----- Original Message -----
From: "terrysavage" <terrysavage.domain.name.hidden>
To: <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>; <avoid-l.domain.name.hidden.edu>
Sent: Friday, August 23, 2002 12:56 AM
Subject: Re: ' possible' reply to Bruno Marchal
> Brent,
> Bruno is much worse than Norm.
> Don't get on the train.
> If you read Bruno's 'Computation, Consciousness and the Quantum', (on
> the web), I think you will see where some of this nonsense leads him. For
> example, he refers to Myhill's comment that the Church and Godel theorems
> are psychological laws - one of the few times I disagree with Myhill -
years
> ago, I checked with Myhill's presumed source for this comment, Gene
> Galanter, who said, in effect, B...S....
> Or, take his notion of 'Turing emulable', where he confuses the notion of
> computational capability with consciousness. Egad! Worse than Penrose.
>
> terry savage
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Brent Meeker" <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>
> To: <avoid-l.domain.name.hidden>
> Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 2:11 PM
> Subject: Re: ' possible' reply to Bruno Marchal
>
>
> > On 20-Aug-02, terrysavage wrote:
> > > In an earlier note, (Re:Impossibilities,08/02/2002, 9:26)
> > > I made some dismissive comments about the terms
> > > 'possibility' and 'necessity'. For reasons I don't quite
> > > understand, these were forwarded to Bruno Marchal. Bruno,
> > > in turn, responded with views of his own, (via, Lennart
> > > Nilsson, Fw:Am I a Token or a Type, 08/06/2002, 8:07) and
> > > suggested (politely) that I was behind the times in the
> > > study of Modal Logic. He was right.
> > ...
> > > One final comment on Bruno's remarks. He says, ...when
> > > terms are confused and ambiguous, it is a motivation for
> > > axiomatizing them....If not, *new* sciences just cannot
> > > appear!' I have two responses:
> >
> > > 1. I have no interest in *new* sciences; I will
> > > leave that to Wolfram.
> > > We have enough trouble with the sciences we
> > > already have.
> >
> > > 2. There is a better alternative for terms that
> > > are confused and
> > > ambiguous - just throw them away.
> >
> > Terry, I agree with almost all that you wrote. I would add
> > that logic, particularly formal or symbolic logic, is just
> > like the rest of mathematics. You can write down axioms and
> > prove theorems according to rules of inference - but
> > whether the axioms are true and whether the rules of
> > inference apply to anything but the symbols is an empirical
> > question. Even the simplest elements of logic, such as
> > "&", can't be substituted everywhere the word "and" appears
> > and still make sense. "&" can be used to conjoin
> > declarative sentences or propostions; but if you try to
> > stick it into, "succotash is not corn and potatoes" you'll
> > get nonsense like, "succotash is not corn or succotash is
> > not potatoes." So as in your (2), if you're going to
> > introduce technical terms and symbols you had better have
> > unambiguous domains defined.
> >
> > However, in defense of Bruno, he uses [] as "provable" and
> > <> as "consistent", which seem pretty well defined within a
> > given axiomatic system. It is when he equates "provable"
> > with "necessary in all possible worlds" that I think I hear
> > a train.
> >
> > Brent Meeker
> >
> > Hence a Reality, yes. But not necessarily a physical
> > reality. Here is the
> > logical dependence:
> > NUMBERS -> "MACHINE DREAMS" -> PHYSICAL -> HUMANS -> PHYSICS
> > -> NUMBERS.
> > --- Bruno Marchal
> >
>
Received on Fri Aug 23 2002 - 09:46:50 PDT