Bruno Marchal wrote:
> Le 18-juil.-06, à 18:42, 1Z a écrit :
> >> and I would say experimentally vague since the birth of experimental
> >> quantum philosophy (EPR, Bell, Shimoni, Feynman, Deutsch, Bennett
> >> ...).
> >
> > Huh???? Electrons and photons are still matter...what *do* you mean ?
>
>
> "matter" is a word use like a lot of misuse of God in theocracies. What
> do you mean when you say "photon" is matter? That we can make repeated
> measurement on them and find stable number pattern.
Also that we can measure it at all, that is available for causal
interaction.
That it exists and other things don't.
> > (BTW, Deutsch uses the Johnsonian "if it kicks back" appraoch
> > to reality).
>
>
> Yes. And Deutsch applied it to defend AR in his FOR (Fabric Of Reality)
> book.
On the basis that you can detect unexpected truths
in maths. Which you can. But that is not *causal* interaction,
so it is not existence in my book.
> >> The big problem with the notion of *primary* matter = how to relate
> >> "1-experiences" with "3-experiments".
> >
> > The mind-body prolbem boild down to qualia, and
> > the problem of qualia and physics boils down to
> > the problem of qualia and mathematical description
>
>
> Feeling to listen to myself here :)
That's the *problem* of maths, not the *solution* !
> > Any inability to have mental proeprties would
> > itslef be a property and
> > therefore be inconsistent with the bareness of a bare substrate.
>
>
> You mean an electron or a string would have bare mental properties.
> I admire you being coherent with non-comp.
I mean a bare substrate. Electons are a particular form of matter which
is thought of in physical, and hence ,mathematical terms.
> > The
> > "subjectity" of
> > consciouss states, often treated as "inherent" boils down to a problem
> > of communicating
> > one's qualia -- how one feesl, how things seem.
>
>
> I would say it is more the uncommunicability of qualia which could be
> problematic.
Huh ? Meaning if we can't communicate them, that is a problem ?
Or meaning that if we can't understand why we can't communicate them,
that is a problem.
> > Thus it is not truly
> > inherent but
> > depends on the means of communication being used. Feelings and seemings
> > can be more readily
> > communicated in artistic, poetice language, and least readily in
> > scientifi technical
> > language.
>
>
> OK, but that is not scientific (3-person) communication. An artist need
> to bet on sufficiently similar experiences for those he wish to
> "communicate" with.
Mathematics is the epitome and pinnacle of 3rd-person communication
*because* it deals with abstract structures. Because it deals with
abstract structures,
it is not good at handling concrete reality -- substance, time,
enality.
> > Since the harder, more technical a science is, the more
> > mathematical it is,
> > the communication problem is at its most acute in a purely mathematical
> > langauge.
> > Thus the problem with physicalism is not its posit of matter (as a bare
> > substrate)
> > but its other posit, that all properties are phycial. Since physics is
> > mathematical,
> > that amounts to the claim that all properties are mathematical (or at
> > least mathematically
> > describable). In making the transition from a physicalist world-view to
> > a mathematical
> > one, the concept of a material substrate is abandoned (although it was
> > never a problem
> > for consciousness) and the posit of mathematical properties becomes,
> > which is a problem
> > for consciousness becomes extreme.
>
>
> I agree.
Really ?
> >> The naïve idea of attaching consciousness to physical activity leads
> >> to
> >> fatal difficulties.
> >
> > Do you mean the Maudlin/Olympia/Movie argument ? But that is
> > very much phsyical activity as opposed to physical passivity.
> > If you are the kind of physicalist who thinks
> > counterfactuals and potentials are part of the total
> > physical situation, the Maudlin argument has little
> > impact.
>
> This is cute. It is already a way to derive QM from comp, especially if
> you know Hardegree's work showing that Quantum Logic is a particular
> logic of counterfactuals. Again, with comp, it is cuter: the stuffy
> appearances are explained by that very counterfactuality: the "stuff"
> can be defined by what makes "many comp dreams" partially sharable.
