Re: The class of Boolean Algebras are a subset of the class of Turing Machines?

From: Marchal Bruno <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2002 11:23:44 +0100 (MET)

Stephen Paul King wrote:


> I am asking this to try to understand how Bruno has a problem with "BOTH
>comp AND the existence of a stuffy substancial universe". It seems to me
>that the term "machine" very much requires some kind of "stuffy substancial
>universe" to exist in, even one that is in thermodynamic equilibrium.
> I fail to see how we can reduce physicality to psychology all the while
>ignoring the need to actually implement the abstract notion of Comp. I
>really would like to understand this! Sets of "zero information" fail to
>explain how we have actual experiences of worlds that are "stuffy
>substancial" ones. It might help if we had a COMP version of "inertia"!


Even Descartes realised the incompatibility between Mechanism and
Weak Materialism (the doctrine that Stuff exits), in his Meditation.
I think Stuff has been introduced by Aristotle. Plato was aware,
mainly through the "dream argument", that evidence of stuff is no proof, and
he conjectured that stuff was shadows of a deeper, invariant and ideal
reality, which is beyond localisation in space or time.
My question is why do you want postulate the existence of stuff.
The only answer I can imagine is wanting that physics is fundamental.
But that moves makes both physics and psychology, plus the apparent links
between, quite mysterious. No doubt that Aristotle "errors" has accelerated
the rise of experimental science and has made possible the industrial revolution.
But Aristotle stuff has been only use to hide fundamental question which
neither science nor technics will be able to continue to hide.
Dennett argues that consciousness, for being explained at all, must be
explained without postulating it. I think the same is true for matter,
space, time, and any sort of stuff.
But, now, with comp, what I say here becomes a consequence of the movie
graph argument or of Maudlin's article "computation and consciousness".
See "Maudlin" or "movie" in the archive for more explanation or
references. You can also dismiss the movie/Maudlin argument if both:
1) You grant me the comp apparition of physics through the proof of LASE
2) You accept some form of OCCAM razor (the concetual form used by Everett
or by most 'everythingers').

Regards, Bruno
Received on Fri Nov 29 2002 - 05:24:20 PST