- Mathematicians are machines that are unable to recognize the fact that they are machines
- Self-explaining Game of Life?
- Love for the Truth
- Making Mind Matter More
- Understanding ‘Understanding’
- When I told my aunt that I wanted to study philosophy …
- Laws of Physics and Theology
- Selves: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics
- They’re Made Out Of Meat
12.05.2019 Mathematicians are machines that are unable to recognize the fact that they are machines
Haim Gaifman, What Gödel’s Incompleteness Result Does and Does Not Show
“And if such is the case, then we (qua mathematicians) are machines that are unable to recognize the fact that they are machines. As the saying goes: if our brains could figure out how they work they would have been much smarter than they are. Gödel’s incompleteness result provides in this case solid grounds for our inability, for it shows it to be a mathematical necessity. The upshot is hauntingly reminiscent of Spinoza’s conception, on which humans are predetermined creatures, who derive their sense of freedom from their incapacity to grasp their own nature. A human, viz. Spinoza himself, may recognize this general truth; but a human cannot know how this predetermination works, that is, the full theory. Just so, we can entertain the possibility that all our mathematical reasoning is subsumed under some computer program; but we can never know how this program works. For if we knew we could diagonalize and get a contradiction.”
Discussion on the everything-list
04.01.2019 Self-explaining Game of Life?
I have listened to Sean Carroll’s Big Picture. His world view is actually similar to the Game of Life, well, the rules are a bit more complicated. Carroll claims that his equation describes human beings as well. He takes a compatibilist position in respect to free will: free will is compatible with the determinism. At the same time, he says that his equation is the very strong intellectual achievement of the mankind.
I thought that it could be possible to invent some sort of the Game of Life where during the system evolution one gets the rule of the game printed on the screen. In my view, this should be somewhat analogous to what Carroll says. Well, it is hard to say in what form the rules of the game should appear, but this after all gives some freedom to invent such a game.
I should mention that I mean nothing fancy. “Explaining” is meant in pure epiphenomenal fashion: an equation spontaneously appeared on a sheet of paper, nothing else.
Discussion on the everything-list
06.05.2017 Love for the Truth
Jean-André Deluc to Christoph Lichtenberg (1798):
“I told you, mon cher Monsieur, that there is no one I prefer to talk physics with than you; because I’ve always seen that like me (if I dare say so) you love physics for itself; which is true of very few people. Some do physics to talk about it, or to make a reputation, or to get a job; but the feeling and love for the truth are rare.”
A quote from John L. Heilbron, Natural Philosophy, in Wrestling with Nature: From Omens to Science, eds. P. Harrison, R. L. Numbers, M. H. Shank, 2011, p. 173 – 199.
05.05.2016 Making Mind Matter More
The last paragraph from the paper:
Jerry A. Fodor, Making Mind Matter More, Philosophical Topics, Vol. 17, No. 1, Philosophy of Mind, 1989, pp. 59-79
“So, then, perhaps there’s a route to physicalism from stuff about mental causation that doesn’t require the claim that ceteris paribus laws can’t ground mental cases. If so, then my story gives us both physicalism and a reasonable account of the causal responsibility of the mental; whereas Davidson’s story gives us at most the former. But if we can’t get both the causal responsibility of the mental and an argument for physicalism, then it seems to me that we ought to give up the argument for physicalism. I’m not really convinced that it matters very much whether the mental is physical; still less that it matters very much whether we can prove that it is. Whereas, if it isn’t literally true that my wanting is causally responsible for my reaching, and my itching is causally responsible for my scratching, and my believing is causally responsible for my saying. . . . if none of that is literally true, then practically everything I believe about anything is false and it’s the end of the world.”
07.04.2016 Understanding ‘Understanding’
Quotes from Addy Pross, What is Life? How Chemistry becomes Biology
Chapter Understanding ‘Understanding’
“In the scientific world we strive to achieve understanding of phenomena in the world around us through application of the scientific method.”
“At the very heart of the scientific method is the process of induction, a way of reasoning whose roots can be traces back to ancient Greek philosophy, but was raised to scientific prominence with its formal description by Francis Bacon.”
“Inductive reasoning involves the reaching of general conclusions from a set of empirically obtained facts – what one might simplistically term pattern recognition.”
