Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
On 13/07/07, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Brent, all that David is getting at is saying nothing reflexively exists without being observed. Observed in what sense? Consciously, by a conscious being? Or decoherred into a quasi-classical state, as in QM? Reflexive would seem to imply it's observed by itself. No, it's not meant to imply that it's 'observed' by itself: rather just that it *is* itself, which is what I think you meant by 'existence simpliciter'. Another term might be instantiation. In qualifying existence by the term 'reflexive', my point was just that, when we originally entertain the idea of something 'existing' or not, we temporarily *abstract* a more tentative sense of 'existence' from any possible instantiation. The abstraction is then 'non-reflexive': it no longer refers to itself, but rather putatively to a referent from which it has (or could have) been abstracted. The danger is that such abstraction may be the very act that seems to rob it of something that is in fact the brute characteristic of instantiation. The argument from 'the One' is that its (and derivatively, any) self-awareness and consciousness derive ultimately from brute, or reflexive, self-access, and hence can't be understood independent of such instantiation. The 'deletion' of these aspects in the specification Torgny makes for the B-Universe can then be seen as precisely characteristic of the abstracted sense of 'existence' - i.e. the free-standing (i.e. non-reflexive) idea - but as making no sense in the context of reflexive instantiation. This doesn't in itself constitute any argument for materialism, because the 'instantiation' could be in terms of any 'possible' world from the plenitude of such, all of which, in this formulation, derive from the One. But my point is that, if a 'world' is arbitrarily specified as not possessing the brute 'reflexive' characteristic of instantiation, then this may just be because such a 'world' is in fact merely the kind of abstraction that is - by this very token - incapable of such instantiation, and hence not 'possible' either. The term I used to attempt to convey the brute characteristic of instantiation was 'reflexivity', in the sense of primitive self-reference or self-access. 'Observation' by contrast has the sense of a complex derivative of this brute characteristic in which various emergent entities are placed in certain kinds of relation *to each other*. Russell's sense of 'reflexive' vis-a-vis observation may indeed also be a useful one, but it's not in fact the point I was making. David Russell Standish wrote: On Tue, Jul 10, 2007 at 04:28:51PM -0700, Brent Meeker wrote: I don't see that relexive adding anything here. It's just existence simpliciter isn't it? Brent, all that David is getting at is saying nothing reflexively exists without being observed. Observed in what sense? Consciously, by a conscious being? Or decoherred into a quasi-classical state, as in QM? Reflexive would seem to imply it's observed by itself. Brent Meeker The tree falling unobserved in the forest does not exist reflexively, but may exist in other senses of the word. It seems quite a useful concept - I may have called it anthropic existence elsewhere, but it doesn't seem to have an accepted name. Cheers --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Asifism revisited.
Brent Meeker skrev: Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 09-juil.-07, 17:41, Torgny Tholerus a crit : ... Our universe is the result of some set of rules. The interesting thing is to discover the specific rules that span our universe. Assuming comp, I don't find plausible that "our universe" can be the result of some set of rules. Even without comp the "arithmetical universe" or arithmetical truth (the "ONE" attached to the little Peano Arithmetic Lobian machine) cannot be described by finite set of rules. But it can be "the result of" a finite set of rules. Arithmetic results from Peano's axioms, but a complete description of arithmetic is impossible. That is exactly what I wanted to say. You don't need to have a complete description of arithmetic. Our universe can be described by doing a number of computations from a finite set of rules. (To get to the current view of our universe you have to do about 10**60 computations for every point of space...) -- Torgny --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Asifism revisited.
