On 03 May 2017, at 18:47, David Nyman wrote:
On 2 May 2017 11:18 p.m., "Brent Meeker" <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
On 5/2/2017 2:29 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 2 May 2017 9:57 p.m., "Brent Meeker" <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
On 5/2/2017 1:09 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 2 May 2017 7:21 p.m., "Brent Meeker" <meeke...@verizon.net>
wrote:
On 5/2/2017 1:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Your answer seems to be that physics can be an illusion of
digital thought, therefore primary physics is otiose. But
thought can't be a consequence of physics because....well you
just don't see how it could be.
Not at all. It cannot be because you need to give a role to the
primary matter which is not emulable by the UD, nor FPI-
recoverable.
The obvious "role" is that some things exist and some don't. I
don't know anyone who calls this "primary matter", but it's what
is not UD emulable.
But what are your grounds for discriminating which things exist
and which don't?
Empiricism.
That's a slogan not an explanation.
That's right - you asked for grounds.
I think you could be more helpful than this.
If anything, it strikes me that the history of human enquiry is
rather conducive to the view that whatever limits we try to impose
on "what exists" are in all likelihood destined soon to be
surpassed.
Actually it has been the reverse. Relativity places a limit on
speed, quantum mechanics places a limit on measurements, Goedel
found a limit on proofs. Laplace was the last physicist who
thought we could predict everything. We haven't been the center of
the universe for a long time.
Very selective. What about the string landscape, eternal inflation
or for that matter the CUH? Maybe you'll say that these are as yet
unproven hypotheses, but are you willing to say in principle​
they're barking up the wrong tree?
Except for eternal inflation, they aren't even developed enough to
be hypotheses. I'm willing to bet that they will imply limits on
what exists. Even CUH does that, it implies real numbers and
theories that assume them don't exist.
Sure, but my point is that all these ideas lead to a broader
ontology than you seemed to be suggesting: i.e the theoretical
recipe for what exists and what doesn't extends beyond the physics
we observe locally. But even comp doesn't claim that *everything*
exists. In fact its ontology is extremely restrictive.
You can say that. The ontology is 0, s(0); s(s(0)), s(s(s(0))), ...
together with the laws of addition an multiplication (which strictly
speaking is not part of the ontology, but that is a quibble at this
stage.
Note that we can choose a different ontology, because any terms of a
Turing universal theory would work: the theology (including physics as
a subbranch) does not depend on the formalism used for the ontology
(if it is not too much rich).
Bruno
In any case, I still don't see that you've made a convincing
argument for your "groundless" circular explanations.
It's not an argument - it's an observation that that's the way
explanations work.
Not all explanations. And in particular not ontological ones.
You mean the fundamental elements of a theory - whose existence
doesn't have an explanation. My idea of an explanation is one that
brings understanding - not just stops explaining.
So is mine. So is Bruno's. What's your point?
For example, based on your remarks above, you implicitly exclude
"non physical" computations from your ontology (not forgetting
what you said about ontology being theory dependent).
Not at all. I've never tried to make my "virtuous circle of
explanation" exhaustive. I generally include "mathematics" in it,
but just as indicator for all kinds of abstract, symbolic based
systems.
A theory explicitly based on a computational ontology includes
both physical and non physical. Of course you could go on to say
that a physical computer could compute anything computable; but in
that case we find ourselves at step 7 of the UDA and the putative
physical machine then takes on the aspect of Bruno's invisible
horses. Unless you want to say that the comp derivation of physics
is thereby merely contingently impossible.
My reservation about that argument is Bruno argues as if all the UD
has to do is reach some state and it will have instantiated his (or
someone's) consciousness. But then I ask myself, "Consciousness of
what?" He thinks the external world is a kind of shared illusion
of an equivalence class of "consciousness" states. This is like
the Boltzmann brain paradox without the solipism. The reasonable
way I can see such an equivalence class having a non-zero measure
is if the physics is computed - not just the conscious perceptions
of physics. Then the physics and consciousness are not different
ontologically, they are just different ways of organizing the
states (like Bertrand Russell's neutral monism).
Is this really different from what comp implies? Surely the
computation of the physics and its appearance are indeed two
different views of the same thing - 3p and 1p plural? As we
appeared to have agreed​ earlier, at the point where physical
computation and the substantive perception (aka reality) with which
it is entangled emerge in tandem, virtuous explanatory equilibrium
has been attained. But the difference in views is the key. The
former (aka 3p or in my parlance the view from nowhere) is the
ontology and the latter the epistemology it implies.
But so far there is nothing in Bruno's theory
Brent, There is no such thing as Bruno's theory. My theory is already
exposed in "The question of King Milinda", where "human" is explained
in term of a char. It is Descartes's mechanism, or a weakening of
Putnam's functionalism (it is "it exists n (functionalism is correct
at level n)"). Diderot called that philosophy "rationalism". It is
basically the idea that there is no magic in the working of our
bodies. The 3p local actions are enough to sustained the local
manifestation of the 1p beliefs and knowledge.
Then all what I say is that IF that theory is correct, THEN physics is
in the head of the universal machine (say), and so we can test/refute
it by comparing the observed physics and that machine's internal
physics. Then I got in the second part of the work the premise of
physics: the logic of measure one is a quantum logic.
that makes them "the same thing" every 1p thread of experience
could be unrelated to every other - there would be no
intersubjective agreement (or it would be of measure zero). I think
this is what he calls "the white rabbit" problem.
But this doesn't answer my empirical tequila test. Bruno replied
that the (physical) tequila just interfered with the (physical)
perception. But in that case the tequila would have no affect on
mathematical reasoning - but it does.
You lost me.
Have a few shots and then find the square root of 69696 in your
head. According to Bruno our physical being is only a way of
interacting with other physical things (like tequila), but for
knowledge and beliefs about numbers the physical is otiose.
Nonsense. You appear not to grasp the point that if comp is correct
then the computational mechanisms dominating our experience
(including our experience of mathematics) must those of the physics
we typically observe. Hence mathematical intuition or inference must
be inextricably entangled with its local physics (as neurocognition)
else comp is false. I think you systematically confuse Bruno's
interview with the machine with an unattained fully fledged theory
appropriate to creatures as psychologically complex as ourselves. At
this stage what is demanded is that the toy model explicate
otherwise inexplicable features of its putatively vastly more
developed but (by assumption) analogous counterpart. And of course
that it not lead, even at such an early stage, to brute
inconsistencies.
OK David. Not sure what Brent try to say.
Bruno
David
Brent
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