On 05 Sep 2017, at 03:01, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 5/09/2017 1:03 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 04 Sep 2017, at 14:11, Bruce Kellett wrote:
Nobody can observe a metaphysical idea. You can observe matter,
and that is an evidence for matter, not for primary matter.
Primary means "not deducible" from something else.
Bruno, you are just playing with words. I observe matter - that is
evidence for matter, so the observation is primary,
What do you mean by "observation is primary"? I don't understand
what that could mean. Normally this assumes an observer and some
reality.
You ignore a lot of 18th and 19th century philosophy.
?
The British empiricist school spent a lot of time discussing the
primacy of observation, leading eventually to positivism, which
insisted that the only meaningful statements were those that could
be reduced to elementary observational statements. This might not
have been a treeibly successful philosophy, but at least it is
understandable.
Which has lead to Vienna positivism, which is self-defeating. I
explain this in detail in my long french text, but that would be just
a distraction here.
Note that I am an empiricist in the more modern Popperian sense.
Yes, I say the physical reality is all in your head (with "you"
equated to any universal number), but the criterion of verification is
still empirical, despite what we see is a dream.
It is like when we become lucid in a dream, and realize from dream
clues that we are dreaming.
If we are machine, then we can show that the observable must be dreams
obeying to this and that laws, and then we do the meaurement, and find
that indeed our physical reality obeys to those laws of dreams/self-
reference.
not the matter. But then I assume matter and deduce that I will
observe it - so the matter becomes primary.
Well, that is not so easy. The whole point of the UDA consists in
showing that EVEN if we assume primary matter, it remains out of my
consciousness.
But that proof fails to convince.
At which step?
Also, I talk on primary matter. To believe in primary matter you
have, by definition, the belief that the apperance of matter and
its law are not deducible from something else.
No, you only have to believe in the existence, for example, of the
particles of the Standard Model of particle physics and their
interactions -- the basic Lagrangian of the theory is all that is
required. Everything folloows from that, so that is primary.
Everything physical follows from that. But it fails on consciousness
(that is why materialist when honest try to eliminate it).
Physics just fails, and even does not aboard, consciousness.
Then mechanism is testable by making the physical derivable from
arithmetic. So let us do the derivation and the measurement before
concluding.
You claim arithmetic is primary, because 2+2=4 independent of you
and me.
... and that we cannot derive it from something simpler. We can
derive it only from something Turing-equivalent.
You again ignore the thousands of years of human cultural history
that led from counting rocks to the Turing machine. That was a
process of deduction and refinement par excellence.
You confuse arithmetic and the human history of science. You would
mock a neurophysiologist by telling him that all his talk on brain is
biased because he is using a brain.
But I can deduce arithmetic from observation,
Observation of something which you infer to be Turing equivalent
with numbers.
making observation primary again,
?
and arithmetic merely derivative. But then I assume that matter is
primary - I can then deduce both observation and
arithmetic.
No, by UDA you will miss "observation". It is the whole point.
Observation is a conscious experience, and with mechanism, you need
to put some non-Turing emulable magic in some stuff to select the
computations which exists in arithmetic.
I do not assume mechanism. Why should I prejudge the outcome by
assuming I already have all the answers?
Then you lost me.
What do you assume? What is you theory? If you assume a physical
universe (automatically primary if you add that we need to assume it),
then that is fine, but mechanism is wrong, indeed, and we are just
working in a different theory. But I still do not know which one you
are assuming.
It is all a matter of choice. You choose to make arithmetic primary,
I study the consequence of the mechanist assumption. There is no
way to define what a digital machine is without assuming arithmetic
(or Turing-equivalent).
but you can't prove that this is necessarily the case.
yes, I can. I can prove that if you suppress any one axiom in RA:
0 ≠ (x + 1)
((x + 1) = (y + 1)) -> x = y
x = 0 v Ey(x = y + 1)
x + 0 = x
x + (y + 1) = (x + y) + 1
x * 0 = 0
x * (y + 1) = (x * y) + x
then I cannot retrieve it, and in all case, I lost Turing
universality.
Where did these axioms of RA come from if not from millennia of
experience of the real world? Or were they handed down from on high,
inscribed on tablets of stone?
