Re: Quentin Meillassoux
God made the integers, all else is the work of man. I'VE GOT IT But I'm not going to go running out naked. Bruno, ask yourself this question: if you were an integer, how would you factor yourself? --nbsp; Mark Buda lt;her...@acm.orggt; I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. On Jul 14, 2010 10:03 AM, Bruno Marchal lt;marc...@ulb.ac.begt; wrote: If we are digital machine, the causal network is plausibly (with Occam) 100% arithmetical.Incompleteness explains why we will never get bored, indeed. Bruno On 13 Jul 2010, at 17:50, Mark Buda wrote:The problem is that the causal network is half physical and half mental and infinite and looped in such a way that you will never get bored, guys. Trust me. It's going to be glorious. --nbsp; Mark Buda lt;her...@acm.orggt; I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. On Jul 13, 2010 11:45 AM, Brent Meeker lt;meeke...@dslextreme.comgt; wrote: On 7/12/2010 10:54 PM, Allen Rex wrote: On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 12:13 AM, Brent Meeker lt;meeke...@dslextreme.comgt; wrote: On 7/12/2010 8:00 PM, Allen Rex wrote: On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 9:33 AM, Bruno Marchal lt;marc...@ulb.ac.begt; wrote: I don't think we can use reason to defeat reason. What machines can do is to use reason to go beyond reason, and find some non provable or non rational truth. This is not a defeat of reason. It is the complete contrary, I would say. I don't think he's trying to use reason to defeat reason, but rather to show that that reason indicates that there is no reason for what we observe. He's arguing that if we don't have a reason for everything we can't have any reason for anything.nbsp; In which case I have no reason to believe him. But in that case you have no reason to disbelieve him either. I don't need a reason to disbelieve him. So, if the deterministic physicalists are right then given the initial conditions of the universe plus the causal laws of physics as applied over ~13.7 billion years, you could not believe other than you do at this moment. You are bound to your beliefs and to your destiny by unbreakable causal chains. And if the indeterministic physicalists are right then that's still basically true, but there were also some coin flips involved in chaining your beliefs down to their current configuration. You are bound to your beliefs and to your destiny by...constant coin flips. A bad run of luck, and there's no telling how you'll end up. My beliefs are formed by reality - I'll take that as a compliment. And if I'm right, there is no reason for the existence of your conscious experience of holding those beliefs. No, IF you're right there is no finite causal chain of explanations for that. There's no mysterious physical world that underlies and explains what you oberve but has no explanation itself. Instead, your conscious experience exists fundamentally and uncaused. There is no you. There is no future. Only the conscious experience of these things. You've made a great leap from I can't have a complete explanation of the world. to There is no world.nbsp; You and Meillassoux are like the little boy who discovers that no matter what his mother says he can ask Why?, except you consider it a profound discovery. Again, to me it looks like all three possibilities amount to the same thing. The first two options just have a lot of extra inferred-from-experience behind the scenes infrastructure which serves no purpose except...what? If you don't think it serves your pursposes, then don't believe.nbsp; I've found it serves mine. Occam's Razor is on my side. Join us Brent. Us?nbsp; Who's us?nbsp; In any case I don't exist.nbsp; I'd explain why, but 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-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. -- 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-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. -- You received
Re: Quentin Meillassoux
Gentlemen, I have figured out what Pythagoras's big secret was and what the whole 2012 Mayan calendar thing relates and the mechanism behind it and the relationship between evolution, intelligent design, quantum mechanics, objective reality, subjective reality, narrative reality, human psychology, the ultimate answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything is in my brain, because I am 42, and I think it would be really funny if I could prove to Richard Dawkins that Douglas Adams was a prophet of God, and that Jesus was a real historical figure, and in the process redeem all the evils that religion, in particular the Catholic Church, of which I am now proud to have never officially left, have done by explaining it to the world. It's really, really, funny. But you're going to have to ask nicely. Because I have other stuff to do. Whee! Really, just use google and wikipedia and most of you can figure out how to reach me. I love it when a plan comes together! Please call me, whoever figures this out first. I know you all want the answers as much as I do. But it's a pain in the ass to explain, just ask Bruno. And I know why! I have to do it face to face! Or at least interactively over the phone. Richard Dawkins, I'm an angel of God, and I'm coming your way! Feel free to use my evidence to prove or disprove the existence of God... because it's all in how you look at it. (That's a hint.) God made the integers, all else is the work of man. I'VE GOT IT But I'm not going to go running out naked. Bruno, ask yourself this question: if you were an integer, how would you factor yourself? --nbsp; Mark Buda lt;her...@acm.orggt; I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. On Jul 14, 2010 10:03 AM, Bruno Marchal lt;marc...@ulb.ac.begt; wrote: If we are digital machine, the causal network is plausibly (with Occam) 100% arithmetical.Incompleteness explains why we will never get bored, indeed. Bruno On 13 Jul 2010, at 17:50, Mark Buda wrote:The problem is that the causal network is half physical and half mental and infinite and looped in such a way that you will never get bored, guys. Trust me. It's going to be glorious. --nbsp; Mark Buda lt;her...@acm.orggt; I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. On Jul 13, 2010 11:45 AM, Brent Meeker lt;meeke...@dslextreme.comgt; wrote: On 7/12/2010 10:54 PM, Allen Rex wrote: On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 12:13 AM, Brent Meeker lt;meeke...@dslextreme.comgt; wrote: On 7/12/2010 8:00 PM, Allen Rex wrote: On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 9:33 AM, Bruno Marchal lt;marc...@ulb.ac.begt; wrote: I don't think we can use reason to defeat reason. What machines can do is to use reason to go beyond reason, and find some non provable or non rational truth. This is not a defeat of reason. It is the complete contrary, I would say. I don't think he's trying to use reason to defeat reason, but rather to show that that reason indicates that there is no reason for what we observe. He's arguing that if we don't have a reason for everything we can't have any reason for anything.nbsp; In which case I have no reason to believe him. But in that case you have no reason to disbelieve him either. I don't need a reason to disbelieve him. So, if the deterministic physicalists are right then given the initial conditions of the universe plus the causal laws of physics as applied over ~13.7 billion years, you could not believe other than you do at this moment. You are bound to your beliefs and to your destiny by unbreakable causal chains. And if the indeterministic physicalists are right then that's still basically true, but there were also some coin flips involved in chaining your beliefs down to their current configuration. You are bound to your beliefs and to your destiny by...constant coin flips. A bad run of luck, and there's no telling how you'll end up. My beliefs are formed by reality - I'll take that as a compliment. And if I'm right, there is no reason for the existence of your conscious experience of holding those beliefs. No, IF you're right there is no finite causal chain of explanations for that. There's no mysterious physical world that underlies and explains what you oberve but has no explanation itself. Instead, your conscious experience exists fundamentally and uncaused. There is no you. There is no future. Only the conscious experience of these things. You've made a great leap from I can't have a complete explanation of the world. to There is no world.nbsp; You and Meillassoux are like the little boy who discovers that no matter what his mother says he can ask Why?, except you consider it a profound discovery. Again, to me it looks like all three possibilities amount to the same thing. The first two options just have a lot of extra inferred-from-experience behind the scenes
Re: Quentin Meillassoux
