subject:"Where Max Tegmark is really wrong"


> On 13 Dec 2018, at 18:05, agrayson2...@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Thursday, December 13, 2018 at 11:34:48 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
>> On 12 Dec 2018, at 19:38, agrays...@gmail.com  wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 3:51:04 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>>> On 11 Dec 2018, at 19:32, agrays...@gmail.com <> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> SNIP
>>> 
>>> 
 No testable hypotheses; conclusios not based on empirical data. AG.
>>> 
>>> Only since 529. Those proposing theories and empirical verification modes 
>>> were persecuted. They escaped in the Middle-East, where unfortunately the 
>>> made “stealing” was made in 1248.
>>> 
>>> Of course, I provide a counter-example, by showing that we can test 
>>> mechanism/materialism, and the test favour mechanism on materialism. 
>>> Physics seems to NOT be the fundamental science.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
 
 In that domain, you can understand that Mechanism is not compatible with 
 Materialism, and that the cosmos is not the ultimate reality. Its 
 appearance comes from something else, non physical.
 
 Play it again Sam. Succinctly, how do you define Mechanism and 
 Materialism, and why are they incompatible? AG 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Mechanism is the idea that our consciousness results only from the physical 
>>> functioning of the brain, or the body (in some generalised sense). To be 
>>> “functioning” (and biologically reproductible) implies digitalness (or you 
>>> can assume it outright). 
>>> 
>>> But then it is easy to understand that a universal machine cannot 
>>> distinguish a computation supporting him/her and executed by this or that 
>>> Turing complete system. In particular, it cannot distinguish a computation 
>>> run by a God, or by Matter, or by arithmetic (which is Turing complete). 
>>> This means that to predict anything empirically, it has to emerge from a 
>>> statistics on all (relative) computations (seen by the machine). When we do 
>>> the math, we do recover already that the observable of the universal 
>>> machine (an arithmetical notion, see Turing) obey a quantum logic, with a 
>>> symmetrical hamiltonian, etc. 
>>> Up to now, Mechanism won the empirical test, where materialism remains on 
>>> the side of the philosophical ontological commitment, without any evidences.
>>> 
>>> Mechanism is just the idea that we can survive with a digital computer in 
>>> place of the body or the brain. It assumes the existence of a level of 
>>> substitution where we survive a functional digital substitution. 
>>> 
>>> Let's assume such a substitution is possible. How do you go from that, to 
>>> some existing "universal machine" doing anything?
>> You don’t need to assume that we survive such substitution to get the 
>> existence of a universal machine.
>>  
>> You wrote above that we could assume it "outright" -- that mechanism implies 
>> we can survive a digital substitution? So I think you need mechanism to be 
>> true for your theory to be viable.
> 
> 
> I define Mechanism by the hypothesis that we can survive such brain Digital 
> transplantation. Yes.
> 
> I don’t claim it is true.
> 
> I claim it is testable, and indeed, somehow already confirmed because it 
> imposed a physics quite similar (up to now) to quantum theory (without 
> collapse).
> 
> I don't believe it's testable. Has that been done to any degree? And if it 
> were, I don't see how it would predict quantum theory. AG 


That is a quite sane attitude, and rather normal remark, before studying the 
argument/proof.

Now, if instead of not believing, you positively disbelief that Digital 
Mechanism is testable, you need to prove or argue for that statement, or 
better, to say at which step of my argument you depart from.

Or you invoke your personal opinion, which is then like abandoning the 
scientific attitude in the domain, to sell a “pseudo-religion”. I don’t think 
so (I hope).




>> But then you've already solved the problem of consciousness without going 
>> further, and it seems the conventional, albeit unproved expectation of 
>> materialism. AG
> 
> No, Materialism is refuted when you assume Mechanism.
> 
> Which form of materialism are you referring to?

Weak Materialsim: the idea that we have to *assume* physical things, like 
anything whose existence is inferred from observation and is judged to be not 
having a simpler explanation which does not invoke a ontological commitment in 
(Aristotelian) substance.




> Not the form or definition used by Stenger.

He is just unclear about that, but he seems to clearly assume analysis and some 
physical reality.

Its book will be very helpful to get the whole physics, when enough of the 
arithmetical quantum logic is known. Despite being decidable, the propositional 
theology is quickly intractable, today. 




> He never affirms or denies a primal unknown other than possibly energy 
> underlying matter.

Yes. That is already a lot. 




> If you replace mind by digital machine for

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-13 Thread agrayson2000



On Thursday, December 13, 2018 at 11:34:48 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 12 Dec 2018, at 19:38, agrays...@gmail.com  wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 3:51:04 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 11 Dec 2018, at 19:32, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>> SNIP
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *No testable hypotheses; conclusios not based on empirical data. AG*.
>>>
>>>
>>> Only since 529. Those proposing theories and empirical verification 
>>> modes were persecuted. They escaped in the Middle-East, where unfortunately 
>>> the made “stealing” was made in 1248.
>>>
>>> Of course, I provide a counter-example, by showing that we can test 
>>> mechanism/materialism, and the test favour mechanism on materialism. 
>>> Physics seems to NOT be the fundamental science.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> In that domain, you can understand that Mechanism is not compatible with 
 Materialism, and that the cosmos is not the ultimate reality. Its 
 appearance comes from something else, non physical.

>>>
>>> *Play it again Sam. Succinctly, how do you define Mechanism and 
>>> Materialism, and why are they incompatible? AG *
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Mechanism is the idea that our consciousness results only from the 
>>> physical functioning of the brain, or the body (in some generalised sense). 
>>> To be “functioning” (and biologically reproductible) implies digitalness 
>>> (or you can assume it outright). 
>>>
>>> But then it is easy to understand that a universal machine cannot 
>>> distinguish a computation supporting him/her and executed by this or that 
>>> Turing complete system. In particular, it cannot distinguish a computation 
>>> run by a God, or by Matter, or by arithmetic (which is Turing complete). 
>>> This means that to predict anything empirically, it has to emerge from a 
>>> statistics on all (relative) computations (seen by the machine). When we do 
>>> the math, we do recover already that the observable of the universal 
>>> machine (an arithmetical notion, see Turing) obey a quantum logic, with a 
>>> symmetrical hamiltonian, etc. 
>>> Up to now, Mechanism won the empirical test, where materialism remains 
>>> on the side of the philosophical ontological commitment, without any 
>>> evidences.
>>>
>>> Mechanism is just the idea that we can survive with a digital computer 
>>> in place of the body or the brain. It assumes the existence of a level of 
>>> substitution where we survive a functional digital substitution. 
>>>
>>
>> *Let's assume such a substitution is possible. How do you go from that, 
>> to some existing "universal machine" doing anything?*
>>
>> You don’t need to assume that we survive such substitution to get the 
>> existence of a universal machine.
>>
>  
> *You wrote above that we could assume it "outright" -- that mechanism 
> implies we can survive a digital substitution? So I think you need 
> mechanism to be true for your theory to be viable. *
>
>
>
> I define Mechanism by the hypothesis that we can survive such brain 
> Digital transplantation. Yes.
>
> I don’t claim it is true.
>
> I claim it is testable, and indeed, somehow already confirmed because it 
> imposed a physics quite similar (up to now) to quantum theory (without 
> collapse).
>


*I don't believe it's testable. Has that been done to any degree? And if it 
were, I don't see how it would predict quantum theory. AG *

> *But then you've already solved the problem of consciousness without going 
> further, and it seems the conventional, albeit unproved expectation of 
> materialism. AG*
>
>
> No, Materialism is refuted when you assume Mechanism. 
>

*Which form of materialism are you referring to? Not the form or definition 
used by Stenger. He never affirms or denies a primal unknown other than 
possibly energy underlying matter. If you replace mind by digital machine 
for a person, mustn't the machine depend on matter to do any calculations? 
AG*

Mechanism and Materialism are in complete opposition. 
>

*Do you have a private definition of Mechanism (and Materialism)? AG*

You need high infinities in the observable world to attach a piece of 
> matter to a mind. 
> We can come back on this when you study the UD-Argument (UD = Universal 
> Dovetailer) step by step.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
>
>> The existence of such machine is already a theorem in any Turing-complete 
>> theory with a bit of induction. It is feature of the arithmetical reality. 
>>
>> *As for physicists being materialists in the sense of believing there is 
>> nothing underlying matter as its cause, I have never heard that position 
>> articulated by any physicist, in person or on the Internet.*
>>
>> You are right. My conclusion has never been problematical with any 
>> physicists. Only metaphysician or theologian who want to assume the 
>> existence of a primary physical universe have a problem with this. My 
>> “enemy” are pseudo-religious believers for whom physicalism is a dogma. 
>> They are never physicists. The physicists are usually

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong


> On 13 Dec 2018, at 15:12, Philip Thrift  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Thursday, December 13, 2018 at 5:34:48 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
>> On 12 Dec 2018, at 19:38, agrays...@gmail.com  wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 3:51:04 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>>> On 11 Dec 2018, at 19:32, agrays...@gmail.com <> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> SNIP
>>> 
>>> 
 No testable hypotheses; conclusios not based on empirical data. AG.
>>> 
>>> Only since 529. Those proposing theories and empirical verification modes 
>>> were persecuted. They escaped in the Middle-East, where unfortunately the 
>>> made “stealing” was made in 1248.
>>> 
>>> Of course, I provide a counter-example, by showing that we can test 
>>> mechanism/materialism, and the test favour mechanism on materialism. 
>>> Physics seems to NOT be the fundamental science.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
 
 In that domain, you can understand that Mechanism is not compatible with 
 Materialism, and that the cosmos is not the ultimate reality. Its 
 appearance comes from something else, non physical.
 
 Play it again Sam. Succinctly, how do you define Mechanism and 
 Materialism, and why are they incompatible? AG 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Mechanism is the idea that our consciousness results only from the physical 
>>> functioning of the brain, or the body (in some generalised sense). To be 
>>> “functioning” (and biologically reproductible) implies digitalness (or you 
>>> can assume it outright). 
>>> 
>>> But then it is easy to understand that a universal machine cannot 
>>> distinguish a computation supporting him/her and executed by this or that 
>>> Turing complete system. In particular, it cannot distinguish a computation 
>>> run by a God, or by Matter, or by arithmetic (which is Turing complete). 
>>> This means that to predict anything empirically, it has to emerge from a 
>>> statistics on all (relative) computations (seen by the machine). When we do 
>>> the math, we do recover already that the observable of the universal 
>>> machine (an arithmetical notion, see Turing) obey a quantum logic, with a 
>>> symmetrical hamiltonian, etc. 
>>> Up to now, Mechanism won the empirical test, where materialism remains on 
>>> the side of the philosophical ontological commitment, without any evidences.
>>> 
>>> Mechanism is just the idea that we can survive with a digital computer in 
>>> place of the body or the brain. It assumes the existence of a level of 
>>> substitution where we survive a functional digital substitution. 
>>> 
>>> Let's assume such a substitution is possible. How do you go from that, to 
>>> some existing "universal machine" doing anything?
>> You don’t need to assume that we survive such substitution to get the 
>> existence of a universal machine.
>>  
>> You wrote above that we could assume it "outright" -- that mechanism implies 
>> we can survive a digital substitution? So I think you need mechanism to be 
>> true for your theory to be viable.
> 
> 
> I define Mechanism by the hypothesis that we can survive such brain Digital 
> transplantation. Yes.
> 
> I don’t claim it is true.
> 
> I claim it is testable, and indeed, somehow already confirmed because it 
> imposed a physics quite similar (up to now) to quantum theory (without 
> collapse).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> But then you've already solved the problem of consciousness without going 
>> further, and it seems the conventional, albeit unproved expectation of 
>> materialism. AG
> 
> 
> No, Materialism is refuted when you assume Mechanism. Mechanism and 
> Materialism are in complete opposition. You need high infinities in the 
> observable world to attach a piece of matter to a mind. 
> We can come back on this when you study the UD-Argument (UD = Universal 
> Dovetailer) step by step.
> 
> Bruno
> 
> 
> 
> The "working hypothesis" of panpsychical materialism (Galen Strawson, Philip 
> Goff, David Skrbina, ...) is that "mind" (consciousness) needs 
> experientialities (not infinities).

Please, study the UD-Argument. Here I said that Matter needs infinities, if we 
want keep Mechanism. 

Mind, I mean the conscious part of Mind,  needs experientialities, and that is 
provided by using the definition of “knowledge” by Theaetetus, (true opinion) 
refuted by Socrates, but the refutation by Socrates assumes implicitly a form 
of completeness which is itself refuted by Gödel+Turing, for machines.

Bruno





> 
> - pt
> 
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> .
> For

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-13 Thread agrayson2000

On Thursday, December 13, 2018 at 6:43:24 AM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 5:55:13 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 11:41:13 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 5:21:15 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
>>> wrote:

 On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 11:13:10 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 3:30:46 PM UTC-6, 
> agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 6:57:33 PM UTC, Philip Thrift 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 10:07:13 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal 
>>> wrote:

 On 11 Dec 2018, at 20:53, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 7:30:32 PM UTC, Philip Thrift 
 wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 1:02:52 PM UTC-6, 
> agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 6:44:34 PM UTC, Philip Thrift 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 12:32:51 PM UTC-6, 
>>> agrays...@gmail.com wrote:

 * As for physicists being materialists in the sense of 
 believing there is nothing underlying matter as its cause, I have 
 never 
 heard that position articulated by any physicist, in person or on 
 the 
 Internet. AG *

>
>
>>>
>>> Victor Stenger
>>> *Materialism Deconstructed?*
>>>
>>> https://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/materialism-deconstructed_b_2228362.html
>>>  
>>>
>>
>> *I was once a member of Vic's discussion group. Vic believed in 
>> the reality of matter, in the sense that if you kick it, it kicks 
>> back. But 
>> he didn't deny the possibility that there could be something more 
>> fundamental underlying matter.  This denial is what Bruno claims is 
>> the 
>> materialist position, but it surely wasn't Vic's position. You know 
>> this, 
>> of course, being a member of that group. Right? AG*
>>
>>>
>>> - pt
>>>
>>  
>
> I hosted Vic in Dallas in 2014 for a talk. I got to know him 
> fairly personally .
>
> Homages to philosophical materialism ("matter is the fundamental 
> substance in nature") is in his books. *Timeless Reality* in 
> particular.
>
> One can be open-minded, or *ironist *in Rorty's definition [ 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironism ], and he was that.
>
> But despite all the "models" talk, I would confidently say he was 
> always a hardcore materialist.
>
> - pt
>

 Show me one instance, just one, where Vic denied something causal 
 and unknown underlying the existence of matter? This is Bruno's model 
 of 
 materialism among physicists but it clearly doesn't apply to Vic. AG 

 You might read my favorite book by Vic, which is “The 
 comprehensible cosmos”. There, it shows something very platonist-like: 
 he 
 shows that physics can be derived from few principles. Unfortunately, 
 he 
 seems to ignore the mind-body problem, and so he does not explain how 
 that 
 physical reality can select our consciousness in way corresponding to 
 what 
 we observe. So there is still a bit of magic in his explanation, or of 
 lack 
 of rigour (by not seeing that he uses some non-mechanist theory to 
 allow a 
 physical reality to do that selection, instead of deducing his first 
 physical principle from arithmetic and machine’s psychology, as we 
 have to 
 do with mechanism. That is even more apparent in his less interesting 
 books 
 like “God the paling hypothesis, (where I agree with the content, but 
 find 
 it bad because he identifies theology with the current theology which 
 assumes a creator but also a creation).

 So Vic approach is still materialist or at least physicalist. But 
 he was on the right track, and would have understood that his attempt 
 to 
 comprehend the cosmos was only a beginning: to work well, he would 
 need to 
 derive the cosmos from machine statistical experience in arithmetic.

 Bruno

>>>
>>> It is interesting that you raise

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-13 Thread Philip Thrift



On Thursday, December 13, 2018 at 5:34:48 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 12 Dec 2018, at 19:38, agrays...@gmail.com  wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 3:51:04 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 11 Dec 2018, at 19:32, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>> SNIP
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *No testable hypotheses; conclusios not based on empirical data. AG*.
>>>
>>>
>>> Only since 529. Those proposing theories and empirical verification 
>>> modes were persecuted. They escaped in the Middle-East, where unfortunately 
>>> the made “stealing” was made in 1248.
>>>
>>> Of course, I provide a counter-example, by showing that we can test 
>>> mechanism/materialism, and the test favour mechanism on materialism. 
>>> Physics seems to NOT be the fundamental science.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> In that domain, you can understand that Mechanism is not compatible with 
 Materialism, and that the cosmos is not the ultimate reality. Its 
 appearance comes from something else, non physical.

>>>
>>> *Play it again Sam. Succinctly, how do you define Mechanism and 
>>> Materialism, and why are they incompatible? AG *
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Mechanism is the idea that our consciousness results only from the 
>>> physical functioning of the brain, or the body (in some generalised sense). 
>>> To be “functioning” (and biologically reproductible) implies digitalness 
>>> (or you can assume it outright). 
>>>
>>> But then it is easy to understand that a universal machine cannot 
>>> distinguish a computation supporting him/her and executed by this or that 
>>> Turing complete system. In particular, it cannot distinguish a computation 
>>> run by a God, or by Matter, or by arithmetic (which is Turing complete). 
>>> This means that to predict anything empirically, it has to emerge from a 
>>> statistics on all (relative) computations (seen by the machine). When we do 
>>> the math, we do recover already that the observable of the universal 
>>> machine (an arithmetical notion, see Turing) obey a quantum logic, with a 
>>> symmetrical hamiltonian, etc. 
>>> Up to now, Mechanism won the empirical test, where materialism remains 
>>> on the side of the philosophical ontological commitment, without any 
>>> evidences.
>>>
>>> Mechanism is just the idea that we can survive with a digital computer 
>>> in place of the body or the brain. It assumes the existence of a level of 
>>> substitution where we survive a functional digital substitution. 
>>>
>>
>> *Let's assume such a substitution is possible. How do you go from that, 
>> to some existing "universal machine" doing anything?*
>>
>> You don’t need to assume that we survive such substitution to get the 
>> existence of a universal machine.
>>
>  
> *You wrote above that we could assume it "outright" -- that mechanism 
> implies we can survive a digital substitution? So I think you need 
> mechanism to be true for your theory to be viable. *
>
>
>
> I define Mechanism by the hypothesis that we can survive such brain 
> Digital transplantation. Yes.
>
> I don’t claim it is true.
>
> I claim it is testable, and indeed, somehow already confirmed because it 
> imposed a physics quite similar (up to now) to quantum theory (without 
> collapse).
>
>
>
>
>
> *But then you've already solved the problem of consciousness without going 
> further, and it seems the conventional, albeit unproved expectation of 
> materialism. AG*
>
>
>
> No, Materialism is refuted when you assume Mechanism. Mechanism and 
> Materialism are in complete opposition. You need high infinities in the 
> observable world to attach a piece of matter to a mind. 
> We can come back on this when you study the UD-Argument (UD = Universal 
> Dovetailer) step by step.
>
> Bruno
>
>

The "working hypothesis" of panpsychical materialism (Galen Strawson, 
Philip Goff, David Skrbina, ...) is that "mind" (consciousness) needs 
*experientialities* (not *infinities)*.

- pt

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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong


> On 12 Dec 2018, at 22:30, agrayson2...@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 6:57:33 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 10:07:13 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
>> On 11 Dec 2018, at 20:53, agrays...@gmail.com <> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 7:30:32 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 1:02:52 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com <> 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 6:44:34 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 12:32:51 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com <> 
>> wrote:
>>  As for physicists being materialists in the sense of believing there is 
>> nothing underlying matter as its cause, I have never heard that position 
>> articulated by any physicist, in person or on the Internet. AG 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Victor Stenger
>> Materialism Deconstructed?
>> https://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/materialism-deconstructed_b_2228362.html
>>  
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> I was once a member of Vic's discussion group. Vic believed in the reality 
>> of matter, in the sense that if you kick it, it kicks back. But he didn't 
>> deny the possibility that there could be something more fundamental 
>> underlying matter.  This denial is what Bruno claims is the materialist 
>> position, but it surely wasn't Vic's position. You know this, of course, 
>> being a member of that group. Right? AG
>> 
>> - pt
>>  
>> 
>> I hosted Vic in Dallas in 2014 for a talk. I got to know him fairly 
>> personally .
>> 
>> Homages to philosophical materialism ("matter is the fundamental substance 
>> in nature") is in his books. Timeless Reality in particular.
>> 
>> One can be open-minded, or ironist in Rorty's definition [ 
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironism 
>>  ], and he was that.
>> 
>> But despite all the "models" talk, I would confidently say he was always a 
>> hardcore materialist.
>> 
>> - pt
>> 
>> Show me one instance, just one, where Vic denied something causal and 
>> unknown underlying the existence of matter? This is Bruno's model of 
>> materialism among physicists but it clearly doesn't apply to Vic. AG 
> 
> 
> You might read my favorite book by Vic, which is “The comprehensible cosmos”. 
> There, it shows something very platonist-like: he shows that physics can be 
> derived from few principles. Unfortunately, he seems to ignore the mind-body 
> problem, and so he does not explain how that physical reality can select our 
> consciousness in way corresponding to what we observe. So there is still a 
> bit of magic in his explanation, or of lack of rigour (by not seeing that he 
> uses some non-mechanist theory to allow a physical reality to do that 
> selection, instead of deducing his first physical principle from arithmetic 
> and machine’s psychology, as we have to do with mechanism. That is even more 
> apparent in his less interesting books like “God the paling hypothesis, 
> (where I agree with the content, but find it bad because he identifies 
> theology with the current theology which assumes a creator but also a 
> creation).
> 
> So Vic approach is still materialist or at least physicalist. But he was on 
> the right track, and would have understood that his attempt to comprehend the 
> cosmos was only a beginning: to work well, he would need to derive the cosmos 
> from machine statistical experience in arithmetic.
> 
> Bruno
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It is interesting that you raise the part of Stenger's writings that have to 
> do with things like symmetry, point-of-view invariance (POVI) in the 
> foundations of physics. That is the part I didn't get at all at the time (now 
> some years ago) and I don't get it (I reject it) even more now. It was like 
> So you are a Platonist now? :)
> 
> I brought up POVI, not Bruno who IS a Platonist. 

Just to be clear, I am only an arithmetical realist, like anyone who believe 
that 2+2=4.

Then I do not do philosophy, in the sense that I would defend some truth. I 
just try to solve the mind body problem, and shows that with the 
HYPOTHESIS/THEORY of Mechanism, it reduces into justifying the laws of physics 
from a theory of consciousness or machine self-reference. It works, so I take 
this hypothesis as plausible, bit if tomorrow someone shows a departure of the 
mathematical physics in the head of the machine with the observation, I will 
take that into account.

