Re: Definitions of intelligence possibly useful to computers in AI or describing life
On 11.08.2012 15:13 Stephen P. King said the following: On 8/11/2012 4:30 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 10.08.2012 00:55 Russell Standish said the following: The point being that life need not be intelligent. In fact 999.9% of life (but whatever measure, numbers, biomass etc) is unintelligent. The study of artificial life by the same reason need not be a study of artitificial intelligence, although because of a biases as an intelligent species, a significantly higher fraction of alife research is about AI. What does intelligence means in this context that life is unintelligent? Let us compare for example a bacterium and a rock. Where there is more intelligence? Evgenii Dear Evgenii, A bacterium and a rock should not be put head to (no)head in this question. A bacterium has autonomy while a rock does not. It is better to see that the rock is just a small piece of an autonomous whole and then compare that whole to the (whole) bacterium. My goal was just to try to understand what Russell meant by life is unintelligent. Say let us take some creations of AI and compare them with a bacterium. Where do we find more intelligence? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Fwd: The Mental Universe
On 06.08.2012 21:50 meekerdb said the following: How's Bruno going to criticize those darn physicists if they just won't stick to materialism. Brent Original Message Link to the PDF: http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/The.mental.universe.pdf I find it strange that the author has not mentioned Ernst Mach. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: God has no name
On 06.08.2012 19:29 Stephen P. King said the following: On 8/6/2012 8:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: ... ? Why? It's not complicated! A person must be, at least, nameable. A person has always has a name. [BM] Why? Because names are necessary for persistent distinguishability. Let us try an informal proof by contradiction. Consider the case where it is *not* necessary for a person to have a name. What means would then exist for one entity to be distinguished from another? We might consider the location of an entity as a proxy for the purposes of identification, but this will not work because entities can change location and a list of all of the past locations of an entity would constitute a name and such is not allowed in our consideration here. What about the 1p content of an entity, i.e. the private name that an entity has for itself with in its self-referential beliefs? Since it is not communicable - as this would make the 1p aspect a non-first person concern and thus make it vanish - it cannot be a name. Names are 3p, they are public invariants that form from a consensus of many entities coming to an agreement, and thus cannot be determined strictly by 1p content. You might also note that the anti-foundation axiom is every graph has a unique decoration. The decoration is the name! It is the name that allow for non-ambiguous identification. A number's name is its meaning invariant symbol representation class... Consider what would happen to COMP if entities had no names! Do I need to go any further for you to see the absurdity of persons (or semi-autonomous entities) not having names? I am afraid that a name as such cannot solve the problem of personal identity. A nice overview on personal identity is here, see 8.1 to 8.4 http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/general-philosophy Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The Unreality of Time
Alberto, I have one more question. On 31.07.2012 11:08 Alberto G. Corona said the following: Evgenii, great questions 2012/7/30 Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru On 30.07.2012 11:19 Alberto G. Corona said the following: ... Let us say that there is some conglomerate of atoms. When it computes and when not? From a black-box perspective, they compute when they are open to to the environment and they maintain its internal entropy. That may be the definition of life too. From inside, they must live in a predictable environment with smooth phisical laws where entrophy dangers and opportinities can be discovered to react appropriately I would suggest to consider a series as follows: A greath exercise, 1) A rock; A rock does not compute but it may be said that it maintain its internal order by generating a newtonian force equal and opposed to every force exerted against it. So it may be considered that perform a analogical computation. But a rock does not preserve and extend its information by reproduction. 2) A ballcock in the toilet; It is an analogical device with a detector (the piece thar floats) and an actuator (the piece that closes the flux of water) . Both are solidary. The computation is the most simple possible: upon a threshold the flux of water is interrupted. Could you please describe a bit more what the difference in computation do you see between a rock and a ballcock? A quote about the rock to this end: Take that rock over there. It doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything, at least to our gross perception. But at the microlevel it consists of an unimaginable number of atoms connected by springy chemical bonds, all jiggling around at a rate that even our fastest supercomputer might envy. And they are not jiggling at random. The rock’s innards ‘see’ the entire universe by means of the gravitational and electromagnetic signals it is continuously receiving. Such a system can be viewed as an all-purpose information processor, one whose inner dynamics mirror any sequence of mental states that our brains might run through. Evgenii http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2011/02/rock-and-information.html -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On 31.07.2012 01:05 Russell Standish said the following: ... With complete information, a totally rational being makes optimal choices, and has no free will, but always beats an irrational being. To this end, one has first to define the sense of life formally. The goal to survive is clear but what would as the next step? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The Unreality of Time
Alberto, Thank you for your answers. I will make one comment now. I plan to read Schneider on molecular machines (thanks for the link) and then I may make more comments. On 31.07.2012 11:08 Alberto G. Corona said the following: Evgenii, great questions 2012/7/30 Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru On 30.07.2012 11:19 Alberto G. Corona said the following: ... The activity of the brain is the mind and the mind is a separate world that includes all that can be perceived. What is outside of the mind may just plain mathematics. What we call phisical world is in reality set of phenomenons perceived by the mind. Observations happen in the mind. We can repeat and verify experiments because we live in the same mathematical reality outside of the mind, and because our minds have similar architecture and experience, so we have the same language, interests, experimental machines, procedures, so, as Eric Voegelin said, we live in a shared social mind. I am not sure if I understand. How do you connect these two assumptions: What we call phisical world is in reality set of phenomenons perceived by the mind. because we live in the same mathematical reality outside of the mind Do you mean that the world outside of the mind is congruent with the perceived world by the mind? Yes. This is not magical, but a product of natural selection. Our mental world is made to support life, and life is the art of maintaining and reproducing our bodies, that live outside of the mind. A computer can simulate anythnig we want, but our brains are dedicated computers devoted full time to carefully examine the external reality that appear to our perception as phenomenons or else, we would not survive. Some irrealities can be accepted when they are in a trade-off with other more valuable knowledge, or the perception is too expensive. We do not see individual dangerous bacterias for example, but we avoid them by smell and taste and some visual clues, well before we noticed its existence. So when we have in front of our eyes an arrangement of atoms that has direct or indirect meaning for our purposes, we identifty and classify it according with his use: men, women, disgusting, pleasing, horses, experiments, countries..but also atoms, electrons and so on. And we proceed acordingly. None of these things exist outside of the mind, but what we are sure of is that outside there is something that make all of us perceive the same things and it respond with certain laws that we have discovered that are mathematical. So both are congruent because the mind evolved to be congruent, but not only congruent, but congruent in certain defined ways. There is a branch called evolutionary epistemology that study the epistemological consequences of the evolved nature of our mind. The world in the brain that is congruent with the world outside of the brain brings us a paradox, as described by Max Velmans: “Lehar (2003), however, points out that if the phenomenal world is inside the brain, the real skull must be outside the phenomenal world (the former and the latter are logically equivalent). Let me be clear: if one accepts that a) The phenomenal world appears to have spatial extension to the perceived horizon and dome of the sky. b) The phenomenal world is really inside the brain. It follows that c) The real skull (as opposed to the phenomenal skull) is beyond the perceived horizon and dome of the sky.“ Some problem here is that science that we know has started with observations and we make these observations in the three dimensional world that we observe outside of our body/brain. Now if we say that actually what we consciously observe is in the brain, then we should reconsider as well what observation is. Hence my interest to skeptic arguments. For example, see famous ‘Proof of an External World’ by Moore http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moore/ How? By holding up my two hands, and saying, as I make a certain gesture with the right hand, ‘Here is one hand’, and adding, as I make a certain gesture with the left, ‘and here is another’ (‘Proof of an External World’ 166). I knew that there was one hand in the place indicated by combining a certain gesture with my first utterance of ‘here’ and that there was another in the different place indicated by combining a certain gesture with my second utterance of ‘here’. How absurd it would be to suggest that I did not know it, but only believed it, and that perhaps it was not the case! You might as well suggest that I do not know that I am now standing up and talking — that perhaps after all I'm not, and that it's not quite certain that I am! (‘Proof of an External World’ 166) With the picture as described by you, this does not work any more. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send
Re: The Unreality of Time
On 30.07.2012 11:19 Alberto G. Corona said the following: Evgenii : I thank you for your questions, since It helps me to re-examine and clarify my position. 2012/7/29 Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru On 29.07.2012 11:28 Alberto G. Corona said the following: These psycho-philosophical arguments like the one of John Ellis are what in evolutionary Psychology is called an explanation based on proximate causes. I guess that science is based on observation and hence it might be good to define what observation is. To this end, past, present and future seems to be quite a crucial concept. First a scientist plans an experiment. Hence at the beginning the experiment is in the future. Then the scientist performs the experiment and eventually the experiment is in the past. The notion of past and present is not only crucial for science, but for human life. The consciousness of time appears as a consequence of two things: Lack of information and the hability that humans have of learning from experience. Plants and most of the animals have innate set of behaviours or at most, a short learning program that fixes behaviour after the young age. But humans modify their behaviour depending on the past, but not only the past but depending on the ordering of events in the past: In an experiment , as in a love affair or in a battle, the lessons learned depends in the order of the events. If we had not that ability to learn from experience and thus, the need to remember sequences of events, then our philosophers would not have the cognitive capacity to philosophize about time, nor the scientists would perform experiments. This is a position of common sense. Yet, to move forward it is necessary to take decisions on how it could be possible to gain knowledge in such a way to be sure that the knowledge is the truth (if this is possible at all). Instead, ultimate causes are the physical causes that generate, by natural selection, a mind with such concepts and such phenomenology that is capable of such reasoning. I take evolutionary reasoning because evolution is the only way to link both kinds of philosophical and physical explanations. The first is more important in practical terms, because our phenomenology defines what IS real. Period. But only ultimate causes can illuminate and explain them. Recently I have written about Grand Design by Hawking. It seems that according to you, the M-theory could be an ultimate cause. Yet, it does not contain the A-series based on past, present and future. One will find there at best the B-series only. It is unclear to me how the M-theory could describe a scientist planning and performing an experiment. I said at the end that the ultimate causes can be the consequences of the existence of the Mind. Of course the M theory is not a theory of everything, It may be mathematical manifold in which our bodies and the substrate of our minds live. but the world of the mind is different form the phisico-mathematical world. In a timeful way of thinking It can be said that the mind evolved (along time) by natural selection to permit its owm survival and reproduction, but it also can be said that the mind, or our shared minds, made of communicable concepts, make possible the existence of the mathematical substrate in which we live. What do you mean by the world of the mind is different form the phisico-mathematical world? Is this as by Descartes res cogitans vs. res extensa? [Our phenomenology conform a common, communicable reality among us because it is the product of a common mind, that is a product of a common brain architecture, that is a result of a common brain development program that is a result of a common genetic inheritance] Let me ask Max Velmans' question again. According to neuroscience, all conscious experience including visual is in the brain. Hence, according to the ultimate causes, is the brain in the world or the world in the brain? What would you say? Again, this question is quite important, as we have to define what observation is. Does for example observation happens in the brain The activity of the brain is the mind and the mind is a separate world that includes all that can be perceived. What is outside of the mind may just plain mathematics. What we call phisical world is in reality set of phenomenons perceived by the mind. Observations happen in the mind. We can repeat and verify experiments because we live in the same mathematical reality outside of the mind, and because our minds have similar architecture and experience, so we have the same language, interests, experimental machines, procedures, so, as Eric Voegelin said, we live in a shared social mind. I am not sure if I understand. How do you connect these two assumptions: What we call phisical world is in reality set of phenomenons perceived by the mind. because we live in the same mathematical reality outside of the mind Do you mean that the world outside of the
Re: The Unreality of Time
On 28.07.2012 23:43 Stephen P. King said the following: On 7/28/2012 4:23 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... Now I have found the original paper by McTaggart in Internet: http://www.ditext.com/mctaggart/time.html ... Dear Evgenii, Never would I cast aspersions upon McTaggart, but what he actually proved was not the unreality of time; for Reality is what which is incontrovertible to all intercommunicating observers. What McTaggart proved was the non-existance of an observational stance that might allow all moments of time to be apprehended simultaneously. His work can be seen as a reiteration of the truth that Einstein was able to show us with his General theory of Relativity. Stephen, I do not see how Einstein could describe the transition from being to becoming. Einstein's four-dimensional timespace does not have changes. This is the reason why Popper has called him once as four-dimensional Parmenides. In Einstein's general theory of relativity, one could after all introduce the B-series. Yet, the A-series are not there. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The Unreality of Time
On 29.07.2012 11:28 Alberto G. Corona said the following: These psycho-philosophical arguments like the one of John Ellis are what in evolutionary Psychology is called an explanation based on proximate causes. I guess that science is based on observation and hence it might be good to define what observation is. To this end, past, present and future seems to be quite a crucial concept. First a scientist plans an experiment. Hence at the beginning the experiment is in the future. Then the scientist performs the experiment and eventually the experiment is in the past. Instead, ultimate causes are the physical causes that generate, by natural selection, a mind with such concepts and such phenomenology that is capable of such reasoning. I take evolutionary reasoning because evolution is the only way to link both kinds of philosophical and physical explanations. The first is more important in practical terms, because our phenomenology defines what IS real. Period. But only ultimate causes can illuminate and explain them. Recently I have written about Grand Design by Hawking. It seems that according to you, the M-theory could be an ultimate cause. Yet, it does not contain the A-series based on past, present and future. One will find there at best the B-series only. It is unclear to me how the M-theory could describe a scientist planning and performing an experiment. [Our phenomenology conform a common, communicable reality among us because it is the product of a common mind, that is a product of a common brain architecture, that is a result of a common brain development program that is a result of a common genetic inheritance] Let me ask Max Velmans' question again. According to neuroscience, all conscious experience including visual is in the brain. Hence, according to the ultimate causes, is the brain in the world or the world in the brain? What would you say? Again, this question is quite important, as we have to define what observation is. Does for example observation happens in the brain? An example of ultimate causes may be the theory of Relativity, statistical mechanics, the fact that we live in a four dimensional universe and our 4d life lines go along a maximum gradient of entropy, and the desplacement along these lines is called time, that is local to each line. Another ultimate cause is the nature of natural selection, how and why a certain aggregate of matter can maintain its internal entropy in his path trough a line of maximum increase of entrophy, and it is by detection computation and acting to avoid dangers and to capture good things. The good and bad entropy must come in identifiable bags in an eternal videogame. This is a requisite for life. Non avoidable changes of entropy causes mass extinctions. [The maximum gradient of entropy is paradoxically at first sight, the most computable path, that is why life proceed in this direction: http://www.slideshare.net/agcorona1/arrow-of-time-determined-by-computability ] In your presentation you use terms causation and computation. How would you define them? Let us say that there is some conglomerate of atoms. When it computes and when not? The same is with causation. What is causation according to ultimiate causes? Does it mean something more as solution to some transient inexorable governing laws? As for the entropy and the arrow of time, recently I have found some nice quotes about Boltzmann From Boltzmann’s fluctuation hypothesis to Boltzmann’s Brain http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/06/boltzmanns-brain.html That's what happens with the entropy approach: “And that minimum fluctuation would be “Boltzmann’s Brain.” Out of the background thermal equilibrium, a fluctuation randomly appears that collects some degrees of freedom into the form of a conscious brain, with just enough sensory apparatus to look around and say “Hey! I exist!”, before dissolving back into the equilibrated ooze.” Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
The Unreality of Time
John Ellis McTaggart The Unreality of Time Mind: A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy 17 (1908): 456-473 I have learned about the McTaggart's A- and B-series from John Yates. http://www.ifsgoa.com/ Now I have found the original paper by McTaggart in Internet: http://www.ditext.com/mctaggart/time.html In the paper, the author proves that time is unreal. He first introduces the A-series that contain past, present, and future and then shows that this idea is self-contradictory. I should say that the paper is popular nowadays as well, Google Scholar shows about 700 citations. The paper is relatively short (about 8500 words) and it is nice. I like it. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: scientists simulate an entire organism in software for the first time ever
On 22.07.2012 17:52 Stephen P. King said the following: This is great news for Bruno! ;-) I was interested in the computational complexity factor involved. http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/21/big-leap-in-bio-engineering-scientists-simulate-an-entire-organism-in-software-for-the-first-time-ever/ I do not have access to the paper at Science Direct but it might be good to browse it before making any conclusion. I would expect this to be done at the level of molecular mechanics and this is very tricky to choose the right potential. Then it is unclear how much of physical time have been simulated. 10 hours of simulation time should be at the level of nanoseconds of physical time provided they have not found a break through. Also it is unclear what boundary conditions have been employed. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: scientists simulate an entire organism in software for the first time ever
