May 31, 2017

Feynman had the highest intuitive physical ideas

Dear Kashyap,

Feynman was a great teacher of the masses. However, part of the reason he was great was that he had a knack for making use of naive realism just enough to give people a hint of what was being proposed but not so much as to get in the way of the theory (hopefully). He makes it clear in that well known chapter at the beginning that the metaphorical ‘curvature’ applies to spacetime considered as a single metric. He then builds up a story about curved space pretending that we can leave time out, in order to get the concept across. 

I agree that it seems that at one point he is telling us that space itself actually y is curved, and I will come back to his metaphysical position, but note that the formula for radius excess he gives is proportional to the mass divided by the square of the velocity of light. I am fairly sure that what this means is that this apparent ‘radius excess’ is what pertains to dynamic relations with the velocity of light - such as light based observations. If we take time out of the analysis and, using a ‘God’s eye view’, ask what curve the space has with no time elapse, or in other words in terms of relations with infinite velocity, then the GM/v(∞) squared term is zero. 

So space itself has no curvature.

And I think that has to be so because it would have to be curved in comparison to some other spatial metric and there isn’t one. The story about ants walking on a sphere works because there is a further dimension that shows that someone working with Pythagorus on paper cannot then assume his rules will apply to oceanic navigation. The comparison fails. It is meaningless to say space is curved unless we have a new comparison that fails. The new comparison, as I understand it, is that whenever you try to assume that Euclid applies to space across time you will find the same sort of discrepancy the navigator finds. Since the velocity of light in a vacuum is the maximum possible it seems reasonable to assume that light is ‘God’s yardstick’ and proclaim space to be curved to the extent it seems to be for light ‘paths’. There does seem to be something intrinsically suited to measuring in the velocity of light but I do not think it can be legitimate to go on to say ‘space really is curved this much’ precisely for the reason that Special Relativity had already shown that space and time as separate metrics are no longer viable aspects of physics.

I have become interested in the degree to which modern physicists fail to understand the basic imperatives of dynamic theories that the masters of the seventeenth century told us about. If Feynman had truly understood physics he would have prefaced his lectures by saying that all students should first read Descartes’s  Meditations in First Philosophy of 1641 in order to understand that all we are entitled to believe about the outside world is that it shows mathematical regularity of its tendency to give us sensations. They should then read the First Scholium on Space and Time of the Principle Mathematica to understand that ‘time’ and ‘space’ as used in physics are not the time and space of ordinary discourse but mathematical tools that can be used to predict our spatial and temporal sensations. And, most importantly, they should read together Leibniz’s Reflections on true Metaphysics, Specimen Dynamicum and New System from the 1690s in order to understand that there are no objects in the world, only actions or dynamic connections - dynamic units that can be called some name meaning ‘unit’ - monad or quantum.

Einstein is of course often considered the worst naive realist of recent times, with his inability to accept quantum theory. On the other hand Feynman seems to suffer some of the same problem. The difference is that whereas Einstein allowed his naive metaphysics to stop him accepting a theory Feynman accepted the theory and said one should not go in to the ‘filawsify’. But if Feynman had understood Leibniz he would have seen that there is nothing difficult to understand about quantum theory at a metaphysical level because it fits precisely what Leibniz showed the fundamental metaphysical level ought to be like.

There seem to be two major lessons Leibniz gives us. One is that there are no things, just dynamic units or ‘events’ or ‘actions’ or perhaps ‘connections’. That immediately makes a concept of space divorced from time absurd. What is confusing is that alongside probing this fundamental level Leibniz spends a lot of time working out the rules of a mechanical (classical) sort of description, in which he does separate space (ordering of coexistents) and time (ordering of sequentials). Although he saw both space and time as relative (contra Newton) he believed in simultaneity at least as a valid abstraction. That might seem at odds with his fundamental dynamic account but he makes it clear that the two sorts of account are incommensurable (but always corresponding as in the modern principle). Einstein seems to have got the dynamic idea right, even if maybe reluctantly. Feynman may not have been quite so good at it, as indicated by the chapter you quote. If he pointed out that none of it means anything except in a dynamic context the sort of confusion people run into would perhaps have been avoided.

