RE: What's wrong with this?
Hi Brent and Bruno,
Thank you for pointing this out! I did mean infinite subsets, or
else the isomorphism would obviously not obtain, but in what Brent wrote is
the escape from the reason why infinities are not observable; we can only
observe those finite parts because we can distinguish those from each other
and from the whole of which they are subsets. In a sense you are making the
point that I was trying to make. Hopefully I will finish the sketch of my
bisimulation idea by this weekend.
Thanks! J
Stephen
From: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal
Sent: Saturday, September 25, 2010 3:33 PM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: What's wrong with this?
Stephen P. King wrote:
Umm, I had no idea that this would be so difficult to understand! I am
claiming that if there does not exist a means to determine a difference then
no difference can be said to exist. This is just a restatement of the
principle of identity of indiscernibles. If the totality of all that exists
is such that it does not exclude any possibility then it is infinite and as
such would have that property of infinities, namely that any proper subset
of that infinity is isomorphic with the infinity itself. This is equivalent
to saying that an infinity is such that is cannot distinguish itself as a
whole from any part of itself. To distinguish objects from each other
there must be some form of deviation and/or weakening from this isomorphism
relationship.
On 25 Sep 2010, at 18:06, Brent Meeker wrote:
This is wrong. Proper subsets of infinite sets may well be finite, {1,2} is
a proper subset of the integers.
On 9/25/2010 12:38 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Perhaps Stephen meant infinite subset, in which case it is correct for N or
any enumerable set (N is isomorphe (in bijection) with all its infinite
proper and improper subsets). But still incorrect in general. N is an
infinite proper subset of R. All infinite set injects properly in bigger
sets; by Cantor theorem.
People are usually more intrigued by improper subset. That {1, 2} is
included in {1, 2, 3} is normal, but that {1, 2, 3} is included in {1, 2, 3}
astonished the beginners. Of course A is included in B means just that x in
A implies x in B.
I guess everyone know the argument that cannabis is a gateway drug. I goes
like that: 90 % of the heroine user have begun with Cannabis. Of course it
is non valid. 100% of the heroin users have begun with water. This does not
imply that water is a gateway product to heroin. To evaluate if cannabis
leads to heroin, you have to count the proportion of heroin user in the
cannabis smoker population; not to count the number of cannabis smoker among
the heroin user. This error is a confusion between A included in B and B
included in A, or between (x in A - x in B) with (x in B - x in A)..
That error is widespread and is due to local associative reasoning (itself
due to Darwinian selection). Logical validity distinguish the relevant
association, making some emotional association irrelevant, despite natural
predisposition.
You can be sure that innocent people have been condemned to the death
penalty due to that error.
Paul Valery said that in life the only choice you have is the choice between
logic and war. He said: ask for proof, and if you don't get them understand
that some people are doing a war against you. Proof, said Valery, is
elementary politeness.
I think logic is a tool for preventing manipulation indeed. But alas logic
is not well taught nor even applied in the human affair. It is a false
secret that nobody has found any evidence that cannabis is toxic or
addictive so they insist: it is gateway drug, and parents can blame cannabis
for leading their children to heroin, but it is a mistake, an error, a
confusion between p - q and q - p. I am paid for giving bad notes to
students, but in the health politics it is done all the time, since more
than a century. By doing such error you can manipulate people for fearing or
hating anything, and do the war to anyone, just use emotional association.
Actually when you do the correct statistics, despite illegality there is no
evidence at all that cannabis lead to other drug, on the contrary it seems
to prevent it slightly (and would be more so if legalized probably).
The whole prohibition stuff is a complete hoax. Prohibition of a drug
literally creates a huge non taxed black market. Prohibitionism does not
protect the children, it makes them the main target of that unregulated
market. It creates the drug problem. It leads also to misinformation. If all
the drug were legalized and taxed with respect to their damage cost, people
would quickly understand what are the real dangerous drug, and I bet many
would be astonished. Democracy did not prevent brain washing. Cannabis and
salvia divinorum are about infinitely less dangerous than aspirin
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 9/25/2010 12:38 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Umm, I had no idea that this would be so difficult to understand! I am
claiming that if there does not exist a means to determine a
difference then no difference can be said to exist. This is just a
restatement of the principle of identity of indiscernibles. If the
totality of all that exists is such that it does not exclude any
possibility then it is infinite and as such would have that property
of infinities, namely that any proper subset of that infinity is
isomorphic with the infinity itself. This is equivalent to saying that
an infinity is such that is cannot distinguish itself as a whole from
any part of itself. To distinguish objects from each other there
must be some form of deviation and/or weakening from this isomorphism
relationship.
This is wrong. Proper subsets of infinite sets may well be finite,
{1,2} is a proper subset of the integers.
Brent
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Everything List group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 25 Sep 2010, at 18:06, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 9/25/2010 12:38 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Umm, I had no idea that this would be so difficult to understand! I
am claiming that if there does not exist a means to determine a
difference then no difference can be said to exist. This is just a
restatement of the principle of identity of indiscernibles. If the
totality of all that exists is such that it does not exclude any
possibility then it is infinite and as such would have that
property of infinities, namely that any proper subset of that
infinity is isomorphic with the infinity itself. This is equivalent
to saying that an infinity is such that is cannot distinguish
itself as a whole from any part of itself. To distinguish
objects from each other there must be some form of deviation and/or
weakening from this isomorphism relationship.
This is wrong. Proper subsets of infinite sets may well be finite,
{1,2} is a proper subset of the integers.
Perhaps Stephen meant infinite subset, in which case it is correct for
N or any enumerable set (N is isomorphe (in bijection) with all its
infinite proper and improper subsets). But still incorrect in general.
N is an infinite proper subset of R. All infinite set injects properly
in bigger sets; by Cantor theorem.
People are usually more intrigued by improper subset. That {1, 2} is
included in {1, 2, 3} is normal, but that {1, 2, 3} is included in {1,
2, 3} astonished the beginners. Of course A is included in B means
just that x in A implies x in B.
I guess everyone know the argument that cannabis is a gateway drug.
I goes like that: 90 % of the heroine user have begun with Cannabis.
Of course it is non valid. 100% of the heroin users have begun with
water. This does not imply that water is a gateway product to heroin.
To evaluate if cannabis leads to heroin, you have to count the
proportion of heroin user in the cannabis smoker population; not to
count the number of cannabis smoker among the heroin user. This error
is a confusion between A included in B and B included in A, or between
(x in A - x in B) with (x in B - x in A)..
That error is widespread and is due to local associative reasoning
(itself due to Darwinian selection). Logical validity distinguish the
relevant association, making some emotional association irrelevant,
despite natural predisposition.
You can be sure that innocent people have been condemned to the death
penalty due to that error.
Paul Valery said that in life the only choice you have is the choice
between logic and war. He said: ask for proof, and if you don't get
them understand that some people are doing a war against you. Proof,
said Valery, is elementary politeness.
I think logic is a tool for preventing manipulation indeed. But alas
logic is not well taught nor even applied in the human affair. It is a
false secret that nobody has found any evidence that cannabis is toxic
or addictive so they insist: it is gateway drug, and parents can blame
cannabis for leading their children to heroin, but it is a mistake, an
error, a confusion between p - q and q - p. I am paid for giving bad
notes to students, but in the health politics it is done all the time,
since more than a century. By doing such error you can manipulate
people for fearing or hating anything, and do the war to anyone, just
use emotional association.
Actually when you do the correct statistics, despite illegality there
is no evidence at all that cannabis lead to other drug, on the
contrary it seems to prevent it slightly (and would be more so if
legalized probably).
The whole prohibition stuff is a complete hoax. Prohibition of a drug
literally creates a huge non taxed black market. Prohibitionism does
not protect the children, it makes them the main target of that
unregulated market. It creates the drug problem. It leads also to
misinformation. If all the drug were legalized and taxed with respect
to their damage cost, people would quickly understand what are the
real dangerous drug, and I bet many would be astonished. Democracy did
not prevent brain washing. Cannabis and salvia divinorum are about
infinitely less dangerous than aspirin or caffeine. The hardest drug
today are alcohol and tobacco, mainly.
I'm optimist. The prohibition of drug policy will crash down like
Berlin wall. Too much lies accumulate.
OK, apology for my rambling. It is not completely unrelated to
löbianity though, if you consider good as being a löbian virtue. No
one can decide for you what is good or bad for you, in the world of
ideally self-referential correct machines. It is natural respect by
modesty of the ever known first person. Löbianity would imply a form
of libertarianity 'for the others', like it implies already a form of
universal dissidence fo one self (as I explained once in a post to
John). Machine's theology might be very *practically* deeply
RE: What's wrong with this?
Hi Bruno, Thank you for your kind considerations and comments. I will interleave my replies below. From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2010 10:44 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: What's wrong with this? Hi Stephen, The 1004 fallacy is when people argue, generally on vocabulary, by demanding precision which is actually not relevant with the concerned issue. It come from a passage of Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll. Bruno was looking at a flock of sheep. Sylvie asked how many sheep there are, and Bruno answered about 1004. Sylvie said that about contradicts the four in 1004, and that he should have said about 1000. To say about 1004 is what I like to call the 1004 fallacy. It is very common in some kind of pseudo human science, and is akin to jargon. (Of course Bruno likes to have the last word, and justified his 1004 by saying he was sure about the 4, given that he distinctly see four sheep here and there, and that the about applied to the 1000 which could have been 100 or 1 (something like that). [SPK] Ah! I understand and I beg your indulgence on that point. I am trying to communicate an idea for which I do not yet have a precise and well-formed symbolic representation and thus am throwing a lot of notions your way hoping that you might intuit a rough version of the idea and ignore the extraneous noise. I am using several ideas that are similar, within my understanding, to several ideas that are present in mathematics and logics and so I beg your indulgence. [BM] Now I do have that feeling a bit with your last posts, where you refer to hard technical works when at the same time I have some difficulties to understand your position (just to make sense of it). [SPK] Yes, we are coming from differing backgrounds and learning and thinking styles. My position is to look at interactions and the implications of such as a possible source and origin for notions that have been usually assumed and even postulated to be primitive and fundamental, but I am also aware that my ideas are a bit divergent of the kinds of things that you are focused upon. As I understand your work so far, you are building a model of the internal and grundladen structure that is an alternative to the diffuse and sometimes naïve metamathematical and metaphysical underpinnings of current physics and that model seems to focus on a single and static entity. I am focused on the external and interactive aspects that highlight many entities in an ongoing and even eternal dialogue with each other. [BM] I think that you try to defend the idea that time is fundamental. Now do you mean some physical notion of time, or do you mean the first person feeling of duration? [SPK] No, time is not fundamental as I understand it. I am advancing and defending the idea that Change is fundamental; time is merely a particular measure of such within finite perception and interactions. I try to go further and advance the idea that we can recover the usual notions of substance and being in terms of isomorphisms within this underlying and fundamental Change. This is done from a Hereclitian perspective informed by the ideas of Plato and others, the latter of which focused upon Being and changelessness as fundamental. I see in most logics and mathematics a tacit axiom of changelessness and I understand the reasoning for such. Truth must be an invariant, but such invariance, I argue, does not necessitate that changelessness be fundamental and primitive. Thus I bet on Arithmetic Realism as True but point out that there is more involved that cannot be captured only within the framework of AR + digital substitution. I argue that we need to have a place within our models for interaction and time, even if that notion of time is emergent and not fundamental. I take duration to be a 1st person aspect that is part of what generates an emergent notion of 3rd person duration for many, such that an appearance of an evolving Common universe obtains. My argument on this are based on my study of computational complexity, concurrency and intractability issues that I found in many philosophical systems. I found that Leibniz' Monadology offered the best framework to explain my reasoning and possible solution. I see your work on modal logics as part of the structure of a Monad, aspects that even Leibniz did not consider and thus am very eager to understand the subtle points of your model. [BM] Are you aware that in both case you have to abandon the mechanist hypothesis, because the digital mechanist hypothesis makes the ultimate reality undistinguishable with arithmetical truth (which is something atemporal/aspatial). In the first case you introduce some physicalism, and in the second case you make consciousness primitive, like
Re: What's wrong with this?
Hi Stephen, OK, did you make sense of the idea of representing Integer with a sort of equivalence class that have members that are the arithmetic generators or creators or acts that equal examples of the number? We can think of 1 in the Platonic sense as the class of all arithmetic operations that are equal to 1, 2 as the class of all arithmetic operations that equal 2, etc. OK, given that then it seems to follow that, say a 2 in the operation that equals some other number is in a sense a mapping of the entire class of 2 into that other class. Does this make sense so far? With a lot of effort! Why introduce impredicativity for the numbers? It does not make a lot of sense: it introduces complexity. It seems to me like doing alpinism with a microscope. It is akin to the 1004 fallacy. [BM] But this has been shown not working. You cannot both capture consciousness by Turing machine states, and at the same time to invoke a notion of physical resource. It is the whole point of most of my posts. Physical resource including space and time have to be recovered from the math of (abstract) computer science. [SPK] No no no! I am not capturing consciousness by Turing machine! I am pointing at the content, using Descartes' brain in a vat and related gedankenexperiments to show how there is an equivalence relation between the content of experience (minus agency notions, self-awareness, etc.) and the content of what can be generated by universal Virtual reality machines, as explained by D. Deutsch in Fabric of Reality, that can be used. The notion of a physical resource is allowed because I am assuming that both mind (crudely an information structure, like a Boolean algebra) and matter (crudely as a Cantor dust or completely disconnected Hausdorff space) are both equally existent and real. The idea in Pratt's work is that Logic and Time (the evolution of physical systems) form a duality see: http://boole.stanford.edu/pub/dti.pdf [BM] This pleads for no fundamental matter, nor time. [SPK] Yes, but bOnly in the limit of the totality of Existence, there is no measure or differentiation, thus no matter or time in that fundamental sense. That’s why the dualism that I am advocating is one that degenerates to a neutral monism in that limit. But the Totality includes the finite and in that finite case we have matter and time. snip [SPK] Your modelization so far seems to only consider a frozen perspective and there is scant mention of how the model is extended to cover a plurality of entities, except for the diamond^alpha aspect mentioned below. As far as I can tell, your Model offers a logical structure to a new version of the individual Leibnizian Monad ( http://www.iep.utm.edu/leib-met/#H8 ) that I am trying to develop, but only in the static sense. There is no dynamic in it. [BM] The 'sensible' modalities, like Bp p, and Bp Dp p, introduces an internal dynamic. S4Grz is not just a logic of knowledge, it is a logic of evolving knowledge, or time. It is due to the p. It makes the first person intuitionist, the builder of its mental reality. [SPK] It may exist there Bruno, but it is by no means explicit. The fact that we can map Bp p, etc. to some abstract structure and use the orderings of those relations to act as a quotienting does nothing to obtain the experiential transitivity that is explicit in the 1st person. [BM] Why? The experiential logic is typically transitive, and anti- symmetrical. [SPK] Yes, that is true but in a static Platonic Idea sense. The main problem, I suspect, obtains from the enumerability of the content of experiential logic as I see in your Model. It is enumerable, but not recursively enumerable. This makes a computation of logical sentence something that has properties in-it-self independent of any notion of interaction; Well, yes. At least in the third person global view. therefore it is, in a deep sense, solipsistic. It is platonistic. Why solispsist. You lost me again I' afraid. To boil this down, we need to start with the existence of a plurality of minds, explaining why it is necessary that there is more than just the One. You move toward this in SIENA.pdf but not sufficiently to nail down the reasoning. What is missing? [BM] Nobody said that. I said only that the natural numbers does provide a kind of computational time, but the subjective time (and space time) comes from the first person logic S4Grz (and S4Grz1), in the ideal case under scrutiny. [SPK] A Liebnitzian order of succession aspect of time, certainly obtain in what you point out here, but that is cheap, for there are no a priori alternatives in the notion of the number that is subsequent to n, for example n +1 or n+2 have only a single and unique property. We do not see this kind of singular one- to one and onto like map of
Re: What's wrong with this?
on 19.09.2010 01:52 1Z said the following: On 18 Sep, 19:32, Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: on 18.09.2010 19:40 1Z said the following: On 18 Sep, 17:20, Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ruwrote: on 18.09.2010 18:08 1Z said the following: ... By the way, about the water. The difference between H, O and H2O is in chemical bonds in H2O. such bonds can be considered basic elements of reality, too I am not sure if I understand your answer. Say we have H2 and O2 at room temperature in some enclosure. Then we put a catalyst there and if the enclosure is strong enough, then we obtain there water, H20. The question is then what happened with bonds in H2 and O2 and where from come new bonds in H20? The bonds in H2, 02 and H20 are completely different from each other. Basic elements of realit6 can appear and disappear too How it would be possible to use your ideas, for example in drug design? Or in the development of a new material? Dunno. They can't brew coffee either. I was exploring the consequences of reductionism. If you want an engineer, hire an engineer. Well, I thought that reductionism could help an engineer. So way my question. Or you mean that reductionism is completely useless? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
on 18.09.2010 23:35 Brent Meeker said the following: On 9/18/2010 12:19 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: on 18.09.2010 21:09 Brent Meeker said the following: On 9/18/2010 9:20 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: on 18.09.2010 18:08 1Z said the following: ... By the way, about the water. The difference between H, O and H2O is in chemical bonds in H2O. such bonds can be considered basic elements of reality, too I am not sure if I understand your answer. Say we have H2 and O2 at room temperature in some enclosure. Then we put a catalyst there and if the enclosure is strong enough, then we obtain there water, H20. The question is then what happened with bonds in H2 and O2 and where from come new bonds in H20? The bonds in H2, 02 and H20 are completely different from each other. Why do you think they are completely different? They are just local energy minima in the wave functions of the outer electrons. It could be that the word completely is not quite right. Sure they are similar in respect that this is an interplay between nuclei and electrons. Yet, what I have meant, that their properties are quite different. Say the OO bond in O2 and the HH bond in H2 are not the same. This also concerns H0 bonds in HOH. But they are the same at the level of QED, i.e. they are described by the same theory and in fact exist in a superposition of the states 2H20 -- 2H2 + O2. You forget here about level of designing drugs and new materials. Can a physicist specialized in QED do it? I guess no, here one has to hire a chemist. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 19 Sep, 07:30, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote: Well, I thought that reductionism could help an engineer. I don't think anyone said that -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 19 Sep, 07:34, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote: on 18.09.2010 23:35 Brent Meeker said the following: On 9/18/2010 12:19 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: on 18.09.2010 21:09 Brent Meeker said the following: On 9/18/2010 9:20 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: on 18.09.2010 18:08 1Z said the following: ... By the way, about the water. The difference between H, O and H2O is in chemical bonds in H2O. such bonds can be considered basic elements of reality, too I am not sure if I understand your answer. Say we have H2 and O2 at room temperature in some enclosure. Then we put a catalyst there and if the enclosure is strong enough, then we obtain there water, H20. The question is then what happened with bonds in H2 and O2 and where from come new bonds in H20? The bonds in H2, 02 and H20 are completely different from each other. Why do you think they are completely different? They are just local energy minima in the wave functions of the outer electrons. It could be that the word completely is not quite right. Sure they are similar in respect that this is an interplay between nuclei and electrons. Yet, what I have meant, that their properties are quite different. Say the OO bond in O2 and the HH bond in H2 are not the same. This also concerns H0 bonds in HOH. But they are the same at the level of QED, i.e. they are described by the same theory and in fact exist in a superposition of the states 2H20 -- 2H2 + O2. You forget here about level of designing drugs and new materials. Can a physicist specialized in QED do it? I guess no, here one has to hire a chemist. No-one thinks reductionism leads to a collapse of the special sciences -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
Evgeniy, I may be the one agreeing with your sentence 1Z did not hear so far. Maybe he is right. Let me try to explain why I am congruent with your suggestion: *Reductionism *(as I identify it, - not congruent with the classical definitions - is the process in which the ongoing conventional sciences consider ALL - i.e. the wholeness, the totality, - as the compendium of our yesterday's knowledge: the content of our so far accepted epistemic enrichment in the sciences (and the world in general). This is how conventional sciences draw conclusions further reaching than our present knowledge (in most cases not knowing about the rest of the world not yet provided by our epistemic enrichment). Think of the Flat Earth, of the 'veins' circulating air, the uncuttable 'atoms', the DNA-genetics, etc. etc., examples that changed the prior (scientific) knowledge by new leanings. You may think of neurology as well, explaining all mental effects upon the brain's so far learned characteristics as measured by the instruments of 2010 - which is more than how it was 25 years ago. It is still reductionist. Engineering has to solve practical tasks in quantitative solutions and cannot resort to include 'maybe'-s for possible extensions of our scientific knowledge. So it takes the reductionist inventory and constructs brilliant contraptions upon 'yesterday's (reductionistic) knowledge that are *ALMOST*good. Almost? well, some airplanes fall off the skyies, some diseases strike, some wars break out, etc. etc., in spite of our incrredible technology we acieved by the results of engineering. The 'still?' unknown rest of the world has its influence in the overall complexity of the world upon those partially solved problems as well, and of course, nobody can include unknowable factors into any consideraton. We use what we know = reduced. *Brent* had a short remark recently to the H2O discussion: 2H2O = 2H2 + O2 - no problem. He stopped short at the reductionist formula and the conventional physical views of water, not extending the complexity of such situations into the 'potentials that are'. - formation of halos of diffusely disappearing hydration and similar hydrated/not hydrated (hydrophil/hydrophob) situations as result of the surrounding chemical(?) environment (unlimited???) - all not expressed in the conventional chemical formulae - or their physical calculations (so far). It is hard to transfer from the 'conventional' to the 'unlimited' because we have no knowledge about the 'rest of the world'. I claim my (scientific) agnosticism and say I dunno. We use the 'reductionist' *MODELs* of the so far known in our calculations and work in equations (maybe not true ones). The 'engineering' style. Respectfully John M On 9/19/10, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On 19 Sep, 07:30, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote: Well, I thought that reductionism could help an engineer. I don't think anyone said that -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
John, I am not sure if I have a particular position. I am a chemist by background, well I was doing all the life simulation only. Actually I am comfortable with reductionism ideas, as many scientist are. Yet, I do not understand something. Say chemistry starts that H2 has a single bond, 02 has a double bond, both being covalent. In H20 we have already partially ionic bonds and so on. What do these terms mean? Hard to define precisely. On the other hand it is possible to say that chemistry is a part of physics, one needs just to solve the Schrödinger equation and that's it, in this case one does not need ambiguous chemical terms. However the latter does not work in practice. Only chemists talking some strange ambiguous language can create new molecules, substances and materials. Why? I do not know. Then recently I have read The Elegant Universe about the superstring theory. The book is written very nicely, I envy the author's ability to write in such simple language. Yet, I do not like the idea of Equation of Everything and my feeling is that the superstring theory is just a dead end: http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2010/07/end-of-reductionism.html However I cannot explain fully my feeling. So basically I just follow what other people say and try to think it over. Evgenii on 19.09.2010 21:13 John Mikes said the following: Evgeniy, I may be the one agreeing with your sentence 1Z did not hear so far. Maybe he is right. Let me try to explain why I am congruent with your suggestion: *Reductionism *(as I identify it, - not congruent with the classical definitions - is the process in which the ongoing conventional sciences consider ALL - i.e. the wholeness, the totality, - as the compendium of our yesterday's knowledge: the content of our so far accepted epistemic enrichment in the sciences (and the world in general). This is how conventional sciences draw conclusions further reaching than our present knowledge (in most cases not knowing about the rest of the world not yet provided by our epistemic enrichment). Think of the Flat Earth, of the 'veins' circulating air, the uncuttable 'atoms', the DNA-genetics, etc. etc., examples that changed the prior (scientific) knowledge by new leanings. You may think of neurology as well, explaining all mental effects upon the brain's so far learned characteristics as measured by the instruments of 2010 - which is more than how it was 25 years ago. It is still reductionist. Engineering has to solve practical tasks in quantitative solutions and cannot resort to include 'maybe'-s for possible extensions of our scientific knowledge. So it takes the reductionist inventory and constructs brilliant contraptions upon 'yesterday's (reductionistic) knowledge that are *ALMOST*good. Almost? well, some airplanes fall off the skyies, some diseases strike, some wars break out, etc. etc., in spite of our incrredible technology we acieved by the results of engineering. The 'still?' unknown rest of the world has its influence in the overall complexity of the world upon those partially solved problems as well, and of course, nobody can include unknowable factors into any consideraton. We use what we know = reduced. *Brent* had a short remark recently to the H2O discussion: 2H2O = 2H2 + O2 - no problem. He stopped short at the reductionist formula and the conventional physical views of water, not extending the complexity of such situations into the 'potentials that are'. - formation of halos of diffusely disappearing hydration and similar hydrated/not hydrated (hydrophil/hydrophob) situations as result of the surrounding chemical(?) environment (unlimited???) - all not expressed in the conventional chemical formulae - or their physical calculations (so far). It is hard to transfer from the 'conventional' to the 'unlimited' because we have no knowledge about the 'rest of the world'. I claim my (scientific) agnosticism and say I dunno. We use the 'reductionist' *MODELs* of the so far known in our calculations and work in equations (maybe not true ones). The 'engineering' style. Respectfully John M On 9/19/10, 1Zpeterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On 19 Sep, 07:30, Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: Well, I thought that reductionism could help an engineer. I don't think anyone said that -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more
Re: What's wrong with this?
