Why Does Anything Exist?

[Jason Resch]

I wrote up my thoughts on the question of "Why does anything exist?"

https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/

I thought members of the list might appreciate some of the references included in it. My thinking on this question has of course been greatly expanded and influenced through my interactions with many of you over the past decade.

I welcome any feedback, thoughts, corrections, or questions regarding anything written.

Sincerely,

Jason

[Kim Jones]

What was there before there was nothing?

Kim Jones B.Mus GDTL 

On 9 Mar 2021, at 4:35 pm, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Jason Resch]

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:57 AM Kim Jones <kimj...@ozemail.com.au> wrote:

What was there before there was nothing?

I don't believe reality was ever a state of absolute nothingness. Rather, there are things that exist necessarily: logical laws, truth, properties of numbers, etc. Some of these truths and number relations concern and define all computational histories, and the appearance of a physical reality is a result of these computations creating consciousness observers. See: https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation

Jason

 

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[Kim Jones]

Yes. As some say around here "Everything is the inside view of Nothing". A set of appearances, as Bruno says. What numbers see - dream - whatever

Kim Jones B.Mus GDTL 

On 9 Mar 2021, at 7:23 pm, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Lawrence Crowell]

Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness exist? If so, then by having existential properties it is not pure nothingness. If nothingness does not exist then there must exist something. In a sense God is the antithesis of nothingness and in a sense shares the same paradoxical issue.

LC

[Brent Meeker]

On 3/9/2021 12:22 AM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:57 AM Kim Jones <kimj...@ozemail.com.au> wrote:

What was there before there was nothing?

I don't believe reality was ever a state of absolute nothingness. Rather, there are things that exist necessarily: logical laws, truth, properties of numbers, etc. Some of these truths and number relations concern and define all computational histories, and the appearance of a physical reality is a result of these computations creating consciousness observers. See: https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation

But you're casually confounding different sense of "exist".  Logical laws, number, etc are derivative on language.  They don't "exist" physically.  The logicians meaning of exist is just to satisfy a predicate.  Any sensible discussion of "exist"needs to start with recognizing it has several different meanings.

Brent

[Jason Resch]

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 9:41 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness exist? If so, then by having existential properties it is not pure nothingness. If nothingness does not exist then there must exist something. In a sense God is the antithesis of nothingness and in a sense shares the same paradoxical issue.

There is a strange and paradoxical sort of identity between nothing and everything, particularly as it relates to information theory. Insofar as the total set of all possibilities has zero information content.

This is the main subject of Russell Standish's book: Theory of Nothing: https://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html

Jason

 

LC

On Monday, March 8, 2021 at 11:34:51 PM UTC-6 Jason wrote:

I wrote up my thoughts on the question of "Why does anything exist?"

https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/

I thought members of the list might appreciate some of the references included in it. My thinking on this question has of course been greatly expanded and influenced through my interactions with many of you over the past decade.

I welcome any feedback, thoughts, corrections, or questions regarding anything written.

Sincerely,

Jason

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[Jason Resch]

Hi Brent,

You are right there are various senses of the word "exists".

I dedicate a section specifically to this issue, and define three types, or modes of existence: https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Three_Modes_of_Existence

Jason

[John Clark]

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 1:57 AM Kim Jones <kimj...@ozemail.com.au> wrote:

> What was there before there was nothing?

"Before" implies time and time implies change;  if nothing exists then nothing can change, and if nothing can change time can not exist, and if time can't exist then there is no "before".

John K Clark

 

[John Clark]

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 2:00 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

> There is a strange and paradoxical sort of identity between nothing and everything,

I agree. Meaning needs contrast, so a universe where everything has the flogknee property would be indistinguishable from a universe where nothing has the flogknee property, and the best definition of "nothing" that I know of is infinite unbounded homogeneity.

John K Clark 

 

 

[Bruce Kellett]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 9:41 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness exist? If so, then by having existential properties it is not pure nothingness. If nothingness does not exist then there must exist something. In a sense God is the antithesis of nothingness and in a sense shares the same paradoxical issue.

There is a strange and paradoxical sort of identity between nothing and everything, particularly as it relates to information theory. Insofar as the total set of all possibilities has zero information content.

A random message string can contain zero information, but still exist -- written on a piece of paper, for example. This idea that zero information equates to 'nothing' is just an elementary confusion of categories.

This is the main subject of Russell Standish's book: Theory of Nothing: https://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html

That is why Russell got so many things wrong in this book.

Bruce

[Jason Resch]

On Tuesday, March 9, 2021, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 9:41 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfieldquaternions@gmail.com> wrote:

Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness exist? If so, then by having existential properties it is not pure nothingness. If nothingness does not exist then there must exist something. In a sense God is the antithesis of nothingness and in a sense shares the same paradoxical issue.

There is a strange and paradoxical sort of identity between nothing and everything, particularly as it relates to information theory. Insofar as the total set of all possibilities has zero information content.

A random message string can contain zero information, but still exist -- written on a piece of paper, for example. This idea that zero information equates to 'nothing' is just an elementary confusion of categories.

Random strings contain a maximum amount of entropy per bit and are incomprehensible. They may not signify anything useful but they require more bits to encode/represent than any less random string of the same length, so in that sense are maximal in the information they convey.

I think you may be operating under a different definition of information than the standard Shannon sense of information theory.

I grant that the equivalence between all strings and no strings is unintuitive, but I think my section on the Library of Babel is illustrative: 

https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#The_Library_of_Babel

Jason

 

This is the main subject of Russell Standish's book: Theory of Nothing: https://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html

That is why Russell got so many things wrong in this book.

Bruce

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[Philip Benjamin]

[Brent Meeker]

“https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation”

[Philip Benjamin] If nothing ever existed, nothing can exist today. “Ex nihilo, nihil fit” (Parmenides). Laws of any kind necessarily requires the existence of a conscious Law Giver. The logical question is: “what is more reasonable?” DEAD MATTER producing life or LIFE producing both dead matter and life-forms?  Only a degree of rationality can be established here.

      Civilized, erudite Phoenician, profligate pagan Augustine of Greco-Roman roots was instantly TRANSFORMED into a non-pagan and pulled the West off Greco-Roman paganism and superstitions  (https://www.midwestaugustinians.org/conversion-of-st-augustine). Thus he was the chief architect of Western Civilization built on the foundation of the Apostolic discourse at Athenian Mars Hill (Acts 17) where the Greco-Roman Unknown god was identified as the aseitous Adonai (plural) YHWH (singular) Elohim (uni-plural) of the Patriarchs, Prophets and the Apostles.

      Progressive pagans with un-awakened consciousness cannot escape the questions of causality, aseity, morality, meaning and telos by simply evading them or assuming illogically the aseity of Dead Matter.

Philip Benjamin        

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[Bruce Kellett]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 9:21 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, March 9, 2021, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 9:41 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness exist? If so, then by having existential properties it is not pure nothingness. If nothingness does not exist then there must exist something. In a sense God is the antithesis of nothingness and in a sense shares the same paradoxical issue.

There is a strange and paradoxical sort of identity between nothing and everything, particularly as it relates to information theory. Insofar as the total set of all possibilities has zero information content.

A random message string can contain zero information, but still exist -- written on a piece of paper, for example. This idea that zero information equates to 'nothing' is just an elementary confusion of categories.

Random strings contain a maximum amount of entropy per bit and are incomprehensible. They may not signify anything useful but they require more bits to encode/represent than any less random string of the same length, so in that sense are maximal in the information they convey.

I think you may be operating under a different definition of information than the standard Shannon sense of information theory.

I grant that the equivalence between all strings and no strings is unintuitive,

It is certainly unintuitive. But does it make any sense? You have made the retrievable information content of the strings to be of paramount importance. But that is just a choice on your part. Other choices could work better in these circumstances. Information content in the form of comprehensible messages is not the only property of the strings, so they are not equivalent to 'nothing'.

Applying information theory outside of its intended domain can lead to all sorts of confusion..

Bruce

[Brent Meeker]

So when was there nothing?  Never.  So what is there now?  Everything.

Brent

[Bruce Kellett]

Silly word play does not amount to philosophical insight.

Bruce

[Tomas Pales]

The law of identity determines what can possibly exist, namely that which is identical to itself. But what is the difference between a possibly existing object and a "really" existing object? I see no difference, and hence all possible objects exist, necessarily.

To which someone might say something like: "But there is a red car parked in front of my house. Isn't it possible that, at this moment, a blue car would be parked there instead? Then the blue car would be a possible object that obviously doesn't exist." Um, no. A red car can't be blue; that would be a contradiction, a violation of the law of identity, and hence impossible. A blue car might be parked in front of my house in a different possible world but then we are talking about a different world, and not really about my house either but rather about a copy of my house in that other world - and the fact that you can't see that other world is not a proof that it doesn't exist.

[Brent Meeker]

On 3/9/2021 2:00 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 9:41 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness exist? If so, then by having existential properties it is not pure nothingness. If nothingness does not exist then there must exist something. In a sense God is the antithesis of nothingness and in a sense shares the same paradoxical issue.

There is a strange and paradoxical sort of identity between nothing and everything, particularly as it relates to information theory. Insofar as the total set of all possibilities has zero information content.

Even if it tells us what is not possible?  I think you're getting in over your head.  What kind of "possible" to you mean?  Simple not self-contradictory?  Nomological?  Or what?

A random message string can contain zero information, but still exist -- written on a piece of paper, for example.

I agree with your basic point, but a random string carries maximum information, per Shannon.  That's why maximally compressed string looks random; although you can't really define random in the information theoretic sense for finite strings.

Brent

This idea that zero information equates to 'nothing' is just an elementary confusion of categories.

This is the main subject of Russell Standish's book: Theory of Nothing: https://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html

That is why Russell got so many things wrong in this book.

Bruce

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[Brent Meeker]

On 3/9/2021 2:30 PM, Philip Benjamin wrote:

If nothing ever existed, nothing can exist today. “Ex nihilo, nihil fit” (Parmenides).

Yeah, but what has he published recently?

Brent

[Brent Meeker]

That was my point, Bruce.

Brent

[Brent Meeker]

On 3/9/2021 3:03 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:

The law of identity determines what can possibly exist, namely that which is identical to itself. But what is the difference between a possibly existing object and a "really" existing object? I see no difference, and hence all possible objects exist, necessarily.

So everything that does not exist is something that cannot possibly exist.  But does that mean in the future or just now.  If it means just now then it's a trivial tautology, equivalent to "It is what it is." and has no useful content.  But if it means now and the future, even confined to the near future, it's false.

To which someone might say something like: "But there is a red car parked in front of my house. Isn't it possible that, at this moment, a blue car would be parked there instead? Then the blue car would be a possible object that obviously doesn't exist." Um, no. A red car can't be blue; that would be a contradiction, a violation of the law of identity, and hence impossible. A blue car might be parked in front of my house in a different possible world but then we are talking about a different world, and not really about my house either but rather about a copy of my house in that other world - and the fact that you can't see that other world is not a proof that it doesn't exist.

c.f. Russell's teapot.

Brent

[Tomas Pales]

On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 12:29:07 AM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

On 3/9/2021 3:03 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:

The law of identity determines what can possibly exist, namely that which is identical to itself. But what is the difference between a possibly existing object and a "really" existing object? I see no difference, and hence all possible objects exist, necessarily.

So everything that does not exist is something that cannot possibly exist.  But does that mean in the future or just now.  If it means just now then it's a trivial tautology, equivalent to "It is what it is." and has no useful content.  But if it means now and the future, even confined to the near future, it's false.

When you talk about something you must define it. The temporal position of an object is part of its definition (identity). So when object X can exist at time t, then it must exist at time t. It's trivial, just an example of the law of identity.

To which someone might say something like: "But there is a red car parked in front of my house. Isn't it possible that, at this moment, a blue car would be parked there instead? Then the blue car would be a possible object that obviously doesn't exist." Um, no. A red car can't be blue; that would be a contradiction, a violation of the law of identity, and hence impossible. A blue car might be parked in front of my house in a different possible world but then we are talking about a different world, and not really about my house either but rather about a copy of my house in that other world - and the fact that you can't see that other world is not a proof that it doesn't exist.

c.f. Russell's teapot.

c.f. Granny's glasses - when she can't find them, they don't exist

The question is what is the difference between a possibly existing object and a "really" existing object? The fact that you don't see something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

[Brent Meeker]

That you can put it's name in a sentence doesn't mean it does exist either. Or even that it's (nomologically) possible.

Brent

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[Tomas Pales]

On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 6:40:51 AM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

On 3/9/2021 3:52 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:

On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 12:29:07 AM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

On 3/9/2021 3:03 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:

The law of identity determines what can possibly exist, namely that which is identical to itself. But what is the difference between a possibly existing object and a "really" existing object? I see no difference, and hence all possible objects exist, necessarily.