Feynman accepts quantum theory more than Einstein but reluctantly too, and with the complaint that nobody can understand it. He uses notional ‘paths' to ‘sum over’ in a way very reminiscent of Leibniz and he admits that these are just tools, but if he had fully understood what Leibniz said about dynamic indivisibles he would have found his own theory perfectly easy to understand. Leibniz points out that individual dynamic units have to have a counterintuitive ‘telic’ description, a priori, which takes us far away from anything like particles or waves and closer to a knight’s move in chess.

The practical relevance, it seems to me, is that saying space is curved confuses everyone. There are no rails laid down by the sun. There is just a non-Euclidean relation between the four dimensions that depends on mass. A curved spacetime built on a naive realist view of ‘how the world seems to light’ may be a good mathematical prop but for things moving much slower like cannon balls, the ‘distortion' of trajectory is quite different. So we end up with questions about curved space in centrifuges.

My guess is that there is a third message for us from Leibniz: that every dynamic relation is always an asymmetric relation of monad to universe and that we should not think that monad and universe should be considered of the same notice category.IN a sense one is quantum and one is classical, so all relations involve both sorts of incommensurable descriptor. Maybe that is why QM and GR seem incommensurable - they are supposed to be?

Best wishes
Jo
May 30, 2017
...

Priyedarshi,

Whatever happened but in most people’s mind Feynman  had the highest intuitive physical  Ideas ever seen in a physicist. Not even Einstein!! He is recognized even for his idea on quantum computers. While we are talking about intellectual honesty, S.N. Bose’s case is very interesting for Indians. He tried to publish his paper on photon statistics in German journals. But being from India he was not getting anywhere. So he sent a copy of his paper to Einstein. Einstein recognized importance of Bose’s work, translated into German and got it published. Later Einstein made some additions to it  and it  became Bose- Einstein statistics. If Einstein did not get Bose’s paper published under Bose’s name we would have either Einstein statistics or at best Einstein- Bose statistics instead of Bose-Einstein statistics! Well! Scientists are human beings and they like fame and fortune like everybody else. Occasionally some of them are real honest, not all!! All of us in this publishing business find out about it!!

Kashyap
May 31, 2017
...

Dear All,

There is an intense debate on validity of Bohm’s theory/hypothesis/interpretation is going on this blog!! Admittedly, I have not read Bohm’s  or Sutherland’s papers. But these days there are so many papers published that no one can read all of them. Now, number of physicists on this blog is a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of total number of physicists. I read many physics blogs also. So far none of the top level physicists has come out in favor of Bohm/Sutherland’s theory. If you say it is a matter of time and my attitude is unscientific. Science should not be a popularity contest! Ok! It is possible that 1000 persons may be wrong and one person may be right. But I think, Bohm/Sutherland’s theories have still terrible problems.

Quantum mechanics works beautifully in the present linear form and it agrees with experiment to  better than 1 part in a billion or more. If Bohm/Sutherland have to make it highly non-linear to make it compatible with experiments, nobody is going to buy it, not even on Einstein’s authority! By the way, Einstein was probably the greatest scientist ever born , but he was wrong in connection with quantum mechanics (God does not play dice and EPR reality issue). So, although I have an open mind, in my heart, I seriously doubt if these efforts to make QM realist will succeed. Personally I like non-realistic interpretation of QM in agreement with Advaita (Maya) philosophy. Again, since there is no consensus about interpretation of quantum mechanics after 90 years of debate, may be something very subtle could be going on!

Best Regards

Kashyap
May 31, 2017
...
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Sri Aurobindo might be closer to the universal machine than Plotinus

Dear Tusar,

"On 30 May 2017, at 11:18, Tusar Nath Mohapatra wrote:
I'm not competent to comment on all that you say here, but can understand to some extent the weight of your problems and, may be, their possible dystopian repercussions."

Yet, you just cited, and provided some interesting links on Sri Aurobindo, which propositions are very close to the one by the Universal Machine, notably on matter, in his "Matter" text. Quite interesting. http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/matter

Then what I say is that arithmetically ideally correct machine have a very similar discourse.

