Re: Russell's possibly defective understanding of Leibniz. Or was it Leibniz's fault ?
Roger, In string theory the monads are responsible for the creation of space via compactification of the extra dimensions of space. I have never understood why, especially on the Mind/Brain forum where we already went thru all of you present thinking, why you never accepted the compact manifolds of string theory as the basis of Leibniz's monads. Instead you just decided the monads were mathematical and not substantial. Richard On Sat, Aug 18, 2012 at 10:41 AM, Roger rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal Admittedly, the more I dig into Leibniz, the more questions I have. But I won't abandon him yet, thinking I misunderstood one of his statements. Or perhaps Russell misunderstood what Leibniz meant. According to Russell, Complete set of predicates means sufficient, complete in a minimal sense. Like sufficient reason I suppose. Or Occam's razor. Or the truth should be simple. Thus Socrates was a man is a proposition which is, as a proposition, thus a substance. This is tied into necessary reason, always either true or false. So I think the better definition is Complete and unchanging set of predicates So because The horse was lame may not always have been true, it is possibly contingent (is only a current fact), so as a proposition it cannot be a substance as far as we know. None of this can be true, however, since most things will change with time. The conclusion is that Russell may be wrong, that nothing be a substance. Yet Leibniz says the universe is made up entirely of monads, and monads are substances by definition. For *Leibniz*, the universe is *made* up of an infinite number of simple substances *...* Perhaps Leibniz meant the world I refer to in my philosophy... He did not count time and space for excample as monads. Roger , rclo...@verizon.net 8/18/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so everything could function. - Receiving the following content - *From:* Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be *Receiver:* everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com *Time:* 2012-08-18, 09:51:15 *Subject:* Re: Cs. Knowing that one knows. On 18 Aug 2012, at 14:47, Roger wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal Being might be defined as =, meaning is. It is a state, not a thing. Then if a state, it is a state relative to some other state. L says that a more dominant monad (superior state) will act on and will always act on a less dominant monad. Darwinism, if you like, before Darwin. Survival of the fittest. Hmm... May be the monads would be better described by the universal numbers/machines. But it is only in a very local sense, embedded in some computation(s), than we can give sense to survival of the fittest. There may indeed be problems with understanding what Leibniz's substance is. Benson Mates, in his book The Philosophy of Leibniz says that he, Mates, does not understand what Leibniz's substance is ! Mates teaches philosophy at Berkeley. OK. What is certain is that L's substance is not physical, it is logical, but points to something outside of itself. So mind as a word is a substance, it is real pointing to the phenomenal mind, the phenomenal mind being the experiencing consciousness. OK. Bertrand Russell has written a book on Leibniz's logic, and I think he defines substance there as anything with a complete set of predicates. IMHO Easy to say, hard to kanow when you have a complete set. Complete in which sense? Bruno Also, predicates such as man in Socrates was a man are said to be (logically ) inside the subject Socrates . Also, a subject or substance cannot be a predicagte, a predicate cannot be a subject. I tend to think of substances as kingdoms. Complete in their own selves. Roger , rclo...@verizon.net 8/18/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so everything could function. - Receiving the following content - *From:* Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be *Receiver:* everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com *Time:* 2012-08-18, 06:51:36 *Subject:* Re: Cs. Knowing that one knows. On 17 Aug 2012, at 22:26, Roger wrote: 1) For wine-tasting -- What one must have is knowing that one knows that the wine tastes good. Such as one can prove that 1+1 =2 but one still has to accept that as true. Yes. In fact the proof that 1+1=2 will lead to the truth of 1+1=2, for you, if you agree on the truth of the axioms you re using, and if you believe that the rules of inference of your theory preserves truth. *2) mo穘ad (mnd)* *n.* *1. Philosophy An indivisible, impenetrable unit of substance viewed as the basic constituent element of physical reality in the metaphysics of Leibniz.* ** ** *Substance:* A being that subsists by itself; a separate or distinct thing. OK, but what is a being? This notion of subtance beg the question. *Contingent truth:* A truth whose opposite is possible
Re: Russell's possibly defective understanding of Leibniz. Or was it Leibniz's fault ?