History is interesting, but the time taken by human to find a theory
does not make the object ofthe theory appearing when the human got
that theory.
I could say that the big-bang is born very recently, from the
biochemistry of the brain of the chanoine Lemaître and Hubble's
observations!
But once we grasp the big-bang, we might accept that hupmans have
nothing to play in its occurence. Likewise, the human might have taken
a long time to get the Robinson axioms, but that does not change that
once grasped we can accept that human, space and time have nothing to
do with them.
I can assume that quarks and electrons, etc, are primary,
Just show the theory.
The Langrangian of the standard model is the theory. It is well-
understood.
But it fails on the mind-body problem.
The quantum Lagrangian does not fail on the mind-body problem (with
Everett), but only if it is the unique arithmetical solution, and
things goes well, we have already extracted the quantum, and got
evidence that the Lagrangian will follow, and not be geographical. It
will be part of the laws, and we get the G* gift: an extension of the
Lagrangian on the non communicable part of the experience, i.e. the
qualia.
I have not see one set of axioms capable of making electrons or
quarks primary.
It is not a matter of axioms. If 'primary' is what everything else
is derived from, then the 'primary' is not deducible from anything
else, axioms or not!
OK. But keep in mind that I assume mechanism, and the point is that in
that case, I ahve to derive the quark from elementary arithmetic
(which includes the number theology and physics).
If your theory is the assumption of the quantum standard model, what
you need to do is to show me the non computationalist theory of mind
and how you relate it to your theory. We already know by UDA that your
theory of mind must be non mechanist.
I have seen only an attempt to do so with strings (by Schmidhuber).
but it was a really "toy string theory" (nevertheless quite
interesting per se).
The axiomatization of physics is largely a failed enterprise. String
theory is a failed attempt at a fundamental theory -- I have nothing
to do with it. But why should everything conform to your standards
of axiomatized logic? There are more things in heaven and earth,
[Bruno], than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
I assume mechanism. I cannot dream on things not dreamable by
universal machine.
And wit mechanism we get already a complete explanation why both
matter and consciousness are not turing emulable, and go beyond the
machine's dream, which assess your point, btw.
and else follows from this. Maybe I can't prove that either, but I
have a hell of a lot more evidence for the possibility of deriving
arithmetic from the existence of matter
I am not sure we have any evidence of how to derive number from
anything physical or Turing equivalent.
Only millennia of experience......
The point is logical, factual. History has nothing to do with it, see
above.
Provide the theory and the deduction. If you can derive arithmetic
from it, you will just prove it to be Turing equivalent, but with a
lot more assumptions, and with the digital mechanist mind-body
problem unsolved.
I don't want to solve the mechanist mind-body problem since I do not
accept mechanism.
I am not suppose to learn about any personal opinion. You are not
supposed to be able to guess mine. When we do science we propose
theory and verification criteria.
than you have of proving the existence of quarks from pure
arithmetic. The evidence is all in my favour.
You have not provided any evidence. You have not provided any
theory actually. And you are refuted by UDA if you claim that by
assuming matter you can derive that you can observe it. For this
you need a theory of matter and a theory of mind and an explanation
of the relation in between.
Emergence and supervenience are all that is required.
OK. The problem is that with non-mechanism, this becomes very unclear.
Non-mechanism is almost equivalent with "and now some magic happens".
If you could be more precise, and give the verification criteria.
Note that if Z1* violates the phsyical reality, we will have some
evidence for your non-mechanist theory, but up to now, mechanism fits
with the facts, and is the only theory which explains the qualia. What
is your non-mechanist explanations? The will of God? Blessed water or
what?
But the theories of physics derived from arithmetic explains the
quantum, the symmetries, and is totally definite, so is completely
testable. If you succeed in showing it is violated by the quack
existence, then we can say that we have an evidence to doubt
digital mechanism, but that is premature.
Yes, if your theory works it will explain everything. But that is
the question.....
My point is that mechanism is incompatible with (weak) materialism,
and that the evidences available today favors much more mechanism than
materialism, forcing us to come back to Pythagoras and Plato, and take
some distance with Aristotle theology.
Bruno
Bruce
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