Re: Could universes in a multiverse be solipsistic ? Would this be a problem ?
On 11/3/2012 12:44 AM, meekerdb wrote: On 11/2/2012 10:38 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: No, that is an incoherent statement as it pretends to be meaningful in the absence of any means to evaluate its meaningfulness. So what means do you used to evaluate, Either snow is white or snow is not white.? My eyes can still discriminate colors from each other... I use them. So do you use your color discrimination to evaluate,Either klognee is grue or klognee is not grue.? Brent -- Well, I don't know, I never tried. Have you? How did it work out? -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Numbers in the Platonic Realm
On 02 Nov 2012, at 19:35, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 11/2/2012 12:23 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 01 Nov 2012, at 21:21, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 11/1/2012 11:23 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
[SPK] Bruno would have us, in step 8 of UDA, to not assume a
concrete robust physical universe.
?
Reread step 8. Step 7 and step 8 are the only steps where I
explicitly do assume a primitive physicalreality.
In step 8, it is done for the reductio ad absurdum.
Dear Bruno,
I have cut and pasted your exact words from SANE04 and you
still didn't understand... From: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.pdf
...what if we don’t grant a concrete robust physical
universe?
Actually the 8th present step will explain
that such a move is nevertheless without purpose. This will make
the notion of concrete and
existing universe completely devoid of any explicative power.
It will follow that a much
weaker and usual form of Ockham’s razor can be used to conclude
that not only physics has
been epistemologically reduced to machine psychology, but
that ‘‘matter’’ has been
ontologically reduced to ‘‘mind’’ where mind is defined as the
object study of fundamental
machine psychology.
My claim is that neither physical worlds nor numbers (or any
other object that must supervene on mind) can be ontologically
primitive. Both must emerge from a neutral ground that is neither
and has no particular properties.
How can anything emerge from something having non properties? Magic?
Dear Bruno,
No, necessity. The totality of existence, the One, cannot be
complete and consistent simultaneously,
Why not? The One is not a theory.
thus it must stratify itself into Many. Each of the Many is claimed
to have aspects that when recombined cancel to neutrality.
[SPK] He goes on to argue that Occam's razor would demand that
we reject the very idea of the existence of physical worlds
Only of primitive physical worlds. And you did agree with this. I
just prove this from comp. That's the originality. A bit of
metaphysics is made into a theorem in a theory (comp).
Can we agree that physical worlds emerge somehow from sharable
aspects of multiple sheaves of computations?
This is what I have shown to be a consequence of comp.
I agree.
[SPK] given that he can 'show' how they can be reconstructed or
derived from irreducible - and thus ontologically primitive -
Arithmetic 'objects' {0, 1, +, *} that are operating somehow
in an atemporal way. We should be able to make the argument run
without ever appealing to a Platonic realm or any kind of
'realism'. In my thinking, if arithmetic is powerful enough to
be a TOE and run the TOE to generate our world, then that power
should be obvious. My problem is that it looks tooo much like
the 'explanation' of creation that we find in mythology, whether
it is the Ptah of ancient Egypt or the egg of Pangu or whatever
other myth one might like. What makes an explanation framed in
the sophisticated and formal language of modal logic any
different?
I use the self-reference logic, for obvious reason. Again, this
entails the sue of some modal logics, due to a *theorem* by
Solovay. All correct machine whose beliefs extend RA obeys to G
and G*. There is no choice in the matter.
That is not changed or involved by my argument.
[SPK] I agree 10% with your point about 'miracles'.
I am very suspicions of special explanations' or 'natural
conspiracies'. (This comes from my upbringing as a Bible-
believing Fundamentalist and eventual rejection of that
literalist mental straight-jacket.) As I see things, any
condition or situation that can be used to 'explain' some other
conceptually difficult condition or situation should be either
universal in that they apply anywhere and anytime
But even in your theory anywhere and anytime must be defined by
something more primitive, given that you agree that physics
cannot be the fundamental theory, given that the physical reality
is not primitive.
The concepts of where and when (positions in a space-time)
would seem to be rendered meaningless if there is no space-time
(or observers/measurements to define it), no? OH, BTW, I don't
think that we disagree that physics cannot be the fundamental
theory. Physics requires measurements/observations to be
meaningful. Where I agree with you is in your considerations of 1p
and observer indeterminacy. Where you and I disagree is on the
question of resources. Resources are required for computations to
run so there has to be the availability of resources involved in
*any* consideration of computations. Ignoring these considerations
by only considering computations as Platonic objects is wrong, IMHO.
You seem to be OK with computations as purely timeless objects
(in Platonia) that are such that
Re: Emergence of Properties
On 02 Nov 2012, at 20:48, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/2/2012 12:23 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: How can anything emerge from something having non properties? Magic? Dear Bruno, Why do you consider magic as a potential answer to your question? After thinking about your question while I was waiting to pick up my daughter from school, it occurred to me that we see in the Big Bang model and in almost all cosmogenesis myths before it, an attempt to answer your question. Do you believe that properties are innate in objects? The arithmetical property of numbers are innate to the numbers, logic and the laws we assume. If so, how do you propose the dependency on measurement, to 'make definite' the properties of objects that we see in quantum theory, works? QM is not part of the theory. My pathetic claim is that properties emerge from a 'subtractive process' (hat tip to Craig) between observers and that the One (totality of what exists) has all possible properties simultaneously (hat tip to Russell Standish). ? I have never understood what aspects of QM theory are derivable from COMP. Then study UDA. You must understand that the *whole* of physics is derivable, not from comp, but from elemntary arithmetic only. This is what is proved from comp. Ask question if you have a problem with any step. Do you have any result that show the general non-commutativity between observables of QM, Yes. That is testable in the Z1* comp quantum logic. It has not yet been completely justified, as the statement involve too many nesting of modal operator to be currently tractable. or do you just show that the linear algebraic structure of observables (as we see in Hilbert spaces) can be derived from 1p indeterminacy? Both. The linear properties and the general non-commutativity properties of operators (representing physical observables) are not the same thing... Of course. But the whole physics is given by the first order extension of the Z and X logic. This is necessary if we assume comp and the classical theory of knowledge (S4). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Could universes in a multiverse be solipsistic ? Would this be a problem ?
On 02 Nov 2012, at 21:19, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/2/2012 12:49 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 01 Nov 2012, at 21:33, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/1/2012 11:36 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 01 Nov 2012, at 00:35, Stephen P. King wrote: On 10/31/2012 9:39 AM, Roger Clough wrote: 1) Yes, numbers float in a sea of universal mind (the One). 2) Here's a thought. If the universe acts like a gigantic homunculus, with the supreme monad or One as its mind, then could there be a solipsism to our universe such that other multiverse versions of oiur universe could not access (the mind of) ours ? Would this be a problem for multiverse theories ? Roger Clough,rclo...@verizon.net 10/31/2012 Dear Roger, I think that this idea is exactly wrong. The idea that numbers float in a sea of universal mind (the One) makes the explanation an infinite regress. Replace the One by arithmetical truth, and the infinite regress disappear. Dear Bruno, Only if arithmetic truth is theory independent, Gödel + Tarski = Arithmetical Truth is so independent of any effective theory that no such theory can get it. mathematical logic, and math, cannot have any meaning without arithmetical truth being independent of theories. Dear Bruno, Truth is Independence of theories cannot mean that truth is a meaningful value in the primitive ontological level. The relation 'Gödel + Tarski = Arithmetical Truth' cannot even exist as a meaningful expression because there is no differentiation of expression at the ontologically primitive level. The same argument that disallows for the existence of a self-aware Universal mind applies. Let me step through a crude sketch of the argument here. A Universal collection of facts is such that there is no facts that is not included, it must cover all possible worlds (ala Kripke), it must be Complete. The universal set of all facts is not a self-consistent set as there exists facts in one world that are inconsistent with facts in some other possible world. A mind is such that its facts are mutually consistent or else it is insane or non-self-aware. A self-aware mind must have some knowledge of facts concerning its existence or else it is not self-aware. A universal mind must know all facts of all possible worlds or else it would not be universal. A Universal mind is thus either insane (inconsistent) or non-self- aware. You are to much precise in a too much fuzzy theory. but that ruins your result! It truth is theory independent then it is impossible for us to be able to know of it. That is mathematical solipsism. I know! My point is that comp implies the singular existence of a mind (universal number that is the sum of all other universal numbers) that is incapable of knowing what it is as there is nothing within its preview that is it not. It is a Universal Mind It is obviously false. We disagree. Then all your references to Boolean algebra becomes nonsensical. Sometimes I can make sense of what you say, but then you add some assertion which put so much confusion that I think I was projecting sense on a sentence which was comp-meaningfully serendipitously. Theories are lantern on little pieces of the truth, which does not depend on the theory, even if the lantern can bring shadows, and also hid some other piece of truth. You insist on the concept of truth as a Platonic Object with innate properties. I disagree with this concept as I see it as incoherent. I don't consider truth as an object. The numbers can be considered as the (only) object. truth concerns only the propositions about those objects and the derivative notions. All this makes sense only because such truth does not depend on us and on our theories. No, that is an incoherent statement as it pretends to be meaningful in the absence of any means to evaluate its meaningfulness. That is arithmetical realism. A statement like Church thesis and comp makes no sense at all without it. I have never heard about someone not believing in arithmetical realism. It is really basic. To pretend that arithmetical realism is false already needs arithmetical realism. In the absence of a means to determine some property, it is incoherent and sometimes inconsistent to claim that the property has some particular value and the absence of all other possible values. In math this is called (mathematical) solipsism. This is like claiming to know exactly what is in a black box that cannot ever be opened or even located. Not at all. (Arithmetical) Truth on the contrary is beyond the knowledge of any machine. All knowledge is 'theory laden' - as David Deutsch explains well. They reappear *in* arithmetical truth, but have fixed points (some provably, some non provably). No problem. Maybe you might write up an explanation of how arithmetic truth is independent
Re: Against Mechanism
On 02 Nov 2012, at 22:02, John Clark wrote:
On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
He believes he still exist, because he believes, or assumed, comp.
People believe they exist and in real life they don't have or need a
reason for doing so. And I no longer know what comp means.
Comp means that we can survive with a digital brain. Nothing else. but
it implies that Plato is correct and Aristotle is incorrect for the
global conception of reality.
Comp is that we can survive with a digital machine replacing the
brain.
I have no difficulty with that, but now you tell me that it means a
great many other things too,
Yes. It has concequences which contradict many point of Aristotle
metaphysics.
things that are clearly untrue; like consciousness was there before
Evolution produced brains or the owner [of a brain] itself must
attach his consciousness to all states existing in arithmetic.
Let us go step by step.
you are stuck in step 3
And I will remain stuck there until you fix the blunders you made in
step 3;
Your blunder has been debunked by many people. Then you have
oscillate between contradictory statements. You are only confusing 1-
views with 3-views. Sometimes between 3-views on 1-views and the 1-
views on 1-views.
You are the one pretending being able to predict what happens after
pushing the button, but you have always given a list of what can
happen, which is not a prediction.
after that perhaps the additional steps that were built on that
fatally flawed foundation would be worth reading.
You did not show a flow, just a confusion between 1p and 3p.
the guy in W and the guy in M are both the guy in H
Yes.
by definition of comp.
I don't know what that is.
See above.
This is enough to get the 1_indeterminacy.
You don't know what your environment will be, what's new and
mysterious about that?
OK. Good. So you accept it. Please go to step 4 now, and tell me if
you agree. We have all the time to see where the reasoning will
eventually lead us.
I have no duplicating machine but I still don't know if my
environment will include rain tomorrow, but I can't find anything of
philosophical interest in that fact .
This is not the same form of indeterminacy. The impossibility of
predicting the weather is due to the deterministic chaos. This is not
used in the first person indeterminacy.
And the guy in Helsinki, if he can reason like any Löbian machine,
Like your other invention comp I don't know what a Löbian
machine is.
A universal machine capable of proving all sentence with the shape p -
Bew('p'), with p being an arithmetical sentence with shape ExP(x),
and P decidable. Exemple: prover theorem for PA, ZF, etc.
What is the probability the Washington man will write in his
diary he sees Washington? 100%.
The question was asked to the Helsinki man.
But you said the Helsinki man was destroyed, if so then he's got
a rather severe case of writers block and is writing very little in
his diary.
The body of the guy in Helsinki is destroyed, but by comp, we have
already accept that the guy itself survives.
So when you say The question was asked to the Helsinki man you are
asking a question to a man who's body has been destroyed.
No, the question is asked before he pushes on the read/cut button.
Yes the Helsinki man is also the Washington man so you could say
there is a 100% chance the Helsinki man will write in his diary I
see Washington.
No. the question is *about* a future 1-view. The guy knows that he
might very well be the guy in Moscow, so he cannot assert that he will
*feel* with 100% chance to be the one in Washington. Again you confuse
the 3-view and the 1-view.
Of course the Helsinki man is also the Moscow man so there is a 100%
chance the Helsinki man will write in his diary I DO NOT see
Washington. There is no contradiction because you have been
duplicated.
Of course there is no contradiction. But the Helsinki man would find
to be contradict if he said I will find myself in W and I will find
myself in Washington, from the first person view, as he knows that
after pushing the button he will find himself being in only one city,
not in two cities simultaneously.
If Bruno Marchal's body is duplicated and sent to Washington and
Moscow but inside identical boxes then Bruno Marchal's
consciousness has not been duplicated and will not be until the
boxes are opened and different things are observed by the Brunos,
at that point they will no longer be each other but both will still
beBruno Marchal
Exactly. This contradict what you say above though.
I said a great deal above but I'll be damned if I see any
contradiction .
