Wittgenstein's meta-philosophy

[Philip Thrift]

https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/was-wittgenstein-right/

Was Wittgenstein Right?

BY PAUL HORWICH 

MARCH 3, 2013

A reminder of philosophy’s embarrassing failure, after over 2000 years, to settle any of its central issues.

The singular achievement of the controversial early 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was to have discerned the true nature of Western philosophy — what is special about its problems, where they come from, how they should and should not be addressed, and what can and cannot be accomplished by grappling with them. The uniquely insightful answers provided to these meta-questions are what give his treatments of specific issues within the subject — concerning language, experience, knowledge, mathematics, art and religion among them — a power of illumination that cannot be found in the work of others.

Admittedly, few would agree with this rosy assessment — certainly not many professional philosophers. Apart from a small and ignored clique of hard-core supporters the usual view these days is that his writing is self-indulgently obscure and that behind the catchy slogans there is little of intellectual value. But this dismissal disguises what is pretty clearly the real cause of Wittgenstein’s unpopularity within departments of philosophy: namely, his thoroughgoing rejection of the subject as traditionally and currently practiced; his insistence that it can’t give us the kind of knowledge generally regarded as its raison d’être.

Wittgenstein claims that there are no realms of phenomena whose study is the special business of a philosopher, and about which he or she should devise profound a priori theories and sophisticated supporting arguments. There are no startling discoveries to be made of facts, not open to the methods of science, yet accessible “from the armchair” through some blend of intuition, pure reason and conceptual analysis. Indeed the whole idea of a subject that could yield such results is based on confusion and wishful thinking.

This attitude is in stark opposition to the traditional view, which continues to prevail. Philosophy is respected, even exalted, for its promise to provide fundamental insights into the human condition and the ultimate character of the universe, leading to vital conclusions about how we are to arrange our lives. It’s taken for granted that there is deep understanding to be obtained of the nature of consciousness, of how knowledge of the external world is possible, of whether our decisions can be truly free, of the structure of any just society, and so on — and that philosophy’s job is to provide such understanding. Isn’t that why we are so fascinated by it?

If so, then we are duped and bound to be disappointed, says Wittgenstein. For these are mere pseudo-problems, the misbegotten products of linguistic illusion and muddled thinking. So it should be entirely unsurprising that the “philosophy” aiming to solve them has been marked by perennial controversy and lack of decisive progress — by an embarrassing failure, after over 2000 years, to settle any of its central issues. Therefore traditional philosophical theorizing must give way to a painstaking identification of its tempting but misguided presuppositions and an understanding of how we ever came to regard them as legitimate. But in that case, he asks, “[w]here does [our] investigation get its importance from, since it seems only to destroy everything interesting, that is, all that is great and important? (As it were all the buildings, leaving behind only bits of stone and rubble)” — and answers that “(w)hat we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand.”

Given this extreme pessimism about the potential of philosophy — perhaps tantamount to a denial that there is such a subject — it is hardly surprising that “Wittgenstein” is uttered with a curl of the lip in most philosophical circles. For who likes to be told that his or her life’s work is confused and pointless? Thus, even Bertrand Russell, his early teacher and enthusiastic supporter, was eventually led to complain peevishly that Wittgenstein seems to have “grown tired of serious thinking and invented a doctrine which would make such an activity unnecessary.”

But what is that notorious doctrine, and can it be defended? We might boil it down to four related claims.

— The first is that traditional philosophy is scientistic: its primary goals, which are to arrive at simple, general principles, to uncover profound explanations, and to correct naïve opinions, are taken from the sciences. And this is undoubtedly the case.

—The second is that the non-empirical (“armchair”) character of philosophical investigation — its focus on conceptual truth — is in tension with those goals.  That’s because our concepts exhibit a highly theory-resistant complexity and variability. They evolved, not for the sake of science and its objectives, but rather in order to cater to the interacting contingencies of our nature, our culture, our environment, our communicative needs and our other purposes.  As a consequence the commitments defining individual concepts are rarely simple or determinate, and differ dramatically from one concept to another. Moreover, it is not possible (as it is within empirical domains) to accommodate superficial complexity by means of simple principles at a more basic (e.g. microscopic) level.

— The third main claim of Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophy — an immediate consequence of the first two — is that traditional philosophy is necessarily pervaded with oversimplification; analogies are unreasonably inflated; exceptions to simple regularities are wrongly dismissed.

— Therefore — the fourth claim — a decent approach to the subject must avoid theory-construction and instead be merely “therapeutic,” confined to exposing the irrational assumptions on which theory-oriented investigations are based and the irrational conclusions to which they lead.

Consider, for instance, the paradigmatically philosophical question: “What is truth?”. This provokes perplexity because, on the one hand, it demands an answer of the form, “Truth is such–and-such,” but on the other hand, despite hundreds of years of looking, no acceptable answer of that kind has ever been found. We’ve tried truth as “correspondence with the facts,” as “provability,” as “practical utility,” and as “stable consensus”; but all turned out to be defective in one way or another — either circular or subject to counterexamples. Reactions to this impasse have included a variety of theoretical proposals.  Some philosophers have been led to deny that there is such a thing as absolute truth. Some have maintained (insisting on one of the above definitions) that although truth exists, it lacks certain features that are ordinarily attributed to it — for example, that the truth may sometimes be impossible to discover. Some have inferred that truth is intrinsically paradoxical and essentially incomprehensible. And others persist in the attempt to devise a definition that will fit all the intuitive data.

But from Wittgenstein’s perspective each of the first three of these strategies rides roughshod over our fundamental convictions about truth, and the fourth is highly unlikely to succeed. Instead we should begin, he thinks, by recognizing (as mentioned above) that our various concepts play very different roles in our cognitive economy and (correspondingly) are governed by defining principles of very different kinds. Therefore, it was always a mistake to extrapolate from the fact that empirical concepts, such as red or magnetic  or alive stand for properties with specifiable underlying natures to the presumption that the notion of truth must stand for some such property as well.

Wittgenstein’s conceptual pluralism positions us to recognize that notion’s idiosyncratic function, and to infer that truth itself will not be reducible to anything more basic. More specifically, we can see that the concept’s function in our cognitive economy is merely to serve as a device of generalization. It enables us to say such things as “Einstein’s last words were true,” and not be stuck with “If Einstein’s last words were that E=mc², then E=mc2; and if his last words were that nuclear weapons should be banned, then nuclear weapons should be banned; … and so on,” which has the disadvantage of being infinitely long!  Similarly we can use it to say: “We should want our beliefs to be true” (instead of struggling with “We should want that if we believe that E=mc², then E=mc²; and that if we believe … etc.”). We can see, also, that this sort of utility depends upon nothing more than the fact that the attribution of truth to a statement is obviously equivalent to the statement itself — for example, “It’s true that E=mc²” is equivalent to “E=mc²”. Thus possession of the concept of truth appears to consist in an appreciation of that triviality, rather than a mastery of any explicit definition. The traditional search for such an account (or for some other form of reductive analysis) was a wild-goose chase, a pseudo-problem. Truth emerges as exceptionally unprofound and as exceptionally unmysterious.

This example illustrates the key components of Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophy, and suggests how to flesh them out a little further. Philosophical problems typically arise from the clash between the inevitably idiosyncratic features of special-purpose concepts —true, good, object, person, now, necessary — and the scientistically driven insistence upon uniformity. Moreover, the various kinds of theoretical move designed to resolve such conflicts (forms of skepticism, revisionism, mysterianism and conservative systematization) are not only irrational, but unmotivated.The paradoxes to which they respond should instead be resolved merely by coming to appreciate the mistakes of perverse overgeneralization from which they arose. And the fundamental source of this irrationality is scientism.

As Wittgenstein put it in the “The Blue Book”:

Our craving for generality has [as one] source … our preoccupation with the method of science. I mean the method of reducing the explanation of natural phenomena to the smallest possible number of primitive natural laws; and, in mathematics, of unifying the treatment of different topics by using a generalization. Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness. I want to say here that it can never be our job to reduce anything to anything, or to explain anything. Philosophy really is “purely descriptive.

These radical ideas are not obviously correct, and may on close scrutiny turn out to be wrong. But they deserve to receive that scrutiny — to be taken much more seriously than they are. Yes, most of us have been interested in philosophy only because of its promise to deliver precisely the sort of theoretical insights that Wittgenstein argues are illusory. But such hopes are no defense against his critique. Besides, if he turns out to be right, satisfaction enough may surely be found in what we still can get — clarity, demystification and truth.

NOTE: A response to this post by Michael P. Lynch will be published in The Stone later this week.

[ https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/of-flies-and-philosophers-wittgenstein-and-philosophy/ ]

Paul Horwich is a professor of philosophy at New York University. He is the author of several books, including “Reflections on Meaning,” “Truth-Meaning-Reality,” and most recently, “Wittgenstein’s Metaphilosophy.”

[  https://as.nyu.edu/content/nyu-as/as/faculty/paul-g-horwich.html ]

cf.

Language Games, Writing Games - Wittgenstein and Derrida: A Comparative Study

Jolán Orbán

https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Lang/LangOrba.htm

@philipthrift

[Brent Meeker]

I quite agree with Horwich and Wittgenstein as they refer to meta-physics.  I think one contribution of meta-physics, as in analyzing the interpretations of quantum mechanics, is what Wittgenstein called "therapuetic", i.e. clarifying and identifying real problems versus psuedo-problems of language.  But I think they also serve a purpose in suggesting how science may advance, what new theories might be developed or how old ones may be better understood.  Although the latter is generally done by scientists who are specialists in the field, there are exceptions like Tim Maudlin.  And from a meta-physical perspective, mathematicians are nothing but armchair philosophers.

Horwich doesn't seem to touch at all on moral and ethical philosophy, how one should live one's life, as exemplified by the epicurieans, the stoics, the existentialists,...  Someday neuroscience, evolution, AI, and decision theory may make this field more scientific, but in the meantime there's a place for philosophy.

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/e01a036f-bde5-4b15-ad17-c845ba538ad0%40googlegroups.com.

[Philip Thrift]

Wittgenstein is at the core really of linguistic pragmatism 

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopragmatism

Languages are tools. There is no truth "out there".

Philosophers are merely a type of programming language theorists.

     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language_theory

@philipthrift 

[Brent Meeker]

On 2/19/2020 12:15 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:

Wittgenstein is at the core really of linguistic pragmatism 

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopragmatism

Languages are tools. There is no truth "out there".

My view is that "true" means different things in different contexts.  Tacked onto a declarative sentence, it's just emphasis.  In science it's an the attribute of statements that can be confirmed empirically.  In logic and mathematics it's just a marker that is assigned to axioms and guaranteed to be preserved by the rules of inference.

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/bb962b26-45b5-45e5-b0ed-969ef177dbd0%40googlegroups.com.

[Terren Suydam]

That's my view as well. However, the original article made reference to "absolute truth", and whether that concept is sensible. Thinking of Descartes' famous "I think, therefore I am", the word "I" is suspect, but we can do away with that and say it's absolutely true that "consciousness exists", and this is about as context-free a statement as one can make.

Terren

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/64ff496a-b215-b857-35ed-f59608fdc15c%40verizon.net.

[Brent Meeker]

But it is the same as 'Consciousness exists'.  The "true" is otiose; and probably the "exists" too.

Brent

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAMy3ZA_LeCmdcaQ0%2B48nhs-c_hT%3DUHRqfoYQwp6UZ1PAdE7erw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Terren Suydam]

What I mean is, "consciousness exists" cannot be denied, in any context. 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/9bbae90f-b63a-6f69-bcbb-a5bba1aa8317%40verizon.net.

[Philip Thrift]

On Wednesday, February 19, 2020 at 6:20:14 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:

On 2/19/2020 12:15 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:

Wittgenstein is at the core really of linguistic pragmatism 

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopragmatism

Languages are tools. There is no truth "out there".

My view is that "true" means different things in different contexts.  Tacked onto a declarative sentence, it's just emphasis.  In science it's an the attribute of statements that can be confirmed empirically.  In logic and mathematics it's just a marker that is assigned to axioms and guaranteed to be preserved by the rules of inference.

Brent

Philosophers are merely a type of programming language theorists.

     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language_theory

@philipthrift 

Scientists are sloppy with the word 'confirmed' ("unlikely to change") as applied to a theory. Nothing is 'confirmed' in science.

Einstein’s theory of general relativity tells us that gravity is due to the curvature of space and time. But this theory is strictly speaking wrong.

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/01/how-to-test-quantum-gravity.html

There are paraconsistent logic theorem provers. Noting is 'guaranteed' in mathematics or logic.

Automated Reasoning for the Dialetheic Logic RM3

https://aaai.org/ocs/index.php/FLAIRS/FLAIRS17/paper/view/15415

@philipthrift

 

[Lawrence Crowell]

Daniel Dennett said that Alan Turing gave us the computer and Wittgenstein gave us Wittgenstein. Though to be fair Wittgenstein did point to how language has this inherent aspect of ambiguity, though his mission was to try to remove such ambiguities from philosophy by clarification of language. His main enemy of course turned to metaphysics. Then through the back door comes quantum physics that illustrates how certain concepts are not as hard or absolute as we previously thought. There is then a tension of sorts between Wittgenstein' insistence of complete clarity and the necessity to appeal to heuristic concepts.

LC

[Philip Thrift]

Wittgenstein (language games) like Derrida (writing games) [ https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Lang/LangOrba.htm ] exposes the ambiguity and underdetermination of all languages.

Hence the end of metaphysics and the search for philosophical certainty.

@philipthrift

[Bruno Marchal]

To be short, I agree with this for the applied part of philosophy. Maybe that is religion.

But he is wrong for metaphysics or theology, which, like physics have an important theoretical counterpart, and it is only due to the stealing of theology by the tyran that we have forgotten this.

It is unclear if the article addressed the position of the old Wittgenstein, which is rather opposite to his early “tractatus” insight. Mechanism shares some consequences with both, but Wiiitgenstein is rarely enough precise to really concluded. Still, its itinerary is not without interest, going from a form of strong positivisme to the acceptance of the plotinian hypostases or epistemological definitions (yet, only implicitly, he does not refer to Plotinus), which is at the antipode of positivisme.

Bruno

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/e01a036f-bde5-4b15-ad17-c845ba538ad0%40googlegroups.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

On 20 Feb 2020, at 01:20, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 2/19/2020 12:15 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:

Wittgenstein is at the core really of linguistic pragmatism 

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopragmatism

Languages are tools. There is no truth "out there".

My view is that "true" means different things in different contexts.  Tacked onto a declarative sentence, it's just emphasis.  In science it's an the attribute of statements that can be confirmed empirically.  In logic and mathematics it's just a marker that is assigned to axioms and guaranteed to be preserved by the rules of inference.

That is only one half of logic. The other half is that truth means satisfaction in a model. The goal of logic is to have theories whose consequences are invariant for changing the models or interpretation. We appreciate   sound and complete theories, which are such that all theorems are true in all models, and reciprocally (completeness) if some proposition is satisfied in all models they have to be provable in the theory. That is typically the case for any first order logical theory, and any effective (the proof are checkable) second-order theory. (In a second order theory we allow quantification on sets and functions).

The notion of satisfaction is a bit long and technical to detailed, but a model is a mathematical structure for which we can define a notion of verification of a formula. I might illustrate this someday, as it is rather important, and rarely taught.  (But there are a tun of excellent books. I have given the references).

Bruno

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/64ff496a-b215-b857-35ed-f59608fdc15c%40verizon.net.

[Bruno Marchal]

On 20 Feb 2020, at 01:20, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 2/19/2020 12:15 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:

Wittgenstein is at the core really of linguistic pragmatism 

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopragmatism

Languages are tools. There is no truth "out there".

My view is that "true" means different things in different contexts. 

And in different modes (of self-reference). The platonists dis understand that the absolute truth requires faith in something beyond “my consciousness” or “consciousness” (to take into account Terren Suydam’ remark).

About this, it is clear to me that in “I think thus I am”, Descartes use the “first person” I. Indeed he start from the doubt. Dubito ergo cogito, cogito ergo sum. Descartes did not prove the existence of Descartes, bit of his own consciousness, hoping others can do the same reasoning for themselves. Consciousness always refer to a first person experience implicitly: like God (truth) it is not a thing.

Tacked onto a declarative sentence, it's just emphasis.  In science it's an the attribute of statements that can be confirmed empirically.  In logic and mathematics it's just a marker that is assigned to axioms and guaranteed to be preserved by the rules of inference.

So, as I said: truth is a semantical notion, which has nothing to do with proof, except that we want the rule of inference to preserve truth, but this means only that we want that if we can prove p -> q, we want that all models satisfying p satisfy also q, and that will be the case for sound and complete theories.

(To be sure: most complete theories in that sense, are incomplete in the Gödel’s incompleteness sense, which refers to some chosen model, often called standard model).

Bruno

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/64ff496a-b215-b857-35ed-f59608fdc15c%40verizon.net.

[Lawrence Crowell]

It is not so simple. Language as with any symbolic system is incomplete. So any symbolic structure will by Gödel's theorem be incapable of proving it's consistency. Wittgenstein seemed to recognize this and backed away from his Tractus.

Even with basic physics we have F = ma, which has a force, a dynamical quantity, equal to mass, kinematical, times acceleration that is geometrical. This is a categorical confusion! Yet we appeal to this as a fundamental principle. That has a few aspects of metaphysics.

[Philip Thrift]

On Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 8:58:15 AM UTC-6, Lawrence Crowell wrote:

It is not so simple. Language as with any symbolic system is incomplete. So any symbolic structure will by Gödel's theorem be incapable of proving it's consistency. Wittgenstein seemed to recognize this and backed away from his Tractus.

Even with basic physics we have F = ma, which has a force, a dynamical quantity, equal to mass, kinematical, times acceleration that is geometrical. This is a categorical confusion! Yet we appeal to this as a fundamental principle. That has a few aspects of metaphysics.But

But of course "F = ma" is simply a string of characters which is interpreted by our program(s) of physics. Force, mass, space, time are all fictional entities ("characters" in another sense!) that are fitted into its framework.

