Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

[Alberto G. Corona]

2012/7/10 meekerdb 

>  On 7/10/2012 10:49 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
>
> There is something deeply religious in many scientifics in his quest to
> expand their Truth. And there is also something very philosophical indeed.
> But they ignore both. They ignore their beliefs and their positivistic
> metaphisics, born in the disputes between nominalists and realists during
> the middle ages. And there is no stronger faith than the faith that see
> himself as aboslute truth about everithing, that ignores its shorcomings
> and its history, and that show contempt or even denial of entire parts of
> the reality.
>
>  This furious  scientist proselitism us understandable and it is
> even healthy, because the idea of a objective scientist with no emotions
> is hypocrite.
>
>  That shows once again that faith is something a society can not live
> without,. because faith in ultimate, unexplained truths is the prerequisite
> for any coordinated social action. And the truths upon which a society
> build itself is its most valuable treasure.
>
>  This seems of topic, but I suggest something to discuss here: shared
> human conscience. We live in a shared virtual conscience. It is shared
> because we share the context and it is virtual because it depends in the
> context of shared beliefs: beliefs in the myths and histories that created
> our country, beliefs in some moral laws, beliefs in the prestige of some
> special humans: priests, scientifics, political figures of the past and the
> present.   We can not verify our beliefs because we have no time and no
> knowledge to do so. So we resort to faith. faith in authority: being
> scientific, political or anything. common faith and legitimated authority
> is necessary to live with others and thus whenever a society is build, it
> needs it.
>
>
> I think you are confounding faith and trust.
>

Trust is a stress reduction word, a secularization form of faith. Just like
fraternity instead of  charity (that means "love"). it was introduced in
Europe after the French revolution.

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=faith%2Ctrust&year_start=1720&year_end=2012&corpus=0&smoothing=3

The german people in the 30´s had faith or trust on Hitler (and here comes
Hitler again).  It does not matter.You can see that the relation of trust
with reasonable facts is less tan tenable. The "duck" epistemology of trust
is the same as faith. The etimology  of trust in many languages: (allmost
all the latin derived languages) is the same as faith. because the faith is
the essence of trust. you trust your friends because you belive that you
know how your friends act and thing. The mental  operation of trust and
faith are the same when you lose your faith in something you loose your
trust on it and viceversa.

Moreover, people have not infinite abilities. they are limited because our
brain is limited and not general purpose. we have a mental organ for
keeping and changing beliefs and trust or whathever you may call it (let´s
call it social capital habilities). For that matter ideologies and
religions are the same in psychological terms. A group of ecologists
singing in a Al Gore´s conference  and a group of christians like me
staring at the window of Vatican have the same brain areas excited. But
also an ignorant who praise science looking at Stephen Hawkins.

 A phisicist ignorant in common law of philosophy or History or Morals, or
game theory or evolutionary psychology or Theology or ignorant in our
traditions and now they came to be not only is sure that he would  say
nonsense when talking about things that really matter for our lives, but
for sure it  could become as dangerous as the anthropologist that gave
support to Hitler. knowledge in a limited field does not mean knowledge in
what is important.

Hawking is simply going beyond what its knowledge authorizes him to talk
about.  People tend to extrapolate its self confidence from one field to
another. But what is worst, our mind can not distribute our trusts, we tend
to grant trust to people no matter what they talk about, specially when
most of our limited knowledge comes from people like him. That is part of
the economy of computation and our tendency to form closed groups of mutual
trust based on common beliefs to optimize our social capital.  Upon a group
is stablished and belief is consolidates, we the humans are in disposition
to defend it with lies, rejection of facts and violence. No matter how
"scientific" of true (all believe that they are) is the set of beliefs.
That is the nature of our evolved mind.

So be careful.