Bruno


> POVI is simple; there can no "laws of physics" to discover if they depend on 
> which direction one is looking. AG






> 
> 
> 
> 
> - pt
> 
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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong


> On 12 Dec 2018, at 19:26, agrayson2...@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 4:07:13 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
>> On 11 Dec 2018, at 20:53, agrays...@gmail.com  wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 7:30:32 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 1:02:52 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com <> 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 6:44:34 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 12:32:51 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com <> 
>> wrote:
>>  As for physicists being materialists in the sense of believing there is 
>> nothing underlying matter as its cause, I have never heard that position 
>> articulated by any physicist, in person or on the Internet. AG 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Victor Stenger
>> Materialism Deconstructed?
>> https://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/materialism-deconstructed_b_2228362.html
>>  
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> I was once a member of Vic's discussion group. Vic believed in the reality 
>> of matter, in the sense that if you kick it, it kicks back. But he didn't 
>> deny the possibility that there could be something more fundamental 
>> underlying matter.  This denial is what Bruno claims is the materialist 
>> position, but it surely wasn't Vic's position. You know this, of course, 
>> being a member of that group. Right? AG
>> 
>> - pt
>>  
>> 
>> I hosted Vic in Dallas in 2014 for a talk. I got to know him fairly 
>> personally .
>> 
>> Homages to philosophical materialism ("matter is the fundamental substance 
>> in nature") is in his books. Timeless Reality in particular.
>> 
>> One can be open-minded, or ironist in Rorty's definition [ 
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironism 
>>  ], and he was that.
>> 
>> But despite all the "models" talk, I would confidently say he was always a 
>> hardcore materialist.
>> 
>> - pt
>> 
>> Show me one instance, just one, where Vic denied something causal and 
>> unknown underlying the existence of matter? This is Bruno's model of 
>> materialism among physicists but it clearly doesn't apply to Vic. AG 
> 
> 
> You might read my favorite book by Vic, which is “The comprehensible cosmos”. 
> There, it shows something very platonist-like: he shows that physics can be 
> derived from few principles.
> 
> I don't think seeking a few first principles is particularly Platonic. Thales 
> thought there were just four elements, and he was way before Plato. AG

Plato did not invent anything indeed. For me, the first platonician was 
Pythagorus. Plato just sum up well his knowledge/inquiry. Note that Pythagorus 
too invent nothing, but he was a great traveller and brought back mathematics 
and metaphysics from its meeting in the East (to simplify a lot, of course).
The idea of first principle, studied rather systematically comes with the 
neopythagoreans and then the neoplatonist. 




> 
> 
> 
> Unfortunately, he seems to ignore the mind-body problem,
> 
> You can't expect him, or anyone, to solve every outstanding problem. AG

No, but he seems to ignore the necessity of solving this to just makes sense to 
its “comprehensible cosmos”. He uses the identify brain-mind, which does not 
work with physicalism.



>  
> and so he does not explain how that physical reality can select our 
> consciousness in way corresponding to what we observe.
> 
> Not a problem; Darwinian evolution.

If you apply Darwin also for the origin of the physical laws, from arithmetic. 
Then it can work.




> If our consciousness were disjoint or somehow contradicting what was "out 
> there", in no time we'd be toast on the trash heap of evolution. AG


We have to explain the appearance of primary matter, without assuming it, as 
this would give it a magical role with respect to digital mechanism.



> 
> So there is still a bit of magic in his explanation, or of lack of rigour (by 
> not seeing that he uses some non-mechanist theory to allow a physical reality 
> to do that selection,
> 
> No major AFAICT; just the observation that without POVI, a study of nature 
> called "physics" couldn't exist. AG
> 
> instead of deducing his first physical principle from arithmetic and 
> machine’s psychology, as we have to do with mechanism. That is even more 
> apparent in his less interesting books like “God the paling hypothesis, 
> (where I agree with the content, but find it bad because he identifies 
> theology with the current theology which assumes a creator but also a 
> creation).
> 
> He was trying to debunk the creator theory, so he had to deny any creation. 
> In fact, I think his favorite origin theory was a non-origin theory. AG 
> 
> So Vic approach is still materialist or at least physicalist. But he was on 
> the right track, and would have understood that his attempt to comprehend the 
> cosmos was only a beginning: to work well, he would

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong


> On 12 Dec 2018, at 19:38, agrayson2...@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 3:51:04 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
>> On 11 Dec 2018, at 19:32, agrays...@gmail.com  wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> SNIP
>> 
>> 
>>> No testable hypotheses; conclusios not based on empirical data. AG.
>> 
>> Only since 529. Those proposing theories and empirical verification modes 
>> were persecuted. They escaped in the Middle-East, where unfortunately the 
>> made “stealing” was made in 1248.
>> 
>> Of course, I provide a counter-example, by showing that we can test 
>> mechanism/materialism, and the test favour mechanism on materialism. Physics 
>> seems to NOT be the fundamental science.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> In that domain, you can understand that Mechanism is not compatible with 
>>> Materialism, and that the cosmos is not the ultimate reality. Its 
>>> appearance comes from something else, non physical.
>>> 
>>> Play it again Sam. Succinctly, how do you define Mechanism and Materialism, 
>>> and why are they incompatible? AG 
>> 
>> 
>> Mechanism is the idea that our consciousness results only from the physical 
>> functioning of the brain, or the body (in some generalised sense). To be 
>> “functioning” (and biologically reproductible) implies digitalness (or you 
>> can assume it outright). 
>> 
>> But then it is easy to understand that a universal machine cannot 
>> distinguish a computation supporting him/her and executed by this or that 
>> Turing complete system. In particular, it cannot distinguish a computation 
>> run by a God, or by Matter, or by arithmetic (which is Turing complete). 
>> This means that to predict anything empirically, it has to emerge from a 
>> statistics on all (relative) computations (seen by the machine). When we do 
>> the math, we do recover already that the observable of the universal machine 
>> (an arithmetical notion, see Turing) obey a quantum logic, with a 
>> symmetrical hamiltonian, etc. 
>> Up to now, Mechanism won the empirical test, where materialism remains on 
>> the side of the philosophical ontological commitment, without any evidences.
>> 
>> Mechanism is just the idea that we can survive with a digital computer in 
>> place of the body or the brain. It assumes the existence of a level of 
>> substitution where we survive a functional digital substitution. 
>> 
>> Let's assume such a substitution is possible. How do you go from that, to 
>> some existing "universal machine" doing anything?
> You don’t need to assume that we survive such substitution to get the 
> existence of a universal machine.
>  
> You wrote above that we could assume it "outright" -- that mechanism implies 
> we can survive a digital substitution? So I think you need mechanism to be 
> true for your theory to be viable.


I define Mechanism by the hypothesis that we can survive such brain Digital 
transplantation. Yes.

I don’t claim it is true.

I claim it is testable, and indeed, somehow already confirmed because it 
imposed a physics quite similar (up to now) to quantum theory (without 
collapse).





> But then you've already solved the problem of consciousness without going 
> further, and it seems the conventional, albeit unproved expectation of 
> materialism. AG


No, Materialism is refuted when you assume Mechanism. Mechanism and Materialism 
are in complete opposition. You need high infinities in the observable world to 
attach a piece of matter to a mind. 
We can come back on this when you study the UD-Argument (UD = Universal 
Dovetailer) step by step.

Bruno




> 
> The existence of such machine is already a theorem in any Turing-complete 
> theory with a bit of induction. It is feature of the arithmetical reality. 
>> As for physicists being materialists in the sense of believing there is 
>> nothing underlying matter as its cause, I have never heard that position 
>> articulated by any physicist, in person or on the Internet.
> You are right. My conclusion has never been problematical with any 
> physicists. Only metaphysician or theologian who want to assume the existence 
> of a primary physical universe have a problem with this. My “enemy” are 
> pseudo-religious believers for whom physicalism is a dogma. They are never 
> physicists. The physicists are usually aware that the whole story on matter 
> is not yet told, and that the foundation of physics are still problematical. 
> Only those who believe they know have such dogma.
> 
> Bruno
>> AG 
>> 
>> Non-mechanism assumes actual infinities in nature, and is inconsistent with 
>> Darwinism, molecular biology, thermodynamic, quantum mechanics. 
>> 
>> If the logic of matter (Z1*) extracted from the universal machine structure 
>> was violating the empirical physical reality, that would be extraordinary, 
>> but, thanks to QM, it fits better with the facts than materialism, which has 
>> never succeeded nor even propose an experimental test.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> The god of Plato and the neoplatonist is

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong



On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 5:55:13 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 11:41:13 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 5:21:15 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 11:13:10 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:



 On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 3:30:46 PM UTC-6, 
 agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 6:57:33 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 10:07:13 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 11 Dec 2018, at 20:53, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 7:30:32 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:



 On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 1:02:52 PM UTC-6, 
 agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 6:44:34 PM UTC, Philip Thrift 
> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 12:32:51 PM UTC-6, 
>> agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>> * As for physicists being materialists in the sense of believing 
>>> there is nothing underlying matter as its cause, I have never heard 
>>> that 
>>> position articulated by any physicist, in person or on the 
>>> Internet. AG *
>>>


>>
>> Victor Stenger
>> *Materialism Deconstructed?*
>>
>> https://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/materialism-deconstructed_b_2228362.html
>>  
>>
>
> *I was once a member of Vic's discussion group. Vic believed in 
> the reality of matter, in the sense that if you kick it, it kicks 
> back. But 
> he didn't deny the possibility that there could be something more 
> fundamental underlying matter.  This denial is what Bruno claims is 
> the 
> materialist position, but it surely wasn't Vic's position. You know 
> this, 
> of course, being a member of that group. Right? AG*
>
>>
>> - pt
>>
>  

 I hosted Vic in Dallas in 2014 for a talk. I got to know him fairly 
 personally .

 Homages to philosophical materialism ("matter is the fundamental 
 substance in nature") is in his books. *Timeless Reality* in 
 particular.

 One can be open-minded, or *ironist *in Rorty's definition [ 
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironism ], and he was that.

 But despite all the "models" talk, I would confidently say he was 
 always a hardcore materialist.

 - pt

>>>
>>> Show me one instance, just one, where Vic denied something causal 
>>> and unknown underlying the existence of matter? This is Bruno's model 
>>> of 
>>> materialism among physicists but it clearly doesn't apply to Vic. AG 
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> You might read my favorite book by Vic, which is “The comprehensible 
>>> cosmos”. There, it shows something very platonist-like: he shows that 
>>> physics can be derived from few principles. Unfortunately, he seems to 
>>> ignore the mind-body problem, and so he does not explain how that 
>>> physical 
>>> reality can select our consciousness in way corresponding to what we 
>>> observe. So there is still a bit of magic in his explanation, or of 
>>> lack of 
>>> rigour (by not seeing that he uses some non-mechanist theory to allow a 
>>> physical reality to do that selection, instead of deducing his first 
>>> physical principle from arithmetic and machine’s psychology, as we have 
>>> to 
>>> do with mechanism. That is even more apparent in his less interesting 
>>> books 
>>> like “God the paling hypothesis, (where I agree with the content, but 
>>> find 
>>> it bad because he identifies theology with the current theology which 
>>> assumes a creator but also a creation).
>>>
>>> So Vic approach is still materialist or at least physicalist. But he 
>>> was on the right track, and would have understood that his attempt to 
>>> comprehend the cosmos was only a beginning: to work well, he would need 
>>> to 
>>> derive the cosmos from machine statistical experience in arithmetic.
>>>
>>> Bruno
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> It is interesting that you raise the part of Stenger's writings that 
>> have to do with things like symmetry, point-of-view invariance (POVI) in 
>> the foundations of physics. That is the part I didn't get at all at the 
>> time (now some years ago) and I don't get it (I reject it) even more 
>> now. 
>> It

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong



On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 11:41:13 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 5:21:15 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 11:13:10 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 3:30:46 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
>>> wrote:



 On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 6:57:33 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 10:07:13 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal 
> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 11 Dec 2018, at 20:53, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 7:30:32 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 1:02:52 PM UTC-6, 
>>> agrays...@gmail.com wrote:



 On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 6:44:34 PM UTC, Philip Thrift 
 wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 12:32:51 PM UTC-6, 
> agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>> * As for physicists being materialists in the sense of believing 
>> there is nothing underlying matter as its cause, I have never heard 
>> that 
>> position articulated by any physicist, in person or on the Internet. 
>> AG *
>>
>>>
>>>
>
> Victor Stenger
> *Materialism Deconstructed?*
>
> https://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/materialism-deconstructed_b_2228362.html
>  
>

 *I was once a member of Vic's discussion group. Vic believed in the 
 reality of matter, in the sense that if you kick it, it kicks back. 
 But he 
 didn't deny the possibility that there could be something more 
 fundamental 
 underlying matter.  This denial is what Bruno claims is the 
 materialist 
 position, but it surely wasn't Vic's position. You know this, of 
 course, 
 being a member of that group. Right? AG*

>
> - pt
>
  
>>>
>>> I hosted Vic in Dallas in 2014 for a talk. I got to know him fairly 
>>> personally .
>>>
>>> Homages to philosophical materialism ("matter is the fundamental 
>>> substance in nature") is in his books. *Timeless Reality* in 
>>> particular.
>>>
>>> One can be open-minded, or *ironist *in Rorty's definition [ 
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironism ], and he was that.
>>>
>>> But despite all the "models" talk, I would confidently say he was 
>>> always a hardcore materialist.
>>>
>>> - pt
>>>
>>
>> Show me one instance, just one, where Vic denied something causal and 
>> unknown underlying the existence of matter? This is Bruno's model of 
>> materialism among physicists but it clearly doesn't apply to Vic. AG 
>>
>>
>>
>> You might read my favorite book by Vic, which is “The comprehensible 
>> cosmos”. There, it shows something very platonist-like: he shows that 
>> physics can be derived from few principles. Unfortunately, he seems to 
>> ignore the mind-body problem, and so he does not explain how that 
>> physical 
>> reality can select our consciousness in way corresponding to what we 
>> observe. So there is still a bit of magic in his explanation, or of lack 
>> of 
>> rigour (by not seeing that he uses some non-mechanist theory to allow a 
>> physical reality to do that selection, instead of deducing his first 
>> physical principle from arithmetic and machine’s psychology, as we have 
>> to 
>> do with mechanism. That is even more apparent in his less interesting 
>> books 
>> like “God the paling hypothesis, (where I agree with the content, but 
>> find 
>> it bad because he identifies theology with the current theology which 
>> assumes a creator but also a creation).
>>
>> So Vic approach is still materialist or at least physicalist. But he 
>> was on the right track, and would have understood that his attempt to 
>> comprehend the cosmos was only a beginning: to work well, he would need 
>> to 
>> derive the cosmos from machine statistical experience in arithmetic.
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> It is interesting that you raise the part of Stenger's writings that 
> have to do with things like symmetry, point-of-view invariance (POVI) in 
> the foundations of physics. That is the part I didn't get at all at the 
> time (now some years ago) and I don't get it (I reject it) even more now. 
> It was like *So you are a Platonist now?* :)
>

 *I brought up POVI, not Bruno who IS a Platonist.  POVI is simple; 
 there can no "laws of physics" to discover if they depend on which 
 direction one is looking. AG*

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong



On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 5:21:15 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 11:13:10 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 3:30:46 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 6:57:33 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:



 On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 10:07:13 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal 
 wrote:
>
>
> On 11 Dec 2018, at 20:53, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 7:30:32 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 1:02:52 PM UTC-6, 
>> agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 6:44:34 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:



 On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 12:32:51 PM UTC-6, 
 agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> * As for physicists being materialists in the sense of believing 
> there is nothing underlying matter as its cause, I have never heard 
> that 
> position articulated by any physicist, in person or on the Internet. 
> AG *
>
>>
>>

 Victor Stenger
 *Materialism Deconstructed?*

 https://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/materialism-deconstructed_b_2228362.html
  

>>>
>>> *I was once a member of Vic's discussion group. Vic believed in the 
>>> reality of matter, in the sense that if you kick it, it kicks back. But 
>>> he 
>>> didn't deny the possibility that there could be something more 
>>> fundamental 
>>> underlying matter.  This denial is what Bruno claims is the materialist 
>>> position, but it surely wasn't Vic's position. You know this, of 
>>> course, 
>>> being a member of that group. Right? AG*
>>>

 - pt

>>>  
>>
>> I hosted Vic in Dallas in 2014 for a talk. I got to know him fairly 
>> personally .
>>
>> Homages to philosophical materialism ("matter is the fundamental 
>> substance in nature") is in his books. *Timeless Reality* in 
>> particular.
>>
>> One can be open-minded, or *ironist *in Rorty's definition [ 
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironism ], and he was that.
>>
>> But despite all the "models" talk, I would confidently say he was 
>> always a hardcore materialist.
>>
>> - pt
>>
>
> Show me one instance, just one, where Vic denied something causal and 
> unknown underlying the existence of matter? This is Bruno's model of 
> materialism among physicists but it clearly doesn't apply to Vic. AG 
>
>
>
> You might read my favorite book by Vic, which is “The comprehensible 
> cosmos”. There, it shows something very platonist-like: he shows that 
> physics can be derived from few principles. Unfortunately, he seems to 
> ignore the mind-body problem, and so he does not explain how that 
> physical 
> reality can select our consciousness in way corresponding to what we 
> observe. So there is still a bit of magic in his explanation, or of lack 
> of 
> rigour (by not seeing that he uses some non-mechanist theory to allow a 
> physical reality to do that selection, instead of deducing his first 
> physical principle from arithmetic and machine’s psychology, as we have 
> to 
> do with mechanism. That is even more apparent in his less interesting 
> books 
> like “God the paling hypothesis, (where I agree with the content, but 
> find 
> it bad because he identifies theology with the current theology which 
> assumes a creator but also a creation).
>
> So Vic approach is still materialist or at least physicalist. But he 
> was on the right track, and would have understood that his attempt to 
> comprehend the cosmos was only a beginning: to work well, he would need 
> to 
> derive the cosmos from machine statistical experience in arithmetic.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>

 It is interesting that you raise the part of Stenger's writings that 
 have to do with things like symmetry, point-of-view invariance (POVI) in 
 the foundations of physics. That is the part I didn't get at all at the 
 time (now some years ago) and I don't get it (I reject it) even more now. 
 It was like *So you are a Platonist now?* :)

>>>
>>> *I brought up POVI, not Bruno who IS a Platonist.  POVI is simple; there 
>>> can no "laws of physics" to discover if they depend on which direction one 
>>> is looking. AG*
>>>




 - pt

>>>
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirality_(chemistry)  ?
>>
>
> What's your point? AG 
>
>>
>> - pt 
>>
>


If laws of physics have to have "directional symmetry" (a leap of faith), 
then

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 11:13:10 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 3:30:46 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 6:57:33 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 10:07:13 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal 
>>> wrote:

 On 11 Dec 2018, at 20:53, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 7:30:32 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 1:02:52 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 6:44:34 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 12:32:51 PM UTC-6, 
>>> agrays...@gmail.com wrote:

 * As for physicists being materialists in the sense of believing 
 there is nothing underlying matter as its cause, I have never heard 
 that 
 position articulated by any physicist, in person or on the Internet. 
 AG *

>
>
>>>
>>> Victor Stenger
>>> *Materialism Deconstructed?*
>>>
>>> https://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/materialism-deconstructed_b_2228362.html
>>>  
>>>
>>
>> *I was once a member of Vic's discussion group. Vic believed in the 
>> reality of matter, in the sense that if you kick it, it kicks back. But 
>> he 
>> didn't deny the possibility that there could be something more 
>> fundamental 
>> underlying matter.  This denial is what Bruno claims is the materialist 
>> position, but it surely wasn't Vic's position. You know this, of course, 
>> being a member of that group. Right? AG*
>>
>>>
>>> - pt
>>>
>>  
>
> I hosted Vic in Dallas in 2014 for a talk. I got to know him fairly 
> personally .
>
> Homages to philosophical materialism ("matter is the fundamental 
> substance in nature") is in his books. *Timeless Reality* in 
> particular.
>
> One can be open-minded, or *ironist *in Rorty's definition [ 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironism ], and he was that.
>
> But despite all the "models" talk, I would confidently say he was 
> always a hardcore materialist.
>
> - pt
>

 Show me one instance, just one, where Vic denied something causal and 
 unknown underlying the existence of matter? This is Bruno's model of 
 materialism among physicists but it clearly doesn't apply to Vic. AG 

 You might read my favorite book by Vic, which is “The comprehensible 
 cosmos”. There, it shows something very platonist-like: he shows that 
 physics can be derived from few principles. Unfortunately, he seems to 
 ignore the mind-body problem, and so he does not explain how that physical 
 reality can select our consciousness in way corresponding to what we 
 observe. So there is still a bit of magic in his explanation, or of lack 
 of 
 rigour (by not seeing that he uses some non-mechanist theory to allow a 
 physical reality to do that selection, instead of deducing his first 
 physical principle from arithmetic and machine’s psychology, as we have to 
 do with mechanism. That is even more apparent in his less interesting 
 books 
 like “God the paling hypothesis, (where I agree with the content, but find 
 it bad because he identifies theology with the current theology which 
 assumes a creator but also a creation).

 So Vic approach is still materialist or at least physicalist. But he 
 was on the right track, and would have understood that his attempt to 
 comprehend the cosmos was only a beginning: to work well, he would need to 
 derive the cosmos from machine statistical experience in arithmetic.

 Bruno

>>>
>>> It is interesting that you raise the part of Stenger's writings that 
>>> have to do with things like symmetry, point-of-view invariance (POVI) in 
>>> the foundations of physics. That is the part I didn't get at all at the 
>>> time (now some years ago) and I don't get it (I reject it) even more now. 
>>> It was like *So you are a Platonist now?* :)
>>>
>>
>> *I brought up POVI, not Bruno who IS a Platonist.  POVI is simple; there 
>> can no "laws of physics" to discover if they depend on which direction one 
>> is looking. AG*
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> - pt
>>>
>>
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirality_(chemistry)  ?
>

What's your point? AG 

>
> - pt 
>

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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong



On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 3:30:46 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 6:57:33 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 10:07:13 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 11 Dec 2018, at 20:53, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 7:30:32 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:



 On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 1:02:52 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 6:44:34 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 12:32:51 PM UTC-6, 
>> agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>> * As for physicists being materialists in the sense of believing 
>>> there is nothing underlying matter as its cause, I have never heard 
>>> that 
>>> position articulated by any physicist, in person or on the Internet. AG 
>>> *
>>>


>>
>> Victor Stenger
>> *Materialism Deconstructed?*
>>
>> https://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/materialism-deconstructed_b_2228362.html
>>  
>>
>
> *I was once a member of Vic's discussion group. Vic believed in the 
> reality of matter, in the sense that if you kick it, it kicks back. But 
> he 
> didn't deny the possibility that there could be something more 
> fundamental 
> underlying matter.  This denial is what Bruno claims is the materialist 
> position, but it surely wasn't Vic's position. You know this, of course, 
> being a member of that group. Right? AG*
>
>>
>> - pt
>>
>  

 I hosted Vic in Dallas in 2014 for a talk. I got to know him fairly 
 personally .

