Le 01-août-05, à 03:18, chales1.domain.name.hidden (Colin Hales) a écrit :
> Reality vs perception of reality? I vote we work really hard on the
> latter and drop all ascription in relation to the former. A
> significant dose of humility indeed.
I don't think "objective reality" can be perceived (only subjective
reality can be perceived). Nevertheless, "objective reality" is an
ideal we should always tend to. I agree very much with your intuition
of the importance of humility, but then you talk as if someone has
given a convincing argument of the existence of a natural world. You
should give the reference :). With the comp assumption, in particular,
there is no "natural world", just a web of numbers' dream (to be
short). Matter emerges from the fact that numbers' dreams overlap in
some non trivial way.
Of course there could be, perhaps, a natural world (and comp is false,
thus). I respect that belief very much, but it is a highly non trivial
assumption. I can understand the recent irritation of Brent Meeker,
because, although your critics of the current average science practice
seems to me well-founded, you are not clear on your assumptions and you
seem to fall in the very trap you describe so well.
Actually, with comp, many things you say seem coherent if you
substitute "natural world" by "arithmetical truth". Remember that Godel
has shown there is no way to build a complete "model" of it. With Godel
we have reasons to believe we are very ignorant, and with comp (+
godel) we have justifiable reasons to believe it is necessary like
that. You should appreciate Godel's and Lob's theorem because it
justifies the humility you defend so well. Lob's formula is often
interpreted as a modesty formula.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Received on Thu Aug 04 2005 - 07:10:54 PDT