Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted

From: Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 11:45:21 +0100

Le 11-nov.-06, à 19:07, 1Z a écrit :
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> Le 11-nov.-06, à 01:09, 1Z a écrit :
>>
>>> No, because there are no possible worlds where (2^32582657)-1
>>> is not a prime number.
>>
>> This is for me a typical "arithmetical realist" statement.
>
> Most philosophers who use the "possible
> worlds" terminology do nothing PW's actually
> exist.
>
> Of course it is AR in the sense of appealing to
> mind-independent truth. And of course it
> remains unclear whether your AR is a claim
> about truth, or about existence.
It depends on the sense of the term "existence". But frankly such
discussion is premature. It is probably a 1004 fallacy, like those who
were condemning the old quantum mechanics, after its birth, because it
is philosophically unclear. I think you should study the comp-theory
before arguing about its interpretation. You are introducing nuances,
like the difference between "2 exists" is true and '"2" exists' which,
although not uninteresting per se, are too much involved considering
the existence of a precise (refutable) "new" theory of mind/matter.
>
>> You still want it both ways: keeping comp and primary material
>> reality,
>> but I have already argued in detail that this cannot work in any
>> reasonable way.
>
> No you haven't. You argument requires an assumption of Platonism
> as well as computationalism. Computationalism
> alone is compatible with materialism.
I need only "A or ~A". You can call it classical computationalism. I
prefer to call it comp, because the reasoning goes through even with
weaken form of classical logic (that is I can use the intuitionist
"excluded middle principle" for arithmetic instead: ~~(A v ~A)).
I do believe the formalist philosophy has been shown dead wrong after
Godel, but in case you have trouble with what I call platonism or even
plotinism you could for all practical purpose adopt "formalism"
temporarily. In that case I will say that an ideal lobian machine (in
her chatty mode) is an "arithmetical platonist" if she asserts "A v ~A"
for any arithmetical proposition A. This could help to proceed, and
then we can come back on discussing on the interpretation problem of
the formalism.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Mon Nov 13 2006 - 05:57:27 PST

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