Evgeniy, thanks for the reply. With H2o you use all those expressions the millenia-long reductionist development came up with and modified them according to newer learned details. (Bond?) You asked What do these terms mean? Chmistry is NOT part of physics, especially not the polymer branch in which I worked and produced characteristics unheard of by changing conditions/additives. Physicists try to occupy all science with their math - which is an applied one. String? wave function? you may add spin and 25 more words. Not Alice's, but physicists' Wunderland. Quark is an honest addition: they chose it as a meaningless word. There is a lot of It Must Be Like That becaus at the time of identification nobody knew better. No other way! - only the Flat Earth. So careful with the chemical expressions: most date back to the 18th c. - yet if you have a head-ache, you take one of those 'compounds' - and not the Schroedinger equation. To be able to talk about 'everything' I ask for some more time, maybe 3-800 years and let us talk then. Best wishes John M On 9/19/10, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote: John, I am not sure if I have a particular position. I am a chemist by background, well I was doing all the life simulation only. Actually I am comfortable with reductionism ideas, as many scientist are. Yet, I do not understand something. Say chemistry starts that H2 has a single bond, 02 has a double bond, both being covalent. In H20 we have already partially ionic bonds and so on. What do these terms mean? Hard to define precisely. On the other hand it is possible to say that chemistry is a part of physics, one needs just to solve the Schrödinger equation and that's it, in this case one does not need ambiguous chemical terms. However the latter does not work in practice. Only chemists talking some strange ambiguous language can create new molecules, substances and materials. Why? I do not know. Then recently I have read The Elegant Universe about the superstring theory. The book is written very nicely, I envy the author's ability to write in such simple language. Yet, I do not like the idea of Equation of Everything and my feeling is that the superstring theory is just a dead end: http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2010/07/end-of-reductionism.html However I cannot explain fully my feeling. So basically I just follow what other people say and try to think it over. Evgenii on 19.09.2010 21:13 John Mikes said the following: Evgeniy, I may be the one agreeing with your sentence 1Z did not hear so far. Maybe he is right. Let me try to explain why I am congruent with your suggestion: *Reductionism *(as I identify it, - not congruent with the classical definitions - is the process in which the ongoing conventional sciences consider ALL - i.e. the wholeness, the totality, - as the compendium of our yesterday's knowledge: the content of our so far accepted epistemic enrichment in the sciences (and the world in general). This is how conventional sciences draw conclusions further reaching than our present knowledge (in most cases not knowing about the rest of the world not yet provided by our epistemic enrichment). Think of the Flat Earth, of the 'veins' circulating air, the uncuttable 'atoms', the DNA-genetics, etc. etc., examples that changed the prior (scientific) knowledge by new leanings. You may think of neurology as well, explaining all mental effects upon the brain's so far learned characteristics as measured by the instruments of 2010 - which is more than how it was 25 years ago. It is still reductionist. Engineering has to solve practical tasks in quantitative solutions and cannot resort to include 'maybe'-s for possible extensions of our scientific knowledge. So it takes the reductionist inventory and constructs brilliant contraptions upon 'yesterday's (reductionistic) knowledge that are *ALMOST*good. Almost? well, some airplanes fall off the skyies, some diseases strike, some wars break out, etc. etc., in spite of our incrredible technology we acieved by the results of engineering. The 'still?' unknown rest of the world has its influence in the overall complexity of the world upon those partially solved problems as well, and of course, nobody can include unknowable factors into any consideraton. We use what we know = reduced. *Brent* had a short remark recently to the H2O discussion: 2H2O = 2H2 + O2 - no problem. He stopped short at the reductionist formula and the conventional physical views of water, not extending the complexity of such situations into the 'potentials that are'. - formation of halos of diffusely disappearing hydration and similar hydrated/not hydrated (hydrophil/hydrophob) situations as result of the surrounding chemical(?) environment (unlimited???) - all not expressed in the conventional chemical formulae - or their physical calculations (so far). It is hard to transfer from the 'conventional' to the 'unlimited' because we have
Re: What's wrong with this? (a side question)
Hi John, Bruno: thanks for the I thinkG in your text below - also: I cannot argue against your negative assessement about atheism - who IMO require a 'God to deny. You know my shortcomings to equate physics with other domains of hearsay belief systems, like theology (as religion mainly). What I mean is a 'system' based on primitive misunderstandings of phenomena at a lower level epistemicly enriched explanatory attempt, at a very early age (way before the Greeks) that was kept as a basis and equipped by the newer epistemic additions over the eons of development up to our times now (and continued probably for the future). You add to that your belief system of the numerals as constituting 'our world' - if used in large enough sequences - what I do not address at this moment. My point is technical. Mechanism and materialism are incompatible. At any rate: it is a 'human' base for constituting a worldview. It is a Löbian one. It concerns the aliens also, except those who are ultrafinitists. I dont' identify myself more with humans than with Löbians. We are not capable of more. That could be John Mikes limitation. I don't like to much Teilhard de Chardin but he said that we are not humans having spiritual experience, but we are sipiritual being having a human experience. That does resonate with Löbian machine's experience. Our capabilities are restricted to absorb only parts of the totality and that. too, in ways how our PERSONAL thinking machine (brain?) adjusted them into its genetic buildup AND our personal experience- background, making it into a PERSONAL mini-solipsism, (expression from Hale) - also callable a perceived reality. That's the first person views. But we can bet on other people and entities, and we can use logic to study the consequence of our hypotheses. Partial, that is. Yes. Since you slanted the 'mind-body' problem towards religious connotations(?), I turned to the Cartesian body-soul dualistic pair which was a result of Descartes's fear of the Inquisition. I think so too. Not finding reasonable that a short-lived body should impose 'eternal' judgements upon an 'eternal' soul, Bodies make no judgement. Only our (eternal) soul do. That is not a religious belief, it is a theorem in mechanist theory (which may be correct or not, we will never *know*). in such respect (at least in its effectiveness?) the 'body' extends the time-limit we assign to the contraption enclosed (spacially) into our 'skin' - what I find untrue as well. This may be done by questioning the precision of our 'time' (and arrow of it) concept as physics takes it into account more or less. Physics come later. Plotinus is right: physics is the study of what God cannot control. The physical reality is the clothe of God when he look to itself. (images). As someone who does not include the necessity of a creator or god into a worldview and claims agnostic ignorance about the much dicussed origins as well as the conclusions of physics-based conventional sciences and considers 'eternity' a timeless concept (maybe just an instant?) OK. furthermore the 'numerals' and math - as David Bohm said: a human invention, - Ok for the numerals and humpan math. But not necessarily for the numbers. This does not makes sense in the mechanist theory (which might be wrong of course). I have no proposal how to formulate answers to those 'burning' questions of 'everything'. Just a thought that may be wrong, but could lead to further enlightening ideas if some smarter-than-me minds add their remarks to it. Best, Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 1 Sep, 05:18, Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com wrote: That these rules generate rational beliefs is a leap of faith, and can neither be refuted nor proven. apart from noting the survival value of rationality over irrationality If the underlying process *didn’t* cause us to present and believe rational arguments, there would be no way to detect this, since there is no way to step outside of the process’s control of one’s beliefs to independently verify the reasonableness of the beliefs it generates. A physicalist may be correct about the physical nature of reality, but if so, this is solely due to his improbable good luck in existing in a rare honest physical universe whose initial conditions and causal laws resulted in his holding true beliefs about his universe's initial conditions and causal laws. He can only exist in a universe where he has a long evolutionary history. Even under MWI the chances of such a complex being assembling himself in a vaccuum are infinitessimal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this? (a side question)
On 3 Sep, 09:10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Physicists have a tradition of putting mind and consciousness under the rug, Physicists have a tradition of not being psychologists front of the 'hard consciousness problem', or the mind-body problem. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
on 18.09.2010 01:38 1Z said the following: On 17 Sep, 18:52, Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: on 17.09.2010 14:33 1Z said the following: On 26 Aug, 17:37, David Nymandavid.ny...@gmail.comwrote: ... The next citation by Robert B. Laughlin (Nobel laureate in physics) could be of interest here: http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2010/08/matter-and-little-ghosts.html By the most important effect of phase organisation is to cause objects to exist. This point is subtle and easily overlooked, since we are accustomed to thinking about solidification in terms of packing of Newtonian spheres. Atoms are not Newtonian spheres, however, but ethereal quantum-mechanical entities lacking that most central of all properties of an object an identifiable position. This is why attempts to describe free atoms in Newtonian terms always result in nonsense statements such as their being neither here nor there but simultaneously everywhere. It is aggregation into large objects that makes a Newtonian description of the atoms meaningful, not the reverse. One might compare this phenomenon with a yet-to-be-filmed Stephen Spilberg movie in which a huge number of little ghosts lock arms and, in doing so, become corporeal. Evgenii Physics may well be less reductionist than the reductionism of the philosophers. But the reductionism of the philosophers still does not entail elimination On the other hand, the philosophers should somehow relate their thoughts with the development in physics. By the way, about the water. The difference between H, O and H2O is in chemical bonds in H2O. Also one may not necessarily obtain H2O from H and O. It depends on temperature and pressure, if temperature is high enough then there are no water molecules anymore. There is some kinetics as well. Say diamond is thermodynamically unstable at normal conditions, but this fact does not influence the diamond prices http://www.diamondse.info/diamonds-price-index.asp -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 18 Sep, 16:11, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote: on 18.09.2010 01:38 1Z said the following: On 17 Sep, 18:52, Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: on 17.09.2010 14:33 1Z said the following: On 26 Aug, 17:37, David Nymandavid.ny...@gmail.com wrote: ... The next citation by Robert B. Laughlin (Nobel laureate in physics) could be of interest here: http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2010/08/matter-and-little-ghosts.html By the most important effect of phase organisation is to cause objects to exist. This point is subtle and easily overlooked, since we are accustomed to thinking about solidification in terms of packing of Newtonian spheres. Atoms are not Newtonian spheres, however, but ethereal quantum-mechanical entities lacking that most central of all properties of an object an identifiable position. This is why attempts to describe free atoms in Newtonian terms always result in nonsense statements such as their being neither here nor there but simultaneously everywhere. It is aggregation into large objects that makes a Newtonian description of the atoms meaningful, not the reverse. One might compare this phenomenon with a yet-to-be-filmed Stephen Spilberg movie in which a huge number of little ghosts lock arms and, in doing so, become corporeal. Evgenii Physics may well be less reductionist than the reductionism of the philosophers. But the reductionism of the philosophers still does not entail elimination On the other hand, the philosophers should somehow relate their thoughts with the development in physics. By the way, about the water. The difference between H, O and H2O is in chemical bonds in H2O. such bonds can be considered basic elements of reality, too Also one may not necessarily obtain H2O from H and O. It depends on temperature and pressure, if temperature is high enough then there are no water molecules anymore. There is some kinetics as well. Say diamond is thermodynamically unstable at normal conditions, but this fact does not influence the diamond prices http://www.diamondse.info/diamonds-price-index.asp -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
on 18.09.2010 18:08 1Z said the following: ... By the way, about the water. The difference between H, O and H2O is in chemical bonds in H2O. such bonds can be considered basic elements of reality, too I am not sure if I understand your answer. Say we have H2 and O2 at room temperature in some enclosure. Then we put a catalyst there and if the enclosure is strong enough, then we obtain there water, H20. The question is then what happened with bonds in H2 and O2 and where from come new bonds in H20? The bonds in H2, 02 and H20 are completely different from each other. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 17 Sep 2010, at 19:52, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: on 17.09.2010 14:33 1Z said the following: On 26 Aug, 17:37, David Nymandavid.ny...@gmail.com wrote: ... Whatever composite categories we might be tempted to have recourse to - you know: molecules, cells, bodies, planets, ideas, explanations, theories, the whole ball of wax - none of these are available from this perspective. Don't need them. More rigorously, they *must not be invoked* because they *do not exist*. They don't need to exist, because the machine doesn't need them to carry all the load and do all the work. OTOH, they must exist because if you have two hydrogens and an oxygen, you inevitably have the compound H2O. You also have many other compounds which are not dreamt of in our philosophy. the set of compounds is basically the powerset of the set of basic entities. there may not be any objective facts about what is a true compound, but the powerset unproblematically includes everything we conventionally regard as a compound as a powerset The next citation by Robert B. Laughlin (Nobel laureate in physics) could be of interest here: http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2010/08/matter-and-little-ghosts.html By the most important effect of phase organisation is to cause objects to exist. This point is subtle and easily overlooked, since we are accustomed to thinking about solidification in terms of packing of Newtonian spheres. That is indeed naive. Atoms are not Newtonian spheres, however, but ethereal quantum- mechanical entities lacking that most central of all properties of an object – an identifiable position. That is naive, and fuzzy. This is why attempts to describe free atoms in Newtonian terms always result in nonsense statements such as their being neither here nor there but simultaneously everywhere. IMO, this has been solved by Everett 1957 (many-worlds). This is also a necessary consequence of logic + arithmetic + I am a machine. It is aggregation into large objects that makes a Newtonian description of the atoms meaningful, not the reverse. I would say it is the first person filtration of coherent histories, to be short. One might compare this phenomenon with a yet-to-be-filmed Stephen Spilberg movie in which a huge number of little ghosts lock arms and, in doing so, become corporeal. Why not, if the atoms are the positive integers and the arms are addition and multiplication, but the physical reality is a projection of infinities of numbers, a biew of arithmetic from inside. No need of magical matter, nor magical arms, just numbers confronted to their own self-referential abilities. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this? (a side question)
On 18 Sep 2010, at 14:34, 1Z wrote: On 3 Sep, 09:10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Physicists have a tradition of putting mind and consciousness under the rug, Physicists have a tradition of not being psychologists front of the 'hard consciousness problem', or the mind-body problem. Indeed. Since Aristotle. Even more so since Christians burns those who depart from the Dogma, and atheism blocks progress in a less hot but as irrational way. But the platonist start with the right unifying principles, I think. The idea to separate physics from theology has been fertile methodologically, but, as I explained, it just does not work without reintroducing magical matter and/or magical minds, and/or magical dualist supervenience principles. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 18 Sep, 17:20, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote: on 18.09.2010 18:08 1Z said the following: ... By the way, about the water. The difference between H, O and H2O is in chemical bonds in H2O. such bonds can be considered basic elements of reality, too I am not sure if I understand your answer. Say we have H2 and O2 at room temperature in some enclosure. Then we put a catalyst there and if the enclosure is strong enough, then we obtain there water, H20. The question is then what happened with bonds in H2 and O2 and where from come new bonds in H20? The bonds in H2, 02 and H20 are completely different from each other. Basic elements of realit6 can appear and disappear too -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this? (a side question)
On 18 Sep, 18:21, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 18 Sep 2010, at 14:34, 1Z wrote: On 3 Sep, 09:10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Physicists have a tradition of putting mind and consciousness under the rug, Physicists have a tradition of not being psychologists front of the 'hard consciousness problem', or the mind-body problem. Indeed. Since Aristotle. Even more so since Christians burns those who depart from the Dogma, and atheism blocks progress in a less hot but as irrational way. ??? That wasn't at all what I meant. I meant that consciousness isn't obviously a physics problem (although it is obviousy a psychology problem) People who think consciousness is part of physics have presupposed it is fundamental -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this? (a side question)
On 18 Sep 2010, at 19:43, 1Z wrote: On 18 Sep, 18:21, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 18 Sep 2010, at 14:34, 1Z wrote: On 3 Sep, 09:10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Physicists have a tradition of putting mind and consciousness under the rug, Physicists have a tradition of not being psychologists front of the 'hard consciousness problem', or the mind-body problem. Indeed. Since Aristotle. Even more so since Christians burns those who depart from the Dogma, and atheism blocks progress in a less hot but as irrational way. ??? That wasn't at all what I meant. I meant that consciousness isn't obviously a physics problem (although it is obviousy a psychology problem) People who think consciousness is part of physics have presupposed it is fundamental When a physicists use a formula to predict an eclipse, he can forget for a while consciousness, but if the physicist want to predict that he will *see* an eclipse, he needs some form of supervenience. Now with classical mechanics, usually he will use (implicitly) the mind/ brain identity thesis, but this breaks down with quantum mechanics and digital mechanism. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
on 18.09.2010 19:02 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 17 Sep 2010, at 19:52, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... This is why attempts to describe free atoms in Newtonian terms always result in nonsense statements such as their being neither here nor there but simultaneously everywhere. IMO, this has been solved by Everett 1957 (many-worlds). This is also A naive question. How an idea of many-worlds helps to solve the mind-body problem? a necessary consequence of logic + arithmetic + I am a machine. It is aggregation into large objects that makes a Newtonian description of the atoms meaningful, not the reverse. I would say it is the first person filtration of coherent histories, to be short. Robert B. Laughlin plays in his book with the term emergence, whatever it means. It is quite popular among biologists nowadays, for example http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/ and some physicists. Basically it means that More Is Different, see More Is Different P. W. Anderson Science, New Series, Vol. 177, No. 4047. (Aug. 4, 1972), pp. 393-396. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
on 18.09.2010 19:40 1Z said the following: On 18 Sep, 17:20, Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: on 18.09.2010 18:08 1Z said the following: ... By the way, about the water. The difference between H, O and H2O is in chemical bonds in H2O. such bonds can be considered basic elements of reality, too I am not sure if I understand your answer. Say we have H2 and O2 at room temperature in some enclosure. Then we put a catalyst there and if the enclosure is strong enough, then we obtain there water, H20. The question is then what happened with bonds in H2 and O2 and where from come new bonds in H20? The bonds in H2, 02 and H20 are completely different from each other. Basic elements of realit6 can appear and disappear too How it would be possible to use your ideas, for example in drug design? Or in the development of a new material? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 9/18/2010 9:20 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: on 18.09.2010 18:08 1Z said the following: ... By the way, about the water. The difference between H, O and H2O is in chemical bonds in H2O. such bonds can be considered basic elements of reality, too I am not sure if I understand your answer. Say we have H2 and O2 at room temperature in some enclosure. Then we put a catalyst there and if the enclosure is strong enough, then we obtain there water, H20. The question is then what happened with bonds in H2 and O2 and where from come new bonds in H20? The bonds in H2, 02 and H20 are completely different from each other. Why do you think they are completely different? They are just local energy minima in the wave functions of the outer electrons. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
on 18.09.2010 21:09 Brent Meeker said the following: On 9/18/2010 9:20 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: on 18.09.2010 18:08 1Z said the following: ... By the way, about the water. The difference between H, O and H2O is in chemical bonds in H2O. such bonds can be considered basic elements of reality, too I am not sure if I understand your answer. Say we have H2 and O2 at room temperature in some enclosure. Then we put a catalyst there and if the enclosure is strong enough, then we obtain there water, H20. The question is then what happened with bonds in H2 and O2 and where from come new bonds in H20? The bonds in H2, 02 and H20 are completely different from each other. Why do you think they are completely different? They are just local energy minima in the wave functions of the outer electrons. It could be that the word completely is not quite right. Sure they are similar in respect that this is an interplay between nuclei and electrons. Yet, what I have meant, that their properties are quite different. Say the OO bond in O2 and the HH bond in H2 are not the same. This also concerns H0 bonds in HOH. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this? (a side question)
Bruno: thanks for the I thinkG in your text below - also: I cannot argue against your negative assessement about atheism - who IMO require a 'God to deny. You know my shortcomings to equate physics with other domains of *hearsay belief systems*, like *theology* (as *religion* mainly). What I mean is a 'system' based on primitive misunderstandings of phenomena at a lower level epistemicly enriched explanatory attempt, at a very early age (way before the Greeks) that was kept as a basis and equipped by the newer epistemic additions over the eons of development up to our times *now* (and continued probably for the future). You add to that your belief system of the numerals as constituting 'our world' - if used in large enough sequences - what I do not address at this moment. At any rate: it is a 'human' base for constituting a worldview. We are not capable of more. Our capabilities are restricted to absorb only parts of the totality and that. too, in ways how our PERSONAL thinking machine (brain?) adjusted them into its genetic buildup AND our personal experience-background, making it into a PERSONAL *mini-solipsism*, (expression from Hale) - also callable a *perceived reality*. Partial, that is. Since you slanted the 'mind-body' problem towards religious connotations(?), I turned to the Cartesian body-soul dualistic pair which was a result of Descartes's fear of the Inquisition. Not finding reasonable that a short-lived body should impose 'eternal' judgements upon an 'eternal' soul, in such respect (at least in its effectiveness?) the 'body' extends the *time-limit* we assign to the contraption enclosed (*spacially*) into our 'skin' - what I find untrue as well. This may be done by questioning the precision of our 'time' (and arrow of it) concept as physics takes it into account more or less. As someone who does not include the necessity of a creator or god into a worldview and claims agnostic ignorance about the much dicussed origins as well as the conclusions of physics-based conventional sciences and considers 'eternity' a timeless concept (maybe just an instant?) furthermore the 'numerals' and math - as David Bohm said: a human invention, - I have no proposal how to formulate answers to those 'burning' questions of 'everything'. Just a thought that may be wrong, but could lead to further enlightening ideas if some smarter-than-me minds add their remarks to it. With best regards, respectfully John M On 9/18/10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 18 Sep 2010, at 14:34, 1Z wrote: On 3 Sep, 09:10, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Physicists have a tradition of putting mind and consciousness under the rug, Physicists have a tradition of not being psychologists front of the 'hard consciousness problem', or the mind-body problem. Indeed. Since Aristotle. Even more so since Christians burns those who depart from the Dogma, and atheism blocks progress in a less hot but as irrational way. But the platonist start with the right unifying principles, I think. The idea to separate physics from theology has been fertile methodologically, but, as I explained, it just does not work without reintroducing magical matter and/or magical minds, and/or magical dualist supervenience principles. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 9/18/2010 12:19 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: on 18.09.2010 21:09 Brent Meeker said the following: On 9/18/2010 9:20 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: on 18.09.2010 18:08 1Z said the following: ... By the way, about the water. The difference between H, O and H2O is in chemical bonds in H2O. such bonds can be considered basic elements of reality, too I am not sure if I understand your answer. Say we have H2 and O2 at room temperature in some enclosure. Then we put a catalyst there and if the enclosure is strong enough, then we obtain there water, H20. The question is then what happened with bonds in H2 and O2 and where from come new bonds in H20? The bonds in H2, 02 and H20 are completely different from each other. Why do you think they are completely different? They are just local energy minima in the wave functions of the outer electrons. It could be that the word completely is not quite right. Sure they are similar in respect that this is an interplay between nuclei and electrons. Yet, what I have meant, that their properties are quite different. Say the OO bond in O2 and the HH bond in H2 are not the same. This also concerns H0 bonds in HOH. But they are the same at the level of QED, i.e. they are described by the same theory and in fact exist in a superposition of the states 2H20 -- 2H2 + O2. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
