Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Bruno Marchal]

John,

Interesting, but from the point of view of the interview, this would be 
cheating. If such sophisticated form of comp is justified, then by the 
UDA reasoning, it has to be justified by the lobian machine. If it is 
the case that such move is proposed by the lobian machine, I will let 
you know.

Bruno


Le 25-août-06, à 17:07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit :


 Thanks Bruno, for accepting my position about atheists. You just did 
 not add
 that 'this is why I don't call myself an atheist'.
 Theology is well thought of in your explanation, however IMO it 
 carries too
 much historical baggage (garbage?) since ~500AD to renew peoples' 
 thinking
 about the meaning of the term.
 *
 One question to the math-teach(er):
 you pressed the 'integers' as the basis of your number-world.
 How about if we consider from the excellent explanation I read 
 recently on
 this list about 'string theory origins': to consider the inside the 
 circle
 equivalents of the 'points' (numbers) outside the circle,  - which are 
 the
 integers - AS THE INTEGERS??? (and call the reciprocals 'inside the 
 circle'
 as our integers?)
  would that change the status of the world? Encased in the circle?
 (That would be a definitely human-manipulated image).
 You could freely apply all your theories on that, too.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/


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RE: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Stathis Papaioannou]

Peter Jones writes:

   And there's no way to prove we aren't computer-simulated...
 
  Right! So if you claimed we were living in a computer simulation because you
  liked the sound of it, that would be a metaphysical position.
 
 It would still be a metaphsyical claim if I had a very good arguemnt.
 It is metaphysical either way because of its content, not because of
 the way it is argued.
 
  If Democritus came
  up with the idea that everything was made of atoms because he liked the 
  sound
  of it that would have been a metaphysical position, even if happened to be 
  true,
  because it would only have been true *by luck*, not because there was some
  good reason to believe it was true. If Democritus had come up with a good 
  reason
  for his atomic theory, that would then have been science, not metaphysics.
 
 Empiricism is still metaphysical.

We have different working definitions of metaphysical.

Stathis Papaioannou
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RE: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Stathis Papaioannou]

John Mikes writes:

 Stathis:
 would you condone to include in your (appreciated) post below the words at
 the * I plant into your text?
 The words: in the (scientific?) belief system we have TODAY about our
 interpretation of whatever epistemically we so far learned about the
 'world'.

OK, I could accept the inclusion of that clause. 

 That would underline your subsequent sentence - if you kindly stop
 denigrating the term 'metaphysics' - a pejoration of the same 'carried away'
 physicists.

I guess those physicists and philosophers in the Empiricist tradition have 
poisoned 
my mind against theology and metaphysics. Sorry, can't help it.
 
 The word 'prediction' also sends the chill alongside my spine: how can a
 model based on a model predict events subject to impact from 'beyond model'
 changes?
 The many results of science-technology should not lead us into a generalized
 acceptance of the model-based thinking. This list is a good example.

Prediction in science is not like prediction by oracles and prophets. If you 
take your 
umbrella with you when you see that the sky is cloudy, you are implicitly 
making a 
scientific prediction based on a meteorological model. Science is really just 
common 
sense writ large.

Stathis Papaioannou
 
 John Mikes
 
 - Original Message -
 From: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
 Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 8:54 PM
 Subject: RE: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'
 
 
 
 As Brent Meeker has pointed out, physical theories are just models to make
 predictions about how the world works*. If physists get carried away and say
 this is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth then they
 are
 talking metaphysics, not physics.
 
 Stathis Papaioannou

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RE: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Stathis Papaioannou]

You can use meta in that way if you like, but metaphysics is about as 
deeply 
ingrained in the language as any philosophical term can be. I think it was Hume
rather than Kant who started the anti-metaphysics movement:

If we take in our hand any volume of divinity or school metaphysics, for 
instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning 
quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning 
matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can 
contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

(An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding)

Perhaps he went too far with the book-burning, since even the logical 
positivists allowed that works of art may have validity for their 
aesthetic qualities - but only for their aesthetic qualities.

Stathis Papaioannou

  As Brent Meeker has pointed out, physical theories are just models to make
  predictions about how the world works*. If physists get carried away and
  say
  this is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth then they
  are
  talking metaphysics, not physics.
 
  Stathis Papaioannou
 
 
 The archaic usage of the word metaphysics, which became a pejorative
 somewhere around the time of Kant, is no longer viable or productive. The
 modern usage of the term Meta = about... far more productive.
 
 meta-chemistry example...table of elements
 meta-data ... computer science term
 meta-mathematics ... 'about' a mathematics
 
 I'd like to eliminate the older usage of the term. It doesn't work as a
 descriptor, especially in physics!
 
 You're right about the physicists, though... they are the most
 'model-bound' in all science. Their beliefs about what they do...in effect
 a theology of mathematical models... is worst in cosmology. To continue to
 believe in the intractability of any formulation of an underlying reality
 in spite of glaring evidence to the contrary...and that it is deserved of
 a pejorative label is.
 
 .. theology
 
 A much better pejorative!
 
 cheers,
 
 Colin Hales
 
 
 
  

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RE: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Stathis Papaioannou]

Peter jones writes:

 Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
 
  Peter Jones writes:
 
 All physical theories are theories of matter (mass/energy).
   
True, but they are not theories of what matter *actually is*.
  
   Hence the need for a metaphysical account of
   matter-as-Bare-Substance to complement the
   physicst's account of matter-as-behaviour.
 
  That would be like theology.
 
 Theology uses the vocabulary of traditional metaphysics, but not all
 traditional
 metaphysics is theology

Theology is a subset of metaphysics. Metaphysics does not deal with 
purely logical and/or empirical facts. This means you could come up with 
any metaphysical theory consistent with the logical and empirical facts, 
no matter how silly, and no-one would be able to rebutt it. For example, 
I could say that friction is the result of tiny, undetectable demons who
try to grab my finger as I slide it against an object. Sure, there's no way 
to prove these demons do or don't exist, but I'm going to believe in them 
anyway as a metaphysical theory.

Stathis Papaioannou
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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Bruno Marchal]

Le 24-août-06, à 22:46, Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:

 .. theology

 A much better pejorative!


I can understand, but I *strongly* disagree on this. theology has 
been studied by the so called rational mystics, which are also the 
greek philosopher/scientist (but also by Chinese and Indian 
logicians) during more than one millennia. It is just a sad and 
contingent fact that theology has been appropriated by politician since 
about 500 A.D. Abandoning the term theology is the product of a 
confusion between the field theology and the contingent christian 
theology.
Well, apparently, thanks to St-Augustin (french writing) 2/3 of the 
main Christian Theology could be Plotinian, and so is closer to comp 
than, for example the Atheist position, and comp (I mean together with 
its immaterialist consequences) seems to be much harder to be 
accepted  by atheists than by christians (I got many empirical 
confirmation of this).
I agree with John Mikes: an atheist need to believe in something for 
not believing in it. Actually they are doubly dogmatic, in the sense 
they cannot doubt about the existence of a physical-stuffy universe, 
and very often, atheist denies they are dogmatic (unlike typical 
believer).

I try to avoid completely the term metaphysics, mainly because I use 
metamathematics in comp, and this could be confusing. I agree with 
Peter, here, the two meta are unrelated.
(Actually a case could be made that Everett made metaphysics in the 
sense of the meta in metamathematics: but I avoid insisting on that: 
the term metaphysics is too much emotionally charged).

Now we have already developed an entire thread on this vocabulary 
problem, and I refer those interested to consult them. Other 
opportunity will appear probably when I will give more explanations on 
the arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus' hypostases. See the recent 
ROADMAP (SHORT) for a preview.

Bruno

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


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[1Z]

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
 Peter jones writes:

  Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
 
   Peter Jones writes:
  
  All physical theories are theories of matter (mass/energy).

 True, but they are not theories of what matter *actually is*.
   
Hence the need for a metaphysical account of
matter-as-Bare-Substance to complement the
physicst's account of matter-as-behaviour.
 
   That would be like theology.
 
  Theology uses the vocabulary of traditional metaphysics, but not all
  traditional
  metaphysics is theology

 Theology is a subset of metaphysics. Metaphysics does not deal with
 purely logical and/or empirical facts. T

Metaphysics can. It depends on who is doing it.

 his means you could come up with
 any metaphysical theory consistent with the logical and empirical facts,
 no matter how silly, and no-one would be able to rebutt it.

Of course not, that is utterly wrong.

Meaphysicians often invoke Occam's razor, for instance.

In cany case, people who seriously think we
are all living in Plato's heaven are already dealing in metaphysics of
the most
baroque kind.

 For example,
 I could say that friction is the result of tiny, undetectable demons who
 try to grab my finger as I slide it against an object. Sure, there's no way
 to prove these demons do or don't exist, but I'm going to believe in them
 anyway as a metaphysical theory.

And there's no way to prove we aren't computer-simulated...

 Stathis Papaioannou
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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[jamikes]

Thanks Bruno, for accepting my position about atheists. You just did not add
that 'this is why I don't call myself an atheist'.
Theology is well thought of in your explanation, however IMO it carries too
much historical baggage (garbage?) since ~500AD to renew peoples' thinking
about the meaning of the term.
*
One question to the math-teach(er):
you pressed the 'integers' as the basis of your number-world.
How about if we consider from the excellent explanation I read recently on
this list about 'string theory origins': to consider the inside the circle
equivalents of the 'points' (numbers) outside the circle,  - which are the
integers - AS THE INTEGERS??? (and call the reciprocals 'inside the circle'
as our integers?)
 would that change the status of the world? Encased in the circle?
(That would be a definitely human-manipulated image).
You could freely apply all your theories on that, too.

John
- Original Message -
From: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Friday, August 25, 2006 9:06 AM
Subject: Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'




Le 24-août-06, à 22:46, Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:

 .. theology

 A much better pejorative!


I can understand, but I *strongly* disagree on this. theology has
been studied by the so called rational mystics, which are also the
greek philosopher/scientist (but also by Chinese and Indian
logicians) during more than one millennia. It is just a sad and
contingent fact that theology has been appropriated by politician since
about 500 A.D. Abandoning the term theology is the product of a
confusion between the field theology and the contingent christian
theology.
Well, apparently, thanks to St-Augustin (french writing) 2/3 of the
main Christian Theology could be Plotinian, and so is closer to comp
than, for example the Atheist position, and comp (I mean together with
its immaterialist consequences) seems to be much harder to be
accepted  by atheists than by christians (I got many empirical
confirmation of this).
I agree with John Mikes: an atheist need to believe in something for
not believing in it. Actually they are doubly dogmatic, in the sense
they cannot doubt about the existence of a physical-stuffy universe,
and very often, atheist denies they are dogmatic (unlike typical
believer).

I try to avoid completely the term metaphysics, mainly because I use
metamathematics in comp, and this could be confusing. I agree with
Peter, here, the two meta are unrelated.
(Actually a case could be made that Everett made metaphysics in the
sense of the meta in metamathematics: but I avoid insisting on that:
the term metaphysics is too much emotionally charged).

Now we have already developed an entire thread on this vocabulary
problem, and I refer those interested to consult them. Other
opportunity will appear probably when I will give more explanations on
the arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus' hypostases. See the recent
ROADMAP (SHORT) for a preview.

Bruno

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





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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[jamikes]

Brent wrote:
 If you know the domain of your model there won't be any impact from
beyond.  Of  course the domain is uncertain at the edges - but just because
there is Grey doesn't  mean there is no black and white.
Our views (I did not press: definition) of a model' differs. Since I
consider the totality as interrelated and interactive and the 'model' a
topical cut as the object of our observation (c.f.: sciences) those
boundaries we surround our (my) models are 'cutting off' the rest of the
world. With all the influence it may have on events BENEATH those (selected)
boundaries.
I am not talking about a grey area.
*
 Should we then resort mystical thinking or armchair philosophizing or
theological revelation?
I do not call your wording an argumentation (style?) ad hominem,
if you know no better variant, you can refer to any one that comes to your
mind. Finally:
 Can you do some other kind of thinking?
The answer is: YES, for one there are things to which I respond
I dunno but try to think in new ways which does not mean that I also
completed it.
To know about something that is not perfect does not imply the obligation to
'perfect it' at the same time. It takes lots of work.
Without necessarily resorting to mystics or (religious) theology.

John



- Original Message -
From: Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 8:00 PM
Subject: Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'



 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  Stathis:
  would you condone to include in your (appreciated) post below the words
at
  the * I plant into your text?
  The words: in the (scientific?) belief system we have TODAY about our
  interpretation of whatever epistemically we so far learned about the
  'world'.
  That would underline your subsequent sentence - if you kindly stop
  denigrating the term 'metaphysics' - a pejoration of the same 'carried
away'
  physicists.
 
  The word 'prediction' also sends the chill alongside my spine: how can a
  model based on a model predict events subject to impact from 'beyond
model'
  changes?

 If you know the domain of your model there won't be any impact from
beyond.  Of
 course the domain is uncertain at the edges - but just because there is
grey doesn't
 mean there is no black and white.

  The many results of science-technology should not lead us into a
generalized
  acceptance of the model-based thinking.

 Should we then resort mystical thinking or armchair philosophizing or
theological
 revelation?

 This list is a good example.

 Can you do some other kind of thinking?

 Brent Meeker


 


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Brent Meeker]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Brent wrote:
 
If you know the domain of your model there won't be any impact from
 
 beyond.  Of  course the domain is uncertain at the edges - but just because
 there is Grey doesn't  mean there is no black and white.
 Our views (I did not press: definition) of a model' differs. Since I
 consider the totality as interrelated and interactive and the 'model' a
 topical cut as the object of our observation (c.f.: sciences) those
 boundaries we surround our (my) models are 'cutting off' the rest of the
 world. With all the influence it may have on events BENEATH those (selected)
 boundaries.
 I am not talking about a grey area.
 *
 
Should we then resort mystical thinking or armchair philosophizing or
 
 theological revelation?
 I do not call your wording an argumentation (style?) ad hominem,
 if you know no better variant, you can refer to any one that comes to your
 mind. Finally:
 
Can you do some other kind of thinking?
 
