On 19 Aug 2014, at 02:18, meekerdb wrote:
Are you aware of the research by the dating website OKCupid that
showed that the best way to find out if your date believes in God,
without asking directly, is to ask if they are persnickety about
spelling and grammar. "No" indicates a likely believer. "Yes"
means a likely atheist.
Nice. Agnostic says "it depends on what is written"
It's purely a statistical correlation, but one based on a large
sample.
It shows perhaps that believers believe that taking care of the sense,
the sounds will take care of themselves.
The atheists believe that by taking care of the sounds, the sense will
take care of themselves.
But that's mechanism, I think, the duality top down/bottom up, or
syntax-semantics, theory-models, machine-realities, etc.
Bruno
Brent
On 8/18/2014 5:10 PM, LizR wrote:
I wish that often, but then I'm (a) pernickety* about grammar and
spelling, and (b) generally in a hurry!
*Or a word spelled something like that!
On 18 August 2014 23:44, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
On 17 Aug 2014, at 07:23, LizR wrote:
PS You do know you can delete posts from the EL, don't you?
But not from the mail boxes. Besides, I am against all post
deletions, except on facebook when people use your wall for
advertising, or when they repeat insults.
What would be nice is an ability to edit mails, for the typo.
Bruno
On 17 August 2014 17:23, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote:
Never mind, you stated your position nice and clearly, perhaps
more clearly than you normally do on the EL.
(...or is that why you're saying "OOPS!" ? :-)
On 17 August 2014 16:54, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
OOPS! I didn't intend to post this to the everything-list;
although it may serve as an introduction for James Lindsay if he
decides to join the list. I wrote to him after reading his book
"dot dot do" which is about infinity in mathematics and philosophy.
Brent
On 8/16/2014 9:28 PM, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/16/2014 4:57 PM, James Lindsay wrote:
Hi Brent,
Thanks for the note. I like the thought about mathematics as a
refinement of language. I also think of it as a specialization
of philosophy, or even a highly distilled variant upon it with
limited scope. Indeed, I frequently conceive of mathematics as a
branch of philosophy where we (mostly) agree upon the axioms and
(mostly) know we're talking about abstract ideas, to be
distinguished from what I feel like I get from many philosophers.
I am not familiar with Bruno Marchal,
Here's his paper that describes his TOE. It rests on two points
for which he gives arguments: (1) If consciousness is
instantiated by certain computational processes which could be
realized in different media (so there's nothing "magici" about
them being done in brains) then they can exist the way arithmetic
exist (i.e. in "platonia"). And in platonia there is a universal
dovetailer, UD, that computes everything computable (and more),
so it instantiates all possible conscious thoughts including
those that cause us to infer the existence of an external
physical world. The problem with his theory, which he
recognizes, is that this apparently instantiates too much. But
as physicist like Max Tegmark, Vilenkin, and Krause talk about
eternal inflation and infinitely many universes in
which all possible
physics is realized, maybe the UD doesn't produce too much. He
thinks he can show that what it produces is like quantum
mechanics except for a measure zero. But I'm not convinced his
measure is more than wishful thinking.
He's a nice fellow though and not a crank. So if you'd like to
engage him on any of this you can join the discussion list everything-list@googlegroups.com
.
and I am not expert in theories of anything, much less
everything, based upon computation or
even
computation theories. I remain a bit skeptical of them, and
overall, I would suggest that such things are likely to be
theories of everything, which is to say still on the map side of
the map/terrain divide.
I agree. But some people assume that there must be some ultimate
ontology of ur-stuff that exists necessarily - and mathematical
objects are their favorite candidates (if they're not
religious). I don't think this is a compelling argument since I
regard numbers as inventions (not necessarily human - likely
evolution invented them). I think of ontologies as the stuff
that is in our theories. Since
theories are
invented to explain things they may ultimately be circular, sort
of like: mathematics-> physics-> chemistry->biology->
intelligence-> mathematics. So you can start with whatever you
think you understand. If this circle of explanation is big
enough to include everything, then I claim it's "virtuously"
circular.
Brent
"What is there? Everything! So what isn't there? Nothing!"
--- Norm Levitt, after Quine
Regarding your note about my Chapter 2, that's an interesting
point that he raises, and interestingly, I don't wholly disagree
with him that it is an integral feature of arithmetic that it is
axiomatically incomplete (though maybe I thought differently
when I wrote the book). Particularly, I don't think of it as a
"bug," but I don't necessarily think of it as a "feature"
either. I'm pretty neutral to it, and I feel like I was trying
to express the idea in my book that it reveals mostly how
theoretical,
as
opposed to real, mathematics is. I'm not sure about this "more
than a map" thing yet, as by "map" I just mean abstract way to
work with reality instead of reality itself and hadn't read more
into my
own
statement than that.
I would disagree with him, however, that it is related to the
hard problem of consciousness, I think, or perhaps it's better
to say that I'm very skeptical of such a claim. Brains are,
however
"immensely"
complex, finite things, and as such, I do not think that the
lack of a complete axiomatization of arithmetic is likely to be
integrally related to the hard problem of consciousness. Maybe I
just don't understand what he's getting at, though. Who knows?
I also tend to agree with you--in some senses--about the
ultrafinitists probably being right. My distinction is that I'm
fine with infinity as a kind of fiction that we play with or use
to make calculus/analysis more accessible. I certainly agree
with you that infinity probably shouldn't be taken too
seriously, particularly once they start getting weird and
(relatively) huge.
There's something interesting to think about, though, when it
comes to the ideas of some infinities being larger than others.
I was thinking a bit about it the other day, in fact. That seems
to be a necessary consequence of little more than certain
definitions on certain kinds of sets (with "infinite" perhaps
not even necessary here, using the finitists' "indefinite"
instead) and one-to-one correspondences.
Anyway, thanks again for the note.
Kindly,
James
On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 1:14 AM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net>
wrote:
After seeing your posts on Vic's avoid-L list, I ordered your
book. I'm generally inclined to see mathematics as a refinement
of language - or in your terms a "map", not to be confused with
the thing mapped. However I often argue with Bruno Marchal, a
logician and neo-platonist, who has a TOE based on computation
(Church-Turing) or number theory. I thought
you
book might help me. But I think Bruno would rightly object to
your Chapter 2. He considers it an important feature of
arithmetic that it
is
axiomatically incomplete, i.e. per Godel's theorem it is bigger
than what can be proven from the axioms. He takes this as a
feature, not a bug,
to
explain that if conscious thought is a computation this is why
it cannot fully explain itself; and that is why "the hard
problem" of
consciousness
is
hard. I think there are simpler, evolutionary explanations for
why consciousness does not include perception of brain
functions, but I think Bruno has a point that arithmetic is
bigger than what follows from
Peano's
axioms and so it is more than a map.
I'm inclined to say Peano's axioms already "prove too much" and
the ultrafinitists are right. Infinity is just a convenience to
avoid
saying
how big, and shouldn't be taken too seriously.
Brent Meeker
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