On 22.07.2012 17:52 Stephen P. King said the following: This is great news for Bruno! ;-) I was interested in the computational complexity factor involved. http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/21/big-leap-in-bio-engineering-scientists-simulate-an-entire-organism-in-software-for-the-first-time-ever/ I have found the paper http://covertlab.stanford.edu/publicationpdfs/mgenitalium_whole_cell_2012_07_20.pdf It is just some data fitting model. I guess that physics as such is just not there. I am not impressed. You will find some better slides to this theme at http://embryogenesisexplained.com/2012/01/modelling-active-cell-processes.html See slide 8 for example. If one keeps the number of variables under 1 M then one can do it indeed. The main problem however is how to coarse the model starting from physics. It seems that there no way to do it. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On 18.07.2012 22:26 meekerdb said the following: On 7/18/2012 12:21 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 18.07.2012 21:08 meekerdb said the following: On 7/18/2012 10:32 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: For example, the fantastic, uinmatched success the judeo-christian civilization until XVIII century at least, as measured in objective evolutionary terms. You mean the one that squelched Greek science (which had to be preserved by the Persians) and brought us the Dark Ages? Or do you refer the post-enlightenment civilization that burgeoned when the Roman Church lost it's grip. Brent Brent, You should read Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, Bacon, Newton, Descartes, Ockham and others authors from that time. Dark Ages is just a myth. From Wikipedia However, many modern scholars who study the era tend to avoid the term altogether for its negative connotations, finding it misleading and inaccurate for any part of the Middle Ages. Evgenii You should read Anaxagoras and Eratosthenes and Democritus and Aristarchus to see how much further science might have been advanced if not for the Church's emphasis on faith and superstition as a means to political power. I do not get your point. Ancient Greece was took over by Rome and then the Roman Empire has also disappeared. Do you mean that this was the Pope's fault? Right now Maarten Hoenen has lectures about atomism, that is, about Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius. It is really fun. Do you know that Democritus is the ‘laughing philosopher’ because of his special relationship to life. Roughly speaking, we are just conglomerates of atoms and in the future there will be other conglomerates of atoms, so we should not think too much about future and death. We should just take the fun from the present. Also see Epicurus in this respect. From such a viewpoint, it is unclear why you blame the Church. You should blame the M-theory instead, because it is the M-theory that has produced one of the 10^500 universes in which the conglomerates of atoms and fields had produced the Catholic Church. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On 18.07.2012 21:08 meekerdb said the following: On 7/18/2012 10:32 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: For example, the fantastic, uinmatched success the judeo-christian civilization until XVIII century at least, as measured in objective evolutionary terms. You mean the one that squelched Greek science (which had to be preserved by the Persians) and brought us the Dark Ages? Or do you refer the post-enlightenment civilization that burgeoned when the Roman Church lost it's grip. Brent Brent, You should read Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, Bacon, Newton, Descartes, Ockham and others authors from that time. Dark Ages is just a myth. From Wikipedia However, many modern scholars who study the era tend to avoid the term altogether for its negative connotations, finding it misleading and inaccurate for any part of the Middle Ages. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On 17.07.2012 09:54 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 16 Jul 2012, at 21:05, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 15.07.2012 16:50 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 14 Jul 2012, at 18:21, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... but it looks like that your motive is also close to the Game of Life. What difference do you see in this respect? With comp, after UDA, and supposing it is 100% valid, the choice of the universal system for the ontology is arbitrary. The laws of physics and the laws of mind are independent of it. So it is better to use one which is far from looking physical so that when we derive physics we diminish the possible confusions of level. The game of life already used a two dimensional grid, and has a notion of physical interaction build it, so I prefer to use the numbers. But the GOL is quite OK in principle. That is my problem. I do not understand how it would be possible to play chess in the Game of Life. Like arithmetic, the game of life is Turing universal. So you can program deep blue in the Game of life. Bruno, My question was a bit of different nature. I understand that one could use the Game of Life as programming environment. That is fine. Now with this environment we implement two Deep Blues and let them play with each other in chess. So there are are changing patterns in the Game of Life that we interpret as two Deep Blues playing chess with each other. My question would be what is the meaning of this event. What does it mean that two Deep Blues are playing chess with each other in? Is this the same when two people are playing chess with each other? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On 15.07.2012 16:50 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 14 Jul 2012, at 18:21, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... but it looks like that your motive is also close to the Game of Life. What difference do you see in this respect? With comp, after UDA, and supposing it is 100% valid, the choice of the universal system for the ontology is arbitrary. The laws of physics and the laws of mind are independent of it. So it is better to use one which is far from looking physical so that when we derive physics we diminish the possible confusions of level. The game of life already used a two dimensional grid, and has a notion of physical interaction build it, so I prefer to use the numbers. But the GOL is quite OK in principle. That is my problem. I do not understand how it would be possible to play chess in the Game of Life. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On 14.07.2012 01:15 meekerdb said the following: On 7/13/2012 4:07 PM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: It must be, because this has been a very sucessful mith. Yes, it was no doubt successful in keeping the peasants believing the in divine knowledge of the free loading priests. Brent One can say the same way that thy myth of Higgs boson is designed to force taxpayers to pay for pleasures of particle physicists. Or what the difference do you see? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On 13.07.2012 20:43 meekerdb said the following: On 7/13/2012 11:14 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... My question would be not about responsibility, I am not that far. Let us take a chess game (the example from John). We have two people playing chess and then for example the M-theory. How would you characterize the relationship between the M-theory and players. I would characterize them as being at separate levels of description. In what sense it is possible to say that the players play their own game? In the sense that there are no significant outside sources influencing the players (like a grandmaster whispering in their ear). How unpredictability would help here? I don't understand help. Are you striving to reach some conclusion you have not revealed? You have mentioned the chaos theory when you have written about predictability. Frankly speaking I do not understand the point, the chaos theory claims. If I understand correctly, it basically says that the uncertainty in the initial condition brings unpredictability. Yet, I do not understand where the uncertainty in initial conditions come from. If we discuss things in principle, then we should consider the case when the initial conditions are known exactly. But that's the point. In chaos theory things are only predictable if initial conditions (and the evolutionary calculations) are carried to infinite precision - which is impossible. You want to consider a case where we start with infinite information to predict an outcome which is defined only by finite information? If you mean predicting future by human beings, then this is not the question I am interested in. To this end, one can also employ Wolfram's computational irreducibility. Because I’ve seen so many cases where simple rules end up generating immensely rich and complex behavior. And that’s made me think it’s not nearly so implausible that our whole universe could come from a simple rule. But really it’s all completely deterministic. That somehow knowing the laws of the universe would tell us how humans would act–and give us a way to compute and predict human behavior. Of course, to many people this always seemed implausible–because we feel that we have some form of free will. And now, with computational irreducibility, we can see how this can still be consistent with deterministic underlying laws. It seems that your viewpoint is similar. If not, please tell where there is the difference. My question was rather philosophical. It is unrelated to practical things, well, the M-theory is anyway unrelated to human practice. In my view, for engineering it does not matter whether the underlying principles is based on natural numbers of on the M-theory. Still, let us look again at the game of chess. If we look at it in principle, then it is actually the Game of Life mentioned in the last chapter of Grand Design. The conglomerates of atoms move other conglomerates of atoms according to completely deterministic laws. Could you please demonstrate how to introduce separate level of descriptions in this process to bring some sense in playing chess? (but please not at the practical level, let us still stay at the level in principle). Evgenii -- http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2010/07/stephen-wolframs-computational-irreducibility.html -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On 13.07.2012 22:14 John Clark said the following: On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: There are no experts in this field because there is no field. The field does exist. What does a expert on theology know about the nature of reality that a non-expert does not? As far as I understand, theology is about beliefs, and beliefs still play an important role, also among physicists. For example the belief in inexorable laws of nature expressed marvelously in Grand Design. Presumably there were questions that he [Newton] had found important. It might be interesting to understand what questions touched him and what has happened with these questions at present. I don't think it would be interesting at all, in fact I'd rather have my teeth drilled than read Newton on theology. Newton was I think the greatest genius the Human Race has yet produced, he was also vain arrogant vindictive and completely humorless, but those are all minor points compared with his virtues. The real tragedy was that this colossal intellect was horribly infected with the religious meme. This meme hijacked most of his massive mental machinery and forced it to think and write far more about religion than about Science. Today even Theologians admit that the many millions of words that he wrote about The Bible are worthless, and if there is one thing Theologians have a lot of experience with is worthless ideas. Newton advanced Science more than any other Human Being but I think it's one of the great tragedies of History that the rarest, most valuable quality that has ever existed in the world was not used to full advantage. Imagine what Newton could have accomplished if his mind had not been caught in a infinite loop, and I blame religion for that. On the other hand, it well might be that without his beliefs, he would not create the Newton's laws. Who knows. In general, I do not think that bringing in ideology helps us to understand history. The question where in physicalism numbers are located is also interesting indeed. If you know the answer, I would appreciate it. The number eleven is located just below green a little to the right of big above sweet and between fast and pneumatic. Could you offer some more meaningful picture on the relationship between mathematics and physics? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On 14.07.2012 10:26 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 13 Jul 2012, at 20:26, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.07.2012 19:40 John Clark said the following: On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: ... 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. The question where in physicalism numbers are located is also interesting indeed. If you know the answer, I would appreciate it. As I just said to Stephen, numbers are not located anywhere. They are not physical entities. Bruno Bruno, I believe, I understand your position. My question concerns the case when one assumes physicalism. If to speak about your theorem, it is unclear to me, how the first person view accesses numbers and mathematical objects. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On 14.07.2012 11:00 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 14 Jul 2012, at 10:42, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... If to speak about your theorem, it is unclear to me, how the first person view accesses numbers and mathematical objects. Like a digital machine, which can access numbers encoded in their memory, through logical gates, and so one. More details are given currently on the FOAR list, but the idea is simple, with comp our bodies are statistical first person constructs related to infinities of number relations, so we access to them a bit like a fish can access water. The price of this is that we have to abandon physicalism eventually. I am not sure if I understand. I would like to have an explanation for a phenomenon, for example 1) I see a cat; 2) I see a piece of paper with 2 + 2 = 4. Yet, when you start explaining, the phenomenon seems to disappear. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On 14.07.2012 11:52 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 14 Jul 2012, at 11:16, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 14.07.2012 11:00 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 14 Jul 2012, at 10:42, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... If to speak about your theorem, it is unclear to me, how the first person view accesses numbers and mathematical objects. Like a digital machine, which can access numbers encoded in their memory, through logical gates, and so one. More details are given currently on the FOAR list, but the idea is simple, with comp our bodies are statistical first person constructs related to infinities of number relations, so we access to them a bit like a fish can access water. The price of this is that we have to abandon physicalism eventually. I am not sure if I understand. I would like to have an explanation for a phenomenon, for example 1) I see a cat; 2) I see a piece of paper with 2 + 2 = 4. Yet, when you start explaining, the phenomenon seems to disappear. 1) I see a cat. This is explained by the fact that your current computational state belongs to an infinity of computations making you singling out some stable patterns that you recognize, by access to your previous experience as being cat. The qualia itself is explained by the fact that when you refer to the cat, you are really referring to yourself (with the implicit hope that it corresponds to some relatively independent pattern), and the math shows that such a self-reference involves some true but non rationally communicable feature. The math explained why, if this justification is correct, machines/numbers will not be entirely satisfied by it, for the first person is not a machine from its own first person view. 2) The same with 2+2=4 written on some paper. It is also a stable pattern in the computations going through your state. Here you might just refer to what you have learned in school, and you might considered that the truth referred by that sentence on a paper is more stable than a cat, but the conscious perception of cat or ink on paper admits the same explanation: some universal number reflect a pattern belonging to almost all computations going through your state. You have to take the first person indeterminacy into account, and keep in mind that your immediate future is determined by an infinity of computations/universal number, going through your actual state. For example, all the Heisenberg matrices computing the state of the galaxy at some description level for some amount of steps. They all provably exist independently of us in a tiny part of elementary arithmetic, and admit at least as many variants as there are possible electron location in their energy level orbitals. I cannot be sure if this helps you as it relies to some familiarity with the first person indeterminacy and the fact that our comp states are distributed in an infinity of distinct, from a third person pov, computations (existing in arithmetic). Bruno, Thank you for the answer. I am definitely far away from to comprehend it, but it looks like that your motive is also close to the Game of Life. What difference do you see in this respect? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On 12.07.2012 22:08 meekerdb said the following: On 7/12/2012 12:27 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 11.07.2012 18:21 John Clark said the following: On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: I understand but the question in principle still remains. Who play the chess, I or the M-theory? There is no logical reason to think those two ways of explaining the same phenomenon are incompatible. It's true that the reason a toy balloon doesn't collapse is that the momentum of gas atoms inside the balloon impacting the surface is greater than or equal to that of the gas atoms outside the balloon impacting the surface, but it's also true that the reason is just that the pressure inside is greater. Sometimes humans find that a high level description and explanation is more useful and sometimes they do not. Trying to understand how hurricanes work by looking at the level of atoms would not be very enlightening, and super-strings would be even less helpful. John K Clark I have read once Elbow Room by Dennett to understand how free will could be compatible with determinism. Yet, I have not understood it. I have to work it out. Evgenii In Dennett's conception 'free will' is just a marker for responsibility; hence his aphorism, You can avoid responsibility for everything if you just make yourself small enough. So where one person might say, Yes, it was me. I did it. another might say, I didn't do it of my own free will. I was coerced by threats of being fired. and yet another might say, I didn't do it. It was just the result of deterministic or random physical processes in my brain and body. The question then would be what determines what a person say. Does unpredictability that you have mentioned in another message will help in this respect? If yes, how? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On 12.07.2012 22:44 John Clark said the following: On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 3:17 PM, Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: I am not an expert in this field There are no experts in this field because there is no field. The field does exist. You may want for example to read Newton. He was a fan of theology. Evgenii but here is for example just a link to the university in Freiburg http://www.uni-freiburg.de/universitaet-en/fakultaeten-einrichtungenwhere you see that the faculty of theology is there. So the field of knowledge that theology deals with is the knowledge of the hijinks going on with the faculty of of one department of the University of Freiburg. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On 13.07.2012 19:53 meekerdb said the following: On 7/13/2012 10:30 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: The field does exist. You may want for example to read Newton. He was a fan of theology. Newton on theology is one of the things I would least like to read. Why? Presumably there were questions that he had found important. It might be interesting to understand what questions touched him and what has happened with these questions at present. In general, I believe that the best approach would be a historical one. This way one would understand better the subject matter of theology. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On 13.07.2012 19:52 meekerdb said the following: On 7/13/2012 10:22 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 12.07.2012 22:08 meekerdb said the following: ... In Dennett's conception 'free will' is just a marker for responsibility; hence his aphorism, You can avoid responsibility for everything if you just make yourself small enough. So where one person might say, Yes, it was me. I did it. another might say, I didn't do it of my own free will. I was coerced by threats of being fired. and yet another might say, I didn't do it. It was just the result of deterministic or random physical processes in my brain and body. The question then would be what determines what a person say. You mistake the point. Dennet's aphorism is a reductio ad absurdum - illustrating how ridiculous is is try to avoid responsibility by blaming physical processes. Does unpredictability that you have mentioned in another message will help in this respect? If yes, how? If you're asking whether unpredictability eliminates responsibility, the answer is no. My question would be not about responsibility, I am not that far. Let us take a chess game (the example from John). We have two people playing chess and then for example the M-theory. How would you characterize the relationship between the M-theory and players. In what sense it is possible to say that the players play their own game? How unpredictability would help here? You have mentioned the chaos theory when you have written about predictability. Frankly speaking I do not understand the point, the chaos theory claims. If I understand correctly, it basically says that the uncertainty in the initial condition brings unpredictability. Yet, I do not understand where the uncertainty in initial conditions come from. If we discuss things in principle, then we should consider the case when the initial conditions are known exactly. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On 07.07.2012 19:40 John Clark said the following: On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: ... 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. The question where in physicalism numbers are located is also interesting indeed. If you know the answer, I would appreciate it. However, visual mental concepts are even more interested as we suppose that vision is a basic human capability and it exists much longer as mathematics. So, according to physics photons are reflected from an object, come to retina, and then natural neural nets starts information processing. The question is what happens after that. Provided that the brain is surrounded by the skull and information processes happen there, one could expect that mental visual concepts are somewhere within the skull. Where do you find a profound misunderstanding in the paragraph above? How would you explain the vision? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On 11.07.2012 19:36 John Clark said the following: On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 3:29 PM, Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: 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. I disagree, I don't like it. You are assuming that there exists a organized field of knowledge called theology, but I can not find the slightest evidence that is in fact true. I am not an expert in this field but here is for example just a link to the university in Freiburg http://www.uni-freiburg.de/universitaet-en/fakultaeten-einrichtungen where you see that the faculty of theology is there. You will find the same at other German universities. Evgenii Lawrence Krauss said that it is his habit to ask every theologian he meets what advances in theology have been made in the last 400 years?, but he has never received a straight answer from a single one of them, the best he has gotten was what do you mean by advances?. A expert in mathematics or physics or biology or literature or ANY other field would not give a weasel answer like that, they'd just rattle off a list of advances, but not theology. He also said he was on a panel at a college and somebody asked another scientist there why there is something rather than nothing and the scientist said that's a question to ask the head of the theology department not me, but Krauss said why ask him rather than the college gardener or plumber or cook?. I have no answer to Krauss's question because like him I think that where theology is concerned there is no expertise and no field. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On 11.07.2012 18:26 John Clark said the following: On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is determined by physical law Does that mean you CAN imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is NOT determined by physical law??!! John K Clark John, Good point, indeed. I should confess that as soon as I start thinking of mathematics then I see no way to define a theory of free will. To this end, mathematics is no better than physics. Well, the only reasonable idea in this respect that I have heard so far is to imagine some master equation that during its evolution in time will have several solutions at some times. I guess that one could construct such a function. The theory of free will could be to be possible in human language though. Evgenii 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.htmlhttp://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/07/philosophy-is-dead.html -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.**comeverything-list@googlegroups.com . To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscribe@ **googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/** group/everything-list?hl=enhttp://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On 11.07.2012 18:21 John Clark said the following: On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: I understand but the question in principle still remains. Who play the chess, I or the M-theory? There is no logical reason to think those two ways of explaining the same phenomenon are incompatible. It's true that the reason a toy balloon doesn't collapse is that the momentum of gas atoms inside the balloon impacting the surface is greater than or equal to that of the gas atoms outside the balloon impacting the surface, but it's also true that the reason is just that the pressure inside is greater. Sometimes humans find that a high level description and explanation is more useful and sometimes they do not. Trying to understand how hurricanes work by looking at the level of atoms would not be very enlightening, and super-strings would be even less helpful. John K Clark I have read once Elbow Room by Dennett to understand how free will could be compatible with determinism. Yet, I have not understood it. I have to work it out. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On 10.07.2012 21:48 meekerdb said the following: 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 What do you mean by 'govern' does not imply 'predictable'? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Oh no!
