Brent Meeker wrote (in one post):
>It seems to me that
>idealism requires extra assumptions about ideas in order that a material
>world
>be perceived as we do.
Suppose we can survive with artificial and digital brain or bodies, in
real
or virtual environment. Then you can conceive yourself as ``a number which
moves itself" (like Xenocratus and Pythagore say). For exemple you can
save your soul on a disk, exchange bodies, etc.
(You can like or dislike that idea, but it is reasonable, isn't it?).
But then you got the computationnalist everything theory, in which every
computations exist (most are infinite).
Then you can, in fact you must, reduce the mind-body problem into the
problem of why machines believes in laws, matter and universe.
Computer science shows that the structure of the set of all computations
is highly non trivial, and it happens (especially if we take into account
1 and 3 person distinction) that the non trivial relation between the
computations
make it possible to derive a lot of qualitative aspect of physical
beliefs.
(indeterminism, non locality, etc.)
There are only numbers, physical realities are the way big numbers,
sharing
deep computationnal histories, manifest themselves to other numbers.
Note that the probabilities depend on all computations. They interfere in
some way.
It gives the hope to derive schroedinger equation from number theory,
and the theory of self-reference (godelian stuff).
* * *
Brent Meeker wrote (in another post):
> [...] and If there is to be a theory of
>everything - including ideas - then it seems it would have to be something
>like
>Russell's neutral monism; in which the basic "stuff" of our lives are sets of
>monads some of which are related so as to represent a physical external world
>(these we mostly call perceptions) and another related set which constitue an
>internal mental life (which we call our thoughts). The fact that these two
>sets are also related to each other in a certain order constitues the passage
>of time (both physical and psychological) and together they constitute a
>person who we say 'experiences things in time.' A TOE would presumably
>predict,
>at least probabilistically, these monads and their relations.
I agree except that I don't see the need to postulate a physical external
world. The physicalities (time, space, ...) are modalities coming from
the way the monad "see" (with comp, "see" is in the artificial
intelligence
sense, to simplify) each other, ... So these monad, if AI works, are
numbers ...
Not only time, *all* physical modalities are internal indexicals.
Bruno
PS I consult my mail only once a week (I'm busy!). I still read it,
though.
Bruno MARCHAL Phone : +32 (0)2 650 27 11
Universite Libre Fax : +32 (0)2 650 27 15
de Bruxelles
Avenue F.D. Roosevelt, 50 IRIDIA, CP 194/6
B-1050 BRUSSELS Email : marchal.domain.name.hidden
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Received on Sat May 13 2000 - 09:40:43 PDT