You did it again. You pretend that there is 100% chance that he will
feel to see Washington, and 100% chance he will feel to see Moscow,
and yet you agree that
Re: On the ontological status of elementary arithmetic
On 02 Nov 2012, at 22:03, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/2/2012 12:55 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 01 Nov 2012, at 21:42, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/1/2012 11:39 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Enumerate the programs computing functions fro N to N, (or the equivalent notion according to your chosen system). let us call those functions: phi_0, phi_1, phi_2, ... (the phi_i) Let B be a fixed bijection from N x N to N. So B(x,y) is a number. The number u is universal if phi_u(B(x,y)) = phi_x(y). And the equality means really that either both phi_u(B(x,y)) and phi_x(y) are defined (number) and that they are equal, OR they are both undefined. In phi_u(B(x,y)) = phi_x(y), x is called the program, and y the data. u is the computer. u i said to emulate the program (machine, ...) x on the input y. OK, but this does not answer my question. What is the ontological level mechanism that distinguishes the u and the x and the y from each other? The one you have chosen above. But let continue to use elementary arithmetic, as everyone learn it in school. So the answer is: elementary arithmetic. Dear Bruno,' If there is no entity to chose the elementary arithmetic, how is it chosen or even defined such that there exist arithmetic statements that can possibly be true or false? Nobody needs to do the choice, as the choice is irrelevant for the truth. If someone choose the combinators, the proof of 1+1= 2 will be very long, and a bit awkward, but the proof of KKK = K, will be very short. If someone chose elementary arithmetic, the proof of 1+1=2 will be very short (Liz found it on FOAR), but the proof that KKK = K, will be long and a bit awkward. The fact is that 1+1=2, and KKK=K, are true, independently of the choice of the theory, and indeed independently of the existence of the theories. Dear Bruno, No, that cannot be the case since statements do not even exist if the framework or theory that defines them does not exist, therefore there is not 'truth' for a non-exitence entity. Brent already debunked this. The truth of a statement does not need the existence of the statement. You confuse again the truth of 1+1=2, with a possible claim of that truth, like 1+1=2. We can assume some special Realm or entity does the work of choosing the consistent set of arithmetical statements or, as I suggest, we can consider the totality of all possible physical worlds As long as you make your theory clearer, I can't understand what you mean by physical world, possible, totality, etc. I use the same definitions as other people use. In philosophy of mind and matter, you can't take a term like physical world for granted. Still less totalility of what exist etc. This is especially true in a context where someone pretend to have found a flaw in the Aristotle theology, which is used by most scientist today (in occident at least). I am not claiming a private language and/or set of definitions, even if I have tried to refine the usual definition more sharply than usual. In findamental science all terms need to be redefined semi- axiomatically. Even and, or,not, etc. That is why we use logic which provides tools for doing this and it makes it possible to avoid *all* metaphysical baggage. Physical world: http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/physical?q=Physical adjective 1) relating to the body as opposed to the mind: a range of physical and mental challenges 2) relating to things perceived through the senses as opposed to the mind; tangible or concrete: the physical world 3) relating to physics or the operation of natural forces generally: physical laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possible_world Those theorists who use the concept of possible worlds consider the actual world to be one of the many possible worlds. For each distinct way the world could have been, there is said to be a distinct possible world; the actual world is the one we in fact live in. Among such theorists there is disagreement about the nature of possible worlds; their precise ontological status is disputed, and especially the difference, if any, in ontological status between the actual world and all the other possible worlds. Totality: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/totality 1: an aggregate amount : sum, whole 2 a : the quality or state of being total : wholeness as the implementers of arithmetic statements and thus their provers. Possible physical worlds, taken as a single aggregate, is just as timeless and non-located as the Platonic Realm and yet we don't need any special pleading for us to believe in them. ;-) ? I refuse to believe that you cannot make sense of what I wrote. Does someone else makes sense? Ask her/him to explain. Can you understand that I find your interpretation of Plato's Realm of Ideals to be incorrect? You seem to have read one book or
Re: AGI
On 02 Nov 2012, at 22:44, John Mikes wrote: Bruno: you got me. I wrote about things we cannot know - we have no capability to think of it - and you deny that based on products of the human mind (math - logic) saying YES, we can know everything (that we or our products DO know). I am sorry John, but this is unclear, and a bit out of the context, so I can't figure out what I was saying. But once we bet we are machine, we can definitely know some things and be sure the machine cannot know, as we derive a contradiction from it. We cannot know everything about reality, nor even what is reality, we can still propose theoreis and reason in such theories. You claimed to be agnostic (more than myself) - now I don't see it. * As I stated: Bohm never went back to his metaphysical ideas while in London and Hiley - posthumusly - composed their book upon this (London) period, so you I doubt whether you can read anything in THAT book - I was mentioning his conversation with Krishnamurti. Bruno On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 1:32 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 21 Oct 2012, at 23:46, John Mikes wrote: Bruno: my apologies for this late late reply, I am slow to decipher the listpost from the daily inundation of Roger-stuff so I miss some more relevant list-post sometimes. You wrote about the U-M: ...an entity capable of computing all partial computable functions... I would be cautios with all since we know only SOME. Not with Church Thesis (CT). It is here that a miracle occur. For all notion of all in mathematics, we can refute the universality pretension by a tool known as diagonalisation. But there is one exception: the notion of computation, which seems (and is with CT) close for the diagonalization. this is how, mainly, the mathematical discovery of the universal machine arrived. I plead ignorance to the difference of a Loeb and another type(?) Univ. Machine. Is the Leobian restricted? In logic; restriction on the axioms leads to unrestriction of the models. and vice versa. Loebian machines are - universal (for computability) - they have the cognitive ability to know (in some sense) that they are universal (and thus they know that they are infinitely ignorant, even if only with respect to the arithmetical truth). They have less models, but more knowledge, which of course lessen the models. In what sense? BTW: What is 'universal'? I would think twice to deem something as It is a precise mathematical notion, and it correspond indeed to what computers are, but also, brain, cells, etc. Even without comp (comp assume that brain cells are not more than universal, at some level). ... it might be intrinsically complex... EVERYTHING is intrinsically (too!) complex. We just take simplified versions - adjusted to OUR mindful capabilities. intelligence vs competence? The 'oldies' (from yesterday back to the Greeks/Indians etc.) were 'competent' in the actual (then) inventory of the knowledge base of their time. That gave their 'intelligence' (the way I defined it) so: no controversy. Bohm discussed with Krishnamurty before his association in London with Hiley. The posthumous book the latter wrote in their combined(?) authorship includes Bohm's earlier physical stances (~1952) even before his Brazilian escape. I do not accuse Hiley of improperness, but he left out all the Krishnamurtian mystique embraced by Bohm. Granted: Bohm taught later advanced physical science in London but as far as I know never went back on his interim (call it: metaphysical?) philosophy. I should certainly reread this. Want to comment, but I am not sure, need to reread some part. I will see. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Numbers in the Platonic Realm
On 11/3/2012 5:18 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: How can anything emerge from something having non properties? Magic? Dear Bruno, No, necessity. The totality of existence, the One, cannot be complete and consistent simultaneously, Why not? The One is not a theory. Why does it have to be a theory? The concept of the One is a fragment of a theory... -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Numbers in the Platonic Realm
On 11/3/2012 5:18 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I read Russell. Never found something that non sensical. If the basic object have no properties, I don't see how anything can emerge from it. You have to explain your point, not to refer to the literature. Dear Bruno, Did you notice that I distinguish between having no properties and having no particular properties? The former is undefinable, the latter is equivalent to having all possible properties. The word particular seems to cause confusion. It is used to bracket one against many, like a figure and its ground. It implies a choice... -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Does your monad (your 1p) survive artificial changes to the brain ?
Hi Bruno Marchal I think the issue of your survival of the doctor's operation or whatever is clouded by the solipsism issue. It should work, for better or worse, as long as you can affirm you have survived by your subjective (1p) experience. More comments are below, but that is the bottom line. MORE COMMENTS: I started looking at your comments on sane04, recalling a comment made by Leibniz, namely the question about what happens to your monad if an arm is amputated ? Right after that, the arm is still alive, I think it can be rejoined. Leibniz said (and I wish I could remember exactly what he said) that your monad--which is actually called spirit for a man or monad with intellect-- will stay with your intellect (or 1p), for that it is what defines you, it is your identity. The arm will not share that monad or soul while detached and so will shortly die. This raises serious problems with the head/mind transplant conjecture. According to L, I think I can say that it wouldn't work. Your monad would stay with the amputated head, and remain attached to or associated with it. But the head or intellect will die for lack of fresh blood, etc., so the monad will remain attached to a rotting head. Your soul is your identity. It stays with you, even though you change through the years or while asleep during an operation. And even when you die. If your subjective 1p consciousness (your monad) survives, then you have survived the doctor's alterations (either with digital hardware or signals) to your brain. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/3/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-02, 12:44:33 Subject: Re: Against Mechanism On 01 Nov 2012, at 21:25, John Clark wrote: On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 2:21 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: the you before the duplication or the you after the duplication? All the you after, are the you before, by definition of comp. OK, but the you before is not the you after. The Helsinki man knows nothing about Moscow or Washington, not even if he still exists after the duplication, He believes he still exist, because he believes, or assumed, comp. but both the Moscow man and the Washington man know all about Helsinki even if they don't know about each other. what you will live, as a first person. If your mind works deterministically then what you will live to think you see will depend on the external environment. Sure. If your mind does NOT work deterministically then what you will live to think you see will depend on absolutely nothing, in other words it is random. There is no new sort of indeterminacy involved just the boring old sort, and how you expect to draw profound philosophical conclusions from such a flimsy foundation is a mystery. Here 3-determinacy entails, by simple logic. You are the only one in the list (and out of the list) who have a problem (but which one?) with this. I do not draw any philosophical conclusion: but a theorem. The theorem is that the physical laws emerges, in a precise and testable way, from arithmetic/computer science. test have already been performed, and you can read the math part which explains all this. You know by comp that [...] I don't know anything by comp. Comp is that we can survive with a digital machine replacing the brain. At one time I thought I knew what you meant by the term, I thought so. but then you say consciousness was there before Evolution produced brains and that the owner [of a brain] itself must attach his consciousness to all states existing in arithmetic. So I was wrong, I don't know what comp means. You were just not aware of the logical consequences, and as long as you are stuck in step 3, it is normal you can't get the consequences of comp. Before the duplication the you is the Helsinki man, after the duplication the you is the Helsinki man and the Washington man and the Moscow man. What is the probability the Helsinki man will write in his diary that he sees Washington? 0%. The guy reconstituted in Washington will say: Gosh I was wrong. That's the problem, you're not clear who I is. This is not relevant. the guy in W and the guy in M are both the guy in H, by definition of comp. This is enough to get the 1_indeterminacy. The Washington man made no error because he made no predictions of any sort, only the Helsinki man did that. The Washington man and Helsinki man have identical memories up to the point of duplication but after that they diverge. That is known by the guy in Helsinki. That is why he can make a bet, on what he can possibly live, given that he knows he will remain alive (betting on comp and the default hypothesis, with the given protocol). What is the probability the Helsinki man will write in his diary he sees
arithmetic truth and 1p truth
Hi Bruno Marchal I think in computationalism you only have to be able to say that the result is arithmetically or algebraically true. Arithmetic truth is what you seek. However, I still have yet to know if a particular computation seems true to your 1p. That would be 1p truth. Does the arithmetic truth pass the 1p test ? Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/3/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-02, 13:23:36 Subject: Re: Numbers in the Platonic Realm On 01 Nov 2012, at 22:50, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/1/2012 12:04 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 01 Nov 2012, at 01:18, Stephen P. King wrote: On 10/31/2012 12:45 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: can stop reading as you need to assume the numbers (or anything Turing equivalent) to get them. Dear Bruno, So it is OK to assume that which I seek to explain? You can't explain the numbers without assuming the numbers. This has been foreseen by Dedekind, and vert well justified by many theorem in mathematical logic. Below the number, you are lead to version of ultrafinitism, which is senseless in the comp theory. Dear Bruno, I disagree with ultrafinitists, they seem to be the mathematical equivalent of flat-earthers'. *and* having some particular set of values and meanings. I just assume x + 0 = x x + s(y) = s(x + y) x *0 = 0 x*s(y) = x*y + x And hope you understand. I can understand these symbols because there is at least a way to physically implement them. Those notion have nothing to do with physical implementation. So your thinking about them is not a physical act? Too much ambiguous. Even staying in comp I can answer yes and no. Yes, because my human thinking is locally supported by physical events. No, because the whole couple mind/physical events is supported by platonic arithmetical truth. Implementation and physical will be explained from them. A natural thing as they are much more complex than the laws above. Numbers are meaningless in the absence of a means to define them. Theories do not free-float. Truth is free floating, and theories lived through truth, they are truth floating, even when false. In the absence of some common media, even if it is generated by sheaves of computations, there simply is no way to understand anything. Why ? Because there is not way to know of them otherwise. Our knowing as nothing to do with truth. If an asteroid would have destroy Earth before the Oresme bishop dicovered that the harmonic series diverge, she would have still diverge, despite no humans would know it. Unless you can communicate with me, I have no way of knowing anything about your ideas. Similarly if there is no physical implementation of a mathematical statement, there is no meaning to claims to truth of such statements. To claim, no. To be true is independent of the claim of the apes. You must accept non-well foundedness for your result to work, but you seem fixated against that. 1004. Pfft. Nice custom made quip. You are often escaping answers by inappropriate mathematical precision, which meaning contradicts your mathematical super-relativism. It is really 1004+contradiction. A statement, such as 2 = 1+1 or two equals one plus one, are said truthfully to have the same meaning because there are multiple and separable entities that can have the agreement on the truth value. In the absence of the ability to judge a statement independently of any particular entity capable of understanding the statement, there is no meaning to the concept that the statement is true or false. To insist that a statement has a meaning and is true (or false) in an ontological condition where no entities capable of judging the meaning, begs the question of meaningfulness! You are taking for granted some things that your arguments disallow. Do you agree that during the five seconds just after the Big Bang (assuming that theory) there might not have been any possible observers. But then the Big Bang has no more sense. No, I don't. Why? Because that concept of the five seconds just after the Big Bang is an assumption of a special case or pleading. I might as well postulate the existence of Raindow Dash to act as the entity to whom the Truth of mathematical statements have absolute meaning. To be frank, I thing that the Big Bang theory, as usually explained is a steaming pile of rubbish, as it asks us to believe that the totality of all that exists sprang into being from Nothing. I actually agree, by accident, on this. But this is not relevant for my point. It is very relevant to mine. Imagine that we can show that some solution to GR equantion have universe so poor that life cannot
Necessary truth and contingent truth
Hi Bruno Marchal There are, as Leibniz said, two types of truth: the a priori truths of necessary reason and the contingent, a posteriori truths, which depend on the test of data verification. Unfortunately we can not know if a theoretical truth (information theory) is true unless it works on real signals (in the contingent world). That would be a pragmatic or contingent truth. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/3/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-02, 13:28:06 Subject: Re: Could universes in a multiverse be solipsistic ? Would this beaproblem ? On 02 Nov 2012, at 10:34, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal Thanks. Then the numbers are noit separate but included in the truth. Losely speaking, OK. Numbers are objects, truth concerns only propositions. My feeling is that the truth then may be the truth(s) of information theory. Information theory is just a tiny part of computer science. The word information is very dangerous and overused, as people will confuse Shannon information with the meaningful information (best handled by model theory in logic). Note that computer science is essentially a tiny part of arithmetic. You must understand that after G?el, we know that arithmetical truth is *very* big, and if we are machine (comp) then we cannot distinguish arithmetical truth from the outer God (the ONE). Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/2/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-01, 11:36:18 Subject: Re: Could universes in a multiverse be solipsistic ? Would this be aproblem ? On 01 Nov 2012, at 00:35, Stephen P. King wrote: On 10/31/2012 9:39 AM, Roger Clough wrote: 1) Yes, numbers float in a sea of universal mind (the One). 2) Here's a thought. If the universe acts like a gigantic homunculus, with the supreme monad or One as its mind, then could there be a solipsism to our universe such that other multiverse versions of oiur universe could not access (the mind of) ours ? Would this be a problem for multiverse theories ? Roger Clough,rclo...@verizon.net 10/31/2012 Dear Roger, I think that this idea is exactly wrong. The idea that numbers float in a sea of universal mind (the One) makes the explanation an infinite regress. Replace the One by arithmetical truth, and the infinite regress disappear. They reappear *in* arithmetical truth, but have fixed points (some provably, some non provably). No problem. That is OK if and only if you allow for the concept of the One to be Kaufman and Zuckerman's Quine Atom aka Russell operator, but if not it does not work. Why? Because numbers have to be distinguishable from to have individual values. The totality of numbers is an infinity and thus have the property that their proper parts cannot be distinguished from their totality. How does the One accomplish this? It seems to me that we have to assume that the One is conscious of the numbers and that makes the numbers something different from the One for 1) to work and this is no different from what a finite mind does. My point here is that a mind cannot be infinite because it would be incapable of distinguishing it's self from any of its proper parts - making it the ultimate solipsist. Do there exist maps between the totality of an infinite set to an improper part? If yes, what are their necessary properties? The One is solipsist, as the one is unique and alone. But I don't see why it should be conscious. It might be, but I see no evidence for this. Bruno The idea of 2) seems to be demolished by Dennett's argument against the homunculus or else the One is strictly a solipsist as I argued above. I suspect that the mapping between wholes and improper parts is the same as Bruno's measure problem. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything- l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- You