On 10.07.2012 20:38 Stephen P. King said the following: Say that it is not so! http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428428/higgs-boson-may-be-an-imposter-say-particle/?ref=rss Hi Stephen, Recently I have read Karin Knorr Cetina, Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge This is an ethnographic study of particle physicists and molecular biologists. You gonna like it. I will search for couple of interesting quotes related to your link on the weekend. Evgenii -- http://blog.rudnyi.ru/tag/karin-knorr-cetina -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
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 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On 10.07.2012 18:03 John Clark said the following: On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 1:59 PM, Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru 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 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
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 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
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. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On 08.07.2012 19:29 John Clark said the following: On Sun, Jul 8, 2012 Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: What I cannot comprehend though is why some people, which after all are also just occasional conglomerates of small particles obeying the Theory-of-Everything, react very differently when they see some pattern I don't understand your confusion, people are made of many parts so they behave in complex ways, so sometimes you need adjectives to describe them that are unnecessary for simpler conglomerates of particles, adjectives like intelligence, consciousness, I, you , and me. Do you know what part of the Theory-of-Everything responsible for such behavior of a conglomerates of particles in this case? If you knew the Theory-of-Everything (assuming there is one and there might not be) that would be a very nice thing to know but it would be a little like knowing the rules of Chess, it's important but it alone won't make you a grandmaster. 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. I understand that when we come to a human being, complexity growth. My question though would be in principle. In Grand Design they say that as it is impossible to use the very basic physical theory in practice, one needs effective sciences. Yet, if I have understood correctly, the authors mean that the theory considered in the book can describe everything including human beings that nothing more than biological machines. I do not not understand in this respect your analogy with chess. Do you mean that I have freedom to play my own game in the M-theory? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
On 07.07.2012 19:40 John Clark said the following: On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru 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. John, I have a general question first. Let us assume the M-theory or any other Theory-of-Everything you like. In the last chapter of Grand Design, there is a comparison of such a theory with the Game of Life: simple rules deterministically produce complex patterns. Now is my questions. We observe different patterns like I have done it according to my will Free will is illusion the free will noise etc. The formation of these patterns follows rules of the Theory-of-Everything. Small particles moves this and that way and occasionally we have a pattern above. What I cannot comprehend though is why some people, which after all are also just occasional conglomerates of small particles obeying the Theory-of-Everything, react very differently when they see some pattern above. Do you know what part of the Theory-of-Everything responsible for such behavior of a conglomerates of particles in this case? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is Dead
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 Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: what is mechanism?
On 02.07.2012 22:01 meekerdb said the following: On 7/2/2012 12:45 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 02.07.2012 21:08 meekerdb said the following: On 7/2/2012 11:50 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... Where to will you place 'description' in the physicalism? Is this just some excitation of natural neural nets or something else? The description is in Platonia. This is presumably one of the reasons that Popper at the end has come to World 3 (equivalent of Platonia): “If I am right that the physical world has been changed by the world 3 products of the human mind, acting through the intervention of the human mind then this means that the worlds 1, 2, and 3, can interact and, therefore, that none of them is causally closed. The thesis that the physical world is not causally closed but that it can be acted upon by world 2 and, through its intervention, by world 3, seems to be particularly hard to swallow for the materialist monist, or the physicalist.” Yet, as a consequence this should mean as Popper mentioned that the physical world is not causally closed. In which case there should be observable events in the brain or elsewhere which are caused unphysically by events in World 3. It is not clear to me how this would comport with computationalism which assumes that any mechanism with the same physical functionality will always compute the same function. Perhaps quantum randomness allows this, although the evidence seems to point to the brain being functionally classical. The observable effects are human languages, mathematics, art, to name a few things. Nevertheless I should agree thatthere is no way that I like to explain it. If we take physics, for example as presented in Hawking's Grand Design, then 'description' should be just some excitations of natural neural nets in the brains of biological machines. However, in Grand Design there was no explanation why these excitations in the brain are able to comprehend the M-theory that governs all the observable effects. According to Bruno, this is another way around. Yet, for me it is also unclear how the first person view could comprehend mathematical objects that compose the framework of the mathematical universe. As far as I understand, human language cannot be formalized mathematically, so it is a puzzle how it could be created from arithmetics. It would be nice to have both, a physical world and Platonia but then the connection between the both is a puzzle. Evgenii -- Three Worlds by Karl Popper http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/06/three-worlds.html -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: what is mechanism?
On 02.07.2012 20:12 meekerdb said the following: On 7/2/2012 7:36 AM, Jason Resch wrote: Do you really not see any difference between tables and chairs and people and numbers, Chairs and people are also mathematical objects, just really complex ones with a large information content. This is the necessary conclusion of anyone who believes physical laws are mathematical. No, it's a necessary conclusion of anyone who cannot distinguish a description from the thing described. Brent, Where to will you place 'description' in the physicalism? Is this just some excitation of natural neural nets or something else? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: what is mechanism?
On 30.06.2012 22:31 meekerdb said the following: On 6/30/2012 12:20 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 30 Jun 2012, at 18:44, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: I think that you have mentioned that mechanism is incompatible with materialism. How this follows then? Because concerning computation and emulation (exact simulation) all universal system are equivalent. Turing machine and Fortran programs are completely equivalent, you can emulate any Turing machine by a fortran program, and you can emulate any fortran program by a Turing machine. More, you can write a fortran program emulating a universal Turing machine, and you can find a Turing machine running a Fortran universal interpreter (or compiler). This means that not only those system compute the same functions from N to N, but also that they can compute those function in the same manner of the other machine. But the question is whether they 'compute' anything outside the context of a physical realization? Personally I am not sure if they compute anything even in a physical realization. To make my point, let us consider some device that implements a PID controller, the equation is in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller#PID_controller_theory Now let us start with the M-theory (or any other) and consider the functioning device in this framework. There is dynamics and evolution of superstrings, however it is unclear to me what happens with the equation for the PID controller in this context. Does it mean that the M-theory computes the equation of the PID controller? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: what is mechanism?
On 01.07.2012 09:38 meekerdb said the following: On 7/1/2012 12:25 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 30.06.2012 22:31 meekerdb said the following: On 6/30/2012 12:20 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 30 Jun 2012, at 18:44, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: I think that you have mentioned that mechanism is incompatible with materialism. How this follows then? Because concerning computation and emulation (exact simulation) all universal system are equivalent. Turing machine and Fortran programs are completely equivalent, you can emulate any Turing machine by a fortran program, and you can emulate any fortran program by a Turing machine. More, you can write a fortran program emulating a universal Turing machine, and you can find a Turing machine running a Fortran universal interpreter (or compiler). This means that not only those system compute the same functions from N to N, but also that they can compute those function in the same manner of the other machine. But the question is whether they 'compute' anything outside the context of a physical realization? Personally I am not sure if they compute anything even in a physical realization. To make my point, let us consider some device that implements a PID controller, the equation is in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller#PID_controller_theory Now let us start with the M-theory (or any other) and consider the functioning device in this framework. There is dynamics and evolution of superstrings, however it is unclear to me what happens with the equation for the PID controller in this context. Does it mean that the M-theory computes the equation of the PID controller? I think that's mixing up models with the thing modeled. If there is a device which is PID controller and it is running and controlling something, then we have a set of equations that describes and predicts what will happen, to a good approximation. We might program a computer to compute what that model predicts. M-theory is a speculative theory about matter that, if it's correct, would be the basis of a predictive model of the behavior of the matter making up the device which is a PID controller at a very low level of detail (e.g. elmentary particles and fields). Then what is the relationship between the M-theory and the matter? How matter that must obey to the M-theory knows about it? If physicists would say that the M-theory is just a model, then I could understand. However Hawking in Grand Design says that a physical theory is more than the model. If I have understood his 'model dependent realism' correctly, then according to him the M-theory is the reality. Evgenii Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: what is mechanism?
On 30.06.2012 11:14 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 29 Jun 2012, at 20:01, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 11.04.2012 11:11 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 10 Apr 2012, at 21:21, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... Hence if you know something in Internet or in the written form, I would appreciate your advice. The best about 20 pages, not too little, and not to much. OK I found the paper by Turing: http://www.thocp.net/biographies/papers/turing_oncomputablenumbers_1936.pdf Of course, the language is old, and we prefer to talk today in term of functions instead of real numbers. You can try to read it. I will search other information, but there are many, and of different type, and most still blinded by the aristotelian preconception. So it is hard to find a paper which would satisfy me. But you can get the intuition with Turing's paper I think. Bruno, I have finally come to mechanism. Thank you for your suggestion. I have browsed Turing's paper. Do I understand correctly, that mechanism is something that could be implemented by some Turing's machine? You can say that. But you could take fortran program instead of Turing machine. The choice of the initial formal system is not important. I think that you have mentioned that mechanism is incompatible with materialism. How this follows then? Evgenii Do you some paper about it that does not have equations but that discusses this term philosophically? Hmm... Not really. The start is simple, but without doing a minimum of technical work, you can't get the correct intuition, for the field is quickly counter-intuitive. I am currently explaining the whole computability stuff on the FOAR list, where I have a very good candid correspondent. You might try take the wagon. If not I would suggest you to study a good book, like Cutland's book, or even the first hundred pages of the Rogers' book. Many popular account on computability are just invalid, or not precise enough to do serious philosophy, I'm afraid. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: what is mechanism?
On 11.04.2012 11:11 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 10 Apr 2012, at 21:21, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... Hence if you know something in Internet or in the written form, I would appreciate your advice. The best about 20 pages, not too little, and not to much. OK I found the paper by Turing: http://www.thocp.net/biographies/papers/turing_oncomputablenumbers_1936.pdf Of course, the language is old, and we prefer to talk today in term of functions instead of real numbers. You can try to read it. I will search other information, but there are many, and of different type, and most still blinded by the aristotelian preconception. So it is hard to find a paper which would satisfy me. But you can get the intuition with Turing's paper I think. Bruno, I have finally come to mechanism. Thank you for your suggestion. I have browsed Turing's paper. Do I understand correctly, that mechanism is something that could be implemented by some Turing's machine? Do you some paper about it that does not have equations but that discusses this term philosophically? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: I am the de-phlogistonator!
On 26.06.2012 04:14 meekerdb said the following: On 6/25/2012 6:22 PM, Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: Hi, Hales, C. G. 2012 The modern phlogiston: why 'thinking machines' don't need computers TheConversation. The Conversation media Group. http://www.theconversation.edu.au/the-modern-phlogiston-why-thinking-machines-dont-need-computers-7881 Cheers Colin P.S. I am done with this issue. I'll just 'Lavoisier' my way through the phlogiston. Good luck. I agree with your point: Engineering first, then science. Here there is a big question whether an engineer has free will (is an engineer different in this respect from a scientist?). In other words, whether the M-theory has already determined all actions of engineers or engineering allows us to find out whether the M-theory is correct. Evgenii But you must know it's not as simple as tissue implying some undifferentiated stuff. Even planaria have a wiring diagram, so to get AGI you probably need to start with the right wiring diagram. And if it is right it will still take a long time to educate it. Brent Artificial intelligence is just whatever doesn't work yet. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: I am the de-phlogistonator!
