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mrParkbench posted:Brandor I think you totally missed the point of my last point. I'm not attempting to deny that the mathematical universe hypothesis is based on a universal claim, or that it is essentially a form of platonism. The issue I brought up is the fact that you try to use this to demonstrate that prescriptive (READ: moral, normative, value-based) conclusions will inevitably follow. There are a lot of reasons to be dubious about this, such as in specific the lack of a principle by which one can transition from a descriptive statement to a normative one. Hey I'm about to go to bed so I can't elaborate yet but I'm going to argue that pretty much a defining feature of the kind of thinking Bangor is talking about is that it inappropriately provides a means of obtaining normative statements from descriptive ones (which is impossible, hence why I said "inappropriately"). An example of this would be Natural Law theory and Thomism in general.
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Mar 25, 2014 06:33
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SedanChair posted:So "totalizing" worldviews result in atrocity? But doesn't this put you in the position of trying to jam every culture that commits atrocities into your definition? Why is this overlay necessary? Why does it augment our ability to see, predict or avoid these abuses? "The absoluteness of the justification - God's will, or holy church or a reward or tradition - can have the power to justify anything." (John Hick, A Christian Theology of Religions). Once you go absolute, and that is done when you claim something is reality, this possibility is opened up. Even an absolute claim that is the consequence of doing this, human suffering and death directly resulting from totalizing absolutism (the cross), can be used to justify these things. But yeah it does mean that, it puts me in the position of trying to totalize an Absolute. I've already said that. I'm criticizing something I participate in. What I'm arguing is a real threat to my core beliefs too. That's part of why I'm so angry at WWN. gently caress, he really can't see what I'm doing and why it's dangerous to my own faith and just wants to have the same old non-conversation. mrParkbench posted:Brandor I think you totally missed the point of my last point. I'm not attempting to deny that the mathematical universe hypothesis is based on a universal claim, or that it is essentially a form of platonism. The issue I brought up is the fact that you try to use this to demonstrate that prescriptive (READ: moral, normative, value-based) conclusions will inevitably follow. There are a lot of reasons to be dubious about this, such as in specific the lack of a principle by which one can transition from a descriptive statement to a normative one. You've already transitioned it to a normative moral claim (and done a bit more than that actually) without realizing you've done so. This is why: "It is customary in Christian language to think of God as that which is alone and finally real. And the term corresponds to the Sanscrit "sat" and the Arabic "al-Haqq" and has parallels in yet other languages. And what is variously called salvation or liberation or enlightenment or awakening consists in this transformation from-self centeredness to reality -centeredness. (John Hick, A Christian Theology of Religions) Statements about the Real, about God are always moral statements. Even if you reject that, statements that about the Real always imply salvation (and that goes in the other direction too, talk about salvation implies the Real). Specifically salvation from not knowing the Truth. When one is saved one wants to spread the good news. I know your beliefs aren't identical to Tegmark's, but look at what he does, he even goes on to make this exact implication and then argues for an evangelization of science it's how he concludes the book. And WWN, that is a hint to where we've talked about this before in a radically different context. "Evangelize" Ogmius815 posted:Thomism in general. The thing about Thomism and scholasticism following it is that everything said is relative and not absolute. It's all metaphor. I actually think critical realism would be one route out. That would look like this: A set of relative (not absolute) relationships based in observation called "maths" can by analogy (and only analogy) let us know something about the Real. That's a very different beast. But a lot of the people who are asserting "Math is real" are trying solve a specific problem related to the interpretations of quantum mechanics. They are rejecting the interpretation that is most like scholasticism, the Copenhagen interpretation, which rejects that the wave function directly says anything about reality.
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Mar 26, 2014 17:20
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You're going to have to elaborate on Thomism being metaphorical. I'm not sure that I disagree, but I'm not entirely sure what you mean. I've studied under some extremely famous Thomists (one of them basically got me into graduate school) and none of them ever said anything like that. I should qualify that I am in no sense a Thomist personally.