 Homages to philosophical materialism ("matter is the fundamental 
 substance in nature") is in his books. *Timeless Reality* in 
 particular.

 One can be open-minded, or *ironist *in Rorty's definition [ 
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironism ], and he was that.

 But despite all the "models" talk, I would confidently say he was 
 always a hardcore materialist.

 - pt

>>>
>>> Show me one instance, just one, where Vic denied something causal and 
>>> unknown underlying the existence of matter? This is Bruno's model of 
>>> materialism among physicists but it clearly doesn't apply to Vic. AG 
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> You might read my favorite book by Vic, which is “The comprehensible 
>>> cosmos”. There, it shows something very platonist-like: he shows that 
>>> physics can be derived from few principles. Unfortunately, he seems to 
>>> ignore the mind-body problem, and so he does not explain how that physical 
>>> reality can select our consciousness in way corresponding to what we 
>>> observe. So there is still a bit of magic in his explanation, or of lack of 
>>> rigour (by not seeing that he uses some non-mechanist theory to allow a 
>>> physical reality to do that selection, instead of deducing his first 
>>> physical principle from arithmetic and machine’s psychology, as we have to 
>>> do with mechanism. That is even more apparent in his less interesting books 
>>> like “God the paling hypothesis, (where I agree with the content, but find 
>>> it bad because he identifies theology with the current theology which 
>>> assumes a creator but also a creation).
>>>
>>> So Vic approach is still materialist or at least physicalist. But he was 
>>> on the right track, and would have understood that his attempt to 
>>> comprehend the cosmos was only a beginning: to work well, he would need to 
>>> derive the cosmos from machine statistical experience in arithmetic.
>>>
>>> Bruno
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> It is interesting that you raise the part of Stenger's writings that have 
>> to do with things like symmetry, point-of-view invariance (POVI) in the 
>> foundations of physics. That is the part I didn't get at all at the time 
>> (now some years ago) and I don't get it (I reject it) even more now. It was 
>> like *So you are a Platonist now?* :)
>>
>
> *I brought up POVI, not Bruno who IS a Platonist.  POVI is simple; there 
> can no "laws of physics" to discover if they depend on which direction one 
> is looking. AG*
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> - pt
>>
>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirality_(chemistry)  ?

- pt 

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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong



On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 6:57:33 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 10:07:13 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 11 Dec 2018, at 20:53, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 7:30:32 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 1:02:52 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
>>> wrote:



 On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 6:44:34 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 12:32:51 PM UTC-6, 
> agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>> * As for physicists being materialists in the sense of believing 
>> there is nothing underlying matter as its cause, I have never heard that 
>> position articulated by any physicist, in person or on the Internet. AG *
>>
>>>
>>>
>
> Victor Stenger
> *Materialism Deconstructed?*
>
> https://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/materialism-deconstructed_b_2228362.html
>  
>

 *I was once a member of Vic's discussion group. Vic believed in the 
 reality of matter, in the sense that if you kick it, it kicks back. But he 
 didn't deny the possibility that there could be something more fundamental 
 underlying matter.  This denial is what Bruno claims is the materialist 
 position, but it surely wasn't Vic's position. You know this, of course, 
 being a member of that group. Right? AG*

>
> - pt
>
  
>>>
>>> I hosted Vic in Dallas in 2014 for a talk. I got to know him fairly 
>>> personally .
>>>
>>> Homages to philosophical materialism ("matter is the fundamental 
>>> substance in nature") is in his books. *Timeless Reality* in particular.
>>>
>>> One can be open-minded, or *ironist *in Rorty's definition [ 
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironism ], and he was that.
>>>
>>> But despite all the "models" talk, I would confidently say he was always 
>>> a hardcore materialist.
>>>
>>> - pt
>>>
>>
>> Show me one instance, just one, where Vic denied something causal and 
>> unknown underlying the existence of matter? This is Bruno's model of 
>> materialism among physicists but it clearly doesn't apply to Vic. AG 
>>
>>
>>
>> You might read my favorite book by Vic, which is “The comprehensible 
>> cosmos”. There, it shows something very platonist-like: he shows that 
>> physics can be derived from few principles. Unfortunately, he seems to 
>> ignore the mind-body problem, and so he does not explain how that physical 
>> reality can select our consciousness in way corresponding to what we 
>> observe. So there is still a bit of magic in his explanation, or of lack of 
>> rigour (by not seeing that he uses some non-mechanist theory to allow a 
>> physical reality to do that selection, instead of deducing his first 
>> physical principle from arithmetic and machine’s psychology, as we have to 
>> do with mechanism. That is even more apparent in his less interesting books 
>> like “God the paling hypothesis, (where I agree with the content, but find 
>> it bad because he identifies theology with the current theology which 
>> assumes a creator but also a creation).
>>
>> So Vic approach is still materialist or at least physicalist. But he was 
>> on the right track, and would have understood that his attempt to 
>> comprehend the cosmos was only a beginning: to work well, he would need to 
>> derive the cosmos from machine statistical experience in arithmetic.
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> It is interesting that you raise the part of Stenger's writings that have 
> to do with things like symmetry, point-of-view invariance (POVI) in the 
> foundations of physics. That is the part I didn't get at all at the time 
> (now some years ago) and I don't get it (I reject it) even more now. It was 
> like *So you are a Platonist now?* :)
>

*I brought up POVI, not Bruno who IS a Platonist.  POVI is simple; there 
can no "laws of physics" to discover if they depend on which direction one 
is looking. AG*

>
>
>
>
> - pt
>

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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong



On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 10:07:13 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 11 Dec 2018, at 20:53, agrays...@gmail.com  wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 7:30:32 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 1:02:52 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 6:44:34 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:



 On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 12:32:51 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
>
> * As for physicists being materialists in the sense of believing there 
> is nothing underlying matter as its cause, I have never heard that 
> position 
> articulated by any physicist, in person or on the Internet. AG *
>
>>
>>

 Victor Stenger
 *Materialism Deconstructed?*

 https://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/materialism-deconstructed_b_2228362.html
  

>>>
>>> *I was once a member of Vic's discussion group. Vic believed in the 
>>> reality of matter, in the sense that if you kick it, it kicks back. But he 
>>> didn't deny the possibility that there could be something more fundamental 
>>> underlying matter.  This denial is what Bruno claims is the materialist 
>>> position, but it surely wasn't Vic's position. You know this, of course, 
>>> being a member of that group. Right? AG*
>>>

 - pt

>>>  
>>
>> I hosted Vic in Dallas in 2014 for a talk. I got to know him fairly 
>> personally .
>>
>> Homages to philosophical materialism ("matter is the fundamental 
>> substance in nature") is in his books. *Timeless Reality* in particular.
>>
>> One can be open-minded, or *ironist *in Rorty's definition [ 
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironism ], and he was that.
>>
>> But despite all the "models" talk, I would confidently say he was always 
>> a hardcore materialist.
>>
>> - pt
>>
>
> Show me one instance, just one, where Vic denied something causal and 
> unknown underlying the existence of matter? This is Bruno's model of 
> materialism among physicists but it clearly doesn't apply to Vic. AG 
>
>
>
> You might read my favorite book by Vic, which is “The comprehensible 
> cosmos”. There, it shows something very platonist-like: he shows that 
> physics can be derived from few principles. Unfortunately, he seems to 
> ignore the mind-body problem, and so he does not explain how that physical 
> reality can select our consciousness in way corresponding to what we 
> observe. So there is still a bit of magic in his explanation, or of lack of 
> rigour (by not seeing that he uses some non-mechanist theory to allow a 
> physical reality to do that selection, instead of deducing his first 
> physical principle from arithmetic and machine’s psychology, as we have to 
> do with mechanism. That is even more apparent in his less interesting books 
> like “God the paling hypothesis, (where I agree with the content, but find 
> it bad because he identifies theology with the current theology which 
> assumes a creator but also a creation).
>
> So Vic approach is still materialist or at least physicalist. But he was 
> on the right track, and would have understood that his attempt to 
> comprehend the cosmos was only a beginning: to work well, he would need to 
> derive the cosmos from machine statistical experience in arithmetic.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>

It is interesting that you raise the part of Stenger's writings that have 
to do with things like symmetry, point-of-view invariance (POVI) in the 
foundations of physics. That is the part I didn't get at all at the time 
(now some years ago) and I don't get it (I reject it) even more now. It was 
like *So you are a Platonist now?* :)




- pt

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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong



On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 3:51:04 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 11 Dec 2018, at 19:32, agrays...@gmail.com  wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 10:12:54 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 9 Dec 2018, at 18:01, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Friday, December 7, 2018 at 10:27:37 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 6 Dec 2018, at 14:20, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thursday, December 6, 2018 at 11:21:38 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:


 On 5 Dec 2018, at 17:19, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:



 On Monday, December 3, 2018 at 3:37:13 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 2 Dec 2018, at 21:25, Philip Thrift  wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sunday, December 2, 2018 at 2:02:43 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 12/2/2018 4:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 30 Nov 2018, at 19:22, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 11/30/2018 1:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> Perspectivism is a form of modalism.
>>
>>
>> Nietzsche is vindicated.
>>
>>
>> Interesting. If you elaborate, you might change my mind on Nietzche, 
>> perhaps!
>> All what I say is very close the Neoplatonism and Negative Theology 
>> (capable only of saying what God is not).
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>> From  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/
>> 6.2 Perspectivism
>>
>> Much of Nietzsche’s reaction to the theoretical philosophy of his 
>> predecessors is mediated through his interest in the notion of 
>> perspective. 
>> He thought that past philosophers had largely ignored the influence of 
>> their own perspectives on their work, and had therefore failed to 
>> control 
>> those perspectival effects (*BGE* 6; see *BGE* I more generally). 
>> Commentators have been both fascinated and perplexed by what has come to 
>> be 
>> called Nietzsche’s “perspectivism”, and it has been a major concern in a 
>> number of large-scale Nietzsche commentaries (see, e.g., Danto 1965; 
>> Kaulbach 1980, 1990; Schacht 1983; Abel 1984; Nehamas 1985; Clark 1990; 
>> Poellner 1995; Richardson 1996; Benne 2005). There has been as much 
>> contestation over exactly what doctrine or group of commitments belong 
>> under that heading as about their philosophical merits, but a few points 
>> are relatively uncontroversial and can provide a useful way into this 
>> strand of Nietzsche’s thinking.
>>
>> Nietzsche’s appeals to the notion of perspective (or, equivalently in 
>> his usage, to an “optics” of knowledge) have a positive, as well as a 
>> critical side. Nietzsche frequently criticizes “dogmatic” philosophers 
>> for 
>> ignoring the perspectival limitations on their theorizing, but as we 
>> saw, 
>> he simultaneously holds that the operation of perspective makes a 
>> positive 
>> contribution to our cognitive endeavors: speaking of (what he takes to 
>> be) 
>> the perversely counterintuitive doctrines of some past philosophers, he 
>> writes,
>>
>> Particularly as knowers, let us not be ungrateful toward such 
>> resolute reversals of the familiar perspectives and valuations with 
>> which 
>> the spirit has raged against itself all too long… : to see differently 
>> in 
>> this way for once, *to want* to see differently, is no small 
>> discipline and preparation of the intellect for its future 
>> “objectivity”—the latter understood not as “disinterested contemplation” 
>> (which is a non-concept and absurdity), but rather as the capacity to 
>> have 
>> one’s Pro and Contra *in one’s power*, and to shift them in and out, 
>> so that one knows how to make precisely the *difference* in 
>> perspectives and affective interpretations useful for knowledge. (
>> *GM* III, 12)
>>
>> This famous passage bluntly rejects the idea, dominant in philosophy 
>> at least since Plato, that knowledge essentially involves a form of 
>> objectivity that penetrates behind all subjective appearances to reveal 
>> the 
>> way things really are, independently of any point of view whatsoever. 
>> Instead, the proposal is to approach “objectivity” (in a revised 
>> conception) asymptotically, by exploiting the difference between one 
>> perspective and another, using each to overcome the limitations of 
>> others, 
>> without assuming that anything like a “view from nowhere” is so much as 
>> possible. There is of course an implicit criticism of the traditional 
>> picture of a-perspectival objectivity here, but there is equally a 
>> positive 
>> set of recommendations about how to pursue knowledge as a finite, 
>> limited 
>> cognitive agent.
>>
>>
>> Thanks. But I do not oppose

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong



On Wednesday, December 12, 2018 at 4:07:13 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 11 Dec 2018, at 20:53, agrays...@gmail.com  wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 7:30:32 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 1:02:52 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 6:44:34 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:



 On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 12:32:51 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
>
> * As for physicists being materialists in the sense of believing there 
> is nothing underlying matter as its cause, I have never heard that 
> position 
> articulated by any physicist, in person or on the Internet. AG *
>
>>
>>

 Victor Stenger
 *Materialism Deconstructed?*

 https://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/materialism-deconstructed_b_2228362.html
  

>>>
>>> *I was once a member of Vic's discussion group. Vic believed in the 
>>> reality of matter, in the sense that if you kick it, it kicks back. But he 
>>> didn't deny the possibility that there could be something more fundamental 
>>> underlying matter.  This denial is what Bruno claims is the materialist 
>>> position, but it surely wasn't Vic's position. You know this, of course, 
>>> being a member of that group. Right? AG*
>>>

 - pt

>>>  
>>
>> I hosted Vic in Dallas in 2014 for a talk. I got to know him fairly 
>> personally .
>>
>> Homages to philosophical materialism ("matter is the fundamental 
>> substance in nature") is in his books. *Timeless Reality* in particular.
>>
>> One can be open-minded, or *ironist *in Rorty's definition [ 
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironism ], and he was that.
>>
>> But despite all the "models" talk, I would confidently say he was always 
>> a hardcore materialist.
>>
>> - pt
>>
>
> Show me one instance, just one, where Vic denied something causal and 
> unknown underlying the existence of matter? This is Bruno's model of 
> materialism among physicists but it clearly doesn't apply to Vic. AG 
>
>
>
> You might read my favorite book by Vic, which is “The comprehensible 
> cosmos”. There, it shows something very platonist-like: he shows that 
> physics can be derived from few principles.
>

*I don't think seeking a few first principles is particularly Platonic. 
Thales thought there were just four elements, and he was way before Plato. 
AG*



Unfortunately, he seems to ignore the mind-body problem, 
>

*You can't expect him, or anyone, to solve every outstanding problem. AG*
 

> and so he does not explain how that physical reality can select our 
> consciousness in way corresponding to what we observe. 
>

*Not a problem; Darwinian evolution. If our consciousness were disjoint or 
somehow contradicting what was "out there", in no time we'd be toast on the 
trash heap of evolution. AG*

So there is still a bit of magic in his explanation, or of lack of rigour 
> (by not seeing that he uses some non-mechanist theory to allow a physical 
> reality to do that selection, 
>

*No major AFAICT; just the observation that without POVI, a study of nature 
called "physics" couldn't exist. AG*

instead of deducing his first physical principle from arithmetic and 
> machine’s psychology, as we have to do with mechanism. That is even more 
> apparent in his less interesting books like “God the paling hypothesis, 
> (where I agree with the content, but find it bad because he identifies 
> theology with the current theology which assumes a creator but also a 
> creation).
>

*He was trying to debunk the creator theory, so he had to deny any 
creation. In fact, I think his favorite origin theory was a non-origin 
theory. AG *

>
> So Vic approach is still materialist or at least physicalist. But he was 
> on the right track, and would have understood that his attempt to 
> comprehend the cosmos was only a beginning: to work well, he would need to 
> derive the cosmos from machine statistical experience in arithmetic.
>

*I don't think that possibility ever occurred to him. And note that those 
who know his work well, like Brent and Bruce, are not enthusiastic about 
your arithmetic theory. AG *

>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an 
> email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com .
> To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com 
> .
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>
>
>

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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-12 Thread Bruno Marchal


> On 12 Dec 2018, at 15:08, agrayson2...@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 6:32:51 PM UTC, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 10:12:54 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
>> On 9 Dec 2018, at 18:01, agrays...@gmail.com <> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Friday, December 7, 2018 at 10:27:37 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>>> On 6 Dec 2018, at 14:20, agrays...@gmail.com <> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Thursday, December 6, 2018 at 11:21:38 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>> 
 On 5 Dec 2018, at 17:19, agrays...@gmail.com <> wrote:
 
 
 
 On Monday, December 3, 2018 at 3:37:13 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
> On 2 Dec 2018, at 21:25, Philip Thrift > wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Sunday, December 2, 2018 at 2:02:43 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
> 
> 
> On 12/2/2018 4:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>>> On 30 Nov 2018, at 19:22, Brent Meeker > wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 11/30/2018 1:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>> Perspectivism is a form of modalism.
> 
> Nietzsche is vindicated.
 
 Interesting. If you elaborate, you might change my mind on Nietzche, 
 perhaps!
 All what I say is very close the Neoplatonism and Negative Theology 
 (capable only of saying what God is not).
 
 Bruno
>>> 
>>> From  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/ 
>>> 
>>> 6.2 Perspectivism
>>> 
>>> Much of Nietzsche’s reaction to the theoretical philosophy of his 
>>> predecessors is mediated through his interest in the notion of 
>>> perspective. He thought that past philosophers had largely ignored the 
>>> influence of their own perspectives on their work, and had therefore 
>>> failed to control those perspectival effects (BGE 6; see BGE I more 
>>> generally). Commentators have been both fascinated and perplexed by 
>>> what has come to be called Nietzsche’s “perspectivism”, and it has been 
>>> a major concern in a number of large-scale Nietzsche commentaries (see, 
>>> e.g., Danto 1965; Kaulbach 1980, 1990; Schacht 1983; Abel 1984; Nehamas 
>>> 1985; Clark 1990; Poellner 1995; Richardson 1996; Benne 2005). There 
>>> has been as much contestation over exactly what doctrine or group of 
>>> commitments belong under that heading as about their philosophical 
>>> merits, but a few points are relatively uncontroversial and can provide 
>>> a useful way into this strand of Nietzsche’s thinking.
>>> 
>>> Nietzsche’s appeals to the notion of perspective (or, equivalently in 
>>> his usage, to an “optics” of knowledge) have a positive, as well as a 
>>> critical side. Nietzsche frequently criticizes “dogmatic” philosophers 
>>> for ignoring the perspectival limitations on their theorizing, but as 
>>> we saw, he simultaneously holds that the operation of perspective makes 
>>> a positive contribution to our cognitive endeavors: speaking of (what 
>>> he takes to be) the perversely counterintuitive doctrines of some past 
>>> philosophers, he writes,
>>> 
>>> Particularly as knowers, let us not be ungrateful toward such resolute 
>>> reversals of the familiar perspectives and valuations with which the 
>>> spirit has raged against itself all too long… : to see differently in 
>>> this way for once, to want to see differently, is no small discipline 
>>> and preparation of the intellect for its future “objectivity”—the 
>>> latter understood not as “disinterested contemplation” (which is a 
>>> non-concept and absurdity), but rather as the capacity to have one’s 
>>> Pro and Contra in one’s power, and to shift them in and out, so that 
>>> one knows how to make precisely the difference in perspectives and 
>>> affective interpretations useful for knowledge. (GM III, 12)
>>> 
>>> This famous passage bluntly rejects the idea, dominant in philosophy at 
>>> least since Plato, that knowledge essentially involves a form of 
>>> objectivity that penetrates behind all subjective appearances to reveal 
>>> the way things really are, independently of any point of view 
>>> whatsoever. Instead, the proposal is to approach “objectivity” (in a 
>>> revised conception) asymptotically, by exploiting the difference 
>>> between one perspective and another, using each to overcome the 
>>> limitations of others, without assuming that anything like a “view from 
>>> nowhere” is so much as possible. There is of course an implicit 
>>> criticism of the traditional picture of a-perspectival objectivity 
>>> here, but there is equally a positive set of recommendations about how 
>>> to pursue knowledge as a finite, limited cognitive agent.
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> Thanks. But I do not oppose

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-12 Thread Bruno Marchal


> On 11 Dec 2018, at 20:53, agrayson2...@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 7:30:32 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 1:02:52 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com <> 
> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 6:44:34 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 12:32:51 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com <> 
> wrote:
>  As for physicists being materialists in the sense of believing there is 
> nothing underlying matter as its cause, I have never heard that position 
> articulated by any physicist, in person or on the Internet. AG 
> 
> 
> 
> Victor Stenger
> Materialism Deconstructed?
> https://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/materialism-deconstructed_b_2228362.html
>  
> 
>  
> 
> I was once a member of Vic's discussion group. Vic believed in the reality of 
> matter, in the sense that if you kick it, it kicks back. But he didn't deny 
> the possibility that there could be something more fundamental underlying 
> matter.  This denial is what Bruno claims is the materialist position, but it 
> surely wasn't Vic's position. You know this, of course, being a member of 
> that group. Right? AG
> 
> - pt
>  
> 
> I hosted Vic in Dallas in 2014 for a talk. I got to know him fairly 
> personally .
> 
> Homages to philosophical materialism ("matter is the fundamental substance in 
> nature") is in his books. Timeless Reality in particular.
> 
> One can be open-minded, or ironist in Rorty's definition [ 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironism  
> ], and he was that.
> 
> But despite all the "models" talk, I would confidently say he was always a 
> hardcore materialist.
> 
> - pt
> 
> Show me one instance, just one, where Vic denied something causal and unknown 
> underlying the existence of matter? This is Bruno's model of materialism 
> among physicists but it clearly doesn't apply to Vic. AG 


You might read my favorite book by Vic, which is “The comprehensible cosmos”. 
There, it shows something very platonist-like: he shows that physics can be 
derived from few principles. Unfortunately, he seems to ignore the mind-body 
problem, and so he does not explain how that physical reality can select our 
consciousness in way corresponding to what we observe. So there is still a bit 
of magic in his explanation, or of lack of rigour (by not seeing that he uses 
some non-mechanist theory to allow a physical reality to do that selection, 
instead of deducing his first physical principle from arithmetic and machine’s 
psychology, as we have to do with mechanism. That is even more apparent in his 
less interesting books like “God the paling hypothesis, (where I agree with the 
content, but find it bad because he identifies theology with the current 
theology which assumes a creator but also a creation).

So Vic approach is still materialist or at least physicalist. But he was on the 
right track, and would have understood that his attempt to comprehend the 
cosmos was only a beginning: to work well, he would need to derive the cosmos 
from machine statistical experience in arithmetic.

