Numbers in Space

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Craig Weinberg

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Sep 20, 2012, 11:02:40 AM9/20/12
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Here's another reductio ad absurdum illustration of comp.

If the version of comp we are discussing here is independent of physics, then shouldn't it be possible for us to program universal machines using only empty space? Length can be quantified, so why can't we just use millimeters or Planck lengths as the basis for our enumeration, addition, and multiplication and directly program from our mind to space?

Of course, it would be hard to know where it was because we would be constantly flying away from a space that was anchored to an absolute position independent of Earth, the solar system, Milky Way, etc, but that shouldn't matter anyhow since whatever method we use to directly program in empty space with our minds should also give us access to the results of the computations.

What do you think? Just as wafers of silicon glass could in theory be functionally identical to a living brain, wouldn't it be equally prejudiced to say that empty space isn't good enough to host the computations of silicon?


Craig

Jason Resch

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Sep 20, 2012, 11:48:11 AM9/20/12
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On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 10:02 AM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
Here's another reductio ad absurdum illustration of comp.

If the version of comp we are discussing here is independent of physics, then shouldn't it be possible for us to program universal machines using only empty space? Length can be quantified, so why can't we just use millimeters or Planck lengths as the basis for our enumeration, addition, and multiplication and directly program from our mind to space?

Of course, it would be hard to know where it was because we would be constantly flying away from a space that was anchored to an absolute position independent of Earth, the solar system, Milky Way, etc, but that shouldn't matter anyhow since whatever method we use to directly program in empty space with our minds should also give us access to the results of the computations.

Right this is already the case.  That we can use our minds to access the results.
 

What do you think? Just as wafers of silicon glass could in theory be functionally identical to a living brain, wouldn't it be equally prejudiced to say that empty space isn't good enough to host the computations of silicon?

We don't even need empty space, we can use thought alone to figure out the future evolution of computers that already exist in Platonia and then get the result of any computation.  The problem is we are slow at doing this, so we build machines that can tell us what these platonic machines do with greater speed and accuracy than we ever could.

It's not doing the computations that is hard, the computations are already there.  The problem is learning their results.

Jason

Craig Weinberg

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Sep 20, 2012, 12:14:25 PM9/20/12
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On Thursday, September 20, 2012 11:48:15 AM UTC-4, Jason wrote:


On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 10:02 AM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
Here's another reductio ad absurdum illustration of comp.

If the version of comp we are discussing here is independent of physics, then shouldn't it be possible for us to program universal machines using only empty space? Length can be quantified, so why can't we just use millimeters or Planck lengths as the basis for our enumeration, addition, and multiplication and directly program from our mind to space?

Of course, it would be hard to know where it was because we would be constantly flying away from a space that was anchored to an absolute position independent of Earth, the solar system, Milky Way, etc, but that shouldn't matter anyhow since whatever method we use to directly program in empty space with our minds should also give us access to the results of the computations.

Right this is already the case.  That we can use our minds to access the results.

Why do you say this is the case? We aren't storing memories in space. When we lose our memory capacity it isn't because the universe is running out of space. We access experience through what we are, not through nothingness.
 
 

What do you think? Just as wafers of silicon glass could in theory be functionally identical to a living brain, wouldn't it be equally prejudiced to say that empty space isn't good enough to host the computations of silicon?

We don't even need empty space, we can use thought alone to figure out the future evolution of computers that already exist in Platonia and then get the result of any computation.  The problem is we are slow at doing this,

Why is being 'slow' a problem? What's the rush? What time is it in Platonia? Why aren't we in Platonia now?
 
so we build machines that can tell us what these platonic machines do with greater speed and accuracy than we ever could.

Why would speed and accuracy matter, objectively? What is speed?
 

It's not doing the computations that is hard, the computations are already there.  The problem is learning their results.

The problem is doing anything in the first place. Computations don't do anything at all. The reason that we do things is that we are not computations. We use computations. We can program things, but we can't thing programs without something to thing them with. This is a fatal flaw. If Platonia exists, it makes no sense for anything other than Platonia to exist. It would be redundant to go through the formality of executing any function is already executed non-locally. Why 'do' anything?

Craig


Jason

Bruno Marchal

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Sep 20, 2012, 12:26:02 PM9/20/12
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On 20 Sep 2012, at 17:02, Craig Weinberg wrote:

> Here's another reductio ad absurdum illustration of comp.
>
> If the version of comp we are discussing here is independent of
> physics, then shouldn't it be possible for us to program universal
> machines using only empty space?

You are quite quick here, but have a good insight, as comp makes space
non clonable, indeterministic in the details, and plausibly Turing
universal, as QM confirms. The 0-body problem (the quantum vacuum) is
already Turing universal (I think). For classical physics you need
three bodies at least).




> Length can be quantified, so why can't we just use millimeters or
> Planck lengths as the basis for our enumeration, addition, and
> multiplication and directly program from our mind to space?

Who we? In the universe nearby it costs a lot of energy/money/time to
handle matter already gigantic compared to the Planck length.

Or are you suggesting we are already simulated by the quantum vacuum.
Very plausible, but comp asks for justifying this in arithmetic.


>
> Of course, it would be hard to know where it was because we would be
> constantly flying away from a space that was anchored to an absolute
> position independent of Earth, the solar system, Milky Way, etc, but
> that shouldn't matter anyhow since whatever method we use to
> directly program in empty space with our minds should also give us
> access to the results of the computations.

?


>
> What do you think? Just as wafers of silicon glass could in theory
> be functionally identical to a living brain, wouldn't it be equally
> prejudiced to say that empty space isn't good enough to host the
> computations of silicon?

Empty space, in any turing universal theory, is equivalent with
universal dovetailing. It is a trivial theory, as when we assume comp,
the space and belief in spaces have to be justified through number
"dreams" statistics.

The advantage of comp is that we can use math and more easily reason
clearly. We can formulate key parts of the mind body problem
mathematically.

And computationalists are cool as they don't think twice before giving
the restaurant menu to the puppet who asks politely. They don't judge
people from their religion, skin color, clothes, or if made of wood,
or metal or flesh, as long as they behave respectfully of course.

Bruno



http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



Craig Weinberg

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Sep 20, 2012, 1:16:24 PM9/20/12
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On Thursday, September 20, 2012 12:26:07 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 20 Sep 2012, at 17:02, Craig Weinberg wrote:

> Here's another reductio ad absurdum illustration of comp.
>
> If the version of comp we are discussing here is independent of  
> physics, then shouldn't it be possible for us to program universal  
> machines using only empty space?

You are quite quick here, but have a good insight, as comp makes space  
non clonable, indeterministic in the details, and plausibly Turing  
universal, as QM confirms. The 0-body problem (the quantum vacuum) is  
already Turing universal (I think). For classical physics you need  
three bodies at least).


What about an ideal vacuum? Just lengths multiplying and adding enumerated bundles of lengths. No quantum.
 



> Length can be quantified, so why can't we just use millimeters or  
> Planck lengths as the basis for our enumeration, addition, and  
> multiplication and directly program from our mind to space?

Who we? In the universe nearby it costs a lot of energy/money/time to  
handle matter already gigantic compared to the Planck length.  

Or are you suggesting we are already simulated by the quantum vacuum.  
Very plausible, but comp asks for justifying this in arithmetic.

I'm saying that whatever program we access when we choose what we think about should be able to run just as easily in space as it does through the brain. I should be able to pick an area of my house and leave a bunch of memories there and then come back to them later just be occupying the same space. That's if we define space as relative to my house and not the rotating planet, revolving sun, etc.

So it sounds like you are not opposed to this idea of computation with no resources whatsoever besides space, provided that it could be justified arithmetically (which I don't understand why it wouldn't be. how does comp know if it's running on matter or space?)
 


>
> Of course, it would be hard to know where it was because we would be  
> constantly flying away from a space that was anchored to an absolute  
> position independent of Earth, the solar system, Milky Way, etc, but  
> that shouldn't matter anyhow since whatever method we use to  
> directly program in empty space with our minds should also give us  
> access to the results of the computations.

?

I mean if I could stand completely still then the planet would fly off from under my feet and I would be left standing exactly where I was with the Earth revolving past me at 107,000 km/hr. I would occupy the same space while the Earth, Sun, and galaxy sweep away from me.

If instead of me, it was memories I had stashed away in space, then my body would be soon separated from the absolute position that I had placed them. It shouldn't matter though, since by the same method of thinking numbers into space, I should be able to retrieve them too, regardless of the distance between my body and the numbers.



>
> What do you think? Just as wafers of silicon glass could in theory  
> be functionally identical to a living brain, wouldn't it be equally  
> prejudiced to say that empty space isn't good enough to host the  
> computations of silicon?

Empty space, in any turing universal theory, is equivalent with  
universal dovetailing. It is a trivial theory, as when we assume comp,  
the space and belief in spaces have to be justified through number  
"dreams" statistics.

So you are saying yes to the space doctor?
 

The advantage of comp is that we can use math and more easily reason  
clearly. We can formulate key parts of the mind body problem  
mathematically.

I don't question that, and I think that it may ultimately be the only way of engineering mind body solutions - but I still think that if we really want to know the truth about mind body, we can only find that in the un-numbered, un-named meta-juxtapostions of experienced sense.
 

And computationalists are cool as they don't think twice before giving  
the restaurant menu to the puppet who asks politely. They don't judge  
people from their religion, skin color, clothes, or if made of wood,  
or metal or flesh, as long as they behave respectfully of course.

I can behave respectfully to a puppet too, but I feel hypocritical because I wouldn't change places with them for any reason.

Bruno



http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



Stephen P. King

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Sep 20, 2012, 8:50:22 PM9/20/12
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Hey Craig,

What do you think physical computers actually are? "universal
machines using only empty space". But Nature hates a vacuum...

--
Onward!

Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html


Stephen P. King

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Sep 20, 2012, 9:10:42 PM9/20/12
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    It takes the consumption of resources to "learn the results". This is what I have been yelling at Bruno about the entire time since I first read his beautiful papers. Understanding is never free.

Stephen P. King

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Sep 20, 2012, 9:28:02 PM9/20/12
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On 9/20/2012 12:14 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:


On Thursday, September 20, 2012 11:48:15 AM UTC-4, Jason wrote:


On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 10:02 AM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
Here's another reductio ad absurdum illustration of comp.

If the version of comp we are discussing here is independent of physics, then shouldn't it be possible for us to program universal machines using only empty space? Length can be quantified, so why can't we just use millimeters or Planck lengths as the basis for our enumeration, addition, and multiplication and directly program from our mind to space?

Of course, it would be hard to know where it was because we would be constantly flying away from a space that was anchored to an absolute position independent of Earth, the solar system, Milky Way, etc, but that shouldn't matter anyhow since whatever method we use to directly program in empty space with our minds should also give us access to the results of the computations.

Right this is already the case.  That we can use our minds to access the results.

Why do you say this is the case? We aren't storing memories in space. When we lose our memory capacity it isn't because the universe is running out of space. We access experience through what we are, not through nothingness.
 
 

What do you think? Just as wafers of silicon glass could in theory be functionally identical to a living brain, wouldn't it be equally prejudiced to say that empty space isn't good enough to host the computations of silicon?

We don't even need empty space, we can use thought alone to figure out the future evolution of computers that already exist in Platonia and then get the result of any computation.  The problem is we are slow at doing this,

Why is being 'slow' a problem? What's the rush? What time is it in Platonia? Why aren't we in Platonia now?
Hi Craig,

    We are! We just don't "feel" it...


 
so we build machines that can tell us what these platonic machines do with greater speed and accuracy than we ever could.

Why would speed and accuracy matter, objectively? What is speed?

    What is the speed of light? Same question!


 

It's not doing the computations that is hard, the computations are already there.  The problem is learning their results.

The problem is doing anything in the first place. Computations don't do anything at all. The reason that we do things is that we are not computations. We use computations. We can program things, but we can't thing programs without something to thing them with. This is a fatal flaw. If Platonia exists, it makes no sense for anything other than Platonia to exist. It would be redundant to go through the formality of executing any function is already executed non-locally. Why 'do' anything?

    Bruno can 't answer that question. He is afraid that it will corrupt Olympia.

Stephen P. King

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Sep 20, 2012, 9:39:26 PM9/20/12
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On 9/20/2012 12:26 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> On 20 Sep 2012, at 17:02, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
>> Here's another reductio ad absurdum illustration of comp.
>>
>> If the version of comp we are discussing here is independent of
>> physics, then shouldn't it be possible for us to program universal
>> machines using only empty space?
>
> You are quite quick here, but have a good insight, as comp makes space
> non clonable, indeterministic in the details, and plausibly Turing
> universal, as QM confirms. The 0-body problem (the quantum vacuum) is
> already Turing universal (I think). For classical physics you need
> three bodies at least).
>

Dear Bruno,

I agree 100% with you. That the quantum vacuum is TU, is obvious to
me. I think that Svozil has something written on this.. maybe or 't Hoft.

>
>
>
>> Length can be quantified, so why can't we just use millimeters or
>> Planck lengths as the basis for our enumeration, addition, and
>> multiplication and directly program from our mind to space?
>
> Who we? In the universe nearby it costs a lot of energy/money/time to
> handle matter already gigantic compared to the Planck length.

Only because we are trying to do things the classical way...

>
> Or are you suggesting we are already simulated by the quantum vacuum.
> Very plausible, but comp asks for justifying this in arithmetic.

I am not sure if that is possible because it seems to me that that
requires the specification of an uncountable infinity.

>
>>
>> Of course, it would be hard to know where it was because we would be
>> constantly flying away from a space that was anchored to an absolute
>> position independent of Earth, the solar system, Milky Way, etc, but
>> that shouldn't matter anyhow since whatever method we use to directly
>> program in empty space with our minds should also give us access to
>> the results of the computations.
>
> ?
>
>
>>
>> What do you think? Just as wafers of silicon glass could in theory be
>> functionally identical to a living brain, wouldn't it be equally
>> prejudiced to say that empty space isn't good enough to host the
>> computations of silicon?
>
> Empty space, in any turing universal theory, is equivalent with
> universal dovetailing. It is a trivial theory, as when we assume comp,
> the space and belief in spaces have to be justified through number
> "dreams" statistics.

But the numbers build an "arithmetic body" and then populate a
space with multiple copies of it... so that they can "implement" the UD.
Their dreaming is this! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamlands

>
> The advantage of comp is that we can use math and more easily reason
> clearly. We can formulate key parts of the mind body problem
> mathematically.

I disagree. We can only formalize the mind, never the body, if we
wish to never be inconsistent.

>
> And computationalists are cool as they don't think twice before giving
> the restaurant menu to the puppet who asks politely. They don't judge
> people from their religion, skin color, clothes, or if made of wood,
> or metal or flesh, as long as they behave respectfully of course.

Maybe it is because they are really not people at all! They are
algorithms hiding in a puppet.

Craig Weinberg

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Sep 20, 2012, 9:49:22 PM9/20/12
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Physical computers are assembled substances which exhibit exceptionally normative, controllable, and observable behaviors.