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Mar 27, 2014 04:51
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Ogmius815 posted:You're going to have to elaborate on Thomism being metaphorical. I'm not sure that I disagree, but I'm not entirely sure what you mean. I've studied under some extremely famous Thomists (one of them basically got me into graduate school) and none of them ever said anything like that. I should qualify that I am in no sense a Thomist personally. I shouldn't have used the word "metaphor" I should have used the word "analogy" like I did the following sentences. I'm going from something I read by Tillich. He was contrasting Aquinas with Duns Scotus. History of Christian Thought posted:Thomas Aquinas cuts the immediate presence of God in the act of knowing. He denies it. In general I also often see it repeated that Catholic systematic theology is by analogy of being, and that comes from Aquinas like this. The Analogical Imagination in Catholic Theology by David Tracy posted:The passage states that theology is the partial, incomplete, analogous but real understanding of the mysteries of the Catholic faith. It achieves this understanding in three steps: First, by developing analogies from nature to under- stand that mystery. Second, by developing -- by means of the analogy -- interconnections among the principal mysteries of the faith (Christ, Trinity, Grace). And third, by relating this understanding to the final end of humanity. Thomas Aquinas in 50 pages, Taylor Marshall posted:The “analogy of being” is the centerpiece of Thomistic philosophy. If one does not understand the analogy of being, one does not understand Thomas Aquinas. It is impossible to penetrate his thought without fully appreciating his doctrine of analogy. So that's where I'm getting it from. Starts with observation of reality of the finite world, but we are separated from God/Truth, no immediate presence of the Real/God. Using reason and knowledge one makes interconnected analogies from things observed in the world to try to understand God/the Real or the mysteries of faith. Then again I read mostly Tillich, Niebuhr, and Barth. I haven't delved into much Catholic theology, outside of general histories of Christian Thought / Dogma. So my view point is that of a protestant layperson who reads a lot (to the point of transcribed class lecture notes in some cases). In general if I get stumped I turn to my wife (masters in early church history), I don't think she can help me much on this particular topic though. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Mar 28, 2014 |
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Mar 27, 2014 16:01
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BrandorKP posted:Then again I read mostly Tillich, Niebuhr, and Barth. I haven't delved into much Catholic theology, outside of general histories of Christian Thought / Dogma. So my view point is that of a protestant layperson who reads a lot (to the point of transcribed class lecture notes in some cases). In general if I get stumped I turn to my wife (masters in early church history), I don't think she can help me much on this particular topic though. This is your problem. You don't have the context to appreciate just how groundbreaking Tillich's work was. Tillich more or less brought Christian theology in line with the previous few hundred years of philosophical changes. To get a better perspective on the traditional views basically just read Aristotle and Aquinas. While you do that, remember that this is still more or less the dominant view outside of the academy and cry.
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Mar 29, 2014 07:01
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Ogmius815 posted:This is your problem. You don't have the context to appreciate just how groundbreaking Tillich's work was. Tillich more or less brought Christian theology in line with the previous few hundred years of philosophical changes. To get a better perspective on the traditional views basically just read Aristotle and Aquinas. While you do that, remember that this is still more or less the dominant view outside of the academy and cry. Yeah a big part of that problem is that most of what I know about Catholicism is Protestant response/reaction. Some of that Protestant response is super negative (Barth especially and Luther too) I'm working on it. It's slow going, there is so much. Started with the Ante-Nicene church fathers. It's going to take me forever to get to the medieval stuff. I'm also working on reading the philosophy as much as I can. My wife at one point straight up told me "go deep or go broad." I went deep/specific first, all the Tillich I could get my hands on. I'm working on broad now. Here's the dirty little secret. I do know how groundbreaking Tillich was. I border on obsessed with the mans work (everything I could get my hands on to read, I did, I've even drank in some of the places he liked to drink). And I am working on the Aristotle, just finished Nicomachean Ethics in the last couple of months. I know enough now to know that to understand Catholicism, I'll have to learn a whole way to think. I've got a whole list of those (ways to think) to figure out, (un)fortunately. And arguing with people here is great way to do that. But the root of my criticism of this "math is Real" stuff is Tillich's idea that our conceptual categories (including the category of existence) don't apply to the Real/God/The Unconditioned (whatever word one wants to use). To say math is real applies a human category to the Real. It's the same error as to say that the bible is the literal Truth. It's an error the Copenhagen interpretation avoids, by saying these equation doesn't talk about reality just observations. Physicists like Tegmark are making that error to try to solve a problem. Directly relating why all this discussion is related to the thread: "Reality does exist, and thus it necessarily exists, and thus it should be derivable from some set of axioms" - MrParkbench This applies the category "exists" to Reality. I don't entirely know what places they can go to fix that error, hence the "eh, maybe the Catholic solution could work for them" line of argument.