On uniqueness
Hi Bruno Marchal Yes, and keep in mind that there may be more than one theory that gives the same results in the form of data. So in this world, the truth must lie in the data, which is unique, and not the theory, which may not be unique. In this world, data is king. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/3/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-02, 13:34:22 Subject: Re: Self-ascription and Perfect Model Model On 02 Nov 2012, at 10:42, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno, Could it not be that there is nothing especially sacred about the natural numbers, that these are, as Hobbes put it regarding words, but counterfeit tokens ? Numbers, with + and * laws, is mainly the same things than digital machines, and the laws making them working. And the real controlling force which uses them is information theory ? That is to say, intelligence. Here you are far too quick. I can make sense, because I have some favorable imagination. As I said, information theory is a tiny part of computer science. It exploits the duality between immune/simple set, where the self-reference logic exploits the duality creative/ productive set. The two dualities plays some r?e, but the creative/ productive set duality (the theory of universal machine) is much more rich. The mathematical notion of information still disallows meaning and person. It is more used for communication of signals, treatment of noise, compression of data, etc. You will also have the problem between choosing classical information or quantum information, and how to relate them, etc. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/2/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Evgenii Rudnyi Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-01, 06:09:50 Subject: Re: Self-ascription and Perfect Model Model On 30.10.2012 16:25 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 30 Oct 2012, at 12:53, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... You talk for example about integers as a framework for everything. Fine. Yet, I would like to understand how mankind through it development has invented integers. How comp would help to answer this? Comp might not been able to answer that, in any better way than, say, evolution theory. Numbers are important in nature, as everything is born from them, and to survive with bigger chance, the universal numbers, us in particular, have to be able to recognize them, and manipulate them accordingly. Comp is not a theory aimed at explaining everything directly. It is just, at the start, an hypothesis in philosophy of mind, and then it appears that it reduces the mind-body problem to an explanation of quanta and qualia from arithmetic/computer science. Its main value in the human science, is, imo, that he forces us to be more modest, and more aware that we know about nothing, if only because we have wrongly separate the human science (including theology, afterlife, metaphysics) and the exact sciences. Comp provides a way to reunite them. Comp can be seen as an abstract corpus callosum making a bridge between the formal and the informal, before bridging mind and matter. Below there is a couple of quotes about German idealism. Please replace Absolute Spirit by Natural Numbers there. Then it may give one possible answer to my question. ?bsolute Spirit is the fundamental reality. But in order to create the world, the Absolute manifests itself, or goes out of itself in a sense, the Absolute forgets itself and empties itself into creation (although never really ceasing to be itself). Thus the world is created as a ?alling away? from Spirit, as a ?elf-alienation? of Spirit, although the Fall is never anything but a play of Spirit itself.? ?aving ?allen? into the manifest and material world, Spirit begins the process of returning to itself, and this process of the return of Spirit to Spirit is simply development or evolution itself. The original ?escent? (or involution) is a forgetting, a fall, a self-alienation of Spirit; and the reverse movement of ?scent? (or evolution) is thus the self-remembering and self-actualization of Spirit. And yet, the Idealists emphasized, all of Spirit is fully present at each and every stage of evolution as the process of evolution itself. ? Evgenii -- http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/10/evolution-and-german-idealism.html -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at
Re: Numbers in the Platonic Realm
On 02 Nov 2012, at 23:12, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/2/2012 1:23 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I can understand these symbols because there is at least a way to physically implement them. Those notion have nothing to do with physical implementation. So your thinking about them is not a physical act? Too much ambiguous. Even staying in comp I can answer yes and no. Yes, because my human thinking is locally supported by physical events. No, because the whole couple mind/physical events is supported by platonic arithmetical truth. Dear Bruno, Where is the evidence of the existence of a Platonic realm? It is part of the assumption. We postulate arithmetic. I try to avoid the use of platonic there, as I used the term in Plato sense. In that sense Platonia = the greek Noùs, and it is derived from arithmetic and comp. All you need is the belief that 43 is prime independently of 43 is prime. The mere self-consistency of an idea is proof of existence Already in arithmetic we have the consistence of the existence of a prrof of the false, this certainly does not mean that there exist a proof of the false. So self-consistency is doubtfully identifiable with truth, and still less with existence. but the idea must be understood by a multiplicity of entities with the capacity to distinguish truth from falsehood to have any coherence as an idea! Not at all. 43 is prime might be true, even in absence of universe and observer. We cannot just assume that the mere existence of some undefined acts to determine the properties of the undefined. Truth and falsity are possible properties, they are not ontological aspects of existence. Truth is no more a property than existence. It makes no sense. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: The One is not a number but a metaphor
Hi Bruno Marchal Sorry, I misconstrued the river/man analogy. Heraclitus said instead that a man cannot stand in the same river twice (or even from moment to moment). It's just a statement of contingency. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/3/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-02, 13:39:24 Subject: Re: The One is not a number but a metaphor On 02 Nov 2012, at 11:50, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal When I refer to the One, I think of it not as a number 1 but as a metaphor. Well, the ONE is not the number 1. OK. The Soul is the identity of a monad, including the supreme monad. The soul does not change, even though the monad is constantly (rapidly) changing. The river keeps changing, but the man standing in it remains the same. Hmm why not. Too much fuzzy to be sure. Only the universal soul can be sais not changing. But once the soul has fallen, it forgets its universal origin, and undergone quite big changes. So in like manor, we can consider the One (as a metaphor, not as a number) as the Soul of the universe, the Universal Soul. I don't think so. the soul is the inner God, the one you can awake by different technic. The outer God, is beyond conceivability, even if comp can identify it with the very complex set of code of the arithmetical truth. At least in the arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Emergence of Properties
On 11/3/2012 5:26 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: The arithmetical property of numbers are innate to the numbers, logic and the laws we assume. Dear Bruno, How? How are properties innate? This idea makes no sense to me, it never has as it does not allow for any explanation of apprehension of properties in my consideration... The only explanation of properties that makes sense to me is that of Leibniz: Properties are given by relations. We might think of objects as bundles of properties but this is problematic as it implies that properties are objects themselves. I think of properties similar to what Leibniz did: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/substance/#DesSpiLei Leibniz's substances, however, are the bearers of change (criterion (iv)) in a very different way from Aristotle's individual substances. An Aristotelian individual possesses some properties essentially and some accidentally. The accidental properties of an object are ones that can be gained and lost over time, and which it might never have possessed at all: its essential properties are the only ones it had to possess and which it possesses throughout its existence. The situation is different for Leibniz's/monads/---which is the name he gives to individual substances, created or uncreated (so God is a monad). Whereas, for Aristotle, the properties that an object/has to/possess and those that it possesses/throughout its existence/coincide, they do not do so for Leibniz. That is, for Leibniz, even the properties that an object possesses only for a part of its existence are essential to it. Every monad bears each of its properties as part of its nature, so if it were to have been different in any respect, it would have been a different entity. Furthermore, there is a sense in which all monads are exactly similar to each other, for they all reflect the whole world. They each do so, however, from a different perspective. For God, so to speak, turns on all sides and considers in all ways the general system of phenomena which he has found it good to produce...And he considers all the faces of the world in all possible ways...the result of each view of the universe, as looked at from a certain position, is...a substance which expresses the universe in conformity with that view. (1998: 66) So each monad reflects the whole system, but with its own perspective emphasized. If a monad is at place p at time t, it will contain all the features of the universe at all times, but with those relating to its own time and place most vividly, and others fading out roughly in accordance with temporal and spatial distance. Because there is a continuum of perspectives on reality, there is an infinite number of these substances. Nevertheless, there is internal change in the monads, because the respect in which its content is vivid varies with time and with action. Indeed, the passage of time just is the change in which of the monad's contents are most vivid. The difference in my thinking to that of Leibniz is that a monad is never at place p at time t (location is defined solely interns of mutuality of perspectives) and monads are only substances in that they are eternal. I find it best to drop the idea of substance altogether as it can be completely defined in terms of invariances. After I wrote the above I can see how you would think of properties as being innate, but I see this as just a mental crutch that you are using to not think too deeply about the concept of property. The situation is the same for your difficulty with my hypothesis of meaning. We learn to associate meanings to words so that words are more than just combinations of letters, but this is just the internalization of the associations and relations within our thinking process. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Numbers in the Platonic Realm
On 02 Nov 2012, at 23:16, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/2/2012 1:23 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: You are the one saying that truth is limited to the means of knowing!!! Yes and no, Truth is limited to the *possibility* of knowledge of it. In the absence of the possibility of a statement being true (or false), there is not such thing as true or false. I use the standard notion, which are simpler than possibility and knowledge. I use only things like ExP(x) is true if there is a n such that P(n), etc. read a textbook in logic, as you introduce metaphysical baggage where logician have been able to discard them. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Emergence of Properties
On 11/3/2012 5:26 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: The arithmetical property of numbers are innate to the numbers, logic and the laws we assume. Hi, This paper might be interesting to any one that would like to see a nice discussion of who it is that we come to understand numbers: http://web.media.mit.edu/~stefanm/society/som_final.html http://web.media.mit.edu/%7Estefanm/society/som_final.html -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Numbers in the Platonic Realm
On 02 Nov 2012, at 23:20, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/2/2012 1:23 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Are you familiar with Jaakko Hintikka's ideas? I am using his concept of game theoretic semantics to derive truth valuations. I read this. yes. I don't see relevant at all. I do appreciate his linking of intention and intension, but it is a bit trivial in the comp theory. Dear Bruno, Hintikka's idea is to show how truth values can be coherently considered to be the result of a process and not necessarily just some a priori valuation. This makes Truth an emergent valuation, just as I content all definite properties are emergent from mutual agreements between entities. But how will you define entities? Where and how will the truth of truth is an emergent valuation emerge? What you say does not make sense for me. But if someone else understand please help Stephen in conveying the idea. Properties, in the absence of the possibility of measurement or apprehension of some type, do not exist; they are what the 1p project onto existence. Nothing more. Existence of what, of who, where, how? It is very bad philosophy to throw doubt on scientific results just by using non standard unclear philosophical definition in a context where honest scientist have no problem at all, and use what everybody understand to show that there is some problem indeed, and attempt to make a formulation of such problems. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Could universes in a multiverse be solipsistic ? Would this be a problem ?
On 11/3/2012 5:39 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I don't consider truth as an object. The numbers can be considered as the (only) object. truth concerns only the propositions about those objects and the derivative notions. OK, then how is it that you seem to imply that truth is independent of 1p, i.e. that it is a valuation internal to experience? -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
heraclitus and leibniz on washington vs moscow
Hi Bruno Marchal
As to washington vs moscow, the man remains the same.
Although a man cannot stand in the same river twice,
his 1p or monad, his identity, remains the same.
The monad itself belongs to the supreme monad or
platonia (same 1p, same identity), because
although its contents keep changing, it has
to remain a fixed identity-- or else the supreme
monad would not know where to place the
constantly adjusted perceptions.
Note that in Leibniz's metaphysics, the perceptions
of each monad are not that of an individual soul such
as we understand perception. An individual soul
sees only the phenomenol world-- from his own
perspective. But a monad contains all of the perceptions
of all the other monads in the universe, so it sees
the universe truly, meaning from all perspectives.
The term holographic perception comes to mind.
In this sense we are God's local sensors, for the God
who knows all.
Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
11/3/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen
- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-11-03, 05:18:25
Subject: Re: Numbers in the Platonic Realm
On 02 Nov 2012, at 19:35, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 11/2/2012 12:23 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 01 Nov 2012, at 21:21, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 11/1/2012 11:23 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
[SPK] Bruno would have us, in step 8 of UDA, to not assume a concrete robust
physical universe.
?
Reread step 8. Step 7 and step 8 are the only steps where I explicitly do
assume a primitive physical reality.
In step 8, it is done for the reductio ad absurdum.
Dear Bruno,
I have cut and pasted your exact words from SANE04 and you still didn't
understand... From:
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.pdf
...what if we don? grant a concrete robust physical universe?
Actually the 8th present step will explain
that such a move is nevertheless without purpose. This will make the notion of
concrete and
existing universe completely devoid of any explicative power. It will
follow that a much
weaker and usual form of Ockham? razor can be used to conclude that not only
physics has
been epistemologically reduced to machine psychology, but that ?matter?
has been
ontologically reduced to ?mind? where mind is defined as the object study of
fundamental
machine psychology.
My claim is that neither physical worlds nor numbers (or any other object
that must supervene on mind) can be ontologically primitive. Both must emerge
from a neutral ground that is neither and has no particular properties.
How can anything emerge from something having non properties? Magic?
Dear Bruno,
No, necessity. The totality of existence, the One, cannot be complete and
consistent simultaneously,
Why not? The One is not a theory.
thus it must stratify itself into Many. Each of the Many is claimed to have
aspects that when recombined cancel to neutrality.
[SPK] He goes on to argue that Occam's razor would demand that we reject the
very idea of the existence of physical worlds
Only of primitive physical worlds. And you did agree with this. I just prove
this from comp. That's the originality. A bit of metaphysics is made into a
theorem in a theory (comp).
Can we agree that physical worlds emerge somehow from sharable aspects of
multiple sheaves of computations?
This is what I have shown to be a consequence of comp.
I agree.
[SPK] given that he can 'show' how they can be reconstructed or derived from
irreducible - and thus ontologically primitive - Arithmetic 'objects' {0, 1, +,
*} that are operating somehow in an atemporal way. We should be able to make
the argument run without ever appealing to a Platonic realm or any kind of
'realism'. In my thinking, if arithmetic is powerful enough to be a TOE and run
the TOE to generate our world, then that power should be obvious. My problem is
that it looks tooo much like the 'explanation' of creation that we find in
mythology, whether it is the Ptah of ancient Egypt or the egg of Pangu or
whatever other myth one might like. What makes an explanation framed in the
sophisticated and formal language of modal logic any different?
I use the self-reference logic, for obvious reason. Again, this entails the sue
of some modal logics, due to a *theorem* by Solovay. All correct machine whose
beliefs extend RA obeys to G and G*. There is no choice in the matter.
That is not changed or involved by my argument.
[SPK] I agree 10% with your point about 'miracles'. I am very
suspicions of special explanations' or 'natural conspiracies'. (This comes
from my upbringing as a Bible-believing Fundamentalist and eventual rejection
of that literalist mental straight-jacket.) As I see things, any condition or
situation that can be
The contingency of theories
Hi Bruno Marchal
All theories are based on the a priori but
can only give contingent results (this world
results).