@phiilipthrift

[Lawrence Crowell]

But, the different parts, F, m and a have different units of measure, which is what is of relevance. 

LC 

[Philip Thrift]

Didm't Vic say all measurements can be reduced to rulers and clocks? 

Then something to do with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckingham_%CF%80_theorem

@philipthrift

@philipthrift

[Brent Meeker]

Vic said just clocks.  The constancy of the speed of light allows time measurements to be used to measure distances...and in fact that's how high precision distance measurements are made.

Brent

@philipthrift

@philipthrift

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/11cb7947-93ed-4c74-94ff-e71d2e002dff%40googlegroups.com.

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Friday, February 21, 2020 at 5:18:05 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:

On 2/21/2020 1:16 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:

On Friday, February 21, 2020 at 2:33:12 PM UTC-6, Lawrence Crowell wrote:

On Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 1:56:02 PM UTC-6, Philip Thrift wrote:

On Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 8:58:15 AM UTC-6, Lawrence Crowell wrote:

It is not so simple. Language as with any symbolic system is incomplete. So any symbolic structure will by Gödel's theorem be incapable of proving it's consistency. Wittgenstein seemed to recognize this and backed away from his Tractus.

Even with basic physics we have F = ma, which has a force, a dynamical quantity, equal to mass, kinematical, times acceleration that is geometrical. This is a categorical confusion! Yet we appeal to this as a fundamental principle. That has a few aspects of metaphysics.But

But of course "F = ma" is simply a string of characters which is interpreted by our program(s) of physics. Force, mass, space, time are all fictional entities ("characters" in another sense!) that are fitted into its framework.

@phiilipthrift

But, the different parts, F, m and a have different units of measure, which is what is of relevance. 

LC 

Didm't Vic say all measurements can be reduced to rulers and clocks? 

Then something to do with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckingham_%CF%80_theorem

Vic said just clocks.  The constancy of the speed of light allows time measurements to be used to measure distances...and in fact that's how high precision distance measurements are made.

Brent

There are both radar and ruler distances. They are not the same. The radar distance is obtained with a light ray and clock. The ruler distance is a distance measured along a spatial ruler.

LC

 

@philipthrift

@philipthrift

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.

[PGC]

On Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 1:55:39 PM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 20 Feb 2020, at 01:20, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 2/19/2020 12:15 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:

Wittgenstein is at the core really of linguistic pragmatism 

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopragmatism

Languages are tools. There is no truth "out there".

My view is that "true" means different things in different contexts. 

And in different modes (of self-reference). The platonists dis understand that the absolute truth requires faith in something beyond “my consciousness” or “consciousness” (to take into account Terren Suydam’ remark).

Wittgestein up to now still has the upper hand with those old arguments over anybody proposing science based ontological packages metaphysically: language will seduce people to overgeneralize, to confuse personal mysticism with reality, to engage in false equivalencies between terms used in formal contexts and everyday use of language, scientism etc. Slowly, yours truly is coming around to the idea that folks agreeing on ontology/reality/religion, which would guide research in some allegedly correct direction; spilling over positive effects into the world... that Wittgenstein may prove correct in that this is a confused product of muddled armchair thinking, not because of his generally negative stance, but because there seem to be positive developments out there that he couldn't have informed those arguments with.

I see/predict metaphysics shifting from the naive armchair forms of identity, reality, matter etc. practiced here on this list with profound erudition, walking in circles for 20 years now (Wittgenstein says thousands of years) to optimization and more efficient pursuit of value and benefit questions instead, through say orchestration of highly sophisticated forms of organization applied to education, governing, finance, technology, problem solving, applied or theoretical etc. that are permissionless, universally accessible, require no hierarchy of politics, charlatan experts, control freaks, their sycophants, and bibles of some Messiah achieving miracles such as eternal life, self-duplication etc.

Metaphysical setups that place less emphasis on truth, trust, power, control, or proof and more emphasis on "can entities such as ourselves be highly organized, solve specific survival problems over short and long terms, without trusting each other + instead assuming that folks will be opportunistic and idealistic?" Example: we don't agree on what reality may be, but we do agree on the need for habitable living space in the long term, nutrition, water, health, limiting self-destruction, expensive wars, standards of living etc. quite clearly. There ARE more appropriate politics and economics on the horizon. Metaphysics here, shifting our old-school conceptions of what first principles are, and you'd refute Wittgenstein instead of running from him. Engineering incentive and not what the game is but how the game of life on this planet could be. 

 

About this, it is clear to me that in “I think thus I am”, Descartes use the “first person” I. Indeed he start from the doubt. Dubito ergo cogito, cogito ergo sum. Descartes did not prove the existence of Descartes, bit of his own consciousness, hoping others can do the same reasoning for themselves. Consciousness always refer to a first person experience implicitly: like God (truth) it is not a thing.

You concede to Terren that "true means different things in different contexts" but everyday like clockwork you still barrage the list with your use of "large truth, 3p, reality that cannot be named, mechanism is incompatible with physicalism" and all the rest of it. I used to wonder why you don't pursue contact with linguists, physicists, a wider audience, and philosophers but this has ceased to surprise me. PGC

 

[Alan Grayson]

You concede to Terren that "true means different things in different contexts" but everyday like clockwork you still barrage the list with your use of "large truth, 3p, reality that cannot be named, mechanism is incompatible with physicalism" and all the rest of it. I used to wonder why you don't pursue contact with linguists, physicists, a wider audience, and philosophers but this has ceased to surprise me. PNGC

I think I finally got it -- what mechanism means for Bruno -- namely, that a human being can be perfectly simulated by a computer. But if that's what he means, how does it follow that mechanism is incompatible with physicalism? What exactly does Bruno mean by physicalism? Why the incompatibility? Bruno? TIA, AG

 

[Brent Meeker]

Because all possible computations (in the Turing sense) are implicit in arithmetic.  And Bruno thinks arithmetic exists, and hence all threads of human (and non-human) consciousness exist in arithmetic.

What exactly does Bruno mean by physicalism?

That physics is the basic science; i.e. the ontology of physics, whatever it is, must give rise to everything else, including conscious thought.

Why the incompatibility? Bruno? TIA, AG

Bruno's a fundamentalist.  You can only have one, really real, true fundamental ontology.

Brent

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/9725ab5e-d50e-41aa-8932-0eafeecf6b4d%40googlegroups.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

On 20 Feb 2020, at 12:50, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

Daniel Dennett said that Alan Turing gave us the computer and Wittgenstein gave us Wittgenstein. Though to be fair Wittgenstein did point to how language has this inherent aspect of ambiguity, though his mission was to try to remove such ambiguities from philosophy by clarification of language. His main enemy of course turned to metaphysics. Then through the back door comes quantum physics that illustrates how certain concepts are not as hard or absolute as we previously thought. There is then a tension of sorts between Wittgenstein' insistence of complete clarity and the necessity to appeal to heuristic concepts.

The “Wittgenstein” of the Tractatus is very different from the “Wittgenstein”’s “on certainty” (his last book).

The young Wittgenstein, a bit like Bertrand Russell did not understood Gödel’s completeness and incompleteness theorem, which, Imo, gives a lot of light on the issue of the ambiguity of languages and theories. QM too, but not as much, and eventually, with the most reasonable current assumption in Cognitive science (Mechanism already used in biology (cf Darwin, Mendel)), QM is explained by the mathematics of the many computations realised in all interpretation of arithmetic (or in the standard one if you prefer).

Bruno

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/5f8a9c86-dcc6-4166-93df-73917ce40a6a%40googlegroups.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 20 Feb 2020, at 15:58, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It is not so simple. Language as with any symbolic system is incomplete.

Yes, but with first order logic, we get at least that what is provable is satisfied in all models (soundness), and vice versa (completeness). Then incompleteness will be relative to a model (usually the (non definable) standard model intended by the theory.

> So any symbolic structure will by Gödel's theorem be incapable of proving it's consistency. Wittgenstein seemed to recognize this and backed away from his Tractus.
>
> Even with basic physics we have F = ma, which has a force, a dynamical quantity, equal to mass, kinematical, times acceleration that is geometrical. This is a categorical confusion! Yet we appeal to this as a fundamental principle. That has a few aspects of metaphysics.

I agree. Like a guy (Teneson) argued well on this list sometimes ago, only first order logic makes a theory independent of metaphysics (except for the choice of the theory, of course, but what I mean is that the theory does not hide some metaphysics, like it is the case for second or higher order logic).

Bruno

>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/05687b80-bd1f-45d5-ba5f-252f2729e5df%40googlegroups.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

You concede to Terren that "true means different things in different contexts”

Yes, that is well illustrated in the different type of knowledge, (like p, []p, []p & p, …), but also in the infinity of “[]”, different for each machine/number.

but everyday like clockwork you still barrage the list with your use of "large truth, 3p, reality that cannot be named, mechanism is incompatible with physicalism" and all the rest of it.

I just assume the Mechanist hypothesis, and derive from it that we cannot assume more than elementary arithmetic for the ontology, and then the phenomenology (mathematically obtained, but intuitively explainable with variate thought experiences) shows the appearance of those variate notion of truth.

I don’t claim mechanism is true, of course, but I derive its consequences, and I show that some are testable.

Bruno

I used to wonder why you don't pursue contact with linguists, physicists, a wider audience, and philosophers but this has ceased to surprise me. PGC

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/554e5aa3-9488-4e0b-8740-d874bd485aef%40googlegroups.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

OK (up to little ambiguities that it would be premature to bother you with for now).

But if that's what he means, how does it follow that mechanism is incompatible with physicalism? What exactly does Bruno mean by physicalism? Why the incompatibility? Bruno? TIA, AG

Physicalism is the idea that there is some real, ontologically independent physical reality, which would not be explainable from something else. It is the idea that we have to assume a fundamental and ontological physical reality.

The problem is that for just defining “Digital Mechanism", you need to believe in the elementary arithmetical statement, like 2+2 = 4, or like the fact that (3756801695685 * 2^666689 + 1) and (3756801695685 * 2^666689 - 1) are twin primes or are not twin primes, or like the determinacy of the distribution of primes. But then you have the implementation of all computations in arithmetic (that follows already from Gödel 1931 + the Church-Turing thesis), and it is up to a physicalist to explain what is a physical universe, and how it makes people conscious in it, and not in arithmetic.

But then the problem is that you have to endow the physical reality with something NOT Turing emulable (computer simulable) and playing some relevant and necessary role in "my consciousness", but then I can no more say yes to a digital mechanist doctor, who build the artificial brain with any subset of physics available to him. You will have to ask him to use some special matter which should not be capable of being simulated by a computer,as if it is, that is done in the arithmetical reality, and mechanism is wrong in that case. 

A universal Turing machine (a computer, not necessarily implemented physically) cannot see the difference between emulated in some metaphysical reality (like with primary matter, or with physicalism, whatever it assumes) and being emulated just in virtue of the Turing complete arithmetical relations which all exist, in all models of arithmetic.

Does this help? Don’t hesitate to ask if not,

Bruno

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/9725ab5e-d50e-41aa-8932-0eafeecf6b4d%40googlegroups.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

Given the sense of “fundamentalism” in the religious (pseudo-religious) domain, it might be useful to make precise that I do not defend any theory or religion. I just say that IF we can survive with an artificial brain, then physics becomes the science of available predictions by universal machine implemented in arithmetic. And that this makes Mechanism Versus Materialism testable, and indeed confirmed by the observation, notably by QM without collapse. There is a "many-world" interpretation of arithmetic (in the head of all universal numbers), and we can test it. We can use any Turing universal formalism instead of arithmetic. They all lead to the same theology, and the same physics.

Bruno

Brent

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/9725ab5e-d50e-41aa-8932-0eafeecf6b4d%40googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/b6ea3692-2307-294c-292d-e0a5292c48cd%40verizon.net.

[PGC]

On Sunday, February 23, 2020 at 3:17:57 PM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 23 Feb 2020, at 01:12, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 2/22/2020 3:52 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:

Why the incompatibility? Bruno? TIA, AG

Bruno's a fundamentalist.  You can only have one, really real, true fundamental ontology.

Given the sense of “fundamentalism” in the religious (pseudo-religious) domain, it might be useful to make precise that I do not defend any theory or religion.

You say that over and over again and yet your discourse implies infinite copies of the subject, which has metaphysical implications. The reply over the years has been that the subject feels choices matter on a first person level, but that just polishes up that today, some Nazi or criminal could go: "for every atrocity/crime that I or somebody else commits, there are infinite branches where we do not commit the atrocity, therefore from a third person point of view: responsibility or legal liability are empty subjective structures, based on an erroneous physicalist world view, as finally... determinism, the mystery of reality, and my first person indeterminacy compel me and others to commit such acts, based on UDA computation execution. Everybody's infinite copies are immortal anyway, therefore the optimal stance is to be an opportunistic gangster. I select the computations that run here and which do not via my weapon."

This doesn't strike me as metaphysical progress on the mind body problem, it's more like regression into cynical relativism, leading right back to materialism (because why not, since nothing but my consciousness is real?), justified by opportunistic success in absence of more evolved principles. I don't know about you guys, but a candidate for approaching metaphysics with some sobriety has to refute things like genocide, and sending others' children to die, while Nazis hide in bunkers. 

 

I just say that IF we can survive with an artificial brain, then physics becomes the science of available predictions by universal machine implemented in arithmetic. And that this makes Mechanism Versus Materialism testable, and indeed confirmed by the observation, notably by QM without collapse. There is a "many-world" interpretation of arithmetic (in the head of all universal numbers), and we can test it. We can use any Turing universal formalism instead of arithmetic. They all lead to the same theology, and the same physics.

Yeah, the theology where nobody is responsible for anything, with some partial deniability. That's the usual weaponization of ignorance and not much different than the world stage we find before us. So you can stop complaining at the physicalists and thank yours truly for relieving of the burden. PGC

 

[Brent Meeker]

On 2/23/2020 6:17 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 23 Feb 2020, at 01:12, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 2/22/2020 3:52 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:

On Saturday, February 22, 2020 at 10:40:12 AM UTC-7, PGC wrote:

On Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 1:55:39 PM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 20 Feb 2020, at 01:20, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 2/19/2020 12:15 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:

Wittgenstein is at the core really of linguistic pragmatism 

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopragmatism

Languages are tools. There is no truth "out there".

My view is that "true" means different things in different contexts. 

And in different modes (of self-reference). The platonists dis understand that the absolute truth requires faith in something beyond “my consciousness” or “consciousness” (to take into account Terren Suydam’ remark).

Wittgestein up to now still has the upper hand with those old arguments over anybody proposing science based ontological packages metaphysically: language will seduce people to overgeneralize, to confuse personal mysticism with reality, to engage in false equivalencies between terms used in formal contexts and everyday use of language, scientism etc. Slowly, yours truly is coming around to the idea that folks agreeing on ontology/reality/religion, which would guide research in some allegedly correct direction; spilling over positive effects into the world... that Wittgenstein may prove correct in that this is a confused product of muddled armchair thinking, not because of his generally negative stance, but because there seem to be positive developments out there that he couldn't have informed those arguments with.

I see/predict metaphysics shifting from the naive armchair forms of identity, reality, matter etc. practiced here on this list with profound erudition, walking in circles for 20 years now (Wittgenstein says thousands of years) to optimization and more efficient pursuit of value and benefit questions instead, through say orchestration of highly sophisticated forms of organization applied to education, governing, finance, technology, problem solving, applied or theoretical etc. that are permissionless, universally accessible, require no hierarchy of politics, charlatan experts, control freaks, their sycophants, and bibles of some Messiah achieving miracles such as eternal life, self-duplication etc.

Metaphysical setups that place less emphasis on truth, trust, power, control, or proof and more emphasis on "can entities such as ourselves be highly organized, solve specific survival problems over short and long terms, without trusting each other + instead assuming that folks will be opportunistic and idealistic?" Example: we don't agree on what reality may be, but we do agree on the need for habitable living space in the long term, nutrition, water, health, limiting self-destruction, expensive wars, standards of living etc. quite clearly. There ARE more appropriate politics and economics on the horizon. Metaphysics here, shifting our old-school conceptions of what first principles are, and you'd refute Wittgenstein instead of running from him. Engineering incentive and not what the game is but how the game of life on this planet could be. 

 

About this, it is clear to me that in “I think thus I am”, Descartes use the “first person” I. Indeed he start from the doubt. Dubito ergo cogito, cogito ergo sum. Descartes did not prove the existence of Descartes, bit of his own consciousness, hoping others can do the same reasoning for themselves. Consciousness always refer to a first person experience implicitly: like God (truth) it is not a thing.

You concede to Terren that "true means different things in different contexts" but everyday like clockwork you still barrage the list with your use of "large truth, 3p, reality that cannot be named, mechanism is incompatible with physicalism" and all the rest of it. I used to wonder why you don't pursue contact with linguists, physicists, a wider audience, and philosophers but this has ceased to surprise me. PNGC

I think I finally got it -- what mechanism means for Bruno -- namely, that a human being can be perfectly simulated by a computer. But if that's what he means, how does it follow that mechanism is incompatible with physicalism?

Because all possible computations (in the Turing sense) are implicit in arithmetic.  And Bruno thinks arithmetic exists, and hence all threads of human (and non-human) consciousness exist in arithmetic.

What exactly does Bruno mean by physicalism?

That physics is the basic science; i.e. the ontology of physics, whatever it is, must give rise to everything else, including conscious thought.

Why the incompatibility? Bruno? TIA, AG

Bruno's a fundamentalist.  You can only have one, really real, true fundamental ontology.

Given the sense of “fundamentalism” in the religious (pseudo-religious) domain, it might be useful to make precise that I do not defend any theory or religion. I just say that IF we can survive with an artificial brain, then physics becomes the science of available predictions by universal machine implemented in arithmetic.

If arithmetic exists independent of physics.

Brent

And that this makes Mechanism Versus Materialism testable, and indeed confirmed by the observation, notably by QM without collapse. There is a "many-world" interpretation of arithmetic (in the head of all universal numbers), and we can test it. We can use any Turing universal formalism instead of arithmetic. They all lead to the same theology, and the same physics.