 The answer is: YES, for one there are things to which I respond
 I dunno but try to think in new ways which does not mean that I also
 completed it.

But is this different than trying to think of new models?

 To know about something that is not perfect does not imply the obligation to
 'perfect it' at the same time. 

I'm not asking that you perfect anything.  You ask that we not be led into 
acceptance 
of model based thinking.  I'm not sure there is another way to think about the 
world 
- my poor brain is not up to thinking the world in it's entirety; hence I 
resort to 
models.  So I'm asking for an example or even a description of how you think we 
should think about the world, while avoiding models.

Brent Meeker

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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[John M]

Brent, you ask the tuppence (or million $) questions.

--- Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] asked:
1: But is this different than trying to think of new
 models?
Somebody suggested (on another list) that MY model
is the unlimited universe. I could not argue, yet it
is a limited model, since our presentG  knowledge
is limited to the up-to-date epistemic cognitive
inventory. This is why I feel comfortable to plead to
be ignorant. (Irrespective of the 'truth' that I am). 
---and---
2:...- my poor brain is not up to thinking the world
in it's entirety; hence I resort to models.  So I'm
asking for an example or even a description of how
you think we should think about the world, while
avoiding models.
My poor brain is also reductionistic in my thinking, I
cannot encompass the totality either. So I think in
models, but always keep that in mind: avoid drawing
conclusions upon the wholeness from results extracted
from a limited model view. (Or so I think). If I make
some general deductions, I use cautious grammar,
allowing for diverse opinions to come up. 
This is not the scientific way to get a title, tenure,
grants, or even the smallest Nobel prize, but it is 
satisfactory for me. I do not persuade others to apply
it. It's my way.
If there is any merit in my ideas for others, be my
guest -that's the reason why I proclaim them. AND: to
get the counter-ideas for my perusal. 

John M 


 
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  Brent wrote:
  
 If you know the domain of your model there won't
 be any impact from
  
  beyond.  Of  course the domain is uncertain at the
 edges - but just because
  there is Grey doesn't  mean there is no black and
 white.
  Our views (I did not press: definition) of a
 model' differs. Since I
  consider the totality as interrelated and
 interactive and the 'model' a
  topical cut as the object of our observation
 (c.f.: sciences) those
  boundaries we surround our (my) models are
 'cutting off' the rest of the
  world. With all the influence it may have on
 events BENEATH those (selected)
  boundaries.
  I am not talking about a grey area.
  *
  
 Should we then resort mystical thinking or
 armchair philosophizing or
  
  theological revelation?
  I do not call your wording an argumentation
 (style?) ad hominem,
  if you know no better variant, you can refer to
 any one that comes to your
  mind. Finally:
  
 Can you do some other kind of thinking?
  
  The answer is: YES, for one there are things to
 which I respond
  I dunno but try to think in new ways which does
 not mean that I also
  completed it.
 
 But is this different than trying to think of new
 models?
 
  To know about something that is not perfect does
 not imply the obligation to
  'perfect it' at the same time. 
 
 I'm not asking that you perfect anything.  You ask
 that we not be led into acceptance 
 of model based thinking.  I'm not sure there is
 another way to think about the world 
 - my poor brain is not up to thinking the world in
 it's entirety; hence I resort to 
 models.  So I'm asking for an example or even a
 description of how you think we 
 should think about the world, while avoiding models.
 
 Brent Meeker
 


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RE: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Stathis Papaioannou]

Peter Jones:

  Theology is a subset of metaphysics. Metaphysics does not deal with
  purely logical and/or empirical facts. T
 
 Metaphysics can. It depends on who is doing it.
 
  his means you could come up with
  any metaphysical theory consistent with the logical and empirical facts,
  no matter how silly, and no-one would be able to rebutt it.
 
 Of course not, that is utterly wrong.
 
 Meaphysicians often invoke Occam's razor, for instance.
 
 In cany case, people who seriously think we
 are all living in Plato's heaven are already dealing in metaphysics of
 the most
 baroque kind.
 
  For example,
  I could say that friction is the result of tiny, undetectable demons who
  try to grab my finger as I slide it against an object. Sure, there's no way
  to prove these demons do or don't exist, but I'm going to believe in them
  anyway as a metaphysical theory.
 
 And there's no way to prove we aren't computer-simulated...

Right! So if you claimed we were living in a computer simulation because you 
liked the sound of it, that would be a metaphysical position. If Democritus 
came 
up with the idea that everything was made of atoms because he liked the sound 
of it that would have been a metaphysical position, even if happened to be 
true, 
because it would only have been true *by luck*, not because there was some 
good reason to believe it was true. If Democritus had come up with a good 
reason 
for his atomic theory, that would then have been science, not metaphysics.

Stathis Papaioannou
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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Bruno Marchal]

Le 23-août-06, à 13:32, 1Z (Peter D. Jones) wrote (in different posts) :


 There are many interpretations of the box and diamond.
 Incompleteness introduces ideas if necessity and possibility based
 on provability (or provability within a system). But there are,
 and always were, ideas of necessity  based on truth rather than
 provability.


I agree (so what?)




 Since the failure of logicism, by Godel's theorem, we can argue that
 numbers does not necessarily exist. Numbers does not come from logic
 alone. If you want them,

 to exist

 you have to do a ontological commitment.

 ..and if you want to play with them as a formal
 system, you don't.


I am not sure I follow you (terminological) nuance between wanting 
something and wanting something to exist.
The move toward formalism does not work for any theory of formal 
system. This is a consequence of Godel's incompleteness.
I don't believe the formalistic philosophical position can even make 
sense of notion like yes doctor. Still less about arithmetical truth, 
unless you formalize all this in second order arithmetic or in set 
theory, but then you need to rely on informal intuition at that level.


 Hence the need for a metaphysical account of
 matter-as-Bare-Substance to complement the
 physicst's account of matter-as-behaviour.


I have not the slightest idea of what could be 
matter-as-bare-substance.
Does matter-as-bare-substance possess a mass?
Does matter-as-bare substance violate Bell's inequality?
Does such questions make sense, when you add that such bare matter has 
no property of its own?
Especially when you put some consciousness in it. It seems to me that 
you are trying to use a metaphysical notion just to put in there all 
remaining unsolved fundamental questions.





 For a formalist, there is nothing to numbers except definitions (axoms,
 etc),. The numbers themselves do not have to exist. So there is
 still no necessary ontological commitment in CT.


OK. In that sense comp does not make any ontological commitment at all. 
as if will always be enough, even for the comp-electrons and protons.
Are you formalist? Could you develop your notion of bare matter in a 
formalistic theory of physics?
What about the interpretation of such a theory.
Note that formalist have no problem with the lobian interview, which 
can indeed be seen as the formal counterpart of the UDA reasoning, but 
I am not sure any mind/body questions addressed in that enterprise 
could make sense to a formalist philosopher.
I agree with Girard (french logician, discoverer of linear logic) that 
formalism in logic is just bureaucracy: it is more harmful than 
useless, imo.



 I said something along such line some times ago. I can provide a
 (short)  explanation. The reason is the Hilbert-Polya conjecture
 according to which the non trivial zero of the complex Riemann Zeta
 function could perhaps be shown to stay on the complex line 1/2 + gt,
 if it was the case that those zero describe the spectrum of some
 quantum operator.

 The *spectrum* of a quantum operator is not observer-dependent.
 What is observer-dependent, according to some, is the particular
 value on the spectrum that is actually observed.


Sorry I was (much too much short). We can come back latter on this 
difficult subject. It is a bit out of topics for now.

Bruno

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


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[jamikes]

Stathis:
would you condone to include in your (appreciated) post below the words at
the * I plant into your text?
The words: in the (scientific?) belief system we have TODAY about our
interpretation of whatever epistemically we so far learned about the
'world'.
That would underline your subsequent sentence - if you kindly stop
denigrating the term 'metaphysics' - a pejoration of the same 'carried away'
physicists.

The word 'prediction' also sends the chill alongside my spine: how can a
model based on a model predict events subject to impact from 'beyond model'
changes?
The many results of science-technology should not lead us into a generalized
acceptance of the model-based thinking. This list is a good example.

John Mikes

- Original Message -
From: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 8:54 PM
Subject: RE: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'



As Brent Meeker has pointed out, physical theories are just models to make
predictions about how the world works*. If physists get carried away and say
this is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth then they
are
talking metaphysics, not physics.

Stathis Papaioannou





 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
 Subject: Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'
 Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:51:07 -0400


 Stathis,

 you touched the 'truth' (a word I put into - because I don't believe
it).
 Matter
 cannot be an is - actually or virtually. Rutherford's empty atom shows
the
 dichotomy between 'effects' ('affects'?) and 'explanation' (more than just
 words).
 The figment 'matter' is a product of 'mental evolution' in this universe,
to
 catch imputes we cannot handle. 'We' is here the mental evolution of the
 universe. It was not man, or the old ape who decided let there be matter
in
 our thinking - it was a zillion-stepwise development to cope with
'affects'
 we experienced without better explanation. So we (humans and animals)
 nowadays (~1b years?) accept the notion that 'there IS matter' and we can
 interact with it. Physics is a product in this development of reductionist
 efforts to 'organize' our world for ourselves.
 And then came the other sciences as well, in the same reductionism.

 We better do not chase a figment, as long as we are living IN IT - accept
 its use and the uncertainty of whatever we talk about. It looks like a
basic
 tenet in our percept of reality - the what we see is what we live with
 from which I TRY to get to a better understanding (not yet achieved, of
 course). All our life, the base knowledge, the technology, the mental
 construct, is a product of this figment.

 Yes, matter is not matterly, just believed so. Energy is a cop-out - a
 'name' for something we cannot put our finger on (mentally). And so are
 numbers.

 The theories you decry, or promote, all of them, are in the same circle.

 Regards

 John Mikes

 - Original Message -
 From: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To: 1Z everything-list@googlegroups.com
 Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 5:11 AM
 Subject: RE: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'



 Peter Jones writes:

  Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
   I can agree. No physicist posit matter in a fundamental theory.
 
  All physical theories are theories of matter (mass/energy).

 True, but they are not theories of what matter *actually is*. At
 the turn of last century Rutherford showed that atoms were mostly
 empty space. Tables and chairs did not suddenly become less solid as
 a result, but it became clear that their apparent solidity was not
 actually evidence that atoms are solid all the way through. In a similar
 fashion, the apparent solidity of matter is not actually evidence that it
 isn't just fluff all the way down, or part of a computer simulation. Our
 physical theories describe the behaviour of matter without formally
 addressing this question at all, despite what prejudices and working
 assumptions physicists may have about the true basis of physical reality.

 Stathis Papaioannou
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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Bruno Marchal]

Le 24-août-06, à 08:51, Tom Caylor a écrit :

 I agree with the importance of recursion theory.  By the way I got the
 book by Cutland.

Nice. It is a very good book. I recommend it heartily to all those who 
want to dig a bit the math behind the comp. hyp.

Bruno

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


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Colin Geoffrey Hales]

 As Brent Meeker has pointed out, physical theories are just models to make
 predictions about how the world works*. If physists get carried away and
 say
 this is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth then they
 are
 talking metaphysics, not physics.

 Stathis Papaioannou


The archaic usage of the word metaphysics, which became a pejorative
somewhere around the time of Kant, is no longer viable or productive. The
modern usage of the term Meta = about... far more productive.

meta-chemistry example...table of elements
meta-data ... computer science term
meta-mathematics ... 'about' a mathematics

I'd like to eliminate the older usage of the term. It doesn't work as a
descriptor, especially in physics!

You're right about the physicists, though... they are the most
'model-bound' in all science. Their beliefs about what they do...in effect
a theology of mathematical models... is worst in cosmology. To continue to
believe in the intractability of any formulation of an underlying reality
in spite of glaring evidence to the contrary...and that it is deserved of
a pejorative label is.

.. theology

A much better pejorative!

cheers,

Colin Hales



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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[1Z]

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

 Peter Jones writes:

All physical theories are theories of matter (mass/energy).
  
   True, but they are not theories of what matter *actually is*.
 
  Hence the need for a metaphysical account of
  matter-as-Bare-Substance to complement the
  physicst's account of matter-as-behaviour.

 That would be like theology.

Theology uses the vocabulary of traditional metaphysics, but not all
traditional
metaphysics is theology


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[1Z]

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

 As Brent Meeker has pointed out, physical theories are just models to make
 predictions about how the world works. If physists get carried away and say
 this is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth then they are
 talking metaphysics, not physics.


Yes. That is the problem. (Apart from the nothing exists approach...)


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Brent Meeker]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Stathis:
 would you condone to include in your (appreciated) post below the words at
 the * I plant into your text?
 The words: in the (scientific?) belief system we have TODAY about our
 interpretation of whatever epistemically we so far learned about the
 'world'.
 That would underline your subsequent sentence - if you kindly stop
 denigrating the term 'metaphysics' - a pejoration of the same 'carried away'
 physicists.
 
 The word 'prediction' also sends the chill alongside my spine: how can a
 model based on a model predict events subject to impact from 'beyond model'
 changes?

If you know the domain of your model there won't be any impact from beyond.  Of 
course the domain is uncertain at the edges - but just because there is grey 
doesn't 
mean there is no black and white.

 The many results of science-technology should not lead us into a generalized
 acceptance of the model-based thinking. 