>   Trust is something society, and all of us, cannot live without.  But
> trust doesn't mean belief without evidence.  As Ronald Reagan famously
> said, "Trust, but verify."  Faith means trusting and never trying to
> verify.  That we can live without.  We have trust in authorities who have
> proven trustworthy in the past.  We bet on many things even though we never
> have certain knowledge, but that d

Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

[Stephen P. King]

On 7/7/2012 1:40 PM, John Clark wrote:
On Sat, Jul 7, 2012  Evgenii Rudnyi > wrote:


> Hawking and Mlodinow start with the statement that free will is
illusion


If they said that, and I don't recall that they did, they were being 
much too kind in equating the "free will" noise to something as 
concrete as illusion.


> An interesting question is however, where resulting visual
mental concepts are located.


I find it about as interesting as asking where "big" or the number 
eleven is located and shows the same profound misunderstanding of the 
situation on so many different levels that it's hard to know where to 
begin.


“/Today we know that helium and lithium, atoms whose nuclei
contain two and three protons, were also primordially
synthesized, in much smaller amounts, when the universe was
about 200 seconds old/.”

> However, is this knowledge or a belief? Assume that there
was Big Bang described by the M-theory as supposed by the book.

The Big Bang does not need anything as exotic as M-theory to make that 
prediction, from just humdrum nuclear physics, the same ideas that 
made the H-bomb, we can calculate that if the universe started from 
100% hydrogen, the simplest element, that was at several hundred 
billion degrees Centigrade then in about 200 seconds as a result of 
fusion reactions you'd have 74.9% Hydrogen 24.9% Helium and .01% 
deuterium and 10^-10 % Lithium, and you can calculate that in the in 
13.7 bullion years since then these percentages should have changed 
very little, and when know that these are exactly the observed values 
we see today. This is far too good a agreement for it to be coincidence.


 > It well might be that philosophers are less informed about the
M-theory but


Forget M-theory, most professional philosophers are totally ignorant 
about ANY of the huge philosophical developments that have happened in 
the last 150 years; they know nothing about Quantum Mechanics or 
Relativity or the profound works of Godel or Turing, they know that 
DNA has something to do with heredity but could not tell you exactly 
what or how it works, they don't even know it's digital;  they've 
heard of Darwin but have only the haziest understanding of what he 
said and have even less interest in it; maybe they know the Universe 
is expanding but the knowledge that it's accelerating hasn't trickled 
down to them yet because that was only discovered 15 years ago and 
they're slow learners; they don't even know that light is a wave of 
electric and magnetic fields or understand simple classical mechanics 
and prefer to talk about the worst physicist who ever lived, 
Aristotle. In short most modern philosophers are philosophical 
ignoramuses.


> In the book, there are many statements against religion.


Thank God!

> comments in Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow,

“Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy
is dead. 



Philosophy isn't dead but professional philosophers are as good as, 
they haven't made a contribution to our understanding of how the world 
works in centuries, scientists and mathematicians have had to pick up 
the slack.


  John K Clark


Hi,

My response to this thread is to reference this interview: 
http://simplycharly.com/wittgenstein/jaakko_hintikka_interview.php ;-)


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Stephen

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
~ Francis Bacon

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Re: Oh no!

[Stephen P. King]

Hi John,

What I have been doing is exploring the soft underbelly of physics, 
those sets of "truths" that are just assumed to be true. For example, I 
have become convinced that a lot of the difficulties in physics are due 
to its assumption that "substance" is primitive. There is even an entire 
article in the online Stanford encyclopedia 
 on the notion of 
substance and therein is laid out the problems for all to see, 
never-the-less science staggers on, assuming that "stuff"  is the 
explanation to every phenomena. The Higgs boson is, IMHO, yet another 
example of the "stuff" mentality. The alternative is to consider that 
"process" is primitive; that all forms of "stuff" are, ultimately, the 
result of some underlying process; there is no such thing as primitive 
stuff!
You can see how this kinda dovetails with Bruno's anti-materialism 
and yet he seems to just fall over into "immaterial" stuff. :_( With 
process we can get some interesting hints of answers to many of these 
questions that vex us so such as the nature of time and even 
consciousness. Logic is recast in terms of interactive game theory (ala 
Jaakko Hintikka)  and 
physics becomes a question of how spaces evolve relative to each other 
(this is already been understood every since Lagrange and Hamilton).