Bruno

Brent

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/9725ab5e-d50e-41aa-8932-0eafeecf6b4d%40googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/b6ea3692-2307-294c-292d-e0a5292c48cd%40verizon.net.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2EFD4799-0C1D-4EAC-BFA5-D13D221755DE%40ulb.ac.be.

[Alan Grayson]

The likely flaw in Bruno's theory is that the axioms of arithmetic don't imply the existence of space and time. Hence, mechanism is false. Simulating a human brain, even if possible, is not enough to copying a universe. AG 

And that this makes Mechanism Versus Materialism testable, and indeed confirmed by the observation, notably by QM without collapse. There is a "many-world" interpretation of arithmetic (in the head of all universal numbers), and we can test it. We can use any Turing universal formalism instead of arithmetic. They all lead to the same theology, and the same physics.

Bruno

Brent

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/9725ab5e-d50e-41aa-8932-0eafeecf6b4d%40googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/b6ea3692-2307-294c-292d-e0a5292c48cd%40verizon.net.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.

[Brent Meeker]

Most people would say they don't even imply the existence of arithmetic.

Brent

Hence, mechanism is false. Simulating a human brain, even if possible, is not enough to copying a universe. AG 

And that this makes Mechanism Versus Materialism testable, and indeed confirmed by the observation, notably by QM without collapse. There is a "many-world" interpretation of arithmetic (in the head of all universal numbers), and we can test it. We can use any Turing universal formalism instead of arithmetic. They all lead to the same theology, and the same physics.

Bruno

Brent

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/9725ab5e-d50e-41aa-8932-0eafeecf6b4d%40googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/b6ea3692-2307-294c-292d-e0a5292c48cd%40verizon.net.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2EFD4799-0C1D-4EAC-BFA5-D13D221755DE%40ulb.ac.be.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/a06f5819-1e53-49d6-918f-845fa799543d%40googlegroups.com.

[Philip Thrift]

If you take the (La)TeX, AMS(La)TeX sources from all the physics papers on arXiv 

https://arxiv.org/help/submit_tex

cf.

Translating Math Formula Images to LaTeX Sequences Using Deep Neural Networks with Sequence-level Training

https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.11415

and extract the math (Tex:Math), then all of arXiv physics can be reduced to arithmetic.

That much is simple.

The question is: can all physical stuff be reduced to arXiv physics?

@philipthrift 

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Sunday, February 23, 2020 at 7:47:41 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 22 Feb 2020, at 18:40, PGC <multipl...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 1:55:39 PM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 20 Feb 2020, at 01:20, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 2/19/2020 12:15 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:

Wittgenstein is at the core really of linguistic pragmatism 

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopragmatism

Languages are tools. There is no truth "out there".

My view is that "true" means different things in different contexts. 

And in different modes (of self-reference). The platonists dis understand that the absolute truth requires faith in something beyond “my consciousness” or “consciousness” (to take into account Terren Suydam’ remark).

Wittgestein up to now still has the upper hand with those old arguments over anybody proposing science based ontological packages metaphysically: language will seduce people to overgeneralize, to confuse personal mysticism with reality, to engage in false equivalencies between terms used in formal contexts and everyday use of language, scientism etc. Slowly, yours truly is coming around to the idea that folks agreeing on ontology/reality/religion, which would guide research in some allegedly correct direction; spilling over positive effects into the world... that Wittgenstein may prove correct in that this is a confused product of muddled armchair thinking, not because of his generally negative stance, but because there seem to be positive developments out there that he couldn't have informed those arguments with.

I see/predict metaphysics shifting from the naive armchair forms of identity, reality, matter etc. practiced here on this list with profound erudition, walking in circles for 20 years now (Wittgenstein says thousands of years) to optimization and more efficient pursuit of value and benefit questions instead, through say orchestration of highly sophisticated forms of organization applied to education, governing, finance, technology, problem solving, applied or theoretical etc. that are permissionless, universally accessible, require no hierarchy of politics, charlatan experts, control freaks, their sycophants, and bibles of some Messiah achieving miracles such as eternal life, self-duplication etc.

Metaphysical setups that place less emphasis on truth, trust, power, control, or proof and more emphasis on "can entities such as ourselves be highly organized, solve specific survival problems over short and long terms, without trusting each other + instead assuming that folks will be opportunistic and idealistic?" Example: we don't agree on what reality may be, but we do agree on the need for habitable living space in the long term, nutrition, water, health, limiting self-destruction, expensive wars, standards of living etc. quite clearly. There ARE more appropriate politics and economics on the horizon. Metaphysics here, shifting our old-school conceptions of what first principles are, and you'd refute Wittgenstein instead of running from him. Engineering incentive and not what the game is but how the game of life on this planet could be. 

 

About this, it is clear to me that in “I think thus I am”, Descartes use the “first person” I. Indeed he start from the doubt. Dubito ergo cogito, cogito ergo sum. Descartes did not prove the existence of Descartes, bit of his own consciousness, hoping others can do the same reasoning for themselves. Consciousness always refer to a first person experience implicitly: like God (truth) it is not a thing.

You concede to Terren that "true means different things in different contexts”

Yes, that is well illustrated in the different type of knowledge, (like p, []p, []p & p, …), but also in the infinity of “[]”, different for each machine/number.

but everyday like clockwork you still barrage the list with your use of "large truth, 3p, reality that cannot be named, mechanism is incompatible with physicalism" and all the rest of it.

I just assume the Mechanist hypothesis, and derive from it that we cannot assume more than elementary arithmetic for the ontology, and then the phenomenology (mathematically obtained, but intuitively explainable with variate thought experiences) shows the appearance of those variate notion of truth.

I don’t claim mechanism is true, of course, but I derive its consequences, and I show that some are testable.

Bruno

Wittgenstein did appeal to a language form that is close to or might be compared to first order logic. Generally language used and how we reference language to objects is beyond this, and it has some element of semantics. This does take one potentially into the Loeb theorem, such as in Boolos and Jeffery's book and the connection to semantic soundness.

LC

 

I used to wonder why you don't pursue contact with linguists, physicists, a wider audience, and philosophers but this has ceased to surprise me. PGC

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.

[Alan Grayson]

ISTM that Peano's Postulates clearly imply positive and negative integers, zero, and arithmetic. What's the contrary argument? TIA, AG 

Hence, mechanism is false. Simulating a human brain, even if possible, is not enough to copying a universe. AG 

And that this makes Mechanism Versus Materialism testable, and indeed confirmed by the observation, notably by QM without collapse. There is a "many-world" interpretation of arithmetic (in the head of all universal numbers), and we can test it. We can use any Turing universal formalism instead of arithmetic. They all lead to the same theology, and the same physics.

Bruno

Brent

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/9725ab5e-d50e-41aa-8932-0eafeecf6b4d%40googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/b6ea3692-2307-294c-292d-e0a5292c48cd%40verizon.net.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2EFD4799-0C1D-4EAC-BFA5-D13D221755DE%40ulb.ac.be.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/a06f5819-1e53-49d6-918f-845fa799543d%40googlegroups.com.

[Brent Meeker]

On 2/24/2020 4:50 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:

ISTM that Peano's Postulates clearly imply positive and negative integers, zero, and arithmetic. What's the contrary argument? TIA, AG 

Contrary to what?

Brent

[Alan Grayson]

I'm referring to the argument of those who claim the Peano's Axioms don't imply arithmetic (when IMO, they obviously do).  How does that argument go?AG 

[Brent Meeker]

Dunno.  How do such arguments go?

Brent

[Alan Grayson]

Concerning PA, Peano's Axioms, how do we know that a set exists that satisfies those axioms, or is it just assumed it exists? AG 

[Bruno Marchal]

Fair enough. But then physicist who use the number must provides a physical explanation of those numbers, and without using the numbers or anything (Turing) equivalent, and that is just logically impossible. You can’t extract the numbers (with add. and mult.) from something not already Turing universal.

Then, between us, I am personally more convinced that 24 is divisible by 8 than of the (primary) existence of the moon, bosons brain and other such complex theoretical construct done unconsciously in the histories bringing brains and stuff.

Brent

The likely flaw in Bruno's theory is that the axioms of arithmetic don't imply the existence of space and time.

It implies the appearance of space and time and physical realities. At least it works up to now, that is why it is testable theory.

Hence, mechanism is false.

Then Darwin is false, and most current theories are false. We have not yet found a natural phenomenon which would not be Turing emulable, except by using sophisticated construct near black hole, suing pure General relativity, but already made impossible if we add quantum mechanics.

Postulating that mechanism is false is usually done by people defending fairy tales explanation of existence.

Simulating a human brain, even if possible, is not enough to copying a universe. AG 

That is a consequence of Mechanism. There is no universe, and every piece of matter becomes NOT Turing emulable. Indeed, to get “all decimals” you will need to execute the entire universal dovetailer everywhere, and this in one instant. You might need to read the 8 step of the reasoning: matter emerges from all computations. 

Note that this too is somehow confirmed by the quantum field theories, where to get “all decimal correct”, you need to take into account an infinity of more and more complex Feynman diagrams, even just to computer the probability that an electron starting at A arrives at B.

Mechanism entails that neither matter, nor consciousness are Turing emulable. They appear due to the non computable first person indeterminacy in the seven step protocol: in front of a universal dovetail, or just arithmetic (the tiny sigma_1, partial computable part).

When a digital computer simulate a brain, it does not create my consciousness. It borrows it from the arithmetical truth (a highly non computable notion) and makes it possible to manifest itself in a relative way, with a higher probability than without it.

Don’t confuse Digital Mechanism, with Digital physicalism (the thesis that the physical universe is computable) because those thesis are inconsistent when taken together. In fact, Digital Physicalism is simply inconsistent, because it implies mechanism, but mechanism implies its negation, and so Digital Mechanism implies its negation, and thus is false, with or without mechanism.

Bruno

And that this makes Mechanism Versus Materialism testable, and indeed confirmed by the observation, notably by QM without collapse. There is a "many-world" interpretation of arithmetic (in the head of all universal numbers), and we can test it. We can use any Turing universal formalism instead of arithmetic. They all lead to the same theology, and the same physics.

Bruno

Brent

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/9725ab5e-d50e-41aa-8932-0eafeecf6b4d%40googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/b6ea3692-2307-294c-292d-e0a5292c48cd%40verizon.net.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2EFD4799-0C1D-4EAC-BFA5-D13D221755DE%40ulb.ac.be.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/a06f5819-1e53-49d6-918f-845fa799543d%40googlegroups.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

(Just a tiny detail, but there is no negative integer in Peano arithmetic). Now, Z + * can be shown to be also Turing universal, but usually we take PA which is simpler.

Bruno

Hence, mechanism is false. Simulating a human brain, even if possible, is not enough to copying a universe. AG 

And that this makes Mechanism Versus Materialism testable, and indeed confirmed by the observation, notably by QM without collapse. There is a "many-world" interpretation of arithmetic (in the head of all universal numbers), and we can test it. We can use any Turing universal formalism instead of arithmetic. They all lead to the same theology, and the same physics.

Bruno

Brent

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/9725ab5e-d50e-41aa-8932-0eafeecf6b4d%40googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/b6ea3692-2307-294c-292d-e0a5292c48cd%40verizon.net.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2EFD4799-0C1D-4EAC-BFA5-D13D221755DE%40ulb.ac.be.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/a06f5819-1e53-49d6-918f-845fa799543d%40googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/e0444074-cb95-4844-b45d-325f802d78a7%40googlegroups.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

That is the question. With mechanism the answer is very simple and clear: we don’t know. We just hope.

But most would say that they believe in a model of arithmetic, because they believe in the structure (N, 0, +, *), learn in secondary school. That is not a proof, because this relies on set theory, which is richer than Peano. Can we prove the existence of a model of set theory? Yes, but only in a still richer theory, like ZF + it exists an inaccessible cardinal.

By Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, we know that NO theory at all can prove the existence of a model of itself, and that is why the machine cannot avoid … religion (the belief in a reality satisfying/veufying their beliefs).

or is it just assumed it exists? AG 

Yes, but not in then theory. Only in the vague and intuitive metattheory. For mechanism, you need just to agree with 

1) 0 ≠ s(x)                     (0 is not the successor of a number)
2) s(x) = s(y) -> x = y     (different numbers have different successors)
3) x = 0 v Ey(x = s(y))    (except for 0, all numbers have a predecessor)

4) x+0 = x                      (if you add zero to a number, you get that number)
5) x+s(y) = s(x+y)  (if you add a number x to the successor of a number y, you get the successor of x added to y)

6) x*0=0                   (if you multiply a number by 0, you get 0)
7) x*s(y)=(x*y)+x    (if you multiply a number x by the successor of y, you get the number x added to the multiplication of the number x with y)

The metaphysics and physics are derived from this, with the mechanist hypothesis in the background, or at the metalevel, or as axioms in the mind of some universal numbers/machine.

Then, normally, if you remember your math course, you might believe that indeed this is consistant, and that is illustrated by the common belief in the intuitive model (N, 0, +, *) learned in secondary school.

Note that the axioms above, or Turing equivalent one, are parst of all theories used in science today. Mechanism entails that the simpler and most common belief are enough, and worst, cannot be completed. The theology and physics are derived in the internal phenomenology of the numbers.

Bruno

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/a81a47f3-dda5-4f26-b97f-dd9cb92c7f37%40googlegroups.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

Then you should be able to give a definition of natural numbers, based on physical laws, and express those physical laws without using the notion of numbers. I don’t see how this is possible, at least with Mechanism. You have to assume something Turing universal, to get something Turing universal. We cannot prove the existence of something Turing universal without postulating the existence of something Turing universal. 

Bruno

Brent

And that this makes Mechanism Versus Materialism testable, and indeed confirmed by the observation, notably by QM without collapse. There is a "many-world" interpretation of arithmetic (in the head of all universal numbers), and we can test it. We can use any Turing universal formalism instead of arithmetic. They all lead to the same theology, and the same physics.

Bruno

Brent

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/9725ab5e-d50e-41aa-8932-0eafeecf6b4d%40googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/b6ea3692-2307-294c-292d-e0a5292c48cd%40verizon.net.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2EFD4799-0C1D-4EAC-BFA5-D13D221755DE%40ulb.ac.be.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/b8c926d9-390a-cb3e-d983-44896aa748fd%40verizon.net.

[Bruno Marchal]

The axioms cannot prove the existence of a model of arithmetic, by the second incompleteness theorem.

But they do imply the existence of the PA theory itself, and of ZF, and of Brent …. (Assuming mechanism for that last one).

When you say “existence of arithmetic” it is unclear if you talk about the theory, or about a model of the theory. To prove the existence of a model of a theory, you will need a more stronger theory that the one concerned. You can prove the existence of a model of RA in PA, or of a model of PA in ZF, or of a model of ZF in ZF + the existence of some large cardinal, etc.

Bruno

Brent

Hence, mechanism is false. Simulating a human brain, even if possible, is not enough to copying a universe. AG 

And that this makes Mechanism Versus Materialism testable, and indeed confirmed by the observation, notably by QM without collapse. There is a "many-world" interpretation of arithmetic (in the head of all universal numbers), and we can test it. We can use any Turing universal formalism instead of arithmetic. They all lead to the same theology, and the same physics.

Bruno

Brent

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/9725ab5e-d50e-41aa-8932-0eafeecf6b4d%40googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/b6ea3692-2307-294c-292d-e0a5292c48cd%40verizon.net.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2EFD4799-0C1D-4EAC-BFA5-D13D221755DE%40ulb.ac.be.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/a06f5819-1e53-49d6-918f-845fa799543d%40googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/14fb34be-ce0e-6f75-837b-ffcc2ad06429%40verizon.net.

[Bruno Marchal]

On 24 Feb 2020, at 11:56, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, February 23, 2020 at 7:47:41 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 22 Feb 2020, at 18:40, PGC <multipl...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 1:55:39 PM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 20 Feb 2020, at 01:20, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 2/19/2020 12:15 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:

Wittgenstein is at the core really of linguistic pragmatism 

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopragmatism

Languages are tools. There is no truth "out there".

My view is that "true" means different things in different contexts. 

And in different modes (of self-reference). The platonists dis understand that the absolute truth requires faith in something beyond “my consciousness” or “consciousness” (to take into account Terren Suydam’ remark).

Wittgestein up to now still has the upper hand with those old arguments over anybody proposing science based ontological packages metaphysically: language will seduce people to overgeneralize, to confuse personal mysticism with reality, to engage in false equivalencies between terms used in formal contexts and everyday use of language, scientism etc. Slowly, yours truly is coming around to the idea that folks agreeing on ontology/reality/religion, which would guide research in some allegedly correct direction; spilling over positive effects into the world... that Wittgenstein may prove correct in that this is a confused product of muddled armchair thinking, not because of his generally negative stance, but because there seem to be positive developments out there that he couldn't have informed those arguments with.

I see/predict metaphysics shifting from the naive armchair forms of identity, reality, matter etc. practiced here on this list with profound erudition, walking in circles for 20 years now (Wittgenstein says thousands of years) to optimization and more efficient pursuit of value and benefit questions instead, through say orchestration of highly sophisticated forms of organization applied to education, governing, finance, technology, problem solving, applied or theoretical etc. that are permissionless, universally accessible, require no hierarchy of politics, charlatan experts, control freaks, their sycophants, and bibles of some Messiah achieving miracles such as eternal life, self-duplication etc.

Metaphysical setups that place less emphasis on truth, trust, power, control, or proof and more emphasis on "can entities such as ourselves be highly organized, solve specific survival problems over short and long terms, without trusting each other + instead assuming that folks will be opportunistic and idealistic?" Example: we don't agree on what reality may be, but we do agree on the need for habitable living space in the long term, nutrition, water, health, limiting self-destruction, expensive wars, standards of living etc. quite clearly. There ARE more appropriate politics and economics on the horizon. Metaphysics here, shifting our old-school conceptions of what first principles are, and you'd refute Wittgenstein instead of running from him. Engineering incentive and not what the game is but how the game of life on this planet could be. 

