The Irrationality of Physicalism
If Physicalism is true, then the belief in Physicalism can’t be rationally justified. If physicalism is true, then our beliefs and experiences are a result of the universe’s initial conditions and causal laws (which may have a probabilistic aspect). Therefore, assuming physicalism, we don’t present or believe arguments for reasons of logic or rationality. Instead, the arguments that we present and believe are those entailed by the physics that underlies our experiences. It is *possible* that we live in a universe whose initial conditions and causal laws are such that our arguments *are* logical. But in a physicalist framework that’s not why we present or believe those arguments. The fact that the arguments may be logical is superfluous to why we make or believe them. Obviously there’s nothing that says that our physically generated experiences and beliefs have to be true or logical. In fact, we have dreams, hallucinations, delusions, schizophrenics, and madmen as proof that there is no such requirement. So arguing for physicalism is making an argument that states that no one presents or believes arguments for reasons of logic. Note that the exact same argument can be applied to Bruno’s mathematical realism, or any other position that posits that consciousness is caused by or results from some underlying process. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@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.
Quentin Meillassoux
Any thoughts? http://speculativeheresy.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/3729-time_without_becoming.pdf I call 'facticity' the absence of reason for any reality; in other words, the impossibility of providing an ultimate ground for the existence of any being. We can only attain conditional necessity, never absolute necessity. If definite causes and physical laws are posited, then we can claim that a determined effect must follow. But we shall never find a ground for these laws and causes, except eventually other ungrounded causes and laws: there is no ultimate cause, nor ultimate law, that is to say, a cause or a law including the ground of its own existence. But this facticity is also proper to thought. The Cartesian Cogito clearly shows this point: what is necessary, in the Cogito, is a conditional necessity: if I think, then I must be. But it is not an absolute necessity: it is not necessary that I should think. From the inside of the subjective correlation, I accede to my own facticity, and so to the facticity of the world correlated with my subjective access to it. I do it by attaining the lack of an ultimate reason, of a causa sui, able to ground my existence. [...] That’s why I don’t believe in metaphysics in general: because a metaphysics always believes, in one way or the other, in the principle of reason: a metaphysician is a philosopher who believes it is possible to explain why things must be what they are, or why things must necessarily change, and perish- why things must be what they are, or why things must change as they do change. I believe on the contrary that reason has to explain why things and why becoming itself can always become what they are not- and why there is no ultimate reason for this game. In this way, “factial speculation” is still a rationalism, but a paradoxical one: it is a rationalism which explain why things must be without reason, and how precisely they can be without reason. Figures are such necessary modalities of facticity- and non-contradiction is the first figure I deduce from the principle of factiality. This demonstrates that one can reason about the absence of reason- if the very idea of reason is subjected to a profound transformation, if it becomes a reason liberated from the principle of reason- or, more exactly: if it is a reason which liberates us from principle of reason. Now, my project consists of a problem which I don’t resolve in After Finitude, but which I hope to resolve in the future: it is a very difficult problem, one that I can’t rigorously set out here, but that I can sum up in this simple question: Would it be possible to derive, to draw from the principle of factiality, the ability of the natural sciences to know, by way of mathematical discourse, reality in itself, by which I mean our world, the factual world as it is actually produced by Hyperchaos, and which exists independently of our subjectivity? To answer this very difficult problem is a condition of a real resolution of the problem of ancestrality, and this constitutes the theoretical finality of my present work. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@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 past hypothesis