Le 12-juil.-07, à 18:43, Brent Meeker a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 09-juil.-07, à 17:41, Torgny Tholerus a écrit : ... Our universe is the result of some set of rules. The interesting thing is to discover the specific rules that span our universe. Assuming comp, I don't find plausible that our universe can be the result of some set of rules. Even without comp the arithmetical universe or arithmetical truth (the ONE attached to the little Peano Arithmetic Lobian machine) cannot be described by finite set of rules. But it can be the result of a finite set of rules. Arithmetic results from Peano's axioms, but a complete description of arithmetic is impossible. I don't understand. Let us define ARITHMETIC (big case) by the set of true (first order logical) arithmetical sentences. (like prime number exist, Let us define arithmetic (lower case) by the set of provable (first order logical) arithmetical sentences, where provable means provable by some sound lobian machine. By incompleteness, whatever sound machine you consisder the corresponding arithmetic is always a proper subset of ARITHMETIC. So arithmetical truth (alias ARITHMETIC) cannot be described by any finite set of rules. Finite sets or rules can never generate the whole of arithmetical truth. OK? Bruno --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
Le 12-juil.-07, à 16:27, David Nyman a écrit : On 12/07/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I try to avoid the words like reflexive or reflection in informal talk, because it is a tricky technical terms I tend to agree with what Brent said. Yes, I ended up more or less agreeing with him myself. But I nevertheless feel, from their posts, that this is *not* what some people have in mind when they use the term 'exists'. existence is a very very tricky notion. In the theory I am proposing (actually I derived it from the comp principle) the most basic notion of exists is remarkably well formalize by first order arithmetical logic, like in Ex(prime(x)): it exists a prime number. All other notion of existence are modal variant: like B[Ex(prime(x))], or ExB(prime(x)); I believe there is a prime number, there is a number such that I believe that that number is prime, etc. Of course, in the lobian frame, B refers itself to an arithmetical predicate (the Beweisbar of Godel 1931). I'm afraid that sometimes you are near the 1004 fallacy. That may well be, but unfortunately I tend only to discover specific examples of this by trial and error. But having done so, I try to hold on to the discovery. OK. But of course your intuition grew perhaps from non comp or non lobian origin. That's definitely the case. OK. (except that you are perhaps lobian, just not knowing it). (I see now what could be the comp lobian observer moments, and will say more in a special purpose post. I look forward to it. Thanks. I will do that in august, if you don't mind; it asks for some work. It will be related to the content of my next paper, where I currently think I will use the observer moment notion (and refer to the list). Roughly speaking, I think that we have to consider first person and third person notion of OM. Nick Bostrom original one is clearly a notion of 1-OM. I can show that with comp there is a natural notion of 3-OM, which is just the (true) Sigma1 sentence. They correspond to the accessible states of the Universal Dovetailer, or to the theorem of a Robinsonian machine or universal machine. A universal machine (or person) get Lobian when she knows (in a technically rather weak sense) that she is universal. This makes it possible (well, even necessary) for the machine to distinguish the 3-OM with all possible 1-OM notion, and this can accelerate the derivation of the physical laws from numbers/machines relations. The new and key point is the identification of 3-OM directly with Sigma1 sentences. Coming back from Siena, I know now that all my work on Church thesis is more original than I thought (meaning: I have to publish more before even logician grasp the whole thing ...). You have a hard row to plough! The difficulty is the interdisciplinary overlap of quantum physics, mathematical logic and, perhaps the harder part: philosophy or mind/theology. Is us = to the lobian machine? I just meant observers in general, using myself as the model. and I've been trying to convince Torgny that we shouldn't fool ourselves into mistaking such conceptions for modes of existing. But each point of view (hypostasis) defines its own mode of existence. Now Plotinus restricts the notion of existence for the ideas (here: the effective objects which provably exist in Platonia). That is why both God and Matter does not really exist in Plotinus theory. Of course God and Matter do exist, even for Plotinus, but it is a different mode of existence. I'm frustrated that I don't seem to be able to communicate what I mean here (I don't know if this is an example of 1004 or not). I meant that just because we can imagine something in a gods' eye way doesn't (for me) entail that it exists in any other way - what I called (but I'll desist!) 'reflexively' (i.e. with reference to itself, or just: for itself), which Brent was content to call existence simpliciter. This intuition of course just begins with knowing that *I* exist for myself, which implies that others exist for themselves, which ultimately implies that everything exists for itself - 'the One' being the ultimate expression of this. I don't mean to equate 'exists for itself' with consciousness, but to say that consciousness emerges as a complex aspect of such self-relation. I'm convinced both that you know what I mean by this, and also that it can be expressed in the Lobian discourse (though not by me). Perhaps. The problem here is that I should explain technical things just to help you to figure out the complexity of the point you single out. To translate this in the lobian discourse is less easy than you think. More on this in august. 'The One' is also a mode of enquiry (no less tricky, of course): it seems to suggest that the mode of existing of both the qualia and the quanta may be ineliminably reflexive: the splintering of a singular process of