If we are digital machine, the causal network is plausibly (with Occam) 100% arithmetical. Incompleteness explains why we will never get bored, indeed. Bruno On 13 Jul 2010, at 17:50, Mark Buda wrote: The problem is that the causal network is half physical and half mental and infinite and looped in such a way that you will never get bored, guys. Trust me. It's going to be glorious. -- Mark Buda her...@acm.org I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. On Jul 13, 2010 11:45 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 7/12/2010 10:54 PM, Allen Rex wrote: On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 12:13 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 7/12/2010 8:00 PM, Allen Rex wrote: On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 9:33 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I don't think we can use reason to defeat reason. What machines can do is to use reason to go beyond reason, and find some non provable or non rational truth. This is not a defeat of reason. It is the complete contrary, I would say. I don't think he's trying to use reason to defeat reason, but rather to show that that reason indicates that there is no reason for what we observe. He's arguing that if we don't have a reason for everything we can't have any reason for anything. In which case I have no reason to believe him. But in that case you have no reason to disbelieve him either. I don't need a reason to disbelieve him. So, if the deterministic physicalists are right then given the initial conditions of the universe plus the causal laws of physics as applied over ~13.7 billion years, you could not believe other than you do at this moment. You are bound to your beliefs and to your destiny by unbreakable causal chains. And if the indeterministic physicalists are right then that's still basically true, but there were also some coin flips involved in chaining your beliefs down to their current configuration. You are bound to your beliefs and to your destiny by...constant coin flips. A bad run of luck, and there's no telling how you'll end up. My beliefs are formed by reality - I'll take that as a compliment. And if I'm right, there is no reason for the existence of your conscious experience of holding those beliefs. No, IF you're right there is no finite causal chain of explanations for that. There's no mysterious physical world that underlies and explains what you oberve but has no explanation itself. Instead, your conscious experience exists fundamentally and uncaused. There is no you. There is no future. Only the conscious experience of these things. You've made a great leap from I can't have a complete explanation of the world. to There is no world. You and Meillassoux are like the little boy who discovers that no matter what his mother says he can ask Why?, except you consider it a profound discovery. Again, to me it looks like all three possibilities amount to the same thing. The first two options just have a lot of extra inferred-from-experience behind the scenes infrastructure which serves no purpose except...what? If you don't think it serves your pursposes, then don't believe. I've found it serves mine. Occam's Razor is on my side. Join us Brent. Us? Who's us? In any case I don't exist. I'd explain why, but 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-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 . -- 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-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.
Re: Quentin Meillassoux
On 12 Jul 2010, at 20:27, Brent Meeker wrote: On 7/12/2010 6:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I don't think we can use reason to defeat reason. What machines can do is to use reason to go beyond reason, and find some non provable or non rational truth. What do you mean by a non-rational truth? A statement that is true but unprovable or a statement for which there is no evidence or is contrary to the preponderance of evidence, i.e. no reason to believe it true? I can understand using reason and experience to find statements that are true but unprovable (either axiomatically or empirically. But if we find a non-rational truth doesn't that mean finding some evidence for it and hence making it a rational truth? By non rational I mean either (according to the context) just non provable. To believe in a numbers or arithmetical consistency, God, or in any Reality, gives typical examples. Scientist believes only in conditionals. I mean theoreticians. I agree with your comments below, on the Meillassoux prose. Except that I would say that explanations exists, as part of reality. Bruno This is not a defeat of reason. It is the complete contrary, I would say. Bruno On 02 Jul 2010, at 22:55, rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: Any thoughts? http://speculativeheresy.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/3729-time_without_becoming.pdf I call 'facticity' the absence of reason for any reality; in other words, the impossibility of providing an ultimate ground for the existence of any being. We can only attain conditional necessity, never absolute necessity. If definite causes and physical laws are posited, then we can claim that a determined effect must follow. But we shall never find a ground for these laws and causes, except eventually other ungrounded causes and laws: there is no ultimate cause, nor ultimate law, that is to say, a cause or a law including the ground of its own existence. But this facticity is also proper to thought. The Cartesian Cogito clearly shows this point: what is necessary, in the Cogito, is a conditional necessity: if I think, then I must be. But it is not an absolute necessity: it is not necessary that I should think. From the inside of the subjective correlation, I accede to my own facticity, and so to the facticity of the world correlated with my subjective access to it. I do it by attaining the lack of an ultimate reason, of a causa sui, able to ground my existence. [...] That’s why I don’t believe in metaphysics in general: because a metaphysics always believes, in one way or the other, in the principle of reason: a metaphysician is a philosopher who believes it is possible to explain why things must be what they are, or why things must necessarily change, and perish- why things must be what they are, or why things must change as they do change. I believe on the contrary that reason has to explain why things and why becoming itself can always become what they are not- and why there is no ultimate reason for this game. In this way, “factial speculation” is still a rationalism, but a paradoxical one: it is a rationalism which explain why things must be without reason, and how precisely they can be without reason. Figures are such necessary modalities of facticity- and non-contradiction is the first figure I deduce from the principle of factiality. You don't spell out what this principle of facticity is, but it seems that it refers not to the world, but to our explanations of the world. It is explanations that may be contradictory, not facts. And so the principle reduces to the well known one that every explanation is in terms of something else (hopefull something we understand better). This demonstrates that one can reason about the absence of reason- if the very idea of reason is subjected to a profound transformation, if it becomes a reason liberated from the principle of reason- or, more exactly: if it is a reason which liberates us from principle of reason. Now, my project consists of a problem which I don’t resolve in After Finitude, but which I hope to resolve in the future: it is a very difficult problem, one that I can’t rigorously set out here, but that I can sum up in this simple question: Would it be possible to derive, to draw from the principle of factiality, the ability of the natural sciences to know, by way of mathematical discourse, reality in itself, We may have a complete explanation of reality - but we can never know that we do. Brent by which I mean our world, the factual world as it is actually produced by Hyperchaos, and which exists independently of our subjectivity? To answer this very difficult problem is a condition of a real resolution of the problem of ancestrality, and this constitutes the theoretical finality of my present work. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to
Re: Quentin Meillassoux
On 13 Jul 2010, at 05:00, Allen Rex wrote: On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 9:33 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I don't think we can use reason to defeat reason. What machines can do is to use reason to go beyond reason, and find some non provable or non rational truth. This is not a defeat of reason. It is the complete contrary, I would say. I don't think he's trying to use reason to defeat reason, but rather to show that that reason indicates that there is no reason for what we observe. By introspection it is hard for me to not believe in the truth of the axioms of elementary arithmetic, and everyone seems to believe in them (except sunday philosophers). I can show that indeed we cannot explain such axioms from something simpler, indeed all universal machines can do that. Then from this, I can explain why and how persons appears and develop beliefs of the kind of the beliefs in universes, God, quantum superposition, laws, etc. Again all universal machines can do that. This makes elementary arithmetic a pretty cute TOE. imo and imt (in my opinion and in my taste). 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-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.