On 26.06.2012 20:56 meekerdb said the following: On 6/26/2012 11:49 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: Here there is a big question whether an engineer has free will (is an engineer different in this respect from a scientist?). I think we've already elucidated several different possible meanings for 'free will'. Which one do you refer to? In this context whether something depends on mental states of Colin's brain expressed in his paper or not. In other words, whether the M-theory has already determined all actions of engineers or engineering allows us to find out whether the M-theory is correct. What difference would it make, whether the answer is 'yes' or 'no', given that we don't (and can't) *know* the answer? A typical metaphysical statement could affect other statements that implicitly depend on it. Hence, in my view a different choice above causes different consequences, in a sense that positions assumed will be different. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: truth
On 22.06.2012 08:03 Stephen P. King said the following: On 6/22/2012 1:50 AM, Brian Tenneson wrote: I have many questions. One is what if truth were malleable? -- HI Brian, If it was malleable, how would we detect the modifications? If our standards of truth varied, how could we tell? This reminds me of the debate between Leibniz and Newton regarding the notion of absolute space. If one assumes the correspondence theory of truth, then the question would be if a reality were malleable. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Every Event has a Cause as Metaphysics
On 18.06.2012 21:56 Craig Weinberg said the following: On Monday, June 18, 2012 3:12:35 PM UTC-4, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: Do you have a good definition of 'cause'? Any change originating from beyond your own direct participation, ie, the consequence of any motive other than your own. The question is how you define it for the physical world. If you as Greeks believe in an animistic theory of nature, then it would work. But if not, they I personally do not know how. For example, how to define cause in Einstein's spacetime? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Theology deepities
On 18.06.2012 23:53 meekerdb said the following: On 6/18/2012 12:37 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 18.06.2012 19:33 meekerdb said the following: On 6/13/2012 1:02 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: And what is that meaning which they have expounded with unanimity and has anyone who is *not* a theologian ever believed it? I believe that educated people, for example scientists, have followed theological books. But I asked what *it* is, the meaning they have expounded with *unanimity*. No doubt some scientists have been influenced by some theological and philosophical writing. But did they *believe it* and *was it unanimous* or was it selected by the scientist from many contradictory writings as one agreeable to his ideas. This would be a goal of historical research to find it out. But the quote you posted asserted that such a meaning was already known: I have no fear of being contradicted when I say that the meaning I suppose to be attached by this author to the proposition 'God exists' is a meaning Christian theologians have never attached to it, and does not even remotely resemble the meaning which with some approach to unanimity they have expounded at considerable length. Collingwood has written this statement according to the historical research available at his time. In his lectures, Maarten Hoenen who is an expert in middle ages, says similar things. You may assume that both of them are apologetic but then you should find other historians and see what they say. You may also read originals texts and offer your own interpretation. The point however that the interpretation should be based on the texts that had been written at those times. For example a couple of quotes from Newton (according to Soul of Science) Newton, General Scholium This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; ... and Deity is the dominion of God, not over his own body, as those imagine who fancy God to be the soul of the world, but over servants. “this most beautiful system of sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.” Now the quote from the book Soul of Science itself: Roger Cotes, in his preface to the second edition of Newton’s Principia, wrote that the book 'will be the safest protection against the attacks of atheists, and nowhere more surely than from this quiver can one draw forth missiles against the band of godless men.' Hard to have been more wrong than that. I am not sure if I understand what you mean. Do you mean that this had not been written in the preface to the second edition of Newton’s Principia? From SEV http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton-principia/ The second edition appeared in 1713, twenty six years after the first. In addition to these, two changes were made that were more polemical than substantive: Newton added the General Scholium following Book 3 in the second edition, and his editor Roger Cotes provided a long anti-Cartesian (and anti-Leibnizian) Preface. It seems that quote from Soul of Science is the correct one. Note that this had happened when Newton was alive. As for Newtons arguments for God, please find below quotes from Soul of Science, p. 66-67. If you do not agree, you may want to read Newton's Principia and offer your own interpretation. Evgenii The reason Newton felt free to avoid ultimate causes was, of course, that for him the ultimate cause was God. He viewed gravity as an active principle through which God Himself imposes order onto passive matter—as one of the avenues through which God exercises His immediate activity in creation. As Kaiser puts it, for Newton things like gravity “depended on God’s immediate presence and activity as much as the breathing of an organism depends on the life-principle within.” Like breathing, these active powers were regular and natural, and yet they could not be explained in purely mechanical terms. A second way Newton found to “fit God in” was in his concept of absolute time and space. From the mathematician Isaac Barrow, Newton adopted the idea that time and space are expressions of God’s own eternity and omnipresence. Newton took God’s eternity to mean He is actually extended throughout all time — in his words, God’s “duration reaches from eternity to eternity.” He took God’s omnipresence to mean that He is extended throughout all space — His presence reaches “from infinity to infinity.” Therefore time must be eternal and space infinite.20 Physics textbooks often describe Newton’s concepts of absolute space and time as purely metaphysical without explaining that his motivation was primarily religious. A third way Newton found a role for God in the world was as the source of its orderly structure. In the cosmic order, Newton saw evidence of intelligent design. “The main business” of science, he said, is to argue backward along the chain of mechanical causes and effects “till we
Re: Theology deepities
On 19.06.2012 09:50 Bruno Marchal said the following: .. This might be because you confine yourself to christian theologians. I read a long time ago a book (La malle de Newton) which confirms Newton neo-platonic tendencies. Keep in mind that neo-platonist have to hide their idea since Rome, and still today. Theology comes from I am not that sure. The Church was not uniform and there were many different intellectual groups as usually fighting with each other. Neo-platonists belonged just to one of such groups. Below there are a couple of quotes from Soul of Science. Well, if we talk about Giordano Bruno He argued that the Egyptian pantheism described in the hermetic writings was superior to Christianity. This was too much for Christians and Bruno was burned. Yet most Christians as neo-platonists did not want to replace Christianity. Whereas the Christian Aristotelian tradition stressed God’s rationality, the neo-Platonic tradition stressed His indwelling spirit working in and through matter. A favorite metaphor was God as an artisan—“the best and most orderly Artisan of all,” in the words of Copernicus. Like Aristotelianism, neo-Platonism saw the world as an organism but with a different emphasis: In explaining natural processes it appealed not to rational Forms but to the creative power of spiritual forces. These forces were often regarded as divine, or at least as avenues of divine activity in the world. Neo-Platonism contained two somewhat distinct streams of thought. One stream can be traced in astronomy; it contained a strong Pythagorean element with a profound and even mystical respect for mathematics. The other stream can be traced in medicine and early chemistry; it focused on immanent, quasi-spiritual forces in nature—“active principles,” as they were called. You will find in the Soul of Science many names of this tradition. It might be interesting to read theological works in this respect. Evgenii the Platonic idea that what we see, observe and measure, is not the whole of reality, but the christians came back with the strong emphasis on the material nature of the creation, and the oversimplication and personification of the creator. Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Every Event has a Cause as Metaphysics
On 18.06.2012 16:39 John Clark said the following: On Sun, Jun 17, 2012 Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: But then why to talk that every event has a cause? I don't know what you're talking about. I never said everything had a cause, in fact I have a strong hunch that some things happen for no cause but I could be wrong about that. However I am most certainly NOT wrong when I say that everything happens for a cause OR everything does not happen for a cause; thus I am also not wrong when I say that the free will noise is no more meaningful the the burp noise. The question would be how to define what 'cause' is. According to Collingwood, it is an anthropocentric as well as anthropomorphic idea. I should confess that I have never thought this way before. Do you have a good definition of 'cause'? I believe that in discussion on free will this is mentioned pretty often. I know, I've done most of the discussing. Why not to forget about this? I don't understand the question. I don't even understand exactly what this refers to. I have meant that when we talk about physics we could drop the term cause at all. Why do we need it in physics? Evgenii By the way, I believe that in Grand Design, Hawkins is talking about cause and effect. I know, I've read it. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Theology deepities
On 18.06.2012 19:33 meekerdb said the following: On 6/13/2012 1:02 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: And what is that meaning which they have expounded with unanimity and has anyone who is *not* a theologian ever believed it? I believe that educated people, for example scientists, have followed theological books. But I asked what *it* is, the meaning they have expounded with *unanimity*. No doubt some scientists have been influenced by some theological and philosophical writing. But did they *believe it* and *was it unanimous* or was it selected by the scientist from many contradictory writings as one agreeable to his ideas. This would be a goal of historical research to find it out. For example a couple of quotes from Newton (according to Soul of Science) Newton, General Scholium This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; ... and Deity is the dominion of God, not over his own body, as those imagine who fancy God to be the soul of the world, but over servants. “this most beautiful system of sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.” Now the quote from the book Soul of Science itself: Roger Cotes, in his preface to the second edition of Newton’s Principia, wrote that the book 'will be the safest protection against the attacks of atheists, and nowhere more surely than from this quiver can one draw forth missiles against the band of godless men.' No doubt, the historical research can offer different interpretations. Another quote from Soul of Science In recent years much scholarly ink has been spilled in attempts to pin down his philosophical orientation. Keynes studied Newton’s manuscripts and concluded that, in contrast to the standard conception, Newton stood within the neo-Platonic tradition with its fascination for symbols and magic. 'Why do I call him a magician?' Keynes asks. 'Because he looked on the whole universe and all that is in it as a riddle, as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence, certain mystic clues which God had laid about the world. ... He regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty.' 'Newton was not the first of the age of reason,' Keynes concludes. 'He was the last of the magicians.' Hence when you think of Newton you indeed have a choice. It might be a good idea to read Newton directly, then you may have a better idea what was his reason to call in God and offer your own interpretation. Evgenii P.S. I have finished listening to Hawking's (I hope that I have got his name right this time) Grand Design. What is the difference between a) I believe in God and b) I believe in the M-theory? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Every Event has a Cause as Metaphysics
In his book An Essay on Metaphysics in Part IIIc Causation, Collingwood has considered what could mean that every event must have a cause. This could be interesting for a discussion on free will, as Collingwood shows that causation presupposes free will. In other words, if free will is to be abandoned, then causation must be abandoned as well. Below all quotes are according to R. G. Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics (Revised Edition with an Introduction and additional material edited by Rex Martin). I will start with a quote from Function of Metaphysics that nicely shows that 'Every Event has a Cause' happens not to be self-evident. p. 409 We are accustomed nowadays to say that every event must have a cause. When we say this, we are speaking as metaphysicians. We are saying something which fully expressed would run thus: our ordinary or scientific thinking rests on the presupposition that every event has a cause. Speaking as scientists, i.e. in so far as we are engaged in ordinary thinking as distinct from reflecting on it or studying it historically, we should not say that every event has a cause, we should only presuppose it. Now, suppose someone were to reply to our remark that every event has a cause, by saying 'You may be right, but of course remember that Newton didn't think so. He divided events or states in nature into two classes, uniform motions, or states of rest, and accelerations or decelerations; and he thought that the second class had causes and the first not. Newton thus held that some events have no causes'. On hearing this, most people, I think, would be at first incredulous. They would say 'but surely it is self-evident that all events must have causes, and Newton can't have failed to see it. He can't have thought that the uniform motion of a body through a certain tract of space had no cause. He must have thought, as we do, that it had a cause, viz. the same body's previous movement through an adjacent tract of space.' When we had overcome this incredulity by studying the text of Newton for ourselves, incredulity would be replaced by indignation. We should say 'I am now convinced that Newton did think that some events have no causes. But it was stupid of him. It isn't true. Actually all events do have causes, and if Newton thought otherwise, he was wrong'. Collingwood has shown that what we find nowadays as self-evident has started with Kant only (just a bit more than 200 years ago). p. 328 (a) That every event has a cause, (b) That the cause of an event is a previous event, (c) That (a) and (b) are known to us a priori. Collingwood has started with three different senses of the term 'cause'. p. 285 Sense I. Here that which is 'caused' is the free and deliberate act of a conscious and responsible agent, and 'causing' him to do it means affording him a motive for doing it. Sense II. Here that which is 'caused' is an event in nature, and its 'cause' is an event or state of things by producing or preventing which we can produce or prevent that whose cause it is said to be. Sense III. Here that which is 'caused' is an event or state of things, and its 'cause' is another event or state of things standing to it in a one-one relation of casual priority. He has referred to these senses as the historical sense, the sense of the practical sciences of nature, and the sense of the theoretical sciences of nature respectively. p. 289 That the relation between these three senses of the word 'cause' is an historical relation: No. I being the earliest of the three, No. II a development from it, and No. III a development from that. XXX. Causation in History - p. 291 This is a current and familiar sense of the word (together with its cognates, correlatives, and equivalents) in English, and of corresponding words in other modern languages. A headline in the Morning Post in 1936 run, 'Mr. Baldwin's speech causes adjournment of the House'. This did not mean that Mr. Baldwin's speech compelled the Speaker to adjourn the House whether or no that event conformed with his own ideas and intentions; it meant that on hearing Mr. Baldwin's speech the Speaker freely made up his mind to adjourn. XXXI. Causation in Practical Natural Science p. 296 The question 'What is the cause of event y?' means in this case 'How can we produce or prevent at will?'. This sense of the word may be defined as follows. A cause is an event or state of things which it is in our power to produce or prevent, and by producing or preventing which we can produce or prevent that whose cause it is said to be. p. 297 The search for causes in sense II is natural science in that sense of the phrase in which natural science is what Aristotle calls a 'practical science', valued not for its truth pure and simple but for its utility, for the 'power over nature' which it gives us: Baconian
Re: Every Event has a Cause as Metaphysics
On 17.06.2012 17:15 John Clark said the following: On Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 11:03 AM, Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: For me personally, it is a puzzle why modern physics still needs that every event has a cause. I don't know what you're talking about. Modern physics does not say every event has a cause, in fact it says the exact opposite. But then why to talk that every event has a cause? I believe that in discussion on free will this is mentioned pretty often. Why not to forget about this? By the way, I believe that in Grand Design, Hawkins is talking about cause and effect. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Theology deepities
On 13.06.2012 18:24 meekerdb said the following: On 6/13/2012 1:57 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 12.06.2012 20:17 meekerdb said the following: Here's a thoughtful blog on the meaning of theology. Bruno may want to comment, since his conception of theology might answer the questions put forward. http://choiceindying.com/2012/06/12/is-religion-just-a-matter-of-deepities-or-something-more/. I have just finished reading Collingwood's An Essay on Metaphysics. A couple of quotes from Chapter XVIII The Proposition 'God Exists'. p. 185. In the last chapter but one I had occasion to comment on the way in which a 'logical positivist', wishing to recommend the doctrine that 'metaphysical propositions' not being verifiable by appeal to observed fact are pseudo-propositions and meaningless, quoted as examples propositions about God, such as the proposition 'God exists'. To him the proposition 'God exists' would seem to mean that there is a being more or less like human beings in respect of his mental powers and dispositions, but having the mental powers of a human being greatly, perhaps infinitely, magnified. It not only 'seems' to mean this, it does mean this to 99% of believers. I guess that we talk about educated people. To this end, one example that I like. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ontological-arguments/ In his Proslogion, St. Anselm claims to derive the existence of God from the concept of 'a being than which no greater can be conceived'. In my view 'a being than which no greater can be conceived' is a nice piece of thinking. I do not mean that it proves something but for 11th. century A.D. it is not that bad. Note that you will find Kurt Goedel among the authors of ontological arguments on the page above. p. 186. I have no fear of being contradicted when I say that the meaning I suppose to be attached by this author to the proposition 'God exists' is a meaning Christian theologians have never attached to it, and does not even remotely resemble the meaning which with some approach to unanimity they have expounded at considerable length. And what is that meaning which they have expounded with unanimity and has anyone who is *not* a theologian ever believed it? I believe that educated people, for example scientists, have followed theological books. p. 187. If the proposition that God exists is a metaphysical proposition it must be understood as carrying with it the metaphysical rubric; and as so understood what it asserts is that as a matter of historical fact a certain absolute presupposition, to be hereafter defined, is or has been made by natural science (the reader will bear in mind my limitation of the field) at a certain phase of its history. It further implies that owing to the presence of this presupposition that phase in the history of natural science has or had a unique character of its own, serving to the historical student as evidence that the presupposition is or was made. The question therefore arises: What difference does it make to the conduct of research in natural science whether scientists do or not do not presuppose the existence of God? Then Collingwood shows that the metaphysical proposition 'God Exists' has played the crucial role in the foundations of classical physics. It seems to be a historical fact. I seems to be an apologist interpretation. To say 'God exists' played a *crucial* role, is ambiguous. Does Collingwood imply science could not have developed without a supposition that there is a 'Big Guy in the Sky', or has he just redefined theism so that it is metaphysically important to science? Or has he just taken the residue of theism after it's reduction by science, from 'The Big Guy in the Sky' to 'The Ground of All Being'. I should confess that in Collingwood's book there are some apologetic statements, for example Chapter XIII Propaganda of Irrationalism have not impressed me. Yet, the statement above is just a historical fact. You may want to browse for example http://www.lambsound.com/Reading/books/Christian_Faith_and_Natural_Philosophy.pdf The book is partly apologetic but otherwise it is a nice review of recent historical works. One quote to show that although the authors of the book use historical results, they do not completely agree with historians (this is a sign that historians have not been paid be the Church) But the new approach harbors its own dangers. Historical sensitivity may give way to historical relativism, in which all cultures and beliefs are regarded as equally true or valid. When that happens, the study of history merges into historicism - the belief that there is no transhistorical truth and that all knowledge is caught up in a continual process of historical change. Many scholars in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science today in fact display a marked tendency toward historicism. They dismiss the idea that science is a search for truth and instead reduce scientific
Re: Questions about simulations, emulations, etc.