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Mar 31, 2014 20:42
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BrandorKP posted:You're contradicting yourself within the statement by talking about a thing while simultaneously denying it exists. Also, can you either rephrase or elaborate what you were saying about the connection between metaphysics and ethics? While I agree that there is something about our moral statements that rest on a metaphysical foundation, I'm not entirely convinced that all metaphysical statements are themselves moral statements. I also don't understand in what way you're using the term 'Salvation' in regards to the Truth.
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Apr 1, 2014 09:40
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Debunk posted:Also, can you either rephrase or elaborate what you were saying about the connection between metaphysics and ethics? While I agree that there is something about our moral statements that rest on a metaphysical foundation, I'm not entirely convinced that all metaphysical statements are themselves moral statements. I also don't understand in what way you're using the term 'Salvation' in regards to the Truth. I'll have to read that Quine paper a couple of more times it is good stuff. (any one interested: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_What_There_Is) But I think this is spot on: "the modern philosophical mathematicians have not on the whole recognized that they were debating the same old problem of universals in a newly clarified form". This is the analogy I've been making. This is why I'm saying all this stuff has been argued out before. See I'm a religious realist. I believe that there is a universal and that it's is the Real (God the Father). This is myth (and Quine is correct to say doing this is myth). But I believe it's true myth. Why do I believe it's true, revelation (via the Son). I am open and straight up honest about this. To go this route isn't to make argument, all one can do is try to explain. This is why it's non-sequitor for WWN to ask me prove my world view. But this "Math is real" stuff is a realism too. They don't want it be. They can state no it's not much as they want. But it's a realism. That makes it a myth/religion. Myth they are attempting to justify with testing and trying to prove. I threw off a one-line earlier in the thread that totally got overlooked. "Oddly enough I'd be cool with that if it were a revelatory assertion". I meant that. All the comparisons to the neo-platonism stuff, was me asking where are the places myths like this go. But on the salvation/truth thing. The word salvation is from "Soter". Soter means literally teacher. It was the term used to talk about the heads of schools. Epicurus, Plato, Socrates, (and eventually Jesus) all these people were called soter (it also means savior). These are teachers, soters, and they are also heads of a school of philosophy. A school of philosophy wasn't just a abstract way to think. One lived ones life by the teachings of the school, more than that the school gave meaning, purpose, and connection to the eternal. The teacher taught a universal Truth that the students/participants in the school lived by, were saved by and not abstractly saved by, saved by in a real sense. The teacher spread the Truth which let the student know who they were, where they were from, what the end was, and how they should live. Salvation is what a soter gives to one, sōtēria. So that's the historical place the words come from, and why they are tied up together. Talking about salvation comes from talking about the Truth or about a universal. If a world view is a realism it always has this implication. But more simply. When one has the Truth one is no longer uncertain, one is free from fear of not knowing. That's the situation the word salvation originally describes, freedom from fear of not knowing. Until recently the Truth was also usually thought of as identical with reality itself, with Being. My view point still looks at it this way, the Real/Being and the Truth are the same thing. So to make an ontological claim, a claim about the what does or doesn't not have being, is the same as making a claim about Truth to me. "Math is real" is clearly an ontological claim about math (and clearly a realism). Thus from my view point, It is the same as saying Math is the Truth. Then that a Truth claim has been made (again I'm talking capital T truth claims) there is the implied freedom from uncertainty (freedom from not knowing). So when they say "Math is Real" it's directly implied "Math will save you." This is what I mean by it's like a logical series. They say that first thing (Math is Real), and they imply that last (Math will save you) thing and there isn't any escaping it. From there when people think they have salvation they do certain things and they talk in certain ways. When I make this whole argument, I'm also impling basically the worst thing that I could say to somebody who believes in a particular myth. Implied by my argument is "this will not save you, it's a lie, and a human construct". This occasional gets called the threat of non-being. (I see this pops up in the Quine paper too, he calls it Plato's beard). All realisms have this risk. The risk that what one says is real might not be. This math is real stuff doesn't want to look at that. People in general don't want to look at that. But the threat of non-being has to be incorporated into a realism or it will eventual kill the realism. I don't see math having a way to incorporate it.
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Apr 2, 2014 19:11
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BrandorKP posted:When I make this whole argument, I'm also impling basically the worst thing that I could say to somebody who believes in a particular myth. Implied by my argument is "this will not save you, it's a lie, and a human construct". This occasional gets called the threat of non-being. (I see this pops up in the Quine paper too, he calls it Plato's beard). All realisms have this risk. The risk that what one says is real might not be. This math is real stuff doesn't want to look at that. People in general don't want to look at that. But the threat of non-being has to be incorporated into a realism or it will eventual kill the realism. I don't see math having a way to incorporate it. You don't think this is maybe a good reason to take a harder look at nominalism?
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Apr 2, 2014 21:53
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Ogmius815 posted:You don't think this is maybe a good reason to take a harder look at nominalism? I do. It's a very, very, good and compelling reason to be a nominalist. I am giving as an argument for rejecting this "Math is real" stuff after all. Without the cross, I would not be willing to risk being a realist. I would lose my realism and would quickly become a nomialist.
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Apr 3, 2014 19:08
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mrParkbench posted:Ok, I will take back what I said about facts after re-reading what you were responding to, and I agree that Who What Now's statement was problematic, but no more so than Brandor's assertion in the first place (Namely, that his arguments were based on 'facts' that he did not need to justify). Point is, the comment was essentially irrelevant to the discussion here as a whole, and merely served as a platform for you to launch into stroking Brandor's semantic bs. I don't disagree with the notion that the claim that a negative outcome is guaranteed is impossible to defend. It is a fundamentally flawed assumption, on purely logical grounds. However, people seem to have taken a bizarrely personal and obtuse way of refuting BrandorKP. Problems often lie in the fundamental assumptions which underlie a certain way of thinking, not in the internal logic of that particular paradigm. It is far more fruitful to just ask him to explain what beliefs he is basing these ideas on, since it is unlikely that he has made any obvious mistakes above the foundational elements of his thinking. It seems to me that BrandorKP believes that it is the human capacity for interpretation of universals that ultimately leads to a morally abhorrent outcome. Such predictive power is obviously impossible, but I am not entirely sure why I should consider it morally abhorrent even if guaranteed. It appears that such framing is entirely dependent on the observer. I have absolutely zero problems with the tug-of-war that often develops around universals. A "dialectic" of this sort is one of the dialectical ways in which actual progress is achieved and, in the grand scheme of things, such conflicts are not a net negative. Judakel fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Apr 3, 2014 |
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Apr 3, 2014 19:16