Probably most of you are familiar with this already, BUT, just in case anyone has any interesting comments... If physicalism is true, your memories are almost certainly false. Consider: Entropy is a measure of the disorder of a system. The higher the entropy, the higher the disorder. If a deck of cards is ordered by suit and then within each suit by ascending rank, then that’s a low entropy state. This is because out of the 8.06 * 10 to the 67th (52!) possible unique arrangements of the cards in a standard 52 card deck, there’s only 24 that fit that particular description. A “random looking” arrangement of the deck is a high entropy state, because there are trillions of unique arrangements of a standard 52 card deck that will fit the description of looking “randomly shuffled”. Same with the egg. There are (relatively) few ways to arrange the molecules of an egg that will result in it looking unbroken, compared to the huge number of ways that will result in it looking broken. SO, unbroken egg…low entropy. Broken egg…high entropy. AND the same with the universe…there are (again, relatively) few ways to arrange the atoms of the universe in a way that makes it resemble what we see with people and trees and planets and stars and galaxies, compared with the gargantuan number of ways to arrange things so that it resembles a generic looking cloud of dust. OKAY. Now. Of the relatively few ways that the elementary particles of the universe can be arranged so as to resemble what we see around us today, only a tiny fraction of those particle arrangements will have values for momentum and position that are consistent with them having arrived at that state 13.7 billion years after something like the Big Bang. The vast majority of the particle arrangements that macroscopically resemble the world around us will *instead* have particles in states (e.g., with positions and velocities) that are consistent with the particles having previously been in something more like a giant dust cloud. By which I mean: If we take their current positions and velocities, and work backwards to see where they came from, and go back far enough in time, eventually we will not arrive at the Big Bang. Instead we will arrive at a state resembling a giant dust cloud (probably a very thin, spread-out dust cloud). SO, bottom line: Out of all the possible configurations that the universe could be in, ones that have people, and planets, and stars, and galaxies are extremely rare. Further, even if we then only consider those extremely rare possible configurations that have people, and planets, and stars, and galaxies – the ones with particles in states (e.g., with positions and velocities) that are consistent with having arrived at this configuration 13.7 billion years after something like the Big Bang are STILL rare. We don’t know the exact state of our universe’s particles, but in statistical mechanics the Principle of Indifference requires us to consider all possible microscopic states that are consistent with our current macroscopic state equally likely. So given all of the above, and our current knowledge of the laws of physics, the most likely explanation is that all of your current memories are false and that yesterday the universe was in a HIGHER state of entropy, not a lower state (as would be required by any variation of the Big Bang theory). Physical systems with low states of entropy are very rare, by definition. So it’s very improbable (but not impossible) that the unlikely low entropy state of the universe of today is the result of having evolved from an EVEN MORE UNLIKELY lower entropy universe that existed yesterday. Instead, statistically it’s overwhelmingly more probable that the unlikely low entropy state of the universe today is the result of a random fluctuation from a HIGHER entropy universe that existed yesterday. And thus your memories of a lower entropy yesterday are most likely due to this random fluctuation, not due to yesterday actually having had a lower entropy than today. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@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 'no miracles' argument against scientific realism
On Apr 16, 4:02 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 16 Apr 2010, at 05:01, rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: What would make universes with honest initial conditions + causal laws more probable than deceptive ones? For every honest universe it would seem possible to have an infinite number of deceptive universes that are the equivalent of The Matrix - they give rise to conscious entities who have convincing but incorrect beliefs about how their universe really is. These entities' beliefs are based on perceptions that are only illusions, or simulations (naturally occurring or intelligently designed), or hallucinations, or dreams. It seems to me that it would be a bit of a miracle if it turned out that we lived in a universe whose initial state and causal laws were such that they gave rise to conscious entities whose beliefs about their universe were true beliefs. That is the whole problem. The revenge of Descartes Malin génie. But the UDA shows that the honest universe, below our substitution level is a sum on all the fiction, and that sums is unique, if defined. The logic of self-reference shows at least that the measure 1 is well defined and obeys no classical, quantum-like, logic. I agree in theory, though I still hold to my consciousness is fundamental and uncaused mantra! Sometimes it seems as though I can interpret what you say as being compatible with that view, and sometimes not. Maybe we're looking at two sides of the same coin...but maybe we're not... PS I do have some serious Mail problem yesterderday, so in absence of answer, it means that I did not get your mail. Sorry. All is well! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@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 'no miracles' argument against scientific realism