“In fact all cognitive beings, human and non-humans alike, apply the method routinely, whether consciously or subconsciously, in a process that has been deeply engrained in us all by evolution. Yes, your pet dog, despite his lack of familiarity with Bacon’s treatise, or epistemology in general, also routinely applies the inductive method.”
“But it took the genius of an Isaac Newton to recognize a much broader pattern, one which links the behavior of falling apples to the orbits of celestial bodies.”
“But what that means, however, is that there is no absolute and deep understanding as to why apples fall. Gravity is just the name of the general pattern to which the falling apple event belongs.”
“Ultimately all scientific explanations are inductive – they involve no more than the recognition of patterns and the association of the specific within the pattern.”
“We have used the term ‘pattern’ to describe what it is that the inductive method seeks, though scientists typically use other terms, such as hypotheses, theories, laws, to mention the main ones, the difference being primarily in the degree to which the pattern has been confirmed.”
“If we keep in mind that every hypothesis, theory, or law is ultimately just a pattern, the day that theory or law is modified or revoked will be less surprising, less disconcerting.”
“There is no fundamental explanation for any phenomena and the best we can do is to say that the pattern is the explanation.”
“It should be emphasized that the same set of observations may on occasion be interpreted in different ways and so may lead to the recognition of different patterns.”
“In conclusion, when a system can be patterned in more than one way, the question as to which pattern is better may well depend on the particular application.”
25.04.2015 When I told my aunt that I wanted to study philosophy …
From preface Clément Vidal, The Beginning and the End: The Meaning of Life in a Cosmological Perspective, 2012.
“Deciding what to do after high school is difficult and pivotal. When I told my aunt that I wanted to study philosophy at the university, she looked at me very empathically and told me: “have you considered to consult a psychiatrist? they can be very helpful, you know.” I was shocked. What had the philosophical pursuit to understand humanity and the cosmos to do with psychic health? Maybe she confused philosophy and psychology. Or maybe she thought that studying philosophy leads nowhere socially or professionally and that I was simply experiencing a temporary existential crisis. Seeing a psychiatrist would put me back on the right social track.
But maybe she was right after all. Maybe asking fundamental and philosophical questions is an illness. In that case I am proud to be ill. Even more, my hope is that it is highly contagious, and that you, my reader, will want to pursue even further the intellectual journey I will now share with you.”
23.05.2013 Laws of Physics and Theology
A quote from Paul Davies, ‘Universe from Bit‘ in ‘Information and the Nature of Reality: From Physics to Metaphysics‘ (suggested by Wendy Wheeler on biosemiotics list)
‘It is remarkable that this view [the orthodox concept of laws of physics derives directly from theology] has remained largely unchallenged after 300 years of secular science. Indeed, the “theological model” of the laws of physics is so ingrained in scientific thinking that it is taken for granted. The hidden assumptions behind the concept of physical laws, and their theological provenance, are simply ignored by almost all except historians of science and theologians. From the scientific standpoint, however, this uncritical acceptance of the theological model of laws leaves a lot to be desired’. (p.71)
16.09.2012 Selves: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics
Galen Strawson, Selves: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics
From Section 1.7 Thing, object
p. 11 “For the moment, though, the brief is to show that selves exist, and that they’re things or objects or ‘substances’ of some sort, and hence, given materialism, physical objects. One possibility is that there are in fact no better candidates for the title of ‘physical object’ than selves – even if there are others that are as good.”
From Section 1.8 Object, physical
p. 11 “This last suggestion is likely to strike many as obviously false, but this reaction may stem in part from a failure to think through what it is for something to be physical, on a genuine or realistic materialist view, and, equally, from a failure to think through what it is for something to be a thing or object.”
From Section 8.12 The one and the many
p. 422 “Should we retain the notion of an object in fundamental metaphysics? There can, I think, be no reasonable objection to it in the case in which we hold with Spinoza and others that there is only one object – the universe, spacetime, deus sive natura.”
p. 423. “The assumption that the term ‘object’ has plural application may be more trouble than it’s worth in fundamental metaphysics, given some of the traditional associations of the term ‘object’ (and ‘substance’) and the bent of present-day physics.”
15.08.2011 They’re Made Out Of Meat
Stathis Papaioannou has made a link to this video on the everything list.
Stephen O’Regan short film, They’re Made Out Of Meat
I like it. Some more info about the story in Wikipedia: They’re_Made_Out_of_Meat