It all really boils down to "belief systems" as you wisely point 
out. :-)


On 7/10/2012 4:28 PM, John Mikes wrote:

Stephen, a 'belief system' may be reassuring.
I spent a lifetime in active R&D exercising conventional science, till 
I lost by belief in many figments of it. It came gradually like one's 
losing a religious faith: trying to THINK 'outside the box' and 
getting nowhere. (First reflection: I am poorly informed and my 
conclusions are inaccurate).
Then the extension of our worldview into items still unknown, as 
exemplified by the gradual enrichment in our epistemic inventory over 
the millennia. We are NOT at the perfection's end...Some more yet has 
got to come and I braced myself for surprises.
I cannot recall when and where, but allegedly prof. Higgs repealed his 
work at his old age - how sorry it would be if true.
The observations upon which science is based supply only explained 
information, accurate and complete to the level of the 'era'. Then 
explanations are applied based on assumptions, presumptions, nth level 
consequences of such and sometimes recalled/changed.
Bruno's and my agnosticism are based on some basic 'faith' to start 
from: his from numerals, arithmetic (I think) mine from a never 
learnable infinite complexity of which we only know a portion.
Everybody has a personal choice whether to include the Higgs boson in 
his/her personal worldview. And there are many others...

John M


On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Stephen P. King 
mailto:stephe...@charter.net>> wrote:


Say that it is not so!


http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428428/higgs-boson-may-be-an-imposter-say-particle/?ref=rss





--
Onward!

Stephen

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
~ Francis Bacon

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Re: Oh no!

[John Mikes]

Stephen, a 'belief system' may be reassuring.
I spent a lifetime in active R&D exercising conventional science, till I
lost by belief in many figments of it. It came gradually like one's losing
a religious faith: trying to THINK 'outside the box' and getting nowhere.
(First reflection: I am poorly informed and my conclusions are inaccurate).
Then the extension of our worldview into items still unknown, as
exemplified by the gradual enrichment in our epistemic inventory over the
millennia. We are NOT at the perfection's end...Some more yet has got to
come and I braced myself for surprises.
I cannot recall when and where, but allegedly prof. Higgs repealed his work
at his old age - how sorry it would be if true.
The observations upon which science is based supply only explained
information, accurate and complete to the level of the 'era'. Then
explanations are applied based on assumptions, presumptions, nth level
consequences of such and sometimes recalled/changed.
Bruno's and my agnosticism are based on some basic 'faith' to start from:
his from numerals, arithmetic (I think) mine from a never learnable
infinite complexity of which we only know a portion.
Everybody has a personal choice whether to include the Higgs boson in
his/her personal worldview. And there are many others...

John M




On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

> Say that it is not so!
>
> http://www.technologyreview.**com/view/428428/higgs-boson-**
> may-be-an-imposter-say-**particle/?ref=rss
>
> --
> Onward!
>
> Stephen
>
> "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
> ~ Francis Bacon
>
>
> --
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> group/everything-list?hl=en
> .
>
>

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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

[meekerdb]

On 7/10/2012 12:38 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
Hence according to the authors, the M-theory governs absolutely everything including 
social sciences. But I am afraid that this is not what you would expect. 


Why would you not expect a theory-of-everything to include the behavior of people?  Note 
that 'govern' does not imply 'predictable'.


Brent

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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 10.07.2012 19:49 Alberto G. Corona said the following:

There is something deeply religious in many scientifics in his quest
to expand their Truth. And there is also something very philosophical
indeed. But they ignore both. They ignore their beliefs and their
positivistic metaphisics, born in the disputes between nominalists
and realists during the middle ages. And there is no stronger faith
than the faith that see himself as aboslute truth about everithing,
that ignores its shorcomings and its history, and that show contempt
or even denial of entire parts of the reality.