Should we then resort mystical thinking or armchair philosophizing or 
theological 
revelation?

This list is a good example.

Can you do some other kind of thinking?

Brent Meeker


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[1Z]

Bruno Marchal wrote:

 Le 23-août-06, à 13:32, 1Z (Peter D. Jones) wrote (in different posts) :

 
  There are many interpretations of the box and diamond.
  Incompleteness introduces ideas if necessity and possibility based
  on provability (or provability within a system). But there are,
  and always were, ideas of necessity  based on truth rather than
  provability.


 I agree (so what?)

So all mathematical staments are still necesary-qua-proof
even if they are possible-qua-provability. So contingent truths -- like
matter doesn't exist -- don't belong in Platonia.

  Since the failure of logicism, by Godel's theorem, we can argue that
  numbers does not necessarily exist. Numbers does not come from logic
  alone. If you want them,
 
  to exist
 
  you have to do a ontological commitment.
 
  ..and if you want to play with them as a formal
  system, you don't.


 I am not sure I follow you (terminological) nuance between wanting
 something and wanting something to exist.

All you have to assume or adopt in order to *do* arithmetic --
beyond logic -- is additional axioms.

 The move toward formalism does not work for any theory of formal
 system. This is a consequence of Godel's incompleteness.

GIT means there are theorems which cannot be proven within
*a* formal system. It does not mean there are theorems which
cannot be proven with *any* formal systems. Every mathmetical
proof procedes from axioms and rulesof inference. A claim
to have peeked into Plato's heaven doesn not count as proof.

 I don't believe the formalistic philosophical position can even make
 sense of notion like yes doctor.

That depends on what you mean by yes doctor. As far
as most people are concerned , yes Doctor is about the ability
of silicon to emulate organic matter. Most people woul not assent
to being killed here, in the sublunar wolrd, on the basis that they
would still survive
in Plato's heaven.

  Still less about arithmetical truth,
 unless you formalize all this in second order arithmetic or in set
 theory, but then you need to rely on informal intuition at that level.

Informal intuition still doens't require Platonic objects.

There are several non-Platonic theoires, formalism is not the only one.

  Hence the need for a metaphysical account of
  matter-as-Bare-Substance to complement the
  physicst's account of matter-as-behaviour.


 I have not the slightest idea of what could be
 matter-as-bare-substance.
 Does matter-as-bare-substance possess a mass?

Not necessarily.

 Does matter-as-bare substance violate Bell's inequality?

Not necessarily.

 Does such questions make sense, when you add that such bare matter has
 no property of its own?
 Especially when you put some consciousness in it.

If I put consciounsess on it, it is no longer bare.

However, there is no *contradiction* in the idea -- and hence no *hard*
problem.

 It seems to me that
 you are trying to use a metaphysical notion just to put in there all
 remaining unsolved fundamental questions.

So are you: the difference is that I know I am,
and I know I must. No amount of mathematics will dodge the
metaphyiscal question. If I am in Plato's heaven, then Plato's
heaven must exist in the same way that I exist ,
whatever that is.
That is the metaphysical quesiton which has not been addressed.

  For a formalist, there is nothing to numbers except definitions (axoms,
  etc),. The numbers themselves do not have to exist. So there is
  still no necessary ontological commitment in CT.


 OK. In that sense comp does not make any ontological commitment at all.

That is what I have been saying all along!

 as if will always be enough, even for the comp-electrons and protons.
 Are you formalist? Could you develop your notion of bare matter in a
 formalistic theory of physics?

If I am formalist about mathematics, that doesn not mean I have
to be formalist about physics. Prima-facie, there is a difference
between
maths and physics.
In physics, you have to *look* -- in maths, you don't.

 What about the interpretation of such a theory.
 Note that formalist have no problem with the lobian interview, which
 can indeed be seen as the formal counterpart of the UDA reasoning, but
 I am not sure any mind/body questions addressed in that enterprise
 could make sense to a formalist philosopher.
 I agree with Girard (french logician, discoverer of linear logic) that
 formalism in logic is just bureaucracy: it is more harmful than
 useless, imo.

I am nor exaclty a formalist. I am using formalism as an
example of a non-Platonic approach . There are others.
The important point is that nothing is ontologically guaranteed by
comp or CT or AR -- but, for your conclusions,  something needs to be.

  I said something along such line some times ago. I can provide a
  (short)  explanation. The reason is the Hilbert-Polya conjecture
  according to which the non trivial zero of the complex Riemann Zeta
  function could perhaps be shown to stay on the complex line 1/2 + gt,
  if it 

Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Brent Meeker]

Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:
As Brent Meeker has pointed out, physical theories are just models to make
predictions about how the world works*. If physists get carried away and
say
this is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth then they
are
talking metaphysics, not physics.

Stathis Papaioannou

 
 
 The archaic usage of the word metaphysics, which became a pejorative
 somewhere around the time of Kant, is no longer viable or productive. The
 modern usage of the term Meta = about... far more productive.
 
 meta-chemistry example...table of elements
 meta-data ... computer science term
 meta-mathematics ... 'about' a mathematics

I agree, let's write it meta-physics.
 
 I'd like to eliminate the older usage of the term. It doesn't work as a
 descriptor, especially in physics!
 
 You're right about the physicists, though... they are the most
 'model-bound' in all science. Their beliefs about what they do...in effect
 a theology of mathematical models... is worst in cosmology. To continue to
 believe in the intractability of any formulation of an underlying reality
 in spite of glaring evidence to the contrary...and that it is deserved of
 a pejorative label is.

You have a formulation of an underlying reality which is not only tractable, 
but for 
which you have glaring evidence of its tractability?  Is it also correct?  I'd 
like 
to see it.

Brent Meeker


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RE: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Stathis Papaioannou]

Peter Jones writes:

 Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
  I can agree. No physicist posit matter in a fundamental theory.
 
 All physical theories are theories of matter (mass/energy).

True, but they are not theories of what matter *actually is*. At 
the turn of last century Rutherford showed that atoms were mostly 
empty space. Tables and chairs did not suddenly become less solid as 
a result, but it became clear that their apparent solidity was not 
actually evidence that atoms are solid all the way through. In a similar 
fashion, the apparent solidity of matter is not actually evidence that it 
isn't just fluff all the way down, or part of a computer simulation. Our 
physical theories describe the behaviour of matter without formally 
addressing this question at all, despite what prejudices and working 
assumptions physicists may have about the true basis of physical reality.

Stathis Papaioannou
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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Bruno Marchal]

Le 21-août-06, à 17:42, 1Z a écrit :

 The point I was trying to make was that I don't have to define
 exactly what my existence is. (Bruno's rationalism makes
 him think no question can can be settled unless it can be exactly
 defined; my empiricism makes me believe there are Brute
 Facts which are true even if we don't understand their nature).


And then we can at least propose theory to figure out where those non 
definable things come from.
Note that I show that the notion of first person is necessarily not 
definable by any first person.
precisely: a lobian machine can define it for a much simpler lobian 
machine. No lobian machine can defined its own notion of first person. 
It is necessarily fuzzy, from her point of view.
This requires some notion in mathematical logic. See the roadmap posts.

Bruno


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


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Bruno Marchal]

Le 21-août-06, à 18:55, David Nyman a écrit :


 I don't think Bruno and Stathis are arguing that numbers are
 neceesarily
 the only things that exist (although a standard Platonist might argue
 that
 that they are the only things that exist necessarily..)

 But aren't they claiming that numbers are the only things necessary
 (together with the operations required for CT+YD, whatever they might
 be) to account for *our* existence? If not, what else is required?



Since the failure of logicism, by Godel's theorem, we can argue that 
numbers does not necessarily exist. Numbers does not come from logic 
alone. If you want them, you have to do a ontological commitment. To 
believe, like all mathematicians, in the structure (N,+,*,0,1) is 
enough for that (actually to believe in (N,+,*,0,1) is too much, but I 
don't want to enter in the technical details before it is really 
necessary).

Bruno






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


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Bruno Marchal]

Le 21-août-06, à 21:12, 1Z a écrit :

 If Everythingism is the combination of rationalsim (all truths are
 necessary apriori truths) and Mathematical Monism (mathematical objects
 exist, and are
 all that exist), it may be self-defeating , in that the second claim,
 ie Mathematical Monism, is not a necessary truth.


Because somewhere you say I am a rationalist (which I appreciate), I 
must say that I do not believe all truth are necessary apriori truth at 
all.
Indeed, everything intelligible, sensible, observable, are build from 
modal logics of necessity and possibility, themselves build from 
incompleteness in arithmetic (which entails that notion of possibility 
makes sense in the world of numbers and machines).


Bruno

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


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[1Z]

Bruno Marchal wrote:
 Le 21-août-06, à 21:12, 1Z a écrit :

  If Everythingism is the combination of rationalsim (all truths are
  necessary apriori truths) and Mathematical Monism (mathematical objects
  exist, and are
  all that exist), it may be self-defeating , in that the second claim,
  ie Mathematical Monism, is not a necessary truth.


 Because somewhere you say I am a rationalist (which I appreciate), I
 must say that I do not believe all truth are necessary apriori truth at
 all.
 Indeed, everything intelligible, sensible, observable, are build from
 modal logics of necessity and possibility, themselves build from
 incompleteness in arithmetic (which entails that notion of possibility
 makes sense in the world of numbers and machines).


There are many interpretations of the box and diamond.
Incompleteness introduces ideas if necessity and possibility based
on provability (or provability within a system). But there are,
and always were, ideas of necessity  based on truth rather than
provability.


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[1Z]

Bruno Marchal wrote:
 Le 21-août-06, à 18:55, David Nyman a écrit :

 
  I don't think Bruno and Stathis are arguing that numbers are
  neceesarily
  the only things that exist (although a standard Platonist might argue
  that
  that they are the only things that exist necessarily..)
 
  But aren't they claiming that numbers are the only things necessary
  (together with the operations required for CT+YD, whatever they might
  be) to account for *our* existence? If not, what else is required?



 Since the failure of logicism, by Godel's theorem, we can argue that
 numbers does not necessarily exist. Numbers does not come from logic
 alone. If you want them,

to exist

 you have to do a ontological commitment.

..and if you want to play with them as a formal
system, you don't.

 To
 believe, like all mathematicians, in the structure (N,+,*,0,1) is
 enough for that (actually to believe in (N,+,*,0,1) is too much, but I
 don't want to enter in the technical details before it is really
 necessary).
 
 Bruno
 
 
 
 
 
 
 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[1Z]

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
 Peter Jones writes:

  Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
   I can agree. No physicist posit matter in a fundamental theory.
 
  All physical theories are theories of matter (mass/energy).

 True, but they are not theories of what matter *actually is*.

Hence the need for a metaphysical account of
matter-as-Bare-Substance to complement the
physicst's account of matter-as-behaviour.


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Bruno Marchal]

Le 22-août-06, à 12:37, 1Z a écrit :



 Tom Caylor wrote:

 I'd say a candidate for making AR false is the behavior of the prime
 numbers, as has been discussed regarding your Riemann zeta function
 TOE.  As I suggested on that thread, it could be that the behavior of
 the Riemann zeta function follows a collapse that is dependent on the
 observer.

  That's the strangest thign I've read ina long


I said something along such line some times ago. I can provide a 
(short)  explanation. The reason is the Hilbert-Polya conjecture 
according to which the non trivial zero of the complex Riemann Zeta 
function could perhaps be shown to stay on the complex line 1/2 + gt, 
if it was the case that those zero describe the spectrum of some 
quantum operator. This has not been proved, but this has been confirmed 
experimentally on many zeroes thanks to Odlyzko, Montgommery etc.
But instead of finding something like the universal wave function, the 
spectrum seems to describe quantum chaos. but as every schoolboy knows 
there is no quantum chaos. Quantum chaos can only appears in a branch 
of the universal quantum wave. It requires measurement. Now the zeroes 
controls and are controlled by the distribution of the prime numbers 
(Riemann). So it looks like the prime number describes a reduced 
universal wave function, like if a collapse did occur. I can understand 
Tom Caylor wanting then that the prime numbers themselves (or the zeta 
description) result from some abstract collapse.
One day I will send a post on many Pythagorean TOE like that. (They all 
miss the quanta/qualia distinction, unlike the lobian interview).

To infer from the Riemann Zeta TOE,  that there is a problem for 
Arithmetical Realism (AR) is a bit quick, though.

Bruno


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


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[1Z]

Bruno Marchal wrote:
 Le 22-août-06, à 08:36, Tom Caylor a écrit :

  I believe that we are finite, but as I said in the computationalsim
  and supervenience thread, it doesn't seem that this is a strong enough
  statement to be useful in a TOE.  It seems that you cannot have YD
  without CT, but if true I would leave Bruno to explain exactly why.
 

 I am not sure I have said that YD needs CT. CT is needed to use the
 informal digital instead of the turing, java python seemingly
 restriction.
 For someone not believing in CT, digital could have a wider meaning
 than turing emulable.
 Now CT needs AR. CT is equivalent with the statement that all universal
 digital machine can emulate each other.

i.e If a Universal Digital macine exists, it can emulate
another one. No ontological commitment there.

  To make this precise (or just
 to define universal machine/number) you need to believe in numbers.

To make something precise you need a precise *definition*.

For a formalist, there is nothing to numbers except definitions (axoms,
etc),. The numbers themselves do not have to exist. So there is
still no necessary ontological commitment in CT.

 (But just in the usual sense of any number theorist).

Which will depend on whether the individual number theorist is
a Platonist, Formalist, or whatever.


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Bruno Marchal]

Le 22-août-06, à 18:36, 1Z a écrit :



 Bruno Marchal wrote:

 I can agree. No physicist posit matter in a fundamental theory.

