On 7/12/2014 1:23 AM, LizR wrote:
Brent,
You left me hanging a week or so ago, and never got back to me about something I'm
interested in finding out more about.
On 2 July 2014 23:14, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com <mailto:lizj...@gmail.com>> wrote:
On 2 July 2014 17:06, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>>
wrote:
On 7/1/2014 9:42 PM, LizR wrote:
On 2 July 2014 15:46, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
OK, so how does that work? Like I said, I don't understand it.
Intuitively, saying that A causes B and B causes A doesn't appear
to make
sense,
It's not a causal relationship, it's an explanatory "->".
Sorry I should have said "explains" although I thought it was obvious I
was
using causal in an explanatory sense, not a physical one. Anyway, please
continue the explanation.
You don't understand what is meant by "physics -> biology" or "biology
->
evolution -> mathematics" or "mathematics -> physics"?
Yes I do.
And there you stopped. I'm still waiting for you to continue the explanation.
To refresh your memory, you said:
OK, except I think the chain is:
arithmetic -> information -> matter -> consciousness -> arithmetic
To which I objected that I couldn't see how this makes sense globally, even if each
local step makes sense. You appear to be claiming that there is no such thing as a
fundamental explanatory level. Since this flies in the face of 3+ centuries of
scientific progress (based on reductionism, which assumes there /is/ a fundamental
explanatory level)
It's just that I noted that fundamental physics has become almost entirely abstract and
mathematical, so that people like Tegmark and Wheeler started to speculate that the
mathematics *is* the physics. Lists like this that subscribe to everythingism Bruno's
"comp" and Tegmark's MUH completely erase the boundary between math and physics. The 3+
centuries of reductionist physics are also 3+ centuries of explaining things through
synthesis of simpler (and presumably better understood) things. At the same time I think
mathematics is a human invention, a certain way of looking at the world made precise in
language. Humans and their inventions are explicable by evolution, biology,
physics,...and mathematics. So maybe the circle closes. The usual objection of a
circular explanation is it leaves stuff out, especially if it leaves out all the stuff you
understand and just explains mystery X in terms of enigma Y. But if the circle is big
enough, if it encompasses everything, then either there's some part you understand and
that allows you to reach all the rest; or you don't understand anything and there's no
hope for you.
, not to mention what most people would regard as logic (or at least common sense), this
looks like a fairly radical revision of our theories of knowledge.
So I'd be interested to know more, if you're prepared to continue explaining.
As I said, I don't have my own TOE. I just put forward the virtuous circle of explanation
based on a suggestion of Bruno (which he's disavowed) as a counter example to the idea
that reductionism must either bottom out or be like infinite Russian dolls.
Brent
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