So everything that does not exist is something that cannot possibly exist.  But does that mean in the future or just now.  If it means just now then it's a trivial tautology, equivalent to "It is what it is." and has no useful content.  But if it means now and the future, even confined to the near future, it's false.

When you talk about something you must define it. The temporal position of an object is part of its definition (identity). So when object X can exist at time t, then it must exist at time t. It's trivial, just an example of the law of identity.

To which someone might say something like: "But there is a red car parked in front of my house. Isn't it possible that, at this moment, a blue car would be parked there instead? Then the blue car would be a possible object that obviously doesn't exist." Um, no. A red car can't be blue; that would be a contradiction, a violation of the law of identity, and hence impossible. A blue car might be parked in front of my house in a different possible world but then we are talking about a different world, and not really about my house either but rather about a copy of my house in that other world - and the fact that you can't see that other world is not a proof that it doesn't exist.

c.f. Russell's teapot.

c.f. Granny's glasses - when she can't find them, they don't exist

The question is what is the difference between a possibly existing object and a "really" existing object? The fact that you don't see something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

That you can put it's name in a sentence doesn't mean it does exist either. Or even that it's (nomologically) possible.

I am not saying that something exists. I am not even saying that something is possible (identical to itself). I am just saying that if something is possible then it exists, because I don't see a difference between possible and "real" existence.

[Bruno Marchal]

On 9 Mar 2021, at 16:41, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness exist? If so, then by having existential properties it is not pure nothingness. If nothingness does not exist then there must exist something. In a sense God is the antithesis of nothingness and in a sense shares the same paradoxical issue.

There are as many notion of “nothing” than there are notion of things. Nothing, when thinking of numbers, can be played by the number 0 (not to confuse with a set containing 0).

In set theory, nothing is given by the empty set. Note that the unary intersection (the intersection of the elements of a set), when applied to the empty set, gives the class of all sets (something too much big to be a set).

Obviously, the quantum nothingness might be well played by the quantum vacuum; which we know to be full of things and happenings.

Some might try a notion of absolute nothingness, but I have no idea what that could be.

The empty theory has all possible models, and so is trivially satisfied in all models, and is thus not interesting. Adding axioms can lead to genuine theory of everything, but it can be shown that adding more axioms than the one required to have a universal machinery leads to contradiction, unless they are particular axioms to described local phenomenologies.

Using arithmetic for the universal base, we have a clear notion of existence, as most people agree on the “standard model of Arithmetic (the set {0, 1, 2, …} + the usual laws learned in school. Then the physical existence and the psychological, and theological existence are provided in the internal phenomenologies imposed by incompleteness (to any arithmetically sound machines). That is testable, and the discovery of the “many-histories” in quantum physics confirmed the “many-world/histories interpretation of arithmetic on which all universal machine converge, soon or later (in the universal dovetailer “number-of-step”).

Bruno 

LC

On Monday, March 8, 2021 at 11:34:51 PM UTC-6 Jason wrote:

I wrote up my thoughts on the question of "Why does anything exist?"

https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/

I thought members of the list might appreciate some of the references included in it. My thinking on this question has of course been greatly expanded and influenced through my interactions with many of you over the past decade.

I welcome any feedback, thoughts, corrections, or questions regarding anything written.

Sincerely,

Jason

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[Philip Benjamin]

[Brent Meeker]

“Yeah, but what has he [Parmenides] published recently?”

[Philip Benjamin]

       Facetious? A modern Parmenides will be one of the (late or alive) physicists who arbitrarily BELIEVE (not reason) in particle-wave duality and self-creating quantum world etc. Wave-likeness ≠ Waviness. Calculations based on both wave-likeness and waviness will be alike, just the same way as Geocentricism (from primitive astrology to Ptolemaic astronomy that was naturally defended by Ecclesiastical establishment) will yield verisimilar mathematical results as heliocentrism. Self-creation of anything is oxymoronic—something has to exist before it exists!! That is against all laws of logic!! No physics is ever against laws of logic. “Quantum vacuum” is no vacuum at all. Moreover one cannot ignore 95% of the missing (dark) matter as trivial or unreal. If 5% of the visible light-matter has chemistry, then 95% of invisible (dark) matter also has chemistry necessarily.   No Parmenides can deny that. Dark-matter chemistry cannot but yield a dark-twin along with the light-twin from the moment of conception.

        The entire acade-media (in fact, the whole world) can be divided into two and only two fundamental groups: 1. Pagan with un-awakened consciousness’ 2. Non-pagan with awakened consciousness.

      The Western hemisphere was ‘once upon a time’ pulled out from the ethos of the pagan into that of the non-pagan thanks to the “instant  transformation” of the 4 th  Century Augustine. Today paganism in the West is the prevalent culture everywhere including the pulpits and the pews, thanks to the indoctrinations in the educational systems from KG through the highest levels.  

Philip Benjamin  

From: 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 9, 2021 5:22 PM
To: everyth...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

 

 

On 3/9/2021 2:30 PM, Philip Benjamin wrote:

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 10 Mar 2021, at 00:03, Tomas Pales <litew...@gmail.com> wrote:

The law of identity determines what can possibly exist, namely that which is identical to itself. But what is the difference between a possibly existing object and a "really" existing object? I see no difference, and hence all possible objects exist, necessarily.

But what is an object? I agree that Unicorn can exist, in the mind of some people, or in a dream, but most would say that Unicorn do no exist, because being fictional is part of their definition. Or take a square circle, or a dog which is also a cat…

The interesting things is what is the minimal amount of things that we have to assume in a theory so that we can derive the existence of all appearances, and of the laws to which they obey? How to get consciousness, how to get the appearance of matter and of physical laws. Assuming Mechanism, it can be proved that any Turing universal machinery will do the job, and that makes Mechanism testable: drive physics and compare with the observation.

What must be searched is to relate the different notion of existence that we are willing to make sense of.

To which someone might say something like: "But there is a red car parked in front of my house. Isn't it possible that, at this moment, a blue car would be parked there instead? Then the blue car would be a possible object that obviously doesn't exist." Um, no. A red car can't be blue; that would be a contradiction, a violation of the law of identity,

Why? A red can which is blue can be identical with itself. All odd natural number solution to 2x = x + 1 are equal to itself, despite not existing. Your self-identity criteria is too weak for being a criteria of existence.

and hence impossible. A blue car might be parked in front of my house in a different possible world but then we are talking about a different world, and not really about my house either but rather about a copy of my house in that other world - and the fact that you can't see that other world is not a proof that it doesn't exist.

OK with this.

Bruno

On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 6:34:51 AM UTC+1 Jason wrote:

I wrote up my thoughts on the question of "Why does anything exist?"

https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/

I thought members of the list might appreciate some of the references included in it. My thinking on this question has of course been greatly expanded and influenced through my interactions with many of you over the past decade.

I welcome any feedback, thoughts, corrections, or questions regarding anything written.

Sincerely,

Jason

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 10 Mar 2021, at 00:19, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 3/9/2021 2:00 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 9:41 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness exist? If so, then by having existential properties it is not pure nothingness. If nothingness does not exist then there must exist something. In a sense God is the antithesis of nothingness and in a sense shares the same paradoxical issue.

There is a strange and paradoxical sort of identity between nothing and everything, particularly as it relates to information theory. Insofar as the total set of all possibilities has zero information content.

Even if it tells us what is not possible?  I think you're getting in over your head.  What kind of "possible" to you mean?  Simple not self-contradictory?  Nomological?  Or what?

A random message string can contain zero information, but still exist -- written on a piece of paper, for example.

I agree with your basic point, but a random string carries maximum information, per Shannon.  That's why maximally compressed string looks random; although you can't really define random in the information theoretic sense for finite strings.

You can define randomness for finite strings, up to a constant. Most universal machine will agree on some large string being random, but can differ on strings shorter than themselves, say. See the book by Calllude on the randomness of finite string.

This is usually defined first, and then an infinite sequence is said to be random if almost all his initial segments are.

Bruno

Brent

This idea that zero information equates to 'nothing' is just an elementary confusion of categories.

This is the main subject of Russell Standish's book: Theory of Nothing: https://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html

That is why Russell got so many things wrong in this book.

Bruce

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[Bruno Marchal]

According to Simplicius, Moderatus of Gades attributed the five “hypostases” (that he talk about well before Plotinus) to Parmenides, making him still far in advance on humans, but not on the arithmetically sound universal machine, which lives in arithmetic (as we know or should know since Gödel’s 1931 paper + Church-Thesis, that Gödel missed, as he explained himself.

Bruno

Brent

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[Bruno Marchal]

That is close how logicians relativise existence, in some theory, to existence in a model of that theory. 

Now, by using both Gödel completeness (a theory has a model iff the theory is consistent) and incompleteness theorem (no theory can prove all arithmetical truth), we get that no machine can prove the existence of a model satisfying its theorem, and that is why all machine get mystical, as they do experience a reality without being able to justify its existence.

Bruno,

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[Brent Meeker]

Then you've either (1) changed the meaning of "real" existence (2) changed the meaning of possible or (3) gone mad.

Brent

[Jason Resch]

Then Minsky was mad:

https://youtu.be/hVJwzVD3jEs

Jason

[smitra]

On 10-03-2021 18:41, Jason Resch wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 11:29 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List
> <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>> On 3/10/2021 1:18 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>
>> On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 6:40:51 AM UTC+1 Brent wrote:
>>
>> On 3/9/2021 3:52 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>
>> On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 12:29:07 AM UTC+1 Brent wrote:
>>
>> On 3/9/2021 3:03 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
>>
>> The law of identity determines what can possibly exist, namely that
>> which is identical to itself. But what is the difference between a
>> possibly existing object and a "really" existing object? I see no
>> difference, and hence all possible objects exist, necessarily.
>>
>> So everything that does not exist is something that cannot possibly
>> exist. But does that mean in the future or just now. If it means

>> _just now_ then it's a trivial tautology, equivalent to "It is what

Here the discussion about possible and real starts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVJwzVD3jEs&t=294s

This point of view makes sense, existence is relative in the sense that
everything that is possible exists and then relative to some agent X,
some other possible thing Y may not exist inside X's universe such that
X can interact with Y. But Y is also guaranteed to exist in its own
universe.

Saibal

[Brent Meeker]

On 3/10/2021 7:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 10 Mar 2021, at 00:19, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 3/9/2021 2:00 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 9:41 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness exist? If so, then by having existential properties it is not pure nothingness. If nothingness does not exist then there must exist something. In a sense God is the antithesis of nothingness and in a sense shares the same paradoxical issue.

There is a strange and paradoxical sort of identity between nothing and everything, particularly as it relates to information theory. Insofar as the total set of all possibilities has zero information content.

Even if it tells us what is not possible?  I think you're getting in over your head.  What kind of "possible" to you mean?  Simple not self-contradictory?  Nomological?  Or what?

A random message string can contain zero information, but still exist -- written on a piece of paper, for example.

I agree with your basic point, but a random string carries maximum information, per Shannon.  That's why maximally compressed string looks random; although you can't really define random in the information theoretic sense for finite strings.

You can define randomness for finite strings, up to a constant.

What does it mean "up to a constant"?

Most universal machine will agree on some large string being random, but can differ on strings shorter than themselves, say. See the book by Calllude on the randomness of finite string.

This is usually defined first, and then an infinite sequence is said to be random if almost all his initial segments are.

Even with only two "l"s in his name, I find no reference to him.  If you have a finite string you can just adopt a notation in which it has a short name, "Bob", and then  it's Kolomogorov complexity is that of "Bob".  So I don't see by what definition you can prove a finite string to be random.

Brent

Bruno

Brent

This idea that zero information equates to 'nothing' is just an elementary confusion of categories.

This is the main subject of Russell Standish's book: Theory of Nothing: https://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html

That is why Russell got so many things wrong in this book.

Bruce

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[Brent Meeker]

Minsky says real is relative to "this"...not your meaning.   He doesn't define what he means by possible.  It's interesting that he takes as an example repeated addition and says he can't understand how there could be a world in which it doesn't exist.  But only a moment before he's discussing things existing in computer games, which can only do finite arithmetic.

Brent

[Tomas Pales]

On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 4:12:21 PM UTC+1 Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 10 Mar 2021, at 00:03, Tomas Pales <litew...@gmail.com> wrote:

The law of identity determines what can possibly exist, namely that which is identical to itself. But what is the difference between a possibly existing object and a "really" existing object? I see no difference, and hence all possible objects exist, necessarily.

But what is an object?

Good question. Whatever an object is, it seems it must necessarily have these two kinds of relations to other objects:

1) composition relation (the relation between a part and a whole, or between an object and a collection (combination, set) of objects that includes this object)

2) instantiation relation (the relation between an object and its property)

Having a composition relation means being a part or having a part (all objects are parts of a greater object, and some objects also have parts). Having an instantiation relation means having a property or being a property (all objects have a property, and some objects are also properties). Wouldn't you agree that every possible object must have these two kinds of relations?