Craig

Craig Weinberg

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Sep 20, 2012, 9:51:08 PM9/20/12
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Exactly, and I was trying to show why. Without that resource cost, there is no reason for anything to have a cost and no reason to leave Platonia. Castles in the clouds ahoy!

Craig

 

Stephen P. King

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Sep 20, 2012, 9:52:36 PM9/20/12
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On 9/20/2012 1:16 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:


On Thursday, September 20, 2012 12:26:07 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 20 Sep 2012, at 17:02, Craig Weinberg wrote:

> Here's another reductio ad absurdum illustration of comp.
>
> If the version of comp we are discussing here is independent of  
> physics, then shouldn't it be possible for us to program universal  
> machines using only empty space?

You are quite quick here, but have a good insight, as comp makes space  
non clonable, indeterministic in the details, and plausibly Turing  
universal, as QM confirms. The 0-body problem (the quantum vacuum) is  
already Turing universal (I think). For classical physics you need  
three bodies at least).


What about an ideal vacuum? Just lengths multiplying and adding enumerated bundles of lengths. No quantum.
Hey!


    Do you mean like a measure with nothing to rule on? Or a nothing without a measure?


 



> Length can be quantified, so why can't we just use millimeters or  
> Planck lengths as the basis for our enumeration, addition, and  
> multiplication and directly program from our mind to space?

Who we? In the universe nearby it costs a lot of energy/money/time to  
handle matter already gigantic compared to the Planck length.  

Or are you suggesting we are already simulated by the quantum vacuum.  
Very plausible, but comp asks for justifying this in arithmetic.

I'm saying that whatever program we access when we choose what we think about should be able to run just as easily in space as it does through the brain. I should be able to pick an area of my house and leave a bunch of memories there and then come back to them later just be occupying the same space. That's if we define space as relative to my house and not the rotating planet, revolving sun, etc.

So it sounds like you are not opposed to this idea of computation with no resources whatsoever besides space, provided that it could be justified arithmetically (which I don't understand why it wouldn't be. how does comp know if it's running on matter or space?)
 

    Space is the only resource needed.




>
> Of course, it would be hard to know where it was because we would be  
> constantly flying away from a space that was anchored to an absolute  
> position independent of Earth, the solar system, Milky Way, etc, but  
> that shouldn't matter anyhow since whatever method we use to  
> directly program in empty space with our minds should also give us  
> access to the results of the computations.

?

I mean if I could stand completely still then the planet would fly off from under my feet and I would be left standing exactly where I was with the Earth revolving past me at 107,000 km/hr. I would occupy the same space while the Earth, Sun, and galaxy sweep away from me.

If instead of me, it was memories I had stashed away in space, then my body would be soon separated from the absolute position that I had placed them. It shouldn't matter though, since by the same method of thinking numbers into space, I should be able to retrieve them too, regardless of the distance between my body and the numbers.



>
> What do you think? Just as wafers of silicon glass could in theory  
> be functionally identical to a living brain, wouldn't it be equally  
> prejudiced to say that empty space isn't good enough to host the  
> computations of silicon?

Empty space, in any turing universal theory, is equivalent with  
universal dovetailing. It is a trivial theory, as when we assume comp,  
the space and belief in spaces have to be justified through number  
"dreams" statistics.

So you are saying yes to the space doctor?

    YES! I do! Over and over and over and over!


 

The advantage of comp is that we can use math and more easily reason  
clearly. We can formulate key parts of the mind body problem  
mathematically.

I don't question that, and I think that it may ultimately be the only way of engineering mind body solutions - but I still think that if we really want to know the truth about mind body, we can only find that in the un-numbered, un-named meta-juxtapostions of experienced sense.
 

And computationalists are cool as they don't think twice before giving  
the restaurant menu to the puppet who asks politely. They don't judge  
people from their religion, skin color, clothes, or if made of wood,  
or metal or flesh, as long as they behave respectfully of course.

I can behave respectfully to a puppet too, but I feel hypocritical because I wouldn't change places with them for any reason.


    How would you know that it happened?

Stephen P. King

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Sep 20, 2012, 11:16:22 PM9/20/12
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On 9/20/2012 9:49 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
Physical computers are assembled substances which exhibit exceptionally
normative, controllable, and observable behaviors.

Craig

To understand a thing is to control a thing.

Jason Resch

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Sep 21, 2012, 1:19:04 AM9/21/12
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For us (in this universe) to learn the results of a platonic computation may take resources, but if you happen to be that very platonic computation in question, then you don't need to do anything extra to get the result.  You are the result.

Jason

Bruno Marchal

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Sep 21, 2012, 4:10:52 AM9/21/12
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Not at all, the answer is easy here. In the big picture, that is arithmetic, nothing is done. The computations are already "done" in it. "doing things" is a relative internal notion coming from the first person perspectives.

Also, Platonia does not really exist, nor God, as existence is what belongs to Platonia. Comp follows Plotinus on this, both God and Matter does not belong to the category exist (ontologically). They are epistemological beings.

Bruno




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Bruno Marchal

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Sep 21, 2012, 4:18:39 AM9/21/12
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On 20 Sep 2012, at 19:16, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Thursday, September 20, 2012 12:26:07 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 20 Sep 2012, at 17:02, Craig Weinberg wrote:

> Here's another reductio ad absurdum illustration of comp.
>
> If the version of comp we are discussing here is independent of  
> physics, then shouldn't it be possible for us to program universal  
> machines using only empty space?

You are quite quick here, but have a good insight, as comp makes space  
non clonable, indeterministic in the details, and plausibly Turing  
universal, as QM confirms. The 0-body problem (the quantum vacuum) is  
already Turing universal (I think). For classical physics you need  
three bodies at least).


What about an ideal vacuum? Just lengths multiplying and adding enumerated bundles of lengths. No quantum.

It would not be Turing universal.



 



> Length can be quantified, so why can't we just use millimeters or  
> Planck lengths as the basis for our enumeration, addition, and  
> multiplication and directly program from our mind to space?

Who we? In the universe nearby it costs a lot of energy/money/time to  
handle matter already gigantic compared to the Planck length.  

Or are you suggesting we are already simulated by the quantum vacuum.  
Very plausible, but comp asks for justifying this in arithmetic.

I'm saying that whatever program we access when we choose what we think about should be able to run just as easily in space as it does through the brain.

Or just arithmetic. You don't need space. Only addition and multiplication of integers. Or justapplication and abstraction on lambda terms, etc.



I should be able to pick an area of my house and leave a bunch of memories there and then come back to them later just be occupying the same space.

Not at all. You are distributed in the whole UD*. You can go back to your memory only if the measure on computations makes such a persistence possible. This needs to be justified with the self-reference logics, and that is what is done with S4Grz1, Z1* and X1*.



That's if we define space as relative to my house and not the rotating planet, revolving sun, etc.

So it sounds like you are not opposed to this idea of computation with no resources whatsoever besides space,

No need for spaces. To invoke it is already too much physicalist for comp.



provided that it could be justified arithmetically (which I don't understand why it wouldn't be. how does comp know if it's running on matter or space?)

By UDA. Anything physical must be justified with the "material hypostases". Up to now, this works, even by giving the shadows of the reason why destructive interference of the computations occurs below our substitution level.

Bruno



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Bruno Marchal

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Sep 21, 2012, 4:34:26 AM9/21/12
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On 21 Sep 2012, at 03:39, Stephen P. King wrote:

> On 9/20/2012 12:26 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> On 20 Sep 2012, at 17:02, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>>
>>> Here's another reductio ad absurdum illustration of comp.
>>>
>>> If the version of comp we are discussing here is independent of
>>> physics, then shouldn't it be possible for us to program universal
>>> machines using only empty space?
>>
>> You are quite quick here, but have a good insight, as comp makes
>> space non clonable, indeterministic in the details, and plausibly
>> Turing universal, as QM confirms. The 0-body problem (the quantum
>> vacuum) is already Turing universal (I think). For classical
>> physics you need three bodies at least).
>>
>
> Dear Bruno,
>
> I agree 100% with you. That the quantum vacuum is TU, is obvious
> to me. I think that Svozil has something written on this.. maybe or
> 't Hoft.
>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Length can be quantified, so why can't we just use millimeters or
>>> Planck lengths as the basis for our enumeration, addition, and
>>> multiplication and directly program from our mind to space?
>>
>> Who we? In the universe nearby it costs a lot of energy/money/time
>> to handle matter already gigantic compared to the Planck length.
>
> Only because we are trying to do things the classical way...

?
Explain this to those who build the LHC.


>
>>
>> Or are you suggesting we are already simulated by the quantum
>> vacuum. Very plausible, but comp asks for justifying this in
>> arithmetic.
>
> I am not sure if that is possible because it seems to me that
> that requires the specification of an uncountable infinity.

I don't see the problem. You might confuse "Turing emulable" and
"Turing recoverable". In the last case we take into account the first
person indeterminacy, and comp already explains that it is uncountable.




>
>>
>>>
>>> Of course, it would be hard to know where it was because we would
>>> be constantly flying away from a space that was anchored to an
>>> absolute position independent of Earth, the solar system, Milky
>>> Way, etc, but that shouldn't matter anyhow since whatever method
>>> we use to directly program in empty space with our minds should
>>> also give us access to the results of the computations.
>>
>> ?
>>
>>
>>>
>>> What do you think? Just as wafers of silicon glass could in theory
>>> be functionally identical to a living brain, wouldn't it be
>>> equally prejudiced to say that empty space isn't good enough to
>>> host the computations of silicon?
>>
>> Empty space, in any turing universal theory, is equivalent with
>> universal dovetailing. It is a trivial theory, as when we assume
>> comp, the space and belief in spaces have to be justified through
>> number "dreams" statistics.
>
> But the numbers build an "arithmetic body"

The numbers arithmetically dream of a non arithmetic body.


> and then populate a space with multiple copies of it... so that they
> can "implement" the UD.

No, they are implemented by the UD, which exists like prime numbers
exists. Primitively.




> Their dreaming is this! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamlands
>
>>
>> The advantage of comp is that we can use math and more easily
>> reason clearly. We can formulate key parts of the mind body problem
>> mathematically.
>
> I disagree. We can only formalize the mind, never the body, if we
> wish to never be inconsistent.

We can't formalize neither the (1p) mind nor the body.



>
>>
>> And computationalists are cool as they don't think twice before
>> giving the restaurant menu to the puppet who asks politely. They
>> don't judge people from their religion, skin color, clothes, or if
>> made of wood, or metal or flesh, as long as they behave
>> respectfully of course.
>
> Maybe it is because they are really not people at all! They are
> algorithms hiding in a puppet.

In that case comp is false.


Bruno


>
>
> --
> Onward!
>
> Stephen
>
> http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html
>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
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Roger Clough

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Hi Jason Resch
 
In the Platonic world space and time don't exist.
 
 
Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/21/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen
 
 
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Time: 2012-09-21, 01:19:04
Subject: Re: Numbers in Space



On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 8:10 PM, Stephen P. King <step...@charter.net> wrote:
On 9/20/2012 11:48 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 10:02 AM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
Here's another reductio ad absurdum illustration of comp.

If the version of comp we are discussing here is independent of physics, then shouldn't it be possible for us to program universal machines using only empty space? Length can be quantified, so why can't we just use millimeters or Planck lengths as the basis for our enumeration, addition, and multiplication and directly program from our mind to space?

Of course, it would be hard to know where it was because we would be constantly flying away from a space that was anchored to an absolute position independent of Earth, the solar system, Milky Way, etc, but that shouldn't matter anyhow since whatever method we use to directly program in empty space with our minds should also give us access to the results of the computations.

Right this is already the case. 锟絋hat we can use our minds to access the results.

What do you think? Just as wafers of silicon glass could in theory be functionally identical to a living brain, wouldn't it be equally prejudiced to say that empty space isn't good enough to host the computations of silicon?

We don't even need empty space, we can use thought alone to figure out the future evolution of computers that already exist in Platonia and then get the result of any computation. 锟絋he problem is we are slow at doing this, so we build machines that can tell us what these platonic machines do with greater speed and accuracy than we ever could.

It's not doing the computations that is hard, the computations are already there. 锟絋he problem is learning their results.

Jason

锟斤拷� It takes the consumption of resources to "learn the results". This is what I have been yelling at Bruno about the entire time since I first read his beautiful papers. Understanding is never free.


For us (in this universe) to learn the results of a platonic computation may take resources, but if you happen to be that very platonic computation in question, then you don't need to do anything extra to get the result. 锟結ou are the result.

Jason

Roger Clough

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Sep 21, 2012, 6:21:19 AM9/21/12
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Hi Bruno Marchal

I think we should only use the word "exists" only when we are
referring to physical existence. Thus I can truthfully say,
for example, that God does not exist.
Wikipedia says, "In common usage, it [existence]
is the world we are aware of through our senses,
and that persists independently without them."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence

On the other hand, Platonia, Plotinus, Plato, Kant and Leibniz,
take the opposite view or what is real and what exists. To them ideas
and other nonphysical items such as numbers or anything not extended in space,
anything outside of spacetime are what exist, the physical world out
there is merely an appearance, a phenomenon. Following Leibniz,
I would say of such things that they live, since life has
such attributes.

So when we say that a man exists, we are speaking of the physical man.
But when we say that he lives, we are speaking of man as a mental or
living being.




Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/21/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


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Subject: Re: Numbers in Space




Roger Clough

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Sep 21, 2012, 6:40:32 AM9/21/12
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Hi Stephen P. King
 
If by "exist" I mean physically exi,sts
and by "lives" I mean nonphysically exists,
Then
 
Computers exist.
Computer programs live.
 
 
 
Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/21/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen
 
 
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Roger Clough

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Sep 21, 2012, 6:44:15 AM9/21/12
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Hi Stephen P. King

Platonia doesn't exist, it lives.


Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/21/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


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Subject: Re: Numbers in Space


On 9/20/2012 12:14 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Thursday, September 20, 2012 11:48:15 AM UTC-4, Jason wrote:



Stephen P. King

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Sep 21, 2012, 7:55:01 AM9/21/12
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Jason,

    That is not the point! I think we all agree on what you remark upon! It is how everything gets partitioned up so that we have the kind of world we observe. We observe a classical world where things don't work with infinite resources or infinite speed or infinite connectivity. We are asking for the fact that we observe an illusion to be explained!

Stephen P. King

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Sep 21, 2012, 10:24:26 AM9/21/12
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On 9/21/2012 4:10 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 21 Sep 2012, at 03:28, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 9/20/2012 12:14 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:


On Thursday, September 20, 2012 11:48:15 AM UTC-4, Jason wrote:


It's not doing the computations that is hard, the computations are already there.  The problem is learning their results.

The problem is doing anything in the first place. Computations don't do anything at all. The reason that we do things is that we are not computations. We use computations. We can program things, but we can't thing programs without something to thing them with. This is a fatal flaw. If Platonia exists, it makes no sense for anything other than Platonia to exist. It would be redundant to go through the formality of executing any function is already executed non-locally. Why 'do' anything?

    Bruno can 't answer that question. He is afraid that it will corrupt Olympia.

Not at all, the answer is easy here. In the big picture, that is arithmetic, nothing is done. The computations are already "done" in it. "doing things" is a relative internal notion coming from the first person perspectives.