> Solidity has to be explained by *many* things (world, computations,
> etc.).
I don't think of substance in terms of solidity. Is that the
problem ? Is that why you keep saying that matter has disappeared from
physics -- because "solidity" has ?
> May I ask you what is your opinion on Everett?
Philosophically, it is still a substance theory. The SWE is a
contingent
fact which does not emerge out of Platonia, and as such it resolves the
HP (as much as
it needs to be resolved in the face of the evidence of QM).
I think MW has technical probelms as physics.
> > Of course. I start from the assumption
> > that I exist, since I do.
>
>
> If by "I" you mean your first person, it is a good implicit assumption
> to motivate the moring cup of coffe or tea. But such an assumption is
> not "scientific", where we are asked to have refutable third person
> assumption.
Oh come on, scientists do not doubt their own existence!
> > I don't start from the assumtion that numbers
> > exist supernaturally , floating around in Plato's
> > heaven.
>
>
> Me neither.
That is very disputable.
> >>> The "intelligible" is a quasi-empiricist mathematical epistemology.
> >>> Mathematicians are supposed by Platonists to be able to "perceive"
> >>> mathematical
> >>> truth with some extra organ.
> >>
> >>
> >> That is naïve platonism. Already condemned by Plato himself and most
> >> of
> >> his followers. Read Plotinus for more on this (especially Ennead V).
> >
> >
> > The question then is whether numbers have any role at all,
> > if they have no epistemological role.
>
>
>
> I don't understand. Why shouldn't number have some epistemological
> role?
Because they have no empirical role -- and that is because
they have no causal role. How can numbers do anything epistemologically
if they don't do anythign causally ?
> With comp they have epistemological role, and ontological (even
> if by this I just mean the independence of the truth of first or second
> order existential propositions like "there exists prime numbers").
What sort of epistemological role do numbers have in COMP ?
We do not confirm mathematical propositions by examining
numbers in Plato's heave, we confirm them with pencil and
paper. Numbers have no active role in making propositions
true. Perhaps you mean they have the passive role
of being implied by propositions. But that is only
true if you assume Platonism.
> >>>> I don't understand what you mean by "numbers don't exist at all".
> >>>
> >>> Well, I've never seen one.
> >>
> >>
> >> Again that would be a critics of naïve Platonism. As I have said:
> >> "number n exists in Platonia" means just that the proposition "number
> >> n
> >> exists" is true. For example I believe that the equation
> >> x^2 - 61y^2 = 1 admits integers solutions independently of any things
> >> related to me.
> >
> > If that is all it means, it cannot possibly support an argument
> > whose conclusion is that something really exists.
>
>
> What do you mean by "really" exists.
Exists in the way I do. As opposed to "can be supposed
without contradiction" or some other non-Platonic reading.
> If you mean by this a stuffy
> material existence, again what you say is going in my direction.
Meaning what ? That you are assuming the real existence of numbers ?
> > The conclusion of a deductive argument has to be implicit in its
> > premisses.
>
> Sure.
You have existential conclusions, so you must
have existential premises. But you keep saying
you are only assuming truth about arithmetic propositions.
> >> I don't understand what you mean by "4356667654090987890111 is prime
> >> or
> >> not" is true here.
> >> Is it false or meaningless on the moon?
> >> is it false or meaningless beyond the solar system?
> >> is it false or meaningless beyond the Milky Way?
> >
> > It's true here, in the non-Platonic world.
>
>
> This I find weird. I believe *much more* in the truth of <<The number
> 4356667654090987890111 is either prime or is not prime>> than in any
> proposition asserting the existence of any "non-platonic" thing.
Even yourself ?
> OK, I agree there is a cup of coffee in front of me. But this means,
> with comp, that among all infinite computational histories going
> through my current comp states (which exists by comp) the normal one
> (in some Gaussian sense, they are the most weighty) describes me in
> front of that cup.