The composition relation generates all possible collections (combinations, sets), down to empty collections (non-composite objects) and maybe even without bottom as long as there is no contradiction. And the instantiation relation generates all possible properties and objects that have these properties, down to collections (which are not properties of anything else) and maybe even without bottom as long as there is no contradiction.

So, there are two kinds of objects: collections and properties (roughly synonymous with concrete and abstract objects, respectively). Actually, we might count relations as a third kind of object because, after all, they are something too. Abstract relations are also properties of concrete relations (for example the abstract/general composition relation is a property of any concrete composition relation).

 

I agree that Unicorn can exist, in the mind of some people, or in a dream, but most would say that Unicorn do no exist, because being fictional is part of their definition.

Minds are parts of reality, so parts of minds (like unicorns) are parts of reality too. Like every object, unicorns exist in the way in which they are defined, in this case as parts of minds. And maybe in some other world also outside of minds, as long as there is no contradiction.

 

Or take a square circle, or a dog which is also a cat…

These are not possible objects because their definition violates the law of identity. What is a circle that is not a circle? Nothing.

Why? A red can which is blue can be identical with itself. All odd natural number solution to 2x = x + 1 are equal to itself, despite not existing. Your self-identity criteria is too weak for being a criteria of existence.

A red car that is blue is a red car that is not red. Violation of law of identity, therefore nothing.

[Tomas Pales]

On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 6:29:13 PM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

On 3/10/2021 1:18 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:

Then you've either (1) changed the meaning of "real" existence (2) changed the meaning of possible or (3) gone mad.

As I said, possible means identical to itself. Now you tell me how it differs from "real".

[Jason Resch]

He said his preference would be to get rid of the word 'real' and only speak of 'possible', because exist doesn't add anything (except for the case of relative existence within the universe, like the button in his shirt). But thinks it's a useless concept to speak of other possible universes being 'real', and prefers only using possible in that context.

Whether he thinks possibility by itself is enough for existence is not clear, but he suggests it when he says we could be part of the logical possibilities of a program that was never turned on.

Jason

Brent

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[Jason Resch]

I believe Chaitin has a definition of randomness that works for finite strings. If I remember correctly it has to do with the length of the shortest program that outputs the string being longer than the string itself.

Jason

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[Brent Meeker]

On 3/10/2021 2:41 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:

On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 6:29:13 PM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

On 3/10/2021 1:18 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:

Then you've either (1) changed the meaning of "real" existence (2) changed the meaning of possible or (3) gone mad.

As I said, possible means identical to itself.

I know you said it, but that doesn't make it so.  Is it possible that there is a an even number greater than 2 which is not the sum of two primes?  Is it real?  Is it possible that there is a cardinal number between aleph0 and aleph1?  Is it real?  If you flip a coin is it possible it will come up heads?  What's the difference between "possible" and "necessary".

When you define a word you need to make it consistent with usage.

Brent

Now you tell me how it differs from "real".

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[Brent Meeker]

On 3/10/2021 2:51 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 4:38 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 3/10/2021 9:41 AM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 11:29 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 3/10/2021 1:18 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:

On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 6:40:51 AM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

On 3/9/2021 3:52 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:

On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 12:29:07 AM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

On 3/9/2021 3:03 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:

The law of identity determines what can possibly exist, namely that which is identical to itself. But what is the difference between a possibly existing object and a "really" existing object? I see no difference, and hence all possible objects exist, necessarily.

So everything that does not exist is something that cannot possibly exist.  But does that mean in the future or just now.  If it means just now then it's a trivial tautology, equivalent to "It is what it is." and has no useful content.  But if it means now and the future, even confined to the near future, it's false.

When you talk about something you must define it. The temporal position of an object is part of its definition (identity). So when object X can exist at time t, then it must exist at time t. It's trivial, just an example of the law of identity.

To which someone might say something like: "But there is a red car parked in front of my house. Isn't it possible that, at this moment, a blue car would be parked there instead? Then the blue car would be a possible object that obviously doesn't exist." Um, no. A red car can't be blue; that would be a contradiction, a violation of the law of identity, and hence impossible. A blue car might be parked in front of my house in a different possible world but then we are talking about a different world, and not really about my house either but rather about a copy of my house in that other world - and the fact that you can't see that other world is not a proof that it doesn't exist.

c.f. Russell's teapot.

c.f. Granny's glasses - when she can't find them, they don't exist

The question is what is the difference between a possibly existing object and a "really" existing object? The fact that you don't see something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

That you can put it's name in a sentence doesn't mean it does exist either. Or even that it's (nomologically) possible.

I am not saying that something exists. I am not even saying that something is possible (identical to itself). I am just saying that if something is possible then it exists, because I don't see a difference between possible and "real" existence.

Then you've either (1) changed the meaning of "real" existence (2) changed the meaning of possible or (3) gone mad.

Brent

Then Minsky was mad:

https://youtu.be/hVJwzVD3jEs

Minsky says real is relative to "this"...not your meaning.   He doesn't define what he means by possible.  It's interesting that he takes as an example repeated addition and says he can't understand how there could be a world in which it doesn't exist.  But only a moment before he's discussing things existing in computer games, which can only do finite arithmetic.

He said his preference would be to get rid of the word 'real' and only speak of 'possible', because exist doesn't add anything (except for the case of relative existence within the universe, like the button in his shirt).

In other words, except for the only case that makes sense.

But thinks it's a useless concept to speak of other possible universes being 'real', and prefers only using possible in that context.

Whether he thinks possibility by itself is enough for existence is not clear, but he suggests it when he says we could be part of the logical possibilities of a program that was never turned on.

But is it possible to turn the program on?  If it was not turned on, and possible=necessary then it was necessarily turned off and could not possibly be turned on.  In which case it was possible, was it?

Brent

[Brent Meeker]

Just name the string "Bob" and output Bob.

Brent

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[Tomas Pales]

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 12:15:43 AM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

On 3/10/2021 2:41 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:

On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 6:29:13 PM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

On 3/10/2021 1:18 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:

Then you've either (1) changed the meaning of "real" existence (2) changed the meaning of possible or (3) gone mad.

As I said, possible means identical to itself.

I know you said it, but that doesn't make it so.  Is it possible that there is a an even number greater than 2 which is not the sum of two primes?  Is it real?  Is it possible that there is a cardinal number between aleph0 and aleph1?  Is it real?  If you flip a coin is it possible it will come up heads?  What's the difference between "possible" and "necessary".

If there is a contradiction in the definition of an object, that means that the law of identity is violated and the object is not identical to itself and hence is not possible. There is no difference between possible and necessary in the absolute sense because every possible object exists necessarily in reality as a whole. The distinction between possible and necessary is used when talking about something that exists only in some possible worlds versus something that exists in every possible world, respectively.

[Bruce Kellett]

On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 10:52 AM Tomas Pales <litew...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 12:15:43 AM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

On 3/10/2021 2:41 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:

On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 6:29:13 PM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

On 3/10/2021 1:18 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:

Then you've either (1) changed the meaning of "real" existence (2) changed the meaning of possible or (3) gone mad.

As I said, possible means identical to itself.

I know you said it, but that doesn't make it so.  Is it possible that there is a an even number greater than 2 which is not the sum of two primes?  Is it real?  Is it possible that there is a cardinal number between aleph0 and aleph1?  Is it real?  If you flip a coin is it possible it will come up heads?  What's the difference between "possible" and "necessary".

If there is a contradiction in the definition of an object, that means that the law of identity is violated and the object is not identical to itself and hence is not possible. There is no difference between possible and necessary in the absolute sense because every possible object exists necessarily in reality as a whole.

That is known as 'begging the question' in that you have assumed the result that it is necessary for you to prove. In other words, you have a circular argument.

Bruce

[Brent Meeker]

On 3/10/2021 3:52 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 12:15:43 AM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

On 3/10/2021 2:41 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:

On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 6:29:13 PM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

On 3/10/2021 1:18 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:

Then you've either (1) changed the meaning of "real" existence (2) changed the meaning of possible or (3) gone mad.

As I said, possible means identical to itself.

I know you said it, but that doesn't make it so.  Is it possible that there is a an even number greater than 2 which is not the sum of two primes?  Is it real?  Is it possible that there is a cardinal number between aleph0 and aleph1?  Is it real?  If you flip a coin is it possible it will come up heads?  What's the difference between "possible" and "necessary".

If there is a contradiction in the definition of an object, that means that the law of identity is violated and the object is not identical to itself and hence is not possible. There is no difference between possible and necessary in the absolute sense because every possible object exists necessarily

You're avoiding the questions.  Your coin coming up heads isn't an object.  Neither is the even number that is not the sum of two primes.  And as Bruno pointed out "object" is not well defined.  Is John Clark an object, or as he puts it "a verb".

in reality as a whole. The distinction between possible and necessary is used when talking about something that exists only in some possible worlds versus something that exists in every possible world, respectively.

But if something is not necessary then there are world's that are same except that the something exists in one and not the other.  Is it identical to itself if it doesn't satisfy the "exists" predicate?

Brent

[Russell Standish]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 09:00:38AM +1100, Bruce Kellett wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 9:41 AM Lawrence Crowell <
> goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness exist? If so, then
> by having existential properties it is not pure nothingness. If
> nothingness does not exist then there must exist something. In a sense
> God is the antithesis of nothingness and in a sense shares the same
> paradoxical issue.
>
>
> There is a strange and paradoxical sort of identity between nothing and
> everything, particularly as it relates to information theory. Insofar as
> the total set of all possibilities has zero information content.
>
>
>

> A random message string can contain zero information, but still exist --
> written on a piece of paper, for example.

To be fair, I usually talk of descriptions that are sets of infinite
strings equivalent under some observer's notion of
classification. Strings sharing a suitable common prefix are usually
equivalent. Information is a property of these descriptions.

I never claimed that a random description has zero information, just
that it is low information. From my point of view, a string consisting
of the works of Willam Shakespeare, followed by an arbitrarily long
sequence of random bits is not a random string, even though it would
be considered as such by AIT. By excluding such sequences as non
random, actual random string will still have non-zero information.

> This idea that zero information
> equates to 'nothing' is just an elementary confusion of categories.
>

I think I said that nothing and everything are duals, in the same way
the empty set and the full set are duals. I never said zero
information equates to nothing.

The full set of strings, corresponding to the zero length description
has zero information. This is what I'm identifying as the Everything.

How is this a confusion of categories?

>
> This is the main subject of Russell Standish's book: Theory of Nothing: 
> https://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html
>
>
>
> That is why Russell got so many things wrong in this book.
>

You need to engage with the work rather than making sweeping
statements like this. Perhaps it is you who got so many things wrong
in the book.

> Bruce
>
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[amal...@physica9.co.uk]

Hi Jason

I can't think of any more fundamental question than 'why anything?'. The associated question 'why this something?' can be used to skewer most attempted TOE's, but from what I understand of your approach I agree that you avoid this fate, so just on those grounds alone I think it should be taken seriously. And there are not many other surviving candidates.

Embracing many different ideas at once requires some careful navigation though. For example, I am not sure how Bruno's link to Everett and the Born Rule (or equivalent) for the purposes of obtaining relative measures across worlds/histories (level 3 multiverse in Tegmark's notation) would connect up to that given by favouring shorter programs over longer ones (level 4).

The clarity of ideas presented in the article have helped to crystallize some of my own thoughts, and I would agree with much of its content. I hope that the article (and any book from it) is widely read and digested.

Alastair

[Jason Resch]

Hi Alastair,

On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 6:47 AM <amal...@physica9.co.uk> wrote:

Hi Jason

I can't think of any more fundamental question than 'why anything?'.

I agree! I think this question is key to so many other questions in life and philosophy, and sometimes in unexpected ways. For instance, as Bruno showed, it could provide evidence for or against otherwise difficult-to-test theories of consciousness.

 

The associated question 'why this something?' can be used to skewer most attempted TOE's, but from what I understand of your approach I agree that you avoid this fate, so just on those grounds alone I think it should be taken seriously. And there are not many other surviving candidates.

I appreciate that. However, I must disclaim responsibility for this being my approach. With my writings, I am only trying to shed light on and share more broadly the approaches of others: Bruno Marchal, Russell Standish, Markus Muller, among others who have been working on theories of existence and reality that offer observationally-testable predictions. I believe this is key, as if we stay only in the domain of pure philosophy, we can easily get stuck in debates that last for millenia with no resolution.