Re: Quentin Meillassoux
On 13 Jul 2010, at 12:49, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 12 Jul 2010, at 20:27, Brent Meeker wrote: On 7/12/2010 6:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I don't think we can use reason to defeat reason. What machines can do is to use reason to go beyond reason, and find some non provable or non rational truth. What do you mean by a non-rational truth? A statement that is true but unprovable or a statement for which there is no evidence or is contrary to the preponderance of evidence, i.e. no reason to believe it true? I can understand using reason and experience to find statements that are true but unprovable (either axiomatically or empirically. But if we find a non-rational truth doesn't that mean finding some evidence for it and hence making it a rational truth? By non rational I mean either (according to the context) just non provable. Sorry: just read By non rational I mean just non provable. I was thinking of some nuances, but then I realize it would be more confusing than enlightening. I always use words in the most general sense, and I reason from that. Only when distinction have a role, I do introduce them. This is the essence of axiomatic thinking. 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-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.
Re: Quentin Meillassoux
On 7/12/2010 10:54 PM, Allen Rex wrote: On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 12:13 AM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 7/12/2010 8:00 PM, Allen Rex wrote: On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 9:33 AM, Bruno Marchalmarc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I don't think we can use reason to defeat reason. What machines can do is to use reason to go beyond reason, and find some non provable or non rational truth. This is not a defeat of reason. It is the complete contrary, I would say. I don't think he's trying to use reason to defeat reason, but rather to show that that reason indicates that there is no reason for what we observe. He's arguing that if we don't have a reason for everything we can't have any reason for anything. In which case I have no reason to believe him. But in that case you have no reason to disbelieve him either. I don't need a reason to disbelieve him. So, if the deterministic physicalists are right then given the initial conditions of the universe plus the causal laws of physics as applied over ~13.7 billion years, you could not believe other than you do at this moment. You are bound to your beliefs and to your destiny by unbreakable causal chains. And if the indeterministic physicalists are right then that's still basically true, but there were also some coin flips involved in chaining your beliefs down to their current configuration. You are bound to your beliefs and to your destiny by...constant coin flips. A bad run of luck, and there's no telling how you'll end up. My beliefs are formed by reality - I'll take that as a compliment. And if I'm right, there is no reason for the existence of your conscious experience of holding those beliefs. No, IF you're right there is no finite causal chain of explanations for that. There's no mysterious physical world that underlies and explains what you oberve but has no explanation itself. Instead, your conscious experience exists fundamentally and uncaused. There is no you. There is no future. Only the conscious experience of these things. You've made a great leap from I can't have a complete explanation of the world. to There is no world. You and Meillassoux are like the little boy who discovers that no matter what his mother says he can ask Why?, except you consider it a profound discovery. Again, to me it looks like all three possibilities amount to the same thing. The first two options just have a lot of extra inferred-from-experience behind the scenes infrastructure which serves no purpose except...what? If you don't think it serves your pursposes, then don't believe. I've found it serves mine. Occam's Razor is on my side. Join us Brent. Us? Who's us? In any case I don't exist. I'd explain why, but 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-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.
Re: Quentin Meillassoux
The problem is that the causal network is half physical and half mental and infinite and looped in such a way that you will never get bored, guys. Trust me. It's going to be glorious. --nbsp; Mark Buda lt;her...@acm.orggt; I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. On Jul 13, 2010 11:45 AM, Brent Meeker lt;meeke...@dslextreme.comgt; wrote: On 7/12/2010 10:54 PM, Allen Rex wrote: On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 12:13 AM, Brent Meeker lt;meeke...@dslextreme.comgt; wrote: On 7/12/2010 8:00 PM, Allen Rex wrote: On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 9:33 AM, Bruno Marchal lt;marc...@ulb.ac.begt; wrote: I don't think we can use reason to defeat reason. What machines can do is to use reason to go beyond reason, and find some non provable or non rational truth. This is not a defeat of reason. It is the complete contrary, I would say. I don't think he's trying to use reason to defeat reason, but rather to show that that reason indicates that there is no reason for what we observe. He's arguing that if we don't have a reason for everything we can't have any reason for anything.nbsp; In which case I have no reason to believe him. But in that case you have no reason to disbelieve him either. I don't need a reason to disbelieve him. So, if the deterministic physicalists are right then given the initial conditions of the universe plus the causal laws of physics as applied over ~13.7 billion years, you could not believe other than you do at this moment. You are bound to your beliefs and to your destiny by unbreakable causal chains. And if the indeterministic physicalists are right then that's still basically true, but there were also some coin flips involved in chaining your beliefs down to their current configuration. You are bound to your beliefs and to your destiny by...constant coin flips. A bad run of luck, and there's no telling how you'll end up. My beliefs are formed by reality - I'll take that as a compliment. And if I'm right, there is no reason for the existence of your conscious experience of holding those beliefs. No, IF you're right there is no finite causal chain of explanations for that. There's no mysterious physical world that underlies and explains what you oberve but has no explanation itself. Instead, your conscious experience exists fundamentally and uncaused. There is no you. There is no future. Only the conscious experience of these things. You've made a great leap from I can't have a complete explanation of the world. to There is no world.nbsp; You and Meillassoux are like the little boy who discovers that no matter what his mother says he can ask Why?, except you consider it a profound discovery. Again, to me it looks like all three possibilities amount to the same thing. The first two options just have a lot of extra inferred-from-experience behind the scenes infrastructure which serves no purpose except...what? If you don't think it serves your pursposes, then don't believe.nbsp; I've found it serves mine. Occam's Razor is on my side. Join us Brent. Us?nbsp; Who's us?nbsp; In any case I don't exist.nbsp; I'd explain why, but 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-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. -- 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.
