Hi Stephen,
On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 2:25 PM, Stephen P. King <stephe...@charter.net>wrote:
> On 11/1/2012 6:54 AM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 1:42 AM, Stephen P. King <stephe...@charter.net>wrote:
>
>> On 10/31/2012 6:14 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 7:59 PM, Stephen P. King
>> <stephe...@charter.net>wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> [SPK]
>>>
>>>> One problem that I have discovered (I thank Brent for bringing this
>>>> up!) is that in our reasoning we set up constructions - such as the person
>>>> on the desert island - that blur the very distinction that I am trying to
>>>> frame. We should never assume temporal situations to argue for relations
>>>> that are atemporal unless we are prepared to show the morphisms between the
>>>> two situations.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Isn't this already physical framework when you seem to be arguing for
>>> time as primitive ("n incompatible with comp to begin with, after which you
>>> seek to carve out a distinction, when you've already mixed at the base?
>>>
>>>
>>> My argument is that it is impossible to 'derive" Becoming from
>> Being, but we can derive Being from Becoming. So why not work with the
>> latter idea? I am trying to get Bruno to admit, among other things, that he
>> has to assume a non-well founded logic for his result to work.;-)
>>
>>
> I see less and less how you'd be able to do that, as I said, by making
> process/linear time primitive in comp, and by assuming physical universe
> with so many statements. Quantum Logic is part of the picture (see SANE
> 2004).
>
>
> Hi Cowboy,
>
> I think of it this way: Change is fundamental (ala
> Heraclitus<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heraclitus/#PhiPri>and
> Bergson <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bergson/#5>) and Being is its
> automorphism <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automorphism>.
>
If you believe and hold on to that, then its clear why UDA isn't a
candidate for TOE for you at this point. As for myself; I remain mute on
that and open. But the dark mystical sayings, that are fun, I'll grant you,
รก la Heraclitus, or weird Bergsonian logic on change and duration with say
the rubber band example, which I am principally open to, feel a bit worn
and make room for much more unexplainable magic than UDA in TOE terms imho.
Is that a bit more clear? "Linear time" (why 'linear'? Is there such a
> thing as non-linear time? Cyclic time is still linear, AFAIK...) is, IMHO,
> change + a measure. Without a measure of change, there is no time; there is
> just change.
>
Then the clock deserves worship; but not from me. By linear time, I mean
our picture of it before weirdness in QM and even Relativity Theory already.
> If we take relativity seriously, we might even claim that there is no
> difference between change minus measure and staticness... I should mention
> that any change that has no measure associated with it is "zeroth" order
> change.
> Without the means to compare two different things to each other, does
> it make any sense to be able to make coherent statements about some change
> in one relative to the other. If there is just one thing, how do we know
> anything about its possible change(s) unless we are looking at it and
> gauging (measuring) its change against some thing else that has some
> measure associated - but our observation of it violates the stipulation of
> "if there is just one thing".
>
>
Not if our picture "just one thing" is partial and print and memory
capacity of 1p is restrained, forcing an amnesia of the "just one thing"
that APPEARS to constantly change.
> The idea that somehow the observer is irrelevant in physics and
> philosophy is, IMHO, one of the worse errors ever. Sure, we need to
> minimize and even eliminate observer bias and preferred reference framing,
> but eliminating the observer and replacing it with some ambiguous 'view
> from nowhere' is undiluted hogwash. This is where "realist" chafe me, they
> act as if the universe of objects is out there and has definite properties
> in the complete absence of any clear explanation for how those properties
> came to be defined in the first place. OK, OK, I will stop ranting...
>
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Bruno would have us, in step 8 of UDA, to "not assume a concrete
>>> robust physical universe". He goes on to argue that Occam's razor would
>>> demand that we reject the very idea of the existence of physical worlds
>>> given that he can 'show' how they can be reconstructed or derived from
>>> irreducible - and thus ontologically primitive - Arithmetic 'objects' {0,
>>> 1, +, *} that are "operating" somehow in an atemporal way.
>>>
>>
>> UDA does not contradict itself here. Restraints on processing power, on
>> memory and print capacities, implying time as some illusion emanating from
>> eternal primitives, don't exist when framed non-constructively, more like
>> sets of assignments, rather than operations in your sense, by which you
>> seem to mean "physically primitive operations" on par with ontologically
>> primitive arrow of time. Isn't this like cracking open the axioms, and then
>> complaining that the building has cracks in it?
>>
>>
>> There are simply a pile of concepts that are just assumed without
>> explanation in any discussion of philosophy/logic/math. My point is that a
>> theory must be have the capacity of being communicable ab initio for it to
>> even be considered. When I am confronted with a theory or a "result" or an
>> argument that seems to disallow for communicability I am going to baulk at
>> it!
>>
>>
> And the possibility that you are baulking at your preconceptions rather
> than engaging the theory has never happened to you? Happens to me all the
> time.
>
>
> OK, got any ideas what these might be other than those I have
> mentioned explicitly? Philosophically, I am a Heraclitean, at least, as
> opposed to a Parmenidean...
>
>
See my preceding point.
