On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 06:45:51PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > On 29 Sep 2014, at 02:22, Russell Standish wrote: > > > > >I introduced the term "urstuff" as a way of referring to what is > >ontologically real. "primitive urstuff" is a tautology, of course, as > >urstuff is primitive by definition. > > > >Urstuff could be matter, or it could be a platonic system like the > >integers. Since we can never know what it is, we should Wittgensteinly > >shut our traps about it, but since we don't seem to be able to do > >that, we need a label to talk about it. > > > But stuff is so much connotated to matter. Matter seems even more > abstract than stuff. Some people makes the error that physics
Only in my grandmother's English. She would say stuff is material - ie specifically the fabric that you make clothes, or curtains out of. But already by my generation, "stuff" is roughly synonymous with "things". A thing needn't be material. My son's generation, would probably use the word "junk" in the same way. > becomes arithmetic, which is against comp, where physics is a > modality of observation (the FPI bet "one" obeys the quantum logic > S4Grz1, or Z1*). > > Again, this is just vocabulary, but to say that numbers are stuff > seems to me to easily lead to the error of confusing math and > physics (which some people do when using comp naively). > I don't think so. But in any case, I'm using a new word "urstuff", which is definitely not my grandmother's "stuff". > I think that insisting that number are not physical, not stuffy, not > material, we are closer to your "nothing" intuition, given this > makes clear that there is nothing physical, except in the internal > self-emerging semantic in arithmetic, on arithmetic. > In English, "stuffy" refers to a personality type - someone who is rigid and formal might be called "stuffy". You're the only person I know of using it as an adjective meaning "made of matter". You do have an important point that the ontological number base is not the same as the empirical world, a distinction captured by Kant's noumenon-phenomenon dichotomy. With the FPI discovery, you can demonstrate this quite formally. But to insist that number aren't physical up front probably doesn't help, as most people don't have a good idea what physical is to start with. With your reversal result, and insisting that physical means what is observed as phenomena, you can then conclude that the arithmetical reality is not phenomena. > > > > > > > > > >>>> > >>> > >>>It demonstrates an inconsistency between physical supervenience and > >>>computational supervenience, notably that physical supervenience > >>>entails that certain very simple computations, such as the replaying > >>>of a recording, will be conscious. > >>> > >>>This only works in a non-robust universe, however, a point that is > >>>often overlooked in treatments of this. > >> > >> > >>It seems to me that the MGA makes the robust/non-robustness > >>irrelevant. It is enough that elementary arithmetic, or the > >>combinators, is a robust reality. > >> > > > >I agree. The whole non-robust universe move is a rejection of your AR > >postulate. But it does seem reasonable to ask what might happen if not > >all possible programs could exist, ie that the Turing model of > >computation is constrained in some way. I guess essential if you > >really want to tackle Aristotelianism in its home ground. > > I mention the sub-universal more often called sub-creative) set of > computable function. That might be interesting indeed. But if we > assume the usual computationalist assumption, for theology and > physics, introuicing such a restriction would already be like doing > terachery. If such a restriction plays a role (as I am sure it > does), that has to be extracted from self-reference to exploit the > G/G* distinction, and get both qualia and quanta. > > > > > > > >>The ultrafinitist physicalism has still to endow his "existing > >>matter" with magical non-Turing emulable to make its reality doing > >>the selection it seems to me. > >> > > > >I agree it is non-Turing, but magical might be a bit too strong an > >epithet. The argument, presumably, is that some computations require > >too great a resource in order to be instantiated. (By analogy with > >Norm Wildberger's main argument against infinity). > > > > > Comp does not allow infinity in its basic ontology. All of 0, 1, 2, > 3, ... are finite. [0, 1, 2, 3, ...} is already in the mind of some > machines, like ZF. It shorten the proofs, and enlighten the picture > from inside. Comp, as Judson Webb analyse it, is a finitism. > is Norm Wildberger an utltrafinitist in math? He look like a > materialist, and ultrafinitist in physics, but normally that is what > the MGA shows it can't really work (unless adding the "magic > "needed). That magic is more than non Turing emulable, it is also > not FPI recoverable. I have no idea what that could be except as > something incomprehensible (primitive matter) introduced to make > something else (machine's mind) incomprehensible. > I haven't chatted with Norm personally about this - his views have evolved considerably in the years since I was regularly in the department. All I know is what he presented in that seminar, and also what was written in that New Scientist article. ISTM that that the MGA presents choices: 1) COMP is false 2) Physical supervenience is false (that's hard to square with evidence) 3) We live in a robust reality (such as AR) 4) Some recordings are conscious Now when speaking about option 4, it should be noted that a detailed recording of the neuronal states of the human brain would be around a petabyte per second. Whilst I could be quite confident that none of the DVDs I have lying around here might be conscious when played back, I would hesitate to rule out an exabyte-sized recording as being conscious, particularly on a hi resolution display device that uses all those bits. Presumably it will be hard to distinguish physically between the replayed recording and the real thing. Intuition pumps can fail. Cheers -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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