On 08.06.2012 21:00 Pzomby said the following: Using mathematics, computations and symbols; human embodied consciousness can (using computers) create models, simulations, emulations, depictions, replications, representations etc. of observations of the physical universe and its processes. This assumes that the actual observable physical universe is exemplified by, and is, instantiations of, mathematics and computations. Why not assume that model is different from what is modeled? For example the impedance model of a Li-ion battery http://www.unibw.de/eit8_2/forschung-en/projekte/battery/battery is not the Li-ion battery. Even the Newman model of a Li-ion battery http://www.cadfem.de/uploads/pics/EMobilitaet-01_w530.jpg is not the Li-ion battery. By the way, when you talk about a representation, you come to the territory of semiotics (the world of signs) http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce-semiotics/ What we see here is Peirce's basic claim that signs consist of three interrelated parts: a sign, an object, and an interpretant. From such a viewpoint, simulation as such represents nothing. Evgenii 1) Does this mean that mathematics is *en-coded* as formulas in matter and energy? 2) If so, are models, simulations, emulations, depictions, replications, representations, a mathematical computational *decoding* of an *en-coded* mathematical physical reality? Thanks -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Questions about simulations, emulations, etc.
On 09.06.2012 12:36 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 09 Jun 2012, at 08:39, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 08.06.2012 21:00 Pzomby said the following: Using mathematics, computations and symbols; human embodied consciousness can (using computers) create models, simulations, emulations, depictions, replications, representations etc. of observations of the physical universe and its processes. This assumes that the actual observable physical universe is exemplified by, and is, instantiations of, mathematics and computations. Why not assume that model is different from what is modeled? That is usually the case. But this does not mean that it is always the case. In particular digital processes, or relations, can be emulated exactly, so if you assume the brain is a natural computer, there are possible exact model, like a digital brain and its corresponding relative state in arithmetic. From the 1p-view, those cannot be distinguished in any immediate way. If I simulate a typhoon on a computer in front of you, you will never become wet by it. But if I read and cut you, and simulate with that computer you + the typhoon at the right comp level (assuming it exists) then you will, in that case, feel to be wet due to the simulated typhoon. Likewise, the arithmetical typhoons can make wet the relative arithmetical entities (with comp). But then even in this case, I distinguish between a typhoon on a computer in front of me and a real typhoon. I mean that let us assume comp for a moment. Let me agree with you for a moment that arithmetics - mind - physics Said that, I still see a computer in front of me (or a computer cluster at work, well I do not see it there but rather access but I guess this does not matter). In other words, even after having accepted your theorem, I do not observe that the typhoon in the computer in front of me makes me wet. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Questions about simulations, emulations, etc.
On 09.06.2012 14:06 Quentin Anciaux said the following: 2012/6/9 Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru On 09.06.2012 12:36 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 09 Jun 2012, at 08:39, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 08.06.2012 21:00 Pzomby said the following: Using mathematics, computations and symbols; human embodied consciousness can (using computers) create models, simulations, emulations, depictions, replications, representations etc. of observations of the physical universe and its processes. This assumes that the actual observable physical universe is exemplified by, and is, instantiations of, mathematics and computations. Why not assume that model is different from what is modeled? That is usually the case. But this does not mean that it is always the case. In particular digital processes, or relations, can be emulated exactly, so if you assume the brain is a natural computer, there are possible exact model, like a digital brain and its corresponding relative state in arithmetic. From the 1p-view, those cannot be distinguished in any immediate way. If I simulate a typhoon on a computer in front of you, you will never become wet by it. But if I read and cut you, and simulate with that computer you + the typhoon at the right comp level (assuming it exists) then you will, in that case, feel to be wet due to the simulated typhoon. Likewise, the arithmetical typhoons can make wet the relative arithmetical entities (with comp). But then even in this case, I distinguish between a typhoon on a computer in front of me and a real typhoon. I mean that let us assume comp for a moment. Let me agree with you for a moment that arithmetics - mind - physics Said that, I still see a computer in front of me (or a computer cluster at work, well I do not see it there but rather access but I guess this does not matter). In other words, even after having accepted your theorem, I do not observe that the typhoon in the computer in front of me makes me wet. Yes so what ? you're not at the same level so you can't expect that... Bruno said Likewise, the arithmetical typhoons can make wet the relative arithmetical entities (with comp). Nothing special, I agree. Yet, let us imagine that we are at the same level. Let me assume that I am in simulation. Yet, even being in simulation, my simulated computer in front of simulated myself will not make simulated myself wet. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Questions about simulations, emulations, etc.
On 09.06.2012 18:07 Quentin Anciaux said the following: 2012/6/9 Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru On 09.06.2012 14:06 Quentin Anciaux said the following: 2012/6/9 Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru On 09.06.2012 12:36 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 09 Jun 2012, at 08:39, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 08.06.2012 21:00 Pzomby said the following: ... Said that, I still see a computer in front of me (or a computer cluster at work, well I do not see it there but rather access but I guess this does not matter). In other words, even after having accepted your theorem, I do not observe that the typhoon in the computer in front of me makes me wet. Yes so what ? you're not at the same level so you can't expect that... Bruno said Likewise, the arithmetical typhoons can make wet the relative arithmetical entities (with comp). Nothing special, I agree. Yet, let us imagine that we are at the same level. Let me assume that I am in simulation. Yet, even being in simulation, my simulated computer ?? No it will make your simulated self in the simulated computer wet... but your simulated self in front of a simulated computer simulating you in front of a typhoon will not... same thing you (the 1st level simulated you) are *not* at the same level (as the simulated simulated you). This I do not quite understand. What does it mean simulated levels in simulation? After all my computer is simulated and I is simulated. Then what is difference between my computer that is simulated and myself that is simulated? Where the difference comes from? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Questions about simulations, emulations, etc.
On 09.06.2012 20:00 Quentin Anciaux said the following: 2012/6/9 Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru On 09.06.2012 18:07 Quentin Anciaux said the following: 2012/6/9 Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru On 09.06.2012 14:06 Quentin Anciaux said the following: 2012/6/9 Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru On 09.06.2012 12:36 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 09 Jun 2012, at 08:39, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 08.06.2012 21:00 Pzomby said the following: ... Said that, I still see a computer in front of me (or a computer cluster at work, well I do not see it there but rather access but I guess this does not matter). In other words, even after having accepted your theorem, I do not observe that the typhoon in the computer in front of me makes me wet. Yes so what ? you're not at the same level so you can't expect that... Bruno said Likewise, the arithmetical typhoons can make wet the relative arithmetical entities (with comp). Nothing special, I agree. Yet, let us imagine that we are at the same level. Let me assume that I am in simulation. Yet, even being in simulation, my simulated computer ?? No it will make your simulated self in the simulated computer wet... but your simulated self in front of a simulated computer simulating you in front of a typhoon will not... same thing you (the 1st level simulated you) are *not* at the same level (as the simulated simulated you). This I do not quite understand. What does it mean simulated levels in simulation? After all my computer is simulated and I is simulated. Then what is difference between my computer that is simulated and myself that is simulated? Where the difference comes from? You were talking about a 'you' being simulated inside a simulated computer (so that you is one level down from a simulated you in front of that simulated computer). So you have: real computer running a simulation. In that simulation a universal computer is built and on it (the simulated computer) a simulated being (part of the simulation at the level where the computer has been built) run another simulation, what is running on the simulated computer cannot affect the simulated being (which is in front of it, if the computer is a real simulation of a computer) but can affect simulated being running on the simulated world of that simulated computer. No, I have meant a) simulated computer b) simulated myself (but not in a) Now I consider a) and b). This is after all some instructions executed by some Turing machine. It seems that there is no difference. How would you define the difference then in this case? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Questions about simulations, emulations, etc.
On 09.06.2012 20:39 David Nyman said the following: On 9 June 2012 19:22, Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: No, I have meant a) simulated computer b) simulated myself (but not in a) Now I consider a) and b). This is after all some instructions executed by some Turing machine. It seems that there is no difference. How would you define the difference then in this case? I agree with you that there is no difference if you are thinking in terms of a physical machine, and assume primitive physicality. In that case the very notion of computation itself is an unnecessary auxiliary assumption in explaining the machine's physical behaviour. But then how can you justify the computational theory of mind on which the whole notion of simulation of consciousness depends? I am not sure if I want to justify something. I am rather in a mood for anarchy. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: free will and mathematics
I have started reading Collingwood's An Essay on Metaphysics and I see one definition that seems to be pertinent to this discussion. p. 27 Def. 4. To assume it to suppose by an act of free choice. A person who 'makes an assumption' is making a supposition about which he is aware that he might if he chose make not that but another. All assumptions are suppositions, but all suppositions are not assumptions: for some are made altogether unawares, and others, though the persons what make them may be conscious of making them, are made without any consciousness of the possibility, if it is a possibility, that others might have been made instead. When correctly used, the word 'assumption' is always used with this implication of free choice, as when it is said 'let us assume x = 10'. What about that? It looks to be not far away from what Aleksandr Lokshin has suggested. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Welcome to Life
On 06.06.2012 06:50 meekerdb said the following: Here's your closest continuation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0Efeature=relmfu Brent Excellent. Thanks for the link. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Popper's World 3 and Multiverse
The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch is full of Popper's methodology. Also one can find there a statement that the knowledge exists objectively. On the other hand, Maarten Hoenen in his lectures several times has mentioned Popper's World 3. Interestingly enough that though Deutsch seems to like Popper a lot, in his book he has mentioned nothing about this part of Popper's heritage. Hence I have finally decided to learn what Popper's World 3 is. It happened that Popper had a very special view on where the objective knowledge exist. A couple of quotes are below. They could be useful in a discussion with a Popperian. Popper seems to be not a dualist but rather a trialist. Three Worlds, Karl Popper The Tanner Lecture On Human Values Delivered at The University of Michigan, April 7, 1978 “In this lecture I intend to challenge those who uphold a monist or even a dualist view of the universe; and I will propose, instead, a pluralist view. I will propose a view of the universe that recognizes at least three different but interacting sub-universes.” “To sum up, we arrive at the following picture of the universe. There is the physical universe, world 1, with its most important sub-universe, that of the living organisms. World 2, the world of conscious experience, emerges as an evolutionary product from the world of organisms. World 3, the world of the products of the human mind, emerges as an evolutionary product from world 2.” “If I am right that the physical world has been changed by the world 3 products of the human mind, acting through the intervention of the human mind then this means that the worlds 1, 2, and 3, can interact and, therefore, that none of them is causally closed. The thesis that the physical world is not causally closed but that it can be acted upon by world 2 and, through its intervention, by world 3, seems to be particularly hard to swallow for the materialist monist, or the physicalist.” “Of course, the materialist will explain it all in terms of our brain processes; and admittedly, they do play a role in mediating the intervention of effects from world 3 through world 2 to world 1. But where the great change originated is in world 3, in our theories. These have, metaphorically speaking, a kind of life of their own, though they depend heavily on our minds and, very likely, also on our brains.” “The feedback effect between world 3 and world 2 is of particular importance. Our minds are the creators of world 3; but world 3 in its turn not only informs our minds, but largely creates them. The very idea of a self depends on world 3 theories, especially upon a theory of time which underlies the identity of the self, the self of yesterday, of today, and of tomorrow. The learning of a language, which is a world 3 object, is itself partly a creative act and partly a feedback effect; and the full consciousness of self is anchored in our human language.” Evgenii -- http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/06/three-worlds.html -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: free will and mathematics
On 01.06.2012 21:30 meekerdb said the following: On 6/1/2012 11:43 AM, Brian Tenneson wrote: Cannot comment, don't know what ASCII string free will means and neither do you. John K Clark Of course there are various degrees to which it can be free but that doesn't mean free will is a meaningless string. Freedom is defined by the observer. I note the freedom I have in choosing my beliefs. I am not bound to agree with you nor am I bound to disagree with you. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines free will as follows “Free Will” is a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives. So what is the fuss about? The fuss is because the concept is thought to be fundamental to jurisprudence and social policy (it's even cited in some Supreme Court decisions). The concept of free will has been carried over from past theological and philosophical ideas. But now the concept is attacked by scientists and some philosophers as incoherent or empirically false. If they are right it would seem to imply revision of the social/legal concepts and laws derived from it. Can existing practice be justified on a purely utilitarian basis? What about that if you see something working (like a human society) and you do not understand how it is working, then it might be a good idea not to try to change it. The drive for change usually comes from people who are not satisfied with their position in the current society. Why the drive for change should come from some metaphysical discussions? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Free will in MWI
On 01.06.2012 19:19 meekerdb said the following: On 6/1/2012 7:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 31 May 2012, at 23:12, meekerdb wrote: ... Sam Harris just wrote a short book titled Free Will and from the comments it has elicited it's apparent that there is very little agreement as to what it means. Sam, for example, rejects compatibilist free will (e.g. as defended by Daniel Dennett) because he says 'free will' decisions must be conscious decisions. The idea that free will need consciousness and the idea of compatibilism seems compatible to me. Have you an idea why Sam find those ideas incompatible? Because, almost all of our thinking, including making decisions, is unconscious. I think he implicitly relies on the fold idea of free will so, How can I be the author of my decision if I didn't even think about it. He argues that we can't accept the unconscious working of our bodies as instantiating free will decisions because, he says, it would be absurd to accept the actions of bacteria in your body as representing your free will. Of course Sam rejects incompatibilist free will too and says free will is an illusion of an illusion. Anyway, if you're interested you can read it yourself, it's only 66 pages. Recently I have seen another book in this direction: Derk Pereboom, Living without Free Will (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy) Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: free will and mathematics
On 01.06.2012 20:48 meekerdb said the following:
On 6/1/2012 8:59 AM, John Clark wrote:
Believers in 'contra causal free will' suppose that it did not,
that
my 'soul' or 'spirit' initiated the physical process without any
determinative physical antecedent.