Also, Platonia does not really exist, nor God, as existence is what belongs to Platonia. Comp follows Plotinus on this, both God and Matter does not belong to the category exist (ontologically). They are epistemological beings.

Bruno

Dear Bruno,

    OK, but you are ignoring my question: How does the existence become decomposed such that there are "epistemological beings"? So far your explanation is focused on the representation in terms of arithmetics and I accept your reasonings: In the big picture, that is arithmetic, nothing is done." There is no "action", no change, all that exists "just is". But then what do we make of time? We can dismiss it as an illusion? But that would be just an evasion of the obvious question: Why does the illusion occur?
    I am interested in explanation that at least try to answer this question: How does the illusion persist? What might "cause" it? Why do "special purpose" computations occur such that we can identify physical systems with them? My proposal is to weaken the concept of Computational Universality a tiny bit and thus allow room for the possibility of an answer to the questions that I have.
    Consider this: What happens is there does not exist any physical system that can implement a particular computation X? Is it possible for us, humans, or any other sentient physical being to "know" anything about X, such that we might have some model of X that is faithfully representative?

Stephen P. King

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Sep 21, 2012, 10:30:34 AM9/21/12
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On 9/21/2012 4:18 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 20 Sep 2012, at 19:16, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Thursday, September 20, 2012 12:26:07 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 20 Sep 2012, at 17:02, Craig Weinberg wrote:

> Here's another reductio ad absurdum illustration of comp.
>
> If the version of comp we are discussing here is independent of  
> physics, then shouldn't it be possible for us to program universal  
> machines using only empty space?

You are quite quick here, but have a good insight, as comp makes space  
non clonable, indeterministic in the details, and plausibly Turing  
universal, as QM confirms. The 0-body problem (the quantum vacuum) is  
already Turing universal (I think). For classical physics you need  
three bodies at least).


What about an ideal vacuum? Just lengths multiplying and adding enumerated bundles of lengths. No quantum.

It would not be Turing universal.

Dear Bruno,

    How so? What is the proof? Craig is allowing for N, + and *. So why not?




 



> Length can be quantified, so why can't we just use millimeters or  
> Planck lengths as the basis for our enumeration, addition, and  
> multiplication and directly program from our mind to space?

Who we? In the universe nearby it costs a lot of energy/money/time to  
handle matter already gigantic compared to the Planck length.  

Or are you suggesting we are already simulated by the quantum vacuum.  
Very plausible, but comp asks for justifying this in arithmetic.

I'm saying that whatever program we access when we choose what we think about should be able to run just as easily in space as it does through the brain.

Or just arithmetic. You don't need space. Only addition and multiplication of integers. Or justapplication and abstraction on lambda terms, etc.

    What do Integers represent? Are they just primitive "objects" with "inherent" properties?





I should be able to pick an area of my house and leave a bunch of memories there and then come back to them later just be occupying the same space.

Not at all. You are distributed in the whole UD*. You can go back to your memory only if the measure on computations makes such a persistence possible. This needs to be justified with the self-reference logics, and that is what is done with S4Grz1, Z1* and X1*.

    You lost us ... "Eyes glaze over" No explanation is being offered as to how the measure comes to be. I am asking you about the measure. Why do you avoid my questions? I will not stop until you answer me coherently!





That's if we define space as relative to my house and not the rotating planet, revolving sun, etc.

So it sounds like you are not opposed to this idea of computation with no resources whatsoever besides space,

No need for spaces. To invoke it is already too much physicalist for comp.

    So all "spaces" are physical? What about a Hilbert space? Is it not a mathematical object?





provided that it could be justified arithmetically (which I don't understand why it wouldn't be. how does comp know if it's running on matter or space?)

By UDA. Anything physical must be justified with the "material hypostases". Up to now, this works, even by giving the shadows of the reason why destructive interference of the computations occurs below our substitution level.


    What determines the "substitution level"?

Stephen P. King

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Sep 21, 2012, 11:04:59 AM9/21/12
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On 9/21/2012 4:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> But the numbers build an "arithmetic body"
>
> The numbers arithmetically dream of a non arithmetic body.
>
>
>> and then populate a space with multiple copies of it... so that they
>> can "implement" the UD.
>
> No, they are implemented by the UD, which exists like prime numbers
> exists. Primitively.

So the dreams "exists like prime numbers exists. Primitively. " and
the dreams are of "a non arithmetic body", thus "a non arithmetic body"
exists primitively. How is this different from anything that I have
tried to tell you of my ideas? We agree!!!!!! This is "dual aspect"
monism! I used to call it process dualism, but realized that that
working caused too much confusion.

Stephen P. King

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Sep 21, 2012, 11:05:52 AM9/21/12
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On 9/21/2012 4:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>
>>> And computationalists are cool as they don't think twice before
>>> giving the restaurant menu to the puppet who asks politely. They
>>> don't judge people from their religion, skin color, clothes, or if
>>> made of wood, or metal or flesh, as long as they behave respectfully
>>> of course.
>>
>> Maybe it is because they are really not people at all! They are
>> algorithms hiding in a puppet.
>
> In that case comp is false.


No, it is not false. Only the strong version of step 8 is false.

Jason Resch

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Sep 21, 2012, 11:05:04 AM9/21/12
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Does 38 have any factors?

Does program xyz stop in fewer than 10^100 steps?

Both of these are mathematical questions with only one possible answer.  Their truth is established whether or not we test it, ask it, implement it or think it.  They would be either true or false even if nothing existed for us to have any hope of answering it.

If you mathematically defined what programs are conscious you could even say the question "Does program xyz contain conscious entities?" is a mathematical question.  If it is true, then there exist conscious entities.

Your requirement that there be some "real" implementation for computation leads to an infinite regress.  What "real" computer is our universe running on?

Jason

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Craig Weinberg

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Sep 21, 2012, 11:13:18 AM9/21/12
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On Thursday, September 20, 2012 11:16:19 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:
On 9/20/2012 9:49 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
Physical computers are assembled substances which exhibit exceptionally
normative, controllable, and observable behaviors.

Craig

     To understand a thing is to control a thing.


Yes! Sort of. I have this whole concept of how motive participation evolves through sense in a linear, strategic way. Think of the panopticon perspective, where the control center is the hub of a wheel of cells which can be observed by the controllers. This metaphorically elevated position mirrors the physically elevated position, like a hilltop in battle, where the more terrain you can view, the more you can theoretically control the outcome of the battle strategically...

However:

You can still understand that you are going to get your ass kicked. Understanding gives you potential to control, and motive to control, but the execution of control requires...resources. Which means using your motives in a way which causes other beings to cause other beings to sympathize with your motives, leverage their own motives against rocks and sticks and high explosives, etc.. to be come more persuasive.

Craig

Craig Weinberg

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Sep 21, 2012, 11:27:56 AM9/21/12
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On Friday, September 21, 2012 4:18:47 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 20 Sep 2012, at 19:16, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Thursday, September 20, 2012 12:26:07 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 20 Sep 2012, at 17:02, Craig Weinberg wrote:

> Here's another reductio ad absurdum illustration of comp.
>
> If the version of comp we are discussing here is independent of  
> physics, then shouldn't it be possible for us to program universal  
> machines using only empty space?

You are quite quick here, but have a good insight, as comp makes space  
non clonable, indeterministic in the details, and plausibly Turing  
universal, as QM confirms. The 0-body problem (the quantum vacuum) is  
already Turing universal (I think). For classical physics you need  
three bodies at least).


What about an ideal vacuum? Just lengths multiplying and adding enumerated bundles of lengths. No quantum.

It would not be Turing universal.

If it isn't then that seems to me an argument for primitive physics.
 



 



> Length can be quantified, so why can't we just use millimeters or  
> Planck lengths as the basis for our enumeration, addition, and  
> multiplication and directly program from our mind to space?

Who we? In the universe nearby it costs a lot of energy/money/time to  
handle matter already gigantic compared to the Planck length.  

Or are you suggesting we are already simulated by the quantum vacuum.  
Very plausible, but comp asks for justifying this in arithmetic.

I'm saying that whatever program we access when we choose what we think about should be able to run just as easily in space as it does through the brain.

Or just arithmetic. You don't need space. Only addition and multiplication of integers. Or justapplication and abstraction on lambda terms, etc.

I was going to do another post upping the ante from Numbers in Space to Numbers in Xpace (imaginary space). To me this is the fading qualia argument that could be a Waterloo for comp. The transition from Turing machines executed in matter to execution in space and then xpace would have to be consistent to support the claim that arithmetic is independent from physics. If that isn't the case, why not? What is different other than physical properties between matter, space, and xpace?
 



I should be able to pick an area of my house and leave a bunch of memories there and then come back to them later just be occupying the same space.

Not at all. You are distributed in the whole UD*. You can go back to your memory only if the measure on computations makes such a persistence possible. This needs to be justified with the self-reference logics, and that is what is done with S4Grz1, Z1* and X1*.

I don't know what that means exactly but if I am getting the gist, it still doesn't tell me why it is easier for me to remember something in my mind than to offload my memories onto objects, places, times of the year, whatever. Why not make a Turing machine out of time that uses moments instead of tape and tape instead of numbers? It seems to me that the universality of UMs is wildly overstated.




That's if we define space as relative to my house and not the rotating planet, revolving sun, etc.

So it sounds like you are not opposed to this idea of computation with no resources whatsoever besides space,

No need for spaces. To invoke it is already too much physicalist for comp.

So we can pretty much call comp magic then. It needs nothing whatsoever and can ultimately control anything from anywhere.
 



provided that it could be justified arithmetically (which I don't understand why it wouldn't be. how does comp know if it's running on matter or space?)

By UDA. Anything physical must be justified with the "material hypostases". Up to now, this works, even by giving the shadows of the reason why destructive interference of the computations occurs below our substitution level.

Why doesn't anything arithmetic need to be justified with "computational hypostases"?

Craig
 

Roger Clough

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Sep 21, 2012, 11:47:24 AM9/21/12
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Hi Stephen P. King and all

The problems imagined by materialists in invoking dualism
are just that - imaginary-- as long as mind is unextended
and brain is extended. And the so-called "hard problem" of consciousness
and the cartesian problem of interfacing or superimposing
mind and brain simply vanish. They're apples and oranges.
They exist in different universes, which can superimpose,
the extended or physical "floating" in a sea of inextended
or nonphysical mind, or to use a better word, life.


Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/21/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


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Roger Clough

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Sep 21, 2012, 11:50:00 AM9/21/12
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Hi Craig Weinberg
 
Thwe ideal vacuum is still in spacetime.
 
 
Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/21/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen
 
 
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Bruno Marchal

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Sep 21, 2012, 12:08:38 PM9/21/12
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On 21 Sep 2012, at 16:24, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 9/21/2012 4:10 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 21 Sep 2012, at 03:28, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 9/20/2012 12:14 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:


On Thursday, September 20, 2012 11:48:15 AM UTC-4, Jason wrote:


It's not doing the computations that is hard, the computations are already there.  The problem is learning their results.

The problem is doing anything in the first place. Computations don't do anything at all. The reason that we do things is that we are not computations. We use computations. We can program things, but we can't thing programs without something to thing them with. This is a fatal flaw. If Platonia exists, it makes no sense for anything other than Platonia to exist. It would be redundant to go through the formality of executing any function is already executed non-locally. Why 'do' anything?

    Bruno can 't answer that question. He is afraid that it will corrupt Olympia.

Not at all, the answer is easy here. In the big picture, that is arithmetic, nothing is done. The computations are already "done" in it. "doing things" is a relative internal notion coming from the first person perspectives.

Also, Platonia does not really exist, nor God, as existence is what belongs to Platonia. Comp follows Plotinus on this, both God and Matter does not belong to the category exist (ontologically). They are epistemological beings.

Bruno

Dear Bruno,

    OK, but you are ignoring my question: How does the existence become decomposed such that there are "epistemological beings"?

We agree that arithmetical truth is independent of us, or more formalistically we assume 0 s(0) ... and the law of addition and multiplication.

From that, and only that, we proves the existence of the computations, and get notably all the "dreams", as with comp we know that dreams, subjective experiences, needs to be associated to those computations. The epistemological beings appears in the content of those dreams, and recover, or not, sharable persistent epistemological realities.







So far your explanation is focused on the representation in terms of arithmetics and I accept your reasonings: In the big picture, that is arithmetic, nothing is done." There is no "action", no change, all that exists "just is". But then what do we make of time?

Time is easy, with comp, as we give an importance to processing, or successive manipulation. There is a variety of time since the start:
the order 0, s(0), s(s(0)), ...
The UD time steps,
The particular steps of each computations in the UD,
etc.
None give the physical time, as it needs to be extracted from the physics emerging on the dreams.




We can dismiss it as an illusion?

We better not. Immaterial does not mean illusion, unless you are fictionalist, in which case comp is meaningless.


But that would be just an evasion of the obvious question: Why does the illusion occur?

Comp explains this entirely. Numbers can already explains where the illusion comes from, and why the illusion has many incommunicable features. This *is* solved.




    I am interested in explanation that at least try to answer this question: How does the illusion persist?

That is the difficult things. That is what I translated in arithmetic. That is the measure problem. Either comp gives a quantum machinery below our substitution level, or it fails. The material hypostases already show that the measure one obeys to quantum like logics, and we got an arithmetical quantization in which we can test if there are quantum gate at the "universal dream bottom".



What might "cause" it? Why do "special purpose" computations occur such that we can identify physical systems with them? My proposal is to weaken the concept of Computational Universality a tiny bit and thus allow room for the possibility of an answer to the questions that I have.

CT makes the concept of Turing universality is one of the most solid epistemological concept ever ... (cf CT)
Good luck.



    Consider this: What happens is there does not exist any physical system that can implement a particular computation X?

All computations can be implemented in any Turing universal system. *Many* subparts of the known physics are Turing universal, so what you say is impossible. 



Is it possible for us, humans, or any other sentient physical being to "know" anything about X, such that we might have some model of X that is faithfully representative?

We already know many things which are not computable. Recursion theory is mainly the study and classification of those non computable things. In math, the computable is both pro-eminent in the construction we do, and the non computable is majority in the ontology. For example the non computable functions from N to N are not enumerable, and the computable one are enumerable (even if not mechanically or computably enumerable (see my posts in FOAR).

But again, this has nothing to do with the notion of physical implementations, which is just an implementation (in the mathematical sense) in a universal system that can be run physically (keeping in mind that "physically" has a new meaning or representation in the comp theory).

Bruno




Stephen P. King

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Sep 21, 2012, 12:14:33 PM9/21/12
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On 9/21/2012 11:05 AM, Jason Resch wrote:


On Sep 21, 2012, at 6:55 AM, "Stephen P. King" <step...@charter.net> wrote:

On 9/21/2012 1:19 AM, Jason Resch wrote:


On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 8:10 PM, Stephen P. King <step...@charter.net> wrote:
On 9/20/2012 11:48 AM, Jason Resch wrote:


On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 10:02 AM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
Here's another reductio ad absurdum illustration of comp.

If the version of comp we are discussing here is independent of physics, then shouldn't it be possible for us to program universal machines using only empty space? Length can be quantified, so why can't we just use millimeters or Planck lengths as the basis for our enumeration, addition, and multiplication and directly program from our mind to space?

