You agree, but you argue because you disagree on the meanings of words. All misunderstandings arise from differing ideas of the meanings of words. Words only have meaning whrn you have agreed on the meaning in advance. By learning through shared experience. It's the symbol grounding problem.
You'll work it out if you keep talking. Everything happens for a reason. Words mean things, and they have their particular meanings for a reason. There are no coincidences. It's no coincidence, for example, that "rationalize" means both "to provide an explanation" and "to make rational". I'm about to rationalize the universe both ways. -- Mark Buda <her...@acm.org> I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. On Jul 19, 2010 4:32 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote: On 19 Jul 2010, at 01:37, Brent Meeker wrote: > On 7/18/2010 1:38 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: >> >> >>>> >>>> >>>>> Assuming physicalism, the causal laws of our universe applied to a >>>>> suitable set of initial conditions will, in time, exhibit features >>>>> that we categorize as “evolutionary”. Some of these evolutionary >>>>> processes may give rise to entities that have conscious >>>>> experiences, >>>>> and some of those conscious experiences will be of holding this, >>>>> that, >>>>> or the other beliefs about logic. But those beliefs are a >>>>> result of >>>>> fundamental laws acting on fundamental entities, and not >>>>> associated >>>>> with any sort of independently existing platonic standard of >>>>> “logical >>>>> reasoning”. > > I don't understand that last sentence. Does "fundamental laws" > refer to those theories we use to explain physical processes. I > don't see how theories can act on entities? What fundamental > entities do you refer to? And why should not the beliefs we > experience be associated with logical reasoning. If we find a flaw > of logic in one of our theories it loses its power to explain or > even to have meaning. I agree. Note that you are commenting on Rex text. I asked the same question. > >>>> >>>> >>>> The idea that truth is independent of reasoning *is* classical >>>> logic or Platonism. Physicalism is platonism with respect to >>>> entities, which like the christian creator and creations are >>>> posited at the start, and for which nobody has ever give >>>> evidences (it is the only difference: to believe that there are >>>> physical laws and fundamental substantial entities is an addition >>>> to arithmetical realism). The very notion of "laws" necessitates >>>> arithmetical realism. >>>> >>>> >>>> Bruno > I didn't cite Cooper as refuting anything. If the same physical > processes produce our brains as well as the rest of the world then > there is a connection between them which might cause our brains to > have somewhat accurate thoughts about the rest of the world. Cooper > explains why that should be so. OK. So we agree that Cooper is more a thread for Rex view, and not at all for mechanism and its immaterialist consequences. That was unclear (I think there as been a "quoting" misinterpretation!). The ball is in Rex's camp. I was indeed just asking Rex why he thinks that Cooper's book is a thread for digital mechanism and/or its immaterialist consequences. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
