>From: Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>
>[Jacques Mallah wrote]
> > The basic computational explanation is not of the world - it's of
>conscious observations. As for the arena where things get implemented -
>that could either be a physical world, or it could be Plato's realm of
>math.
>
>That an implementation might be in another physical world I can
>understand.
>
>I don't see how an implementation can be in Plato's realm of
>mathematics. In mathematics there are axioms and theorems and proofs -
>none of these imply any occurence in time.
There is more than that in mathematics. Structures, for example.
Anything that could be described mathematically, such as geometries,
computations, and anything that could be a model of a (hypothetical) world.
There's plenty of room for implementations there.
>You might be able to impose an order on theorems (ala' Godel) and it might
>be possible to identify this with time (although I doubt this can work),
I doubt it too, although there was some kind of paper suggesting that
the strings of string theory are made of theorems. But I strongly doubt
that one's on the right track.
>but even so it is just
>a single order that is implicit - there is no way to distinguish two
>different "implementations" of this order.
I don't know about that, though. Probably there could be ways. But I
haven't really studied the idea of building things out of theorems, since I
think things are just structures, and structures are in Plato's kitchen
already.
- - - - - - -
Jacques Mallah (jackmallah.domain.name.hidden)
Physicist / Many Worlder / Devil's Advocate
"I know what no one else knows" - 'Runaway Train', Soul Asylum
My URL:
http://hammer.prohosting.com/~mathmind/
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Received on Sat Sep 01 2001 - 18:27:20 PDT