Re: The Meaning of Life
This study recent published in Nature suggests not only a neural basis for morality, but a specific neural basis for a specific kind of morality: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nature05631.html http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/science/22brain.html?_r=1ref=scienceoref=slogin Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Janus [was Evidence for the simulation argument ]
Mark, I appreciate your post, and I take any feeling, that what is said here is incompatible with the computationalist hypothesis, as a misunderstanding of what comp could be, or as an absence of knowledge of how computer science and mathematical logic force us to revise our opinion on machine and numbers (natural or not). The Janus image is cute. From any correct machine point of views, incompleteness forces us to recognize that arithmetical truth is a Janus with at least 8 (or 16, or 24, ...) heads. Those unavoidable quite different internal and not always arithmetical view of the arithmetical reality(*) connect all machine dreams in an eventually empirically testable view, and also, contrary to usual physics prevent at the start the usual pre-Loebian pseudo-mechanist or materialist elimination of the person. Bruno (*) For example, from the first person point of view a machine cannot identify herself with ANY machine. When a machine says I am not a machine, if I denotes the first person canonically attached to the machine, such an assertion is correct. I know that this is counter-intuitive. I can provide more technical explanation if asked. Le 21-mars-07, à 18:05, Mark Peaty a écrit : John, with your rich linguistic experience you surely recognise that English [plain or otherwise] is very much a hybrid language - and surely many who are forced to learn it as a second or third language would call it 'b*stard' even. And the way that we native speakers of English use words from other languages is never very consistent, Imp*rialistically exploitative is the stronger tradition. So please don't expect great depth of empathy with Latin or whatever. The point about 'Janus' - who I first heard about through reading the books of Arthur Koestler - is that 'he'? no 'It'! embodies or symbolises some interesting aspects of the part-whole nature of things in the real world. And it was Arthur Koestler who really majored on the pervasive manifestation and influence of part-whole dichotomy-as-integration in nature. My rave about Janus and the quora is an attempt to digest all the strange and seemingly incompatible theories and descriptions trotted out on this and other discussion groups. The Janus incorporates a basic paradoxical feature of the 'real' world: togetherness and separation. The two faces of Janus ARE one entity or feature, like the two sides of a door. Each face must connect with others, and it seems self evident that such a place of connection requires at least three different Jani to be linked together, because just two would not be distinguishable. Part of the reason I go on about this is that I am not satisfied with conceptions of 'arithmetic' being ultimate in nature and somehow immune from entropy. My take on things is that 'existence' per se is ultimately irreducible but we can never get to the bottom of it. Indeed, 'getting to the bottom' of the _Great It_ may be impossible in principle if process physics is the truest description we can find. If basic space time is an eternal process of collapse and simplification in the direction of smallwards, there may be no true smallest thing. Our discovery of the Planck length, etc, and the fact that we live in a world of the characteristic dimensions it appears to have, may be 'just' artefacts or consequences of being the size we are. What I mean is there may be no limits to the range of scales [orders of magnitude] that are possible. One good feature of the 'Janus' concept is that it incorporates existence, connection at potentially vast distance, the potential for 'direction' [because the two faces of Janus are looking opposite ways], the potential for tension and its resolution through simplification [and therefore gravity as drift towards small size], and so forth. Furthermore it does not rule out the possibility that the connections embodied as the Janus connection, are of an indeterminate, fractal nature. This might be reflected in the node or quorum actually being made of [or having] fractional connectivity. I see it as possible that 'numbers' are in fact words, and the 'integers' or 'whole numbers' that we commonly speak of and utilise are actually convenient fabrications humans have created in order to impose order on the world. It is conceivable that everything real is actually a process that can only ever be represented properly with 'quasi-numbers' that only ever exhibit/take fractional values. Regards Mark Peaty CDES [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.arach.net.au/~mpeaty/ John Mikes wrote: Mark, makes sense - but... *: I hate when people create a new vocabulary to be learned for appropriate use. I made MY vocabulary and the rest of the world should learn it. Adolf H*tler. * Then again I like your 'plain English' of Latin words, grammar and mythology. * We like to mix features of reductionist (conventional) science with more advanced ideas, it is
Re: Believing ...