However, arithmetic is not a theory, it is
arithmetical (permanent, necessary, logical) truth.
Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
11/3/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen
- Receiving the following content -
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-11-03, 05:59:33
Subject: Re: Against Mechanism
On 02 Nov 2012, at 22:02, John Clark wrote:
On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 Bruno Marchal wrote:
He believes he still exist, because he believes, or assumed, comp.
People believe they exist and in real life they don't have or need a reason for
doing so. And I no longer know what comp means.
Comp means that we can survive with a digital brain. Nothing else. but it
implies that Plato is correct and Aristotle is incorrect for the global
conception of reality.
Comp is that we can survive with a digital machine replacing the brain.
I have no difficulty with that, but now you tell me that it means a great many
other things too,
Yes. It has concequences which contradict many point of Aristotle metaphysics.
things that are clearly untrue; like consciousness was there before Evolution
produced brains or the owner [of a brain] itself must attach his
consciousness to all states existing in arithmetic.
Let us go step by step.
you are stuck in step 3
And I will remain stuck there until you fix the blunders you made in step 3;
Your blunder has been debunked by many people. Then you have oscillate
between contradictory statements. You are only confusing 1-views with 3-views.
Sometimes between 3-views on 1-views and the 1-views on 1-views.
You are the one pretending being able to predict what happens after pushing the
button, but you have always given a list of what can happen, which is not a
prediction.
after that perhaps the additional steps that were built on that fatally flawed
foundation would be worth reading.
You did not show a flow, just a confusion between 1p and 3p.
the guy in W and the guy in M are both the guy in H
Yes.
by definition of comp.
I don't know what that is.
See above.
This is enough to get the 1_indeterminacy.
You don't know what your environment will be, what's new and mysterious about
that?
OK. Good. So you accept it. Please go to step 4 now, and tell me if you agree.
We have all the time to see where the reasoning will eventually lead us.
I have no duplicating machine but I still don't know if my environment will
include rain tomorrow, but I can't find anything of philosophical interest in
that fact .
This is not the same form of indeterminacy. The impossibility of predicting the
weather is due to the deterministic chaos. This is not used in the first person
indeterminacy.
And the guy in Helsinki, if he can reason like any L?ian machine,
Like your other invention comp I don't know what a L?ian machine is.
A universal machine capable of proving all sentence with the shape p -
Bew('p'), with p being an arithmetical sentence with shape ExP(x), and P
decidable. Exemple: prover theorem for PA, ZF, etc.
What is the probability the Washington man will write in his diary he
sees Washington? 100%.
The question was asked to the Helsinki man.
But you said the Helsinki man was destroyed, if so then he's got a rather
severe case of writers block and is writing very little in his diary.
The body of the guy in Helsinki is destroyed, but by comp, we have already
accept that the guy itself survives.
So when you say The question was asked to the Helsinki man you are asking a
question to a man who's body has been destroyed.
No, the question is asked before he pushes on the read/cut button.
Yes the Helsinki man is also the Washington man so you could say there is a
100% chance the Helsinki man will write in his diary I see Washington.
No. the question is *about* a future 1-view. The guy knows that he might very
well be the guy in Moscow, so he cannot assert that he will *feel* with 100%
chance to be the one in Washington. Again you confuse the 3-view and the
1-view.
Of course the Helsinki man is also the Moscow man so there is a 100% chance the
Helsinki man will write in his diary I DO NOT see Washington. There is no
contradiction because you have been duplicated.
Of course there is no contradiction. But the Helsinki man would find to be
contradict if he said I will find myself in W and I will find myself in
Washington, from the first person view, as he knows that after pushing the
button he will find himself being in only one city, not in two cities
simultaneously.
If Bruno Marchal's body is duplicated and sent to Washington and Moscow but
inside identical boxes then Bruno Marchal's
Re: Could universes in a multiverse be solipsistic ? Would this be a problem ?
On 11/3/2012 5:39 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: [BM] All this makes sense only because such truth does not depend on us and on our theories. [SPK] No, that is an incoherent statement as it pretends to be meaningful in the absence of any means to evaluate its meaningfulness. That is arithmetical realism. A statement like Church thesis and comp makes no sense at all without it. I have never heard about someone not believing in arithmetical realism. It is really basic. To pretend that arithmetical realism is false already needs arithmetical realism. Dear Bruno, You have now heard of someone like that! Church's thesis and comp make sense to me without AR, I don't pretend that I am the only mind and that it is because my thoughts can agree with those of other minds that there is something real to all of us. You still do not see thecrypto-solipsism http://books.google.com/books?id=k_xYkhHiXbwCpg=PA254lpg=PA254dq=crypto-solipsismsource=blots=nUEID3Dj1asig=zBQ3_9dxB6nHe2EVQ3o2iJ_VZG0hl=ensa=Xei=6gCVUMLUG4yk8gTXrIDICAved=0CE0Q6AEwBw#v=onepageq=crypto-solipsismf=falseof your philosophical stance! I am not alone is noticing this! (See the linked passage here http://books.google.com/books?id=k_xYkhHiXbwCpg=PA254lpg=PA254dq=crypto-solipsismsource=blots=nUEID3Dj1asig=zBQ3_9dxB6nHe2EVQ3o2iJ_VZG0hl=ensa=Xei=6gCVUMLUG4yk8gTXrIDICAved=0CE0Q6AEwBw#v=onepageq=crypto-solipsismf=false for a discussion) David Deutsch has a long discussion of this problem in his book/The Fabric of Reality/. At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AThe_Fabric_of_Reality , I found the following: Philosophers keep getting tangled up trying to prove scientific theories using pure logic alone, without any basis of facts. Viewing them as explanations instead brings many advantages, such as the ability to choose the simplest theory that fits the evidence. As an example, he demolishes Solipsism. Solipsism is generally supposed to be irrefutable, on the grounds that if everything is a dream, then so are the results of any test one could do. Deutsch refutes that by taking the theory seriously (as he says) and thinking out the ramifications. How is it that everything (specifically all fields of science) forms a consistent whole, even things one does not yet know? How do other, imaginary people know things that you do not? How can they have skills that you cannot equal? The end result is that you have a theory which includes all the complexity of the apparent world, plus an additional notion that it is the dream of a single entity. Thus it is actually a more complicated theory, not a simpler one. Sound familiar? Realism is not a single theory, there are many forms of realism http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism/. You seem to have a naive realist view of numbers, in that we can apprehend them directly or at least that the properties of numbers are innate and yet are apprehended directly. I see this theory as nonsensical as it offers no explanation as to how properties of numbers match up with those of our thoughts about numbers. Umm, maybe you think that by equating the dreams of numbers to our inner thoughts, you can avoid this problem. OK. Nice Move! But we are left empty handed when it comes time to explain thoughts of change and the problem of arithmetic bodies. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
The two types of truth
Hi Bruno Marchal and Stephen, http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/leibniz.html Leibniz declares that there are two kinds of truth: truths of reason [which are non-contradictory, are always either true or false], and truths of fact [which are not always either true or false]. Truths of reason are a priori, while truths of fact are a posteriori. Truths of reason are necessary, permanent truths. Truths of fact are contingent, empirical truths. Both kinds of truth must have a sufficient reason. Truths of reason have their sufficient reason in being opposed to the contradictoriness and logical inconsistency of propositions which deny them. Truths of fact have their sufficient reason in being more perfect than propositions which deny them. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/3/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-03, 07:13:24 Subject: Re: Numbers in the Platonic Realm On 02 Nov 2012, at 23:12, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/2/2012 1:23 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I can understand these symbols because there is at least a way to physically implement them. Those notion have nothing to do with physical implementation. So your thinking about them is not a physical act? Too much ambiguous. Even staying in comp I can answer yes and no. Yes, because my human thinking is locally supported by physical events. No, because the whole couple mind/physical events is supported by platonic arithmetical truth. Dear Bruno, Where is the evidence of the existence of a Platonic realm? It is part of the assumption. We postulate arithmetic. I try to avoid the use of platonic there, as I used the term in Plato sense. In that sense Platonia = the greek No?, and it is derived from arithmetic and comp. All you need is the belief that 43 is prime independently of 43 is prime. The mere self-consistency of an idea is proof of existence Already in arithmetic we have the consistence of the existence of a prrof of the false, this certainly does not mean that there exist a proof of the false. So self-consistency is doubtfully identifiable with truth, and still less with existence. but the idea must be understood by a multiplicity of entities with the capacity to distinguish truth from falsehood to have any coherence as an idea! Not at all. 43 is prime might be true, even in absence of universe and observer. We cannot just assume that the mere existence of some undefined acts to determine the properties of the undefined. Truth and falsity are possible properties, they are not ontological aspects of existence. Truth is no more a property than existence. It makes no sense. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
knowledge by description vs knowledge by acquaintance
Hi Hal Ruhl What you provide, which is useful, are the objective predicates of life, such as the a and b of life is a life is b They are descriptors of life. But life itself is subjective, being the subject life of those propositions. Life is what it is, just the same as you or me. But it is not those descriptors. There are two types of knowledge: knowledge by description (you know who I am in words, by my descriptors). knowledge by acquaintance (you have actually met me). Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/3/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Hal Ruhl Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-02, 16:27:15 Subject: RE: Life: origin, purpose, and qualia spectrum Hi Stephen: -Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Stephen P. King Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2012 11:50 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Life: origin, purpose, and qualia spectrum On 10/31/2012 9:48 PM, Hal Ruhl wrote: Hi Everyone: I would like to restart my participation on the list by having a discussion regarding the aspects of what we call life in our universe starting in a simple manner as follows: [terms not defined herein have the usual Laws of Physics definition] 1) Definition (1): Energy (E) is the ability to subject a mass to a force. 2) There are several types of energy currently known: a) Mass itself via the conversion: [M = E/(c*c)] b) Gravitational c) Electromagnetic d) Nuclear [Strong and Weak forces] e) Dark Energy Hi Hal, Nice post! Thank you. Any way that the energy/force/work relation can be considered as a broken symmetry restoration concept? I had not thought of the unfolding of the scene I propose in terms of symmetry. But now that you mention it is seems that our universe may have started with full rotational symmetry [a point] and may end up with the same symmetry based on an infinite uniform and quite cold gas. 3) Definition (2) Work (W) Work is the flow of energy amongst the various types by means of a change in the spatial configuration, dynamics and/or amount of mass in a system brought about by an actual application of a force to a mass. 4) The exact original distribution of energy amongst the various types can't be reestablished and the new configuration can't do as much work as the prior configuration was capable of doing. [Second Law of Thermodynamics] Isn't the maximum entropy of a system a type of symmetry, where all equiprobable states look the same? See above response. 5) Time is not a factor: Once a flow of energy is possible it will take place immediately. 6) Conclusion (1): Since life is an energy flow conduit, wherever the possibility of life exists life will appear as rapidly as possible. The origin of life herein. Let me refer you to a very old paper of mine: http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/life.html I took a quick look. I may need some help understanding it fully. I occasionally play with the idea that Dark Energy is a spatially uniform leak of information from outside combined with a maximum information packing density in our universe. 7) Some energy flows are prevented by what are known [in my memory] as Energy Flow Hang-up Barriers such as nuclear bonding coefficient issues, spatial configuration, spin, other spatial dynamics, ignition temperature requirements, electromagnetic repulsion, etc. [Energy Flow Hang-up Barriers is not my terminology - I think there was a twenty year or so old article in Scientific American I am looking for and a quick Internet search found a discussion of the repulsion hang-up in Cosmology The Science of the Universe by Edward Robert Harrison. 8) Once life is present it will immediately punch as many holes in as many Energy Hang-up Barriers as the details of the particular life entity involved allows - this is how it realizes its energy flow conduit character. The purpose of life herein. In other words life's purpose is to hasten the heat death of its host universe. 9) Now add in evolution which is a random walk with a lower but no upper bound. Do you see mutation as a one-to-many map and selection as a many -to-one map? Well the DNA strings we know of are finite [n characters] so a particular example is a one in some sense and this string's finite number of mutations 4 ^ n+ is a many. However, I do not see that selection will always produce just one successor. My intent with #9 was to open the door a crack on what I would like to post next. Slightly larger crack: I too have been chewing on these concepts for many years. I have several unpublished works expressing versions of these ideas such as A Path to Socioeconomic Sustainability, 1992, Library of Congress deposit # TXu 554
Re: (mathematical) solipsism
On 11/3/2012 5:39 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: [SPK] In the absence of a means to determine some property, it is incoherent and sometimes inconsistent to claim that the property has some particular value and the absence of all other possible values. In math this is called (mathematical) solipsism. Dear Bruno, How is it solipsism? Solipsism is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism: Solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. The term comes from the Latin solus (alone) and ipse (self). Solipsism as an epistemological position holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure. The external world and other minds cannot be known, and might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist. My point is that numbers, by your notion of AR, are solipsistic as there is literally nothing other than the numbers. I reject AR because of this! Numbers alone cannot do what you propose. This post argues similar to my point: http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=5944965 Conventional solipsism is a logical philosophy whose underlying views apply equally to mathematical philosophies of neopythagoreanism and neoplatonism as well as mathematical realism and empiricism generally. The well established philosophical principle of solipsism is that only the individual is or can be demonstrated to exist. But the problem is that if this principle were actually demonstrably true it would also make it false because the truth established would ipso facto make the principle beyond control of any individual. Nobody really thinks solipsism is true. But the difficulty is no one can prove or disprove the concept because no one can prove the foundations of truth in absolute, necessary, and universal terms. This article http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1020context=philo argues against the claim that Intuitionism is solipsistic. I reject Intuitionism as a singular coherent theory of mathematics, but I do accept it as a member of the pantheon of interpretations of mathematics. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Numbers in the Platonic Realm
On 03 Nov 2012, at 11:46, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/3/2012 5:18 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: How can anything emerge from something having non properties? Magic? Dear Bruno, No, necessity. The totality of existence, the One, cannot be complete and consistent simultaneously, Why not? The One is not a theory. Why does it have to be a theory? The concept of the One is a fragment of a theory... You make the same coinfusion again and again. The One is not the same as the concept of the One. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: On the ontological status of elementary arithmetic
On 11/3/2012 6:08 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Dear Bruno, No, that cannot be the case since statements do not even exist if the framework or theory that defines them does not exist, therefore there is not 'truth' for a non-exitence entity. Brent already debunked this. The truth of a statement does not need the existence of the statement. You confuse again the truth of 1+1=2, with a possible claim of that truth, like 1+1=2. Horsefeathers http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/horsefeathers! How is the truth of an arithmetic statement separable from any claim of that truth? What is the possible value of a statement that we can make no claims about? -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: On the ontological status of elementary arithmetic
On 11/3/2012 6:08 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Russell is still a pregödelian philosophers. Gödel refutes his general philosophy of math in a precise way. Any idea in what book or paper is Gödel's refutation? I wish to read this! -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Could universes in a multiverse be solipsistic ? Would this be a problem ?
