I of course accept this, but so far fail to see its significance. — javra
I'd instead focus on the discreetness of physical givens as discerned by awareness. Something which, as an indefinite amount of something, we commonly term quantity in the English language. Which we then use numbers to more precisely quantify in definite manners. — javra
I don't know the background of the guy you've quoted. Is the guy trying to conceive of what reality is like, or would be like, in the complete absence of all awareness in the cosmos? — javra
The exactitude of numbers has everything to do with awareness's aptitudes - especially here addressing that of humans - — javra
That something stands out perceptually is not that it is actually separate from its environment; it is just that we can distinguish it. — Janus
When we distinguish a single tomato, there is not an "indefinite quantity of something" in the sense that you were using the term 'quantity', that is as number: on the contrary there is an exact number of tomatoes; in this case one. — Janus
An understanding of numbers is often viewed as a distinctly human faculty — a hallmark of our intelligence that, along with language, sets us apart from all other animals.
But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Honeybees count landmarks when navigating toward sources of nectar. Lionesses tally the number of roars they hear from an intruding pride before deciding whether to attack or retreat. Some ants keep track of their steps; some spiders keep track of how many prey are caught in their web. One species of frog bases its entire mating ritual on number: If a male calls out — a whining pew followed by a brief pulsing note called a chuck — his rival responds by placing two chucks at the end of his own call. The first frog then responds with three, the other with four, and so on up to around six, when they run out of breath.
Practically every animal that scientists have studied — insects and cephalopods, amphibians and reptiles, birds and mammals — can distinguish between different numbers of objects in a set or sounds in a sequence. They don’t just have a sense of “greater than” or “less than,” but an approximate sense of quantity: that two is distinct from three, that 15 is distinct from 20. This mental representation of set size, called numerosity, seems to be “a general ability,” and an ancient one, said Giorgio Vallortigara, a neuroscientist at the University of Trento in Italy.
Either via the idealism of Platonic Realism or the materialism of today's mainstream views, how can one have numbers in the complete absence of discrete amounts of givens - i.e., of quantities? (if nothing else, there would yet be a quantity of numbers by the shear presence of the number(s) addressed) — javra
I'm not getting this. Edit: A predator's perceived prey that stands out perceptually isn't separate from the prey's environment? — javra
As to Bateson's latest quote, interesting as it is to read, it only speculates without evidencing what is speculated. — javra
But wait, what if all this is not counting but "pattern or rhythm recognition"? I'll skip on this debate. — javra
Conceptually, quantities consist of numbers - whether or not the latter are specified. To go back to Bateson's initial quote, what would a numberless measurement of length, for example, be? — javra
Instead, you could reply to what I initially asked.
Either via the idealism of Platonic Realism or the materialism of today's mainstream views, how can one have numbers in the complete absence of discrete amounts of givens - i.e., of quantities? (if nothing else, there would yet be a quantity of numbers by the shear presence of the number(s) addressed) — javra
To go back to Bateson's initial quote, what would a numberless measurement of length, for example, be?
how can one have numbers in the complete absence of discrete amounts of givens - i.e., of quantities?
We ought to have ontological commitment to all and only the entities that are indispensable to our best scientific theories.
Mathematical entities are indispensable to our best scientific theories.
Therefore, we ought to have ontological commitment to mathematical entities.
The most common explanations make reference to "what Turing Machines do," because that's the easiest way to describe computation, but then Turing Machines are themselves an attempt to define what human beings do when carrying out instructions to compute things. But then human consciousness is also explained in terms of computation, making the whole explanation somewhat circular. — Count Timothy von Icarus
To go back to Bateson's initial quote, what would a numberless measurement of length, for example, be? - javra
Couldn't this be accomplished by simply referencing objects' extension in relation to one another? — Count Timothy von Icarus
I feel like there is support for the supposition that the illusion of discreteness is just a useful survival trick as much as for the idea that innate numeracy denotes the existence of numbers "out there, sans mind." — Count Timothy von Icarus
how can one have numbers in the complete absence of discrete amounts of givens - i.e., of quantities? - javra
Imagine a continuum, for example a line, of finite length. Our line has an uncountably infinite number of points but also a finite length. — Count Timothy von Icarus
ake some section of the line, arbitrarily, and compare how many lengths of the section fit within the whole. There are sections of the line that exist such that the line can be broken into n segments of equal length, where n is a natural number. No initial discreteness required, right? All that is required is that the points of the line differ from each other in some way; — Count Timothy von Icarus
I've always found the reverse argument more interesting, the claim that numbers are essential for reality, or at least our understanding of it. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Anyhow, if some hitherto unformulated version of logicalism is true, and numbers are reducible to logos, it seems to me like this argument is moot (and that the concept of logos spermatikos ends up beating out divine nous as a better explanation of "how things are," IMHO.) — Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm not convinced — 180 Proof
Extant models of digital physics are incompatible with the existence of several continuous characters of physical symmetries,[7] e.g., rotational symmetry, translational symmetry, Lorentz symmetry, and the Lie group gauge invariance of Yang–Mills theories, all central to current physical theory.