Friends, that reminds me of my 1/2 c profession in - more or less - chemistry with a conclusion that averted the brainwashing received in college (and applied in my successful RD work as long as it lasted) that the chemical 'formulae' of compounds describe 'ingredients'. You mentioned H2O - which is standing for *WATER.* as solid ice, liquid, or gas (vapor). You did not detail the 'ingredients' mixed up as H, O, naturally non-existing entities except for quite esoteric conditions we almost do not even know. What we know is H2 and O2 molecules, none of them detectable in water (any form) not even resembling characteristic in the mix produced when water has been *DESTROYED*. Similarly we learned about H and O when destroying H2 and O2 gasses. The resemblance comes as a result of mathematical transforms. (Forget for now spectroscopical matches: they were named backwards over hundreds of steps in tests just to show such matches). Now every child knows that water consists of oxygen and hydrogen. And the tooth fairy provides for the teeth. Gross negligence and superficiality. So: That is in a compound with MW(?) 18, ingredients: 2, extensively findable and general. Imagine our conventional scientific question marks in - say - proteins (MW: millions, ingredients 18+) and zillions of configurational/conformational design-potentials. Synthetic polymers seem more regulated if you stick to the imagined atomic composition and forget about the (conf/conf) design potentials, restricted into the features we considered yesterday. (Nano-structures are new and who knows what else is coming up?) Conventional sciences is a nice pipe-dream, we take what we know - period. Think further: and you are out, no publisher available, no pulpit to expose ideas - of course, because those ideas usually exceed the measuring capabilities of the past instrumental designs and so do not provide (numerical!) data for mathematical churnings. *Compounds exist???* of course, we think of them, eo ipso they 'exist' *in our minds*. Is there any other definition of *existing?* do we have criteria for 'objective' reality? Can we observe/count measure it? Nope. * Compounds aren't postulated as some separate set of entities--they are just set theoretic constructs put of what does exsit. **H2O is not distinct from the two H's and the O.* just - as I tried to show it above - has nothing to do with them. Even if you 'synthesize' for proof - you burn H2 *gas* in O2 *gas* (or vice versa, nothing about *H* and *O*, with completely different attributes and characteristics. Careful with 'belief systems' called: conventional sciences: they are mostly hearsay-based and justified backwards with evidence manufactured in the course of million steps. Some retrograded. Frustrated in my conventional knowledge-memories regarding chemistry (Ph.D.,) and polymer molecular technology (D.Sc) when thinking forward John M. On 9/17/10, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: On 17 Sep, 14:10, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote: On 17 September 2010 13:33, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: Compounds aren't postulated as some separate set of entities--they are just set theoretic constructs put of what does exsit. H2O is not distinct from the two H's and the O. That's exactly my point. Think about it. I did. It turns out that compounds exist, but not primarily. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 18 Sep, 19:32, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote: on 18.09.2010 19:40 1Z said the following: On 18 Sep, 17:20, Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: on 18.09.2010 18:08 1Z said the following: ... By the way, about the water. The difference between H, O and H2O is in chemical bonds in H2O. such bonds can be considered basic elements of reality, too I am not sure if I understand your answer. Say we have H2 and O2 at room temperature in some enclosure. Then we put a catalyst there and if the enclosure is strong enough, then we obtain there water, H20. The question is then what happened with bonds in H2 and O2 and where from come new bonds in H20? The bonds in H2, 02 and H20 are completely different from each other. Basic elements of realit6 can appear and disappear too How it would be possible to use your ideas, for example in drug design? Or in the development of a new material? Dunno. They can't brew coffee either. I was exploring the consequences of reductionism. If you want an engineer, hire an engineer. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 26 Aug, 17:37, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: I should stress, again, I'm not personally committed to this view - it seems indeed highly problematic - but it is what the recipe says. Now, just to emphasise the point, when I say it's a hard thing to do this imaginatively, I mean that it isn't permissible to look back from this reductionist-god's eye view and continue to conjure familiar composite entities from the conjectural base components, because reductionism is a commitment to the proposition that these don't exist. not at all. reductionism is a commitment to the idea that all higher level entities are compounds and nothing but compounds, wholes which are exactly the sums of their parts. Whatever composite categories we might be tempted to have recourse to - you know: molecules, cells, bodies, planets, ideas, explanations, theories, the whole ball of wax - none of these are available from this perspective. Don't need them. More rigorously, they *must not be invoked* because they *do not exist*. They don't need to exist, because the machine doesn't need them to carry all the load and do all the work. OTOH, they must exist because if you have two hydrogens and an oxygen, you inevitably have the compound H2O. You also have many other compounds which are not dreamt of in our philosophy. the set of compounds is basically the powerset of the set of basic entities. there may not be any objective facts about what is a true compound, but the powerset unproblematically includes everything we conventionally regard as a compound as a powerset Now, many people might be prompted to object at this point that's not reducing, that's eliminating as though these terms could be kept distinct. But I'm arguing that reductionism, consistently applied, is inescapably eliminative. The hypothesis was that base-level events are self-sufficient and consequently must be granted metaphysical (and hence physical) reality. Nothing else is required to explain why the machine exists and works, so nothing else need - or indeed can non- question-beggingly - be postulated. Compounds aren't postulated as some separate set of entities--they are just set theoretic constructs put of what does exsit. H2O is not distinct from the two H's and the O. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 17 September 2010 13:33, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: Compounds aren't postulated as some separate set of entities--they are just set theoretic constructs put of what does exsit. H2O is not distinct from the two H's and the O. That's exactly my point. Think about it. David On 26 Aug, 17:37, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: I should stress, again, I'm not personally committed to this view - it seems indeed highly problematic - but it is what the recipe says. Now, just to emphasise the point, when I say it's a hard thing to do this imaginatively, I mean that it isn't permissible to look back from this reductionist-god's eye view and continue to conjure familiar composite entities from the conjectural base components, because reductionism is a commitment to the proposition that these don't exist. not at all. reductionism is a commitment to the idea that all higher level entities are compounds and nothing but compounds, wholes which are exactly the sums of their parts. Whatever composite categories we might be tempted to have recourse to - you know: molecules, cells, bodies, planets, ideas, explanations, theories, the whole ball of wax - none of these are available from this perspective. Don't need them. More rigorously, they *must not be invoked* because they *do not exist*. They don't need to exist, because the machine doesn't need them to carry all the load and do all the work. OTOH, they must exist because if you have two hydrogens and an oxygen, you inevitably have the compound H2O. You also have many other compounds which are not dreamt of in our philosophy. the set of compounds is basically the powerset of the set of basic entities. there may not be any objective facts about what is a true compound, but the powerset unproblematically includes everything we conventionally regard as a compound as a powerset Now, many people might be prompted to object at this point that's not reducing, that's eliminating as though these terms could be kept distinct. But I'm arguing that reductionism, consistently applied, is inescapably eliminative. The hypothesis was that base-level events are self-sufficient and consequently must be granted metaphysical (and hence physical) reality. Nothing else is required to explain why the machine exists and works, so nothing else need - or indeed can non- question-beggingly - be postulated. Compounds aren't postulated as some separate set of entities--they are just set theoretic constructs put of what does exsit. H2O is not distinct from the two H's and the O. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
on 17.09.2010 14:33 1Z said the following: On 26 Aug, 17:37, David Nymandavid.ny...@gmail.com wrote: ... Whatever composite categories we might be tempted to have recourse to - you know: molecules, cells, bodies, planets, ideas, explanations, theories, the whole ball of wax - none of these are available from this perspective. Don't need them. More rigorously, they *must not be invoked* because they *do not exist*. They don't need to exist, because the machine doesn't need them to carry all the load and do all the work. OTOH, they must exist because if you have two hydrogens and an oxygen, you inevitably have the compound H2O. You also have many other compounds which are not dreamt of in our philosophy. the set of compounds is basically the powerset of the set of basic entities. there may not be any objective facts about what is a true compound, but the powerset unproblematically includes everything we conventionally regard as a compound as a powerset The next citation by Robert B. Laughlin (Nobel laureate in physics) could be of interest here: http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2010/08/matter-and-little-ghosts.html By the most important effect of phase organisation is to cause objects to exist. This point is subtle and easily overlooked, since we are accustomed to thinking about solidification in terms of packing of Newtonian spheres. Atoms are not Newtonian spheres, however, but ethereal quantum-mechanical entities lacking that most central of all properties of an object – an identifiable position. This is why attempts to describe free atoms in Newtonian terms always result in nonsense statements such as their being neither here nor there but simultaneously everywhere. It is aggregation into large objects that makes a Newtonian description of the atoms meaningful, not the reverse. One might compare this phenomenon with a yet-to-be-filmed Stephen Spilberg movie in which a huge number of little ghosts lock arms and, in doing so, become corporeal. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 17 Sep, 14:10, David Nyman da...@davidnyman.com wrote: On 17 September 2010 13:33, 1Z peterdjo...@yahoo.com wrote: Compounds aren't postulated as some separate set of entities--they are just set theoretic constructs put of what does exsit. H2O is not distinct from the two H's and the O. That's exactly my point. Think about it. I did. It turns out that compounds exist, but not primarily. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 17 Sep, 18:52, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote: on 17.09.2010 14:33 1Z said the following: On 26 Aug, 17:37, David Nymandavid.ny...@gmail.com wrote: ... Whatever composite categories we might be tempted to have recourse to - you know: molecules, cells, bodies, planets, ideas, explanations, theories, the whole ball of wax - none of these are available from this perspective. Don't need them. More rigorously, they *must not be invoked* because they *do not exist*. They don't need to exist, because the machine doesn't need them to carry all the load and do all the work. OTOH, they must exist because if you have two hydrogens and an oxygen, you inevitably have the compound H2O. You also have many other compounds which are not dreamt of in our philosophy. the set of compounds is basically the powerset of the set of basic entities. there may not be any objective facts about what is a true compound, but the powerset unproblematically includes everything we conventionally regard as a compound as a powerset The next citation by Robert B. Laughlin (Nobel laureate in physics) could be of interest here: http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2010/08/matter-and-little-ghosts.html By the most important effect of phase organisation is to cause objects to exist. This point is subtle and easily overlooked, since we are accustomed to thinking about solidification in terms of packing of Newtonian spheres. Atoms are not Newtonian spheres, however, but ethereal quantum-mechanical entities lacking that most central of all properties of an object an identifiable position. This is why attempts to describe free atoms in Newtonian terms always result in nonsense statements such as their being neither here nor there but simultaneously everywhere. It is aggregation into large objects that makes a Newtonian description of the atoms meaningful, not the reverse. One might compare this phenomenon with a yet-to-be-filmed Stephen Spilberg movie in which a huge number of little ghosts lock arms and, in doing so, become corporeal. Evgenii Physics may well be less reductionist than the reductionism of the philosophers. But the reductionism of the philosophers still does not entail elimination -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
RE: What's wrong with this?
Hi Bruno, It seems that we need to discuss more basic ideas as it seems that my attempted explanations are not bisimulating with your thoughts. From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2010 9:40 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: What's wrong with this? On 12 Sep 2010, at 21:43, Stephen P. King wrote: Hi Bruno, -Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2010 11:36 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: What's wrong with this? On 11 Sep 2010, at 00:42, Stephen P. King wrote: Hi Bruno, -Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal Sent: Friday, September 10, 2010 11:16 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: What's wrong with this? snip *** Integers as Arithmetic Equivalence Classes and implications by S. P. King 9/10/2010 Zero-ness ___ 0 + 0 = 0 0 - 0 = 0 0^1 - 0^1 = 0 1 - 1 = 0 2 - 2 = 0 3 - 3 = 0 ... 0 x 0 = 0 ___ One-ness ___ 0 + 1 = 1 1^1 + 0 = 1 1 - 0 = 1 1^1 - 0 = 1 2 - 1 = 1 3 - 2 = 1 4 - 3 = 1 . 1 x 1 = 1 2 / 2 = 1 3 / 3 = 1 4 / 4 = 1 . _ Two-ness 1 + 1 = 2 1^1 + 1^1 = 2 0 + 2 = 2 3 - 1 = 2 4 - 2 = 2 5 - 3 = 2 . 4 / 2 = 2 6 / 3 = 2 8 / 4 = 2 .. ___ Etc. External symmetry = 3rd person aspect. Each Class has aleph_null tuples and thus has the same cardinality. We could use the permutation symmetry over the cardinality to identify an external or 3rd person notion of Integer. This would generate a notion of that is an Integer that is invariant to a change from one of the N classes to another. What would be the internal symmetry? Internal Symmetries = 1st person aspect. Note that we can substitute equivalent elements of the tuples with each other by the use of bracketing or some other push/pop method. This would ultimately show that the tuples are combinations of images of each other's elements so that there is 1) no primitive atom and 2) that the pattern of similarities and differences over this tapestry of combinatorics would encode the operations of Arithmetic. Property 1 is the reason I use non-well founded set theory, by the way... * [BM] It is difficult for me to follow. In ZF there is no atom, yet it is well-founded. Non well-foundedness is motivate by introducing set having themselves as elements, or having elements having elements ... having elements having the starting set as an element. [SPK] Yes, in my example above it seems to be the case that the N-ness classes can have themselves as elements and so forth. For example, in the Zero-ness class, there is a couple of 0s that are equaling 0 when added, subtracted or multiplied. Is this not an example of an element having itself as an element? My wording might be incorrect according to the usual definition of class, etc. but I hope that my meanings are communicated. [BM] Honesty I am a bit lost. [SPKnew] OK, did you make sense of the idea of representing Integer with a sort of equivalence class that have members that are the arithmetic generators or creators or acts that equal examples of the number? We can think of 1 in the Platonic sense as the class of all arithmetic operations that are equal to 1, 2 as the class of all arithmetic operations that equal 2, etc. OK, given that then it seems to follow that, say a 2 in the operation that equals some other number is in a sense a mapping of the entire class of 2 into that other class. Does this make sense so far? snip [SPK] Let me quote something from Carlo Rovelli that I found in Quo Vadis Quantum Mechanics? referring to C. E. Shannon's 1949 book: ...the definition of Shannon, not the popular one, but the one in his book, where you have two systems with many states, and there is a possible state of the couple but there is only a restricted subset of all joint states. Information is simply the way of counting the allowed joint possible states. The fact that there is a common allowed state tells you that if you know something about one system you also know something about the other one. This is exactly what you need in communication theory when you have a channel, a receiver and a transmitter. So I have two systems. If there is a quantum correlation of the two, I can say that, if this system is UP, the other is DOWN, and vice versa. This is what I mean by information, period. I am attempting to be faithful to this definition. Interestingly, it seems that since the equivalence classes that I pointed out above are countably infinite
Re: What's wrong with this?
On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 9:40 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 12 Sep 2010, at 21:43, Stephen P. King wrote: The only explanation that I can think of for this is that the hope of an impersonal determinism that obtains from the block-static reality doctrine allows it adherents to avoid all notions of personal responsibility for their behaviors. On the contrary, it is explained that free-will and responsibility is unavoidable from inside. To use the determinacy of the big whole would be like to give a name to God, and that is explicitly making any Löbian machine inconsistent, and worth: incorrect. We are typically partially responsible for our normal futures. Bertrand Russell: Whatever may be thought about it as a matter of ultimate metaphysics, it is quite clear that nobody believes it in practice. Everyone has always believed that it is possible to train character; everyone has always known that alcohol or opium will have a certain effect on behaviour. The apostle of free will maintains that a man can by will power avoid getting drunk, but he does not maintain that when drunk a man can say British Constitution as clearly as if he were sober. And everybody who has ever had to do with children knows that a suitable diet does more to make them virtuous than the most eloquent preaching in the world. The one effect that the free- will doctrine has in practice is to prevent people from following out such common-sense knowledge to its rational conclusion. When a man acts in ways that annoy us we wish to think him wicked, and we refuse to face the fact that his annoying behaviour is a result of antecedent causes which, if you follow them long enough, will take you beyond the moment of his birth and therefore to events for which he cannot be held responsible by any stretch of imagination. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 14 Sep 2010, at 17:23, Rex Allen wrote: On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 9:40 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 12 Sep 2010, at 21:43, Stephen P. King wrote: The only explanation that I can think of for this is that the hope of an impersonal determinism that obtains from the block-static reality doctrine allows it adherents to avoid all notions of personal responsibility for their behaviors. On the contrary, it is explained that free-will and responsibility is unavoidable from inside. To use the determinacy of the big whole would be like to give a name to God, and that is explicitly making any Löbian machine inconsistent, and worth: incorrect. We are typically partially responsible for our normal futures. Bertrand Russell: Whatever may be thought about it as a matter of ultimate metaphysics, it is quite clear that nobody believes it in practice. Everyone has always believed that it is possible to train character; everyone has always known that alcohol or opium will have a certain effect on behaviour. The apostle of free will maintains that a man can by will power avoid getting drunk, but he does not maintain that when drunk a man can say British Constitution as clearly as if he were sober. And everybody who has ever had to do with children knows that a suitable diet does more to make them virtuous than the most eloquent preaching in the world. The one effect that the free- will doctrine has in practice is to prevent people from following out such common-sense knowledge to its rational conclusion. When a man acts in ways that annoy us we wish to think him wicked, and we refuse to face the fact that his annoying behaviour is a result of antecedent causes which, if you follow them long enough, will take you beyond the moment of his birth and therefore to events for which he cannot be held responsible by any stretch of imagination. Bertrand Russell has been my favorite philosopher during a long time in my youth. But he is deadly wrong on many things. He thought that mathematics can be based on logic alone, but this has been refuted by Gödel's theorem, and then that very theorem imposes to distinguish the knower machine and the believer (even when correct) machine, and actually forces us to introduce many different ways to see the arithmetical reality, from inside. The quoted text confuses the deterministic third person description of a (putative) reality, and the first person knowledge available to a subject living inside that reality. Note that, having said this, I should insist that free will is NOT related to the first person indeterminacy, but free-will is related to the fact that we can have a rather good idea of what hurt and what please to oneself, and we can see that sometimes we can get personally a bigger amount of what please by methods leading to the hurting of other people, and that we can face our conscience and decide on its account. To believe the contrary would lead to the confusion of the sadic (in Sade sense) with the psychopath, and it would lead to the substitution of the judge by the psychiatre, the jail by the asylum. This would converge toward authoritative regime and eventually every person would be judge irresponsible and would find itself in a controled asylum. A bit like modern prohibition of drugs, it is an self-prophetic path which makes people irresponsible, indeed. Incompleteness provides for the ideally correct machine a coherent picture making it, from inside, partially responsible for its futures, including possible amounts of what please and what hurts to oneself and other machines. The whole picture is determined, but as I said to Stephen, to invoke it from inside is a mechanist blasphem; it is akin to say that God told you what is good and bad for *me* (or anyone who is not you). It would be like saying that a sadist is not responsible for his action given that it obeyed strictly to the laws of physics when committing its murder. In Löbian term, it is a confusion between the Human (Löbian) first person experiences and exact (that is falsifiable!) third person science. Mechanism explains why consciousness leads to conscience. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
RE: What's wrong with this?
Hi Bruno, -Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2010 11:36 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: What's wrong with this? On 11 Sep 2010, at 00:42, Stephen P. King wrote: Hi Bruno, -Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal Sent: Friday, September 10, 2010 11:16 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: What's wrong with this? On 09 Sep 2010, at 14:37, Stephen P. King wrote: Hi Bruno, My thought is to look at the transformation group around which some property is invariant to act as a generator of the properties of the, say, quark. [BM] Good idea. That is related with the importance of group theory and (soon) category theory in physics. For simple numbers this would be a permutation over fields, one field per number, [BM] Why? We may have use combinators instead of numbers. Their role are intensional, and representational. Their intrinsic mathematical structure certainly plays some role, but I don't see why to use them directly to mirror physics. Even if that works (by chance) it would hidden the mind-body problem. Of course it might be very interesting, and the relation between physics and number theory suggest that such approach have their merits. [SPK] YES!!! You nailed it! Let me paste a little note here that I just wrote up. I apologize in advance for the crudeness of this. *** Integers as Arithmetic Equivalence Classes and implications by S. P. King 9/10/2010 Zero-ness ___ 0 + 0 = 0 0 - 0 = 0 0^1 - 0^1 = 0 1 - 1 = 0 2 - 2 = 0 3 - 3 = 0 ... 0 x 0 = 0 ___ One-ness ___ 0 + 1 = 1 1^1 + 0 = 1 1 - 0 = 1 1^1 - 0 = 1 2 - 1 = 1 3 - 2 = 1 4 - 3 = 1 . 1 x 1 = 1 2 / 2 = 1 3 / 3 = 1 4 / 4 = 1 . _ Two-ness 1 + 1 = 2 1^1 + 1^1 = 2 0 + 2 = 2 3 - 1 = 2 4 - 2 = 2 5 - 3 = 2 . 4 / 2 = 2 6 / 3 = 2 8 / 4 = 2 .. ___ Etc. External symmetry = 3rd person aspect. Each Class has aleph_null tuples and thus has the same cardinality. We could use the permutation symmetry over the cardinality to identify an external or 3rd person notion of Integer. This would generate a notion of that is an Integer that is invariant to a change from one of the N classes to another. What would be the internal symmetry? Internal Symmetries = 1st person aspect. Note that we can substitute equivalent elements of the tuples with each other by the use of bracketing or some other push/pop method. This would ultimately show that the tuples are combinations of images of each other's elements so that there is 1) no primitive atom and 2) that the pattern of similarities and differences over this tapestry of combinatorics would encode the operations of Arithmetic. Property 1 is the reason I use non-well founded set theory, by the way... * [BM] It is difficult for me to follow. In ZF there is no atom, yet it is well-founded. Non well-foundedness is motivate by introducing set having themselves as elements, or having elements having elements ... having elements having the starting set as an element. [SPK] Yes, in my example above it seems to be the case that the N-ness classes can have themselves as elements and so forth. For example, in the Zero-ness class, there is a couple of 0s that are equaling 0 when added, subtracted or multiplied. Is this not an example of an element having itself as an element? My wording might be incorrect according to the usual definition of class, etc. but I hope that my meanings are communicated. It is my suspicion that the mind-body problem is caused by a lack of understanding of what is involved. It is far too easy to throw up one's hands and settle for some silly eliminatism; Ignorance is Bliss. Notice that both the internal and external symmetry notions here yield a kind of indefiniteness that Plotinus would point to, as per your discussions, to define Matter. You should elaborate, but you should make clear the relation between math and philosophy/theology. [SPK]] Yes, I agree but I am sure that you can see that this is very difficult to do. But what about the information content itself of the relations themselves? Is Information identical to Indeterminateness? [BM] Information is a tricky word having different meaning in different theories. It can be a measure of surprise, like in the old Shannon theory, or something related to meaning, like in logics and in the press. We can relate all that, but then we have to be almost formal for not falling in the traps of non genuine analogies. [SPK] Let me quote something from Carlo Rovelli that I found in Quo Vadis Quantum Mechanics? referring to C. E. Shannon's
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 11 Sep 2010, at 00:42, Stephen P. King wrote: Hi Bruno, -Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal Sent: Friday, September 10, 2010 11:16 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: What's wrong with this? On 09 Sep 2010, at 14:37, Stephen P. King wrote: Hi Bruno, My thought is to look at the transformation group around which some property is invariant to act as a generator of the properties of the, say, quark. [BM] Good idea. That is related with the importance of group theory and (soon) category theory in physics. For simple numbers this would be a permutation over fields, one field per number, [BM] Why? We may have use combinators instead of numbers. Their role are intensional, and representational. Their intrinsic mathematical structure certainly plays some role, but I don't see why to use them directly to mirror physics. Even if that works (by chance) it would hidden the mind-body problem. Of course it might be very interesting, and the relation between physics and number theory suggest that such approach have their merits. [SPK] YES!!! You nailed it! Let me paste a little note here that I just wrote up. I apologize in advance for the crudeness of this. *** Integers as Arithmetic Equivalence Classes and implications by S. P. King 9/10/2010 Zero-ness ___ 0 + 0 = 0 0 - 0 = 0 0^1 - 0^1 = 0 1 - 1 = 0 2 - 2 = 0 3 - 3 = 0 ... 0 x 0 = 0 ___ One-ness ___ 0 + 1 = 1 1^1 + 0 = 1 1 - 0 = 1 1^1 - 0 = 1 2 - 1 = 1 3 - 2 = 1 4 - 3 = 1 . 1 x 1 = 1 2 / 2 = 1 3 / 3 = 1 4 / 4 = 1 . _ Two-ness 1 + 1 = 2 1^1 + 1^1 = 2 0 + 2 = 2 3 - 1 = 2 4 - 2 = 2 5 - 3 = 2 . 4 / 2 = 2 6 / 3 = 2 8 / 4 = 2 .. ___ Etc. External symmetry = 3rd person aspect. Each Class has aleph_null tuples and thus has the same cardinality. We could use the permutation symmetry over the cardinality to identify an external or 3rd person notion of Integer. This would generate a notion of that is an Integer that is invariant to a change from one of the N classes to another. What would be the internal symmetry? Internal Symmetries = 1st person aspect. Note that we can substitute equivalent elements of the tuples with each other by the use of bracketing or some other push/pop method. This would ultimately show that the tuples are combinations of images of each other's elements so that there is 1) no primitive atom and 2) that the pattern of similarities and differences over this tapestry of combinatorics would encode the operations of Arithmetic. Property 1 is the reason I use non-well founded set theory, by the way... * It is difficult for me to follow. In ZF there is no atom, yet it is well-founded. Non well-foundedness is motivate by introducing set having themselves as elements, or having elements having elements ... having elements having the starting set as an element. It is my suspicion that the mind-body problem is caused by a lack of understanding of what is involved. It is far too easy to throw up one's hands and settle for some silly eliminatism; Ignorance is Bliss. Notice that both the internal and external symmetry notions here yield a kind of indefiniteness that Plotinus would point to, as per your discussions, to define Matter. You should elaborate, but you should make clear the relation between math and philosophy/theology. But what about the information content itself of the relations themselves? Is Information identical to Indeterminateness? Information is a tricky word having different meaning in different theories. It can be a measure of surprise, like in the old Shannon theory, or something related to meaning, like in logics and in the press. We can relate all that, but then we have to be almost formal for not falling in the traps of non genuine analogies. It seems to me that the answer is a resounding NO! I claim that it is its Dual. Thus I advocate a form of mind-matter dualism in terms of an Information-Matter dualism following the lines of the Pontryagin and Stone dualities. http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/327868 You may elaborate, but Stone dualities are very technical hard matter. I guess you are alluding to Vaughan Pratt's work on Chu Spaces. but this seems to not really resolve the question entirely. [BM] I am not sure I have a clear idea of the question, here. [SPK] Am I making any sense so far? It makes me suspicious of the entire Platonic program, for what would act as the universal generator of twoness as distinguished from threeness be in-itself? Why not some kind of nominalism that transforms asymptotically into universalism? [BM] You lost me. You know how I work. I start from an assumption about some link between consciousness and Turing 'machine', and from this I derived step by step a frame
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 09 Sep 2010, at 14:37, Stephen P. King wrote: Hi Bruno, My thought is to look at the transformation group around which some property is invariant to act as a generator of the properties of the, say, quark. Good idea. That is related with the importance of group theory and (soon) category theory in physics. For simple numbers this would be a permutation over fields, one field per number, Why? We may have use combinators instead of numbers. Their role are intensional, and representational. Their intrinsic mathematical structure certainly plays some role, but I don't see why to use them directly to mirror physics. Even if that works (by chance) it would hidden the mind-body problem. Of course it might be very interesting, and the relation between physics and number theory suggest that such approach have their merits. but this seems to not really resolve the question entirely. I am not sure I have a clear idea of the question, here. It makes me suspicious of the entire Platonic program, for what would act as the universal generator of twoness as distinguished from threeness be in-itself? Why not some kind of nominalism that transforms asymptotically into universalism? You lost me. You know how I work. I start from an assumption about some link between consciousness and Turing 'machine', and from this I derived step by step a frame which is closer to Plato and Plotinus than to Aristotle, at least on the Matter notion. BTW, I really enjoyed reading your SIENA paper. My only comment on it is that I wish you would elaborate more on the diamond^alpha t aspect because that is where plurality obtains. Thanks. Actually I think, but I'm still not quite sure, that the ^alpha feature should explain the graded aspect of the quantum logics, which should explains the origin of the tensor product, of the plurality of dimension, and eventually the (quantum) structure of space-time. The many worlds are more due to the extreme redundancy of the computational histories in arithmetic. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
RE: What's wrong with this?