A belief that was enormously popular during the dark ages and led
to a thousand years of philosophical dead ends; not surprising
really, confusion is inevitable if you insist on trying to make
sense out of gibberish.
So you think the existence of soul or spirit is not just false but
incomprehensible. I disagree since there are experiments (e.g.
healing prayer, NDE tests) that could have provided evidence for
these extra-physical phenomena. By their null result they provide
evidence against them. But on your view there cannot be evidence for
or against because the concept cannot be given any meaning, much less
an operational meaning that can be tested.
From Understanding Consciousness by Max Velmans:
p. 300 To make matters worse, there are four distinct ways in which
body/brain and mind/consciousness might in principle, enter into casual
relationship. There might be physical causes of physical states,
physical causes of mental states, mental causes of mental states, and
mental causes of physical states. Establishing which forms of causation
are effective in practice has clear implication for understanding the
aetiology and proper treatment of illness and disease.
Within conventional medicine, physical - physical is taken for granted.
Consequently, the proper treatment for physical disorders is assumed to
be some from of physical intervention. Psychiatry takes the efficacy of
physical - mental causation for granted, along with the assumption that
the proper treatment for psychological disorders may involve
psychoactive drugs, neurosurgery and so on. Many forms of psychotherapy
take mental - mental causation for granted, and assume that
psychological disorders can be alleviated by means of 'talking cures',
guided imagery, hypnosis and other form of mental intervention.
Psychosomatic medicine assumes that mental - physical causation can be
effective ('psychogenesis'). Consequently, under some circumstances, a
physical disorder (for example, hysterical paralysis) may require a
mental (psychotherapeutic) intervention. Given the extensive evidence
for all these causal interactions (cf. Velmans, 1996a), how we to make
sense of them?
Velmans, M. 1996a: The Science of Consciousness: Psychological,
Neuropsychological and Clinical Reviews, London: Routledge.
Evgenii
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Re: Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism
On 28.05.2012 22:42 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 28 May 2012, at 21:09, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: Bruno, I believe that this time I could say that you express your position. For example in your two answers below it does not look like I don't defend that position. I don't think so. I comment my comment below. On 28.05.2012 10:55 Bruno Marchal said the following: I comment on both Evgenii and Craig's comment: On May 26, 11:57 am, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote: ... Velmans introduces perceptual projection but this remains as the Hard Problem in his book, how exactly perceptual projection happens. It does not make sense. This is doing Aristotle mistake twice. To see a mistake or an invalidity in an argument, you don't need to take any position. Comp can be used as a counter-example to the idea that Velmans' move is necessary. But then there are two different positions, first those who assume comp and those who do not. Well, the number of positions is presumably more than two. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism
On 27.05.2012 23:04 Stephen P. King said the following: On 5/27/2012 4:07 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... A good extension. Velmans does not consider such a case but he says that the perceptions are located exactly where one perceives them. In this case, it seems that it should not pose an additional difficulty. Hi Evgenii, This does seem to imply an interesting situation where the mind/consciousness of the observer is in a sense no longer confined to being 'inside the skull but ranging out to the farthest place where something is percieved. It seems to me that imply a mapping between a large hyper-volume (the out there) and the small volume of the brain that cannot be in a one-to-one form. The reflexive idea looks a lot like a Pullback in category theory and one can speculate if the dual, the Pushout, is also involved. See http://www.euclideanspace.com/maths/discrete/category/universal/index.htm for more. If you say that mind/consciousness confined to being 'inside the skull' you have exactly the same problem as then you must accept that all three dimensional world that you observe up to the horizon is 'inside the skull'. The mapping problem remains though. ... Yes, the third-person view belongs to another observer and Velmans plays this fact out. He means that at his picture when a person looks at the cat, the third-person view means another person who looks at that cat and simultaneously look at the first person. This way, two person can change their first-person view to third-person view. However, it is still impossible to directly observe the first-person view of another observer. Everything that is possible in this respect are neural correlates of consciousness. Does this ultimately imply that the 3-p (third person point of view) is merely an abstraction and never actually occurring? WE make a big There is no clear answer in the book (or I have missed it). ... Not really. As usual, the positive construction of own philosophy is weaker as the critique of other philosophies. Yes, that is true. An already existing target makes for a sharper attack. In Russian to this end, one says Ломать не строить, душа не болит. I would translate this idiom as To destroy something is much easier than to build it, as this way the soul does not hurt. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: A Computable Universe: Understanding and Exploring Nature As Computation
On 28.05.2012 17:48 John Mikes said the following: Evgenij: to your last par (small remark): (and I repeat the outburst of a religious scientist upon my post questioning his 'faith'): Who gave you the audacity to feel so superior to (some?) WORKING CLASS? (I apologize: you seem to be only the messenger) Then again (in the message): GENTLEMEN? and WHAT moral norms? Would gays be included? and why would women excluded? WHAT morality would be required? Read the SCRIPTs (maybe more than just the Jewish Bible) and you will be shaken in your morals of the past centuries' mostly western belief. Girls in good standing, i.e. Ishtar's virgins (whores?) who had to conceive by a stranger for money to prove their fertility and find a decent husband? Consequently the offering of the first born because they were most likely the offspring of other than the husband? and so on and on. Pompei was later, but still in the 'biblical' morals. Remarks of this kind should be explained/understood better. Sorry for the outburst LohnM Hi John, I was just kidding. I should say though that the movie Pornography: A Secret History of Civilization is very enjoyable when they describe how the Victorian society has reacted to findings in Pompei. See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erotic_art_in_Pompeii_and_Herculaneum Do you have other explanation why this book is so expansive? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism
Bruno, I believe that this time I could say that you express your position. For example in your two answers below it does not look like I don't defend that position. On 28.05.2012 10:55 Bruno Marchal said the following: I comment on both Evgenii and Craig's comment: On May 26, 11:57 am, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote: ... Velmans introduces perceptual projection but this remains as the Hard Problem in his book, how exactly perceptual projection happens. It does not make sense. This is doing Aristotle mistake twice. Velmans contrast his model with reductionism (physicalism) and dualism and interestingly enough he finds many common features between reductionism and dualism. For example, the image in the mirror will be in the brain according to both reductionism and dualism. That does not make sense either. There are no image in the brain. In fact there is no brain. As for Aristotle, recently I have read Feyerabend where he has compared Aristotle's 'Natural is what occurs always or almost always' with Galileo's inexorable laws. Somehow I like 'occurs always or almost always'. I find it more human. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The limit of all computations
On 26.05.2012 21:06 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 26 May 2012, at 16:48, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 26.05.2012 11:30 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 26 May 2012, at 08:47, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... In my view, it would be nicer to treat such a question historically. Your position based on your theorem, after all, is one of possible positions. What do you mean by my position? I don't think I defend a position. I do study the consequence of comp, if only to give a chance to a real non-comp theory. A position that the natural numbers are the foundation of the world. I don't defend that position. I show it to be a consequence of the comp hypothesis + occam razor. I do appreciate the clearness of your position. From this viewpoint, the language of mathematics allows us to remove ambiguities indeed. ... When we talk with each other and make proofs we use a human language. Hence to make sure that we can make universal proofs by means of a human language, it might be good to reach an agreement on what it is. This is an impossible task. That is why I use the semi-axiomatic method (in UDA), and math in AUDA. If you disagree with a method of reasoning, you have to explain why. In english, no problem. I also agree that human language in a way is a mess. Yet, somehow it seems to work and this puzzles my, how it could happen when even mathematicians failed to analyze it. ... I am not against non-comp, but I am against any gap-theory, where we introduce something in the ontology to make a problem unsolvable leading to don't ask policy. We are back to a human language. It seems that you mean that some constructions expressed by it do not make sense. It well might be but again we have to discuss the language then. I don't see why we have to discuss language, apart from the machines and their languages. It seems that there is a gap between the language of mathematics and a human language. It might be interesting to understand it. It might give us a hint on how the Universe is made. You see, we must use a human language to communicate, with the language of mathematics this would not work. I do not know why. As for comp, I have written once Simulation Hypothesis and Simulation Technology http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2011/09/simulation-hypothesis-and-simulation-technology.html that practically speaking it just does not work. I understand that you talk in principle but how could we know if comp in principle is true if we cannot check it in practice? The whole point is that we can check it, at least if you accept the classical theory of knowledge. Physics arise from number self-reference in a precise constrained way, and the logic of observable already give rise to quantum-like logic. If mechanism is false, we can know it. If it is true we can only bet on it, and the bet or not on some level of substitution. The facts (Everett QM) gives evidence that our first person plural is given by the electronic orbital, our stories does not depend on the precise position of electron in those orbitals. I personally find an extrapolation of a working model outside of its scope that has been researched pretty dangerous. I am just showing that computationalism (widespread) and materialism (widespread) are incompatible. I reason only, and I extrapolate less than Aristotelians. I am afraid that reason only is not enough to understand Nature. I am browsing now The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy. Let me give a quote that in an enjoyable way expresses my thought above. p. 19 In 1277 Etienne Tempier, Bishop of Paris, issued a condemnation of several theses derived from Aristotelianism - that God could not allow any form of planetary motion other than circular, that He could not make a vacuum, and many more. The condemnation of 1277 helped inspire a form of theology known as voluntarism, which admitted no limitations on God’s power. It regarded natural law not as Forms inherent within nature but as divine commands imposed from outside nature. Voluntarism insisted that the structure of the universe - indeed, its very existence - is not rationally necessary but is contingent upon the free and transcendent will of God. One of the most important consequences of voluntarist theology for science is that it helped to inspire and justify an experimental methodology. For if God created freely rather than by logical necessity, then we cannot gain knowledge of it by logical deduction (which traces necessary connections). Instead, we have to go out and look, to observe and experiment. As Barbour puts it: 'The world is orderly and dependable because God is trustworthy and not capricious; but the details of the world must be found by observation rather than rational deduction because God is free and did not have to create any particular kind of universe.' Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Re: The limit of all computations
On 24.05.2012 09:52 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 23 May 2012, at 20:19, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... nominalism that they are just notation and do not exist as such independently from the mind. But that distinction is usually made in the aristotelian context, where some concrete physical universe is postulated. With comp we know this is not possible. You can restate it by saying that the natural numbers are concrete, but that a property like 'being prime is abstract. Then mathematicians are mostly realist, because they believe that being prime is an independent property of natural numbers. for a mechanical generable set, like the set of prime numbers, you can come back to nominalism through Gödel numbering, and through the identification of the concept of primes with the number (machine) which generates all and only the prime numbers. But this leads to difficulties for the non mechanically generable sets of numbers, which *do* play a role in the machine/numbers points of view. To me this difference realism vs. nominalism seems to be related to the question whether mathematical objects are mental or not. But with comp, mental is a number's attributes. And eventually physical is a collection of number attribute. If you make mathematical object mental, and *only* mental, you have to tell me what you assume at the start in the theory. If you chose something physical, then you have to abandon comp, and you have to tell how you relate mental and physical, by using provably non Turing emulable components. You will lose also the explanation of why something physical exist, and why it hurts. In my view, it would be nicer to treat such a question historically. Your position based on your theorem, after all, is one of possible positions. In your paper to express your position you employ a normal human language. Hence I believe that that the question about general terms in the human language is the same as about the natural numbers. Again, the ideal world of Plato was not designed for natural numbers only. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The limit of all computations
On 26.05.2012 11:30 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 26 May 2012, at 08:47, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... In my view, it would be nicer to treat such a question historically. Your position based on your theorem, after all, is one of possible positions. What do you mean by my position? I don't think I defend a position. I do study the consequence of comp, if only to give a chance to a real non-comp theory. A position that the natural numbers are the foundation of the world. I agree that you often repeat the assumption for your theorem but I believe that your answers to my question have been answered exactly from such a position. In your paper to express your position you employ a normal human language. Hence I believe that that the question about general terms in the human language is the same as about the natural numbers. ? (I can agree and disagree, it is too vague) When we talk with each other and make proofs we use a human language. Hence to make sure that we can make universal proofs by means of a human language, it might be good to reach an agreement on what it is. Again, the ideal world of Plato was not designed for natural numbers only. Sure. Although it begins with natural numbers only, and it ended on this, somehow, because the neoplatonists were aware of the importance of numbers and were coming back to Pythagorean form of platonism. Now, with comp, or just with Church thesis, there is a sort of rehabilitation of the Pythagorean view, for the non natural numbers reappears in the natural number realm as unavoidable epistemic tools for the natural numbers to understand themselves, and anymore than numbers (and their basic laws) is not just unnecessary, it is that it cannot work without adding some explicit non-comp magic. I am not against non-comp, but I am against any gap-theory, where we introduce something in the ontology to make a problem unsolvable leading to don't ask policy. We are back to a human language. It seems that you mean that some constructions expressed by it do not make sense. It well might be but again we have to discuss the language then. As for comp, I have written once Simulation Hypothesis and Simulation Technology http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2011/09/simulation-hypothesis-and-simulation-technology.html that practically speaking it just does not work. I understand that you talk in principle but how could we know if comp in principle is true if we cannot check it in practice? I personally find an extrapolation of a working model outside of its scope that has been researched pretty dangerous. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Max Velmans' Reflexive Monism
I have just finished reading Understanding Consciousness by Max Velmans and below there are a couple of comments to the book. The book is similar to Jeffrey Gray's Consciousness: Creeping up on the Hard Problem in a sense that it takes phenomenal consciousness seriously. Let me give an example. Imagine that you watch yourself in the mirror. Your image that you observe in the mirror is an example of phenomenal consciousness. The difference with Jeffrey Gray is in the question where the image that you see in the mirror is located. If we take a conventional way of thinking, that is, 1) photons are reflected by the mirror 2) neurons in retina are excited 3) natural neural nets starts information processing then the answer should be that this image is in your brain. It seems to be logical as, after all, we know that there is nothing after the mirror. However, it immediately follows that not only your image in the mirror is in your brain but rather everything that your see is also in your brain. This is exactly what one finds in Gray's book The world is inside the head. Velmans takes a different position that he calls reflexive model of perception. According to him, what we consciously experience is located exactly where we experience it. In other words, the image that you see in the mirror is located after the mirror and not in your brain. A nice picture that explains Velmans' idea is at http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/05/brain-and-world.html Velmans introduces perceptual projection but this remains as the Hard Problem in his book, how exactly perceptual projection happens. Velmans contrast his model with reductionism (physicalism) and dualism and interestingly enough he finds many common features between reductionism and dualism. For example, the image in the mirror will be in the brain according to both reductionism and dualism. This part could be interesting for Stephen. First I thought that perceptual projection could be interpreted similar to Craig's senses but it is not the case. Velmans' reflexive monism is based on a statement that first- and third-person views cannot be combined (this is what Bruno says). From a third-person view, one observes neural correlates of consciousness but not the first-person view. Now I understand such a position much better. Anyway the the last chapter in the book is Self-consciousness in a reflexive universe. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: A Computable Universe: Understanding and Exploring Nature As Computation
On 26.05.2012 07:57 Stephen P. King said the following: On 5/26/2012 1:50 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: http://uncomp.uwe.ac.uk/LCCOMP/en/Files/Entries/2012/5/23_A_Computable_Universe.html Overview This volume, with a foreword by Sir Roger Penrose, discusses the foundations of computation in relation to nature. It focuses on two main questions: What is computation? How does nature compute? The contributors are world-renowned experts who have helped shape a cutting-edge computational understanding of the universe. They discuss computation in the world from a variety of perspectives, ranging from foundational concepts to pragmatic models to ontological conceptions and philosophical implications. Alas, it cost $138.00 US. That is too much. :_( A small remark. Recently I have watched Pornography: A Secret History of Civilization. It happened that after European have found so much erotics in Pompei, they have decided that only gentlemen with strict moral norms could watch such findings. Otherwise this could spoil the moral values in the working class. You could think the same way. The price is high not to destroy the moral of the working class. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
A Computable Universe: Understanding and Exploring Nature As Computation
http://uncomp.uwe.ac.uk/LCCOMP/en/Files/Entries/2012/5/23_A_Computable_Universe.html Overview This volume, with a foreword by Sir Roger Penrose, discusses the foundations of computation in relation to nature. It focuses on two main questions: What is computation? How does nature compute? The contributors are world-renowned experts who have helped shape a cutting-edge computational understanding of the universe. They discuss computation in the world from a variety of perspectives, ranging from foundational concepts to pragmatic models to ontological conceptions and philosophical implications. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The limit of all computations
On 23.05.2012 10:47 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 23 May 2012, at 01:22, Stephen P. King wrote: ... If mathematical objects are not within the category of Mental then that is news to philosophers... If mathematical objects are within the category of Mental then that is news to mathematicians... Let us take terms like information, computation, etc. Are they mental or mathematical? It might be good simultaneously to extend this question by including general terms that people use to describe the word. Are mathematical objects then are different from them? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The limit of all computations
On 23.05.2012 19:43 Stephen P. King said the following: ... There seems to be a divergence of definitions occurring. It might be better for me to withdraw from philosophical discussions for a while and focus just on mathematical questions, like the dependence on order of a basis... I believe that to this end, one just needs to number basis vectors, so we must order them. If I remember correctly, depending on how you order x, y, z you obtain either a right or left-handed coordinate system. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The limit of all computations
On 23.05.2012 20:01 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 23 May 2012, at 19:19, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... Let us take terms like information, computation, etc. Are they mental or mathematical? Information is vague, and can be both. Computation is mathematical, by using the Church (Turing Kleene Post Markov) thesis. But humans, and any universal machine, can mentally handle and reason on mathematical notions, implementing or representing them locally. With comp, trivially, the mental is the doing of a universal numbers. It might be good simultaneously to extend this question by including general terms that people use to describe the word. Are mathematical objects then are different from them? I am not sure I understand what you are asking. I am talking about language that we use to describe the Nature. Information and computation were just an example. We can however find also energy, mass, or animal, human being. I guess that Plato has not limited the Platonia to the mathematical objects rather it was about ideas. So is my question. Let me repeat about the fight between realism vs. nominalism. Realism in this context is different from the modern meaning of the word. Realism and nominalism in philosophy are related to universals. A simple example: A is a person; B is a person. Does A is equal to B? The answer is no, A and B are after all different persons. Yet the question would be if something universal and related to a term “person” exists objectively (say as an objective attribute). Realism says that universals do exist independent from the mind, nominalism that they are just notation and do not exist as such independently from the mind. To me this difference realism vs. nominalism seems to be related to the question whether mathematical objects are mental or not. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: “Markov's theorem
Stephen, I have a more general question. I am not a mathematician and I do not quite understand the relationship between mathematics and the world that surround me. It seems to me that your writing implies that there is the intimate connections between mathematics and the Universe. Could you please express your viewpoint in more detail on why findings in mathematics could influence our understanding of the world? From a viewpoint of a not-mathematician this looks a bit like a numerology. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Poking the bear.