Bruno




> 
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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-12 Thread Bruno Marchal


> On 11 Dec 2018, at 19:32, agrayson2...@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 10:12:54 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
>> On 9 Dec 2018, at 18:01, agrays...@gmail.com  wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Friday, December 7, 2018 at 10:27:37 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>>> On 6 Dec 2018, at 14:20, agrays...@gmail.com <> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Thursday, December 6, 2018 at 11:21:38 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>> 
 On 5 Dec 2018, at 17:19, agrays...@gmail.com <> wrote:
 
 
 
 On Monday, December 3, 2018 at 3:37:13 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
> On 2 Dec 2018, at 21:25, Philip Thrift > wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Sunday, December 2, 2018 at 2:02:43 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
> 
> 
> On 12/2/2018 4:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>>> On 30 Nov 2018, at 19:22, Brent Meeker > wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 11/30/2018 1:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>> Perspectivism is a form of modalism.
> 
> Nietzsche is vindicated.
 
 Interesting. If you elaborate, you might change my mind on Nietzche, 
 perhaps!
 All what I say is very close the Neoplatonism and Negative Theology 
 (capable only of saying what God is not).
 
 Bruno
>>> 
>>> From  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/ 
>>> 
>>> 6.2 Perspectivism
>>> 
>>> Much of Nietzsche’s reaction to the theoretical philosophy of his 
>>> predecessors is mediated through his interest in the notion of 
>>> perspective. He thought that past philosophers had largely ignored the 
>>> influence of their own perspectives on their work, and had therefore 
>>> failed to control those perspectival effects (BGE 6; see BGE I more 
>>> generally). Commentators have been both fascinated and perplexed by 
>>> what has come to be called Nietzsche’s “perspectivism”, and it has been 
>>> a major concern in a number of large-scale Nietzsche commentaries (see, 
>>> e.g., Danto 1965; Kaulbach 1980, 1990; Schacht 1983; Abel 1984; Nehamas 
>>> 1985; Clark 1990; Poellner 1995; Richardson 1996; Benne 2005). There 
>>> has been as much contestation over exactly what doctrine or group of 
>>> commitments belong under that heading as about their philosophical 
>>> merits, but a few points are relatively uncontroversial and can provide 
>>> a useful way into this strand of Nietzsche’s thinking.
>>> 
>>> Nietzsche’s appeals to the notion of perspective (or, equivalently in 
>>> his usage, to an “optics” of knowledge) have a positive, as well as a 
>>> critical side. Nietzsche frequently criticizes “dogmatic” philosophers 
>>> for ignoring the perspectival limitations on their theorizing, but as 
>>> we saw, he simultaneously holds that the operation of perspective makes 
>>> a positive contribution to our cognitive endeavors: speaking of (what 
>>> he takes to be) the perversely counterintuitive doctrines of some past 
>>> philosophers, he writes,
>>> 
>>> Particularly as knowers, let us not be ungrateful toward such resolute 
>>> reversals of the familiar perspectives and valuations with which the 
>>> spirit has raged against itself all too long… : to see differently in 
>>> this way for once, to want to see differently, is no small discipline 
>>> and preparation of the intellect for its future “objectivity”—the 
>>> latter understood not as “disinterested contemplation” (which is a 
>>> non-concept and absurdity), but rather as the capacity to have one’s 
>>> Pro and Contra in one’s power, and to shift them in and out, so that 
>>> one knows how to make precisely the difference in perspectives and 
>>> affective interpretations useful for knowledge. (GM III, 12)
>>> 
>>> This famous passage bluntly rejects the idea, dominant in philosophy at 
>>> least since Plato, that knowledge essentially involves a form of 
>>> objectivity that penetrates behind all subjective appearances to reveal 
>>> the way things really are, independently of any point of view 
>>> whatsoever. Instead, the proposal is to approach “objectivity” (in a 
>>> revised conception) asymptotically, by exploiting the difference 
>>> between one perspective and another, using each to overcome the 
>>> limitations of others, without assuming that anything like a “view from 
>>> nowhere” is so much as possible. There is of course an implicit 
>>> criticism of the traditional picture of a-perspectival objectivity 
>>> here, but there is equally a positive set of recommendations about how 
>>> to pursue knowledge as a finite, limited cognitive agent.
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> Thanks. But I do not oppose perspectivism with Plato, and certainly not 
>> with neoplatonism, which explains

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong



On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 6:32:51 PM UTC, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 10:12:54 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 9 Dec 2018, at 18:01, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Friday, December 7, 2018 at 10:27:37 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 6 Dec 2018, at 14:20, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thursday, December 6, 2018 at 11:21:38 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:


 On 5 Dec 2018, at 17:19, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:



 On Monday, December 3, 2018 at 3:37:13 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 2 Dec 2018, at 21:25, Philip Thrift  wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sunday, December 2, 2018 at 2:02:43 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 12/2/2018 4:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 30 Nov 2018, at 19:22, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 11/30/2018 1:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> Perspectivism is a form of modalism.
>>
>>
>> Nietzsche is vindicated.
>>
>>
>> Interesting. If you elaborate, you might change my mind on Nietzche, 
>> perhaps!
>> All what I say is very close the Neoplatonism and Negative Theology 
>> (capable only of saying what God is not).
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>> From  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/
>> 6.2 Perspectivism
>>
>> Much of Nietzsche’s reaction to the theoretical philosophy of his 
>> predecessors is mediated through his interest in the notion of 
>> perspective. 
>> He thought that past philosophers had largely ignored the influence of 
>> their own perspectives on their work, and had therefore failed to 
>> control 
>> those perspectival effects (*BGE* 6; see *BGE* I more generally). 
>> Commentators have been both fascinated and perplexed by what has come to 
>> be 
>> called Nietzsche’s “perspectivism”, and it has been a major concern in a 
>> number of large-scale Nietzsche commentaries (see, e.g., Danto 1965; 
>> Kaulbach 1980, 1990; Schacht 1983; Abel 1984; Nehamas 1985; Clark 1990; 
>> Poellner 1995; Richardson 1996; Benne 2005). There has been as much 
>> contestation over exactly what doctrine or group of commitments belong 
>> under that heading as about their philosophical merits, but a few points 
>> are relatively uncontroversial and can provide a useful way into this 
>> strand of Nietzsche’s thinking.
>>
>> Nietzsche’s appeals to the notion of perspective (or, equivalently in 
>> his usage, to an “optics” of knowledge) have a positive, as well as a 
>> critical side. Nietzsche frequently criticizes “dogmatic” philosophers 
>> for 
>> ignoring the perspectival limitations on their theorizing, but as we 
>> saw, 
>> he simultaneously holds that the operation of perspective makes a 
>> positive 
>> contribution to our cognitive endeavors: speaking of (what he takes to 
>> be) 
>> the perversely counterintuitive doctrines of some past philosophers, he 
>> writes,
>>
>> Particularly as knowers, let us not be ungrateful toward such 
>> resolute reversals of the familiar perspectives and valuations with 
>> which 
>> the spirit has raged against itself all too long… : to see differently 
>> in 
>> this way for once, *to want* to see differently, is no small 
>> discipline and preparation of the intellect for its future 
>> “objectivity”—the latter understood not as “disinterested contemplation” 
>> (which is a non-concept and absurdity), but rather as the capacity to 
>> have 
>> one’s Pro and Contra *in one’s power*, and to shift them in and out, 
>> so that one knows how to make precisely the *difference* in 
>> perspectives and affective interpretations useful for knowledge. (
>> *GM* III, 12)
>>
>> This famous passage bluntly rejects the idea, dominant in philosophy 
>> at least since Plato, that knowledge essentially involves a form of 
>> objectivity that penetrates behind all subjective appearances to reveal 
>> the 
>> way things really are, independently of any point of view whatsoever. 
>> Instead, the proposal is to approach “objectivity” (in a revised 
>> conception) asymptotically, by exploiting the difference between one 
>> perspective and another, using each to overcome the limitations of 
>> others, 
>> without assuming that anything like a “view from nowhere” is so much as 
>> possible. There is of course an implicit criticism of the traditional 
>> picture of a-perspectival objectivity here, but there is equally a 
>> positive 
>> set of recommendations about how to pursue knowledge as a finite, 
>> limited 
>> cognitive agent.
>>
>>
>> Thanks. But I do not oppose perspectivism with Plato, and certainly 
>> not with

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong



On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 5:20:22 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 8:04:11 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 1:53:50 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 7:30:32 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:



 On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 1:02:52 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 6:44:34 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 12:32:51 PM UTC-6, 
>> agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>> * As for physicists being materialists in the sense of believing 
>>> there is nothing underlying matter as its cause, I have never heard 
>>> that 
>>> position articulated by any physicist, in person or on the Internet. AG 
>>> *
>>>


>>
>> Victor Stenger
>> *Materialism Deconstructed?*
>>
>> https://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/materialism-deconstructed_b_2228362.html
>>  
>>
>
> *I was once a member of Vic's discussion group. Vic believed in the 
> reality of matter, in the sense that if you kick it, it kicks back. But 
> he 
> didn't deny the possibility that there could be something more 
> fundamental 
> underlying matter.  This denial is what Bruno claims is the materialist 
> position, but it surely wasn't Vic's position. You know this, of course, 
> being a member of that group. Right? AG*
>
>>
>> - pt
>>
>  

 I hosted Vic in Dallas in 2014 for a talk. I got to know him fairly 
 personally .

 Homages to philosophical materialism ("matter is the fundamental 
 substance in nature") is in his books. *Timeless Reality* in 
 particular.

 One can be open-minded, or *ironist *in Rorty's definition [ 
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironism ], and he was that.

 But despite all the "models" talk, I would confidently say he was 
 always a hardcore materialist.

 - pt

>>>
>>> Show me one instance, just one, where Vic denied something causal and 
>>> unknown underlying the existence of matter? This is Bruno's model of 
>>> materialism among physicists but it clearly doesn't apply to Vic. AG 
>>>
>>
>>
>> When Vic refutes that materialism ("all there is is matter") has been 
>> refuted (as Vic did in his essay), he is asserting all there is is matter. 
>> There is no matter + some ghosts behind matter. He wanted to banish the 
>> ghosts (the immaterial).
>>
>
> Apparently, you don't understand what the issue with materialism is. I 
> already explained it. AG 
>
>>
>> - pt
>>
>

I guess I don't know what the issue with *materialism* ("the notion that 
only matter exists"*) is that you are referring to.



This I do know: To have an issue with (be opposed to) materialism is to 
have a belief such as:


   - Immaterialism , a 
   philosophy branching from George Berkeley of which his idealism is a type
   - Dualism (philosophy of mind) 
   , a 
   philosophy which includes the claim that mental phenomena are, in some 
   respects, non-physical
   - Gnosticism , a general class 
   of religious movements which hold that human beings have divine souls 
   trapped in a material world
   - Idealism , which holds that 
   the ultimate nature of reality is based on mind or ideas
   - Maya (illusion) , a 
   concept in various Indian religions regarding the dualism of the Universe
   - Platonic realism , 
   which holds that certain universals have a *real* existence, in the 
   sense of philosophical realism
   - Supernaturalism 
   - Transcendentalism , a 
   group of ideas involving an ideal spiritual state that 'transcends' the 
   physical and empirical realms


* [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimaterialism ]

- pt


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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong



On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 8:04:11 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 1:53:50 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 7:30:32 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 1:02:52 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
>>> wrote:



 On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 6:44:34 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 12:32:51 PM UTC-6, 
> agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>> * As for physicists being materialists in the sense of believing 
>> there is nothing underlying matter as its cause, I have never heard that 
>> position articulated by any physicist, in person or on the Internet. AG *
>>
>>>
>>>
>
> Victor Stenger
> *Materialism Deconstructed?*
>
> https://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/materialism-deconstructed_b_2228362.html
>  
>

 *I was once a member of Vic's discussion group. Vic believed in the 
 reality of matter, in the sense that if you kick it, it kicks back. But he 
 didn't deny the possibility that there could be something more fundamental 
 underlying matter.  This denial is what Bruno claims is the materialist 
 position, but it surely wasn't Vic's position. You know this, of course, 
 being a member of that group. Right? AG*

>
> - pt
>
  
>>>
>>> I hosted Vic in Dallas in 2014 for a talk. I got to know him fairly 
>>> personally .
>>>
>>> Homages to philosophical materialism ("matter is the fundamental 
>>> substance in nature") is in his books. *Timeless Reality* in particular.
>>>
>>> One can be open-minded, or *ironist *in Rorty's definition [ 
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironism ], and he was that.
>>>
>>> But despite all the "models" talk, I would confidently say he was always 
>>> a hardcore materialist.
>>>
>>> - pt
>>>
>>
>> Show me one instance, just one, where Vic denied something causal and 
>> unknown underlying the existence of matter? This is Bruno's model of 
>> materialism among physicists but it clearly doesn't apply to Vic. AG 
>>
>
>
> When Vic refutes that materialism ("all there is is matter") has been 
> refuted (as Vic did in his essay), he is asserting all there is is matter. 
> There is no matter + some ghosts behind matter. He wanted to banish the 
> ghosts (the immaterial).
>

Apparently, you don't understand what the issue with materialism is. I 
already explained it. AG 

>
> - pt
>

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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong



On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 1:53:50 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 7:30:32 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 1:02:52 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 6:44:34 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:



 On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 12:32:51 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
>
> * As for physicists being materialists in the sense of believing there 
> is nothing underlying matter as its cause, I have never heard that 
> position 
> articulated by any physicist, in person or on the Internet. AG *
>
>>
>>

 Victor Stenger
 *Materialism Deconstructed?*

 https://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/materialism-deconstructed_b_2228362.html
  

>>>
>>> *I was once a member of Vic's discussion group. Vic believed in the 
>>> reality of matter, in the sense that if you kick it, it kicks back. But he 
>>> didn't deny the possibility that there could be something more fundamental 
>>> underlying matter.  This denial is what Bruno claims is the materialist 
>>> position, but it surely wasn't Vic's position. You know this, of course, 
>>> being a member of that group. Right? AG*
>>>

 - pt

>>>  
>>
>> I hosted Vic in Dallas in 2014 for a talk. I got to know him fairly 
>> personally .
>>
>> Homages to philosophical materialism ("matter is the fundamental 
>> substance in nature") is in his books. *Timeless Reality* in particular.
>>
>> One can be open-minded, or *ironist *in Rorty's definition [ 
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironism ], and he was that.
>>
>> But despite all the "models" talk, I would confidently say he was always 
>> a hardcore materialist.
>>
>> - pt
>>
>
> Show me one instance, just one, where Vic denied something causal and 
> unknown underlying the existence of matter? This is Bruno's model of 
> materialism among physicists but it clearly doesn't apply to Vic. AG 
>


When Vic refutes that materialism ("all there is is matter") has been 
refuted (as Vic did in his essay), he is asserting all there is is matter. 
There is no matter + some ghosts behind matter. He wanted to banish the 
ghosts (the immaterial).

- pt

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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong



On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 7:30:32 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 1:02:52 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 6:44:34 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 12:32:51 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
>>> wrote:

 * As for physicists being materialists in the sense of believing there 
 is nothing underlying matter as its cause, I have never heard that 
 position 
 articulated by any physicist, in person or on the Internet. AG *

>
>
>>>
>>> Victor Stenger
>>> *Materialism Deconstructed?*
>>>
>>> https://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/materialism-deconstructed_b_2228362.html
>>>  
>>>
>>
>> *I was once a member of Vic's discussion group. Vic believed in the 
>> reality of matter, in the sense that if you kick it, it kicks back. But he 
>> didn't deny the possibility that there could be something more fundamental 
>> underlying matter.  This denial is what Bruno claims is the materialist 
>> position, but it surely wasn't Vic's position. You know this, of course, 
>> being a member of that group. Right? AG*
>>
>>>
>>> - pt
>>>
>>  
>
> I hosted Vic in Dallas in 2014 for a talk. I got to know him fairly 
> personally .
>
> Homages to philosophical materialism ("matter is the fundamental substance 
> in nature") is in his books. *Timeless Reality* in particular.
>
> One can be open-minded, or *ironist *in Rorty's definition [ 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironism ], and he was that.
>
> But despite all the "models" talk, I would confidently say he was always a 
> hardcore materialist.
>
> - pt
>

Show me one instance, just one, where Vic denied something causal and 
unknown underlying the existence of matter? This is Bruno's model of 
materialism among physicists but it clearly doesn't apply to Vic. AG 

-- 
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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong



On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 1:02:52 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 6:44:34 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 12:32:51 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> * As for physicists being materialists in the sense of believing there 
>>> is nothing underlying matter as its cause, I have never heard that position 
>>> articulated by any physicist, in person or on the Internet. AG *
>>>


>>
>> Victor Stenger
>> *Materialism Deconstructed?*
>>
>> https://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/materialism-deconstructed_b_2228362.html
>>  
>>
>
> *I was once a member of Vic's discussion group. Vic believed in the 
> reality of matter, in the sense that if you kick it, it kicks back. But he 
> didn't deny the possibility that there could be something more fundamental 
> underlying matter.  This denial is what Bruno claims is the materialist 
> position, but it surely wasn't Vic's position. You know this, of course, 
> being a member of that group. Right? AG*
>
>>
>> - pt
>>
>  

I hosted Vic in Dallas in 2014 for a talk. I got to know him fairly 
personally .

Homages to philosophical materialism ("matter is the fundamental substance 
in nature") is in his books. *Timeless Reality* in particular.

One can be open-minded, or *ironist *in Rorty's definition 
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironism ], and he was that.

But despite all the "models" talk, I would confidently say he was always a 
hardcore materialist.

- pt

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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong



On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 6:44:34 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 12:32:51 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
> wrote:
>>
>> * As for physicists being materialists in the sense of believing there is 
>> nothing underlying matter as its cause, I have never heard that position 
>> articulated by any physicist, in person or on the Internet. AG *
>>
>>>
>>>
>
> Victor Stenger
> *Materialism Deconstructed?*
>
> https://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/materialism-deconstructed_b_2228362.html
>  
>

*I was once a member of Vic's discussion group. Vic believed in the reality 
of matter, in the sense that if you kick it, it kicks back. But he didn't 
deny the possibility that there could be something more fundamental 
underlying matter.  This denial is what Bruno claims is the materialist 
position, but it surely wasn't Vic's position. You know this, of course, 
being a member of that group. Right? AG*

>
> - pt
>

-- 
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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong



On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 12:32:51 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
wrote:
>
> * As for physicists being materialists in the sense of believing there is 
> nothing underlying matter as its cause, I have never heard that position 
> articulated by any physicist, in person or on the Internet. AG *
>
>>
>>

Victor Stenger
*Materialism Deconstructed?*
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/materialism-deconstructed_b_2228362.html
 

- pt

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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong



On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 10:12:54 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 9 Dec 2018, at 18:01, agrays...@gmail.com  wrote:
>
>
>
> On Friday, December 7, 2018 at 10:27:37 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 6 Dec 2018, at 14:20, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, December 6, 2018 at 11:21:38 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 5 Dec 2018, at 17:19, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Monday, December 3, 2018 at 3:37:13 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:


 On 2 Dec 2018, at 21:25, Philip Thrift  wrote:



 On Sunday, December 2, 2018 at 2:02:43 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>
>
>
> On 12/2/2018 4:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 30 Nov 2018, at 19:22, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>
>
>
> On 11/30/2018 1:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> Perspectivism is a form of modalism.
>
>
> Nietzsche is vindicated.
>
>
> Interesting. If you elaborate, you might change my mind on Nietzche, 
> perhaps!
> All what I say is very close the Neoplatonism and Negative Theology 
> (capable only of saying what God is not).
>
> Bruno
>
>
> From  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/
> 6.2 Perspectivism
>
> Much of Nietzsche’s reaction to the theoretical philosophy of his 
> predecessors is mediated through his interest in the notion of 
> perspective. 
> He thought that past philosophers had largely ignored the influence of 
> their own perspectives on their work, and had therefore failed to control 
> those perspectival effects (*BGE* 6; see *BGE* I more generally). 
> Commentators have been both fascinated and perplexed by what has come to 
> be 
> called Nietzsche’s “perspectivism”, and it has been a major concern in a 
> number of large-scale Nietzsche commentaries (see, e.g., Danto 1965; 
> Kaulbach 1980, 1990; Schacht 1983; Abel 1984; Nehamas 1985; Clark 1990; 
> Poellner 1995; Richardson 1996; Benne 2005). There has been as much 
> contestation over exactly what doctrine or group of commitments belong 
> under that heading as about their philosophical merits, but a few points 
> are relatively uncontroversial and can provide a useful way into this 
> strand of Nietzsche’s thinking.
>
> Nietzsche’s appeals to the notion of perspective (or, equivalently in 
> his usage, to an “optics” of knowledge) have a positive, as well as a 
> critical side. Nietzsche frequently criticizes “dogmatic” philosophers 
> for 
> ignoring the perspectival limitations on their theorizing, but as we saw, 
> he simultaneously holds that the operation of perspective makes a 
> positive 
> contribution to our cognitive endeavors: speaking of (what he takes to 
> be) 
> the perversely counterintuitive doctrines of some past philosophers, he 
> writes,
>
> Particularly as knowers, let us not be ungrateful toward such resolute 
> reversals of the familiar perspectives and valuations with which the 
> spirit 
> has raged against itself all too long… : to see differently in this way 
> for 
> once, *to want* to see differently, is no small discipline and 
> preparation of the intellect for its future “objectivity”—the latter 
> understood not as “disinterested contemplation” (which is a non-concept 
> and 
> absurdity), but rather as the capacity to have one’s Pro and Contra *in 
> one’s power*, and to shift them in and out, so that one knows how to 
> make precisely the *difference* in perspectives and affective 
> interpretations useful for knowledge. (*GM* III, 12)
>
> This famous passage bluntly rejects the idea, dominant in philosophy 
> at least since Plato, that knowledge essentially involves a form of 
> objectivity that penetrates behind all subjective appearances to reveal 
> the 
> way things really are, independently of any point of view whatsoever. 
> Instead, the proposal is to approach “objectivity” (in a revised 
> conception) asymptotically, by exploiting the difference between one 
> perspective and another, using each to overcome the limitations of 
> others, 
> without assuming that anything like a “view from nowhere” is so much as 
> possible. There is of course an implicit criticism of the traditional 
> picture of a-perspectival objectivity here, but there is equally a 
> positive 
> set of recommendations about how to pursue knowledge as a finite, limited 
> cognitive agent.
>
>
> Thanks. But I do not oppose perspectivism with Plato, and certainly 
> not with neoplatonism, which explains everything from the many 
> perspective 
> of the One, or at least can be interpreted that way.
>
> Pure perspectivism is an extreme position which leads to pure 
> relativism, which does not make

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-11 Thread Brent Meeker




On 12/11/2018 2:12 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
When we say that God cannot be omniscient (for pure logical reason), 
the atheists replies by saying that we cannot change the definition. 
They would have said that Earth does not exist when it was discovered 
that it is round! Of course, in science we change the definition *all 
the time*.


