On 8/20/2017 9:23 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 20 Aug 2017, at 17:24, David Nyman wrote:



On 20 Aug 2017 2:46 p.m., "Bruno Marchal" <marc...@ulb.ac.be <mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>> wrote:


    On 19 Aug 2017, at 01:21, David Nyman wrote:

    On 18 August 2017 at 18:13, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be
    <mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>> wrote:


        On 18 Aug 2017, at 15:39, David Nyman wrote:

        He points at a mug and says that 'representations' (meaning
        numbers) aren't to be confused with things themselves.


        He confuses a number and a possible representation of a number.

        LIke many people confuse the (usual, standard) arithmetical
        reality with a theory of the arithmetical reality. Yet after
        Gödel we know that no theories at all can represent or
        encompass the whole of the arithmetical reality.

        It is not much different that confusing a telescope and a
        star, or a microscope and a bacteria, or a finger and a
        moon, or a number and a numeral ("chiffre" in french).
        But in math, it is quite frequent. In logic, such
        distinction are very important. In Gödel's proof, we need to
        distinguish a mathematical being, like the number s(0), the
        representation of the number s(0), which is the sequence of
        the symbol "s", "(", "0", ")" (and that is not a number, but
        a word), and the representation of the representation of a
        number, which, when we represent things in arithmetic will
        be something like
        2^3 * 3^4 * 5^5 *7^6, which will be some
        s(s(s(s(s(s(s(s(s(s(s(s(s(s(s( ....(0)...). (very long!).


        But what is the 'thing itself' at which he points?

        A mug. I guess.


    ​Just so.

    The question will be "what is a mug in itself". A materialist
    would say that it is a structured collection of atoms, but a
    mechanist has to say something like "a common pattern pointed at
    by some normal (in Gauss sense) machine sharing some long (deep)
    histories. Something like that.


Yeah, something like that. I enjoyed Frenkel's talk actually. I like his enthusiasm for mathematics. It's funny though he doesn't seem to appreciate his implicit assumptions, or indeed that he is in fact expressing a particular metaphysical position. Is math real? I mean, really real? Trouble is, people assume that the answer is obvious, whether they think it's yes or no.

We need only to agree on what we agree. The beauty of the Church's thesis, is that it entails by "theoremata" the existence of the emulation of all computations in elementary arithmetic.

(Just that fact, and computationalism, should make us doubt that we can take a primary physical reality for granted: it is the dream argument with a vengeance).

The question is not "is math real", but do you believe that 2+0= 2, and a bit of logic.

I do not claim that the whole of philosophy or theology can become science, but I do claim that if we assume mechanism, then by Church's thesis, philosophy and theology becomes a science, even in the usual empiricist sense.

There is something funny here. The theology of the machine is ultra-non-empiricist, as the mystical machine claims that the whole truth (including physics) is "in your head and nowhere else". ("you" = any universal machine). But that is what makes the machine theology testable, by comparing the physics in the head of any (sound) universal machine with what we actually observed.

Are you claiming that there is a one-to-one map between true statements in mathematics and what I experience?? The problem with everythingism is that one doesn't experience everything.


Math is real? Which math? I doubt that sincere people doubt arithmetic, and I have never heard of parents who would have taken their kids out of a school for the reason that hey have been taught that 2+2=4; neither in the Western nor Eastern worlds.

I doubt the infinity of standard arithmetic.


Now, for limit and real numbers it is much less obvious. here intutionist and classical philosophy diverge. With Mechanism, it is better to considered analysis (and eventually physics) as universal machine mind tools. Gödel's incompleteness justifies partially why the machine needs to invent infinities to better figure out themselves. Before Gödel, most mathematician, like Hilbert, were hoping that with the finite and the symbolic we could justify the consistency of the use of the infinities, but after Gödel we know that even with the infinities we cannot circumscribe and justify the consistency of the finite and the symbolic.

All the more reason to classify them as fiction - not part of the really real.

Brent

The root of the undecidability is the Turing-universality. With the conceptual discovery of the universal machine, we got the tools to understand that we have no idea what they are. Nor what they are capable of doing. A universal machine can defeat all effective theory about itself, and it knows already that its soul (first person) is not a machine.

So, to be clear: is *arithmetic* real? I think so. Fundamentally (up to the Turing equivalence).

Is analysis real, yes, but only as a a phenomenological simplification of the digital, which has still its laws. But here we have no Church thesis, and no real notion of "standard model". Should we teach infinitesimals whose consistency follows some work in non standard model of arithmetic? Should we use intuitionist analysis? with or without the intuitionist Church's thesis (not really related to the classical).

On RA, there is unanimity (among humans today).

On PA there is unanimity minus one (Nelson)

On Analysis, or set theories, there is no unanimity, but a clear classical "mainstream", and a lot of different, but easily related options reflecting taste and personal opinions.

I doubt less that 24 is composite than any assumption in physics, metaphysics, theology or whatever applied sciences. That 24 is composite is among the 3p notions which are the closest to the non communicable 1p certainty of consciousness here and now (the only non doubtable thing).

Bruno







David



    Bruno




    David​


        Bruno






        
https://futurism.com/the-most-important-question-underlying-artificial-general-intelligence-research-is-math-real/
        
<https://futurism.com/the-most-important-question-underlying-artificial-general-intelligence-research-is-math-real/>

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