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> We should be able to make the argument run without ever appealing to a
>>> Platonic realm or any kind of 'realism'.
>>>
>>
>> It's hard for me to see bets being made without some cash/investment/gap
>> of faith on the table.
>>
>>
>> Sure.
>>
>>
> Then it would be easy for you to directly address the question: why assume
> non-comp and then complain about comp's implications of time and physics
> arising from dream interaction of universal numbers, therefore being not
> primary or existing primitively?
>
>
> But I agree with comp up to the strong version of step 8! I accept
> comp with a weak version of step 8 or, I think equivalently, a weak version
> of computational universality: *A computation is universal if it is not
> dependent on any one particular physical system*. This implies, to me,
> that there is at least one physical system that such a universal
> computation can be said to actually run on! This goes against the
> Parmenidean/Platonistic idea of computation as static objects in eternity
> that are completely independent of physical stuff!
> This makes me suspicious of the entire idea of ontological
> "independence" but I digress.
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>> In my thinking, if arithmetic is powerful enough to be a TOE and run the
>>> TOE to generate our world, then that power should be obvious. My problem is
>>> that it looks tooo much like the 'explanation' of creation that we find in
>>> mythology, whether it is the
>>> Ptah<http://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/ptah.html>of ancient Egypt or the egg
>>> of Pangu <http://www.livingmyths.com/Chinese.htm> or whatever other
>>> myth one might like. What makes an explanation framed in the sophisticated
>>> and formal language of modal logic any different?
>>>
>>>
>> Nothing, at its base. Appearances and looks can deceive, as numbers can
>> too.
>>
>>
>> Would this not make that deception something in our understanding
>> and not the fault of numbers? After all, numbers are supposedly the least
>> ambiguous of entities!
>>
>>
> On the surface, but not when you look under the hood. That's a
> reductionist bias of number.
>
>
> Don't get me started on reductionism! I don't believe in it as I don't
> believe in ontologically primitive objects that have particular properties.
>
>
Then I don't see how you can make an ontological bet. You're at the table,
betting on 24 or whatever, but you won't place your chips.
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>> I agree 1000000000% with your point about 'miracles'. I am very
>>> suspicions of "special explanations' or 'natural conspiracies'.
>>>
>>
>> Same here. My point with humanism + natural sciences, including standard
>> model, is that you have to be straight about your wager: there's my magic
>> primitive right there, warts and all.
>>
>> Its deceiving to, on the one hand assert "no miracles" whatsoever, and
>> then ask for it at the instant of Big Bang. "Human" in this sense is both
>> deceptive through error and useful for power.
>>
>>
>> I think that we are too eager for explanations and are willing to
>> play fast and lose with concepts so long as we can hand wave problems away.
>>
>>
> Agreed.
>
>
>
> ;-)
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>> (This comes from my upbringing as a "Bible-believing Fundamentalist"
>>> and eventual rejection of that literalist mental straight-jacket.) As I see
>>> things, any condition or situation that can be used to 'explain' some other
>>> conceptually difficult condition or situation should be either universal in
>>> that they apply anywhere and anytime or are such that there must be a
>>> particular configuration of events for them to occur. This principle (?)
>>> applies to everything, be it the Big Bang initial state/singularity or
>>> consciousness.
>>>
>>> One point about the Big Bang. It seems to me that if we are
>>> considering conditions in our current physical universe that involve
>>> sufficiently small scales and/or high enough energies that there should be
>>> the equivalent to the Big Bang initial conditions, thus the Big Bang should
>>> be considered as an ongoing process even now and not some epochally special
>>> event.
>>>
>>
>> You argue both comp ("universal, anywhere, eternal") and physically
>> primitive universe ("current physical universe", "ongoing process" etc).
>>
>>
>> It seems to me that we need both to come up with ontological
>> theories!
>>
>
> I don't need to. Others are good at that. Every song I play/write is one
> ontological theory, that sometimes even kids can grasp and smile at. In
> ancient Greece, music was a branch of core education. Numbers and geometry
> were as important as an understanding of harmony. I am not idealizing
> ancient Greece, nor am I saying math = music.
>
>
> I have found that those ancient Greeks where just as smart as smart
> people today.
>
>
Maybe.
>
>
>>
>>
>> That's why I ask above why you burn your money before you put it on the
>> (comp) table and claim the game is rigged? Just because "eternal is
>> foundation", doesn't imply that process isn't possible on some higher
>> level. Your alluding to mysticism points towards different ways you can
>> frame temporal and "atemporal" systems. There's not "a difference", there
>> are many, which is perhaps a fruitful avenue of inquiry.
>>
>> I do agree with you on the straight-jacket problem. But extreme
>> limitation is also liberating.
>>
>>
>> Freedom from is not freedom to.
>>
>
> I'm not saying UD is without problems or possible flaws; but simply fail
> to understand the flaw you are trying to express.
>
> Again: why burn the basement and complain the building has cracks?
>
>
> I'm trying to do exactly not that...
>
>
Then why not remain open to UDA, including step 8?
Cowboy Obvious :)
>
> --
> Onward!
>
> Stephen
>
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