 All physical theories are theories of matter (mass/energy).

I believe so. This does not entail per se that matter is primitive.
Also I prefer to define physics by the science of the observables. It 
is more neutral and misleading than by using the notion of matter, 
which is so different when considered along Plato line or Aristotle 
one.

Bruno



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


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Bruno Marchal]

Le 22-août-06, à 23:03, David Nyman a écrit :

 But this suggests to me that comp, in the 'instantiation-free' AR+CT+YD
 sense, *cannot* be correct, precisely because it makes 'existential'
 claims for the 'axiomatisation of indexical existence in a 3rd-person
 way'. The key issue here is surely the distinction between 'existence'
 and 'truth' as Peter specifies in his post to me.

Comp makes only the assumption that there are numbers (although 
technically it is just about the number 0, and its successor).

The 'axiomatisation of indexical existence in a 3rd person way'  is 
derived from that.

This is a key point.

I think my discussion with Pete is terminological. When I say numbers 
exist, Pete seems to think I believe in some magical realm were 
numbers exist in I don't know which sense. But when I say number exist, 
I just mean that the proposition numbers exists is true independently 
of myself. I know since a long time that the word platonist is 
slightly ambiguous when used by modern mathematician, and that is why 
I prefer to say realism instead of Platonism.

My ontic theory is really no more than Robinson Arithmetic (Q).
Well to be sure I have more cute ontic theories, like the 
SK-combinators, or like a unique equation for an universal diophantine 
polynomials, etc. Some are more useful than others in some context, but 
they are all equivalent with respect to the derivation of physics from 
numbers.

Your post is long, and I would like to comment Russell still today. 
Will read the rest of your post tomorrow. perhaps we should try to 
write shorter post on very specific points. It would help, if only the 
mail boxes :)

Bruno


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


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[1Z]

Bruno Marchal wrote:
 Le 22-août-06, à 18:36, 1Z a écrit :

 
 
  Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
  I can agree. No physicist posit matter in a fundamental theory.
 
  All physical theories are theories of matter (mass/energy).

 I believe so. This does not entail per se that matter is primitive.

A philosophical notion of pimitive matter is both
constent and useful.

 Also I prefer to define physics by the science of the observables.

It isn't, de facto. Machian physics is a side-issue
or minority interest, like intuitionism in maths.

 It
 is more neutral and misleading than by using the notion of matter,
 which is so different when considered along Plato line or Aristotle
 one.


People have come up with different theories
about the same thing ?!

Next, you'll be telling me there is more than one
philosophy-of-maths...so obviously maths must be dicarded wholesale ,
to avoid confusion.

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


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[1Z]

Bruno Marchal wrote:
 Le 22-août-06, à 12:37, 1Z a écrit :

 
 
  Tom Caylor wrote:
 
  I'd say a candidate for making AR false is the behavior of the prime
  numbers, as has been discussed regarding your Riemann zeta function
  TOE.  As I suggested on that thread, it could be that the behavior of
  the Riemann zeta function follows a collapse that is dependent on the
  observer.
 
   That's the strangest thign I've read ina long


 I said something along such line some times ago. I can provide a
 (short)  explanation. The reason is the Hilbert-Polya conjecture
 according to which the non trivial zero of the complex Riemann Zeta
 function could perhaps be shown to stay on the complex line 1/2 + gt,
 if it was the case that those zero describe the spectrum of some
 quantum operator.

The *spectrum* of a quantum operator is not observer-dependent.
What is observer-dependent, according to some, is the particular
value on the spectrum that is actually observed.


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[David Nyman]

Bruno Marchal wrote:

 I think my discussion with Pete is terminological. When I say numbers
 exist, Pete seems to think I believe in some magical realm were
 numbers exist in I don't know which sense. But when I say number exist,
 I just mean that the proposition numbers exists is true independently
 of myself. I know since a long time that the word platonist is
 slightly ambiguous when used by modern mathematician, and that is why
 I prefer to say realism instead of Platonism.

This is the heart of the disagreement. Of course I agree that 'numbers
exist' is true independent of myself, but for me this just means that I
believe that such 'mathematical objects' - abstracted from other
putative features of what-exists - are instantiated in what-exists
independently of any instantiation of myself. That's all. And I
challenge you to show that this is insufficient for any actual
mathematics that is, has been, or could be practised.

I also prefer to say 'realism', in this case in place of
'Aristotelianism'. And this is the parting of the ways. If we choose to
be 'realist' about numbers, we also choose not to explain them further.
If our 'realism' relates to observables - e.g. my primitive 'figure/
ground reflexivity' - then we have OR (observable arithmetic) derived
from its instantiation in a posited differentiable what-exists. I've
chosen the latter because my intuition favours starting from what is
reflexively manifested. This is clearly not mandatory. But choose we
must, and what is then 'explicable' follows ineluctably from this.

perhaps we should try to
 write shorter post on very specific points. It would help, if only the
 mail boxes :)

I'm trying!

David


 Le 22-août-06, à 23:03, David Nyman a écrit :

  But this suggests to me that comp, in the 'instantiation-free' AR+CT+YD
  sense, *cannot* be correct, precisely because it makes 'existential'
  claims for the 'axiomatisation of indexical existence in a 3rd-person
  way'. The key issue here is surely the distinction between 'existence'
  and 'truth' as Peter specifies in his post to me.

 Comp makes only the assumption that there are numbers (although
 technically it is just about the number 0, and its successor).

 The 'axiomatisation of indexical existence in a 3rd person way'  is
 derived from that.

 This is a key point.

 I think my discussion with Pete is terminological. When I say numbers
 exist, Pete seems to think I believe in some magical realm were
 numbers exist in I don't know which sense. But when I say number exist,
 I just mean that the proposition numbers exists is true independently
 of myself. I know since a long time that the word platonist is
 slightly ambiguous when used by modern mathematician, and that is why
 I prefer to say realism instead of Platonism.

 My ontic theory is really no more than Robinson Arithmetic (Q).
 Well to be sure I have more cute ontic theories, like the
 SK-combinators, or like a unique equation for an universal diophantine
 polynomials, etc. Some are more useful than others in some context, but
 they are all equivalent with respect to the derivation of physics from
 numbers.

 Your post is long, and I would like to comment Russell still today.
 Will read the rest of your post tomorrow.
 
 Bruno
 
 
 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[jamikes]

Stathis,

you touched the 'truth' (a word I put into - because I don't believe it).
Matter
cannot be an is - actually or virtually. Rutherford's empty atom shows the
dichotomy between 'effects' ('affects'?) and 'explanation' (more than just
words).
The figment 'matter' is a product of 'mental evolution' in this universe, to
catch imputes we cannot handle. 'We' is here the mental evolution of the
universe. It was not man, or the old ape who decided let there be matter in
our thinking - it was a zillion-stepwise development to cope with 'affects'
we experienced without better explanation. So we (humans and animals)
nowadays (~1b years?) accept the notion that 'there IS matter' and we can
interact with it. Physics is a product in this development of reductionist
efforts to 'organize' our world for ourselves.
And then came the other sciences as well, in the same reductionism.

We better do not chase a figment, as long as we are living IN IT - accept
its use and the uncertainty of whatever we talk about. It looks like a basic
tenet in our percept of reality - the what we see is what we live with
from which I TRY to get to a better understanding (not yet achieved, of
course). All our life, the base knowledge, the technology, the mental
construct, is a product of this figment.

Yes, matter is not matterly, just believed so. Energy is a cop-out - a
'name' for something we cannot put our finger on (mentally). And so are
numbers.

The theories you decry, or promote, all of them, are in the same circle.

Regards

John Mikes

- Original Message -
From: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: 1Z everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 5:11 AM
Subject: RE: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'



Peter Jones writes:

 Bruno Marchal wrote:

  I can agree. No physicist posit matter in a fundamental theory.

 All physical theories are theories of matter (mass/energy).

True, but they are not theories of what matter *actually is*. At
the turn of last century Rutherford showed that atoms were mostly
empty space. Tables and chairs did not suddenly become less solid as
a result, but it became clear that their apparent solidity was not
actually evidence that atoms are solid all the way through. In a similar
fashion, the apparent solidity of matter is not actually evidence that it
isn't just fluff all the way down, or part of a computer simulation. Our
physical theories describe the behaviour of matter without formally
addressing this question at all, despite what prejudices and working
assumptions physicists may have about the true basis of physical reality.

Stathis Papaioannou
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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Colin Geoffrey Hales]

 Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
 Peter Jones writes:

  Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
   I can agree. No physicist posit matter in a fundamental theory.
 
  All physical theories are theories of matter (mass/energy).

 True, but they are not theories of what matter *actually is*.

 Hence the need for a metaphysical account of
 matter-as-Bare-Substance to complement the
 physicst's account of matter-as-behaviour.


If that is done isn't what you call metaphysics the 'actual physics' and
the physicist's account of 'matter-as-behaviour' the metaphysics? Just a
rhetorical terminological gripe.

Also, if the universe is treated as a mathematics ( of
matter-as-bare-substance ), isn't the scientist its metamathematics,
built of it? (With all the Godellian implications..) i.e. Scientists are
what could be called the 'metamathematics of the noumenon'?

andTo be an instance of this metamathematics.. is to be a scientist
and have qualia. The scientist and the qualia would both be natural
expressions of the same noumenon. The existence of qualia _at all_ is
logical proof that the choice of which 'matter-as-Bare-Substance' (to make
a universe with scientists in it) is limited to be only that class which
are capable of expressing what might be termed qualia. Hence this is a
scientific proposition. It might not predict to a comfortable level of
specificity (as to what this matter-as-bare-substance is) , but it
certainly is a scientific (empirically supportable) constraint.

Qualia thus become an empirical key to a door to the noumenon.

Colin Hales


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[1Z]

Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:
 
 
  Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
  Peter Jones writes:
 
   Bruno Marchal wrote:
  
I can agree. No physicist posit matter in a fundamental theory.
  
   All physical theories are theories of matter (mass/energy).
 
  True, but they are not theories of what matter *actually is*.
 
  Hence the need for a metaphysical account of
  matter-as-Bare-Substance to complement the
  physicst's account of matter-as-behaviour.
 

 If that is done isn't what you call metaphysics the 'actual physics' and
 the physicist's account of 'matter-as-behaviour' the metaphysics? Just a
 rhetorical terminological gripe.

The meta in metaphysics doesn't operate like the meta in
metamathematics.

'The title of the work is Τῶν μετὰ τὰ φύσικα
(literally, of the things after physics). This is generally supposed
to mean that this is just a collection of works that later editors
placed after Aristotle's treatises on physics, but it may well mean
that the budding philosopher should study these subjects after studying
physical matters such as motion, time, and animal life.'


 Also, if the universe is treated as a mathematics ( of
 matter-as-bare-substance ), isn't the scientist its metamathematics,
 built of it? (With all the Godellian implications..) i.e. Scientists are
 what could be called the 'metamathematics of the noumenon'?





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RE: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Stathis Papaioannou]

Peter Jones writes:

   All physical theories are theories of matter (mass/energy).
 
  True, but they are not theories of what matter *actually is*.
 
 Hence the need for a metaphysical account of
 matter-as-Bare-Substance to complement the
 physicst's account of matter-as-behaviour.

That would be like theology.

Stathis Papaioannou
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RE: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Stathis Papaioannou]

As Brent Meeker has pointed out, physical theories are just models to make 
predictions about how the world works. If physists get carried away and say 
this is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth then they are 
talking metaphysics, not physics.

Stathis Papaioannou 





 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
 Subject: Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'
 Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:51:07 -0400
 
 
 Stathis,
 
 you touched the 'truth' (a word I put into - because I don't believe it).
 Matter
 cannot be an is - actually or virtually. Rutherford's empty atom shows the
 dichotomy between 'effects' ('affects'?) and 'explanation' (more than just
 words).
 The figment 'matter' is a product of 'mental evolution' in this universe, to
 catch imputes we cannot handle. 'We' is here the mental evolution of the
 universe. It was not man, or the old ape who decided let there be matter in
 our thinking - it was a zillion-stepwise development to cope with 'affects'
 we experienced without better explanation. So we (humans and animals)
 nowadays (~1b years?) accept the notion that 'there IS matter' and we can
 interact with it. Physics is a product in this development of reductionist
 efforts to 'organize' our world for ourselves.
 And then came the other sciences as well, in the same reductionism.
 
 We better do not chase a figment, as long as we are living IN IT - accept
 its use and the uncertainty of whatever we talk about. It looks like a basic
 tenet in our percept of reality - the what we see is what we live with
 from which I TRY to get to a better understanding (not yet achieved, of
 course). All our life, the base knowledge, the technology, the mental
 construct, is a product of this figment.
 
 Yes, matter is not matterly, just believed so. Energy is a cop-out - a
 'name' for something we cannot put our finger on (mentally). And so are
 numbers.
 
 The theories you decry, or promote, all of them, are in the same circle.
 
 Regards
 
 John Mikes
 
 - Original Message -
 From: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To: 1Z everything-list@googlegroups.com
 Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 5:11 AM
 Subject: RE: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'
 
 
 
 Peter Jones writes:
 
  Bruno Marchal wrote:
 
   I can agree. No physicist posit matter in a fundamental theory.
 
  All physical theories are theories of matter (mass/energy).
 
 True, but they are not theories of what matter *actually is*. At
 the turn of last century Rutherford showed that atoms were mostly
 empty space. Tables and chairs did not suddenly become less solid as
 a result, but it became clear that their apparent solidity was not
 actually evidence that atoms are solid all the way through. In a similar
 fashion, the apparent solidity of matter is not actually evidence that it
 isn't just fluff all the way down, or part of a computer simulation. Our
 physical theories describe the behaviour of matter without formally
 addressing this question at all, despite what prejudices and working
 assumptions physicists may have about the true basis of physical reality.
 
