--- Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
>
> 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.
Let us stop here.
I think the Tooth Fairy said also cute definitions, I
did it with zstrmprst or tohuvabohu to represent known
concepts that did not fit into common sense ideas. YOu
explained that "numbers are 1,2,3,..." I don't see the
ancient Greek orthography calling any of them "soul".
We seem to err into some science fictive language, the
names became meningless and applicable to whatever we
want to apply something to.
I firmly believe (George, sorry) that the mental
activity is timeless and spaceless (thought is not
restricted by models like "c" or 'locus') and our own
imagination about the world is just like that: our own
imagination, to fit into that part of thinking which
we so far acquired in the epistemic learning prior to
2006 - but definitely subsequent to 500 B.C.
I have no idea what to call "soul", but definitely not
1,2,3... - no matter what those bearded Greeks said.
I don't want to deny our mental enrichment and go back
into the primitive information of ancient levels. They
were wise and had good thinking minds, but without the
percept of facts that became apparent lately
(2000yrs).
Our science is an illusorical model-view, but to deny
it completely would jeopardize our technology. I am
not a hermit of my own thoughts. It's my problem.
> 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".
I go along with these expressions, have faith in those
minds (including yourself) who frequent them, but it
does not give 'content' to my ways (especially not the
purely arithmetical environment - as far as it is only
"measuring" in terms of human 'distortion'.) Testable
is virutal and model-based, valid only in the percept
of reality we carry in pour mind.
Excuse my outburst, it seems I got to a clash in my
acceptance of "just expressions" as I consider it in
the "non-mathematical" worldview.
I still favor David Bohm's "hypothesis" (as you
labelled it) that 'numbers are invention of the human
mind' and I add: except for that we don't see any
counting in forms of existence. The 'everything' seems
to be analogue and interrelated to me. Digital is our
embryonic computer and I don't like to extend this
idea into the 'everything'. (Cf: other hypotheses as):
>
> 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.
I believe (again this word!) in more than just ONE
solution to 'everything'. In our ongoing present
mental weakness we cannot yet decide which model is
the widest applicable? The level I arrived at so far
is only the postulate NOT to exclaim firm choices for
'everything'.
But I stll have only my feeble mind to rely on.
Thanks for your patience with me.
To the Technical remarks below:
I cannot think 3rd person. I cannot rape my feeling.
>
> Bruno
John
>
> (*) 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 - 14:49:13 PST