What's wrong with this?
David Nyman
time by the way many mainstream philosophers of mind seem to
unconsciously adopt a particularly insidious form of direct realism,
whilst being quite blind to it. It centres on the idea of extreme
physical reductionism, which I take to be the hypothesis that all
composite phenomena can be completely recast, in principle, in the
form of a causally complete and closed "ground level" account of non-
composite micro-physical events. I'm not concerned at this point
whether such a restrictive view is "true", or whether it is at odds
with digital mechanism etc., but only that I take it to be a core
assumption from which numerous people, including many philosophers,
derive theories of the mental. I want to argue that the consequences
of such a view are perhaps more radically restrictive than commonly
assumed.
If we could remove ourselves from the universe and take a strict
reductionist-god's eye view (which means having to drop all our usual
mental categories - a very hard thing to achieve imaginatively) then,
strictly adhering to the above hypothesis, all that would remain would
be some ground-level physical machine grinding along, without the need
for additional composite or macroscopic posits. Take your pick from
current theory what is supposed to represent this "machine", but that
needn't necessarily be at issue for the purpose of the argument. The
point is that removing everything composite from the picture
supposedly results in zero difference at the base level - same events,
same "causality".
I should stress, again, I'm not personally committed to this view - it
seems indeed highly problematic - but it is what the recipe says.
Now, just to emphasise the point, when I say it's a hard thing to do
this imaginatively, I mean that it isn't permissible to "look back"
from this reductionist-god's eye view and continue to conjure familiar
composite entities from the conjectural base components, because
reductionism is a commitment to the proposition that these don't
exist. Whatever composite categories we might be tempted to have
recourse to - you know: molecules, cells, bodies, planets, ideas,
explanations, theories, the whole ball of wax - none of these are
available from this perspective. Don't need them. More rigorously,
they *must not be invoked* because they *do not exist*. They don't
need to exist, because the machine doesn't need them to carry all the
load and do all the work.
Now, many people might be prompted to object at this point "that's not
reducing, that's eliminating" as though these terms could be kept
distinct. But I'm arguing that reductionism, consistently applied, is
inescapably eliminative. The hypothesis was that base-level events
are self-sufficient and consequently must be granted metaphysical (and
hence "physical") reality. Nothing else is required to explain why
the machine exists and works, so nothing else need - or indeed can non-
question-beggingly - be postulated. If we really feel we must insist
that there is something metaphysically indispensable above and beyond
this (and it would seem that we have good reason to) we must look for
an additional metaphysical somewhere to locate these somethings.
Essentially we now have two options. We can follow Kant in locating
them in a metaphysically real synthetic first-person category that
transcends the ground-level (which stands here, approximately, for the
"thing-in-itself"). The alternative - and this is the option that
many philosophers seem to adopt by some "directly real" sleight-of-
intuition - is that we somehow locate them "out there" right on top of
the micro-physical account. It's easy to do: just look damn you,
there they are, can't you see them? And in any case, one wants to
protest, how can one predict, explain or comprehend anything above the
ground floor *without* such categories? Yes, that is indeed the very
question. But the reductionist-god's eye view (if we've done it
right) should convince us - weirdly, but unavoidably - that they just
aren't automatically "out there", metaphysically, at our disposal. If
this eludes us, it can only be because we've fallen into the error of
retaining these indispensable organising categories intact, naturally
but illicitly, whilst attempting this imaginative feat. Unfortunately
this is to beg the very questions we seek to answer.
I suppose the nub of this for me is that - whether we consider
ourselves monist or dualist, or amongst the ontological uncommitted -
we have need of both analytic and integrative principles to account
for the states of affairs that confront us. There is, as it were, a
spectrum that extends from maximal fragmentation to maximal
integration, and neither extreme by itself suffices. The only mystery
is why anyone would ever think it would. Or am I just missing
something obvious as usual?
David
Stephen P. King
Very well said! Let me add a quote from Carlo Rovelli (in the
context of discussions of the notion of observation in QM) found in "Quo
Vadis Quantum Mechanics?" (ed. Elitzur, Dolev and Kolenda):
"My main suggestion is to forbid ourselves to use the point of view of God.
Do not compare two different observers, unless you are, for instance, a
third observer who interacts with the two. In order to make this comparison
you have a quantum mechanical interaction. So, very simply, the answer is
like that of special relativity: I am telling you that, with respect to this
observer, this comes first and this comes second. Intuitively one might
think that this cannot be. But really there is no contradiction."
It seems to me that the assumption of the *observer at infinity* in
modern physics (and its intersections with mathematics and philosophy)
and/or the ansatz of "context-free" and/or "coordinate-free" plays
essentially the same role as God did in classical era thought. I claim that
it is the failure to critically examine the logical consequences of this
tacit assumption or postulate that is a source of problems and paradox in
our attempts to move understanding of our Universe forward. Like it or not,
there is a reality to *what it is like to be an observer* in our world and
any denial of its reality, however illusory or epiphenomenal that might be,
does not help our understanding. Failure to confront the Hard Problem with
eliminatist propositions is thus argued to be at best intellectual timidity.
http://www.drfrenzo.com/2007/09/intellectual-timidity.html
Kindest regards,
Stephen
-----Original Message-----
From: everyth...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of David Nyman
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2010 12:38 PM
To: Everything List
Subject: What's wrong with this?
I've been waking up with a persistent thought again, prompted this time by
the way many mainstream philosophers of mind seem to unconsciously adopt a
particularly insidious form of direct realism, whilst being quite blind to
it. It centers on the idea of extreme physical reductionism, which I take
to be the hypothesis that all composite phenomena can be completely recast,
in principle, in the form of a causally complete and closed "ground level"
account of non- composite micro-physical events. I'm not concerned at this
point whether such a restrictive view is "true", or whether it is at odds
with digital mechanism etc., but only that I take it to be a core assumption
from which numerous people, including many philosophers, derive theories of
the mental. I want to argue that the consequences of such a view are
perhaps more radically restrictive than commonly assumed.
If we could remove ourselves from the universe and take a strict
reductionist-god's eye view (which means having to drop all our usual mental
categories - a very hard thing to achieve imaginatively) then, strictly
adhering to the above hypothesis, all that would remain would be some
ground-level physical machine grinding along, without the need for
additional composite or macroscopic posits. Take your pick from current
theory what is supposed to represent this "machine", but that needn't
necessarily be at issue for the purpose of the argument. The point is that
removing everything composite from the picture supposedly results in zero
difference at the base level - same events, same "causality".
I should stress, again, I'm not personally committed to this view - it seems
indeed highly problematic - but it is what the recipe says.
Now, just to emphasize the point, when I say it's a hard thing to do this
David Nyman
Thanks for the quote and the link - and your own thoughts, of course.
Yes, I've always had the queasy feeling that most of what is generally
accepted to be manifest from God's perspective is actually acquired by
bare-faced, if mostly unconscious, metaphysical larceny. But this
theft has been so regularly and blithely perpetrated by so many
people, with such impeccable credentials, that I am still inclined at
times to suspect some residual misunderstanding or naivety on my own
part. I suppose that evolution has equipped us with such an
instinctive commitment to naturalism that it has become like one of
those insidious computer viruses that resists attempts to eliminate it
by immediately re-creating itself.
In some ways, the notorious "hard problem" might be less
controversially recast in the form of the question: Given the
metaphysical posit of some pole of maximal fragmentation, what is the
genesis and metaphysical status of its composite counter-poles? After
all, nobody, even the most ardently committed "eliminativist", seeks
to controvert the manifest relevance of the "counter-poles", even
whilst being quite blind to the questions begged by their uncritical
assumption. And in the absence of any intelligible possibility of an
"outside view", the answer, as you correctly state, must be
inextricably bound up with "what it is like to be an observer in our
world". Under such constraint, it can hardly remain controversial
that all observational evidence must somehow be obtained "from the
inside" - after all, where else is there? Rather, what seems to
require explication is how micro- and macro-scopic poles interweave in
the synthesis of an apparently stable, shared composite world.
David
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Jason Resch
Rex Allen
On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 12:37 PM, David Nyman <david...@gmail.com> wrote:
> If we could remove ourselves from the universe and take a strict
> reductionist-god's eye view (which means having to drop all our usual
> mental categories - a very hard thing to achieve imaginatively) then,
> strictly adhering to the above hypothesis, all that would remain would
> be some ground-level physical machine grinding along, without the need
> for additional composite or macroscopic posits. Take your pick from
> current theory what is supposed to represent this "machine", but that
> needn't necessarily be at issue for the purpose of the argument. The
> point is that removing everything composite from the picture
> supposedly results in zero difference at the base level - same events,
> same "causality".
It seems to me that the primary question is about causality. Once you commit to the idea of a rule-governed system, you're already in a radically restrictive regime. Whether the system is physical or "ideal" or whatever seems largely irrelevant.
But what is the alternative to a rule-governed system?
How can the occurrence of any event be explained *except* by attributing that occurrence to some rule? Which is just to say that the event occurred for some reason.
But if everything has a reason, then there are an infinity of reasons even if there are only a finite number of things that initially need explanation. Because for every reason there should be a another reason that explains why the rule the reason refers to holds instead of not holding or instead of some other rule holding in it's place or in addition to it.
And then we need a reason for each one of the reasons for our original reasons. And so on, ad infinitum. But why our particular set of infinite reasons instead of some other set of inifinite reasons? What is the reason for that?
The alternative is that some things happen for no reason. But in this case, why would some things have explanations while others don't? What is the reason for the two categories?
Maybe, instead, there is no reason for anything? How would we know? What would eliminate this possibility from consideration?
So...reductive physicalism. It seems like only one example of a larger problem.
Maybe "Idealist Accidentalism" is the answer?
On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 7:04 PM, David Nyman <david...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I suppose that evolution has equipped us with such an
> instinctive commitment to naturalism...
Why would that be the case? And if true, what does it mean?
In a deterministic world view, such as the Newtonian one that was in favor in 1859 when Darwin published On the Origin of Species, the answer is simple: it is a necessary and inevitable consequence of the universe's initial conditions and causal laws that humans have an instinctive commitment to naturalism.
So in a deterministic universe, questions about evolution are ultimately just questions about initial conditions and causal laws.
In a probabilistic world view, we add an element of chance to initial conditions and causal laws. The universe no longer plays chess...instead it plays poker. There are still rules, but the rules include randomly shuffling the deck between hands and keeping the hole cards hidden.
In a probabilistic universe, questions about evolution are still ultimately questions about initial conditions and causal laws. The constrained randomness involved of how events actually transpire is an aspect of the universe's framework of governing laws.
So, either way: We have an instinctive commitment to naturalism because the universe has caused us to have an instinctive commitment to naturalism.
Given that this is the case, should be more inclined to trust this instinct, or less?
Bruno Marchal
I am not necessarily opposed to such view. It may depend on some
ambiguities.
>
> I should stress, again, I'm not personally committed to this view - it
> seems indeed highly problematic - but it is what the recipe says.
> Now, just to emphasise the point, when I say it's a hard thing to do
> this imaginatively, I mean that it isn't permissible to "look back"
> from this reductionist-god's eye view and continue to conjure familiar
> composite entities from the conjectural base components, because
> reductionism is a commitment to the proposition that these don't
> exist.
Are you sure? Not all reductionists will agree. Perhaps James D.
Watson (co-discoverer of the helical structure of DNA) would agree. I
have heard that Watson believes only in atoms, and when someone asked
him if he believed also in molecules, he would have said: No! Only
atoms!
But most reductionist would say that they believe in atom and in their
properties, and this makes it possible to enter in a great variety of
different combinations having themselves even more non trivial
properties. Why would a reductionist be committed in saying that such
higher level features do not exist?
In my opinion such reductionist will have a difficulty to explain
consciousness and private subjective experience, but not other third
person describable properties. In my opinion physics and chemistry can
explain why an avogadro number of H20 leads to wetness (but not to the
wetness qualia unless they can explain electron and quarks from only
numbers).
> Whatever composite categories we might be tempted to have
> recourse to - you know: molecules, cells, bodies, planets, ideas,
> explanations, theories, the whole ball of wax - none of these are
> available from this perspective.
I understand this. Actually this is like the neoplatonist Gods, who
are usually rather dumb. They are lost in the infinities of details
somehow.
But again, nobody should be interested in the rather unavailable God
perspective: if molecules and cells notions are available from the
perspective of some group of molecules or cells, that is all what
counts from *their* perspective.
> Don't need them. More rigorously,
> they *must not be invoked* because they *do not exist*.
Like in quantum field theory. There is nothing but a vast unique
field. But again, it is in the nature of that field to have many
singularities capable of playing the role of particles etc. And
particles will need to exist ... only from the perspective of
particles or organized group of particles.
> They don't
> need to exist, because the machine doesn't need them to carry all the
> load and do all the work.
I am not sure. It would be like saying that prime numbers don't exist
because they can be defined entirely in term of addition and
multiplication. But usually we say that prime numbers exist *because*
some number have this and that relation with some numbers.
>
> Now, many people might be prompted to object at this point "that's not
> reducing, that's eliminating" as though these terms could be kept
> distinct. But I'm arguing that reductionism, consistently applied, is
> inescapably eliminative.
Only in God's eye. But who cares? Well, probably God, and that is
probably why he will try to forget for awhile who he is and why he
will lost himself in his creation .... ;-)
> The hypothesis was that base-level events
> are self-sufficient and consequently must be granted metaphysical (and
> hence "physical") reality.
Or "arithmetical" reality. It depends of the chosen theory.
> Nothing else is required to explain why
> the machine exists and works,
That is because, like the non eliminativist reductionist, you endow
the basic components with basic (but rich) properties. If not, you can
not even talk about machines. Any machine is already an abstract
organization of some primitive elements (emerging or not from deeper
realities).
> so nothing else need - or indeed can non-
> question-beggingly - be postulated.
But in elementary arithmetic, you can prove the existence of numbers
with very long and complex high level properties. You don't need to
postulate them.
> If we really feel we must insist
> that there is something metaphysically indispensable above and beyond
> this (and it would seem that we have good reason to) we must look for
> an additional metaphysical somewhere to locate these somethings.
We have to postulate or agree on consciousness, and on a minimal
amount of consciousness content, like the numbers (for example).
>
> Essentially we now have two options. We can follow Kant in locating
> them in a metaphysically real synthetic first-person category that
> transcends the ground-level (which stands here, approximately, for the
> "thing-in-itself").
Yes.
> The alternative - and this is the option that
> many philosophers seem to adopt by some "directly real" sleight-of-
> intuition - is that we somehow locate them "out there" right on top of
> the micro-physical account. It's easy to do: just look damn you,
> there they are, can't you see them? And in any case, one wants to
> protest, how can one predict, explain or comprehend anything above the
> ground floor *without* such categories? Yes, that is indeed the very
> question. But the reductionist-god's eye view (if we've done it
> right) should convince us - weirdly, but unavoidably - that they just
> aren't automatically "out there", metaphysically, at our disposal.
I don't see why.
> If
> this eludes us, it can only be because we've fallen into the error of
> retaining these indispensable organising categories intact, naturally
> but illicitly, whilst attempting this imaginative feat. Unfortunately
> this is to beg the very questions we seek to answer.
>
> I suppose the nub of this for me is that - whether we consider
> ourselves monist or dualist, or amongst the ontological uncommitted -
> we have need of both analytic and integrative principles to account
> for the states of affairs that confront us.
But the reductionist will explain the integrative part through the
properties of its elementary objects. Like we can explain why a number
develops point of view relatively to some universal numbers, etc. Or
like we can explain why observer "see" the quantum wave collapse,
despite they don't exist in the Quantum-God's eye.
> There is, as it were, a
> spectrum that extends from maximal fragmentation to maximal
> integration, and neither extreme by itself suffices.
Yes. That will explain the variety of necessary internal views.
Internal modalities gives the necessary contingencies (BD<something>,
or [ ]<>(something)).
> The only mystery
> is why anyone would ever think it would.
The fundamental ontology may be simple. A quantum topology for a
physicalist, elementary arithmetic for the mechanist. The rest is
internal relative perspectives. This is clear in physics from Galileo
to Everett, and it should be clear now in mathematics or arithmetics
with mechanism, which has the advantage to explain not just the high
level relations between the quanta (the sharable chunks of reality)
but also the high level relation between the quanta and the qualia,
the sensible and non directly sharable chunks of reality. (But this
capital nuance is not of concern here).
> Or am I just missing
> something obvious as usual?
We don't have to explain how God believes in "us, them, this and
that". We have to explain why *we* believe in those things, and may be
in God. By God I mean the fundamental reality by-definition (be it
arithmetical truth of quantum topological truth, or the bearded male
outside the universe, whatever...).
Bruno
David Nyman
> But most reductionist would say that they believe in atom and in their
> properties, and this makes it possible to enter in a great variety of
> different combinations having themselves even more non trivial properties.
> Why would a reductionist be committed in saying that such higher level
> features do not exist?
Well, such reductionists could not of course be eliminativist about
these higher level features and properties. But this then commits
them to the metaphysical reality - in some sense - of the higher level
features, as distinct from their components. And this "some sense" is
- at minimum - Kant's sense of "appearance" as distinct from whatever
may be the "thing in itself". I guess my overall thesis is that
everyone, whatever kind of "-ist" they avow themselves to be, can't
help but be committed to the metaphysical reality of the objects of
perception (even when they implicitly locate them "out there" in some
un-Kantian, "directly real" way). That's just our situation.
"Eliminating" this sense can only lead to frank incoherence, and my
argument, by pushing the notion to breaking point in the form of a
reductio ad absurdum, was simply meant to make this particularly
obvious.
>> But the reductionist-god's eye view (if we've done it
>> right) should convince us - weirdly, but unavoidably - that they just
>> aren't automatically "out there", metaphysically, at our disposal.
>
> I don't see why.
I mean "out there", where some level-zero domain of maximal
fragmentation (what Levine calls "basic physical properties") is
posited - according to the extreme view I'm criticising - as the sole
metaphysically reality. Remember, my argument is presented in the
form of a reductio of just this position, by limiting it *strictly* to
what it is entitled to under its own explicit metaphysical
constraints.
>> I suppose the nub of this for me is that - whether we consider
>> ourselves monist or dualist, or amongst the ontological uncommitted -
>> we have need of both analytic and integrative principles to account
>> for the states of affairs that confront us.
>
> But the reductionist will explain the integrative part through the
> properties of its elementary objects.
Yes, and no such "explaining" can possibly be legitimate within the
constraint of a *strict eliminativist* metaphysics. One cannot
consistently claim a) that only basic "physical" entities and events
are real, and b) go on appealing to "explanations" involving all
manner of composite entities and concepts. A further metaphysical
something is thereby being invoked, whether one likes it or not. The
fully "eliminated" mechanism isn't supposed to need "explanations" to
get its job done. That is the point of the posit of metaphysical
exclusivity. But of course eliminativists actually do still need
explanations, and that's their tragedy (or perhaps their salvation).
But they can't eat their metaphysical cake, and have it too.
Of course the "extra metaphysical something" is inextricably bound up
with consciousness and the first-person. My point is that
eliminativists have little option but to go on appealing to all the
paraphernalia of the composite objects of perception, even whilst
simultaneously denying that their referents have any metaphysical
reality. They're still just as apparent - whether "in here" or "out
there" - as if they'd never been "eliminated"! Such blatant
metaphysical theft is concealed only because of the almost insuperable
tendency to go on deploying this language and these concepts, even
after insisting that whatever they refer to is to be "eliminated" from
one's metaphysics.
>
> But in elementary arithmetic, you can prove the existence of numbers with
> very long and complex high level properties. You don't need to postulate
> them.
This is a horse of a different colour, and perhaps a different
conversation. I have been pondering quite a bit since our last
interchange, and now it strikes me (perhaps rather late in the
proceedings) that it is central to your thesis that the bare
properties of "substance physics" are just *insufficiently rich* to
explain the first person phenomena (including the "metaphysical
distinctness" of the composite entities of perception from the
fragmented events of physics). My eliminativist reductio just makes
this more obvious, at least to me, because it demonstrates that one
cannot avoid further metaphysical posits even to be able to speak
intelligibly about reality. But as you say above, arithmetic
potentially offers much more in terms of the needful combinatorial
richness of properties - perhaps enough to do the job, or at least
most of it.
David
Stephen P. King
Hi Folks,
Excellent topic and comments! Naturalism does seem to be a natural condition of humans given their predilection for supernatural or supranatural explanations of events that have no simplistic explanations, i.e. in terms of their common every day experiences which are limited by their socioeconomic conditions. I am not sure what Idealist Accidentalism would entail… Could you elaborate on this, Rex?