Re: Quentin Meillassoux
On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 11:45 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 7/12/2010 10:54 PM, Allen Rex wrote: So, if the deterministic physicalists are right then given the initial conditions of the universe plus the causal laws of physics as applied over ~13.7 billion years, you could not believe other than you do at this moment. You are bound to your beliefs and to your destiny by unbreakable causal chains. And if the indeterministic physicalists are right then that's still basically true, but there were also some coin flips involved in chaining your beliefs down to their current configuration. You are bound to your beliefs and to your destiny by...constant coin flips. A bad run of luck, and there's no telling how you'll end up. My beliefs are formed by reality - I'll take that as a compliment. In that view, you know who else's views were formed by reality? Charles Manson. Ted Bundy. John Wayne Gacy. Stalin. Hitler. Every murdering, molesting, schizophrenic, delusional, or psychopathic deviant who has ever lived. That's who. SO. I wouldn't take it as *that* big a compliment. Don't pat yourself on the back too hard. And if I'm right, there is no reason for the existence of your conscious experience of holding those beliefs. No, IF you're right there is no finite causal chain of explanations for that. No, if I'm right (as opposed to the physicalists) there are no explanations. Just facts of experience. There's no mysterious physical world that underlies and explains what you oberve but has no explanation itself. Instead, your conscious experience exists fundamentally and uncaused. There is no you. There is no future. Only the conscious experience of these things. You've made a great leap from I can't have a complete explanation of the world. to There is no world. You and Meillassoux are like the little boy who discovers that no matter what his mother says he can ask Why?, except you consider it a profound discovery. I think we're more like the little boy who points out that the emperor wears no clothes. Again, to me it looks like all three possibilities amount to the same thing. The first two options just have a lot of extra inferred-from-experience behind the scenes infrastructure which serves no purpose except...what? If you don't think it serves your pursposes, then don't believe. I've found it serves mine. Indeed...I imagine that the dogmas of religious belief can be a great comfort. Occam's Razor is on my side. Join us Brent. Us? Who's us? In any case I don't exist. I'd explain why, but You don't exist, but in my experience, emails bearing the name Brent Meeker always have interesting content. Speaking of which, you didn't respond to my previous email. I was particularly curious about your response to: If every variant of dogmatic metaphysics is characterized by the thesis that *at least one entity* is absolutely necessary (the thesis of real necessity) it becomes clear how metaphysics culminates in the thesis according to which *every* entity is absolutely necessary (the principle of sufficient reason). Conversely, to reject dogmatic metaphysics means to reject all real necessity, Why all? Quantum mechanics already rejects some necessity and replaces it with probabilities - but not all; instead it recovers necessities in certain limits (eigenfunctions, decoherence,...). Quantum mechanical laws would still enforce the necessity of one probability distribution instead of some other, wouldn’t they? The probabilistic aspect takes place within the fixed and unchanging context of quantum mechanics. Like the randomness of the shuffle takes places within the deterministic rules of poker. Do the rules of poker change from one day to the next? The suits? The number of cards in the deck? Are those aspects random? Does quantum mechanics have similarly fixed aspects? Do new fundamental forces pop in and out of existence? Are there days when electromagnetism doesn’t work? And if not, why not? What enforces the consistent application of the QCD and QED and gravity? And what enforces the consistent application of that enforcement? And what enforces the enforcement of the consistent application of the enforcement? And so on. Is there a sufficient reason for these things? Or is this just the way it works, for no reason? -- 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.
Re: Quentin Meillassoux
On 7/13/2010 1:52 PM, Allen Rex wrote: On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 11:45 AM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 7/12/2010 10:54 PM, Allen Rex wrote: So, if the deterministic physicalists are right then given the initial conditions of the universe plus the causal laws of physics as applied over ~13.7 billion years, you could not believe other than you do at this moment. You are bound to your beliefs and to your destiny by unbreakable causal chains. And if the indeterministic physicalists are right then that's still basically true, but there were also some coin flips involved in chaining your beliefs down to their current configuration. You are bound to your beliefs and to your destiny by...constant coin flips. A bad run of luck, and there's no telling how you'll end up. My beliefs are formed by reality - I'll take that as a compliment. In that view, you know who else's views were formed by reality? Charles Manson. Ted Bundy. John Wayne Gacy. Stalin. Hitler. Every murdering, molesting, schizophrenic, delusional, or psychopathic deviant who has ever lived. Also Einstein, Jefferson, Florence Nightingale, Lavosier, Bach, my mother, Bruno, Russell, Conrad,... On the whole, a lot more people I'm glad to be associated with than nuts. That's who. SO. I wouldn't take it as *that* big a compliment. Don't pat yourself on the back too hard. And if I'm right, there is no reason for the existence of your conscious experience of holding those beliefs. No, IF you're right there is no finite causal chain of explanations for that. No, if I'm right (as opposed to the physicalists) there are no explanations. Just facts of experience. So explanations are not part of reality - which is what I said. The problem with just the facts, m'am is that there are no theory-free facts. Do you experience the appearance of words on you computer monitor? Is that a fact? No, that is an inference assuming your eyes are working and you're not hallucinating. But maybe you're always hallucinating - No that won't work either because then computer and monitor and appear have no reference and no meaning, and you could not even form the thought of seeing words on my monitor? There's no mysterious physical world that underlies and explains what you oberve but has no explanation itself. Instead, your conscious experience exists fundamentally and uncaused. There is no you. There is no future. Only the conscious experience of these things. You've made a great leap from I can't have a complete explanation of the world. to There is no world. You and Meillassoux are like the little boy who discovers that no matter what his mother says he can ask Why?, except you consider it a profound discovery. I think we're more like the little boy who points out that the emperor wears no clothes. Again, to me it looks like all three possibilities amount to the same thing. The first two options just have a lot of extra inferred-from-experience behind the scenes infrastructure which serves no purpose except...what? If you don't think it serves your pursposes, then don't believe. I've found it serves mine. Indeed...I imagine that the dogmas of religious belief can be a great comfort. You're the one insisting that you have found the secret of the universe. If we think it, it's a fact. Occam's Razor is on my side. Join us Brent. Us? Who's us? In any case I don't exist. I'd explain why, but You don't exist, but in my experience, emails bearing the name Brent Meeker always have interesting content. Sorry, I have no explanation for that. Speaking of which, you didn't respond to my previous email. I was particularly curious about your response to: If every variant of dogmatic metaphysics is characterized by the thesis that *at least one entity* is absolutely necessary (the thesis of real necessity) it becomes clear how metaphysics culminates in the thesis according to which *every* entity is absolutely necessary (the principle of sufficient reason). Conversely, to reject dogmatic metaphysics means to reject all real necessity, Why all? Quantum mechanics already rejects some necessity and replaces it with probabilities - but not all; instead it recovers necessities in certain limits (eigenfunctions, decoherence,...). Quantum mechanical laws would still enforce the necessity of one probability distribution instead of some other, wouldn’t they? The probabilistic aspect takes place within the fixed and unchanging context of quantum mechanics. Like the randomness of the shuffle takes places within the deterministic rules of poker. Do the rules of poker change from one day to the next? The suits? The number of cards in the deck? Are those aspects random? Does quantum mechanics have similarly fixed aspects? Do new fundamental forces pop in and out of