On 03 Nov 2012, at 12:24, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/3/2012 5:39 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I don't consider truth as an object. The numbers can be considered as the (only) object. truth concerns only the propositions about those objects and the derivative notions. OK, then how is it that you seem to imply that truth is independent of 1p, i.e. that it is a valuation internal to experience? Explain me why how you think that the content of the primeness of 43 depends on experience, and of whom. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: RE: Life: origin, purpose, and qualia spectrum
Hi Hal Ruhl Information is a collection of facts or data. There must be a reason (a sufficient reason) for their being so. We do not know what that is, although scientists do construct theories to give us a sufficient reason or two. To do this, they use their intelligence, which is from the platonic realm. This does not provide certainty (since the theory may not be unique or be in error), but it is immensely useful. Nature itself does not need to construct theories, it is thought by some such as Leibniz, that the facts we see were created a priori according to a pre-established harmony. By the hand of God. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/3/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Hal Ruhl Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-02, 23:47:05 Subject: RE: Life: origin, purpose, and qualia spectrum Hi Stephen: I think this got lost so I sending it again. -Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Stephen P. King Sent: Friday, November 02, 2012 6:37 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Life: origin, purpose, and qualia spectrum On 11/2/2012 4:27 PM, Hal Ruhl wrote: Let me refer you to a very old paper of mine: http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/life.html I took a quick look. I may need some help understanding it fully. I occasionally play with the idea that Dark Energy is a spatially uniform leak of information from outside combined with a maximum information packing density in our universe. Hi Hal, Could it be that information is being created and forcing the physical universe to make room for its instantiation? After all, space is not a conserved quantity! I think that what you mention is at least part of the source of Dark Energy but I wonder if the members of the multiverse are completely isolated from each other. Hal -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Could universes in a multiverse be solipsistic ? Would this be a problem ?
On 03 Nov 2012, at 12:43, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/3/2012 5:39 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: [BM] All this makes sense only because such truth does not depend on us and on our theories. [SPK] No, that is an incoherent statement as it pretends to be meaningful in the absence of any means to evaluate its meaningfulness. That is arithmetical realism. A statement like Church thesis and comp makes no sense at all without it. I have never heard about someone not believing in arithmetical realism. It is really basic. To pretend thatarithmetical realism is false already needs arithmetical realism. Dear Bruno, You have now heard of someone like that! Church's thesis and comp make sense to me without AR, I don't pretend that I am the only mind and that it is because my thoughts can agree with those of other minds that there is something real to all of us. You still do not see the crypto-solipsism of your philosophical stance! I am not alone is noticing this! (See the linked passage here for a discussion) David Deutsch has a long discussion of this problem in his book The Fabric of Reality. At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AThe_Fabric_of_Reality , I found the following: Philosophers keep getting tangled up trying to prove scientific theories using pure logic alone, without any basis of facts. Viewing them as explanations instead brings many advantages, such as the ability to choose the simplest theory that fits the evidence. As an example, he demolishes Solipsism. Solipsism is generally supposed to be irrefutable, on the grounds that if everything is a dream, then so are the results of any test one could do. Deutsch refutes that by taking the theory seriously (as he says) and thinking out the ramifications. How is it that everything (specifically all fields of science) forms a consistent whole, even things one does not yet know? How do other, imaginary people know things that you do not? How can they have skills that you cannot equal? The end result is that you have a theory which includes all the complexity of the apparent world, plus an additional notion that it is the dream of a single entity. Thus it is actually a more complicated theory, not a simpler one. Sound familiar? I don't see anything relevant for our (unclear) issue. Realism is not a single theory, there are many forms of realism. You seem to have a naive realist view of numbers, in that we can apprehend them directly or at least that the properties of numbers are innate and yet are apprehended directly. I said innate for numbers, with the logic and their laws. I don't say innate for humans in the usual psychological sense. You are digressing. I see this theory as nonsensical Mee too, but this is not related to arithmetical realism. as it offers no explanation as to how properties of numbers match up with those of our thoughts about numbers. Comp makes that clear, as the reality is arithmetical, or equivalent. Umm, maybe you think that by equating the dreams of numbers to our inner thoughts, you can avoid this problem. This follows from comp. I have not chosen this. OK. Nice Move! But we are left empty handed when it comes time to explain thoughts of change and the problem of arithmetic bodies. I am just formulating the problem, and solve a part of 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 everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Emergence of Properties
On 03 Nov 2012, at 12:17, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/3/2012 5:26 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: The arithmetical property of numbers are innate to the numbers, logic and the laws we assume. Dear Bruno, How? How are properties innate? This idea makes no sense to me, it never has as it does not allow for any explanation of apprehension of properties in my consideration... The only explanation of properties that makes sense to me is that of Leibniz: Properties are given by relations. We might think of objects as bundles of properties but this is problematic as it implies that properties are objects themselves. I think of properties similar to what Leibniz did: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/substance/#DesSpiLei Leibniz's substances, however, are the bearers of change (criterion (iv)) in a very different way from Aristotle's individual substances. An Aristotelian individual possesses some properties essentially and some accidentally. The accidental properties of an object are ones that can be gained and lost over time, and which it might never have possessed at all: its essential properties are the only ones it had to possess and which it possesses throughout its existence. The situation is different for Leibniz's monads—which is the name he gives to individual substances, created or uncreated (so God is a monad). Whereas, for Aristotle, the properties that an object has to possess and those that it possesses throughout its existence coincide, they do not do so for Leibniz. That is, for Leibniz, even the properties that an object possesses only for a part of its existence are essential to it. Every monad bears each of its properties as part of its nature, so if it were to have been different in any respect, it would have been a different entity. Furthermore, there is a sense in which all monads are exactly similar to each other, for they all reflect the whole world. They each do so, however, from a different perspective. For God, so to speak, turns on all sides and considers in all ways the general system of phenomena which he has found it good to produce…And he considers all the faces of the world in all possible ways…the result of each view of the universe, as looked at from a certain position, is…a substance which expresses the universe in conformity with that view. (1998: 66) So each monad reflects the whole system, but with its own perspective emphasized. If a monad is at place p at time t, it will contain all the features of the universe at all times, but with those relating to its own time and place most vividly, and others fading out roughly in accordance with temporal and spatial distance. Because there is a continuum of perspectives on reality, there is an infinite number of these substances. Nevertheless, there is internal change in the monads, because the respect in which its content is vivid varies with time and with action. Indeed, the passage of time just is the change in which of the monad's contents are most vivid. The difference in my thinking to that of Leibniz is that a monad is never at place p at time t (location is defined solely interns of mutuality of perspectives) and monads are only substances in that they are eternal. I find it best to drop the idea of substance altogether as it can be completely defined in terms of invariances. After I wrote the above I can see how you would think of properties as being innate, I meant independent of us. Not innate in the sense of psychology. but I see this as just a mental crutch that you are using to not think too deeply about the concept of property. I garee with what Leibiz said, and what Frege and the logicians have done with it. The situation is the same for your difficulty with my hypothesis of meaning. We learn to associate meanings to words so that words are more than just combinations of letters, but this is just the internalization of the associations and relations within our thinking process. You are too much unclear, for me. I can agree and disagree. As long as you don't present your theory it is hard to find out what you mean. Bruno -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at
Re: Re: Numbers in the Platonic Realm
Hi Quentin Anciaux Any statement that cannot be contradicted is always true. As such these truths are called a priori. They were here before the world or you or me was created. Prime numbers seem to be such. A posteriori truths are truths of existence called facts. They may be contradicted, may not be always true or false. Today it is raining is such. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/3/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Quentin Anciaux Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-02, 20:25:00 Subject: Re: Numbers in the Platonic Realm 2012/11/2 Stephen P. King On 11/2/2012 1:23 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I can understand these symbols because there is at least a way to physically implement them. Those notion have nothing to do with physical implementation. ? ? So your thinking about them is not a physical act? Too much ambiguous. Even staying in comp I can answer yes and no. Yes, because my human thinking is locally supported by physical events. No, because the whole couple mind/physical events is supported by platonic arithmetical truth. Dear Bruno, ? ? Where is the evidence of the existence of a Platonic realm? The mere self-consistency of an idea is proof of existence but the idea must be understood by a multiplicity of entities with the capacity to distinguish truth from falsehood to have any coherence as an idea! We cannot just assume that the mere existence of some undefined acts to determine the properties of the undefined. Truth and falsity are possible properties, they are not ontological aspects of existence. Either? you can have emerging properties of nothing or you can't. Either there is infinite regress or not, whatever is true (and one or the other is), it's not an obstacle. Quentin -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: On the ontological status of elementary arithmetic
Hi Stephen P. King Bertrand Russell was a superb logician but he was not infallible with regard to metaphysics. He called Leibniz's metaphysics an enchanted land and confessed that he hadn't a clue to what the meaning of pragmatism is. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/3/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-02, 17:03:42 Subject: Re: On the ontological status of elementary arithmetic On 11/2/2012 12:55 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 01 Nov 2012, at 21:42, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/1/2012 11:39 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Enumerate the programs computing functions fro N to N, (or the equivalent notion according to your chosen system). let us call those functions: phi_0, phi_1, phi_2, ... (the phi_i) Let B be a fixed bijection from N x N to N. So B(x,y) is a number. The number u is universal if phi_u(B(x,y)) = phi_x(y). And the equality means really that either both phi_u(B(x,y)) and phi_x(y) are defined (number) and that they are equal, OR they are both undefined. In phi_u(B(x,y)) = phi_x(y), x is called the program, and y the data. u is the computer. u i said to emulate the program (machine, ...) x on the input y. OK, but this does not answer my question. What is the ontological level mechanism that distinguishes the u and the x and the y from each other? The one you have chosen above. But let continue to use elementary arithmetic, as everyone learn it in school. So the answer is: elementary arithmetic. Dear Bruno,' If there is no entity to chose the elementary arithmetic, how is it chosen or even defined such that there exist arithmetic statements that can possibly be true or false? Nobody needs to do the choice, as the choice is irrelevant for the truth. If someone choose the combinators, the proof of 1+1= 2 will be very long, and a bit awkward, but the proof of KKK = K, will be very short. If someone chose elementary arithmetic, the proof of 1+1=2 will be very short (Liz found it on FOAR), but the proof that KKK = K, will be long and a bit awkward. The fact is that 1+1=2, and KKK=K, are true, independently of the choice of the theory, and indeed independently of the existence of the theories. Dear Bruno, No, that cannot be the case since statements do not even exist if the framework or theory that defines them does not exist, therefore there is not 'truth' for a non-exitence entity. We can assume some special Realm or entity does the work of choosing the consistent set of arithmetical statements or, as I suggest, we can consider the totality of all possible physical worlds As long as you make your theory clearer, I can't understand what you mean by physical world, possible, totality, etc. I use the same definitions as other people use. I am not claiming a private language and/or set of definitions, even if I have tried to refine the usual definition more sharply than usual. Physical world: http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/physical?q=Physical adjective 1) relating to the body as opposed to the mind: a range of physical and mental challenges 2) relating to things perceived through the senses as opposed to the mind; tangible or concrete: the physical world 3) relating to physics or the operation of natural forces generally: physical laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possible_world Those theorists who use the concept of possible worlds consider the actual world to be one of the many possible worlds. For each distinct way the world could have been, there is said to be a distinct possible world; the actual world is the one we in fact live in. Among such theorists there is disagreement about the nature of possible worlds; their precise ontological status is disputed, and especially the difference, if any, in ontological status between the actual world and all the other possible worlds. Totality: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/totality 1: an aggregate amount : sum, whole 2a : the quality or state of being total : wholeness as the implementers of arithmetic statements and thus their provers. Possible physical worlds, taken as a single aggregate, is just as timeless and non-located as the Platonic Realm and yet we don't need any special pleading for us to believe in them. ;-) ? I refuse to believe that you cannot make sense of what I wrote. Can you understand that I find your interpretation of Plato's Realm of Ideals to be incorrect? You seem to have read one book or taken one lecture on the subject and not read any more philosophical discussion of the ideas involved. I have asked you repeatedly to merely read Bertrand Russell's small book on philosophy - with is available on-line here http://www.ditext.com/russell/russell.html, but you seem unwilling to do that. Why?