Could I propose a hypothesis about rules and causality? I will try to keep my explanation here simplistic to save time and space so please take that into account as you read this. First, if we are going to eliminate all traces of supranaturalism from our considerations, does it not behoove us to be sure that we are bringing the Observer at Infinity in some other guise? This notion of “rules” concerns me because it seems to imply that either some entity established them ab initio or else their existence is simply the result of some selective mechanism. Naturalism would involve making sure that it is not the former case. I think that the work of thinkers like Russell Standish and Nick Bostrom are making great strides to help us understand this later possibility. It could very well be that these “rules” are simply patterns of commonality that emerge between a large number of interacting systems, following something like a cross between learning or ‘habituation” and a least action principle.
In the work of Vaughan Pratt (http://boole.stanford.edu/pratt.html) I found an interesting way of thinking of causality. It is part of his Chu space based model of concurrence and interactions. To set things up let us first think of what goes on in the transition from one event to another in a sequence in time, the context within which the notion of causality arises. When we consider some event a as being the cause of some other event b, is it always the case that a and b where unique in that there was only one possible b for the given a?
This question might not make any sense in the classical regime where its determinism involves a strict one-to-one and onto mapping between successive events in time, but this is not true for QM. In quantum mechanics we have the situation that unless the conditions and systems are severely restricted for any a there is a spectrum of possible b_i that could obtain via the superposition rule. This is one reason we have all sorts of so-called problems with QM as it does not let us get away with the one-to-one and onto maps of classical dynamics.
So, I am lead to the question, given the (a, b_i) pair which represents a state and the set of its possible “next states”, what about the time reversed situation? Well, we find that for some b there is not just one possible a; what we find is another many-to-one sort of mapping, just pointing in the opposite direction” (b, a_j). We can see this explicitly in the bra and ket notations and people like John Cramer and others have seized upon this to think about interactions that go both “forward” and “backward” in time. What Pratt proposes is a more subtle version of this that assumes a duality relationship between information and matter. Explained here http://chu.stanford.edu/guide.html#ratmech , this duality involves a transition rule that move us a bit toward making sense of the kinds of great questions that Rex points out below.
The rule, put very crudely, is that for a to cause b, b must imply a; where the material act of causation is the dual of the logical act of implication. Let me quote directly from Pratt’s paper:
“We propose to reduce complex mind-body interaction to the elementary interactions
of their constituents. Events of the body interact with states of the
mind. This interaction has two dual forms. A physical event a in the body
A impresses its occurrence on a mental state x of the mind X, written a=|x.
Dually, in state x the mind infers the prior occurrence of event a, written x |= a.
States may be understood as corresponding more or less to the possible worlds
of a Kripke structure, and events to propositions that may or may not hold in
different worlds of that structure.
With regard to orientation, impression is causal and its direction is that
of time. Inference is logical, and logic swims upstream against time. Prolog’s
backward-chaining strategy dualizes this by viewing logic as primary and time
as swimming upstream against logic, but this amounts to the same thing. The
basic idea is that time and logic flow in opposite directions.”
Of course we have to get past the objections to dualism for this idea to be taken seriously, but I believe that it goes a long way to understanding causality in a wider context.
Kindest regards,
Stephen
From: everyth...@googlegroups.com [mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Rex Allen
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2010 1:09 PM
To: everyth...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: What's wrong with this?
On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 12:37 PM, David Nyman <david...@gmail.com> wrote:
> If we could remove ourselves from the universe and take a strict
> reductionist-god's eye view (which means having to drop all our usual
> mental categories - a very hard thing to achieve imaginatively) then,
> strictly adhering to the above hypothesis, all that would remain would
> be some ground-level physical machine grinding along, without the need
> for additional composite or macroscopic posits. Take your pick from
> current theory what is supposed to represent this "machine", but that
> needn't necessarily be at issue for the purpose of the argument. The
> point is that removing everything composite from the picture
> supposedly results in zero difference at the base level - same events,
> same "causality".
It seems to me that the primary question is about causality. Once you commit to the idea of a rule-governed system, you're already in a radically restrictive regime. Whether the system is physical or "ideal" or whatever seems largely irrelevant.
But what is the alternative to a rule-governed system?
How can the occurrence of any event be explained *except* by attributing that occurrence to some rule? Which is just to say that the event occurred for some reason.
But if everything has a reason, then there are an infinity of reasons even if there are only a finite number of things that initially need explanation. Because for every reason there should be a another reason that explains why the rule the reason refers to holds instead of not holding or instead of some other rule holding in it's place or in addition to it.
And then we need a reason for each one of the reasons for our original reasons. And so on, ad infinitum. But why our particular set of infinite reasons instead of some other set of infinite reasons? What is the reason for that?
The alternative is that some things happen for no reason. But in this case, why would some things have explanations while others don't? What is the reason for the two categories?
Maybe, instead, there is no reason for anything? How would we know? What would eliminate this possibility from consideration?
So...reductive physicalism. It seems like only one example of a larger problem.
Maybe "Idealist Accidentalism" is the answer?
snip.
Brent Meeker
Hi Folks,
Excellent topic and comments! Naturalism does seem to be a natural condition of humans given their predilection for supernatural or supranatural explanations of events that have no simplistic explanations, i.e. in terms of their common every day experiences which are limited by their socioeconomic conditions. I am not sure what Idealist Accidentalism would entail… Could you elaborate on this, Rex?
Could I propose a hypothesis about rules and causality? I will try to keep my explanation here simplistic to save time and space so please take that into account as you read this. First, if we are going to eliminate all traces of supranaturalism from our considerations, does it not behoove us to be sure that we are bringing the Observer at Infinity in some other guise? This notion of “rules” concerns me because it seems to imply that either some entity established them ab initio or else their existence is simply the result of some selective mechanism. Naturalism would involve making sure that it is not the former case. I think that the work of thinkers like Russell Standish and Nick Bostrom are making great strides to help us understand this later possibility. It could very well be that these “rules” are simply patterns of commonality that emerge between a large number of interacting systems, following something like a cross between learning or ‘habituation” and a least action principle.
In the work of Vaughan Pratt (http://boole.stanford.edu/pratt.html) I found an interesting way of thinking of causality. It is part of his Chu space based model of concurrence and interactions. To set things up let us first think of what goes on in the transition from one event to another in a sequence in time, the context within which the notion of causality arises. When we consider some event a as being the cause of some other event b, is it always the case that a and b where unique in that there was only one possible b for the given a?
This question might not make any sense in the classical regime where its determinism involves a strict one-to-one and onto mapping between successive events in time, but this is not true for QM. In quantum mechanics we have the situation that unless the conditions and systems are severely restricted for any a there is a spectrum of possible b_i that could obtain via the superposition rule. This is one reason we have all sorts of so-called problems with QM as it does not let us get away with the one-to-one and onto maps of classical dynamics.
Brent
--
Bruno Marchal
On 28 Aug 2010, at 02:26, David Nyman wrote:
> On 27 August 2010 19:21, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>
>> But most reductionist would say that they believe in atom and in
>> their
>> properties, and this makes it possible to enter in a great variety of
>> different combinations having themselves even more non trivial
>> properties.
>> Why would a reductionist be committed in saying that such higher
>> level
>> features do not exist?
>
> Well, such reductionists could not of course be eliminativist about
> these higher level features and properties. But this then commits
> them to the metaphysical reality - in some sense - of the higher level
> features, as distinct from their components. And this "some sense" is
> - at minimum - Kant's sense of "appearance" as distinct from whatever
> may be the "thing in itself". I guess my overall thesis is that
> everyone, whatever kind of "-ist" they avow themselves to be, can't
> help but be committed to the metaphysical reality of the objects of
> perception (even when they implicitly locate them "out there" in some
> un-Kantian, "directly real" way). That's just our situation.
> "Eliminating" this sense can only lead to frank incoherence, and my
> argument, by pushing the notion to breaking point in the form of a
> reductio ad absurdum, was simply meant to make this particularly
> obvious.
I agree with you. We are going in the same drection.
>
>>> But the reductionist-god's eye view (if we've done it
>>> right) should convince us - weirdly, but unavoidably - that they
>>> just
>>> aren't automatically "out there", metaphysically, at our disposal.
>>
>> I don't see why.
>
> I mean "out there", where some level-zero domain of maximal
> fragmentation (what Levine calls "basic physical properties") is
> posited - according to the extreme view I'm criticising - as the sole
> metaphysically reality. Remember, my argument is presented in the
> form of a reductio of just this position, by limiting it *strictly* to
> what it is entitled to under its own explicit metaphysical
> constraints.
OK.
>
>>> I suppose the nub of this for me is that - whether we consider
>>> ourselves monist or dualist, or amongst the ontological
>>> uncommitted -
>>> we have need of both analytic and integrative principles to account
>>> for the states of affairs that confront us.
>>
>> But the reductionist will explain the integrative part through the
>> properties of its elementary objects.
>
> Yes, and no such "explaining" can possibly be legitimate within the
> constraint of a *strict eliminativist* metaphysics. One cannot
> consistently claim a) that only basic "physical" entities and events
> are real, and b) go on appealing to "explanations" involving all
> manner of composite entities and concepts. A further metaphysical
> something is thereby being invoked, whether one likes it or not. The
> fully "eliminated" mechanism isn't supposed to need "explanations" to
> get its job done. That is the point of the posit of metaphysical
> exclusivity. But of course eliminativists actually do still need
> explanations, and that's their tragedy (or perhaps their salvation).
> But they can't eat their metaphysical cake, and have it too.
You are right. In a sense that is what happened with the abndon of the
Hilbert program in math, after Gödel's paper. Hilbert wanted to secure
the foundation of math by eliminating intuition (your "metaphysical"
import) and making math relying only on finite things and finite
rules. It just don't work: intuition is just not eliminable. Scientist
have to admit that they rely always on metaphysical assumption at some
level.
>
> Of course the "extra metaphysical something" is inextricably bound up
> with consciousness and the first-person.
Her *I¨agree with you, sure.
> My point is that
> eliminativists have little option but to go on appealing to all the
> paraphernalia of the composite objects of perception, even whilst
> simultaneously denying that their referents have any metaphysical
> reality. They're still just as apparent - whether "in here" or "out
> there" - as if they'd never been "eliminated"! Such blatant
> metaphysical theft is concealed only because of the almost insuperable
> tendency to go on deploying this language and these concepts, even
> after insisting that whatever they refer to is to be "eliminated" from
> one's metaphysics.
OK.
>
>>
>> But in elementary arithmetic, you can prove the existence of
>> numbers with
>> very long and complex high level properties. You don't need to
>> postulate
>> them.
>
> This is a horse of a different colour, and perhaps a different
> conversation. I have been pondering quite a bit since our last
> interchange, and now it strikes me (perhaps rather late in the
> proceedings) that it is central to your thesis that the bare
> properties of "substance physics" are just *insufficiently rich* to
> explain the first person phenomena (including the "metaphysical
> distinctness" of the composite entities of perception from the
> fragmented events of physics). My eliminativist reductio just makes
> this more obvious, at least to me, because it demonstrates that one
> cannot avoid further metaphysical posits even to be able to speak
> intelligibly about reality. But as you say above, arithmetic
> potentially offers much more in terms of the needful combinatorial
> richness of properties - perhaps enough to do the job, or at least
> most of it.
Most of it, because we still have to "politely" infer some
consciousness on oneself and others. The beauty of mechanism is that
it gives the more possible without evacuating the person, it makes the
person central in the whole "metaphysics", even if he person is
emerging from (infinities) of number relations.
Bruno
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Rex Allen
>
> Excellent topic and comments! Naturalism does seem to be a
> natural condition of humans given their predilection for supernatural or
> supranatural explanations of events that have no simplistic explanations,
> i.e. in terms of their common every day experiences which are limited by
> their socioeconomic conditions. I am not sure what Idealist Accidentalism
> would entail… Could you elaborate on this, Rex?
By "idealist" I'm referring to metaphysical idealism...that what
fundamentally exists is mental, not physical. And by mental I mean
either consciousness or existing only as an aspect of consciousness.
For example, there is my conscious experience of a dream, and then
there are the things that appear in my dreams that I am conscious
of...houses and chairs and trees and people. Both categories of
things are mental. The trees that appear in my dreams only exist as
an aspect of the dream.
And by "accidentalism" I mean the theory that nothing that exists or
occurs is caused. There is nothing that connects or controls the flow
of events. The only rule is that there are no rules to appeal to.
So "idealist accidentalism"...the view that what exists is mental, and
that there is no underlying process that explains or governs this
existence.
Explaining the order of our experience by positing the existence of
orderly underlying processes (as with reductive physicalism, for
example) is just begging the question...because then what explains the
order of those underlying processes?
The total amount of mystery was conserved. We just transferred the
mystery to a new location - from our conscious experience to a
hypothetical underlying process. We are unwilling to accept that our
experiences "just are" orderly, so instead we appeal to an underlying
process which "just is" orderly. "Ordo Ex Machina".
Not only that, but this reductionist approach raises the question of
why we would be so lucky as to have our conscious experiences
generated by underlying processes that "cause" us to have correct
knowledge of those very processes.
We can only know what the underlying process causes us to know. Thus,
the tendency to believe true things can't be a special feature of
humans. Rather, it would be a special feature of the process that
underlies human experience.
But, again, this is a problem with any rule-based explanation of
reality, not just with reductive physicalism.
But the only alternative to a rule-based explanation of reality is
accidentalism, isn't it?
> Could I propose a hypothesis about rules and causality? I will try to keep
> my explanation here simplistic to save time and space so please take that
> into account as you read this. First, if we are going to eliminate all
> traces of supranaturalism from our considerations, does it not behoove us to
> be sure that we are bringing the Observer at Infinity in some other guise?
> This notion of "rules" concerns me because it seems to imply that either
> some entity established them ab initio or else their existence is simply the
> result of some selective mechanism.
But then what is the selective mechanism a result of?
> Naturalism would involve making sure
> that it is not the former case. I think that the work of thinkers like
> Russell Standish and Nick Bostrom are making great strides to help us
> understand this later possibility. It could very well be that these "rules"
> are simply patterns of commonality that emerge between a large number of
> interacting systems,
Emerge by what rule? Or do they emerge randomly? If so, that takes
us back to accidentalism, doesn't it?
Also, a large number of interacting systems is just "a system", isn't
it? At the very least a system of interacting systems. Where the
boundaries are drawn is all in how you look at...I would think.
With the right mapping you can find any pattern anywhere, can't you?
What privileges one interpretational mapping over another?
> What Pratt proposes is a more subtle version of this that assumes a
> duality relationship between information and matter. Explained here
> http://chu.stanford.edu/guide.html#ratmech , this duality involves a
> transition rule that move us a bit toward making sense of the kinds of great
> questions that Rex points out below.
Maybe it is that way...but if so, I wonder why? Why is it that way
instead of some other way?
Bruno Marchal
If idealist accidentalism is correct then there is no theory at all.
But idealist accidentalism is a theory (even if vague)
So there is no theory, and there is one theory.
So 0 = 1.
Contradiction.
So idealist accidentalism is refuted.
You may save it by insisting that idealist accidentalism is not a
theory. It would be a mere philosophical injunction of the type
"dont' ask, don't search".
hmm...
Bruno
Rex Allen
>>
>> So "idealist accidentalism"...the view that what exists is mental, and
>> that there is no underlying process that explains or governs this
>> existence.
>
> If idealist accidentalism is correct then there is no theory at all.
Well, I'd have to hear your definition of "theory" and what the
conditions are for its existence.
So obviously something exists...my conscious experience of this
moment. This experience is a multifaceted thing...in that there are
many "things" I am conscious of in this moment.
But this is true of dreams as well. I am conscious of many things in
a dream, but those aren't things that exist outside or independently
of the dream.
So what accounts for the dream? Numbers? How does my experience of
dreaming of a tree connect to numbers? What is it that generates my
experience of a tree from the brutely existing substrate of numbers?
Why should numbers give rise to my dream experience of a tree?
Obviously I can use numbers to represent the tree...in the sense that
I can use saved numerical measurements to "re-present" the tree to my
self...if I can remember how to interpret the measurements. And I'm
even willing to grant that I can use numbers to represent my
experience of the tree. But representation is just the re-presenting
of something to your conscious experience, which is not at all the
same as explaining the fact of that experience.
> But idealist accidentalism is a theory (even if vague)
> So there is no theory, and there is one theory.
> So 0 = 1.
> Contradiction.
> So idealist accidentalism is refuted.
I think you should have your logician license revoked...
> You may save it by insisting that idealist accidentalism is not a theory. It
> would be a mere philosophical injunction of the type "dont' ask, don't
> search".
I think it is a just a recognition that Agrippa's trilemma and the
principle of sufficient reason lead to infinite levels of infinite
regress. Which I take as a sign that there's something wrong with
that type of interpretation of our conscious experience.
Quentin Anciaux
I'm sorry bruno... but that is sophism...
Regards,
Quentin
You may save it by insisting that idealist accidentalism is not a theory. It would be a mere philosophical injunction of the type "dont' ask, don't search".
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Quentin Anciaux
I should just add that "idealist accidentalism" is *exactly* as irrefutable as solipsism.
Hence by that it has no value... but it's not refuted.
Regards,
Quentin
You may save it by insisting that idealist accidentalism is not a theory. It would be a mere philosophical injunction of the type "dont' ask, don't search".
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Rex Allen
>
> I should just add that "idealist accidentalism" is *exactly* as irrefutable
> as solipsism.
>
> Hence by that it has no value... but it's not refuted.
What would refute physicalism? It would seem to me that quantum
mechanics is sufficiently flexible to account for nearly any
observation, especially since the many worlds interpretation and the
possibility of multiverses would seem likely to give rise to so many
permutations.
Even probabilistic physical laws and a single infinite universe would
still seem likely to give rise to some pretty bizarre scenarios,
wouldn’t it?
Now, maybe quantum mechanics will be replaced by a different theory,
but can you imagine any possible feature of such a theory that would
rule out a physicalist interpretation?
And, again, any rule-based framework for explaining our conscious
experiences means, by definition, that don’t present or believe
arguments for reasons of logic or rationality. Instead, the arguments
that we present and believe are those entailed by the rules that
underlie our experiences.
That these rules generate rational beliefs is a leap of faith, and can
neither be refuted nor proven.
If the underlying process *didn’t* cause us to present and believe
rational arguments, there would be no way to detect this, since there
is no way to step outside of the process’s control of one’s beliefs to
independently verify the "reasonableness" of the beliefs it generates.
A physicalist may be correct about the physical nature of reality, but
if so, this is solely due to his improbable good luck in existing in a
rare "honest" physical universe whose initial conditions and causal
laws resulted in his holding true beliefs about his universe's initial
conditions and causal laws.
Given all that, ultimately I doubt your beliefs are any better footing
than solipsism either.
Rex
Quentin Anciaux
Euh..
I'm sorry but where did I state my belief in the preceeding message ? Where did I spoke about physicalism ?
I spoke about "idealist accidentalism" in answer to Bruno who said wrongly it's been refuted when it's not because well... read the preceeding message.
Quentin
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Bruno Marchal
I should just add that "idealist accidentalism" is *exactly* as irrefutable as solipsism.
Hence by that it has no value... but it's not refuted.
You may save it by insisting that idealist accidentalism is not a theory. It would be a mere philosophical injunction of the type "dont' ask, don't search".
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Bruno Marchal
On 31 Aug 2010, at 19:36, Rex Allen wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 11:11 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>
> wrote:
>>>
>>> So "idealist accidentalism"...the view that what exists is mental,
>>> and
>>> that there is no underlying process that explains or governs this
>>> existence.
>>
>> If idealist accidentalism is correct then there is no theory at all.
>
> Well, I'd have to hear your definition of "theory" and what the
> conditions are for its existence.
The existence of a theory is usually not the object of the theory, but
of a metatheory.
In some case the metatheory can itself be an object of the theory. For
example zoologists are animal (but botanist are not plant). Since
Gödel we know that the theory "Peano Arithmetic" can be studied "in"
Peano arithmetic. And monist philosophies makes mandatory that the
theory and/or the theoretican has to belong to the collection of
objects or phenomena of the theory. Physicists do obey to the laws of
gravitation for example. A physicist of masse m will attract a
physicist of mass M with a force proportional to mM/(square of the
distance between two physicists). of course that force is negligible
compared to the natural repulsion that a physicist can or cannot have
for a colleague ...
>
> So obviously something exists...my conscious experience of this
> moment.
