On Monday, February 24, 2020 at 7:15:40 AM UTC-6, John Clark wrote: > > On Sun, Feb 23, 2020 at 9:32 PM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com > <javascript:>> wrote: > > *> IMO, there's nothing mysterious about Bruno's definition of mechanism. >> It's what's generally believed by most physicists; namely, that everything >> in the universe can be explained by the interaction of particles (and >> waves), * > > > Or to say the same thing more simply, every event has a cause, there is no > logical reason that must be true but it's a good working assumption to > start with. All physicists think its true except at the quantum level, and > with 2 exceptions even religious people think it's true; the exceptions are > the Soul's actions and God's actions which they think are events without a > cause, which is the very definition of random. > > Yet in direct contradiction to that religious people are constantly > talking about the logical reasons, the causes, for God's actions. For > example they believe God made the hurricane hit the city BECAUSE he was > angry. Why was God angry? God was angry because of gay marriage. Why would > gay marriage make God angry? Because it's morally wrong. What makes > something morally wrong?..... It's unclear how religious people think this > chain of questions will terminate or even if they think it will terminate > at all, to tell the truth I don't think most have even given it any thought. >
In *Euthyphro* by Plato there is a dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro on whether the gods, or for our purposes I will use God, is truthful and virtuous because He follows truth and virtue or whether God makes it so. If God follows truth and virtue then God is subordinate to that and is then not all omnipotent. If on the other hand God creates truth and virtue then those are subject to the will and whim of a conscious being and thus not absolute. The issue leads to a sort of pardox. This was reasoned in the 5th century BCE, and to this day to tears a hole in any statement by religious people that they have "the Truth." I don't follow Bruno's ideas along these lines well. I can well enough understand how Loeb's theorem leads to semantics and a second order system that is beyond first order logic that is from a language-programming perspective purely syntactic. How this impacts physics is somewhat less clear. The best I can think of is with the Taoist issue with nothingness. Does nothingness exist? If it does exist then it is not really nothing, and if it does not exist then there must be something. The conclusion then is that nothingness is self-contradictory. From a physics perspective we do have something along those lines with a false vacuum that is unstable, which by symmetry breaking or tunneling transitions into a physical vacuum plus particles and radiation. The pure vacuum is unstable. LC > > >> Self-duplication is made possible by the Digital Mechanism. If you >>> agree that with self-duplication, >> >> > *> I don't. * > > > So you believe in the 18'th century idea of vitalism, the idea that > everything interesting about the universe is caused by a secret sauce that > science can never explain. But strangely you do believe you're the same > person you were a year ago even though the atoms you had in your body then > have all been replaced by new atoms. For reasons never made clear you think > that doesn't count. I must conclude that you don't believe in > self-duplication for emotional reasons not intelectual ones, the same > reason you don't believe in the Many Worlds quantum interpretation. > > *> **there's no way that arithmetic alone can CREATE space and time. * > > > There is no way arithmetic alone can create ANYTHING, but bizarrely Bruno > believes it can. That's why I say although he uses the word constantly I > have no idea what Bruno means by "mechanism". > > *> A computer can create "points" in a hypothetical grid, and various >> types of distance formulas, but it cannot* [...] > > > A computer is NOT "arithmetic alone", a computer is made of matter and > uses energy. Bruno is the one who thinks arithmetic alone can do things not > me, in fact he thinks it can do everything. > > * > **what's your definition of physicalism?* > > > I have none, I never use the word and have no use for it. > > John K Clark > -- 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/a28a3791-a594-47da-a4c0-8ecdbe462389%40googlegroups.com.
