Re: UDA revisited

From: Russell Standish <lists.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2006 19:12:02 +1100

On Sun, Nov 19, 2006 at 02:36:04PM +1100, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
> But if a physical universe is needed to run the UD, without a physical universe
> there is no UD. It's a circular argument unless you have some other argument
> showing a computation can run without physical hardware.
>
> Stathis Papaioannou

The argument is that its "turtles all the way down", or in other words
that there is no first cause.

It seems that there are three possibilities:

1. Causal chains are infinite and unbounded
2. Causal chains are infinite but bounded (the causal chain is
circular).
3. Casual chains are finite and bounded (first cause is needed)

Only in case 3 is a physical universe needed to run the UD. My
personal taste is for case 2, but I doubt there is any way of
empirically settling the matter, and many people find all 3 options
distasteful.

Cheers

PS - I'll need to think a bit about Colin's post... :)

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Received on Sat Nov 18 2006 - 23:04:25 PST