On 18 Aug, 01:43, David Nyman <david.ny....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> 2009/8/17 Flammarion <peterdjo....domain.name.hidden>:
>
> > I am trying to persuade Bruno that his argument has an implict
> > assumption of Platonism that should be made explicit. An assumption
> > of Platonism as a non-observable background might be
> > justifiiable in the way you suggest, but it does need
> > to be made explicit.
>
> Yes, this is why I felt it might help the discussion to make the
> possibility of such an assumption explicit in this way.
>
> > Bruno's theory may well be falsifiable. But then it is hardly
> > a disproof of materialism as it stands.
>
> Agreed - not as a knockdown blow - although as you know his argument
> is that materialism is incompatible with the computational theory of
> mind; and of course I've also been arguing for this, although my
> alternative (i.e. a theory, rather than an intuition) wouldn't
> necessarily be the same as his.
>
> >> I think the core of the problem is a tendency to mentally conjure
> >> platonia as a pure figment;
>
> > I am not sure what you mean by that. Anti-Platonic philsoophies
> > of maths, such as formalism, are considered positons supported by
> > arguments, not vague intuitions.
>
> Yes, I don't dispute that. But aside from this, perhaps one could say
> that we tend to assume that ideas about 'platonias' have sense but no
> reference.
I don't see why
>However, some physicists - Julian Barbour for one - use
> the term in a way that clearly has reference, as I think does Bruno.
Any Platonists thinks there is a real immaterial realm, that is the
whole point
> One should perhaps recall that the appeal to number as a causal
> principle (to use the logic of 'paraphrase') can't be met by any
> merely human concept of number. IOW for reality to emerge from
> number, whatever the putative referents of human number terminology
> may be, they must at some level be uniquely cashable in terms of
> RITSIAR.
I would have hoped that was obvious.
> >> this will not do; nor is it presumably
> >> what Plato had in mind. Rather, platonia might be reconceived in
> >> terms of the preconditions of the observable and real; its theoretical
> >> entities must - ultimately - be cashable for what is RITSIAR, both
> >> 'materially' and 'mentally'. On this basis, some such intuition of an
> >> 'immaterial' (pre-material?) - but inescapably real - precursory
> >> state could be seen as theoretically inevitable, whether one
> >> subsequently adopts a materialist or a comp interpretative stance.
>
> > I don;t see why it is necessay at all, let alone why
> > it was inevitable. You were earlier comparing it
> > to a hypothetical background ontology. How did
> > it jump form (falsifiable) hypotheiss to necessary
> > and inevitable truth?
>
> It didn't. I was just suggesting that embracing some more 'agnostic'
?!?!?!
> background schema of this kind might actually be helpful in
> appreciating the scope and limits of explanation. For example, just
> how far down the explanatory hierarchy do we have to go before it
> starts making less and less sense to insist on characterising the
> explanatory entities as 'material'?
It hasn't happened yet.
>Are superstrings material? Is
> quantum foam material? Are
> whatever-are-conceived-as-the-pre-conditions for their appearance in
> the scheme of things material? What is surely at issue is not their
> 'essential' materiality but their properties as appealed to by theory
> (i.e. the ones to which we would resort by paraphrase).
Any physcial theory is distinguished from an
Everythingis theory by maintaining the contingent existence of only
some
possible mathematical structures. That is a general statement that
is not affected by juggling one theory for another. I have further
defined PM in *terms* of such contingency.
> Perhaps our
> ultimate explanatory entities need be conceived as no more 'material'
> than necessary for us to depend on them as plausible pre-cursors of
> the more obviously material; but of course, no less so either.
>
> While I've got you here, as it were - I don't see why this wouldn't
> apply equally to the mental: IOW our explanatory entities need be
> conceived as no more 'mental' than necessary for us to depend on them
> as plausible precursors of the more obviously mental; but no less so
> either.
>
> David
>
>
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Received on Tue Aug 18 2009 - 01:55:35 PDT