Of course, it would be hard to know where it was because we would be constantly flying away from a space that was anchored to an absolute position independent of Earth, the solar system, Milky Way, etc, but that shouldn't matter anyhow since whatever method we use to directly program in empty space with our minds should also give us access to the results of the computations.

Right this is already the case.  That we can use our minds to access the results.
 

What do you think? Just as wafers of silicon glass could in theory be functionally identical to a living brain, wouldn't it be equally prejudiced to say that empty space isn't good enough to host the computations of silicon?

We don't even need empty space, we can use thought alone to figure out the future evolution of computers that already exist in Platonia and then get the result of any computation.  The problem is we are slow at doing this, so we build machines that can tell us what these platonic machines do with greater speed and accuracy than we ever could.

It's not doing the computations that is hard, the computations are already there.  The problem is learning their results.

Jason

    It takes the consumption of resources to "learn the results". This is what I have been yelling at Bruno about the entire time since I first read his beautiful papers. Understanding is never free.


For us (in this universe) to learn the results of a platonic computation may take resources, but if you happen to be that very platonic computation in question, then you don't need to do anything extra to get the result.  You are the result.

Jason
Jason,

    That is not the point! I think we all agree on what you remark upon! It is how everything gets partitioned up so that we have the kind of world we observe. We observe a classical world where things don't work with infinite resources or infinite speed or infinite connectivity. We are asking for the fact that we observe an illusion to be explained!

Does 38 have any factors?

Does program xyz stop in fewer than 10^100 steps?

Both of these are mathematical questions with only one possible answer.  Their truth is established whether or not we test it, ask it, implement it or think it.  They would be either true or false even if nothing existed for us to have any hope of answering it.

Hi Jason,

    You are missing the point. There is the Truth and there is the ability to know of it. The former is immaterial, independent of any one of us. The latter is physical, we must work to have it.



If you mathematically defined what programs are conscious you could even say the question "Does program xyz contain conscious entities?" is a mathematical question.  If it is true, then there exist conscious entities.

    We have to be able to communicate...



Your requirement that there be some "real" implementation for computation leads to an infinite regress.  What "real" computer is our universe running on?

    The underlying Quantum's unitary transformation.

Bruno Marchal

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Sep 21, 2012, 12:17:12 PM9/21/12
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On 21 Sep 2012, at 12:21, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Bruno Marchal  

I think we should only use the word "exists"  only when we are
referring to physical existence.

Hmm.... That might aggravate the naturalist or materialist human penchant.




Thus I can truthfully say,
for example, that God does not exist.  
Wikipedia says, "In common usage, it [existence]
is the world we are aware of through our senses,  
and that persists independently without them."

But that points on the whole problem. With comp and QM, even when you observe the moon, it is not "really" there.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence

On the other hand, Platonia, Plotinus, Plato, Kant and Leibniz,
take the opposite view or what is real and what exists. To them ideas
and other nonphysical items such as numbers or anything not extended in space,
anything outside of spacetime are what exist, the physical world out
there is merely an appearance, a phenomenon.  Following Leibniz,
I would say of such things that they live, since life has
such attributes.

Hmm... Then numbers lives, but with comp, only universal or Lobian numbers can be said reasonably enough to be living. You might go to far. Even in Plato, the Noùs content (all the ideas) is richer that its living part. I doubt Plato would have said that a circle is living. Life will need the soul to enact life in the intelligible.




So when we say that a man exists, we are speaking of the physical man.
But when we say that he lives, we are speaking of man as a mental or
living being.

The person and its body. OK. For the term "exist" I think we should allow all reading, and just ask people to remind us of the sense before the use.

With comp, all the exists comes from the "ExP(x)" use in arithmetic, and their arithmetical epistemological version, like []Ex[]P(x), or []<>Ex[]<>P(x), etc.

That gives a testable toy theology (testable as such a theology contains the physics as a subpart).

Bruno

Alberto G. Corona

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Sep 21, 2012, 12:42:47 PM9/21/12
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Hi,
Anyone serious about knowing truths must either spend its life trying to define the concept of existence and fighting for it or 
to discard it for all uses. The concept of phisical exsitence has a primitive utilitary nature:  Are there men in the other side of the mountain?. This urgent need to fix the knowledge of the phisical environment makes existence something crucial for communication.

More sophisticated civilizations added to the existence more subtle concepts, which had effects in the personal and social life of the people: philosophical, psichological , political, religious. In this sense materialism is a return to primitivism.  

In pragmatic terms,  anything that has effects in life exist. Are you humans with hands, minds etc  or are you allucinations, robots?
I don´t know it properly, but you exist for me. 

This makes the concept of existence redundant, or at most, a matter of public consensus in the context of a community. But probably existence has never been more than this.

Alberto.

2012/9/21 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>



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Alberto.

Craig Weinberg

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Sep 21, 2012, 12:58:41 PM9/21/12
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On Friday, September 21, 2012 11:51:10 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote:
Hi Craig Weinberg
 
Thwe ideal vacuum is still in spacetime.

It's in ideal spacetime.
 

Craig Weinberg

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Sep 21, 2012, 1:03:13 PM9/21/12
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On Friday, September 21, 2012 11:48:34 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote:
Hi Stephen P. King  and all

The problems imagined by materialists in invoking dualism
are just that - imaginary-- as long as mind is unextended
and brain is extended. And the so-called "hard problem" of consciousness
and the cartesian problem of interfacing or superimposing
mind and brain simply vanish. They're apples and  oranges.
They exist in different universes, which can superimpose,
the extended or physical "floating" in a sea of inextended
or nonphysical mind, or to use a better word, life.

But if I drink coffee (from the apples universe of extended stuff) then I get amped (in the oranges universe if unextended mind). Why does that problem disappear?

Craig
 

Jason Resch

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Sep 21, 2012, 1:06:24 PM9/21/12
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If you accept platonism then why do you always give Bruno trouble over there needing to be a physical universe in which to run the UD?
 


If you mathematically defined what programs are conscious you could even say the question "Does program xyz contain conscious entities?" is a mathematical question.  If it is true, then there exist conscious entities.

    We have to be able to communicate...


This isn't hard to explain.  Some programs contain multiple interacting entities.
 


Your requirement that there be some "real" implementation for computation leads to an infinite regress.  What "real" computer is our universe running on?

    The underlying Quantum's unitary transformation.

--

Bruno Marchal

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Sep 21, 2012, 1:07:27 PM9/21/12
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On 21 Sep 2012, at 17:05, Stephen P. King wrote:

> On 9/21/2012 4:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>>
>>>> And computationalists are cool as they don't think twice before
>>>> giving the restaurant menu to the puppet who asks politely. They
>>>> don't judge people from their religion, skin color, clothes, or
>>>> if made of wood, or metal or flesh, as long as they behave
>>>> respectfully of course.
>>>
>>> Maybe it is because they are really not people at all! They are
>>> algorithms hiding in a puppet.
>>
>> In that case comp is false.
>
>
> No, it is not false. Only the strong version of step 8 is false.

All steps follows from comp.

If something more is used in step 8: tell me what, but don't confuse a
conclusion with an assumption, as you did before.

I suggest a point: which is that step 8 uses: sup-phys + comp => 323.

Most people up to now agree that this follows from comp. It is hard to
formalize this, as sup-phys is hard to formalize by itself. Indeed you
can easily build ad hoc theory of matter which contradicts this. Yet,
when people effectively define such ad hoc notion of primitive matter,
without magic, it becomes Turing emulable, and their argument becomes
an argument either against comp, by making the magic non Turing
emulable, or an argument for lowering down the level, not for the
invalidity of sup-phys + comp => 323.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



meekerdb

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Sep 21, 2012, 2:49:30 PM9/21/12
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On 9/21/2012 8:05 AM, Jason Resch wrote:


On Sep 21, 2012, at 6:55 AM, "Stephen P. King" <step...@charter.net> wrote:

On 9/21/2012 1:19 AM, Jason Resch wrote:


On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 8:10 PM, Stephen P. King <step...@charter.net> wrote:
On 9/20/2012 11:48 AM, Jason Resch wrote:


On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 10:02 AM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
Here's another reductio ad absurdum illustration of comp.

If the version of comp we are discussing here is independent of physics, then shouldn't it be possible for us to program universal machines using only empty space? Length can be quantified, so why can't we just use millimeters or Planck lengths as the basis for our enumeration, addition, and multiplication and directly program from our mind to space?

Of course, it would be hard to know where it was because we would be constantly flying away from a space that was anchored to an absolute position independent of Earth, the solar system, Milky Way, etc, but that shouldn't matter anyhow since whatever method we use to directly program in empty space with our minds should also give us access to the results of the computations.

Right this is already the case.  That we can use our minds to access the results.
 

What do you think? Just as wafers of silicon glass could in theory be functionally identical to a living brain, wouldn't it be equally prejudiced to say that empty space isn't good enough to host the computations of silicon?

We don't even need empty space, we can use thought alone to figure out the future evolution of computers that already exist in Platonia and then get the result of any computation.  The problem is we are slow at doing this, so we build machines that can tell us what these platonic machines do with greater speed and accuracy than we ever could.

It's not doing the computations that is hard, the computations are already there.  The problem is learning their results.

Jason

    It takes the consumption of resources to "learn the results". This is what I have been yelling at Bruno about the entire time since I first read his beautiful papers. Understanding is never free.


For us (in this universe) to learn the results of a platonic computation may take resources, but if you happen to be that very platonic computation in question, then you don't need to do anything extra to get the result.  You are the result.

Jason
Jason,

    That is not the point! I think we all agree on what you remark upon! It is how everything gets partitioned up so that we have the kind of world we observe. We observe a classical world where things don't work with infinite resources or infinite speed or infinite connectivity. We are asking for the fact that we observe an illusion to be explained!

Does 38 have any factors?

Does program xyz stop in fewer than 10^100 steps?

Both of these are mathematical questions with only one possible answer.  Their truth is established whether or not we test it, ask it, implement it or think it.  They would be either true or false even if nothing existed for us to have any hope of answering it.

If you mathematically defined what programs are conscious you could even say the question "Does program xyz contain conscious entities?" is a mathematical question.  If it is true, then there exist conscious entities.

But a statement can be true, "Sherlock Holmes live on Baker Street." without implying any existence.

Brent

Roger Clough

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Sep 22, 2012, 5:25:47 AM9/22/12
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ROGER: Hi Bruno Marchal

I think we should only use the word "exists" only when we are
referring to physical existence.

BRUNO: Hmm.... That might aggravate the naturalist or materialist human penchant.

ROGER: Why ? Naturalist and materialist entities are extended and so physically exist.
What I say here is how I think Leibniz would respond.

Thus I can truthfully say,
for example, that God does not exist.
Wikipedia says, "In common usage, it [existence]
is the world we are aware of through our senses,
and that persists independently without them."

BRUNO: But that points on the whole problem. With comp and QM, even when you observe the moon, it is not "really" there.

ROGER: Yes it is. Although I observe the moon phenomenologically, it still has physical existence in spacetime
because it is extended. At least that's Leibniz' position, namely that phenomena, although illusions,
still have physical presence. Leibniz refers to these as "well-founded phenomena." You can still stub your toe on
phenomenological rocks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence


On the other hand, Platonia, Plotinus, Plato, Kant and Leibniz,
take the opposite view or what is real and what exists. To them ideas
and other nonphysical items such as numbers or anything not extended in space,
anything outside of spacetime are what exist, the physical world out
there is merely an appearance, a phenomenon. Following Leibniz,
I would say of such things that they live, since life has
such attributes.

BRUNO: Hmm... Then numbers lives, but with comp, only universal or Lobian numbers can be said reasonably enough to be living.
You might go to far. Even in Plato, the No? content (all the ideas) is richer that its living part. I doubt Plato would have said that
a circle is living. Life will need the soul to enact life in the intelligible.

Plato's One is a special case, saince it is a monad of monads,

And more esoteric thinking treats numbers more as beings:

http://supertarot.co.uk/westcott/monad.htm

BRUNO:  The person and its body. OK. For the term "exist" I think we should allow all reading, and just ask people to remind us of the sense before the use.


With comp, all the exists comes from the "ExP(x)" use in arithmetic, and their arithmetical epistemological version, like []Ex[]P(x), or []<>Ex[]<>P(x), etc.


That gives a testable toy theology (testable as such a theology contains the physics as a subpart).


Bruno
 
ROGER: You lost me, except I believe that a main part of confusion and disagreement on this list
comes because of multiple meanings of the word "exists",
which brings me back to where I started:


I think we should only use the word "exists" only when we are
referring to physical (extended) existence.

============================================================================================



----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-09-21, 04:10:52
Subject: Re: Numbers in Space




On 21 Sep 2012, at 03:28, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/20/2012 12:14 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Thursday, September 20, 2012 11:48:15 AM UTC-4, Jason wrote:




It's not doing the computations that is hard, the computations are already there. The problem is learning their results.

The problem is doing anything in the first place. Computations don't do anything at all. The reason that we do things is that we are not computations. We use computations. We can program things, but we can't thing programs without something to thing them with. This is a fatal flaw. If Platonia exists, it makes no sense for anything other than Platonia to exist. It would be redundant to go through the formality of executing any function is already executed non-locally. Why 'do' anything?


Bruno can 't answer that question. He is afraid that it will corrupt Olympia.



Not at all, the answer is easy here. In the big picture, that is arithmetic, nothing is done. The computations are already "done" in it. "doing things" is a relative internal notion coming from the first person perspectives.


Also, Platonia does not really exist, nor God, as existence is what belongs to Platonia. Comp follows Plotinus on this, both God and Matter does not belong to the category exist (ontologically). They are epistemological beings.


Bruno











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Onward!

Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html


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ROGER: Hi Bruno Marchal

I think we should only use the word "exists" only when we are
referring to physical existence.

BRUNO: Hmm.... That might aggravate the naturalist or materialist human penchant.

ROGER: Why ? Naturalist and materialist entities are extended and so physically exist.
What I say here is how I think Leibniz would respond.

Thus I can truthfully say,
for example, that God does not exist.
Wikipedia says, "In common usage, it [existence]
is the world we are aware of through our senses,
and that persists independently without them."

BRUNO: But that points on the whole problem. With comp and QM, even when you observe the moon, it is not "really" there.

ROGER: Yes it is. Although I observe the moon phenomenologically, it still has physical existence in spacetime
because it is extended. At least that's Leibniz' position, namely that phenomena, although illusions,
still have physical presence. Leibniz refers to these as "well-founded phenomena." You can still stub your toe on
phenomenological rocks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence

On the other hand, Platonia, Plotinus, Plato, Kant and Leibniz,
take the opposite view or what is real and what exists. To them ideas
and other nonphysical items such as numbers or anything not extended in space,
anything outside of spacetime are what exist, the physical world out
there is merely an appearance, a phenomenon. Following Leibniz,
I would say of such things that they live, since life has
such attributes.

