Hi Mark,
Le 05-oct.-06, à 20:49, markpeaty a écrit :
>
> Bruno,
> I started to read [the English version of] your discourse on Origin of
> Physical Laws and Sensations. I will read more later. It is certainly
> very interesting and thought provoking. It makes me think of 'Reasons
> and Persons' by Derek Parfitt. His book is very dry in places but
> mostly very well worth the effort of ploughing through it.
Parfit is good. I stop to follow him when he insists that we are token.
I paraphrase myself sometimes by the slogan MANY TYPES NO TOKEN.
BTW I like very much Hofstadter (mentionned by David) too except that
he could have said much more on the "universal machine", and he could
have make clearer the relation between logic and computer science, and
also I would suggest people read an easier (less diluted) introduction
to Godel's theorem before embarking on the golden braid ... if only to
extract more juice ....
>
> As a non-mathematician I can only argue using my form of 'common sense'
> plus general knowledge. [En passant - I am happy to see that your
> French language discourse features a debate between Jean Pierre
> Changeaux and a mathematician. Changeaux's book 'Neuronal Man' was a
> major influence in setting me off on my quest to understand the nature
> of consciousness. He helped me to find a very reasonable understanding
> which makes a lot of sense of the world. Merci beacoup a JPC. :-]
OK, but note that when Alain Connes explained Quantum Mechanics to JPC,
JPC concludes QM must be wrong. Actually, even just current empirical
tiny quantum computations support Alain Connes and not JPC.
I think JPC is really not convincing in "l'homme neuronal", he buries
all the interesting questions, not only about mind, but above all about
matter. In the dialogs with Connes, he is not really listening ....
(imo).
>
> I dispute the assumption that we can consider and reify number/s and/or
> logic apart from its incarnation.
There is no need to reify the numbers. You need only to believe that
proposition like "571 is a prime number" or "all natural numbers can be
represented by the sum of 4 squares" are either true or false
independently of you or me.
> It is like the 'ceteris paribus' so
> beloved of economists; it is a conceptual tool not a description of the
> world.
I don't think so. Once you accept that the number theoretical truth is
independent of you (which I take as a form of humility), then it can be
explained quite precisely why "numbers" (in a third person view-view)
are bounded to believe in a physical (third person sharable) reality
and in a unnameable first person reality etc. All this is an
sufficiently precise way so as to be testable.
I am super busy until the end of october. In november I will come back
to the "roadmap". I continue to read the conversations anyway, and
perhaps make short comments. (I should also come back about thinking to
do that english version of my thesis but I have not yet solved the
interdisciplinar-pedago-diplomatico problems ... :O(.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Fri Oct 06 2006 - 09:16:51 PDT