1Z wrote:
> This *is* ecumenicism. The buck stops here. What higher
> court of appeal is there , than consideration of the nature of
> EVERYTHING?
Touché!
> If Bruno isn't reifying numbers, he's in trouble.
And if the materialist isn't reifying the observables, he's right in
there with him. Take your pick. You know I'm with you in requiring that
the underlying reality must somehow be Real In The Sense I Am Real. But
I don't know what reification has to do with it - I'm not a thing. The
interesting issues here IMO are about explanatory power. For the sake
of empiricism, I hope that comp can make some predictions with respect
to the instantiation of consciousness and the 1-person that are
inconsistent with theory couched purely in terms of the 'material
observables' - i.e posit specifically how the computational emergence
of 'matter' makes an experimentally disconfirmable difference. I would
also like to understand how this differs (if indeed it does) from
computation done on 'real computers' (how I distrust this vocabulary!)
So although somehow it must all be RITSIAR all the way down, I'm
prepared to keep my counsel (sine die) as to the 'fundamental' nature
of the turtles.
> They're metaphysics. Face it.
Yes, of course. All such discourse is metaphysics, what else could it
be? It is a question of faith if we wish to go beyond this
acknowledgement and ascribe 'ultimate reality' in the direction of our
metaphysical gestures. In this broad ecumenical spirit, materialism is
a metaphysics too. But we should be no less empirically demanding with
respect to our metaphysics. And we have no practical alternative (and
I'm all too aware of the irony) but to act in good faith.
[Scene: Night-time. David is asleep and having a nightmare that he's
Father Dougal.
Dougal: "Ted, I've had an idea. We're all just a dream of the Great
Turtle!"
Ted: "Get off that bloody computer!"]
'night.
D
> David Nyman wrote:
> > Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >
> > > If you prefer I should
> > > have said "associate" instead of "identifying".
> >
> > Hi Bruno, welcome back.
> >
> > The terminological distinction you now make above is important - maybe
> > it's another case of Franco-English faux amis (false cognates), but
> > when you say 'identify' I think it steers Peter (and others) towards
> > notions of 'reification' of number.
>
> If Bruno isn't reifying numbers, he's in trouble.
>
> He might be able to reduce an existent physical universe
> to existent numbers, but he certainly can't reduce it
> to non-existstent numbers.
>
> > To 'associate' (in your sense of
> > point-for-point commensurability) digital machines with number is a
> > different matter (literally) than to 'identify' (i.e. posit an absolute
> > identity between) them.
>
> Yes. But if there if Platonia consist only of numbers,
> and it here is no-one to do the associating in Platonia,
> there are no machines/computations/algorithms in Platonia.
>
> > Perhaps for the future, vis-a-vis reification, we should simply
> > conclude, with Father Jack: "that would be an ecumenical matter"!
>
> This *is* ecumenicism. The buck stops here. What higher
> court of appeal is there , than consideration of the nature of
> EVERYTHING?
>
> > > Computability is an absolute notion (with CT), but provability is a
> > > relative (with respect to a machine) notion. Put in another way:
> > > computations admits a universal dovetailer which generates and run all
> > > computations, but there is no universal dovetailer for proofs.
> >
> > Point taken. The EC 'axioms' may be better conceived as primitive
> > computations (like the UD), not theorems.
>
> They're metaphysics. Face it.
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Received on Wed Oct 18 2006 - 20:25:08 PDT