Le 21-mars-07, à 22:18, John Mikes a écrit : Academic - tenure - even Nobel type conventional science is rfeductionistic in this sense.. I agree: SCIENCE should be as you identified it. Thanks for telling. I thought, a bit naively perhaps, that after Descartes and Popper, say, it was part of common knowledge that science, properly understood, is an arrow from doubts to ... more and more doubts, and cannot, thus, be reductionist. You know, people like Leibniz and even the young Hilbert thought that a machine could exist capable of answering, at least in principle, all question about numbers, actually all question about machine as well, including herself. Now we know that we can interview machine as powerful as we want, as far as they remain self-referentially correct, they remain extraordinarily modest. If you ask to such a machine if she will ever say a bullshit, well, the young one crash immediately (transforming herself into a universal dovetailer btw), the older one answer that either they will say a bullshit, or that they ... might say a bullshit(*). Bruno (*) For the modalist: I will prove a falsity or it is consistent that I will prove a falsity Bf v DBf(same as Dt - ~BDt). With the older modal notation: []f v []f (same as t - ~[]t ) B = [] = Godel purely arithmetical provability predicate (Beweisbar) D = = ~B~= ~[]~ Recall that, as Aristotle already got, ~B = D~ and ~D = B~ (in the alethic mode: not necessary p = possible not p ; not possible p = necessary not p. See my older modal posts. 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Believing ...
Bruno, those 'idealistic' definitions from Leibnitz and Descartes are not experienced in - - what is called usually as science. Look at the Laws of physics, does engineering doubt them? The statements of 'logic', arithmetic, etc. etc. are all believed as FIRM laws. Now that is what I call 'reductionist = to consider a topical limited cut from the totality for the relevant (?) observations WITHIN such (what I call: model), and draw conclusions if there were nothing else to consider. That is what Academia (tenure-Nobel) does and what - as I wrote - most editing companies accept for publication. This is close to what young minds get brainwashed into in college education. e.g. Physics 101 etc. (Neurology not exempted). Absolutely different from what you and I said. No 'flexible mind' allowed. I hope you accept my terms for 'reductionist science' G, John - Original Message - From: Bruno Marchal To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Friday, March 23, 2007 7:36 AM Subject: Re: Believing ... Le 21-mars-07, à 22:18, John Mikes a écrit : Academic - tenure - even Nobel type conventional science is rfeductionistic in this sense.. I agree: SCIENCE should be as you identified it. Thanks for telling. I thought, a bit naively perhaps, that after Descartes and Popper, say, it was part of common knowledge that science, properly understood, is an arrow from doubts to ... more and more doubts, and cannot, thus, be reductionist. You know, people like Leibniz and even the young Hilbert thought that a machine could exist capable of answering, at least in principle, all question about numbers, actually all question about machine as well, including herself. Now we know that we can interview machine as powerful as we want, as far as they remain self-referentially correct, they remain extraordinarily modest. If you ask to such a machine if she will ever say a bullshit, well, the young one crash immediately (transforming herself into a universal dovetailer btw), the older one answer that either they will say a bullshit, or that they ... might say a bullshit(*). Bruno (*) For the modalist: I will prove a falsity or it is consistent that I will prove a falsity Bf v DBf(same as Dt - ~BDt). With the older modal notation: []f v []f (same as t - ~[]t ) B = [] = Godel purely arithmetical provability predicate (Beweisbar) D = = ~B~= ~[]~ Recall that, as Aristotle already got, ~B = D~ and ~D = B~ (in the alethic mode: not necessary p = possible not p ; not possible p = necessary not p. See my older modal posts. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 268.18.17/730 - Release Date: 3/22/2007 7:44 AM --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