But the Earth is defined ostensively.  Nobody changed the definition.  
The definition of God is never ostensive and so it is subject to wildly 
varying changes to serve the needs and prejudices of whomever wants 
divine support for their theories.








*but for you their beliefs are the same? How ridiculous this is! AG*


Same belief in Matter (which is the God incompatible with Mechanism).
Same belief that God = the Christian God only (total oversight of a 
millenium of scientific theology!).


They don’t have the same belief in God, but they share the same 
definition (curiously enough).


What is curious about that.  If you have a different belief in fascism 
than Siegfried Verbeke don't you have to share the same definition of 
fascism; otherwise you would be having a different belief about a 
different thing and you could no more disagree with him than my 
believing eggs are a good breakfast would be disagreeing with you that 
coffee is good at breakfast.  You have to agree on what you are talking 
about in order to disagree on what you believe about it.


Brent

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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-11 Thread Bruno Marchal


> On 9 Dec 2018, at 18:01, agrayson2...@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Friday, December 7, 2018 at 10:27:37 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
>> On 6 Dec 2018, at 14:20, agrays...@gmail.com  wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Thursday, December 6, 2018 at 11:21:38 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>>> On 5 Dec 2018, at 17:19, agrays...@gmail.com <> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Monday, December 3, 2018 at 3:37:13 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>> 
 On 2 Dec 2018, at 21:25, Philip Thrift > wrote:
 
 
 
 On Sunday, December 2, 2018 at 2:02:43 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
 
 
 On 12/2/2018 4:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
>> On 30 Nov 2018, at 19:22, Brent Meeker > wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 11/30/2018 1:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
> Perspectivism is a form of modalism.
 
 Nietzsche is vindicated.
>>> 
>>> Interesting. If you elaborate, you might change my mind on Nietzche, 
>>> perhaps!
>>> All what I say is very close the Neoplatonism and Negative Theology 
>>> (capable only of saying what God is not).
>>> 
>>> Bruno
>> 
>> From  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/ 
>> 
>> 6.2 Perspectivism
>> 
>> Much of Nietzsche’s reaction to the theoretical philosophy of his 
>> predecessors is mediated through his interest in the notion of 
>> perspective. He thought that past philosophers had largely ignored the 
>> influence of their own perspectives on their work, and had therefore 
>> failed to control those perspectival effects (BGE 6; see BGE I more 
>> generally). Commentators have been both fascinated and perplexed by what 
>> has come to be called Nietzsche’s “perspectivism”, and it has been a 
>> major concern in a number of large-scale Nietzsche commentaries (see, 
>> e.g., Danto 1965; Kaulbach 1980, 1990; Schacht 1983; Abel 1984; Nehamas 
>> 1985; Clark 1990; Poellner 1995; Richardson 1996; Benne 2005). There has 
>> been as much contestation over exactly what doctrine or group of 
>> commitments belong under that heading as about their philosophical 
>> merits, but a few points are relatively uncontroversial and can provide 
>> a useful way into this strand of Nietzsche’s thinking.
>> 
>> Nietzsche’s appeals to the notion of perspective (or, equivalently in 
>> his usage, to an “optics” of knowledge) have a positive, as well as a 
>> critical side. Nietzsche frequently criticizes “dogmatic” philosophers 
>> for ignoring the perspectival limitations on their theorizing, but as we 
>> saw, he simultaneously holds that the operation of perspective makes a 
>> positive contribution to our cognitive endeavors: speaking of (what he 
>> takes to be) the perversely counterintuitive doctrines of some past 
>> philosophers, he writes,
>> 
>> Particularly as knowers, let us not be ungrateful toward such resolute 
>> reversals of the familiar perspectives and valuations with which the 
>> spirit has raged against itself all too long… : to see differently in 
>> this way for once, to want to see differently, is no small discipline 
>> and preparation of the intellect for its future “objectivity”—the latter 
>> understood not as “disinterested contemplation” (which is a non-concept 
>> and absurdity), but rather as the capacity to have one’s Pro and Contra 
>> in one’s power, and to shift them in and out, so that one knows how to 
>> make precisely the difference in perspectives and affective 
>> interpretations useful for knowledge. (GM III, 12)
>> 
>> This famous passage bluntly rejects the idea, dominant in philosophy at 
>> least since Plato, that knowledge essentially involves a form of 
>> objectivity that penetrates behind all subjective appearances to reveal 
>> the way things really are, independently of any point of view 
>> whatsoever. Instead, the proposal is to approach “objectivity” (in a 
>> revised conception) asymptotically, by exploiting the difference between 
>> one perspective and another, using each to overcome the limitations of 
>> others, without assuming that anything like a “view from nowhere” is so 
>> much as possible. There is of course an implicit criticism of the 
>> traditional picture of a-perspectival objectivity here, but there is 
>> equally a positive set of recommendations about how to pursue knowledge 
>> as a finite, limited cognitive agent.
>> 
>> 
> 
> Thanks. But I do not oppose perspectivism with Plato, and certainly not 
> with neoplatonism, which explains everything from the many perspective of 
> the One, or at least can be interpreted that way.
> 
> Pure perspectivism is an extreme position which leads to pure relativism, 
> which does not make sense, as we can only doubt starting

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-09 Thread agrayson2000

On Friday, December 7, 2018 at 10:27:37 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 6 Dec 2018, at 14:20, agrays...@gmail.com  wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thursday, December 6, 2018 at 11:21:38 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 5 Dec 2018, at 17:19, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Monday, December 3, 2018 at 3:37:13 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 2 Dec 2018, at 21:25, Philip Thrift  wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sunday, December 2, 2018 at 2:02:43 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:

 On 12/2/2018 4:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

 On 30 Nov 2018, at 19:22, Brent Meeker  wrote:

 On 11/30/2018 1:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

 Perspectivism is a form of modalism.

 Nietzsche is vindicated.

 Interesting. If you elaborate, you might change my mind on Nietzche, 
 perhaps!
 All what I say is very close the Neoplatonism and Negative Theology 
 (capable only of saying what God is not).

 Bruno

 From  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/
 6.2 Perspectivism

 Much of Nietzsche’s reaction to the theoretical philosophy of his 
 predecessors is mediated through his interest in the notion of 
 perspective. 
 He thought that past philosophers had largely ignored the influence of 
 their own perspectives on their work, and had therefore failed to control 
 those perspectival effects (*BGE* 6; see *BGE* I more generally). 
 Commentators have been both fascinated and perplexed by what has come to 
 be 
 called Nietzsche’s “perspectivism”, and it has been a major concern in a 
 number of large-scale Nietzsche commentaries (see, e.g., Danto 1965; 
 Kaulbach 1980, 1990; Schacht 1983; Abel 1984; Nehamas 1985; Clark 1990; 
 Poellner 1995; Richardson 1996; Benne 2005). There has been as much 
 contestation over exactly what doctrine or group of commitments belong 
 under that heading as about their philosophical merits, but a few points 
 are relatively uncontroversial and can provide a useful way into this 
 strand of Nietzsche’s thinking.

 Nietzsche’s appeals to the notion of perspective (or, equivalently in 
 his usage, to an “optics” of knowledge) have a positive, as well as a 
 critical side. Nietzsche frequently criticizes “dogmatic” philosophers for 
 ignoring the perspectival limitations on their theorizing, but as we saw, 
 he simultaneously holds that the operation of perspective makes a positive 
 contribution to our cognitive endeavors: speaking of (what he takes to be) 
 the perversely counterintuitive doctrines of some past philosophers, he 
 writes,

 Particularly as knowers, let us not be ungrateful toward such resolute 
 reversals of the familiar perspectives and valuations with which the 
 spirit 
 has raged against itself all too long… : to see differently in this way 
 for 
 once, *to want* to see differently, is no small discipline and 
 preparation of the intellect for its future “objectivity”—the latter 
 understood not as “disinterested contemplation” (which is a non-concept 
 and 
 absurdity), but rather as the capacity to have one’s Pro and Contra *in 
 one’s power*, and to shift them in and out, so that one knows how to 
 make precisely the *difference* in perspectives and affective 
 interpretations useful for knowledge. (*GM* III, 12)

 This famous passage bluntly rejects the idea, dominant in philosophy at 
 least since Plato, that knowledge essentially involves a form of 
 objectivity that penetrates behind all subjective appearances to reveal 
 the 
 way things really are, independently of any point of view whatsoever. 
 Instead, the proposal is to approach “objectivity” (in a revised 
 conception) asymptotically, by exploiting the difference between one 
 perspective and another, using each to overcome the limitations of others, 
 without assuming that anything like a “view from nowhere” is so much as 
 possible. There is of course an implicit criticism of the traditional 
 picture of a-perspectival objectivity here, but there is equally a 
 positive 
 set of recommendations about how to pursue knowledge as a finite, limited 
 cognitive agent.

 Thanks. But I do not oppose perspectivism with Plato, and certainly not 
 with neoplatonism, which explains everything from the many perspective of 
 the One, or at least can be interpreted that way.

 Pure perspectivism is an extreme position which leads to pure 
 relativism, which does not make sense, as we can only doubt starting from 
 indubitable things (cf Descartes). But Nietzsche might have been OK, as 
 the 
 text above suggested a “revised conception” of objective. 

 With mechanism, you have an ablate truth (the sigma_1 arithmetical 
 truth),

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-07 Thread Bruno Marchal


> On 6 Dec 2018, at 14:20, agrayson2...@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Thursday, December 6, 2018 at 11:21:38 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
>> On 5 Dec 2018, at 17:19, agrays...@gmail.com  wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Monday, December 3, 2018 at 3:37:13 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>>> On 2 Dec 2018, at 21:25, Philip Thrift > wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Sunday, December 2, 2018 at 2:02:43 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 12/2/2018 4:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
> On 30 Nov 2018, at 19:22, Brent Meeker > wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 11/30/2018 1:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
 Perspectivism is a form of modalism.
>>> 
>>> Nietzsche is vindicated.
>> 
>> Interesting. If you elaborate, you might change my mind on Nietzche, 
>> perhaps!
>> All what I say is very close the Neoplatonism and Negative Theology 
>> (capable only of saying what God is not).
>> 
>> Bruno
> 
> From  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/ 
> 
> 6.2 Perspectivism
> 
> Much of Nietzsche’s reaction to the theoretical philosophy of his 
> predecessors is mediated through his interest in the notion of 
> perspective. He thought that past philosophers had largely ignored the 
> influence of their own perspectives on their work, and had therefore 
> failed to control those perspectival effects (BGE 6; see BGE I more 
> generally). Commentators have been both fascinated and perplexed by what 
> has come to be called Nietzsche’s “perspectivism”, and it has been a 
> major concern in a number of large-scale Nietzsche commentaries (see, 
> e.g., Danto 1965; Kaulbach 1980, 1990; Schacht 1983; Abel 1984; Nehamas 
> 1985; Clark 1990; Poellner 1995; Richardson 1996; Benne 2005). There has 
> been as much contestation over exactly what doctrine or group of 
> commitments belong under that heading as about their philosophical 
> merits, but a few points are relatively uncontroversial and can provide a 
> useful way into this strand of Nietzsche’s thinking.
> 
> Nietzsche’s appeals to the notion of perspective (or, equivalently in his 
> usage, to an “optics” of knowledge) have a positive, as well as a 
> critical side. Nietzsche frequently criticizes “dogmatic” philosophers 
> for ignoring the perspectival limitations on their theorizing, but as we 
> saw, he simultaneously holds that the operation of perspective makes a 
> positive contribution to our cognitive endeavors: speaking of (what he 
> takes to be) the perversely counterintuitive doctrines of some past 
> philosophers, he writes,
> 
> Particularly as knowers, let us not be ungrateful toward such resolute 
> reversals of the familiar perspectives and valuations with which the 
> spirit has raged against itself all too long… : to see differently in 
> this way for once, to want to see differently, is no small discipline and 
> preparation of the intellect for its future “objectivity”—the latter 
> understood not as “disinterested contemplation” (which is a non-concept 
> and absurdity), but rather as the capacity to have one’s Pro and Contra 
> in one’s power, and to shift them in and out, so that one knows how to 
> make precisely the difference in perspectives and affective 
> interpretations useful for knowledge. (GM III, 12)
> 
> This famous passage bluntly rejects the idea, dominant in philosophy at 
> least since Plato, that knowledge essentially involves a form of 
> objectivity that penetrates behind all subjective appearances to reveal 
> the way things really are, independently of any point of view whatsoever. 
> Instead, the proposal is to approach “objectivity” (in a revised 
> conception) asymptotically, by exploiting the difference between one 
> perspective and another, using each to overcome the limitations of 
> others, without assuming that anything like a “view from nowhere” is so 
> much as possible. There is of course an implicit criticism of the 
> traditional picture of a-perspectival objectivity here, but there is 
> equally a positive set of recommendations about how to pursue knowledge 
> as a finite, limited cognitive agent.
> 
> 
 
 Thanks. But I do not oppose perspectivism with Plato, and certainly not 
 with neoplatonism, which explains everything from the many perspective of 
 the One, or at least can be interpreted that way.
 
 Pure perspectivism is an extreme position which leads to pure relativism, 
 which does not make sense, as we can only doubt starting from indubitable 
 things (cf Descartes). But Nietzsche might have been OK, as the text above 
 suggested a “revised conception” of objective. 
 
 With mechanism, you have an ablate truth (the sigma_1 arithmetical truth),

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-06 Thread Philip Thrift



On Thursday, December 6, 2018 at 12:11:31 PM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thursday, December 6, 2018 at 5:58:21 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, December 6, 2018 at 7:20:18 AM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thursday, December 6, 2018 at 11:21:38 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:


 On 5 Dec 2018, at 17:19, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:



 On Monday, December 3, 2018 at 3:37:13 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 2 Dec 2018, at 21:25, Philip Thrift  wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sunday, December 2, 2018 at 2:02:43 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 12/2/2018 4:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 30 Nov 2018, at 19:22, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 11/30/2018 1:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> Perspectivism is a form of modalism.
>>
>>
>> Nietzsche is vindicated.
>>
>>
>> Interesting. If you elaborate, you might change my mind on Nietzche, 
>> perhaps!
>> All what I say is very close the Neoplatonism and Negative Theology 
>> (capable only of saying what God is not).
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>> From  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/
>> 6.2 Perspectivism
>>
>> Much of Nietzsche’s reaction to the theoretical philosophy of his 
>> predecessors is mediated through his interest in the notion of 
>> perspective. 
>> He thought that past philosophers had largely ignored the influence of 
>> their own perspectives on their work, and had therefore failed to 
>> control 
>> those perspectival effects (*BGE* 6; see *BGE* I more generally). 
>> Commentators have been both fascinated and perplexed by what has come to 
>> be 
>> called Nietzsche’s “perspectivism”, and it has been a major concern in a 
>> number of large-scale Nietzsche commentaries (see, e.g., Danto 1965; 
>> Kaulbach 1980, 1990; Schacht 1983; Abel 1984; Nehamas 1985; Clark 1990; 
>> Poellner 1995; Richardson 1996; Benne 2005). There has been as much 
>> contestation over exactly what doctrine or group of commitments belong 
>> under that heading as about their philosophical merits, but a few points 
>> are relatively uncontroversial and can provide a useful way into this 
>> strand of Nietzsche’s thinking.
>>
>> Nietzsche’s appeals to the notion of perspective (or, equivalently in 
>> his usage, to an “optics” of knowledge) have a positive, as well as a 
>> critical side. Nietzsche frequently criticizes “dogmatic” philosophers 
>> for 
>> ignoring the perspectival limitations on their theorizing, but as we 
>> saw, 
>> he simultaneously holds that the operation of perspective makes a 
>> positive 
>> contribution to our cognitive endeavors: speaking of (what he takes to 
>> be) 
>> the perversely counterintuitive doctrines of some past philosophers, he 
>> writes,
>>
>> Particularly as knowers, let us not be ungrateful toward such 
>> resolute reversals of the familiar perspectives and valuations with 
>> which 
>> the spirit has raged against itself all too long… : to see differently 
>> in 
>> this way for once, *to want* to see differently, is no small 
>> discipline and preparation of the intellect for its future 
>> “objectivity”—the latter understood not as “disinterested contemplation” 
>> (which is a non-concept and absurdity), but rather as the capacity to 
>> have 
>> one’s Pro and Contra *in one’s power*, and to shift them in and out, 
>> so that one knows how to make precisely the *difference* in 
>> perspectives and affective interpretations useful for knowledge. (
>> *GM* III, 12)
>>
>> This famous passage bluntly rejects the idea, dominant in philosophy 
>> at least since Plato, that knowledge essentially involves a form of 
>> objectivity that penetrates behind all subjective appearances to reveal 
>> the 
>> way things really are, independently of any point of view whatsoever. 
>> Instead, the proposal is to approach “objectivity” (in a revised 
>> conception) asymptotically, by exploiting the difference between one 
>> perspective and another, using each to overcome the limitations of 
>> others, 
>> without assuming that anything like a “view from nowhere” is so much as 
>> possible. There is of course an implicit criticism of the traditional 
>> picture of a-perspectival objectivity here, but there is equally a 
>> positive 
>> set of recommendations about how to pursue knowledge as a finite, 
>> limited 
>> cognitive agent.
>>
>>
>> Thanks. But I do not oppose perspectivism with Plato, and certainly 
>> not with neoplatonism, which explains everything from the many 
>> perspective 
>> of the One, or at least can be

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-06 Thread agrayson2000



On Thursday, December 6, 2018 at 5:58:21 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thursday, December 6, 2018 at 7:20:18 AM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, December 6, 2018 at 11:21:38 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 5 Dec 2018, at 17:19, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Monday, December 3, 2018 at 3:37:13 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:


 On 2 Dec 2018, at 21:25, Philip Thrift  wrote:



 On Sunday, December 2, 2018 at 2:02:43 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>
>
>
> On 12/2/2018 4:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 30 Nov 2018, at 19:22, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>
>
>
> On 11/30/2018 1:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> Perspectivism is a form of modalism.
>
>
> Nietzsche is vindicated.
>
>
> Interesting. If you elaborate, you might change my mind on Nietzche, 
> perhaps!
> All what I say is very close the Neoplatonism and Negative Theology 
> (capable only of saying what God is not).
>
> Bruno
>
>
> From  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/
> 6.2 Perspectivism
>
> Much of Nietzsche’s reaction to the theoretical philosophy of his 
> predecessors is mediated through his interest in the notion of 
> perspective. 
> He thought that past philosophers had largely ignored the influence of 
> their own perspectives on their work, and had therefore failed to control 
> those perspectival effects (*BGE* 6; see *BGE* I more generally). 
> Commentators have been both fascinated and perplexed by what has come to 
> be 
> called Nietzsche’s “perspectivism”, and it has been a major concern in a 
> number of large-scale Nietzsche commentaries (see, e.g., Danto 1965; 
> Kaulbach 1980, 1990; Schacht 1983; Abel 1984; Nehamas 1985; Clark 1990; 
> Poellner 1995; Richardson 1996; Benne 2005). There has been as much 
> contestation over exactly what doctrine or group of commitments belong 
> under that heading as about their philosophical merits, but a few points 
> are relatively uncontroversial and can provide a useful way into this 
> strand of Nietzsche’s thinking.
>
> Nietzsche’s appeals to the notion of perspective (or, equivalently in 
> his usage, to an “optics” of knowledge) have a positive, as well as a 
> critical side. Nietzsche frequently criticizes “dogmatic” philosophers 
> for 
> ignoring the perspectival limitations on their theorizing, but as we saw, 
> he simultaneously holds that the operation of perspective makes a 
> positive 
> contribution to our cognitive endeavors: speaking of (what he takes to 
> be) 
> the perversely counterintuitive doctrines of some past philosophers, he 
> writes,
>
> Particularly as knowers, let us not be ungrateful toward such resolute 
> reversals of the familiar perspectives and valuations with which the 
> spirit 
> has raged against itself all too long… : to see differently in this way 
> for 
> once, *to want* to see differently, is no small discipline and 
> preparation of the intellect for its future “objectivity”—the latter 
> understood not as “disinterested contemplation” (which is a non-concept 
> and 
> absurdity), but rather as the capacity to have one’s Pro and Contra *in 
> one’s power*, and to shift them in and out, so that one knows how to 
> make precisely the *difference* in perspectives and affective 
> interpretations useful for knowledge. (*GM* III, 12)
>
> This famous passage bluntly rejects the idea, dominant in philosophy 
> at least since Plato, that knowledge essentially involves a form of 
> objectivity that penetrates behind all subjective appearances to reveal 
> the 
> way things really are, independently of any point of view whatsoever. 
> Instead, the proposal is to approach “objectivity” (in a revised 
> conception) asymptotically, by exploiting the difference between one 
> perspective and another, using each to overcome the limitations of 
> others, 
> without assuming that anything like a “view from nowhere” is so much as 
> possible. There is of course an implicit criticism of the traditional 
> picture of a-perspectival objectivity here, but there is equally a 
> positive 
> set of recommendations about how to pursue knowledge as a finite, limited 
> cognitive agent.
>
>
> Thanks. But I do not oppose perspectivism with Plato, and certainly 
> not with neoplatonism, which explains everything from the many 
> perspective 
> of the One, or at least can be interpreted that way.
>
> Pure perspectivism is an extreme position which leads to pure 
> relativism, which does not make sense, as we can only doubt starting from 
> indubitable things (cf Descartes). But Nietzsche might have

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-06 Thread Philip Thrift

On Thursday, December 6, 2018 at 7:20:18 AM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thursday, December 6, 2018 at 11:21:38 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 5 Dec 2018, at 17:19, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Monday, December 3, 2018 at 3:37:13 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 2 Dec 2018, at 21:25, Philip Thrift  wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sunday, December 2, 2018 at 2:02:43 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:

 On 12/2/2018 4:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

 On 30 Nov 2018, at 19:22, Brent Meeker  wrote:

 On 11/30/2018 1:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

 Perspectivism is a form of modalism.

 Nietzsche is vindicated.

 Interesting. If you elaborate, you might change my mind on Nietzche, 
 perhaps!
 All what I say is very close the Neoplatonism and Negative Theology 
 (capable only of saying what God is not).

 Bruno

 From  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/
 6.2 Perspectivism

 Much of Nietzsche’s reaction to the theoretical philosophy of his 
 predecessors is mediated through his interest in the notion of 
 perspective. 
 He thought that past philosophers had largely ignored the influence of 
 their own perspectives on their work, and had therefore failed to control 
 those perspectival effects (*BGE* 6; see *BGE* I more generally). 
 Commentators have been both fascinated and perplexed by what has come to 
 be 
 called Nietzsche’s “perspectivism”, and it has been a major concern in a 
 number of large-scale Nietzsche commentaries (see, e.g., Danto 1965; 
 Kaulbach 1980, 1990; Schacht 1983; Abel 1984; Nehamas 1985; Clark 1990; 
 Poellner 1995; Richardson 1996; Benne 2005). There has been as much 
 contestation over exactly what doctrine or group of commitments belong 
 under that heading as about their philosophical merits, but a few points 
 are relatively uncontroversial and can provide a useful way into this 
 strand of Nietzsche’s thinking.