Re: Quentin Meillassoux
Brent (and Bruno?) I salute Brent as fellow agnostic (cf: your closing sentence). Then again I THINK (for me, comparing my 4th to 5th language) reason is slightly different in taste from raison - closer to Bruno's motherly vocabulary. Anyway, both are the products of human thinking, human logic, even if someone thinks in 'numbers' G. Furthermore a term like 'facticity' (I love it) is whatever WE in our human logic ACCEPT as factual - from that fraction of the totality we MAY know at all. We are impaired by thinking in terms of a physical world fallacy, as conventional sciences imprinted into human minds over these millennia. Granted, we (on this list anyway) are further than restrict 'facts' to matterly processes and objects, but we certainly cannot include into our inventory those items that we (still) don't know about. And THOSE items contribute to 'being factual', part of facticity. Anybody around to identify fact? (like truth?) John M On 7/12/10, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 7/12/2010 6:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I don't think we can use reason to defeat reason. What machines can do is to use reason to go *beyond* reason, and find some non provable or non rational truth. What do you mean by a non-rational truth? A statement that is true but unprovable or a statement for which there is no evidence or is contrary to the preponderance of evidence, i.e. no reason to believe it true? I can understand using reason and experience to find statements that are true but unprovable (either axiomatically or empirically. But if we find a non-rational truth doesn't that mean finding some evidence for it and hence making it a rational truth? This is not a defeat of reason. It is the complete contrary, I would say. Bruno On 02 Jul 2010, at 22:55, rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: Any thoughts? http://speculativeheresy.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/3729-time_without_becoming.pdf I call 'facticity' the absence of reason for any reality; in other words, the impossibility of providing an ultimate ground for the existence of any being. We can only attain conditional necessity, never absolute necessity. If definite causes and physical laws are posited, then we can claim that a determined effect must follow. But we shall never find a ground for these laws and causes, except eventually other ungrounded causes and laws: there is no ultimate cause, nor ultimate law, that is to say, a cause or a law including the ground of its own existence. But this facticity is also proper to thought. The Cartesian Cogito clearly shows this point: what is necessary, in the Cogito, is a conditional necessity: if I think, then I must be. But it is not an absolute necessity: it is not necessary that I should think. From the inside of the subjective correlation, I accede to my own facticity, and so to the facticity of the world correlated with my subjective access to it. I do it by attaining the lack of an ultimate reason, of a causa sui, able to ground my existence. [...] That’s why I don’t believe in metaphysics in general: because a metaphysics always believes, in one way or the other, in the principle of reason: a metaphysician is a philosopher who believes it is possible to explain why things must be what they are, or why things must necessarily change, and perish- why things must be what they are, or why things must change as they do change. I believe on the contrary that reason has to explain why things and why becoming itself can always become what they are not- and why there is no ultimate reason for this game. In this way, “factial speculation” is still a rationalism, but a paradoxical one: it is a rationalism which explain why things must be without reason, and how precisely they can be without reason. Figures are such necessary modalities of facticity- and non-contradiction is the first figure I deduce from the principle of factiality. You don't spell out what this principle of facticity is, but it seems that it refers not to the world, but to our explanations of the world. It is explanations that may be contradictory, not facts. And so the principle reduces to the well known one that every explanation is in terms of something else (hopefull something we understand better). This demonstrates that one can reason about the absence of reason- if the very idea of reason is subjected to a profound transformation, if it becomes a reason liberated from the principle of reason- or, more exactly: if it is a reason which liberates us from principle of reason. Now, my project consists of a problem which I don’t resolve in After Finitude, but which I hope to resolve in the future: it is a very difficult problem, one that I can’t rigorously set out here, but that I can sum up in this simple question: Would it be possible to derive, to draw from the principle of factiality, the ability of the natural sciences to know, by way of mathematical
Re: Quentin Meillassoux
I don't think we can use reason to defeat reason. What machines can do is to use reason to go beyond reason, and find some non provable or non rational truth. This is not a defeat of reason. It is the complete contrary, I would say. Bruno On 02 Jul 2010, at 22:55, rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: Any thoughts? http://speculativeheresy.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/3729-time_without_becoming.pdf I call 'facticity' the absence of reason for any reality; in other words, the impossibility of providing an ultimate ground for the existence of any being. We can only attain conditional necessity, never absolute necessity. If definite causes and physical laws are posited, then we can claim that a determined effect must follow. But we shall never find a ground for these laws and causes, except eventually other ungrounded causes and laws: there is no ultimate cause, nor ultimate law, that is to say, a cause or a law including the ground of its own existence. But this facticity is also proper to thought. The Cartesian Cogito clearly shows this point: what is necessary, in the Cogito, is a conditional necessity: if I think, then I must be. But it is not an absolute necessity: it is not necessary that I should think. From the inside of the subjective correlation, I accede to my own facticity, and so to the facticity of the world correlated with my subjective access to it. I do it by attaining the lack of an ultimate reason, of a causa sui, able to ground my existence. [...] That’s why I don’t believe in metaphysics in general: because a metaphysics always believes, in one way or the other, in the principle of reason: a metaphysician is a philosopher who believes it is possible to explain why things must be what they are, or why things must necessarily change, and perish- why things must be what they are, or why things must change as they do change. I believe on the contrary that reason has to explain why things and why becoming itself can always become what they are not- and why there is no ultimate reason for this game. In this way, “factial speculation” is still a rationalism, but a paradoxical one: it is a rationalism which explain why things must be without reason, and how precisely they can be without reason. Figures are such necessary modalities of facticity- and non-contradiction is the first figure I deduce from the principle of factiality. This demonstrates that one can reason about the absence of reason- if the very idea of reason is subjected to a profound transformation, if it becomes a reason liberated from the principle of reason- or, more exactly: if it is a reason which liberates us from principle of reason. Now, my project consists of a problem which I don’t resolve in After Finitude, but which I hope to resolve in the future: it is a very difficult problem, one that I can’t rigorously set out here, but that I can sum up in this simple question: Would it be possible to derive, to draw from the principle of factiality, the ability of the natural sciences to know, by way of mathematical discourse, reality in itself, by which I mean our world, the factual world as it is actually produced by Hyperchaos, and which exists independently of our subjectivity? To answer this very difficult problem is a condition of a real resolution of the problem of ancestrality, and this constitutes the theoretical finality of my present work. -- 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-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.
