On Thursday, July 18, 2019 at 10:18:38 PM UTC-5, Dan Sonik wrote: > > Bravo PGC. Very Well Said. > > Delusions of reality as based in a purely mathematical scheme will never > amount to a "theory of everything..." > > Just another quaint, historically bounded, and deeply ontologically > committed idea with absolutely no practical relevance, much like Thales' > commitment that "all is water" or Anaximander's idea of the "apeiron" as a > metaphysical absolute. Sounds great on paper... try to do something with > it... well, that's a Turing TarPit right there. > > And just a further comment to Bruno's constant use of "Aristotelian > assumption" of "primary matter." Can I have primary source citation, > please? From what I recall of my Aristotle, a fair bit of it, I can't even > once remember him talking about "matter" in the ordinary, "post-Cartesian" > sense of the term. And you know why? Because he didn't have that > distinction in his lexicon!!! In his metaphysics, he talks of > "particulars," not "matter" per se, unless you think this is based on his > idea of one of the four forms of causation. And he argued that all four > need to be present before a thing comes to be (efficient, formal, > teleological, final). Nowhere does he mention the very modern (i.e. > post-Descartes) idea of "matter" in this metaphysic. > > Please defend your claims philologically, and not by way of obscure > mathematical formula supposedly designed to lead us to some sort of > ultimate Platonic conclusion. And also not by way of convenient > redefinitions of common words (God, matter, machine) that leave most people > in a dust of confusion. (but maybe that's your intent?) > > I can already feel you writing... "but the hypothesis of mechanism > dictates that ... x must be y.... " ... "numbers must have dreams, and they > must be us... " the hypostases of the ultimate one talked about by plotinus > (which numbered 8) must be the only way if we assume mechanism... " > > ENOUGH! > > Your rhetoric and constant pompous references to your previous posts have > chased many great minds away from this list. (Craig Weinberg comes to > mind.) And I mostly come here to see John Clark constantly body slam you > with respect to the question of hardware implementation of computations... > which you never answer... like a true cultist... "Go back to step 3" -- > fuck step three. There are no matter duplicating machines. There is no > "absolute first person perspective"... referred to by a pronoun "I". And > even if there were a matter duplicating machine, it would have to be made > of "matter" (pace John Clark) and so couldn't simply just happen by virtue > of the mathematical formalism. (Remember Pythagoras? See where he ended up? > Not because what he said was true... because it was ANNOYINGLY FALSE) > Therefore, your mind experiment is done as far as practical consequences. > So what? Who cares? What are we even doing here? > > God bless John Clark for fighting this nonsense. > > Remember what this list was meant to do -- CULTIVATE THEORIES OF > EVERYTHING... NOT "Cultivate what conforms to Bruno's idea of a Theory of > Everything Is." > > And, please, no disrepect to any of the other participants on this thread. > I have followed you all for so long (10+) years that you are all family > (including Bruno, you silly bastard) > > I love the salutary conclusions that seem to emerge from your > speculations, Bruno, I really do... but so much effort has been dedicated > to trying to make you see that you have blindspots (Brent Meeker, John > Clark, Craig Weinberg) and you never modify your theory to cover them, you > only insist that they don't understand your genius plan. > > Let me ask you: if you are the only car traveling in a certain direction > (let's call it North) and you encounter multiple cars traveling at other > directions (namely, South), are the other guys driving in the wrong > direction? Or are you? > > And before anyone charges me of just dropping in uninvited, my claimed 10+ > years experience a lie, I have posted here before, in different guises. > I'll leave it up to the readers (if they're interested) in figuring out who > I am. > > Doesn't matter now, though, my anonymity is blown. > > Please be kind (or not, this is the internet, after all...) > > Anyway, I found it irresistible to drop in and let you all know I love you > all and this forum, and Bruno too for being so god damned STUBBORN!! But > it's looking like you might need to re evaluate some stuff? > > Go ahead, cut me up in the comments... > > >
o defend Thales, he was one of the ancient materialists, like the atomist materialists Democritus and Epicurus who defined matter differently. (Thales was a wave theorist vs. a particle theorist. :)) He may have been wrong about water: https://www.iep.utm.edu/thales/ *The problem of the nature of matter, and its transformation into the myriad things of which the universe is made, engaged the natural philosophers, commencing with Thales. For his hypothesis to be credible, it was essential that he could explain how all things could come into being from water, and return ultimately to the originating material. It is inherent in Thales's hypotheses that water had the potentiality to change to the myriad things of which the universe is made, the botanical, physiological, meteorological and geological states. * but Thales is better than today's physicists who are are really antimaterialists, like Sean Carroll: https://twitter.com/seanmcarroll/status/1151580183876362240 "I’m happy to be described as a monist. There aren’t multiple different kinds of things; *there is only the wave function of the universe*. As an emergent approximation it’s useful to characterize the wave function as describing *multiple worlds*." So for Sean Carroll, reality is a mathematical entity: a wave function. At least Thales believed in stuff (matter). @philipthrift -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/14a0d805-d795-4586-b20a-beb6ee2f7566%40googlegroups.com.