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
On 13/07/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I said in an earlier post that this amounted to a kind of solipsism of the One: IOW, the One would be justified in the view (if it had one!) that it was all that existed, and that everything was simply an aspect of itself. Yes, and this is where Aristotle and Plotinus differs the most (even more than Aristotle/Plato). Would the ONE have a pov, He/She/It would be solispsist. A sad thing for a God Sad indeed. Perhaps the One just has to differentiate to get some company. Anyway, the notion of the solipsism of the One essentially encapsulates the view I was trying to put forward from the inception of our dialogues on first person primacy. But since the One is not what most people would consider a person (let alone a god), another term would be better. I wonder what? David Le 12-juil.-07, à 16:27, David Nyman a écrit : On 12/07/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I try to avoid the words like reflexive or reflection in informal talk, because it is a tricky technical terms I tend to agree with what Brent said. Yes, I ended up more or less agreeing with him myself. But I nevertheless feel, from their posts, that this is *not* what some people have in mind when they use the term 'exists'. existence is a very very tricky notion. In the theory I am proposing (actually I derived it from the comp principle) the most basic notion of exists is remarkably well formalize by first order arithmetical logic, like in Ex(prime(x)): it exists a prime number. All other notion of existence are modal variant: like B[Ex(prime(x))], or ExB(prime(x)); I believe there is a prime number, there is a number such that I believe that that number is prime, etc. Of course, in the lobian frame, B refers itself to an arithmetical predicate (the Beweisbar of Godel 1931). I'm afraid that sometimes you are near the 1004 fallacy. That may well be, but unfortunately I tend only to discover specific examples of this by trial and error. But having done so, I try to hold on to the discovery. OK. But of course your intuition grew perhaps from non comp or non lobian origin. That's definitely the case. OK. (except that you are perhaps lobian, just not knowing it). (I see now what could be the comp lobian observer moments, and will say more in a special purpose post. I look forward to it. Thanks. I will do that in august, if you don't mind; it asks for some work. It will be related to the content of my next paper, where I currently think I will use the observer moment notion (and refer to the list). Roughly speaking, I think that we have to consider first person and third person notion of OM. Nick Bostrom original one is clearly a notion of 1-OM. I can show that with comp there is a natural notion of 3-OM, which is just the (true) Sigma1 sentence. They correspond to the accessible states of the Universal Dovetailer, or to the theorem of a Robinsonian machine or universal machine. A universal machine (or person) get Lobian when she knows (in a technically rather weak sense) that she is universal. This makes it possible (well, even necessary) for the machine to distinguish the 3-OM with all possible 1-OM notion, and this can accelerate the derivation of the physical laws from numbers/machines relations. The new and key point is the identification of 3-OM directly with Sigma1 sentences. Coming back from Siena, I know now that all my work on Church thesis is more original than I thought (meaning: I have to publish more before even logician grasp the whole thing ...). You have a hard row to plough! The difficulty is the interdisciplinary overlap of quantum physics, mathematical logic and, perhaps the harder part: philosophy or mind/theology. Is us = to the lobian machine? I just meant observers in general, using myself as the model. and I've been trying to convince Torgny that we shouldn't fool ourselves into mistaking such conceptions for modes of existing. But each point of view (hypostasis) defines its own mode of existence. Now Plotinus restricts the notion of existence for the ideas (here: the effective objects which provably exist in Platonia). That is why both God and Matter does not really exist in Plotinus theory. Of course God and Matter do exist, even for Plotinus, but it is a different mode of existence. I'm frustrated that I don't seem to be able to communicate what I mean here (I don't know if this is an example of 1004 or not). I meant that just because we can imagine something in a gods' eye way doesn't (for me) entail that it exists in any other way - what I called (but I'll desist!) 'reflexively' (i.e. with reference to itself, or just: for itself), which Brent was content to call existence simpliciter. This intuition of course just begins with knowing that *I* exist for
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
Le 13-juil.-07, à 17:02, David Nyman a écrit : But since the One is not what most people would consider a person (let alone a god), another term would be better. I wonder what? I think you are trying to give a name to what is unnameable (unless you are not lobian; even lobian non-machine cannot name it). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
On 13/07/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think you are trying to give a name to what is unnameable (unless you are not lobian; even lobian non-machine cannot name it). Perish the thought. But I was referring to 'first person primacy', not 'the One'. Maybe something like the 'primacy of the unnameable'? On the other hand Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen It doesn't seem to keep us quiet for long though :-) David Le 13-juil.-07, à 17:02, David Nyman a écrit : But since the One is not what most people would consider a person (let alone a god), another term would be better. I wonder what? I think you are trying to give a name to what is unnameable (unless you are not lobian; even lobian non-machine cannot name it). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Asifism revisited.
