Re: Numbers

From: 1Z <peterdjones.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2006 10:34:19 -0800

Bruno Marchal wrote:
> Le 27-mars-06, à 16:07, 1Z a écrit :
>
> >
> >
> > Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >> Le 25-mars-06, à 23:13, 1Z a écrit :
> >>
> >>
> >>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >>>> Le 25-mars-06, à 19:17, 1Z a écrit :
> >>>>
> >>>>>>>> You will miss the consequences of the assumption. All science is
> >>>>>>>> based
> >>>>>>>> on implicit or explicit assumption, related to (non definable)
> >>>>>>>> world-views.
> >>>
> >>>>>>> Almost all science is based on the implicit assumption of a
> >>>>>>> "stuffy"
> >>>>>>> world view.
> >>>
> >>>>>> No. This is a simplifying methodological assumption, but there is
> >>>>>> no
> >>>>>> evidence it is necessary. Few physicists use it.
> >>>
> >>>>> I can assure you that real-life physicsists do use it.
> >>>>
> >>>> Give reference please.
> >>>
> >>> Typing "physics matter" into google produces 108,000,000 hits...
> >>>
> >>> http://www.google.co.uk/search?
> >>> hl=en&q=physics+matter&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
> >>>
> >>> ...happy reading.
> >>
> >>
> >> Didn't find the reference.
> >
> > Every single one of the 108,000,000 hits is about the
> > physical strudy of matter.
>
>
> ?

You think "matter" is different to"stuff" ?

>
> >
> >> Nor even with "assumption mater". You help
> >> me to realize that physicist never assume the existence of primitive
> >> matter,
> >
> > It was not my intention to "help you realise that". it was my
> > intention to get you to see that, as far as they are concerned,
> > physicists
> > do nothing all day but study matter.
>
>
> This I already knew. If you define "matter" as what is studied by
> physicist, then I do believe in matter. I guess there is a
> misunderstanding somewhere.

I suppose so. But you stlll haven' t explained why "physics is all
about
matter" doesn't equate to "physics is all about stuff".

>
> >
> >> nor do they postulate it with the notable exception of
> >> Aristotle, and of those moderns who show that a boolean conception of
> >> matter is contradicted by the facts and/or the QM theory.
> >
> > If a "boolean concept" of matter is wrong , then a boolean concept
> > of matter is wrong. That does not mean that matter itself is
> > non-existent.
>
>
> I have never said that matter is non-existent. I say only that matter
> is not a primitive concept. That the existence of matter emerge from
> average of observer/machine points of views.


Your second sentence does not support your first. Something may be
observationally,
theoretically and epistemically comples and still be ontologically
simple.

The fact that the scientific concept of matter doesn't *seem*
particularly
obvious or intuitive to humans just means we are not born with apriori
knowlede of the world. The problem , if there is one, is with us, not
with matter.

> > If you study something, you are going to make discoveries about
> > it, and that will involve disproving some traditonal theories. But
> > diproving
> > a theory of matter is not disproving matter.
>
>
> In a nutshell, what I can show you is that IF comp is correct THEN
> matter should emerge from some measure on relative computational states
> (and this is making comp empirically testable).
> Only the putative stuffy Aristotelian matter disappears.

I don't know of any other kind of matter.

What you are presumably
saying is that a solipsistic perceived world will seem to be a material
world. But do you really have an explanation for that ? Or are you just
assuming that a computational multiverse will conveniently behave like
a quantum multiverse ?

> On the
> contrary, the physical laws (the math of the observable) should be made
> more solid as arising from purely number theoretical relations, as seen
> and glued together by an infinite union of first person point of view.

That's not explaining matter as such -- as "stuff" -- that's explaining
physics
phenomenologically/instrumentally/solipsistically.

> >
> > Note, BTW, the extreme generality of the concept of matter I am using;
> > matter is whatever makes one abstract form, rather than another,
> > concretely exist.
>
>
> ?
>

To put it another way, matter answers the HP problem. HP universes are
not observed
because they do not concretely exist. "They do not concretely exist"
means they are
not material.

> >> In the
> >> meantime if you can find a more circumscribed set of references ...
> >
> > ?????
> >
> > Can you point me to the paper in a journal of botany that definitely
> > proves,
> > for once and all, that plants exist ?
>
>
> I have not so much doubt that plants exist, and if you define matter by
> the object study of physicists, I have no problem. I believe in
> fermions and bosons and anyons, and in the moon also. But I take them
> as abstract type of observable things, sometimes with a so much
> specificity relatively to me that indeed for all practical purpose I
> will consider them as token. But both from QM and comp, I hardly
> believe those token are token-identified by any form of "concrete
> stuff".

There is nothing about QM that suggests that matter does not exist
(ie that all abstract forms are instantiated. The SWE in that case *is*
the constraint.).

> *Primitive* matter is the bullet of both cognitive science and
> physics. It makes unnecessarily complex both mind and matter (and their
> relations).


The problem with the mind-body relation is the mathematical
**description**
of matter.

> >> Actually I find the word "matter" more vague and ill-defined than
> >> consciousness,
> >
> > wikipedia defines it as follows
> >
> > "Matter is commonly defined as the substance of which physical objects
> > are composed."
>
>
> Such a definition is highly ambiguous, and most interpretations of it
> will depend today of your interpretation of quantum physics.

The *details* are ambiguous; otherwise it would not be
possible
to make discoveries in physics.

> I can take it as the "grand-mother" definition of matter, quite
> beneficial for handling food and grandchildren, useless to interpret
> EPR or GHZ, ...
> With just comp there are still more ambiguities.
>
> >
> > meaning that what you are seeking to deny , that physics utilises a
> > concept of matter,
> > is not merely true, but tautologously true.
>
> Of course. I deny only the idea that matter is primitive, or that the
> physical science are necessarily the fundamental science.

Hmm. Matter can be primitive (particularly under my definition) without
physics being
the fundamental science.


> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter
> >
> >> and I believe the "matter hard problem" is harder than
> >> the so-called hard problem of consciousness.
> >
> > Hmm. I dare say it's hard for solipsists. That may tell you somehting
> > about solipsism.
>
>
> The falsity of solipsism does not entail the falsity of objective
> idealism.
> And with comp we get, as free gift from its objective idealist theory,
> a glimpse on some different forms of subjective idealist internal views
> shared, in a non communicable way, by collection of distinguishable
> machines.

Of course the computational theory of mind does not directly equate to
idealism; computers are real things, real processes.


> My point is just that if comp (or weaker) is correct then matter is not
> primitive. Mind and matter are modes of arithmetical truth (assuming
> comp-or-weaker). And thanks to computer science and mathematical logic,
> variants and precisions can lead to testable physics.
>
> Bruno
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/


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Received on Mon Mar 27 2006 - 13:35:20 PST

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