Re: Quentin Meillassoux
On 7/12/2010 6:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: I don't think we can use reason to defeat reason. What machines can do is to use reason to go /beyond/ reason, and find some non provable or non rational truth. What do you mean by a non-rational truth? A statement that is true but unprovable or a statement for which there is no evidence or is contrary to the preponderance of evidence, i.e. no reason to believe it true? I can understand using reason and experience to find statements that are true but unprovable (either axiomatically or empirically. But if we find a non-rational truth doesn't that mean finding some evidence for it and hence making it a rational truth? This is not a defeat of reason. It is the complete contrary, I would say. Bruno On 02 Jul 2010, at 22:55, rexallen...@gmail.com mailto:rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: Any thoughts? http://speculativeheresy.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/3729-time_without_becoming.pdf I call 'facticity' the absence of reason for any reality; in other words, the impossibility of providing an ultimate ground for the existence of any being. We can only attain conditional necessity, never absolute necessity. If definite causes and physical laws are posited, then we can claim that a determined effect must follow. But we shall never find a ground for these laws and causes, except eventually other ungrounded causes and laws: there is no ultimate cause, nor ultimate law, that is to say, a cause or a law including the ground of its own existence. But this facticity is also proper to thought. The Cartesian Cogito clearly shows this point: what is necessary, in the Cogito, is a conditional necessity: if I think, then I must be. But it is not an absolute necessity: it is not necessary that I should think. From the inside of the subjective correlation, I accede to my own facticity, and so to the facticity of the world correlated with my subjective access to it. I do it by attaining the lack of an ultimate reason, of a causa sui, able to ground my existence. [...] That’s why I don’t believe in metaphysics in general: because a metaphysics always believes, in one way or the other, in the principle of reason: a metaphysician is a philosopher who believes it is possible to explain why things must be what they are, or why things must necessarily change, and perish- why things must be what they are, or why things must change as they do change. I believe on the contrary that reason has to explain why things and why becoming itself can always become what they are not- and why there is no ultimate reason for this game. In this way, “factial speculation” is still a rationalism, but a paradoxical one: it is a rationalism which explain why things must be without reason, and how precisely they can be without reason. Figures are such necessary modalities of facticity- and non-contradiction is the first figure I deduce from the principle of factiality. You don't spell out what this principle of facticity is, but it seems that it refers not to the world, but to our explanations of the world. It is explanations that may be contradictory, not facts. And so the principle reduces to the well known one that every explanation is in terms of something else (hopefull something we understand better). This demonstrates that one can reason about the absence of reason- if the very idea of reason is subjected to a profound transformation, if it becomes a reason liberated from the principle of reason- or, more exactly: if it is a reason which liberates us from principle of reason. Now, my project consists of a problem which I don’t resolve in After Finitude, but which I hope to resolve in the future: it is a very difficult problem, one that I can’t rigorously set out here, but that I can sum up in this simple question: Would it be possible to derive, to draw from the principle of factiality, the ability of the natural sciences to know, by way of mathematical discourse, reality in itself, We may have a complete explanation of reality - but we can never know that we do. Brent by which I mean our world, the factual world as it is actually produced by Hyperchaos, and which exists independently of our subjectivity? To answer this very difficult problem is a condition of a real resolution of the problem of ancestrality, and this constitutes the theoretical finality of my present work. -- 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/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to
Re: Quentin Meillassoux
On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 2:27 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: You don't spell out what this principle of facticity is, but it seems that it refers not to the world, but to our explanations of the world. So the first sentence says: “I call 'facticity' the absence of reason for any reality” In his book “After Finitude”, Meillassoux explains that the principle of facticity (which he also refers to as “the principle of unreason”) stands in contrast to Leibniz’s “Principle of Sufficient Reason”, which states that anything that happens does so for a definite reason. From pg. 33 of After Finitude: “But we also begin to understand how this proof [the ontological proof of God] is intrinsically tied to the culmination of a principle first formulated by Leibniz, although already at work in Descartes, viz., the principle of sufficient reason, according to which for every thing, every fact, and every occurence, there must be a reason why it is thus and so rather than otherwise. For not only does such a principle require that there be a possible explanation for every worldly fact; it also requires that thought account for the unconditioned totality of beings, as well as for their being thus and so. Consequently, although thought may well be able to account for the facts of the world by invoking this or that global law - nevertheless, it must also, according to the principle of reason, account for why these laws are thus and not otherwise, and therefore account for why the world is thus and not otherwise. And even were such a ‘reason for the world’ to be furnished, it would yet be necessary to account for this reason, and so on ad infinitum. If thought is to avoid an infinite regress while submitting to the principle of reason, it is incumbent upon it to uncover a reason that would prove capable of accounting for everything, including itself - a reason no conditioned by any other reason, and which only the ontological argument is capable of uncovering, since the latter secures the existence of an X through the determination of this X alone, rather than through the determination of some entity other than X - X must be because it is perfect, and hence causa sui, or sole cause of itself. If every variant of dogmatic metaphysics is characterized by the thesis that *at least one entity* is absolutely necessary (the thesis of real necessity) it becomes clear how metaphysics culminates in the thesis according to which *every* entity is absolutely necessary (the principle of sufficient reason). Conversely, to reject dogmatic metaphysics means to reject all real necessity, and a fortiori to reject the principle of sufficient reason, as well as the ontological argument, which is the keystone that allows the system of real necessity to close in upon itself. Such a refusal enjoins one us to maintain that there is no legitimate demonstration that a determinate entity should exist unconditionally.” It is explanations that may be contradictory, not facts. Pg. 60: “We are no longer upholding a variant of the principle of sufficient reason, according to which there is a necessary reason why everything is the way it is rather than otherwise, but rather the absolute truth of a *principle of unreason*. There is no reason for anything to be or to remain the way it is; everything must, without reason, be able not to be and/or be other than it is. What we have here is a principle, and even, we could say, an anhypothetical