On 19 Aug 2009, at 22:38, Flammarion wrote:
>>
>>> That is false. You are tacitly assuming that PM has to be argued
>>> with the full force of necessity --
>>
>> I don't remember. I don't find trace of what makes you think so.
>> Where?
>
> Well, if it;s tacit you wouldn't find a trace.
I wake up this morning realizing this was not your usual statement
that I am implicitly assuming what I am proving.
So actually you may be right, I do believe that PM has to be argued.
No doubt that many millennia of evolution make us believe in the
solidity of our environment, and many years of atomism have made us
believe that the idea that matter has ultimate constituents is very
plausible, as the term "atom" and "elementary particles" are witnessing.
I have never been much happy with such a notion, which reminds me of
the "material point" of classical physics. Does such elementary
constituents have any spatial shape, and what are they made from. With
quantum mechanics, from quantum fields to superstrings, I thought
people would understand that the "atomism" question was not settled,
and that fields and waves, and quantum logic, were somehow questioning
at least the simplicity or naivety of such a conception of matter.
Loop gravity and string theory addressed that fundamental point in a
very different way.
But anyway, the idea that physics, not matter, is fundamental is a
prejudice of (simplified) Aristotelianism, and not a statement of any
physical theories, and given the lack of success of (weak) materialism
with respect to the mind-body or consciousness-reality problem, I tend
to assume among honest scientists some agnosticism here. But I do have
underestimated the materialist prejudice.
So I guess you are right on this: I should insist that PM has never
been proved nor really been addressed in "modern science". It is
always implicit in the background. I thought for long that people were
aware that it is a methodological simplification, quite similar to the
material point, but I am wrong on this.
Comp does not entail the non existence of particles, but eventually
reduce them to pure mathematical symmetries conjugated to the observer
self-multiplications. If elementary, really elementary particles,
exist, then comp *has to* justify them from a "pure" theory of mind
(computer science/number theory).
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list.domain.name.hidden
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscribe.domain.name.hidden
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Received on Tue Aug 25 2009 - 09:22:46 PDT