On Apr 16, 6:29 am, Skeletori sami.per...@gmail.com wrote: On Apr 16, 6:01 am, rexallen...@gmail.com rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: What would make universes with honest initial conditions + causal laws more probable than deceptive ones? For every honest universe it would seem possible to have an infinite number of deceptive universes that are the equivalent of The Matrix - they give rise to conscious entities who have convincing but incorrect beliefs about how their universe really is. These entities' beliefs are based on perceptions that are only illusions, or simulations (naturally occurring or intelligently designed), or hallucinations, or dreams. It seems to me that it would be a bit of a miracle if it turned out that we lived in a universe whose initial state and causal laws were such that they gave rise to conscious entities whose beliefs about their universe were true beliefs. I agree, if the initial conditions and laws are complex enough that the Matrix is directly baked there. Assuming physicalism, the complexity we see around us had to come from somewhere, right? And there are only two choices: either the initial conditions, or the causal laws (which may have a probablistic aspect). If we want to talk about probabilities we'd need to assign some measure to possible universes, and most of the mass will be concentrated on the simple universes. However, simple in this case doesn't mean much and wouldn't preclude Matrix-like universes. Indeed! Peter van Inwagen proposed a rather peculiar answer to the question why there exists anything at all. His reasoning is as follows. there may exist an infinite number of worlds full of diverse beings, but only one empty world. Therefore the probability of the empty world is zero, while the probability of a (non-empty) is one. This apparently simple reasoning is based on very strong an essentially arbitrary assumptions. First of all, that there may exist an infinite number of worlds (that they have at least a potential existence); secondly, that probability theory as we know it may be applied to them (in other words that probability theory is in a sense aprioristic with respect to these worlds); and thirdly, that they come into being on the principle of 'greater probability.' The following question may be put with respect to this mental construct: 'Why does it exist, rather than nothing?' - Michael Heller It's even worse when you consider how much more likely it is that we live in a simulation :). Although, for every simulated world there's a possible universe with the exact same structure, so it might be difficult to distinguish between the two, even in principle. It seems to me that for every possible universe there are an infinite number of possible deceptive simulations of it. But for the universe being simulated, there is only one possible honest instance of it. So...if we assume that physicalism/materialism is true, it would seem that we should also assume that our perceptions don't tell us anything about the true underlying nature of reality. At best, our perceptions only tell us about the rules of our (probably naturally occuring) simulation. But more likely, our perceptions only tell us about our perceptions...and it's a mistake to infer anything further with respect to ontology. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@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 'no miracles' argument against scientific realism
Let's assume that our best scientific theories tell us something true about the way the world *really* is, in an ontological sense. And further, for simplicity, let's assume a deterministic interpretation of those theories. In this view, the universe as we know it began ~13.7 billion years ago. We'll set aside any questions about what, if anything, preceded the first instant and just draw a line there and call that our initial state. Given the specifics of that initial state, plus the particular causal laws of physics that we have, the universe can only evolve along one path. The state of the universe at this moment is entirely determined by two, and only two, things: its initial state and its casual laws. But this means that the development of our scientific theories *about* the universe was also entirely determined by the initial state of the universe and it's causal laws. Our discovery of the true nature of the universe has to have been baked into the structure of the universe in its first instant. By comparison, how many sets of *possible* initial states plus causal laws are there that would give rise to conscious entities who develop *false* scientific theories about their universe? It seems to me that this set of deceptive universes is likely much larger than the set of honest universes. What would make universes with honest initial conditions + causal laws more probable than deceptive ones? For every honest universe it would seem possible to have an infinite number of deceptive universes that are the equivalent of The Matrix - they give rise to conscious entities who have convincing but incorrect beliefs about how their universe really is. These entities' beliefs are based on perceptions that are only illusions, or simulations (naturally occurring or intelligently designed), or hallucinations, or dreams. It seems to me that it would be a bit of a miracle if it turned out that we lived in a universe whose initial state and causal laws were such that they gave rise to conscious entities whose beliefs about their universe were true beliefs. Note that a similar argument can also be made if we choose an indeterministic interpretation of our best scientific theories. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@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.