principle; not in the sense in which Plato used this term to describe the Idea of the Good, but rather in the Aristotelian sense. By ‘anhypothetical principle’, Aristotle meant a fundamental proposition that could not be deduced from any other, but which could be proved by argument. This proof, which could be called ‘indirect’ or ‘refutational’, proceeds not by deducing the principle from some other proposition - in which case it would no longer count as a principle - but by pointing out the inevitable inconsistency into which anyone contesting the truth of the principle is bound to fall. One establishes the principle without deducing it, by demonstrating that anyone who contests it can do so only by presupposing it to be true, thereby refuting him or herself. Aristotle sees in non-contradiction precisely such a principle, one that is established ‘refutationally’ rather than deductively, because any coherent challenge to it already presupposes its acceptance. Yet there is an essential difference between the principle of unreason and the principle of non-contradiction; viz. what Aristotle demonstrates ‘refutationally’ is that no one can *think* a contradiction, but he has not thereby demonstrated that contradiction is absolutely impossible. Thus the strong correlationist could contrast the facticity of this principle to its absolutization - she would acknowledge that she cannot think contradiction, but she would refuse to acknowledge that this proves its absolute impossibility. For
Re: Quentin Meillassoux
On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 9:33 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I don't think we can use reason to defeat reason. What machines can do is to use reason to go beyond reason, and find some non provable or non rational truth. This is not a defeat of reason. It is the complete contrary, I would say. I don't think he's trying to use reason to defeat reason, but rather to show that that reason indicates that there is no reason for what we observe. See my response to Brent for further quotes from Meillassoux's book. He states own his case pretty well I think. -- 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.
Re: Quentin Meillassoux
On 7/12/2010 7:56 PM, Allen Rex wrote: On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 2:27 PM, Brent Meekermeeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: You don't spell out what this principle of facticity is, but it seems that it refers not to the world, but to our explanations of the world. So the first sentence says: “I call 'facticity' the absence of reason for any reality” You mean the absence of a sufficient reason for any piece of reality? In his book “After Finitude”, Meillassoux explains that the principle of facticity (which he also refers to as “the principle of unreason”) stands in contrast to Leibniz’s “Principle of Sufficient Reason”, which states that anything that happens does so for a definite reason. From pg. 33 of After Finitude: “But we also begin to understand how this proof [the ontological proof of God] is intrinsically tied to the culmination of a principle first formulated by Leibniz, although already at work in Descartes, viz., the principle of sufficient reason, according to which for every thing, every fact, and every occurence, there must be a reason why it is thus and so rather than otherwise. For not only does such a principle require that there be a possible explanation for every worldly fact; it also requires that thought account for the unconditioned totality of beings, Why thought? as well as for their being thus and so. Consequently, although thought may well be able to account for the facts of the world by invoking this or that global law - nevertheless, it must also, according to the principle of reason, account for why these laws are thus and not otherwise, and therefore account for why the world is thus and not otherwise. And even were such a ‘reason for the world’ to be furnished, it would yet be necessary to account for this reason, and so on ad infinitum. If thought is to avoid an infinite regress while submitting to the principle of reason, Why does it need to avoid an infinite regress? Maybe reality is like an infinite set of Russian dolls. Actually my favorite is the virtuous circle of reasons. You just follow it around until you find one you understand. it is incumbent upon it to uncover a reason that would prove capable of accounting for everything, Who says it's incumbent...and why should I care? including itself - a reason no conditioned by any other reason, and which only the ontological argument is capable of uncovering, since the latter secures the existence of an X through the determination of this X alone, rather than through the determination of some entity other than X - X must be because it is perfect, and hence causa sui, or sole cause of itself. If every variant of dogmatic metaphysics is characterized by the thesis that *at least one entity* is absolutely necessary (the thesis of real necessity) it becomes clear how metaphysics culminates in the thesis according to which *every* entity is absolutely necessary (the principle of sufficient reason). Conversely, to reject dogmatic metaphysics means to reject all real necessity, Why all? Quantum mechanics already rejects some necessity and replaces it with probabilities - but not all; instead it recovers necessities in certain limits (eigenfunctions, decoherence,...). and a fortiori to reject the principle of sufficient reason, as well as the ontological argument, which is the keystone that allows the system of real necessity to close in upon itself. Such a refusal enjoins one us to maintain that there is no legitimate demonstration that a determinate entity should exist unconditionally.” It is explanations that may be contradictory, not facts. Pg. 60: “We are no longer upholding a variant of the principle of sufficient reason, according to which there is a necessary reason why everything is the way it is rather than otherwise, but rather the absolute truth of a *principle of unreason*. There is no reason for anything to be or to remain the way it is; everything must, without reason, be able not to be and/or be other than it is. What we have here is a principle, and even, we could say, an anhypothetical principle; not in the sense in which Plato used this term to describe the Idea of the Good, but rather in the Aristotelian sense. By ‘anhypothetical principle’, Aristotle meant a fundamental proposition that could not be deduced from any other, but which could be proved by argument. This proof, which could be called ‘indirect’ or ‘refutational’, proceeds not by deducing the principle from some other proposition - in which case it would no longer count as a principle - but by pointing out the inevitable inconsistency into which anyone contesting the truth of the principle is bound to fall. One establishes the principle without deducing it, by demonstrating that anyone who contests it can do so only by presupposing it to be true, thereby refuting him or herself. Aristotle sees in non-contradiction precisely such a principle, one that is established
Re: Quentin Meillassoux
On 7/12/2010 8:00 PM, Allen Rex wrote: On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 9:33 AM, Bruno Marchalmarc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I don't think we can use reason to defeat reason. What machines can do is to use reason to go beyond reason, and find some non provable or non rational truth. This is not a defeat of reason. It is the complete contrary, I would say. I don't think he's trying to use reason to defeat reason, but rather to show that that reason indicates that there is no reason for what we observe. He's arguing that if we don't have a reason for everything we can't have any reason for anything. In which case I have no reason to believe him. Brent See my response to Brent for further quotes from Meillassoux's book. He states own his case pretty well I think. -- 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.