That is obvious for you. I have to postulate it.
Unless you postulate we are the same person?
I can agree with that, at some level, but you waould not refer to
"this moment". I am not sure what you mean by "moment" with idealist
accidentalism (IA).
> This experience is a multifaceted thing...in that there are
> many "things" I am conscious of in this moment.
>
> But this is true of dreams as well. I am conscious of many things in
> a dream, but those aren't things that exist outside or independently
> of the dream.
In which theory. Such a sentence seems to assume a lot, if only to
make some sense. If IA is correct, words like "world", "outside" refer
to what?
>
> So what accounts for the dream? Numbers?
In the theory "digital mechanism", aka "computationnalism", we can
argue for this, indeed.
> How does my experience of
> dreaming of a tree connect to numbers? What is it that generates my
> experience of a tree from the brutely existing substrate of numbers?
Well, from the true but non communicable part given by the self-
reference logic of self-introspecting (ideally correct) programs
(machine, numbers, theories ... words are used in a large sense here).
>
> Why should numbers give rise to my dream experience of a tree?
> Obviously I can use numbers to represent the tree...in the sense that
> I can use saved numerical measurements to "re-present" the tree to my
> self...if I can remember how to interpret the measurements. And I'm
> even willing to grant that I can use numbers to represent my
> experience of the tree. But representation is just the re-presenting
> of something to your conscious experience, which is not at all the
> same as explaining the fact of that experience.
The fact of experience is given by the true fixed point of the
representation, like a map of the USA, when situated in the USA will
have a representing point superposed on the real point.
>
>
>> But idealist accidentalism is a theory (even if vague)
>> So there is no theory, and there is one theory.
>> So 0 = 1.
>> Contradiction.
>> So idealist accidentalism is refuted.
>
> I think you should have your logician license revoked...
I will not insist on that littel reasoning. Was just trying to shortly
points that IA makes little sense for me.
>
>
>> You may save it by insisting that idealist accidentalism is not a
>> theory. It
>> would be a mere philosophical injunction of the type "dont' ask,
>> don't
>> search".
>
> I think it is a just a recognition that Agrippa's trilemma and the
> principle of sufficient reason lead to infinite levels of infinite
> regress. Which I take as a sign that there's something wrong with
> that type of interpretation of our conscious experience.
When put in computer science terms (which computationalism invites
naturally to do), we inherit of the fixed point solutions of recursive
equation.
I have no problem with people trying different kind of theory, but to
posit consciousness at the start (or matter, actually) does not
satisfy me. As I said it prevents further research. I understand that
feeling (consciousness cannot be explained), but I can at least
explain why machine/numbers develop discourse invoking similar failure
feeling about their own consciousness/consistency, or true but non
provable predicate on themselves.
Bruno
David Nyman
>> How does my experience of
>> dreaming of a tree connect to numbers? What is it that generates my
>> experience of a tree from the brutely existing substrate of numbers?
>
> Well, from the true but non communicable part given by the self-reference
> logic of self-introspecting (ideally correct) programs (machine, numbers,
> theories ... words are used in a large sense here).
Rex's question excerpted above, and Bruno's response to it, seem to
relate directly to the topic I had in mind in my original post.
Speaking, as it were, somewhat in Bruno's rather "large" sense, the
"brutely existing substrate of numbers" might correspond to that
particular perspective on the Real which is characterised by
abstraction to what I called the pole of maximal fragmentation - i.e.
the role presumably occupied by the quantum field and its
manifestations in current physical theory. "The self-reference logic
of self-introspecting (ideally correct) programs (machine, numbers,
theories ...", would then be seen in the role of a combinatorial logic
operating over this domain - that occupied, in physical theory, by
whatever are supposed to be considered the fundamental relations
between "physical" ultimates.
The key subtlety then devolves on "the true but non communicable
part". This seems very difficult to state concisely. Perhaps what
makes it elusive is that first one has to appreciate that the
self-introspecting logic is (somehow) already capable of grasping that
certain of its beliefs have the characteristic of implying to the
believer, in a certain sense, the "metaphysical distinctness" of their
referents. To see this, let us consider "Logical-David" - i.e. that
aspect of David that is purely a manifestation of "self-introspecting
(ideally correct) programs". This Logical-David possesses - i.e. is
(partially) constituted by - certain self-referential beliefs that
mediate relations between "himself" and the "objects of his
experience". He is already, within the constraints of this purely
logical substrate, capable of demonstrating consistent commitment to
such beliefs, and to their putative referents; indeed this is what
motivates any communicable judgement or statement whatsoever that he
is capable of producing about them. There is something more, however.
There is something that already seems to him to transcend this purely
logical "substrate", something somehow metaphysically distinct, that
seems to arise from its peculiarly self-referencing character. It
seems somehow to be those very "objects of experience" themselves.
On reflection, however, Logical-David is (just) able to see that all
these considerations can still be confined within the constitutive
substrate of numbers and combinatorial logic. Or to put it another
way, as someone notoriously said, "he would say that, wouldn't he"?
Whatever this extra something might, or might not, be, he is incapable
of communicating it directly. Consequently, purely "logically", he
must (just) concede that any such putative metaphysical distinctness
could still be, from a purely "logical" standpoint, chimerical. In
other words, it would appear that he cannot, with pure logic, rule out
the possibility - even to himself - of Logical-David being merely a
zombie. And indeed, Logical-David is, precisely, such a zombie.
Actually, in this somewhat etiolated form he really should be
considered more an intriguing interpretation of the
mathematico-logical substrate than a person, as it were, in his own
right
Can there be no escape from this seemingly doleful logic? Yes, if
there is *in fact* a David whose personal individuation is able to
transcend its merely logical embodiment. And such transcendence
indeed implies a metaphysically distinct, direct grasp of certain
truths beyond their mere logical implication; some sort of personal
integration or synthesis - apotheosis, even - correlated with, but
irreducible to, any substrate considered in its purely
analytical-combinatorial aspect. In short, for such transcendent
individuation to be the case, there must *actually exist* a
first-person David who is conscious, as well as merely logically
possessed, of the objects of his experience.
And as to the truth of this - of course - only he would know.
David (both of him)
Rex Allen
> Euh..
>
> I'm sorry but where did I state my belief in the preceeding message ? Where
> did I spoke about physicalism ?
>
> I spoke about "idealist accidentalism" in answer to Bruno who said wrongly
> it's been refuted when it's not because well... read the preceeding message.
I did read your preceeding message. And what I got out of it is that
if you consistently apply your evaluative criteria, you should
conclude that physicalism, platonism, deism, theism, arithmetical
realism and all other metaphysical theories that reduce conscious
experience to some sort of underlying rule-governed framework are
irrefutable and thus valueless.
But what are alternatives to rule-governed metaphysical frameworks?
Accidentalism, and...what else? Refraining from metaphysical
speculation altogether?
Rex
Bruno Marchal
Consequently, purely "logically", he
must (just) concede that any such putative metaphysical distinctness
could still be, from a purely "logical" standpoint, chimerical.
In
other words, it would appear that he cannot, with pure logic, rule out
the possibility - even to himself - of Logical-David being merely a
zombie.
And indeed, Logical-David is, precisely, such a zombie.
Actually, in this somewhat etiolated form he really should be
considered more an intriguing interpretation of the
mathematico-logical substrate than a person, as it were, in his own
right
Can there be no escape from this seemingly doleful logic? Yes, if
there is *in fact* a David whose personal individuation is able to
transcend its merely logical embodiment.
And such transcendence
indeed implies a metaphysically distinct, direct grasp of certain
truths beyond their mere logical implication; some sort of personal
integration or synthesis - apotheosis, even - correlated with, but
irreducible to, any substrate considered in its purely
analytical-combinatorial aspect.
In short, for such transcendent
individuation to be the case, there must *actually exist* a
first-person David who is conscious,
as well as merely logically
possessed, of the objects of his experience.
And as to the truth of this - of course - only he would know.
David (both of him)
Quentin Anciaux
On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 2:14 AM, Quentin Anciaux <allc...@gmail.com> wrote:I did read your preceeding message. And what I got out of it is that
> Euh..
>
> I'm sorry but where did I state my belief in the preceeding message ? Where
> did I spoke about physicalism ?
>
> I spoke about "idealist accidentalism" in answer to Bruno who said wrongly
> it's been refuted when it's not because well... read the preceeding message.
if you consistently apply your evaluative criteria, you should
conclude that physicalism, platonism, deism, theism, arithmetical
realism and all other metaphysical theories that reduce conscious
experience to some sort of underlying rule-governed framework are
irrefutable and thus valueless.
You're the one saying that. The problem with "idealist accidentalism" (like with sollipsism) is that you can change at will to adapt to the fact. It's not the case with the others (but is the case with theism/deism/magic/bisounours world/etc).
Quentin
But what are alternatives to rule-governed metaphysical frameworks?
Accidentalism, and...what else? Refraining from metaphysical
speculation altogether?
Rex
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Bruno Marchal
Rex Allen
>
> In some case the metatheory can itself be an object of the theory. For
> example zoologists are animal (but botanist are not plant). Since Gödel we
> know that the theory "Peano Arithmetic" can be studied "in" Peano
> arithmetic. And monist philosophies makes mandatory that the theory and/or
> the theoretican has to belong to the collection of objects or phenomena of
> the theory. Physicists do obey to the laws of gravitation for example. A
> physicist of masse m will attract a physicist of mass M with a force
> proportional to mM/(square of the distance between two physicists). of
> course that force is negligible compared to the natural repulsion that a
> physicist can or cannot have for a colleague ...
This is part of the point I'm making. You have to place yourself
within your proposed framework. If you posit the existence of a
rule-based system as an explanation for conscious experience, then the
rules of that system "determine" the arguments that you present and
believe.
At this point you are merely a cog in the machine of your system.
Your every thought, belief, and emotion are the byproduct of the
inexorable action of its metaphysical gears.
How is this situation an improvement on solipsism? Only you exist.
Only the machine exists.
Six of one, half a dozen of the other I’d say.
And there’s still the problem that the vast majority of physical
universes (or mathematical structures) would be dishonest “Matrix”
universes (or structures), so how likely is it that our beliefs are
true of anything outside of our subjective experience?
>> So obviously something exists...my conscious experience of this
>> moment.
>
> That is obvious for you. I have to postulate it.
I don’t see the importance of this point? I am certain that my
experience of this moment (or instant) exists...nothing important
hinges on whether your experience exists. If it doesn’t, that’s fine.
I’m not trying to explain your conscious experience, I’m only trying
to explain mine. Bouncing ideas off of you is a useful
activity...which would still be true even if it turned out that you
were just an Eliza-like chat-bot that parsed incoming emails,
rearranged the wording, and added some logician-speak before mailing
them back out.
> I can agree with that, at some level, but you waould not refer to "this
> moment". I am not sure what you mean by "moment" with idealist accidentalism
> (IA).
Moment as in “Instant of consciousness”. Or even as in “instance of
consciousness”.
>> This experience is a multifaceted thing...in that there are
>> many "things" I am conscious of in this moment.
>>
>> But this is true of dreams as well. I am conscious of many things in
>> a dream, but those aren't things that exist outside or independently
>> of the dream.
>
> In which theory.
I was thinking of physicalism.
> Such a sentence seems to assume a lot, if only to make some
> sense. If IA is correct, words like "world", "outside" refer to what?
Aspects of experience.
>> So what accounts for the dream? Numbers?
>
> In the theory "digital mechanism", aka "computationnalism", we can argue for
> this, indeed.
So IF it is true that some particular some set of numbers and the
relations between them just *are* my conscious experience of seeing an
oak tree, THEN *something* has to make that true.
It’s not the numbers themselves that would make that true, because
numbers are numbers, and have nothing obvious to do with oak trees or
experience.
And it’s not the relations between numbers, because these also have
nothing obvious to do with oak trees or experience.
So, what is it that makes the previous statement true? If it is true,
then it seems to me that there must be some other kind of relationship
that can connect numbers, relationships between numbers, and the
experience of oak trees.
What, in your opinion, is the nature of this extra relationship?
> I have no problem with people trying different kind of theory, but to posit
> consciousness at the start (or matter, actually) does not satisfy me.
Consciousness is the start though, isn’t it? It doesn’t have to be
posited...it’s a given. Directly known.
Trying to ignore this givenness and re-derive it from things that are
inferred FROM conscious experience is where you go astray I think.
> As I said it prevents further research.
Why do you want to do further research?
Putting yourself in your own proposed metaphysical framework, what is
the cause of your insatiable lust for more research? In the grand
scheme of things, what does it mean that you want further research?
Rex Allen
Easier said than done! I've sworn it off 4 times this year...but here
I am again.
Rex Allen
>>
>> I did read your preceeding message. And what I got out of it is that
>> if you consistently apply your evaluative criteria, you should
>> conclude that physicalism, platonism, deism, theism, arithmetical
>> realism and all other metaphysical theories that reduce conscious
>> experience to some sort of underlying rule-governed framework are
>> irrefutable and thus valueless.
>
>
> You're the one saying that.
You are correct, I seem to be the only one saying that if you apply
your evaluative criteria consistently, then your charge against
idealist accidentalism applies equally to physicalism and the rest.
> The problem with "idealist accidentalism" (like
> with sollipsism) is that you can change at will to adapt to the fact. It's
> not the case with the others (but is the case with
> theism/deism/magic/bisounours world/etc).
Physicalism is exactly as changeable as idealistic accidentalism.
That was the point of my earlier response to you.
What new fact could possibly refute physicalism??? (or mathematical
platonism, or whatever)
Keep in mind that idealistic accidentalism is an alternative to
physicalism, not to quantum field theory.
Physicalism just being the thesis that that everything which exists is
no more extensive than its physical properties; that there are no
kinds of things other than physical things.
So, what new data couldn't be interpreted as being consistent with that?
An idealistic accidentalist would take an instrumentalist view of
quantum mechanics. As opposed to some form of scientific realism that
a physicalist might support.
Quentin Anciaux
On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 1:51 AM, Quentin Anciaux <allc...@gmail.com> wrote:You are correct, I seem to be the only one saying that if you apply
>>
>> I did read your preceeding message. And what I got out of it is that
>> if you consistently apply your evaluative criteria, you should
>> conclude that physicalism, platonism, deism, theism, arithmetical
>> realism and all other metaphysical theories that reduce conscious
>> experience to some sort of underlying rule-governed framework are
>> irrefutable and thus valueless.
>
>
> You're the one saying that.
your evaluative criteria consistently, then your charge against
idealist accidentalism applies equally to physicalism and the rest.
Physicalism is exactly as changeable as idealistic accidentalism.
> The problem with "idealist accidentalism" (like
> with sollipsism) is that you can change at will to adapt to the fact. It's
> not the case with the others (but is the case with
> theism/deism/magic/bisounours world/etc).
That was the point of my earlier response to you.
No
What new fact could possibly refute physicalism??? (or mathematical
platonism, or whatever)
How could physicalism account for a big giant hand of god (?) appearing in the sky ? :D
It can't... "idealist accidentalism" can account *all* the facts, not some of them but all... the worst thing is that it can account everything and has no explanatory value, it denies explanation in its own definition. So yes it's useless, you can posit it and then go sleeping.
If you can always say to any question some thing like 'it's because the pastafari did it'... then I don't see the value of the theory.
And yes theories which could never ever be disproved have little value.
Keep in mind that idealistic accidentalism is an alternative to
physicalism, not to quantum field theory.
quantum field theory in a "idealistic accidentalism" world has no value because it accidentaly works...
Quentin
Physicalism just being the thesis that that everything which exists is
no more extensive than its physical properties; that there are no
kinds of things other than physical things.
So, what new data couldn't be interpreted as being consistent with that?
An idealistic accidentalist would take an instrumentalist view of
quantum mechanics. As opposed to some form of scientific realism that
a physicalist might support.
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David Nyman
> In
> other words, it would appear that he cannot, with pure logic, rule out
> the possibility - even to himself - of Logical-David being merely a
> zombie.
>
> No. Even the zombie can see that he cannot. That's why the
> self-referentially correct machine cannot be a zombie.
Yes, my emphasis here was indeed **with pure logic**. That is to say,
the "purely logical part" - i.e. the believer - begins by suspecting
that it perhaps can't rule out the possibility that it is *only* that:
i.e. pure logic. But the subtlety is that it can also realise that
this very possibility begs the question of its own self-referential
integrity. That is, it would place into doubt its very "existence for
itself" as something (i.e. anything whatsoever) metaphysically
distinct from the substrate of logic considered to be constituting it.
The following dilemma is then presented: either a) there simply *is
no believer* in any way metaphysically distinct from the substrate in
general, or b) the truth of such distinctness is for the believer
alone to assert. But then, since the unpalatable consequence of
option a) would be the annihilation of both the Cat and the Grin, the
believer (thankfully) realises that "self-referential correctness"
mandates the truth of its own existence-for-itself. What a relief!
Why can this be so hard to see? This thought was what motivated my
original post - i.e. that the reason (or at least a major reason) why
all this can seem so elusive is that we continually seek to escape
self-reference by adopting - per impossibile - some maximally analytic
"objectivised" viewpoint: i.e. the reductionist-god's eye view, or
"observer at infinity". Although success in achieving such a "view"
should entail the consequence of entirely banishing any
self-referential distinctness we possess, somehow we can fail to
appreciate this, and the Cheshire Cat-like apparition of the "objects
of experience" remains in full view. How is this? Because we forget
that any "view" purporting to be both entirely analytic and *outside
of everything* must, by that very restriction, have abandoned any
legitimate grasp of *internally-referenced* categories predicated on
integration, composition, or synthesis. We just go on "projecting"
all this from afar, just as though we had not absented ourselves from
the scene. Such metaphysical absent-mindedness tricks us into begging
the question of just how such synthetic categories could in fact
acquire any transcendence over a putative analytic substrate. In
effect, this kind of metaphysical circularity is "hard-wired" into our
naturalistic modes of thought - though we may blind ourselves to
self-reference, we cannot escape it.
> You have to study Gödel and Tarski theorem, or a result by Kaplan and
> Montague, recasted in the Solovay logics. Smorynski wrote a paper "50 years
> of arithmetical self-reference", a rather long time ago. Boolos 1979 and
> 1993 consecrated a chapter to the "knower" (S4Grz). A student and friend of
> mine has formalized Bp & Dp (the Z, Z1, Z* and Z1*) logics, but the case for
> S4GRz1, and the X, X1, X*, X1* logics remains unsolved. There are theorem
> prover for those logics, and so by an indirect argument we know them
> formalizable, but no one has found the axioms yet. Note that all those logic
> are non effectively soluble, once extended at the modal predicate level.
> The hypostases give a knowledge of the believer, the conscious knower, the
> observer, the "feeler" each with they communicable and non communicable
> part, from which you can derive, the observable, the non observable, the
> feelable and the non feelable, well many things, including quanta and
> qualia.
> Weakness: hard mathematics.
> Ask any question if you feel so. I am aware it is hard and ultra-subtle
> stuff. Well, that is why only technics can handle those self-references.
It is, as you say, remarkable that there exist detailed systems of
self-referential logic that can capture such subtleties, and make
rigorous the distinction between formal and non-formal parts. I am
grateful for your continued perseverance and patience in affording me
even the most basic insight into them, and I only wish I had the sheer
tenacity to get to grips with them in the extended technical detail
they demand, as you do. But you, after all, are a logician and I am a
mere quibbler. Nevertheless, it intrigues me that my quibbling
occasionally seems to lead me somewhere in the vicinity of these
notions, so I won't abandon it entirely!
David
Rex Allen
>
>>
>> What new fact could possibly refute physicalism??? (or mathematical
>> platonism, or whatever)
>
> How could physicalism account for a big giant hand of god (?) appearing in
> the sky ? :D
Would you believe it was the hand of god? Why not the hand of some
space alien *pretending* to be god?
That would be a physicalist interpretation. How could anyone prove otherwise?
OR, it could turn out that god just is a superpowerful space
alien...that would also be a valid physicalist interpretation.
OR it you could say you were hallucinating it. Also a physicalist interpration.
OR it could be taken as the result of an extremely unlikely but not
impossible quantum fluctuation, followed by a whole series of supposed
miracles that are *also* just quantum fluctions. In an infinite
universe anything that's not strictly impossible in inevitable.
So another physicalist interpretation.
Did you never see that episode of Star Trek TNG where Picard faces
down a woman claiming to be the devil? "Devil's Due".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil's_Due_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)
SO, as I said,physicalism is exactly as changeable as idealistic accidentalism.