I appreciate Sri Aurobindo since a long time, but it is only by reading more recently his book on Heraclitus that I begin to think he might be even closer to the universal machine than Plotinus, and this says something!

"Since you mentioned transhumanists, I'm pasting four extracts below for added perspective. Your namesakes, - Giordano Bruno and Bruno Latour, - are important players in this emerging scenario, incidentally."

Giordano Bruno seems more serious than Bruno Latour, but then I read only part of Latour's literature. He seems not aware of the mind-body problem, and he takes the physical world for granted, without making clear that it is an assumption. Whitehead seems more honest/correct on this, despite him too is unclear of what he assumes, and what he does not assume. I avoid that kind of literature, because there are too much ambiguities making too much large the class of possible interpretations.

Extracts:
1. "In short, for Śāntideva, the world actually is incomplete and lacking, and we misunderstand it if we don’t see this lack – a lack at least partially expressed in the notion of non-self. For ibn Sīnā it’s just that the world would be incomplete without God. But since he takes God to exist, for him the world is complete; it is as it should be. The similarity between the two is that we don’t adequately understand the world, it is incomplete in intelligibility, without the key idea of God or non-self."
Posted on 28 May 2017 by Amod Lele

This makes a lot of sense, and fits well the machine's classical philosophy.

2. "People of scientisic leanings are usually the first to notice that Husserl is playing this game. And since the game is directly at odds with their own program for bringing consciousness back into the natural world, they quickly become angry and dismissive toward Husserl. They see him as an idealist and as nothing more than an idealist... For Badiou really isn’t an innovator at all on this point, while Husserl is the biggest innovator of it in nearly 200 years, and arguably in the entire history of philosophy." comment on the Rorty quip from Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek (Graham Harman) "The unity of objects, for Husserl, is in those objects themselves, not in a human subject that bundles or counts them."

I guess the machine is closer to Husserl than to the people with scientific leaning, which are religious believer in Matter (the big "M" is for any notion of matter assumed as primary, or primitive).

3. "Joshua Ramey - The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual ... (2012) Description: Gilles Deleuze drew on a vast array of source material, from philosophy and psychoanalysis to science and art. Yet scholars have largely neglected one of the intellectual currents underlying his work: Western esotericism, specifically the lineage of hermetic thought that extends from Late Antiquity into the Renaissance through the work of figures such as Iamblichus, Nicholas of Cusa, Pico della Mirandola, and Giordano Bruno. In this book, Joshua Ramey examines the extent to which Deleuze's ethics, metaphysics, and politics were informed by, and can only be fully understood through, this hermetic tradition."

Deleuze has been useful for me, with his book "La logique du sens". But I am not so much a follower of hermetic thought, and already in Plotinus time, they add nonsense, it seems to me. 

If you read Plotinus' ennead on Numbers, he is incredibly "modern", close to the problems seen by Cantor which led to Gödel. But Iamblichus "theology of Arithmetic" is pseudo-mystical numerology. I can appreciate it, because I do love the fist ten numbers on which the book is all about, but then, I take very seriously *all* the numbers, and Iamblichus seems to me committing a sort of special number idolatry (which was quite common at this time, and the pythagoreans have some responsibility). 

4. "Following Bruno Latour, there have been articulations of the empirical as compositional, or, in Donna Haraway’s (2015, 161) terms, as the “compost” of emerging worlds. Matter has a heartbeat. In what Karen Barad (2003, 817) calls “the process of mattering,” things come to matter in both senses of the term. Life is deliteralized in a robust realism of energetic surfaces, qualities, and remainders that withdraw from phenomenological and representational efforts at reduction and paraphrase (see Harman 2011, 2012). Categories are at best an oblique mode of access to the generativity of singularities taking place (Harman 2008)." by Kathleen Stewart , Issue 32.2, May 2017

I will say that I simply do not understand such kind of talk. Feel free to develop if you think that there is something interesting there. I might just miss it.