You do have direct evidence for the coffee cup.
You don't have direct evidence of the computational
histories.
You don't even have direct evidence for computationalism.
There is much less evidence for that for the existence
of tangible physical things.
Rational arguments are supposed to start
from well-founded premises.
> This is not a final explanation. Somehow my point is just that if comp
> is true than an explanation must have a shape of that kind.
It doesn't come from comp alone,
it comes from Platonism (which is quite disputable),
it comes from Maudlin's arguments (which have some
disputable elements), etc...
> Introducing
> stuff makes the explanation of the relative stability of the qualia
> related to that coffee cup much harder.
How ?
> > We don't need the Platonic World to *make* it true. It fulfils
> > no epistemological role.
>
>
> We certainly don't need any naïve Platonic World. I keep insisting I
> don't believe in any stuffy-like plato heaven.
Platonism needs to be justified somehow. If it isn't
justified the way Plato thought, as the only explanation
for how we "see" the truth of mathematical claims,
it has to be justified some other way.
Platonists don;'t eed to think Platonic existence
is material. If anythign, they need to believe
it is immaterial, since matter is spatio-temproal
and contingent, which Platonic numbers are asserted
not to be.
That still leaves us needing a sense of what that immaterial existence
consists of. But that is not my problem, it is the Platonist's
problem. I exist, and if I "emerged" from Platonia,
Platonia must exist, however immaterially.
> I am not criticizing the
> notion of stuff here to reintroduce it in Platonia.
> Now "173 is prime" has a truth value independent of me, and it is a
> matter of taste to see that truth as an epistemological or an
> ontological one.
No, it is a matter of philosophical dispute. Platonism
needs to be justified somehow.
> Actually it is better to see it as an ontological truth (in a slightly
> generalized sense) for the precise reason that the epistemology will
> concern what (immaterial) machine can prove.
That's easy: immaterial things don't exist, so they don't
prove anything.
> Wrongly, rightly, etc.
> Proof at first will not be related to truth. Of course an ontological
> proposition like "the machine 456 believes (proves) 666 is a prime
> number" could be an ontological truth, in the sense that the machine
> 456 does really prove that 666 is a prime number (from which we can
> believe the machine 456 is not correct; but that is something else).
The machine can't really prove anything unless it really exists.
Of course, we can prove what it proves without building it.
> > Of course, *standard* computationalism doesn't by itself allow
> > you to attach cognition/consciousness to anything abstract.
>
>
> See the UDA proof. What you call "standard computationalism" is
> inconsistent. See UDA.
THe UDA assumes Platonism.
> > Computations can be multiply replicated at different points
> > in space and time (or not at all) so they are not Platonic.
>
>
> I don't think you can replicate a computation, nor do I think you can
> replicate a number, nor even that this makes sense. You can only
> replicate a relative implementation of those things.
We seem to have semantic problem. For me a computation
is an implementation of an algorithm.
> >> In *all* situation, when I say a number exists, or when I say a
> >> sequence of numbers exists, I only mean that the proposition
> >> expressing
> >> that existence is true independently of me or you.
> >
> > Then nothing actually existing can possible "emerge".
>
>
> We already agreed on that. If you mean "material" by "actually
> existing".
I mean exisitng like me -- I don't think I emerged out of truth.
> >> You did not read carefully what I have said. I am just using "exists"
> >> as a quantifier (in first or second order logic). Exists n P(n) =
> >> truth
> >> of "exists n P(n)".
> >
> > Which still isn't helpful, since different
> > schools of mathematical philosophy put different
> > interpretations on the mathematical sense of "exists".
>
>
> I disagree. All platonist mathematical philosophers agree with the
> standard interpretation of the 150 first pages of any introduction to
> predicate logics, or even second order logic, and I need no more given
> that my starting frame is "platonism" (restricted or not on
> arithmetics).