 Nietzsche’s appeals to the notion of perspective (or, equivalently in 
 his usage, to an “optics” of knowledge) have a positive, as well as a 
 critical side. Nietzsche frequently criticizes “dogmatic” philosophers for 
 ignoring the perspectival limitations on their theorizing, but as we saw, 
 he simultaneously holds that the operation of perspective makes a positive 
 contribution to our cognitive endeavors: speaking of (what he takes to be) 
 the perversely counterintuitive doctrines of some past philosophers, he 
 writes,

 Particularly as knowers, let us not be ungrateful toward such resolute 
 reversals of the familiar perspectives and valuations with which the 
 spirit 
 has raged against itself all too long… : to see differently in this way 
 for 
 once, *to want* to see differently, is no small discipline and 
 preparation of the intellect for its future “objectivity”—the latter 
 understood not as “disinterested contemplation” (which is a non-concept 
 and 
 absurdity), but rather as the capacity to have one’s Pro and Contra *in 
 one’s power*, and to shift them in and out, so that one knows how to 
 make precisely the *difference* in perspectives and affective 
 interpretations useful for knowledge. (*GM* III, 12)

 This famous passage bluntly rejects the idea, dominant in philosophy at 
 least since Plato, that knowledge essentially involves a form of 
 objectivity that penetrates behind all subjective appearances to reveal 
 the 
 way things really are, independently of any point of view whatsoever. 
 Instead, the proposal is to approach “objectivity” (in a revised 
 conception) asymptotically, by exploiting the difference between one 
 perspective and another, using each to overcome the limitations of others, 
 without assuming that anything like a “view from nowhere” is so much as 
 possible. There is of course an implicit criticism of the traditional 
 picture of a-perspectival objectivity here, but there is equally a 
 positive 
 set of recommendations about how to pursue knowledge as a finite, limited 
 cognitive agent.

 Thanks. But I do not oppose perspectivism with Plato, and certainly not 
 with neoplatonism, which explains everything from the many perspective of 
 the One, or at least can be interpreted that way.

 Pure perspectivism is an extreme position which leads to pure 
 relativism, which does not make sense, as we can only doubt starting from 
 indubitable things (cf Descartes). But Nietzsche might have been OK, as 
 the 
 text above suggested a “revised conception” of objective. 

 With mechanism, you have an ablate truth (the sigma_1 arithmetical 
 truth), and the rest is explained by the perspective

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-06 Thread agrayson2000



On Thursday, December 6, 2018 at 11:21:38 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 5 Dec 2018, at 17:19, agrays...@gmail.com  wrote:
>
>
>
> On Monday, December 3, 2018 at 3:37:13 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 2 Dec 2018, at 21:25, Philip Thrift  wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sunday, December 2, 2018 at 2:02:43 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/2/2018 4:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 30 Nov 2018, at 19:22, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 11/30/2018 1:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Perspectivism is a form of modalism.
>>>
>>>
>>> Nietzsche is vindicated.
>>>
>>>
>>> Interesting. If you elaborate, you might change my mind on Nietzche, 
>>> perhaps!
>>> All what I say is very close the Neoplatonism and Negative Theology 
>>> (capable only of saying what God is not).
>>>
>>> Bruno
>>>
>>>
>>> From  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/
>>> 6.2 Perspectivism
>>>
>>> Much of Nietzsche’s reaction to the theoretical philosophy of his 
>>> predecessors is mediated through his interest in the notion of perspective. 
>>> He thought that past philosophers had largely ignored the influence of 
>>> their own perspectives on their work, and had therefore failed to control 
>>> those perspectival effects (*BGE* 6; see *BGE* I more generally). 
>>> Commentators have been both fascinated and perplexed by what has come to be 
>>> called Nietzsche’s “perspectivism”, and it has been a major concern in a 
>>> number of large-scale Nietzsche commentaries (see, e.g., Danto 1965; 
>>> Kaulbach 1980, 1990; Schacht 1983; Abel 1984; Nehamas 1985; Clark 1990; 
>>> Poellner 1995; Richardson 1996; Benne 2005). There has been as much 
>>> contestation over exactly what doctrine or group of commitments belong 
>>> under that heading as about their philosophical merits, but a few points 
>>> are relatively uncontroversial and can provide a useful way into this 
>>> strand of Nietzsche’s thinking.
>>>
>>> Nietzsche’s appeals to the notion of perspective (or, equivalently in 
>>> his usage, to an “optics” of knowledge) have a positive, as well as a 
>>> critical side. Nietzsche frequently criticizes “dogmatic” philosophers for 
>>> ignoring the perspectival limitations on their theorizing, but as we saw, 
>>> he simultaneously holds that the operation of perspective makes a positive 
>>> contribution to our cognitive endeavors: speaking of (what he takes to be) 
>>> the perversely counterintuitive doctrines of some past philosophers, he 
>>> writes,
>>>
>>> Particularly as knowers, let us not be ungrateful toward such resolute 
>>> reversals of the familiar perspectives and valuations with which the spirit 
>>> has raged against itself all too long… : to see differently in this way for 
>>> once, *to want* to see differently, is no small discipline and 
>>> preparation of the intellect for its future “objectivity”—the latter 
>>> understood not as “disinterested contemplation” (which is a non-concept and 
>>> absurdity), but rather as the capacity to have one’s Pro and Contra *in 
>>> one’s power*, and to shift them in and out, so that one knows how to 
>>> make precisely the *difference* in perspectives and affective 
>>> interpretations useful for knowledge. (*GM* III, 12)
>>>
>>> This famous passage bluntly rejects the idea, dominant in philosophy at 
>>> least since Plato, that knowledge essentially involves a form of 
>>> objectivity that penetrates behind all subjective appearances to reveal the 
>>> way things really are, independently of any point of view whatsoever. 
>>> Instead, the proposal is to approach “objectivity” (in a revised 
>>> conception) asymptotically, by exploiting the difference between one 
>>> perspective and another, using each to overcome the limitations of others, 
>>> without assuming that anything like a “view from nowhere” is so much as 
>>> possible. There is of course an implicit criticism of the traditional 
>>> picture of a-perspectival objectivity here, but there is equally a positive 
>>> set of recommendations about how to pursue knowledge as a finite, limited 
>>> cognitive agent.
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks. But I do not oppose perspectivism with Plato, and certainly not 
>>> with neoplatonism, which explains everything from the many perspective of 
>>> the One, or at least can be interpreted that way.
>>>
>>> Pure perspectivism is an extreme position which leads to pure 
>>> relativism, which does not make sense, as we can only doubt starting from 
>>> indubitable things (cf Descartes). But Nietzsche might have been OK, as the 
>>> text above suggested a “revised conception” of objective. 
>>>
>>> With mechanism, you have an ablate truth (the sigma_1 arithmetical 
>>> truth), and the rest is explained by the perspective enforced by 
>>> incompleteness.
>>>
>>>
>>> My reading of Nietzsche is he thought that there are many different 
>>> perspectives and one can only approach the truth by looking from different 
>>> perspectives but never taking one of them

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-06 Thread Bruno Marchal

> On 5 Dec 2018, at 17:19, agrayson2...@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Monday, December 3, 2018 at 3:37:13 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> 
>> On 2 Dec 2018, at 21:25, Philip Thrift > 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Sunday, December 2, 2018 at 2:02:43 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On 12/2/2018 4:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>> 
 On 30 Nov 2018, at 19:22, Brent Meeker > wrote:

 On 11/30/2018 1:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>> 
>>> Perspectivism is a form of modalism.
>> 
>> Nietzsche is vindicated.
> 
> Interesting. If you elaborate, you might change my mind on Nietzche, 
> perhaps!
> All what I say is very close the Neoplatonism and Negative Theology 
> (capable only of saying what God is not).
> 
> Bruno

 From  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/ 

 6.2 Perspectivism

 Much of Nietzsche’s reaction to the theoretical philosophy of his 
 predecessors is mediated through his interest in the notion of 
 perspective. He thought that past philosophers had largely ignored the 
 influence of their own perspectives on their work, and had therefore 
 failed to control those perspectival effects (BGE 6; see BGE I more 
 generally). Commentators have been both fascinated and perplexed by what 
 has come to be called Nietzsche’s “perspectivism”, and it has been a major 
 concern in a number of large-scale Nietzsche commentaries (see, e.g., 
 Danto 1965; Kaulbach 1980, 1990; Schacht 1983; Abel 1984; Nehamas 1985; 
 Clark 1990; Poellner 1995; Richardson 1996; Benne 2005). There has been as 
 much contestation over exactly what doctrine or group of commitments 
 belong under that heading as about their philosophical merits, but a few 
 points are relatively uncontroversial and can provide a useful way into 
 this strand of Nietzsche’s thinking.

 Nietzsche’s appeals to the notion of perspective (or, equivalently in his 
 usage, to an “optics” of knowledge) have a positive, as well as a critical 
 side. Nietzsche frequently criticizes “dogmatic” philosophers for ignoring 
 the perspectival limitations on their theorizing, but as we saw, he 
 simultaneously holds that the operation of perspective makes a positive 
 contribution to our cognitive endeavors: speaking of (what he takes to be) 
 the perversely counterintuitive doctrines of some past philosophers, he 
 writes,

 Particularly as knowers, let us not be ungrateful toward such resolute 
 reversals of the familiar perspectives and valuations with which the 
 spirit has raged against itself all too long… : to see differently in this 
 way for once, to want to see differently, is no small discipline and 
 preparation of the intellect for its future “objectivity”—the latter 
 understood not as “disinterested contemplation” (which is a non-concept 
 and absurdity), but rather as the capacity to have one’s Pro and Contra in 
 one’s power, and to shift them in and out, so that one knows how to make 
 precisely the difference in perspectives and affective interpretations 
 useful for knowledge. (GM III, 12)

 This famous passage bluntly rejects the idea, dominant in philosophy at 
 least since Plato, that knowledge essentially involves a form of 
 objectivity that penetrates behind all subjective appearances to reveal 
 the way things really are, independently of any point of view whatsoever. 
 Instead, the proposal is to approach “objectivity” (in a revised 
 conception) asymptotically, by exploiting the difference between one 
 perspective and another, using each to overcome the limitations of others, 
 without assuming that anything like a “view from nowhere” is so much as 
 possible. There is of course an implicit criticism of the traditional 
 picture of a-perspectival objectivity here, but there is equally a 
 positive set of recommendations about how to pursue knowledge as a finite, 
 limited cognitive agent.

>>> 
>>> Thanks. But I do not oppose perspectivism with Plato, and certainly not 
>>> with neoplatonism, which explains everything from the many perspective of 
>>> the One, or at least can be interpreted that way.
>>> 
>>> Pure perspectivism is an extreme position which leads to pure relativism, 
>>> which does not make sense, as we can only doubt starting from indubitable 
>>> things (cf Descartes). But Nietzsche might have been OK, as the text above 
>>> suggested a “revised conception” of objective. 
>>> 
>>> With mechanism, you have an ablate truth (the sigma_1 arithmetical truth), 
>>> and the rest is explained by the perspective enforced by incompleteness.
>> 
>> My reading of Nietzsche is he thought that there are many different 
>> perspectives and one can only approach the truth by looking from different

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-06 Thread Bruno Marchal



> On 5 Dec 2018, at 17:05, Mark Buda  wrote:
> 
> Philip Thrift  writes:
> 
>> On Tuesday, December 4, 2018 at 4:50:22 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>> 
>> On 12/4/2018 11:50 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>> 
>> On Tuesday, December 4, 2018 at 1:46:44 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: 
>> 
>> On 12/4/2018 12:06 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>> 
>> Can you give an example of "truth in the programming" and how it differs 
>> from the mathematical idea of true and the correspondence theory of truth?
>> 
>> Brent
>> 
>> Truth in programming follows the Brouwerian concept of truth:
>> [ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/brouwer/ ]
>> 
>> There is no determinant of mathematical truth outside the activity of 
>> thinking; a proposition only becomes true when the subject has experienced 
>> its truth (by having carried out an appropriate
>> mental construction); similarly, a proposition only becomes false when the 
>> subject has experienced its falsehood (by realizing that an appropriate 
>> mental construction is not possible).
>> 
>> There is no determinant of mathematical truth outside the activity of 
>> computing; a proposition only becomes true when the program has produced its 
>> truth (by having carried out an
>> appropriate computational construction); similarly, a proposition only 
>> becomes false when the program has produced its falsehood (by computing that 
>> an appropriate computational construction is
>> not possible). 
>> 
>> I didn't ask for examples of circular definitions.
>> 
>> Brent
>> 
>> In what sense is type theory circular logic? 
>> 
>> First, I didn't ask for a logic, I asked for examples to the different ideas 
>> of truth. Instead you provided some assertions about "where truth is 
>> determined" and about becoming true...which were circular.
>> 
>> "a proposition only becomes true when the subject has experienced its truth"
>> 
>> " a proposition only becomes true when the program has produced its truth" 
>> 
>> Third, neither your post nor the article on Brouwer said anything about type 
>> theory.
>> https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/type-theory-intuitionistic/
>> 
>> Brent
>> 
>> The simple way to put it:
>> 
>> Write a Lisp program p.
>> 
>> If p returns nil, pi is false.
>> 
>> If p returns anything else, p is true.
>> 
>> That's all you need to know about truth.
> 
> You have it all wrong.
> 
> "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," -- that is all
> Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Hmm…. Beauty requires truth, OK, but to think that truth requires beauty looks 
like wishful thinking. Some truth are ugly, I’m afraid. 

Bruno




> -- 
> Mark Buda 
> I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free
> 
> -- 
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
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> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an 
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
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> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-05 Thread Philip Thrift



On Wednesday, December 5, 2018 at 10:05:44 AM UTC-6, Mark Buda wrote:
>
> Philip Thrift > writes: 
>
> > On Tuesday, December 4, 2018 at 4:50:22 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: 
> > 
> >  On 12/4/2018 11:50 AM, Philip Thrift wrote: 
> > 
> >  On Tuesday, December 4, 2018 at 1:46:44 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: 
> > 
> >  On 12/4/2018 12:06 AM, Philip Thrift wrote: 
> > 
> >  Can you give an example of "truth in the programming" and how it 
> differs from the mathematical idea of true and the correspondence theory of 
> truth? 
> > 
> >  Brent 
> > 
> >  Truth in programming follows the Brouwerian concept of truth: 
> >  [ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/brouwer/ ] 
> > 
> >  There is no determinant of mathematical truth outside the activity of 
> thinking; a proposition only becomes true when the subject has experienced 
> its truth (by having carried out an appropriate 
> >  mental construction); similarly, a proposition only becomes false when 
> the subject has experienced its falsehood (by realizing that an appropriate 
> mental construction is not possible). 
> > 
> >  There is no determinant of mathematical truth outside the activity of 
> computing; a proposition only becomes true when the program has produced 
> its truth (by having carried out an 
> >  appropriate computational construction); similarly, a proposition only 
> becomes false when the program has produced its falsehood (by computing 
> that an appropriate computational construction is 
> >  not possible). 
> > 
> >  I didn't ask for examples of circular definitions. 
> > 
> >  Brent 
> > 
> >  In what sense is type theory circular logic? 
> > 
> >  First, I didn't ask for a logic, I asked for examples to the different 
> ideas of truth. Instead you provided some assertions about "where truth is 
> determined" and about becoming true...which were circular. 
> > 
> >  "a proposition only becomes true when the subject has experienced its 
> truth" 
> > 
> >  " a proposition only becomes true when the program has produced its 
> truth" 
> > 
> >  Third, neither your post nor the article on Brouwer said anything about 
> type theory. 
> >  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/type-theory-intuitionistic/ 
> > 
> >  Brent 
> > 
> > The simple way to put it: 
> > 
> > Write a Lisp program p. 
> > 
> > If p returns nil, pi is false. 
> > 
> > If p returns anything else, p is true. 
> > 
> > That's all you need to know about truth. 
>
> You have it all wrong. 
>
> "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," -- that is all 
> Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. 
> -- 
> Mark Buda > 
> I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free 
>


One of the best-selling popular science books of 2018 is "Lost in Math" by 
Sabine Hossenfelder. In Germany, the title is “Das Hässliche Universum” 
(The Ugly Universe).

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/ @skdh 

The claim: The belief that "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" has caused 
theoretical physics to stagnate.

- pt


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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-05 Thread agrayson2000



On Wednesday, December 5, 2018 at 4:19:12 PM UTC, agrays...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>
> On Monday, December 3, 2018 at 3:37:13 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 2 Dec 2018, at 21:25, Philip Thrift  wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sunday, December 2, 2018 at 2:02:43 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/2/2018 4:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 30 Nov 2018, at 19:22, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 11/30/2018 1:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Perspectivism is a form of modalism.
>>>
>>>
>>> Nietzsche is vindicated.
>>>
>>>
>>> Interesting. If you elaborate, you might change my mind on Nietzche, 
>>> perhaps!
>>> All what I say is very close the Neoplatonism and Negative Theology 
>>> (capable only of saying what God is not).
>>>
>>> Bruno
>>>
>>>
>>> From  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/
>>> 6.2 Perspectivism
>>>
>>> Much of Nietzsche’s reaction to the theoretical philosophy of his 
>>> predecessors is mediated through his interest in the notion of perspective. 
>>> He thought that past philosophers had largely ignored the influence of 
>>> their own perspectives on their work, and had therefore failed to control 
>>> those perspectival effects (*BGE* 6; see *BGE* I more generally). 
>>> Commentators have been both fascinated and perplexed by what has come to be 
>>> called Nietzsche’s “perspectivism”, and it has been a major concern in a 
>>> number of large-scale Nietzsche commentaries (see, e.g., Danto 1965; 
>>> Kaulbach 1980, 1990; Schacht 1983; Abel 1984; Nehamas 1985; Clark 1990; 
>>> Poellner 1995; Richardson 1996; Benne 2005). There has been as much 
>>> contestation over exactly what doctrine or group of commitments belong 
>>> under that heading as about their philosophical merits, but a few points 
>>> are relatively uncontroversial and can provide a useful way into this 
>>> strand of Nietzsche’s thinking.
>>>
>>> Nietzsche’s appeals to the notion of perspective (or, equivalently in 
>>> his usage, to an “optics” of knowledge) have a positive, as well as a 
>>> critical side. Nietzsche frequently criticizes “dogmatic” philosophers for 
>>> ignoring the perspectival limitations on their theorizing, but as we saw, 
>>> he simultaneously holds that the operation of perspective makes a positive 
>>> contribution to our cognitive endeavors: speaking of (what he takes to be) 
>>> the perversely counterintuitive doctrines of some past philosophers, he 
>>> writes,
>>>
>>> Particularly as knowers, let us not be ungrateful toward such resolute 
>>> reversals of the familiar perspectives and valuations with which the spirit 
>>> has raged against itself all too long… : to see differently in this way for 
>>> once, *to want* to see differently, is no small discipline and 
>>> preparation of the intellect for its future “objectivity”—the latter 
>>> understood not as “disinterested contemplation” (which is a non-concept and 
>>> absurdity), but rather as the capacity to have one’s Pro and Contra *in 
>>> one’s power*, and to shift them in and out, so that one knows how to 
>>> make precisely the *difference* in perspectives and affective 
>>> interpretations useful for knowledge. (*GM* III, 12)
>>>
>>> This famous passage bluntly rejects the idea, dominant in philosophy at 
>>> least since Plato, that knowledge essentially involves a form of 
>>> objectivity that penetrates behind all subjective appearances to reveal the 
>>> way things really are, independently of any point of view whatsoever. 
>>> Instead, the proposal is to approach “objectivity” (in a revised 
>>> conception) asymptotically, by exploiting the difference between one 
>>> perspective and another, using each to overcome the limitations of others, 
>>> without assuming that anything like a “view from nowhere” is so much as 
>>> possible. There is of course an implicit criticism of the traditional 
>>> picture of a-perspectival objectivity here, but there is equally a positive 
>>> set of recommendations about how to pursue knowledge as a finite, limited 
>>> cognitive agent.
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks. But I do not oppose perspectivism with Plato, and certainly not 
>>> with neoplatonism, which explains everything from the many perspective of 
>>> the One, or at least can be interpreted that way.
>>>
>>> Pure perspectivism is an extreme position which leads to pure 
>>> relativism, which does not make sense, as we can only doubt starting from 
>>> indubitable things (cf Descartes). But Nietzsche might have been OK, as the 
>>> text above suggested a “revised conception” of objective. 
>>>
>>> With mechanism, you have an ablate truth (the sigma_1 arithmetical 
>>> truth), and the rest is explained by the perspective enforced by 
>>> incompleteness.
>>>
>>>
>>> My reading of Nietzsche is he thought that there are many different 
>>> perspectives and one can only approach the truth by looking from different 
>>> perspectives but never taking one of them as definitive.  This goes along 
>>> with his denial