BRUNO: Hmm... Then numbers lives, but with comp, only universal or Lobian numbers can be said reasonably enough to be living.
You might go to far. Even in Plato, the No? content (all the ideas) is richer that its living part. I doubt Plato would have said that
a circle is living. Life will need the soul to enact life in the intelligible.

ROGER: I'm not sure, but I think you're probably right and I was wrong. Living things change, numbers do not change.

ROGER: Hi Bruno Marchal

I think we should only use the word "exists" only when we are
referring to physical existence.

BRUNO: Hmm.... That might aggravate the naturalist or materialist human penchant.

ROGER: Why ? Naturalist and materialist entities are extended and so physically exist.
What I say here is how I think Leibniz would respond.

Thus I can truthfully say,
for example, that God does not exist.
Wikipedia says, "In common usage, it [existence]
is the world we are aware of through our senses,
and that persists independently without them."

BRUNO: But that points on the whole problem. With comp and QM, even when you observe the moon, it is not "really" there.

ROGER: Yes it is. Although I observe the moon phenomenologically, it still has physical existence in spacetime
because it is extended. At least that's Leibniz' position, namely that phenomena, although illusions,
still have physical presence. Leibniz refers to these as "well-founded phenomena." You can still stub your toe on
phenomenological rocks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence

On the other hand, Platonia, Plotinus, Plato, Kant and Leibniz,
take the opposite view or what is real and what exists. To them ideas
and other nonphysical items such as numbers or anything not extended in space,
anything outside of spacetime are what exist, the physical world out
there is merely an appearance, a phenomenon. Following Leibniz,
I would say of such things that they live, since life has
such attributes.

BRUNO: Hmm... Then numbers lives, but with comp, only universal or Lobian numbers can be said reasonably enough to be living.
You might go to far. Even in Plato, the No? content (all the ideas) is richer that its living part. I doubt Plato would have said that
a circle is living. Life will need the soul to enact life in the intelligible.

ROGER: I'm not sure, but I think you're probably right and I was wrong. Living things change, numbers do not change.
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The person and its body.

BRRUNO: OK. For the term "exist" I think we should allow all reading, and just ask people to remind us of the sense before the use.


With comp, all the exists comes from the "ExP(x)" use in arithmetic, and their arithmetical epistemological version, like []Ex[]P(x), or []<>Ex[]<>P(x), etc.


That gives a testable toy theology (testable as such a theology contains the physics as a subpart).


Bruno







----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-09-21, 04:10:52
Subject: Re: Numbers in Space




On 21 Sep 2012, at 03:28, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/20/2012 12:14 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Thursday, September 20, 2012 11:48:15 AM UTC-4, Jason wrote:




It's not doing the computations that is hard, the computations are already there. The problem is learning their results.

The problem is doing anything in the first place. Computations don't do anything at all. The reason that we do things is that we are not computations. We use computations. We can program things, but we can't thing programs without something to thing them with. This is a fatal flaw. If Platonia exists, it makes no sense for anything other than Platonia to exist. It would be redundant to go through the formality of executing any function is already executed non-locally. Why 'do' anything?


Bruno can 't answer that question. He is afraid that it will corrupt Olympia.



Not at all, the answer is easy here. In the big picture, that is arithmetic, nothing is done. The computations are already "done" in it. "doing things" is a relative internal notion coming from the first person perspectives.


Also, Platonia does not really exist, nor God, as existence is what belongs to Platonia. Comp follows Plotinus on this, both God and Matter does not belong to the category exist (ontologically). They are epistemological beings.


Bruno











--
Onward!

Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html


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ROGER: I'm not sure, but I think you're probably right and I was wrong. Living things change, numbers do not change.
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Roger Clough

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Sep 22, 2012, 5:34:46 AM9/22/12
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Hi Alberto G. Corona


If we can define what we are talking about, most of our problems
will be solved.

That is why I believe we ought to use the Descartes-Leibniz definition
of physical existence as that which is in spacetime (is extended).
Thus the brain exists.

Nonphysical existence (mind) is that which is not extended in space and
hence is said to be nonextended or inextended.
I have been referring to this type of existence as living,
but number does not seem tpo be alive since it does not change
while living things do. I sucggest that we use the term "mental"
for inextended entities.

Then both number and mind are mental.

Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/22/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Alberto G. Corona
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-09-21, 12:42:47
Subject: Re: Does Platonia exist ?


Hi,
Anyone serious about knowing truths must either spend its life trying to define the concept of existence and fighting for it or?
to discard it for all uses. The concept of phisical exsitence has a primitive utilitary nature: ?re there men in the other side of the mountain?. This urgent need to fix the knowledge of the phisical environment makes existence something crucial for communication.


More sophisticated civilizations added to the existence more subtle concepts, which had effects in the personal and social life of the people: philosophical, psichological , political, religious. In this?ense materialism is a return to primitivism. ?


In pragmatic terms, ?nything that has effects in life exist. Are you humans with hands, minds etc ?r are you allucinations, robots?
I don? know it properly, but you exist for me.?


This makes the concept of existence redundant, or at most, a matter of public consensus in the context of a community. But probably existence has never been more than this.


Alberto.


2012/9/21 Bruno Marchal



On 21 Sep 2012, at 12:21, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Bruno Marchal ?

I think we should only use the word "exists" ?nly when we are
referring to physical existence.


Hmm.... That might aggravate the naturalist or materialist human penchant.








Thus I can truthfully say,
for example, that God does not exist. ?
Wikipedia says, "In common usage, it [existence]
is the world we are aware of through our senses, ?
and that persists independently without them."



But that points on the whole problem. With comp and QM, even when you observe the moon, it is not "really" there.







http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence

On the other hand, Platonia, Plotinus, Plato, Kant and Leibniz,
take the opposite view or what is real and what exists. To them ideas
and other nonphysical items such as numbers or anything not extended in space,
anything outside of spacetime are what exist, the physical world out
there is merely an appearance, a phenomenon. ?ollowing Leibniz,
I would say of such things that they live, since life has
such attributes.



Hmm... Then numbers lives, but with comp, only universal or Lobian numbers can be said reasonably enough to be living. You might go to far. Even in Plato, the No? content (all the ideas) is richer that its living part. I doubt Plato would have said that a circle is living. Life will need the soul to enact life in the intelligible.







So when we say that a man exists, we are speaking of the physical man.
But when we say that he lives, we are speaking of man as a mental or
living being.



The person and its body. OK. For the term "exist" I think we should allow all reading, and just ask people to remind us of the sense before the use.


With comp, all the exists comes from the "ExP(x)" use in arithmetic, and their arithmetical epistemological version, like []Ex[]P(x), or?]<>Ex[]<>P(x), etc.


That gives a testable toy theology (testable as such a theology contains the physics as a subpart).


Bruno







----- Receiving the following content ----- ?
From: Bruno Marchal ?
Receiver: everything-list ?
Time: 2012-09-21, 04:10:52
Subject: Re: Numbers in Space




On 21 Sep 2012, at 03:28, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/20/2012 12:14 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Thursday, September 20, 2012 11:48:15 AM UTC-4, Jason wrote:




It's not doing the computations that is hard, the computations are already there. ?he problem is learning their results.

The problem is doing anything in the first place. Computations don't do anything at all. The reason that we do things is that we are not computations. We use computations. We can program things, but we can't thing programs without something to thing them with. This is a fatal flaw. If Platonia exists, it makes no sense for anything other than Platonia to exist. It would be redundant to go through the formality of executing any function is already executed non-locally. Why 'do' anything?


??runo can 't answer that question. He is afraid that it will corrupt Olympia.



Not at all, the answer is easy here. In the big picture, that is arithmetic, nothing is done. The computations are already "done" in it. "doing things" is a relative internal notion coming from the first person perspectives.


Also, Platonia does not really exist, nor God, as existence is what belongs to Platonia. Comp follows Plotinus on this, both God and Matter does not belong to the category exist (ontologically). They are epistemological beings.


Bruno











-- ?
Onward!

Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html


-- ?

Roger Clough

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Sep 22, 2012, 5:53:33 AM9/22/12
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Hi Craig Weinberg

How does ideal spacetime differ from what physicists refer to as spacetime.
Real spacetime can be integrated over dxdydzdt.

Anyway, even a physical vacuum can contain things such as radio waves,
light, intelligence, Platonia, etc.

There is no such thing as nothing, IMHO.


Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/22/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Craig Weinberg
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-09-21, 12:58:41
Subject: Re: Re: Numbers in Space
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/2OYGedkfgs0J.

Roger Clough

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Sep 22, 2012, 6:11:43 AM9/22/12
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Hi Craig Weinberg

OK that's the classic example of the pin prick and feeling pain.

It works for the worlds of apples and oranges if you accept
Hume's and Leibniz's theory of causation, or at least my understanding of it,
namely that changes in the mental world are simply synchronized
with changes in the physical world and vice versa.

Given that, to see if an action is "caused" either by mental or physical
powers you simply look at the near-future mental
or physical situation. Monads allow you to do that.
In that future state both the mental and physical situations
will have changed. And anything changed can be considered
as being caused. That's the principle of sufficient reason.




Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/22/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


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From: Craig Weinberg
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Time: 2012-09-21, 13:03:13
Subject: Re: Mind and brain as apples and oranges
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Stephen P. King

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Sep 22, 2012, 2:05:04 PM9/22/12
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On 9/22/2012 5:25 AM, Roger Clough wrote:
ROGER: Hi Bruno Marchal

I think we should only use the word "exists" only when we are
referring to physical existence.

Dear Roger,

    I think the exact opposite. We should NEVER use the word exists in reference to what is merely the subject of human perception, aka "physical existence".



BRUNO: Hmm.... That might aggravate the naturalist or materialist human penchant.

    Just a tad...



ROGER: Why ? Naturalist and materialist entities are extended and so physically exist.

    Why might wish to consider that that "extension" is the result of observation and not independent of it. What I just wrote will be controversial, as it seems to make "what exists" subject to human whim, but I am trying to make a more subtle point. The physical world has properties that we can observe by performing observations and we have learned, from very careful experiment and logical analysis, that those properties cannot be "definite" prior to the measurements. This is not to say that measurements "cause" properties, no. Measurements "select" properties. "Objects" prior to measurement have a spectrum of "possible properties" and not "definite properties. This is the lesson of QM that must be understood. To claim otherwise is to claim that nature has a preference for some basis.
    We to understand that every single act of interaction that occurs in the universe is, at some level, an act of measurement. If we consider that there are a HUGE number of measurements occurring all around us continuously, that this and this alone is responsible for the appearance of a "definite" physical world that has properties "objectively". It does this in the sense that that definiteness does not depend on the actions of any one individual observations or interaction; it depends on the sum over all of the acts of interaction.


What I say here is how I think Leibniz would respond.

Thus I can truthfully say,
for example, that God does not exist.
Wikipedia says, "In common usage, it [existence]
is the world we are aware of through our senses,
and that persists independently without them."

BRUNO: But that points on the whole problem. With comp and QM, even when you observe the moon, it is not "really" there.

ROGER: Yes it is. Although I observe the moon phenomenologically, it still has physical existence in spacetime
because it is extended.

    You are not the only observer of the moon! There is a subtle passive-aggressive solipsism in this idea that "the moon exists without me" , as if to imply the possibility of the converse: "the moon would not exist without me".

    No, By Leibniz' Monadology, all extensions are an "appearance" and not inherent or "innate". The definiteness of the Moon follows from the mutual consistency required to occur between the percepts of each and every monad such that an "incontrovertible" (empty of inconsistency) relation can exist between them. This in the language of computer science is known as "Satisfiability".


At least that's Leibniz' position, namely that phenomena, although illusions,
still have physical presence. Leibniz refers to these as "well-founded phenomena." You can still stub your toe on
phenomenological rocks.

    Yes, but Leibniz' position was that phenomenological appearance flowed strictly from the Pre-Established Harmony between monads and had no existence or "reality" otherwise.


"Existence has been variously defined by sources. In common usage, it is the world we are aware of through our senses, and that persists independently without them. Others define it as everything that is, or simply everything."

    I am one of those "others". We cannot conflate the definiteness of properties that we perceive with the bundling together of those properties in some particular location that results because of the requirement of mutual consistency of our physical universe. Existence, qua innate possibility to be, cannot be constrained by any a prior or contingent upon any a posteriori. It must simply be. So leave it alone.




On the other hand, Platonia, Plotinus, Plato, Kant and Leibniz,
take the opposite view or what is real and what exists. To them ideas
and other nonphysical items such as numbers or anything not extended in space,
anything outside of spacetime are what exist, the physical world out
there is merely an appearance, a phenomenon. Following Leibniz,
I would say of such things that they live, since life has
such attributes.


    But Leibniz did not give us a complete and consistent ToE. His P.E.H. is deeply flawed and his explanation of the world that logically follows from the synchronization of the monad's perceptions  was woefully pedantic and flawed. I suspect that he simply did not want to try to speculate on the subject but his hand was forced by his need to defend his ideas against the savage attacks from the likes of Voltaire and others.

    I believe that Leibniz' Monadology can be rehabilitated and that it presents us with the general outline of a way of thinking that is consistent with the message of QM, that there is no preferred basis and that all appearances of a physical world are purely phenomenological. Convincing the classicists and the substance monists that this is the case, well, not so easy.


BRUNO: Hmm... Then numbers lives, but with comp, only universal or Lobian numbers can be said reasonably enough to be living.
You might go to far. Even in Plato, the No? content (all the ideas) is richer that its living part. I doubt Plato would have said that
a circle is living. Life will need the soul to enact life in the intelligible.


    Of course! It has God, the supreme monad to do this. In QM terms we have the idea of the entire universe as a QM system, and we have the mysterious Wheeler-Dewitt equation describing its timeless Hamiltonian.

Plato's One is a special case, since it is a monad of monads,

    Yes, it was the Completion of all possible monads. It must be complete for obvious reasons and it must be Consistent for logical reasons, but if we examine this idea carefully, we find that there is a problem. It cannot be both simultaneously and be effective.



And more esoteric thinking treats numbers more as beings:

http://supertarot.co.uk/westcott/monad.htm

BRUNO:  The person and its body. OK. For the term "exist" I think we should allow all reading, and just ask people to remind us of the sense before the use.


With comp, all the exists comes from the "ExP(x)" use in arithmetic, and their arithmetical epistemological version, like []Ex[]P(x), or []<>Ex[]<>P(x), etc.

    Can not you see, Bruno, that this stipulation makes existence contingent upon the ability to be defined by a symbol and thus on human whim? It is the tool-maker and user that is talking through you here.




That gives a testable toy theology (testable as such a theology contains the physics as a subpart).

    Testable, sure, but theology should never be contingent. It must flow from pure necessity and our finite models are simply insufficient for this task.




Bruno
 
ROGER: You lost me, except I believe that a main part of confusion and disagreement on this list
comes because of multiple meanings of the word "exists",
which brings me back to where I started:


I think we should only use the word "exists" only when we are
referring to physical (extended) existence.

============================================================================================


    We agree, Roger, in our disagreement.