This furious  scientist proselitism us understandable and it is even
healthy, because the idea of a objective scientist with no emotions
is hypocrite.

That shows once again that faith is something a society can not live
without,. because faith in ultimate, unexplained truths is the
prerequisite for any coordinated social action. And the truths upon
which a society build itself is its most valuable treasure.

This seems of topic, but I suggest something to discuss here: shared
human conscience. We live in a shared virtual conscience. It is
shared because we share the context and it is virtual because it
depends in the context of shared beliefs: beliefs in the myths and
histories that created our country, beliefs in some moral laws,
beliefs in the prestige of some special humans: priests, scientifics,
political figures of the past and the present.   We can not verify
our beliefs because we have no time and no knowledge to do so. So we
resort to faith. faith in authority: being scientific, political or
anything. common faith and legitimated authority is necessary to live
with others and thus whenever a society is build, it needs it.

And the assault of the foundational social truths and the core
beliefs of the people is central for any battle for power

Do the  hawking Theory of everything says something about this? I´m
soure, because it is about everyhing, Isn´t?


Well, it depends. They say

“It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is 
determined by physical law, so it seems that we are no more than 
biological machines and that free will is just an illusion.”


Hence according to the authors, the M-theory governs absolutely 
everything including social sciences. But I am afraid that this is not 
what you would expect.


Evgenii
--
http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/07/philosophy-is-dead.html

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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 10.07.2012 18:03 John Clark said the following:

On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 1:59 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi
wrote:



I do not not understand in this respect your analogy with chess.



You may know all the rules of chess but that does not mean you know
what all the complex interactions those rules could lead to, and that
is why you are not a chess grandmaster despite knowing the rules of
the game. And even if a Theory of Everything existed and even if
every high school student understood it that would still not be the
end of science because all the initial conditions would still need to
be found, and even more important all the astronomically, possibly
infinitely, large number complex interactions would also be unknown.
I don't see how a Theory of Everything would help you much in
meteorology or biology or poetry, those things are too complex for
that approach.


I understand but the question in principle still remains. Who play the 
chess, I or the M-theory?


Evgenii

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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 10.07.2012 09:47 Bruno Marchal said the following:




...


The whole of the human sciences is perverted since theology get out
of the academy. Philosophy is often just a "religious" reaction to
institutionalized "religion". God id dead, said Nietzsche, so ...
what do we do?


In Germany theology still belongs to universities. What I like is that 
you will find as a department of theoretical theology as well as a 
department of practical theology.


The lectures of Maartin Hoenen on philosophy are attended also be 
theologians and it makes it even more enjoyable.


Evgenii

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Oh no!

[Stephen P. King]

Say that it is not so!

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428428/higgs-boson-may-be-an-imposter-say-particle/?ref=rss 



--
Onward!

Stephen

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
~ Francis Bacon


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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

[meekerdb]

On 7/10/2012 10:49 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
There is something deeply religious in many scientifics in his quest to expand their 
Truth. And there is also something very philosophical indeed. But they ignore both. They 
ignore their beliefs and their positivistic metaphisics, born in the disputes between 
nominalists and realists during the middle ages. And there is no stronger faith than the 
faith that see himself as aboslute truth about everithing, that ignores its shorcomings 
and its history, and that show contempt or even denial of entire parts of the reality.


This furious  scientist proselitism us understandable and it is even healthy, because 
the idea of a objective scientist with no emotions is hypocrite.


That shows once again that faith is something a society can not live without,. because 
faith in ultimate, unexplained truths is the prerequisite for any coordinated social 
action. And the truths upon which a society build itself is its most valuable treasure.


This seems of topic, but I suggest something to discuss here: shared human conscience. 
We live in a shared virtual conscience. It is shared because we share the context and it 
is virtual because it depends in the context of shared beliefs: beliefs in the myths and 
histories that created our country, beliefs in some moral laws, beliefs in the prestige 
of some special humans: priests, scientifics, political figures of the past and the 
present.   We can not verify our beliefs because we have no time and no knowledge to do 
so. So we resort to faith. faith in authority: being scientific, political or anything. 
common faith and legitimated authority is necessary to live with others and thus 
whenever a society is build, it needs it.