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-05 Thread agrayson2000



On Monday, December 3, 2018 at 3:37:13 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 2 Dec 2018, at 21:25, Philip Thrift > 
> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sunday, December 2, 2018 at 2:02:43 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 12/2/2018 4:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 30 Nov 2018, at 19:22, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 11/30/2018 1:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> Perspectivism is a form of modalism.
>>
>>
>> Nietzsche is vindicated.
>>
>>
>> Interesting. If you elaborate, you might change my mind on Nietzche, 
>> perhaps!
>> All what I say is very close the Neoplatonism and Negative Theology 
>> (capable only of saying what God is not).
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>> From  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/
>> 6.2 Perspectivism
>>
>> Much of Nietzsche’s reaction to the theoretical philosophy of his 
>> predecessors is mediated through his interest in the notion of perspective. 
>> He thought that past philosophers had largely ignored the influence of 
>> their own perspectives on their work, and had therefore failed to control 
>> those perspectival effects (*BGE* 6; see *BGE* I more generally). 
>> Commentators have been both fascinated and perplexed by what has come to be 
>> called Nietzsche’s “perspectivism”, and it has been a major concern in a 
>> number of large-scale Nietzsche commentaries (see, e.g., Danto 1965; 
>> Kaulbach 1980, 1990; Schacht 1983; Abel 1984; Nehamas 1985; Clark 1990; 
>> Poellner 1995; Richardson 1996; Benne 2005). There has been as much 
>> contestation over exactly what doctrine or group of commitments belong 
>> under that heading as about their philosophical merits, but a few points 
>> are relatively uncontroversial and can provide a useful way into this 
>> strand of Nietzsche’s thinking.
>>
>> Nietzsche’s appeals to the notion of perspective (or, equivalently in his 
>> usage, to an “optics” of knowledge) have a positive, as well as a critical 
>> side. Nietzsche frequently criticizes “dogmatic” philosophers for ignoring 
>> the perspectival limitations on their theorizing, but as we saw, he 
>> simultaneously holds that the operation of perspective makes a positive 
>> contribution to our cognitive endeavors: speaking of (what he takes to be) 
>> the perversely counterintuitive doctrines of some past philosophers, he 
>> writes,
>>
>> Particularly as knowers, let us not be ungrateful toward such resolute 
>> reversals of the familiar perspectives and valuations with which the spirit 
>> has raged against itself all too long… : to see differently in this way for 
>> once, *to want* to see differently, is no small discipline and 
>> preparation of the intellect for its future “objectivity”—the latter 
>> understood not as “disinterested contemplation” (which is a non-concept and 
>> absurdity), but rather as the capacity to have one’s Pro and Contra *in 
>> one’s power*, and to shift them in and out, so that one knows how to 
>> make precisely the *difference* in perspectives and affective 
>> interpretations useful for knowledge. (*GM* III, 12)
>>
>> This famous passage bluntly rejects the idea, dominant in philosophy at 
>> least since Plato, that knowledge essentially involves a form of 
>> objectivity that penetrates behind all subjective appearances to reveal the 
>> way things really are, independently of any point of view whatsoever. 
>> Instead, the proposal is to approach “objectivity” (in a revised 
>> conception) asymptotically, by exploiting the difference between one 
>> perspective and another, using each to overcome the limitations of others, 
>> without assuming that anything like a “view from nowhere” is so much as 
>> possible. There is of course an implicit criticism of the traditional 
>> picture of a-perspectival objectivity here, but there is equally a positive 
>> set of recommendations about how to pursue knowledge as a finite, limited 
>> cognitive agent.
>>
>>
>> Thanks. But I do not oppose perspectivism with Plato, and certainly not 
>> with neoplatonism, which explains everything from the many perspective of 
>> the One, or at least can be interpreted that way.
>>
>> Pure perspectivism is an extreme position which leads to pure relativism, 
>> which does not make sense, as we can only doubt starting from indubitable 
>> things (cf Descartes). But Nietzsche might have been OK, as the text above 
>> suggested a “revised conception” of objective. 
>>
>> With mechanism, you have an ablate truth (the sigma_1 arithmetical 
>> truth), and the rest is explained by the perspective enforced by 
>> incompleteness.
>>
>>
>> My reading of Nietzsche is he thought that there are many different 
>> perspectives and one can only approach the truth by looking from different 
>> perspectives but never taking one of them as definitive.  This goes along 
>> with his denial and rejection of being a system builder.  I think he 
>> equated system builders with those who took their perspective to be the 
>> only one.
>>
>> Brent
>>
>
>
> Nietzsche  is famous

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-05 Thread Mark Buda

Philip Thrift  writes:

> On Tuesday, December 4, 2018 at 4:50:22 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>
>  On 12/4/2018 11:50 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>  On Tuesday, December 4, 2018 at 1:46:44 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: 
>
>  On 12/4/2018 12:06 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>  Can you give an example of "truth in the programming" and how it differs 
> from the mathematical idea of true and the correspondence theory of truth?
>
>  Brent
>
>  Truth in programming follows the Brouwerian concept of truth:
>  [ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/brouwer/ ]
>
>  There is no determinant of mathematical truth outside the activity of 
> thinking; a proposition only becomes true when the subject has experienced 
> its truth (by having carried out an appropriate
>  mental construction); similarly, a proposition only becomes false when the 
> subject has experienced its falsehood (by realizing that an appropriate 
> mental construction is not possible).
>
>  There is no determinant of mathematical truth outside the activity of 
> computing; a proposition only becomes true when the program has produced its 
> truth (by having carried out an
>  appropriate computational construction); similarly, a proposition only 
> becomes false when the program has produced its falsehood (by computing that 
> an appropriate computational construction is
>  not possible). 
>
>  I didn't ask for examples of circular definitions.
>
>  Brent
>
>  In what sense is type theory circular logic? 
>
>  First, I didn't ask for a logic, I asked for examples to the different ideas 
> of truth. Instead you provided some assertions about "where truth is 
> determined" and about becoming true...which were circular.
>
>  "a proposition only becomes true when the subject has experienced its truth"
>
>  " a proposition only becomes true when the program has produced its truth" 
>
>  Third, neither your post nor the article on Brouwer said anything about type 
> theory.
>  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/type-theory-intuitionistic/
>
>  Brent
>
> The simple way to put it:
>
> Write a Lisp program p.
>
> If p returns nil, pi is false.
>
> If p returns anything else, p is true.
>
> That's all you need to know about truth.

You have it all wrong.

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," -- that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
-- 
Mark Buda 
I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free

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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong



On Tuesday, December 4, 2018 at 10:40:36 PM UTC-6, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 4, 2018 at 4:50:22 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 12/4/2018 11:50 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, December 4, 2018 at 1:46:44 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: 
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/4/2018 12:06 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>>
>>> Can you give an example of "truth in the programming" and how it differs 
 from the mathematical idea of true and the correspondence theory of truth?

 Brent

>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Truth in programming follows the Brouwerian concept of truth:
>>> [ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/brouwer/ ]
>>>
>>>  
>>>
>>> *There is no determinant of mathematical truth outside the activity of 
>>> thinking; a proposition only becomes true when the subject has experienced 
>>> its truth (by having carried out an appropriate mental construction); 
>>> similarly, a proposition only becomes false when the subject has 
>>> experienced its falsehood (by realizing that an appropriate mental 
>>> construction is not possible).*
>>>
>>> *There is no determinant of mathematical truth outside the activity of 
>>> computing;* a proposition only becomes true when the program has 
>>> produced  its truth (by having carried out an appropriate computational 
>>> construction); similarly, a proposition only becomes false when the program 
>>> has produced its falsehood (by computing that an appropriate computational 
>>> construction is not possible). 
>>>
>>>
>>> I didn't ask for examples of circular definitions.
>>>
>>> Brent
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> In what sense is type theory circular logic? 
>>
>>
>> First, I didn't ask for a logic, I asked for examples to the different 
>> ideas of truth.  Instead you provided some assertions about "where truth is 
>> determined" and about becoming true...which were circular.
>>
>> "a proposition only becomes* true* when the subject has experienced its 
>> *truth*"
>>
>> " a proposition only becomes *true* when the program has produced  its 
>> *truth*" 
>>
>> Third, neither your post nor the article on Brouwer said anything about 
>> type theory.
>> https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/type-theory-intuitionistic/
>>
>> Brent
>>
>
>
> The simple way to put it:
>
>  Write a *Lisp* program *p*.
>
>  If *p* returns nil, pi is false.
>
 If *p* returns nil, *p* is false. 
  

>
>  If *p *returns anything else, *p* is true.
>
> That's all you need to know about truth.
>
> - pt
>

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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong




On Tuesday, December 4, 2018 at 4:50:22 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>
>
>
> On 12/4/2018 11:50 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 4, 2018 at 1:46:44 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: 
>>
>>
>>
>> On 12/4/2018 12:06 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>> Can you give an example of "truth in the programming" and how it differs 
>>> from the mathematical idea of true and the correspondence theory of truth?
>>>
>>> Brent
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Truth in programming follows the Brouwerian concept of truth:
>> [ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/brouwer/ ]
>>
>>  
>>
>> *There is no determinant of mathematical truth outside the activity of 
>> thinking; a proposition only becomes true when the subject has experienced 
>> its truth (by having carried out an appropriate mental construction); 
>> similarly, a proposition only becomes false when the subject has 
>> experienced its falsehood (by realizing that an appropriate mental 
>> construction is not possible).*
>>
>> *There is no determinant of mathematical truth outside the activity of 
>> computing;* a proposition only becomes true when the program has 
>> produced  its truth (by having carried out an appropriate computational 
>> construction); similarly, a proposition only becomes false when the program 
>> has produced its falsehood (by computing that an appropriate computational 
>> construction is not possible). 
>>
>>
>> I didn't ask for examples of circular definitions.
>>
>> Brent
>>
>
>
>
> In what sense is type theory circular logic? 
>
>
> First, I didn't ask for a logic, I asked for examples to the different 
> ideas of truth.  Instead you provided some assertions about "where truth is 
> determined" and about becoming true...which were circular.
>
> "a proposition only becomes* true* when the subject has experienced its 
> *truth*"
>
> " a proposition only becomes *true* when the program has produced  its 
> *truth*" 
>
> Third, neither your post nor the article on Brouwer said anything about 
> type theory.
> https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/type-theory-intuitionistic/
>
> Brent
>


The simple way to put it:

 Write a *Lisp* program *p*.

 If *p* returns nil, pi is false.

 If *p *returns anything else, *p* is true.

That's all you need to know about truth.

- pt

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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-04 Thread Brent Meeker




On 12/4/2018 11:50 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:



On Tuesday, December 4, 2018 at 1:46:44 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:



On 12/4/2018 12:06 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:


Can you give an example of "truth in the programming" and how
it differs from the mathematical idea of true and the
correspondence theory of truth?

Brent




Truth in programming follows the Brouwerian concept of truth:
[ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/brouwer/
 ]


/There is no determinant of mathematical truth outside the
activity of thinking; a proposition only becomes true when the
subject has experienced its truth (by having carried out an
appropriate mental construction); similarly, a proposition only
becomes false when the subject has experienced its falsehood (by
realizing that an appropriate mental construction is not possible)./

*There is no determinant of mathematical truth outside the
activity of computing;* a proposition only becomes true when the
program has produced  its truth (by having carried out an
appropriate computational construction); similarly, a proposition
only becomes false when the program has produced its falsehood
(by computing that an appropriate computational construction is
not possible).



I didn't ask for examples of circular definitions.

Brent




In what sense is type theory circular logic?


First, I didn't ask for a logic, I asked for examples to the different 
ideas of truth.  Instead you provided some assertions about "where truth 
is determined" and about becoming true...which were circular.


"a proposition only becomes*/true/* when the subject has experienced its 
*/truth/*"


" a proposition only becomes /*true*/ when the program has produced  its 
*/truth/*"


Third, neither your post nor the article on Brouwer said anything about 
type theory.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/type-theory-intuitionistic/

Brent

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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong



On Tuesday, December 4, 2018 at 1:46:44 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>
>
>
> On 12/4/2018 12:06 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
> Can you give an example of "truth in the programming" and how it differs 
>> from the mathematical idea of true and the correspondence theory of truth?
>>
>> Brent
>>
>
>
>
> Truth in programming follows the Brouwerian concept of truth:
> [ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/brouwer/ ]
>
>  
>
> *There is no determinant of mathematical truth outside the activity of 
> thinking; a proposition only becomes true when the subject has experienced 
> its truth (by having carried out an appropriate mental construction); 
> similarly, a proposition only becomes false when the subject has 
> experienced its falsehood (by realizing that an appropriate mental 
> construction is not possible).*
>
> *There is no determinant of mathematical truth outside the activity of 
> computing;* a proposition only becomes true when the program has 
> produced  its truth (by having carried out an appropriate computational 
> construction); similarly, a proposition only becomes false when the program 
> has produced its falsehood (by computing that an appropriate computational 
> construction is not possible). 
>
>
> I didn't ask for examples of circular definitions.
>
> Brent
>



In what sense is type theory circular logic? 

- pt

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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-04 Thread Brent Meeker




On 12/4/2018 12:06 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:


Can you give an example of "truth in the programming" and how it
differs from the mathematical idea of true and the correspondence
theory of truth?

Brent




Truth in programming follows the Brouwerian concept of truth:
[ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/brouwer/ ]


/There is no determinant of mathematical truth outside the activity of 
thinking; a proposition only becomes true when the subject has 
experienced its truth (by having carried out an appropriate mental 
construction); similarly, a proposition only becomes false when the 
subject has experienced its falsehood (by realizing that an 
appropriate mental construction is not possible)./


*There is no determinant of mathematical truth outside the activity of 
computing;* a proposition only becomes true when the program has 
produced  its truth (by having carried out an appropriate 
computational construction); similarly, a proposition only becomes 
false when the program has produced its falsehood (by computing that 
an appropriate computational construction is not possible).




I didn't ask for examples of circular definitions.

Brent

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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-04 Thread Bruno Marchal


> On 4 Dec 2018, at 09:06, Philip Thrift  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Monday, December 3, 2018 at 7:46:22 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
> 
> 
> On 12/3/2018 9:59 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>> But that is close to the solipsist move. The fact that we cannot define 
>> truth does not entail that some notion of truth does not make sense. In 
>> particular, Peano arithmetic can already define an infinity of approximation 
>> of truth, namely sigma_i and pi_i truth (the truth of the sentences will a 
>> finite and fixed number of quantifier, as opposed to finite sentences with 
>> an arbitrary finite number of quantifier).
>> 
>> We can invoke truth, but we can develop meta-discourse relating truth to 
>> theories, like we cannot invoke our own consciousness does not prevent us to 
>> try theories about it. 
>> It is a bit like “I cannot study my own brain”, but I can still infer some 
>> theories of my brain by looking at the brain of others and then assuming 
>> that I am not different.
> 
> So are do these theories produce true or false propositions?
> 
>> 
>> Bruno
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>  
>> A different perspective (!) of "truth" comes from - vs. PA (Peano 
>> arithmetic) - PLT (programming language theory - the legacy to a large 
>> extent of John C. Reynolds [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Reynolds 
>>  - who was originally a 
>> theoretical physicist ], and sort of in parallel the whole type-theory 
>> gang). Rather than an external "god-like" notion of truth, truth is in the 
>> programming.
>> 
>> - pt
>> 
>> 
> Can you give an example of "truth in the programming" and how it differs from 
> the mathematical idea of true and the correspondence theory of truth?
> 
> Brent
> 
> 
> 
> Truth in programming follows the Brouwerian concept of truth:
> [ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/brouwer/ ]

OK, that is the first person truth, captured by the []p & p variant of []p, 
allowed and imposed by incompleteness (we don’t have the provability of []p -> 
p, but of course (([]p & p) -> p).



> 
>  
> 
> There is no determinant of mathematical truth outside the activity of 
> thinking; a proposition only becomes true when the subject has experienced 
> its truth (by having carried out an appropriate mental construction); 
> similarly, a proposition only becomes false when the subject has experienced 
> its falsehood (by realizing that an appropriate mental construction is not 
> possible).
> 
> There is no determinant of mathematical truth outside the activity of 
> computing; a proposition only becomes true when the program has produced  its 
> truth (by having carried out an appropriate computational construction); 
> similarly, a proposition only becomes false when the program has produced its 
> falsehood (by computing that an appropriate computational construction is not 
> possible). 


Yes, []p & p is a bit solipsistic, like we all are from the exclusive first 
person point of view. That is good psychology, but bad metaphysics. Brouwer 
said once to his enthusiastic students “how can you appreciate a course given 
by someone who does not believe in your existence?”. Good question!

Bruno



> 
> - pt
> 
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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-04 Thread Bruno Marchal



> On 4 Dec 2018, at 03:30, Brent Meeker  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 12/3/2018 7:31 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>> On 2 Dec 2018, at 21:06, Brent Meeker  wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 12/2/2018 4:52 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
 Language have no relation with truth a priori. Theories might have. 
 Semantics are truth “by definition”, by relativising it to the notion of 
 model/reality.
 
>>> Then what is this "true" and "false" which you attribute to the 
>>> propositions of modal logic?
>> In  classical logic, truth is any object in a set of two objects, or it is 
>> the supremum in a Boolean algebra. In propositional logic a “world” is 
>> defined by any function from the set of atomic letters to {t, f}.
> 
> Right.  T and F are just formal markers in logic and the rules of inference 
> are supposed to preserve T.
> 
>> 
>> Then if the theory is “rich enough”, truth can be meta-defined by “satisfied 
>> by the structure (N, 0, s, +, *).
>> Of course, this presuppose the intuitive understanding of 2+2=4, etc.
>> 
>> In our case, as all modal formula are arithmetical formula, it is the usual 
>> informal mathematical notion just above (arithmetical truth, satisfaction by 
>> the usual standard model).
> 
> That's satisfaction relative to some particular axioms and rules of inference.

OK, but the modal logic just sum up purely arithmetical theorem.

For example the fact that G proves <>t -> ~[]<>t really means that PA (or any 
Löbian entity) proves

 consistent(’t’) -> ~beweisbar(‘consistent(’t’)),

And the fact that G proves []p -> [][]p means that for all arithmetical 
proposition p, PA proves

 beweisbar(‘p’) -> beweisbar(‘beweisbar(‘p’)’).

The modal logic are imposed mathematically. G is the logic of (provable) 
self-reference, like G* \ G gives the true non provable proposition. The fact 
that G* \ G proves <>[]f means that the consistency of inconsistency is true, 
and non provable by PA.

The entire theology, including physics, are constituted of true arithmetical 
formula.




> 
>> 
>> That one can be define by V(‘p’) means the same as p. It is Tarski’s idea 
>> that ‘p’ is true when p, or when it is the case that p. Like wise, to say 
>> Provable-and-true(p) we use []p & p.
> 
> That's the correspondence theory of truth, which is what ordinary discourse 
> and physics assume. 

Yes, except that with mechanism, the correspondence refers to the standard 
model of arithmetic (the non axiomatisable structure (N, 0, s, +, *). 



> So there are at least three kinds of "true”.

They all derive from the standard model of arithmetic, that is, the elementary 
notions we learn in high school, although we don’t call it that way. 




> To which we might add the Trump theory of truth, "If it makes me look good 
> it's true.”

Better to not add this one :)






> 
>> 
>> I recommend the book by Torkel Franzen “Inexhaustibility” for a more 
>> detailed explanation of the concept of truth.
> 
> I have the book but I haven't read it (so many books, so little time).

I understand. Its other book on the misuse of Gödel’s incompleteness is also 
very good, and simpler to read.

Bruno



> 
> Brent
> 
> 
>> 
>> We can come back, but I suggest to come back on this only when we need it, 
>> as this is an very rich and complex subject by itself.
>> 
>> Bruno
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> Brent
>>> 
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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-04 Thread Bruno Marchal


> On 4 Dec 2018, at 02:46, Brent Meeker  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 12/3/2018 9:59 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>> But that is close to the solipsist move. The fact that we cannot define 
>> truth does not entail that some notion of truth does not make sense. In 
>> particular, Peano arithmetic can already define an infinity of approximation 
>> of truth, namely sigma_i and pi_i truth (the truth of the sentences will a 
>> finite and fixed number of quantifier, as opposed to finite sentences with 
>> an arbitrary finite number of quantifier).
>> 
>> We can invoke truth, but we can develop meta-discourse relating truth to 
>> theories, like we cannot invoke our own consciousness does not prevent us to 
>> try theories about it. 
>> It is a bit like “I cannot study my own brain”, but I can still infer some 
>> theories of my brain by looking at the brain of others and then assuming 
>> that I am not different.
> 
> So are do these theories produce true or false propositions?

You quote me (Bruno), here.

You are the judge. In our (mechanist) case, this follows from elementary 
arithmetic.





> 
>> 
>> Bruno
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>  
>> A different perspective (!) of "truth" comes from - vs. PA (Peano 
>> arithmetic) - PLT (programming language theory - the legacy to a large 
>> extent of John C. Reynolds [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Reynolds 
>>  - who was originally a 
>> theoretical physicist ], and sort of in parallel the whole type-theory 
>> gang). Rather than an external "god-like" notion of truth, truth is in the 
>> programming.
>> 
>> - pt
>> 
>> 
> Can you give an example of "truth in the programming" and how it differs from 
> the mathematical idea of true and the correspondence theory of truth?


I let Philip Thrift answer this one. I use always Tarski’s theory 
(correspondence with respect to some model/reality assumed).

Bruno 



> 
> Brent
> 
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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong



On Monday, December 3, 2018 at 7:46:22 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>
>
>
> On 12/3/2018 9:59 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
> But that is close to the solipsist move. The fact that we cannot define 
>> truth does not entail that some notion of truth does not make sense. In 
>> particular, Peano arithmetic can already define an infinity of 
>> approximation of truth, namely sigma_i and pi_i truth (the truth of the 
>> sentences will a finite and fixed number of quantifier, as opposed to 
>> finite sentences with an arbitrary finite number of quantifier).
>>
>> We can invoke truth, but we can develop meta-discourse relating truth to 
>> theories, like we cannot invoke our own consciousness does not prevent us 
>> to try theories about it. 
>> It is a bit like “I cannot study my own brain”, but I can still infer 
>> some theories of my brain by looking at the brain of others and then 
>> assuming that I am not different.
>>
>
> So are do these theories produce true or false propositions?
>
>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>>
>  
> A different perspective (!) of "truth" comes from - vs. PA (Peano 
> arithmetic) - *PLT* (programming language theory - the legacy to a large 
> extent of John C. Reynolds [ 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Reynolds - who was originally a 
> theoretical physicist ], and sort of in parallel the whole type-theory 
> gang). Rather than an external "god-like" notion of truth, truth is in the 
> programming.
>
> - pt
>
>
> Can you give an example of "truth in the programming" and how it differs 
> from the mathematical idea of true and the correspondence theory of truth?
>
> Brent
>



Truth in programming follows the Brouwerian concept of truth:
[ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/brouwer/ ]

 

*There is no determinant of mathematical truth outside the activity of 
thinking; a proposition only becomes true when the subject has experienced 
its truth (by having carried out an appropriate mental construction); 
similarly, a proposition only becomes false when the subject has 
experienced its falsehood (by realizing that an appropriate mental 
construction is not possible).*

*There is no determinant of mathematical truth outside the activity of 
computing;* a proposition only becomes true when the program has produced  
its truth (by having carried out an appropriate computational 
construction); similarly, a proposition only becomes false when the program 
has produced its falsehood (by computing that an appropriate computational 
construction is not possible). 

- pt

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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-03 Thread Brent Meeker

On 12/3/2018 7:31 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 2 Dec 2018, at 21:06, Brent Meeker wrote:

On 12/2/2018 4:52 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Language have no relation with truth a priori. Theories might have. Semantics
are truth “by definition”, by relativising it to the notion of model/reality.

Then what is this "true" and "false" which you attribute to the propositions of
modal logic?

In classical logic, truth is any object in a set of two objects, or it is the
supremum in a Boolean algebra. In propositional logic a “world” is defined by
any function from the set of atomic letters to {t, f}.

Right. T and F are just formal markers in logic and the rules of
inference are supposed to preserve T.

Then if the theory is “rich enough”, truth can be meta-defined by “satisfied by
the structure (N, 0, s, +, *).
Of course, this presuppose the intuitive understanding of 2+2=4, etc.

In our case, as all modal formula are arithmetical formula, it is the usual
informal mathematical notion just above (arithmetical truth, satisfaction by
the usual standard model).

That's satisfaction relative to some particular axioms and rules of
inference.

That one can be define by V(‘p’) means the same as p. It is Tarski’s idea that ‘p’
is true when p, or when it is the case that p. Like wise, to say
Provable-and-true(p) we use []p & p.