 

About this, it is clear to me that in “I think thus I am”, Descartes use the “first person” I. Indeed he start from the doubt. Dubito ergo cogito, cogito ergo sum. Descartes did not prove the existence of Descartes, bit of his own consciousness, hoping others can do the same reasoning for themselves. Consciousness always refer to a first person experience implicitly: like God (truth) it is not a thing.

You concede to Terren that "true means different things in different contexts”

Yes, that is well illustrated in the different type of knowledge, (like p, []p, []p & p, …), but also in the infinity of “[]”, different for each machine/number.

but everyday like clockwork you still barrage the list with your use of "large truth, 3p, reality that cannot be named, mechanism is incompatible with physicalism" and all the rest of it.

I just assume the Mechanist hypothesis, and derive from it that we cannot assume more than elementary arithmetic for the ontology, and then the phenomenology (mathematically obtained, but intuitively explainable with variate thought experiences) shows the appearance of those variate notion of truth.

I don’t claim mechanism is true, of course, but I derive its consequences, and I show that some are testable.

Bruno

Wittgenstein did appeal to a language form that is close to or might be compared to first order logic.

He got the 0-order logic, somehow. Proved sound and complete by Emil Post (before or after, I am not sure).

Generally language used and how we reference language to objects is beyond this, and it has some element of semantics. This does take one potentially into the Loeb theorem, such as in Boolos and Jeffery's book and the connection to semantic soundness.

No doubt on this. This is what I have exploited to derive the theology and physics of the universal number. Löb’s theorem plays a key role, and Solovay “final” theorems do the trick, at the propositional modal level, so we get already the propositional full logic of the subject (and we got Intuitionist knowledge logic) and of the material object (we get quantum logic, classical and intuitionist). 

The point is that with Mechanism, physics is derivable from the psychology or theology of machines or numbers. That makes theology into a popperian science, that is, refutable experimentally.

Bruno

LC

 

I used to wonder why you don't pursue contact with linguists, physicists, a wider audience, and philosophers but this has ceased to surprise me. PGC

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/554e5aa3-9488-4e0b-8740-d874bd485aef%40googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/088914f2-f881-4a6c-8152-b2748618d61c%40googlegroups.com.

[PGC]

The theology where the Nazi can claim: "I am doing the multiverse a favor by committing atrocities, thereby removing a horrible variant from the plenum of branches." We should celebrate them as the genuine multiverse socialists for bearing that burden. That's what Adolf meant with national socialism! He was a multiverse guy apparently. :) They also like ontologically pure species, classes, hierarchies, primary beings/ideas and you've demonstrated here, a willingness to want to teach them patiently with infinite consideration. 

Every vague singular universe assumption with naive progress narratives is philosophically more "advanced". Christian theology uses a prohibition: "Do not kill!", which is at least life affirming in its core. Christian theology also allows for monstrous things called apologies and forgiveness, so that somebody who committed a horrible act may aspire towards a self that doesn't commit such acts. Self-Improvement and self-help gurus, even ones with mechanist theologies, are apparently legal. In mechanism, as I've learned, everybody committed original sin and is tarnished from the start, on account of multiple subject scenario and everybody being copies of one another. 

This is a straight philosophical diagonal: pleasant platonic ontology but it relativizes the destruction of life, similarly to other multiverse arguments, while being amenable to opportunistic-purist gangster takeovers as outlined here and in the post you choose to ignore, because "we don't know!". Indeed, this style of "arguing" implies a need to ignore dissenting views, which we see in current politics as well. With the total lack of life affirming properties due to infinite indecision and unknowability, you can post in the respectable, serious, sophisticated, technical style that you apparently need to demonstrate to yourself and others daily all you want. 

You can't affirm life nor evade the cynical implications I sketch in passing here. Not even to the poor level of outdated primitive Christian standards, while moralizing everybody else on their lack of respect for what you see as everybody's "true ignorance" in terms of matter, body mind problem etc. Plus, you see your own discourse as somehow truer than everybody else's: when the whole linguistic world assesses every discourse as a type of fiction, similar to Wittgenstein's language games, with assumptions, world views, and biases of its practitioners baked in; the assumption is that your world view is somehow written on the eternal walls of arithmetic, and that a privileged audience may behold the sacred servitor (it's "servant" in English by the way, and the usage archaic) being the most advanced practitioner of their own what? Their own ignorance? 

Is it a coincidence then, that mechanism is best practiced in the company of those without command of the relevant subjects instead of specialists? I would argue it isn't, for whenever a mechanist encounters dissent, all they need to do is post forward and not look back. To forget and burn the inconvenient arguments is - what can I say? - the mark of more genuine science and theology. PGC 

[Brent Meeker]

On 2/25/2020 12:18 AM, Alan Grayson wrote:

I'm referring to the argument of those who claim the Peano's Axioms don't imply arithmetic (when IMO, they obviously do).  How does that argument go?AG

Dunno.  How do such arguments go?

Brent

Concerning PA, Peano's Axioms, how do we know that a set exists that satisfies those axioms, or is it just assumed it exists? AG 

What does it mean for a set to "exist".   Does it mean a collection of things that if you kick them they kick back?  In mathematics it just means a collection of unique things that don't imply a logical contradiction.

Brent

[Brent Meeker]

They do.  They look at spots on the film and count, 1 2 3 4 ... They don't start from axioms, but from ostensive definitions.  Axioms are a convenient assumption allow theorizing.

Then, between us, I am personally more convinced that 24 is divisible by 8 than of the (primary) existence of the moon,

But not when you're looking a the Moon.  Being sure of that sentence is true, "Dr Watson was a friend of Sherlock Holmes." doesn't mean the things named in the sentence exist.

bosons brain and other such complex theoretical construct done unconsciously in the histories bringing brains and stuff.

Brent

The likely flaw in Bruno's theory is that the axioms of arithmetic don't imply the existence of space and time.

It implies the appearance of space and time and physical realities. At least it works up to now, that is why it is testable theory.

Hence, mechanism is false.

Then Darwin is false, and most current theories are false. We have not yet found a natural phenomenon which would not be Turing emulable, except by using sophisticated construct near black hole, suing pure General relativity, but already made impossible if we add quantum mechanics.

Postulating that mechanism is false is usually done by people defending fairy tales explanation of existence.

Simulating a human brain, even if possible, is not enough to copying a universe. AG 

That is a consequence of Mechanism. There is no universe, and every piece of matter becomes NOT Turing emulable. Indeed, to get “all decimals” you will need to execute the entire universal dovetailer everywhere, and this in one instant. You might need to read the 8 step of the reasoning: matter emerges from all computations. 

Note that this too is somehow confirmed by the quantum field theories, where to get “all decimal correct”, you need to take into account an infinity of more and more complex Feynman diagrams, even just to computer the probability that an electron starting at A arrives at B.

Just one of many computational techniques for calculating the Green's function.

Mechanism entails that neither matter, nor consciousness are Turing emulable. They appear due to the non computable first person indeterminacy in the seven step protocol: in front of a universal dovetail, or just arithmetic (the tiny sigma_1, partial computable part).

When a digital computer simulate a brain, it does not create my consciousness. It borrows it from the arithmetical truth (a highly non computable notion) and makes it possible to manifest itself in a relative way, with a higher probability than without it.

In a way relative to what?...to the physical world.

Brent

Don’t confuse Digital Mechanism, with Digital physicalism (the thesis that the physical universe is computable) because those thesis are inconsistent when taken together. In fact, Digital Physicalism is simply inconsistent, because it implies mechanism, but mechanism implies its negation, and so Digital Mechanism implies its negation, and thus is false, with or without mechanism.

Bruno

And that this makes Mechanism Versus Materialism testable, and indeed confirmed by the observation, notably by QM without collapse. There is a "many-world" interpretation of arithmetic (in the head of all universal numbers), and we can test it. We can use any Turing universal formalism instead of arithmetic. They all lead to the same theology, and the same physics.

Bruno

Brent

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/9725ab5e-d50e-41aa-8932-0eafeecf6b4d%40googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/b6ea3692-2307-294c-292d-e0a5292c48cd%40verizon.net.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2EFD4799-0C1D-4EAC-BFA5-D13D221755DE%40ulb.ac.be.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/a06f5819-1e53-49d6-918f-845fa799543d%40googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/18BFAA95-EFFD-4029-939A-839C63A097E0%40ulb.ac.be.

[Brent Meeker]

Definitions are in words.  How do you define the words.  As JKC correctly points out, examples are more important than definitions.  I don't use physical laws to define natural numbers, I use ostensive definition by examples...which is exactly how you learned numbers at your mother's knee.  The concern for definitions and axioms only arose when you wanted to reason about numbers too big to comprehend or write down.

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

But 1 2 3 4 … is not Turing universal.

Let us consider Robinson arithmetic, which is a very weak theory of arithmetic (indeed consistent with the assumption that there is a biggest natural number, i.e. RA is consistent with ultra-finitisme, and indeed their basic assumption. RA cannot even prove that 0 + x = x for all x, but it can prove that 0 + 1 = 1, 0 + 2 = 2, 0 + 3 = 3, etc. Yet, RA is Turing complete (Turing universal).

What I want to say is well illustrated by the fact that "RA minus any one of its axioms", is no more Turing universal.

If you put one axiom away from:

1) 0 ≠ s(x)

2) x ≠ y -> s(x) ≠ s(y)

3) x ≠ 0 -> Ey(x = s(y)) 

4) x+0 = x

5) x+s(y) = s(x+y)

6) x*0=0

7) x*s(y)=(x*y)+x

You lose the Turing universality.

So what I say is that it is impossible to prove the existence of universal machine and computation in a theory which does not assume them in a way or in another.

Then, once you can prove the existence of one universal machine, you can prove the existence of any universal machine. You get them all. You can define and prove the axiom above from just the two combinators axioms Kxy = x, and Sxyz = xz(yz). So SK -> RA, and you can prove the SK axioms in RA, so RA -> SK. 

In fact, Church’s thesis can be replaced by the weaker axiom: it exists a universal machine (the original thesis of church is more like: it exist a universal machine, and indeed there exist a universal lambda expression.

But without assuming some universal machine or machinery, you cannot prove their existence. 

It is like the axiom of infinity, or the axiom of choice: you cannot prove them form less.

Then, between us, I am personally more convinced that 24 is divisible by 8 than of the (primary) existence of the moon,

But not when you're looking a the Moon.

Especially when looking at the moon.

  Being sure of that sentence is true, "Dr Watson was a friend of Sherlock Holmes." doesn't mean the things named in the sentence exist.

It certainly means that Watson and Homes exist, in some sense. The question is “is that sense interesting with respect to our goal of explaining "everything” (matter and consciousness) in a coherent way?

bosons brain and other such complex theoretical construct done unconsciously in the histories bringing brains and stuff.

Brent

The likely flaw in Bruno's theory is that the axioms of arithmetic don't imply the existence of space and time.

It implies the appearance of space and time and physical realities. At least it works up to now, that is why it is testable theory.

Hence, mechanism is false.

Then Darwin is false, and most current theories are false. We have not yet found a natural phenomenon which would not be Turing emulable, except by using sophisticated construct near black hole, suing pure General relativity, but already made impossible if we add quantum mechanics.

Postulating that mechanism is false is usually done by people defending fairy tales explanation of existence.

Simulating a human brain, even if possible, is not enough to copying a universe. AG 

That is a consequence of Mechanism. There is no universe, and every piece of matter becomes NOT Turing emulable. Indeed, to get “all decimals” you will need to execute the entire universal dovetailer everywhere, and this in one instant. You might need to read the 8 step of the reasoning: matter emerges from all computations. 

Note that this too is somehow confirmed by the quantum field theories, where to get “all decimal correct”, you need to take into account an infinity of more and more complex Feynman diagrams, even just to computer the probability that an electron starting at A arrives at B.

Just one of many computational techniques for calculating the Green's function.

OK, but the technic illustrates the need to consider all path to get the correct answer, which is what mechanism enforces when we describes a piece of matter at a level below our substitution level. (I didn't mean this as a proof, but as an empirical evidence for Mechanism).  

Mechanism entails that neither matter, nor consciousness are Turing emulable. They appear due to the non computable first person indeterminacy in the seven step protocol: in front of a universal dovetail, or just arithmetic (the tiny sigma_1, partial computable part).

When a digital computer simulate a brain, it does not create my consciousness. It borrows it from the arithmetical truth (a highly non computable notion) and makes it possible to manifest itself in a relative way, with a higher probability than without it.

In a way relative to what?...to the physical world.

Relative to other universal machine. Not necessarily those subset of the physical laws which emulates me, but also relatively to the universal number run along with me (my body).

Bruno

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/6f325ca0-c252-10b3-9561-c08dcf37a622%40verizon.net.

[Bruno Marchal]

Practically? I am OK with this. But when we do fundamental science, we must be clear on what we assume, and what we derive, and the point is that with mechanism, we can no more assume a physical universe. If we assume a physical universe to explain a first peson prediction, that would work if that physical universe is not Turing emulable, and, importantly, that it is able to make my consciousness, or my first person prediction, related to that physical universe. But with mechanism, that consciousness is brought by the corresponding computation in arithmetic. If not, you need a non computationalist theory of mind. If the mechanism by which the physical universe makes me conscious is Turing emulable, it is automatically already emulated in arithmetic, through infinitely many occurrences, and the first person prediction (physics) has to be a statistics on all (relative) computations.

Mechanism just make precise and rigorous the old and antic “dream argument”. The LARC experience is a stunning evidence for the existence of the Higgs Boson, but not a proof, as I can conceive that I will wake up and realised that this LARC stuff was just a dream. We cannot prove any ontological evidence from any experience, but of course we can judge some evidences and accumulation of evidences making some belief more plausible than other.

The concern for definitions and axioms only arose when you wanted to reason about numbers too big to comprehend or write down.

It happens when we search a (fundamental) theory. With Mechanism, we have to derive physics from machine biology-psychology-theology, that is from the mathematics of arithmetical self-reference (from qG1*) (G1= G + (p->[]p).

Bruno

Brent

t postulating the existence of something Turing universal. 

Bruno

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/e2073f78-fb67-66b6-7226-28b887881e87%40verizon.net.

[PGC]

On Wednesday, February 26, 2020 at 12:02:23 PM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 25 Feb 2020, at 22:24, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Definitions are in words.  How do you define the words.  As JKC correctly points out, examples are more important than definitions.  I don't use physical laws to define natural numbers, I use ostensive definition by examples...which is exactly how you learned numbers at your mother's knee. 

Practically? I am OK with this. But when we do fundamental science,

There is no scientific consensus on what first principles are, or if they even exist.

 

we must be clear on what we assume, and what we derive, and the point is that with mechanism, we can no more assume a physical universe.

Then pulling the trigger in the quantum immortality sense doesn't matter. People should do it and see the light.

 

If we assume a physical universe to explain a first peson prediction, that would work if that physical universe is not Turing emulable, and, importantly, that it is able to make my consciousness, or my first person prediction, related to that physical universe.

There is evidence that most folks, with appropriate training, can see two cities at the same time.

 

But with mechanism, that consciousness is brought by the corresponding computation in arithmetic. If not, you need a non computationalist theory of mind.

The computationalist theory of mind is homemade determinism: it never had nor would it be meaningful for it to have a theory of mind because it couldn't be the large, godzilla of truth. People are not responsible for their actions anyway. But I'm sure that journals of psychology are crazy about your theory of mind and all it illuminates.

 

If the mechanism by which the physical universe makes me conscious is Turing emulable, it is automatically already emulated in arithmetic, through infinitely many occurrences, and the first person prediction (physics) has to be a statistics on all (relative) computations.

Mechanism just make precise and rigorous the old and antic “dream argument”. The LARC experience is a stunning evidence for the existence of the Higgs Boson, but not a proof, as I can conceive that I will wake up and realised that this LARC stuff was just a dream.

Same with any of your personal fictions. You want proof, then pull the trigger on any living entity you're attached to, and rationally, correctly, like the good, correct, universal number knowing what's going on: simply not care, it's all UD. Humanism affirms life while your confusions contain a death wish. See quantum immortality. 

 

We cannot prove any ontological evidence from any experience, but of course we can judge some evidences and accumulation of evidences making some belief more plausible than other.

We know you can sit around and judge things for 20 years, but it's careless as you don't work on alternatives or refutation in the critical spirit of scientific inquiry. All self-validation under the guise of education. Why education actually? It's all just a dream, where any notion of responsibility or agency in the face of determinism is negated and written in stone. 

The concern for definitions and axioms only arose when you wanted to reason about numbers too big to comprehend or write down.

It happens when we search a (fundamental) theory. With Mechanism, we have to derive physics from machine biology-psychology-theology, that is from the mathematics of arithmetical self-reference (from qG1*) (G1= G + (p->[]p).

That is like Shylock with the Venetians: 

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction. 

So what if some reasoning is sound or correct in somebody's view? That's easy. Madmen and Nazis can do that. Finding explanations for everything is psychologically related to the ultimate, deluded, infinite confession: an apology for existing... which is kinda sad. 

Who needs a theory of mind, to explain it, when we can enjoy the privilege of whatever ride we appear to have left? PGC

[Brent Meeker]

On 2/26/2020 2:48 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>   Being sure of that sentence is true, "Dr Watson was a friend of
>> Sherlock Holmes." doesn't mean the things named in the sentence exist.
>
> It certainly means that Watson and Homes exist, in some sense. The
> question is “is that sense interesting with respect to our goal of
> explaining "everything” (matter and consciousness) in a coherent way?

They exist in exactly the same way arithmetic and Turing machines exist.

Brent

[Brent Meeker]

And we should be clear that what we are doing are assuming and hypothesizing and reasoning about our assumptions and we are not bringing anything into existence thereby.

Brent

If we assume a physical universe to explain a first peson prediction, that would work if that physical universe is not Turing emulable, and, importantly, that it is able to make my consciousness, or my first person prediction, related to that physical universe. But with mechanism, that consciousness is brought by the corresponding computation in arithmetic. If not, you need a non computationalist theory of mind. If the mechanism by which the physical universe makes me conscious is Turing emulable, it is automatically already emulated in arithmetic, through infinitely many occurrences, and the first person prediction (physics) has to be a statistics on all (relative) computations.