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Judakel posted:It seems to me that BrandorKP believes that it is the human capacity for interpretation of universals that ultimately leads to a morally abhorrent outcome Another term for it is "the demonization of religion." "that a particular religion claims to be identical with the religious Absolute and rejects judgment against itself. This leads, internally, to demonic suppression of doubt, criticism, and honest search for truth within the particular religion itself; and it leads, externally, to the most demonic and destructive of all wars, religious wars." (My Search for Absolutes, Tillich) That problem is worse for hidden religion (like Math is real, or Freedon is real) because hidden religions don't have all the history where people have fallen into the traps and done the very bad things when the religion was demonized. They also tend not to think or not realize they are participating in a myth, so they reject the possibility of this risk. That's a dangerous combination. And this creates a massive problem for me. Do I do this with my beliefs? ( I can't answer that) Judakel posted:Such predictive power is obviously impossible, I don't think we can say that. The prophetic voice expressed in literal interpretation, yeah that's bullshit. It looks like this: http://www.thetrumpet.com/ That's impossible garbage. I'd throw this "this will not save you, it's a lie, and a human construct" at that. But this is different: "I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together." (edit: better clarify that's MLK) It creates problems to declare that type of prophetic voice impossible. And most people when pressed, even if they nominally reject the prophetic mode, won't give this type of prophecy up. And if that type of predictive statement is impossible, that is to say if logical conclusions reached starting from a realism cannot be predictive, well that's more problematic for other posters in this thread than it is for me. Judakel posted:A "dialectic" of this sort is one of the dialectical ways in which actual progress is achieved and, in the grand scheme of things, such conflicts are not a net negative. Unless one is rocking circular and not a helical dialectic. Then things just always come back to the same place. This is another reason I don't want to get too consistent. I'd like to have the flexibility to think in both of those ways, or in neither of them if it became useful. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Apr 4, 2014 |
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Apr 4, 2014 16:32
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Ogmius815 posted:You don't think this is maybe a good reason to take a harder look at nominalism? Quine is less of a nominalist than an out-and-out anti-realist. He's also skeptical that universals to any real logical work in our theories, other than to simplify statements that would otherwise constitute an infinite expression. All of BrandorKP's worries go away once you stop worrying about anything bottoming out in the "real". If it's actually nominalism you're interested in, go to Goodman (Languages of Art; The Structure of Appearance). If you're actually an antirealist, go to Rorty (Philosophy and the mirror of nature; Contingency, Irony and Solidarity). In either case, ditch the cross.
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Apr 4, 2014 17:53
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RealityApologist posted:Quine is less of a nominalist than an out-and-out anti-realist. By his own admission, though, Quine was terrible at understanding even the science of his day. That makes me skeptical about his claims to being a realist in any useful sense.
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Apr 5, 2014 00:17
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DoctorDilettante posted:By his own admission, though, Quine was terrible at understanding even the science of his day. That makes me skeptical about his claims to being a realist in any useful sense. Do you have a source on this?
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Apr 5, 2014 04:20
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multistability posted:Do you have a source on this? Just conversations with people who knew him. The generation of philosophers that were senior faculty while I was in grad school were themselves grad students or junior faculty during quine's prime. I've heard this from a number of them, even those who liked him very much (including Philip Kitcher). He reportedly didn't keep up with the scientific literature of the day, and had only a basic understating of atomic theory. In his writing, he almost never engages with specific scientific theses. That's not necessarily a fatal criticism, but it's an interesting historical note.