I think you are confounding faith and trust.  Trust is something society, and all of us, 
cannot live without.  But trust doesn't mean belief without evidence.  As Ronald Reagan 
famously said, "Trust, but verify."  Faith means trusting and never trying to verify.  
That we can live without.  We have trust in authorities who have proven trustworthy in the 
past.  We bet on many things even though we never have certain knowledge, but that doesn't 
mean we have no knowledge or that we should not test our knowledge.




And the assault of the foundational social truths and the core beliefs of the people is 
central for any battle for power


Exactly what happens when beliefs are faith and are divorced from empirical test - then 
all that remains is a struggle for power to impose arbitrary beliefs to be held on faith.


Brent



Do the  hawking Theory of everything says something about this? I´m soure, because it is 
about everyhing, Isn´t?




2012/7/7 Bruno Marchal mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>>


On 07 Jul 2012, at 15:31, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

My comments to Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, 
especially
to the statement from the book

“Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is 
dead.
Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, 
particularly
physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery 
in our
quest for knowledge.”

http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/07/philosophy-is-dead.html



I am not so much in favor of "professional philosophers", which does not 
mean that
some of them do good ... science (like Maudlin, Slezak, even McGuin: it is 
real
reasoning).

But that statement looks like the blind arrogance of physics, which ignores 
the mind
body problem systematically for years.

Consciousness might be the grain of sand which will remind us that we might 
try to
be a bit more modest.

To say that scientists have become the bearer of the knowledge quest is a 
truism
becoming false when the scientist put a problem under the rug.

Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ 




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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

[Alberto G. Corona]

There is something deeply religious in many scientifics in his quest to
expand their Truth. And there is also something very philosophical indeed.
But they ignore both. They ignore their beliefs and their positivistic
metaphisics, born in the disputes between nominalists and realists during
the middle ages. And there is no stronger faith than the faith that see
himself as aboslute truth about everithing, that ignores its shorcomings
and its history, and that show contempt or even denial of entire parts of
the reality.

This furious  scientist proselitism us understandable and it is
even healthy, because the idea of a objective scientist with no emotions
is hypocrite.

That shows once again that faith is something a society can not live
without,. because faith in ultimate, unexplained truths is the prerequisite
for any coordinated social action. And the truths upon which a society
build itself is its most valuable treasure.

This seems of topic, but I suggest something to discuss here: shared human
conscience. We live in a shared virtual conscience. It is shared because we
share the context and it is virtual because it depends in the context of
shared beliefs: beliefs in the myths and histories that created our
country, beliefs in some moral laws, beliefs in the prestige of some
special humans: priests, scientifics, political figures of the past and the
present.   We can not verify our beliefs because we have no time and no
knowledge to do so. So we resort to faith. faith in authority: being
scientific, political or anything. common faith and legitimated authority
is necessary to live with others and thus whenever a society is build, it
needs it.

And the assault of the foundational social truths and the core beliefs of
the people is central for any battle for power

Do the  hawking Theory of everything says something about this? I´m soure,
because it is about everyhing, Isn´t?



2012/7/7 Bruno Marchal 

>
> On 07 Jul 2012, at 15:31, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>
>  My comments to Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow,
>> especially to the statement from the book
>>
>> “Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is
>> dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science,
>> particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of
>> discovery in our quest for knowledge.”
>>
>> http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/07/**philosophy-is-dead.html
>>
>
>
> I am not so much in favor of "professional philosophers", which does not
> mean that some of them do good ... science (like Maudlin, Slezak, even
> McGuin: it is real reasoning).
>
> But that statement looks like the blind arrogance of physics, which
> ignores the mind body problem systematically for years.
>
> Consciousness might be the grain of sand which will remind us that we
> might try to be a bit more modest.
>
> To say that scientists have become the bearer of the knowledge quest is a
> truism becoming false when the scientist put a problem under the rug.
>
> Bruno
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~**marchal/ 
>
>
>
>
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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 1:59 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi  wrote:


> > I do not not understand in this respect your analogy with chess.