Torgny Tholerus wrote: Brent Meeker skrev: Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 09-juil.-07, à 17:41, Torgny Tholerus a écrit : ... Our universe is the result of some set of rules. The interesting thing is to discover the specific rules that span our universe. Assuming comp, I don't find plausible that our universe can be the result of some set of rules. Even without comp the arithmetical universe or arithmetical truth (the ONE attached to the little Peano Arithmetic Lobian machine) cannot be described by finite set of rules. But it can be the result of a finite set of rules. Arithmetic results from Peano's axioms, but a complete description of arithmetic is impossible. That is exactly what I wanted to say. You don't need to have a complete description of arithmetic. Our universe can be described by doing a number of computations from a finite set of rules. (To get to the current view of our universe you have to do about 10**60 computations for every point of space...) How did you arrive at that number? Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Asifism revisited.
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 12-juil.-07, à 18:43, Brent Meeker a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 09-juil.-07, à 17:41, Torgny Tholerus a écrit : ... Our universe is the result of some set of rules. The interesting thing is to discover the specific rules that span our universe. Assuming comp, I don't find plausible that our universe can be the result of some set of rules. Even without comp the arithmetical universe or arithmetical truth (the ONE attached to the little Peano Arithmetic Lobian machine) cannot be described by finite set of rules. But it can be the result of a finite set of rules. Arithmetic results from Peano's axioms, but a complete description of arithmetic is impossible. I don't understand. Let us define ARITHMETIC (big case) by the set of true (first order logical) arithmetical sentences. (like prime number exist, Let us define arithmetic (lower case) by the set of provable (first order logical) arithmetical sentences, where provable means provable by some sound lobian machine. By incompleteness, whatever sound machine you consisder the corresponding arithmetic is always a proper subset of ARITHMETIC. So arithmetical truth (alias ARITHMETIC) cannot be described by any finite set of rules. Finite sets or rules can never generate the whole of arithmetical truth. OK? Bruno Yes, I understand. But ARITHMETIC is generated by or results from Peano's axioms - right? Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Some thoughts from Grandma
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 12-juil.-07, à 16:27, David Nyman a écrit : On 12/07/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I try to avoid the words like reflexive or reflection in informal talk, because it is a tricky technical terms I tend to agree with what Brent said. Yes, I ended up more or less agreeing with him myself. But I nevertheless feel, from their posts, that this is *not* what some people have in mind when they use the term 'exists'. existence is a very very tricky notion. In the theory I am proposing (actually I derived it from the comp principle) the most basic notion of exists is remarkably well formalize by first order arithmetical logic, like in Ex(prime(x)): it exists a prime number. But isn't this just an elaboration that obscures the prior assumption that numbers exist? If numbers don't exist then Ex(prime(x)) is false, or requires a different interpretation of E. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
A Natural Axiomatization of Church's Thesis
Apropos much discussion on this list, a new paper is available at ftp://ftp.research.microsoft.com/pub/tr/TR-2007-85.pdf Abstract: The Abstract State Machine Thesis asserts that every classical algorithm is behaviorally equivalent to an abstract state machine. This thesis has been shown to follow from three natural postulates about algorithmic computation. Here, we prove that augmenting those postulates with an additional requirement regarding basic operations implies Church's Thesis, namely, that the only numeric functions that can be calculated by effective means are the recursive ones (which are the same, extensionally, as the Turing-computable numeric functions). In particular, this gives a natural axiomatization of Church's Thesis, as Gödel and others suggested may be possible. - Jef --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