Which still means that different schools of mathematical
philosophy will differ, since Platonism is only one school.
And you seem to have missed the point that phil-of-math
is a kind of meta-intpretation of maths, which doesn't
impact on the truth of maths per se.
> > Some take it to mean "can be defined wtihout contraciction",
>
> The formalist. I don't need the formalist philosophy.
I think you need it to be false.
> > some "can be finitely constructed" and so on.
>
>
> Most intuitionist. I rediscover their math philosophies through the
> notion of first person related to the machines.
You have to assume that one of them, Platonism, is correct
without arguing for it.
> >> I believe that there is an infinity of twin primes ... or not,
> >> independently of the fact that mathematicians on this planet or
> >> elsewhere will solve, or not, that (currently open) problem.
> >
> > The point remains that existence cannot emerge
> > out of truth.
>
> You keep saying this, and I keep answering that any stuffy existence,
> indeed, cannot emerge out of truth. But the UDA shows that the
> assumption of a material stuff cannot even explain why we believe and
> keep belief in stable 3-person sharable patterns. WE don't need that
> hypothesis.
You mean the Maudlin argument ?
> >>> You have to explain how a mathematical structure can appear
> >>> at all, before you can explain how it can appear quantal (or
> >>> whatever).
> >>
> >>
> >> Honestly why?
> >
> > Logic. Something has to exist before it has any particular properties.
>
>
> You mean "5" existed before being prime?
"5 is prime" is a true sentence.
> >> I presuppose some amount of arithmetic.
> >
> > Presume its existence or just its truth ?
> > Back to the usual ambiguity.
>
>
> I think you repeat yourself. Please Jones, once and for all, remember I
> don't believe comp is consistent with the belief that something exists
> with *your* notion of physical primary existence.
> When I say something exist, I always mean that I can formalize the
> theory in first or second order logic, and that some existential
> proposition like "ExP(x)" is true. It does not entail x exists in any
> other sense.
But it must if it is supposed to entail my existence !
> I don't need other sense. Nor do I need any bare notion of
> causality. causality, like responsibility, are high level descriptive
> notion. Not something at the root.
No physicalist would agree.
> >> As an
> >> arithmetical platonist I suppose those existential proposition are
> >> true. Comma. I don't believe math truth are related to time or space.
> >> The number 2, or any math structure, does not *appear*.
> >
> >
> > Then nothing can appear *from* it.
>
> Right. Nothing stuffy. Time, space, energy MUST (by the UDA) emerges
> from (probably deep and long) computations, and those computations
> themselves exists only in the sense I described above: either in the
> sense of some arithmetical proposition like ExP(x), or in the truth of
> an infinity of such propositions.
The UDA requires Platonism.
> >> I have never slipped into:
> >
> >> mathematical objects (numbers) exist Platonically" EXCEPT in the sense
> >> that some existential arithmetical proposition is objectively true.
> >
> > And that *does* entail existence ?
>
>
> No. Let us be clear: with your notion of existence I believe there is
> just nothing.
Obviously, there isn't.
> To be exact, I believe anyone understanding the comp hyp will by
> himslef soon or later undersatnd it must be so, or comp is false.
> Why are we discussing: from what you say we know already you don't
> believe in comp.
It is plausible, but not so much as the the things it contradcits,
according to you, such as the
existence of matter. So your argument (as stated) would be a reductio
of COMP.
Unless it is really based on Platonism, which I stongly suspect, in
which
case it is a /reductio/ of Platonism.
> You pretend that you accept "standard comp", but the UDA shows standard
> comp leads to immateriality.
The UDA assumes Platonism. Standard comp doesn't.
> Nothing exists in your sense if standard
> comp is true. Unless you find an error in UDA, ...
The UDA assumes Platonism.
> > BM: 'It is
> > a version of Platonism limited at least to arithmetical truth'.