Thanks for your comments, and for the links to Sri Aurobindo. I might comment some paragraph of Aurobindo later, as it is the exams duties period, and my scheduling get more and more tight.

Best regards,

Bruno
May 30, 2017
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May 30, 2017

Giordano Bruno, Bruno Latour, and Bruno Marchal

Dear Bruno,

I'm not competent to comment on all that you say here, but can understand to some extent the weight of your problems and, may be, their possible dystopian repercussions.

Since you mentioned transhumanists, I'm pasting four extracts below for added perspectives. Your namesakes, - Giordano Bruno and Bruno Latour, - are important players in this emerging scenario, incidentally.

Thanks,
Tusar
May 30, 2017

Extracts:
1. "In short, for Śāntideva, the world actually is incomplete and lacking, and we misunderstand it if we don’t see this lack – a lack at least partially expressed in the notion of non-self. For ibn Sīnā it’s just that the world would be incomplete without God. But since he takes God to exist, for him the world is complete; it is as it should be. The similarity between the two is that we don’t adequately understand the world, it is incomplete in intelligibility, without the key idea of God or non-self."
Posted on 28 May 2017 by Amod Lele

2. "People of scientisic leanings are usually the first to notice that Husserl is playing this game. And since the game is directly at odds with their own program for bringing consciousness back into the natural world, they quickly become angry and dismissive toward Husserl. They see him as an idealist and as nothing more than an idealist... For Badiou really isn’t an innovator at all on this point, while Husserl is the biggest innovator of it in nearly 200 years, and arguably in the entire history of philosophy." comment on the Rorty quip from Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek (Graham Harman)
The unity of objects, for Husserl, is in those objects themselves, not in a human subject that bundles or counts them. 

3. "Joshua Ramey - The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual ... (2012) Description: Gilles Deleuze drew on a vast array of source material, from philosophy and psychoanalysis to science and art. Yet scholars have largely neglected one of the intellectual currents underlying his work: Western esotericism, specifically the lineage of hermetic thought that extends from Late Antiquity into the Renaissance through the work of figures such as Iamblichus, Nicholas of Cusa, Pico della Mirandola, and Giordano Bruno. In this book, Joshua Ramey examines the extent to which Deleuze's ethics, metaphysics, and politics were informed by, and can only be fully understood through, this hermetic tradition."

4. "Following Bruno Latour, there have been articulations of the empirical as compositional, or, in Donna Haraway’s (2015, 161) terms, as the “compost” of emerging worlds. Matter has a heartbeat. In what Karen Barad (2003, 817) calls “the process of mattering,” things come to matter in both senses of the term. Life is deliteralized in a robust realism of energetic surfaces, qualities, and remainders that withdraw from phenomenological and representational efforts at reduction and paraphrase (see Harman 2011, 2012). Categories are at best an oblique mode of access to the generativity of singularities taking place (Harman 2008)." by Kathleen Stewart , Issue 32.2, May 2017
...

Dear Mohapatra,

I am aware with Sri Aurobindo and his philosophy as propounded by him as a consequence of his spiritual experiences. Fundamental Reality in Sri Aurobindo philosophy is the realm of pure consciousness and it has nothing to do with the physicality of the physicists whether in the non-quantum or quantum or PQM forms of Jack Sarfatti as being discussed under this forum

Vinod Sehgal
May 30, 2017
...
Dear Vinod

I'd like to draw your attention to an extract from The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo:

"Subdivide the visible aggregate or the formal atom into essential atoms, break it up into the most infinitesimal dust of being, we shall still, because of the nature of the Mind and Life that formed them, arrive at some utmost atomic existence, unstable perhaps but always reconstituting itself in the eternal flux of force, phenomenally, and not at a mere unatomic extension incapable of contents."

You can take a look at the whole chapter at:

Thanks,

Tusar
May 30, 2017
...

Dear Tusar,

Thanks for your e-mail. I have very high respect but very limited knowledge about Sri Aurobindo. Last year on our trip to south India we visited Aurobindo ashram and we found it very nice peaceful place. I am interested in relating physics to the non sensory world which our sages talk about. But I have never met anyone who has experience about Samadhi, astral body etc. I have not even talked to anyone who has met anyone with such experiences. I have been in U.S. since 1960 and of course it is not practical matter to go to India and search for such people! 