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Apr 5, 2014 11:07
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Can anyone parse this? Its Max Tegmark apparently claiming that *consciousness* is a state of matter?! http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.1219 Has Tegmark lost his mind here, or am I just failing to parse it. A lot of the language is beyond me, and whilst I'd normally instantly throw this into the "bullshit" basket, it IS by Tegmark who's a legitimately highly regarded physicist (and apparently proponent of the mathematical universe idea) Then again Penrose, arguably one of the most regarded physicists alive, wrote the emperors new mind and we all know how THAT adventure turned out, so the title 'brilliant physicist' doesnt necessarily instantly earn immunity from the title of 'purveyor of gibberish'. duck monster fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Apr 21, 2014 |
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Apr 21, 2014 17:32
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duck monster posted:Can anyone parse this? Its Max Tegmark apparently claiming that *consciousness* is a state of matter?! Some English parsing: https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/5e7ed624986d A more general critique of Tegmark's approach: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=6551
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Apr 21, 2014 18:49
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RealityApologist posted:Some English parsing: https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/5e7ed624986d Hey Eripsa, you must be pretty busy these days.
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Apr 21, 2014 19:01
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duck monster posted:Can anyone parse this? Its Max Tegmark apparently claiming that *consciousness* is a state of matter?! Haven't looked over the paper in much detail, but I think the state of matter idea is something he is using to sensationalize what's going on. I don't think the concept of 'state of matter' is really defined well enough to make this kind of claim meaningful (linear behaviour in specified regimes vs. strong nonlinearity in the boundaries), the idea here is basically to use statistical mechanics and information theory to create a model of physical system which can process information in a 'conscious' manner, which isn't exactly a new or fringe idea. There may in fact be worthwhile insight here, but it seems to me like he's basically throwing out a lot of loosely related ideas about conscious information processing, and using the "State of Matter" term as a rhetorical tool to connect them. Which it probably doesn't do too well... Also, somewhat ironic but worth noting, it was Tegmark who did the work which used quantum decoherence to disprove Penrose's formulation of the quantum mind, and they debated it pretty fiercely.
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Apr 21, 2014 21:44
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Right, I was getting the feeling I'm missing some sort of grand mathematical metaphor here. edit: Welp, reading that medium article has just left me even more confused. I sort of get that he's describing a hypothetical rather than actual substance (I hope, because this poo poo veers into serious deepak chopra territority if he isn't and I doubt Tegmark is doing that) , I'm just not exactly sure what is gained from doing that other than just trying to describe an abstract mechanism. My problem is, how does this tell us more about whats in the black box by describing it this way. Reading these papers, my lack of mathematics beyond 20 years since forgotten basic first year calculus betrays me here, alas. duck monster fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Apr 22, 2014 |
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Apr 22, 2014 00:07
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duck monster posted:Right, I was getting the feeling I'm missing some sort of grand mathematical metaphor here. The general idea of "states of matter" has been under attack from various sides for a while now, quite apart from anything to do with 'consciousness'. Examples include: http://www.ams.org/notices/201303/rnoti-p310.pdf https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20130403-solid-or-liquid-physicists-redefine-states-of-matter/ http://gizmodo.com/there-are-way-more-than-three-states-of-matter-1182677930 http://phys.org/news/2014-02-eye-chicken-state-view.html#jCp  quote:Researchers from Princeton University and Washington University in St. Louis report that the unusual arrangement of cells in a chicken's eye constitutes the first known biological occurrence of a potentially new state of matter known as "disordered hyperuniformity," which has been shown to have unique physical properties. These states have a "hidden order" that allows them to behave like crystal and liquid states of matter. They exhibit order over large distances and disorder over small distances. This diagram depicts the spatial distribution of the five types of light-sensitive cells known as cones in the chicken retina. Credit: Image courtesy of Joseph Corbo and Timothy Lau, Washington University in St. Louis
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Apr 22, 2014 01:23
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"Disordered hyperuniformity", what a strange term to coin
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Apr 22, 2014 01:38
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duck monster posted:Can anyone parse this? Its Max Tegmark apparently claiming that *consciousness* is a state of matter?! basic unit of what makes an intelligent system than the typical hippie woo-woo consciousness bullshit. I don't even begin to understand the underlying math though, so I might be completely wrong. RealityApologist posted:The general idea of "states of matter" has been under attack from various sides for a while now, quite apart from anything to do with 'consciousness'. Examples include: This is cool and all, but how does it relate to anything in this thread?