Re: Re: Numbers in the Platonic Realm
Hi Stephen P. King The Platonic Realm doesn't exactly exist, because it is non-contradictory truth beyond spacetime. It is the a priori, the One, from which all things come. Sometimes I think of it as Cosmic Mind, Universal Intelligence, which has the attributes of God. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/3/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-02, 18:12:19 Subject: Re: Numbers in the Platonic Realm On 11/2/2012 1:23 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I can understand these symbols because there is at least a way to physically implement them. Those notion have nothing to do with physical implementation. So your thinking about them is not a physical act? Too much ambiguous. Even staying in comp I can answer yes and no. Yes, because my human thinking is locally supported by physical events. No, because the whole couple mind/physical events is supported by platonic arithmetical truth. Dear Bruno, Where is the evidence of the existence of a Platonic realm? The mere self-consistency of an idea is proof of existence but the idea must be understood by a multiplicity of entities with the capacity to distinguish truth from falsehood to have any coherence as an idea! We cannot just assume that the mere existence of some undefined acts to determine the properties of the undefined. Truth and falsity are possible properties, they are not ontological aspects of existence. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Numbers in the Platonic Realm
Hi Stephen P. King 1 + 1 =2 is a necessary truth, not a fact. It is always true. A priori. So there are necessary truths such as arithmetical truths which were here before the contingent world of facts was created. And will always be. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/3/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-02, 18:16:09 Subject: Re: Numbers in the Platonic Realm On 11/2/2012 1:23 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: You are the one saying that truth is limited to the means of knowing!!! Yes and no, Truth is limited to the *possibility* of knowledge of it. In the absence of the possibility of a statement being true (or false), there is not such thing as true or false. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Numbers in the Platonic Realm
Hi Stephen P. King The platonic realm is nothing. Intelligence is nothing. Life itself is nothing. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/3/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-02, 23:17:40 Subject: Re: Numbers in the Platonic Realm On 11/2/2012 8:25 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: Either you can have emerging properties of nothing or you can't. Either there is infinite regress or not, whatever is true (and one or the other is), it's not an obstacle. Hi Questin, It depends on whether you think of Nothing as merely an absence of properties or a complete lack of existence. I believe in the former case. I don't have problems with infinite regress as I understand that an actual regress requires infinite stuff to be real. Explanation that push the problem behind a insurmountable curtain are not infinite regressive, they are merely evasions of the problem. They are attempt to get people to stop asking hard questions. I will not ever stop asking questions as I am not afraid of being wrong or foolish. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Emergence of Properties
Hi Stephen P. King The properties of spacetime things are what can be measured (ie facts). The properties of beyond spacetime things are propositions that can't be contradicted (necessary truths). Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/3/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-03, 07:17:58 Subject: Re: Emergence of Properties On 11/3/2012 5:26 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: The arithmetical property of numbers are innate to the numbers, logic and the laws we assume. Dear Bruno, How? How are properties innate? This idea makes no sense to me, it never has as it does not allow for any explanation of apprehension of properties in my consideration... The only explanation of properties that makes sense to me is that of Leibniz: Properties are given by relations. We might think of objects as bundles of properties but this is problematic as it implies that properties are objects themselves. I think of properties similar to what Leibniz did: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/substance/#DesSpiLei Leibniz's substances, however, are the bearers of change (criterion (iv)) in a very different way from Aristotle's individual substances. An Aristotelian individual possesses some properties essentially and some accidentally. The accidental properties of an object are ones that can be gained and lost over time, and which it might never have possessed at all: its essential properties are the only ones it had to possess and which it possesses throughout its existence. The situation is different for Leibniz's monads?hich is the name he gives to individual substances, created or uncreated (so God is a monad). Whereas, for Aristotle, the properties that an object has to possess and those that it possesses throughout its existence coincide, they do not do so for Leibniz. That is, for Leibniz, even the properties that an object possesses only for a part of its existence are essential to it. Every monad bears each of its properties as part of its nature, so if it were to have been different in any respect, it would have been a different entity. Furthermore, there is a sense in which all monads are exactly similar to each other, for they all reflect the whole world. They each do so, however, from a different perspective. For God, so to speak, turns on all sides and considers in all ways the general system of phenomena which he has found it good to produce?nd he considers all the faces of the world in all possible ways?he result of each view of the universe, as looked at from a certain position, is? substance which expresses the universe in conformity with that view. (1998: 66) So each monad reflects the whole system, but with its own perspective emphasized. If a monad is at place p at time t, it will contain all the features of the universe at all times, but with those relating to its own time and place most vividly, and others fading out roughly in accordance with temporal and spatial distance. Because there is a continuum of perspectives on reality, there is an infinite number of these substances. Nevertheless, there is internal change in the monads, because the respect in which its content is vivid varies with time and with action. Indeed, the passage of time just is the change in which of the monad's contents are most vivid. The difference in my thinking to that of Leibniz is that a monad is never at place p at time t (location is defined solely interns of mutuality of perspectives) and monads are only substances in that they are eternal. I find it best to drop the idea of substance altogether as it can be completely defined in terms of invariances. After I wrote the above I can see how you would think of properties as being innate, but I see this as just a mental crutch that you are using to not think too deeply about the concept of property. The situation is the same for your difficulty with my hypothesis of meaning. We learn to associate meanings to words so that words are more than just combinations of letters, but this is just the internalization of the associations and relations within our thinking process. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Emergence of Properties
Hi Stephen P. King Those are psychological versions of numbers etc,. The innate properties are arithmetical. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/3/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-03, 07:20:37 Subject: Re: Emergence of Properties On 11/3/2012 5:26 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: The arithmetical property of numbers are innate to the numbers, logic and the laws we assume. Hi, This paper might be interesting to any one that would like to see a nice discussion of who it is that we come to understand numbers: http://web.media.mit.edu/~stefanm/society/som_final.html -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: (mathematical) solipsism
Hi Stephen P. King Although well-founded, solipsism still remains a psychological theory, a fact, if you will. As such, it belongs to the contingent world, not the world of necessary reason. There may be beings to which it does not hold. Mystics claim to have merged with the mind of God. Or perhaps some day a proof against it may be found. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/3/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-03, 08:00:10 Subject: Re: (mathematical) solipsism On 11/3/2012 5:39 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: [SPK] In the absence of a means to determine some property, it is incoherent and sometimes inconsistent to claim that the property has some particular value and the absence of all other possible values. In math this is called (mathematical) solipsism. Dear Bruno, How is it solipsism? Solipsism is: Solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. The term comes from the Latin solus (alone) and ipse (self). Solipsism as an epistemological position holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure. The external world and other minds cannot be known, and might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist. My point is that numbers, by your notion of AR, are solipsistic as there is literally nothing other than the numbers. I reject AR because of this! Numbers alone cannot do what you propose. This post argues similar to my point: http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=5944965 Conventional solipsism is a logical philosophy whose underlying views apply equally to mathematical philosophies of neopythagoreanism and neoplatonism as well as mathematical realism and empiricism generally. The well established philosophical principle of solipsism is that only the individual is or can be demonstrated to exist. But the problem is that if this principle were actually demonstrably true it would also make it false because the truth established would ipso facto make the principle beyond control of any individual. Nobody really thinks solipsism is true. But the difficulty is no one can prove or disprove the concept because no one can prove the foundations of truth in absolute, necessary, and universal terms. This article http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1020context=philo argues against the claim that Intuitionism is solipsistic. I reject Intuitionism as a singular coherent theory of mathematics, but I do accept it as a member of the pantheon of interpretations of mathematics. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: On the ontological status of elementary arithmetic
Hi Stephen P. King Contingent truths (facts) are not always true. They are constructed by inference or induction by man (a la Francis Bacon). Quantities are such. Necessary truths are/were/shall be always true. They can't be invented, they have to be discovered. Numbers are such. Arithmetic or had to exist before man or the Big Bang woujld not have worked. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/3/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-03, 08:06:59 Subject: Re: On the ontological status of elementary arithmetic On 11/3/2012 6:08 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Dear Bruno, No, that cannot be the case since statements do not even exist if the framework or theory that defines them does not exist, therefore there is not 'truth' for a non-exitence entity. Brent already debunked this. The truth of a statement does not need the existence of the statement. You confuse again the truth of 1+1=2, with a possible claim of that truth, like 1+1=2. Horsefeathers! How is the truth of an arithmetic statement separable from any claim of that truth? What is the possible value of a statement that we can make no claims about? -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Emergence of Properties
Hi Stephen, ' Yes, Aristotle's substances and their properties do not change with time. But Leibniz's do very rapidly. And they are individual to each substance, meaning to each monad (from his aspect). The actual properties are collective data of the universe. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/3/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-03, 08:22:27 Subject: Re: Emergence of Properties On 03 Nov 2012, at 12:17, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/3/2012 5:26 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: The arithmetical property of numbers are innate to the numbers, logic and the laws we assume. Dear Bruno, How? How are properties innate? This idea makes no sense to me, it never has as it does not allow for any explanation of apprehension of properties in my consideration... The only explanation of properties that makes sense to me is that of Leibniz: Properties are given by relations. We might think of objects as bundles of properties but this is problematic as it implies that properties are objects themselves. I think of properties similar to what Leibniz did: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/substance/#DesSpiLei Leibniz's substances, however, are the bearers of change (criterion (iv)) in a very different way from Aristotle's individual substances. An Aristotelian individual possesses some properties essentially and some accidentally. The accidental properties of an object are ones that can be gained and lost over time, and which it might never have possessed at all: its essential properties are the only ones it had to possess and which it possesses throughout its existence. The situation is different for Leibniz's monads?hich is the name he gives to individual substances, created or uncreated (so God is a monad). Whereas, for Aristotle, the properties that an object has to possess and those that it possesses throughout its existence coincide, they do not do so for Leibniz. That is, for Leibniz, even the properties that an object possesses only for a part of its existence are essential to it. Every monad bears each of its properties as part of its nature, so if it were to have been different in any respect, it would have been a different entity. Furthermore, there is a sense in which all monads are exactly similar to each other, for they all reflect the whole world. They each do so, however, from a different perspective. For God, so to speak, turns on all sides and considers in all ways the general system of phenomena which he has found it good to produce?nd he considers all the faces of the world in all possible ways?he result of each view of the universe, as looked at from a certain position, is? substance which expresses the universe in conformity with that view. (1998: 66) So each monad reflects the whole system, but with its own perspective emphasized. If a monad is at place p at time t, it will contain all the features of the universe at all times, but with those relating to its own time and place most vividly, and others fading out roughly in accordance with temporal and spatial distance. Because there is a continuum of perspectives on reality, there is an infinite number of these substances. Nevertheless, there is internal change in the monads, because the respect in which its content is vivid varies with time and with action. Indeed, the passage of time just is the change in which of the monad's contents are most vivid. The difference in my thinking to that of Leibniz is that a monad is never at place p at time t (location is defined solely interns of mutuality of perspectives) and monads are only substances in that they are eternal. I find it best to drop the idea of substance altogether as it can be completely defined in terms of invariances. After I wrote the above I can see how you would think of properties as being innate, I meant independent of us. Not innate in the sense of psychology. but I see this as just a mental crutch that you are using to not think too deeply about the concept of property. I garee with what Leibiz said, and what Frege and the logicians have done with it. The situation is the same for your difficulty with my hypothesis of meaning. We learn to associate meanings to words so that words are more than just combinations of letters, but this is just the internalization of the associations and relations within our thinking process. You are too much unclear, for me. I can agree and disagree. As long as you don't present your theory it is hard to find out what you mean. Bruno -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
Re: The two types of truth
On 11/3/2012 7:45 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal and Stephen, http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/leibniz.html Leibniz declares that there are two kinds of truth: truths of reason [which are non-contradictory, are always either true or false], and truths of fact [which are not always either true or false]. Truths of reason are a priori, while truths of fact are a posteriori. Truths of reason are necessary, permanent truths. Truths of fact are contingent, empirical truths. Both kinds of truth must have a sufficient reason. Truths of reason have their sufficient reason in being opposed to the contradictoriness and logical inconsistency of propositions which deny them. Truths of fact have their sufficient reason in being more perfect than propositions which deny them. Dear Roger, Is truth, either of reason or of fact, independent of the mind or in the collective minds of all that could apprehend them? -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Numbers in the Platonic Realm
On 11/3/2012 8:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 03 Nov 2012, at 11:46, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/3/2012 5:18 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: How can anything emerge from something having non properties? Magic? Dear Bruno, No, necessity. The totality of existence, the One, cannot be complete and consistent simultaneously, Why not? The One is not a theory. Why does it have to be a theory? The concept of the One is a fragment of a theory... You make the same coinfusion again and again. The One is not the same as the concept of the One. Does the One have a Concept of The One as its unique 1p? -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Could universes in a multiverse be solipsistic ? Would this be a problem ?
On 11/3/2012 8:12 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 03 Nov 2012, at 12:24, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/3/2012 5:39 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I don't consider truth as an object. The numbers can be considered as the (only) object. truth concerns only the propositions about those objects and the derivative notions. OK, then how is it that you seem to imply that truth is independent of 1p, i.e. that it is a valuation internal to experience? Explain me why how you think that the content of the primeness of 43 depends on experience, and of whom. Dear Bruno, The primacy of 17 or 43 or any other number is such that it can be apprehended, at least in principle, by /at least one entity/ (please note that this is a lower bound concept!). This implies that in the absence of that possibility of apprehension (by at least one entity) that there is no such thing as primeness. The dependency that I am claiming for the properties of numbers is no different from the dependency of properties (in the sense of being definite) for physical objects; there must exist some means to determine or otherwise measure or prove what those particular properties might be. Finitists fail because they assume that only a finite number of entities can in principle exist that can determine the properties of some arbitrary number. (See Normal J. Wildberger http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/%7Enorman/'s ideas for an example of finitism in mathematics) I propose that there are an infinity of possible worlds, each with a potential infinity of entities that can, at least in principle, determine the properties of any arbitrary number. This is the same idea, I think, as Godel's infinite tower of theories, each of which can determine the truth value for any theory which is a subset of it or implied to exist by it. I am just inverting the idea of the Forcing axiom of Cohen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forcing_%28mathematics%29. I start with an ambiguous notion of the One and reduce it down to where it is a fragment, a monad, a subset of the totality of all possible, and yet it reflects all of itsancestors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowest_common_ancestor as it is never not a proper part of the One. This is just an elaboration of Leibniz' idea of monads... The idea that a property has content is nonsensical, IMHO. Primeness (of numbers) is a property of numbers, and like any other object, they are nothing more than bounded bundles (clopen sets?) of properties defined in relation to other bounded bundles of properties. Only the One is isolated and independent of all things, as it *is* all things! It cannot be aware of anything other than itself, by definition. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Could universes in a multiverse be solipsistic ? Would this be a problem ?