Hi Bruno, -Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal Sent: Friday, September 10, 2010 11:16 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: What's wrong with this? On 09 Sep 2010, at 14:37, Stephen P. King wrote: Hi Bruno, My thought is to look at the transformation group around which some property is invariant to act as a generator of the properties of the, say, quark. [BM] Good idea. That is related with the importance of group theory and (soon) category theory in physics. For simple numbers this would be a permutation over fields, one field per number, [BM] Why? We may have use combinators instead of numbers. Their role are intensional, and representational. Their intrinsic mathematical structure certainly plays some role, but I don't see why to use them directly to mirror physics. Even if that works (by chance) it would hidden the mind-body problem. Of course it might be very interesting, and the relation between physics and number theory suggest that such approach have their merits. [SPK] YES!!! You nailed it! Let me paste a little note here that I just wrote up. I apologize in advance for the crudeness of this. *** Integers as Arithmetic Equivalence Classes and implications by S. P. King 9/10/2010 Zero-ness ___ 0 + 0 = 0 0 - 0 = 0 0^1 - 0^1 = 0 1 - 1 = 0 2 - 2 = 0 3 - 3 = 0 ... 0 x 0 = 0 ___ One-ness ___ 0 + 1 = 1 1^1 + 0 = 1 1 - 0 = 1 1^1 - 0 = 1 2 - 1 = 1 3 - 2 = 1 4 - 3 = 1 . 1 x 1 = 1 2 / 2 = 1 3 / 3 = 1 4 / 4 = 1 . _ Two-ness 1 + 1 = 2 1^1 + 1^1 = 2 0 + 2 = 2 3 - 1 = 2 4 - 2 = 2 5 - 3 = 2 . 4 / 2 = 2 6 / 3 = 2 8 / 4 = 2 .. ___ Etc. External symmetry = 3rd person aspect. Each Class has aleph_null tuples and thus has the same cardinality. We could use the permutation symmetry over the cardinality to identify an external or 3rd person notion of Integer. This would generate a notion of that is an Integer that is invariant to a change from one of the N classes to another. What would be the internal symmetry? Internal Symmetries = 1st person aspect. Note that we can substitute equivalent elements of the tuples with each other by the use of bracketing or some other push/pop method. This would ultimately show that the tuples are combinations of images of each other's elements so that there is 1) no primitive atom and 2) that the pattern of similarities and differences over this tapestry of combinatorics would encode the operations of Arithmetic. Property 1 is the reason I use non-well founded set theory, by the way... * It is my suspicion that the mind-body problem is caused by a lack of understanding of what is involved. It is far too easy to throw up one's hands and settle for some silly eliminatism; Ignorance is Bliss. Notice that both the internal and external symmetry notions here yield a kind of indefiniteness that Plotinus would point to, as per your discussions, to define Matter. But what about the information content itself of the relations themselves? Is Information identical to Indeterminateness? It seems to me that the answer is a resounding NO! I claim that it is its Dual. Thus I advocate a form of mind-matter dualism in terms of an Information-Matter dualism following the lines of the Pontryagin and Stone dualities. http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/327868 but this seems to not really resolve the question entirely. [BM] I am not sure I have a clear idea of the question, here. [SPK] Am I making any sense so far? It makes me suspicious of the entire Platonic program, for what would act as the universal generator of twoness as distinguished from threeness be in-itself? Why not some kind of nominalism that transforms asymptotically into universalism? [BM] You lost me. You know how I work. I start from an assumption about some link between consciousness and Turing 'machine', and from this I derived step by step a frame which is closer to Plato and Plotinus than to Aristotle, at least on the Matter notion. [SPK] Yes and I use the assumption that any 1st person content of consciousness can be show to be equivalent to the content of some virtual reality generated by a Turing Machine (given with sufficient physical resources) and following your arguments will agree that while the content itself is computable, *which one of the computations it is* that is the actual generator of the particular content of a particular point of view is not computational. These thoughts tie back to the point about indeterminateness that Plotinus brilliantly made and you point out. Your modelization so far seems to only consider a frozen perspective and there is scant mention of how the model is extended to cover a plurality of entities, except for the diamond^alpha aspect mentioned below. As far as I can tell, your Model offers a logical structure to a new
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 08 Sep 2010, at 20:28, Rex Allen wrote: On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 10:50 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 9/7/2010 1:48 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: Having said this your point does not follow, in the sense that even if consciousness supervenes on interactions of particles (non mechanism) this would not prevents consciousness to retroact on the particles, like when a painter moves ink and papers to express his artistic feelings. Another example: we may argue that guns and atomic bombs are produced in part by human fears. But then what causes human fears? Assuming Mechanism (and thus non-physicalism) we could say that very old self-referential subroutines cause human fear. It is the qualia associated with anything threatening our probability survival. You could say quarks and electrons cause human fears which then cause guns and bombs. Not really. Quarks and electrons can locally play a role in the local and relative implementation of the subroutines above. OR, you could say quarks and electrons cause human fears *and also cause* guns and bombs. Human fears being epiphenomenal and non-causal. This does not work because we already known that quark and electron exists relatively to us because our consciousness selects or filters the realities which sustain us consistently. Consciousness is more primitive than quarks and electrons. This is probably not obvious, but follows from the UDA. Consciousness is just inference by machine of their own consistency. How could you tell which option was correct? The first one is a bit closer to what we have to deduce from the digital mechanist hypothesis. Human flesh and guns and bombs all boil down to specific arrangements of quarks and electrons. There's no mystery as to how one could lead to the others. The mystery is why there should be an experience of fear associated certain arrangements of quarks and electrons and experiences of happiness associated with other arrangements and (presumably) no experience at all associated with yet other arrangements. The mystery is solved when you understand that consciousness (immaterial) is a necessarily existing inference of machines (immaterial) observing themselves, and that quarks and bombs are their constructs/filtration. Probably the quarks are much common in any Löbian observable (physical) reality, given that they come from quantum phenomena already build by the Löbian machines (infinitely more common in the arithmetical multi-dreams than humans). The only mystery which remains is the qualia of the natural numbers itself, but this one is enough to explain why it is not humanly, nor Löbianly, solvable. So everything, including a mystery, fit together nicely. And consciousness has a role: that reality-inference speed up the processes deepening our histories. The stability and persistence of observable reality needs that consciousness filtration. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
RE: What's wrong with this?
Hi Bruno, My thought is to look at the transformation group around which some property is invariant to act as a generator of the properties of the, say, quark. For simple numbers this would be a permutation over fields, one field per number, but this seems to not really resolve the question entirely. It makes me suspicious of the entire Platonic program, for what would act as the universal generator of twoness as distinguished from threeness be in-itself? Why not some kind of nominalism that transforms asymptotically into universalism? BTW, I really enjoyed reading your SIENA paper. My only comment on it is that I wish you would elaborate more on the diamond^alpha t aspect because that is where plurality obtains. Onward! Stephen P. King -Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2010 4:42 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: What's wrong with this? snip The mystery is solved when you understand that consciousness (immaterial) is a necessarily existing inference of machines (immaterial) observing themselves, and that quarks and bombs are their constructs/filtration. Probably the quarks are much common in any Löbian observable (physical) reality, given that they come from quantum phenomena already build by the Löbian machines (infinitely more common in the arithmetical multi-dreams than humans). The only mystery which remains is the qualia of the natural numbers itself, but this one is enough to explain why it is not humanly, nor Löbianly, solvable. So everything, including a mystery, fit together nicely. And consciousness has a role: that reality-inference speed up the processes deepening our histories. The stability and persistence of observable reality needs that consciousness filtration. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 07 Sep 2010, at 23:13, Brent Meeker wrote: On 9/7/2010 1:48 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: on 07.09.2010 05:11 Rex Allen said the following: On Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 11:01 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 9/6/2010 6:45 PM, Rex Allen wrote: ... Put a different way: According to physicalism conscious experience supervenes on quarks and electrons. Quarks and electrons do not supervene on conscious experience. I have just read Vital Dust, The Origin and Evolution of Life on Earth by Christian de Duve. One citation from the chapter The Future of Life (p. 271). We have reached a crucial state in the history of life. The face of the Earth has changed dramatically in the last few thousand years, a mere instant in evolution time, and it is changing ever faster. What would have taken one thousands generations in the past may now happen in a single generation. Biological evolution is on a runaway course toward severe instability. In a way, our time recalls one of those major breaks in evolution signaled by massive extinctions. But there is a difference. The cause of instability is not the impact of a large asteroid or some other uncontrollable event. The perturbation is from life itself acting through a species of its own creation, an immensely successful species filling every corner of the planet with continually growing throngs, increasingly subjugating and exploiting the world. For the first time, also, in the history of life, natural selection has been replaced, be it only partly, by willful intervention on the part of a member of the bioshperic community. The facts are before us clear and unmistakable. Everybody can read the message and draw the obvious conclusions. This means that conscious experience at least changes the movements of quarks and electrons. I don't think that follows. Maybe as Rex said, conscious experience supervenes on the interaction of particles. In which case the interaction of particles is not Turing emulable. If *we* are Turing emulable (in the yes doctor sense), then physicalism is wrong, and consciousness, including bodies observations, relies or supervenes on infinities of computations or number relations (or combinators relations, etc.). Having said this your point does not follow, in the sense that even if consciousness supervenes on interactions of particles (non mechanism) this would not prevents consciousness to retroact on the particles, like when a painter moves ink and papers to express his artistic feelings. Another example: we may argue that guns and atomic bombs are produced in part by human fears. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
Evgeniy, you may read anything and the contrary of it. We have to make up *our own mind* for ourselves, I mean: *not to persuade others to accept it*, yet maybe *include* in our version whatever we find reasonable in all those (contradictory?) opinions that have been published by smart scientists. I could go with Brent's formulation: quarks etc. are figments of the model we formulated in the 'physicalstic' train of explanations *till yesterday*(my def. for 'up-to-date') while whatever we call 'consciousness, even 'conscious experience' is closer to the unlimited complexity - assumable as a building block for the totality. So no wonder of the 'supervenience' assigned. We call I wrote showing my agnostic stance. Your closing sentence is appreciable: *This means that conscious experience at least changes the movements of quarks and electrons* inmy terms at least: considering the physicalist view as a figment of our model-construct of whatever we so far know (learned through our epistemic enrichment till yesterday). I try to be more evasive and uncertain in my ignorance (agnosticism) of the *TOTALITY - * *my (our) *knowledge restricted to a portion of it only. But the 'conventional science' is admirable, the technology it helped to develop is incredible and ALMOST good - as I put it referring to the (influencing) factors of the still unknow(n)(able) part of it. With mathematical equations we substitute all of it for the part we already know. No licence for the still unknown (maybe in Heisenberg's thinking yes). I have no intention to engage in a physicalistic discussion which is beyond me. John M On 9/7/10, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote: on 07.09.2010 05:11 Rex Allen said the following: On Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 11:01 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 9/6/2010 6:45 PM, Rex Allen wrote: ... Put a different way: According to physicalism conscious experience supervenes on quarks and electrons. Quarks and electrons do not supervene on conscious experience. I have just read Vital Dust, The Origin and Evolution of Life on Earth by Christian de Duve. One citation from the chapter The Future of Life (p. 271). We have reached a crucial state in the history of life. The face of the Earth has changed dramatically in the last few thousand years, a mere instant in evolution time, and it is changing ever faster. What would have taken one thousands generations in the past may now happen in a single generation. Biological evolution is on a runaway course toward severe instability. In a way, our time recalls one of those major breaks in evolution signaled by massive extinctions. But there is a difference. The cause of instability is not the impact of a large asteroid or some other uncontrollable event. The perturbation is from life itself acting through a species of its own creation, an immensely successful species filling every corner of the planet with continually growing throngs, increasingly subjugating and exploiting the world. For the first time, also, in the history of life, natural selection has been replaced, be it only partly, by willful intervention on the part of a member of the bioshperic community. The facts are before us clear and unmistakable. Everybody can read the message and draw the obvious conclusions. This means that conscious experience at least changes the movements of quarks and electrons. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 10:50 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 9/7/2010 1:48 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: Having said this your point does not follow, in the sense that even if consciousness supervenes on interactions of particles (non mechanism) this would not prevents consciousness to retroact on the particles, like when a painter moves ink and papers to express his artistic feelings. Another example: we may argue that guns and atomic bombs are produced in part by human fears. But then what causes human fears? You could say quarks and electrons cause human fears which then cause guns and bombs. OR, you could say quarks and electrons cause human fears *and also cause* guns and bombs. Human fears being epiphenomenal and non-causal. How could you tell which option was correct? Human flesh and guns and bombs all boil down to specific arrangements of quarks and electrons. There's no mystery as to how one could lead to the others. The mystery is why there should be an experience of fear associated certain arrangements of quarks and electrons and experiences of happiness associated with other arrangements and (presumably) no experience at all associated with yet other arrangements. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
on 07.09.2010 05:11 Rex Allen said the following: On Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 11:01 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 9/6/2010 6:45 PM, Rex Allen wrote: ... Put a different way: According to physicalism conscious experience supervenes on quarks and electrons. Quarks and electrons do not supervene on conscious experience. I have just read Vital Dust, The Origin and Evolution of Life on Earth by Christian de Duve. One citation from the chapter The Future of Life (p. 271). We have reached a crucial state in the history of life. The face of the Earth has changed dramatically in the last few thousand years, a mere instant in evolution time, and it is changing ever faster. What would have taken one thousands generations in the past may now happen in a single generation. Biological evolution is on a runaway course toward severe instability. In a way, our time recalls one of those major breaks in evolution signaled by massive extinctions. But there is a difference. The cause of instability is not the impact of a large asteroid or some other uncontrollable event. The perturbation is from life itself acting through a species of its own creation, an immensely successful species filling every corner of the planet with continually growing throngs, increasingly subjugating and exploiting the world. For the first time, also, in the history of life, natural selection has been replaced, be it only partly, by willful intervention on the part of a member of the bioshperic community. The facts are before us clear and unmistakable. Everybody can read the message and draw the obvious conclusions. This means that conscious experience at least changes the movements of quarks and electrons. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 9/7/2010 1:48 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: on 07.09.2010 05:11 Rex Allen said the following: On Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 11:01 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 9/6/2010 6:45 PM, Rex Allen wrote: ... Put a different way: According to physicalism conscious experience supervenes on quarks and electrons. Quarks and electrons do not supervene on conscious experience. I have just read Vital Dust, The Origin and Evolution of Life on Earth by Christian de Duve. One citation from the chapter The Future of Life (p. 271). We have reached a crucial state in the history of life. The face of the Earth has changed dramatically in the last few thousand years, a mere instant in evolution time, and it is changing ever faster. What would have taken one thousands generations in the past may now happen in a single generation. Biological evolution is on a runaway course toward severe instability. In a way, our time recalls one of those major breaks in evolution signaled by massive extinctions. But there is a difference. The cause of instability is not the impact of a large asteroid or some other uncontrollable event. The perturbation is from life itself acting through a species of its own creation, an immensely successful species filling every corner of the planet with continually growing throngs, increasingly subjugating and exploiting the world. For the first time, also, in the history of life, natural selection has been replaced, be it only partly, by willful intervention on the part of a member of the bioshperic community. The facts are before us clear and unmistakable. Everybody can read the message and draw the obvious conclusions. This means that conscious experience at least changes the movements of quarks and electrons. I don't think that follows. Maybe as Rex said, conscious experience supervenes on the interaction of particles. Brent Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 11:07 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 9/4/2010 5:28 PM, Rex Allen wrote: That still makes them physicalist theories, not quasi-physicalist. As long as the mad scientist and his vats/computers are physical. Does this mad scientist have free will, i.e. can he act independent of any physical constraints in our universe? Then he's *super* our natural. Hmmm. This is a peculiar direction for you to go. Why would I think the mad scientist has free will? Again, I don't even think free will is conceivable. Every decision is either caused, or it's not caused. I see no third option. If the decision was not caused, then it's random. No free will. If the decision is caused, then what caused the cause? And what caused the cause of the cause? And so on. The decision is a link in a causal chain which must eventually be traced outside the person making the choice. No free will. I assume that by free will you mean that the mad scientist is ultimately responsible for his actions. But I don't see how that could ever be the case. We'd just be inside the Matrix. Nothing supernatural about that. Yes it is. It's super our natural. Anything can happen - no physical laws. Anything can happen in dreams too - no physical laws apply there. But dreams aren't generally considered supernatural occurrences. Being inside the Matrix is just like being inside a dream. A more coherent, orderly dream. But a kind of dream nonetheless. Assuming physicalism, the physical world causes our dream experiences. Assuming physicalism, the physical world causes our Matrix experiences. Finding out you were in the Matrix would be equivalent to realizing you were in a dream. This is fine. As long as you're not claiming that physicalism is superior to idealistic accidentalism by virtue of being falsifiable. I'm not. But I claim that particular physical theories are falsifiable, whereas idealistic accidentalism either has no theories or has ones that are not falsifiable - depending on how you look at it. But it doesn't matter that particular physical theories are falsifiable, because in the event of falsification you will always just fall back to another physical theory. With the many-worlds interpretation serving as an ultimate safety net. Further, physicalism isn't necessary to formulate falsifiable theories. Take, for instance, idealistic occasionalism. Here mathematical theories would be interpreted as describing the patterns behind God's causal interventions so that you can predict what God will cause to happen next. If your theory gets falsified then you theorized incorrectly about the pattern behind God's actions. The existence of God himself is taken as a given. As the existence of a physical substrate is taken as a given in physicalism. However, note that both physicalism and idealistic occasionalism have similar problems when you put yourself inside the framework of your theory: the formulation of the theories is a result of the underlying mechanism that is being theorized about. So if the idealistic occasionalist theorized correctly, this can only be because God *caused* him to theorize correctly. Alternatively, if the physicalist theorizes correctly, this can only be because his universe's particular initial conditions and causal laws *caused* him to theorize correctly. Indeed. The same goes for the physical. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Exactly my point. What's your definition of physicalism? I would say that physicalism is the claim that *all* conscious experiences are due to the independent existence of some other more fundamental set of entities (particles, fields, wavefunctions, strings, whatever) whose nature must be such that their existence and properties are (in principle) directly inferable from the details of our sensory data and serve some role in generating that sensory data. Note that the in principle qualifier is meant to include counterfactuals...i.e., the existence and properties of these entities *would be* directly inferable from the details of our sensory data if some particular scenario were to occur. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On Sun, Sep 5, 2010 at 3:13 PM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: Brent and Rex: after many many discussions I suffered along - reading utter stupidity, Ouch! this one is a refreshingly reasonable one. Excellent! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 9/6/2010 6:45 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 11:07 PM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 9/4/2010 5:28 PM, Rex Allen wrote: That still makes them physicalist theories, not quasi-physicalist. As long as the mad scientist and his vats/computers are physical. Does this mad scientist have free will, i.e. can he act independent of any physical constraints in our universe? Then he's *super* our natural. Hmmm. This is a peculiar direction for you to go. Why would I think the mad scientist has free will? Again, I don't even think free will is conceivable. Every decision is either caused, or it's not caused. I see no third option. If the decision was not caused, then it's random. No free will. If the decision is caused, then what caused the cause? And what caused the cause of the cause? And so on. The decision is a link in a causal chain which must eventually be traced outside the person making the choice. No free will. I assume that by free will you mean that the mad scientist is ultimately responsible for his actions. But I don't see how that could ever be the case. We'd just be inside the Matrix. Nothing supernatural about that. Yes it is. It's super our natural. Anything can happen - no physical laws. Anything can happen in dreams too - no physical laws apply there. But dreams aren't generally considered supernatural occurrences. Being inside the Matrix is just like being inside a dream. A more coherent, orderly dream. But a kind of dream nonetheless. Assuming physicalism, the physical world causes our dream experiences. Assuming physicalism, the physical world causes our Matrix experiences. Finding out you were in the Matrix would be equivalent to realizing you were in a dream. This is fine. As long as you're not claiming that physicalism is superior to idealistic accidentalism by virtue of being falsifiable. I'm not. But I claim that particular physical theories are falsifiable, whereas idealistic accidentalism either has no theories or has ones that are not falsifiable - depending on how you look at it. But it doesn't matter that particular physical theories are falsifiable, because in the event of falsification you will always just fall back to another physical theory. With the many-worlds interpretation serving as an ultimate safety net. Further, physicalism isn't necessary to formulate falsifiable theories. Take, for instance, idealistic occasionalism. Here mathematical theories would be interpreted as describing the patterns behind God's causal interventions so that you can predict what God will cause to happen next. If your theory gets falsified then you theorized incorrectly about the pattern behind God's actions. The existence of God himself is taken as a given. As the existence of a physical substrate is taken as a given in physicalism. However, note that both physicalism and idealistic occasionalism have similar problems when you put yourself inside the framework of your theory: the formulation of the theories is a result of the underlying mechanism that is being theorized about. So if the idealistic occasionalist theorized correctly, this can only be because God *caused* him to theorize correctly. Alternatively, if the physicalist theorizes correctly, this can only be because his universe's particular initial conditions and causal laws *caused* him to theorize correctly. Indeed. The same goes for the physical. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Exactly my point. What's your definition of physicalism? I would say that physicalism is the claim that *all* conscious experiences are due to the independent existence of some other more fundamental set of entities (particles, fields, wavefunctions, strings, whatever) whose nature must be such that their existence and properties are (in principle) directly inferable from the details of our sensory data and serve some role in generating that sensory data. But in that case the conscious experiences and the existence of those particles are *not* independent. Your definition seems incoherent. Brent Note that the in principle qualifier is meant to include counterfactuals...i.e., the existence and properties of these entities *would be* directly inferable from the details of our sensory data if some particular scenario were to occur. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 11:01 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 9/6/2010 6:45 PM, Rex Allen wrote: I would say that physicalism is the claim that *all* conscious experiences are due to the independent existence of some other more fundamental set of entities (particles, fields, wavefunctions, strings, whatever) whose nature must be such that their existence and properties are (in principle) directly inferable from the details of our sensory data and serve some role in generating that sensory data. But in that case the conscious experiences and the existence of those particles are *not* independent. Your definition seems incoherent. The words are due to is meant in the sense are dependent on. The word independent was meant in the sense that the more fundamental entities are not affected by conscious experience. As an example of what I mean: Conscious experience is *dependent* on the interactions of quarks and electrons. But quarks, electrons, their interactions are *independent* of conscious experience. The dependency flows one way. Put a different way: According to physicalism conscious experience supervenes on quarks and electrons. Quarks and electrons do not supervene on conscious experience. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
