Re: The past hypothesis

2010-05-06 Thread m.a.
Brent, Thanks for keeping the phun in philosophy. marty - Original Message - From: Brent Meeker To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 3:58 PM Subject:

Re: The past hypothesis

2010-05-06 Thread John Mikes
Dear Rex, I went through that long back-and-forth with Brent (not sure which meaning whom) and recalled Brono's we don't 'know': we assume (as in scinece). I also recalled my poor opinion about statistical/probabilistical judgements (because they depend on the limits of counting and sequence of

Re: The past hypothesis

2010-05-06 Thread Bruno Marchal
On 06 May 2010, at 04:24, Rex Allen wrote: On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 2:54 PM, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: We haven't changed the relative number of Rexs and not-Rexs, we've just labeled them with an extra property and then rearranged them according to that additional property. They

Re: The past hypothesis

2010-05-06 Thread Rex Allen
Ha! Indeed, these nesting levels do get fairly obscure. On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 10:49 AM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: Dear Rex, I tried to paraphrase your next to last par. of this post. It was: As if we could do otherwise. If we assume physicalism, then our constituent particles

Re: The past hypothesis

2010-05-06 Thread Rex Allen
On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 12:45 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 06 May 2010, at 04:24, Rex Allen wrote: On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 2:54 PM, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: We haven't changed the relative number of Rexs and not-Rexs, we've just labeled them with an extra

Re: The past hypothesis

2010-05-06 Thread Bruno Marchal
On 06 May 2010, at 04:13, Rex Allen wrote: What is belief except another aspect of conscious experience? OK. Well. I am trying to fit everything that I know into a single consistent, coherent framework. Me too. Maybe belief is all that exists? Fundamental and uncaused...

Re: The past hypothesis

2010-05-06 Thread John Mikes
Rex, you may have made a typo, but in my thinking it does not make a difference: when I translate the 'physicalist' surety into hypothetical (agnostic, assumed) possibilities it leads to the same uncertainty if translated from YES or from NO. My main point is the *given the universe's initial