> It can't... "idealist accidentalism" can account *all* the facts, not some
> of them but all... the worst thing is that it can account everything and has
> no explanatory value, it denies explanation in its own definition. So yes
> it's useless, you can posit it and then go sleeping.
>
> If you can always say to any question some thing like 'it's because the
> pastafari did it'... then I don't see the value of the theory.
Whereas a phyiscalist would always say, "quantum mechanics did it", or
"unlikely but not impossible initial conditions explains it", or
whatever.
I don't see the value of a physicalist interpretation of the
descriptive/predictive equations that constitute quantum theory.
> And yes theories which could never ever be disproved have little value.
Then physicalism, mathematical platonism, deism, etc. have little value.
>> Keep in mind that idealistic accidentalism is an alternative to
>> physicalism, not to quantum field theory.
>>
>
> quantum field theory in a "idealistic accidentalism" world has no value
> because it accidentaly works...
Even assuming that physicalism is true, what explains the fact that
our universe had the particular initial conditions and causal laws
that it does? Aren't these, in effect, accidental?
Everything else that we observe is just a coincidence of those two
contingent things...initial conditions and causal laws. Everything,
*including* our discovery of these causal laws and our theories about
the initial conditions. If we're right, this is an accident...a
stroke of good fortune in living in an "honest" universe, and not a
"matrix" universe.
Bruno Marchal
:)
There is no problem with metaphysical speculation. It is, I think,
unavoidable when we do fundamental research.
But personally, I think that when we want make a public presentation,
it is best to separate the speculative part, which is the theory, from
the conclusion/theorem we can derive from the theory. It is vain to
defend the assumption-speculation-theory as being true or real or
whatever.
Science is only collection of theories, and statements derive in those
theories, and intepretation rules, and confirmation modus operandi.
Only layman and engineers have to hope that their theories fits enough
a reality.
The theories and the reasoning can be presented informally or
formally. Rigor has nothing to do with formalization, but a lot to do
with clarity. It is also better that the theory/assumption are shared
by many, because ... it is more fun.
Take it easy,
Bruno
>
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Bruno Marchal
On 02 Sep 2010, at 10:01, Rex Allen wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 4:21 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>
> wrote:
>>
>> In some case the metatheory can itself be an object of the theory.
>> For
>> example zoologists are animal (but botanist are not plant). Since
>> Gödel we
>> know that the theory "Peano Arithmetic" can be studied "in" Peano
>> arithmetic. And monist philosophies makes mandatory that the theory
>> and/or
>> the theoretican has to belong to the collection of objects or
>> phenomena of
>> the theory. Physicists do obey to the laws of gravitation for
>> example. A
>> physicist of masse m will attract a physicist of mass M with a force
>> proportional to mM/(square of the distance between two physicists).
>> of
>> course that force is negligible compared to the natural repulsion
>> that a
>> physicist can or cannot have for a colleague ...
>
> This is part of the point I'm making. You have to place yourself
> within your proposed framework. If you posit the existence of a
> rule-based system as an explanation for conscious experience,
I don't do that. I insist that if 3-we are machine, that if we have a
body capable as being described by a (digital) machine, then
(simplifying a bit to be short), consciousness is not produced by that
machine, but filtered from 'arithmetical truth'.
> then the
> rules of that system "determine" the arguments that you present and
> believe.
This looks like a universal critics of science. I assume indeed that
we are machine, and then I make a reasoning, and then indeed I also
ask the machines what they think about the theory. Computer science
makes the interview of ideally correct machines indeed feasible.
>
> At this point you are merely a cog in the machine of your system.
> Your every thought, belief, and emotion are the byproduct of the
> inexorable action of its metaphysical gears.
Not really, because by proceeding in that way, I may discover
evidences that I am wrong.
>
> How is this situation an improvement on solipsism? Only you exist.
> Only the machine exists.
?
I believe in electron, bridge, numbers, nations, humans, planet,
galaxies, etc. But that is just a personal confession.
Then all what I say is that if I am machine, then all those things I
just mention have to emerge from numbers with their additive and
multiplicative structure, and I explain how and why.
>
> Six of one, half a dozen of the other I’d say.
>
> And there’s still the problem that the vast majority of physical
> universes (or mathematical structures) would be dishonest “Matrix”
> universes (or structures), so how likely is it that our beliefs are
> true of anything outside of our subjective experience?
Well, most people do share with me the assumptions, they do believe
that there is an infinity of prime numbers, that consciousness could
be plausibly preserve in functional digital brain substitution, and
then they follow, with varying degrees of easyness the reasoning.
The "matrix" and machine's "dreams" obey to the laws of computer
science.
No identity thesis. The relation between consciousness and the number
relation is more "holistic" than the materialist usually thinks.
>
> It’s not the numbers themselves that would make that true, because
> numbers are numbers, and have nothing obvious to do with oak trees or
> experience.
I use numbers, but I could use combinators or truing machines. What is
important is that they are finite things, and admits many relations
between them, and that some relation are universal in the sense of
computer science.
>
> And it’s not the relations between numbers, because these also have
> nothing obvious to do with oak trees or experience.
>
> So, what is it that makes the previous statement true? If it is true,
> then it seems to me that there must be some other kind of relationship
> that can connect numbers, relationships between numbers, and the
> experience of oak trees.
>
> What, in your opinion, is the nature of this extra relationship?
It is the undefinable "true" nature of those relations, and their
hopefully stable nature, which is not yet proved for digital mechanism
(but progresses can be amde, and what is already found makes the
quantum mechanics solultion of that stability problem a confirmation
of digital mechanism, up to now.
>
>> I have no problem with people trying different kind of theory, but
>> to posit
>> consciousness at the start (or matter, actually) does not satisfy me.
>
> Consciousness is the start though, isn’t it? It doesn’t have to be
> posited...it’s a given. Directly known.
Your consciousness, for you. But the point is to try to share
something with others.
Bruno
>
> Trying to ignore this givenness and re-derive it from things that are
> inferred FROM conscious experience is where you go astray I think.
>
>> As I said it prevents further research.
>
> Why do you want to do further research?
>
> Putting yourself in your own proposed metaphysical framework, what is
> the cause of your insatiable lust for more research? In the grand
> scheme of things, what does it mean that you want further research?
>
Sami Perttu
that he doesn't know what the right level is, as in his world, all
observationally equivalent explanations are interchangeable. What he
can do is appeal to simplicity in reducing everything to some atomic
objects, which are then really real.
Would it be simpler still to guess that every observer is in a
superposition of worlds that are consistent with his observations?
Then we don't have to pick any level. Some of the worlds would
correspond to idealistic accidentalism in its many forms. In some he
would be recreated each moment, in some he would be a zombie, in
others some kind of Brahman, and so on.
Bruno Marchal
On 02 Sep 2010, at 17:02, David Nyman wrote:
> On 1 September 2010 21:51, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>
>> In
>> other words, it would appear that he cannot, with pure logic, rule
>> out
>> the possibility - even to himself - of Logical-David being merely a
>> zombie.
>>
>> No. Even the zombie can see that he cannot. That's why the
>> self-referentially correct machine cannot be a zombie.
>
> Yes, my emphasis here was indeed **with pure logic**. That is to say,
> the "purely logical part" - i.e. the believer - begins by suspecting
> that it perhaps can't rule out the possibility that it is *only* that:
> i.e. pure logic.
Not at all. He has a relation with truth. He begins by confusing its
belief with truth, but introspecting itself, it discovers the gap
between truth and its beliefs.
So that he discovers the gap between beliefs (the "logical system")
and knowledge (by definition: those beliefs which are, some perhaps
serendipitously, others perhaps necessarily, true.
> But the subtlety is that it can also realise that
> this very possibility begs the question of its own self-referential
> integrity.
Yes. Indeed.
> That is, it would place into doubt its very "existence for
> itself" as something (i.e. anything whatsoever) metaphysically
> distinct from the substrate of logic considered to be constituting it.
Good.
> The following dilemma is then presented: either a) there simply *is
> no believer* in any way metaphysically distinct from the substrate in
> general,
Certainly not.
> or b) the truth of such distinctness is for the believer
> alone to assert.
Exact.
> But then, since the unpalatable consequence of
> option a) would be the annihilation of both the Cat and the Grin, the
> believer (thankfully) realises that "self-referential correctness"
> mandates the truth of its own existence-for-itself. What a relief!
I think so.
>
> Why can this be so hard to see? This thought was what motivated my
> original post - i.e. that the reason (or at least a major reason) why
> all this can seem so elusive is that we continually seek to escape
> self-reference by adopting - per impossibile - some maximally analytic
> "objectivised" viewpoint: i.e. the reductionist-god's eye view, or
> "observer at infinity". Although success in achieving such a "view"
> should entail the consequence of entirely banishing any
> self-referential distinctness we possess, somehow we can fail to
> appreciate this, and the Cheshire Cat-like apparition of the "objects
> of experience" remains in full view. How is this? Because we forget
> that any "view" purporting to be both entirely analytic and *outside
> of everything* must, by that very restriction, have abandoned any
> legitimate grasp of *internally-referenced* categories predicated on
> integration, composition, or synthesis.
That sentence is long ;-)
> We just go on "projecting"
> all this from afar, just as though we had not absented ourselves from
> the scene. Such metaphysical absent-mindedness tricks us into begging
> the question of just how such synthetic categories could in fact
> acquire any transcendence over a putative analytic substrate. In
> effect, this kind of metaphysical circularity is "hard-wired" into our
> naturalistic modes of thought - though we may blind ourselves to
> self-reference, we cannot escape it.
I think so. As far as I don't misunderstand. Give me time to digest.
I appreciate very much your patience. Got the feeling you see the thing.
Let me try to take the opportunity to try to give you the
"arithmetical" thing, and why logic+arithmetic force the self-
referential logic to distinguish between the formal (body, syntax,
finite machine, program, word, number, the 3-thing) and the informal
(truth, person, knowledge, the 1-thing).
Allow me to be not exact on the details, for example Gödel has chosen
PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA as pet formal "rich" theory, and I choose Peano
Arithmetic (like all logicians in all textbook). Gödel and Tarski have
shown remarkable facts:
There are true arithmetical sentences that PA cannot prove.
PA can talk about its own probability.
In particular PA can prove that IF PA will never prove a falsity, that
is, IF PA is consistent, then PA cannot prove that PA is consistent.
That remains true for all consistent extension of PA.
That PA can prove all this. In particular PA proves that "IF PA is
consistent then PA cannot prove that PA is consistent".
PA can talk about provability, but cannot even name truth.
That PA can, nevertheless, name a transfinite approximation of truth.
PA can prove that "as far" as PA is "correct" then G* apply to it.
So, as far as I am true, beliefs coincide with knowledge. Some
effective extension of PA will be able to "see" that PA's knowledge is
not definable by PA (and so is informal), and obeys a different logic
(an S4 logic instead of G).
I will think about trying to be even more clear and pedagogical. I may
sum up that I do agree with your analysis, by my own intuition/
introspection (that I try to convey with mechanism, and uda, ...), but
that PA seems to agree too, entailing that all effective (machine)
extensions of PA would agree to :)
Truth is Plato's god. It is the undefinable object of research of the
fundamental inquirer. Truth about numbers is far beyond numbers. But
numbers can already see that.
Bruno
>> stuff. Well, that is why only technics can handle those self-
>> references.
>> To post to this group, send email to everything-
>> li...@googlegroups.com.
>>
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Evgenii Rudnyi
>
...
> Science is only collection of theories, and statements derive in
> those theories, and intepretation rules, and confirmation modus
> operandi. Only layman and engineers have to hope that their theories
> fits enough a reality.
>
> The theories and the reasoning can be presented informally or
> formally. Rigor has nothing to do with formalization, but a lot to do
> with clarity. It is also better that the theory/assumption are shared
> by many, because ... it is more fun.
How would you define what a physical law is?
The reason I am asking is that recently I have read The Elegant Universe
by Brian Green about the superstring theory. For some reasons physicists
insist that they can find Equation of Everything.
Best wishes,
Evgenii
http://blog.rudnyi.ru
David Nyman
> So, as far as I am true, beliefs coincide with knowledge.
Yes, I can see that this statement essentially sums up exactly what I
was trying to say! Its structure expresses the relation between
formal (belief) and non-formal (knowledge), from the synthetic
perspective of the believer/knower. What I was criticising in my
original post was the kind of view that purports to ignore the
indispensable non-formal roots of this tree of knowledge, whilst
continuing to make off with its fruit!
If I may speak (even) more loosely for a moment, I tend to think of
the Real, insofar as we can conceptualise it at all (and we can't) as
being in some sense a Big Whole, but a Big Whole that is somehow also
able to manifest itself as a multitude. In this, I guess I've always
broadly shared the metaphysical intuitions of the neo-Platonist and
Eastern traditions. Because both these poles seem to me ineliminable,
truth can be found only in the tension between analysis and
integration, not at either limit. The Big Whole is eternally engaged
in some process of maximal fragmentation - a cosmic self-analysis, so
to speak - but any knowledge gained thereby can be absorbed only by
re-integration into the Whole. It seems to me that much
"eliminativist" theorising is driven into incoherence as a result of
ignoring considerations essentially of this type, with the further
paradoxical consequence that the theories themselves are expressible
only in terms of knowledge gained through the very integrative
phenomena that they explicitly rule out!
David
> thing, and why logic+arithmetic force the self-referential logic to
>>> Well, from the true but non communicable part given by the self-reference
>>> stuff. Well, that is why only technics can handle those self-references.
>>> Well, from the true but non communicable part given by the self-reference
>>>
>>> logic of self-introspecting (ideally correct) programs (machine, numbers,
>>>
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Brent Meeker
An idealistic accidentalist would take an instrumentalist view of quantum mechanics. As opposed to some form of scientific realism that a physicalist might support.
Brent
Bruno Marchal
On 02 Sep 2010, at 19:23, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
> on 02.09.2010 17:57 Bruno Marchal said the following:
> ...
>
>> Science is only collection of theories, and statements derive in
>> those theories, and intepretation rules, and confirmation modus
>> operandi. Only layman and engineers have to hope that their theories
>> fits enough a reality.
>> The theories and the reasoning can be presented informally or
>> formally. Rigor has nothing to do with formalization, but a lot to do
>> with clarity. It is also better that the theory/assumption are shared
>> by many, because ... it is more fun.
>
> How would you define what a physical law is?
Empirically: physical laws are the laws which can relate what I can
observe and share with others.
Assuming digital mechanism, after the UDA reasoning, the physical
laws are no more primitive laws, inferable from observation, but they
emerge from the coupling consciousness/reality itself emerging from
the additive/multiplicative structure of numbers. The laws of physics
are no more fundamental. The emergence is enough constrained as to
make the mechanist assumption testable. If we are in a 'matrix', we
can verify it. (mechanism entails we are in a matrix, actually in an
infinities of matrix, existing platonistically in the structure of
numbers+addition+multiplication. Note that this makes the ultimate
physical laws much more solid: such laws are shown to have a reason.
>
> The reason I am asking is that recently I have read The Elegant
> Universe by Brian Green about the superstring theory. For some
> reasons physicists insist that they can find Equation of Everything.
Physicists have a tradition of putting mind and consciousness under
the rug, and they usually confuse everything with everything-physical.
This has been a fertile methodological simplification, but it breaks
in front of the 'hard consciousness problem', or the mind-body problem.
Bruno
Bruno Marchal
On 2 September 2010 18:32, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:So, as far as I am true, beliefs coincide with knowledge.
Yes, I can see that this statement essentially sums up exactly what I
was trying to say! Its structure expresses the relation between
formal (belief) and non-formal (knowledge), from the synthetic
perspective of the believer/knower. What I was criticising in my
original post was the kind of view that purports to ignore the
indispensable non-formal roots of this tree of knowledge, whilst
continuing to make off with its fruit!
If I may speak (even) more loosely for a moment, I tend to think of
the Real, insofar as we can conceptualise it at all (and we can't) as
being in some sense a Big Whole, but a Big Whole that is somehow also
able to manifest itself as a multitude. In this, I guess I've always
broadly shared the metaphysical intuitions of the neo-Platonist and
Eastern traditions.
Because both these poles seem to me ineliminable,
truth can be found only in the tension between analysis and
integration, not at either limit. The Big Whole is eternally engaged
in some process of maximal fragmentation - a cosmic self-analysis, so
to speak - but any knowledge gained thereby can be absorbed only by
re-integration into the Whole.
It seems to me that much
"eliminativist" theorising is driven into incoherence as a result of
ignoring considerations essentially of this type, with the further
paradoxical consequence that the theories themselves are expressible
only in terms of knowledge gained through the very integrative
phenomena that they explicitly rule out!
Evgenii Rudnyi
>
> On 02 Sep 2010, at 19:23, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>
>> on 02.09.2010 17:57 Bruno Marchal said the following: ...
>>
>>> Science is only collection of theories, and statements derive in
>>> those theories, and intepretation rules, and confirmation modus
>>> operandi. Only layman and engineers have to hope that their
>>> theories fits enough a reality. The theories and the reasoning
>>> can be presented informally or formally. Rigor has nothing to do
>>> with formalization, but a lot to do with clarity. It is also
>>> better that the theory/assumption are shared by many, because ...
>>> it is more fun.
>>
>> How would you define what a physical law is?
>
> Empirically: physical laws are the laws which can relate what I can
> observe and share with others.
How to distinguish then a law and a correlation?
> Assuming digital mechanism, after the UDA reasoning, the physical
> laws are no more primitive laws, inferable from observation, but they
> emerge from the coupling consciousness/reality itself emerging from
> the additive/multiplicative structure of numbers. The laws of physics
> are no more fundamental. The emergence is enough constrained as to
> make the mechanist assumption testable. If we are in a 'matrix', we
> can verify it. (mechanism entails we are in a matrix, actually in an
> infinities of matrix, existing platonistically in the structure of
> numbers+addition+multiplication. Note that this makes the ultimate
> physical laws much more solid: such laws are shown to have a reason.
Let me continue with my question. So we have observations and then we
make some model. It could be of empirical nature or we say that this
model is a law. How do we know when a model becomes a law?
>> The reason I am asking is that recently I have read The Elegant
>> Universe by Brian Green about the superstring theory. For some
>> reasons physicists insist that they can find Equation of
>> Everything.
>
> Physicists have a tradition of putting mind and consciousness under
> the rug, and they usually confuse everything with
> everything-physical. This has been a fertile methodological
> simplification, but it breaks in front of the 'hard consciousness
> problem', or the mind-body problem.
Could you please recommend some modern books in this respect?
Say I have just listened to audio book
Best of the Brain from Scientific American: Mind, Matter, and Tomorrow�s
Brain
http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2010/09/what-crazy-scientists-make-with-brain-nowadays.html
and they have found an effective way to treat depression: plant an
electrode to some brain area (area 25) and put a voltage. Could it be
also a way in the future to solve the mind-body problem? A couple of
electrodes, some voltage pattern, and that's it?
Evgenii
Bruno Marchal
on 03.09.2010 10:10 Bruno Marchal said the following:On 02 Sep 2010, at 19:23, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:on 02.09.2010 17:57 Bruno Marchal said the following: ...Science is only collection of theories, and statements derive in those theories, and intepretation rules, and confirmation modus operandi. Only layman and engineers have to hope that theirtheories fits enough a reality. The theories and the reasoningcan be presented informally or formally. Rigor has nothing to dowith formalization, but a lot to do with clarity. It is alsobetter that the theory/assumption are shared by many, because ...it is more fun.How would you define what a physical law is?Empirically: physical laws are the laws which can relate what I can observe and share with others.
How to distinguish then a law and a correlation?
Assuming digital mechanism, after the UDA reasoning, the physicallaws are no more primitive laws, inferable from observation, but theyemerge from the coupling consciousness/reality itself emerging fromthe additive/multiplicative structure of numbers. The laws of physicsare no more fundamental. The emergence is enough constrained as tomake the mechanist assumption testable. If we are in a 'matrix', wecan verify it. (mechanism entails we are in a matrix, actually in aninfinities of matrix, existing platonistically in the structure of numbers+addition+multiplication. Note that this makes the ultimate physical laws much more solid: such laws are shown to have a reason.
Let me continue with my question. So we have observations and then we make some model.
It could be of empirical nature or we say that this model is a law. How do we know when a model becomes a law?
The reason I am asking is that recently I have read The Elegant Universe by Brian Green about the superstring theory. For somereasons physicists insist that they can find Equation ofEverything.Physicists have a tradition of putting mind and consciousness underthe rug, and they usually confuse everything witheverything-physical. This has been a fertile methodologicalsimplification, but it breaks in front of the 'hard consciousnessproblem', or the mind-body problem.