 Stathis Papaioannou
 _
 Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail.
 http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-491
 1fb2b2e6d
 
 
 
 --
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 Checked by AVG Free Edition.
 Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.11.5/425 - Release Date: 08/22/06
 
 
 
  

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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Tom Caylor]

Bruno Marchal wrote:
 Hi David,


 Le 18-août-06, à 02:16, David Nyman wrote (answering John):

 
  [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
  John
 
  Thanks for taking the trouble to express your thoughts at such length.
  I won't say too much now, as I have to leave shortly to meet a long
  lost relative - from Hungary! However, I just want to make sure it's
  clear, both for you and the list, that:
 
  Comp is false. Let's see where *that* leads.
 
  isn't intended as a definitive claim that comp *is* false.

 To be honest I have not yet seen where you postulates comp wrong in
 your long anti-roadmap post.
 Recall that I take comp as YD + CT + AR (Yes Doctor + Church Thesis +
 Arithmetical Realism).
 So, strictly speaking comp can be false in seven ways:

 YD CT AR
 1 1 1comp is true
 1 1 0comp is false 1
 1 0 1  2
 1 0 0  3
 0 1 1  4
 0 1 0  5
 0 0 1  6
 0 0 0  7

 1. AR is false, but CT is true, and YD is true. This would mean there
 is a program which stops or does not stop according to my knowledge of
 it. It is beyond my imagination, even if, as a logician I know that I
 have to postulate AR. Of course the UD would loose all its purpose.
 2. CT is false. This would mean there exist a way to explain in a
 finite time how to compute a function from N to N, such that no
 computer can be programmed to compute it. Possible but unlikely.
 3) YD is true, but CT is false and AR is false. This means the doctor
 is helped by Gods or Goddesses.
 4) YD is false (and CT and AR are true). This means I am an actual
 infinite object.
 5) 6) 7): combination of above.


  Rather, *if*
  it is false, in what ways specifically, and what are the alternatives?
  Can they be stated as clearly and explicitly as Bruno is trying to do
  for his approach ('to see where it leads')? Hence the 'anti-roadmap',
  or perhaps better - 'another roadmap', or some ideas for one.

 It is certainly interesting. But comp is a very weak statement, so
 non-comp is very strong. It needs some actual infinite to be
 implemented. Judson Webb range comp in the finitist doctrines
 (but not in the ultra-finitist doctrine).


I believe that we are finite, but as I said in the computationalsim
and supervenience thread, it doesn't seem that this is a strong enough
statement to be useful in a TOE.  It seems that you cannot have YD
without CT, but if true I would leave Bruno to explain exactly why.
The substitution level being a finite level is not strong enough to
conclude that there is a non-zero probability that the doctor will get
it right.  That would be a bad bet/faith.


  Most of
  the thoughts in it were originally expressed in some earlier postings
  on 'The Fabric of Reality' list, which Bruno was kind enough to copy to
  this list.  Anyway, it's intended as a point of departure (for me
  certainly) and I look forward to some strenuous critiques.
 
  One misgiving I have, now that I've finally grasped (I think) that the
  comp 'theology' entails 'faith' in the number realm, ...


 I prefer to reserve faith for the resurection promised but not
 guarantied by the (honest) doctor.
 I need infinitely less faith to believe that each number has a
 successor than to believe the sun will rise tomorrow. AR is very weak.
 Sometimes I regret to have been explicit on AR, because it looks like
 everyone believe in it, except when we write it explicitly. People put
 many things in it, which are not there. Not believing in AR also
 entails that there is a finite polynomial (on the integers) such that
 two different people can find different integer values when applying
 the polynomial on the same number, and despite those people agree on
 the meaning of + and * and zero and +1.


  ... is that by this
  token it seeks to provide a TOE (Bruno, am I wrong about this?)

 You are right. By the UDA it is not a matter of choice.



  That
  is, beginning with an assertion of 'faith' in UDA + the number realm,
  we seek to axiomatise and 'prove' a complete theory of our origins.
  Bruno is a very modest person, but I worry about the 'modesty' of the
  goal.

 Modesty is not incompatible with ambitious goal. You can decide to
 climb the everest Mountain, and recognize you have climb only two
 meters high :)



  Of course, it's highly probable that I just misunderstand this
  point. However, I'm having trouble with my faith in numbers,
  monseigneur.

 We cannot build a theory without accepting some intuitive truth, and
 some third person presentation of those truth. AR false means that the
 simple y = sin(x) real function could intersect the real axes on some
 non integer abscisse. Do you really believe that? Quantum mechanics
 relies completely on AR. If AR is false, QM is inconsistent (and almost
 all math).
 So, either you put in AR something which is 

Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[1Z]

Tom Caylor wrote:

 I'd say a candidate for making AR false is the behavior of the prime
 numbers, as has been discussed regarding your Riemann zeta function
 TOE.  As I suggested on that thread, it could be that the behavior of
 the Riemann zeta function follows a collapse that is dependent on the
 observer.

 That's the strangest thign I've read ina long
time.

BTW, do you find AR umabiguous? Is it about truth or existence, in your
view ?


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Bruno Marchal]

Le 21-août-06, à 04:14, David Nyman a écrit :


 Bruno

 (BTW please delete any previous version of this posted in error.)

 I'm absolutely sincere in what I've said about approaching comp in 'as
 if' mode.



All right. I thought so. Let us try to see if and where we differ.





 But at the same time I've hoped from the beginning that we
 could make explicit the choices that motivate our different ontic
 starting assumptions. Are there perhaps irreconcilable issues of style
 or preference, or are there fundamental logical, philosophical, or even
 semantic errors entailed in one or other position? Well, let me
 continue in the effort by trying to clarify my position on some of your
 recent points.

 So, either you put in AR something which is not there (like peter D
 Jones who want me doing Aristotle error on the numbers (like if I 
 was
 reifying some concreteness about them), or you should have a powerful
 argument against AR, but then you should elaborate.
 To be honest I have not yet seen where you postulates comp wrong in
 your long anti-roadmap post.
 Recall that I take comp as YD + CT + AR (Yes Doctor + Church Thesis +
 Arithmetical Realism).

 OK.  I've already agreed to accept AR in 'as if' mode. So that implies
 I'm staying on the comp road in the same 'as if' spirit to see where it
 leads. It's very interesting! Also I genuinely think that AR is not
 'false' from any of the *logical* perspectives from which you
 defend it.


OK.




 My problem - outside 'as if' mode (and this goes back to the
 'primacy' issue) - is with adopting *any* essentially 'non-indexical'
 (or in Colin's usage 'non-situated') postulate as 'ontic ground zero'.
 My view - and I'm still not clear whether you think it unjustified, or
 that you simply *prefer* to start elsewhere - is that we go wrong the
 moment we fail to treat reflexive indexical necessity with maximal -
 *extreme* - seriousness. My most basic claim is that to make *any*
 non-indexical assumption primary - even one as apparently 'modest' as
 AR - is to try to 'sneak past' this, and thereby to fail *the* crucial
 test of ontic realism.


Because comp makes it possible to postulate a simple theory where 
everything is communicable in a third person way. By making the first 
person primitive, you loose the ability to explain it (or to get some 
best possible third person explanation). I agree with Peter (1Z) when 
he criticize you by saying that a person is something complex, and I 
agree with Dennett when he says that something complex must be 
explained by something easier. Now comp shows the ultimate fundamental 
role of the first person, and that is why I appreciate your seriousness 
here, and in principle you still could try to formalize it in a third 
person way, but your last attempt led to some explosion of more 
complicated concepts.
The same remark works when you are making indexical primitive, 
although indexical can be translated in purely third person way (that 
is exactly what Post, Turing, Godel ... Kleene have proved). The case 
of platonist or classical machine gives rise to the indexical but 
purely arithmetical provability predicate B, and this one is 
quasi-primitive in the sense that all others notions of persons (the 
hypostases) are variant of B.
So yes, there is just a tiny difference between us. I just doubt you 
can axiomatize your first person indexical seriousness in a simple 
third person way. If comp is correct, you can't, I think, and 
eventually this gives a protection of the first person against 
normative theories.
To sum up, the notion of first person is too complex to be be 
primitive, especially when you see that comp explains why the first 
person is correct when thinking it is primitive (but false by trying to 
put this in a third person discourse.
And the, unlike Peter, I consider that the notion of matter is also 
complex, and assuming it also thhrows away any hope foir explanation, 
and then comp forbid that move anyway by the UDA.



 We could call this position maximal personal, or indexical,
 seriousness, but what's in a name? It frustrates me almost beyond
 endurance that this isn't simply 'obvious' (though error, especially
 one's own, is subtle).

As a first person discourse, comp tells that you are correct. As a 
third person discourse you are on the verge of inconsistency.


 But it seems as though we're somehow 'tricked'
 out of seeing it because all 'personal' interaction (including that
 with the 'self') is relational, and 3rd-person is the characteristic
 mode of relational interaction. So all natural language just assumes
 it.

 Consequently when you say:

 What you say is exactly what the lobian *first person* will feel.  I 
 hope you will
 see this eventually.

 I think I do 'see' it. I understand that the lobian first person
 *emerging* from your non-indexical AR postulate could indeed be
 decribed as 'possessing' such a view. I can indeed 'see' how you can
 invoke a '1st-person David analog' in 

Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[David Nyman]

1Z wrote:

  That's the strangest thign I've read ina long
 time.

!!! That's odd, because this's the stringest thagn I've road ina ling
tome.

David

 Tom Caylor wrote:

  I'd say a candidate for making AR false is the behavior of the prime
  numbers, as has been discussed regarding your Riemann zeta function
  TOE.  As I suggested on that thread, it could be that the behavior of
  the Riemann zeta function follows a collapse that is dependent on the
  observer.

  That's the strangest thign I've read ina long
 time.

 BTW, do you find AR umabiguous? Is it about truth or existence, in your
 view ?


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[1Z]

Bruno Marchal wrote:

 I can agree. No physicist posit matter in a fundamental theory.

All physical theories are theories of matter (mass/energy).


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Tom Caylor]

1Z wrote:
 Tom Caylor wrote:

  I'd say a candidate for making AR false is the behavior of the prime
  numbers, as has been discussed regarding your Riemann zeta function
  TOE.  As I suggested on that thread, it could be that the behavior of
  the Riemann zeta function follows a collapse that is dependent on the
  observer.

  That's the strangest thign I've read ina long
 time.


Truth is stranger than fiction.  Something strange may be just what is
needed to break out of going around in circles.

 BTW, do you find AR umabiguous? Is it about truth or existence, in your
 view ?

The way I see it, we define math in the first place as being whatever
is independent of the observer (i.e. invariance).  (This is why
observer-dependent math seems absurd.)  But then I think this search
for invariance eventually brings us full circle to a self-referential
paradox.  Math is whatever we observe (to be true / to exist)
independent of the observer.  Is AR about truth or existence?  Is the
earth is flat about truth or existence?  I believe only in a
relative/local/apparent AR, but that really isn't AR.


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[1Z]

Tom Caylor wrote:
 But then I think this search
 for invariance eventually brings us full circle to a self-referential
 paradox.  Math is whatever we observe (to be true / to exist)
 independent of the observer.

The fact that an observer can observe something doesn't make it
dependent
on the observer.


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[David Nyman]

Bruno Marchal wrote:

 Because comp makes it possible to postulate a simple theory where
 everything is communicable in a third person way. By making the first
 person primitive, you loose the ability to explain it (or to get some
 best possible third person explanation).

I'm still not sure I've communicated this 'primitivity' correctly, but
IMO comp (in 'pure' AR+CT+YD form) achieves what you claim at the cost
of coherence about 'existence' (see below).

(BTW, is it simply the case that 'existence' in the sense described
below is not really your concern? When you said that grandma was 'very
very close indeed', what else is needed for Achilles to get abreast of
the tortoise, if I may thus egregiously mix my metaphors?)

 So yes, there is just a tiny difference between us. I just doubt you
 can axiomatize your first person indexical seriousness in a simple
 third person way. If comp is correct, you can't, I think, and
 eventually this gives a protection of the first person against
 normative theories.

But this suggests to me that comp, in the 'instantiation-free' AR+CT+YD
sense, *cannot* be correct, precisely because it makes 'existential'
claims for the 'axiomatisation of indexical existence in a 3rd-person
way'. The key issue here is surely the distinction between 'existence'
and 'truth' as Peter specifies in his post to me. Indexical seriousness
is believing that whatever exists does so 'in the sense that I exist'.
(The 'infinity' of this sense must be resolved within the infinity or
otherwise of whatever exists.) 'Truth' is an abstraction from whatever
exists, and there is no justification for hypothesising it to 'exist'
in any other sense whatsoever. Truths are 'dispositions to believe' -
highly organised metaphors, no more, just as 'I' am. What they are
'about' is other features of what exists, and this situation exists
self-referentially solely 'in the sense that I exist'. AR, CT, etc. are
functional instantiations of such metaphors within what exists. They
are just one part of what exists modelling another.

My view is that 'participation in what exists' exhausts what we can
'modestly' claim as 'axiomatic'. We agree, I think, that it is our
unique source of knowledge of anything whatsoever. Consequently, it
seems to me perverse to reject its brutely 'given' status in any
schematisation of 'what exists'. I think you seek to overcome this by
giving 'truth' primacy and then deriving 'what exists' from this. I
know you believe that this is a 'modest' assumption, but IMO its
modesty cannot compensate for its incoherence.

