Bruno wrote:
> So the divine intellect of the Vimalakirti Machine will contains all
proposition of the form:
> ~B<whatever>:
> more example:
> ~B(an asteroid will not hurt earth in 2102)
> ~B(an asteroid will hurt earth in 2102)
> ~B(1+1 = 4)
> ~B(1+1 ? 4)
> ~B(PI is rational)
> ~B(PI is not rational)
> etc.
> This gives an infinite set of true propositions *about* the machine,
> all beginning by "~B". The modalist will recall that "~B" is
equivalent
> with "D~", and <whatever> is of course the same as <~whatever>,
> so the divine intellect can be characterized by saying it contains
> all "possibilities" (the alethic reading of the diamond "D").
>
> This was simple enough, no?
So when you say that the divine is the set of propositions that are
true about the entity, what you are really saying is that the divine
knows about all of the elements in the Universal Set (your <whatever>)
and so can take the complement of the terrestrial intellect to get all
of the things that the terrestrial intellect cannot know. Right? For
the Vimalakirti Machine (and also for me today, too, whether I am a
machine or not) this includes both of the following.
An asteroid will not hit the earth in 2102.
An asteroid will hit the earth in 2102.
I am uncomfortable taking the complement of something when I don?t know
what the Universal Set is. This is akin to the Something vs. Nothing
problem. Everything and Nothing are equally mysterious. Doesn?t
taking the complement of a discourse by a machine provide no more
information than the discourse itself? It seems that you would have to
have access to the truth (p) for the "divine intellect" to be any
smarter than the "terrestrial intellect". This is what the "divine
soul" has, Bp & p.
> I let you find the divine soul...
For the Vimalakirti Machine, since "Bp" is empty, and thus "Bp & p" is
empty, then by your "taking the complement" argument above it would
seem to me that you would say that the divine soul "contains all
possibilities" also. The fact that p is anded with Bp to begin with
shouldn?t make a difference in this case, since the result is empty.
The divine soul cannot have access to all truth p, but only the portion
of truth covered by Bp, which is empty since Bp is empty. The divine
soul is the propositions which are true *about the entity*, not all
true propositions.
> ...
> I hope this helps you to distinguish a discourse made
> BY a machine/entity from a discourse made ABOUT
> the machine/entity. This is a key to understand the
> difference between terrestrial and divine in the
> mathematical interpretation of Plotinus.
The difference seems to bank on taking the complement. What is your
Universal Set? Is it only things that can be expressed by numbers? By
the way, I saw that in the Wall Street Journal today there is an
article about a man who sold his soul on eBay for $504. I guess his
Universal Set is just numbers. :)
Tom
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Received on Thu Mar 09 2006 - 19:44:48 PST