Could you please recommend some modern books in this respect?
Say I have just listened to audio book
Best of the Brain from Scientific American: Mind, Matter, and Tomorrow’s Brain
http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2010/09/what-crazy-scientists-make-with-brain-nowadays.html
and they have found an effective way to treat depression: plant an electrode to some brain area (area 25) and put a voltage. Could it be also a way in the future to solve the mind-body problem? A couple of electrodes, some voltage pattern, and that's it?
Rex Allen
> Scientifically I think there are possible data
> that would count as evidence against physicalism. For example, if persons
> reporting out-of-body experiences could actually gain knowledge not
> otherwise available via these experiences. Another example would be prayer
> healing studies. If it happened that prayers by say Sikhs were effective
> with statistical significance while prayers by other religionists were not;
> that would be strong evidence against physicalism.
First, one might prefer the physicalist "Nick Bostrom" style
explanation that we are in a computer simulation over adopting a
supernatural explanation. In effect making God physical. The "deity"
outside the computer simulation can arrange things however he
likes...including allowing OBEs and Sikh prayer healing. Or those
might be a sign of a flaw in the simulation's programming.
Second, both OBEs and Sikh prayer healing might be explained by
entanglement style "action at a distance" mechanisms. Certainly one
could start with that claim, quantum mechanics having already blazed
the trail. Why only Sikh healing? Well, presumably different beliefs
would be associated with different physical brain structures, and
maybe only some brain structures have the right "triggering"
configuration.
Third, even without action at a distance or resonant brain structures,
there's still the equivalent of "dark matter" style explanations.
That there is an additional physical layer that only weakly (and maybe
probabilistically) interacts with the layer we have relatively easy
access to.
If the OBE/prayer process could be mathematically modeled, then it
would just be a matter of assigning physical interpretations to the
equations of the model. As the Many Worlds, consistent histories,
copenhagen, and Bohmian interpretations do for quantum mechanics.
And again, it seems to me that in an infinite universe, SOMEWHERE
someone should find what seems to be statistically significant
evidence of Sikh prayer healing and OBEs. Since it seems to me that
in enough trials with all possible initial conditions and all possible
outcomes of probabilistic causal laws, *someone* should see a false
positive...in fact, a lot of false positives. So many false positives
as to establish reasonable belief that there is a causal connection.
And that's just off the top of my head.
So, I don't see how OBEs or prayer healing would in any way falsify
physicalism, or even dent it. Though they might demolish the Standard
Model.
>> An idealistic accidentalist would take an instrumentalist view of
>> quantum mechanics. As opposed to some form of scientific realism that
>> a physicalist might support.
>>
>
> Many physicists take an instrumentalist view of quantum mechanics, c.f.
> Asher Peres graduate textbook.
For the record, I didn't claim that physicalism entailed scientific realism.
Evgenii Rudnyi
> On 9/2/2010 1:32 AM, Rex Allen wrote:
>> On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 1:51 AM, Quentin Anciaux<allc...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
...
> Of course it is *logically* possible that any new data could be
> consistent with physicalism - but then logical possibility is a very
> weak standard; it just excludes "X and not-X". Scientifically I
> think there are possible data that would count as evidence against
> physicalism. For example, if persons reporting out-of-body
> experiences could actually gain knowledge not otherwise available via
> these experiences.
Nice experiments with out-of-body experience are at the Laboratory of
Cognitive Neuroscience
Just look at video at this page. There is a good paper in Die Zeit about it
http://www.zeit.de/2008/15/OdE24-Gehirn
but it is in German.
Evgenii
Brent Meeker
Brent
Rex Allen
>
> You've made up some just-so stories about how some other quasi-physical
> explanation *might* be adopted.
In what way are my proposed explanations "quasi-physical" instead of
just physical?
> You haven't show that they *would* be
> preferred to supernatural ones.
I don't need to show that they would be preferred. I just need to
show that physicalism is still a live option, and thus not
falsifiable.
And honestly I find my proposed explanations more plausible than
supernatural ones. While God would explain the Sikhs prayer thing,
that also runs into the problem of evil.
The simulation argument alone is enough to see off any God-based
competition. Anyone who already leans in that direction would
probably take this option over God in the event of an outbreak of
miracles.
Initially I'm sure the vast majority of people would be convinced of a
supernatural explanation for OBEs or healing prayer...*but* the vast
majority of people are already religiously inclined. So I'm not sure
that a popularity contest counts.
I'd bet that the majority of atheists would choose one of my
proposals, or maybe come up with an even better physicalist
alternative.
> You can always speculate that any
> regularity we note is just a false positive that in inevitable in an
> infinite universe - but that will convince no one.
"No one" is way too strong. It would convince some.
Also you could conclude that we'd wondered into a low-probability
branch of the universal wave function a-la the many worlds
interpretation.
I think all "many worlders" would take this interpretation of events
if there were an outbreak of miracles. Do you disagree?
And the many world interpretation isn't that different than the
infinite universe option.
Brent Meeker
On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 2:58 AM, Brent Meeker <meek...@dslextreme.com> wrote:You've made up some just-so stories about how some other quasi-physical explanation *might* be adopted.In what way are my proposed explanations "quasi-physical" instead of just physical?
You haven't show that they *would* be preferred to supernatural ones.I don't need to show that they would be preferred. I just need to show that physicalism is still a live option, and thus not falsifiable. And honestly I find my proposed explanations more plausible than supernatural ones. While God would explain the Sikhs prayer thing, that also runs into the problem of evil.
The simulation argument alone is enough to see off any God-based competition.
Anyone who already leans in that direction would probably take this option over God in the event of an outbreak of miracles. Initially I'm sure the vast majority of people would be convinced of a supernatural explanation for OBEs or healing prayer...*but* the vast majority of people are already religiously inclined. So I'm not sure that a popularity contest counts. I'd bet that the majority of atheists would choose one of my proposals, or maybe come up with an even better physicalist alternative.You can always speculate that any regularity we note is just a false positive that in inevitable in an infinite universe - but that will convince no one."No one" is way too strong. It would convince some. Also you could conclude that we'd wondered into a low-probability branch of the universal wave function a-la the many worlds interpretation. I think all "many worlders" would take this interpretation of events if there were an outbreak of miracles. Do you disagree? And the many world interpretation isn't that different than the infinite universe option.
I think this argument though is ill defined. "Physicalism" or "naturalism" isn't a particular theory anymore that "supernaturalism" or "everythingism" or "Platonism" is. It's kind of metaphysics which says some things exist and some don't, and things that exist are ones we can in some sense interact with (If you kick it, it kicks back. is the slogan). But generally metatheories aren't testable in the same sense that theories are. If you want to test whether God exists, you first need to make your definition of "God" sufficiently precise to make some inferences about what would or wouldn't be the case if God did or didn't exist.
Brent
Stephen P. King
Dear Brent,
From: everyth...@googlegroups.com [mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Brent Meeker
Sent: Saturday, September 04, 2010 7:39 PM
To: everyth...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: What's wrong with this?
On 9/4/2010 12:45 AM, Rex Allen wrote:
On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 2:58 AM, Brent Meeker <meek...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
You've made up some just-so stories about how some other quasi-physicalexplanation *might* be adopted.
In what way are my proposed explanations "quasi-physical" instead of
just physical?
Brain-in-vat and the-universe-as-a-computer-simulation are not really physical theories since they assume that everything we consider physical just exists at the whim of some mad scientist.
[SPK] I disagree strongly! Is the "mad scientist" not constrained by its equivalent to physical laws? AFAIK, the brain-in-vat and universe-as-a-computer-simulation are related thought experiments that allow us to think more deeply about our tacit assumptions about our world and ourselves. Maybe you might help us to better understand your thoughts by explaining what "physical" means to you.You haven't show that they *would* bepreferred to supernatural ones.
I don't need to show that they would be preferred. I just need to
show that physicalism is still a live option, and thus not
falsifiable.
And honestly I find my proposed explanations more plausible than
supernatural ones. While God would explain the Sikhs prayer thing,
that also runs into the problem of evil.
Who said God is omnibeneficient?
[SPK]
Who said that the term even applied? I think that any anthropomorphic notions of deity would be subject to a thorough examination. The mere idea that we can adjoin the term "omni" with some other anthropomorphic term seems to be oxymoronic from the start. This gets to John Mikes discomfort with the indiscriminate use to the term "all", a discomfort that I share.
The simulation argument alone is enough to see off any God-based
competition.
No, it's just a another conception of God - the world is still created and formed by a supernatural agent.
[SPK]
How so? Is a computational system with sufficient resources unable to generate a simulation of the universe that we experience? We are not talking about the actual construction or specification of such, only the mere possibility that such a system could exist.
Anyone who already leans in that direction would
probably take this option over God in the event of an outbreak of
miracles.
Initially I'm sure the vast majority of people would be convinced of a
supernatural explanation for OBEs or healing prayer...*but* the vast
majority of people are already religiously inclined. So I'm not sure
that a popularity contest counts.
I'd bet that the majority of atheists would choose one of my
proposals, or maybe come up with an even better physicalist
alternative.
You can always speculate that anyregularity we note is just a false positive that in inevitable in aninfinite universe - but that will convince no one.
"No one" is way too strong. It would convince some.
Also you could conclude that we'd wondered into a low-probability
branch of the universal wave function a-la the many worlds
interpretation.
I think all "many worlders" would take this interpretation of events
if there were an outbreak of miracles. Do you disagree?
And the many world interpretation isn't that different than the
infinite universe option.
That's one of the criticisms of many-worlds. If the theory can't derive the Born rules then it's not falsifiable, even in a probabilistic sense.
[SPK]
Hold on just a moment, Brent. The derivation of the Born rules is still not a settled issue in the sense that we don't have a single theory that would explain how the Born rule is even a necessary condition. I would love to be wrong on this latter claim. J
I think this argument though is ill defined. "Physicalism" or "naturalism" isn't a particular theory anymore that "supernaturalism" or "everythingism" or "Platonism" is. It's kind of metaphysics which says some things exist and some don't, and things that exist are ones we can in some sense interact with (If you kick it, it kicks back. is the slogan). But generally metatheories aren't testable in the same sense that theories are. If you want to test whether God exists, you first need to make your definition of "God" sufficiently precise to make some inferences about what would or wouldn't be the case if God did or didn't exist.
Brent
[SPK]
We can judge a metatheory by examination of its logical consequences, the good 'ol GIGO rule still applies. J
Onward!
Stephen P. King
Rex Allen
> On 9/4/2010 12:45 AM, Rex Allen wrote:
>> In what way are my proposed explanations "quasi-physical" instead of
>> just physical?
>>
>
> Brain-in-vat and the-universe-as-a-computer-simulation are not really
> physical theories since they assume that everything we consider physical
> just exists at the whim of some mad scientist.
That still makes them physicalist theories, not quasi-physicalist. As
long as the mad scientist and his vats/computers are physical.
>> And honestly I find my proposed explanations more plausible than
>> supernatural ones. While God would explain the Sikhs prayer thing,
>> that also runs into the problem of evil.
>>
>
> Who said God is omnibeneficient?
The Sikhs.
>> The simulation argument alone is enough to see off any God-based
>> competition.
>
> No, it's just a another conception of God - the world is still created and
> formed by a supernatural agent.
We'd just be inside the Matrix. Nothing supernatural about that.
>> I think all "many worlders" would take this interpretation of events
>> if there were an outbreak of miracles. Do you disagree?
>> And the many world interpretation isn't that different than the
>> infinite universe option.
>>
>
> That's one of the criticisms of many-worlds. If the theory can't derive the
> Born rules then it's not falsifiable, even in a probabilistic sense.
See? Physicalism isn't falsifiable. It falls into the same category
as idealistic accidentalism.
And thus, according to Quentin, is worthless.
Specific scientific theories that posit the existence of particular
physical entities are falsifiable, but in no sense does physicalism
stand or fall with them.
> I think this argument though is ill defined. "Physicalism" or "naturalism"
> isn't a particular theory anymore that "supernaturalism" or "everythingism"
> or "Platonism" is.
The Merriam Webster dictionary shows 9 definitions for the word
"theory". I'm pretty certain that our usage here fits at least one of
them.
> It's kind of metaphysics which says some things exist
> and some don't, and things that exist are ones we can in some sense interact
> with (If you kick it, it kicks back. is the slogan). But generally
> metatheories aren't testable in the same sense that theories are.
This is fine. As long as you're not claiming that physicalism is
superior to idealistic accidentalism by virtue of being falsifiable.
> If you
> want to test whether God exists, you first need to make your definition of
> "God" sufficiently precise to make some inferences about what would or
> wouldn't be the case if God did or didn't exist.
Indeed. The same goes for the "physical".
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Brent Meeker
On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 7:38 PM, Brent Meeker <meek...@dslextreme.com> wrote:On 9/4/2010 12:45 AM, Rex Allen wrote:In what way are my proposed explanations "quasi-physical" instead of just physical?Brain-in-vat and the-universe-as-a-computer-simulation are not really physical theories since they assume that everything we consider physical just exists at the whim of some mad scientist.That still makes them physicalist theories, not quasi-physicalist. As long as the mad scientist and his vats/computers are physical.
And honestly I find my proposed explanations more plausible than supernatural ones. While God would explain the Sikhs prayer thing, that also runs into the problem of evil.Who said God is omnibeneficient?The Sikhs.
The simulation argument alone is enough to see off any God-based competition.No, it's just a another conception of God - the world is still created and formed by a supernatural agent.We'd just be inside the Matrix. Nothing supernatural about that.
I think all "many worlders" would take this interpretation of events if there were an outbreak of miracles. Do you disagree? And the many world interpretation isn't that different than the infinite universe option.That's one of the criticisms of many-worlds. If the theory can't derive the Born rules then it's not falsifiable, even in a probabilistic sense.See? Physicalism isn't falsifiable. It falls into the same category as idealistic accidentalism.
And thus, according to Quentin, is worthless. Specific scientific theories that posit the existence of particular physical entities are falsifiable, but in no sense does physicalism stand or fall with them.I think this argument though is ill defined. "Physicalism" or "naturalism" isn't a particular theory anymore that "supernaturalism" or "everythingism" or "Platonism" is.The Merriam Webster dictionary shows 9 definitions for the word "theory". I'm pretty certain that our usage here fits at least one of them.It's kind of metaphysics which says some things exist and some don't, and things that exist are ones we can in some sense interact with (If you kick it, it kicks back. is the slogan). But generally metatheories aren't testable in the same sense that theories are.This is fine. As long as you're not claiming that physicalism is superior to idealistic accidentalism by virtue of being falsifiable.
If you want to test whether God exists, you first need to make your definition of "God" sufficiently precise to make some inferences about what would or wouldn't be the case if God did or didn't exist.Indeed. The same goes for the "physical". What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Brent
John Mikes
Rex Allen
> On 9/4/2010 5:28 PM, Rex Allen wrote:
>> That still makes them physicalist theories, not quasi-physicalist. As
>> long as the mad scientist and his vats/computers are physical.
>>
>
> Does this mad scientist have free will, i.e. can he act independent of any
> physical constraints in our universe? Then he's *super* our natural.
Hmmm. This is a peculiar direction for you to go. Why would I think
the mad scientist has "free will"?
Again, I don't even think free will is conceivable.
Every decision is either caused, or it's not caused. I see no third option.
If the decision was not caused, then it's random. No free will.
If the decision is caused, then what caused the cause? And what
caused the cause of the cause? And so on. The decision is a link in
a causal chain which must eventually be traced outside the person
making the choice. No free will.
I assume that by "free will" you mean that the mad scientist is
ultimately responsible for his actions. But I don't see how that
could ever be the case.
>> We'd just be inside the Matrix. Nothing supernatural about that.
>>
>
> Yes it is. It's "super" our natural. Anything can happen - no physical
> laws.
Anything can happen in dreams too - no physical laws apply there. But
dreams aren't generally considered supernatural occurrences.
Being inside the Matrix is just like being inside a dream. A more
coherent, orderly dream. But a kind of dream nonetheless.
Assuming physicalism, the physical world causes our dream experiences.
Assuming physicalism, the physical world causes our Matrix experiences.
Finding out you were in the Matrix would be equivalent to realizing
you were in a dream.
>> This is fine. As long as you're not claiming that physicalism is
>> superior to idealistic accidentalism by virtue of being falsifiable.
>>
>
> I'm not. But I claim that particular physical theories are falsifiable,
> whereas idealistic accidentalism either has no theories or has ones that are
> not falsifiable - depending on how you look at it.
But it doesn't matter that particular physical theories are
falsifiable, because in the event of falsification you will always
just fall back to another physical theory. With the many-worlds
interpretation serving as an ultimate safety net.
Further, physicalism isn't necessary to formulate falsifiable
theories. Take, for instance, "idealistic occasionalism". Here
mathematical theories would be interpreted as describing the patterns
behind God's causal interventions so that you can predict what God
will cause to happen next. If your theory gets falsified then you
theorized incorrectly about the pattern behind God's actions.
The existence of God himself is taken as a given. As the existence of
a physical substrate is taken as a given in physicalism.
However, note that both physicalism and idealistic occasionalism have
similar problems when you put yourself inside the framework of your
theory: the formulation of the theories is a result of the underlying
mechanism that is being theorized about.
So if the idealistic occasionalist theorized correctly, this can only
be because God *caused* him to theorize correctly.
Alternatively, if the physicalist theorizes correctly, this can only
be because his universe's particular initial conditions and causal
laws *caused* him to theorize correctly.
>> Indeed. The same goes for the "physical".
>>
>> What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
>>
>
> Exactly my point. What's your definition of "physicalism"?
I would say that physicalism is the claim that *all* conscious
experiences are due to the independent existence of some other more
fundamental set of entities (particles, fields, wavefunctions,
strings, whatever) whose nature must be such that their existence and
properties are (in principle) directly inferable from the details of
our sensory data and serve some role in generating that sensory data.
Note that the "in principle" qualifier is meant to include
counterfactuals...i.e., the existence and properties of these entities
*would be* directly inferable from the details of our sensory data if
some particular scenario were to occur.
Rex Allen
> Brent and Rex:
> after many many discussions I suffered along - reading utter stupidity,
Ouch!
> this
> one is a refreshingly reasonable one.
Excellent!
Brent Meeker
Brent
Rex Allen
The words "are due to" is meant in the sense "are dependent on".
The word "independent" was meant in the sense that the more
fundamental entities are not affected by conscious experience.
As an example of what I mean:
Conscious experience is *dependent* on the interactions of quarks and
electrons.
But quarks, electrons, their interactions are *independent* of
conscious experience.
The dependency flows one way.
Put a different way:
According to physicalism conscious experience supervenes on quarks and
electrons. Quarks and electrons do not supervene on conscious
experience.
Evgenii Rudnyi
> On Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 11:01 PM, Brent Meeker
> <meek...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
>> On 9/6/2010 6:45 PM, Rex Allen wrote:
...
> Put a different way:
>
> According to physicalism conscious experience supervenes on quarks
> and electrons. Quarks and electrons do not supervene on conscious
> experience.
>
I have just read Vital Dust, The Origin and Evolution of Life on Earth
by Christian de Duve. One citation from the chapter The Future of Life
(p. 271).
"We have reached a crucial state in the history of life. The face of the
Earth has changed dramatically in the last few thousand years, a mere
instant in evolution time, and it is changing ever faster. What would
have taken one thousands generations in the past may now happen in a
single generation. Biological evolution is on a runaway course toward
severe instability.
In a way, our time recalls one of those major breaks in evolution
signaled by massive extinctions. But there is a difference. The cause of
instability is not the impact of a large asteroid or some other
uncontrollable event. The perturbation is from life itself acting
through a species of its own creation, an immensely successful species
filling every corner of the planet with continually growing throngs,
increasingly subjugating and exploiting the world. For the first time,
also, in the history of life, natural selection has been replaced, be it
only partly, by willful intervention on the part of a member of the
bioshperic community. The facts are before us clear and unmistakable.
Everybody can read the message and draw the obvious conclusions."
This means that conscious experience at least changes the movements of
quarks and electrons.
Evgenii
Brent Meeker
Brent
Evgenii
Bruno Marchal
John Mikes
Rex Allen
>
>> On 9/7/2010 1:48 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>
> Having said this your point does not follow, in the sense that even if
> consciousness supervenes on interactions of particles (non mechanism) this
> would not prevents consciousness to retroact on the particles, like when a
> painter moves ink and papers to express his artistic feelings. Another
> example: we may argue that guns and atomic bombs are produced in part by
> human fears.