Mechanism just make precise and rigorous the old and antic “dream argument”. The LARC experience is a stunning evidence for the existence of the Higgs Boson, but not a proof, as I can conceive that I will wake up and realised that this LARC stuff was just a dream. We cannot prove any ontological evidence from any experience, but of course we can judge some evidences and accumulation of evidences making some belief more plausible than other.

The concern for definitions and axioms only arose when you wanted to reason about numbers too big to comprehend or write down.

It happens when we search a (fundamental) theory. With Mechanism, we have to derive physics from machine biology-psychology-theology, that is from the mathematics of arithmetical self-reference (from qG1*) (G1= G + (p->[]p).

Bruno

Brent

t postulating the existence of something Turing universal. 

Bruno

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/e2073f78-fb67-66b6-7226-28b887881e87%40verizon.net.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/1E52FB50-992D-461F-8501-E5E01CBADC23%40ulb.ac.be.

[Alan Grayson]

Are the integers, and by extension arithmetic, fictitious? AG 

[Brent Meeker]

I wouldn't say necessarily say "fictitous".  They are abstractions, like "red".  They are descriptive of sets of things.

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

Really?

The difference is that arithmetic is used by all physicists, mathematicians, economists, and that if you are mistaken about their relations, your rocket might blow up, or miss the moon.

But if you are wrong about Watson or Holmes, you might just get a bad note at your English literature course.

Bruno




>
> Brent
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.

> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/0ed5c2d8-f713-c748-2f0b-307745a2050c%40verizon.net.

[Bruno Marchal]

Exactly. 

 When doing metaphysics seriously, we make the ontological commitment(s) into hypotheses themselves. That is exactly what the materialists have forgotten to do since the “political” (tyrannical) institutionalisation of religion, but this comes from the abandon of the scientific attitude in theology/metaphysics since about 1500 years.

Bruno

Brent

If we assume a physical universe to explain a first peson prediction, that would work if that physical universe is not Turing emulable, and, importantly, that it is able to make my consciousness, or my first person prediction, related to that physical universe. But with mechanism, that consciousness is brought by the corresponding computation in arithmetic. If not, you need a non computationalist theory of mind. If the mechanism by which the physical universe makes me conscious is Turing emulable, it is automatically already emulated in arithmetic, through infinitely many occurrences, and the first person prediction (physics) has to be a statistics on all (relative) computations.

Mechanism just make precise and rigorous the old and antic “dream argument”. The LARC experience is a stunning evidence for the existence of the Higgs Boson, but not a proof, as I can conceive that I will wake up and realised that this LARC stuff was just a dream. We cannot prove any ontological evidence from any experience, but of course we can judge some evidences and accumulation of evidences making some belief more plausible than other.

The concern for definitions and axioms only arose when you wanted to reason about numbers too big to comprehend or write down.

It happens when we search a (fundamental) theory. With Mechanism, we have to derive physics from machine biology-psychology-theology, that is from the mathematics of arithmetical self-reference (from qG1*) (G1= G + (p->[]p).

Bruno

Brent

t postulating the existence of something Turing universal. 

Bruno

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/e2073f78-fb67-66b6-7226-28b887881e87%40verizon.net.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/1E52FB50-992D-461F-8501-E5E01CBADC23%40ulb.ac.be.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/009c7520-cab9-7748-7bf8-fff7c2d14db2%40verizon.net.

[Philip Thrift]

Arithmetic (or algebra, or geometry) is a language (or collection/family of languages to be picky) - expressed formally as a list of axioms and theorems produced from that list of axioms -  so as a language it is itself not fiction, just as when you walk into the fiction section of a library, you see books written in English, and English as a language is itself not fictitious.

But numbers - the entities or subjects of arithmetic - are fictitious.

@philipthrift

[PGC]

On Thursday, February 27, 2020 at 1:16:17 PM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 26 Feb 2020, at 21:41, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

And we should be clear that what we are doing are assuming and hypothesizing and reasoning about our assumptions and we are not bringing anything into existence thereby.

Exactly. 

 When doing metaphysics seriously, we make the ontological commitment(s) into hypotheses themselves. That is exactly what the materialists have forgotten to do since the “political” (tyrannical) institutionalisation of religion, but this comes from the abandon of the scientific attitude in theology/metaphysics since about 1500 years.

If anybody needs to repeat how serious they are so often... 

That there ever existed "a correct scientific attitude" of the pure Godzilla of pure truthful truthiness, widespread in the antique, with every citizen able to argue pure socratic, in front of the saint prophets of Plato and Plotinus, where everything existed in perfect harmony, while the saints could endlessly split hairs with folks about the inaccuracies of their ignorance towards the one big truth of truths... is fun but hardly historically accurate. You imply truth so often, you're running risk of intimidating the current US president.

The existential status of abstract mathematical objects can be seen to be on the same level as Sher- or Shylock. And if we elevate them via "hold on, abstract objects flow into engineering and are therefore productive in our world, which Sherlock isn't", who knows... maybe some Sherlogician Nazis will take over the world by posting on a list with a theory that the property of being a unicorn exists in the broad platonic sense, even without any instantiated unicorns... you can derive numbers from unicorns by asking: what does a unicorn have? A horn, so what number corresponds most closely to the most platonic attribute of said horn? We have derived the number one. Now, compare that to how many horns no unicorns have, e.g. a crab. It is obvious that no unicorns implies the emptiness of space before the arrival of the unicorn our savior Jesushorn. He was the one-unicorn and those that followed became the second, the third, the fourth etc. disciples and their tales and mathemagical adventures led them to teach Pythagoras about triangles and Plato about platonism.

Whatever people make true or fictional - outside the rather transparent self-parenting validation of their own views - what do they get out of it besides money, influence, nothing but the whole truth so help them godzilla of ultimate truthfulness? PGC

 

[Brent Meeker]

On 2/27/2020 4:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> On 26 Feb 2020, at 21:36, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 2/26/2020 2:48 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>> Being sure of that sentence is true, "Dr Watson was a friend of Sherlock Holmes." doesn't mean the things named in the sentence exist.
>>> It certainly means that Watson and Homes exist, in some sense. The question is “is that sense interesting with respect to our goal of explaining "everything” (matter and consciousness) in a coherent way?
>> They exist in exactly the same way arithmetic and Turing machines exist.
>
> Really?
>
> The difference is that arithmetic is used by all physicists, mathematicians, economists, and that if you are mistaken about their relations, your rocket might blow up, or miss the moon.
>
> But if you are wrong about Watson or Holmes, you might just get a bad note at your English literature course.

None of those people use all of arithmetic.

Brent

[Philip Thrift]

On Thursday, February 27, 2020 at 6:11:49 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:

> On 26 Feb 2020, at 21:36, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 2/26/2020 2:48 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>   Being sure of that sentence is true, "Dr Watson was a friend of Sherlock Holmes." doesn't mean the things named in the sentence exist.
>>
>> It certainly means that Watson and Homes exist, in some sense. The question is “is that sense interesting with respect to our goal of explaining "everything” (matter and consciousness) in a coherent way?
>
> They exist in exactly the same way arithmetic and Turing machines exist.


Really?

The difference is that arithmetic is used by all physicists, mathematicians, economists, and that if you are mistaken about their relations, your rocket might blow up, or miss the moon.

But if you are wrong about Watson or Holmes, you might just get a bad note at your English literature course.

Bruno

What could be a "wrong" thesis about Watson and/or Holmes?

(Think of a young Derrida writing a school paper.)

@philipthrift 

[Brent Meeker]

On Thursday, February 27, 2020 at 6:11:49 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:

> On 26 Feb 2020, at 21:36, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 2/26/2020 2:48 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>   Being sure of that sentence is true, "Dr Watson was a friend of Sherlock Holmes." doesn't mean the things named in the sentence exist.
>>
>> It certainly means that Watson and Homes exist, in some sense. The question is “is that sense interesting with respect to our goal of explaining "everything” (matter and consciousness) in a coherent way?
>
> They exist in exactly the same way arithmetic and Turing machines exist.


Really?

The difference is that arithmetic is used by all physicists, mathematicians, economists, and that if you are mistaken about their relations, your rocket might blow up, or miss the moon.

But if you are wrong about Watson or Holmes, you might just get a bad note at your English literature course.

But not if you were studying how a detective should solve a crime.  And if you were mistaken about the methods you might fail to solve the crime.

Brent

Bruno

[Bruno Marchal]

That seems to me to be a confusion between language and theories, and their semantics. You did not comment on my superhero triangle, which illustrates that the arithmetical reality is not fiction.  

You *can* call that fiction, but then the point will be that the physical reality emerges from that fiction, and the word “fiction” will lose its common meaning, and mislead people. The point is that for all I and j, phi_i(j) converges or does not converges. If it was fiction, we could decide which is the case, but then elementary arithmetic becomes inconsistent.

Bruno

@philipthrift

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/29555a54-8a0f-4d35-8a35-ee56468eca3e%40googlegroups.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

They use a part of it, which suppose it consistent, and that is global. Nobody use “all” of arithmetic, it is a highly non computable set, and nobody can use that (as opposed of making theories which put some light on it).

Bruno



>
> Brent
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/79c09429-5aca-b5f9-1b5a-679b20b14661%40verizon.net.

[Bruno Marchal]

Good question. It would be like making a summary of a novel, which would be wrong. If you say “Tintin never got to the moon” you are wrong, with respect to the novel, and false, with respect to the mundane reality. But if you say that the number 18 is prime, you are false, even among the aliens.

Bruno

(Think of a young Derrida writing a school paper.)

@philipthrift 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/23b30502-5d5d-4230-ae21-44cf0e00776f%40googlegroups.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

You illustrate my point. Studying crime is real stuff, like arithmetic. In this case, you are using fictions to put some light on a possible  “real” case, and that makes the difference.

How would you answer the question “is Holmes smoking a pipe made from atoms”? If you treat Holmes like a machine Turing, you get paradoxes here: as you will need to say that “all pipes are made of atoms”, “everything made of atoms is physically real”, “Holmes smokes a pipe”, so Holmes’s pipe is physically real”. So Homes is more real than Turing machine, which are typically not made of atoms.

Bruno

Brent

Bruno

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/46975872-d483-3de5-9e0a-ddff29c9f70e%40verizon.net.

[Philip Thrift]

On Friday, February 28, 2020 at 2:01:22 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 27 Feb 2020, at 13:17, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wednesday, February 26, 2020 at 6:54:36 PM UTC-6, Alan Grayson wrote:

On Wednesday, February 26, 2020 at 1:36:49 PM UTC-7, Brent wrote:

On 2/26/2020 2:48 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>   Being sure of that sentence is true, "Dr Watson was a friend of
>> Sherlock Holmes." doesn't mean the things named in the sentence exist.
>
> It certainly means that Watson and Homes exist, in some sense. The
> question is “is that sense interesting with respect to our goal of
> explaining "everything” (matter and consciousness) in a coherent way?

They exist in exactly the same way arithmetic and Turing machines exist.

Brent

Are the integers, and by extension arithmetic, fictitious? AG 

Arithmetic (or algebra, or geometry) is a language (or collection/family of languages to be picky) - expressed formally as a list of axioms and theorems produced from that list of axioms -  so as a language it is itself not fiction, just as when you walk into the fiction section of a library, you see books written in English, and English as a language is itself not fictitious.

But numbers - the entities or subjects of arithmetic - are fictitious.

That seems to me to be a confusion between language and theories, and their semantics. You did not comment on my superhero triangle, which illustrates that the arithmetical reality is not fiction.  

You *can* call that fiction, but then the point will be that the physical reality emerges from that fiction, and the word “fiction” will lose its common meaning, and mislead people. The point is that for all I and j, phi_i(j) converges or does not converges. If it was fiction, we could decide which is the case, but then elementary arithmetic becomes inconsistent.

Bruno

Semantics is very much the thing (the elephant in the room) of languages/theory - certainly from the perspective of programming language theory.

Real computing is computing voided of Platonism.

 

https://codicalist.wordpress.com/2018/09/30/real-computationalism/

Take arithmetic (encoded in the Peano axioms):

Peano axioms of natural numbers in Agda

https://gist.github.com/IKEGAMIDaisuke/1211203

What is its ultimate semantics? As one sees theorems being proven and produced on the computer screen, it is the result of movement of elections in computer circuits and pixels.

What is its semantics in the human brain of the person watching the computer screen of the Agda program "doing its thing" with the Peano axioms and proving theorems?

One could leave that answer to neuroscientists about what the human brain does with looking at proof of arithmetic on a computer screen (or in a printed book for that matter).

Only Platonists jump to a belief that there is a ghostly world of abstract entities called "numbers" that exists outside of matter (whether that matter is your brain or your computer).

@philipthrift 

[Bruno Marchal]

The standard model of arithmetic, which refers to what we have learned in school. 

Nobody can define this, but everybody has a good idea of what it is. Then, with Mechanism and Traski theorem, we understand why we cannot define it.

As one sees theorems being proven and produced on the computer screen, it is the result of movement of elections in computer circuits and pixels.

But this concerns the proof. It is not a semantic. If it is proved in a complete theory, like RA or PA or any first order arithmetic, the semantical part will means “true in all models of the the theory”. That implies “trie in the standard model”, but the reciprocal is not true. In fact the standard model (semantic) eludes all effective theories of arithmetic.

What is its semantics in the human brain of the person watching the computer screen of the Agda program "doing its thing" with the Peano axioms and proving theorems?

One could leave that answer to neuroscientists about what the human brain does with looking at proof of arithmetic on a computer screen (or in a printed book for that matter).

Not sure if the neuroscientist will help here. 

Only Platonists jump to a belief that there is a ghostly world of abstract entities called "numbers" that exists outside of matter (whether that matter is your brain or your computer).

We don’t need this either. We need only to believe that 2+3 = 5, or that phi_i(j) converges or not converges. The philosophy and metaphysics come after. 

If not, it is like studying the working of my brain to convince myself that I understand correctly that 2+2=4. That does not work, because my brain study is based on my belief that 2+2=4.

You could aswel say that Einstein’s theory is circular, because you want to explain 2+2=4 with Matter, but Einstein’s theory use the numbers, and assumes they do what they need to give sense to, say, E= mc^2.

At some point, people have to put *all* the hypothesis on the table, so that it is clear what is assumed, and what is derived.

Bruno

@philipthrift 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/b2a5360f-7267-454e-b852-320e6bde0649%40googlegroups.com.

[PGC]

On Friday, February 28, 2020 at 9:08:25 AM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 27 Feb 2020, at 21:01, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thursday, February 27, 2020 at 6:11:49 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:

> On 26 Feb 2020, at 21:36, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 2/26/2020 2:48 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>   Being sure of that sentence is true, "Dr Watson was a friend of Sherlock Holmes." doesn't mean the things named in the sentence exist.
>>
>> It certainly means that Watson and Homes exist, in some sense. The question is “is that sense interesting with respect to our goal of explaining "everything” (matter and consciousness) in a coherent way?
>
> They exist in exactly the same way arithmetic and Turing machines exist.


Really?

The difference is that arithmetic is used by all physicists, mathematicians, economists, and that if you are mistaken about their relations, your rocket might blow up, or miss the moon.

But if you are wrong about Watson or Holmes, you might just get a bad note at your English literature course.

Bruno

What could be a "wrong" thesis about Watson and/or Holmes?

Good question. It would be like making a summary of a novel, which would be wrong. If you say “Tintin never got to the moon” you are wrong, with respect to the novel, and false, with respect to the mundane reality. But if you say that the number 18 is prime, you are false, even among the aliens.

If your literature professor didn't fail you, he or she should have. I say this without irony or humor intended.

Nobody in the world, other than servitor humblebrag here, claims to know or have an authoritative grasp on where "mundane reality" ends and where the land of fiction and wishful thinking begins. Sure, we may know that some abstraction may or may not be locally more effective given some more or less defined domain... but that's far from claiming absolute reality/truth. No credible scientist does this, even when deeply and passionately pursuing their work. And in literary contexts, it is lesson 101: nobody can arbitrate for anybody else what they consider to be real. Any interpretation of platonism worth its salt imho would concur with this.

Bruno is therefore not a platonist in my book. Those ancient Greeks did not try to manipulate folks with cheap rhetorical tricks like: "you believe 2 + 2 = 4? you believe in functions that function? So then accept that mechanism the way I preach, my view of reality, and Turing machines are the only valid path in conducting discourse about ensemble theories and everything else for that matter, because this discourse is the primary and only discourse that should exist scientifically because we must be turing machines." This IS the authoritarian tendency of one unfortunate, anxious individual increasingly hijacking the discourse on ensemble theories here. It is colonialist and territorial: if the smallest part of your reasoning assumes one element of my arithmetical system, pay me rent and grant me infinite credibility/authority.

In any literature class practiced with care, folks have the decency of understanding the ambiguity between what a finite being may consider real/true and the desperate generalization that would turn that into some absolutist fundamentalism. That's why folks self-destruct on rewards (e.g. gambling) and beliefs of various kinds, and why linguists study discourses of control/power. Nobody is perfect and nobody remains uncompromised. 

"Realism anything" is a red flag. And I'll maintain that the less serious versions of scientific secularism, christianity/major/minor religions that remain respectful of the inner private lives of people, who may hold different things to be real; including the rather fuzzy humanisms and post-modernisms practiced currently, are perhaps ambiguous for a reason: they are at least life affirming, with efforts to tune them towards benevolence/understanding that may be far from perfect, but clearly more advanced than "metaphysics" that are cynical and authoritative in nature. PGC

Democracy and freedom of religion concerns, along with disclaimers towards the usual pitfalls of fundamentalism, should accompany any discourse that assumes itself or claims to be "realist". The Isis guys, Nazis, and any authoritarian regime assume themselves, along with their interpretation of the world, to be more primarily real than some excluded boogyman scapegoat group, which invariably, in logically forcing fashion, leads to the deletion of the less prime elements, to put it mildly. For sake of the real, of course. PGC

[Philip Thrift]

So much for the mathematical educational system. It has become an orthodox, fundamentalist divinity school.

