Re: WHY DOES ANYTHING EXIST (typos corrected)
Le 21-mai-05, à 20:32, Lee Corbin a écrit : Come on, now. Nobody here, understands what Bruno's done, except *maybe* Bruno. You exaggerate, I think. And you take the risk of mystifying what I have done, which is far more simple than you imagine. Of course there is a conceptual difficulty, which is due probably to the hardness of acknowledging our aristotelian substancialist prejudice. Most today's people take Nature for granted, and they don't like the idea that there is an hard problem of matter (along with a poblem of consciousness, which is simpler in the frame of comp), nor do they like the idea that physics could be a secondary science, and *must* be so, in case comp (as I define it) would be true. It is true that some atheists *hate* my thesis, but this is because they *do* understand it. They do understand that my argument shows in a rather definitive way how much atheism is based on dogma which have nothing to envy to religious dogma. Both atheist and catholics hates agnostic attitude in fundamental matters. To reason in theology is still a taboo. Theology is still in a pre-galilean phase. Science has not yet really begin I think, and I illustrate it with my thesis. The technical part makes problem only for the many who didn't get some basic notion in logic (which is alas not very well taught today). But a 15h course should be enough. Compare to Stephen's Pratts paper, which presupposes not only non-standard logics, but also category theory, my work is far much easier. There is nothing magical in my use of logic: I invite you to read my SANE paper and ask me ANY question. My work is 100% 3-person sharable, and it shows only that comp is testable. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
RE: WHY DOES ANYTHING EXIST (typos corrected)
Stephen writes
Consider the Cantor hierarchy and the way that nameability seems to
become more and more difficult as we climb higher and higher.
Yeah, remember Rudy Rucker's joke in Infinity and the Mind where
he points out It is interesting to note that the smaller large
cardinals have much grander names than the really big ones. Down
at the bottom you have the self-styled inaccessible and indescribable
cardinals loudly celebrating their size, while above, one of the
larger cardinals quietly remarks that it is measurable.
What has happened, I think, is that the seventh or eighth time that
your mind is completely blown, even having your mind *blown* gets
familiar---and even perhaps a bit dull. The Red Queen could also
have told Alice that every day before breakfast, she has her
whole world view turned upside-down and inside-out at least several
times.
The reason why this question has no answer is because there is no point
at which the question about First Causes can be posed such that an answer
obtains that is provably True. This is the proof that Bruno's work shows us,
taking Gdel's to its logical conclusion.
Come on, now. Nobody here, understands what Bruno's done, except
*maybe* Bruno. You draw the most sweeping conclusions from the smallest
things. Common sense tells one that questions about First Causes
don't have any answers of substance, but it's a stretch to say that
this comes from rumination about Gdel's theorem. Sounds just like
the people who derived moral relativism from Einstein's work.
Additionally, the notion of a first cause, in itself, is fraught with
tacit assumptions. Consider the possibility that there is no such a thing as
a first cause just as there is no such thing as a privileged frame of
reference. We are assuming that there is a foundation that is manifested
by the axiom of regularity:
http://www.answers.com/topic/axiom-of-regularity?method=5
Every non-empty set S contains an element a which is disjoint from S.
Exactly how can Existence obey this axiom without being inconsistent?
Before we run away screaming in Horror at this thought, consider the
implications of Norman's statement here:
You misunderstand what the axiom is saying. (I admit, I was
shocked and appalled at your rewording of it---but then it
turned out that *you* were not the criminal who reworded it
this way. It's actually in the link you provide!! (Thanks.))
Well, at least liability if not criminality, unless it's
immediately added that what this is saying is that we
demand that any S set have the property, in order to
qualify as being a real set, that it is not incestuous
with at least one of its elements: I mean, there is at
least one of its elements that it doesn't share an element
with.
For example, if S = {a,b,c}, say, then we cannot have
a = {b,c}, and b = {a}, and c = {a,b,c}, because then it's,
like, totally devoid of substance. Whereas if there was
some *honest* element d in S such that d = {a, S, c, f},
then while it is pretty wild to have S itself, along with
the other suspiciously incestuous elements like a and c
contributing to the potential delinquency, at least it has
f, which makes it free from total engagement in perverse
behavior.
*Regularity* was the nicest axiom that Zermelo found that
saved us from the very worst kind of circularity, I guess.
Lee
Re: WHY DOES ANYTHING EXIST (typos corrected)
Hi Lee,
I see that you have not yet experienced the wonders of non-well founded
set theory! Let me point you to the first paper that I read that started me
down this road:
http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/pw/papers/math1.ps
I hope you can view Postscript files. Let me know if otherwise.
Stephen
- Original Message -
From: Lee Corbin [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: everything-list@eskimo.com
Sent: Saturday, May 21, 2005 2:32 PM
Subject: RE: WHY DOES ANYTHING EXIST (typos corrected)
Stephen writes
Consider the Cantor hierarchy and the way that nameability seems to
become more and more difficult as we climb higher and higher.
Yeah, remember Rudy Rucker's joke in Infinity and the Mind where
he points out It is interesting to note that the smaller large
cardinals have much grander names than the really big ones. Down
at the bottom you have the self-styled inaccessible and indescribable
cardinals loudly celebrating their size, while above, one of the
larger cardinals quietly remarks that it is measurable.
What has happened, I think, is that the seventh or eighth time that
your mind is completely blown, even having your mind *blown* gets
familiar---and even perhaps a bit dull. The Red Queen could also
have told Alice that every day before breakfast, she has her
whole world view turned upside-down and inside-out at least several
times.
The reason why this question has no answer is because there is no
point
at which the question about First Causes can be posed such that an
answer
obtains that is provably True. This is the proof that Bruno's work shows
us,
taking Gdel's to its logical conclusion.