But then what causes human fears?
You could say quarks and electrons cause human fears which then cause
guns and bombs.
OR, you could say quarks and electrons cause human fears *and also
cause* guns and bombs. Human fears being epiphenomenal and
non-causal.
How could you tell which option was correct?
Human flesh and guns and bombs all boil down to specific arrangements
of quarks and electrons. There's no mystery as to how one could lead
to the others.
The mystery is why there should be an experience of fear associated
certain arrangements of quarks and electrons and experiences of
happiness associated with other arrangements and (presumably) no
experience at all associated with yet other arrangements.
Bruno Marchal
On 08 Sep 2010, at 20:28, Rex Allen wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 10:50 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>
> wrote:
>>
>>> On 9/7/2010 1:48 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>>> ....
>>
>> Having said this your point does not follow, in the sense that even
>> if
>> consciousness supervenes on interactions of particles (non
>> mechanism) this
>> would not prevents consciousness to retroact on the particles, like
>> when a
>> painter moves ink and papers to express his artistic feelings.
>> Another
>> example: we may argue that guns and atomic bombs are produced in
>> part by
>> human fears.
>
> But then what causes human fears?
Assuming Mechanism (and thus non-physicalism) we could say that "very
old" self-referential subroutines "cause" human fear. It is the qualia
associated with anything threatening our probability survival.
>
> You could say quarks and electrons cause human fears which then cause
> guns and bombs.
Not really. Quarks and electrons can locally play a role in the local
and relative implementation of the subroutines above.
>
> OR, you could say quarks and electrons cause human fears *and also
> cause* guns and bombs. Human fears being epiphenomenal and
> non-causal.
This does not work because we already known that quark and electron
exists relatively to us because our consciousness selects or filters
the realities which sustain us consistently. Consciousness is more
primitive than quarks and electrons. This is probably not obvious, but
follows from the UDA. Consciousness is "just" inference by machine of
their own consistency.
>
> How could you tell which option was correct?
The first one is a bit closer to what we have to deduce from the
digital mechanist hypothesis.
>
> Human flesh and guns and bombs all boil down to specific arrangements
> of quarks and electrons. There's no mystery as to how one could lead
> to the others.
>
> The mystery is why there should be an experience of fear associated
> certain arrangements of quarks and electrons and experiences of
> happiness associated with other arrangements and (presumably) no
> experience at all associated with yet other arrangements.
The mystery is solved when you understand that consciousness
(immaterial) is a necessarily existing inference of machines
(immaterial) observing themselves, and that quarks and bombs are
their constructs/filtration. Probably the quarks are much common in
any Löbian observable (physical) reality, given that they come from
quantum phenomena already build by the Löbian machines (infinitely
more common in the arithmetical multi-dreams than humans).
The only mystery which remains is the qualia of the natural numbers
itself, but this one is enough to explain why it is not humanly, nor
Löbianly, solvable.
So everything, including a mystery, fit together nicely. And
consciousness has a role: that reality-inference speed up the
processes deepening our histories. The stability and persistence of
observable reality needs that consciousness filtration.
Bruno
Stephen P. King
My thought is to look at the transformation group around which some
property is invariant to act as a generator of the properties of the, say,
quark. For simple numbers this would be a permutation over fields, one field
per number, but this seems to not really resolve the question entirely. It
makes me suspicious of the entire Platonic program, for what would act as
the universal generator of "twoness" as distinguished from "threeness" be
in-itself? Why not some kind of nominalism that transforms asymptotically
into universalism?
BTW, I really enjoyed reading your SIENA paper. My only comment on
it is that I wish you would elaborate more on the diamond^alpha t aspect
because that is where plurality obtains.
Onward!
Stephen P. King
-----Original Message-----
From: everyth...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal
Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2010 4:42 AM
To: everyth...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: What's wrong with this?
snip
Bruno Marchal
On 09 Sep 2010, at 14:37, Stephen P. King wrote:
> Hi Bruno,
>
> My thought is to look at the transformation group around which some
> property is invariant to act as a generator of the properties of
> the, say,
> quark.
Good idea. That is related with the importance of group theory and
(soon) category theory in physics.
> For simple numbers this would be a permutation over fields, one field
> per number,
Why? We may have use combinators instead of numbers. Their role are
intensional, and representational. Their intrinsic mathematical
structure certainly plays some role, but I don't see why to use them
directly to mirror physics. Even if that works (by chance) it would
hidden the mind-body problem. Of course it might be very interesting,
and the relation between physics and number theory suggest that such
approach have their merits.
> but this seems to not really resolve the question entirely.
I am not sure I have a clear idea of the question, here.
> It
> makes me suspicious of the entire Platonic program, for what would
> act as
> the universal generator of "twoness" as distinguished from
> "threeness" be
> in-itself? Why not some kind of nominalism that transforms
> asymptotically
> into universalism?
You lost me.
You know how I work. I start from an assumption about some link
between consciousness and Turing 'machine', and from this I derived
step by step a frame which is closer to Plato and Plotinus than to
Aristotle, at least on the "Matter" notion.
> BTW, I really enjoyed reading your SIENA paper. My only comment on
> it is that I wish you would elaborate more on the diamond^alpha t
> aspect
> because that is where plurality obtains.
>
Thanks. Actually I think, but I'm still not quite sure, that the
"^alpha" feature should explain the graded aspect of the quantum
logics, which should explains the origin of the tensor product, of the
plurality of dimension, and eventually the (quantum) structure of
space-time. The many worlds are more due to the extreme redundancy of
the computational histories in arithmetic.
Bruno
Stephen P. King
-----Original Message-----
From: everyth...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal
Sent: Friday, September 10, 2010 11:16 AM
To: everyth...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: What's wrong with this?
On 09 Sep 2010, at 14:37, Stephen P. King wrote:
> Hi Bruno,
>
> My thought is to look at the transformation group around which some
> property is invariant to act as a generator of the properties of the,
> say, quark.
[BM]
Good idea. That is related with the importance of group theory and
(soon) category theory in physics.
> For simple numbers this would be a permutation over fields, one field
> per number,
[BM]
Why? We may have use combinators instead of numbers. Their role are
intensional, and representational. Their intrinsic mathematical structure
certainly plays some role, but I don't see why to use them directly to
mirror physics. Even if that works (by chance) it would hidden the mind-body
problem. Of course it might be very interesting, and the relation between
physics and number theory suggest that such approach have their merits.
[SPK]
YES!!! You nailed it! Let me paste a little note here that I just
wrote up. I apologize in advance for the crudeness of this.
***
Integers as Arithmetic Equivalence Classes and implications
by S. P. King
9/10/2010
Zero-ness
_______
0 + 0 = 0
0 - 0 = 0
0^1 - 0^1 = 0
1 - 1 = 0
2 - 2 = 0
3 - 3 = 0
...
0 x 0 = 0
_______
One-ness
_______
0 + 1 = 1
1^1 + 0 = 1
1 - 0 = 1
1^1 - 0 = 1
2 - 1 = 1
3 - 2 = 1
4 - 3 = 1
.
1 x 1 = 1
2 / 2 = 1
3 / 3 = 1
4 / 4 = 1
.
_____
Two-ness
________
1 + 1 = 2
1^1 + 1^1 = 2
0 + 2 = 2
3 - 1 = 2
4 - 2 = 2
5 - 3 = 2
.
4 / 2 = 2
6 / 3 = 2
8 / 4 = 2
..
_______
Etc.
External symmetry = 3rd person aspect.
Each Class has aleph_null tuples and thus has the same cardinality.
We could use the permutation symmetry over the cardinality to identify an
external or 3rd person notion of Integer. This would generate a notion of
that is an Integer that is invariant to a change from one of the N classes
to another.
What would be the internal symmetry?
Internal Symmetries = 1st person aspect.
Note that we can substitute equivalent elements of the tuples with
each other by the use of bracketing or some other push/pop method. This
would ultimately show that the tuples are combinations of "images" of each
other's elements so that there is 1) no primitive atom and 2) that the
pattern of similarities and differences over this tapestry of combinatorics
would encode the operations of Arithmetic. Property 1 is the reason I use
non-well founded set theory, by the way...
*************
It is my suspicion that the mind-body problem is caused by a lack of
understanding of what is involved. It is far too easy to throw up one's
hands and settle for some silly eliminatism; Ignorance is Bliss. Notice that
both the internal and external symmetry notions here yield a kind of
indefiniteness that Plotinus would point to, as per your discussions, to
define Matter. But what about the information content itself of the
relations themselves? Is Information identical to Indeterminateness? It
seems to me that the answer is a resounding NO! I claim that it is its Dual.
Thus I advocate a form of mind-matter dualism in terms of an
Information-Matter dualism following the lines of the Pontryagin and Stone
dualities. http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/327868
> but this seems to not really resolve the question entirely.
[BM]
I am not sure I have a clear idea of the question, here.
[SPK]
Am I making any sense so far?
> It
> makes me suspicious of the entire Platonic program, for what would act
> as the universal generator of "twoness" as distinguished from
> "threeness" be in-itself? Why not some kind of nominalism that
> transforms asymptotically into universalism?
[BM]
You lost me.
You know how I work. I start from an assumption about some link between
consciousness and Turing 'machine', and from this I derived step by step a
frame which is closer to Plato and Plotinus than to Aristotle, at least on
the "Matter" notion.
[SPK]
Yes and I use the assumption that any 1st person "content" of
consciousness can be show to be equivalent to the content of some virtual
reality generated by a Turing Machine (given with sufficient physical
resources) and following your arguments will agree that while the content
itself is computable, *which one of the computations it is* that is the
actual generator of the particular content of a particular point of view is
not computational. These thoughts tie back to the point about
indeterminateness that Plotinus brilliantly made and you point out.
Your modelization so far seems to only consider a "frozen"
perspective and there is scant mention of how the model is extended to cover
a plurality of entities, except for the diamond^alpha aspect mentioned
below. As far as I can tell, your Model offers a logical structure to a new
version of the individual Leibnizian Monad (
http://www.iep.utm.edu/leib-met/#H8 ) that I am trying to develop, but only
in the static sense. There is no dynamic in it. I think that this is
intentional since you are taking an explicit Platonic Idea stance in the
Modelization of Plotinusian Statics. I appreciate that, but understand that
unless we can derive change from changelessness within our modelizing we are
doomed to eliminatism when it comes to our 1st and 3rd notions temporal
transitivity, duration and causality. It is my contention that it is
impossible to derive change from changelessness, but the converse is easy to
show.... Leibniz himself made this mistake so I do not fault you too much.
;P
> BTW, I really enjoyed reading your SIENA paper. My only comment on
it
> is that I wish you would elaborate more on the diamond^alpha t aspect
> because that is where plurality obtains.
>
[BM]
Thanks. Actually I think, but I'm still not quite sure, that the "^alpha"
feature should explain the graded aspect of the quantum logics, which should
explains the origin of the tensor product, of the plurality of dimension,
and eventually the (quantum) structure of space-time. The many worlds are
more due to the extreme redundancy of the computational histories in
arithmetic.
[SPK]
In the quantum logic that I have studied so far there is the fact
that there are an infinite number of instantiations (not sure if that is the
right word) of Boolean algebraic structures within a sufficiently general
Quantum Logic propositional lattice. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_logic This might be the place where
plurality obtains.
One of my interests is in looking at the extension of Qlogic that
has a Local instead of a Global change (time = measure of change) parameter.
So far I think that I have an idea but it is still only embryonic. I am
looking at whether or not it is possible to use the notion of families of
parameters or functors that preserve the bijective map from density
operators to density operators which is convexity preserving between pairs
of Quantum systems, where the QM system is taken as a Monad. Right now I
need to figure out what would generate the convexity. I know that I lack
much of the sophisticated knowledge needed to do this quickly, so my work is
very slow.
Onward!
Stephen P. King
Bruno Marchal
It is difficult for me to follow. In ZF there is no atom, yet it is
well-founded. Non well-foundedness is motivate by introducing set
having themselves as elements, or having elements having elements ...
having elements having the starting set as an element.
>
> It is my suspicion that the mind-body problem is caused by a lack of
> understanding of what is involved. It is far too easy to throw up
> one's
> hands and settle for some silly eliminatism; Ignorance is Bliss.
> Notice that
> both the internal and external symmetry notions here yield a kind of
> indefiniteness that Plotinus would point to, as per your
> discussions, to
> define Matter.
You should elaborate, but you should make clear the relation between
math and philosophy/theology.
> But what about the information content itself of the
> relations themselves? Is Information identical to Indeterminateness?
Information is a tricky word having different meaning in different
theories. It can be a measure of surprise, like in the old Shannon
theory, or something related to meaning, like in logics and in the
press. We can relate all that, but then we have to be almost formal
for not falling in the traps of non genuine analogies.
> It
> seems to me that the answer is a resounding NO! I claim that it is
> its Dual.
> Thus I advocate a form of mind-matter dualism in terms of an
> Information-Matter dualism following the lines of the Pontryagin and
> Stone
> dualities. http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/327868
You may elaborate, but Stone dualities are very technical hard matter.
I guess you are alluding to Vaughan Pratt's work on Chu Spaces.
But this has been shown not working. You cannot both capture
consciousness by Turing machine states, and at the same time to invoke
a notion of physical resource. It is the whole point of most of my
posts. Physical resource including space and time have to be recovered
from the math of (abstract) computer science.
> and following your arguments will agree that while the content
> itself is computable, *which one of the computations it is* that is
> the
> actual generator of the particular content of a particular point of
> view is
> not computational.
I am OK, here.
> These thoughts tie back to the point about
> indeterminateness that Plotinus brilliantly made and you point out.
Yes. Note that the idea of relating matter to indeterminacy is already
in Aristotle. Alas, Aristotle and/or its successors have reified it
metaphysically. That is, imo, what makes the mind-body problem
insolvable.
>
> Your modelization so far seems to only consider a "frozen"
> perspective and there is scant mention of how the model is extended
> to cover
> a plurality of entities, except for the diamond^alpha aspect mentioned
> below. As far as I can tell, your Model offers a logical structure
> to a new
> version of the individual Leibnizian Monad (
> http://www.iep.utm.edu/leib-met/#H8 ) that I am trying to develop,
> but only
> in the static sense. There is no dynamic in it.
The 'sensible' modalities, like Bp & p, and Bp & Dp & p, introduces an
internal dynamic. S4Grz is not just a logic of knowledge, it is a
logic of evolving knowledse, or time. It is due to the "& p". It makes
the first person intuitionist, the builder of its mental reality.
> I think that this is
> intentional since you are taking an explicit Platonic Idea stance in
> the
> Modelization of Plotinusian Statics. I appreciate that, but
> understand that
> unless we can derive change from changelessness within our
> modelizing we are
> doomed to eliminatism when it comes to our 1st and 3rd notions
> temporal
> transitivity, duration and causality.
That's right, but the nice thing is that the first person notion
automatically provides an internal dynamics.
> It is my contention that it is
> impossible to derive change from changelessness,
Even physicalists can accept this though. Many physicists don't
believe in time. It emerges for local observers when embedded in the
block-static reality.
Of course we accept the (non trivial) ordering of the natural numbers,
which can be seen as the Mother of all computational times.
I wish you good luck.
Bruno
Stephen P. King
[BM]
It is difficult for me to follow. In ZF there is no atom, yet it is
well-founded. Non well-foundedness is motivate by introducing set
having themselves as elements, or having elements having elements ...
having elements having the starting set as an element.
[SPK]
Yes, in my example above it seems to be the case that the N-ness
classes can have themselves as elements and so forth. For example, in the
Zero-ness class, there is a couple of 0s that are equaling 0 when added,
subtracted or multiplied. Is this not an example of an element having itself
as an element? My wording might be incorrect according to the usual
definition of class, etc. but I hope that my meanings are communicated.
>
> It is my suspicion that the mind-body problem is caused by a lack of
> understanding of what is involved. It is far too easy to throw up
> one's
> hands and settle for some silly eliminatism; Ignorance is Bliss.
> Notice that
> both the internal and external symmetry notions here yield a kind of
> indefiniteness that Plotinus would point to, as per your
> discussions, to
> define Matter.
You should elaborate, but you should make clear the relation between
math and philosophy/theology.
[SPK]]
Yes, I agree but I am sure that you can see that this is very
difficult to do.
> But what about the information content itself of the
> relations themselves? Is Information identical to Indeterminateness?
[BM]
Information is a tricky word having different meaning in different
theories. It can be a measure of surprise, like in the old Shannon
theory, or something related to meaning, like in logics and in the
press. We can relate all that, but then we have to be almost formal
for not falling in the traps of non genuine analogies.
[SPK]
Let me quote something from Carlo Rovelli that I found in "Quo Vadis
Quantum Mechanics?" referring to C. E. Shannon's 1949 book:
"...the definition of Shannon, not the popular one, but the one in his book,
where you have two systems with many states, and there is a possible state
of the couple but there is only a restricted subset of all joint states.
Information is simply the way of counting the allowed joint possible states.
The fact that there is a common allowed state tells you that if you know
something about one system you also know something about the other one. This
is exactly what you need in communication theory when you have a channel, a
receiver and a transmitter. So I have two systems. If there is a quantum
correlation of the two, I can say that, if this system is UP, the other is
DOWN, and vice versa. This is what I mean by information, period."
I am attempting to be faithful to this definition.
Interestingly, it seems that since the equivalence classes that I
pointed out above are countably infinite then the property that any proper
subset of infinity is isomorphic to the infinity would apply and this would
make the notion of information for such classes to vanish, no? It would be a
zero-information system of sorts!
> It
> seems to me that the answer is a resounding NO! I claim that it is
> its Dual.
> Thus I advocate a form of mind-matter dualism in terms of an
> Information-Matter dualism following the lines of the Pontryagin and
> Stone
> dualities. http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/327868
[SPK]
You may elaborate, but Stone dualities are very technical hard matter.
I guess you are alluding to Vaughan Pratt's work on Chu Spaces.
[SPK]
Yes, it is Pratt's idea that inspires this thinking. What he has
found is that is possible to solve the problem of Cartesian Dualism, but in
solving the problem we chance the notion of "substance" into one that is
emergent from underlying Process and not taken to be a primitive. What
convinced me of the validity of his idea is that it offers a very neat and
novel solution to the measurement problem of QM. To me it is the utility of
a metaphysical principle in advancing understanding that goes toward the
necessity of its assumptions/axiom, just as you have shown how the ideas of
Plato ,Plotinus and Theaetetus are useful.
[BM]
But this has been shown not working. You cannot both capture
consciousness by Turing machine states, and at the same time to invoke
a notion of physical resource. It is the whole point of most of my
posts. Physical resource including space and time have to be recovered
from the math of (abstract) computer science.
[SPK]
No no no! I am not "capturing consciousness by Turing machine"! I am
pointing at the content, using Descartes' brain in a vat and related
gedankenexperiments to show how there is an equivalence relation between the
content of experience (minus "agency" notions, self-awareness, etc.) and
the content of what can be generated by universal Virtual reality machines,
as explained by D. Deutsch in Fabric of Reality, that can be used. The
notion of a physical resource is allowed because I am assuming that both
mind (crudely an information structure, like a Boolean algebra) and matter
(crudely as a Cantor dust or completely disconnected Hausdorff space) are
both equally existent and "real". The idea in Pratt's work is that Logic and
Time (the evolution of physical systems) form a duality see:
http://boole.stanford.edu/pub/dti.pdf
> and following your arguments will agree that while the content
> itself is computable, *which one of the computations it is* that is
> the
> actual generator of the particular content of a particular point of
> view is not computational.
[BM]
I am OK, here.
[SPK]
OK, so if we can extract the symmetry groups from the possible
relations between 'many' and find that those include the symmetry groups
that we find in physics, would this not give us a way to think of physical
laws as emergent from interactions in a way that is parallel to Kant's idea?
But for this to work, two conditions must be show to be of prior necessity:
a plurality of systems that we can associate with observers (in a generic
non-anthropomorphic sense) and a means to derive notions of "substance
exchange". That is what I am working towards.
> These thoughts tie back to the point about
> indeterminateness that Plotinus brilliantly made and you point out.
[BM]
Yes. Note that the idea of relating matter to indeterminacy is already
in Aristotle. Alas, Aristotle and/or its successors have reified it
metaphysically. That is, imo, what makes the mind-body problem
insolvable.