Stephen P. King

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Sep 22, 2012, 3:40:12 PM9/22/12
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On 9/22/2012 5:34 AM, Roger Clough wrote:
> Hi Alberto G. Corona
>
>
> If we can define what we are talking about, most of our problems
> will be solved.
>
> That is why I believe we ought to use the Descartes-Leibniz definition
> of physical existence as that which is in spacetime (is extended).
> Thus the brain exists.
>
> Nonphysical existence (mind) is that which is not extended in space and
> hence is said to be nonextended or inextended.
> I have been referring to this type of existence as living,
> but number does not seem tpo be alive since it does not change
> while living things do. I sucggest that we use the term "mental"
> for inextended entities.
>
> Then both number and mind are mental.
>
> Roger Clough,rcl...@verizon.net
> 9/22/2012
> "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen

Dear Roger,

The only problem that I see is that the term "living" has an
associated schemata of meaningfulness. It would be better, I argue, to
cleanser the term "existence" of its vague and nonsensical associations
and use it for the necessary possibility of both the extended and
non-extended aspects of the One.

Bruno Marchal

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Sep 22, 2012, 3:49:55 PM9/22/12
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On 22 Sep 2012, at 11:25, Roger Clough wrote:

ROGER: Hi Bruno Marchal

I think we should only use the word "exists" only when we are
referring to physical existence.

BRUNO: Hmm.... That might aggravate the naturalist or materialist human penchant.

ROGER: Why ? Naturalist and materialist entities are extended and so physically exist.

R^3 is extended, but is not physical. The Mandelbrot set is extended, but is not physical. 




What I say here is how I think Leibniz would respond.

Thus I can truthfully say,
for example, that God does not exist.
Wikipedia says, "In common usage, it [existence]
is the world we are aware of through our senses,
and that persists independently without them."

BRUNO: But that points on the whole problem. With comp and QM, even when you observe the moon, it is not "really" there.

ROGER: Yes it is. Although I observe the moon phenomenologically, it still has physical existence in spacetime
because it is extended.


I don't what is spacetime. I work on where spacetime oir space time hallucinations come from.




At least that's Leibniz' position, namely that phenomena, although illusions,
still have physical presence.

I don't understand. the "physical" is what need an explanation, notably when you assume comp.



Leibniz refers to these as "well-founded phenomena." You can still stub your toe on
phenomenological rocks.

Yes. But this is more an argument that phenomenological rocks can make you stub the toe, even when non extended, like when being virtual or arithmetical.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence


On the other hand, Platonia, Plotinus, Plato, Kant and Leibniz,
take the opposite view or what is real and what exists. To them ideas
and other nonphysical items such as numbers or anything not extended in space,
anything outside of spacetime are what exist, the physical world out
there is merely an appearance, a phenomenon. Following Leibniz,
I would say of such things that they live, since life has
such attributes.

BRUNO: Hmm... Then numbers lives, but with comp, only universal or Lobian numbers can be said reasonably enough to be living.
You might go to far. Even in Plato, the No? content (all the ideas) is richer that its living part. I doubt Plato would have said that
a circle is living. Life will need the soul to enact life in the intelligible.

Plato's One is a special case, saince it is a monad of monads,

OK, it makes sense with mùonad of monads = universal machine/number, and monad = machine/number.



And more esoteric thinking treats numbers more as beings:

http://supertarot.co.uk/westcott/monad.htm

BRUNO:  The person and its body. OK. For the term "exist" I think we should allow all reading, and just ask people to remind us of the sense before the use.


With comp, all the exists comes from the "ExP(x)" use in arithmetic, and their arithmetical epistemological version, like []Ex[]P(x), or []<>Ex[]<>P(x), etc.


That gives a testable toy theology (testable as such a theology contains the physics as a subpart).


Bruno
 
ROGER: You lost me, except I believe that a main part of confusion and disagreement on this list
comes because of multiple meanings of the word "exists",
which brings me back to where I started:


I think we should only use the word "exists" only when we are
referring to physical (extended) existence.


Which brings me back to my statement: this will not help.

You can use this in the mundane life, or even when doing physics (although with QM, even this is no more clear). But if you serach a TOE, it is clearer to clearly distinguish what you assume to exist at the start, and what exists by derivation, and what exists in the mind of the self-aware creatures appearing by derivation.

Keep in mind that the UD arrgument is supposed, at the least, to show that the TOE is just arithmetic (or anything Turing equivalent), and that the physical reality has to be recovered mathematically by the statistical interference of number's dream. That is an exercise in theoretical computer science. We can recover more, as we can get a large non communicable, but "hopable" or "fearable", part.

Bruno




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John Mikes

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Sep 22, 2012, 3:52:11 PM9/22/12
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Dear Stephen and Bruno:
(BRUNO: Hmm... Then numbers lives, but with comp, only universal or Lobian numbers can be said reasonably enough to be living.
You might go to far. Even in Plato, the No? content (all the ideas) is richer that its living part. I doubt Plato would have said that a circle is living. Life will need the soul to enact life in the intelligible.
)

I find it hard to believe that 'exist(ence?)' is depending on human thought/measurement/comprehension. If something fails to 'materialize'(?) into physical(?) existence it still can exist - in our thinking, or beyond that: in the part of the unlimited (complexity?) we never heard of.
To restrict existence to our knowledge - especially quoting ancient thinkers who experienced so much less to think of-
(e.g. Leibnitz, whom I respect no end, but over the more than 3 centuries humanity has learned SOMETHING??) 
is counterscientific -there are less polite words - and Bruno's justification depends how we define that 'circle' - OOPS: life-living. And IF we aggrevate naturalists and materialists? so be it. (Spelling var: SOB-it).
(Bruno again:  Life will need the soul to enact life in the intelligible.
Looks like Bruno's stance on the mind-body bases. I am not with that, I consider Descartes' dualism a defence against the danger to be burnt at the stake. I consider him smarter than dualistic.
 
Stephen, I think(?) you waste your time arguing in such length against a differen belief system. It is like a political campaign in the US: everybody talks ONLY to their OWN constituents, the others do not even listen. All those billion $s (there) are wasted just as all those zillion posts here.
Look at the double-meaning of your Wiki-quote. ((- I am one of those "others"-.))
 
Sorry I could not resist to reply.
 
John M

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Stephen P. King

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Sep 22, 2012, 4:03:48 PM9/22/12
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On 9/22/2012 6:11 AM, Roger Clough wrote:
> Hi Craig Weinberg
>
> OK that's the classic example of the pin prick and feeling pain.
>
> It works for the worlds of apples and oranges if you accept
> Hume's and Leibniz's theory of causation, or at least my understanding of it,
> namely that changes in the mental world are simply synchronized
> with changes in the physical world and vice versa.

Dear Roger,

The relation between the extended and non-extended is immediate
and thus must be some form of isomorphism. I porpose the Stone Duality
to be a valid and faithful representation of this isomorphism, following
the suggestion by Pratt.
The "coordination" of events of the body and states of the mind are
successive alignments that we can either case into a global explanatory
scheme, such as a PEN, or we can assume some Humean classical model.
Perhaps both Hume and Leibniz where looking at the problem from opposite
sides of a spectrum and each only seeing the pole. If We start with the
consistent idea of a monad, as defined, and then consider what it means
to have a coordination between the extended and non-extended aspects, we
notice that these can be recast into an "inside" v. "outside" relation.

It was Descartes that failed to see that the problem is not
explanation of the interaction between the mental and the physical, it
is the problem of explanation of how bodies (minds) interact with other
bodies (minds). Bruno has shown that it is possible to almost completely
capture the relational scheme needed for minds within a framework of
modal logic. He shows that all that is left is the explanation of what
is a body. Newton et al, have given us a wonderful account of the
schemata of the body but left unresolved the nature and necessity of the
mind. What if both of these schemata are just restatements of the
Polarity between what Leibniz and Hume considered as a problem of causality?

>
> Given that, to see if an action is "caused" either by mental or physical
> powers you simply look at the near-future mental
> or physical situation. Monads allow you to do that.

Don't conflate them. Think of the "causality " of each as
contravariant, as "going in opposite directions". Monads can solve this
if we understand that they have dual aspects. Mental aspects are such
that their causation is "logical entailment" and this "looks back onto
precedent" so as to not allow any state that would contradict any
previous state. Physical aspects are causal in the usual understood
sense of events causing other events in a temporal progression.

> In that future state both the mental and physical situations
> will have changed.

No! That would allow contradictions, and thus "White Rabbits", to
occur. The key is to understand that we cannot assume a global
arrangement that imposes a ordering on the Many, ala a Pre-Established
Harmony. We have to allow for novelty and choice. We can achieve this in
an explanation, but we need to consider that we are, at the end of the
day, considering finite worlds that have bounding horizons.

> And anything changed can be considered
> as being caused. That's the principle of sufficient reason.

We agree. but all of the Principles must be applicable. We cannot
cherry pick the applications of the Principles. There is the Identity of
Indiscernibles to consider, and others...

Alberto G. Corona

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Sep 22, 2012, 5:16:22 PM9/22/12
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Some random thoughs about existence:

Actually we can not pretend to know what we can not know. We have no access to the things in themselves (Kant) what we know are phenomena, that are perceptions and concepts of our mind.  But we share an space of conscience with the ones that we trust , with which we share  a set of dogmas. Few people realize that the mainstream notion of existence, the single most important and powerful dogma of existence today in the Western World is the Ocham Razor  that was originally enunciated by the Monk as something like "Do not proliferate the entities without neccesity". From this derives the scepticism and the scientific inquiry, that ruled out many many concepts from existence.  Including the ones that science still don´t know. (scientism is a fundamentalist revision that put upside down this)

Ironically, Ocham was a nominalist, and the Nominalism, the notion that no abstract concept exist except the phisical ones( and perhaps numbers) was a philosophical attempt of Duns Scotus for liberating God from  any limitations of reason, that Aristotelian scholastics, specially Saint Thomas Aquinas proposed, derived from Natural Theology: Limitations of the type: "God can not do Evil, God can not create imperfect things.Therefore what exist can not be contradictory" etc Scotus said that  concepts as "perfection" and "the Good" can not be above God. To avoid contradictions of the type "God Is Perfect and can do evil and contradictory Things" Scotus said that Good and Perfection and all the asbstract concepts don't exist, and are meaningles. Scotus said that the only revelation was the Bible, not the study of the Creation in a naturalistic way.

Ochamist and nominalists in general (mostly protestants) abandoned philosophy. But although they rejected to philosophize about the Good and the Perfection, they believed in the practical value of these concepts, because the bible said so. But in the same way that Escotus wanted to liberate God from Moral concepts, there were people that wanted to liberate men too. That was a natural evolution of the philosophy of Duns Scotus. From Duns Scotus to Marx and Hitler and  Charles Manson there is a single step: to reject Christianity.  The result is a existential landscape where the only firm ground is the existence of phisical objects and their laws. For al the rest, there is no God, Good, no Evil. All is relative. Do what thou wilt. There are minor gods and sacred words  created to alleviate this mess of course: Ecology, democracy etc.

One last thing to finish: To demonstrate that existence is conventional, and has a evolutionary nature, is that the existence or not of something depends in the group of people that believe it. We can not talk about existence outside of the people thtat don´t accept our premises. Suppose that islamists conquer the universal caliphate and any self proclaimed infidel is killed. then, undoubtably, Alá will exist for everyone. Marginal heterodoxies will go on, but with the same status than today criminals that are UFO believers. 

But in the same way that the laws of fluidodinamics say that a penguin can not fly, a religion based in volence can not flourish because it jeopardizes social collaboration, according with game theory. So at the end of the day, there are laws for existence because there are laws of nature. Only that we still don´t know many of them. Then we discover truth by making experiments. But to know the higer truths, nature does experiments with us by selecting the most sucessful societies and their respective beliefs.



2012/9/22 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>

On 22 Sep 2012, at 11:25, Roger Clough wrote:

t: Hi Bruno Marchal



--
Alberto.

Stephen P. King

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Sep 22, 2012, 6:56:32 PM9/22/12
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On 9/22/2012 3:52 PM, John Mikes wrote:
Dear Stephen and Bruno:
(BRUNO: Hmm... Then numbers lives, but with comp, only universal or Lobian numbers can be said reasonably enough to be living.
You might go to far. Even in Plato, the No? content (all the ideas) is richer that its living part. I doubt Plato would have said that a circle is living. Life will need the soul to enact life in the intelligible.
)

I find it hard to believe that 'exist(ence?)' is depending on human thought/measurement/comprehension. If something fails to 'materialize'(?) into physical(?) existence it still can exist - in our thinking, or beyond that: in the part of the unlimited (complexity?) we never heard of.
To restrict existence to our knowledge - especially quoting ancient thinkers who experienced so much less to think of-
(e.g. Leibnitz, whom I respect no end, but over the more than 3 centuries humanity has learned SOMETHING??) 
is counterscientific -there are less polite words - and Bruno's justification depends how we define that 'circle' - OOPS: life-living. And IF we aggrevate naturalists and materialists? so be it. (Spelling var: SOB-it).
(Bruno again:  Life will need the soul to enact life in the intelligible.
Looks like Bruno's stance on the mind-body bases. I am not with that, I consider Descartes' dualism a defence against the danger to be burnt at the stake. I consider him smarter than dualistic.
 
Stephen, I think(?) you waste your time arguing in such length against a differen belief system. It is like a political campaign in the US: everybody talks ONLY to their OWN constituents, the others do not even listen. All those billion $s (there) are wasted just as all those zillion posts here.
Look at the double-meaning of your Wiki-quote. ((- I am one of those "others"-.))
 
Sorry I could not resist to reply.
 
John M
 
 
Dear John,

    I try and I deeply appreciate your comment. You understand me sometimes. Sometimes I don't have any idea where the thoughts that I write come from or what they mean until later...

Bruno Marchal

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Sep 23, 2012, 3:25:51 AM9/23/12
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On 22 Sep 2012, at 20:05, Stephen P. King wrote:


With comp, all the exists comes from the "ExP(x)" use in arithmetic, and their arithmetical epistemological version, like []Ex[]P(x), or []<>Ex[]<>P(x), etc. 

    Can not you see, Bruno, that this stipulation makes existence contingent upon the ability to be defined by a symbol and thus on human whim? It is the tool-maker and user that is talking through you here.

Confusion of level. The stipulation used to described such existence does not makes such existence contingent at all. Only the stipulation is contingent, not its content, which can be considered as absolute, as we work in the standard model (by the very definition of comp: we work with standard comp (we would not say "yes" to a doctor if he propose a non standard cording of our brain).






That gives a testable toy theology (testable as such a theology contains the physics as a subpart). 

    Testable, sure, but theology should never be contingent. It must flow from pure necessity and our finite models are simply insufficient for this task.

First our model is not finite, only our theories and machines are. And the AUDA illustrates clearly that theology's shape (the hypostases) follows pure necessity, even if all machine will define a particular arithmetical content for each theology, but this is natural, as it concerns the private life of individual machine (it is the same for us by default in all religion).

Bruno




Alberto G. Corona

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Sep 23, 2012, 6:18:15 AM9/23/12
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This is my schema. 

Can you complete/ammend it?

