On 6/21/2012 11:41 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 Stephen P. King <stephe...@charter.net
<mailto:stephe...@charter.net>> wrote:
> Do you [Bruno] stand by that implication, that "matter is
primitive" = "not explainable from non material relation"? This
implies that: "matter is not primitive" = "explainable from non
material relation".
That implies nothing of the sort, in fact it implies the exact opposite.
Hi John,
Nice to talk with you again! ;-) It is quite possible that I got it
exactly backward, that would be a symptom of my dyslexia. ;-)
If it's really primitive then it's the end of a long line of "what is
that made of?" or "why did that happen?" questions. If it's truly
primitive then it's not explainable PERIOD, otherwise the explanation
would be the thing that was primitive, unless of course the
explanation itself had a explanation. Maybe nothing is primitive and
it's like a onion with a infinite number of layers, or maybe not,
nobody knows.
Each and every one of these possibilities are included in the wide
variety of mereologies <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/>
that I have tried to ask Bruno about. I would really like to get an
exact definition what Bruno defines as "primitive". I have a preference
for the "nothing is truly primitive" idea as this is what is considered
in the non-well founded sets and related logics that Jon Barwise et al
have written about and is assumed in Vaughan Pratt's rehabilitation of
Dualism. I realize that this is a hard thing to get people to think
about, but given the fact that the current assumptions and theories are
not solving the problems, why not consider reasonable alternatives?
> time is not just the number of steps, it is also the
transitional flow from one step to another.
You don't know that to be true and without instrumentation if time
jumped just a hundred times a second or so you couldn't tell the
difference between that and continuous flow, that's why TV and movies
work.
I am talking/writing about the transition itself, not the fineness
of it. Whether is is smooth or discrete, I think that we agree that
transitions are occurring! So my point remains conta Bruno, we cannot
think of time as just a ordered collection of entities.
And there are theoretical reasons to suspect that there is no time
shorter than the Plank Time, 10^-44 seconds, a number that can be
calculated using only the gravitational constant, the speed of light,
and Plank's constant, which makes me think they may be the most
important physical constants around and although the laws of physics
may be different in different parts of the multiverse those three
numbers may stay the same. Or maybe not, nobody knows.
I would really like to understand the reasoning that lead to that
misconception. Just because we can get a from a concatenation of
"physical constants" does not make it a physical constant. I have
reasons to suspect that the gravitational constant is not actually a
constant but that is not my story to tell. Time, as we are considering
here, is a measure of duration of interaction. If there is not a means
to define the standard of that measure then it follows that "time" does
not exist in that sense. On the other hand, the existence of the
transitioning itself is not dependent on the existence of a measure.
> I would really like to understand why it is that John Clark
insists on this elimination attitude toward the referent of that
"sequence of ASCII characters". It seems that he does not
understand the ramifications of such a postulate! IMHO, it makes
anything that claims to be produced by his mind to be a
meaningless "sequence of ASCII characters" as it clearly cannot be
the result of an act of "his" will. He can have no will
I have said, more than once, that the meaning of "will" is clear and I
have absolutely no problem with it; but I don't have the slightest
idea what "free will" is supposed to mean and neither do you and
neither does anybody else. I know this because whenever anybody tries
to give a definition or a example or even a informal explanation of
"free will" it only takes them about 2 seconds to tie themselves into
idiotic self contradictions, circularity, and other ridiculous logical
knots.
John K Clark
The word "Free" means that it is not forced or coerced. It is a
legal type term, IMHO. I will agree with your point that the concept has
been pushed into situations and realms where it simply does not apply. I
hope that you see my humorous point of the absurdity that flows from
thinking of free will (or its denial) applies as a universal.
--
Onward!
Stephen
"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
~ Francis Bacon
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