> >
> > PJ: Is it ? But Platonism is an ontological thesis. As a standard
> > reference work has it: "The philosophy of Plato, or an
> > approach to philosophy resembling his. For example, someone who
> > asserts that numbers exist independently of the
> > things they number could be called a Platonist."
>
>
> Yes like G. Hardy. No problem. Peano Arithmetic and second-order
> arithmetic have been invented to show we can do math a-la-Hardy without
> ontological commitment. Modern platonism does not need to interpret
> ontologically any mathematical form of existence.
Platonism *is* an ontological claim. Perhaps you mean bivalence or
non-constructivism.
> > BM: 'It should not be confused
> > with the much stronger Pythagorean form of AR, AR+, which asserts that
> > only natural
> > numbers exist together with their nameable relations: all the rest
> > being derivative from
> > those relations.
>
>
> >
> > If Pythagoreanism is stronger than Platonism in insisting that
> > everything is
> > derivable from (existing) natural numbers, is Platonism weaker than
> > Pythagoreanism
> > in insisting that everything is derivable from existing numbers of all
> > kinds,
> > natural or not? Is Platonism not being taken as a claim about existence
> > here, not just a claim about truth ?
>
> Logicians, after the failure of logicism, have succeeded in showing
> that you cannot derive the existene of some math object without
> postulating sets. So There are an infinity of stronger mathematical
> theories. Now with comp arithmetic is enough. But we don't need to
> postulate that only numbers exists (in my non-ontological sense then).
It is a question of existence versus truth, not arithmetic vs sets.
> > BM: "A machine will be
> > said an Arithmetical Platonist if the machine believes enough
> > elementary
> > arithmetical truth (including some scheme of induction axiom)."
> >
> > PJ: Switching back to an epistemological definition of "platonism"
> In all text and discussion we need just to accord ourself. You talk
> like if "platonism" was a clear notion.
If it isn't, that doesn't help
your argument, since your argument depends
on Platonism. If I "emerge" from some
Platonia , then Platonia needs to exist
in some sense. If Platonists can't
explain what that sense is, that is
just another reason to reject Platonism.
> No conceptual notion are easy.
> I just hope you understand and remember that by arithmetical platonism
> I just mean the independence of arithmetical truth, and, by "ontology
> of x" I mean anything concerned witrh the proposition with shape
> ExP(x).
Then I cannot be in Platonia.
> I don't even have to postulate the consistency of arithmetic, although
> it makes things simpler for beginners.
> In my work there is no ontological commitment at all, if you except the
> betting on others' consciousness, without which the enterprise would
> not make sense. But then, I eliminate even that bet in the lobian
> interview.
If there are no existential premisses in an
argument, there can be no existential conclusions.
> > BM:'Instead of linking [the pain I feel] at space-time (x,t) to
> > [a machine state] at space-time
> > (x,t), we are obliged to associate [the pain I feel at space-time
> > (x,t)]
> > to a type or a sheaf of
> > computations (existing forever in the arithmetical Platonia which is
> > accepted as existing
> > independently of our selves with arithmetical realism).'
> >
> > PJ: Another use of Realism as a thesis about existence.
>
> Again in the sense of "ExP(x)" is true independently of me, you ...
How can mere truth that doesn't exist feel a pain.
> > PJ: And if the pain-feeling "you" exists eternally, how do
> > ever *not* feel pain ? There is an ontological gulf
> > between tokens and types, between the temporal
> > and the eternal, which has been leaped over at a bound here.
>
>
> The UDA gives a first approximation of an explanation of time. The
> lobian interview isolate that subjective time notion with the modal
> logic S4Grz. Which I isolate: I mean I don't chose it because I would
> find it nice, etc.
But, as usual, that is time as an abstract structure, not
as something actually happening.
> >> And I don't believe that mathematical objects, or even *any* 3-object,
> >> are capable of having experiences (which by definition are *never*
> >> illusory).
> >
> > In which case it is hard to see how your argument could work at all.