sarcastically & superciliously ridiculed your & my spooky immaterial opinions in this thread about general Reason instead of particular Things. Specifically, he poo-poos my information-based posts postulating something like a data-processing-universe theory.— Wayfarer
In most versions of physicalism, which tend to embrace the computational theory of mind (still seemingly the most popular theory in cognitive science), a belief is just an encoding of the state of the external environment. — Count Timothy von Icarus
This view works regardless of how consciousness arises, or even if it is eliminated, because agents are not defined in terms of possessing first person perspective, but rather through having goals. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Lewis seems to conflate the proposition that "the universe and causal forces are meaningless," as in, "devoid of moral or ethical value and describing nothing outside themselves," with agent's beliefs necessarily also being "meaningless," as in "the beliefs must not actually be in reference to anything else." — Count Timothy von Icarus
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not seek or conjecture either of them as if they were veiled obscurities or extravagances beyond the horizon of my vision; I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence. — Immanuel Kant
Yes and no.Would you (180) also accuse Fredkin ... of "hasty generalization" and "unparsimonious and the pseudo-speculative equivalent of (neo-Aristotlean / neo-Thomistic / neo-Hegelian) intelligent design"? — Gnomon
I'll drink to that. :up:Is his "law enforcement agent" a god-of-the-gaps posit to cover our ignorance of ultimate answers?
This "computer" metaphor amounts to an infinite regress – it's "enformers" all the way down. :lol:Is his "computer" a self-programmed natural intelligence, or an artificial intelligence created by an even more intelligent Programmer?
Define "human intelligence". :sparkle:Is human intelligence merely an accidental pattern of a hypothetical "universal cellular automaton"?
That's what makes it reductionist. You can set aside the first person perspective, and with it, the reality of existence, by treating it as a model, or a board game, as if you were surveying the whole panorama from outside it - when you're actually not.
Have you ever encountered Bertrand Russell's A Free Man's Worship?
If we assume that physical systems, as described per physicalism, can indeed produce first person experience... — Count Timothy von Icarus
Tropes and universals can be described in mathematical, computable terms. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I find it sort of funny in a way, because for the Stoics and many early Christians the fact that the world did move in such a law-like way was itself evidence of the divine Logos, not an argument against the divine. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I know it's already been suggested that crows can count, but try explaining the concept of prime to them. — Wayfarer
I'm not convinced (it does not seem to me to follow), however, 'that if physical events-regularities are computable (which they are), then physical reality must be a "computer" executing a nonphysical program (and, in your case, Gnomon, that's written by a "nonphysical programmer")' – at best, this hasty generalization is too unparsimonious and the pseudo-speculative equivalent of (neo-Aristotlean / neo-Thomistic / neo-Hegelian) "intelligent design". :eyes: — 180 Proof
Rather than a set of immutable numbers, which seems less defensible today, we can have a set of possible, contextually immutable axioms, which define a vast, perhaps infinite space of systems. The truths in the systems are mutable, because there are different systems, but then there is a sort of fall back, second-order Platonism where the existence of the systems themselves, and relations between them, are immutable. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't think that this works. The reason why different systems are needed is because incompatibilities arise between one and another. Incompatibility makes it impossible to have immutable axioms which would be applicable to all systems. — Metaphysician Undercover
Incompatibility makes it impossible to have immutable axioms which would be applicable to all systems.
From his reply : "I'm not convinced (it does not seem to me to follow), however, 'that if physical events-regularities are computable (which they are), then physical reality must be a "computer" executing a nonphysical program (and, in your case, Gnomon, that's written by a "nonphysical programmer")' – at best, this hasty generalization is too unparsimonious and the pseudo-speculative equivalent of (neo-Aristotlean / neo-Thomistic / neo-Hegelian) "intelligent design". — Gnomon
Is the concern overdetermination of the belief? — NotAristotle
Again, I'll reply to you, because dialoging with 180 is like talking to a snarky wall. — Gnomon
(The) Materialistic worldview seems to be based on pragmatic scientific Reduction — Gnomon
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