I would challenge you to demonstrate any natural language specifiable
meaning of truth that is not a mapping between putative features of
'what exists in the sense that I exist'. Mathematical truth is a
special version of this, the 'putative features' here being
metaphorised as highly abstracted/ highly structured 'mathematical
objects'. Ditto logic. The fact that a logical or mathematical analysis
can show what 3rd-person (i.e. logically) specifiable entities 'would
believe' is epistemologically insightful but existentially neither here
nor there, because the logic is the *model*, not the *referent*. And
it's the referent that 'possesses' the belief, not the model.

 I agree with Peter (1Z) when
 he criticize you by saying that a person is something complex, and I
 agree with Dennett when he says that something complex must be
 explained by something easier.

The 'sense in which I exist' is not dependent on my complexity. It's
rather the *bare participation* of 'whatever-I-am' in what exists, not
the specifics of this (as Peter points out, his formulation exists
precisely to leave questions of detail open). Consequently, what I've
been calling 'indexical' or '1st person' existence (and obviously these
are bad terms because they lead to such misunderstanding) is *not*
complex, and avoids Dennett's criticism, and also Peter's (because the
same confusion had unfortunately arisen between us).

 Yes and that is normal. I reduce the mystery of here and now to the
 much simpler mysteries of the type:  why am I in Washington and not in
 Moscow, or why am I in Moscow and not in Washington after a WM
 self-duplication experiment. Surely with comp you could figure out that
 those questions, although first person meaningful, are third person
 meaningless. NO?

Yes, but I don't think these conclusions are dependent on comp. They
are simply an aspect of point-of-view, or the localising effect of
'information horizons'. Identity is global, point-of-view is local. My
criticism was not this, but rather against the invocation of 'global
indexicality' as an artefact of 3rd person models. Metaphorically, 3rd
person is 'over there', indexical necessity 'over here'. You can't make
something appear 'over here', whatever you do 'over there', because
what's 'over there' is just your *story* about what's going on 'over
here'. So my point is that the story about 'indexicality' has to be
understood as 

Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[1Z]

David Nyman wrote:

 This isn't a surprise surely, because 'matter' is defined purely
 relationally as behaviour.

By whom ?

I just can't
 see, except in 'as if' mode, how AR truly serves as 'ontic ground zero'
 in this 'maximally serious' sense.

Some of us think matter does...


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[David Nyman]

1Z wrote:

  This isn't a surprise surely, because 'matter' is defined purely
  relationally as behaviour.

 By whom ?

Not by me! I mean that I assume that it is defined this way in the
'AR+CT+YD' version of comp. Whereas I need a 'substrate' to carry my
sense of reflexive ontic 'realism' or 'seriousness'. I think our views
can be reconciled (see below).

 I just can't
  see, except in 'as if' mode, how AR truly serves as 'ontic ground zero'
  in this 'maximally serious' sense.

 Some of us think matter does...

And as it happens we both may be included in this 'some of us'! I've
been reading with interest your exchange with Bruno re the 'existence'
of numbers etc - also what you've been saying to Stathis about the
significance of instantiation and the consequent difference between
'programme and process'. I've always felt that that much of our
disagreement was language based, and reading these conversations has
reinforced this.  When you say:

 If numbers don't exist in the sense that I exist, then I cannot be a number.

I'm perfectly happy to agree.  And 'in the sense that I exist' is what
I always intended by 'personal', etc. Consequently, as far as I'm
concerned, we can agree on 'reflexive necessity' as ontic ground zero.
IOW, we both ask that whatever is postulated as the fons et origo of
existence should exist 'in the sense that I exist'. I think the
difference in language is mainly that my mental picture begins with the
'situated view' and yours with the 'external view', but I think we both
believe that a 'serious' view of 'existence' cannot dispense with
either, and must reconcile and unify them. Hence the idea of a 'bare
substrate' as indispensible to carry this basic sense of existence,
within which relationally defined 'properties' and 'phenomena' can then
coherently find their expression.

But it seems to me that inherent in Bruno's (and Stathis') view is a
desire to have relationality without the relata, and although this may
lead to some unexpected epistemological insights, it leads IMO to a
fatally incoherent theory of 'existence', with a concomittant
trivialisation, amounting to dismissal, of the whole notion of
instantiation. There is a fundamental disagreement here on the mutual
dependency of 'personal existence' and 'conceptual existence'. I hold,
and I think you do too, that 'I exist' must be prior to 'concepts
exist', whereas AR+CT+YD holds the opposite. So its article of faith
becomes:

'If I don't exist in the sense that numbers exist, then I cannot be.'

Actually, your recent debates on these issues have come as close as
I've seen on the list to pinning down the precise terms of disagreement
between what amounts two two camps. It would be a great service to the
list if we could achieve a position where the 'articles of faith' of
each camp could be unambiguously defined, even if not reconciled. For a
start, have you a view on the status, as empirical *evidence* for your
position, of what you intend by 'the sense I exist'? I ask because both
sides claim the 'sense of existence' as compatible with their views,
and it would be really helpful if this could be shown to be false.

David

 David Nyman wrote:

  This isn't a surprise surely, because 'matter' is defined purely
  relationally as behaviour.

 By whom ?

 I just can't
  see, except in 'as if' mode, how AR truly serves as 'ontic ground zero'
  in this 'maximally serious' sense.
 
 Some of us think matter does...


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Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[1Z]

David Nyman wrote:
 1Z wrote:

   This isn't a surprise surely, because 'matter' is defined purely
   relationally as behaviour.
 
  By whom ?

 Not by me! I mean that I assume that it is defined this way in the
 'AR+CT+YD' version of comp. Whereas I need a 'substrate' to carry my
 sense of reflexive ontic 'realism' or 'seriousness'. I think our views
 can be reconciled (see below).

Hmm. I think the substrate is just down to Somethingism -- some
possible things
exist, other don't.

  I just can't
   see, except in 'as if' mode, how AR truly serves as 'ontic ground zero'
   in this 'maximally serious' sense.
 
  Some of us think matter does...

 And as it happens we both may be included in this 'some of us'! I've
 been reading with interest your exchange with Bruno re the 'existence'
 of numbers etc - also what you've been saying to Stathis about the
 significance of instantiation and the consequent difference between
 'programme and process'. I've always felt that that much of our
 disagreement was language based, and reading these conversations has
 reinforced this.  When you say:

  If numbers don't exist in the sense that I exist, then I cannot be a number.

 I'm perfectly happy to agree.  And 'in the sense that I exist' is what
 I always intended by 'personal', etc. Consequently, as far as I'm
 concerned, we can agree on 'reflexive necessity' as ontic ground zero.

Actually, you have lost me there.

The point I was trying to make was that I don't have to define
exactly what my existence is. (Bruno's rationalism makes
him think no question can can be settled unless it can be exactly
defined; my empiricism makes me believe there are Brute
Facts which are true even if we don't understand their nature).

So: even if I don't know in which sense i exsit, I exist
in some sense S, and if numbers don't exist in (at least)
sense S (whatever that is) , I cannot be one.

Therefore, there must be some kind of existence-claim
in Bruno's thesis.

 IOW, we both ask that whatever is postulated as the fons et origo of
 existence should exist 'in the sense that I exist'. I think the
 difference in language is mainly that my mental picture begins with the
 'situated view' and yours with the 'external view', but I think we both
 believe that a 'serious' view of 'existence' cannot dispense with
 either, and must reconcile and unify them.

I am not at all sure that views equate to kinds of existstence.

I just think that arguments cannot come to sound existential
conclusions
without making existential assumptions..

 Hence the idea of a 'bare
 substrate' as indispensible to carry this basic sense of existence,
 within which relationally defined 'properties' and 'phenomena' can then
 coherently find their expression.

The bare substrate, AFAICS, is inferred empricially,
although having been inferred, it can then explain various
basic facts logically (through its very bareness!)

 But it seems to me that inherent in Bruno's (and Stathis') view is a
 desire to have relationality without the relata, and although this may
 lead to some unexpected epistemological insights, it leads IMO to a
 fatally incoherent theory of 'existence', with a concomittant
 trivialisation, amounting to dismissal, of the whole notion of
 instantiation.

I agree. They seem to found their arguments on an inability
to understand the difference between truth and existence.


 There is a fundamental disagreement here on the mutual
 dependency of 'personal existence' and 'conceptual existence'. I hold,
 and I think you do too, that 'I exist' must be prior to 'concepts
 exist', whereas AR+CT+YD holds the opposite.

I am not convinced that ther is anything special about
my existence objectively, it is just a convenient starting-point
(epistemologcially).
It might turn out to be inessential (ontologically).

 So its article of faith
 becomes:

 'If I don't exist in the sense that numbers exist, then I cannot be.'

I don't think Bruno and Stathis are arguing that numbers are
neceesarily
the only things that exist (although a standard Platonist might argue
that
that they are the only things that exist necessarily..)

Bruno sometimes claims that the posit of material existence is
unnecessary once you have immaterial existence..and also
that material existence is not merely unnecessary but impossible.

 Actually, your recent debates on these issues have come as close as
 I've seen on the list to pinning down the precise terms of disagreement
 between what amounts two two camps. It would be a great service to the
 list if we could achieve a position where the 'articles of faith' of
 each camp could be unambiguously defined, even if not reconciled. For a
 start, have you a view on the status, as empirical *evidence* for your
 position, of what you intend by 'the sense I exist'?

The point of that particular formulation is to avoid giving an exact
meaning --
although I the meaning of existence in the
emprical-contingent-materialist
snese can be explained.

 I ask 

Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[David Nyman]

1Z wrote:

 Hmm. I think the substrate is just down to Somethingism -- some
 possible things
 exist, other don't.

Yes, but I find that to avoid slipping implicitly into 'relations
without the relata', or necessarily relying on 'matter', it's
conceptually helpful to have a 'figure/ ground' sort of schema, and the
'ground' is what I'm here calling the 'substrate'. Within this, some
'things' - occasions of relatedness - will exist, others won't.


 So: even if I don't know in which sense i exsit, I exist
 in some sense S, and if numbers don't exist in (at least)
 sense S (whatever that is) , I cannot be one.

 Therefore, there must be some kind of existence-claim
 in Bruno's thesis.

Yes, sorry - language again. I meant 'reflexive' precisely in the sense
that S must be the same for both - i.e. the senses must 'reflect' each
other even where they're not specified in detail. So of course I agree
that Bruno's view implies an existence claim (though I know he
doesn't).

 I am not at all sure that views equate to kinds of existstence.

 I just think that arguments cannot come to sound existential
 conclusions
 without making existential assumptions..

OK. And the sound existential conclusion, and the assumptions on which
it is based, will must be adequate to account for both of these views,
yes?

 The bare substrate, AFAICS, is inferred empricially,
 although having been inferred, it can then explain various
 basic facts logically (through its very bareness!)

When you say 'empirically' do you mean for example that there might
have been no opportunity for us to infer anything, or that something
quite other might have been the case to be inferred? I suppose when you
appeal to 'brute facts', that necessarily implies that the facts might
be brutally otherwise. But do you hold that there are any logically or
conceptually prior constraints on what could be available to be brutely
discovered, or is this simply an open question?

 I am not convinced that ther is anything special about
 my existence objectively, it is just a convenient starting-point
 (epistemologcially).
 It might turn out to be inessential (ontologically).

Well, your factual existence may be circumstantially contingent,
although necessarily potential in the overall state of affairs, given
your factual existence. So, 'inessential' in what sense?

 I don't think Bruno and Stathis are arguing that numbers are
 neceesarily
 the only things that exist (although a standard Platonist might argue
 that
 that they are the only things that exist necessarily..)

But aren't they claiming that numbers are the only things necessary
(together with the operations required for CT+YD, whatever they might
be) to account for *our* existence? If not, what else is required?

 The point of that particular formulation is to avoid giving an exact
 meaning --
 although I the meaning of existence in the
 emprical-contingent-materialist
 snese can be explained.

So in that case is empirical evidence to convince us one way or the
other only to the extent that we are willing to build 'empiricism' into
our presuppositions about reality? IOW, are all justifications destined
to be entirely circular?

David


 David Nyman wrote:
  1Z wrote:
 
This isn't a surprise surely, because 'matter' is defined purely
relationally as behaviour.
  
   By whom ?
 
  Not by me! I mean that I assume that it is defined this way in the
  'AR+CT+YD' version of comp. Whereas I need a 'substrate' to carry my
  sense of reflexive ontic 'realism' or 'seriousness'. I think our views
  can be reconciled (see below).

 Hmm. I think the substrate is just down to Somethingism -- some
 possible things
 exist, other don't.

   I just can't
see, except in 'as if' mode, how AR truly serves as 'ontic ground zero'
in this 'maximally serious' sense.
  
   Some of us think matter does...
 
  And as it happens we both may be included in this 'some of us'! I've
  been reading with interest your exchange with Bruno re the 'existence'
  of numbers etc - also what you've been saying to Stathis about the
  significance of instantiation and the consequent difference between
  'programme and process'. I've always felt that that much of our
  disagreement was language based, and reading these conversations has
  reinforced this.  When you say:
 
   If numbers don't exist in the sense that I exist, then I cannot be a 
   number.
 
  I'm perfectly happy to agree.  And 'in the sense that I exist' is what
  I always intended by 'personal', etc. Consequently, as far as I'm
  concerned, we can agree on 'reflexive necessity' as ontic ground zero.

 Actually, you have lost me there.

 The point I was trying to make was that I don't have to define
 exactly what my existence is. (Bruno's rationalism makes
 him think no question can can be settled unless it can be exactly
 defined; my empiricism makes me believe there are Brute
 Facts which are true even if we don't understand their nature).

 So: even if I don't know in 

Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[1Z]

David Nyman wrote:
 1Z wrote:

  Hmm. I think the substrate is just down to Somethingism -- some
  possible things
  exist, other don't.