Come on, now. Nobody here, understands what Bruno's done, except
*maybe* Bruno. You draw the most sweeping conclusions from the smallest
things. Common sense tells one that questions about First Causes
don't have any answers of substance, but it's a stretch to say that
this comes from rumination about Gdel's theorem. Sounds just like
the people who derived moral relativism from Einstein's work.
Additionally, the notion of a first cause, in itself, is fraught
with
tacit assumptions. Consider the possibility that there is no such a thing
as
a first cause just as there is no such thing as a privileged frame of
reference. We are assuming that there is a foundation that is
manifested
by the axiom of regularity:
http://www.answers.com/topic/axiom-of-regularity?method=5
Every non-empty set S contains an element a which is disjoint from S.
Exactly how can Existence obey this axiom without being inconsistent?
Before we run away screaming in Horror at this thought, consider the
implications of Norman's statement here:
You misunderstand what the axiom is saying. (I admit, I was
shocked and appalled at your rewording of it---but then it
turned out that *you* were not the criminal who reworded it
this way. It's actually in the link you provide!! (Thanks.))
Well, at least liability if not criminality, unless it's
immediately added that what this is saying is that we
demand that any S set have the property, in order to
qualify as being a real set, that it is not incestuous
with at least one of its elements: I mean, there is at
least one of its elements that it doesn't share an element
with.
For example, if S = {a,b,c}, say, then we cannot have
a = {b,c}, and b = {a}, and c = {a,b,c}, because then it's,
like, totally devoid of substance. Whereas if there was
some *honest* element d in S such that d = {a, S, c, f},
then while it is pretty wild to have S itself, along with
the other suspiciously incestuous elements like a and c
contributing to the potential delinquency, at least it has
f, which makes it free from total engagement in perverse
behavior.
*Regularity* was the nicest axiom that Zermelo found that
saved us from the very worst kind of circularity, I guess.
Lee
Re: WHY DOES ANYTHING EXIST (typos corrected)
Dear Freinds, I apologize for not reading my own post more carefully before sending them. My dislexia is acting up badly lately and my previous post was full of terrible typos. - Original Message - From: Norman Samish [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2005 4:15 PM Subject: Re: WHY DOES ANYTHING EXIST Gentlemen, Thank you for many illuminating replies to the Why does anything exist? question. Three are shown below. It's clear that some hold that there is an identity between physical and mathematical existence (although Patrick Leahy may disagree). If so, we can phrase the big WHY as Why do numbers exist? (Answer: Because such existence is a logical necessity.) [SPK] This identity, does it how at all levels of Existence? I would argue that it does not and this is the reason that I am suggesting that we look at Vaughan Pratt's ideas based on Chu spaces as a way to comprehend the stratifications of Existence. The duality we find there is easy to understand once we get past our prejudices. Consider the duality that exist between Cantor sets and complete atomic Boolean algebras... http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~pt/ASD/manifesto.html Consider the Cantor hierarchy and the way that nameability seems to become more and more difficult as we climb higher and higher. In the limit of the hierarchy, there is a point at which physical implementability and mathematical representability are not longer distinguishable, Nothingness and Everything are One. Every transformation is a perfect homomorphism, even an automorphism. This is perfect symmetry. But we must not forget that Existence-in-itself must be Complete and thus it follows that all modes of Existence also must exist, thus we have the example of the Cantor Hierarchy. http://www.phschool.com/science/science_news/articles/infinite_wisdom.html The question (at least as I mean it) can also be phrased as Why is there something instead of nothing? Or perhaps I am really asking What is the First Cause? [SPK] Any notions of First Causes are self-contradicting. The reason why this question has no answer is because there is no point at which the question about First Causes can be posed such that an answer obtains that is provably True. This is the proof that Bruno's work shows us, taking Goedel's to its logical conclusion. The very asking of the question is like trying to predict what one will do, given some Newcombian choice, and then having to wrestle with the implications of the answer. Additionally, the notion of a first cause, in itself, is fraught with tacit assumptions. Consider the possibility that there is no such a thing as a first cause just as there is no such thing as a privileged frame of reference. We are assuming that there is a foundation that is manifested by the axiom of regularity: http://www.answers.com/topic/axiom-of-regularity?method=5 Every non-empty set S contains an element a which is disjoint from S. Exactly how can Existence obey this axiom without being inconsistent? Before we run away screaming in Horror at this thought, consider the implications of Norman's statement here: I think the big WHY must be an unanswerable question from a scientific standpoint, and that Leahy must be correct when he says . . . there is just no answer to the big WHY. Stephen Paul King says it, maybe more rigorously, when he says, Existence, itself, can not be said to require an explanation for such would be a requirement that there is a necessitate prior to which Existence is dependent upon. Norman Samish ~~ Stephen Paul King writes: Existence, itself, can not be said to require an explanation for such would be a requirement that there is a necessitate prior to which Existence is dependent upon. Pearce's idea is not new and we have it from many thinkers that the totality of the multiverse must sum to zero, that is the essence of symmetry. It is the actuality of the content of our individual experiences (including all of the asymmetries) that we have to justify. Patrick Leahy writes: I find this a very odd question to be asked on this list. To me, one of the main attractions of the everything thesis is that it provides the only possible answer to this question. Viz: as Jonathan pointed out, mathematical objects are logical necessities, and the thesis (at least in Tegmark's formulation) is that physical existence is identical to mathematical existence. Despite this attractive feature, I'm fairly sure the thesis is wrong (so that there is just no answer to the big WHY?), but that's another story. Bruno Marchal writes: You can look at my URL for argument that physical existence emerges from mathematical existence. I have no clues that physical existence could just be equated to mathematical existence unless you attach consciousness to individuated bodies, but how? I can argue that without accepting natural numbers you cannot justify
