Le 08-mars-06, à 18:14, John M a écrit :
>
> Bruno wrote:
>
> "What can be said about numbers is that it is
> impossible to explain what numbers are to someone who
> does not already knows what they are..."
>
> <I will talk about "what numbers do, not 'are'>
>
> "..If a TOE does not implicitly or explicitly
> presupposes the existetnce of natural numbers, then
> the natural numbers will not be definable in that TOE,
> and for this reason that TOE will not be a plausible
> TOE. - although Hartree Field, if I remember
> correctly, makes a case for a science without
> number[s?]. ..."
>
> Friends, we are closer friends than any others in this
> world: we share our thoughts, the most intimae of us.
> So I dare share this one with you all:
> *
> As I said above: "what numbers do".
> Well, what DO numbers do? -- -THEY DO NOTHING. - -
> - This is my fundamental objection to the 'hard'
> number theory making numbers (and their manipulations)
> the basis of them all (I don't dare: nature, world,
> existence, etc. as very loaded words over here).
> Numbers do NOT add, subtract, etc., WE do it to (by,
> with) them. Humans, Loebian machines, whatever, but
> NOT the numbers.
Pythagoreans, like Xenocrates, have a very cute expression: "the soul
is a number which moves itself".
Now, IF you accept the computationalist hypothesis, such an expression
can be "almost(*)" interpret in a literal sense. Indeed, with comp, you
are a program and can make a backup of yourself each evening, and
choose different bodies each evening. You can travel at the speed of
light from one city to another one by using the net, etc.
Then the Universal Dovetailer Argument (UDA) shows that your
"immateriality" is contagious to your possible environment: that is, no
immaterial machines can know if she belongs to or is supported by a
"real" environment, or a virtual one, or a purely arithmetical one
(with the testable consequence that the physical appearance are
governed by a measure on all "observer moment".
So I conclude that either you presuppose the falsity of the comp
assumption or that you think there is an error in the UDA or that or
some of its steps are unsupported. I may ask you which one?
My point is not that numbers explain everything: my point is that those
who say "yes" to their dgitalist surgeon should realize that IF they
survive with the digital brain, then, to solve the mind-body problem,
they have to explain every material appearances from number theoretical
considerations.
Bruno
(*) Technical remark:Technically, the soul in Plotinus' sense or in the
lobian sense, that is the Bp & p hypostase is NOT a number in that
(third person) sense, but this is a result of incompleteness: if I am a
number (corresponding to some consistent machine/entity) then not only
I cannot know which number I am, but I can't in any first person way
"feel" that I am any number. The first person is right by saying "I am
not a number", and this could explain why indeed we don't feel
subjectively to be a number once we are "objectively" numbers.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Thu Mar 09 2006 - 12:27:19 PST