Re: Little exercise

From: John Mikes <jamikes.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:44:17 -0500

Kory:
>"...It's not that I don't believe in life...."<

In WHAT??? Some people believe in god, some in numbers, none can
reasonably identify the target of their belief. How about you?
*
>"... I just that I think that molecules, bits,
patterns, whatever, are the things that play the role ..."<

The listed 'whatevers' are sweatful explanations of (mis)understood
partial phenomena one received at a primitive level of the epistemic
cognitive inventory-builduing in the line of quantized considerations
and their forced matching into equations. All in the 'evolving' HUMAN
(OOPs, Bruno: Lobian) mindset-part accessible AT THAT TIME to us. (Add
'atoms' to it and the elusive 'energy' - whatever that may be).
*
>"...I don't like "cognitive immaterialism" (or anything with
"immaterialism"), because it implies that I don't believe in matter..."<

I dislike the term on another basis: "IMmaterialism" implies material,
to deny it (like atheism a theos) and 'cognitive' in our usual meaning
is within the 'human' general way of thinking, not in the domains of a
lobian machine beyond our present capabilities.
I try expressions like 'unlimited complexity', 'totality',
'existence(?)' not pointing to our (mis)conception of a physical world
in the sense of our conventional sciences.
I see no possible compromise: on either severs the reductionist lingo,
or falls into it.
What makes me vague, - so be it - I DO NOT publish or seek
awards/(acad).tenures.
Maybe the grandkids of our grandkids will have a more adequate
language to express things we may think of today.

John M

PS - Bruno wrote to me:

>..."Be careful and be open to your own philosophy. The idea that "digital"
and "numbers" (the concept, not our human description of it) are
restrictions could be due to our human prejudice. May be a machine
could one day believes this is a form of unfounded prejudicial exclusion..."<

Exactly the point I made in the above concluding sentence. We cannot (today) overstep the language of our human epistemic level without sounding irrational. I feel this in posts about Alice, teleport, etc. and even Bruno's mentioned
 "concept - not description" of digital and numbers.
The 'capabilities "one day" of an illusorical machine' vs. our expressable capabilities NOW do not constitute evidence for what "one day" the unknown capabilities of that machine could find reasonable. I have to include my reasonable(?) restrictions of today. Maybe in my futuristic trend I am still too conservative.
John M




On 11/21/08, Kory Heath <kory.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
>
> On Nov 20, 2008, at 11:43 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> On 20 Nov 2008, at 10:13, Kory Heath wrote:
>>> What is your definition of "mathematicalism" here?
>>
>>
>> Strong definition: the big "everything" is a mathematical object.
>> (But perhaps this is asking too much. The whole of math is already not
>> a mathematical object). So:
>>
>> Weak definition: every thing is mathematical, except everything!
>
> Ok. Do you know of anyone else who uses the term in that way? I don't
> even find it in Tegmark's papers. As I said, it only gets a handful of
> hits on Google, and they're basically all us.
>
> I don't like "cognitive immaterialism" (or anything with
> "immaterialism"), because it implies that I don't believe in matter. I
> guess you could say that I don't, but it's closer to the truth to say
> that I think that mathematical facts simply *are* what materialists
> (gropingly, confusedly) call physical matter. It would be like me, as
> an opponent of vitalism, calling myself an "a-lifer". It's not that I
> don't believe in life. I just that I think that molecules, bits,
> patterns, whatever, are the things that play the role that the
> vitalists have (gropingly, confusedly) called the "life-force".
>
> I like "Mathematical Physicalism", if it's possible for me to keep
> that term distinct from your "mathematicalism".
>
> -- Kory
>
>
> >
>

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Received on Fri Nov 21 2008 - 15:44:30 PST

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