 

Nobody can define this, but everybody has a good idea of what it is. Then, with Mechanism and Traski theorem, we understand why we cannot define it.

As one sees theorems being proven and produced on the computer screen, it is the result of movement of elections in computer circuits and pixels.

But this concerns the proof. It is not a semantic. If it is proved in a complete theory, like RA or PA or any first order arithmetic, the semantical part will means “true in all models of the the theory”. That implies “trie in the standard model”, but the reciprocal is not true. In fact the standard model (semantic) eludes all effective theories of arithmetic.

What is taught in schools though:

Operational semantics is a category of formal programming language semantics in which certain desired properties of a program, such as correctness, safety or security, are verified by constructing proofs from logical statements about its execution and procedures, rather than by attaching mathematical meanings to its terms (denotational semantics). 

(Wikipedia) 

What is its semantics in the human brain of the person watching the computer screen of the Agda program "doing its thing" with the Peano axioms and proving theorems?

One could leave that answer to neuroscientists about what the human brain does with looking at proof of arithmetic on a computer screen (or in a printed book for that matter).

Not sure if the neuroscientist will help here. 

Only Platonists jump to a belief that there is a ghostly world of abstract entities called "numbers" that exists outside of matter (whether that matter is your brain or your computer).

We don’t need this either. We need only to believe that 2+3 = 5, or that phi_i(j) converges or not converges. The philosophy and metaphysics come after. 

If not, it is like studying the working of my brain to convince myself that I understand correctly that 2+2=4. That does not work, because my brain study is based on my belief that 2+2=4.

You could aswel say that Einstein’s theory is circular, because you want to explain 2+2=4 with Matter, but Einstein’s theory use the numbers, and assumes they do what they need to give sense to, say, E= mc^2.

At some point, people have to put *all* the hypothesis on the table, so that it is clear what is assumed, and what is derived.

Bruno

That "2_2=4" works in Einstein's theory - and it its numerical relativity implementations - is a matter of mathematical pulp fictionalism. 

https://codicalist.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/mathematical-pulp-fictionalism/

@philipthrift

[Brent Meeker]

On 2/28/2020 12:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> On 27 Feb 2020, at 18:28, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 2/27/2020 4:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>> On 26 Feb 2020, at 21:36, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 2/26/2020 2:48 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>>>> Being sure of that sentence is true, "Dr Watson was a friend of Sherlock Holmes." doesn't mean the things named in the sentence exist.
>>>>> It certainly means that Watson and Homes exist, in some sense. The question is “is that sense interesting with respect to our goal of explaining "everything” (matter and consciousness) in a coherent way?
>>>> They exist in exactly the same way arithmetic and Turing machines exist.
>>> Really?
>>>
>>> The difference is that arithmetic is used by all physicists, mathematicians, economists, and that if you are mistaken about their relations, your rocket might blow up, or miss the moon.
>>>
>>> But if you are wrong about Watson or Holmes, you might just get a bad note at your English literature course.
>> None of those people use all of arithmetic.
> They use a part of it, which suppose it consistent, and that is global. Nobody use “all” of arithmetic, it is a highly non computable set, and nobody can use that (as opposed of making theories which put some light on it).
>

But they don't use the part of it you need to derive Goedel's theorem
and Loeb's theorem etc.

Brent

[Brent Meeker]

On 2/28/2020 12:14 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 28 Feb 2020, at 03:34, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On Thursday, February 27, 2020 at 6:11:49 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:

> On 26 Feb 2020, at 21:36, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 2/26/2020 2:48 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>   Being sure of that sentence is true, "Dr Watson was a friend of Sherlock Holmes." doesn't mean the things named in the sentence exist.
>>
>> It certainly means that Watson and Homes exist, in some sense. The question is “is that sense interesting with respect to our goal of explaining "everything” (matter and consciousness) in a coherent way?
>
> They exist in exactly the same way arithmetic and Turing machines exist.


Really?

The difference is that arithmetic is used by all physicists, mathematicians, economists, and that if you are mistaken about their relations, your rocket might blow up, or miss the moon.

But if you are wrong about Watson or Holmes, you might just get a bad note at your English literature course.

But not if you were studying how a detective should solve a crime.  And if you were mistaken about the methods you might fail to solve the crime.

You illustrate my point. Studying crime is real stuff, like arithmetic. In this case, you are using fictions to put some light on a possible  “real” case, and that makes the difference.

How would you answer the question “is Holmes smoking a pipe made from atoms”?

No, he's smoking a pipe imagined by Conan Doyle (who didn't even believe in atoms).

Brent

If you treat Holmes like a machine Turing, you get paradoxes here: as you will need to say that “all pipes are made of atoms”, “everything made of atoms is physically real”, “Holmes smokes a pipe”, so Holmes’s pipe is physically real”. So Homes is more real than Turing machine, which are typically not made of atoms.

Bruno

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/368E78AB-0638-485D-870B-1A767F85C5AA%40ulb.ac.be.

[Brent Meeker]

That doesn't really help because it leaves open the relation between what is assumed to be true and what is actually.  That's why reasoning that is not grounded in ostensive definitions and empirically tested is just a game.

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

?

I think they use it. You have already incompleteness in Robison Arithmetic, and Löb’s theorem needs the induction axioms, which are used all the time, like when believing that x + y = y + x for all natural numbers. That was the point of Gödel: his incompleteness theorem is provable by the theories he was concerned about. Incompleteness arrives very quickly, indeed, in very elementary arithmetic (“very” = no induction axioms, and “elementary” = axiomatisable in first order logic).

Bruno



>
> Brent
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/a49c0c00-cc27-c757-5b06-f8b7e639d085%40verizon.net.

[Bruno Marchal]

Accepting the Aristotelian credo, but I have never found one empirical or theoretical evidence for it, and then with Mechanism we know, or should know, that it does not make sense. Physicalism + mechanism gives magical power to “matter” by enabling it to prevent a Turing machine, 100% similar to you at the relevant description level, to be conscious. This raise the question if some holy water is not also needed, or the will of some supernatural creature …

Ostensive definition works very well, but not in computationalist metaphysics, as ostension happens in dreams, and thus in arithmetic. Physics is the science of measuring the relative plausibility of computations/dreams, and computer science, predicts quickly the many worlds, and the (propositional) quantum formalism, where materialism must still eliminate or dismiss consciousness and the mind-body problem.

Bruno

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/72d30f9e-20ec-010c-f5d4-d9c0f45bfcb2%40verizon.net.

[PGC]

On Saturday, February 29, 2020 at 10:04:16 AM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 29 Feb 2020, at 03:45, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 2/28/2020 5:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 28 Feb 2020, at 13:05, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

Only Platonists jump to a belief that there is a ghostly world of abstract entities called "numbers" that exists outside of matter (whether that matter is your brain or your computer).

We don’t need this either. We need only to believe that 2+3 = 5, or that phi_i(j) converges or not converges. The philosophy and metaphysics come after. 

If not, it is like studying the working of my brain to convince myself that I understand correctly that 2+2=4. That does not work, because my brain study is based on my belief that 2+2=4.

You could aswel say that Einstein’s theory is circular, because you want to explain 2+2=4 with Matter, but Einstein’s theory use the numbers, and assumes they do what they need to give sense to, say, E= mc^2.

At some point, people have to put *all* the hypothesis on the table, so that it is clear what is assumed, and what is derived.

That doesn't really help because it leaves open the relation between what is assumed to be true and what is actually.  That's why reasoning that is not grounded in ostensive definitions and empirically tested is just a game.

Accepting the Aristotelian credo, but I have never found one empirical or theoretical evidence for it,

Then don't accept food, water, or any other material substance as primary. Use abstractions or images in your mind. Jesus also gave up all material possessions to reflect his faith in mechanism. The Christian thing was just advertising. 

 

and then with Mechanism we know, or should know, that it does not make sense. Physicalism + mechanism gives magical power to “matter” by enabling it to prevent a Turing machine, 100% similar to you at the relevant description level, to be conscious. This raise the question if some holy water is not also needed, or the will of some supernatural creature …

Ostensive definition works very well, but not in computationalist metaphysics,

The "metaphysics" where everybody states "reality is the thing we search" but actually is certain of what is real and what isn't + has the authority to impose it, just because the boss is always right. Yeah, we all know that "metaphysics". PGC  

[Brent Meeker]

On 2/29/2020 1:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 29 Feb 2020, at 03:45, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 2/28/2020 5:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 28 Feb 2020, at 13:05, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

Only Platonists jump to a belief that there is a ghostly world of abstract entities called "numbers" that exists outside of matter (whether that matter is your brain or your computer).

We don’t need this either. We need only to believe that 2+3 = 5, or that phi_i(j) converges or not converges. The philosophy and metaphysics come after. 

If not, it is like studying the working of my brain to convince myself that I understand correctly that 2+2=4. That does not work, because my brain study is based on my belief that 2+2=4.

You could aswel say that Einstein’s theory is circular, because you want to explain 2+2=4 with Matter, but Einstein’s theory use the numbers, and assumes they do what they need to give sense to, say, E= mc^2.

At some point, people have to put *all* the hypothesis on the table, so that it is clear what is assumed, and what is derived.

That doesn't really help because it leaves open the relation between what is assumed to be true and what is actually.  That's why reasoning that is not grounded in ostensive definitions and empirically tested is just a game.

Accepting the Aristotelian credo, but I have never found one empirical or theoretical evidence for it,

You just refuse to see it.  It's all around you.  The evidence is that it works.

and then with Mechanism we know, or should know, that it does not make sense. Physicalism + mechanism gives magical power to “matter” by enabling it to prevent a Turing machine, 100% similar to you at the relevant description level, to be conscious. This raise the question if some holy water is not also needed, or the will of some supernatural creature …

Ostensive definition works very well, but not in computationalist metaphysics, as ostension happens in dreams, and thus in arithmetic. Physics is the science of measuring the relative plausibility of computations/dreams, and computer science, predicts quickly the many worlds, and the (propositional) quantum formalism, where materialism must still eliminate or dismiss consciousness and the mind-body problem.

Even in philosophizing about consciousness you rely on ostensive definition: when you write about "seeing red" or "counting" as conscious activities you are relying on and assuming that it points to what it brings to mind in your reader.

Brent

[PGC]

Or even simpler regarding conscious activities: "how does the brain work?" in the first place. The idea of the brain as a machine may or may not be fruitful in terms of AI, philosophy etc. but it still is a metaphor. "Machines work, brains work; they're both mechanisms, inputs and outputs... so Descartes, right?" 

Convincing folks of the veracity of this metaphor as a computationalist with such an agenda, you'd have to perform something as huge as "model/simulate an entire complex nervous system, with neuronal function, at a single state" + bring home loot, such as cures for illnesses and viruses etc.

Show folks this, in any language or code, informed by whatever beliefs of researchers/scientists working on any substrate, and then we may or may not want to talk machine philosophy and identity questions. Go ahead, Bruno + computationalists (that can perfectly separate truth from falsity in reality, you guys that can absolutely, with complete and utter seriousness distinguish real facts from fiction; as we've learned in this thread): show the neuroscience community and the rest of us how it's REALLY done. Everybody ready to learn around here, right? PGC

[Philip Thrift]

I presume :) everyone here has reviewed all the abstracts, workshops, posters, and sessions at next month's TSC 2020 conference:

http://consciousness.arizona.edu/

abstracts: https://eagle.sbs.arizona.edu/sc/abs_report_bysession.php?p=C

(Does anyone have a presentation there?)

What approach to consciousness is missing from this gazillion collection of presentations?

@philipthrift

[Bruno Marchal]

On 29 Feb 2020, at 13:43, PGC <multipl...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, February 29, 2020 at 10:04:16 AM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 29 Feb 2020, at 03:45, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 2/28/2020 5:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 28 Feb 2020, at 13:05, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

Only Platonists jump to a belief that there is a ghostly world of abstract entities called "numbers" that exists outside of matter (whether that matter is your brain or your computer).

We don’t need this either. We need only to believe that 2+3 = 5, or that phi_i(j) converges or not converges. The philosophy and metaphysics come after. 

If not, it is like studying the working of my brain to convince myself that I understand correctly that 2+2=4. That does not work, because my brain study is based on my belief that 2+2=4.

You could aswel say that Einstein’s theory is circular, because you want to explain 2+2=4 with Matter, but Einstein’s theory use the numbers, and assumes they do what they need to give sense to, say, E= mc^2.

At some point, people have to put *all* the hypothesis on the table, so that it is clear what is assumed, and what is derived.

That doesn't really help because it leaves open the relation between what is assumed to be true and what is actually.  That's why reasoning that is not grounded in ostensive definitions and empirically tested is just a game.

Accepting the Aristotelian credo, but I have never found one empirical or theoretical evidence for it,

Then don't accept food, water, or any other material substance as primary.

Indeed.

Use abstractions or images in your mind. Jesus also gave up all material possessions to reflect his faith in mechanism. The Christian thing was just advertising. 

 

and then with Mechanism we know, or should know, that it does not make sense. Physicalism + mechanism gives magical power to “matter” by enabling it to prevent a Turing machine, 100% similar to you at the relevant description level, to be conscious. This raise the question if some holy water is not also needed, or the will of some supernatural creature …

Ostensive definition works very well, but not in computationalist metaphysics,

The "metaphysics" where everybody states "reality is the thing we search" but actually is certain of what is real and what isn't + has the authority to impose it, just because the boss is always right. Yeah, we all know that "metaphysics". PGC  

The whole point of doing “metaphysics” with the scientific attitude is in never claiming truth, and always be open for refutation. A metaphysician or theologian keeping this attitude cannot be certain of what is real.

Bruno

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/a68e17bf-a8e7-4fb8-95f0-777f1ab63fd1%40googlegroups.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

On 29 Feb 2020, at 18:13, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 2/29/2020 1:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 29 Feb 2020, at 03:45, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 2/28/2020 5:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 28 Feb 2020, at 13:05, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

Only Platonists jump to a belief that there is a ghostly world of abstract entities called "numbers" that exists outside of matter (whether that matter is your brain or your computer).

We don’t need this either. We need only to believe that 2+3 = 5, or that phi_i(j) converges or not converges. The philosophy and metaphysics come after. 

If not, it is like studying the working of my brain to convince myself that I understand correctly that 2+2=4. That does not work, because my brain study is based on my belief that 2+2=4.

You could aswel say that Einstein’s theory is circular, because you want to explain 2+2=4 with Matter, but Einstein’s theory use the numbers, and assumes they do what they need to give sense to, say, E= mc^2.

At some point, people have to put *all* the hypothesis on the table, so that it is clear what is assumed, and what is derived.

That doesn't really help because it leaves open the relation between what is assumed to be true and what is actually.  That's why reasoning that is not grounded in ostensive definitions and empirically tested is just a game.

Accepting the Aristotelian credo, but I have never found one empirical or theoretical evidence for it,

You just refuse to see it.  It's all around you.  The evidence is that it works.

I think that you are confusing the evidences for a physical reality (which are numerous, I think everyone agree on this), with the evidence for a physical reality which would be at the origin of everything, for which there is no evidence at all, and there is arguably a big evidence against (the dream argument, and even more so: the discovery of all computations in Arithmetic). 

I have shown that such an evidence would be given by a discrepancy between quantum mechanics, and the physics which “is in th head of the universal number”, but, up to now, no evidence have been found (that I know of). 

and then with Mechanism we know, or should know, that it does not make sense. Physicalism + mechanism gives magical power to “matter” by enabling it to prevent a Turing machine, 100% similar to you at the relevant description level, to be conscious. This raise the question if some holy water is not also needed, or the will of some supernatural creature …

Ostensive definition works very well, but not in computationalist metaphysics, as ostension happens in dreams, and thus in arithmetic. Physics is the science of measuring the relative plausibility of computations/dreams, and computer science, predicts quickly the many worlds, and the (propositional) quantum formalism, where materialism must still eliminate or dismiss consciousness and the mind-body problem.

Even in philosophizing about consciousness you rely on ostensive definition: when you write about "seeing red" or "counting" as conscious activities you are relying on and assuming that it points to what it brings to mind in your reader.

Not in any relevant way with respect to the reasoning. You are the one making an ontological commitment, and then dismissing consciousness, it seems to me. But how could a universal machine makes the difference between being run by a physical machine and by an arithmetical machine. She cannot do that, unless by doing experiment and comparing the result predicted by the physics derived from arithmetic, and the physics inferred from the observation. And this, up now, seems to add evidence for Mechanism, not for Materialism.

Bruno

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/6c157082-c914-1791-7a01-3ed156f715be%40verizon.net.

[Bruno Marchal]

They missed the hard problem of consciousness, that is the mind-body problem. Explicitly so. In a sense, they miss a millenium of progress in that filed, but this reminds us that we are still in the Aristotelian era (even more after 2000).

Bruno

@philipthrift

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/7d214d94-4295-4658-b51f-b775ac0e0801%40googlegroups.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

Have you heard of parents taking their kids out of school after they taught that 2 + 2 = 4?

I am not sure what you are saying here, nor below. If you can elaborate?

Bruno

 

Nobody can define this, but everybody has a good idea of what it is. Then, with Mechanism and Traski theorem, we understand why we cannot define it.

As one sees theorems being proven and produced on the computer screen, it is the result of movement of elections in computer circuits and pixels.

But this concerns the proof. It is not a semantic. If it is proved in a complete theory, like RA or PA or any first order arithmetic, the semantical part will means “true in all models of the the theory”. That implies “trie in the standard model”, but the reciprocal is not true. In fact the standard model (semantic) eludes all effective theories of arithmetic.

What is taught in schools though:

Operational semantics is a category of formal programming language semantics in which certain desired properties of a program, such as correctness, safety or security, are verified by constructing proofs from logical statements about its execution and procedures, rather than by attaching mathematical meanings to its terms (denotational semantics). 

(Wikipedia) 

What is its semantics in the human brain of the person watching the computer screen of the Agda program "doing its thing" with the Peano axioms and proving theorems?