[BM]
I disagree. What makes the mind-body problem insoluble is the
assumption that 'substance' is primitive. We can see this in Descartes
attempt at dualism. By taking res extensa and res cognitas as primitive
substances, Descartes was unable to close the gap between them, for within
the notion of substance one must have another substance that is of both
aspects to bridge between them and this necessity stultifies the entire
project; what is the point of separate substances if there is a third
substance that is both? Cartesian dualism fails because it is just an
incoherent monism. OTOH, if we consider Mind and Matter in terms of their
logics and dynamics and see that there is a relation between these two
aspects that preserves their differences all the while there is a
parallelism a solution can obtain. But this alternative requires a different
metaphysical underpinning; this point is what I am arguing below.
>
> Your modelization so far seems to only consider a "frozen"
> perspective and there is scant mention of how the model is extended
> to cover
> a plurality of entities, except for the diamond^alpha aspect mentioned
> below. As far as I can tell, your Model offers a logical structure
> to a new
> version of the individual Leibnizian Monad (
> http://www.iep.utm.edu/leib-met/#H8 ) that I am trying to develop,
> but only
> in the static sense. There is no dynamic in it.
[BM]
The 'sensible' modalities, like Bp & p, and Bp & Dp & p, introduces an
internal dynamic. S4Grz is not just a logic of knowledge, it is a
logic of evolving knowledge, or time. It is due to the "& p". It makes
the first person intuitionist, the builder of its mental reality.
[SPK]
It may exist there Bruno, but it is by no means explicit. The fact
that we can map Bp & p, etc. to some abstract structure and use the
orderings of those relations to act as a quotienting does nothing to obtain
the experiential transitivity that is explicit in the 1st person. This is
just a very sophisticated form of eliminatism unless we assume, even
tacitly, a fundamental Becoming. We find explicit examples of this in
discussions of Chris Isham's paper on Topos. See: Isham, C. J. (1993),
“Canonical Quantum Gravity and the Problem of Time”, in L. A. Ibort and M.
A. Rodríguez (eds.), Integrable Systems, Quantum Groups, and Quantum Field
theories. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 157-288. And
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001915/01/SptPhilChallQG=9903072.p
df
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001914/01/EmergTimeQG=9901024.pdf
My problem is that I do not have a good understanding of S4Grz.
Could you point me to papers on it that I might obtain online?
> I think that this is
> intentional since you are taking an explicit Platonic Idea stance in
> the
> Modelization of Plotinusian Statics. I appreciate that, but
> understand that
> unless we can derive change from changelessness within our
> modelizing we are
> doomed to eliminatism when it comes to our 1st and 3rd notions
> temporal
> transitivity, duration and causality.
[BM]
That's right, but the nice thing is that the first person notion
automatically provides an internal dynamics.
[SPK]
Ummm, I am not so sure that is a correct statement of the
relationship. From what I have been able to understand so far, the 1st
person notion entails an internal dynamic because of its self-referencing
maps. My point is that the mere existence of automorphisms or self-mappings
alone is insufficient. We need a ground within which these would act;
otherwise we just have the equivalent of a dust with no hope of
interactions.
> It is my contention that it is
> impossible to derive change from changelessness,
[BM]
Even physicalists can accept this though. Many physicists don't
believe in time. It emerges for local observers when embedded in the
block-static reality.
Of course we accept the (non trivial) ordering of the natural numbers,
which can be seen as the Mother of all computational times.
[SPK]
So does this allow us to not consider the alternative? This is so
frustrating, we have a beautiful way of deriving the appearance of
changelessness from fundamental change, by using the notion of automorphisms
within a wider context of morphism, and this is rejected out of hand? That
is about the most irrational thinking that I can witness! The only
explanation that I can think of for this is that the hope of an impersonal
determinism that obtains from the block-static reality doctrine allows it
adherents to avoid all notions of personal responsibility for their
behaviors.
As to the non-trivial ordering of numbers, it should be obvious that
there does not exist a unique ordering over the class of possible 1st person
experiences, or computational strings; the class is not equivalent to a
simply connected space which is, essentially, what is required for a unique
ordering to be possible. We see this in physics in the Foliation Problem of
General Relativity and in differential topology. See:
www.cmp.caltech.edu/~dannyc/papers/fpams.pdf.gz we are fooling ourselves if
we think that time is just the ordering of natural numbers. Again, we can
ignore this and retreat into pseudo-monorealism - that only I exist - and
use that solipsism to conclude that any other alternative is just a
diffeomorphism of one's own notion of the natural ordering. This might
explain the irrational resistance to the reality of the implications of a
finite speed of Light that we find in many people.
I think that the notion of Person that Plotinus uses to consider his
hypostases conceals this problem. By assuming personhood he is
surreptitiously introducing the 1st person self-mapping. This is equivalent
to assuming a fundamental Becoming grundladen within one's basic axioms. I
recall a conversation that I have with a writer that was arguing that time
did not exist. I pointed out that his model involved the computation of
optimizations over infinite collections of interactions and how this was the
mother of all NP-Complete problems and quoted to him his own words taken
from a discussion of how computational intensive it was for him to obtain
solutions to small examples of these optimizations on his physical desktop
computer and was taken aback by his complete incomprehension of this point.
One cannot consider that the mere existence of a solution to an infinite
NP-Complete problem is sufficient grounds to argue that the computation
itself need not ever occur, because that solution is not alone, it exists
mixed up with all of the infinite number of alternatives and the physical
act of running a machine is what manifests that One solution. The same
argument applies to the Universal Dovetailer.
Snip
Kindest regards,
Stephen
Bruno Marchal
Itseems to me that the answer is a resounding NO! I claim that it isits Dual.Thus I advocate a form of mind-matter dualism in terms of anInformation-Matter dualism following the lines of the Pontryagin andStonedualities. http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/327868[SPK]
You may elaborate, but Stone dualities are very technical hard matter.
I guess you are alluding to Vaughan Pratt's work on Chu Spaces.
[SPK]
Yes, it is Pratt's idea that inspires this thinking. What he has
found is that is possible to solve the problem of Cartesian Dualism, but in
solving the problem we chance the notion of "substance" into one that is
emergent from underlying Process and not taken to be a primitive.
What
convinced me of the validity of his idea is that it offers a very neat and
novel solution to the measurement problem of QM.
This is
just a very sophisticated form of eliminatism unless we assume, even
tacitly, a fundamental Becoming. We find explicit examples of this in
discussions of Chris Isham's paper on Topos. See: Isham, C. J. (1993),
“Canonical Quantum Gravity and the Problem of Time”, in L. A. Ibort and M.
A. Rodríguez (eds.), Integrable Systems, Quantum Groups, and Quantum Field
theories. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 157-288. And
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001915/01/SptPhilChallQG=9903072.p
df
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001914/01/EmergTimeQG=9901024.pdf
My problem is that I do not have a good understanding of S4Grz.
Could you point me to papers on it that I might obtain online?
I think that this isintentional since you are taking an explicit Platonic Idea stance intheModelization of Plotinusian Statics. I appreciate that, butunderstand thatunless we can derive change from changelessness within ourmodelizing we aredoomed to eliminatism when it comes to our 1st and 3rd notionstemporaltransitivity, duration and causality.[BM]
That's right, but the nice thing is that the first person notion
automatically provides an internal dynamics.
[SPK]
Ummm, I am not so sure that is a correct statement of the
relationship. From what I have been able to understand so far, the 1st
person notion entails an internal dynamic because of its self-referencing
maps.
My point is that the mere existence of automorphisms or self-mappings
alone is insufficient. We need a ground within which these would act;
otherwise we just have the equivalent of a dust with no hope of
interactions.It is my contention that it isimpossible to derive change from changelessness,[BM]
Even physicalists can accept this though. Many physicists don't
believe in time. It emerges for local observers when embedded in the
block-static reality.
Of course we accept the (non trivial) ordering of the natural numbers,
which can be seen as the Mother of all computational times.
[SPK]
So does this allow us to not consider the alternative? This is so
frustrating, we have a beautiful way of deriving the appearance of
changelessness from fundamental change, by using the notion of automorphisms
within a wider context of morphism, and this is rejected out of hand? That
is about the most irrational thinking that I can witness! The only
explanation that I can think of for this is that the hope of an impersonal
determinism that obtains from the block-static reality doctrine allows it
adherents to avoid all notions of personal responsibility for their
behaviors.
As to the non-trivial ordering of numbers, it should be obvious that
there does not exist a unique ordering over the class of possible 1st person
experiences, or computational strings; the class is not equivalent to a
simply connected space which is, essentially, what is required for a unique
ordering to be possible. We see this in physics in the Foliation Problem of
General Relativity and in differential topology. See:
www.cmp.caltech.edu/~dannyc/papers/fpams.pdf.gz we are fooling ourselves if
we think that time is just the ordering of natural numbers.
Again, we can
ignore this and retreat into pseudo-monorealism - that only I exist - and
use that solipsism to conclude that any other alternative is just a
diffeomorphism of one's own notion of the natural ordering. This might
explain the irrational resistance to the reality of the implications of a
finite speed of Light that we find in many people.
I think that the notion of Person that Plotinus uses to consider his
hypostases conceals this problem. By assuming personhood he is
surreptitiously introducing the 1st person self-mapping.
This is equivalent
to assuming a fundamental Becoming grundladen within one's basic axioms. I
recall a conversation that I have with a writer that was arguing that time
did not exist. I pointed out that his model involved the computation of
optimizations over infinite collections of interactions and how this was the
mother of all NP-Complete problems and quoted to him his own words taken
from a discussion of how computational intensive it was for him to obtain
solutions to small examples of these optimizations on his physical desktop
computer and was taken aback by his complete incomprehension of this point.
One cannot consider that the mere existence of a solution to an infinite
NP-Complete problem is sufficient grounds to argue that the computation
itself need not ever occur, because that solution is not alone, it exists
mixed up with all of the infinite number of alternatives and the physical
act of running a machine is what manifests that One solution. The same
argument applies to the Universal Dovetailer.
Rex Allen
>
> On 12 Sep 2010, at 21:43, Stephen P. King wrote:
>> The only
>> explanation that I can think of for this is that the hope of an impersonal
>> determinism that obtains from the block-static reality doctrine allows it
>> adherents to avoid all notions of personal responsibility for their
>> behaviors.
>>
>
> On the contrary, it is explained that free-will and responsibility is
> unavoidable from inside. To use the determinacy of the big whole would be
> like to give a name to God, and that is explicitly making any Löbian machine
> inconsistent, and worth: incorrect.
> We are typically partially responsible for our normal futures.
Bertrand Russell:
"Whatever may be thought about it as a matter of ultimate metaphysics,
it is quite clear that nobody believes it in practice. Everyone has
always believed that it is possible to train character; everyone has
always known that alcohol or opium will have a certain effect on
behaviour. The apostle of free will maintains that a man can by will
power avoid getting drunk, but he does not maintain that when drunk a
man can say "British Constitution" as clearly as if he were sober. And
everybody who has ever had to do with children knows that a suitable
diet does more to make them virtuous than the most eloquent preaching
in the world. The one effect that the free- will doctrine has in
practice is to prevent people from following out such common-sense
knowledge to its rational conclusion. When a man acts in ways that
annoy us we wish to think him wicked, and we refuse to face the fact
that his annoying behaviour is a result of antecedent causes which, if
you follow them long enough, will take you beyond the moment of his
birth and therefore to events for which he cannot be held responsible
by any stretch of imagination."
Bruno Marchal
Bertrand Russell has been my favorite philosopher during a long time
in my youth. But he is deadly wrong on many things. He thought that
mathematics can be based on logic alone, but this has been refuted by
Gödel's theorem, and then that very theorem imposes to distinguish the
knower machine and the believer (even when correct) machine, and
actually forces us to introduce many different ways to see the
arithmetical reality, from inside. The quoted text confuses the
deterministic third person description of a (putative) reality, and
the first person knowledge available to a subject "living inside" that
reality.
Note that, having said this, I should insist that free will is NOT
related to the first person indeterminacy, but free-will is related to
the fact that we can have a rather good idea of what hurt and what
please to oneself, and we can see that sometimes we can get personally
a bigger amount of what please by methods leading to the hurting of
other people, and that we can face our conscience and decide on its
account.
To believe the contrary would lead to the confusion of the sadic (in
Sade sense) with the psychopath, and it would lead to the substitution
of the judge by the psychiatre, the jail by the asylum. This would
converge toward authoritative regime and eventually every person would
be judge irresponsible and would find itself in a controled asylum. A
bit like modern prohibition of drugs, it is an self-prophetic path
which makes people irresponsible, indeed.
Incompleteness provides for the ideally correct machine a coherent
picture making it, from inside, partially responsible for its futures,
including possible amounts of what please and what hurts to oneself
and other machines.
The whole picture is determined, but as I said to Stephen, to invoke
it from inside is a mechanist "blasphem"; it is akin to say that God
told you what is good and bad for *me* (or anyone who is not you). It
would be like saying that a sadist is not responsible for his action
given that it obeyed strictly to the laws of physics when committing
its murder. In Löbian term, it is a confusion between the Human
(Löbian) first person experiences and exact (that is falsifiable!)
third person science.
Mechanism explains why consciousness leads to conscience.
Bruno
Stephen P. King
Hi Bruno,
It seems that we need to discuss more basic ideas as it seems that my attempted explanations are not bisimulating with your thoughts.
From: everyth...@googlegroups.com [mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2010 9:40 AM
To: everyth...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: What's wrong with this?
On 12 Sep 2010, at 21:43, Stephen P. King wrote:
Hi Bruno,
-----Original Message-----
From: everyth...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal
Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2010 11:36 AM
To: everyth...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: What's wrong with this?
On 11 Sep 2010, at 00:42, Stephen P. King wrote:
Hi Bruno,
-----Original Message-----
[mailto:everyth...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal
Sent: Friday, September 10, 2010 11:16 AM
Subject: Re: What's wrong with this?
snip
[BM]
Honesty I am a bit lost.
[SPKnew]
OK, did you make sense of the idea of representing Integer with a sort of equivalence class that have members that are the arithmetic generators or creators or acts that equal examples of the number? We can think of 1 in the Platonic sense as the class of all arithmetic operations that are equal to 1, 2 as the class of all arithmetic operations that equal 2, etc. OK, given that then it seems to follow that, say a 2 in the operation that equals some other number is in a sense a mapping of the entire class of 2 into that other class. Does this make sense so far?
snip
[SPK]
Let me quote something from Carlo Rovelli that I found in "Quo Vadis
Quantum Mechanics?" referring to C. E. Shannon's 1949 book:
"...the definition of Shannon, not the popular one, but the one in his book,
where you have two systems with many states, and there is a possible state
of the couple but there is only a restricted subset of all joint states.
Information is simply the way of counting the allowed joint possible states.
The fact that there is a common allowed state tells you that if you know
something about one system you also know something about the other one. This
is exactly what you need in communication theory when you have a channel, a
receiver and a transmitter. So I have two systems. If there is a quantum
correlation of the two, I can say that, if this system is UP, the other is
DOWN, and vice versa. This is what I mean by information, period."
I am attempting to be faithful to this definition.
Interestingly, it seems that since the equivalence classes that I
pointed out above are countably infinite then the property that any proper
subset of infinity is isomorphic to the infinity would apply and this would
make the notion of information for such classes to vanish, no? It would be a
zero-information system of sorts!
[BM]
?
[SPK]
How do we consider the information content of infinite sets? Given that and the way that we see mapping from classes into classes as pointed out about, does this not give us a notion of "the way of counting the allowed joint possible" elements?
It
seems to me that the answer is a resounding NO! I claim that it is
its Dual.
Thus I advocate a form of mind-matter dualism in terms of an
Information-Matter dualism following the lines of the Pontryagin and
Stone
dualities. http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/327868
[BM]
You may elaborate, but Stone dualities are very technical hard matter.
I guess you are alluding to Vaughan Pratt's work on Chu Spaces.
[SPK]
Yes, it is Pratt's idea that inspires this thinking. What he has
found is that is possible to solve the problem of Cartesian Dualism, but in
solving the problem we chance the notion of "substance" into one that is
emergent from underlying Process and not taken to be a primitive.
[BM]
? (like with the UD argument?).
[SPK]
I don't understand how your UDA does this. I need to study it further. I need to understand how you obtain the notion of concurrency in your model, for it is not sufficient to encode transitivity for a single system, we need to show how a vast number of systems synchronize and correlate their states with each other, otherwise our model is solipsistic; incapable of modelizing beyond itself.
[SPK]
What
convinced me of the validity of his idea is that it offers a very neat and
novel solution to the measurement problem of QM.
[BM]
Different from Everett's solution? (Which appears to extend the mind-body problem with digital mechanism).
Is Pratt a many-worlder?
[SPK]
No, Pratt's ideas follow the interaction interpretation of John Cramer. Resent work by Aharonov, Elitzur and other is looking in this direction. See for example: http://a-c-elitzur.co.il/site/siteArticle.asp?ar=71
snip
[BM]
This pleads for no fundamental matter, nor time.
[SPK]
Yes, but bOnly in the limit of the totality of Existence, there is no measure or differentiation, thus no matter or time in that fundamental sense. That’s why the dualism that I am advocating is one that degenerates to a neutral monism in that limit. But the Totality includes the finite and in that finite case we have matter and time.
snip
[SPK] Your modelization so far seems to only consider a "frozen"
perspective and there is scant mention of how the model is extended
to cover
a plurality of entities, except for the diamond^alpha aspect mentioned
below. As far as I can tell, your Model offers a logical structure
to a new
version of the individual Leibnizian Monad (
http://www.iep.utm.edu/leib-met/#H8 ) that I am trying to develop,
but only in the static sense. There is no dynamic in it.
[BM]
The 'sensible' modalities, like Bp & p, and Bp & Dp & p, introduces an
internal dynamic. S4Grz is not just a logic of knowledge, it is a
logic of evolving knowledge, or time. It is due to the "& p". It makes
the first person intuitionist, the builder of its mental reality.
[SPK]
It may exist there Bruno, but it is by no means explicit. The fact
that we can map Bp & p, etc. to some abstract structure and use the
orderings of those relations to act as a quotienting does nothing to obtain
the experiential transitivity that is explicit in the 1st person.
[BM]
Why? The experiential logic is typically transitive, and anti-symmetrical.
[SPK] Yes, that is true but in a static Platonic Idea sense. The main problem, I suspect, obtains from the enumerability of the content of experiential logic as I see in your Model. This makes a computation of logical sentence something that has properties in-it-self independent of any notion of interaction; therefore it is, in a deep sense, solipsistic. To boil this down, we need to start with the existence of a plurality of minds, explaining why it is necessary that there is more than just the One. You move toward this in SIENA.pdf but not sufficiently to nail down the reasoning.
snip
[BM]
Even physicalists can accept this though. Many physicists don't
believe in time. It emerges for local observers when embedded in the
block-static reality.
Of course we accept the (non trivial) ordering of the natural numbers,
which can be seen as the Mother of all computational times.
[SPK]
So does this allow us to not consider the alternative? This is so
frustrating, we have a beautiful way of deriving the appearance of
changelessness from fundamental change, by using the notion of automorphisms
within a wider context of morphism, and this is rejected out of hand? That
is about the most irrational thinking that I can witness! The only
explanation that I can think of for this is that the hope of an impersonal
determinism that obtains from the block-static reality doctrine allows it
adherents to avoid all notions of personal responsibility for their
behaviors.
[BM]
On the contrary, it is explained that free-will and responsibility is unavoidable from inside. To use the determinacy of the big whole would be like to give a name to God, and that is explicitly making any Löbian machine inconsistent, and worth: incorrect.
We are typically partially responsible for our normal futures.
[SPK] This subtle proof has still eluded me. I want to be sure that no one is projecting anthropomorphic notions into the model without sufficient reasons that these obtain.
[SPK] As to the non-trivial ordering of numbers, it should be obvious that
there does not exist a unique ordering over the class of possible 1st person
experiences, or computational strings; the class is not equivalent to a
simply connected space which is, essentially, what is required for a unique
ordering to be possible. We see this in physics in the Foliation Problem of
General Relativity and in differential topology. See:
www.cmp.caltech.edu/~dannyc/papers/fpams.pdf.gz we are fooling ourselves if
we think that time is just the ordering of natural numbers.
[BM]
Nobody said that. I said only that the natural numbers does provide a kind of computational time, but the subjective time (and space time) comes from the first person logic S4Grz (and S4Grz1), in the ideal case under scrutiny.
[SPK]
A Liebnitzian "order of succession" aspect of time, certainly obtain in what you point out here, but that is cheap, for there are no a priori alternatives in the notion of the number that is subsequent to n, for example n +1 or n+2 have only a single and unique property. We do not see this kind of singular one- to one and onto like map of determination in our notions of free-will and responsibility. We see a selection process from a menu of alternatives, alternatives that are all given concurrently. This is a very different notion than what we see in natural numbers.