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Apr 22, 2014 02:06
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quote:I have long contended that consciousness is the way information feels when being processed in certain complex ways [1, 2],i.e., that it corresponds to certain complex patterns in spacetime that obey the same laws of physics as other complex systems, with no "secret sauce" required. Ok, I take that back, he seems to be talking about the 'spooky' kind of consciousness after all. No idea how it might follow from the math stuff, and I doubt anyone but the author and maybe few other people have any.
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Apr 22, 2014 02:27
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grate deceiver posted:Ok, I take that back, he seems to be talking about the 'spooky' kind of consciousness after all. No idea how it might follow from the math stuff, and I doubt anyone but the author and maybe few other people have any. Reality is just the interior surface of the comsmic equasion, and thus consciousness is just mathematics pondering itself.  For my next trick I'm going to eat an entire bucket of hash cookies and then huff an entire can of lighter fluid and explain how austrian economics is in fact the purest music of the celestial spheres
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Apr 22, 2014 03:51
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RealityApologist posted:The general idea of "states of matter" has been under attack from various sides for a while now, quite apart from anything to do with 'consciousness'. Examples include: Do you remotely understand why extrapolating a physical phenomena you don't understand into a philosophical concept is worse than useless?
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Apr 22, 2014 03:54
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Dusseldorf posted:Do you remotely understand why extrapolating a physical phenomena you don't understand into a philosophical concept is worse than useless? You must be new to Eripsa-posts.
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Apr 22, 2014 04:32
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Thermocouples are devices that measure temperatures by joining two different conductors. There's an extremely small voltage difference that corresponds to the temperature difference. It's in the microvolt range, from an EE perspective it's nontrivial to detect something that small compared to something like a thermistor. Type K thermocouples are some of the most popular and made out of chromel/alumel. They were made when metallurgy was less advanced, as nickel causes a minor bump when it hits 350C. Wikipedia mentions the "sensitivity of approximately 41 µV/°C". But that's not really true. At 0°C, the voltage is 0.000. At 100°C, the voltage is 4.096mV. So for a thermocouple specified before we really knew what we were doing the voltage difference in the freezing point and boiling point of water is precisely 2^12 µV
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Apr 22, 2014 05:58
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grate deceiver posted:Ok, I take that back, he seems to be talking about the 'spooky' kind of consciousness after all. No idea how it might follow from the math stuff, and I doubt anyone but the author and maybe few other people have any. I don't think there is anything that 'spooky' about the way he's approaching consciousness, and the mathematical connection may be a bit tenuous but it's not really unfounded. It's basically making some pretty reasonable assumptions about what kind of system could exhibit what we consider to be 'consciousness', such as high-redunancy, distributed memory (what Tegmark calls 'integration'), and an ability to learn or evolve in the absence of input ('autonomy'). I've so far looked at the first half of the paper, where he is basically investigating the limits of integration in quantum systems, and I presume the second half focuses more on the autonomy question. Oh, and if anyone is wondering why the focus on quantum systems... One of Tegmark's hypotheses is that waveform collapse by a conscious observer is not a necessary postulate, rather quantum decoherence between the consciousness and the observed system results in an apparent collapse. This is not the same as saying that a brain is performing 'quantum computations'.
