where the transactional interpretation is true, and where Penrose's objective reduction happens. I'm tempted to even say that universes exist where the Copenhagen interpretation is true, but that seems to be more a refusal to ask questions than a genuine interpretation. Therefore it is somewhat pointless to argue about whether we are in one or another of these universes. In fact, I would claim that we are in all of these, at least all that are not logically inconsistent or incompatible with the data. That is, our conscious experience spans multiple universes; we are instantiated equally and equivalently in universes which have different laws of physics, but where the differences are so subtle that they have no effect on our observations. It may be that at some future time, we can perform an experiment which will provide evidence to eliminate or confirm some of these possible QM interpretations. At that time, our consciousness will differentiate, and we will go on in each of the separate universes, with separate consciousness. It is still useful to discuss whether the various interpretations work at all, and whether they are in fact compatible with our experimental results. But to go beyond that and to try to determine which one is true is, according to the multiverse philosophy, an empty exercise. All are true; all are instantiated in the multiverse, and we live in all of them. Hal
Re: spooky action at a distance
CORRECTION -- sorry -- Ben Udell. As I recall, Tegmark also said that there would be classically deterministic universes, with no quantum physics at all. So, it seems that an SAS in such a universe would have no reason to surmise a Level III multiverse. It makes you wonder what things we SASs don't know about, that might have led us to surmise still further Levels of the multiverse. Or conceivably could an SAS in a classically deterministic universe surmise something like a Level III multiverse, from considerations of the (ontological?) status(es) of terms of alternatives, alternatives of the types studied in logic (e.g. multivalue logic), mathematical theory of probability, (pure) mathematical theory of information -- such disciplines as consider structures of alternatives that exhaust the possibilities (a la p or ~p)? (Note: These fields seem distinguishable from other areas of math also by being concerned with drawing what tend to be irreversibly deductive conclusions -- I mean as distinguished from the reversible equational reasonings which preserve information help allow a same mathematical object to be pursued applied under quite diverse aspects -- so, if there is an area of variational math or optimization which has this irreversible deductions tendency, it should probably be included among them, but I'm not a mathematician don't know whether there is.). - Benjamin Udell - Original Message - From: Hal Finney [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 12:30 PM Subject: Re: spooky action at a distance This list is dedicated to exploring the implications of the prospect that all universes exist. According to this principle, universes exist with all possible laws of physics. It follows that universes exist which follow the MWI; and universes exist where only one branch is real and where the other branches are eliminated. Universes exist where the transactional interpretation is true, and where Penrose's objective reduction happens. I'm tempted to even say that universes exist where the Copenhagen interpretation is true, but that seems to be more a refusal to ask questions than a genuine interpretation. Therefore it is somewhat pointless to argue about whether we are in one or another of these universes. In fact, I would claim that we are in all of these, at least all that are not logically inconsistent or incompatible with the data. That is, our conscious experience spans multiple universes; we are instantiated equally and equivalently in universes which have different laws of physics, but where the differences are so subtle that they have no effect on our observations. It may be that at some future time, we can perform an experiment which will provide evidence to eliminate or confirm some of these possible QM interpretations. At that time, our consciousness will differentiate, and we will go on in each of the separate universes, with separate consciousness. It is still useful to discuss whether the various interpretations work at all, and whether they are in fact compatible with our experimental results. But to go beyond that and to try to determine which one is true is, according to the multiverse philosophy, an empty exercise. All are true; all are instantiated in the multiverse, and we live in all of them. Hal
Re: a possible paradox
Tegmark's multiverse theory doesn't make it appropriate to initiate -- or multiply -- the gratuitous. get fucked Well, based upon the vast vocabulary as evidenced by this incisive argument by the poster, obviously a man of the vast intellect and insight of a George Bush! Impressive indeed! Cheers