On 16.05.2012 05:53 Colin Geoffrey Hales said the following: Hi all, You might be interested in a little article I wrote, published here: http://theconversation.edu.au/learning-experience-lets-take-consciousness-in-from-the-cold-6739 I am embarked on the long process of getting science to self-review. Enjoy! Colin Hi Colin, I have read recently Jeffrey A. Gray, Consciousness: Creeping up on the Hard Problem and reading now Max Velmans, Understanding Consciousness. These books show that one will find something different from NCC as well. An interesting question is where phenomenal consciousness. Is it completely in the brain? Max Velmans develops a reflexive model of perception where phenomenal consciousness is outside of the brain: http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/05/brain-and-world.html Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Dualism via Quantum Mechanics
On 14.05.2012 10:29 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 13 May 2012, at 23:19, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... Yet, I guess that even not all physicists believe in multiverse. When you convince all physicists that multivers exists, I will start thinking about it. On reality, usually all humans are wrong. Also, if people start reasoning when the majority is convinced, this means that no one reason really. You should avoid that kind of authoritative argument. Science is not a question of majority vote. My empirical observations just shows that the easiness and obviousness that you stress to accept multiverse seems to be overestimated. The life seems to be more complex. ... Let us take chemists. They use molecular modeling for a long time and I would say they have been already successful without a multiverse. No, this is false. They use multiverse all the time. They prefer to talk In my view, your position that chemists have used multiverse all the time contradicts to historical facts. with the superposition state labeling, and they can invent for themselves the idea that QM does not apply to them, to avoid the contagion of he superposition state, but that's word play to avoid looking at what happens. It is just avoiding facts to sustain personal conviction. Humans does that all the time. QM = multiverse. The collapse of the wave is already an invention to hide the multiverse, and it has never work. You should look what molecular simulation is. It has nothing to do with the collapse of wave function. Whether wave function collapses or not, for chemists it does not matter. They use quantum mechanics according to instrumentalism and, as I have written, they have been successful. Do you mean that when all chemists accept the multiverse interpretation, they will start working more productively? They accept it. I have a book, by Baggot, who explains that he taught chemistry for 17 years, absolutely convinced that QM was true only on little distance, so he predicts that nature did not violate Bell's inequality, but when the experience of Aspect was done, he revised his opinion, and accept the idea that QM might be true macroscopically, and that it makes the weirdness a real fact of life. De Broglie behaves like ghat too. This illustrates that people can use a theory, without taking it seriously, because they follow their wishful conviction. It is typical for humans to do that. Again, you need to look at what molecular simulation is. What you write has nothing to do with molecular simulation, nor with the way how chemists develop new molecules and materials. That was my point, try to apply multiverse ideas to develop a new drug more productively. I would say that it will not work, because the collapse of wave function is irrelevant at this level. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Dualism via Quantum Mechanics
On 13.05.2012 04:38 meekerdb said the following: On 5/12/2012 4:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Evgenii, All this is well known. Copenhagen theory, or unique-universe theory are non computationalist dualist theories. Not all of them, at least not in the sense of dualist you mean. Adrian Kent has proposed a one-universe theory which doesn't suffer the ambiguity of the Copenhagen interpretation. arXiv:0708.3710v3 Real World Interpretation of Quantum Theory It has some problems similar to those of everything theories, namely showing that a quasi-classical universe is stable against a chaos of quantum white rabbits. But as Shimony has shown, the idea that consciousness collapse the wave leads to many difficulties, like non local hidden variables in physics, or solipsism in philosophy of mind. Or even just the problem to say what exactly is the collapse, on which all believers in collapse differ. I think it only leads to these problems if you take the wf to be an objective property of the system. A more instrumentalist interpretation (c.f. Asher Peres Quantum Theory:Concepts and Methods) which takes the wf to be a way of predicting measurement results doesn't suffer these problems: 'collapse' is just a change in our information. Brent Brent, Could you please comment on On the reality of the quantum state Matthew F. Pusey, Jonathan Barrett Terry Rudolph Nature Physics, (2012) http://www.nature.com/news/a-boost-for-quantum-reality-1.10602 What does it imply? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Dualism via Quantum Mechanics
On 13.05.2012 15:09 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 12 May 2012, at 14:59, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 12.05.2012 13:33 Bruno Marchal said the following: Evgenii, All this is well known. Copenhagen theory, or unique-universe theory are non computationalist dualist theories. But as Shimony has shown, the idea that consciousness collapse the wave leads to many difficulties, like non local hidden variables in physics, or solipsism in philosophy of mind. Or even just the problem to say what exactly is the collapse, on which all believers in collapse differ. Computationalism and Everett (QM without collapse) have no problems in that respect, and line up well with the everything-like use of Occam. I listen currently to Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. Yet, I am not convinced that Multiverse is a good explanation. The multiverse is a logical consequence of 1+1= 2, and mechanism. You don't need quantum mechanics. Then quantum mechanics, the first theory in physics succeeding to survive more that 5 years (indeed about a century now), is very solid, and based on very simple math, and it confirms the mechanism multiverse/multidream. So, to avoid the multiverse, you have to postulate very special physical laws, yet unobserved, and a very special theory of person, yet unobserved. Why not, but it is very speculative, and seems to be driven by wishful thinking only. I am glad that you believe in multiverse and find it logical. Yet, I guess that even not all physicists believe in multiverse. When you convince all physicists that multivers exists, I will start thinking about it. For example, I do not remember that multiverse has been even mentioned in The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. He discusses an eleven-dimensional space needed for the superstring theory but not the multiverse. You could as well defend the theory that the earth is flat, and build ad hoc rules to explain why it seems to be a sphere. I personally consider quantum mechanics just as a model. Yes. It is a theory. An hypothesis, very weird, but strongly supported by the facts, and whose main weird consequences are also a consequence of elementary arithmetic, and mechanism (even without any facts). David Deutsch does not like it, he says that instrumentalism is a bad philosophy and that we must take physical theories literally. I agree with Deutsch on this. That is science. Taking ideas seriously, so that we can change the theories more quickly when refuted. But then Deutsch uses comp, and very typically, like many, ignore its logical consequence. So Deutsch does not follow his own philosophy. In general, I am disappointed by his book. His style, I know the truth as this is a good explanation is far away from skeptical inquiry. After all, we know that quantum mechanics and general relativity contradict to each other. Why then to invest too much time into interpretations like Multiverse? Why it is useful? To learn and to try to figure out what happens here and now. Let us take chemists. They use molecular modeling for a long time and I would say they have been already successful without a multiverse. Do you mean that when all chemists accept the multiverse interpretation, they will start working more productively? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Dualism via Quantum Mechanics
A few quotes below to dualism from Max Velmans. Evgenii http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/05/quantum-dualist-interactionism.html In Chapter 2, Conscious Souls, Brains and Quantum Mechanics there is a nice section Quantum Dualist Interactionism (p. 17 – 21) where Max Velmans describes works that present interpretation of dualism in the framework of quantum mechanics. Stapp, H. (2007a) ‘Quantum mechanical theories of consciousness’ in The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, pp. 300-312. Stapp, H. (2007b) ‘Quantum approaches to consciousness’ in The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness, pp. 881-908. Stapp, H. (2007c) Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer. Interestingly enough Stapp refers to the work of von Neumann: Von Neumann, J. (1955/1932) Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics/Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantummechanik. p. 19. “In various interpretations of quantum mechanics there is in any case ambiguity, and associated controversy, about where in the observation process a choice about what to observe and a subsequent observation is made. For example, according to the ‘Gopenhagen Convention’, the original formation of quantum theory developed by Niels Bohr, there is a clear separation between the process taking place in the observer (Process 1) and the process taking place in the system that is being observed (Process 2).” p. 21. “To differentiate the conscious part of Process 1 (the ‘conscious ego’) from the physically embodied part, Stapp (2007c) refers to it as ‘Process 0′. Stapp believes that such quantum dualist interactionism neatly sidesteps the classical problems of mind-body (or consciousness-brain) interaction (see Stapp, 2007a, p. 305). According to the von Neumann/Stapp theory, consciousness (Process 0) chooses what question to ask; through the meditation of Process 1 that interacts with Process 2 (the developing possibilities specified by the quantum mechanics of the physical system under interrogation, including the brain) – and Nature supplies an answer, which in turn reflected in conscious experience (making the entire process a form of dualism-interactionism).” p. 21. “A central claim of the von Neumann/Stapp theory, for example, is that it is the observer’s conscious free will (von Neumann’s ‘abstract ego’ or Stapp’s ‘Process 0′) that chooses how to probe nature.” -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Dualism via Quantum Mechanics
On 12.05.2012 13:33 Bruno Marchal said the following: Evgenii, All this is well known. Copenhagen theory, or unique-universe theory are non computationalist dualist theories. But as Shimony has shown, the idea that consciousness collapse the wave leads to many difficulties, like non local hidden variables in physics, or solipsism in philosophy of mind. Or even just the problem to say what exactly is the collapse, on which all believers in collapse differ. Computationalism and Everett (QM without collapse) have no problems in that respect, and line up well with the everything-like use of Occam. I listen currently to Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. Yet, I am not convinced that Multiverse is a good explanation. I personally consider quantum mechanics just as a model. David Deutsch does not like it, he says that instrumentalism is a bad philosophy and that we must take physical theories literally. In general, I am disappointed by his book. His style, I know the truth as this is a good explanation is far away from skeptical inquiry. After all, we know that quantum mechanics and general relativity contradict to each other. Why then to invest too much time into interpretations like Multiverse? Why it is useful? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Conscious Will and Responsibility: A Tribute to Benjamin Libet
Below there is a message from Facebook where his author briefly describes a book with papers about Libet's experiment. I guess that this should be useful for discussions about free will. Evgenii --- Review :Conscious Will and Responsibility: A Tribute to Benjamin Libet The editors of this work are well-chosen. Walter Sinnot-Armstrong is a well known philosopher who in the past has shown a healthy scepticism towards many philosophical views on time and free will. Lynn Nadel is a psychologist who specializes in memory, and has, for example, investigated the role of the hippocampus in memory formation. This all implies careful selection of current work on the Libet problem, sometimes known in the vernacular as the Libet half-second. My own interests are less in the immediate moral or ethical implications of Libet's findings, but more deeply into how Libet's discovery can and has affected current ideas on the mind, and on what the actual mechanisms are. The important results of Banks and Isham, of Hallett, Haynes, Haggard and Pockett, and of many other present day luminaries are discussed in some detail, often by the authors themselves. For anyone who wants to learn recent work on the Libet problem, many of the answers are in this book,which can reasonably be recommended to any appropriate advanced student and to good libraries for reference. Clearly the very latest papers, such as the most recent work of Isham and Geng, may not have had time to appear, and a few people like Lau and Mukamel are not actual authors here but some of their results are referred to therein. My own studies, which allow tensed as well as tenseless time, do also relate to the work of other authors like Adamatzky, Elze, Super and Romeo, but then I have a slightly different slant on the subject, as referred to in my recent work in http://ttjohn.blogspot.in/2012/05/strange-results-of-libet-experiments.html my website ifsgoa.com and my Facebook group http://www.facebook.com/groups/ifsgoa/ and of course my new book on physics, neuroscience and time: http://amzn.to/zHtsxy http://bit.ly/xR8FgF details, reviewers http://bit.ly/A2eaOe This book is highly recommended to anyone interested in philosophy, neuroscience and particularly in the Libet half-second at an advanced scientific level. Dr. John Yates, Institute for Fundamental Studies, Goa, Mumbai and London. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The Brain Minds Whether We Believe in Free Will or Not
On 09.05.2012 08:47 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 08 May 2012, at 21:41, meekerdb wrote: On 5/8/2012 12:04 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On May 8, 2:17 pm, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote: On 07.05.2012 22:21 Craig Weinberg said the following: On May 7, 3:37 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: ... Sure science grew out of Christianity, out of the decay and fragmentation of Christianity. When Christianity was strong and in control is what we call The Dark Ages. Now that it is no longer in control and the Western world relies on the technology of science, Christian apologists are writing revisionist histories. I agree, organized religion has been a catastrophe for the world, and it still is, but that doesn't change the historical emergence of science from spiritual contemplation. I would suggest you to consider Soviet Union under Stalin when military atheists took the power over. I guess that the absolute number of victims was even more. Just one examples. Nikolai Vavilov - a famous biologist working in genetics (compare his fate with that of Copernicus and Galileo) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov Late 1930s - Lysenko, who has conceived a hatred for genetics is put in charge of all of Soviet agriculture 1940 - arrested for allegedly wrecking Soviet agriculture; delivered more than a hundred hours of lectures on science while in prison 1943 - died imprisoned and suffering from dystrophia (faulty nutrition of muscles, leading to paralysis), in the Saratov prison. I don't think we can say that was caused by atheism though. Soviet communism was still atheistic after Stalin, wasn't it? There are secular authorities in power in other countries where there has not been any genocidal consequences. It seems like there have been and continue to be bloody crusades and inquisitions in the name of religion specifically that we haven't really seen associated with movements for the sake of atheism. Craig Any world view that attracts 'true believers' and promises 'a better world' can be co-opted for political power. Humans are social animals and like to belong to greater organizations. This is useful, but like most useful things, also dangerous. Science tends to avoid this because it institutionalizes skeptical testing. I don't think so. You cannot institutionalize skeptical testing, or you will kill skepticism. I know examples. You can encourage it by practice, but once institutionalized, it stop working. It could be partly institutionalized provided that power given for science is limited. The point in my example was that when a person could acquire unlimited power, than even a skeptical thinker would quickly become a dictator. In general, there is always fighting between different intellectual groups and the only difference is in allowable means in the fight that are accepted by a society. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The Brain Minds Whether We Believe in Free Will or Not