You may know all the rules of chess but that does not mean you know what
all the complex interactions those rules could lead to, and that is why you
are not a chess grandmaster despite knowing the rules of the game. And even
if a Theory of Everything existed and even if every high school student
understood it that would still not be the end of science because all the
initial conditions would still need to be found, and even more important
all the astronomically, possibly infinitely, large number complex
interactions would also be unknown.  I don't see how a Theory of Everything
would help you much in meteorology or biology or poetry, those things are
too complex for that approach.

  John K Clark

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Socratus: Metaphysics ( science and religion)

[socra...@bezeqint.net]

Socratus: Metaphysics ( science and religion)
==.
Physics and Religion:
a) T=0K
b) c/d=pi, R/N=k, E/M=c^2, h=0, c=0
Mathematics and Religion:
i^2= -1, e^ipi= -1
Biology and Religion: 
Vitalism 
Practice and Religion: 
Meditation, Parapsychology.
==.
Israel Socratus

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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

[Bruno Marchal]

On 09 Jul 2012, at 22:01, John Mikes wrote:


Bruno, thanks for your 'views' expressed to Evgeniy below.
"...Why people believe..."  I think we agreed that no such thing in  
our access as a Theory of Everything (omniscience missing) and the  
figments scientists believe IN are fables.


Probably. In which theory? Or if you prefer: in which fables?



I apologize for writing in brief "Nature" and not as I usually do:  
"the existence, nature, the world, you name it..."


That might be the object of research. Assuming some well precise  
"fable".




and for 'humans' in a similar sense, abbreviated from something  
like: "the portion of the infinite complexity we have actually   
conscious access to..." (and I am not sure if 'we' - 'you? - have  
access to all details of other Loebian machines or jumping bugs how  
THEY exercise mental functions akin to our thinking in this  
restricted format we apply as our present life (please: don't ask!)


The point is that if you accept comp, then you can prove that all  
correct entities will obeys to the same laws of mind as very simple  
Löbian machine that we can undertand from the outside in some semi- 
complete way, meaning we can many positive things about them, even if  
we can't prove many negative things.
It is a bit like we can understand that a human cells obeys similar  
laws than bacteria, so that we can learn things on animals and plants  
by studying first the bacteria, which are more simple.





However I barge in 'asking': what is "rationally"? your word  
(machine) theology is just another name. If you copy the (religious/ 
philosophical) theology, we are not ahead and if you presume the  
infinite capabilities of the 'ultimate' Loebian than we don't  
(can't) understand the term.


All those entities have finite capabilities, or *potentially* (only)  
infinite one. "rationally" means that the machine
believes in some logic and laws (enough to make it universal in Turing  
sense).




(Your last par is a 'human'(!) impersonation of a machine.


This is a John-Mikean impersonation of me.

I have no clue why you put *your* boundary on the *human*. I am also a  
mammal, a living earth creature, a Löbian number (perhaps, if comp is  
true), a divine word (as a consequence of comp), a universal number,  
etc.




Just thinking


Just thinking too :)

Bruno



JohnM

On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 9:16 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


On 08 Jul 2012, at 19:29, John Clark wrote (to Evgenii Rudnyi)

If you want to understand why people are the way they are I don't  
think the Theory-of-Everything would help you much, you'd do much  
better studding Evolutionary Biology, neurology, or computer science.


Yes, computer science might help to understand why people are the  
way they are. But computer science, the theory of, and by,   
universal machines, already must explain, assuming comp, why people  
believe in fermions and bosons, making it a theory of everything, or  
at least a good candidate for it, especially if you take into  
account computer science *and* computer's computer science (that is,  
what computer can guess or can experience without ever being able to  
justified rationally: what I like to call "machine's theology, or  
"Tarski minus Gödel").