>
>
> But then just read it, and tell me where you lose the line.
What you say -- "I don't believe that mathematical objects, or even
*any* 3-object,
are capable of having experiences " contradicts the conclusion
that we are in Platonia
> >> Only subject or person can have experiences, and subject and persons
> >> emerges from infinities of (sigma_1) relation between numbers.
> >
> > What can "emerge" from relationships between mathematical
> > structures except more mathematical structures ?
> >
> > "And then a miracle occurs"
>
>
> If you want. Actually Godel call already Church thesis a miracle, and
> then the comp hyp explain why numbers eventually believe correctly in
> "physical" theories. But here "physical" is not primitive. It concerns
> "observable" and sharable stable patterns. Nothing stuffy, nothing
> primitive.
> The advantage of my theorem is that it leads to a simultaneous
> understanding of quanta and qualia. Qualia are the non sharable part of
> what machines can still measure.
Non-shareability may be a necessary criterion of qualiahood,
but it is not a sufficient one.
> The proposition
> > http://www.webamused.com/blogosophy/archives/002064.html
>
>
> I like very much that jokes. Now read UDA, and tell me where you think
> I should be more explicit (in case you feel the need).
What I keep asking you to be explicit about is the difference
between mind-independent truth and mind-independent existence.
> >> The UD
> >> generates those relations and assigns some weight to all of them.
> >
> > "Weight" of course being just another number -- not actual
> > existence.
>
>
> I could as well ask you what do you mean by "actual existence" (except
> that by experience I have never hear something interesting here).
We "monsters" start with lived experience here -- the Johnsonian
defintions. You "gods" find that uninteresting because
you have made your mind up that everything must
have an abstract defintion -- even that which
is is essentially concrete.
> You do an ontologica&l commitment (matter, time, electron).
Myself
> I don't.
Not even yourself ?
> I
> could have said I postulate numbers (to make it easy for beginners) but
> I will not, because *you* take it as naive platonism.
> The only object in which I really belief are those for which I can
> present proof or evidences that the proposition "ExP(x)" is true
> independent of me.
So you don't believe in your own existence because you can't prove it
?!?!?
> > It seems to me that materialism can survive the Maudlin/Olympia
> > argument
> > with only a slight adjustment; phenomenal states supervene
> > on the total physical state, not just on the active physical state.
>
>
> Excellent. But really just a tiny step toward understanding that the
> comp hyp forces us to eventually accept that the "total physical
> states" is just an (incredible) pattern existing among numbers and
> sequences of numbers, ....
Without Platonism or a concrete UD, the pattern of
which you speak is just a hypothesis.
> All that "Existing" in my non-ontological-commitment sense.
> >> the
> >> idea that there is something genuinely stuffy at the origin of the
> >> computations. Comp entails that the appearance of that genuine stuff
> >> emerges from the independent truth of some formula in arithmetic. I
> >> could even put them in polynomial form.
> >
> > You have a mathematical proof that phenomenality emerges from
> > mathematics ???
>
>
> Yes. It is almost trivial ASSUMING comp. But then with just the lobian
> interview I retrieve a good candiidate for many form of phenomenality,
> which corresponds nicely with what Plotinus called "hypostasis".
What's the mathematical formula for the taste of chocolate then ?
(Of course you don't mean *phenomenality*,
you mean "unshareability"...)
> > (And that's *phenomenality*, not uncertainty
> > or undecidability).
>
>
> Well, "phenomenality" is not "uncertainty", still less
> "undecidability". But both the UDA and the lobian interview relates
> those notions. For example "physicality" is almost reduced with
> "measurable uncertainty", and the consistency of the use of the
> Theaetetical notion of knowledge arise from the necessary gap between
> proof and truth for lobian machine, etc.
> The theory of matter I get from that is testable, and part of it
> already tested!
> And nature seems indeed comp-correct until now ;-)
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Received on Thu Jul 20 2006 - 16:07:00 PDT