 Yes, but I find that to avoid slipping implicitly into 'relations
 without the relata', or necessarily relying on 'matter', it's
 conceptually helpful to have a 'figure/ ground' sort of schema, and the
 'ground' is what I'm here calling the 'substrate'. Within this, some
 'things' - occasions of relatedness - will exist, others won't.

 
  So: even if I don't know in which sense i exsit, I exist
  in some sense S, and if numbers don't exist in (at least)
  sense S (whatever that is) , I cannot be one.
 
  Therefore, there must be some kind of existence-claim
  in Bruno's thesis.

 Yes, sorry - language again. I meant 'reflexive' precisely in the sense
 that S must be the same for both - i.e. the senses must 'reflect' each
 other even where they're not specified in detail. So of course I agree
 that Bruno's view implies an existence claim (though I know he
 doesn't).

  I am not at all sure that views equate to kinds of existstence.
 
  I just think that arguments cannot come to sound existential
  conclusions
  without making existential assumptions..

 OK. And the sound existential conclusion, and the assumptions on which
 it is based, will must be adequate to account for both of these views,
 yes?

  The bare substrate, AFAICS, is inferred empricially,
  although having been inferred, it can then explain various
  basic facts logically (through its very bareness!)

 When you say 'empirically' do you mean for example that there might
 have been no opportunity for us to infer anything, or that something
 quite other might have been the case to be inferred?

I mean that historically the concept of matter emerged
from observation. There are various things that can be
made out of the raw-material of wood, various that can be made out of
stone...
maybe there is a sub-raw-material that underpins wood and stone.


Taking the term in its widest sense, matter signifies that out of
which anything is made or composed. Thus the original meaning of hyle
(Homer) is wood, in the sense of grove or forest; and hence,
derivatively, wood cut down or timber. The Latin materia, as opposed
to lignum (wood used for fuel), has also the meaning of timber for
building purposes. In modern languages this word (as signifying raw
material) is used in a similar way. Matter is thus one of the elements
of the becoming and continued being of an artificial product. The
architect employs timber in the building of his house; the shoemaker
fashions his shoes from leather. It will be observed that, as an
intrinsic element, matter connotes composition, and is most easily
studied in a consideration of the nature of change.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10053b.htm

. I suppose when you
 appeal to 'brute facts', that necessarily implies that the facts might
 be brutally otherwise. But do you hold that there are any logically or
 conceptually prior constraints on what could be available to be brutely
 discovered, or is this simply an open question?

Well, I don't think logical contradicitons are possible...beyond
that the only constraint is the weak anthropic principle.

  I am not convinced that ther is anything special about
  my existence objectively, it is just a convenient starting-point
  (epistemologcially).
  It might turn out to be inessential (ontologically).

 Well, your factual existence may be circumstantially contingent,
 although necessarily potential in the overall state of affairs, given
 your factual existence. So, 'inessential' in what sense?

In that sense: my factual existence may be circumstantially
contingent..

  I don't think Bruno and Stathis are arguing that numbers are
  neceesarily
  the only things that exist (although a standard Platonist might argue
  that
  that they are the only things that exist necessarily..)

 But aren't they claiming that numbers are the only things necessary
 (together with the operations required for CT+YD, whatever they might
 be) to account for *our* existence? If not, what else is required?

Standard Platonists (e.g Plato) don't claim that.


  The point of that particular formulation is to avoid giving an exact
  meaning --
  although I the meaning of existence in the
  emprical-contingent-materialist
  snese can be explained.

 So in that case is empirical evidence to convince us one way or the
 other only to the extent that we are willing to build 'empiricism' into
 our presuppositions about reality? IOW, are all justifications destined
 to be entirely circular?

Empiricism vs. rationalism is the really deep question here.

If Everythingism is the combination of rationalsim (all truths are
necessary apriori truths) and Mathematical Monism (mathematical objects
exist, and are
all that exist), it may be self-defeating , in that the second claim,
ie Mathematical Monism, is not a necessary truth.

If that is the case, 

Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[David Nyman]

Bruno

I'm absolutely sincere in what I've said about approaching comp in
'as if' mode. But at the same time I've hoped from the beginning
that we could make explicit the choices that motivate our different
ontic starting assumptions. Are there perhaps irreconcilable issues of
style or preference, or are there fundamental logical, philosophical,
or even semantic errors entailed in one or other position? Well, let me
continue in the effort by trying to clarify my position on some of your
recent points.

 So, either you put in AR something which is not there (like peter D
 Jones who want me doing Aristotle error on the numbers (like if I was
 reifying some concreteness about them), or you should have a powerful
 argument against AR, but then you should elaborate.

 To be honest I have not yet seen where you postulates comp wrong in
 your long anti-roadmap post.
 Recall that I take comp as YD + CT + AR (Yes Doctor + Church Thesis +
 Arithmetical Realism).

OK.  I've already agreed to accept AR in 'as if' mode. So that implies
I'm staying on the comp road in the same 'as if' spirit to see where it
leads. It's very interesting! Also I genuinely think that AR is not
'false' from any of the *logical* perspectives from which you
defend it. My problem - outside 'as if' mode (and this goes back to the
'primacy' issue) - is with adopting *any* 3rd-person postulate as
'ontic ground zero'. My view - and I'm still not clear whether
you think it unjustified, or that you simply *prefer* to start
elsewhere - is that we go wrong the moment we fail to treat reflexive
indexical necessity with maximal - *extreme* - seriousness. My most
basic claim is that to make *any* 3rd-person assumption primary - even
one as apparently 'modest' as AR - is to try to 'sneak past'
this, and thereby to fail *the* crucial test of ontic realism.

We could call this position maximal personal, or indexical,
seriousness, but what's in a name? It frustrates me almost beyond
endurance that this isn't simply 'obvious' (though error,
especially one's own, is subtle). But it seems as though we're
somehow 'tricked' out of seeing it because all 'personal'
interaction (including that with the 'self') is relational, and
3rd-person is the characteristic mode of relational interaction. So all
natural language just assumes it.

Consequently when you say:

 What you say is exactly what the lobian *first person* will feel.  I hope you 
 will
 see this eventually.

I think I 'see' it *now*. I understand that the lobian first person
*emerging* from your 3rd person AR postulate *would* indeed
'possess' such a view. But my problem is with all this 3rd person
language. I can indeed 'see' how you can invoke a '1st-person
David analog' in this way, but I can't at all see how this causes
'indexically necessary David' - 'here and now' - to appear
out of 'thin 3rd-person air'. Logic lacks this power. It seems as
if only magic will do. It's like Harry Potter saying - I know
I'm just imagining you, but hang on, in just a jiffy AR will make you
indexically necessary.

On the other hand, bare 'indexical necessity' is the sole ontic
postulate I need. Is this an insufficiently 'modest' requirement? My
justification is reflexively evident and incorrigible. It does no
practical damage to the subsequent postulation of AR - it can't do,
because this position simply *is* the situation from which I postulate
it. By the same token, CT survives (if true) undamaged by being
postulated from this position. In other words, I'm claiming that we
have access to versions of AR and CT manifested entirely in virtue of
their generalisation from relational reality, and I can't see that
you or I have reason to believe anything else, except through
'Penrose direct revelation', which you reject. So what's the
alternative?

YD now becomes the interesting case, and the point, as I recall, where
we started. My long post refers to the dependencies and assumptions,
implicit in bit-stream representations, that are only made explicit by
their instantiation. My argument is that any digital program is an
arbitrary gloss on the behaviour of a 'substrate' (i.e. lower logical
level) - I think I've seen you argue more or less the same point -
and therefore relies on a notion of 'causation' (dependency,
sequence, structure, behaviour, or state your preferred terminology) -
that is essentially non-local at the level of such instantiation.

Consequently we must choose: to believe either that *any* example of
situated, indexical, experience arises from localised phenomena at the
causal level of their instantiation (appropriately schematised), or
that it arises from arbitrary, non-localised, aspatial, atemporal,
abstractions from behaviour at this level. I can't see that these
considerations don't apply to *any* digital 'substitution level'
that relies on a purely syntactical expression - e.g. instantiation
in a digital computer - and would consequently have to decline the
doctor's offer. This is what I mean by 

Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[David Nyman]

Bruno

(BTW please delete any previous version of this posted in error.)

I'm absolutely sincere in what I've said about approaching comp in 'as
if' mode. But at the same time I've hoped from the beginning that we
could make explicit the choices that motivate our different ontic
starting assumptions. Are there perhaps irreconcilable issues of style
or preference, or are there fundamental logical, philosophical, or even
semantic errors entailed in one or other position? Well, let me
continue in the effort by trying to clarify my position on some of your
recent points.

 So, either you put in AR something which is not there (like peter D
 Jones who want me doing Aristotle error on the numbers (like if I was
 reifying some concreteness about them), or you should have a powerful
 argument against AR, but then you should elaborate.
 To be honest I have not yet seen where you postulates comp wrong in
 your long anti-roadmap post.
 Recall that I take comp as YD + CT + AR (Yes Doctor + Church Thesis +
 Arithmetical Realism).

OK.  I've already agreed to accept AR in 'as if' mode. So that implies
I'm staying on the comp road in the same 'as if' spirit to see where it
leads. It's very interesting! Also I genuinely think that AR is not
'false' from any of the *logical* perspectives from which you
defend it. My problem - outside 'as if' mode (and this goes back to the
'primacy' issue) - is with adopting *any* essentially 'non-indexical'
(or in Colin's usage 'non-situated') postulate as 'ontic ground zero'.
My view - and I'm still not clear whether you think it unjustified, or
that you simply *prefer* to start elsewhere - is that we go wrong the
moment we fail to treat reflexive indexical necessity with maximal -
*extreme* - seriousness. My most basic claim is that to make *any*
non-indexical assumption primary - even one as apparently 'modest' as
AR - is to try to 'sneak past' this, and thereby to fail *the* crucial
test of ontic realism.

We could call this position maximal personal, or indexical,
seriousness, but what's in a name? It frustrates me almost beyond
endurance that this isn't simply 'obvious' (though error, especially
one's own, is subtle). But it seems as though we're somehow 'tricked'
out of seeing it because all 'personal' interaction (including that
with the 'self') is relational, and 3rd-person is the characteristic
mode of relational interaction. So all natural language just assumes
it.

Consequently when you say:

 What you say is exactly what the lobian *first person* will feel.  I hope you 
 will
 see this eventually.

I think I do 'see' it. I understand that the lobian first person
*emerging* from your non-indexical AR postulate could indeed be
decribed as 'possessing' such a view. I can indeed 'see' how you can
invoke a '1st-person David analog' in 3rd-person language in this way,
but I can't at all see how this causes 'indexically necessary David' -
'here and now' - to appear out of 'thin 3rd-person air'. Does mere
logic posess such power? It seems as if only magic will do. It's like
Harry Potter saying - I know I'm just imagining you, but hang on, in
just a jiffy AR will make you indexically necessary.

On the other hand, bare 'indexical necessity' is the sole ontic
postulate I need. Is this an insufficiently 'modest' requirement? My
justification is reflexively evident and incorrigible. It does no
practical damage to the subsequent postulation of AR - it can't do,
because this position simply *is* the situation from which I postulate
it. By the same token, CT survives (if true) undamaged by being
postulated from this position. In other words, I'm claiming that we
have access to versions of AR and CT manifested entirely in virtue of
their generalisation from relational reality, and I can't see that you
or I have reason to believe anything else, except through 'Penrose
direct revelation', which you reject. So what's the
alternative?

YD now becomes the interesting case, and the point, as I recall, where
we started. My long post refers to the dependencies and assumptions,
implicit in bit-stream representations, that are only made explicit by
their instantiation. My argument is that any digital program is an
arbitrary gloss on the behaviour of a 'substrate' (i.e. lower logical
level) - I think I've seen you argue more or less the same point - and
therefore relies on a notion of 'causation' (dependency, sequence,
structure, behaviour, or state your preferred terminology) - that is
essentially non-local at the level of such instantiation.

Consequently we must choose: to believe either that *any* example of
situated, indexical, experience arises from localised phenomena at the
causal level of their instantiation (appropriately schematised), or
that it arises from arbitrary, non-localised, aspatial, atemporal,
abstractions from behaviour at this level. I can't see that these
considerations don't apply to *any* digital 'substitution level' that
relies on a purely syntactical expression - e.g. 

Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[Bruno Marchal]

Hi David,


Le 18-août-06, à 02:16, David Nyman wrote (answering John):


 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 John

 Thanks for taking the trouble to express your thoughts at such length.
 I won't say too much now, as I have to leave shortly to meet a long
 lost relative - from Hungary! However, I just want to make sure it's
 clear, both for you and the list, that:

 Comp is false. Let's see where *that* leads.

 isn't intended as a definitive claim that comp *is* false.

To be honest I have not yet seen where you postulates comp wrong in 
your long anti-roadmap post.
Recall that I take comp as YD + CT + AR (Yes Doctor + Church Thesis + 
Arithmetical Realism).
So, strictly speaking comp can be false in seven ways:

YD CT AR
1 1 1comp is true
1 1 0comp is false 1
1 0 1  2
1 0 0  3
0 1 1  4
0 1 0  5
0 0 1  6
0 0 0  7

1. AR is false, but CT is true, and YD is true. This would mean there 
is a program which stops or does not stop according to my knowledge of 
it. It is beyond my imagination, even if, as a logician I know that I 
have to postulate AR. Of course the UD would loose all its purpose.
2. CT is false. This would mean there exist a way to explain in a 
finite time how to compute a function from N to N, such that no 
computer can be programmed to compute it. Possible but unlikely.
3) YD is true, but CT is false and AR is false. This means the doctor 
is helped by Gods or Goddesses.
4) YD is false (and CT and AR are true). This means I am an actual 
infinite object.
5) 6) 7): combination of above.