Re: Quentin Meillassoux
On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 12:06 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 7/12/2010 7:56 PM, Allen Rex wrote: On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 2:27 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: You don't spell out what this principle of facticity is, but it seems that it refers not to the world, but to our explanations of the world. So the first sentence says: “I call 'facticity' the absence of reason for any reality” You mean the absence of a sufficient reason for any piece of reality? No, I imagine he means what he says. Any reality. I assume you were going to say something about quantum indeterminancy here? Or am just I being paranoid? For not only does such a principle require that there be a possible explanation for every worldly fact; it also requires that thought account for the unconditioned totality of beings, Why thought? Why not thought? What’s wrong with the use of thought there? He’s French, he does things like that. If thought is to avoid an infinite regress while submitting to the principle of reason, Why does it need to avoid an infinite regress? An infinite regress in a series of propositions arises if the truth of proposition P1 requires the support of proposition P2, and for any proposition in the series Pn, the truth of Pn requires the support of the truth of Pn+1. There would never be adequate support for P1, because the infinite sequence needed to provide such support could not be completed. Distinction is made between infinite regresses that are vicious and those that are not. One definition given is that a vicious regress is an attempt to solve a problem which re-introduced the same problem in the proposed solution. If one continues along the same lines, the initial problem will recur infinitely and will never be solved. Not all regresses, however, are vicious. Trying to find a reason for a reason for a reason...seems like the vicious kind of infinite regress. Hey, look, the “The Münchhausen-Trilemma”! I’ll read that tomorrow. Arguing with Brent has paid dividends yet again! Maybe reality is like an infinite set of Russian dolls. Actually my favorite is the virtuous circle of reasons. You just follow it around until you find one you understand. Why would reality be that way instead of some other way? Why our particular circle of reasons instead of some other circle? Why not a vicious circle instead of a virtuous one? it is incumbent upon it to uncover a reason that would prove capable of accounting for everything, Who says it's incumbent...and why should I care? Quentin Meillassoux...and because you’re intellectually curious? Actually, you’re more intellectually grumpy I think. If every variant of dogmatic metaphysics is characterized by the thesis that *at least one entity* is absolutely necessary (the thesis of real necessity) it becomes clear how metaphysics culminates in the thesis according to which *every* entity is absolutely necessary (the principle of sufficient reason). Conversely, to reject dogmatic metaphysics means to reject all real necessity, Why all? Quantum mechanics already rejects some necessity and replaces it with probabilities - but not all; instead it recovers necessities in certain limits (eigenfunctions, decoherence,...). Quantum mechanical laws would still enforce the necessity of one probability distribution instead of some other, wouldn’t they? The probabilistic aspect takes place within the fixed and unchanging context of quantum mechanics. Like the randomness of the shuffle takes places within the deterministic rules of poker. Do the rules of poker change from one day to the next? The suits? The number of cards in the deck? Are those aspects random? Does quantum mechanics have similarly fixed aspects? Do new fundamental forces pop in and out of existence? Are there days when electromagnetism doesn’t work? And if not, why not? What enforces the consistent application of the QCD and QED and gravity? And what enforces the consistent application of that enforcement? And what enforces the enforcement of the consistent application of the enforcement? And so on. Is there a sufficient reason for these things? Or is this just the way it works, for no reason? Clearly then, for contemporary logicians, it is not non-contradiction that provides the criterion for what is thinkable, but rather inconsistency. What every logic - as well as every logos more generally - wants to avoid is a discourse so trivial that it renders every well-formulated statement, as well as its negation, equally valid. But contradiction is logically thinkable so long as it remains ‘confined’ within limits such that it does not entail the truth of every contradiction.” Yes, I'm familiar with Graham Priest. Splendid. His wikipedia entry says that he is 3rd Dan, International Karate-do Shobukai; 4th Dan, Shi’to Ryu, and an Australian National Kumite Referee and Kata Judge. If every
Re: Quentin Meillassoux
On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 12:13 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: On 7/12/2010 8:00 PM, Allen Rex wrote: On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 9:33 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I don't think we can use reason to defeat reason. What machines can do is to use reason to go beyond reason, and find some non provable or non rational truth. This is not a defeat of reason. It is the complete contrary, I would say. I don't think he's trying to use reason to defeat reason, but rather to show that that reason indicates that there is no reason for what we observe. He's arguing that if we don't have a reason for everything we can't have any reason for anything. In which case I have no reason to believe him. But in that case you have no reason to disbelieve him either. So, if the deterministic physicalists are right then given the initial conditions of the universe plus the causal laws of physics as applied over ~13.7 billion years, you could not believe other than you do at this moment. You are bound to your beliefs and to your destiny by unbreakable causal chains. And if the indeterministic physicalists are right then that's still basically true, but there were also some coin flips involved in chaining your beliefs down to their current configuration. You are bound to your beliefs and to your destiny by...constant coin flips. A bad run of luck, and there's no telling how you'll end up. And if I'm right, there is no reason for the existence of your conscious experience of holding those beliefs. There's no mysterious physical world that underlies and explains what you oberve but has no explanation itself. Instead, your conscious experience exists fundamentally and uncaused. There is no you. There is no future. Only the conscious experience of these things. Again, to me it looks like all three possibilities amount to the same thing. The first two options just have a lot of extra inferred-from-experience behind the scenes infrastructure which serves no purpose except...what? Occam's Razor is on my side. Join us 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-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.
