Misc responses to "1Z" <peterdjones.domain.name.hidden>
> Colin Hales wrote:
>> David Nyman:
>> <snip>
>> > > An _abstract_ computation/model X implemented symbolically on a of
a
>> > portion
>> > > of the structure (a COMPUTER) inside the structure (the UNIVERSE)
>> will
>> > see
>> > > the universe as "NOT COMPUTER", not some function of the
>> machinations of
>> > X,
>> > > the model. Eg The first person perspective of a register in a
>> computer
>> > > holding a quantity N must be that of being a register in a
computer,
>> not
>> > > that of 'being' a quantity N.
>> >
>> > Interestingly you see it as the perspective of the register, rather
than some computational entity within X. Does this imply some sort of
hardware/ substrate experiential dependency, rather than a purely
relational 'program-level' view?
>> >
>> >
>> Sort of...but I think the word 'hardware' is loaded with assumption.
I'd
>> say
>> that universe literally is a relational construct
>
> A timeless relational construct or an evolving relational construct ?
Evolving. The evolution of the construct from state to state makes it feel
like there is time.
>
>> and that it's appearance
>> as 'physical' is what it is like when you are in it. .ie.
>
> Presumably, what is *necessarily* like when you are
> in it , since there is no contingency in Platonia.
Platonia has not been instantiated. Our universe has. Our universe may
act, somewhere, somehow, as if it were interacting with entities in
platonia, but that does not make platonic entities 'real' any more than
real/imaginary power vectors delivered out your power-outlet make the
square root of -1 real.
>
> I await an apriori deduction of qualia from
> relational structures....
Why stop there? What about an a-priori deduction of mass from relational
structures? Or space? Or electric fields? Or gravity? All the same...and
none of these have been predicted by any abstract model or 'lumpy/thingy'
ontological thinking. The abstract model predicts things that behave
'model'-ly. Parameters/variables in the model match adequately when
compared to reality. They do not describe what it is actually made of....
f = ma says nothing about what mass is. It says what mass _does_.
>
>> There's no such
>> 'thing' as a 'thing'. :-) It doesn't mean that behaving 'as if' there
are
>> such things as things is not useful...we survive that way...
>> 'Substrate' in my intended context would mean more like 'whatever it is
that
>> the universe is, it is that'. Our predisposition to assume isolated
lumpy
>> 'thingness' is rather pervasive.
>
> Of course: it is well founded empirically. We have abundant
> evidence that only certaint things exist within a given spatial
> volume (contingency) that they endure through time, and so on.
No. We have abundant evidence of some'thing' behaving as per an
abstraction of 'thing' at the scales we explore. We have NOT proven that
these laws apply at all scales..indeed we have abundant evidence to the
contrary! Absense of evidence is not evidence of absense.
>
> Timeless universe, universes where everything that can exist
> does exist, are not well founded empirically.
No they are not. Again a mathematical model (quantum mechanics) that seems
to imply multiple universes does not mean that they exist....Only that the
model makes it look like it does. I can imagine any number of situations
where the fuzziness of the ultra-scale world obeys the rules of a QM-like
model.
For example, the perfectly deterministicly repeated trajectory of whatever
an electron is made of through 35.4 spatial dimensions is going to look
awfully fuzzy to critters observing it as course scales within 3
dimensions. QM depicts fuzziness... and 'aha' the universe is made of QM?
Not so. It merely appears to obey the abstraction QM provides us.
QM says nothing about what the universe is actually constructed of. It is
not constructed of quantum mechanics! It is constructed of something that
behaves quantum mechanical-ly.
>
>
>> Perhaps this:
>> Waving a bit of it ('stuff', the relational-substrate) around in a
circle
>> (for example) in indirect 'as-if' symbolic representation as a
>> computation
>> of an abstraction X in no way instantiates X or Xness,
>
> Why not? What *does* implementation consist of ?
Being the stuff, the substrate. It's the only thing actually instantiated.
>
>> it instantiates
>> 'being_waved_around_in_a_circle_ness' from the point of view of being
the
>> 'stuff' (1st person) and the behaviour 'waving_around_in_a_circle_ly'
(3rd
>> person). Note that the 3rd person is actually derived from the 1st
person
>> perspective of the observer! This third person can pretend
>> 'waving_around_in_a_circle_ly' is X, but that's all there is...play
acting.
>> The third person perspective is manufactured in the eyes of the
beholder.
>> Perhaps rather than '1st Person Prime' as an assertion, maybe '3rd
person
>> not prime' is a lesser and more justified position. The fact is that
there
>> is no such thing as a 'third person'.
>
> Ontologically ?
No, experientially.
Nobody experiences 'third person'. Everybody has a 1st person experience
only. There is no such thing as an objective view. There is merely
behaviour called objectivity which serves to extract regularities which
subsequently become described with natural laws. If you care to treat the
collection of natural laws as a kind of 'lens' through which to view the
universe, then that view could be regarded as a 'third person view'. But
nobody ever has that view. The universe thus viewed does not exist. The
ontology of that view does not exist.
>
>> What you have is a communicable 1st
>> person perspective that yet another 'first person perspective' can find
if
>> it looks. No-one ever has a 'third person' perspective.
>
> Epistemologically ?
No. Experientially.
See above. The collection of laws as a set of beliefs is _not_ a third
person perspective. Adopting the beliefs results in behaviours that enable
the prediction of 1st person experiences (the behaviour of the natural
world as observed). This is how science works. This behaviour (acting as
if the natural laws ran the universe) instantates the causal ancestry of
all our technology. It really works ..but..
Any further attribution of natural laws beyind the status of (albeit
highly structured and systematically calibrated) beliefs is not justified.
=======================
The fundamental and, IMO fatal assumption being made here and throughout
this thread, is that a _description_ of the universe acquired/validated
with 1st person experience (= our only and entire source of scientific
evidence) necessarily means that a natural law thus established is
literally involved in the structure and causal necessities of the
universe. This is plain unjustified nonsense.
What we get with empirical laws is a model/abstraction that the universe
_appears_ to obey. The models are very predictive and useful. But they are
devoid of causal necessity and say nothing about the underlying
composition of the universe. Natural laws say WHAT but are mute as to WHY.
Take any laws of the natural world X. The physics of it is called Xics.
(eg quantum mechanics). The natural world is _not_ constructed of Xics.
The natural world merely behaves Xically in the specified context.
That we happen to have a universe that is describable in models .ie. that
happens to implement the necessary calculi in the context of our
observations... this is a simply a property of the universe not yet
explored. The so-called 'unreasonable effectiveness' of mathematics has us
duped into a mass delusion that somehow the natural world is literally
constructed of our abstractions.
Furthermore it also seems to have us duped that further considerations of
mathematical idealisations and abstractions in general likewise tells us
something about the composition of the actual underlying natural world....
for example that it is the result of a computer running one of our
abstractions.
As a result, instead of exploring the native structure of the universe as
a natural mathematics in its own right with all its axioms established in
a 'big-bang', we are diverted into mental machinations of entities whose
relationship with the actual universe is merely an assumption.
I'm hoping this also addresses some of David Nyman's queries.
Colin Hales
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Received on Wed Aug 09 2006 - 12:11:09 PDT