Embracing many different ideas at once requires some careful navigation though. For example, I am not sure how Bruno's link to Everett

More work is required. I think some elements of quantum theory are suggested by all computations. But is our exact form of quantum theory entirely extractible?  It might not be, if we live in a "multi-multi-verse" (that is to say, there might be many various kinds of multiverses).  There are also different possible explanations for why our multiverse has the particular form it does, for instace, here are just a few possibilities:

• Do we see a quantum reality because of the pre-existence of an infinity of minds? -- (i.e. many-minds interpretation)
• Do we see a quantum reality because quantum realities yield the most observers? -- (some kind of measure-theoretic argument based on branch splitting)
• Do we see a quantum reality because of anthropic reasons? -- (e.g. atoms are unstable without Pauli exclusion principle, we wouldn't be alive without it)
• Do we see a quantum reality because only quantum computation yields consciousness? -- (A zombie/binding based argument, a Penrose style quantum consciousness approach)

 

and the Born Rule (or equivalent) for the purposes of obtaining relative measures across worlds/histories (level 3 multiverse in Tegmark's notation)

The source of Born's Rule is not established, but I have seen arguments that it is the only plausible rule, given Gleason's Theorem ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleason%27s_theorem )

would connect up to that given by favouring shorter programs over longer ones (level 4).

The general critique of Tegmark's level IV is that there are more possible universes of greater complexity than simpler ones. Algorithmic Information Theory comes to the rescue, I think, by showing most observers will be produced by shorter programs. I also find it curious just how many observers appear to be created by the universe we are in. Eternal inflation suggests the number of observers in our universe doubles rapidly, for all time. It is hard to imagine a program that could generate more osbervers more quickly than this. Is this any kind of clue for why our universe is as big and growing as fast as it is? I am not sure, but I find it curious.

 

The clarity of ideas presented in the article have helped to crystallize some of my own thoughts, and I would agree with much of its content. I hope that the article (and any book from it) is widely read and digested.

I am very happy to hear that. I and others on this list are always looking to discuss these and similar ideas. I've been on this list since 2007 and it has had a huge role in shaping my view of reality. Others have been on even longer.

Jason

[Tomas Pales]

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 1:26:27 AM UTC+1 Bruce wrote:

On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 10:52 AM Tomas Pales <litew...@gmail.com> wrote:

If there is a contradiction in the definition of an object, that means that the law of identity is violated and the object is not identical to itself and hence is not possible. There is no difference between possible and necessary in the absolute sense because every possible object exists necessarily in reality as a whole.

That is known as 'begging the question' in that you have assumed the result that it is necessary for you to prove. In other words, you have a circular argument.

I don't have much of an argument for claiming that there is no difference between possible and "real" existence. I just can't even imagine any fundamental difference, I don't know what it would even mean.

[John Clark]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 5:56 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I believe Chaitin has a definition of randomness that works for finite strings. If I remember correctly it has to do with the length of the shortest program that outputs the string being longer than the string itself.

Yes, but that definition has one severe disadvantage. Mathematicians can prove that they are an infinite number of finite strings of X length in which there are no program shorter than X that could produce them, however there is no way to prove in general that one particular string of length X is of that nature.

.

John K Clark   See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

.

 

[Tomas Pales]

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 2:39:11 AM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

On 3/10/2021 3:52 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 12:15:43 AM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

On 3/10/2021 2:41 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:

On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 6:29:13 PM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

On 3/10/2021 1:18 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:

Then you've either (1) changed the meaning of "real" existence (2) changed the meaning of possible or (3) gone mad.

As I said, possible means identical to itself.

I know you said it, but that doesn't make it so.  Is it possible that there is a an even number greater than 2 which is not the sum of two primes?  Is it real?  Is it possible that there is a cardinal number between aleph0 and aleph1?  Is it real?  If you flip a coin is it possible it will come up heads?  What's the difference between "possible" and "necessary".

If there is a contradiction in the definition of an object, that means that the law of identity is violated and the object is not identical to itself and hence is not possible. There is no difference between possible and necessary in the absolute sense because every possible object exists necessarily

You're avoiding the questions.  Your coin coming up heads isn't an object.

Why not? It's an event, which is an object in spacetime.

 

  Neither is the even number that is not the sum of two primes.

Numbers are properties (abstract objects). For example, number five is a property of all collections that have five members. Concrete and abstract objects go hand in hand, for example if there are concrete triangles then there is also the property (abstract object) of triangleness (triangle "in general") that all concrete triangles have. Some people think that properties are just thoughts or words but apparently they are inherently connected with the nature of concrete objects so I would locate properties "out there" similarly like concrete objects, not just in the mind.

 

  And as Bruno pointed out "object" is not well defined.

And I replied to Bruno about that yesterday.

 

Is John Clark an object, or as he puts it "a verb".

He is an object in spacetime.

[Brent Meeker]

Is there a dog in your room?  Is it possible for a dog to be in your room?  Do you understand those two questions?

Brent

[Tomas Pales]

Sure. And these are the answers: There is no dog in my room at this moment. It is impossible for a dog to be in my room at this moment. Why is it impossible? Because it would be a contradiction if a dog was in a room where it is not. Like I said in a similar example, it might be possible in a different world but not in this one.

[Brent Meeker]

On 3/11/2021 2:23 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 10:27:35 PM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

On 3/11/2021 9:44 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 1:26:27 AM UTC+1 Bruce wrote:

On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 10:52 AM Tomas Pales <litew...@gmail.com> wrote:

If there is a contradiction in the definition of an object, that means that the law of identity is violated and the object is not identical to itself and hence is not possible. There is no difference between possible and necessary in the absolute sense because every possible object exists necessarily in reality as a whole.

That is known as 'begging the question' in that you have assumed the result that it is necessary for you to prove. In other words, you have a circular argument.

I don't have much of an argument for claiming that there is no difference between possible and "real" existence. I just can't even imagine any fundamental difference, I don't know what it would even mean.

Is there a dog in your room?  Is it possible for a dog to be in your room?  Do you understand those two questions?

Sure. And these are the answers: There is no dog in my room at this moment. It is impossible for a dog to be in my room at this moment.

I didn't write "at this moment".   So apparently you can't a question about what is possible.

Brent

Why is it impossible? Because it would be a contradiction if a dog was in a room where it is not. Like I said in a similar example, it might be possible in a different world but not in this one.

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[Tomas Pales]

On Friday, March 12, 2021 at 1:03:38 AM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

On 3/11/2021 2:23 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 10:27:35 PM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

On 3/11/2021 9:44 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 1:26:27 AM UTC+1 Bruce wrote:

On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 10:52 AM Tomas Pales <litew...@gmail.com> wrote:

If there is a contradiction in the definition of an object, that means that the law of identity is violated and the object is not identical to itself and hence is not possible. There is no difference between possible and necessary in the absolute sense because every possible object exists necessarily in reality as a whole.

That is known as 'begging the question' in that you have assumed the result that it is necessary for you to prove. In other words, you have a circular argument.

I don't have much of an argument for claiming that there is no difference between possible and "real" existence. I just can't even imagine any fundamental difference, I don't know what it would even mean.

Is there a dog in your room?  Is it possible for a dog to be in your room?  Do you understand those two questions?

Sure. And these are the answers: There is no dog in my room at this moment. It is impossible for a dog to be in my room at this moment.

I didn't write "at this moment".   So apparently you can't a question about what is possible.

You obviously meant "at this moment" when you asked about whether there is a dog in my room. If you didn't implicitely mean "at this moment" also in the second question then the answer to that question is that it might be possible for a dog to be in my room at a different time.

[Bruno Marchal]

Actual existence can be seen indexically. It is a possible world viewed from that world. This allows a treatment with modal logics (mainly invented to solve that “relative existence” problem. Then with Mechanism, the modal logics are imposed by incompleteness, and we get the 8 different sorts of phenomenological existence, build from the first-order-logical notion of existence from arithmetic. What really exist are the numbers, 0, s0, ss0, sssO, … The only laws are addition and multiplication. All the rest belong to the number “imagination” defined by their arithmetical relation with (infinite in some case) universal numbers.

(You don’t need to postulate 0, nor s, as they can be defined from only + and x (exercise)).

Bruno

Brent

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 10 Mar 2021, at 22:43, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 3/10/2021 7:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 10 Mar 2021, at 00:19, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 3/9/2021 2:00 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 9:41 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness exist? If so, then by having existential properties it is not pure nothingness. If nothingness does not exist then there must exist something. In a sense God is the antithesis of nothingness and in a sense shares the same paradoxical issue.

There is a strange and paradoxical sort of identity between nothing and everything, particularly as it relates to information theory. Insofar as the total set of all possibilities has zero information content.

Even if it tells us what is not possible?  I think you're getting in over your head.  What kind of "possible" to you mean?  Simple not self-contradictory?  Nomological?  Or what?

A random message string can contain zero information, but still exist -- written on a piece of paper, for example.

I agree with your basic point, but a random string carries maximum information, per Shannon.  That's why maximally compressed string looks random; although you can't really define random in the information theoretic sense for finite strings.

You can define randomness for finite strings, up to a constant.

What does it mean "up to a constant”?

It means that the notion of algorithmic randomness is the same for all universal machine, except for the (finite) sequence which are small compared to the length of the (finite) code of the universal machine in use.

The precision are lengthy to describe, as you need a language with prefixed (self-delimiting) programs, but the idea is basically the idea of Kologorov complexity, and use some theorem by Chaitin. Then there are many variants, obtained by Martin Löff, and also Solovay.

Basically, a finite sequence is random is the program to generate it is as long as the sequence itself. But it is obvious that the length will depend on the universal machine use to run the programs, so different machine might get different result, and then it can be shown that the difference can be bounded by a constant, depending natural of the code of the universal machine in use.

Maybe you will find an answer to your question in this pdf:

https://math.uchicago.edu/~may/REU2013/REUPapers/Steinitz.pdf

(I should find some time to (re)read it). 

Most universal machine will agree on some large string being random, but can differ on strings shorter than themselves, say. See the book by Calllude on the randomness of finite string.

This is usually defined first, and then an infinite sequence is said to be random if almost all his initial segments are.

Even with only two "l"s in his name, I find no reference to him.  If you have a finite string you can just adopt a notation in which it has a short name, "Bob", and then  it's Kolomogorov complexity is that of "Bob".  So I don't see by what definition you can prove a finite string to be random.

The name of a program is not the program itself. The program is supposed to be written in the computer language. Its name is only a local macro, and if you use macro, you need to compile it first. 

The wiki is not bad on this:

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

Bruno

Brent

Bruno

Brent

This idea that zero information equates to 'nothing' is just an elementary confusion of categories.

This is the main subject of Russell Standish's book: Theory of Nothing: https://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html

That is why Russell got so many things wrong in this book.

Bruce

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 10 Mar 2021, at 23:38, Tomas Pales <litew...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 4:12:21 PM UTC+1 Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 10 Mar 2021, at 00:03, Tomas Pales <litew...@gmail.com> wrote:

The law of identity determines what can possibly exist, namely that which is identical to itself. But what is the difference between a possibly existing object and a "really" existing object? I see no difference, and hence all possible objects exist, necessarily.

But what is an object?

Good question. Whatever an object is, it seems it must necessarily have these two kinds of relations to other objects:

1) composition relation (the relation between a part and a whole, or between an object and a collection (combination, set) of objects that includes this object)

2) instantiation relation (the relation between an object and its property)

Having a composition relation means being a part or having a part (all objects are parts of a greater object, and some objects also have parts). Having an instantiation relation means having a property or being a property (all objects have a property, and some objects are also properties). Wouldn't you agree that every possible object must have these two kinds of relations?

I translate this by “an object is an element of a set together with some structure or laws. OK? So vectors, numbers, maps, can all be seen as (mathematical) object. (And with mechanism, we can then deduce that there is no physical object, although the mind can easily approximate them by some “object” (build by the mind). 

The composition relation generates all possible collections (combinations, sets), down to empty collections (non-composite objects) and maybe even without bottom as long as there is no contradiction. And the instantiation relation generates all possible properties and objects that have these properties, down to collections (which are not properties of anything else) and maybe even without bottom as long as there is no contradiction.

OK. In math we use often set theory, intuitively (or formally) to define, or better to represent, the different object we want to talk about.

It is known that arithmetic (the natural numbers) can be used too, for most of the usual mathematics (including a lot of constructive real objects, and more, but not all real numbers)

With mechanism, we can (and must, up to a Turing-equivalence) take as only “metaphysically, or ontologically real” object the natural numbers (0, s0, ss0, …).

So, there are two kinds of objects: collections and properties (roughly synonymous with concrete and abstract objects, respectively).

“Concrete” is a tricky term which does not survive Mechanism, which reverse not just physics and psychology-theology, but also abstract and concrete. Just 0, s0, … are concrete, but a physical object like a table becomes abstract. It looks concrete phenomenologically, but that is because we have millions of neurons making us feel that way.

Actually, we might count relations as a third kind of object because, after all, they are something too. Abstract relations are also properties of concrete relations (for example the abstract/general composition relation is a property of any concrete composition relation).