Brent and Rex: after many many discussions I suffered along - reading utter stupidity, this one is a refreshingly reasonable one. Most assign to so called atheists arguments of 'almost believeing' superstitionists. I don't call myself 'atheist', with the name requiring a 'god' to not-believeing in. Also not a physicalist, who requires 'physical' reasons to start the universe (whatever). Nor any 'supernatural' since I find it 'natural' no matter how esoteric an idea of the beginnings may be (it belongs to nature, ha ha). The question: ***Who said God is omnibeneficient? * is a precondition of religious neoief, except for the Satanaites. Beneficient as much, that the warring opponents, believeing in the 'same' god expect it to desstroty the 'other one' i.e. both do so. Of course it depends waht behavior would a certain culture call 'beneficient'. Upon the 'supernatural' argument SPK gave a good answer, unless we are willing to call comp supernaturalG. *...*but* the vast majority of people are already religiously inclined * *ALREADY?* rather *still,* since it is the mental evolutionary beginning based on fear or on exalted and/or/ exploitive arguments. Or we may call it a 'hereditary' gullibility of hearsay stories. Let's forget about a popularity contest among ignorant, gullible, or a plain mindless intimidated hearsay-ridden crowd. Then comes enlarging our cognitive inventory: Explaining the (still) mysterious, what is also covered by 'miraculous'. Once we have learned the 'inner'(?) actions (originative mechanism) it's not mysterious/miraculous anymore. Till then I claim ignorance and call my own ignorance an agnostic stance. Sounds more scientific. Then again in 'physicalistic view': *infinite universe*? who identified physically the* 'infinite'* (beyond the joke of a circle)? On 9/4/10, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 9/4/2010 12:45 AM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 2:58 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: You've made up some just-so stories about how some other quasi-physical explanation *might* be adopted. In what way are my proposed explanations quasi-physical instead of just physical? Brain-in-vat and the-universe-as-a-computer-simulation are not really physical theories since they assume that everything we consider physical just exists at the whim of some mad scientist. You haven't show that they *would* be preferred to supernatural ones. I don't need to show that they would be preferred. I just need to show that physicalism is still a live option, and thus not falsifiable. And honestly I find my proposed explanations more plausible than supernatural ones. While God would explain the Sikhs prayer thing, that also runs into the problem of evil. Who said God is omnibeneficient? The simulation argument alone is enough to see off any God-based competition. No, it's just a another conception of God - the world is still created and formed by a supernatural agent. Anyone who already leans in that direction would probably take this option over God in the event of an outbreak of miracles. Initially I'm sure the vast majority of people would be convinced of a supernatural explanation for OBEs or healing prayer...*but* the vast majority of people are already religiously inclined. So I'm not sure that a popularity contest counts. I'd bet that the majority of atheists would choose one of my proposals, or maybe come up with an even better physicalist alternative. You can always speculate that any regularity we note is just a false positive that in inevitable in an infinite universe - but that will convince no one. No one is way too strong. It would convince some. Also you could conclude that we'd wondered into a low-probability branch of the universal wave function a-la the many worlds interpretation. I think all many worlders would take this interpretation of events if there were an outbreak of miracles. Do you disagree? And the many world interpretation isn't that different than the infinite universe option. That's one of the criticisms of many-worlds. If the theory can't derive the Born rules then it's not falsifiable, even in a probabilistic sense. I think this argument though is ill defined. Physicalism or naturalism isn't a particular theory anymore that supernaturalism or everythingism or Platonism is. It's kind of metaphysics which says some things exist and some don't, and things that exist are ones we can in some sense interact with (If you kick it, it kicks back. is the slogan). But generally metatheories aren't testable in the same sense that theories are. If you want to test whether God exists, you first need to make your definition of God sufficiently precise to make some inferences about what would or wouldn't be the case if God did or didn't exist. Brent -- You received this message because you are
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 9/3/2010 12:49 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 12:46 AM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Scientifically I think there are possible data that would count as evidence against physicalism. For example, if persons reporting out-of-body experiences could actually gain knowledge not otherwise available via these experiences. Another example would be prayer healing studies. If it happened that prayers by say Sikhs were effective with statistical significance while prayers by other religionists were not; that would be strong evidence against physicalism. First, one might prefer the physicalist Nick Bostrom style explanation that we are in a computer simulation over adopting a supernatural explanation. In effect making God physical. The deity outside the computer simulation can arrange things however he likes...including allowing OBEs and Sikh prayer healing. Or those might be a sign of a flaw in the simulation's programming. Second, both OBEs and Sikh prayer healing might be explained by entanglement style action at a distance mechanisms. Certainly one could start with that claim, quantum mechanics having already blazed the trail. Why only Sikh healing? Well, presumably different beliefs would be associated with different physical brain structures, and maybe only some brain structures have the right triggering configuration. Third, even without action at a distance or resonant brain structures, there's still the equivalent of dark matter style explanations. That there is an additional physical layer that only weakly (and maybe probabilistically) interacts with the layer we have relatively easy access to. If the OBE/prayer process could be mathematically modeled, then it would just be a matter of assigning physical interpretations to the equations of the model. As the Many Worlds, consistent histories, copenhagen, and Bohmian interpretations do for quantum mechanics. And again, it seems to me that in an infinite universe, SOMEWHERE someone should find what seems to be statistically significant evidence of Sikh prayer healing and OBEs. Since it seems to me that in enough trials with all possible initial conditions and all possible outcomes of probabilistic causal laws, *someone* should see a false positive...in fact, a lot of false positives. So many false positives as to establish reasonable belief that there is a causal connection. And that's just off the top of my head. So, I don't see how OBEs or prayer healing would in any way falsify physicalism, or even dent it. You've made up some just-so stories about how some other quasi-physical explanation *might* be adopted. You haven't show that they *would* be preferred to supernatural ones. You can always speculate that any regularity we note is just a false positive that in inevitable in an infinite universe - but that will convince no one. Brent Though they might demolish the Standard Model. An idealistic accidentalist would take an instrumentalist view of quantum mechanics. As opposed to some form of scientific realism that a physicalist might support. Many physicists take an instrumentalist view of quantum mechanics, c.f. Asher Peres graduate textbook. For the record, I didn't claim that physicalism entailed scientific realism. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 2:58 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: You've made up some just-so stories about how some other quasi-physical explanation *might* be adopted. In what way are my proposed explanations quasi-physical instead of just physical? You haven't show that they *would* be preferred to supernatural ones. I don't need to show that they would be preferred. I just need to show that physicalism is still a live option, and thus not falsifiable. And honestly I find my proposed explanations more plausible than supernatural ones. While God would explain the Sikhs prayer thing, that also runs into the problem of evil. The simulation argument alone is enough to see off any God-based competition. Anyone who already leans in that direction would probably take this option over God in the event of an outbreak of miracles. Initially I'm sure the vast majority of people would be convinced of a supernatural explanation for OBEs or healing prayer...*but* the vast majority of people are already religiously inclined. So I'm not sure that a popularity contest counts. I'd bet that the majority of atheists would choose one of my proposals, or maybe come up with an even better physicalist alternative. You can always speculate that any regularity we note is just a false positive that in inevitable in an infinite universe - but that will convince no one. No one is way too strong. It would convince some. Also you could conclude that we'd wondered into a low-probability branch of the universal wave function a-la the many worlds interpretation. I think all many worlders would take this interpretation of events if there were an outbreak of miracles. Do you disagree? And the many world interpretation isn't that different than the infinite universe option. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this? (And Another Thing edition)
On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 2:58 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: You can always speculate that any regularity we note is just a false positive that in inevitable in an infinite universe - but that will convince no one. Also, I think you're underestimating the extent to which people will re-evaluate their estimates of what's likely and unlikely when presented with scientific evidence for OBEs and Sikh prayer healing. A lot of things that had sounded far-fetched before will sound much more plausible when set against the reality of OBEs and Sikh prayer healing. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 9/4/2010 12:45 AM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 2:58 AM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: You've made up some just-so stories about how some other quasi-physical explanation *might* be adopted. In what way are my proposed explanations quasi-physical instead of just physical? Brain-in-vat and the-universe-as-a-computer-simulation are not really physical theories since they assume that everything we consider physical just exists at the whim of some mad scientist. You haven't show that they *would* be preferred to supernatural ones. I don't need to show that they would be preferred. I just need to show that physicalism is still a live option, and thus not falsifiable. And honestly I find my proposed explanations more plausible than supernatural ones. While God would explain the Sikhs prayer thing, that also runs into the problem of evil. Who said God is omnibeneficient? The simulation argument alone is enough to see off any God-based competition. No, it's just a another conception of God - the world is still created and formed by a supernatural agent. Anyone who already leans in that direction would probably take this option over God in the event of an outbreak of miracles. Initially I'm sure the vast majority of people would be convinced of a supernatural explanation for OBEs or healing prayer...*but* the vast majority of people are already religiously inclined. So I'm not sure that a popularity contest counts. I'd bet that the majority of atheists would choose one of my proposals, or maybe come up with an even better physicalist alternative. You can always speculate that any regularity we note is just a false positive that in inevitable in an infinite universe - but that will convince no one. No one is way too strong. It would convince some. Also you could conclude that we'd wondered into a low-probability branch of the universal wave function a-la the many worlds interpretation. I think all many worlders would take this interpretation of events if there were an outbreak of miracles. Do you disagree? And the many world interpretation isn't that different than the infinite universe option. That's one of the criticisms of many-worlds. If the theory can't derive the Born rules then it's not falsifiable, even in a probabilistic sense. I think this argument though is ill defined. Physicalism or naturalism isn't a particular theory anymore that supernaturalism or everythingism or Platonism is. It's kind of metaphysics which says some things exist and some don't, and things that exist are ones we can in some sense interact with (If you kick it, it kicks back. is the slogan). But generally metatheories aren't testable in the same sense that theories are. If you want to test whether God exists, you first need to make your definition of God sufficiently precise to make some inferences about what would or wouldn't be the case if God did or didn't exist. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
RE: What's wrong with this?
Dear Brent, From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Brent Meeker Sent: Saturday, September 04, 2010 7:39 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: What's wrong with this? On 9/4/2010 12:45 AM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 2:58 AM, Brent Meeker mailto:meeke...@dslextreme.com meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: You've made up some just-so stories about how some other quasi-physical explanation *might* be adopted. In what way are my proposed explanations quasi-physical instead of just physical? Brain-in-vat and the-universe-as-a-computer-simulation are not really physical theories since they assume that everything we consider physical just exists at the whim of some mad scientist. [SPK] I disagree strongly! Is the mad scientist not constrained by its equivalent to physical laws? AFAIK, the brain-in-vat and universe-as-a-computer-simulation are related thought experiments that allow us to think more deeply about our tacit assumptions about our world and ourselves. Maybe you might help us to better understand your thoughts by explaining what physical means to you. You haven't show that they *would* be preferred to supernatural ones. I don't need to show that they would be preferred. I just need to show that physicalism is still a live option, and thus not falsifiable. And honestly I find my proposed explanations more plausible than supernatural ones. While God would explain the Sikhs prayer thing, that also runs into the problem of evil. Who said God is omnibeneficient? [SPK] Who said that the term even applied? I think that any anthropomorphic notions of deity would be subject to a thorough examination. The mere idea that we can adjoin the term omni with some other anthropomorphic term seems to be oxymoronic from the start. This gets to John Mikes discomfort with the indiscriminate use to the term all, a discomfort that I share. The simulation argument alone is enough to see off any God-based competition. No, it's just a another conception of God - the world is still created and formed by a supernatural agent. [SPK] How so? Is a computational system with sufficient resources unable to generate a simulation of the universe that we experience? We are not talking about the actual construction or specification of such, only the mere possibility that such a system could exist. Anyone who already leans in that direction would probably take this option over God in the event of an outbreak of miracles. Initially I'm sure the vast majority of people would be convinced of a supernatural explanation for OBEs or healing prayer...*but* the vast majority of people are already religiously inclined. So I'm not sure that a popularity contest counts. I'd bet that the majority of atheists would choose one of my proposals, or maybe come up with an even better physicalist alternative. You can always speculate that any regularity we note is just a false positive that in inevitable in an infinite universe - but that will convince no one. No one is way too strong. It would convince some. Also you could conclude that we'd wondered into a low-probability branch of the universal wave function a-la the many worlds interpretation. I think all many worlders would take this interpretation of events if there were an outbreak of miracles. Do you disagree? And the many world interpretation isn't that different than the infinite universe option. That's one of the criticisms of many-worlds. If the theory can't derive the Born rules then it's not falsifiable, even in a probabilistic sense. [SPK] Hold on just a moment, Brent. The derivation of the Born rules is still not a settled issue in the sense that we don't have a single theory that would explain how the Born rule is even a necessary condition. I would love to be wrong on this latter claim. J I think this argument though is ill defined. Physicalism or naturalism isn't a particular theory anymore that supernaturalism or everythingism or Platonism is. It's kind of metaphysics which says some things exist and some don't, and things that exist are ones we can in some sense interact with (If you kick it, it kicks back. is the slogan). But generally metatheories aren't testable in the same sense that theories are. If you want to test whether God exists, you first need to make your definition of God sufficiently precise to make some inferences about what would or wouldn't be the case if God did or didn't exist. Brent [SPK] We can judge a metatheory by examination of its logical consequences, the good 'ol GIGO rule still applies. J Onward! Stephen P. King -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l
Re: What's wrong with this?
On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 7:38 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 9/4/2010 12:45 AM, Rex Allen wrote: In what way are my proposed explanations quasi-physical instead of just physical? Brain-in-vat and the-universe-as-a-computer-simulation are not really physical theories since they assume that everything we consider physical just exists at the whim of some mad scientist. That still makes them physicalist theories, not quasi-physicalist. As long as the mad scientist and his vats/computers are physical. And honestly I find my proposed explanations more plausible than supernatural ones. While God would explain the Sikhs prayer thing, that also runs into the problem of evil. Who said God is omnibeneficient? The Sikhs. The simulation argument alone is enough to see off any God-based competition. No, it's just a another conception of God - the world is still created and formed by a supernatural agent. We'd just be inside the Matrix. Nothing supernatural about that. I think all many worlders would take this interpretation of events if there were an outbreak of miracles. Do you disagree? And the many world interpretation isn't that different than the infinite universe option. That's one of the criticisms of many-worlds. If the theory can't derive the Born rules then it's not falsifiable, even in a probabilistic sense. See? Physicalism isn't falsifiable. It falls into the same category as idealistic accidentalism. And thus, according to Quentin, is worthless. Specific scientific theories that posit the existence of particular physical entities are falsifiable, but in no sense does physicalism stand or fall with them. I think this argument though is ill defined. Physicalism or naturalism isn't a particular theory anymore that supernaturalism or everythingism or Platonism is. The Merriam Webster dictionary shows 9 definitions for the word theory. I'm pretty certain that our usage here fits at least one of them. It's kind of metaphysics which says some things exist and some don't, and things that exist are ones we can in some sense interact with (If you kick it, it kicks back. is the slogan). But generally metatheories aren't testable in the same sense that theories are. This is fine. As long as you're not claiming that physicalism is superior to idealistic accidentalism by virtue of being falsifiable. If you want to test whether God exists, you first need to make your definition of God sufficiently precise to make some inferences about what would or wouldn't be the case if God did or didn't exist. Indeed. The same goes for the physical. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 9/4/2010 5:28 PM, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 7:38 PM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 9/4/2010 12:45 AM, Rex Allen wrote: In what way are my proposed explanations quasi-physical instead of just physical? Brain-in-vat and the-universe-as-a-computer-simulation are not really physical theories since they assume that everything we consider physical just exists at the whim of some mad scientist. That still makes them physicalist theories, not quasi-physicalist. As long as the mad scientist and his vats/computers are physical. Does this mad scientist have free will, i.e. can he act independent of any physical constraints in our universe? Then he's *super* our natural. And honestly I find my proposed explanations more plausible than supernatural ones. While God would explain the Sikhs prayer thing, that also runs into the problem of evil. Who said God is omnibeneficient? The Sikhs. I never heard that. Pick another supenatural being to pray to then - it's just an example. The simulation argument alone is enough to see off any God-based competition. No, it's just a another conception of God - the world is still created and formed by a supernatural agent. We'd just be inside the Matrix. Nothing supernatural about that. Yes it is. It's super our natural. Anything can happen - no physical laws. I think all many worlders would take this interpretation of events if there were an outbreak of miracles. Do you disagree? And the many world interpretation isn't that different than the infinite universe option. That's one of the criticisms of many-worlds. If the theory can't derive the Born rules then it's not falsifiable, even in a probabilistic sense. See? Physicalism isn't falsifiable. It falls into the same category as idealistic accidentalism. But you're equating naturalism with a particular theory. And thus, according to Quentin, is worthless. Specific scientific theories that posit the existence of particular physical entities are falsifiable, but in no sense does physicalism stand or fall with them. I think this argument though is ill defined. Physicalism or naturalism isn't a particular theory anymore that supernaturalism or everythingism or Platonism is. The Merriam Webster dictionary shows 9 definitions for the word theory. I'm pretty certain that our usage here fits at least one of them. It's kind of metaphysics which says some things exist and some don't, and things that exist are ones we can in some sense interact with (If you kick it, it kicks back. is the slogan). But generally metatheories aren't testable in the same sense that theories are. This is fine. As long as you're not claiming that physicalism is superior to idealistic accidentalism by virtue of being falsifiable. I'm not. But I claim that particular physical theories are falsifiable, whereas idealistic accidentalism either has no theories or has ones that are not falsifiable - depending on how you look at it. If you want to test whether God exists, you first need to make your definition of God sufficiently precise to make some inferences about what would or wouldn't be the case if God did or didn't exist. Indeed. The same goes for the physical. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Exactly my point. What's your definition of physicalism? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this? (a side question)
On 02 Sep 2010, at 19:23, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: on 02.09.2010 17:57 Bruno Marchal said the following: ... Science is only collection of theories, and statements derive in those theories, and intepretation rules, and confirmation modus operandi. Only layman and engineers have to hope that their theories fits enough a reality. The theories and the reasoning can be presented informally or formally. Rigor has nothing to do with formalization, but a lot to do with clarity. It is also better that the theory/assumption are shared by many, because ... it is more fun. How would you define what a physical law is? Empirically: physical laws are the laws which can relate what I can observe and share with others. Assuming digital mechanism, after the UDA reasoning, the physical laws are no more primitive laws, inferable from observation, but they emerge from the coupling consciousness/reality itself emerging from the additive/multiplicative structure of numbers. The laws of physics are no more fundamental. The emergence is enough constrained as to make the mechanist assumption testable. If we are in a 'matrix', we can verify it. (mechanism entails we are in a matrix, actually in an infinities of matrix, existing platonistically in the structure of numbers+addition+multiplication. Note that this makes the ultimate physical laws much more solid: such laws are shown to have a reason. The reason I am asking is that recently I have read The Elegant Universe by Brian Green about the superstring theory. For some reasons physicists insist that they can find Equation of Everything. Physicists have a tradition of putting mind and consciousness under the rug, and they usually confuse everything with everything-physical. This has been a fertile methodological simplification, but it breaks in front of the 'hard consciousness problem', or the mind-body problem. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this? (a side question)
on 03.09.2010 10:10 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 02 Sep 2010, at 19:23, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: on 02.09.2010 17:57 Bruno Marchal said the following: ... Science is only collection of theories, and statements derive in those theories, and intepretation rules, and confirmation modus operandi. Only layman and engineers have to hope that their theories fits enough a reality. The theories and the reasoning can be presented informally or formally. Rigor has nothing to do with formalization, but a lot to do with clarity. It is also better that the theory/assumption are shared by many, because ... it is more fun. How would you define what a physical law is? Empirically: physical laws are the laws which can relate what I can observe and share with others. How to distinguish then a law and a correlation? Assuming digital mechanism, after the UDA reasoning, the physical laws are no more primitive laws, inferable from observation, but they emerge from the coupling consciousness/reality itself emerging from the additive/multiplicative structure of numbers. The laws of physics are no more fundamental. The emergence is enough constrained as to make the mechanist assumption testable. If we are in a 'matrix', we can verify it. (mechanism entails we are in a matrix, actually in an infinities of matrix, existing platonistically in the structure of numbers+addition+multiplication. Note that this makes the ultimate physical laws much more solid: such laws are shown to have a reason. Let me continue with my question. So we have observations and then we make some model. It could be of empirical nature or we say that this model is a law. How do we know when a model becomes a law? The reason I am asking is that recently I have read The Elegant Universe by Brian Green about the superstring theory. For some reasons physicists insist that they can find Equation of Everything. Physicists have a tradition of putting mind and consciousness under the rug, and they usually confuse everything with everything-physical. This has been a fertile methodological simplification, but it breaks in front of the 'hard consciousness problem', or the mind-body problem. Could you please recommend some modern books in this respect? Say I have just listened to audio book Best of the Brain from Scientific American: Mind, Matter, and Tomorrow’s Brain http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2010/09/what-crazy-scientists-make-with-brain-nowadays.html and they have found an effective way to treat depression: plant an electrode to some brain area (area 25) and put a voltage. Could it be also a way in the future to solve the mind-body problem? A couple of electrodes, some voltage pattern, and that's it? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this? (a side question)
On 03 Sep 2010, at 15:55, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: on 03.09.2010 10:10 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 02 Sep 2010, at 19:23, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: on 02.09.2010 17:57 Bruno Marchal said the following: ... Science is only collection of theories, and statements derive in those theories, and intepretation rules, and confirmation modus operandi. Only layman and engineers have to hope that their theories fits enough a reality. The theories and the reasoning can be presented informally or formally. Rigor has nothing to do with formalization, but a lot to do with clarity. It is also better that the theory/assumption are shared by many, because ... it is more fun. How would you define what a physical law is? Empirically: physical laws are the laws which can relate what I can observe and share with others. How to distinguish then a law and a correlation? By doing the correct statistics, we can *infer* laws from observation. But this needs always some theory in the background. Assuming digital mechanism, after the UDA reasoning, the physical laws are no more primitive laws, inferable from observation, but they emerge from the coupling consciousness/reality itself emerging from the additive/multiplicative structure of numbers. The laws of physics are no more fundamental. The emergence is enough constrained as to make the mechanist assumption testable. If we are in a 'matrix', we can verify it. (mechanism entails we are in a matrix, actually in an infinities of matrix, existing platonistically in the structure of numbers+addition+multiplication. Note that this makes the ultimate physical laws much more solid: such laws are shown to have a reason. Let me continue with my question. So we have observations and then we make some model. Before mechanism, I insist. Mechanism says that physical laws have to deduced from number theory/computer science. In principle we need no more observation than the trivial assessment of our own consciousness, and then some introspective work. This is not practical, but the goal is to solve conceptually the mind body problem, not to predict physical phenomena. The conceptual advantage of mechanism is that it gives directly the correct physics (correct with respect to mechanism!). With observation we can never be sure that the laws are only local, if not based on lucky correlations, or hallucinated. It could be of empirical nature or we say that this model is a law. How do we know when a model becomes a law? Never. But in science we never know. We may believe in a theory, for a time. Or we may derive a laws from another theory, on which we already *bet*. It is always a sort of bet. Science search truth, but never know when it finds it. Of course the more you derive from simple hypotheses, the more you can be confident for the theory, but it is confidence, never certainty. Actually, this is a theorem of machine psychology : assertable certainty is *only* a symptom of madness. The reason I am asking is that recently I have read The Elegant Universe by Brian Green about the superstring theory. For some reasons physicists insist that they can find Equation of Everything. Physicists have a tradition of putting mind and consciousness under the rug, and they usually confuse everything with everything-physical. This has been a fertile methodological simplification, but it breaks in front of the 'hard consciousness problem', or the mind-body problem. Could you please recommend some modern books in this respect? Say I have just listened to audio book Best of the Brain from Scientific American: Mind, Matter, and Tomorrow’s Brain http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2010/09/what-crazy-scientists-make-with-brain-nowadays.html and they have found an effective way to treat depression: plant an electrode to some brain area (area 25) and put a voltage. Could it be also a way in the future to solve the mind-body problem? A couple of electrodes, some voltage pattern, and that's it? Not at all. If we accept mechanism, we have to abandon the Aristotelian idea that there is a primitive universe, and that physics is the fundamental science. We have to backtrack on Pythagorus, Plato and Plotinus. The relation between consciousness and brain is far more subtle than the materialists believe. In a sense the brain does not create consciousness. The brain makes it possible for consciousness to be manifested relatively to some computational histories. We may find correlation between brain activity and some problem like depression, but this is just the art of the physician, or the shaman (plants are still better than electrode today). It does not address the fundamental issues. For books, you could take a look for books here: http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/web/resources http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/web/auda Have a good day, Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You
Re: What's wrong with this?