On 11/3/2012 8:19 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 03 Nov 2012, at 12:43, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/3/2012 5:39 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: [BM] All this makes sense only because such truth does not depend on us and on our theories. [SPK] No, that is an incoherent statement as it pretends to be meaningful in the absence of any means to evaluate its meaningfulness. That is arithmetical realism. A statement like Church thesis and comp makes no sense at all without it. I have never heard about someone not believing in arithmetical realism. It is really basic. To pretend that arithmetical realism is false already needs arithmetical realism. Dear Bruno, You have now heard of someone like that! Church's thesis and comp make sense to me without AR, I don't pretend that I am the only mind and that it is because my thoughts can agree with those of other minds that there is something real to all of us. You still do not see thecrypto-solipsism http://books.google.com/books?id=k_xYkhHiXbwCpg=PA254lpg=PA254dq=crypto-solipsismsource=blots=nUEID3Dj1asig=zBQ3_9dxB6nHe2EVQ3o2iJ_VZG0hl=ensa=Xei=6gCVUMLUG4yk8gTXrIDICAved=0CE0Q6AEwBw#v=onepageq=crypto-solipsismf=falseof your philosophical stance! I am not alone is noticing this! (See the linked passage here http://books.google.com/books?id=k_xYkhHiXbwCpg=PA254lpg=PA254dq=crypto-solipsismsource=blots=nUEID3Dj1asig=zBQ3_9dxB6nHe2EVQ3o2iJ_VZG0hl=ensa=Xei=6gCVUMLUG4yk8gTXrIDICAved=0CE0Q6AEwBw#v=onepageq=crypto-solipsismf=false for a discussion) David Deutsch has a long discussion of this problem in his book/The Fabric of Reality/. At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AThe_Fabric_of_Reality , I found the following: Philosophers keep getting tangled up trying to prove scientific theories using pure logic alone, without any basis of facts. Viewing them as explanations instead brings many advantages, such as the ability to choose the simplest theory that fits the evidence. As an example, he demolishes Solipsism. Solipsism is generally supposed to be irrefutable, on the grounds that if everything is a dream, then so are the results of any test one could do. Deutsch refutes that by taking the theory seriously (as he says) and thinking out the ramifications. How is it that everything (specifically all fields of science) forms a consistent whole, even things one does not yet know? How do other, imaginary people know things that you do not? How can they have skills that you cannot equal? The end result is that you have a theory which includes all the complexity of the apparent world, plus an additional notion that it is the dream of a single entity. Thus it is actually a more complicated theory, not a simpler one. Sound familiar? I don't see anything relevant for our (unclear) issue. Umm, must I put the quote in different words for you? Here is what Google translator gives us: Les philosophes garder s'empêtrer essayer de prouver les théories scientifiques utilisant la logique pure seul, sans aucune base de faits. Les considérant comme des explications provoque au contraire de nombreux avantages, comme la possibilité de choisir la théorie la plus simple qui s'adapte à la preuve. A titre d'exemple, il démolit solipsisme. Le solipsisme est généralement censé être irréfutable, au motif que si tout est un rêve, alors si sont les résultats d'un test qu'on pourrait faire. Deutsch réfute que, en prenant au sérieux la théorie (comme il dit) et de la pensée sur les ramifications. Comment se fait-il que tout (en particulier tous les domaines de la science) constitue un ensemble cohérent, même des choses qu'on ne sait pas encore? Comment puis-autres, des personnages imaginaires savoir des choses que vous n'avez pas? Comment peuvent-ils avoir des compétences que vous pouvez ne pas correspondre? Le résultat final est que vous avez une théorie qui comprend toute la complexité du monde apparent, plus une notion supplémentaire qui est le rêve d'une seule et même entité. Ainsi, il est en fait une théorie plus compliquée, pas un système plus simple. Realism is not a single theory, there are many forms of realism http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism/. You seem to have a naive realist view of numbers, in that we can apprehend them directly or at least that the properties of numbers are innate and yet are apprehended directly. I said innate for numbers, with the logic and their laws. I don't say innate for humans in the usual psychological sense. You are digressing. Why is it different for numbers? What makes numbers special? You claim that numbers have dreams and other crypto-psychological claims, so why not? I see this theory as nonsensical Mee too, but this is not related to arithmetical realism. OK, can you see how my critique of AR works? I claim that AR assumes too much; that it assumes innate properties without any explanation of how the definite of the properties of
RE: Life: origin, purpose, and qualia spectrum
Hi Stephen: -Original Message- Hi Hal, Could it be that information is being created and forcing the physical universe to make room for its instantiation? After all, space is not a conserved quantity! [HH] I think that what you mention is at least part of the source of Dark Energy but I wonder if the members of the multiverse are completely isolated from each other. Of course they are, otherwise we would see them! Perhaps we have yet to look in the right place in the right way. Perhaps a component of Dark Energy is a first peak at a larger world. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Against Mechanism
On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 11:01 AM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Your contradiction is that at some times you accept survival and other times you deny there is survival. Well depending on circumstances sometimes you survive and sometimes you don't, there have been a huge number of permutations in this thought experiment, give me a specific one and I'll tell you if you survived. And it was Bruno not me who invented the Helsinki man and the Washington man and the Moscow man; If he gave then different names he must have believed there is something different about them, and indeed there is, the Moscow man will write in his diary I don't see Washington and the Washington man will wright that he does. Big deal. Okay, one simple question which I hope you will answer: As in the movie the Prestige, would you step into the duplicating machine knowing that one of your duplicates would survive and one would drown? If you have reservations about stepping into the machine, because you are uncertain whether you might experience that suffering, that is all you need to move to the next step, which is merely duplication with delay. In the movie you enjoyed so much, the main character wondered Would I be the man in the box or the prestige? This is all that is meant to be shown by step 3, that a person in Angier's position can't know which man he will be after the machine copies him. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Against Mechanism
On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: You are the one pretending being able to predict what happens after pushing the button, but you have always given a list of what can happen, which is not a prediction. A list is necessary because there are 2 things, if I know they are going to have different fates then I cannot just give one answer. And if the 2 are identical I can't single out one and say this one will have fate X while that one will have fate Y, and because they are identical it would be a useless prediction even if I could. You did not show a flow, just a confusion between 1p and 3p. Oh for heaven's sake Bruno, do you really believe I don't understand the difference between the first and third person point of view? I have no duplicating machine but I still don't know if my environment will include rain tomorrow, but I can't find anything of philosophical interest in that fact . This is not the same form of indeterminacy. The impossibility of predicting the weather is due to the deterministic chaos. In the first place pure deterministic chaos probably does not exist, and even if it did it would not be predictable because you'd have to know the initial conditions with infinite and not just astronomically good precision, and because if you wished to get a answer before the event happened the computation would generate so much heat it would create a new Big Bang. So when you say The question was asked to the Helsinki man you are asking a question to a man who's body has been destroyed. No, the question is asked before he pushes on the read/cut button. I'll bet you don't even remember the question, it was What is the probability the Washington man will write in his diary he sees Washington? and I said the answer was 100%. For some reason you believed my prediction was wrong. If you want John Clark to make other predictions about what the Helsinki man will write in the Helsinki man's diary under various circumstances John Clark will do so, but because this involves personal identity for clarity please don't use any pronouns in the question. The guy knows that he might very well be the guy in Moscow, And this illustrates what a muddle pronouns can cause; but yes it's true, the Helsinki man knows that the man in Moscow will be the Moscow man. Big deal. so he cannot assert that he will *feel* with 100% chance to be the one in Washington. Again you confuse the 3-view and the 1-view. And again you are confused by pronouns. from the first person view, as he knows that after pushing the button he will find himself being in only one city, not in two cities simultaneously. Yes but John Clark sees nothing paradoxical or contradictory about that, its just odd; and the only reason its odd is that were not accustomed to that sort of thing and the reason for that is that duplicating machines, although they violate no laws of physics are, with current technology, hard to make. And that could change. You pretend that there is 100% chance that he will feel to see Washington, and 100% chance he will feel to see Moscow and yet you agree that there is 100% chance he will see only one city If Bruno Marchal sees a contradiction in that its because pronouns have gotten the better of Bruno Marchal yet again. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: On the ontological status of elementary arithmetic
On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 4:03 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: Dear Bruno, No, that cannot be the case since statements do not even exist if the framework or theory that defines them does not exist, therefore there is not 'truth' for a non-exitence entity. Stephen, in your philosophy do you believe the Milky way existed before there was life to see it? Can things not happen or be true in the absence of observers? Can a universe devoid of internal observers be said to exist? If so, in what sense would you say it exists? Thanks, Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: On the ontological status of elementary arithmetic
On 11/3/2012 8:38 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King Bertrand Russell was a superb logician but he was not infallible with regard to metaphysics. He called Leibniz's metaphysics an enchanted land and confessed that he hadn't a clue to what the meaning of pragmatism is. Hi Roger, Yeah, his star fell today, for me. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Numbers in the Platonic Realm
On 11/3/2012 8:48 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King 1 + 1 =2 is a necessary truth, not a fact. It is always true. A priori. So there are necessary truths such as arithmetical truths which were here before the contingent world of facts was created. And will always be. Hi Roger, It seems to me that is there are necessary truths that have no connection to facts in any way, then they are unknowable. I am just reversing that thought to define the relations between a priori and a posteriori truths. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Numbers in the Platonic Realm
On 11/3/2012 8:51 AM, Roger Clough wrote: The platonic realm is nothing. Intelligence is nothing. Life itself is nothing. 1-1 = 0 2-2 = 0 3-3 = 0 ... -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Emergence of Properties
On 11/3/2012 8:57 AM, Roger Clough wrote: The properties of spacetime things are what can be measured (ie facts). The properties of beyond spacetime things are propositions that can't be contradicted (necessary truths). Hi Roger, I do not assume that the can't be contradicted is an a priori fixed apartheid on truths. I define necessary truths to be contingent on _many minds_ in agreement. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: (mathematical) solipsism
On 11/3/2012 9:06 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Although well-founded, solipsism still remains a psychological theory, a fact, if you will. As such, it belongs to the contingent world, not the world of necessary reason. There may be beings to which it does not hold. Mystics claim to have merged with the mind of God. Or perhaps some day a proof against it may be found. Hi Roger, If you can find a consistent definition of a mind for me, I will give you that proof. ;-) -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: On the ontological status of elementary arithmetic
On 11/3/2012 9:13 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Necessary truths are/were/shall be always true. They can't be invented, they have to be discovered. Numbers are such. Yes, but not just discovered, they must be communicable. Arithmetic or had to exist before man or the Big Bang woujld not have worked. I do not restrict entities with 1p to humanity. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Emergence of Properties
On 11/3/2012 9:18 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Yes, Aristotle's substances and their properties do not change with time. But Leibniz's do very rapidly. And they are individual to each substance, meaning to each monad (from his aspect). The actual properties are collective data of the universe. Hi Roger, I do not assume a single physical universe that is independent of entities with 1p. I call this idea the Fish bowl model. I see the physical universe as a dream that is the same for many 1p, a literal mass delusion! -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Life: origin, purpose, and qualia spectrum
On 11/3/2012 12:10 PM, Hal Ruhl wrote: Hi Stephen: -Original Message- Hi Hal, Could it be that information is being created and forcing the physical universe to make room for its instantiation? After all, space is not a conserved quantity! [HH] I think that what you mention is at least part of the source of Dark Energy but I wonder if the members of the multiverse are completely isolated from each other. Of course they are, otherwise we would see them! Perhaps we have yet to look in the right place in the right way. Perhaps a component of Dark Energy is a first peak at a larger world. Hi Hal, Interesting possibility! -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: On the ontological status of elementary arithmetic
On 11/3/2012 1:30 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 4:03 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net mailto:stephe...@charter.net wrote: Dear Bruno, No, that cannot be the case since statements do not even exist if the framework or theory that defines them does not exist, therefore there is not 'truth' for a non-exitence entity. Stephen, in your philosophy do you believe the Milky way existed before there was life to see it? Hi Jason, Why are you assuming that life has a small set of possible instances? I see life as a very broad spectrum. In my thinking, instances life occurs when ever an entropy flow http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/life.html can be harnessed to sustain autopoiesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopoiesis. Can things not happen or be true in the absence of observers? No, there is no meaning to things or true in the absence of observers, as they are properties that observers agree upon. Can a universe devoid of internal observers be said to exist? Yes. Existence is not dependent or contingent. If so, in what sense would you say it exists? It is a necessary possibility thus it exists. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: What is Life?
On 11/3/2012 2:46 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: I see life as a very broad spectrum. In my thinking, instances life occurs when ever an entropy flow http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/life.html can be harnessed to sustain autopoiesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopoiesis. also see http://www.eoht.info/page/Entropy+flow -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Weyl on mathematics vs. reality
Some more quotes from Bas C Van Fraassen Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective. This time on what Weyl has said on isomorphism between mathematics and reality. p. 208 Herman Weyl expressed the fundamental insight as follows in 1934: 'A science can never determine its subject-matter expect up to isomorphic representation. The idea of isomorphism indicates the self-understood, insurmountable barrier of knowledge. [...T]oward the nature of its objects science maintains complete indifference.' (Weyl 1934:19) The initial assertion is clearly based on two basic convictions: o that scientific representation is mathematical, and o that in mathematics no distinction cuts across structural sameness. p. 209 Weyl illustrates this with the example of a color space and an isomorphic geometric object. ... The color space is a region on the projective plane. If we can nevertheless distinguish the one from the other, or from other attribute spaces with that structure, doesn't that mean that we can know more that what science, so conceived, can deliver? Weyl accompanies his point about this limitation with an immediate characterization of the 'something else' which is then left un-represented. 'This - for example what distinguish the colors from the point of the projective plane - one can only know in immediate alive intuition.' (Ibid.) p. 210 We seem to be left with four equally unpalatable alternatives: o that either the point about isomorphism and mathematics is mistaken, or o that scientific representation is not at bottom mathematical representation alone, or o that science is necessarily incomplete in a way we can know it to be incomplete, or o that those apparent differences to us, cutting across isomorphism, are illusory. In his comment about immediate alive intuition, Weyl appears to opt for the second, or perhaps the third, alternative. But on the either of this, we face a perplexing epistemological question: Is there something that I could know to be the case, and which is not expressed by a proposition that could be part of some scientific theory? Evgenii -- http://blog.rudnyi.ru/tag/bas-c-van-fraassen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Could universes in a multiverse be solipsistic ? Would this be a problem ?
On 11/3/2012 2:22 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/3/2012 12:44 AM, meekerdb wrote: On 11/2/2012 10:38 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: No, that is an incoherent statement as it pretends to be meaningful in the absence of any means to evaluate its meaningfulness. So what means do you used to evaluate, Either snow is white or snow is not white.? My eyes can still discriminate colors from each other... I use them. So do you use your color discrimination to evaluate,Either klognee is grue or klognee is not grue.? Brent -- Well, I don't know, I never tried. Have you? How did it work out? Well, that's very curious since the sentence is a tautology and is obviously true. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Could universes in a multiverse be solipsistic ? Would this be a problem ?
On 11/3/2012 6:58 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 11/3/2012 2:22 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/3/2012 12:44 AM, meekerdb wrote: On 11/2/2012 10:38 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: No, that is an incoherent statement as it pretends to be meaningful in the absence of any means to evaluate its meaningfulness. So what means do you used to evaluate, Either snow is white or snow is not white.? My eyes can still discriminate colors from each other... I use them. So do you use your color discrimination to evaluate,Either klognee is grue or klognee is not grue.? Brent -- Well, I don't know, I never tried. Have you? How did it work out? Well, that's very curious since the sentence is a tautology and is obviously true. Brent Esas palabras no tienen significansa. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Weyl on mathematics vs. reality
Nice. I was just writing about mathematics and use of symbols: http://s33light.org/post/34935613677 Craig On Saturday, November 3, 2012 3:01:55 PM UTC-4, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: Some more quotes from Bas C Van Fraassen Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective. This time on what Weyl has said on isomorphism between mathematics and reality. p. 208 Herman Weyl expressed the fundamental insight as follows in 1934: 'A science can never determine its subject-matter expect up to isomorphic representation. The idea of isomorphism indicates the self-understood, insurmountable barrier of knowledge. [...T]oward the nature of its objects science maintains complete indifference.' (Weyl 1934:19) The initial assertion is clearly based on two basic convictions: o that scientific representation is mathematical, and o that in mathematics no distinction cuts across structural sameness. p. 209 Weyl illustrates this with the example of a color space and an isomorphic geometric object. ... The color space is a region on the projective plane. If we can nevertheless distinguish the one from the other, or from other attribute spaces with that structure, doesn't that mean that we can know more that what science, so conceived, can deliver? Weyl accompanies his point about this limitation with an immediate characterization of the 'something else' which is then left un-represented. 'This - for example what distinguish the colors from the point of the projective plane - one can only know in immediate alive intuition.' (Ibid.) p. 210 We seem to be left with four equally unpalatable alternatives: o that either the point about isomorphism and mathematics is mistaken, or o that scientific representation is not at bottom mathematical representation alone, or o that science is necessarily incomplete in a way we can know it to be incomplete, or o that those apparent differences to us, cutting across isomorphism, are illusory. In his comment about immediate alive intuition, Weyl appears to opt for the second, or perhaps the third, alternative. But on the either of this, we face a perplexing epistemological question: Is there something that I could know to be the case, and which is not expressed by a proposition that could be part of some scientific theory? Evgenii -- http://blog.rudnyi.ru/tag/bas-c-van-fraassen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/at06iH1ons4J. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Weyl on mathematics vs. reality
: Is there something that I could know to be the case, and which is not expressed by a proposition that could be part of some scientific theory? Yes . I love my mother is some knowledge that I know , and is not part of a scientific theory. We know reality because we live in the reality, We do not approximate reality by theories. We directly know reality because we live within it. Our primary knowledge is intuitive, historic, direct.. It is _the_ reality. A theory is a second class of knowledge about a model that approximate reality, maybe upto a point of an isomorphism with some-part-of reality, but certainly, not an isomorphism that embraces the whole reality, because we could never know if we have modelized the entire reality, nether if this modelization is accurate. The legitimate usage of the models is to refine this intuitive knowledge. But at the worst, a model can negate our direct knowledge and try to create an alternative reality. In this case the theorist reclaim the model as the reality. Thus the theorist .reclaim a complete knowledge of reality. In this case the theorist is outside of science, even if it is within the science industry, and becomes a sort of gnostic preacher -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Could universes in a multiverse be solipsistic ? Would this be a problem ?
