On 02 Dec 2013, at 00:51, Jesse Mazer wrote:
To add to my last comment, the article at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz-modal/
mentions that Leibniz was among those philosophers who
distinguished between necessary and contingent truths, and only
granted God the power to change contingent ones. Here's a relevant
bit from the article:
Consider the way Leibniz distinguishes necessary and contingent
truths in ยง13 of the Discourse on Metaphysics.
The one whose contrary implies a contradiction is absolutely
necessary; this deduction occurs in the eternal truths, for example,
the truths of geometry. The other is necessary only ex hypothesi
and, so to speak, accidentally, but it is contingent in itself,
since its contrary does not imply a contradiction. And this
connection is based not purely on ideas and God's simple
understanding, but on his free decrees and on the sequence of the
universe. (A VI iv 1547/AG 45)
I think that this is about the same error as believing that free will
needs indeterminacy.
So, what's wrong with adopting Tegmark's solution which takes our
universe as a Platonic mathematical structure, so that all truths
about it are necessary ones too?
But if it is one mathematical structure, and not another, that would
make it contingent. I think the laws of physics are mathematical
necessities, because the "physical illusion" is an arithmetical
process involving all universal machines, which is a well defined
notions (assuming Church Thesis).
Then there would be no need for a creator God, though one might
still talk about a sort of Spinoza-esque pantheist God (especially
if one also prefers panpsychism as a solution to the metaphysical
problem of the relation between consciousness and third-person
objective reality)
But that would make a brain or a computer unnecessary for being
conscious relatively to some stories. That would work, as indeed, by
negating comp, we can still imagine some infinite mathematical
structure linking brain and mind, in a way avoiding the FPI and the
reversal consequence of the comp assumption. But then we can't survive
with a brain-computer, and we can't use computer science in philosophy
of mind and theology.
Bruno
On Sunday, December 1, 2013, Jesse Mazer wrote:
Most theistic philosophers and theologians who have considered the
issue agree that God did not create the laws of math and logic, and
does not have the power to alter them (or any other "necessary"
truths, which for theists might include things like moral rules, or
qualities of God such as omnipotence). Do you think the Mandelbrot
set, or any other piece of pure mathematics, functions without a
government, or are mathematical rules themselves a form of
government even if God didn't create them? Certainly most atheists
now think the universe follows mathematical laws, and one could even
adopt Max Tegmark's idea and speculate that our universe is just
another part of the uncreated Platonic realm of mathematical forms.
On Sunday, December 1, 2013, Roger Clough wrote:
How can a grown man be an atheist ?
An atheist is a person who believes that the universe can
function without some form of government.
How silly.
Dr. Roger B Clough NIST (ret.) [1/1/2000]
See my Leibniz site at
http://independent.academia.edu/RogerClough
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