In logic, the basic object are the intended meaning of the term of the theory, then we can build higher order logics. 

 

I agree that Unicorn can exist, in the mind of some people, or in a dream, but most would say that Unicorn do no exist, because being fictional is part of their definition.

Minds are parts of reality,

We cannot really invoke “reality” as its very nature is part of the inquiry.

so parts of minds (like unicorns) are parts of reality too. Like every object, unicorns exist in the way in which they are defined, in this case as parts of minds. And maybe in some other world also outside of minds, as long as there is no contradiction.

 

Or take a square circle, or a dog which is also a cat…

These are not possible objects because their definition violates the law of identity. What is a circle that is not a circle? Nothing.

Why? A red can which is blue can be identical with itself. All odd natural number solution to 2x = x + 1 are equal to itself, despite not existing. Your self-identity criteria is too weak for being a criteria of existence.

A red car that is blue is a red car that is not red. Violation of law of identity, therefore nothing.

Fair enough, at least with a content relative to the metaphysics, or basic ontology we assume at the start.

Bruno

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[Bruno Marchal]

That is the alethic (Leibnizian) modal logic S5, which is the only one not obtained in the modal logics of self-reference. Possible P becomes not-provable-not P, that is consistent(P).

We have to use the modal logic G for the 3p self-reference, then we get a logic S4 for knowledge and quantum logics for the notion of observable-predictible. In fact we get 8 logics of self-references, and each of them have their own notion of possibility and necessity, but none are even close to S5.

Bruno

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[Bruno Marchal]

Indeed. In fact Chaitin did prove a “new" incompleteness theorem, but unlike Gödel’s one, it is not constructive. No machine can prove the algorithmic randomness of sequence bigger than themselves (up to some constant related to its code length).

I put “new” in quote, because that theorem was proved by Emil Post much before, but in a context having no relation with complexity of string, but with his notion of simple and immune set. It illustrates set whose logical complexity is between the recursive and the m-complete (or creative) sets (which are also Turing-complete).

Randomness, unlike creativity or Turing-universality is a non constructive notion, which is as we could expect intuitively.

Bruno

.

John K Clark   See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

.

 

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[Tomas Pales]

On Friday, March 12, 2021 at 1:30:55 PM UTC+1 Bruno Marchal wrote:

I translate this by “an object is an element of a set together with some structure or laws. OK? So vectors, numbers, maps, can all be seen as (mathematical) object.

Yes.

(And with mechanism, we can then deduce that there is no physical object, although the mind can easily approximate them by some “object” (build by the mind). 

Not sure what you mean by "physical". I regard as physical those mathematical objects that are in spacetime (and spacetime itself is a mathematical object too, a 4-dimensional space with one dimension somewhat different that the other three).

OK. In math we use often set theory, intuitively (or formally) to define, or better to represent, the different object we want to talk about.

It is known that arithmetic (the natural numbers) can be used too, for most of the usual mathematics (including a lot of constructive real objects, and more, but not all real numbers)

Reality may be bigger than arithmetic and then we need set theory to capture it, no? Well, we may never know if reality is bigger than arithmetic because it's impossible to prove that even arithmetic is consistent, let alone something bigger.

 

“Concrete” is a tricky term which does not survive Mechanism, which reverse not just physics and psychology-theology, but also abstract and concrete. Just 0, s0, … are concrete, but a physical object like a table becomes abstract. It looks concrete phenomenologically, but that is because we have millions of neurons making us feel that way.

By "concrete" object I mean an object that is not a property. For example, the general triangle (an abstract object) is a property of all concrete triangles such as ones I can draw on a piece of paper. But a concrete triangle is not a property of anything. Same with tables; the concrete table in your room is not a property of anything but the abstract table ("table in general") is a property exemplified in all concrete tables.

We cannot really invoke “reality” as its very nature is part of the inquiry.

I regard as reality all objects (that are identical to themselves, of course).

A red car that is blue is a red car that is not red. Violation of law of identity, therefore nothing.

Fair enough, at least with a content relative to the metaphysics, or basic ontology we assume at the start.

Without respecting law of identity, logical explosion will erase all differences between object and non-object, existence and non-existence, turning everything into nonsense. Paraconsistent logics arbitrarily deny law of identity in some circumstances and arbitrarily block explosion in some circumstances. They are meaningful and corresponding to reality only to the extent they affirm the law of identity.

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 4:00:51 PM UTC-6 Bruce wrote:

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 9:41 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

Nothingness is a paradoxical thing. Does nothingness exist? If so, then by having existential properties it is not pure nothingness. If nothingness does not exist then there must exist something. In a sense God is the antithesis of nothingness and in a sense shares the same paradoxical issue.

There is a strange and paradoxical sort of identity between nothing and everything, particularly as it relates to information theory. Insofar as the total set of all possibilities has zero information content.

A random message string can contain zero information, but still exist -- written on a piece of paper, for example. This idea that zero information equates to 'nothing' is just an elementary confusion of categories.

A random string of characters of length N, where each character has p_n probability of occurring in the string has entropy 

S = -k sum_{n=1}^N p_n log(p_n).

If p_n = 1/N then S = k log(N), consider sum as an integral and use properties of log, which is Boltzmann's rule. This is a measure of information. It may tell you nothing, but it actually still has information.

LC

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 4:30:26 PM UTC-6 medinuclear wrote:

[Brent Meeker]

“https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation”

[Philip Benjamin] If nothing ever existed, nothing can exist today. “Ex nihilo, nihil fit” (Parmenides). Laws of any kind necessarily requires the existence of a conscious Law Giver. The logical question is: “what is more reasonable?” DEAD MATTER producing life or LIFE producing both dead matter and life-forms?  Only a degree of rationality can be established here.

The laws are constructs of the human mind. There may be patterns in nature, and we inductively infer them as laws. The idea there must be a mind for anything to exist is silly. Where did the mind come from, and if such a mind existed there was then no true nothingness.

LC

 

      Civilized, erudite Phoenician, profligate pagan Augustine of Greco-Roman roots was instantly TRANSFORMED into a non-pagan and pulled the West off Greco-Roman paganism and superstitions  (https://www.midwestaugustinians.org/conversion-of-st-augustine). Thus he was the chief architect of Western Civilization built on the foundation of the Apostolic discourse at Athenian Mars Hill (Acts 17) where the Greco-Roman Unknown god was identified as the aseitous Adonai (plural) YHWH (singular) Elohim (uni-plural) of the Patriarchs, Prophets and the Apostles.

      Progressive pagans with un-awakened consciousness cannot escape the questions of causality, aseity, morality, meaning and telos by simply evading them or assuming illogically the aseity of Dead Matter.

Philip Benjamin        

 

From: 'Brent Meeker' Tuesday, March 9, 2021 12:38 PM  everyth...@googlegroups.com  Subject: Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

On 3/9/2021 12:22 AM, Jason Resch wrote:

 

 

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:57 AM Kim Jones <kimj...@ozemail.com.au> wrote:

What was there before there was nothing?

 

I don't believe reality was ever a state of absolute nothingness. Rather, there are things that exist necessarily: logical laws, truth, properties of numbers, etc. Some of these truths and number relations concern and define all computational histories, and the appearance of a physical reality is a result of these computations creating consciousness observers. See: https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation

But you're casually confounding different sense of "exist".  Logical laws, number, etc are derivative on language.  They don't "exist" physically.  The logicians meaning of exist is just to satisfy a predicate.  Any sensible discussion of "exist"needs to start with recognizing it has several different meanings.

Brent

--.

[Brent Meeker]

So then is it possible that there is a dog in your bathroom, at this moment?

Brent

[Tomas Pales]

On Friday, March 12, 2021 at 11:02:45 PM UTC+1 Brent wrote:

So then is it possible that there is a dog in your bathroom, at this moment?

No.

 

[Bruno Marchal]

On 12 Mar 2021, at 14:42, Tomas Pales <litew...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Friday, March 12, 2021 at 1:30:55 PM UTC+1 Bruno Marchal wrote:

I translate this by “an object is an element of a set together with some structure or laws. OK? So vectors, numbers, maps, can all be seen as (mathematical) object.

Yes.

(And with mechanism, we can then deduce that there is no physical object, although the mind can easily approximate them by some “object” (build by the mind). 

Not sure what you mean by "physical”.

The observable. It concerns measurable numbers, in the usual repetitive sense of physics, like temperature, momentum, position, clock, etc.

I regard as physical those mathematical objects that are in spacetime (and spacetime itself is a mathematical object too, a 4-dimensional space with one dimension somewhat different that the other three).

This looks like making the physical into a mathematic structure. With Mechanism, the physical universe is not a mathematical structure among others, but an invariant in the mind of all Turing machine. It is the arithmetical (or Turing equivalent) seen from inside. Physics becomes (again) a branch of Theology, albeit here Digital Mechanism makes  the theology into a branch of computer science/mathematical logic, and even into a branch of arithmetic. It is testable by comparing the observation with the physics “in the head of the universal Turing number/machine.

The ontology is simple (just the natural numbers together with the two laws of addition and multiplication).

OK. In math we use often set theory, intuitively (or formally) to define, or better to represent, the different object we want to talk about.

It is known that arithmetic (the natural numbers) can be used too, for most of the usual mathematics (including a lot of constructive real objects, and more, but not all real numbers)

Reality may be bigger than arithmetic

The internal phenomenology of arithmetic is indeed bigger than the arithmetical truth. But the ontology is not, and eventually we have to limit the arithmetical truth (something infinitely complex) to its partial computable part. “God” is the sigma_1 (partial computable) part of the arithmetical reality (which is the union of the sigma_1, and all sigma_i (which are less and less computable, necessitating stronger and stronger oracles (in Turing sense).

and then we need set theory to capture it, no?

Only in the phenomenology. It is a theorem of arithmetic (+ mechanism) that most universal number believe in set and infinity axioms, due to the unbound-able complexity of the arithmetical reality when "seen from inside” (a notion made precise using the mathematic of self-reference (Gödel, Löb, Solovay).

Well, we may never know if reality is bigger than arithmetic because it's impossible to prove that even arithmetic is consistent, let alone something bigger.

We cannot prove anything about Reality, not even that there is one, beyond our personal consciousness. But we can try theories, and we learn something when and if they are refuted.

Now, Arithmetic, with a big A, that is, the standard model of arithmetic is consistent per definition. Also, we can prove the consistency of arithmetic with no more axioms that we use in Analysis, and a theory like PA (Peano arithmetic) is believed to be consistent by all mathematician (except Nelson).

But with Mechanism, even PA is too much for the ontology, and we can use only RA (Robinson Arithmetic). This is PA minus the induction axioms. The usual induction axioms have to be added only in the machine’s phenomenology. RA (aka Q) is believed to be consistent by all mathematicians, including Nelson and even the ultrafinitist. 

 

“Concrete” is a tricky term which does not survive Mechanism, which reverse not just physics and psychology-theology, but also abstract and concrete. Just 0, s0, … are concrete, but a physical object like a table becomes abstract. It looks concrete phenomenologically, but that is because we have millions of neurons making us feel that way.

By "concrete" object I mean an object that is not a property.

But what is an object?

For example, the general triangle (an abstract object) is a property of all concrete triangles such as ones I can draw on a piece of paper.

(Hmm… I cannot use at the ontological level notion like piece of paper. I can explain (or see my papers) that a piece of paper is something quite abstract. That it is looks concrete is basically an illusion, requiring long computational histories, and many neurons...

But a concrete triangle is not a property of anything. Same with tables; the concrete table in your room is not a property of anything but the abstract table ("table in general") is a property exemplified in all concrete tables.

I would need to know what you assume to exist, and what you derive from that assumption. I do not assume an ontological physical universe. I do assume a physical universe, but the goal will be to explain it without that assumption, and I show why we have to do that when we assume that a brain or a body is Turing emulable at a relevant level of description.

We cannot really invoke “reality” as its very nature is part of the inquiry.

I regard as reality all objects (that are identical to themselves, of course).

I take x = x as a logical truth about identity. So every thing is equal to itself, and so, self-identity cannot be a criteria of (fundamental) existence.

But the collection of all sets equal to themselves, {x I x = x} is typically not a set, despite that collection is equal to itself.

You seem to assume everything at the start, but without defining things, that will lead easily to inconsistencies. A square circle is equal to itself, arguably.

A red car that is blue is a red car that is not red. Violation of law of identity, therefore nothing.

Fair enough, at least with a content relative to the metaphysics, or basic ontology we assume at the start.

Without respecting law of identity, logical explosion will erase all differences between object and non-object, existence and non-existence, turning everything into nonsense. Paraconsistent logics arbitrarily deny law of identity in some circumstances and arbitrarily block explosion in some circumstances. They are meaningful and corresponding to reality only to the extent they affirm the law of identity.