On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 12:46 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Scientifically I think there are possible data that would count as evidence against physicalism. For example, if persons reporting out-of-body experiences could actually gain knowledge not otherwise available via these experiences. Another example would be prayer healing studies. If it happened that prayers by say Sikhs were effective with statistical significance while prayers by other religionists were not; that would be strong evidence against physicalism. First, one might prefer the physicalist Nick Bostrom style explanation that we are in a computer simulation over adopting a supernatural explanation. In effect making God physical. The deity outside the computer simulation can arrange things however he likes...including allowing OBEs and Sikh prayer healing. Or those might be a sign of a flaw in the simulation's programming. Second, both OBEs and Sikh prayer healing might be explained by entanglement style action at a distance mechanisms. Certainly one could start with that claim, quantum mechanics having already blazed the trail. Why only Sikh healing? Well, presumably different beliefs would be associated with different physical brain structures, and maybe only some brain structures have the right triggering configuration. Third, even without action at a distance or resonant brain structures, there's still the equivalent of dark matter style explanations. That there is an additional physical layer that only weakly (and maybe probabilistically) interacts with the layer we have relatively easy access to. If the OBE/prayer process could be mathematically modeled, then it would just be a matter of assigning physical interpretations to the equations of the model. As the Many Worlds, consistent histories, copenhagen, and Bohmian interpretations do for quantum mechanics. And again, it seems to me that in an infinite universe, SOMEWHERE someone should find what seems to be statistically significant evidence of Sikh prayer healing and OBEs. Since it seems to me that in enough trials with all possible initial conditions and all possible outcomes of probabilistic causal laws, *someone* should see a false positive...in fact, a lot of false positives. So many false positives as to establish reasonable belief that there is a causal connection. And that's just off the top of my head. So, I don't see how OBEs or prayer healing would in any way falsify physicalism, or even dent it. Though they might demolish the Standard Model. An idealistic accidentalist would take an instrumentalist view of quantum mechanics. As opposed to some form of scientific realism that a physicalist might support. Many physicists take an instrumentalist view of quantum mechanics, c.f. Asher Peres graduate textbook. For the record, I didn't claim that physicalism entailed scientific realism. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
on 03.09.2010 06:46 Brent Meeker said the following: On 9/2/2010 1:32 AM, Rex Allen wrote: On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 1:51 AM, Quentin Anciauxallco...@gmail.com wrote: ... Of course it is *logically* possible that any new data could be consistent with physicalism - but then logical possibility is a very weak standard; it just excludes X and not-X. Scientifically I think there are possible data that would count as evidence against physicalism. For example, if persons reporting out-of-body experiences could actually gain knowledge not otherwise available via these experiences. Nice experiments with out-of-body experience are at the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience http://lnco.epfl.ch/ Just look at video at this page. There is a good paper in Die Zeit about it http://www.zeit.de/2008/15/OdE24-Gehirn but it is in German. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 4:21 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: In some case the metatheory can itself be an object of the theory. For example zoologists are animal (but botanist are not plant). Since Gödel we know that the theory Peano Arithmetic can be studied in Peano arithmetic. And monist philosophies makes mandatory that the theory and/or the theoretican has to belong to the collection of objects or phenomena of the theory. Physicists do obey to the laws of gravitation for example. A physicist of masse m will attract a physicist of mass M with a force proportional to mM/(square of the distance between two physicists). of course that force is negligible compared to the natural repulsion that a physicist can or cannot have for a colleague ... This is part of the point I'm making. You have to place yourself within your proposed framework. If you posit the existence of a rule-based system as an explanation for conscious experience, then the rules of that system determine the arguments that you present and believe. At this point you are merely a cog in the machine of your system. Your every thought, belief, and emotion are the byproduct of the inexorable action of its metaphysical gears. How is this situation an improvement on solipsism? Only you exist. Only the machine exists. Six of one, half a dozen of the other I’d say. And there’s still the problem that the vast majority of physical universes (or mathematical structures) would be dishonest “Matrix” universes (or structures), so how likely is it that our beliefs are true of anything outside of our subjective experience? So obviously something exists...my conscious experience of this moment. That is obvious for you. I have to postulate it. I don’t see the importance of this point? I am certain that my experience of this moment (or instant) exists...nothing important hinges on whether your experience exists. If it doesn’t, that’s fine. I’m not trying to explain your conscious experience, I’m only trying to explain mine. Bouncing ideas off of you is a useful activity...which would still be true even if it turned out that you were just an Eliza-like chat-bot that parsed incoming emails, rearranged the wording, and added some logician-speak before mailing them back out. I can agree with that, at some level, but you waould not refer to this moment. I am not sure what you mean by moment with idealist accidentalism (IA). Moment as in “Instant of consciousness”. Or even as in “instance of consciousness”. This experience is a multifaceted thing...in that there are many things I am conscious of in this moment. But this is true of dreams as well. I am conscious of many things in a dream, but those aren't things that exist outside or independently of the dream. In which theory. I was thinking of physicalism. Such a sentence seems to assume a lot, if only to make some sense. If IA is correct, words like world, outside refer to what? Aspects of experience. So what accounts for the dream? Numbers? In the theory digital mechanism, aka computationnalism, we can argue for this, indeed. So IF it is true that some particular some set of numbers and the relations between them just *are* my conscious experience of seeing an oak tree, THEN *something* has to make that true. It’s not the numbers themselves that would make that true, because numbers are numbers, and have nothing obvious to do with oak trees or experience. And it’s not the relations between numbers, because these also have nothing obvious to do with oak trees or experience. So, what is it that makes the previous statement true? If it is true, then it seems to me that there must be some other kind of relationship that can connect numbers, relationships between numbers, and the experience of oak trees. What, in your opinion, is the nature of this extra relationship? I have no problem with people trying different kind of theory, but to posit consciousness at the start (or matter, actually) does not satisfy me. Consciousness is the start though, isn’t it? It doesn’t have to be posited...it’s a given. Directly known. Trying to ignore this givenness and re-derive it from things that are inferred FROM conscious experience is where you go astray I think. As I said it prevents further research. Why do you want to do further research? Putting yourself in your own proposed metaphysical framework, what is the cause of your insatiable lust for more research? In the grand scheme of things, what does it mean that you want further research? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 3:50 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 02 Sep 2010, at 04:15, Rex Allen wrote: Accidentalism, and...what else? Refraining from metaphysical speculation altogether? That is the good idea! Easier said than done! I've sworn it off 4 times this year...but here I am again. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 1:51 AM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: I did read your preceeding message. And what I got out of it is that if you consistently apply your evaluative criteria, you should conclude that physicalism, platonism, deism, theism, arithmetical realism and all other metaphysical theories that reduce conscious experience to some sort of underlying rule-governed framework are irrefutable and thus valueless. You're the one saying that. You are correct, I seem to be the only one saying that if you apply your evaluative criteria consistently, then your charge against idealist accidentalism applies equally to physicalism and the rest. The problem with idealist accidentalism (like with sollipsism) is that you can change at will to adapt to the fact. It's not the case with the others (but is the case with theism/deism/magic/bisounours world/etc). Physicalism is exactly as changeable as idealistic accidentalism. That was the point of my earlier response to you. What new fact could possibly refute physicalism??? (or mathematical platonism, or whatever) Keep in mind that idealistic accidentalism is an alternative to physicalism, not to quantum field theory. Physicalism just being the thesis that that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties; that there are no kinds of things other than physical things. So, what new data couldn't be interpreted as being consistent with that? An idealistic accidentalist would take an instrumentalist view of quantum mechanics. As opposed to some form of scientific realism that a physicalist might support. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
2010/9/2 Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 1:51 AM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: I did read your preceeding message. And what I got out of it is that if you consistently apply your evaluative criteria, you should conclude that physicalism, platonism, deism, theism, arithmetical realism and all other metaphysical theories that reduce conscious experience to some sort of underlying rule-governed framework are irrefutable and thus valueless. You're the one saying that. You are correct, I seem to be the only one saying that if you apply your evaluative criteria consistently, then your charge against idealist accidentalism applies equally to physicalism and the rest. The problem with idealist accidentalism (like with sollipsism) is that you can change at will to adapt to the fact. It's not the case with the others (but is the case with theism/deism/magic/bisounours world/etc). Physicalism is exactly as changeable as idealistic accidentalism. That was the point of my earlier response to you. No What new fact could possibly refute physicalism??? (or mathematical platonism, or whatever) How could physicalism account for a big giant hand of god (?) appearing in the sky ? :D It can't... idealist accidentalism can account *all* the facts, not some of them but all... the worst thing is that it can account everything and has no explanatory value, it denies explanation in its own definition. So yes it's useless, you can posit it and then go sleeping. If you can always say to any question some thing like 'it's because the pastafari did it'... then I don't see the value of the theory. And yes theories which could never ever be disproved have little value. Keep in mind that idealistic accidentalism is an alternative to physicalism, not to quantum field theory. quantum field theory in a idealistic accidentalism world has no value because it accidentaly works... Quentin Physicalism just being the thesis that that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties; that there are no kinds of things other than physical things. So, what new data couldn't be interpreted as being consistent with that? An idealistic accidentalist would take an instrumentalist view of quantum mechanics. As opposed to some form of scientific realism that a physicalist might support. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 1 September 2010 21:51, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: In other words, it would appear that he cannot, with pure logic, rule out the possibility - even to himself - of Logical-David being merely a zombie. No. Even the zombie can see that he cannot. That's why the self-referentially correct machine cannot be a zombie. Yes, my emphasis here was indeed **with pure logic**. That is to say, the purely logical part - i.e. the believer - begins by suspecting that it perhaps can't rule out the possibility that it is *only* that: i.e. pure logic. But the subtlety is that it can also realise that this very possibility begs the question of its own self-referential integrity. That is, it would place into doubt its very existence for itself as something (i.e. anything whatsoever) metaphysically distinct from the substrate of logic considered to be constituting it. The following dilemma is then presented: either a) there simply *is no believer* in any way metaphysically distinct from the substrate in general, or b) the truth of such distinctness is for the believer alone to assert. But then, since the unpalatable consequence of option a) would be the annihilation of both the Cat and the Grin, the believer (thankfully) realises that self-referential correctness mandates the truth of its own existence-for-itself. What a relief! Why can this be so hard to see? This thought was what motivated my original post - i.e. that the reason (or at least a major reason) why all this can seem so elusive is that we continually seek to escape self-reference by adopting - per impossibile - some maximally analytic objectivised viewpoint: i.e. the reductionist-god's eye view, or observer at infinity. Although success in achieving such a view should entail the consequence of entirely banishing any self-referential distinctness we possess, somehow we can fail to appreciate this, and the Cheshire Cat-like apparition of the objects of experience remains in full view. How is this? Because we forget that any view purporting to be both entirely analytic and *outside of everything* must, by that very restriction, have abandoned any legitimate grasp of *internally-referenced* categories predicated on integration, composition, or synthesis. We just go on projecting all this from afar, just as though we had not absented ourselves from the scene. Such metaphysical absent-mindedness tricks us into begging the question of just how such synthetic categories could in fact acquire any transcendence over a putative analytic substrate. In effect, this kind of metaphysical circularity is hard-wired into our naturalistic modes of thought - though we may blind ourselves to self-reference, we cannot escape it. You have to study Gödel and Tarski theorem, or a result by Kaplan and Montague, recasted in the Solovay logics. Smorynski wrote a paper 50 years of arithmetical self-reference, a rather long time ago. Boolos 1979 and 1993 consecrated a chapter to the knower (S4Grz). A student and friend of mine has formalized Bp Dp (the Z, Z1, Z* and Z1*) logics, but the case for S4GRz1, and the X, X1, X*, X1* logics remains unsolved. There are theorem prover for those logics, and so by an indirect argument we know them formalizable, but no one has found the axioms yet. Note that all those logic are non effectively soluble, once extended at the modal predicate level. The hypostases give a knowledge of the believer, the conscious knower, the observer, the feeler each with they communicable and non communicable part, from which you can derive, the observable, the non observable, the feelable and the non feelable, well many things, including quanta and qualia. Weakness: hard mathematics. Ask any question if you feel so. I am aware it is hard and ultra-subtle stuff. Well, that is why only technics can handle those self-references. It is, as you say, remarkable that there exist detailed systems of self-referential logic that can capture such subtleties, and make rigorous the distinction between formal and non-formal parts. I am grateful for your continued perseverance and patience in affording me even the most basic insight into them, and I only wish I had the sheer tenacity to get to grips with them in the extended technical detail they demand, as you do. But you, after all, are a logician and I am a mere quibbler. Nevertheless, it intrigues me that my quibbling occasionally seems to lead me somewhere in the vicinity of these notions, so I won't abandon it entirely! David On 01 Sep 2010, at 20:03, David Nyman wrote: On 1 September 2010 09:21, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: How does my experience of dreaming of a tree connect to numbers? What is it that generates my experience of a tree from the brutely existing substrate of numbers? Well, from the true but non communicable part given by the self-reference logic of self-introspecting (ideally correct) programs (machine, numbers, theories ...
Re: What's wrong with this?
On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 5:12 AM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: What new fact could possibly refute physicalism??? (or mathematical platonism, or whatever) How could physicalism account for a big giant hand of god (?) appearing in the sky ? :D Would you believe it was the hand of god? Why not the hand of some space alien *pretending* to be god? That would be a physicalist interpretation. How could anyone prove otherwise? OR, it could turn out that god just is a superpowerful space alien...that would also be a valid physicalist interpretation. OR it you could say you were hallucinating it. Also a physicalist interpration. OR it could be taken as the result of an extremely unlikely but not impossible quantum fluctuation, followed by a whole series of supposed miracles that are *also* just quantum fluctions. In an infinite universe anything that's not strictly impossible in inevitable. So another physicalist interpretation. Did you never see that episode of Star Trek TNG where Picard faces down a woman claiming to be the devil? Devil's Due. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil's_Due_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation) SO, as I said,physicalism is exactly as changeable as idealistic accidentalism. It can't... idealist accidentalism can account *all* the facts, not some of them but all... the worst thing is that it can account everything and has no explanatory value, it denies explanation in its own definition. So yes it's useless, you can posit it and then go sleeping. If you can always say to any question some thing like 'it's because the pastafari did it'... then I don't see the value of the theory. Whereas a phyiscalist would always say, quantum mechanics did it, or unlikely but not impossible initial conditions explains it, or whatever. I don't see the value of a physicalist interpretation of the descriptive/predictive equations that constitute quantum theory. And yes theories which could never ever be disproved have little value. Then physicalism, mathematical platonism, deism, etc. have little value. Keep in mind that idealistic accidentalism is an alternative to physicalism, not to quantum field theory. quantum field theory in a idealistic accidentalism world has no value because it accidentaly works... Even assuming that physicalism is true, what explains the fact that our universe had the particular initial conditions and causal laws that it does? Aren't these, in effect, accidental? Everything else that we observe is just a coincidence of those two contingent things...initial conditions and causal laws. Everything, *including* our discovery of these causal laws and our theories about the initial conditions. If we're right, this is an accident...a stroke of good fortune in living in an honest universe, and not a matrix universe. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 02 Sep 2010, at 10:03, Rex Allen wrote: On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 3:50 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 02 Sep 2010, at 04:15, Rex Allen wrote: Accidentalism, and...what else? Refraining from metaphysical speculation altogether? That is the good idea! Easier said than done! I've sworn it off 4 times this year...but here I am again. :) There is no problem with metaphysical speculation. It is, I think, unavoidable when we do fundamental research. But personally, I think that when we want make a public presentation, it is best to separate the speculative part, which is the theory, from the conclusion/theorem we can derive from the theory. It is vain to defend the assumption-speculation-theory as being true or real or whatever. Science is only collection of theories, and statements derive in those theories, and intepretation rules, and confirmation modus operandi. Only layman and engineers have to hope that their theories fits enough a reality. The theories and the reasoning can be presented informally or formally. Rigor has nothing to do with formalization, but a lot to do with clarity. It is also better that the theory/assumption are shared by many, because ... it is more fun. Take it easy, Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 02 Sep 2010, at 10:01, Rex Allen wrote: On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 4:21 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: In some case the metatheory can itself be an object of the theory. For example zoologists are animal (but botanist are not plant). Since Gödel we know that the theory Peano Arithmetic can be studied in Peano arithmetic. And monist philosophies makes mandatory that the theory and/or the theoretican has to belong to the collection of objects or phenomena of the theory. Physicists do obey to the laws of gravitation for example. A physicist of masse m will attract a physicist of mass M with a force proportional to mM/(square of the distance between two physicists). of course that force is negligible compared to the natural repulsion that a physicist can or cannot have for a colleague ... This is part of the point I'm making. You have to place yourself within your proposed framework. If you posit the existence of a rule-based system as an explanation for conscious experience, I don't do that. I insist that if 3-we are machine, that if we have a body capable as being described by a (digital) machine, then (simplifying a bit to be short), consciousness is not produced by that machine, but filtered from 'arithmetical truth'. then the rules of that system determine the arguments that you present and believe. This looks like a universal critics of science. I assume indeed that we are machine, and then I make a reasoning, and then indeed I also ask the machines what they think about the theory. Computer science makes the interview of ideally correct machines indeed feasible. At this point you are merely a cog in the machine of your system. Your every thought, belief, and emotion are the byproduct of the inexorable action of its metaphysical gears. Not really, because by proceeding in that way, I may discover evidences that I am wrong. How is this situation an improvement on solipsism? Only you exist. Only the machine exists. ? I believe in electron, bridge, numbers, nations, humans, planet, galaxies, etc. But that is just a personal confession. Then all what I say is that if I am machine, then all those things I just mention have to emerge from numbers with their additive and multiplicative structure, and I explain how and why. Six of one, half a dozen of the other I’d say. And there’s still the problem that the vast majority of physical universes (or mathematical structures) would be dishonest “Matrix” universes (or structures), so how likely is it that our beliefs are true of anything outside of our subjective experience? Well, most people do share with me the assumptions, they do believe that there is an infinity of prime numbers, that consciousness could be plausibly preserve in functional digital brain substitution, and then they follow, with varying degrees of easyness the reasoning. The matrix and machine's dreams obey to the laws of computer science. So obviously something exists...my conscious experience of this moment. That is obvious for you. I have to postulate it. I don’t see the importance of this point? I am certain that my experience of this moment (or instant) exists...nothing important hinges on whether your experience exists. If it doesn’t, that’s fine. I’m not trying to explain your conscious experience, I’m only trying to explain mine. Bouncing ideas off of you is a useful activity...which would still be true even if it turned out that you were just an Eliza-like chat-bot that parsed incoming emails, rearranged the wording, and added some logician-speak before mailing them back out. I can agree with that, at some level, but you waould not refer to this moment. I am not sure what you mean by moment with idealist accidentalism (IA). Moment as in “Instant of consciousness”. Or even as in “instance of consciousness”. This experience is a multifaceted thing...in that there are many things I am conscious of in this moment. But this is true of dreams as well. I am conscious of many things in a dream, but those aren't things that exist outside or independently of the dream. In which theory. I was thinking of physicalism. Such a sentence seems to assume a lot, if only to make some sense. If IA is correct, words like world, outside refer to what? Aspects of experience. So what accounts for the dream? Numbers? In the theory digital mechanism, aka computationnalism, we can argue for this, indeed. So IF it is true that some particular some set of numbers and the relations between them just *are* my conscious experience of seeing an oak tree, THEN *something* has to make that true. No identity thesis. The relation between consciousness and the number relation is more holistic than the materialist usually thinks. It’s not the numbers themselves that would make that true, because numbers are numbers, and have nothing obvious to do with oak trees
Re: What's wrong with this?
What about reductive maximalism? :) The physicalist has the problem that he doesn't know what the right level is, as in his world, all observationally equivalent explanations are interchangeable. What he can do is appeal to simplicity in reducing everything to some atomic objects, which are then really real. Would it be simpler still to guess that every observer is in a superposition of worlds that are consistent with his observations? Then we don't have to pick any level. Some of the worlds would correspond to idealistic accidentalism in its many forms. In some he would be recreated each moment, in some he would be a zombie, in others some kind of Brahman, and so on. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 02 Sep 2010, at 17:02, David Nyman wrote: On 1 September 2010 21:51, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: In other words, it would appear that he cannot, with pure logic, rule out the possibility - even to himself - of Logical-David being merely a zombie. No. Even the zombie can see that he cannot. That's why the self-referentially correct machine cannot be a zombie. Yes, my emphasis here was indeed **with pure logic**. That is to say, the purely logical part - i.e. the believer - begins by suspecting that it perhaps can't rule out the possibility that it is *only* that: i.e. pure logic. Not at all. He has a relation with truth. He begins by confusing its belief with truth, but introspecting itself, it discovers the gap between truth and its beliefs. So that he discovers the gap between beliefs (the logical system) and knowledge (by definition: those beliefs which are, some perhaps serendipitously, others perhaps necessarily, true. But the subtlety is that it can also realise that this very possibility begs the question of its own self-referential integrity. Yes. Indeed. That is, it would place into doubt its very existence for itself as something (i.e. anything whatsoever) metaphysically distinct from the substrate of logic considered to be constituting it. Good. The following dilemma is then presented: either a) there simply *is no believer* in any way metaphysically distinct from the substrate in general, Certainly not. or b) the truth of such distinctness is for the believer alone to assert. Exact. But then, since the unpalatable consequence of option a) would be the annihilation of both the Cat and the Grin, the believer (thankfully) realises that self-referential correctness mandates the truth of its own existence-for-itself. What a relief! I think so. Why can this be so hard to see? This thought was what motivated my original post - i.e. that the reason (or at least a major reason) why all this can seem so elusive is that we continually seek to escape self-reference by adopting - per impossibile - some maximally analytic objectivised viewpoint: i.e. the reductionist-god's eye view, or observer at infinity. Although success in achieving such a view should entail the consequence of entirely banishing any self-referential distinctness we possess, somehow we can fail to appreciate this, and the Cheshire Cat-like apparition of the objects of experience remains in full view. How is this? Because we forget that any view purporting to be both entirely analytic and *outside of everything* must, by that very restriction, have abandoned any legitimate grasp of *internally-referenced* categories predicated on integration, composition, or synthesis. That sentence is long ;-) We just go on projecting all this from afar, just as though we had not absented ourselves from the scene. Such metaphysical absent-mindedness tricks us into begging the question of just how such synthetic categories could in fact acquire any transcendence over a putative analytic substrate. In effect, this kind of metaphysical circularity is hard-wired into our naturalistic modes of thought - though we may blind ourselves to self-reference, we cannot escape it. I think so. As far as I don't misunderstand. Give me time to digest. You have to study Gödel and Tarski theorem, or a result by Kaplan and Montague, recasted in the Solovay logics. Smorynski wrote a paper 50 years of arithmetical self-reference, a rather long time ago. Boolos 1979 and 1993 consecrated a chapter to the knower (S4Grz). A student and friend of mine has formalized Bp Dp (the Z, Z1, Z* and Z1*) logics, but the case for S4GRz1, and the X, X1, X*, X1* logics remains unsolved. There are theorem prover for those logics, and so by an indirect argument we know them formalizable, but no one has found the axioms yet. Note that all those logic are non effectively soluble, once extended at the modal predicate level. The hypostases give a knowledge of the believer, the conscious knower, the observer, the feeler each with they communicable and non communicable part, from which you can derive, the observable, the non observable, the feelable and the non feelable, well many things, including quanta and qualia. Weakness: hard mathematics. Ask any question if you feel so. I am aware it is hard and ultra- subtle stuff. Well, that is why only technics can handle those self- references. It is, as you say, remarkable that there exist detailed systems of self-referential logic that can capture such subtleties, and make rigorous the distinction between formal and non-formal parts. I am grateful for your continued perseverance and patience in affording me even the most basic insight into them, and I only wish I had the sheer tenacity to get to grips with them in the extended technical detail they demand, as you do. But you, after all, are a logician and I am a mere quibbler.