Things in themselves (noumena) ->  - Have a computational nature (Bruno) : few components: numbers, + *
                                                         - Is just a mathematical manyfold(Me),  few components: equations
                                                         - Are Monadic (Roger). many components
                                                         - Are phisical: includes the "phisical world" with: space, time persons, cars. (physicalists)

Things perceived (phenomena) -> - Relies on the architecture of the mind, the activity of the brain (a local arangement that 
                                                         keep entropy constant along a direction in space-time,  the product of natural selection
                                                        Therefore, existence is selected (Me)
                                                      - The mind is a robust computation -and therefore implies a certain selection- (Bruno)
                                                      - Are created by the activity of the supreme monad (Roger)
                                                      - Does not matter (physicalists)



2012/9/23 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>

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Stephen P. King

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Sep 23, 2012, 10:55:08 AM9/23/12
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On 9/23/2012 6:18 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
This is my schema. 

Can you complete/ammend it?

Things in themselves (noumena) ->  - Have a computational nature (Bruno) : few components: numbers, + *
                                                         - Is just a mathematical manyfold(Me),  few components: equations
                                                         - Are Monadic (Roger). many components
                                                         - Are phisical: includes the "phisical world" with: space, time persons, cars. (physicalists)

Things perceived (phenomena) -> - Relies on the architecture of the mind, the activity of the brain (a local arangement that 
                                                         keep entropy constant along a direction in space-time,  the product of natural selection
                                                        Therefore, existence is selected (Me)
                                                      - The mind is a robust computation -and therefore implies a certain selection- (Bruno)
                                                      - Are created by the activity of the supreme monad (Roger)
                                                      - Does not matter (physicalists)


Hi Alberto,

    As I see it, the idea that the noumena are specific and definite without being given in association with phenomena is false as it implies that the "things in themselves"" have innate properties for no reason whatsoever...



2012/9/23 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>

On 22 Sep 2012, at 20:05, Stephen P. King wrote:


With comp, all the exists comes from the "ExP(x)" use in arithmetic, and their arithmetical epistemological version, like []Ex[]P(x), or []<>Ex[]<>P(x), etc. 

    Can not you see, Bruno, that this stipulation makes existence contingent upon the ability to be defined by a symbol and thus on human whim? It is the tool-maker and user that is talking through you here.

Confusion of level. The stipulation used to described such existence does not makes such existence contingent at all. Only the stipulation is contingent, not its content, which can be considered as absolute, as we work in the standard model (by the very definition of comp: we work with standard comp (we would not say "yes" to a doctor if he propose a non standard cording of our brain).






That gives a testable toy theology (testable as such a theology contains the physics as a subpart). 

    Testable, sure, but theology should never be contingent. It must flow from pure necessity and our finite models are simply insufficient for this task.

First our model is not finite, only our theories and machines are. And the AUDA illustrates clearly that theology's shape (the hypostases) follows pure necessity, even if all machine will define a particular arithmetical content for each theology, but this is natural, as it concerns the private life of individual machine (it is the same for us by default in all religion).

Bruno





Bruno Marchal

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Sep 23, 2012, 11:16:38 AM9/23/12
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On 23 Sep 2012, at 12:18, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

This is my schema. 

Can you complete/ammend it?

Things in themselves (noumena) ->  - Have a computational nature (Bruno) : few components: numbers, + *

OK, for the chosen basic ontology. Numbers, and theor additive and multiplicative laws. That is enough, as is any Turing complete ontology.
I would not described the numbers has components, though, because this could lead to the misleading idea that that what exists might be made of numbers, and that is a physicalist non correct view of how what exist epistemologically emerges (through complex number relations and their epistemological content which can be shown to exists once we assume computationalism).
Also, if the things in themselves have a computational nature (addition and multiplication are computable, the whole thing is not, as arithmetical truth is not computable at all, and will play an important role in the emergence of the epistemological reality. In particular, the internal epistemological realities will have many non computable features, like machines and programs have too).




                                                         - Is just a mathematical manyfold(Me),  few components: equations
                                                         - Are Monadic (Roger). many components
                                                         - Are phisical: includes the "phisical world" with: space, time persons, cars. (physicalists)

Things perceived (phenomena) -> - Relies on the architecture of the mind, the activity of the brain (a local arangement that 
                                                         keep entropy constant along a direction in space-time,  the product of natural selection
                                                        Therefore, existence is selected (Me)

Is not a brain something perceived? Is that not circular? I can understand "relies on the architecture of the mind" (the dreams of the universal number), but what is a brain? what is time, space, nature?


                                                      - The mind is a robust computation -and therefore implies a certain selection- (Bruno)

The 1-mind is not a computation, but a selection of a infinity of computation among an infinity of computations.



                                                      - Are created by the activity of the supreme monad (Roger)
                                                      - Does not matter (physicalists)


Hmm... Many physicalists, notably when computationalist, believe that the mind is real, and can matter. Only, when they use comp to justify this, or to pretend the mind-body problem is solved by comp, they are inconsistent (as shown normally by the UD Argument).

I am not sure if your theory take or not the first person indeterminacy into account. Do you agree(*) with UDA 1-4 ?

Bruno





2012/9/23 Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>

On 22 Sep 2012, at 20:05, Stephen P. King wrote:


With comp, all the exists comes from the "ExP(x)" use in arithmetic, and their arithmetical epistemological version, like []Ex[]P(x), or []<>Ex[]<>P(x), etc. 

    Can not you see, Bruno, that this stipulation makes existence contingent upon the ability to be defined by a symbol and thus on human whim? It is the tool-maker and user that is talking through you here.

Confusion of level. The stipulation used to described such existence does not makes such existence contingent at all. Only the stipulation is contingent, not its content, which can be considered as absolute, as we work in the standard model (by the very definition of comp: we work with standard comp (we would not say "yes" to a doctor if he propose a non standard cording of our brain).






That gives a testable toy theology (testable as such a theology contains the physics as a subpart). 

    Testable, sure, but theology should never be contingent. It must flow from pure necessity and our finite models are simply insufficient for this task.

First our model is not finite, only our theories and machines are. And the AUDA illustrates clearly that theology's shape (the hypostases) follows pure necessity, even if all machine will define a particular arithmetical content for each theology, but this is natural, as it concerns the private life of individual machine (it is the same for us by default in all religion).

Bruno





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Roger Clough

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Hi Bruno Marchal


Potential definitions :

To Exist = to have objective being, to physically be, to be within spacetime, having spacial location and extension at time t - a thing such as a brain or object

To Inhere = to have subjective being, to mentally or nonphysically be, that is, to be outside of spacetime, inextended (without spacial location at time t), such as thoughts, numbers, quanta, qualia, etc.

Thus brain exists, mind inheres.

An agent = An inherent control and observation center.

A self = an agent

Actual = to exist

Real = either to exist or to inhere even without a self or agent to observe or control it.


Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/24/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Bruno Marchal
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Time: 2012-09-23, 11:16:38
Subject: Re: What is 'Existence'?

==============================================================


On 23 Sep 2012, at 12:18, Alberto G. Corona wrote:


This is my schema.


Can you complete/ammend it?


Things in themselves (noumena) -> - Have a computational nature (Bruno) : few components: numbers, + *


OK, for the chosen basic ontology. Numbers, and theor additive and multiplicative laws. That is enough, as is any Turing complete ontology.
I would not described the numbers has components, though, because this could lead to the misleading idea that that what exists might be made of numbers, and that is a physicalist non correct view of how what exist epistemologically emerges (through complex number relations and their epistemological content which can be shown to exists once we assume computationalism).
Also, if the things in themselves have a computational nature (addition and multiplication are computable, the whole thing is not, as arithmetical truth is not computable at all, and will play an important role in the emergence of the epistemological reality. In particular, the internal epistemological realities will have many non computable features, like machines and programs have too).








- Is just a mathematical manyfold(Me), few components: equations
- Are Monadic (Roger). many components
- Are phisical: includes the "phisical world" with: space, time persons, cars. (physicalists)


Things perceived (phenomena) -> - Relies on the architecture of the mind, the activity of the brain (a local arangement that
keep entropy constant along a direction in space-time, the product of natural selection
Therefore, existence is selected (Me)


Is not a brain something perceived? Is that not circular? I can understand "relies on the architecture of the mind" (the dreams of the universal number), but what is a brain? what is time, space, nature?




- The mind is a robust computation -and therefore implies a certain selection- (Bruno)


The 1-mind is not a computation, but a selection of a infinity of computation among an infinity of computations.






- Are created by the activity of the supreme monad (Roger)
- Does not matter (physicalists)




Hmm... Many physicalists, notably when computationalist, believe that the mind is real, and can matter. Only, when they use comp to justify this, or to pretend the mind-body problem is solved by comp, they are inconsistent (as shown normally by the UD Argument).


I am not sure if your theory take or not the first person indeterminacy into account. Do you agree(*) with UDA 1-4 ?


Bruno


(*) http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html








2012/9/23 Bruno Marchal



Roger Clough

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Hi Bruno Marchal

But R^3 is not extended in spacetime, is not at location r at time t
and isn't a physical but a mental object

I would say rather that R^3 inheres.


Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/24/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


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Subject: Re: Does Platonia exist ?




OK, it makes sense with m?nad of monads = universal machine/number, and monad = machine/number.
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Alberto G. Corona

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Sep 24, 2012, 6:46:20 AM9/24/12
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Hi Stephen, 
Any idea about whatever is outside of the mind  (noumena, thing it itself as Kant named it)    before it is experienced as phenomena is and will remain speculative forever. By definition.  But this does not prohibit our speculations...


2012/9/23 Stephen P. King <step...@charter.net>
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Alberto G. Corona

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The unavoidable speculative nature of neumena makes existence uncertain to the most deep level. All we have is the phenomena, that are mental. So certainty of existence has meaning within an space of shared conscience of believers that have, by various mental processes, "certainty" of existence of somethig.

2012/9/24 Alberto G. Corona <agoc...@gmail.com>



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Alberto G. Corona

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Hi Bruno,

With components I mean a neutral enumeration of entities. perhaps lebnitzian monads would be more appropriate.

Besides numbers + and * I think that is necessary  machines or any kind of instruction set + an execution unit? . It isn't?

Stephen P. King

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On 9/24/2012 6:46 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
> Hi Stephen,
> Any idea about whatever is outside of the mind (noumena, thing it
> itself as Kant named it) before it is experienced as phenomena is
> and will remain speculative forever. By definition. But this does not
> prohibit our speculations...
>
>
I agree. ;-)

Roger Clough

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Hi John Mikes

At the time I thought to call the nonphysical realm life,
but since decided to use a less red flag term, that
the nonphysical domain inheres, while the physical realm exists.


Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/24/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


----- Receiving the following content -----
From: John Mikes
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Time: 2012-09-22, 15:52:11
Subject: Re: What is 'Existence'?


Dear Stephen and Bruno:
(BRUNO: Hmm... Then numbers lives, but with comp, only universal or Lobian numbers can be said reasonably enough to be living.
You might go to far. Even in Plato, the No? content (all the ideas) is richer that its living part. I doubt Plato would have said that a circle is living. Life will need the soul to enact life in the intelligible. )

I find it hard to believe that 'exist(ence?)' is depending on human thought/measurement/comprehension. If something fails to 'materialize'(?) into physical(?) existence it still can exist - in our thinking, or beyond that: in the part of the unlimited (complexity?) we never heard of.
To restrict existence to our knowledge - especially quoting ancient thinkers who experienced so much less to think of-
(e.g. Leibnitz, whom I respect no end, but over the more than 3 centuries humanity has learned SOMETHING??)?
is counterscientific -there are less polite words - and Bruno's justification depends how we define that 'circle' - OOPS: life-living. And IF we aggrevate naturalists and materialists? so be it. (Spelling var: SOB-it).
(Bruno again:? Life will need the soul to enact life in the intelligible.
Looks like Bruno's stance on the mind-body bases. I am not with that, I consider Descartes' dualism a defence against the danger to be burnt at the stake. I consider him smarter than dualistic.
?
Stephen, I think(?) you waste your time arguing in such length against a differen belief system. It is like a political campaign in the US: everybody talks ONLY to their OWN constituents, the others do not even listen. All those billion $s (there) are wasted just as all those zillion posts here.
Look at the double-meaning of your Wiki-quote. ((-? am one of those "others"-.))
?
Sorry I could not resist to reply.
?
John M
?
?
?
?
?
?
On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 2:05 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 9/22/2012 5:25 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

ROGER: Hi Bruno Marchal

I think we should only use the word "exists" only when we are
referring to physical existence.


Dear Roger,

?? I think the exact opposite. We should NEVER use the word exists in reference to what is merely the subject of human perception, aka "physical existence".



BRUNO: Hmm.... That might aggravate the naturalist or materialist human penchant.


?? Just a tad...



ROGER: Why ? Naturalist and materialist entities are extended and so physically exist.


?? Why might wish to consider that that "extension" is the result of observation and not independent of it. What I just wrote will be controversial, as it seems to make "what exists" subject to human whim, but I am trying to make a more subtle point. The physical world has properties that we can observe by performing observations and we have learned, from very careful experiment and logical analysis, that those properties cannot be "definite" prior to the measurements. This is not to say that measurements "cause" properties, no. Measurements "select" properties. "Objects" prior to measurement have a spectrum of "possible properties" and not "definite properties. This is the lesson of QM that must be understood. To claim otherwise is to claim that nature has a preference for some basis.
?? We to understand that every single act of interaction that occurs in the universe is, at some level, an act of measurement. If we consider that there are a HUGE number of measurements occurring all around us continuously, that this and this alone is responsible for the appearance of a "definite" physical world that has properties "objectively". It does this in the sense that that definiteness does not depend on the actions of any one individual observations or interaction; it depends on the sum over all of the acts of interaction.


What I say here is how I think Leibniz would respond.

Thus I can truthfully say,
for example, that God does not exist.
Wikipedia says, "In common usage, it [existence]
is the world we are aware of through our senses,
and that persists independently without them."

BRUNO: But that points on the whole problem. With comp and QM, even when you observe the moon, it is not "really" there.

ROGER: Yes it is. Although I observe the moon phenomenologically, it still has physical existence in spacetime
because it is extended.

?? You are not the only observer of the moon! There is a subtle passive-aggressive solipsism in this idea that "the moon exists without me" , as if to imply the possibility of the converse: "the moon would not exist without me".

?? No, By Leibniz' Monadology, all extensions are an "appearance" and not inherent or "innate". The definiteness of the Moon follows from the mutual consistency required to occur between the percepts of each and every monad such that an "incontrovertible" (empty of inconsistency) relation can exist between them. This in the language of computer science is known as "Satisfiability".


At least that's Leibniz' position, namely that phenomena, although illusions,
still have physical presence. Leibniz refers to these as "well-founded phenomena." You can still stub your toe on
phenomenological rocks.


?? Yes, but Leibniz' position was that phenomenological appearance flowed strictly from the Pre-Established Harmony between monads and had no existence or "reality" otherwise.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence


"Existence has been variously defined by sources. In common usage, it is the world we are aware of through our senses, and that persists independently without them. Others define it as everything that is, or simply everything."

?? I am one of those "others". We cannot conflate the definiteness of properties that we perceive with the bundling together of those properties in some particular location that results because of the requirement of mutual consistency of our physical universe. Existence, qua innate possibility to be, cannot be constrained by any a prior or contingent upon any a posteriori. It must simply be. So leave it alone.