On 08.05.2012 21:48 meekerdb said the following: On 5/8/2012 11:09 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... For the development of science, it is necessary to have a believe that equations discovered by a human mind could be used for the whole history of Universe. At that time, this belief came from trinity. The logic of trinity is more complex, it concerns that words can explain Nature. I will report on this more, when I will work out Collingwood's An Essay on Metaphysics. Roughly speaking In the Beginning was the Word. The trinity, by the way, is not the invention of Christianity, it comes from ancient times. You have mentioned that you have another explanation why neuron nets not only obey the physical laws but they also can comprehend the physical laws. Could you please sketch it? I don't recall making such a claim, but assuming brains are instances of neural nets it's pretty clear that 'comprehend' means to implement input/output functions that are useful for survival and reproduction. Inventing mathematically consistent descriptions of physical processes (aka physical laws) is very useful in survival and reproduction. Hence neural nets evolve to comprehend physical laws. Brent, I believe that you have mentioned a book of your friend in this respect. I would be very much interesting in learning what modern science says about this. In general, this implies that the physical laws must allow the neural nets to comprehend the physical laws, that is, there is some constraint on possible physical laws. Evgenii Brent Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The Brain Minds Whether We Believe in Free Will or Not
On 07.05.2012 22:19 meekerdb said the following: On 5/7/2012 12:29 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.05.2012 20:11 meekerdb said the following: On 5/7/2012 10:42 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.05.2012 04:17 meekerdb said the following: On 5/6/2012 5:47 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On May 6, 4:06 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: Newton, Boyle, Tyndall, Descarte, Laplace, Kepler,...none of them were from the universities, which were dominated by theology. All of them were still theological thinkers though, Theological in that the concerned themselves with fundamentals and god (although Laplace famously said he had no need of that hypothesis), but all unconventional. Descarte was on the index of prohibited books until the index was abandoned in 1962. Newton was an Aryan heretic. The statement of Laplace is a part of the story when Newton called in God to preserve the stability of the Sun system. Two quotes from Feyerabend “Laplace showed a century later, that the planetary system did not fall apart but oscillated with a very large period. ‘I do not need this hypothesis’, he said, when Napoleon asked him about the need for a divine being.” Napoleon was not asking about the stability of the solar system. He had not even read Laplace's book. “But this was not yet the end of matter. … A precise calculation would have given infinities. … But this meant that Newton’s theory gave correct results only when used in an ad hoc way.” Where has Feyerbrand written this? Is he claiming that the solar system cannot be stable within Newton's theory? Does he think GR is needed (NASA doesn't)? This is a quote from Tyranny of Science http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/04/god-as-a-cosmic-operator.html He is really saying that using Laplaces method of series, taking the limit of the series would have given infinities. He recognizes that Poincare showed how the solar system is stable within Newtonian physics. So it is not the case that Newton's theory gave correct results only when used in an ad hoc way. It is exactly the case that at the time of Newton and Laplace, Newtonian physics was used in an ad hoc way. We should consider event in the historical perspective, otherwise it does not make sense to discuss the development of science. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The Brain Minds Whether We Believe in Free Will or Not
On 07.05.2012 21:49 meekerdb said the following: On 5/7/2012 12:09 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.05.2012 19:52 John Clark said the following: On Sun, May 6, 2012 at 1:51 PM, Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: To me the logic of trinity is perverse in the same extent as quantum mechanics. Perverse it may be but it's not my business to judge what quantum mechanics does in private when nobody is looking, that's up to quantum mechanics and the electron, but the point is that love it or hate it the logic of quantum mechanics works, it makes correct predictions on how the world works and if you don't like it complain to the universe not me. But the logic of the trinity does nothing and is just brain dead dumb. John K Clark You are wrong. With the trinity logic you can find for example an answer why human language allows us to describe events that has happened long before the life has been created. A remarkable discovery. The ancient Egyptians and Babylonians (and the present day Muslims) were unable to describe events before life on Earth (but maybe there was life elsewhere?). Or maybe you just refer to ex falso quodlibet, so by logic 1=3 implies anything at all. Brent For the development of science, it is necessary to have a believe that equations discovered by a human mind could be used for the whole history of Universe. At that time, this belief came from trinity. The logic of trinity is more complex, it concerns that words can explain Nature. I will report on this more, when I will work out Collingwood's An Essay on Metaphysics. Roughly speaking In the Beginning was the Word. The trinity, by the way, is not the invention of Christianity, it comes from ancient times. You have mentioned that you have another explanation why neuron nets not only obey the physical laws but they also can comprehend the physical laws. Could you please sketch it? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The Brain Minds Whether We Believe in Free Will or Not
On 07.05.2012 22:21 Craig Weinberg said the following: On May 7, 3:37 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: ... Sure science grew out of Christianity, out of the decay and fragmentation of Christianity. When Christianity was strong and in control is what we call The Dark Ages. Now that it is no longer in control and the Western world relies on the technology of science, Christian apologists are writing revisionist histories. I agree, organized religion has been a catastrophe for the world, and it still is, but that doesn't change the historical emergence of science from spiritual contemplation. I would suggest you to consider Soviet Union under Stalin when military atheists took the power over. I guess that the absolute number of victims was even more. Just one examples. Nikolai Vavilov - a famous biologist working in genetics (compare his fate with that of Copernicus and Galileo) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov Late 1930s - Lysenko, who has conceived a hatred for genetics is put in charge of all of Soviet agriculture 1940 - arrested for allegedly wrecking Soviet agriculture; delivered more than a hundred hours of lectures on science while in prison 1943 - died imprisoned and suffering from dystrophia (faulty nutrition of muscles, leading to paralysis), in the Saratov prison. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The Brain Minds Whether We Believe in Free Will or Not
On 06.05.2012 22:06 meekerdb said the following: On 5/6/2012 10:51 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 05.05.2012 23:34 meekerdb said the following: ... I would agree with that. Rome fell for other, more material reasons. But its fall created a power vacuum which was filled by organized Christianity and Christianity like any dogmatic religion is in conflict with the skeptical, inquiring, testing nature of science. When the reformation broke the intellectual monopoly of the Church, science flowered and for a time it was regarded as an adjunct to theology: discovering the creator through nature. But that only lasted up till Darwin. I am afraid that the conflict between Christianity and science that you describe is not consistent with historical facts. According to Prof Hoenen, who is an expert on Middle Age, science and theology has been developed rather like a brother and a sister. More like a master and slave - until the slaves revolted. Honen is a professor of philosophy and theology who specializes in commenting on theologians of the middle ages: Marilius, Boethius, and Albert Magnus. Although Bruno (not Marchal) was burned at the stake and Galileo was put under house arrest, science was allowed as a servant of the church up until the Victorian era. Newton, Boyle, Tyndall, Descarte, Laplace, Kepler,...none of them were from the universities, which were dominated by theology. And the real break came with Darwin. To say they developed like brother and sister is to suppose theology developed. While science has advance enormously in scope and accuracy, theologians now do no better than in the 13th century. For science to be started in a sense that you have mentioned, the society should reach a certain limit of development. I am afraid that you forget about this simple fact. Science in the middle ages has started from logic, grammatic, etc. Without this there would be no science that you mean. Again, the science has developed in the Christian Europe. This could be coincidence but one cannot exclude that this was destiny. You are talking about skeptical inquiry but you do not want to apply it for all questions. I am afraid that you take some answers just from ideological considerations, not from historical research. The favorite authors of Prof Hoenen are Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas von Aquin. I like a lot On Truth by Anselm of Canterbury. Prof Hoenen has demonstrated nicely that his work influenced many thinkers in the West a lot that pondered on what is truth. Right now I listen to Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. The book is not bad but the style is just terrible: I know the truth because this truth (that I know) is objective. Anselm and Thomas in this respect were more clever. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The Brain Minds Whether We Believe in Free Will or Not
On 07.05.2012 04:17 meekerdb said the following: On 5/6/2012 5:47 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On May 6, 4:06 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: Newton, Boyle, Tyndall, Descarte, Laplace, Kepler,...none of them were from the universities, which were dominated by theology. All of them were still theological thinkers though, Theological in that the concerned themselves with fundamentals and god (although Laplace famously said he had no need of that hypothesis), but all unconventional. Descarte was on the index of prohibited books until the index was abandoned in 1962. Newton was an Aryan heretic. The statement of Laplace is a part of the story when Newton called in God to preserve the stability of the Sun system. Two quotes from Feyerabend “Laplace showed a century later, that the planetary system did not fall apart but oscillated with a very large period. ‘I do not need this hypothesis’, he said, when Napoleon asked him about the need for a divine being.” “But this was not yet the end of matter. … A precise calculation would have given infinities. … But this meant that Newton’s theory gave correct results only when used in an ad hoc way.” The second quote shows that Laplace is actually was wrong, as his prove was not yet a correct one. Strictly speaking at the level of his knowledge (provided he would develop his series correctly) he would still need God to preserve the stability of the Sun system. Evgenii http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/04/god-as-a-cosmic-operator.html -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The Brain Minds Whether We Believe in Free Will or Not
On 07.05.2012 19:52 John Clark said the following: On Sun, May 6, 2012 at 1:51 PM, Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: To me the logic of trinity is perverse in the same extent as quantum mechanics. Perverse it may be but it's not my business to judge what quantum mechanics does in private when nobody is looking, that's up to quantum mechanics and the electron, but the point is that love it or hate it the logic of quantum mechanics works, it makes correct predictions on how the world works and if you don't like it complain to the universe not me. But the logic of the trinity does nothing and is just brain dead dumb. John K Clark You are wrong. With the trinity logic you can find for example an answer why human language allows us to describe events that has happened long before the life has been created. How for example the equations of quantum mechanics (that are certainly a creation of a human mind) can describe the Universe when there was no life? This is why, according to Prof Hoenen (Collingwood) trinity was an important ingredient of culture. With trinity a human being can understand the inexorable equations of Nature (or at least this was the belief at that time). Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The Brain Minds Whether We Believe in Free Will or Not
On 07.05.2012 20:01 meekerdb said the following: On 5/7/2012 10:35 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... It must have had its causes, but I note that it coincided with the reformation and the fragmentation of the Church's power. Science developed most in England where Henry VIII had divorced the Church from Rome and made it much weaker. That's British chauvinism. You should come to Paris and cry it loudly. Then let us see what happens. You are talking about skeptical inquiry but you do not want to apply it for all questions. I am afraid that you take some answers just from ideological considerations, not from historical research. The favorite authors of Prof Hoenen are Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas von Aquin. It's not my field to research - nor yours. You rely a few experts two of whom I note are noted Catholic apologists - hardly skeptical thinkers, but promoters of faith. Prof Hoenen is a skeptical thinker, he always contrasts many different viewpoints. He is an expert for middle ages, so he knows better what happened at that time as you. He does not promote faith, he just says how it was in the reality at that time. In general however, it would be make much more sense to read more about that development. This what I am saying, instead of ideology it is better to promote knowledge. Evgenii Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The Brain Minds Whether We Believe in Free Will or Not
On 07.05.2012 20:11 meekerdb said the following: On 5/7/2012 10:42 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.05.2012 04:17 meekerdb said the following: On 5/6/2012 5:47 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On May 6, 4:06 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: Newton, Boyle, Tyndall, Descarte, Laplace, Kepler,...none of them were from the universities, which were dominated by theology. All of them were still theological thinkers though, Theological in that the concerned themselves with fundamentals and god (although Laplace famously said he had no need of that hypothesis), but all unconventional. Descarte was on the index of prohibited books until the index was abandoned in 1962. Newton was an Aryan heretic. The statement of Laplace is a part of the story when Newton called in God to preserve the stability of the Sun system. Two quotes from Feyerabend “Laplace showed a century later, that the planetary system did not fall apart but oscillated with a very large period. ‘I do not need this hypothesis’, he said, when Napoleon asked him about the need for a divine being.” Napoleon was not asking about the stability of the solar system. He had not even read Laplace's book. “But this was not yet the end of matter. … A precise calculation would have given infinities. … But this meant that Newton’s theory gave correct results only when used in an ad hoc way.” Where has Feyerbrand written this? Is he claiming that the solar system cannot be stable within Newton's theory? Does he think GR is needed (NASA doesn't)? This is a quote from Tyranny of Science http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/04/god-as-a-cosmic-operator.html Feyerbrand claims that the creation of knowledge does not happen according to so called scientific method From Wikipedia The Oxford English Dictionary says that scientific method is: a method or procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses. Feyerbrand does not care by himself, whether Solar system is stable or not, this is not his business. He justs comments on how the development of science has happened according to historical facts. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The Brain Minds Whether We Believe in Free Will or Not
On 05.05.2012 23:34 meekerdb said the following: On 5/5/2012 1:07 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... According to Prof Hoenen, the logic of trinity was at that time basically in the blood. He gave several examples including even Marx. According to Prof Hoenen, the logic in Marx's Capital is the same as the logic of trinity. ?? Which is to say murky, ambiguous, and contradictory? I think Marx is a lot clearer than the trinity. To me the logic of trinity is perverse in the same extent as quantum mechanics. ... I guess that the reason for the fall of Rome was not Christianity. By the way, there is a nice book I would agree with that. Rome fell for other, more material reasons. But its fall created a power vacuum which was filled by organized Christianity and Christianity like any dogmatic religion is in conflict with the skeptical, inquiring, testing nature of science. When the reformation broke the intellectual monopoly of the Church, science flowered and for a time it was regarded as an adjunct to theology: discovering the creator through nature. But that only lasted up till Darwin. I am afraid that the conflict between Christianity and science that you describe is not consistent with historical facts. According to Prof Hoenen, who is an expert on Middle Age, science and theology has been developed rather like a brother and a sister. No doubt, that one can observe a fight for the power between different intellectual groups (this happens between relatives as well) but this is quite different from what your are talking. Lucio Russo. The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why it Had to Be Reborn where the author claim that there was another scientific revolution indeed. Yet, Rome was the reason for its fall. Lucio Russo says that Rome as such was not interested in scientific revolution. Let me repeat however what Collingwood has presumably done. His goal was to find absolute presuppositions related to the statement God exists. What's his definition of God? Does he really mean presuppositions, or does he mean entailments. I wouldn't think you'd need any presuppositions to simply assert, God exists. I expect that he means presuppositions, as this is the main theme of his book. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
