On 20 Jan 2009, at 05:22, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
> Günther Greindl wrote:
> <snip>
>>
>> The question is, why the quantum (as Wheeler, I think, put it)?
>> Bruno's
>> COMP gives a very elegant _explanation_.
>
> I agree it is elegant, but whether it can really explain the world
> remains to be
> seen.
I am not proposing a new explanation. It is the contrary. I show that
if we assume digital mechanism, more or less the current theory of
mind, especially among materialist, then materialism not only fail on
mind and consciousness (like I would say all experts know), but
materialism stop to work for matter itself.
Iy is a theorem, in a venerable old theory.
>
>
>>
>> Also, with COMP, the mind-body problem indeed disappears. We have
>> computations within computations within computations. (And I think
>> that
>> Bruno is correct when assuming that there is no _lowest_ level).
>
> But the problem reappears as the body-problem. Why is materialism
> so successful
> as a model of the world?
Probably because materialism provides an excellent approximation for
most concerns.
>
>
>>
>> It needn't even be a pure idealism, but rather Russelian neutral
>> monism
>> - some states more or less conscious - the degree of consciousness
>> depending on the degree of self-reflexivity (see for instance here
>> for a
>> theory of consciousness which works well with COMP:
>> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-higher/)
>>
>>
>> Back to the ontological problem of the "grounding": materialism is in
>> essence the thesis that there is, at bottom, a "substance", which
>> has no
>> independent properties, but serves as instantiator for other
>> properties.
>
> It seems somewhat gratuitous to call this a "substance". I'd say
> materialism
> holds (on simple empirical grounds) that some things exist and some
> don't.
? Computationalist or digital mechanist too. They assert that numbers
bigger than two, even and prime does not exist, and that numbers with
odd divisors exist.
If you meant "exist physically", then I can agree, yet I have to
define "exist physically" in arithmetic if comp is assumed.
>
>
>
>> But why should such a strange thing exist?
>
> Why should some things exist and others not - because if everything
> existed
> there would be no distinction between "exist" and "not-exist" (I
> know that's a
> stilly argument, but it is similar to the kind of logic chopping I
> sometimes see
> from the proponents of "everything exists").
>
>> Why not let the relations
>> stand for themselves? Especially for an MWI-theorist; if you only
>> accept
>> a single world, matter does seem much more plausible - going through
>> diverse transformations, that being all there is, and located
>> somewhere
>> in an otherwise empty spacetime or whatever - but those are all very
>> naive intuitions which modern physics has moved beyond (and all the
>> more
>> so critical reflection on the results of modern physics).
>
> I think I'm as qualified to speak for modern physics as you and I
> don't think it
> has "moved beyond". MWI is attractive for several reasons, but it
> is well short
> of Tegmarkia.
>
>>
>> A big question: why should there be such a thing as a lowest level, a
>> grounding? While for a materialist, the imagination of "turtles all
>> the
>> way down" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down
>> is quite strange, computations all the way down is very intuitive.
>> Well,
>> awe-inspiring intuitive ;-)) Think of the fractal video Bruno sent
>> out
>> a little while ago.
>
> I think Tegmark grounded his "everything" by supposing that the
> lowest level was
> uncomputable.
With comp, the 3-person ultimate everything is digital, or
combinatorial, or arithmetical, or Diophantine. There are lower first
order citizens; the digits, the combinators, the numbers, etc.
It is the first person realities, including the physics which are no
no more grounded in the digital or the computable.
>
>
>>
>> What explanatory power does matter hold? None, I conjecture. Please
>> give
>> at least one so we can discuss.
>
> Materialism has been very effective in not only explaining, but in
> predicting
> things. That doesn't prove it's right, but I could ask what
> explanatory power
> does "everything exists" hold.
Before seraching explanation we have to well understand the problem.
With comp we have this problem: it predicts the observability of the
many worlds, when we observe ourselves. And with current physics
(quantum mechanic) we have this problem: we observe, albeit
indirectly, many worlds, or superposition of histories.
> Remember that a theory that could explain
> anything, fails to explain at all.
I agree.
>
>
> For myself, I find Bruno's theory very intriguing. It is more
> specific than
> Tegmark's
I have no theory, except a widely believed (but not understood)
digital version of Milinda-Descartes' Mechanism. I have an argument
(even a proof I could argue) instead of a theory. Twenty years older
than Tegmark or Schmidhuber, too, actually.
> and so I believe has more hope of making contact with empiricism.
Exactly. Those damn physicists have discovered the many-world just
before the theologians! It is just bad luck, and has to do with the
hardness theology is coming back in the academy (to say the least), in
some universities.
> But
> for me that is the proof of the pudding - not logical arguments
> about how nature
> "must be".
You told me you did have a problem with step 6, and I provide an
explanation. What is it you are still missing in the argument, beside
a strong feeling (I suspect) that it has to have an error or an
unconvincing step somewhere? I would be pleased If you could be kind
enough to explain what you still feel wrong, and where. It is the only
way to progress. I am still open to the idea that something is wrong,
or missing in the argument. I can understand it is hard to believe,
but the point is that it *follows* from comp, or I am missing something.
I think there are four level of difficulty:
1) UDA(1... 6) you dont' need math here, nor sophisticate view of
reality.
2) UDA 7 (falsely simple for computer users, easy to explain ... by
hiding non obvious technical difficulties).
3) UDA 8 (a bit subtle, some takes time, some understand then prefer
to forget. It closes and terminates the argument).
4) AUDA (for those who have understood UDA, and want to know more, and
how the universal machine itself, once Lobian, solves the
*computationalist* mind and matter problem exposed in the UDA).
Benefits from Gödel, Löb, Solovay, Goldblatt, Boolos, Visser,
Grzegorczyk, and others like Theaetetus ...). This parts is difficult
in the sense that it asks you to study some mathematical logic. But it
is NOT necessary for the UDA, the UD reversal argument, except for
helping (a lot) to make sense of the consequence of comp.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Wed Jan 21 2009 - 13:43:35 PST