peterdjones wrote:
>
> Georges Quénot wrote:
>> peterdjones wrote:
>>> [...]
>>> (To put it another way: the point is to explain
>>> experience. Physicalism explains non-experience
>>> of HP universes by saying they don't exist. MM appeals
>>> to ad-hoc hypotheses about non-interaction. All explanations
>>> have to end somewhere. The question is how many
>>> unexplained assumptions there are).
>> I would like to understand your view. How do *you* solve
>> the "HP universe" problem? In your view of things, amongst
>> all the mathematical objects to which a universe could be
>> isomorphic to, *what* does make only one (or a few) "exist"
>> or "be real" or "be physical" or "be instanciated" and all
>> others not?
>
> In your view, what means that only mathematical objects exist ?
I can try to answer to this but I do not see how it helps
to answer my question. It is hard to explain what it means
to someone that resist the idea (that must be like trying
to explain a mystic experience to a non believer).
It is just the idea that there could be no difference between
mathematical existence and physical existence. I would say
that it makes sense only in the case in which the three other
mentionned conjectures also make sense and could be true.
I believe that we have a diffculty here because we have very
different intuitions about what mathematical objects can be
and about what a mathematical object corresponding to a
universe hosting conscious beings could look like. I already
mentionned three possibilities to deal with the HP universe
"problem" in this context. I understood that it did not make
it for you because of this difference between our intuitions.
> All explanations stop somewhere. The question is whether they
> succeed in explaining experience.
Do you mean that it is "just so" that the "mathematical
object" that is isomorph to our universe is "instantiated"
and that the "mathematical objects" that would be isomorph
to HP universes are not?
Isn't that a bit ad'hoc? Does it explain anything at all?
>> Also, you reject "mathematical monism" as not making sense
>> for you but what about the ohter conjectures I mentionned?
>> Do you find that "physical monism" ("mind emerges from
>> matter activity"), "mathematical realism" ("mathematical
>> objects exist by themselves") and "Tegmark's hypothesis"
>> ("our universe is isomorphic to a mathematical object",
>> though Tegmark might no be the first to propose the idea)
>> make sense? Have some chance of being true?
>
>> Do you find that "physical monism" ("mind emerges from
> matter activity"),
>
> All the evidence points to this.
OK. So in your view this makes sense and is likeky to be true.
Evidence is also that a lot of people resist physical monism
just as you resist mathematical monism.
>> "mathematical realism" ("mathematical objects exist by themselves")
>
> Not supported by empirical evidence; not needed to explain
> the epistemic objectivity of mathematics.
That could be a language problem. In my view, what I was
thinking of is likely to be equivalent to the "epistemic
objectivity of mathematics" in your view.
>> and "Tegmark's hypothesis"
>> ("our universe is isomorphic to a mathematical object",
>
> Must be at least partially true, or physics would not work,
Partially is not of much help in this context. Th question is
whether it can/could be *fully/absolutely* true.
Georges.
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Received on Sun Mar 26 2006 - 16:02:04 PST