I can agree. Paraconistent logic is useful to make theories (and semantics) for natural languages, but is useless for fundamental science, where we should better start from simple things on which everyone agrees (except Sunday-type of philosophers).

Bruno

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[Bruno Marchal]

I comment both Benjamin and Lawrence.

On 12 Mar 2021, at 16:56, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 4:30:26 PM UTC-6 medinuclear wrote:

[Brent Meeker]

“https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation”

[Philip Benjamin] If nothing ever existed, nothing can exist today. “Ex nihilo, nihil fit” (Parmenides).

OK. Key point.

Laws of any kind necessarily requires the existence of a conscious Law Giver.

But here I disagree. Consciousness will be the non provable truth (about machine and by machine) related to their belief in some reality including oneself. Introspective machine/number can’t miss it.

The logical question is: “what is more reasonable?” DEAD MATTER producing life or LIFE producing both dead matter and life-forms?  Only a degree of rationality can be established here.

Both in the arithmetical reality, and in the physical reality, life is a simple consequence of the so called second recursion theorem by Kleene. It is the fact that piece of codes can encode all it needs to protect itself, to reproduce itself, to grow, develop, organise and evolved…

Now, the physical reality is not a primitive primary reality, but an illusion common to all relative numbers, in almost all of their consistent histories.

The laws are constructs of the human mind.  [Lawrence]

The expression of the laws are constructs of the human mind, but I guess you are OK that F=GmM/r^2 was as much approximately true before human life appears on this planet and after. OK?

There may be patterns in nature, and we inductively infer them as laws.

… OK, and we can sometimes deduce some laws from other, and verify with Nature. Then there are some mathematical laws, that we find by introspection and dialog with others.

This is neutral with respect to the question of the origin of the physical reality. With Mechanism, the physical reality does not need to be assumed, and in fact cannot be assumed if we want get both the quanta and the qualia, as this requires a much simpler theory, like any Turing universal system/theory.

The idea there must be a mind for anything to exist is silly.

Yes. It is like abandoning to try to explain mind (and matter). It is better to not assume neither mind nor matter as fundamental. But we have to assume at least one universal machinery, and the old Pythagorean one works very well (natural numbers + the laws making it in a Turing universal system).

Where did the mind come from, and if such a mind existed there was then no true nothingness.

Yes. In fact it is the empty explanation “God made it”, which might work, actually, but only with a mathematically precise theory of God, and an explanation of it build the physical reality, or how it makes us believe in a physical reality.

With mechanism we assume only “very elementary arithmetic” (PA without the induction axioms), and derive from this the existence of the universal numbers, and get physics from their own notion of observable. Physics becomes a statistics on the relative experience/dream by numbers emulated in Arithmetic, in virtue of the laws of + and *.

What people miss is that the notion of computation is purely an arithmetical notion. See the book by Martin Davis, and its chapter 4, for a proof of this, but Gödel’s 1931 contains it already implicitly. Gödel missed it because he missed the Church-Turing thesis, and was quite skeptical until 1936 where he was convinced by Turing.

[Benjamin:]

      Civilized, erudite Phoenician, profligate pagan Augustine of Greco-Roman roots was instantly TRANSFORMED into a non-pagan and pulled the West off Greco-Roman paganism and superstitions  (https://www.midwestaugustinians.org/conversion-of-st-augustine). Thus he was the chief architect of Western Civilization built on the foundation of the Apostolic discourse at Athenian Mars Hill (Acts 17) where the Greco-Roman Unknown god was identified as the aseitous Adonai (plural) YHWH (singular) Elohim (uni-plural) of the Patriarchs, Prophets and the Apostles.

      Progressive pagans with un-awakened consciousness cannot escape the questions of causality, aseity, morality, meaning and telos by simply evading them or assuming illogically the aseity of Dead Matter.

I think that most “progressive pagans” never really assumed the existence of Dead Matter, nor even of any Matter, to begin with.

Bruno

Philip Benjamin        

 

From: 'Brent Meeker' Tuesday, March 9, 2021 12:38 PM  everyth...@googlegroups.com  Subject: Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

On 3/9/2021 12:22 AM, Jason Resch wrote:

 

 

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 12:57 AM Kim Jones <kimj...@ozemail.com.au> wrote:

What was there before there was nothing?

 

I don't believe reality was ever a state of absolute nothingness. Rather, there are things that exist necessarily: logical laws, truth, properties of numbers, etc. Some of these truths and number relations concern and define all computational histories, and the appearance of a physical reality is a result of these computations creating consciousness observers. See: https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation

But you're casually confounding different sense of "exist".  Logical laws, number, etc are derivative on language.  They don't "exist" physically.  The logicians meaning of exist is just to satisfy a predicate.  Any sensible discussion of "exist"needs to start with recognizing it has several different meanings.

Brent

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[Jason Resch]

On Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 5:24 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

I comment both Benjamin and Lawrence.

On 12 Mar 2021, at 16:56, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 4:30:26 PM UTC-6 medinuclear wrote:

[Brent Meeker]

“https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation”

[Philip Benjamin] If nothing ever existed, nothing can exist today. “Ex nihilo, nihil fit” (Parmenides).

OK. Key point.

Laws of any kind necessarily requires the existence of a conscious Law Giver.

But here I disagree. Consciousness will be the non provable truth (about machine and by machine) related to their belief in some reality including oneself. Introspective machine/number can’t miss it.

What is it that makes the truths concerning consciousness unprovable?

Is it unprovable only by that machine where another entity using another more powerful system could prove it?

Is it a consequence of self reference?

Is it related to trying to prove statements of a form "Machine X cannot prove P"?

If I run a simulation of some entity on my computer, could I not prove statements about the knowledge/information states contained by it's mind?

What exactly are the limits of what can be proved? Is it just about qualia?

Jason

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/B4A08744-6D82-4B28-861B-2E21F6BA877B%40ulb.ac.be.

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Sunday, March 14, 2021 at 5:24:27 AM UTC-5 Bruno Marchal wrote:

I comment both Benjamin and Lawrence.

On 12 Mar 2021, at 16:56, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 4:30:26 PM UTC-6 medinuclear wrote:

[Brent Meeker]

“https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation”

[Philip Benjamin] If nothing ever existed, nothing can exist today. “Ex nihilo, nihil fit” (Parmenides).

OK. Key point.

Laws of any kind necessarily requires the existence of a conscious Law Giver.

But here I disagree. Consciousness will be the non provable truth (about machine and by machine) related to their belief in some reality including oneself. Introspective machine/number can’t miss it.

The logical question is: “what is more reasonable?” DEAD MATTER producing life or LIFE producing both dead matter and life-forms?  Only a degree of rationality can be established here.

Both in the arithmetical reality, and in the physical reality, life is a simple consequence of the so called second recursion theorem by Kleene. It is the fact that piece of codes can encode all it needs to protect itself, to reproduce itself, to grow, develop, organise and evolved…

Now, the physical reality is not a primitive primary reality, but an illusion common to all relative numbers, in almost all of their consistent histories.

The laws are constructs of the human mind.  [Lawrence]

The expression of the laws are constructs of the human mind, but I guess you are OK that F=GmM/r^2 was as much approximately true before human life appears on this planet and after. OK?

There may be patterns in nature, and we inductively infer them as laws.

… OK, and we can sometimes deduce some laws from other, and verify with Nature. Then there are some mathematical laws, that we find by introspection and dialog with others.

This is neutral with respect to the question of the origin of the physical reality. With Mechanism, the physical reality does not need to be assumed, and in fact cannot be assumed if we want get both the quanta and the qualia, as this requires a much simpler theory, like any Turing universal system/theory.

The idea there must be a mind for anything to exist is silly.

Yes. It is like abandoning to try to explain mind (and matter). It is better to not assume neither mind nor matter as fundamental. But we have to assume at least one universal machinery, and the old Pythagorean one works very well (natural numbers + the laws making it in a Turing universal system).

Where did the mind come from, and if such a mind existed there was then no true nothingness.

Yes. In fact it is the empty explanation “God made it”, which might work, actually, but only with a mathematically precise theory of God, and an explanation of it build the physical reality, or how it makes us believe in a physical reality.

With mechanism we assume only “very elementary arithmetic” (PA without the induction axioms), and derive from this the existence of the universal numbers, and get physics from their own notion of observable. Physics becomes a statistics on the relative experience/dream by numbers emulated in Arithmetic, in virtue of the laws of + and *.

What people miss is that the notion of computation is purely an arithmetical notion. See the book by Martin Davis, and its chapter 4, for a proof of this, but Gödel’s 1931 contains it already implicitly. Gödel missed it because he missed the Church-Turing thesis, and was quite skeptical until 1936 where he was convinced by Turing.

As I indicated nothingness is a sort of self-annihilating concept, nothingness annihilates nothingness meaning there is something. Does nothingness exist? If it does then by having existential properties it is not true nothingness. Maybe it is more the quantum vacuum. If nothingness does not exist then there must be something.

Even the theological argument of creati ex nihilio is self-defeating, for there had to be a God in that argument. Does God exist? If so then there was not truly nothingness. If God does not exist the argument is meaningless.

BTW, I have Davis's book. He was a part of the quartet who showed the Hilbert thesis for a single method of p-adic numbers was false.

 

[Benjamin:]

      Civilized, erudite Phoenician, profligate pagan Augustine of Greco-Roman roots was instantly TRANSFORMED into a non-pagan and pulled the West off Greco-Roman paganism and superstitions 

And this lead to a 1000 year dark age. Besides, Augustine was not Phoenician but Berber. The original inhabitants of Carthage were dispersed or killed by the Romans with the 3rd Punic War. Carthage was largely a Roman city after that. 

 

(https://www.midwestaugustinians.org/conversion-of-st-augustine). Thus he was the chief architect of Western Civilization built on the foundation of the Apostolic discourse at Athenian Mars Hill (Acts 17) where the Greco-Roman Unknown god was identified as the aseitous Adonai (plural) YHWH (singular) Elohim (uni-plural) of the Patriarchs, Prophets and the Apostles.

      Progressive pagans with un-awakened consciousness cannot escape the questions of causality, aseity, morality, meaning and telos by simply evading them or assuming illogically the aseity of Dead Matter.

I think that most “progressive pagans” never really assumed the existence of Dead Matter, nor even of any Matter, to begin with.

Bruno

Besides the discourse with Paul at Mars hill was a part of his program of establishing a new system of social control. This was why Paul made Christianity a success. He turned it into a social structure which appealed to some authority or truth "up there" and inaccessible to reasoning. This is an early version of Orwell's Big Brother, an imaginary all powerful and vengeful being who knows all --- "Big Brother is watching you." It is completely antithetical to scientific and rational reasoning. 

LC  

[Tomas Pales]

On Sunday, March 14, 2021 at 10:57:08 AM UTC+1 Bruno Marchal wrote:

But what is an object?

Anything that is identical to itself. It also seems necessary that every object is part of a greater object and has properties.

 

We cannot really invoke “reality” as its very nature is part of the inquiry.

I regard as reality all objects (that are identical to themselves, of course).

I take x = x as a logical truth about identity. So every thing is equal to itself, and so, self-identity cannot be a criteria of (fundamental) existence.

Why not? Why would some objects that are identical to themselves exist and other objects that are identical to themselves would not exist? What would such an existential distinction even mean?

 

But the collection of all sets equal to themselves, {x I x = x} is typically not a set, despite that collection is equal to itself.

I don't see a difference between collection and set. And there is no collection of all collections, just like there is no biggest number.

 

You seem to assume everything at the start, but without defining things, that will lead easily to inconsistencies.

I assume the law of identity for every object, so all inconsistencies are thereby ruled out.

 

A square circle is equal to itself, arguably.

No, a square circle is a circle that is not a circle, so it is not identical to itself. It is not an object, it's nothing.

[Philip Benjamin]

[Philip Benjamin]

       Laws are NOT constructs of the human mind. The ‘expressions of the Laws’ are indeed human constructs.  F=GmM/r^2 = ma is only a human expression of Laws governing an unknown force called gravity. ‘Unknown’ here means unknown to human consciousness that DID NOT and COULD NOT have CREATED ‘gravity’. From F = GmM/r² = ma, where F is the gravitational force, G is the gravitational constant, M is the mass of the Earth, r is the radius of the Earth, and m is the mass of another object (near the surface of the Earth),  GM/r²= a (The m's canceled out.) which allows solving for M, the mass of the Earth. M = ar^2/G, where a = 9.8m/sec^2, r = 6.4 x 10^6 m, and G = 6.67 x 10^-11m³/(kg sec^2).  M = 9.8 x (6.4 x 10^6)^2/(6.67 x 10^-11) = 6.0 x 10^24kg. This mass, radius, gravity and their relationships etc. are not created by human minds!! Greek Eratosthenes calculated the radius of the earth comparing shadows in wells during the summer solstice about 230 B.C.