One could leave that answer to neuroscientists about what the human brain does with looking at proof of arithmetic on a computer screen (or in a printed book for that matter).

Not sure if the neuroscientist will help here. 

Only Platonists jump to a belief that there is a ghostly world of abstract entities called "numbers" that exists outside of matter (whether that matter is your brain or your computer).

We don’t need this either. We need only to believe that 2+3 = 5, or that phi_i(j) converges or not converges. The philosophy and metaphysics come after. 

If not, it is like studying the working of my brain to convince myself that I understand correctly that 2+2=4. That does not work, because my brain study is based on my belief that 2+2=4.

You could aswel say that Einstein’s theory is circular, because you want to explain 2+2=4 with Matter, but Einstein’s theory use the numbers, and assumes they do what they need to give sense to, say, E= mc^2.

At some point, people have to put *all* the hypothesis on the table, so that it is clear what is assumed, and what is derived.

Bruno

That "2_2=4" works in Einstein's theory - and it its numerical relativity implementations - is a matter of mathematical pulp fictionalism. 

https://codicalist.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/mathematical-pulp-fictionalism/

@philipthrift

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/6b49ae77-2429-496d-a464-67588eb77445%40googlegroups.com.

[PGC]

On Sunday, March 1, 2020 at 2:44:05 PM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 29 Feb 2020, at 13:43, PGC <multipl...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, February 29, 2020 at 10:04:16 AM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 29 Feb 2020, at 03:45, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 2/28/2020 5:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 28 Feb 2020, at 13:05, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

Only Platonists jump to a belief that there is a ghostly world of abstract entities called "numbers" that exists outside of matter (whether that matter is your brain or your computer).

We don’t need this either. We need only to believe that 2+3 = 5, or that phi_i(j) converges or not converges. The philosophy and metaphysics come after. 

If not, it is like studying the working of my brain to convince myself that I understand correctly that 2+2=4. That does not work, because my brain study is based on my belief that 2+2=4.

You could aswel say that Einstein’s theory is circular, because you want to explain 2+2=4 with Matter, but Einstein’s theory use the numbers, and assumes they do what they need to give sense to, say, E= mc^2.

At some point, people have to put *all* the hypothesis on the table, so that it is clear what is assumed, and what is derived.

That doesn't really help because it leaves open the relation between what is assumed to be true and what is actually.  That's why reasoning that is not grounded in ostensive definitions and empirically tested is just a game.

Accepting the Aristotelian credo, but I have never found one empirical or theoretical evidence for it,

Then don't accept food, water, or any other material substance as primary.

Indeed.

Use abstractions or images in your mind. Jesus also gave up all material possessions to reflect his faith in mechanism. The Christian thing was just advertising. 

 

and then with Mechanism we know, or should know, that it does not make sense. Physicalism + mechanism gives magical power to “matter” by enabling it to prevent a Turing machine, 100% similar to you at the relevant description level, to be conscious. This raise the question if some holy water is not also needed, or the will of some supernatural creature …

Ostensive definition works very well, but not in computationalist metaphysics,

The "metaphysics" where everybody states "reality is the thing we search" but actually is certain of what is real and what isn't + has the authority to impose it, just because the boss is always right. Yeah, we all know that "metaphysics". PGC  

The whole point of doing “metaphysics” with the scientific attitude is in never claiming truth, and always be open for refutation. A metaphysician or theologian keeping this attitude cannot be certain of what is real.

Then you are neither a practitioner of metaphysics with a scientific attitude, nor a theologian as you posts on Holmes, Tintin etc. in this thread quite openly reveal an attitude that apparently can separate truth from fiction without problems. Applying logic to fiction in making statements regarding reality is evidence that you regularly confuse truth with personal fictions. PGC  

 

[Bruno Marchal]

On 28 Feb 2020, at 18:38, PGC <multipl...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Friday, February 28, 2020 at 9:08:25 AM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 27 Feb 2020, at 21:01, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thursday, February 27, 2020 at 6:11:49 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:

> On 26 Feb 2020, at 21:36, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 2/26/2020 2:48 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>   Being sure of that sentence is true, "Dr Watson was a friend of Sherlock Holmes." doesn't mean the things named in the sentence exist.
>>
>> It certainly means that Watson and Homes exist, in some sense. The question is “is that sense interesting with respect to our goal of explaining "everything” (matter and consciousness) in a coherent way?
>
> They exist in exactly the same way arithmetic and Turing machines exist.


Really?

The difference is that arithmetic is used by all physicists, mathematicians, economists, and that if you are mistaken about their relations, your rocket might blow up, or miss the moon.

But if you are wrong about Watson or Holmes, you might just get a bad note at your English literature course.

Bruno

What could be a "wrong" thesis about Watson and/or Holmes?

Good question. It would be like making a summary of a novel, which would be wrong. If you say “Tintin never got to the moon” you are wrong, with respect to the novel, and false, with respect to the mundane reality. But if you say that the number 18 is prime, you are false, even among the aliens.

If your literature professor didn't fail you, he or she should have. I say this without irony or humor intended.

Nobody in the world, other than servitor humblebrag here, claims to know or have an authoritative grasp on where "mundane reality" ends and where the land of fiction and wishful thinking begins. Sure, we may know that some abstraction may or may not be locally more effective given some more or less defined domain... but that's far from claiming absolute reality/truth.

I certainly do not claim the truth of Mechanism. I derive consequences of it, and insist that Mong the consequence, nobody can know if Mechanism its true, at least in some public way. Of course, someone having got an artificial brain; can, privately be happy with it, but still cannot claim it to be known as true.

Somewhere you talked about Mechanism as a metaphor. Here mechanism explains why this always fail. Mechanism is just the assumption of the existence of a level where we are Turning emulable, but then that level cannot be known, and that is why it requires, for the practitioners, some act of faith. The ethic of mechanism is that mechanism could be wrong, and should never been enforced. It asks for an explicit consent, or refusal. To say yes to the doctor implies the right to say no.

Bruno

No credible scientist does this, even when deeply and passionately pursuing their work. And in literary contexts, it is lesson 101: nobody can arbitrate for anybody else what they consider to be real. Any interpretation of platonism worth its salt imho would concur with this.

Bruno is therefore not a platonist in my book. Those ancient Greeks did not try to manipulate folks with cheap rhetorical tricks like: "you believe 2 + 2 = 4? you believe in functions that function? So then accept that mechanism the way I preach, my view of reality, and Turing machines are the only valid path in conducting discourse about ensemble theories and everything else for that matter, because this discourse is the primary and only discourse that should exist scientifically because we must be turing machines." This IS the authoritarian tendency of one unfortunate, anxious individual increasingly hijacking the discourse on ensemble theories here. It is colonialist and territorial: if the smallest part of your reasoning assumes one element of my arithmetical system, pay me rent and grant me infinite credibility/authority.

In any literature class practiced with care, folks have the decency of understanding the ambiguity between what a finite being may consider real/true and the desperate generalization that would turn that into some absolutist fundamentalism. That's why folks self-destruct on rewards (e.g. gambling) and beliefs of various kinds, and why linguists study discourses of control/power. Nobody is perfect and nobody remains uncompromised. 

"Realism anything" is a red flag. And I'll maintain that the less serious versions of scientific secularism, christianity/major/minor religions that remain respectful of the inner private lives of people, who may hold different things to be real; including the rather fuzzy humanisms and post-modernisms practiced currently, are perhaps ambiguous for a reason: they are at least life affirming, with efforts to tune them towards benevolence/understanding that may be far from perfect, but clearly more advanced than "metaphysics" that are cynical and authoritative in nature. PGC

Democracy and freedom of religion concerns, along with disclaimers towards the usual pitfalls of fundamentalism, should accompany any discourse that assumes itself or claims to be "realist". The Isis guys, Nazis, and any authoritarian regime assume themselves, along with their interpretation of the world, to be more primarily real than some excluded boogyman scapegoat group, which invariably, in logically forcing fashion, leads to the deletion of the less prime elements, to put it mildly. For sake of the real, of course. PGC

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/832bf9c5-90c8-4801-879a-85a8aafc5e56%40googlegroups.com.

[PGC]

The mind-body problem could well be intractable. At least some of that work might lead to engineering solutions that could make the mind-machine metaphor more credible, which complaining and whining about others' attitudes and dismissing them for missing things and loving not your work, rarely accomplishes. PGC 

[PGC]

On Sunday, March 1, 2020 at 3:09:31 PM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 28 Feb 2020, at 18:38, PGC <multipl...@gmail.com> wrote:

What could be a "wrong" thesis about Watson and/or Holmes?

Good question. It would be like making a summary of a novel, which would be wrong. If you say “Tintin never got to the moon” you are wrong, with respect to the novel, and false, with respect to the mundane reality. But if you say that the number 18 is prime, you are false, even among the aliens.

If your literature professor didn't fail you, he or she should have. I say this without irony or humor intended.

Nobody in the world, other than servitor humblebrag here, claims to know or have an authoritative grasp on where "mundane reality" ends and where the land of fiction and wishful thinking begins. Sure, we may know that some abstraction may or may not be locally more effective given some more or less defined domain... but that's far from claiming absolute reality/truth.

I certainly do not claim the truth of Mechanism. I derive consequences of it, and insist that Mong the consequence, nobody can know if Mechanism its true, at least in some public way. Of course, someone having got an artificial brain; can, privately be happy with it, but still cannot claim it to be known as true.

Somewhere you talked about Mechanism as a metaphor. Here mechanism explains why this always fail. Mechanism is just the assumption of the existence of a level where we are Turning emulable, but then that level cannot be known, and that is why it requires, for the practitioners, some act of faith. The ethic of mechanism is that mechanism could be wrong, and should never been enforced. It asks for an explicit consent, or refusal. To say yes to the doctor implies the right to say no.

You can't post without bringing up mechanism, thereby assuming very ambitiously that everybody you meet consents (where are your "ethics of mechanism"?) to your use of what is still a metaphor, in absence of convincing evidence that even a tiny part of reality, one complex organism, can indeed be emulated effectively enough, that we'd have sufficient context to even approach the question. Show us successful emulations of just one complex organism, say your favorite "worm", instead of bringing up conways gol in conways gol. The latter is easy, while the former... just show us and we'll see. PGC 

 

[Bruno Marchal]

On 29 Feb 2020, at 03:45, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

The whole idea of formalising the theory is to avoid that discussion. If we have some reason to doubt a theory, we discuss with peers, and perhaps we abandon it. But we cannot do the philosophy before the hard work, or we can not progress. 

The truth of a they is never part of the theory, and since Tarski and Gödel, we know that it has to be like that. 

That's why reasoning that is not grounded in ostensive definitions and empirically tested is just a game.

Sure, but that too does not make them true. 

What the greeks did understood, before Tarski (!à, is that truth is beyond the theory, and requires faith, if only the natural faith that we are not currently doing a nocturnal sort of dream.

All this has few incidence on applied physics, but it has already an impact on the foundations of physics, and is of crucial importance when doing metaphysics with the scientific method. There to, an ontological commitment on a notion of reality ((model) for that theory cannot be made. If done in the theory without precaution, that leads to inconsistency. If done with some precaution, it leads to a new different (and more powerful) theory.

Bruno

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/72d30f9e-20ec-010c-f5d4-d9c0f45bfcb2%40verizon.net.

[PGC]

On Sunday, March 1, 2020 at 3:54:41 PM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 29 Feb 2020, at 03:45, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 2/28/2020 5:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 28 Feb 2020, at 13:05, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

Only Platonists jump to a belief that there is a ghostly world of abstract entities called "numbers" that exists outside of matter (whether that matter is your brain or your computer).

We don’t need this either. We need only to believe that 2+3 = 5, or that phi_i(j) converges or not converges. The philosophy and metaphysics come after. 

If not, it is like studying the working of my brain to convince myself that I understand correctly that 2+2=4. That does not work, because my brain study is based on my belief that 2+2=4.

You could aswel say that Einstein’s theory is circular, because you want to explain 2+2=4 with Matter, but Einstein’s theory use the numbers, and assumes they do what they need to give sense to, say, E= mc^2.

At some point, people have to put *all* the hypothesis on the table, so that it is clear what is assumed, and what is derived.

That doesn't really help because it leaves open the relation between what is assumed to be true and what is actually. 

The whole idea of formalising the theory is to avoid that discussion. If we have some reason to doubt a theory, we discuss with peers, and perhaps we abandon it. But we cannot do the philosophy before the hard work, or we can not progress. 

The truth of a they is never part of the theory, and since Tarski and Gödel, we know that it has to be like that. 

That's why reasoning that is not grounded in ostensive definitions and empirically tested is just a game.

Sure, but that too does not make them true. 

What the greeks did understood, before Tarski (!à, is that truth is beyond the theory, and requires faith, if only the natural faith that we are not currently doing a nocturnal sort of dream.

All this has few incidence on applied physics, but it has already an impact on the foundations of physics, and is of crucial importance when doing metaphysics with the scientific method. There to, an ontological commitment on a notion of reality ((model) for that theory cannot be made. If done in the theory without precaution, that leads to inconsistency. If done with some precaution, it leads to a new different (and more powerful) theory.

Says you, but the conferences ARE out there and happening, which the materialist tyrants apparently are foolishly funding.

You have to get yourself out there, share, and defend your crucial model like everybody else. Complaining that others don't get it while not reaching out to them... you can curse in an empty forest too. 

I think it is premature for metaphysics until we have more results and evidence on the practicability of what theoretical models assume by seeing what they can do, and how well they can do it. Until then, everybody just has metaphors and perhaps... the brain and machines are not good enough metaphors/fictions, in terms of helping us emulate complex organisms etc. 

I suspect these days, some patchwork/multiplicity of metaphors with complex relations will emerge as more effective for now, rather than a single idea (such as machines). PGC

[Philip Thrift]

On Sunday, March 1, 2020 at 8:02:41 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 28 Feb 2020, at 19:32, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

Real computing is computing voided of Platonism.

 

https://codicalist.wordpress.com/2018/09/30/real-computationalism/

Take arithmetic (encoded in the Peano axioms):

Peano axioms of natural numbers in Agda

https://gist.github.com/IKEGAMIDaisuke/1211203

What is its ultimate semantics?

The standard model of arithmetic, which refers to what we have learned in school. 

So much for the mathematical educational system. It has become an orthodox, fundamentalist divinity school.

Have you heard of parents taking their kids out of school after they taught that 2 + 2 = 4?

I am not sure what you are saying here, nor below. If you can elaborate?

That "2_2=4" works in Einstein's theory - and it its numerical relativity implementations - is a matter of mathematical pulp fictionalism. 

https://codicalist.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/mathematical-pulp-fictionalism/

In a stack-based language (e.g like a FORTH variant) world 

  

       2 + 2

results in 2 on top of the stack.

push 2

push +  (top of stack is combined with what's below, which is empty)

push 2

 (stack is 2 2)

vs        2 2 +  

  (stack sequence is 2, 2 2, 4)

@philipothrift 

[Bruno Marchal]

I assume the mechanist hypothesis, and derive from it that it can be tested, and indeed that quantum mechanics without collapse provides evidence for it.

I do claim any truth, not even that x + 0 = x (I just hope people interested can accept this). I submit a reasoning for people interested in the subject. You might confuse truth and validity, perhaps. (Just trying to understand what you say).

Bruno

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/7ddefdf9-6331-4284-b412-10cbe7ae57de%40googlegroups.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

Relatively to which theory? Intractable is relative to a theory. Obviously, with mechanism, the problem is tractable. The mind-body problem is reduced to the mathematical problem of deriving the physical laws from self-reference logic, and this works well, up to now.

At least some of that work might lead to engineering solutions that could make the mind-machine metaphor more credible,

We should not confuse the use of some particular mechanical metaphor in the study of the brain, like when saying that the brain is a neural net, or a Boltzman machine, etc. and the Mechanist hypothesis, which assumes a level of description of oneself where we are Turing emulable. Mechanist entails that all mechanical metaphor are dangerous, and that is why saying “yes” to the doctor required an act of faith. No machine can ever know “for sure” which machine she is, and indeed, that plays a crucial role in the mathematical definition of the first person indeterminacy.

Mechanical metaphor can be helpful in AI, or in some part of metaphysics, but the mechanist hypothesis makes any particular one never provable. It is the reason why I call that a theology, which really means that nobody can enforce any definition of who or what you are.

Bruno

which complaining and whining about others' attitudes and dismissing them for missing things and loving not your work, rarely accomplishes. PGC 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/0600e12f-4b49-4598-a323-e6ac0b2c685e%40googlegroups.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

On 1 Mar 2020, at 15:24, PGC <multipl...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, March 1, 2020 at 3:09:31 PM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 28 Feb 2020, at 18:38, PGC <multipl...@gmail.com> wrote:

What could be a "wrong" thesis about Watson and/or Holmes?

Good question. It would be like making a summary of a novel, which would be wrong. If you say “Tintin never got to the moon” you are wrong, with respect to the novel, and false, with respect to the mundane reality. But if you say that the number 18 is prime, you are false, even among the aliens.

If your literature professor didn't fail you, he or she should have. I say this without irony or humor intended.

Nobody in the world, other than servitor humblebrag here, claims to know or have an authoritative grasp on where "mundane reality" ends and where the land of fiction and wishful thinking begins. Sure, we may know that some abstraction may or may not be locally more effective given some more or less defined domain... but that's far from claiming absolute reality/truth.

I certainly do not claim the truth of Mechanism. I derive consequences of it, and insist that Mong the consequence, nobody can know if Mechanism its true, at least in some public way. Of course, someone having got an artificial brain; can, privately be happy with it, but still cannot claim it to be known as true.

Somewhere you talked about Mechanism as a metaphor. Here mechanism explains why this always fail. Mechanism is just the assumption of the existence of a level where we are Turning emulable, but then that level cannot be known, and that is why it requires, for the practitioners, some act of faith. The ethic of mechanism is that mechanism could be wrong, and should never been enforced. It asks for an explicit consent, or refusal. To say yes to the doctor implies the right to say no.

