On 11 Sep, 19:34, Bruno Marchal <marc....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> On 11 Sep 2009, at 17:45, Flammarion wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On 04 Sep, 22:12, Bruno Marchal <marc....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> >> On 04 Sep 2009, at 19:21, Flammarion wrote:
>
> >>> ... Bruno has been arguign that numbers
> >>> exist because there are true mathematical statements asserting their
> >>> existence. The counterargument is that "existence" in mathematical
> >>> statements is merely metaphorical. That is what is being argued
> >>> backwards
>
> >> I have never said that numbers exists because there are true
> >> mathematical statements asserting their existence.
>
> >> I am just saying that in the comp theory, I have to assume that such
> >> truth are not dependent of me, or of anything else. It is necessary
> >> to
> >> even just enunciate Church thesis. A weakening of Church thesis is 'a
> >> universal machine exists". In the usual mathematical sense, like
> >> with
> >> the theorem asserting that 'prime numbers exists.
>
> > There is no usual sense of "exists" as the material I posted
> > demonstrates.
>
> > You have to be assuming that the existence of the UD is literal
> > and Platonic since you care concluding that I am beign generated by
> > it and
> > my existeince is not merely metaphorical. The arguemnt doesn't go
> > through
> > otherwise.
>
> Once you say "yes" to the doctor, there is a clear sense in which
> "you" (that is your third person relative computational state, the one
> the doctor digitalizes) exist in arithmetic, or exist arithmetically,
> and this in infinite exemplars, relatively to an infinity of universal
> numbers which executes the computation going through that state, and
> this in the arithmetical sense, which implied a subtle mathematical
> redundancy.
Not at all. I would only say yes to a material re-incarnation. I
don't believe in infinities of really existing immateial numbers.
> Then the MGA enforces that all universal machine first person future
> experience is statistically dependent of a sum on all those
> computations.
They don't exist/
> You may read books by Boolos and Jeffrey, or Epstein & Carnielli, to
> see this. It is related to the representability of the computable
> functions in Robinson Arithmetic together with Church thesis.
>
>
>
> >> I just make explicit that elementary true arithmetical statements are
> >> part of the theory. You are free to interpret them in a formlaistic
> >> way, or in some realist way, or metaphorically. The reasoning does
> >> not
> >> depend on the intepretation, except that locally you bet you can
> >> 'save
> >> your relative state' in a digital backup, for UDA.
>
> > IF formalism is true there is no UD. It simply doesn't exist
> > and doesn't genarate anything.
>
> If formalism is true, there is no matter, either.
No,that does not follow.
> I am still waiting your formal definition of "primary matter", and of
> "ontological existence".
I don't have to give one. Formalism is not the claim
that everything is formal, it is the claim tha mathematics
is a formal game played by material beings, ie mathemaicians.
> I am not sure I understand how you can both believe to be a formalist
> and believe in *primary* matter. To be honest.
You have misunderstood formalism
> Both in the West and the East we known since the dream argument that
> *primary* matter is a metaphysical notion.
The existence of anyhting immaterial is a metaphysical notion
> That is the main difference
> between the Platonist (in my sense) and the Aristotelicians. Atheists
> and Christians are usually Aristotelicians, and their opposition hides
> the deeper opposition between (weak) materialist Aristotelician and
> (neo)-Platonist.
>
> It is here that the scientific attitude remind us to not commit
> ontological commitment, and to be agnostic, except on refuted
> statements.
>
> I am agnostic on both Matter and God. With "B" = believe, "~" = not,
> "m" = "Matter exists" and "g" ="God exists", taking in mind that I am
> open for large sense of those words, I am agnostic in the sense that
> ~Bm & ~B~m & ~Bg & ~B~g. That's why I do research. (Matter with a big
> "m" = primary matter. In Plotinus the "One" and "Matter" are both
> beyond being/existence. That fits very well with AUDA.
>
> I am not agnostic about consciousness, and persons, though.
>
>
>
> >> And you don't need
> >> really that for the 'interview' of the universal machine.
>
> > Of course I need a real machine for a real interview.
>
> You should avoid the use of 'real". In our context, this is the notion
> which we are discussing, or (re)defining.
How can I avoid "real" in a discussion of "real"?
> I have personally less doubt about my consciousness, and about my
> believe in the prime numbers than in anything material. Physicists
> avoid the question, except when interested in the conceptual problems
> posed by QM.
You can't validly infer the actual non-existence of matter
from beliefs about numbers. At some stage you have
to argue that the "exists" in mathematical statemetns
is metaphysically loaded and should be interpreted
literally to mean actual existence. And that is precisely
because I cannot deny my own actual existence.
> Bohr was ready to decree sometimes ago that the notion of reality did
> not apply to the microscopic. Nowadays we apply QM in cosmology, and
> we accept the price, that is the multiverse, but this still avoid the
> consciousness/reality relationship problem, when we assume comp. The
> MGA shows that we have to be a little more radical than Everett if we
> want to keep the CTM/comp idea.
> As I just said on another forum: 'real' is a tricky notion.
>
>
>
> >> All theories in physics uses at least that arithmetical fragment. But
> >> fermions and bosons becomes metaphor, with comp.
