Re: OMs are events

From: Hal Finney <hal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 14:41:43 -0700 (PDT)

Brent Meeker wrote (he always forgets to forward to the list):
> Hal Finney wrote:
> > I'd be curious to know whether you think that Platonic existence could
> > include a notion of time.
>
> I think timelessness is a defining characteristic of Platonic "existence". I
> use scare quotes because I'm not sure what definition of "existence" would
> justify ascribing existence of things like mathematical objects. Once we go
> beyond our model of physical existence, we may have to invent various categories
> of "existence", e.g. "Dr. Watson exists in Sherlock Holmes stories".

A Tegmark or Schmidhuber model in effect assumes that abstract,
Platonic objects have enough existence for people to live in them.
And in that case, there is no real difference between physical existence
and Platonic existence. Physical existence would be a subset of Platonic.
(Or as Bruno says, physical existence is a "modal" way of viewing Platonic
existence, i.e. which objects are physically real would depend on the
observer.) I know that not everyone here shares that view, however.

If we consider the concept that "everything exists", the title of this
list, then this does seem to lead us towards this merging of physical and
mathematical/logical/Platonic existence. On the other hand, I would say
that everything exists, but some things exist more than others. So I am
drawing distinctions between degrees of existence (based on measure),
and it may be that distinguishing physical from abstract existence is
not such a dissimilar strategy.

Hal Finney
Received on Thu Aug 04 2005 - 18:35:12 PDT