If a machine postulates comp, which by definition is true for her,  
she can already justify rationally, using her bet in comp, why she  
has beliefs that she cannot justify rationally. Comp itself  
constitutes such a belief.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/




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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

[Bruno Marchal]

On 09 Jul 2012, at 19:52, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:


On 07.07.2012 21:54 Bruno Marchal said the following:


On 07 Jul 2012, at 15:31, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:


My comments to Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard
Mlodinow, especially to the statement from the book

“Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy
is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in
science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers
of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.”

http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/07/philosophy-is-dead.html



I am not so much in favor of "professional philosophers", which does
not mean that some of them do good ... science (like Maudlin, Slezak,
even McGuin: it is real reasoning).


I find philosophy useful as a database of different way of thinking.  
It helps not to invent a bicycle again.


In many universities, philosophy is literature. When done modestly it  
can be very interesting. But this can also be used to make, not  
literature, but series of arguments from authority considered as  
answering all questions and thinking at our place.


In my youth philosophy was marxism, not presented as a theory  
(hypothesis) but as the only right solution to all problems, and you  
were treated as crackpot if you dare to have a slight air of  
skepticism about that. It was "religion" in the pejorative sense of  
the word.


The word "philosophy" is just not well defined as a field. It looks  
often just like a boundary inviting you to abandon critical thinking  
and the scientific attitude (modesty with respect to the truth we  
search) and it leads to idolatry with respect to person, and  
dismissing with respect to ideas.


The whole of the human sciences is perverted since theology get out of  
the academy. Philosophy is often just a "religious" reaction to  
institutionalized "religion". God id dead, said Nietzsche, so ... what  
do we do?


Bruno






Evgenii

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Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

[Bruno Marchal]

On 09 Jul 2012, at 19:45, meekerdb wrote:


On 7/9/2012 10:33 AM, John Clark wrote:


On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 11:26 AM, meekerdb   
wrote:

> How do you derive fermions and bosons from comp?

I don't know how to derive fermions and bosons from nothing but  
arithmetic but you can do the next best thing. If the Schrodinger  
wave function for a particle is a odd function, that is F(x) = -F(- 
x), then it's a fermion and the probability of 2 fermions occupying  
the same quantum state is zero, in other words it obeys the Pauli  
Exclusion Principle and is the reason that the ground beneath your  
feet, which is made of fermions, is solid and you don't sink to the  
center of the Earth.


If the Schrodinger wave function for a particle is a even function,  
that is F(x) = F(-x), then it's a boson and it can ignore the Pauli  
Exclusion Principle and is the reason light rays, made of bosons,  
don't scramble each other when they collide at right angles, light  
particles can occupy the same quantum state and thus can pass  
through each other and be completely unaffected; it's the reason  
the light rays that enter our eye are not a hopeless chaotic jumble  
of information randomized by a astronomical large number of  
collisions with other photons.


Yes, that is what I was alluding to by mentionning "à-la-Feynman", as  
this is well explaiend in his famous lecture notes on physics, notably  
the one on quantum mechanics.






Yep, I knew that.  I thought for a moment that Bruno claimed to  
derive something like that from comp, but it turns out that all he  
claims is that if comp is the theory-of-eveything then it must  
predict everything.


Nowhere is Comp assumed to be the theory of everything. It is just the  
assumption that "I" am a digital machine (mechanism), to put it shortly.


Then we derive from that assumption that arithmetic is a theory of  
everything, as good as any other (basically a first order  
specification of a Turing universal system), and then the derivation  
is constructive.


It is quite different from what you say.

You did understood the seven steps (not clear for the step 8), but now  
you seem to have forgotten the points, or even the goal.


The goal is not to replace physics as a science, but to get a correct  
picture of the possible reality, and the possible fundamental science,  
once we assume computationalism without putting first person and  
consciousness under the carpet.


Main result: Aristotle theology can't work. Plato's theology still work.

Bruno



http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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