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Apr 22, 2014 16:44
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The problem with Tegmark lies in the causal upshot that he denies some form of morphological computation that throws of the intelligibility of the things observed as separate from the computational mechanism. So some morphological feature like a finger moves and it can be transformed into a proposition that not only emerges but has its own ontological expression above it and not horizontal to it. He along with a few others, especially in power laws literature, tend to use the analogy of series of valves that when pushed do some action that is held to not be reducible metaphysically but expressible in a single proposition or formula. Hence, the existence of a power law they claim governs or at least is coextensive with the valves and the action done as a result. The talk about religion is misleading even if we accept that the analogy holds because we are evaluating the contingent features of our experience with religious experience and a very limited one at that, unless you hold that there really is special access to some object at all times while at the same denying that to others and denying you have some substantive access minus epistemic awareness. The talk of Tillich's religious existentialism also is blank on any religious tradition that is not part of the late Anglo-Latin historical experience. It is also really choppy at that. An example would be historical critiques of of the neo-durkheiman view of secular providence and providence in the western world by Charles Taylor in in Religious Mobilizations and Robert Esposito's talk the theological economic and theological political division in antiquity in his work titled , Bios. An easy way to compare it would be to look at the difference between the connection in Late Renaissance England of decency as being a requisite of access to reason ,Rosseau's claims in the Second Discourse about politics and reason and Byzantine thought on politics and reason. Rousseau claimed that reason necessarily appeared with politics through providence, ordered nature, providing the tools for its own expression and this meant that reason was expressed with it but not contingent like politics. The universal only appeared to sustain it in active form, that is appearing in method and justifying it. Byzantine thought in the Pseudo Justinan involved the claim that nature constituted expressions of ethics and politics along with aesthetics. The difference amounts to the claim that moral and aesthetic connections are necessary for rationality and the ability to think true forms in one view. While the other basically entailed that all actions exist and exhibit some causal connection and those features themselves are products of the imagination. The Byzantine thought and similar claims like decadence to Ibn Khaldun are constitutive features of existence whereas the english view has a dualist mode of reason being necessary to understand but not participating in nature. Placing some universal as granting strong access but not participating in actuality as somehow constitutive of religious expression seems to be a big leap. This is assuming that universal here holds across the examples. Edit: Added an example. Ogodei_Khan fucked around with this message at 07:07 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 06:26
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Ogodei_Khan posted:Placing some universal as granting strong access but not participating in actuality as somehow constitutive of religious expression seems to be a big leap. This is assuming that universal here holds across the examples. Except that, 1. Talk about an ineffable Real that is in our concepts and that our concepts might point to but that does not depend on our concepts 2. Talk about a Math that underlays the human concept math but that is free of our human symbols/concepts of math or that can be understand independently from them in another set of concepts. Talk of type 2 fits into a category defined by talk of type 1. 1 is religious talk, is God talk. Tegmark clearly doing 2. That makes this religious expression. Ogodei_Khan posted:unless you hold that there really is special access to some object at all times while at the same denying that to others and denying you have some substantive access minus epistemic awareness. A radical immanence and a radical absence are two sides of the same coin. And special access to the Absolute is not the same as special access to some object. Ogodei_Khan posted:The problem with Tegmark lies in the causal upshot that he denies some form of morphological computation that throws of the intelligibility of the things observed as separate from the computational mechanism. I parse this as: in the final result of, at the end of causality he denies that there is some form of reason/thought that can understand things observed as separate from Reason (Reason here as the rigid mathematical laws of the universe). And if he is asserting a power law type situation, where one thing varies as a power of the other, then he's saying: Our thought and the rules the universe operates by vary by a power, vary exponentially, from one another. So then we have our thought and Math as variations by degree of the same thing while also being exponentially separated from each other. So is that any different than this: "I am "in" God in my very distance from him. "(Zizek talking about a Hegelian suffering God) If one takes the esoteric math terms and looks at their structure it's very similar to the structure of things said in esoteric religious terms. There are images consisting of vaginas, eyes, spear wounds and Christ on the cross that are saying the same thing. Edit: Is reading that what it's like to read what I write sometimes? Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Apr 30, 2014 |
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Apr 30, 2014 19:35
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RealityApologist posted:The general idea of "states of matter" has been under attack from various sides for a while now, quite apart from anything to do with 'consciousness'. Examples include: none of these links show that the general idea of "states of matter" is under attack, eripsa
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May 1, 2014 00:55
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