You can't post without bringing up mechanism, thereby assuming very ambitiously that everybody you meet consents

I do not. Nobody can even guess if I believe in Mechanism myself or not.

(where are your "ethics of mechanism"?) to your use of what is still a metaphor,

It is not a metaphor. If you accept a digital artificial brain in the skull, the fact that you survive or die is not a metaphor. The artificial brain is not a metaphor. See my other post (we cannot know which machine we are, except by being lucky, and taking “know” in the weak Theaetetus sense of true belief, assuming mechanism true).

in absence of convincing evidence that even a tiny part of reality, one complex organism, can indeed be emulated effectively enough,

The contrary is true: we don’t have find any evidence of anything non mechanical in Nature.

The problem of Mechanism is not that people disbelieve it, but that people take it for granted. The inconsistency happens when people believed in both Mechanism and Materialism. 

that we'd have sufficient context to even approach the question. Show us successful emulations of just one complex organism, say your favorite "worm", instead of bringing up conways gol in conways gol. The latter is easy, while the former... just show us and we'll see. PGC 

You might look at my  “Amoeba, Planaria and Dreaming machine”. Usually, the extraordinary claim is “non-mechanism” (usually done by “believer” in something supernatural).

Anyway, I don’t defend mechanism, nor do I attack it. It is not my job. I show it to be testable (and tested) I study how far it is from Neoplatonism, also.

Bruno 

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/34148dfd-0c52-4702-93d0-044d210f390f%40googlegroups.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

So, FORTH seems to confirm what I say, apparently. It is just that  FORTH use a different language to say the same truth. It says 2 2 + instead of 2 + 2. That shows the importance in distinguish the language (conventional) from the truth (not conventional).

I did not expect less from FORTH, one of the oldest and cutest universal number (aka Turing universal system) :)

Bruno

@philipothrift 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/e506b816-00dc-4e2f-8033-9a9b9d3bea10%40googlegroups.com.

[Philip Thrift]

On Monday, March 2, 2020 at 6:38:29 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 1 Mar 2020, at 19:11, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

In a stack-based language (e.g like a FORTH variant) world 

  

       2 + 2

results in 2 on top of the stack.

push 2

push +  (top of stack is combined with what's below, which is empty)

push 2

(stack is 2 2)

vs        2 2 +  

 (stack sequence is 2, 2 2, 4)

So, FORTH seems to confirm what I say, apparently. It is just that  FORTH use a different language to say the same truth. It says 2 2 + instead of 2 + 2. That shows the importance in distinguish the language (conventional) from the truth (not conventional).

I did not expect less from FORTH, one of the oldest and cutest universal number (aka Turing universal system) :)

Bruno

One could also have a CHESS machine for chess moves.

Chess notation:

http://www.chesscorner.com/tutorial/basic/notation/notate.htm

example:

1. f4 e5

2. fxe5 d6

3. exd6 Bxd6

4. g3 Qg5

5. Nf3 Qxg3+

6. hxg3 Bxg3#

Instead of an arithmetic game with symbols from [0,1,2,...9,+,-], it's a chess game with some additional symbols.

That's all the TRUTH there is to it. The truth of the game.

@philipthrift

 

[PGC]

On Monday, March 2, 2020 at 1:23:49 PM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 1 Mar 2020, at 15:24, PGC <multipl...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, March 1, 2020 at 3:09:31 PM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 28 Feb 2020, at 18:38, PGC <multipl...@gmail.com> wrote:

What could be a "wrong" thesis about Watson and/or Holmes?

Good question. It would be like making a summary of a novel, which would be wrong. If you say “Tintin never got to the moon” you are wrong, with respect to the novel, and false, with respect to the mundane reality. But if you say that the number 18 is prime, you are false, even among the aliens.

If your literature professor didn't fail you, he or she should have. I say this without irony or humor intended.

Nobody in the world, other than servitor humblebrag here, claims to know or have an authoritative grasp on where "mundane reality" ends and where the land of fiction and wishful thinking begins. Sure, we may know that some abstraction may or may not be locally more effective given some more or less defined domain... but that's far from claiming absolute reality/truth.

I certainly do not claim the truth of Mechanism. I derive consequences of it, and insist that Mong the consequence, nobody can know if Mechanism its true, at least in some public way. Of course, someone having got an artificial brain; can, privately be happy with it, but still cannot claim it to be known as true.

Somewhere you talked about Mechanism as a metaphor. Here mechanism explains why this always fail. Mechanism is just the assumption of the existence of a level where we are Turning emulable, but then that level cannot be known, and that is why it requires, for the practitioners, some act of faith. The ethic of mechanism is that mechanism could be wrong, and should never been enforced. It asks for an explicit consent, or refusal. To say yes to the doctor implies the right to say no.

You can't post without bringing up mechanism, thereby assuming very ambitiously that everybody you meet consents

I do not. Nobody can even guess if I believe in Mechanism myself or not.

I think everybody here has reasonable confidence/evidence that you do: most posts you write are defenses of mechanism and attacks on what you call "materialism". And this is an understatement. 

 

(where are your "ethics of mechanism"?) to your use of what is still a metaphor,

It is not a metaphor.

This certainty is absolute, while not providing the math/experiment/result of emulating the states of even one complex organism, such as our famous worm, to a degree that might convince any scientist of plausible tractability of the problem in computational terms. I use tractability in the sense of determining whether or not something appears practical given the current state of the art in computing. Nobody cares about folks whining about their neglected hypothesis, if those folks don't work on showing others that the hypothesis may be fruitful. You ask for a considerable leap of faith, requiring others to assume that an entire human can be cloned. Show them that you can emulate a worm's neurology, full accounting of complete state with neurons firing etc., using any assumption, mechanism if you want, and that would be evidence towards a more credible appreciation of mind/organism/brain as machine. To have blind faith in our future ability to do so, is hardly scientific. Science relies on evidence somewhere, not infinite explanations.   

 

If you accept a digital artificial brain in the skull,

Then show me a worm's brain working in arithmetic. The felicity of doing so wouldn't ever mean, we've truly achieved what we set out to do, but the model and simulation would shed light on how far or close we are to realizing the core component of the thought experiment, and therefore it's plausibility at some point in time. Then people could make up their own minds on whether the problem is valid, or as Wittgenstein suggests, apparently a time waster of the usual kind, which ontological reasoning and identity questions have 2000 years track record of being. A German conservative parliamentarian intent on blocking parliament from some action he was opposed to, recently stated in a newspaper: "we should have a fundamental discussion on the subject."; knowing full well that all one has to do to block action is to loose people in defending their fundamental convictions.  

 

the fact that you survive or die is not a metaphor.

Well, show us!

 

The artificial brain is not a metaphor. See my other post (we cannot know which machine we are, except by being lucky, and taking “know” in the weak Theaetetus sense of true belief, assuming mechanism true).

I'm immune to the interior reasoning because I'm not convinced of the door/premise of the reasoning in the first place: assume we clone an individual is the premise... then show me the clone, the simulation, informed by your ethics, metaphysics, engineering etc. 

It might be cul-de-sac with zero value for humans interested in sustaining survival and life. Metaphysically, it devalues life and paints a rather depressing picture of existence. Everybody's immortal, so why care about anything and/or anybody?

in absence of convincing evidence that even a tiny part of reality, one complex organism, can indeed be emulated effectively enough,

The contrary is true: we don’t have find any evidence of anything non mechanical in Nature.

Show us the goods. Emulate just one complex organism from nature.

 

The problem of Mechanism is not that people disbelieve it, but that people take it for granted. The inconsistency happens when people believed in both Mechanism and Materialism.

Wow, some people are inconsistent. This is the kind of psychological insight that is rather obvious and easy to obtain. Nobody needs fancy ontologies for trivialities. 

It would be more amazing to see anybody be perfectly consistent in regard to anything. Another reason the ontology becomes less credible.

 

 

that we'd have sufficient context to even approach the question. Show us successful emulations of just one complex organism, say your favorite "worm", instead of bringing up conways gol in conways gol. The latter is easy, while the former... just show us and we'll see. PGC 

You might look at my  “Amoeba, Planaria and Dreaming machine”. Usually, the extraordinary claim is “non-mechanism” (usually done by “believer” in something supernatural).

Anyway, I don’t defend mechanism, nor do I attack it. It is not my job. I show it to be testable (and tested) I study how far it is from Neoplatonism, also.

Not only did I believe and read that at a point in my life, I defended computationalism on this list. For years. How you can forget this is concerning. 

My position now is closer to: stop explaining; the pleasantness of Platonism or correspondences of its inner reasoning with personal observations and mysticisms of yours... sorry, but none of this sheds light regarding its plausibility. Evidence is required for this: we are quite a long way from emulating a single complex organism, therefore the road is long on determining whether mind as machine metaphor, that presupposes cloning of entire individuals and uploading consciousness to some other substrate, would reach a threshold of plausibility beyond pure hypothetical possibility, making arguments of this type more concrete. Step 0 might already be too ambitious for many, without more context/evidence on the plausibility and practicability of mind as a machine. 

You want to engage the linguists/philosophers that allege platonism is pleasant but empty, inconsistent language game? Those folks won't be swayed by internal consistencies inside arguments with established premisses they don't accept. Show them how the math does worm neurology better than neuroscience by some measure, and the problematic platonic truth claims would appear less relevant. PGC 

 

[Bruno Marchal]

This will not do, unless you modify the game of chess, and allow an non bounded chessboard. In that case we can conceive a set of rules of games making that Chess-game Turing universal, and then indeed, it will give the same theology and the same physics than arithmetic. Again, elementary arithmetic is simpler and better known.

That's all the TRUTH there is to it. The truth of the game.

If you game or formal system is Turing universal, the truth is far beyond what you can justify in any effective (where a proof is checkable) theory. Any theory will only see a tiny part of the “whole truth”, even when the “whole truth” is limited to the (3p) possible games.

Bruno

@philipthrift

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/8fb22f4b-aa72-4581-b20c-0ebfa8071a9b%40googlegroups.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

On 2 Mar 2020, at 17:42, PGC <multipl...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Monday, March 2, 2020 at 1:23:49 PM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 1 Mar 2020, at 15:24, PGC <multipl...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, March 1, 2020 at 3:09:31 PM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 28 Feb 2020, at 18:38, PGC <multipl...@gmail.com> wrote:

What could be a "wrong" thesis about Watson and/or Holmes?

Good question. It would be like making a summary of a novel, which would be wrong. If you say “Tintin never got to the moon” you are wrong, with respect to the novel, and false, with respect to the mundane reality. But if you say that the number 18 is prime, you are false, even among the aliens.

If your literature professor didn't fail you, he or she should have. I say this without irony or humor intended.

Nobody in the world, other than servitor humblebrag here, claims to know or have an authoritative grasp on where "mundane reality" ends and where the land of fiction and wishful thinking begins. Sure, we may know that some abstraction may or may not be locally more effective given some more or less defined domain... but that's far from claiming absolute reality/truth.

I certainly do not claim the truth of Mechanism. I derive consequences of it, and insist that Mong the consequence, nobody can know if Mechanism its true, at least in some public way. Of course, someone having got an artificial brain; can, privately be happy with it, but still cannot claim it to be known as true.

Somewhere you talked about Mechanism as a metaphor. Here mechanism explains why this always fail. Mechanism is just the assumption of the existence of a level where we are Turning emulable, but then that level cannot be known, and that is why it requires, for the practitioners, some act of faith. The ethic of mechanism is that mechanism could be wrong, and should never been enforced. It asks for an explicit consent, or refusal. To say yes to the doctor implies the right to say no.

You can't post without bringing up mechanism, thereby assuming very ambitiously that everybody you meet consents

I do not. Nobody can even guess if I believe in Mechanism myself or not.

I think everybody here has reasonable confidence/evidence that you do: most posts you write are defenses of mechanism and attacks on what you call "materialism". And this is an understatement. 

 

(where are your "ethics of mechanism"?) to your use of what is still a metaphor,

It is not a metaphor.

This certainty is absolute,

It is not a certainty. On the contrary, it is part of the faith needed to say “yes” to the doctor.

while not providing the math/experiment/result of emulating the states of even one complex organism, such as our famous worm, to a degree that might convince any scientist of plausible tractability of the problem in computational terms. I use tractability in the sense of determining whether or not something appears practical given the current state of the art in computing. Nobody cares about folks whining about their neglected hypothesis, if those folks don't work on showing others that the hypothesis may be fruitful. You ask for a considerable leap of faith, requiring others to assume that an entire human can be cloned. Show them that you can emulate a worm's neurology, full accounting of complete state with neurons firing etc., using any assumption, mechanism if you want, and that would be evidence towards a more credible appreciation of mind/organism/brain as machine. To have blind faith in our future ability to do so, is hardly scientific. Science relies on evidence somewhere, not infinite explanations.   

 

If you accept a digital artificial brain in the skull,

Then show me a worm's brain working in arithmetic. The felicity of doing so wouldn't ever mean, we've truly achieved what we set out to do, but the model and simulation would shed light on how far or close we are to realizing the core component of the thought experiment, and therefore it's plausibility at some point in time. Then people could make up their own minds on whether the problem is valid, or as Wittgenstein suggests, apparently a time waster of the usual kind, which ontological reasoning and identity questions have 2000 years track record of being. A German conservative parliamentarian intent on blocking parliament from some action he was opposed to, recently stated in a newspaper: "we should have a fundamental discussion on the subject."; knowing full well that all one has to do to block action is to loose people in defending their fundamental convictions.  

 

the fact that you survive or die is not a metaphor.

Well, show us!

Saying for an artificial brain, and surviving with it, like we assume when we bet on mechanism, is not metaphorical. The artificial brain is no more a metaphor than an artificial heart.

You talk like if I was trying to prove Mechanism to be true, but that is simply not the case.

Bruno

 

The artificial brain is not a metaphor. See my other post (we cannot know which machine we are, except by being lucky, and taking “know” in the weak Theaetetus sense of true belief, assuming mechanism true).

I'm immune to the interior reasoning because I'm not convinced of the door/premise of the reasoning in the first place: assume we clone an individual is the premise... then show me the clone, the simulation, informed by your ethics, metaphysics, engineering etc. 

It might be cul-de-sac with zero value for humans interested in sustaining survival and life. Metaphysically, it devalues life and paints a rather depressing picture of existence. Everybody's immortal, so why care about anything and/or anybody?

in absence of convincing evidence that even a tiny part of reality, one complex organism, can indeed be emulated effectively enough,

The contrary is true: we don’t have find any evidence of anything non mechanical in Nature.

Show us the goods. Emulate just one complex organism from nature.

 

The problem of Mechanism is not that people disbelieve it, but that people take it for granted. The inconsistency happens when people believed in both Mechanism and Materialism.

Wow, some people are inconsistent. This is the kind of psychological insight that is rather obvious and easy to obtain. Nobody needs fancy ontologies for trivialities. 

It would be more amazing to see anybody be perfectly consistent in regard to anything. Another reason the ontology becomes less credible.

 

 

that we'd have sufficient context to even approach the question. Show us successful emulations of just one complex organism, say your favorite "worm", instead of bringing up conways gol in conways gol. The latter is easy, while the former... just show us and we'll see. PGC 

You might look at my  “Amoeba, Planaria and Dreaming machine”. Usually, the extraordinary claim is “non-mechanism” (usually done by “believer” in something supernatural).

Anyway, I don’t defend mechanism, nor do I attack it. It is not my job. I show it to be testable (and tested) I study how far it is from Neoplatonism, also.

Not only did I believe and read that at a point in my life, I defended computationalism on this list. For years. How you can forget this is concerning. 

My position now is closer to: stop explaining; the pleasantness of Platonism or correspondences of its inner reasoning with personal observations and mysticisms of yours... sorry, but none of this sheds light regarding its plausibility. Evidence is required for this: we are quite a long way from emulating a single complex organism, therefore the road is long on determining whether mind as machine metaphor, that presupposes cloning of entire individuals and uploading consciousness to some other substrate, would reach a threshold of plausibility beyond pure hypothetical possibility, making arguments of this type more concrete. Step 0 might already be too ambitious for many, without more context/evidence on the plausibility and practicability of mind as a machine. 

You want to engage the linguists/philosophers that allege platonism is pleasant but empty, inconsistent language game? Those folks won't be swayed by internal consistencies inside arguments with established premisses they don't accept. Show them how the math does worm neurology better than neuroscience by some measure, and the problematic platonic truth claims would appear less relevant. PGC 

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/7290c4fe-a9a3-499f-8a74-0a5a9af28490%40googlegroups.com.

[Philip Thrift]

As I think I've posted here before, Hampkins has written on infinite chess:

http://jdh.hamkins.org/tag/infinite-chess/

Abstract. I shall give a general introduction to the theory of infinite games, using infinite chess — chess played on an infinite edgeless chessboard — as a central example. Since chess, when won, is won at a finite stage of play, infinite chess is an example of what is known technically as an open game, and such games admit the theory of transfinite ordinal game values. I shall exhibit several interesting positions in infinite chess with very high transfinite game values. The precise value of the omega one of chess is an open mathematical question.  This talk will include some of the latest progress, which includes a position with game value ω^4.

.

But whether its the rules of Hampkins chess or Peano arithmetic, they can be encoded in Agda and run on a computer. 

@philipthrift

 

[Bruno Marchal]

No problem with this. That does not entail that such an infinite chess is Turing complete, but that would not be quite astonishing. Now, this is either true, or false, OK? I mean, it is not a matter of convention.

Infinite games play an important role in Set Theory, and recently, I got reasons to believe that some axioms on infinite games might help to prove some arithmetical sentence. 

The table of Laver are also very interesting in that regard. They are simple finite combinatorial (and thus mechanical) table, yet some of there properties have been proved only by using ultra-large cardinals in set theory, notably the cardinal of Laver. Despite set theory is phenomenological (with mechanism), we can still be realist on them, like we can stay realist on the physical reality, despite it becoming phenomenological too.

Bruno

@philipthrift

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/902e1dea-9cc9-4458-8d31-054eb9dfc08a%40googlegroups.com.