Le 27-mars-06, à 20:34, 1Z (Peter D Jones) a écrit :
>
> You think "matter" is different to"stuff" ?
When I define matter by what is observable, I don't necessarily
consider it as a primary stuffy thing indeed.
Given that arithmetical truth already emulate all "video-games" with
internal observers incapable of testing the "stuffiness" of their
environment, you can easily conceive the consistency of the idea that
we don't need to postulate more than arithmetical truth.
> I suppose so. But you stlll haven' t explained why "physics is all
> about
> matter" doesn't equate to "physics is all about stuff".
Don't put to much literal interpretation on words. If by matter or
stuff you mean electron, or whatever that makes the needles of some
apparatus here or there, again I believe that the electron exists, but
this has nothing to do with the idea that the electron or the string or
whatever "physical" is primitive or not. My point is that we cannot
believe at the same time in the primitiveness of matter and in the
computationalist hypothesis (or incredibly weaker as I have discovered
and made precise after the comp PhD).
>
>>
>>>
>>>> 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 matter exists. Do you agree that this is not obvious. (here again I
mean by matter a notion of primitive matter, not just physical theories
and possible interpretation of it).
Can you doubt about the existence of primitive matter.
What is your conception of matter? Strings living in a space-time? Loop
gravity. What is your interpretation of QM. I mean "matter" is less
clear today than yesterday (even if yesterday matter was already
unclear for those who believe in consciousness).
Even Descartes was already aware that if the world was explainable in a
mechanist way, no observation could provide a definite evidence of the
existence of matter. But Descartes believed in matter and to justify
it---keeping the mechanist hypothesis---he was forced to invoke the
transcendental goodness of a God.
>>
>> Only the putative stuffy Aristotelian matter disappears.
>
> I don't know of any other kind of matter.
But even physicist can sometimes imagine that. That would be the case
if all units disappear in some fundamental equation. But then if you
want a concrete model of palpable but immaterial matter, just study the
UDA (or even some other proposal in this list). Oh, I think I will send
asap some other immaterialist TOE (not based on comp for a change).
>
> 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 ?
Well, with comp, it is enough to understand that "numbers" can dream,
in a sense which is not so easy to explain concisely of course. But my
url contains links to my papers (and to the list but those needs to be
updated).
> Or are you just
> assuming that a computational multiverse will conveniently behave like
> a quantum multiverse ?
Well, a priori, with comp, we get to many universes in the comp
multiverse, but then the "simple" argument showing there are too much
comp-universes is put under highly non trivial constraints once we add
conditions of consistency. This is due to the non trivial consequences
of the incompleteness phenomena. And indeed I got from that a begining
of explanation of why those universes interfere and why probabilities
behaves in some weird way. Then I am stuck in mathematical conjectures
(meaning more works remain to be done, but that is hardly astonishing).
>
>> 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.
If me or someone else derive QM string or loop theory without invoking
stuff, I think we will say that we don't need no more the hypothesis of
"stuff".
Nobody has succeed in defining stuff or justifying it exists. Why do
you want we try to explain something vaguely defined and that nobody
has ever see?
It is like if Napoleon would have said to Laplace "Sorry but your
theory does not explain God, and should be abandoned".
If you really believe in stuff, I think the burden is for you ... if
only just explaining what do you really mean by that. I have less
problem with consciousness, which I verify every instant.
To doubt matter, just one dream is enough, or just a little bit of
imagination in front of video-games.
>
>>>
>>> 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.).
But even SWE is presented as an immaterial constrained. Nothing in QM
suggests that matter (the stuffy primitive one) exists. And with comp,
such a stuffy matter can no more explained anything, giving that from a
first person perspective the mathematical and physical are not
distinguishable.
>
>> *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.
I agree. It is *the* main problem. A quite interesting one, and I have
perhaps make progress.
> Hmm. Matter can be primitive (particularly under my definition) without
> physics being
> the fundamental science.
?
> Of course the computational theory of mind does not directly equate to
> idealism; computers are real things, real processes.
Yes but you know, that word "real" what does it mean in a scientific
approach?
More so since I have shown (others developed similar argument in the
list) that once you postulated comp (even the concrete one applying it
in some concrete universe) then eventually the idea of concrete
universe became explicatively empty. The approach I gave is
constructive, it proposes an alternative theory.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Tue Mar 28 2006 - 10:41:59 PST