Against Physics
Against Physics Let me go through my full chain of reasoning here, before I draw my conclusion: So the world that I perceive seems pretty orderly. When I drive to work, it's always where I expect it to be. The people are always the same. I pick up where I left off on the previous day, and life generally proceeds in an orderly and predictable way. Even when something unexpected happens, I can generally trace back along a chain of cause and effect and determine why it happened, and understand both why I didn't expect it and why I probably could have. In my experience thus far, there have been no Alice in Wonderland style white rabbits that suddenly appear in a totally inexplicable way, make a few cryptic remarks while checking their pocket watch, and then scurry off. Why do I never see such white rabbits? Well, at first glance, something like physicalism seems like the obvious choice to explain my reality's perceived order - to explain both what I experience AND what I *don't* experience. The world is reducible to fundamental particles (waves, strings, whatever) which have certain properties (mass, velocity, spin, charge, etc) that determine how they interact, and it all adds up to what I see. In this view, what I see is ultimately determined by the starting conditions of the universe, plus the physical laws that govern the interaction of the fundamental elements of the universe, applied over how-many-ever billions of years. While no explanation is given for the initial conditions, or why the fundamental laws of physics are what they are, if you get past that then from a cause-and-effect stand point physicalism offers a pretty solid explanation for why my world is orderly and predictable, and why I don't see white rabbits. And in the form of functionalism/computationalism + evolution it even offers a pretty good foundation for explaining the existence and mechanism of human behavior and ability. But physicalism has a major drawback: It doesn't obviously explain the experience of consciousness that goes with human behavior and ability. Particles, waves, mass, spin, velocity...no matter how you add them up, there doesn't seem to be any way to get conscious experience. Which is a problem, since consciousness is the portal through which we access everything else. My conscious experience is what I know. I know of other things only when they force themselves (or are forced) into my conscious awareness. So, physicalism does explain why we see, what we see, and why we don't see white rabbits. But it doesn't seem to explain the conscious experience OF seeing what we see. Further, by positing an independently existing and well ordered external universe to explain our orderly perceptions, we have just pushed the question back one level. The new questions are, why does this external universe exist and why is it so orderly? BUT, this initially seems justified by the fact that physicalism explains how it is possible for us to make correct predictions. BUT, actually it explains nothing. Nothing has been explained because we are PART of the system that we are trying to explain by appealing to physicalism. If the order and predictability of our experiences are due to the initial conditions of the universe and the laws of physics, then we inhabit a universe whose entire future, including our existence and all of our activities and experiences, is fixed. Frozen in place by unbreakable causal chains. Effectively (and maybe actually), the entire future of the universe can be seen as existing simultaneously with its beginning. We could just as well say that the entire past, present, and future came into being at one instant, and we are just experiencing our portion of it in slices. But there is no explanation here. This block universe just IS. It just exists. It came into being for no reason, for no purpose, with no meaning. It exists in the form that it does, and there is no answer to the question why?. We are part of that universe, existing entirely within it and contained by it. Therefore we also just exist. For no reason, for no purpose, with no meaning, our future history also frozen in place by causal chains. What is true for the universe as a whole is true for it's contents. Any explanation we derive is purely local to our particular viewpoint. In reality there is no explanation. Explanations are as subjective as experience. Of course this doesn't mean that I get to pick my preferred explanations, BUT I don't get to pick my experiences either. To try an make what I'm saying more clear: let's imagine a real block. Say, a block of speckled granite. Now let's consider two adjacent specks of white and gray. Why are they adjacent? What caused them to be adjacent? Well, if we consider this block of granite within the context of our universe, then we can say that there is a reason in that context as to why they are adjacent. There is an explanation, which has to do with the laws
Re: No MWI
So,in terms of the many worlds interpretation, what is the standard narrative explanation of the double slit experiment? In particular, in MWI-speak, what exactly happens when you know which slit the photon has passed through that causes the interference pattern disappear? Also, what is the MWI-based explanation for the quantum eraser experiment? Rex --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
