Hi Peter,
----- Original Message -----
From: "1Z" <peterdjones.domain.name.hidden>
To: "Everything List" <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2006 5:47 PM
Subject: Existence, individuation, instantiation
Stephen Paul King wrote:
> Dear Quentin et al,
>
> I keep reading this claim that "only the existence of the algorithm
> itself is necessary" and I am still mystified as to how it is reasoned for
> mere existence of a representation of a process, such as an implementation
> in terms of some Platonic Number, is sufficient to give a model of that
> can
> be used to derive anything like the world of appearences that we have.
>
> AFAIK, this claim is that mere existence necessarily entails any
> property, including properties that involve some notion of chance.
[PJ]
The existence of some (abstract, theoretical, hypothetical)
thing involves all the properties associated (theoretically)
with it. The existence of a camel entails the existence
if a hump. The existence of a unicorn would entail the
existence of a horn.
[SPK]
Humm, are you not using semantic inferences here? The notion of a
"camel" entails the notion of a "hump", as well as the relation between
"unicorn" and "horn", along with all of the other traits/properties that go
into the "meaning" of the thing. I liken this to the meaning of words in a
dictionary: every word's meaning is given as its relationship with other
words, a *word* that has no relation with any other is by definition thus
meaningless! (This may relate to the notion of "mutual information...)
I like to think of this in terms of graph theory, where each word is a
vertex and a "definition" (the meaning) is given by the graph of edges that
connect any one to some other. Note that there is Dominance but no
convexity...
On the other hand, I was not considering the particularities of
"properties", I am trying to drill down a bit deeper into the notion of
existence itself. Whether or not a Camel or Unicorn exist does not add
anything to its properties other than the obvious: The fact that a graph of
relations can be constructed that "identifies" a thing is not necessitated
by Existence. Meaning is not the same as existence, or is it...???
snip
Stephen Paul King wrote:
> Hi Lee,
>
> I have no qualms with your point here, but it seems that we have
> skipped
> past the question that I am trying to pose: Where does distinguishability
> and individuation follow from the mere existence of Platonic Forms, if
> "process" is merely a "relation" between Forms (as Bruno et al claim)?!
>
> In my previous post I tried to point out that *existence* is not a
> first-order (or n-th order) predicate and thus does nothing to distinguish
> one Form, Number, Algorithm, or what-have-you from another.
[PJ]
Things that physically exist , exist in specific spatio-temporal
locations. the fact that something exists in this place rather
than that place is indeed a fact over and above the intrinisc
properties of the thing.
[SPK]
I would like to understand the origin of the idea that "things" have
"intrinsic properties"! It seems to me that we are assuming with this idea
that the particularity of properties of things has nothing at all to do this
any relationships that some given thing/object has with other object/thing!
As I try to show with the idea of a dictionary, a word has no meaning if and
unless it has some set of relations with other words. The notion of
"intrinsic" seems to me to be wholly contradictory of this idea and thus I
am frankly baffled as to how it is that this notion has survived without
inquiry for so long!
The entire discussion of the notion of Numbers as Platonic Forms tacitly
includes this notion that I am arguing is deeply flawed unless we explicitly
reference to the relationships between Numbers from which flows their
particular values. What I am arguing is that the mere *existence* of Object
is insufficient to necessitate relationships between those objects. The
relations are of a different type. I strongly suspect that this claim is
deeply embedded in Bruno's theory but has not yet been explored. For
example, all of the references to Gödel's incompleteness point to an
infinite hierarchy of types of relations, a hierarchy mirrored in the
infinity of different infinities.
Onward!
Stephen
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Received on Fri Jul 07 2006 - 16:30:01 PDT