On 2/27/2022 4:44 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
On Sunday, February 27, 2022 at 11:45:32 PM UTC+1 meeke...@gmail.com
wrote:
On 2/27/2022 12:59 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
On Sunday, February 27, 2022 at 8:50:02 PM UTC+1
meeke...@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/27/2022 8:43 AM, Tomas Pales wrote:
On Thursday, February 24, 2022 at 4:45:11 AM UTC+1
meeke...@gmail.com wrote:
This should be of interest to all the everythingists on
this list. I'd especially like to hear what Bruno
thinks of it. It's a bit expensive, so I may wait for
more reviews before I take it up.
/Birmingham-based philosopher Alastair Wilson has taken
up the Herculean task of putting modal realism and
many-worlds quantum theory together into a coherent,
unitary view of reality. The results of this effort have
been presented in several papers in recent years, and
are now assembled in this thought-provoking book. While,
as we will see, questions remain, Wilson has no doubt
managed to come up with ingenious new hypotheses and has
proposed solutions to existing problems and, more
generally, with a powerful new modal realist view. The
resulting perspective will certainly be of interest in
the coming years, especially for naturalistically
inclined philosophers, demanding that metaphysical
hypotheses be made as continuous with our best science
as possible./
https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/the-nature-of-contingency-quantum-physics-as-modal-realism/
From the review I take it that Wilson has missed the
intermediate kind of possibility, namely computability
which is between logical possibility and nomological
possibility.
Brent
I am not sure what is new here. Many-worlds interpretation
of QM is obviously an example of Lewis' modal realism in the
context of QM. As was discussed here some time ago, it may
not even involve splitting of worlds. That is, all the
quantum parallel worlds may be distinct worlds (objects)
even before a measurement; they are just exactly the same
before the measurement (exact copies of each other) and they
start to differ at the measurement event. A regularity in
the multiverse of these quantum worlds manifests in the fact
that the worlds start differing in proportions given by the
Born rule, based on the (same) state of the worlds at the
moment of measurement.
More generally about possible worlds or objects, I still see
no difference between a world that is logically possible
(consistent) and a world that "exists".
Really? It is logically possible that you don't exist. So
would the world without you have no difference from this world?
A world without me is possible (logically consistent). A world
with me is possible too, obviously. And so both worlds exist,
because they are both possible.
But they are certainly different. You tried to infer that they
must both exist because there is no difference between the one
with you, which exists by observation, and the one without you.
No, I talked about two exactly same worlds (copies), with all the same
properties, and I asked what it would even mean if one of them existed
and the other didn't.
A logically possible world is a world that is identical to
itself, that is, it has the properties it has and does not have
the properties it does not have. If two worlds have all the same
properties except the property of existence (one exists and the
other doesn't) what does it even mean?
That only shows that a given world must either exist or not
exist. Maybe only worlds with Tomas Pales in them exist. That's
a different property.
It shows that if a given world is possible, it doesn't make sense to
ask whether it exists. Because there is no difference between being
possible and existing.
And you know this last how:?
Because I see no difference between being possible and existing.
So I see no alternative to modal realism.
If we want to go into more details we may ask what properties a
world or object may have and based on that we may differentiate
between different kinds of worlds or objects, for example
spatiotemporal worlds versus worlds that don't have a temporal
or spatial structure. An important kind of property is relations
between objects (relational properties), and the most general
kind of relation is similarity, which holds between any two
objects and thus is a necessary kind of relation. It just means
that two objects have certain common properties and certain
different properties. Mathematics as the most general study of
relations explores the similarity relation as morphism in
category theory and has reduced it to the set membership
relation in set theory. Set theory is interesting to me in that
it grounds mathematics in concrete worlds made of collections
(sets), as opposed to abstract relations like numbers,
functions, symmetries etc.
But if all mathematically (structurally) and consistently
characterized worlds/objects exist, it seems surprising that we
live in a world with quite stable laws of physics that persist
in time (along the time dimension of spacetime). Since reality
is a mess of everything possible
"Possible" is a rather ill defined concept and "everything
possible" is even worse. "Logically possible" doesn't fix the
problem. Logic is about language and propositions. What is
logically possible depends on what rules of logic one adopts. Is
it logically possible that Sherlock Holmes companion is both John
Watson and James Watson? Does a contradiction imply everything?
By "possible" I always mean logically possible (consistent) - an
object is possible if it has the properties
Properties are things we invent to describe objects. It's a muddle
to imagine you can define objects by properties. Does my car have
the property of being insurable?
We need to define properties with precision in order to see if there
is any inconsistency between them. The ultimate level of precision is
mathematical precision where all relational properties are reduced to
set membership relations, thus reducing the structure of an object to
a pure set - that is, a set whose all members are themselves sets, all
members of its members are sets, and so on, down to empty sets or
maybe even without bottom.
So to know whether a world exist we must first reduce it's description
to mathematical relations between sets. Sets of what? What good is a
criterion that can never be checked.
that it has and doesn't have the properties that it doesn't have. In
other words, it is identical to itself. That's classical logic, and
the only kind of logic that makes sense to me.
Then I suggest you read some books by logicians.
Will they explain what is a circle that is not a circle, and similar
nonsense?
No, about whether a true proposition requires that its referents exist.
Whether all propositions follow from a contradiction. The scope of
quantifications... Whether you can quantify over relations. Try
https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-About-Logic-Introduction-Philosophy/dp/019289238X/ref=sr_1_1
I think you have an impoverished view of logic.
Brent
An object that is not what it is doesn't make sense to me. What's
the deal with James Watson? Is it an alternative name for John
Watson?
Conan Doyle couldn't keep his imaginary world consistent and in
some stories Holmes companion is James Watson and in some he's
John Watson. So I guess that world doesn't exist.
Well, if according to his description two different persons are the
same person then a world with such a person cannot exist.
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