Re: computationalism and supervenience

From: Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 14:54:11 +0200

Le 07-sept.-06, à 14:14, 1Z a écrit :

>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> Le 06-sept.-06, à 21:59, 1Z a écrit :
>>
>>> Of course it is not natural, or we would not
>>> have two separate words for "possible" and "actual".
>>
>> Well, Platonist theories are counter-intuitive. Aristotle is the one
>> responsible to make us believe reality is what we measure. Plato says
>> what we observe is the shadow of what is.
>
> yet metaphysics is a *bad* thing...


Who says that?
I dislike the word "metaphysics" *because* that word is almost
synonymous of "bad thing", but the whole field is like any other
fields. It is never bad in itself. Some people are bad, like some
gardener can be bad, or like plumber can be bad.
A field can also become bad when it is appropriated by dishonest
people, like genetics in the USSR, or theology in Occident.
But that is contingent on history.

Concerning metaphysics and theology, I think there is just no clearcut
frontier with physics, and math. The position of Earth relatively to
the Sun has been a subject of theology during a long period of time.
Some of my old work on EPR and Bell has been discarded a long time ago
because many scientist just believed it was "metaphysics" despite that
my very point was that EPR showed that some metaphysical questions
*was* really physical questions. Despite Bell tremendous clarification
they were unable of changing their mind, and all this because they
decided to take for granted Bohr's "metaphysics", ...
Same for theology: those who says that theology cannot be scientific
are more or less the same as those who take for granted Aristotle
metaphysics.

That is why I never judge any "field", only particular work by
particular people. I appreciate when people put their carts on the
table before the play. Clear assumption leads to clear refutation or
genuine reconstruction.

Bruno


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


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Received on Fri Sep 08 2006 - 08:57:10 PDT

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