>
> > Mathematical existence is metaphorical if mathematical existence is
> > literal.
>
> In your theory. I have no problem with that. I just refer you to an
> argument showing that such theories are epistemologically incompatible
> with the comp hypothesis, or CTM.
They are not incompatible with CTM. They are incompatible
with comp because comp=CTM+Platonism. I can keep CTM and
materialism by rejecting Platonism
> > Their existence is literal if mathematical existence is metaphorical.
>
> >> May be very fertile
> >> one. Like galaxies and brains.
>
> >> Scientist does not commit themselves ontologically. They postulate
> >> basic entities and relations in theories which are always
> >> hypothetical.
>
> > False. There is nothing hypothetical about ingeous rock.
>
> This is either mere wishful thinking, or you are not a machine. If you
> are a machine, then you confuse stable hypothesis with truth. "de
> mémoire de rose, je n'ai jamais vu mourir un jardinier" said the poet
> Fontenelle (from a rose's memory "I have never seen a gardiner dying".
> A possible misquote!
Everybody makes common-sense metaphysical commitments,
and that includes much of science. It only becomes problematical
in abstruse areas of physics. In any case, your argument is not-
metaphysically
non-comital, you are committed to the Platonic existence of numbers.
The difference between my position and yours is that my commitments
are closer to common sense.
> Of course, we can play with words. Comp does provide an explanation of
> the existence of relatively stable patterns, already similar to
> quantum mechanics, so there is a sense, in the comp frame, that some
> rock are not hypothetical relatively to some observer. They are just
> not composed of little material definite things, they are singular
> maps on the local accessible probable computational histories. Why
> this is described by a wave? Probably because things get symmetrical
> and linear on the border of the universal machine ignorance, as the
> logic of "sensible" and "intelligible" matter suggests (already, cf
> AUDA).
>
> With the SWE, you get a phenomenological account of the wave packet
> reduction through a comp subjective differentiation (that's mainly the
> work of Everett). But UDA shows that once you do that, you have to
> pursue the differentiation up to the justification of the SWE itself,
> from the numbers (or combinators, etc.).
>
> You are stuck at step 00 (you told me) by irrelevant philosophical
> considerations, I'm afraid. My point is mainly technical. UDA
> transforms the mind-body or consciousness/reality problem into a
> problem in mathematical computer science.
There is not UDA if there is no realy existng UD. There is no
really existing UD if Platonism is false.
>If you are formalist, there
> is a complete formalist reading on what I do, indeed that's AUDA. A
> strict formalist can read UDA as a motivation for AUDA. But I have to
> insist that formalists are in general arithmetical realist ...
Only AR qua bivalence. The whole point of formalism
is the rejection of AR qua existence. However truth
alone does nto get you an existing UD, and therefore
does not get my existence inside it.
> in the
> formal sense of using the third excluded middle. I don't need more,
> and I can technically recast the whole thing with less (by using
> Markov intuitionistic principle).
>
> The consistency of all this eventually resides in subtle aspects of
> the incompleteness phenomena in theoretical computer science. "Comp"
> is also for "computer science". Once you accept the excluded middle
> principle, like most mathematicians, you discover there is a
> "universe" full of living things there, developing complex views.
Nonsense. The LEM is just a formal rule. There is no inference
from bivalence to Platonism
> You can say everything is metaphor but your consciousness: it is up to
> *your* work to make some things less metaphorical than others.
> We share, "obviously" long histories, and we are deep objects which
> can explain usual confusions about tokens and types.
>
> And all this leads to a very elegant theory of everything. The
> ontology is defined by "p is true" if "p" is provable in Robinson
> Arithmetic.
That is not ontology. You keep thinkign you can get
ontology for free jsut by proving somehting on a
blackboard.
>The epistemology is defined by "p is believed" if "p" is
> provable by Peano Arithmetic, or by any Löbian Machine described by
> Robinson Arithmetic. It is very concrete and a formalist should
> appreciate. Perhaps you should forget UDA for a while, and come back
> later, and study the "formal" AUDA part. It is my modest part in
> theoretical computer science, relying on key theorems by Gödel, Löb,
> Solovay, and many others. It is also a sequence of open problems, but
> the contrary would have been surprising. And there is an heroin there:
> the (classical) universal machine. And its little brother the
> (quantum) universal machine plays some key role too. AUDA shed some
> light on a two way road between those two notions.
>
> To be sure other part of math shows that, like the relation between
> braids and quantum computations, or Abramski's combinators algebra.
> The advantage of the "self-referential" approach, with the (formal)
> interview of the universal machine which introspects itself is that,
> by the Solovay G/G* splitting, we get the difference between the true
> (theological part) and the provable (the 'scientifically communicable'
> part).
>
> A correct Löbian machine can study correctly (formally) the whole
> theology (which extends the science here) of a simpler Löbian machine.
> She cannot lift it correctly to herself, without falling in
> inconsistencies, but she can lift it in the interrogative and informal
> way, be it by hope, fear, bets, prayers or whatever. (or she can
> accept some 'truth' as new axioms and transform herself, but that's
> necessary risky).
>
> Bruno
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Sat Sep 12 2009 - 07:42:48 PDT