On 11/3/2012 6:24 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/3/2012 5:39 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I don't consider truth as an object. The numbers can be considered as the (only) object. truth concerns only the propositions about those objects and the derivative notions. OK, then how is it that you seem to imply that truth is independent of 1p, i.e. that it is a valuation internal to experience? My view of it is that arithmetic is model of counting, adding and combining in pairs. All of these can be informally defined ostensively and so various propositions can be seen to be true or false. The model is extended to arbitrarily large numbers, and evaluation is arbitrarily extended by induction. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: On the ontological status of elementary arithmetic
On 11/3/2012 7:06 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/3/2012 6:08 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Dear Bruno, No, that cannot be the case since statements do not even exist if the framework or theory that defines them does not exist, therefore there is not 'truth' for a non-exitence entity. Brent already debunked this. The truth of a statement does not need the existence of the statement. You confuse again the truth of 1+1=2, with a possible claim of that truth, like 1+1=2. Horsefeathers http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/horsefeathers! How is the truth of an arithmetic statement separable from any claim of that truth? What is the possible value of a statement that we can make no claims about? You are causing confusion by asking how the truth of a statement is separable from any claim of that truth. But claims and statements are the same thing - so of course they are not seperable. Bruno is saying that the claim/statement is NOT the same as the fact that makes it true. 1+1=2 is a claim; it's the claim that 1+1=2. And that's a true claim; it's true that 1+1=2 whether you claim it or not. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: On the ontological status of elementary arithmetic
On 11/3/2012 8:21 PM, meekerdb wrote: Horsefeathers http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/horsefeathers! How is the truth of an arithmetic statement separable from any claim of that truth? What is the possible value of a statement that we can make no claims about? You are causing confusion by asking how the truth of a statement is separable from any claim of that truth. But claims and statements are the same thing - so of course they are not seperable. Bruno is saying that the claim/statement is NOT the same as the fact that makes it true. 1+1=2 is a claim; it's the claim that 1+1=2. And that's a true claim; it's true that 1+1=2 whether you claim it or not. It is not about me or any other single individual, it is about the mutual agreement on the claim by many individuals, any one of which is irrelevant to the truth of a claim. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
RE: Life: origin, purpose, and qualia spectrum
Hi John: My responses are below within an edited original post. Thanks for your comments. 1) Definition (1): Energy (E) is the ability to subject a mass to a force. * Re the use of ability here: What I am trying to do here is establish a process such that at the instant an ability becomes a possibility that possibility is realized immediately since the necessary series of events unfold immediately . Take as an example a radioactive isotope deep in the earth's core. We can reasonably assume that it was fused together billions of years ago in some ancient stellar event. Since then it has had the ability to undergo fission [ a type of energy ] but has not because conditions in it have never been quite right. Then all of a sudden conditions are right - appropriate Bosons are exchanged and the fission unfolds. Energy is redistributed amongst the various types. Thus at the moment I will therefore leave the above wording as is. * * 2) There are several types of energy currently known or proposed : I agree with you about Dark Energy - I had intended the wording to be as it now appears above. ++ a) Mass itself via the conversion: [M=E/(c*c)] I do not think the above is a restriction in the sense I think you mean. For example a spring when compressed [as I understand it] is more massive when compressed then when relaxed. ++ b) Gravitional c) Electromagnetic d) Nuclear [Strong and Weak forces] e) Dark Energy 3) Definition (2) Work (W): Work is the flow of energy amongst the various types by means of a change in the spatial configuration, dynamics and/or amount of mass in a system brought about by an actual application of a force to a mass. 4) The exact original distribution of energy amongst the various types can't be reestablished and the new configuration can't do as much work as the prior configuration was capable of doing. [Second Law of Thermodynamics] 5) Time is not a factor: Once a flow of energy is possible it will take place immediately. 6) Conclusion (1): Since life is an energy flow conduit, wherever the possibility of life exists life will appear as rapidly as possible. The origin of life herein. \ If we look at the usual attempts to define life, we find things such as grow [larger I suppose], reproduce, etc. These require a flow of energy from an initial ability to do work to a lower ability to do work and through the life entity. Think of the life entity as a pipe or conduit for this flow. Therefore life herein is just an energy flow conduit drilling holes in energy flow hang-up barriers as rapidly as possible for the particular entity to enable even more such energy flow - a simple but not necessarily uplifting origin-purpose. *** 7) Some energy flows are prevented by what are known [in my memory] as Energy Flow Hang-up Barriers such as nuclear bonding coefficient issues, spatial configuration, spin, other spatial dynamics, ignition temperature requirements, electromagnetic repulsion, etc. [Energy Flow Hang-up Barriers is not my terminology - I think there was a twenty year or so old article in Scientific American and a quick Internet search found a discussion of the repulsion hangup in Cosmology The Science of the Universe. 8) Once life is present it will immediately punch as many holes in as many Energy Hang-up Barriers as the details of the particular life entity involved allows - this is how it realizes its energy flow conduit character. The purpose of life herein. In other words life's purpose is to hasten the heat death of its host universe. 9) Now add in evolution which is a random walk with a lower but no upper bound. A discussion of the possible consequences [such as qualia levels of particular life entities] should await a critique and possibly a revision of the above. Thanks again for your comments. Hal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Weyl on mathematics vs. reality
On 11/3/2012 2:01 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: Some more quotes from Bas C Van Fraassen Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective. This time on what Weyl has said on isomorphism between mathematics and reality. p. 208 Herman Weyl expressed the fundamental insight as follows in 1934: 'A science can never determine its subject-matter expect up to isomorphic representation. The idea of isomorphism indicates the self-understood, insurmountable barrier of knowledge. [...T]oward the nature of its objects science maintains complete indifference.' (Weyl 1934:19) The initial assertion is clearly based on two basic convictions: o that scientific representation is mathematical, and o that in mathematics no distinction cuts across structural sameness. p. 209 Weyl illustrates this with the example of a color space and an isomorphic geometric object. ... The color space is a region on the projective plane. If we can nevertheless distinguish the one from the other, or from other attribute spaces with that structure, doesn't that mean that we can know more that what science, so conceived, can deliver? Weyl accompanies his point about this limitation with an immediate characterization of the 'something else' which is then left un-represented. 'This - for example what distinguish the colors from the point of the projective plane - one can only know in immediate alive intuition.' (Ibid.) p. 210 We seem to be left with four equally unpalatable alternatives: o that either the point about isomorphism and mathematics is mistaken, or o that scientific representation is not at bottom mathematical representation alone, or o that science is necessarily incomplete in a way we can know it to be incomplete, or o that those apparent differences to us, cutting across isomorphism, are illusory. In his comment about immediate alive intuition, Weyl appears to opt for the second, or perhaps the third, alternative. But on the either of this, we face a perplexing epistemological question: Is there something that I could know to be the case, and which is not expressed by a proposition that could be part of some scientific theory? It seems to me he left out the most likely case: that our science is incomplete in a way we know. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Weyl on mathematics vs. reality
On 11/3/2012 6:47 PM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: : Is there something that I could know to be the case, and which is not expressed by a proposition that could be part of some scientific theory? Yes . I love my mother is some knowledge that I know , and is not part of a scientific theory. But could it be is the question. There could be a scientific theory that Alberto Corona loves his mother and you could know the theory. We know reality because we live in the reality, We do not approximate reality by theories. We directly know reality because we live within it. Our primary knowledge is intuitive, historic, direct.. It is _the_ reality. A theory is a second class of knowledge about a model that approximate reality, maybe upto a point of an isomorphism with some-part-of reality, but certainly, not an isomorphism that embraces the whole reality, because we could never know if we have modelized the entire reality, nether if this modelization is accurate. The legitimate usage of the models is to refine this intuitive knowledge. But at the worst, a model can negate our direct knowledge and try to create an alternative reality. In this case the theorist reclaim the model as the reality. Thus the theorist .reclaim a complete knowledge of reality. In this case the theorist is outside of science, even if it is within the science industry, and becomes a sort of gnostic preacher Yes, a model that includes everything is impossible (and not even useful), but it might still be that each thing you know is part of some model. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: On the ontological status of elementary arithmetic
On 11/3/2012 8:11 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/3/2012 8:21 PM, meekerdb wrote: Horsefeathers http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/horsefeathers! How is the truth of an arithmetic statement separable from any claim of that truth? What is the possible value of a statement that we can make no claims about? You are causing confusion by asking how the truth of a statement is separable from any claim of that truth. But claims and statements are the same thing - so of course they are not seperable. Bruno is saying that the claim/statement is NOT the same as the fact that makes it true. 1+1=2 is a claim; it's the claim that 1+1=2. And that's a true claim; it's true that 1+1=2 whether you claim it or not. It is not about me or any other single individual, it is about the mutual agreement on the claim by many individuals, any one of which is irrelevant to the truth of a claim. Realism (arithmetical or other) is the position that the claim by EVERY one of which is irrelevant; the truth of the claim depends only whether it corresponds to a fact. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: On the ontological status of elementary arithmetic
On 11/3/2012 10:35 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 11/3/2012 8:11 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/3/2012 8:21 PM, meekerdb wrote: Horsefeathers http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/horsefeathers! How is the truth of an arithmetic statement separable from any claim of that truth? What is the possible value of a statement that we can make no claims about? You are causing confusion by asking how the truth of a statement is separable from any claim of that truth. But claims and statements are the same thing - so of course they are not seperable. Bruno is saying that the claim/statement is NOT the same as the fact that makes it true. 1+1=2 is a claim; it's the claim that 1+1=2. And that's a true claim; it's true that 1+1=2 whether you claim it or not. It is not about me or any other single individual, it is about the mutual agreement on the claim by many individuals, any one of which is irrelevant to the truth of a claim. Realism (arithmetical or other) is the position that the claim by EVERY one of which is irrelevant; the truth of the claim depends only whether it corresponds to a fact. Brent It your claim is true then truth is unknowable, as facts become meaningless. Fact require independent verification to exist. -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Life: origin, purpose, and qualia spectrum
Hi, Hal, and thanks for your reply. I don't feel up to discuss YOUR ideas: as I touched I WAS a polymer(chem) scientist as long as I lost my faith in the conventional views (giving place to agnosticism upon the infinite complexity I call everything. So consider my responses 'second rate' - ideas you may or may not consider indeed. ## Ability: seems to me you value the potential energy higher than the rest. ##Mass - I am lost. (massive as well). When I tried to go down to the bases of it, I lost all massiveness: mass less concepts with physical items attached. All in our conventional science terms: human thinking within the model we actually carry (different at all times). ##Dark energy (matter?) - thanks for not crucifying me for such un-science. ## - E??? do you have any idea how to identify electricity? (This is not my vendetta against it for the 5 days this week when we missed it to Sandy). Luckily we got it back but I have bad vibes. ## We NEED Strong and weak forces to maintain our figment of matter. So we created them and calculate them to satisfy what we think. I don't deny an atomic bomb explosion, but the explanation is premature. We have a fantastic technology - ALMOST good (except for some unexpected mishaps, accidents, sicknesses, wars, imperfections.) ##Your Conclusions to 6 are perfectly identified by the terms science is using (work?). I call them figments based on our present partial knowledge of EVERYTHING - subject to be changed when our knowledge -inventory grows. It was different 1000 years ago and maybe yesterday. Your sentences are involved, I need more time to digest them better. (As I recall our last discussion years ago, I stopped short when you started to resort more and more into engineering lingo what I could not match. That was the time when my agnostic ideas emerged and I could not cope with the human thinking firmness of the engineering know-it-all.) My principle is - I dunno. ## LIFE: I feel with 'my' translation I may be close to your position - maybe a bit wider in scope. I did not boil it down (so far!) to energy change (flow). Reproduction is nonexistent, except in prokaryotes, the offspring of 2 heterosexual parents into a 3rd entity maybe 'procreation', but not *reproduction* of any of the parents. Just think of the personal DNA. I surprised already some reputable biologists/physiologists. Like a physicist's characterisation of energy(activity!) I found for life - *process* the MR (metabolism and repair) description of Robert Rosen the closest - not an identification of the *term* either. Besides I place a 'life(process)' into much wider bounds than OUR human chemistry of carbon compound-, even non-carbon compound live- bio-chem-processes in our terrestrial circumstances. (See resp to ##9) ##to7: I feel the 'universe' is our abode among innumerable others in a Multiverse - composed of non-identical ones, MAYBE not so simplistic ones as ours (we have no contact to others): ours is founded upon two ordinates (space and time) making it a 3D view with changes between the two. Conventional sciences cannot afford to step out from such framework (Sci.Am. or else). That would be 'unscientific' and 'imaginary'. ## Heat Death - the perfect and infinite entropy Stephen referred to - is akin to (my) re-distribution into the - OK, let's say: - perfect entropy of MY PLENITUDE from which the universe(s) popped out because of some un-entropic complexity formation - to re-smoothing again into it. The Black Hole is a related idea, perverted into Terrestrial Physics. (And so we get again closer in thinking - Ha Ha). ## to 9 I have objections. I cannot imagine (maybe my mistake) evolution without a goal, a final aim which would require an intelligent design to approach it. (I may have one: the re-distribution into the Plenitude). My way (as of yesterday) is the ease-and-potential path of changes allowed by the available configurations (relations) when a change occurs. NO RANDOM, it would make a grits out of nature. Even authors with high preference on random treatises withdrew into a conditional random when I attacked the term. Conditionality kills random of course. So in my terms: NO random mutations, (especially not FOR survival) I call 'evolution' the HISTORY of our universe. The unsuccessful mutants die, the successful go on - science detects them in its snapshots taken and explains them religiously. (Survival of the fittest - the Dinosaur was fit when it got extinct by the change in circumstances). I accept ONE random (in mathematical puzzles): take ANY number... Your lower, but not upper bound is highly appreciable. Thanks. I apologize for my haphazard remarks upon prima vista reading. The list-discussion is not a well-founded scientific discourse upon new ideas. Most people tell what they formulated over years. A reply is many times instantaneous. Regards John Mikes On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 9:43 PM, Hal Ruhl halr...@alum.syracuse.edu wrote: Hi John: My
Re: On the ontological status of elementary arithmetic
On 11/3/2012 11:06 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/3/2012 10:35 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 11/3/2012 8:11 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 11/3/2012 8:21 PM, meekerdb wrote: Horsefeathers http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/horsefeathers! How is the truth of an arithmetic statement separable from any claim of that truth? What is the possible value of a statement that we can make no claims about? You are causing confusion by asking how the truth of a statement is separable from any claim of that truth. But claims and statements are the same thing - so of course they are not seperable. Bruno is saying that the claim/statement is NOT the same as the fact that makes it true. 1+1=2 is a claim; it's the claim that 1+1=2. And that's a true claim; it's true that 1+1=2 whether you claim it or not. It is not about me or any other single individual, it is about the mutual agreement on the claim by many individuals, any one of which is irrelevant to the truth of a claim. Realism (arithmetical or other) is the position that the claim by EVERY one of which is irrelevant; the truth of the claim depends only whether it corresponds to a fact. Brent It your claim is true then truth is unknowable, I don't see how that follows. When everyone claimed the Earth was flat did that make it unknowable that it was round? If so how did anyone ever come know it? as facts become meaningless. Fact require independent verification to exist. That's directly contrary to the meaning of 'fact'. I think you want the word 'opinion'. Brent -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.455 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/5370 - Release Date: 11/02/12 19:34:00 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