 Rather, *if*
 it is false, in what ways specifically, and what are the alternatives?
 Can they be stated as clearly and explicitly as Bruno is trying to do
 for his approach ('to see where it leads')? Hence the 'anti-roadmap',
 or perhaps better - 'another roadmap', or some ideas for one.

It is certainly interesting. But comp is a very weak statement, so 
non-comp is very strong. It needs some actual infinite to be 
implemented. Judson Webb range comp in the finitist doctrines 
(but not in the ultra-finitist doctrine).


 Most of
 the thoughts in it were originally expressed in some earlier postings
 on 'The Fabric of Reality' list, which Bruno was kind enough to copy to
 this list.  Anyway, it's intended as a point of departure (for me
 certainly) and I look forward to some strenuous critiques.

 One misgiving I have, now that I've finally grasped (I think) that the
 comp 'theology' entails 'faith' in the number realm, ...


I prefer to reserve faith for the resurection promised but not 
guarantied by the (honest) doctor.
I need infinitely less faith to believe that each number has a 
successor than to believe the sun will rise tomorrow. AR is very weak. 
Sometimes I regret to have been explicit on AR, because it looks like 
everyone believe in it, except when we write it explicitly. People put 
many things in it, which are not there. Not believing in AR also 
entails that there is a finite polynomial (on the integers) such that 
two different people can find different integer values when applying 
the polynomial on the same number, and despite those people agree on 
the meaning of + and * and zero and +1.


 ... is that by this
 token it seeks to provide a TOE (Bruno, am I wrong about this?)

You are right. By the UDA it is not a matter of choice.



 That
 is, beginning with an assertion of 'faith' in UDA + the number realm,
 we seek to axiomatise and 'prove' a complete theory of our origins.
 Bruno is a very modest person, but I worry about the 'modesty' of the
 goal.

Modesty is not incompatible with ambitious goal. You can decide to 
climb the everest Mountain, and recognize you have climb only two 
meters high :)



 Of course, it's highly probable that I just misunderstand this
 point. However, I'm having trouble with my faith in numbers,
 monseigneur.

We cannot build a theory without accepting some intuitive truth, and 
some third person presentation of those truth. AR false means that the 
simple y = sin(x) real function could intersect the real axes on some 
non integer abscisse. Do you really believe that? Quantum mechanics 
relies completely on AR. If AR is false, QM is inconsistent (and almost 
all math).
So, either you put in AR something which is not there (like peter D 
Jones who want me doing Aristotle error on the numbers (like if I was 
reifying some concreteness about them), or you should have a powerful 
argument against AR, but then you should elaborate.



 My own intuition begins from my own indexical
 self-assertion, my necessity, generalised to an inclusive
 self-asserting necessity extending outwards indefinitely.


Here I have a pedagogical, if not diplomatical, problem. What you say 
is exactly what the lobian *first person* will feel.  I hope you will 
see this 

Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[jamikes]

David,
your post has wits. Yet it reminded me of 'atheism' which starts from the
belief it is supposed to deny. I am not an atheist, because I do not know
what to deny: what do people 'think' to call god?
My question to comp was (and I think it is different from your position):
Let me IN into learning about 'comp' from the outside, the 'no comp'
mindset.
When you say: Comp is false you accepted it and argue about IT.
I ask What is comp - if I am outside the entire mindset and don't assume?

Bruno is VERY logical and knowledgeable, but his 'mindset' includes numbers
and mathematical thinking. I got a lot of good responses from him to my
questions and all started from some in theory assumption (e.g. 'assuming
comp', etc.). What if we do NOT assume it?

I asked about 'numbers' stripped from counting and quantities. Otherwise
they are only quantizing adjectives (6 what?). (Like the 'color green'?)
Pure mathematics works differently, it even substitutes the numbers with
other symbols (yes, 'symbols', if we do not think of the 'what').  I
differentiate an applied math in the sciences, working with quantities
identified within the limited topical models of the science. This is another
subject, - I want to concentrate here on the numbers concept.

Ideas 'exist' relationally (and some are translated into physical
(materialistic) features). To get to 'ideas' a receiving observer is
necessary with enough complexity to accept them.  (Then we (our mind)
interpret them into the perception of reality).
In my older thinking (prone to be revised) I defined my 'information'
concept as some difference 'accepted' into an observer. The difference can
be e.g. an electric (so called) potential and the acceptor )observer!) even
a polar(!) moelcule(!),  - or at a different level: a difference, like a
strange societal story is accepted by a reader of G.B.Shaw (observer).
(Existence in this ontology was the difference itself, observer anything
that accepts information.)

When the developing human 'mind' reached the complexity to identify
'numbers' the numbers enetered the human thinking. Does it make sense to
argue a homoiusion war whether they existed before they could be accepted?
For 'us' they started to exist when our mind became capable to 'accept' such
information.
It is only semantical in our syntax to call this situation an invention.
It is only semantical in our syntax to call this situation an invention.
Then we started to count and think in quantities using the newly invented
'numbers'. But what are these 'numbers' without the counting and quantizing?

Do they have a quantitative original meaning? Originally the 'unit' was 2,
and '1' was half of it in certain cases. In my language which is older than
the Indo - European ones a man with 1 eye is half-eyed and with 1 hand or
foot i said to have lost his half hand or foot. Yet a man is 1, a sable is
1, not 2. Many was 5, seemingly from the fingers, and in Russian grammar
they have a dual case and a big plural above 5.  (Also: a 'unit' involves
more than one by its meaning).

David, I do not go all along your long post.
These remarks came to mind  - I don't write a dissertation.
Your idea was an intreresting one. My original reaction (above) was a
reminiscence to a 'believer's' challenge that I should 'disprove' god and my
answer was: only, if you prove something to exist can I refute it.

Best wishes

John Mikes


- Original Message -
From: David Nyman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2006 9:41 AM
Subject: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'



 Comp is false. Let's see where *that* leads. I'm erecting
 this as a signpost to indicate a direction, and I would beg the
 list's indulgence in helping me to look in this direction, rather
 than confining its comments to the ramshackle construction of the
 signpost itself. My hope is that you will help me to expose whatever is
 untrue or confused about what follows (I'm sure you will!). But I
 hope you will also 'catch my drift'.

 1) The bit-stream

 Comp deals with a bit-stream representation of appearance. The theorems
 of comp process this bit-stream in terms of a formal system, creating a
 framework within which 'true or 'false' theorems may be
 evaluated. This system is by its nature closed, or tautological. The
 statements that can be made, their 'truth' or 'falsehood', are
 inherent in the axiomatic and operational characteristics of the formal
 system as applied to the bit-stream.

 2) The instantiation

 In order to implement the comp approach, an instantiation is required
 that will represent the bit-stream and enact the formal operations. The
 Turing machine is an idealised version of such an instantiation. A
 digital computer is a physical version of a TM. Consequently comp may
 be instantiated in a digital computer, and copied in innumerable media
 that suitably preserve its informational structure.

 3) Dimensionality

 The bit-stream 

Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[David Nyman]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

John

Thanks for taking the trouble to express your thoughts at such length.
I won't say too much now, as I have to leave shortly to meet a long
lost relative - from Hungary! However, I just want to make sure it's
clear, both for you and the list, that:

  Comp is false. Let's see where *that* leads.

isn't intended as a definitive claim that comp *is* false. Rather, *if*
it is false, in what ways specifically, and what are the alternatives?
Can they be stated as clearly and explicitly as Bruno is trying to do
for his approach ('to see where it leads')? Hence the 'anti-roadmap',
or perhaps better - 'another roadmap', or some ideas for one. Most of
the thoughts in it were originally expressed in some earlier postings
on 'The Fabric of Reality' list, which Bruno was kind enough to copy to
this list.  Anyway, it's intended as a point of departure (for me
certainly) and I look forward to some strenuous critiques.

One misgiving I have, now that I've finally grasped (I think) that the
comp 'theology' entails 'faith' in the number realm, is that by this
token it seeks to provide a TOE (Bruno, am I wrong about this?) That
is, beginning with an assertion of 'faith' in UDA + the number realm,
we seek to axiomatise and 'prove' a complete theory of our origins.
Bruno is a very modest person, but I worry about the 'modesty' of the
goal. Of course, it's highly probable that I just misunderstand this
point. However, I'm having trouble with my faith in numbers,
monseigneur. My own intuition begins from my own indexical
self-assertion, my necessity, generalised to an inclusive
self-asserting necessity extending outwards indefinitely. I don't look
for a way to 'get behind' this, and to this extent I don't seek a TOE,
because I can't believe that 'everything' (despite the name of this
list) is theoretically assimilable. This may well be blindness more
than modesty, however.

Having said this, of course in a spirit of learning I'm trying to
understand and adopt *as if* true the comp assumptions, and continue to
put my best efforts into getting my head around Bruno's roadmap as it
emerges. I have a lot of experience of changing my mind (and maybe I'll
get a better one!)

David


 David,
 your post has wits. Yet it reminded me of 'atheism' which starts from the
 belief it is supposed to deny. I am not an atheist, because I do not know
 what to deny: what do people 'think' to call god?
 My question to comp was (and I think it is different from your position):
 Let me IN into learning about 'comp' from the outside, the 'no comp'
 mindset.
 When you say: Comp is false you accepted it and argue about IT.
 I ask What is comp - if I am outside the entire mindset and don't assume?

 Bruno is VERY logical and knowledgeable, but his 'mindset' includes numbers
 and mathematical thinking. I got a lot of good responses from him to my
 questions and all started from some in theory assumption (e.g. 'assuming
 comp', etc.). What if we do NOT assume it?

 I asked about 'numbers' stripped from counting and quantities. Otherwise
 they are only quantizing adjectives (6 what?). (Like the 'color green'?)
 Pure mathematics works differently, it even substitutes the numbers with
 other symbols (yes, 'symbols', if we do not think of the 'what').  I
 differentiate an applied math in the sciences, working with quantities
 identified within the limited topical models of the science. This is another
 subject, - I want to concentrate here on the numbers concept.

 Ideas 'exist' relationally (and some are translated into physical
 (materialistic) features). To get to 'ideas' a receiving observer is
 necessary with enough complexity to accept them.  (Then we (our mind)
 interpret them into the perception of reality).
 In my older thinking (prone to be revised) I defined my 'information'
 concept as some difference 'accepted' into an observer. The difference can
 be e.g. an electric (so called) potential and the acceptor )observer!) even
 a polar(!) moelcule(!),  - or at a different level: a difference, like a
 strange societal story is accepted by a reader of G.B.Shaw (observer).
 (Existence in this ontology was the difference itself, observer anything
 that accepts information.)

 When the developing human 'mind' reached the complexity to identify
 'numbers' the numbers enetered the human thinking. Does it make sense to
 argue a homoiusion war whether they existed before they could be accepted?
 For 'us' they started to exist when our mind became capable to 'accept' such
 information.
 It is only semantical in our syntax to call this situation an invention.
 It is only semantical in our syntax to call this situation an invention.
 Then we started to count and think in quantities using the newly invented
 'numbers'. But what are these 'numbers' without the counting and quantizing?

 Do they have a quantitative original meaning? Originally the 'unit' was 2,
 and '1' was half of it in certain cases. In my language which is 

Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

[jamikes]

- Original Message -
From: David Nyman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2006 8:16 PM
Subject: Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'

Dave,

thanks fir the friendly and decent words. It was not questionable that you
did not 'attack' comp as false, I reflected principally as a
discussion-technique.  I like Bruno a lot and use some not-so-kind
argumentation style lately to tease out from him a stronger argument.
We agree in the goal of learning. You are more of a professional than I am.

John



 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 ...
 John

 Thanks for taking the trouble to express your thoughts at such length.
 I won't say too much now, as I have to leave shortly to meet a long
 lost relative - from Hungary! However, I just want to make sure it's
 clear, both for you and the list, that:

   Comp is false. Let's see where *that* leads.

 isn't intended as a definitive claim that comp *is* false. Rather, *if*
 it is false, in what ways specifically, and what are the alternatives?
 Can they be stated as clearly and explicitly as Bruno is trying to do
 for his approach ('to see where it leads')? Hence the 'anti-roadmap',
 or perhaps better - 'another roadmap', or some ideas for one. Most of
 the thoughts in it were originally expressed in some earlier postings
 on 'The Fabric of Reality' list, which Bruno was kind enough to copy to
 this list.  Anyway, it's intended as a point of departure (for me
 certainly) and I look forward to some strenuous critiques.

 One misgiving I have, now that I've finally grasped (I think) that the
 comp 'theology' entails 'faith' in the number realm, is that by this
 token it seeks to provide a TOE (Bruno, am I wrong about this?) That
 is, beginning with an assertion of 'faith' in UDA + the number realm,
 we seek to axiomatise and 'prove' a complete theory of our origins.
 Bruno is a very modest person, but I worry about the 'modesty' of the
 goal. Of course, it's highly probable that I just misunderstand this
 point. However, I'm having trouble with my faith in numbers,
 monseigneur. My own intuition begins from my own indexical
 self-assertion, my necessity, generalised to an inclusive
 self-asserting necessity extending outwards indefinitely. I don't look
 for a way to 'get behind' this, and to this extent I don't seek a TOE,
 because I can't believe that 'everything' (despite the name of this
 list) is theoretically assimilable. This may well be blindness more
 than modesty, however.

 Having said this, of course in a spirit of learning I'm trying to
 understand and adopt *as if* true the comp assumptions, and continue to
 put my best efforts into getting my head around Bruno's roadmap as it
 emerges. I have a lot of experience of changing my mind (and maybe I'll
 get a better one!)

 David


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