1Z wrote:
>
> Georges Quénot wrote:
>
>>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.
>
>
> Then why do we use two different words (mathematical and physical) ?
>
>
>>I would say
>>that it
>
>
> "it" meaning mathematical existence IS different to physical existence.
> ?
>
>
>>makes sense only in the case in which the three other
>>mentionned conjectures also make sense and could be true.
>
>
> I don't see why the mathematical realism needs to be true.
> The difference between mathematical existence and physical
> existence could consist in physical things exisitng, and mathematical
> objects not exisiting.
>
>
>>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?
>
>
> We can go some way to explaining the non-existence
> of HP universes by their requiring a more complex
> set of laws ( where "we" are believers in physical
> realism). However, we are bound to end up with
> physical laws being "just so". However -- so every
> other explanation ends up with a "just so". In physical
> MWI it is just so that the SWE delimits the range of possible
> universes. In Barbour's theory it is just so that Platonia
> consists of every possible 3-dimensional configuration of
> matter, not every 7dimensional one, or n-dimensional one.
> In Mathematical Monism, it is just so that , while very mathematical
> object exists, no non-mathematical object exists.
You would like this book by Vic Stenger:
http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/nothing.html
Vic defends the view that physical laws are based on point-of-view-invariance;
that is a constraint we place on what we call a law. As such, they are not
really laws constraining nature, they are symmetries that are an absence of
'law' (i.e. structure).
Brent Meeker
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Received on Mon Mar 27 2006 - 01:03:45 PST