That's the correspondence theory of truth, which is what ordinary
discourse and physics assume. So there are at least three kinds of
"true". To which we might add the Trump theory of truth, "If it makes me
look good it's true."

I recommend the book by Torkel Franzen “Inexhaustibility” for a more detailed
explanation of the concept of truth.

I have the book but I haven't read it (so many books, so little time).

Brent

We can come back, but I suggest to come back on this only when we need it, as
this is an very rich and complex subject by itself.

Bruno

Brent

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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-03 Thread Brent Meeker




On 12/3/2018 9:59 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:


But that is close to the solipsist move. The fact that we cannot
define truth does not entail that some notion of truth does not
make sense. In particular, Peano arithmetic can already define an
infinity of approximation of truth, namely sigma_i and pi_i truth
(the truth of the sentences will a finite and fixed number of
quantifier, as opposed to finite sentences with an arbitrary
finite number of quantifier).

We can invoke truth, but we can develop meta-discourse relating
truth to theories, like we cannot invoke our own consciousness
does not prevent us to try theories about it.
It is a bit like “I cannot study my own brain”, but I can still
infer some theories of my brain by looking at the brain of others
and then assuming that I am not different.



So are do these theories produce true or false propositions?



Bruno



A different perspective (!) of "truth" comes from - vs. PA (Peano 
arithmetic) - *PLT* (programming language theory - the legacy to a 
large extent of John C. Reynolds 
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Reynolds - who was originally 
a theoretical physicist ], and sort of in parallel the whole 
type-theory gang). Rather than an external "god-like" notion of truth, 
truth is in the programming.


- pt


Can you give an example of "truth in the programming" and how it differs 
from the mathematical idea of true and the correspondence theory of truth?


Brent

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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-03 Thread Philip Thrift



On Monday, December 3, 2018 at 11:59:21 AM UTC-6, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
>
>
> On Monday, December 3, 2018 at 9:12:54 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 2 Dec 2018, at 14:45, Philip Thrift  wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sunday, December 2, 2018 at 6:52:38 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 30 Nov 2018, at 17:44, Philip Thrift  wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Friday, November 30, 2018 at 6:39:19 AM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
>>> wrote:



 On Friday, November 30, 2018 at 9:13:29 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
>
> *This may be a simplistic pov, but since there was IMO no Original 
> Sin, there was no need for a Sacrifice for its forgiveness. Under this 
> view, Christianity is overwhelmingly an illusion. And since Theology 
> seems 
> to be primarily an extended argument about the historical history and 
> truths about Christianity, it too is essentially worthless; an extended 
> wrangling over nothing. AG *
>
>
> That comes from the 1500 years of brainwashing. I use theology in the 
> sense of Plato, not the Gospel. Only atheists believe in JC, 
>

 *Really? It seems you never met any Christians on a personal level. If 
 you did, you'd see how uninformed you are. AG*
  

> except for the TV evangelist, which are arguably con men.
> That was the goal of the Christian after 529. To make us forget that 
> the original question of the greeks was about the existence of a 
> (primary) 
> physical universe. God exist by definition: it is, by definition, the 
> truth 
> we intuit to be larger than ourselves.
>

 *I really doubt the question about the nature of matter has been 
 forgotten. AG *

>
>
>
>>>
>>> There is no truth outside of language, and matter's just another word 
>>> for nothing left to lose.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Language have no relation with truth a priori. Theories might have. 
>>> Semantics are truth “by definition”, by relativising it to the notion of 
>>> model/reality.
>>>
>>> Bruno
>>>
>>>
>>  
>>
>> *Rorty* is right, I think: Better not to use the word "truth" at all.
>>
>>
>> In any argument, we cannot invoke “truth", nor “real”, nor “god” etc. All 
>> this for the same basic reason which is justified in the Mechanist theory 
>> by their provable non definability (à-la Tarski).
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> It's just "justification". Or "judgment" (a type-theoretic term).
>>
>>
>> But that is close to the solipsist move. The fact that we cannot define 
>> truth does not entail that some notion of truth does not make sense. In 
>> particular, Peano arithmetic can already define an infinity of 
>> approximation of truth, namely sigma_i and pi_i truth (the truth of the 
>> sentences will a finite and fixed number of quantifier, as opposed to 
>> finite sentences with an arbitrary finite number of quantifier).
>>
>> We can invoke truth, but we can develop meta-discourse relating truth to 
>> theories, like we cannot invoke our own consciousness does not prevent us 
>> to try theories about it. 
>> It is a bit like “I cannot study my own brain”, but I can still infer 
>> some theories of my brain by looking at the brain of others and then 
>> assuming that I am not different.
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>>
>  
> A different perspective (!) of "truth" comes from - vs. PA (Peano 
> arithmetic) - *PLT* (programming language theory - the legacy to a large 
> extent of John C. Reynolds [ 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Reynolds - who was originally a 
> theoretical physicist ], and sort of in parallel the whole type-theory 
> gang). Rather than an external "god-like" notion of truth, truth is in the 
> programming.
>
> - pt
>
>
>
I should also mention (in addition to John Reynolds) Peter Landin 
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Landin ] (who looked a lot like 
Richard Deacon [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Deacon_(actor)  - *The 
Dick Van Dyke Show*, *Leave It To Beaver* ].


- pt

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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

2018-12-03 Thread Philip Thrift



On Monday, December 3, 2018 at 9:12:54 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 2 Dec 2018, at 14:45, Philip Thrift > 
> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sunday, December 2, 2018 at 6:52:38 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 30 Nov 2018, at 17:44, Philip Thrift  wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Friday, November 30, 2018 at 6:39:19 AM UTC-6, agrays...@gmail.com 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Friday, November 30, 2018 at 9:13:29 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:



 *This may be a simplistic pov, but since there was IMO no Original Sin, 
 there was no need for a Sacrifice for its forgiveness. Under this view, 
 Christianity is overwhelmingly an illusion. And since Theology seems to be 
 primarily an extended argument about the historical history and truths 
 about Christianity, it too is essentially worthless; an extended wrangling 
 over nothing. AG *


 That comes from the 1500 years of brainwashing. I use theology in the 
 sense of Plato, not the Gospel. Only atheists believe in JC, 

>>>
>>> *Really? It seems you never met any Christians on a personal level. If 
>>> you did, you'd see how uninformed you are. AG*
>>>  
>>>
 except for the TV evangelist, which are arguably con men.
 That was the goal of the Christian after 529. To make us forget that 
 the original question of the greeks was about the existence of a (primary) 
 physical universe. God exist by definition: it is, by definition, the 
 truth 
 we intuit to be larger than ourselves.

>>>
>>> *I really doubt the question about the nature of matter has been 
>>> forgotten. AG *
>>>



>>
>> There is no truth outside of language, and matter's just another word for 
>> nothing left to lose.
>>
>>
>>
>> Language have no relation with truth a priori. Theories might have. 
>> Semantics are truth “by definition”, by relativising it to the notion of 
>> model/reality.
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>  
>
> *Rorty* is right, I think: Better not to use the word "truth" at all.
>
>
> In any argument, we cannot invoke “truth", nor “real”, nor “god” etc. All 
> this for the same basic reason which is justified in the Mechanist theory 
> by their provable non definability (à-la Tarski).
>
>
>
>
>
> It's just "justification". Or "judgment" (a type-theoretic term).
>
>
> But that is close to the solipsist move. The fact that we cannot define 
> truth does not entail that some notion of truth does not make sense. In 
> particular, Peano arithmetic can already define an infinity of 
> approximation of truth, namely sigma_i and pi_i truth (the truth of the 
> sentences will a finite and fixed number of quantifier, as opposed to 
> finite sentences with an arbitrary finite number of quantifier).
>
> We can invoke truth, but we can develop meta-discourse relating truth to 
> theories, like we cannot invoke our own consciousness does not prevent us 
> to try theories about it. 
> It is a bit like “I cannot study my own brain”, but I can still infer some 
> theories of my brain by looking at the brain of others and then assuming 
> that I am not different.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
 
A different perspective (!) of "truth" comes from - vs. PA (Peano 
arithmetic) - *PLT* (programming language theory - the legacy to a large 
extent of John C. Reynolds [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Reynolds 
- who was originally a theoretical physicist ], and sort of in parallel the 
whole type-theory gang). Rather than an external "god-like" notion of 
truth, truth is in the programming.

- pt




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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong


> On 2 Dec 2018, at 21:41, agrayson2...@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Sunday, December 2, 2018 at 8:25:47 PM UTC, Philip Thrift wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sunday, December 2, 2018 at 2:02:43 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
> 
> 
> On 12/2/2018 4:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>>> On 30 Nov 2018, at 19:22, Brent Meeker > wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 11/30/2018 1:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>> Perspectivism is a form of modalism.
> 
> Nietzsche is vindicated.
 
 Interesting. If you elaborate, you might change my mind on Nietzche, 
 perhaps!
 All what I say is very close the Neoplatonism and Negative Theology 
 (capable only of saying what God is not).
 
 Bruno
>>> 
>>> From  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/ 
>>> 
>>> 6.2 Perspectivism
>>> 
>>> Much of Nietzsche’s reaction to the theoretical philosophy of his 
>>> predecessors is mediated through his interest in the notion of perspective. 
>>> He thought that past philosophers had largely ignored the influence of 
>>> their own perspectives on their work, and had therefore 
>>> failed to control those perspectival effects (BGE 6; see BGE I more 
>>> generally). Commentators have been both fascinated and 
>>> perplexed by what has come to be called Nietzsche’s “perspectivism”, and it 
>>> has been a major concern in a number of large-scale Nietzsche commentaries 
>>> (see, e.g., Danto 1965; Kaulbach 1980, 1990; Schacht 1983; Abel 1984; 
>>> Nehamas 1985; Clark 1990; Poellner 1995; Richardson 1996; Benne 2005). 
>>> There has been as much contestation over exactly what doctrine or group of 
>>> commitments belong under that heading as about their philosophical merits, 
>>> but a few points are relatively uncontroversial and can provide a useful 
>>> way into this strand of Nietzsche’s thinking.
>>> 
>>> Nietzsche’s appeals to the notion of perspective (or, equivalently in his 
>>> usage, to an “optics” of knowledge) have a positive, as well as a critical 
>>> side. Nietzsche frequently criticizes “dogmatic” philosophers for ignoring 
>>> the perspectival limitations on their theorizing, but as we saw, he 
>>> simultaneously holds that the operation of perspective makes a positive 
>>> contribution to our cognitive endeavors: speaking of (what he takes to be) 
>>> the perversely counterintuitive doctrines of some past philosophers, he 
>>> writes,
>>> 
>>> Particularly as knowers, let us not be ungrateful toward such resolute 
>>> reversals of the familiar perspectives and valuations with which the spirit 
>>> has raged against itself all too long… : to see differently in this way for 
>>> once, to want to see differently, is no small discipline and preparation of 
>>> the intellect for its future “objectivity”—the latter understood not as 
>>> “disinterested contemplation” (which is a non-concept and absurdity), but 
>>> rather as the capacity to have one’s Pro and Contra in one’s power, and to 
>>> shift them in and out, so that one knows how to make precisely the 
>>> difference in perspectives and affective interpretations useful for 
>>> knowledge. (GM III, 12)
>>> 
>>> This famous passage bluntly rejects the idea, dominant in philosophy at 
>>> least since Plato, that knowledge essentially involves a form of 
>>> objectivity that penetrates behind all subjective appearances to reveal the 
>>> way things really are, independently of any point of view whatsoever. 
>>> Instead, the proposal is to approach “objectivity” (in a revised 
>>> conception) asymptotically, by exploiting the difference between one 
>>> perspective and another, using each to overcome the limitations of others, 
>>> without assuming that anything like a “view from nowhere” is so much as 
>>> possible. There is of course an implicit criticism of the traditional 
>>> picture of a-perspectival objectivity here, but there is equally a positive 
>>> set of recommendations about how to pursue knowledge as a finite, limited 
>>> cognitive agent.
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> Thanks. But I do not oppose perspectivism with Plato, and certainly not with 
>> neoplatonism, which explains everything from the many perspective of the 
>> One, or at least can be interpreted that way.
>> 
>> Pure perspectivism is an extreme position which leads to pure relativism, 
>> which does not make sense, as we can only doubt starting from indubitable 
>> things (cf Descartes). But Nietzsche might have been OK, as the text above 
>> suggested a “revised conception” of objective. 
>> 
>> With mechanism, you have an ablate truth (the sigma_1 arithmetical truth), 
>> and the rest is explained by the perspective enforced by incompleteness.
> 
> My reading of Nietzsche is he thought that there are many different 
> perspectives and one can only approach the truth by looking from different 
> perspectives but never taking one of them as definitive.  This goes along 
> with his denial and rejection of being a

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong


> On 2 Dec 2018, at 21:25, Philip Thrift  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Sunday, December 2, 2018 at 2:02:43 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
> 
> 
> On 12/2/2018 4:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>>> On 30 Nov 2018, at 19:22, Brent Meeker > 
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 11/30/2018 1:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>> Perspectivism is a form of modalism.
> 
> Nietzsche is vindicated.
 
 Interesting. If you elaborate, you might change my mind on Nietzche, 
 perhaps!
 All what I say is very close the Neoplatonism and Negative Theology 
 (capable only of saying what God is not).
 
 Bruno
>>> 
>>> From  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/ 
>>> 
>>> 6.2 Perspectivism
>>> 
>>> Much of Nietzsche’s reaction to the theoretical philosophy of his 
>>> predecessors is mediated through his interest in the notion of perspective. 
>>> He thought that past philosophers had largely ignored the influence of 
>>> their own perspectives on their work, and had therefore failed to control 
>>> those perspectival effects (BGE 6; see BGE I more generally). Commentators 
>>> have been both fascinated and perplexed by what has come to be called 
>>> Nietzsche’s “perspectivism”, and it has been a major concern in a number of 
>>> large-scale Nietzsche commentaries (see, e.g., Danto 1965; Kaulbach 1980, 
>>> 1990; Schacht 1983; Abel 1984; Nehamas 1985; Clark 1990; Poellner 1995; 
>>> Richardson 1996; Benne 2005). There has been as much contestation over 
>>> exactly what doctrine or group of commitments belong under that heading as 
>>> about their philosophical merits, but a few points are relatively 
>>> uncontroversial and can provide a useful way into this strand of 
>>> Nietzsche’s thinking.
>>> 
>>> Nietzsche’s appeals to the notion of perspective (or, equivalently in his 
>>> usage, to an “optics” of knowledge) have a positive, as well as a critical 
>>> side. Nietzsche frequently criticizes “dogmatic” philosophers for ignoring 
>>> the perspectival limitations on their theorizing, but as we saw, he 
>>> simultaneously holds that the operation of perspective makes a positive 
>>> contribution to our cognitive endeavors: speaking of (what he takes to be) 
>>> the perversely counterintuitive doctrines of some past philosophers, he 
>>> writes,
>>> 
>>> Particularly as knowers, let us not be ungrateful toward such resolute 
>>> reversals of the familiar perspectives and valuations with which the spirit 
>>> has raged against itself all too long… : to see differently in this way for 
>>> once, to want to see differently, is no small discipline and preparation of 
>>> the intellect for its future “objectivity”—the latter understood not as 
>>> “disinterested contemplation” (which is a non-concept and absurdity), but 
>>> rather as the capacity to have one’s Pro and Contra in one’s power, and to 
>>> shift them in and out, so that one knows how to make precisely the 
>>> difference in perspectives and affective interpretations useful for 
>>> knowledge. (GM III, 12)
>>> 
>>> This famous passage bluntly rejects the idea, dominant in philosophy at 
>>> least since Plato, that knowledge essentially involves a form of 
>>> objectivity that penetrates behind all subjective appearances to reveal the 
>>> way things really are, independently of any point of view whatsoever. 
>>> Instead, the proposal is to approach “objectivity” (in a revised 
>>> conception) asymptotically, by exploiting the difference between one 
>>> perspective and another, using each to overcome the limitations of others, 
>>> without assuming that anything like a “view from nowhere” is so much as 
>>> possible. There is of course an implicit criticism of the traditional 
>>> picture of a-perspectival objectivity here, but there is equally a positive 
>>> set of recommendations about how to pursue knowledge as a finite, limited 
>>> cognitive agent.
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> Thanks. But I do not oppose perspectivism with Plato, and certainly not with 
>> neoplatonism, which explains everything from the many perspective of the 
>> One, or at least can be interpreted that way.
>> 
>> Pure perspectivism is an extreme position which leads to pure relativism, 
>> which does not make sense, as we can only doubt starting from indubitable 
>> things (cf Descartes). But Nietzsche might have been OK, as the text above 
>> suggested a “revised conception” of objective. 
>> 
>> With mechanism, you have an ablate truth (the sigma_1 arithmetical truth), 
>> and the rest is explained by the perspective enforced by incompleteness.
> 
> My reading of Nietzsche is he thought that there are many different 
> perspectives and one can only approach the truth by looking from different 
> perspectives but never taking one of them as definitive.  This goes along 
> with his denial and rejection of being a system builder.  I think he equated 
> system builders with those who took their perspective to be the only

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong

> On 2 Dec 2018, at 21:06, Brent Meeker  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 12/2/2018 4:52 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>> Language have no relation with truth a priori. Theories might have. 
>> Semantics are truth “by definition”, by relativising it to the notion of 
>> model/reality.
>> 
> 
> Then what is this "true" and "false" which you attribute to the propositions 
> of modal logic?

In  classical logic, truth is any object in a set of two objects, or it is the 
supremum in a Boolean algebra. In propositional logic a “world” is defined by 
any function from the set of atomic letters to {t, f}. 

Then if the theory is “rich enough”, truth can be meta-defined by “satisfied by 
the structure (N, 0, s, +, *). 
Of course, this presuppose the intuitive understanding of 2+2=4, etc.

In our case, as all modal formula are arithmetical formula, it is the usual 
informal mathematical notion just above (arithmetical truth, satisfaction by 
the usual standard model).

That one can be define by V(‘p’) means the same as p. It is Tarski’s idea that 
‘p’ is true when p, or when it is the case that p. Like wise, to say 
Provable-and-true(p) we use []p & p.

I recommend the book by Torkel Franzen “Inexhaustibility” for a more detailed 
explanation of the concept of truth.

We can come back, but I suggest to come back on this only when we need it, as 
this is an very rich and complex subject by itself.

Bruno

> 
> Brent
> 
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Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong


> On 2 Dec 2018, at 21:02, Brent Meeker  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 12/2/2018 4:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>>> On 30 Nov 2018, at 19:22, Brent Meeker >> > wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 11/30/2018 1:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> 
>> Perspectivism is a form of modalism.
> 
> Nietzsche is vindicated.
 
 Interesting. If you elaborate, you might change my mind on Nietzche, 
 perhaps!
 All what I say is very close the Neoplatonism and Negative Theology 
 (capable only of saying what God is not).
 
 Bruno
>>> 
>>> From  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/ 
>>> 
>>> 6.2 Perspectivism
>>> 
>>> Much of Nietzsche’s reaction to the theoretical philosophy of his 
>>> predecessors is mediated through his interest in the notion of perspective. 
>>> He thought that past philosophers had largely ignored the influence of 
>>> their own perspectives on their work, and had therefore failed to control 
>>> those perspectival effects (BGE 6; see BGE I more generally). Commentators 
>>> have been both fascinated and perplexed by what has come to be called 
>>> Nietzsche’s “perspectivism”, and it has been a major concern in a number of 
>>> large-scale Nietzsche commentaries (see, e.g., Danto 1965; Kaulbach 1980, 
>>> 1990; Schacht 1983; Abel 1984; Nehamas 1985; Clark 1990; Poellner 1995; 
>>> Richardson 1996; Benne 2005). There has been as much contestation over 
>>> exactly what doctrine or group of commitments belong under that heading as 
>>> about their philosophical merits, but a few points are relatively 
>>> uncontroversial and can provide a useful way into this strand of 
>>> Nietzsche’s thinking.
>>> 
>>> Nietzsche’s appeals to the notion of perspective (or, equivalently in his 
>>> usage, to an “optics” of knowledge) have a positive, as well as a critical 
>>> side. Nietzsche frequently criticizes “dogmatic” philosophers for ignoring 
>>> the perspectival limitations on their theorizing, but as we saw, he 
>>> simultaneously holds that the operation of perspective makes a positive 
>>> contribution to our cognitive endeavors: speaking of (what he takes to be) 
>>> the perversely counterintuitive doctrines of some past philosophers, he 
>>> writes,
>>> 
>>> Particularly as knowers, let us not be ungrateful toward such resolute 
>>> reversals of the familiar perspectives and valuations with which the spirit 
>>> has raged against itself all too long… : to see differently in this way for 
>>> once, to want to see differently, is no small discipline and preparation of 
>>> the intellect for its future “objectivity”—the latter understood not as 
>>> “disinterested contemplation” (which is a non-concept and absurdity), but 
>>> rather as the capacity to have one’s Pro and Contra in one’s power, and to 
>>> shift them in and out, so that one knows how to make precisely the 
>>> difference in perspectives and affective interpretations useful for 
>>> knowledge. (GM III, 12)
>>> 
>>> This famous passage bluntly rejects the idea, dominant in philosophy at 
>>> least since Plato, that knowledge essentially involves a form of 
>>> objectivity that penetrates behind all subjective appearances to reveal the 
>>> way things really are, independently of any point of view whatsoever. 
>>> Instead, the proposal is to approach “objectivity” (in a revised 
>>> conception) asymptotically, by exploiting the difference between one 
>>> perspective and another, using each to overcome the limitations of others, 
>>> without assuming that anything like a “view from nowhere” is so much as 
>>> possible. There is of course an implicit criticism of the traditional 
>>> picture of a-perspectival objectivity here, but there is equally a positive 
>>> set of recommendations about how to pursue knowledge as a finite, limited 
>>> cognitive agent.
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> Thanks. But I do not oppose perspectivism with Plato, and certainly not with 
>> neoplatonism, which explains everything from the many perspective of the 
>> One, or at least can be interpreted that way.
>> 
>> Pure perspectivism is an extreme position which leads to pure relativism, 
>> which does not make sense, as we can only doubt starting from indubitable 
>> things (cf Descartes). But Nietzsche might have been OK, as the text above 
>> suggested a “revised conception” of objective. 
>> 
>> With mechanism, you have an ablate truth (the sigma_1 arithmetical truth), 
>> and the rest is explained by the perspective enforced by incompleteness.
> 
> My reading of Nietzsche is he thought that there are many different 
> perspectives and one can only approach the truth by looking from different 
> perspectives but never taking one of them as definitive.  This goes along 
> with his denial and rejection of being a system builder.  I think he equated 
> system builders with those who took their perspective to be the only one.

Yes, when we built theories of

Re: Where Max Tegmark is really wrong