Re: What's wrong with this? (a side question)
on 02.09.2010 17:57 Bruno Marchal said the following: ... Science is only collection of theories, and statements derive in those theories, and intepretation rules, and confirmation modus operandi. Only layman and engineers have to hope that their theories fits enough a reality. The theories and the reasoning can be presented informally or formally. Rigor has nothing to do with formalization, but a lot to do with clarity. It is also better that the theory/assumption are shared by many, because ... it is more fun. How would you define what a physical law is? The reason I am asking is that recently I have read The Elegant Universe by Brian Green about the superstring theory. For some reasons physicists insist that they can find Equation of Everything. Best wishes, Evgenii http://blog.rudnyi.ru -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 2 September 2010 18:32, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: So, as far as I am true, beliefs coincide with knowledge. Yes, I can see that this statement essentially sums up exactly what I was trying to say! Its structure expresses the relation between formal (belief) and non-formal (knowledge), from the synthetic perspective of the believer/knower. What I was criticising in my original post was the kind of view that purports to ignore the indispensable non-formal roots of this tree of knowledge, whilst continuing to make off with its fruit! If I may speak (even) more loosely for a moment, I tend to think of the Real, insofar as we can conceptualise it at all (and we can't) as being in some sense a Big Whole, but a Big Whole that is somehow also able to manifest itself as a multitude. In this, I guess I've always broadly shared the metaphysical intuitions of the neo-Platonist and Eastern traditions. Because both these poles seem to me ineliminable, truth can be found only in the tension between analysis and integration, not at either limit. The Big Whole is eternally engaged in some process of maximal fragmentation - a cosmic self-analysis, so to speak - but any knowledge gained thereby can be absorbed only by re-integration into the Whole. It seems to me that much eliminativist theorising is driven into incoherence as a result of ignoring considerations essentially of this type, with the further paradoxical consequence that the theories themselves are expressible only in terms of knowledge gained through the very integrative phenomena that they explicitly rule out! David On 02 Sep 2010, at 17:02, David Nyman wrote: On 1 September 2010 21:51, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: In other words, it would appear that he cannot, with pure logic, rule out the possibility - even to himself - of Logical-David being merely a zombie. No. Even the zombie can see that he cannot. That's why the self-referentially correct machine cannot be a zombie. Yes, my emphasis here was indeed **with pure logic**. That is to say, the purely logical part - i.e. the believer - begins by suspecting that it perhaps can't rule out the possibility that it is *only* that: i.e. pure logic. Not at all. He has a relation with truth. He begins by confusing its belief with truth, but introspecting itself, it discovers the gap between truth and its beliefs. So that he discovers the gap between beliefs (the logical system) and knowledge (by definition: those beliefs which are, some perhaps serendipitously, others perhaps necessarily, true. But the subtlety is that it can also realise that this very possibility begs the question of its own self-referential integrity. Yes. Indeed. That is, it would place into doubt its very existence for itself as something (i.e. anything whatsoever) metaphysically distinct from the substrate of logic considered to be constituting it. Good. The following dilemma is then presented: either a) there simply *is no believer* in any way metaphysically distinct from the substrate in general, Certainly not. or b) the truth of such distinctness is for the believer alone to assert. Exact. But then, since the unpalatable consequence of option a) would be the annihilation of both the Cat and the Grin, the believer (thankfully) realises that self-referential correctness mandates the truth of its own existence-for-itself. What a relief! I think so. Why can this be so hard to see? This thought was what motivated my original post - i.e. that the reason (or at least a major reason) why all this can seem so elusive is that we continually seek to escape self-reference by adopting - per impossibile - some maximally analytic objectivised viewpoint: i.e. the reductionist-god's eye view, or observer at infinity. Although success in achieving such a view should entail the consequence of entirely banishing any self-referential distinctness we possess, somehow we can fail to appreciate this, and the Cheshire Cat-like apparition of the objects of experience remains in full view. How is this? Because we forget that any view purporting to be both entirely analytic and *outside of everything* must, by that very restriction, have abandoned any legitimate grasp of *internally-referenced* categories predicated on integration, composition, or synthesis. That sentence is long ;-) We just go on projecting all this from afar, just as though we had not absented ourselves from the scene. Such metaphysical absent-mindedness tricks us into begging the question of just how such synthetic categories could in fact acquire any transcendence over a putative analytic substrate. In effect, this kind of metaphysical circularity is hard-wired into our naturalistic modes of thought - though we may blind ourselves to self-reference, we cannot escape it. I think so. As far as I don't misunderstand. Give me time to digest. You have to
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 9/2/2010 1:32 AM, Rex Allen wrote: On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 1:51 AM, Quentin Anciauxallco...@gmail.com wrote: I did read your preceeding message. And what I got out of it is that if you consistently apply your evaluative criteria, you should conclude that physicalism, platonism, deism, theism, arithmetical realism and all other metaphysical theories that reduce conscious experience to some sort of underlying rule-governed framework are irrefutable and thus valueless. You're the one saying that. You are correct, I seem to be the only one saying that if you apply your evaluative criteria consistently, then your charge against idealist accidentalism applies equally to physicalism and the rest. The problem with idealist accidentalism (like with sollipsism) is that you can change at will to adapt to the fact. It's not the case with the others (but is the case with theism/deism/magic/bisounours world/etc). Physicalism is exactly as changeable as idealistic accidentalism. That was the point of my earlier response to you. What new fact could possibly refute physicalism??? (or mathematical platonism, or whatever) Keep in mind that idealistic accidentalism is an alternative to physicalism, not to quantum field theory. Physicalism just being the thesis that that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties; that there are no kinds of things other than physical things. So, what new data couldn't be interpreted as being consistent with that? Of course it is *logically* possible that any new data could be consistent with physicalism - but then logical possibility is a very weak standard; it just excludes X and not-X. Scientifically I think there are possible data that would count as evidence against physicalism. For example, if persons reporting out-of-body experiences could actually gain knowledge not otherwise available via these experiences. Another example would be prayer healing studies. If it happened that prayers by say Sikhs were effective with statistical significance while prayers by other religionists were not; that would be strong evidence against physicalism. An idealistic accidentalist would take an instrumentalist view of quantum mechanics. As opposed to some form of scientific realism that a physicalist might support. Many physicists take an instrumentalist view of quantum mechanics, c.f. Asher Peres graduate textbook. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
2010/9/1 Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 6:15 PM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: I should just add that idealist accidentalism is *exactly* as irrefutable as solipsism. Hence by that it has no value... but it's not refuted. What would refute physicalism? It would seem to me that quantum mechanics is sufficiently flexible to account for nearly any observation, especially since the many worlds interpretation and the possibility of multiverses would seem likely to give rise to so many permutations. Even probabilistic physical laws and a single infinite universe would still seem likely to give rise to some pretty bizarre scenarios, wouldn’t it? Now, maybe quantum mechanics will be replaced by a different theory, but can you imagine any possible feature of such a theory that would rule out a physicalist interpretation? And, again, any rule-based framework for explaining our conscious experiences means, by definition, that don’t present or believe arguments for reasons of logic or rationality. Instead, the arguments that we present and believe are those entailed by the rules that underlie our experiences. That these rules generate rational beliefs is a leap of faith, and can neither be refuted nor proven. If the underlying process *didn’t* cause us to present and believe rational arguments, there would be no way to detect this, since there is no way to step outside of the process’s control of one’s beliefs to independently verify the reasonableness of the beliefs it generates. A physicalist may be correct about the physical nature of reality, but if so, this is solely due to his improbable good luck in existing in a rare honest physical universe whose initial conditions and causal laws resulted in his holding true beliefs about his universe's initial conditions and causal laws. Given all that, ultimately I doubt your beliefs are any better footing than solipsism either. Rex Euh.. I'm sorry but where did I state my belief in the preceeding message ? Where did I spoke about physicalism ? I spoke about idealist accidentalism in answer to Bruno who said wrongly it's been refuted when it's not because well... read the preceeding message. Quentin -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 01 Sep 2010, at 00:13, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2010/8/30 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 29 Aug 2010, at 21:20, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 12:00 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: Excellent topic and comments! Naturalism does seem to be a natural condition of humans given their predilection for supernatural or supranatural explanations of events that have no simplistic explanations, i.e. in terms of their common every day experiences which are limited by their socioeconomic conditions. I am not sure what Idealist Accidentalism would entail… Could you elaborate on this, Rex? By idealist I'm referring to metaphysical idealism...that what fundamentally exists is mental, not physical. And by mental I mean either consciousness or existing only as an aspect of consciousness. For example, there is my conscious experience of a dream, and then there are the things that appear in my dreams that I am conscious of...houses and chairs and trees and people. Both categories of things are mental. The trees that appear in my dreams only exist as an aspect of the dream. And by accidentalism I mean the theory that nothing that exists or occurs is caused. There is nothing that connects or controls the flow of events. The only rule is that there are no rules to appeal to. So idealist accidentalism...the view that what exists is mental, and that there is no underlying process that explains or governs this existence. If idealist accidentalism is correct then there is no theory at all. But idealist accidentalism is a theory (even if vague) So there is no theory, and there is one theory. So 0 = 1. Contradiction. So idealist accidentalism is refuted. I'm sorry bruno... but that is sophism... I was applying idealist accidentalism. I could have written anything. I should just add that idealist accidentalism is *exactly* as irrefutable as solipsism. Hence by that it has no value... but it's not refuted. I can agree with that. Usually I agree with Popper that a theory has to be refutable to be qualified as a theory. But I don't want initiate a vocabulary discussion. Note that solipsism has some value in the sense that we can imagine it to be true, and somehow it is true from the first person point of view: our mental world is somehow a personal construction. It is just false once we posit two observers, as we do when we want communicate. Idealist accidentalism seem to me almost equivalent with the idea that there is no theory at all. Best, Bruno You may save it by insisting that idealist accidentalism is not a theory. It would be a mere philosophical injunction of the type dont' ask, don't search. hmm... Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 31 Aug 2010, at 19:36, Rex Allen wrote: On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 11:11 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: So idealist accidentalism...the view that what exists is mental, and that there is no underlying process that explains or governs this existence. If idealist accidentalism is correct then there is no theory at all. Well, I'd have to hear your definition of theory and what the conditions are for its existence. The existence of a theory is usually not the object of the theory, but of a metatheory. In some case the metatheory can itself be an object of the theory. For example zoologists are animal (but botanist are not plant). Since Gödel we know that the theory Peano Arithmetic can be studied in Peano arithmetic. And monist philosophies makes mandatory that the theory and/or the theoretican has to belong to the collection of objects or phenomena of the theory. Physicists do obey to the laws of gravitation for example. A physicist of masse m will attract a physicist of mass M with a force proportional to mM/(square of the distance between two physicists). of course that force is negligible compared to the natural repulsion that a physicist can or cannot have for a colleague ... So obviously something exists...my conscious experience of this moment. That is obvious for you. I have to postulate it. Unless you postulate we are the same person? I can agree with that, at some level, but you waould not refer to this moment. I am not sure what you mean by moment with idealist accidentalism (IA). This experience is a multifaceted thing...in that there are many things I am conscious of in this moment. But this is true of dreams as well. I am conscious of many things in a dream, but those aren't things that exist outside or independently of the dream. In which theory. Such a sentence seems to assume a lot, if only to make some sense. If IA is correct, words like world, outside refer to what? So what accounts for the dream? Numbers? In the theory digital mechanism, aka computationnalism, we can argue for this, indeed. How does my experience of dreaming of a tree connect to numbers? What is it that generates my experience of a tree from the brutely existing substrate of numbers? Well, from the true but non communicable part given by the self- reference logic of self-introspecting (ideally correct) programs (machine, numbers, theories ... words are used in a large sense here). Why should numbers give rise to my dream experience of a tree? Obviously I can use numbers to represent the tree...in the sense that I can use saved numerical measurements to re-present the tree to my self...if I can remember how to interpret the measurements. And I'm even willing to grant that I can use numbers to represent my experience of the tree. But representation is just the re-presenting of something to your conscious experience, which is not at all the same as explaining the fact of that experience. The fact of experience is given by the true fixed point of the representation, like a map of the USA, when situated in the USA will have a representing point superposed on the real point. But idealist accidentalism is a theory (even if vague) So there is no theory, and there is one theory. So 0 = 1. Contradiction. So idealist accidentalism is refuted. I think you should have your logician license revoked... I will not insist on that littel reasoning. Was just trying to shortly points that IA makes little sense for me. You may save it by insisting that idealist accidentalism is not a theory. It would be a mere philosophical injunction of the type dont' ask, don't search. I think it is a just a recognition that Agrippa's trilemma and the principle of sufficient reason lead to infinite levels of infinite regress. Which I take as a sign that there's something wrong with that type of interpretation of our conscious experience. When put in computer science terms (which computationalism invites naturally to do), we inherit of the fixed point solutions of recursive equation. I have no problem with people trying different kind of theory, but to posit consciousness at the start (or matter, actually) does not satisfy me. As I said it prevents further research. I understand that feeling (consciousness cannot be explained), but I can at least explain why machine/numbers develop discourse invoking similar failure feeling about their own consciousness/consistency, or true but non provable predicate on themselves. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 1 September 2010 09:21, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: How does my experience of dreaming of a tree connect to numbers? What is it that generates my experience of a tree from the brutely existing substrate of numbers? Well, from the true but non communicable part given by the self-reference logic of self-introspecting (ideally correct) programs (machine, numbers, theories ... words are used in a large sense here). Rex's question excerpted above, and Bruno's response to it, seem to relate directly to the topic I had in mind in my original post. Speaking, as it were, somewhat in Bruno's rather large sense, the brutely existing substrate of numbers might correspond to that particular perspective on the Real which is characterised by abstraction to what I called the pole of maximal fragmentation - i.e. the role presumably occupied by the quantum field and its manifestations in current physical theory. The self-reference logic of self-introspecting (ideally correct) programs (machine, numbers, theories ..., would then be seen in the role of a combinatorial logic operating over this domain - that occupied, in physical theory, by whatever are supposed to be considered the fundamental relations between physical ultimates. The key subtlety then devolves on the true but non communicable part. This seems very difficult to state concisely. Perhaps what makes it elusive is that first one has to appreciate that the self-introspecting logic is (somehow) already capable of grasping that certain of its beliefs have the characteristic of implying to the believer, in a certain sense, the metaphysical distinctness of their referents. To see this, let us consider Logical-David - i.e. that aspect of David that is purely a manifestation of self-introspecting (ideally correct) programs. This Logical-David possesses - i.e. is (partially) constituted by - certain self-referential beliefs that mediate relations between himself and the objects of his experience. He is already, within the constraints of this purely logical substrate, capable of demonstrating consistent commitment to such beliefs, and to their putative referents; indeed this is what motivates any communicable judgement or statement whatsoever that he is capable of producing about them. There is something more, however. There is something that already seems to him to transcend this purely logical substrate, something somehow metaphysically distinct, that seems to arise from its peculiarly self-referencing character. It seems somehow to be those very objects of experience themselves. On reflection, however, Logical-David is (just) able to see that all these considerations can still be confined within the constitutive substrate of numbers and combinatorial logic. Or to put it another way, as someone notoriously said, he would say that, wouldn't he? Whatever this extra something might, or might not, be, he is incapable of communicating it directly. Consequently, purely logically, he must (just) concede that any such putative metaphysical distinctness could still be, from a purely logical standpoint, chimerical. In other words, it would appear that he cannot, with pure logic, rule out the possibility - even to himself - of Logical-David being merely a zombie. And indeed, Logical-David is, precisely, such a zombie. Actually, in this somewhat etiolated form he really should be considered more an intriguing interpretation of the mathematico-logical substrate than a person, as it were, in his own right Can there be no escape from this seemingly doleful logic? Yes, if there is *in fact* a David whose personal individuation is able to transcend its merely logical embodiment. And such transcendence indeed implies a metaphysically distinct, direct grasp of certain truths beyond their mere logical implication; some sort of personal integration or synthesis - apotheosis, even - correlated with, but irreducible to, any substrate considered in its purely analytical-combinatorial aspect. In short, for such transcendent individuation to be the case, there must *actually exist* a first-person David who is conscious, as well as merely logically possessed, of the objects of his experience. And as to the truth of this - of course - only he would know. David (both of him) On 31 Aug 2010, at 19:36, Rex Allen wrote: On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 11:11 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: So idealist accidentalism...the view that what exists is mental, and that there is no underlying process that explains or governs this existence. If idealist accidentalism is correct then there is no theory at all. Well, I'd have to hear your definition of theory and what the conditions are for its existence. The existence of a theory is usually not the object of the theory, but of a metatheory. In some case the metatheory can itself be an object of the theory. For example zoologists are animal (but botanist are not plant). Since Gödel we know
Re: What's wrong with this?
On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 2:14 AM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: Euh.. I'm sorry but where did I state my belief in the preceeding message ? Where did I spoke about physicalism ? I spoke about idealist accidentalism in answer to Bruno who said wrongly it's been refuted when it's not because well... read the preceeding message. I did read your preceeding message. And what I got out of it is that if you consistently apply your evaluative criteria, you should conclude that physicalism, platonism, deism, theism, arithmetical realism and all other metaphysical theories that reduce conscious experience to some sort of underlying rule-governed framework are irrefutable and thus valueless. But what are alternatives to rule-governed metaphysical frameworks? Accidentalism, and...what else? Refraining from metaphysical speculation altogether? Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 01 Sep 2010, at 20:03, David Nyman wrote: On 1 September 2010 09:21, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: How does my experience of dreaming of a tree connect to numbers? What is it that generates my experience of a tree from the brutely existing substrate of numbers? Well, from the true but non communicable part given by the self- reference logic of self-introspecting (ideally correct) programs (machine, numbers, theories ... words are used in a large sense here). Rex's question excerpted above, and Bruno's response to it, seem to relate directly to the topic I had in mind in my original post. Speaking, as it were, somewhat in Bruno's rather large sense, the brutely existing substrate of numbers might correspond to that particular perspective on the Real which is characterised by abstraction to what I called the pole of maximal fragmentation - i.e. the role presumably occupied by the quantum field and its manifestations in current physical theory. The self-reference logic of self-introspecting (ideally correct) programs (machine, numbers, theories ..., would then be seen in the role of a combinatorial logic operating over this domain - that occupied, in physical theory, by whatever are supposed to be considered the fundamental relations between physical ultimates. The key subtlety then devolves on the true but non communicable part. This seems very difficult to state concisely. Perhaps what makes it elusive is that first one has to appreciate that the self-introspecting logic is (somehow) already capable of grasping that certain of its beliefs have the characteristic of implying to the believer, in a certain sense, the metaphysical distinctness of their referents. To see this, let us consider Logical-David - i.e. that aspect of David that is purely a manifestation of self-introspecting (ideally correct) programs. This Logical-David possesses - i.e. is (partially) constituted by - certain self-referential beliefs that mediate relations between himself and the objects of his experience. He is already, within the constraints of this purely logical substrate, capable of demonstrating consistent commitment to such beliefs, and to their putative referents; indeed this is what motivates any communicable judgement or statement whatsoever that he is capable of producing about them. There is something more, however. There is something that already seems to him to transcend this purely logical substrate, something somehow metaphysically distinct, that seems to arise from its peculiarly self-referencing character. It seems somehow to be those very objects of experience themselves. On reflection, however, Logical-David is (just) able to see that all these considerations can still be confined within the constitutive substrate of numbers and combinatorial logic. Or to put it another way, as someone notoriously said, he would say that, wouldn't he? Whatever this extra something might, or might not, be, he is incapable of communicating it directly. Yes. It is the truth as such that he cannot communicate. The third person description can be confined in the combinatorials, but not the truth. Like the truth of feeling to be the one reconstituted at here or there in self-multipliation. A part of truth is livable, but non communicable as such. Consequently, purely logically, he must (just) concede that any such putative metaphysical distinctness could still be, from a purely logical standpoint, chimerical. No. G* extended properly G. There is two self-referential logics. The true one, obeying G*, and the communicable part G. The machine can expect that the same thing (truth) obeys different logic (first person, third person). Incompleteness protects the machine from confusing the views. If he takes G* minus G as chimerical, he becomes inconsistent, or it lacks self correctness. In other words, it would appear that he cannot, with pure logic, rule out the possibility - even to himself - of Logical-David being merely a zombie. No. Even the zombie can see that he cannot. That's why the self- referentially correct machine cannot be a zombie. And indeed, Logical-David is, precisely, such a zombie. In a sense you are right. But such a third person describable logical david, is more akin to David's body, than David the (first) person, which (by definition) is connected to the truth. You are confusing Bp, and Bp p. The third person self and the first person self. Actually, in this somewhat etiolated form he really should be considered more an intriguing interpretation of the mathematico-logical substrate than a person, as it were, in his own right Can there be no escape from this seemingly doleful logic? Yes, if there is *in fact* a David whose personal individuation is able to transcend its merely logical embodiment. That's what G* and its intensional variants offer on a plate. And such transcendence indeed implies a metaphysically distinct,
Re: What's wrong with this?
2010/9/2 Rex Allen rexallen31...@gmail.com On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 2:14 AM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: Euh.. I'm sorry but where did I state my belief in the preceeding message ? Where did I spoke about physicalism ? I spoke about idealist accidentalism in answer to Bruno who said wrongly it's been refuted when it's not because well... read the preceeding message. I did read your preceeding message. And what I got out of it is that if you consistently apply your evaluative criteria, you should conclude that physicalism, platonism, deism, theism, arithmetical realism and all other metaphysical theories that reduce conscious experience to some sort of underlying rule-governed framework are irrefutable and thus valueless. You're the one saying that. The problem with idealist accidentalism (like with sollipsism) is that you can change at will to adapt to the fact. It's not the case with the others (but is the case with theism/deism/magic/bisounours world/etc). Quentin But what are alternatives to rule-governed metaphysical frameworks? Accidentalism, and...what else? Refraining from metaphysical speculation altogether? Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 11:11 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: So idealist accidentalism...the view that what exists is mental, and that there is no underlying process that explains or governs this existence. If idealist accidentalism is correct then there is no theory at all. Well, I'd have to hear your definition of theory and what the conditions are for its existence. So obviously something exists...my conscious experience of this moment. This experience is a multifaceted thing...in that there are many things I am conscious of in this moment. But this is true of dreams as well. I am conscious of many things in a dream, but those aren't things that exist outside or independently of the dream. So what accounts for the dream? Numbers? How does my experience of dreaming of a tree connect to numbers? What is it that generates my experience of a tree from the brutely existing substrate of numbers? Why should numbers give rise to my dream experience of a tree? Obviously I can use numbers to represent the tree...in the sense that I can use saved numerical measurements to re-present the tree to my self...if I can remember how to interpret the measurements. And I'm even willing to grant that I can use numbers to represent my experience of the tree. But representation is just the re-presenting of something to your conscious experience, which is not at all the same as explaining the fact of that experience. But idealist accidentalism is a theory (even if vague) So there is no theory, and there is one theory. So 0 = 1. Contradiction. So idealist accidentalism is refuted. I think you should have your logician license revoked... You may save it by insisting that idealist accidentalism is not a theory. It would be a mere philosophical injunction of the type dont' ask, don't search. I think it is a just a recognition that Agrippa's trilemma and the principle of sufficient reason lead to infinite levels of infinite regress. Which I take as a sign that there's something wrong with that type of interpretation of our conscious experience. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
2010/8/30 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 29 Aug 2010, at 21:20, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 12:00 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: Excellent topic and comments! Naturalism does seem to be a natural condition of humans given their predilection for supernatural or supranatural explanations of events that have no simplistic explanations, i.e. in terms of their common every day experiences which are limited by their socioeconomic conditions. I am not sure what Idealist Accidentalism would entail… Could you elaborate on this, Rex? By idealist I'm referring to metaphysical idealism...that what fundamentally exists is mental, not physical. And by mental I mean either consciousness or existing only as an aspect of consciousness. For example, there is my conscious experience of a dream, and then there are the things that appear in my dreams that I am conscious of...houses and chairs and trees and people. Both categories of things are mental. The trees that appear in my dreams only exist as an aspect of the dream. And by accidentalism I mean the theory that nothing that exists or occurs is caused. There is nothing that connects or controls the flow of events. The only rule is that there are no rules to appeal to. So idealist accidentalism...the view that what exists is mental, and that there is no underlying process that explains or governs this existence. If idealist accidentalism is correct then there is no theory at all. But idealist accidentalism is a theory (even if vague) So there is no theory, and there is one theory. So 0 = 1. Contradiction. So idealist accidentalism is refuted. I'm sorry bruno... but that is sophism... Regards, Quentin You may save it by insisting that idealist accidentalism is not a theory. It would be a mere philosophical injunction of the type dont' ask, don't search. hmm... Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
2010/9/1 Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com 2010/8/30 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 29 Aug 2010, at 21:20, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 12:00 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: Excellent topic and comments! Naturalism does seem to be a natural condition of humans given their predilection for supernatural or supranatural explanations of events that have no simplistic explanations, i.e. in terms of their common every day experiences which are limited by their socioeconomic conditions. I am not sure what Idealist Accidentalism would entail… Could you elaborate on this, Rex? By idealist I'm referring to metaphysical idealism...that what fundamentally exists is mental, not physical. And by mental I mean either consciousness or existing only as an aspect of consciousness. For example, there is my conscious experience of a dream, and then there are the things that appear in my dreams that I am conscious of...houses and chairs and trees and people. Both categories of things are mental. The trees that appear in my dreams only exist as an aspect of the dream. And by accidentalism I mean the theory that nothing that exists or occurs is caused. There is nothing that connects or controls the flow of events. The only rule is that there are no rules to appeal to. So idealist accidentalism...the view that what exists is mental, and that there is no underlying process that explains or governs this existence. If idealist accidentalism is correct then there is no theory at all. But idealist accidentalism is a theory (even if vague) So there is no theory, and there is one theory. So 0 = 1. Contradiction. So idealist accidentalism is refuted. I'm sorry bruno... but that is sophism... Regards, Quentin I should just add that idealist accidentalism is *exactly* as irrefutable as solipsism. Hence by that it has no value... but it's not refuted. Regards, Quentin You may save it by insisting that idealist accidentalism is not a theory. It would be a mere philosophical injunction of the type dont' ask, don't search. hmm... Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 6:15 PM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: I should just add that idealist accidentalism is *exactly* as irrefutable as solipsism. Hence by that it has no value... but it's not refuted. What would refute physicalism? It would seem to me that quantum mechanics is sufficiently flexible to account for nearly any observation, especially since the many worlds interpretation and the possibility of multiverses would seem likely to give rise to so many permutations. Even probabilistic physical laws and a single infinite universe would still seem likely to give rise to some pretty bizarre scenarios, wouldn’t it? Now, maybe quantum mechanics will be replaced by a different theory, but can you imagine any possible feature of such a theory that would rule out a physicalist interpretation? And, again, any rule-based framework for explaining our conscious experiences means, by definition, that don’t present or believe arguments for reasons of logic or rationality. Instead, the arguments that we present and believe are those entailed by the rules that underlie our experiences. That these rules generate rational beliefs is a leap of faith, and can neither be refuted nor proven. If the underlying process *didn’t* cause us to present and believe rational arguments, there would be no way to detect this, since there is no way to step outside of the process’s control of one’s beliefs to independently verify the reasonableness of the beliefs it generates. A physicalist may be correct about the physical nature of reality, but if so, this is solely due to his improbable good luck in existing in a rare honest physical universe whose initial conditions and causal laws resulted in his holding true beliefs about his universe's initial conditions and causal laws. Given all that, ultimately I doubt your beliefs are any better footing than solipsism either. Rex -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 29 Aug 2010, at 21:20, Rex Allen wrote: On Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 12:00 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: Excellent topic and comments! Naturalism does seem to be a natural condition of humans given their predilection for supernatural or supranatural explanations of events that have no simplistic explanations, i.e. in terms of their common every day experiences which are limited by their socioeconomic conditions. I am not sure what Idealist Accidentalism would entail… Could you elaborate on this, Rex? By idealist I'm referring to metaphysical idealism...that what fundamentally exists is mental, not physical. And by mental I mean either consciousness or existing only as an aspect of consciousness. For example, there is my conscious experience of a dream, and then there are the things that appear in my dreams that I am conscious of...houses and chairs and trees and people. Both categories of things are mental. The trees that appear in my dreams only exist as an aspect of the dream. And by accidentalism I mean the theory that nothing that exists or occurs is caused. There is nothing that connects or controls the flow of events. The only rule is that there are no rules to appeal to. So idealist accidentalism...the view that what exists is mental, and that there is no underlying process that explains or governs this existence. If idealist accidentalism is correct then there is no theory at all. But idealist accidentalism is a theory (even if vague) So there is no theory, and there is one theory. So 0 = 1. Contradiction. So idealist accidentalism is refuted. You may save it by insisting that idealist accidentalism is not a theory. It would be a mere philosophical injunction of the type dont' ask, don't search. hmm... Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 12:00 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: Excellent topic and comments! Naturalism does seem to be a natural condition of humans given their predilection for supernatural or supranatural explanations of events that have no simplistic explanations, i.e. in terms of their common every day experiences which are limited by their socioeconomic conditions. I am not sure what Idealist Accidentalism would entail… Could you elaborate on this, Rex? By idealist I'm referring to metaphysical idealism...that what fundamentally exists is mental, not physical. And by mental I mean either consciousness or existing only as an aspect of consciousness. For example, there is my conscious experience of a dream, and then there are the things that appear in my dreams that I am conscious of...houses and chairs and trees and people. Both categories of things are mental. The trees that appear in my dreams only exist as an aspect of the dream. And by accidentalism I mean the theory that nothing that exists or occurs is caused. There is nothing that connects or controls the flow of events. The only rule is that there are no rules to appeal to. So idealist accidentalism...the view that what exists is mental, and that there is no underlying process that explains or governs this existence. Explaining the order of our experience by positing the existence of orderly underlying processes (as with reductive physicalism, for example) is just begging the question...because then what explains the order of those underlying processes? The total amount of mystery was conserved. We just transferred the mystery to a new location - from our conscious experience to a hypothetical underlying process. We are unwilling to accept that our experiences just are orderly, so instead we appeal to an underlying process which just is orderly. Ordo Ex Machina. Not only that, but this reductionist approach raises the question of why we would be so lucky as to have our conscious experiences generated by underlying processes that cause us to have correct knowledge of those very processes. We can only know what the underlying process causes us to know. Thus, the tendency to believe true things can't be a special feature of humans. Rather, it would be a special feature of the process that underlies human experience. But, again, this is a problem with any rule-based explanation of reality, not just with reductive physicalism. But the only alternative to a rule-based explanation of reality is accidentalism, isn't it? Could I propose a hypothesis about rules and causality? I will try to keep my explanation here simplistic to save time and space so please take that into account as you read this. First, if we are going to eliminate all traces of supranaturalism from our considerations, does it not behoove us to be sure that we are bringing the Observer at Infinity in some other guise? This notion of rules concerns me because it seems to imply that either some entity established them ab initio or else their existence is simply the result of some selective mechanism. But then what is the selective mechanism a result of? Naturalism would involve making sure that it is not the former case. I think that the work of thinkers like Russell Standish and Nick Bostrom are making great strides to help us understand this later possibility. It could very well be that these rules are simply patterns of commonality that emerge between a large number of interacting systems, Emerge by what rule? Or do they emerge randomly? If so, that takes us back to accidentalism, doesn't it? Also, a large number of interacting systems is just a system, isn't it? At the very least a system of interacting systems. Where the boundaries are drawn is all in how you look at...I would think. With the right mapping you can find any pattern anywhere, can't you? What privileges one interpretational mapping over another? What Pratt proposes is a more subtle version of this that assumes a duality relationship between information and matter. Explained here http://chu.stanford.edu/guide.html#ratmech , this duality involves a transition rule that move us a bit toward making sense of the kinds of great questions that Rex points out below. Maybe it is that way...but if so, I wonder why? Why is it that way instead of some other way? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
RE: What's wrong with this?