      No human mind howsoever brilliant can escape facing the necessity of aseity of something or other. Only a degree of rationality can be settled here. What is MORE rational: Eternal dead-matter producing life (consciousness) or E ternal LIFE producing both dead-matter and life (consciousness)?

Philip Benjamin

 

everyth...@googlegroups.com <everyth...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Jason Resch verything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: Why Does Anything Exist? On Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 5:24 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

I comment both Benjamin and Lawrence.

On 12 Mar 2021, at 16:56, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

 

On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 4:30:26 PM UTC-6 medinuclear wrote:

[Brent Meeker]

“https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation”

[Philip Benjamin] If nothing ever existed, nothing can exist today. “Ex nihilo, nihil fit” (Parmenides).

 

OK. Key point.Laws of any kind necessarily requires the existence of a conscious Law Giver.

 

But here I disagree. Consciousness will be the non provable truth (about machine and by machine) related to their belief in some reality including oneself. Introspective machine/number can’t miss it.

 

What is it that makes the truths concerning consciousness unprovable?

 

Is it unprovable only by that machine where another entity using another more powerful system could prove it?

 

Is it a consequence of self reference?

 

Is it related to trying to prove statements of a form "Machine X cannot prove P"?

 

If I run a simulation of some entity on my computer, could I not prove statements about the knowledge/information states contained by it's mind?

 

What exactly are the limits of what can be proved? Is it just about qualia?

 

Jason

The logical question is: “what is more reasonable?” DEAD MATTER producing life or LIFE producing both dead matter and life-forms?  Only a degree of rationality can be established here.

Both in the arithmetical reality, and in the physical reality, life is a simple consequence of the so called second recursion theorem by Kleene. It is the fact that piece of codes can encode all it needs to protect itself, to reproduce itself, to grow, develop, organise and evolved…

 

Now, the physical reality is not a primitive primary reality, but an illusion common to all relative numbers, in almost all of their consistent histories.

 

The laws are constructs of the human mind.  [Lawrence]

 

The expression of the laws are constructs of the human mind, but I guess you are OK that F=GmM/r^2 was as much approximately true before human life appears on this planet and after. OK?

There may be patterns in nature, and we inductively infer them as laws.

 

… OK, and we can sometimes deduce some laws from other, and verify with Nature. Then there are some mathematical laws, that we find by introspection and dialog with others.

This is neutral with respect to the question of the origin of the physical reality. With Mechanism, the physical reality does not need to be assumed, and in fact cannot be assumed if we want get both the quanta and the qualia, as this requires a much simpler theory, like any Turing universal system/theory.

The idea there must be a mind for anything to exist is silly.

 

Yes. It is like abandoning to try to explain mind (and matter). It is better to not assume neither mind nor matter as fundamental. But we have to assume at least one universal machinery, and the old Pythagorean one works very well (natural numbers + the laws making it in a Turing universal system).

Where did the mind come from, and if such a mind existed there was then no true nothingness.

 

Yes. In fact it is the empty explanation “God made it”, which might work, actually, but only with a mathematically precise theory of God, and an explanation of it build the physical reality, or how it makes us believe in a physical reality.

 

With mechanism we assume only “very elementary arithmetic” (PA without the induction axioms), and derive from this the existence of the universal numbers, and get physics from their own notion of observable. Physics becomes a statistics on the relative experience/dream by numbers emulated in Arithmetic, in virtue of the laws of + and *.

 

What people miss is that the notion of computation is purely an arithmetical notion. See the book by Martin Davis, and its chapter 4, for a proof of this, but Gödel’s 1931 contains it already implicitly. Gödel missed it because he missed the Church-Turing thesis, and was quite skeptical until 1936 where he was convinced by Turing.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

[Philip Benjamin]

[Philip Benjamin]

general...@googlegroups.com  Subject: [Consciousness-Online] RE: Why Does Anything Exist?

Philip Benjamin        

Brent.

[Brent Meeker]

On 3/14/2021 3:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

The laws are constructs of the human mind.  [Lawrence]

The expression of the laws are constructs of the human mind, but I guess you are OK that F=GmM/r^2 was as much approximately true before human life appears on this planet and after. OK?

I think "approximately true" implicitly assumes someone for whom the approximation is good enough.  Someone with values and purpose.

Brent

[smitra]

There exists an as of yet unknown exact description of gravity. The
leading term of the expansion of that theory for large distances, low
energies and velocities will yield the Newtonian theory.

It's not much different from saying that sin(x) = x + O(x^3)

Saibal

[Bruno Marchal]

On 14 Mar 2021, at 15:56, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 5:24 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

I comment both Benjamin and Lawrence.

On 12 Mar 2021, at 16:56, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 4:30:26 PM UTC-6 medinuclear wrote:

[Brent Meeker]

“https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Story_of_Creation”

[Philip Benjamin] If nothing ever existed, nothing can exist today. “Ex nihilo, nihil fit” (Parmenides).

OK. Key point.

Laws of any kind necessarily requires the existence of a conscious Law Giver.

But here I disagree. Consciousness will be the non provable truth (about machine and by machine) related to their belief in some reality including oneself. Introspective machine/number can’t miss it.

What is it that makes the truths concerning consciousness unprovable?

The truth concerning consciousness is provable in a (or the) theory of consciousness (given by the sound machine).

The truth of “the fact of my consciousness here and now”, for example, is shown to be true and non provable by the machine, a bit like the truth of the consistency of the (sound) machine cannot be made by the machine itself.

Is it unprovable only by that machine where another entity using another more powerful system could prove it?

It is knowable-for-sure by the machine (indeed it is the only thing which is knowable-for-sure), but the machine can know that it is not rationally knowable or justifiable. It belongs to a variant of a G* minus G type of proposition.

Is it a consequence of self reference?

It is indeed a consequence of the mathematics of self-reference, together with the classical definition of Plato and the Neoplatonician. But those definition can be motivated through the thought experiences when assuming mechanism, in a diverse way.

Is it related to trying to prove statements of a form "Machine X cannot prove P”?

Yes. (And through mechanism, we can relate it also to the mechanist thought experience, as it is the only thing linking consciousness to the machine, by the “yes doctor” act of faith).

More generally, with “[0]p” interpreted by Gödel’s provability predicate (sigma_1 complete) provable(‘p’), it is related  to 

~[0]p

~[1]p

~[2]p

~[3]p

~[4]p

With the arithmetical, and non-arithmetical operators defined by

[0]p = the usual Gödelian provability predicate (beweisbar, provable, …).

[1]p = [0]p & p (knowable; This one cannot be defined in arithmetic, or by the machine)

[2]p = [0]p & <0>t (observable)

[3]p = [0]p & <0>t & p (sensible; This one cannot be defined in arithmetic, or by the machine).

If I run a simulation of some entity on my computer, could I not prove statements about the knowledge/information states contained by it's mind?

Yes, you can, but only by assuming it has a (conscious) mind, which is something that you cannot prove, even for humans, aliens, gods, whatever. You cannot prove it about yourself either, despite you can know-it-for-sure.

What exactly are the limits of what can be proved? Is it just about qualia?

It is about any Reality big enough to satisfy all your beliefs, where you is any sound machine believing in any essentially undecidable theory, like the very weak theory Q (Robinson Arithmetic).

No machine can define its own semantic. From the machine points of view, its own semantic obeys many typical axioms of the One of the neoplatonician (not nameable, not provable, not doubtable, not observable, yet responsible for *all* the nameable, the provable, the doubtable, the observable).

With mechanism, in a first pass “god”, the One,  is the arithmetical Reality, and in the second pass, when we interview the computationalist Löbian machine, in fine, the One is the tiny sigma_1 complete part of arithmetic (aka the universal dovetailing).

Bruno

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUhVa_qSZmh5Hxb3iAo%2BvdWF%2BD7h7fpUjpbNFkUFux3j7w%40mail.gmail.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

Nothingness means nothing without defining which things we are talking about. 

In mathematical logic, no model is empty, by definition (making AxP(x) -> ExP(x) into a logical axiom).

We presuppose that we are alway talking about *some* things.

Even the theological argument of creati ex nihilio is self-defeating, for there had to be a God in that argument. Does God exist? If so then there was not truly nothingness. If God does not exist the argument is meaningless.

That is the reason why the God of the Neoplatonician is not a creator. It is more a fundamental reality seen from inside, by doubting entities aware that they are finite and possibly dreaming.

BTW, I have Davis's book. He was a part of the quartet who showed the Hilbert thesis for a single method of p-adic numbers was false.

Can you give me the references? I know only that he is part of the Putnam-Davis-Robinson-Matiyazevic quartet who solved (negatively) Hilbert’s ten problem, which is not related to the p-adic numbers.

Hilbert’s tenth problem is the question of the existence of an algorithm to solve the polynomial Diophantine equation (the solutions have to be natural numbers or integers, and the coefficients in the polysomes are integers). The solution is NO, there is no such algorithm, and indeed we can build a Turing universal polynomial of degree 4. (We can’t do that with real numbers. For the real numbers, Hilbert’s corresponding "10th problem" is algorithmically solvable, so a real polynomial cannot be Turing universal).

Bruno

 

[Benjamin:]

      Civilized, erudite Phoenician, profligate pagan Augustine of Greco-Roman roots was instantly TRANSFORMED into a non-pagan and pulled the West off Greco-Roman paganism and superstitions 

And this lead to a 1000 year dark age. Besides, Augustine was not Phoenician but Berber. The original inhabitants of Carthage were dispersed or killed by the Romans with the 3rd Punic War. Carthage was largely a Roman city after that. 

 

(https://www.midwestaugustinians.org/conversion-of-st-augustine). Thus he was the chief architect of Western Civilization built on the foundation of the Apostolic discourse at Athenian Mars Hill (Acts 17) where the Greco-Roman Unknown god was identified as the aseitous Adonai (plural) YHWH (singular) Elohim (uni-plural) of the Patriarchs, Prophets and the Apostles.

      Progressive pagans with un-awakened consciousness cannot escape the questions of causality, aseity, morality, meaning and telos by simply evading them or assuming illogically the aseity of Dead Matter.

I think that most “progressive pagans” never really assumed the existence of Dead Matter, nor even of any Matter, to begin with.

Bruno

Besides the discourse with Paul at Mars hill was a part of his program of establishing a new system of social control. This was why Paul made Christianity a success. He turned it into a social structure which appealed to some authority or truth "up there" and inaccessible to reasoning. This is an early version of Orwell's Big Brother, an imaginary all powerful and vengeful being who knows all --- "Big Brother is watching you." It is completely antithetical to scientific and rational reasoning. 

LC  

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 14 Mar 2021, at 17:26, Tomas Pales <litew...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, March 14, 2021 at 10:57:08 AM UTC+1 Bruno Marchal wrote:

But what is an object?

Anything that is identical to itself. It also seems necessary that every object is part of a greater object and has properties.

That’s not enough precise. It makes any thing into object, except that it seems to need a notion of part, and thus can be structured, in many ways, as many as there are set theories, at least, and there are many, from ZF and NF to the many toposes...

 

We cannot really invoke “reality” as its very nature is part of the inquiry.

I regard as reality all objects (that are identical to themselves, of course).

I take x = x as a logical truth about identity. So every thing is equal to itself, and so, self-identity cannot be a criteria of (fundamental) existence.

Why not? Why would some objects that are identical to themselves exist and other objects that are identical to themselves would not exist? What would such an existential distinction even mean?

As a scientist, I try to assume as less as possible, and only things on which everyone agree.

Most people agree that 4+5=9, and that this implies Ex(x+5 = 9), and do one. 

With Mechanism, this is enough, and mandatory (up to a Turing equivalence). 

Then, from the numbers’ point of view, they get hallucinated in the difference between p, []p, []p & p, etc… which will explain the apperance of the laws of physics, in the mind of large stable collection of universal numbers/machines, but it would be long to explain this right now. I can give references for more.

 

But the collection of all sets equal to themselves, {x I x = x} is typically not a set, despite that collection is equal to itself.

I don't see a difference between collection and set.

A collection is a set in the intuitive sense. A (formal) set, in an axiomatic theory of set, is an element (in the intuitive sense) of a model of set theory. Yes, the difference is a bit subtle, but capital when we study the axiomatic of set theory and its models.

If you identify all collection with (formal) sets, you get contradictions. For example, by Cantor theorem all set of parts P(S) of a set S is bigger than the set S: PS > S. But if the collection U of all sets was a set, PU > U, but U is the set of all sets, so certainly U should be bigger than all sets. And there are many other contradictions...

And there is no collection of all collections, just like there is no biggest number.

The problem is that there is a collection of all sets, once we define set axiomatically. We just have to be careful to distinguish set and collections, once we want use such theories to solve some problem.

 

You seem to assume everything at the start, but without defining things, that will lead easily to inconsistencies.