Snip
Let us deal with the rest of my critique of Plotinus's model some other time. It is of great interest to me as it helps me understand details that are absent in Leibnitz' Monadology and need to be considered, but I need to focus on developing a mutual understanding of the ideas here so far.
Onward!
Stephen P. King
1Z
On 26 Aug, 17:37, David Nyman <david.ny...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I should stress, again, I'm not personally committed to this view - it
> seems indeed highly problematic - but it is what the recipe says.
> Now, just to emphasise the point, when I say it's a hard thing to do
> this imaginatively, I mean that it isn't permissible to "look back"
> from this reductionist-god's eye view and continue to conjure familiar
> composite entities from the conjectural base components, because
> reductionism is a commitment to the proposition that these don't
> exist.
not at all. reductionism is a commitment to the idea that
all higher level entities are compounds and nothing but compounds,
wholes
which are exactly the sums of their parts.
>Whatever composite categories we might be tempted to have
> recourse to - you know: molecules, cells, bodies, planets, ideas,
> explanations, theories, the whole ball of wax - none of these are
> available from this perspective. Don't need them. More rigorously,
> they *must not be invoked* because they *do not exist*. They don't
> need to exist, because the machine doesn't need them to carry all the
> load and do all the work.
OTOH, they must exist because if you have two hydrogens and an oxygen,
you inevitably have the compound H2O. You also have many other
compounds which are not
dreamt of in our philosophy. the set of compounds is basically the
powerset of the set of basic entities. there may not be any objective
facts about what is a "true" compound, but the powerset
unproblematically includes everything we conventionally regard as a
compound as a powerset
> Now, many people might be prompted to object at this point "that's not
> reducing, that's eliminating" as though these terms could be kept
> distinct. But I'm arguing that reductionism, consistently applied, is
> inescapably eliminative. The hypothesis was that base-level events
> are self-sufficient and consequently must be granted metaphysical (and
> hence "physical") reality. Nothing else is required to explain why
> the machine exists and works, so nothing else need - or indeed can non-
> question-beggingly - be postulated.
Compounds aren't postulated as some separate set of entities--they
are just set theoretic constructs put of what does exsit. H2O is not
distinct from the two H's and the O.
David Nyman
> Compounds aren't postulated as some separate set of entities--they
> are just set theoretic constructs put of what does exsit. H2O is not
> distinct from the two H's and the O.
That's exactly my point. Think about it.
David
Evgenii Rudnyi
...
>> Whatever composite categories we might be tempted to have recourse
>> to - you know: molecules, cells, bodies, planets, ideas,
>> explanations, theories, the whole ball of wax - none of these are
>> available from this perspective. Don't need them. More
>> rigorously, they *must not be invoked* because they *do not exist*.
>> They don't need to exist, because the machine doesn't need them to
>> carry all the load and do all the work.
>
> OTOH, they must exist because if you have two hydrogens and an
> oxygen, you inevitably have the compound H2O. You also have many
> other compounds which are not dreamt of in our philosophy. the set of
> compounds is basically the powerset of the set of basic entities.
> there may not be any objective facts about what is a "true" compound,
> but the powerset unproblematically includes everything we
> conventionally regard as a compound as a powerset
The next citation by Robert B. Laughlin (Nobel laureate in physics)
could be of interest here:
http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2010/08/matter-and-little-ghosts.html
"By the most important effect of phase organisation is to cause objects
to exist. This point is subtle and easily overlooked, since we are
accustomed to thinking about solidification in terms of packing of
Newtonian spheres. Atoms are not Newtonian spheres, however, but
ethereal quantum-mechanical entities lacking that most central of all
properties of an object � an identifiable position. This is why attempts
to describe free atoms in Newtonian terms always result in nonsense
statements such as their being neither here nor there but simultaneously
everywhere. It is aggregation into large objects that makes a Newtonian
description of the atoms meaningful, not the reverse. One might compare
this phenomenon with a yet-to-be-filmed Stephen Spilberg movie in which
a huge number of little ghosts lock arms and, in doing so, become
corporeal."
Evgenii
1Z
On 17 Sep, 14:10, David Nyman <da...@davidnyman.com> wrote:
>
> > Compounds aren't postulated as some separate set of entities--they
> > are just set theoretic constructs put of what does exsit. H2O is not
> > distinct from the two H's and the O.
>
> That's exactly my point. Think about it.
1Z
> statements such as their being neither here nor there but simultaneously
> everywhere. It is aggregation into large objects that makes a Newtonian
> description of the atoms meaningful, not the reverse. One might compare
> this phenomenon with a yet-to-be-filmed Stephen Spilberg movie in which
> a huge number of little ghosts lock arms and, in doing so, become
> corporeal."
>
> Evgenii
of the philosophers. But the reductionism of the philosophers
still does not entail elimination
1Z
On 1 Sep, 05:18, Rex Allen <rexallen31...@gmail.com> wrote:
> That these rules generate rational beliefs is a leap of faith, and can
> neither be refuted nor proven.
apart from noting the survival value of
rationality over irrationality
> If the underlying process *didn’t* cause us to present and believe
> rational arguments, there would be no way to detect this, since there
> is no way to step outside of the process’s control of one’s beliefs to
> independently verify the "reasonableness" of the beliefs it generates.
>
> A physicalist may be correct about the physical nature of reality, but
> if so, this is solely due to his improbable good luck in existing in a
> rare "honest" physical universe whose initial conditions and causal
> laws resulted in his holding true beliefs about his universe's initial
> conditions and causal laws.
He can only exist in a universe where he has a long evolutionary
history. Even under MWI the chances of such a complex being assembling
himself
in a vaccuum are infinitessimal
1Z
On 3 Sep, 09:10, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> Physicists have a tradition of putting mind and consciousness under
> the rug,
Physicists have a tradition of not being psychologists
front of the 'hard consciousness problem', or the mind-body problem.
Evgenii Rudnyi
>
>
> On 17 Sep, 18:52, Evgenii Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:
>> on 17.09.2010 14:33 1Z said the following:
>>
>>
>>
>>> On 26 Aug, 17:37, David Nyman<david.ny...@gmail.com> wrote:
...
>> The next citation by Robert B. Laughlin (Nobel laureate in
>> physics) could be of interest here:
>>
>> http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2010/08/matter-and-little-ghosts.html
>>
>> "By the most important effect of phase organisation is to cause
>> objects to exist. This point is subtle and easily overlooked, since
>> we are accustomed to thinking about solidification in terms of
>> packing of Newtonian spheres. Atoms are not Newtonian spheres,
>> however, but ethereal quantum-mechanical entities lacking that most
>> central of all properties of an object an identifiable position.
>> This is why attempts to describe free atoms in Newtonian terms
>> always result in nonsense statements such as their being neither
>> here nor there but simultaneously everywhere. It is aggregation
>> into large objects that makes a Newtonian description of the atoms
>> meaningful, not the reverse. One might compare this phenomenon with
>> a yet-to-be-filmed Stephen Spilberg movie in which a huge number of
>> little ghosts lock arms and, in doing so, become corporeal."
>>
>> Evgenii
>
> Physics may well be less reductionist than the reductionism of the
> philosophers. But the reductionism of the philosophers still does not
> entail elimination
On the other hand, the philosophers should somehow relate their thoughts
with the development in physics.
By the way, about the water. The difference between H, O and H2O is in
chemical bonds in H2O. Also one may not necessarily obtain H2O from H
and O. It depends on temperature and pressure, if temperature is high
enough then there are no water molecules anymore. There is some kinetics
as well. Say diamond is thermodynamically unstable at normal conditions,
but this fact does not influence the diamond prices
1Z
Evgenii Rudnyi
>
...
>>
>> By the way, about the water. The difference between H, O and H2O is
>> in chemical bonds in H2O.
>
> such bonds can be considered basic elements of reality, too
>
I am not sure if I understand your answer. Say we have H2 and O2 at room
temperature in some enclosure. Then we put a catalyst there and if the
enclosure is strong enough, then we obtain there water, H20. The
question is then what happened with bonds in H2 and O2 and where from
come new bonds in H20? The bonds in H2, 02 and H20 are completely
different from each other.
Bruno Marchal
That is indeed naive.
> Atoms are not Newtonian spheres, however, but ethereal quantum-
> mechanical entities lacking that most central of all properties of
> an object – an identifiable position.
That is naive, and fuzzy.
> This is why attempts to describe free atoms in Newtonian terms
> always result in nonsense statements such as their being neither
> here nor there but simultaneously everywhere.
IMO, this has been solved by Everett 1957 (many-worlds). This is also
a necessary consequence of logic + arithmetic + "I am a machine".
> It is aggregation into large objects that makes a Newtonian
> description of the atoms meaningful, not the reverse.
I would say it is the first person filtration of coherent histories,
to be short.
> One might compare this phenomenon with a yet-to-be-filmed Stephen
> Spilberg movie in which a huge number of little ghosts lock arms
> and, in doing so, become corporeal."
Why not, if the atoms are the positive integers and the arms are
addition and multiplication, but the physical reality is a projection
of infinities of numbers, a biew of arithmetic from inside. No need of
magical matter, nor magical arms, just numbers confronted to their own
self-referential abilities.
Bruno
Bruno Marchal
Indeed. Since Aristotle. Even more so since Christians burns those who
depart from the Dogma, and atheism blocks progress in a less hot but
as irrational way.
But the platonist start with the right unifying principles, I think.
The idea to separate physics from theology has been fertile
methodologically, but, as I explained, it just does not work without
reintroducing magical matter and/or magical minds, and/or magical
dualist supervenience principles.
Bruno
1Z
1Z
On 18 Sep, 18:21, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> On 18 Sep 2010, at 14:34, 1Z wrote:
>
>
>
> > On 3 Sep, 09:10, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>
> >> Physicists have a tradition of putting mind and consciousness under
> >> the rug,
>
> > Physicists have a tradition of not being psychologists
> > front of the 'hard consciousness problem', or the mind-body problem.
>
> Indeed. Since Aristotle. Even more so since Christians burns those who
> depart from the Dogma, and atheism blocks progress in a less hot but
> as irrational way.
That wasn't at all what I meant.
I meant that consciousness isn't obviously a physics problem (although
it
is obviousy a psychology problem)
People who think consciousness is part of physics have presupposed
it is fundamental
Bruno Marchal
When a physicists use a formula to predict an eclipse, he can "forget"
for a while consciousness, but if the physicist want to predict that
he will *see* an eclipse, he needs some form of supervenience. Now
with classical mechanics, usually he will use (implicitly) the mind/
brain identity thesis, but this breaks down with quantum mechanics and
digital mechanism.
Bruno
Evgenii Rudnyi
>
> On 17 Sep 2010, at 19:52, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
...
>> This is why attempts to describe free atoms in Newtonian terms
>> always result in nonsense statements such as their being neither
>> here nor there but simultaneously everywhere.
>
> IMO, this has been solved by Everett 1957 (many-worlds). This is also
A naive question. How an idea of many-worlds helps to solve the
mind-body problem?
> a necessary consequence of logic + arithmetic + "I am a machine".
>
>
>> It is aggregation into large objects that makes a Newtonian
>> description of the atoms meaningful, not the reverse.
>
> I would say it is the first person filtration of coherent histories,
> to be short.
Robert B. Laughlin plays in his book with the term emergence, whatever
it means. It is quite popular among biologists nowadays, for example
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/
and some physicists. Basically it means that "More Is Different", see
More Is Different
P. W. Anderson
Science, New Series, Vol. 177, No. 4047. (Aug. 4, 1972), pp. 393-396.
Evgenii Rudnyi
How it would be possible to use your ideas, for example in drug design?
Or in the development of a new material?
Brent Meeker
Brent
Evgenii Rudnyi
It could be that the word completely is not quite right. Sure they are
similar in respect that this is an interplay between nuclei and
electrons. Yet, what I have meant, that their properties are quite
different. Say the OO bond in O2 and the HH bond in H2 are not the same.
This also concerns H0 bonds in HOH.
John Mikes
Brent Meeker
Brent
John Mikes
> > are just set theoretic constructs put of what does exsit. H2O is not
> > distinct from the two H's and the O".
1Z
They can't brew coffee either.
I was exploring the consequences of reductionism.
If you want an engineer, hire an engineer.
Evgenii Rudnyi
Well, I thought that reductionism could help an engineer. So way my
question. Or you mean that reductionism is completely useless?
Evgenii Rudnyi
You forget here about level of designing drugs and new materials. Can a
physicist specialized in QED do it? I guess no, here one has to hire a
chemist.
1Z
On 19 Sep, 07:30, Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:
> Well, I thought that reductionism could help an engineer.
1Z
John Mikes
It is hard to transfer from the 'conventional' to the 'unlimited' because we have no knowledge about the 'rest of the world'. I claim my (scientific) agnosticism and say "I dunno". We use the 'reductionist' MODELs of the so far known in our calculations and work in equations (maybe not true ones). The 'engineering' style.
Evgenii Rudnyi
I am not sure if I have a particular position. I am a chemist by
background, well I was doing all the life simulation only.
Actually I am comfortable with reductionism ideas, as many scientist
are. Yet, I do not understand something.
Say chemistry starts that H2 has a single bond, 02 has a double bond,
both being covalent. In H20 we have already partially ionic bonds and so
on. What do these terms mean? Hard to define precisely. On the other
hand it is possible to say that chemistry is a part of physics, one
needs just to solve the Schr�dinger equation and that's it, in this case
one does not need ambiguous chemical terms. However the latter does not
work in practice. Only chemists talking some strange ambiguous language
can create new molecules, substances and materials. Why? I do not know.
Then recently I have read The Elegant Universe about the superstring
theory. The book is written very nicely, I envy the author's ability to
write in such simple language. Yet, I do not like the idea of Equation
of Everything and my feeling is that the superstring theory is just a
dead end:
http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2010/07/end-of-reductionism.html
However I cannot explain fully my feeling. So basically I just follow
what other people say and try to think it over.
Evgenii
on 19.09.2010 21:13 John Mikes said the following:
> Evgeniy, I may be the one agreeing with your sentence 1Z did not hear
> so far. Maybe he is right. Let me try to explain why I am congruent
> with your suggestion: *Reductionism *(as I identify it, - not
> congruent with the classical definitions - is the process in which
> the ongoing conventional sciences consider "ALL" - i.e. the
> wholeness, the totality, - as the compendium of our yesterday's
> knowledge: the content of our so far accepted epistemic enrichment in
> the sciences (and the world in general). This is how conventional
> sciences draw conclusions further reaching than our present knowledge
> (in most cases not knowing about "the rest of the world" not yet
> provided by our epistemic enrichment). Think of the Flat Earth, of
> the 'veins' circulating air, the uncuttable 'atoms', the
> DNA-genetics, etc. etc., examples that changed the prior (scientific)
> knowledge by new leanings. You may think of neurology as well,
> explaining all mental effects upon the brain's so far learned
> characteristics as measured by the instruments of 2010 - which is
> more than how it was 25 years ago. It is still reductionist.
>
> Engineering has to solve practical tasks in quantitative solutions
> and cannot resort to include 'maybe'-s for possible extensions of our
> scientific knowledge. So it takes the reductionist inventory and
> constructs brilliant contraptions upon 'yesterday's (reductionistic)
> knowledge that are *ALMOST*good. Almost? well, some airplanes fall
> off the skyies, some diseases strike, some wars break out, etc. etc.,
> in spite of our incrredible technology we acieved by the results of
> engineering. The 'still?' unknown "rest of the world" has its
> influence in the overall complexity of the world upon those partially
> solved problems as well, and of course, nobody can include unknowable
> factors into any consideraton. We use what we know = reduced.
>
> *Brent* had a short remark recently to the H2O discussion: "2H2O =
> 2H2 + O2 - no problem". He stopped short at the reductionist formula
> and the conventional physical views of water, not extending the
> complexity of such situations into the 'potentials that are'. -
> formation of halos of diffusely disappearing hydration and similar
> hydrated/not hydrated (hydrophil/hydrophob) situations as result of
> the surrounding chemical(?) environment (unlimited???) - all not
> expressed in the conventional chemical formulae - or their physical
> calculations (so far).
>
> It is hard to transfer from the 'conventional' to the 'unlimited'
> because we have no knowledge about the 'rest of the world'. I claim
> my (scientific) agnosticism and say "I dunno". We use the
> 'reductionist' *MODELs* of the so far known in our calculations and
> work in equations (maybe not true ones). The 'engineering' style.
> Respectfully
>
> John M
>
>
> On 9/19/10, 1Z<peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 19 Sep, 07:30, Evgenii Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:
>>
>>> Well, I thought that reductionism could help an engineer.
>>
>> I don't think anyone said that
>>
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John Mikes
John,
I am not sure if I have a particular position. I am a chemist by background, well I was doing all the life simulation only.
Actually I am comfortable with reductionism ideas, as many scientist are. Yet, I do not understand something.
Say chemistry starts that H2 has a single bond, 02 has a double bond, both being covalent. In H20 we have already partially ionic bonds and so on. What do these terms mean? Hard to define precisely. On the other hand it is possible to say that chemistry is a part of physics, one needs just to solve the Schrödinger equation and that's it, in this case one does not need ambiguous chemical terms. However the latter does not work in practice. Only chemists talking some strange ambiguous language can create new molecules, substances and materials. Why? I do not know.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
Bruno Marchal
Hi John,
> Bruno:
>
> thanks for the "I think"<G> in your text below - also: I cannot
> argue against your negative assessement about atheism - who IMO
> require a 'God" to deny. You know my shortcomings to equate physics
> with other domains of hearsay belief systems, like theology (as
> religion mainly). What I mean is a 'system' based on primitive
> misunderstandings of phenomena at a lower level epistemicly enriched
> explanatory attempt, at a very early age (way before the Greeks)
> that was "kept" as a basis and equipped by the newer epistemic
> additions over the eons of development up to our times now (and
> continued probably for the future). You add to that your "belief
> system" of the numerals as constituting 'our world' - if used in
> large enough sequences - what I do not address at this moment.
My point is technical. Mechanism and materialism are incompatible.
>
> At any rate: it is a 'human' base for constituting a worldview.
It is a Löbian one. It concerns the aliens also, except those who are
ultrafinitists.
I dont' identify myself more with humans than with Löbians.
> We are not capable of more.
That could be John Mikes limitation.
I don't like to much Teilhard de Chardin but he said that we are not
humans having spiritual experience, but we are sipiritual being having
a human experience. That does resonate with Löbian machine's experience.
> Our capabilities are restricted to absorb only parts of the totality
> and that. too, in ways how our PERSONAL thinking machine (brain?)
> adjusted them into its genetic buildup AND our personal experience-
> background, making it into a PERSONAL mini-solipsism, (expression
> from Hale) - also callable a perceived reality.
That's the first person views. But we can bet on other people and
entities, and we can use logic to study the consequence of our
hypotheses.
> Partial, that is.
Yes.
>
> Since you slanted the 'mind-body' problem towards religious
> connotations(?), I turned to the Cartesian "body-soul" dualistic
> pair which was a result of Descartes's fear of the Inquisition.
I think so too.
> Not finding reasonable that a short-"lived" body should impose
> 'eternal' judgements upon an 'eternal' soul,
Bodies make no judgement. Only our (eternal) soul do. That is not a
religious belief, it is a theorem in mechanist theory (which may be
correct or not, we will never *know*).
> in such respect (at least in its effectiveness?) the 'body' extends
> the time-limit we assign to the contraption enclosed (spacially)
> into our 'skin' - what I find untrue as well.
> This may be done by questioning the precision of our 'time' (and
> arrow of it) concept as physics takes it into account more or less.
Physics come later. Plotinus is right: physics is the study of what
God cannot control.
The physical reality is the clothe of God when he look to itself.
(images).
>
> As someone who does not include the necessity of a "creator" or
> "god" into a worldview and claims agnostic ignorance about the much
> dicussed "origins" as well as the conclusions of physics-based
> conventional sciences and considers 'eternity' a timeless concept
> (maybe just an instant?)
OK.
> furthermore the 'numerals' and math - as David Bohm said: a human
> invention, -
Ok for the numerals and humpan math. But not necessarily for the
numbers. This does not makes sense in the mechanist theory (which
might be wrong of course).
> I have no proposal how to formulate answers to those 'burning'
> questions of 'everything'.
>
> Just a thought that may be wrong, but could lead to further
> enlightening ideas if some smarter-than-me minds add their remarks
> to it.
Best,
Bruno