On 18 Aug 2012, at 16:41, Roger wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal Admittedly, the more I dig into Leibniz, the more questions I have. But I won't abandon him yet, thinking I misunderstood one of his statements. Or perhaps Russell misunderstood what Leibniz meant. According to Russell, Complete set of predicates means sufficient, complete in a minimal sense. Like sufficient reason I suppose. Or Occam's razor. Or the truth should be simple. Thus Socrates was a man is a proposition which is, as a proposition, thus a substance. This is tied into necessary reason, always either true or false. So I think the better definition is Complete and unchanging set of predicates So because The horse was lame may not always have been true, it is possibly contingent (is only a current fact), so as a proposition it cannot be a substance as far as we know. None of this can be true, however, since most things will change with time. The conclusion is that Russell may be wrong, that nothing be a substance. Yet Leibniz says the universe is made up entirely of monads, and monads are substances by definition. For Leibniz, the universe is made up of an infinite number of simple substances ... Perhaps Leibniz meant the world I refer to in my philosophy... He did not count time and space for excample as monads. Russell was still believing that the mathematical reality was axiomatizable. Gôdel did not just destroyed Hilbert's program, but also a large part of the antic conception of platonism, including a large part of Russelm's conception. After Gödel and Turing, after Post and Kleene, we know that the arithmetical Platonia is *full* of life, but also typhoons, black holes, and many things. There is a Skolem paradox, which needs model theory to be made precise: arithmetic is enumerable, nevertheless, when seen by machines from inside, it is not. It is *very* big. I respect a lot people like Leibniz and Russell. Leibniz, by many token, was closer to the discovery of the universal numbers/machines than Russell, despite Babbage. Comp is still close to Russell's philosophy of numbers but departs from his philosophy of sets. Leibniz needs just to be relativized, imo, by allowing accessibilty relations, or neighborhood relations between worlds/realities (shared dream/vido-game, somehow). Comp does not let much choice in the matter, anyway. We are confronted with a big problem, but we can, actually we have to, translate it in arithmetic, once we assume comp. Bruno Roger , rclo...@verizon.net 8/18/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-18, 09:51:15 Subject: Re: Cs. Knowing that one knows. On 18 Aug 2012, at 14:47, Roger wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal Being might be defined as =, meaning is. It is a state, not a thing. Then if a state, it is a state relative to some other state. L says that a more dominant monad (superior state) will act on and will always act on a less dominant monad. Darwinism, if you like, before Darwin. Survival of the fittest. Hmm... May be the monads would be better described by the universal numbers/machines. But it is only in a very local sense, embedded in some computation(s), than we can give sense to survival of the fittest. There may indeed be problems with understanding what Leibniz's substance is. Benson Mates, in his book The Philosophy of Leibniz says that he, Mates, does not understand what Leibniz's substance is ! Mates teaches philosophy at Berkeley. OK. What is certain is that L's substance is not physical, it is logical, but points to something outside of itself. So mind as a word is a substance, it is real pointing to the phenomenal mind, the phenomenal mind being the experiencing consciousness. OK. Bertrand Russell has written a book on Leibniz's logic, and I think he defines substance there as anything with a complete set of predicates. IMHO Easy to say, hard to kanow when you have a complete set. Complete in which sense? Bruno Also, predicates such as man in Socrates was a man are said to be (logically ) inside the subject Socrates . Also, a subject or substance cannot be a predicagte, a predicate cannot be a subject. I tend to think of substances as kingdoms. Complete in their own selves. Roger , rclo...@verizon.net 8/18/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-18, 06:51:36 Subject: Re: Cs. Knowing that one knows. On 17 Aug 2012, at 22:26, Roger wrote: 1) For wine-tasting -- What one must have is knowing that one knows that the wine tastes good. Such as one can prove that 1+1 =2 but one still has to accept that as true.