I assume the law of identity for every object, so all inconsistencies are thereby ruled out.

? (You seem to assume some object, and it is unclear if you mean “physical object”, psychological object, etc. You seem to have a general theory of object, but you don’t seem to characterise them axiomatically, so, to be honest, I don’t see any theory.

 

A square circle is equal to itself, arguably.

No, a square circle is a circle that is not a circle,

Obviously, a square circle is a circle. It is a counter-example to the idea that a square cannot be a circle. It does not exist, but that does not make it different to itself. Even a Unicorn is equal to itself.

The real problem of the square circle is that we don’t have provides definition, or we talk about something which cannot exist, so we can’t really build meaningful proposition about it, without being inconsistent.

so it is not identical to itself. It is not an object, it's nothing.

x = x is usually an axiom of all theory of identity, with the symmetry and transitivity. At least we agree on that. Your notion of object is still too much fuzzy to be used in metaphysics/theology, Imo.

Bruno

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 14 Mar 2021, at 18:47, Philip Benjamin <medin...@hotmail.com> wrote:

[Philip Benjamin]

       Laws are NOT constructs of the human mind. The ‘expressions of the Laws’ are indeed human constructs.  F=GmM/r^2 = ma is only a human expression of Laws governing an unknown force called gravity. ‘Unknown’ here means unknown to human consciousness that DID NOT and COULD NOT have CREATED ‘gravity’. From F = GmM/r² = ma, where F is the gravitational force, G is the gravitational constant, M is the mass of the Earth, r is the radius of the Earth, and m is the mass of another object (near the surface of the Earth),  GM/r²= a (The m's canceled out.) which allows solving for M, the mass of the Earth. M = ar^2/G, where a = 9.8m/sec^2, r = 6.4 x 10^6 m, and G = 6.67 x 10^-11m³/(kg sec^2).  M = 9.8 x (6.4 x 10^6)^2/(6.67 x 10^-11) = 6.0 x 10^24kg. This mass, radius, gravity and their relationships etc. are not created by human minds!! Greek Eratosthenes calculated the radius of the earth comparing shadows in wells during the summer solstice about 230 B.C.

      No human mind howsoever brilliant can escape facing the necessity of aseity of something or other. Only a degree of rationality can be settled here. What is MORE rational: Eternal dead-matter producing life (consciousness) or E ternal LIFE producing both dead-matter and life (consciousness)?

Assuming Mechanism, there is no choice here. What is more rational is elementary arithmetic, as it explains where the beliefs n creator and creation comes from, and why it can hurt sometimes.

Then, if we get wrong on anything observable, we can speculate that Mechanism is false, or we are in a malevolent simulation, etc.

Bruno

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[Bruno Marchal]

I agree. "3,14 is an approximation of PI” is true, independently of any observer, even if it is a vague proposition. Its degree of precision are themselves independent of us, even if the taste for this or that precision might depend on us, and of some context.

I used “approximately true” because it is hard to find a law of physics which is not an approximation of such sort, but for the point I was making I was alluding to some such laws, and that would make sense for anyone realist on some physicai reality (fundamental or not). If not, then “the laws is a construct of mind” would be interpreted in an anthropomorphic way, like if the humans are at the origin of the physical reality. The fact that F = GmM/r^2 does not depend on some human thinking about “F= GmM/r^2.
Brent might have confuse a law and a human (correct or incorrect) description of that law.

This difficulty appears also in arithmetic. The fact that the arithmetical reality run all computations must not be confuse with that fact that we can describe the computations in arithmetic, as a computation is not the same as a description of a computation, even if to prove that Arithmetic is Turing universal imposed *us* to go through those description. There is a complex pedagogical problem here. It is like the difference between the number 1 and the symbol “1”, those are extremely different entities. Nobody knows what the number 1 is, but everybody can handle it very easily, and the symbol “1” is anything you want, even the Mount Everest if you want, although that would not be a practical symbol, for sure.

Bruno


>
> Saibal

>
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[Brent Meeker]

On 3/16/2021 2:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> On 15 Mar 2021, at 10:23, smitra <smi...@zonnet.nl> wrote:
>>
>> On 14-03-2021 20:03, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:
>>> On 3/14/2021 3:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>>> The laws are constructs of the human mind. [Lawrence]
>>>> The expression of the laws are constructs of the human mind, but I
>>>> guess you are OK that F=GmM/r^2 was as much approximately true
>>>> before human life appears on this planet and after. OK?
>>> I think "approximately true" implicitly assumes someone for whom the
>>> approximation is good enough. Someone with values and purpose.
>>> Brent
>> There exists an as of yet unknown exact description of gravity. The leading term of the expansion of that theory for large distances, low energies and velocities will yield the Newtonian theory.
>>
>> It's not much different from saying that sin(x) = x + O(x^3)
>
> I agree. "3,14 is an approximation of PI” is true, independently of any observer, even if it is a vague proposition. Its degree of precision are themselves independent of us, even if the taste for this or that precision might depend on us, and of some context.
>
> I used “approximately true” because it is hard to find a law of physics which is not an approximation of such sort, but for the point I was making I was alluding to some such laws, and that would make sense for anyone realist on some physicai reality (fundamental or not). If not, then “the laws is a construct of mind” would be interpreted in an anthropomorphic way, like if the humans are at the origin of the physical reality. The fact that F = GmM/r^2 does not depend on some human thinking about “F= GmM/r^2.

If it doesn't depend on human thinking, then what does the "=" sign
mean?  What does "F" refer to?  In my view they refer to a model (in the
physics sense) in which the equation expresses a relation between
elements of the model.  That the model is a useful approximation does
happen to depend on our circumstances.  If we lived a planet closely
orbiting a red dwarf/black hole binary it might not be close enough to
be considered useful, much less a "law".

> Brent might have confuse a law and a human (correct or incorrect) description of that law.

And what would an "incorrect description of a law" be?  One can say
describing a cow as a bird is an incorrect description of a cow, because
you can point to the cow and say "That is not a bird".  But you can't
point to a law, you can only point to a better approximation.

>
> This difficulty appears also in arithmetic. The fact that the arithmetical reality run all computations must not be confuse with that fact that we can describe the computations in arithmetic, as a computation is not the same as a description of a computation, even if to prove that Arithmetic is Turing universal imposed *us* to go through those description. There is a complex pedagogical problem here. It is like the difference between the number 1 and the symbol “1”, those are extremely different entities. Nobody knows what the number 1 is, but everybody can handle it very easily, and the symbol “1” is anything you want, even the Mount Everest if you want, although that would not be a practical symbol, for sure.

But they handle it easily because they learn the rules for handling the
symbol and the semantics for translating from symbols to the meaning. 
Most people can't do even simple addition beyond one digit without using
symbols at least mentally.

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

On 16 Mar 2021, at 19:53, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 3/16/2021 2:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 15 Mar 2021, at 10:23, smitra <smi...@zonnet.nl> wrote:

On 14-03-2021 20:03, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:

On 3/14/2021 3:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

The laws are constructs of the human mind.  [Lawrence]

The expression of the laws are constructs of the human mind, but I
guess you are OK that F=GmM/r^2 was as much approximately true
before human life appears on this planet and after. OK?

I think "approximately true" implicitly assumes someone for whom the
approximation is good enough.  Someone with values and purpose.
Brent

There exists an as of yet unknown exact description of gravity. The leading term of the expansion of that theory for large distances, low energies and velocities will yield the Newtonian theory.

It's not much different from saying that sin(x) = x + O(x^3)

I agree. "3,14 is an approximation of PI” is true, independently of any observer, even if it is a vague proposition. Its degree of precision are themselves independent of us, even if the taste for this or that precision might depend on us, and of some context.

I used “approximately true” because it is hard to find a law of physics which is not an approximation of such sort, but for the point I was making I was alluding to some such laws, and that would make sense for anyone realist on some physicai reality (fundamental or not). If not, then “the laws is a construct of mind” would be interpreted in an anthropomorphic way, like if the humans are at the origin of the physical reality. The fact that F = GmM/r^2 does not depend on some human thinking about “F= GmM/r^2.

If it doesn't depend on human thinking, then what does the "=" sign mean?  What does "F" refer to? 

It means that IF an observer was there, and want to evaluate the acceleration toward the object of mass M, of an object of mass m, by F=ma, we get ma = GmM/r^2, and thus a = GM/r^2. In passing we see that all objects near M have the same accelaration, and thus we get the usual orbits, etc. So, in absence of any observer, the planet will move around a star in some way, etc… 

I use Einstein’s principle of Reality here, which is the counterfactual asserting that if we can predict a result with certainty, then, even if we don’t make the measurement, there is an element of reality (fundamental or not).

In my view they refer to a model (in the physics sense) in which the equation expresses a relation between elements of the model. 

Which is interesting only if the elements of that model (in a physician sense) correspond to element or reality (which “model” in the logician’s sense, basically).

That the model is a useful approximation does happen to depend on our circumstances. 

The usefulness of that approximation depends on the circumstances, and the goal of some observer.

Yet, the fact that it is true, or approximately true, should be true independently of any observer.

Earth is approximately a sphere, and it makes sense to assume/believe that Earth was approximately a sphere long before life appeared on it.

If we lived a planet closely orbiting a red dwarf/black hole binary it might not be close enough to be considered useful, much less a "law”.

? You might need better equation, like Einstein GR, if you have the time. The was of physics are not contradicted by a Black Hole, and if that was the case, it means that the law we discovered was false, and would search for a better law. But those laws are supposed to be independent of the observer. Quarks exchanged gluon already two seconds after the big-bang. If a human is needed for having a reality obeying some law, we will need some human to start the physical histories. That become a form of solipsism.

We cannot prove the existence of a Reality does not mean that there is no Reality. Indeed, that is the reality that we will confront with our theories.

Brent might have confuse a law and a human (correct or incorrect) description of that law.

And what would an "incorrect description of a law" be? 

F = mv (like Aristotle did, which still makes sense due to friction, but it is Newton who got the correct (or better) insight, and then Einstein get even more correct on this.

One can say describing a cow as a bird is an incorrect description of a cow, because you can point to the cow and say "That is not a bird".  But you can't point to a law, you can only point to a better approximation.

The theory which classify a cow as a bird can be considered as a better approximation than the theory classifying the cow as a star, which is better that the theory according to which the cow is a number.

This difficulty appears also in arithmetic. The fact that the arithmetical reality run all computations must not be confuse with that fact that we can describe the computations in arithmetic, as a computation is not the same as a description of a computation, even if to prove that Arithmetic is Turing universal imposed *us* to go through those description. There is a complex pedagogical problem here. It is like the difference between the number 1 and the symbol “1”, those are extremely different entities. Nobody knows what the number 1 is, but everybody can handle it very easily, and the symbol “1” is anything you want, even the Mount Everest if you want, although that would not be a practical symbol, for sure.

But they handle it easily because they learn the rules for handling the symbol and the semantics for translating from symbols to the meaning. 

OK. They got the semantics and the use, in this case, rather together.

Most people can't do even simple addition beyond one digit without using symbols at least mentally.

But they don’t doubt that the results are well definite, even if they can’t do the calculation, which is the point of being realist on such relations and laws, both in mathematics and physics. But to get the mind-body relation right, we need to be correct at a deeper level, and be precise on what we assume at the start, and what we derive from what we assume.

Bruno 

Brent

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[Brent Meeker]

You seem to be assuming I'm not a realist because I think we invent the laws of physics.  I assume there is some reality and the laws of physics we write down are our attempts to describe it.  But they are almost certainly not the real laws, only approximation that are accurate on limited domains.  This is easily seen, not only from the history of physics in which one "law" after another has been replaced with a different, more accurate, more comprehensive "law", but also from the fact that our most accurate and comprehensive laws, quantum field theory and general relativity, are incompatible.

Brent

[Jason Resch]

On Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 10:17 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 14 Mar 2021, at 17:26, Tomas Pales <litew...@gmail.com> wrote:

 

A square circle is equal to itself, arguably.

No, a square circle is a circle that is not a circle,

Obviously, a square circle is a circle. It is a counter-example to the idea that a square cannot be a circle. It does not exist, but that does not make it different to itself. Even a Unicorn is equal to itself.

The real problem of the square circle is that we don’t have provides definition, or we talk about something which cannot exist, so we can’t really build meaningful proposition about it, without being inconsistent.

I know this isn't a proof of anything, but I found it interesting nonetheless, and thought some might appreciate seeing a "square circle"

https://m.facebook.com/ARTPIQ/videos/642129876609181/

Jason

[spudb...@aol.com]

Reminds me of using an additional physical dimension! Like Clifford Pickover used to write about.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309522477_Overview_of_Hypersphere_World-Universe_Model

-----Original Message-----
From: Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com>
To: Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wed, Mar 17, 2021 1:35 pm
Subject: Re: Why Does Anything Exist?

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