On the other hand, Platonia, Plotinus, Plato, Kant and Leibniz,
take the opposite view or what is real and what exists. To them ideas
and other nonphysical items such as numbers or anything not extended in space,
anything outside of spacetime are what exist, the physical world out
there is merely an appearance, a phenomenon. Following Leibniz,
I would say of such things that they live, since life has
such attributes.



?? But Leibniz did not give us a complete and consistent ToE. His P.E.H. is deeply flawed and his explanation of the world that logically follows from the synchronization of the monad's perceptions? was woefully pedantic and flawed. I suspect that he simply did not want to try to speculate on the subject but his hand was forced by his need to defend his ideas against the savage attacks from the likes of Voltaire and others.

?? I believe that Leibniz' Monadology can be rehabilitated and that it presents us with the general outline of a way of thinking that is consistent with the message of QM, that there is no preferred basis and that all appearances of a physical world are purely phenomenological. Convincing the classicists and the substance monists that this is the case, well, not so easy.


BRUNO: Hmm... Then numbers lives, but with comp, only universal or Lobian numbers can be said reasonably enough to be living.
You might go to far. Even in Plato, the No? content (all the ideas) is richer that its living part. I doubt Plato would have said that
a circle is living. Life will need the soul to enact life in the intelligible.



?? Of course! It has God, the supreme monad to do this. In QM terms we have the idea of the entire universe as a QM system, and we have the mysterious Wheeler-Dewitt equation describing its timeless Hamiltonian.


Plato's One is a special case, since it is a monad of monads,


?? Yes, it was the Completion of all possible monads. It must be complete for obvious reasons and it must be Consistent for logical reasons, but if we examine this idea carefully, we find that there is a problem. It cannot be both simultaneously and be effective.



And more esoteric thinking treats numbers more as beings:

http://supertarot.co.uk/westcott/monad.htm

BRUNO:? The person and its body. OK. For the term "exist" I think we should allow all reading, and just ask people to remind us of the sense before the use.


With comp, all the exists comes from the "ExP(x)" use in arithmetic, and their arithmetical epistemological version, like []Ex[]P(x), or []<>Ex[]<>P(x), etc.


?? Can not you see, Bruno, that this stipulation makes existence contingent upon the ability to be defined by a symbol and thus on human whim? It is the tool-maker and user that is talking through you here.




That gives a testable toy theology (testable as such a theology contains the physics as a subpart).


?? Testable, sure, but theology should never be contingent. It must flow from pure necessity and our finite models are simply insufficient for this task.




Bruno
?
ROGER: You lost me, except I believe that a main part of confusion and disagreement on this list
comes because of multiple meanings of the word "exists",
which brings me back to where I started:


I think we should only use the word "exists" only when we are
referring to physical (extended) existence.

============================================================================================




?? We agree, Roger, in our disagreement.

Roger Clough

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Sep 24, 2012, 8:05:37 AM9/24/12
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Hi Stephen P. King

What's in a name ?

If you have a better word for what I have been calling
physical existence, please say it.


Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/24/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Subject: Re: What is 'Existence'?


Roger Clough

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Hi Stephen P. King

I have since abandoned the term living for the term "to inhere"
to apply to nonphysical existence such as thoughts or ideas or numbers.


Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/24/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


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Time: 2012-09-22, 15:40:12
Subject: Re: Does Platonia exist ?


Roger Clough

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Sep 24, 2012, 8:12:43 AM9/24/12
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Hi Stephen P. King
 
I have trouble conceiving an isomorphism (or anything comparative) between
something that is there and something that is not. The something
that is not there is not the absence of the thing that was,
since it has no shape, no location, and cannot be found by a physical
search.
 
 
Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/24/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen
 
 
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Stephen P. King

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On 9/24/2012 8:05 AM, Roger Clough wrote:
> Hi Stephen P. King
>
> What's in a name ?
>
> If you have a better word for what I have been calling
> physical existence, please say it.
>
>
>
"Actuality".

Roger Clough

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Sep 24, 2012, 8:53:25 AM9/24/12
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Hi Stephen P. King

At least as far as the physical world goes,
the grand project of science is to find out what the noumena are.


Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/24/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


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Time: 2012-09-24, 07:40:08
Subject: Re: What is 'Existence'?


Bruno Marchal

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On 24 Sep 2012, at 12:26, Roger Clough wrote:

> Hi Bruno Marchal
>
>
> Potential definitions :
>
> To Exist = to have objective being, to physically be, to be within
> spacetime, having spacial location and extension at time t - a thing
> such as a brain or object

But "exists" has simple meaning, when applied on what you assume to
exist primitively. The words "objective", "physically", "being",
"spacetime" "spatial", "location", "time", "brain", "object" have no
simple meaning that everyone can take for granted, when working on th
TOE search, or when trying to get some light on the mind body problem.

I thought you were a Platonist, even if a Leibnizian one, but now it
seems you believe in primitive physical notion, like spacetime, so it
becomes hard to figure out what are your sharable assumptions.



>
> To Inhere = to have subjective being, to mentally or nonphysically
> be, that is, to be outside of spacetime, inextended (without spacial
> location at time t), such as thoughts, numbers, quanta, qualia, etc.
>
> Thus brain exists, mind inheres.

?
I don't see the logic leading to brain exist, from mind inhere.
Brain exists, but with comp it can't be a primitive existence, and so
"brain exists" is a pattern that we have to explain from an ontology
with not assumed brain.


>
> An agent = An inherent control and observation center.
>
> A self = an agent
>
> Actual = to exist
>
> Real = either to exist or to inhere even without a self or agent to
> observe or control it.

That can make sense in some context, but not when you search a theory
*explaining* or enlightening the big picture. You need a criterion of
existence for what you take as primitive, and then you can defined the
many different sorts of existence which can be reduced to the
primitive existence.
But you betrayed yourself by insisting that we don't mix theology and
science, where I think that the separation of theology and science is
very big mistake, even if easily explainable by Darwin and human short
term interests.
I cannot convince you by reason, on something about which you decided
to abandon reason.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



Bruno Marchal

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Sep 24, 2012, 9:03:42 AM9/24/12
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On 24 Sep 2012, at 12:32, Roger Clough wrote:

> Hi Bruno Marchal
>
> But R^3 is not extended in spacetime, is not at location r at time t
> and isn't a physical but a mental object

What makes you sure that the "physical" is not a mental object?



>
> I would say rather that R^3 inheres.

Not sure this helps.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



Roger Clough

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Sep 24, 2012, 9:06:36 AM9/24/12
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Hi Stephen P. King

Yes, "actual" is much better than "exist". Good.

I suppose I could say I have actual thoughts, but
that's I believe a misnaming.

There is a similar or even identical idea that goes back Aristotle.

en穞el積穋hy (n-tl-k)
n. pl. en穞el積穋hies
1. In the philosophy of Aristotle, the condition of a thing whose essence is fully realized; actuality.
2. In some philosophical systems, a vital force that directs an organism toward self-fulfillment.
[Late Latin entelecha, from Greek entelekheia : entels, complete (en-, in; see en-2 + telos, completion; see kwel-1 in Indo-European roots) + ekhein, to have; see segh- in Indo-European roots.]

entelechy [?n't?l?k?]
n pl -chies Metaphysics
1. (Philosophy) (in the philosophy of Aristotle) actuality as opposed to potentiality
2. (Philosophy) (in the system of Leibnitz) the soul or principle of perfection of an object or person; a monad or basic constituent
3. (Philosophy) something that contains or realizes a final cause, esp the vital force thought to direct the life of an organism




Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/24/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Stephen P. King
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-09-24, 08:21:51
Subject: Re: What is 'Existence'?


Stephen P. King

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Sep 24, 2012, 9:08:03 AM9/24/12
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On 9/24/2012 8:12 AM, Roger Clough wrote:
Hi Stephen P. King
 
I have trouble conceiving an isomorphism (or anything comparative) between
something that is there and something that is not. The something
that is not there is not the absence of the thing that was,
since it has no shape, no location, and cannot be found by a physical
search.
 
 

Hi Roger,

    I sympathize with you but must point out that one must be sure that one's idea and assumptions are correct. What I am proposing is that that Minds are, at the lowest level, a relational structure that can be well represented by Boolean Algebras. There is a duality between BAs and a type of topological space:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone%27s_representation_theorem_for_Boolean_algebras

"Each Boolean algebra B has an associated topological space, denoted here S(B), called its Stone space. The points in S(B) are theultrafilters on B, or equivalently the homomorphisms from B to the two-element Boolean algebra. The topology on S(B) is generated by a basis consisting of all sets of the form
\{ x \in S(B)
          \mid b \in x\}, where b is an element of B.

For any Boolean algebra B, S(B) is a compact totally disconnected Hausdorff space; such spaces are called Stone spaces (also profinite spaces). Conversely, given any topological space X, the collection of subsets of X that are clopen (both closed and open) is a Boolean algebra."


 

     This made complete sense to me once I realized what the Stone spaces "look like": a collection of particles in an emptiness (frozen in time). (A Cantor dust is a Stone space.) A nice illustration of the physical universe once we strip away of the detail. When we take change into account we get a succession of Stone spaces and BAs. The direction of the "arrows" of evolution of these are in opposite directions. BAs evolve by "looking backwards" to be sure no new proposition contradicts a previously accepted proposition. This property alone makes this hypothesis very appealing as it leads naturally to a reason why there are no "White Rabbits" (spontaneous events that present contradictory information, like a "White Rabbit" popping out of nowhere).

Stephen P. King

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Sep 24, 2012, 9:11:54 AM9/24/12
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On 9/24/2012 9:06 AM, Roger Clough wrote:
> Hi Stephen P. King
>
> Yes, "actual" is much better than "exist". Good.
>
> I suppose I could say I have actual thoughts, but
> that's I believe a misnaming.
>
> There is a similar or even identical idea that goes back Aristotle.

> entelechy (n-tl-k)
> n. pl. entelechies
> 1. In the philosophy of Aristotle, the condition of a thing whose essence is fully realized; actuality.
> 2. In some philosophical systems, a vital force that directs an organism toward self-fulfillment.
> [Late Latin entelecha, from Greek entelekheia : entels, complete (en-, in; see en-2 + telos, completion; see kwel-1 in Indo-European roots) + ekhein, to have; see segh- in Indo-European roots.]
>
> entelechy [?n't?l?k?]
> n pl -chies Metaphysics
> 1. (Philosophy) (in the philosophy of Aristotle) actuality as opposed to potentiality
> 2. (Philosophy) (in the system of Leibnitz) the soul or principle of perfection of an object or person; a monad or basic constituent
> 3. (Philosophy) something that contains or realizes a final cause, esp the vital force thought to direct the life of an organism
>

Yep, that was my motivation, the consideration of "entelechy". ;-)

Roger Clough

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Sep 24, 2012, 9:11:32 AM9/24/12
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Hi Bruno Marchal
 
Being a pragmatist (and an engineer), I believe what works or makes the best sense.
I am basically trying to understand the relationship between
Platonism and modern science. So it's not either/or, its both/and.
 
Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/24/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen
 
 
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Time: 2012-09-24, 08:58:12
Subject: Re: Potential definitions--Re: Re: What is 'Existence'?

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Bruno Marchal

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Sep 24, 2012, 9:21:42 AM9/24/12
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On 24 Sep 2012, at 13:03, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

Hi Bruno,

With components I mean a neutral enumeration of entities. perhaps lebnitzian monads would be more appropriate.

Besides numbers + and * I think that is necessary  machines or any kind of instruction set + an execution unit? . It isn't?

You don't need this. You can define instruction sets and execution units with numbers and the + and * laws. That was Gödel did in his 1931 paper, and it is the root of theoretical computer science.
Arithmetic implicitly defines all computations, and for the first person indeterminacy, those implicit definitions are enough to explain the orogin of the physical sensations and theories.

Bruno

Roger Clough

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Sep 24, 2012, 9:34:25 AM9/24/12
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Hi Bruno Marchal

Good point. Some say that matter is ultimately mental. Hmmmm. But as far as I know,
it still seems to have dimensions at least down to the fundamental particle level.
And Heisenberg seems to forbid us from having much success at smaller sizes.

I guess I should define the physical as that which is, or is thought to be,
measureable. So:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Actual = that which has spacetime dimensions

Inherent = that which does not have spacetime dimensions

An agent = An inherent and autonomous control and observation center.

A self = an agent

Real = persistent actuality or inherence independent of a self

Consciousness = The realm of any activity by a self

Intelligence = Decision making by an agent or self

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/24/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-09-24, 09:03:42
Subject: Re: Does Platonia exist ?


Roger Clough

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Sep 24, 2012, 9:40:17 AM9/24/12
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Hi Bruno Marchal

R^3 has no dimensions, and does not exist in spacetime.

So instead of calling it actual, I say that it inheres (when read or thought).


Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/24/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-09-24, 09:03:42
Subject: Re: Does Platonia exist ?


Roger Clough

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Sep 24, 2012, 10:21:37 AM9/24/12
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Hi Stephen P. King

OK, I can understand that at least in princiople. I recall a statement
by the famous Maharishi Yogi from way back:
 
"Knowledge is structured in consciousness."
 
I had forgotten the "structured" part.
 
To my mind at least, that explains why nature 
shows structure as well.  A plausibility argument for
the existence of God.


Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net
9/24/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen


----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Stephen P. King
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-09-24, 09:08:03
Subject: Re: On Causation with Mind and brain as apples and oranges


On 9/24/2012 8:12 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Stephen P. King

I have trouble conceiving an isomorphism (or anything comparative) between
something that is there and something that is not. The something
that is not there is not the absence of the thing that was,
since it has no shape, no location, and cannot be found by a physical
search.




Hi Roger,

    I sympathize with you but must point out that one must be sure that one's idea and assumptions are correct. What I am proposing is that that Minds are, at the lowest level, a relational structure that can be well represented by Boolean Algebras. There is a duality between BAs and a type of topological space:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone%27s_representation_theorem_for_Boolean_algebras

"Each Boolean algebra B has an associated topological space, denoted here S(B), called its Stone space. The points in S(B) are theultrafilters on B, or equivalently the homomorphisms from B to the two-element Boolean algebra. The topology on S(B) is generated by a basis consisting of all sets of the form

Bruno Marchal

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Sep 24, 2012, 10:37:59 AM9/24/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On 24 Sep 2012, at 15:11, Roger Clough wrote:

Hi Bruno Marchal
 
Being a pragmatist (and an engineer), I believe what works or makes the best sense.
I am basically trying to understand the relationship between
Platonism and modern science. So it's not either/or, its both/and.

As an extreme conservative, I could argue that platonism = modern (human and exact) science. This makes me say, provocatively, that science has ceased to be modern 1500 years ago, as it is based since on a methodological fertile idea, but a dead end as a dogma, that there is a *primitive* physical reality. That is why very plausibly, we have stopped to make progress in the human sciences, and notably on the mind-body problem, since that time. That might perhaps explain the general inhumanity of humans (shoah, rwanda, communism, prohibition, etc.). Democracy has been a progress, but a tiny one, very fragile, and in peril today.

Bruno



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