Hi Folks, Excellent topic and comments! Naturalism does seem to be a natural condition of humans given their predilection for supernatural or supranatural explanations of events that have no simplistic explanations, i.e. in terms of their common every day experiences which are limited by their socioeconomic conditions. I am not sure what Idealist Accidentalism would entail. Could you elaborate on this, Rex? Could I propose a hypothesis about rules and causality? I will try to keep my explanation here simplistic to save time and space so please take that into account as you read this. First, if we are going to eliminate all traces of supranaturalism from our considerations, does it not behoove us to be sure that we are bringing the Observer at Infinity in some other guise? This notion of rules concerns me because it seems to imply that either some entity established them ab initio or else their existence is simply the result of some selective mechanism. Naturalism would involve making sure that it is not the former case. I think that the work of thinkers like Russell Standish and Nick Bostrom are making great strides to help us understand this later possibility. It could very well be that these rules are simply patterns of commonality that emerge between a large number of interacting systems, following something like a cross between learning or 'habituation and a least action principle. In the work of Vaughan Pratt (http://boole.stanford.edu/pratt.html) I found an interesting way of thinking of causality. It is part of his Chu space based model of concurrence and interactions. To set things up let us first think of what goes on in the transition from one event to another in a sequence in time, the context within which the notion of causality arises. When we consider some event a as being the cause of some other event b, is it always the case that a and b where unique in that there was only one possible b for the given a? This question might not make any sense in the classical regime where its determinism involves a strict one-to-one and onto mapping between successive events in time, but this is not true for QM. In quantum mechanics we have the situation that unless the conditions and systems are severely restricted for any a there is a spectrum of possible b_i that could obtain via the superposition rule. This is one reason we have all sorts of so-called problems with QM as it does not let us get away with the one-to-one and onto maps of classical dynamics. So, I am lead to the question, given the (a, b_i) pair which represents a state and the set of its possible next states, what about the time reversed situation? Well, we find that for some b there is not just one possible a; what we find is another many-to-one sort of mapping, just pointing in the opposite direction (b, a_j). We can see this explicitly in the bra and ket notations and people like John Cramer and others have seized upon this to think about interactions that go both forward and backward in time. What Pratt proposes is a more subtle version of this that assumes a duality relationship between information and matter. Explained here http://chu.stanford.edu/guide.html#ratmech , this duality involves a transition rule that move us a bit toward making sense of the kinds of great questions that Rex points out below. The rule, put very crudely, is that for a to cause b, b must imply a; where the material act of causation is the dual of the logical act of implication. Let me quote directly from Pratt's paper: We propose to reduce complex mind-body interaction to the elementary interactions of their constituents. Events of the body interact with states of the mind. This interaction has two dual forms. A physical event a in the body A impresses its occurrence on a mental state x of the mind X, written a=|x. Dually, in state x the mind infers the prior occurrence of event a, written x |= a. States may be understood as corresponding more or less to the possible worlds of a Kripke structure, and events to propositions that may or may not hold in different worlds of that structure. With regard to orientation, impression is causal and its direction is that of time. Inference is logical, and logic swims upstream against time. Prolog's backward-chaining strategy dualizes this by viewing logic as primary and time as swimming upstream against logic, but this amounts to the same thing. The basic idea is that time and logic flow in opposite directions. Of course we have to get past the objections to dualism for this idea to be taken seriously, but I believe that it goes a long way to understanding causality in a wider context. Kindest regards, Stephen From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Rex Allen Sent: Friday, August 27, 2010 1:09 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: What's wrong with this? On Thu
Re: What's wrong with this?
and logic flow in opposite directions. Of course we have to get past the objections to dualism for this idea to be taken seriously, but I believe that it goes a long way to understanding causality in a wider context. Kindest regards, Stephen *From:* everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf Of *Rex Allen *Sent:* Friday, August 27, 2010 1:09 PM *To:* everything-list@googlegroups.com *Subject:* Re: What's wrong with this? On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 12:37 PM, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com mailto:david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: If we could remove ourselves from the universe and take a strict reductionist-god's eye view (which means having to drop all our usual mental categories - a very hard thing to achieve imaginatively) then, strictly adhering to the above hypothesis, all that would remain would be some ground-level physical machine grinding along, without the need for additional composite or macroscopic posits. Take your pick from current theory what is supposed to represent this machine, but that needn't necessarily be at issue for the purpose of the argument. The point is that removing everything composite from the picture supposedly results in zero difference at the base level - same events, same causality. It seems to me that the primary question is about causality. Once you commit to the idea of a rule-governed system, you're already in a radically restrictive regime. Whether the system is physical or ideal or whatever seems largely irrelevant. But what is the alternative to a rule-governed system? How can the occurrence of any event be explained *except* by attributing that occurrence to some rule? Which is just to say that the event occurred for some reason. But if everything has a reason, then there are an infinity of reasons even if there are only a finite number of things that initially need explanation. Because for every reason there should be a another reason that explains why the rule the reason refers to holds instead of not holding or instead of some other rule holding in it's place or in addition to it. And then we need a reason for each one of the reasons for our original reasons. And so on, ad infinitum. But why our particular set of infinite reasons instead of some other set of infinite reasons? What is the reason for that? The alternative is that some things happen for no reason. But in this case, why would some things have explanations while others don't? What is the reason for the two categories? Maybe, instead, there is no reason for anything? How would we know? What would eliminate this possibility from consideration? So...reductive physicalism. It seems like only one example of a larger problem. Maybe Idealist Accidentalism is the answer? snip. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 28 Aug 2010, at 02:26, David Nyman wrote: On 27 August 2010 19:21, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: But most reductionist would say that they believe in atom and in their properties, and this makes it possible to enter in a great variety of different combinations having themselves even more non trivial properties. Why would a reductionist be committed in saying that such higher level features do not exist? Well, such reductionists could not of course be eliminativist about these higher level features and properties. But this then commits them to the metaphysical reality - in some sense - of the higher level features, as distinct from their components. And this some sense is - at minimum - Kant's sense of appearance as distinct from whatever may be the thing in itself. I guess my overall thesis is that everyone, whatever kind of -ist they avow themselves to be, can't help but be committed to the metaphysical reality of the objects of perception (even when they implicitly locate them out there in some un-Kantian, directly real way). That's just our situation. Eliminating this sense can only lead to frank incoherence, and my argument, by pushing the notion to breaking point in the form of a reductio ad absurdum, was simply meant to make this particularly obvious. I agree with you. We are going in the same drection. But the reductionist-god's eye view (if we've done it right) should convince us - weirdly, but unavoidably - that they just aren't automatically out there, metaphysically, at our disposal. I don't see why. I mean out there, where some level-zero domain of maximal fragmentation (what Levine calls basic physical properties) is posited - according to the extreme view I'm criticising - as the sole metaphysically reality. Remember, my argument is presented in the form of a reductio of just this position, by limiting it *strictly* to what it is entitled to under its own explicit metaphysical constraints. OK. I suppose the nub of this for me is that - whether we consider ourselves monist or dualist, or amongst the ontological uncommitted - we have need of both analytic and integrative principles to account for the states of affairs that confront us. But the reductionist will explain the integrative part through the properties of its elementary objects. Yes, and no such explaining can possibly be legitimate within the constraint of a *strict eliminativist* metaphysics. One cannot consistently claim a) that only basic physical entities and events are real, and b) go on appealing to explanations involving all manner of composite entities and concepts. A further metaphysical something is thereby being invoked, whether one likes it or not. The fully eliminated mechanism isn't supposed to need explanations to get its job done. That is the point of the posit of metaphysical exclusivity. But of course eliminativists actually do still need explanations, and that's their tragedy (or perhaps their salvation). But they can't eat their metaphysical cake, and have it too. You are right. In a sense that is what happened with the abndon of the Hilbert program in math, after Gödel's paper. Hilbert wanted to secure the foundation of math by eliminating intuition (your metaphysical import) and making math relying only on finite things and finite rules. It just don't work: intuition is just not eliminable. Scientist have to admit that they rely always on metaphysical assumption at some level. Of course the extra metaphysical something is inextricably bound up with consciousness and the first-person. Her *I¨agree with you, sure. My point is that eliminativists have little option but to go on appealing to all the paraphernalia of the composite objects of perception, even whilst simultaneously denying that their referents have any metaphysical reality. They're still just as apparent - whether in here or out there - as if they'd never been eliminated! Such blatant metaphysical theft is concealed only because of the almost insuperable tendency to go on deploying this language and these concepts, even after insisting that whatever they refer to is to be eliminated from one's metaphysics. OK. But in elementary arithmetic, you can prove the existence of numbers with very long and complex high level properties. You don't need to postulate them. This is a horse of a different colour, and perhaps a different conversation. I have been pondering quite a bit since our last interchange, and now it strikes me (perhaps rather late in the proceedings) that it is central to your thesis that the bare properties of substance physics are just *insufficiently rich* to explain the first person phenomena (including the metaphysical distinctness of the composite entities of perception from the fragmented events of physics). My eliminativist reductio just makes this more obvious, at least to me, because it demonstrates that one cannot avoid
Re: What's wrong with this?
, Stephen -Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of David Nyman Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2010 12:38 PM To: Everything List Subject: What's wrong with this? I've been waking up with a persistent thought again, prompted this time by the way many mainstream philosophers of mind seem to unconsciously adopt a particularly insidious form of direct realism, whilst being quite blind to it. It centers on the idea of extreme physical reductionism, which I take to be the hypothesis that all composite phenomena can be completely recast, in principle, in the form of a causally complete and closed ground level account of non- composite micro-physical events. I'm not concerned at this point whether such a restrictive view is true, or whether it is at odds with digital mechanism etc., but only that I take it to be a core assumption from which numerous people, including many philosophers, derive theories of the mental. I want to argue that the consequences of such a view are perhaps more radically restrictive than commonly assumed. If we could remove ourselves from the universe and take a strict reductionist-god's eye view (which means having to drop all our usual mental categories - a very hard thing to achieve imaginatively) then, strictly adhering to the above hypothesis, all that would remain would be some ground-level physical machine grinding along, without the need for additional composite or macroscopic posits. Take your pick from current theory what is supposed to represent this machine, but that needn't necessarily be at issue for the purpose of the argument. The point is that removing everything composite from the picture supposedly results in zero difference at the base level - same events, same causality. I should stress, again, I'm not personally committed to this view - it seems indeed highly problematic - but it is what the recipe says. Now, just to emphasize the point, when I say it's a hard thing to do this imaginatively, I mean that it isn't permissible to look back from this reductionist-god's eye view and continue to conjure familiar composite entities from the conjectural base components, because reductionism is a commitment to the proposition that these don't exist. Whatever composite categories we might be tempted to have recourse to - you know: molecules, cells, bodies, planets, ideas, explanations, theories, the whole ball of wax - none of these are available from this perspective. Don't need them. More rigorously, they *must not be invoked* because they *do not exist*. They don't need to exist, because the machine doesn't need them to carry all the load and do all the work. Now, many people might be prompted to object at this point that's not reducing, that's eliminating as though these terms could be kept distinct. But I'm arguing that reductionism, consistently applied, is inescapably eliminative. The hypothesis was that base-level events are self-sufficient and consequently must be granted metaphysical (and hence physical) reality. Nothing else is required to explain why the machine exists and works, so nothing else need - or indeed can non- question-beggingly - be postulated. If we really feel we must insist that there is something metaphysically indispensable above and beyond this (and it would seem that we have good reason to) we must look for an additional metaphysical somewhere to locate these somethings. Essentially we now have two options. We can follow Kant in locating them in a metaphysically real synthetic first-person category that transcends the ground-level (which stands here, approximately, for the thing-in-itself). The alternative - and this is the option that many philosophers seem to adopt by some directly real sleight-of- intuition - is that we somehow locate them out there right on top of the micro-physical account. It's easy to do: just look damn you, there they are, can't you see them? And in any case, one wants to protest, how can one predict, explain or comprehend anything above the ground floor *without* such categories? Yes, that is indeed the very question. But the reductionist-god's eye view (if we've done it right) should convince us - weirdly, but unavoidably - that they just aren't automatically out there, metaphysically, at our disposal. If this eludes us, it can only be because we've fallen into the error of retaining these indispensable organising categories intact, naturally but illicitly, whilst attempting this imaginative feat. Unfortunately this is to beg the very questions we seek to answer. I suppose the nub of this for me is that - whether we consider ourselves monist or dualist, or amongst the ontological uncommitted - we have need of both analytic and integrative principles
Re: What's wrong with this?
On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 12:37 PM, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: If we could remove ourselves from the universe and take a strict reductionist-god's eye view (which means having to drop all our usual mental categories - a very hard thing to achieve imaginatively) then, strictly adhering to the above hypothesis, all that would remain would be some ground-level physical machine grinding along, without the need for additional composite or macroscopic posits. Take your pick from current theory what is supposed to represent this machine, but that needn't necessarily be at issue for the purpose of the argument. The point is that removing everything composite from the picture supposedly results in zero difference at the base level - same events, same causality. It seems to me that the primary question is about causality. Once you commit to the idea of a rule-governed system, you're already in a radically restrictive regime. Whether the system is physical or ideal or whatever seems largely irrelevant. But what is the alternative to a rule-governed system? How can the occurrence of any event be explained *except* by attributing that occurrence to some rule? Which is just to say that the event occurred for some reason. But if everything has a reason, then there are an infinity of reasons even if there are only a finite number of things that initially need explanation. Because for every reason there should be a another reason that explains why the rule the reason refers to holds instead of not holding or instead of some other rule holding in it's place or in addition to it. And then we need a reason for each one of the reasons for our original reasons. And so on, ad infinitum. But why our particular set of infinite reasons instead of some other set of inifinite reasons? What is the reason for that? The alternative is that some things happen for no reason. But in this case, why would some things have explanations while others don't? What is the reason for the two categories? Maybe, instead, there is no reason for anything? How would we know? What would eliminate this possibility from consideration? So...reductive physicalism. It seems like only one example of a larger problem. Maybe Idealist Accidentalism is the answer? On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 7:04 PM, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: I suppose that evolution has equipped us with such an instinctive commitment to naturalism... Why would that be the case? And if true, what does it mean? In a deterministic world view, such as the Newtonian one that was in favor in 1859 when Darwin published On the Origin of Species, the answer is simple: it is a necessary and inevitable consequence of the universe's initial conditions and causal laws that humans have an instinctive commitment to naturalism. So in a deterministic universe, questions about evolution are ultimately just questions about initial conditions and causal laws. In a probabilistic world view, we add an element of chance to initial conditions and causal laws. The universe no longer plays chess...instead it plays poker. There are still rules, but the rules include randomly shuffling the deck between hands and keeping the hole cards hidden. In a probabilistic universe, questions about evolution are still ultimately questions about initial conditions and causal laws. The constrained randomness involved of how events actually transpire is an aspect of the universe's framework of governing laws. So, either way: We have an instinctive commitment to naturalism because the universe has caused us to have an instinctive commitment to naturalism. Given that this is the case, should be more inclined to trust this instinct, or less? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What's wrong with this?
On 27 August 2010 19:21, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: But most reductionist would say that they believe in atom and in their properties, and this makes it possible to enter in a great variety of different combinations having themselves even more non trivial properties. Why would a reductionist be committed in saying that such higher level features do not exist? Well, such reductionists could not of course be eliminativist about these higher level features and properties. But this then commits them to the metaphysical reality - in some sense - of the higher level features, as distinct from their components. And this some sense is - at minimum - Kant's sense of appearance as distinct from whatever may be the thing in itself. I guess my overall thesis is that everyone, whatever kind of -ist they avow themselves to be, can't help but be committed to the metaphysical reality of the objects of perception (even when they implicitly locate them out there in some un-Kantian, directly real way). That's just our situation. Eliminating this sense can only lead to frank incoherence, and my argument, by pushing the notion to breaking point in the form of a reductio ad absurdum, was simply meant to make this particularly obvious. But the reductionist-god's eye view (if we've done it right) should convince us - weirdly, but unavoidably - that they just aren't automatically out there, metaphysically, at our disposal. I don't see why. I mean out there, where some level-zero domain of maximal fragmentation (what Levine calls basic physical properties) is posited - according to the extreme view I'm criticising - as the sole metaphysically reality. Remember, my argument is presented in the form of a reductio of just this position, by limiting it *strictly* to what it is entitled to under its own explicit metaphysical constraints. I suppose the nub of this for me is that - whether we consider ourselves monist or dualist, or amongst the ontological uncommitted - we have need of both analytic and integrative principles to account for the states of affairs that confront us. But the reductionist will explain the integrative part through the properties of its elementary objects. Yes, and no such explaining can possibly be legitimate within the constraint of a *strict eliminativist* metaphysics. One cannot consistently claim a) that only basic physical entities and events are real, and b) go on appealing to explanations involving all manner of composite entities and concepts. A further metaphysical something is thereby being invoked, whether one likes it or not. The fully eliminated mechanism isn't supposed to need explanations to get its job done. That is the point of the posit of metaphysical exclusivity. But of course eliminativists actually do still need explanations, and that's their tragedy (or perhaps their salvation). But they can't eat their metaphysical cake, and have it too. Of course the extra metaphysical something is inextricably bound up with consciousness and the first-person. My point is that eliminativists have little option but to go on appealing to all the paraphernalia of the composite objects of perception, even whilst simultaneously denying that their referents have any metaphysical reality. They're still just as apparent - whether in here or out there - as if they'd never been eliminated! Such blatant metaphysical theft is concealed only because of the almost insuperable tendency to go on deploying this language and these concepts, even after insisting that whatever they refer to is to be eliminated from one's metaphysics. But in elementary arithmetic, you can prove the existence of numbers with very long and complex high level properties. You don't need to postulate them. This is a horse of a different colour, and perhaps a different conversation. I have been pondering quite a bit since our last interchange, and now it strikes me (perhaps rather late in the proceedings) that it is central to your thesis that the bare properties of substance physics are just *insufficiently rich* to explain the first person phenomena (including the metaphysical distinctness of the composite entities of perception from the fragmented events of physics). My eliminativist reductio just makes this more obvious, at least to me, because it demonstrates that one cannot avoid further metaphysical posits even to be able to speak intelligibly about reality. But as you say above, arithmetic potentially offers much more in terms of the needful combinatorial richness of properties - perhaps enough to do the job, or at least most of it. David On 26 Aug 2010, at 18:37, David Nyman wrote: I've been waking up with a persistent thought again, prompted this time by the way many mainstream philosophers of mind seem to unconsciously adopt a particularly insidious form of direct realism, whilst being quite blind to it. It centres on the idea of extreme physical reductionism, which I
What's wrong with this?
I've been waking up with a persistent thought again, prompted this time by the way many mainstream philosophers of mind seem to unconsciously adopt a particularly insidious form of direct realism, whilst being quite blind to it. It centres on the idea of extreme physical reductionism, which I take to be the hypothesis that all composite phenomena can be completely recast, in principle, in the form of a causally complete and closed ground level account of non- composite micro-physical events. I'm not concerned at this point whether such a restrictive view is true, or whether it is at odds with digital mechanism etc., but only that I take it to be a core assumption from which numerous people, including many philosophers, derive theories of the mental. I want to argue that the consequences of such a view are perhaps more radically restrictive than commonly assumed. If we could remove ourselves from the universe and take a strict reductionist-god's eye view (which means having to drop all our usual mental categories - a very hard thing to achieve imaginatively) then, strictly adhering to the above hypothesis, all that would remain would be some ground-level physical machine grinding along, without the need for additional composite or macroscopic posits. Take your pick from current theory what is supposed to represent this machine, but that needn't necessarily be at issue for the purpose of the argument. The point is that removing everything composite from the picture supposedly results in zero difference at the base level - same events, same causality. I should stress, again, I'm not personally committed to this view - it seems indeed highly problematic - but it is what the recipe says. Now, just to emphasise the point, when I say it's a hard thing to do this imaginatively, I mean that it isn't permissible to look back from this reductionist-god's eye view and continue to conjure familiar composite entities from the conjectural base components, because reductionism is a commitment to the proposition that these don't exist. Whatever composite categories we might be tempted to have recourse to - you know: molecules, cells, bodies, planets, ideas, explanations, theories, the whole ball of wax - none of these are available from this perspective. Don't need them. More rigorously, they *must not be invoked* because they *do not exist*. They don't need to exist, because the machine doesn't need them to carry all the load and do all the work. Now, many people might be prompted to object at this point that's not reducing, that's eliminating as though these terms could be kept distinct. But I'm arguing that reductionism, consistently applied, is inescapably eliminative. The hypothesis was that base-level events are self-sufficient and consequently must be granted metaphysical (and hence physical) reality. Nothing else is required to explain why the machine exists and works, so nothing else need - or indeed can non- question-beggingly - be postulated. If we really feel we must insist that there is something metaphysically indispensable above and beyond this (and it would seem that we have good reason to) we must look for an additional metaphysical somewhere to locate these somethings. Essentially we now have two options. We can follow Kant in locating them in a metaphysically real synthetic first-person category that transcends the ground-level (which stands here, approximately, for the thing-in-itself). The alternative - and this is the option that many philosophers seem to adopt by some directly real sleight-of- intuition - is that we somehow locate them out there right on top of the micro-physical account. It's easy to do: just look damn you, there they are, can't you see them? And in any case, one wants to protest, how can one predict, explain or comprehend anything above the ground floor *without* such categories? Yes, that is indeed the very question. But the reductionist-god's eye view (if we've done it right) should convince us - weirdly, but unavoidably - that they just aren't automatically out there, metaphysically, at our disposal. If this eludes us, it can only be because we've fallen into the error of retaining these indispensable organising categories intact, naturally but illicitly, whilst attempting this imaginative feat. Unfortunately this is to beg the very questions we seek to answer. I suppose the nub of this for me is that - whether we consider ourselves monist or dualist, or amongst the ontological uncommitted - we have need of both analytic and integrative principles to account for the states of affairs that confront us. There is, as it were, a spectrum that extends from maximal fragmentation to maximal integration, and neither extreme by itself suffices. The only mystery is why anyone would ever think it would. Or am I just missing something obvious as usual? David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group.