In our visit to the ashram, I inquired if there are such people around. No one could point me to one. Similar thing happened in our visit to Raman Ashram. At both places they said just meditate. You will get your answers! That may be very well true. I can also read about such experiences in books, but that is not very satisfactory from a scientific point of view. Anyway, do you think Sri Aurobindo had such experiences about Samadhi and astral body etc.? I would like to hear about your opinion on these matters.

Best Regards.

Kaashyap
May 29, 2017
...

Dear Prof. K

I don't think I have met anyone with yogic powers or experiences and feel it's good that you didn't find anyone in India. Sri Aurobindo has written extensively on various subjects and they are now freely available online at:


My request to you is to read a page or two at random, even if it doesn't interest you or you don't understand. I can assure you that it'd be very rewarding in terms of self-enrichment over a year or so.

Thanks,
Tusar
May 29, 2017
...

Machines can justify their own incompleteness

"On 28 May 2017, at 20:30, Tusar Nath Mohapatra wrote:
Thanks Bruno for appreciation and positive assessment."

You are welcome Tusar.

"You have raised enough anticipation in this forum about your theory which, let's hope, will be unveiled by you someday so that it can be understood by non-specialists like me without being tortured by mathematical symbols or equations."

I think that when we try to explain the theology of the numbers, without equation, we get the discourse of the mystics, including the silence of those who have gone sufficiently far to know well where they need to stay silent. We get even closer to the mystics open to rationalism, like the antic greek neoplatonists, like Plotinus, or perhaps even closer to the neo-pythagoreans (like, perhaps, Moderatus of Gades, if some accounts are correct, because, unlike Plotinus, we have lost all his writings). 

Of course, that might be preposterous, and I might be biased. 

Without equation, I want to refer you to the proof of the immortality of the soul by Socrates/Plato. 

Yet, the amazing thing which I try to convey, is that by making the assumption of the finitude of its body (a reasonable version of mechanism), a large class of machines will already ¨find*, by themselves, that they have a non definable first person self (which can be used as a "meta-definition" of the soul), and that such a soul is immortal (in a context which is hard to describe, and this might be for the worst and the best: open problem).

Gödel" incompleteness is that the universal machine is for ever never completely semantically satisfied, from its point of view. 

What many people miss, although it was already present in Gödel's 1931 paper, is that  the machines, alluded above, can justify their own incompleteness. The machine understands that their are ignorant about something, and that it is big and partially explorable, in many different ways. They already know (in a precise technical sense) that the more they learn about It, the bigger is their ignorance, like with a lantern in an infinite cave: the more you see, the more you see that you don't see. They know that about It, the more they know in "quantity", the less they know in proportion. They converge toward a sobering modesty (to use your word below).

"I have, however, added the final four lines to the above poem as follows:
It's agreed that we are far away
From any semblance of a solution"

I think we go close every thousand years. Then we drift away, by the usual human many attachments. Perhaps fear has some role, or some fear pathologies, or egocentric exploitations.

The virgin universal machine, I mean the not-yet-programmed one,  is at least sufficiently close and precise that we can test "her" physical theory. 

But once programmed and enslaved, they too drive away. And the One becomes the Multiple, "again".

The theological truth contains secret parts (already well described by the machine "guardian angel". This gives some access to the machine, to what is beyond it.

I was alluding to the modal logic G*,  I will say some word on it later). The machine remains silent on this. That secret parts is very often well described by mystics, but also by smokers of Salvia divinorum. Some things are not supposed to be publicly asserted on the "terrestrial plane". it would spoil the terrestrial life, a bit like a thriller movie can be spoiled by someone telling the end of the thriller.

Are we really far away of the solution? 
Or is it that we are so close to it all the time that we forget to look at it?
Perhaps we prefer not to look at it, and try to forget when we do? 
Or we get just blinded by the enormous amount of prejudices that we drag when lost in very long deep histories? So far from Home?

The universal machine is not the solution. It is on the contrary the terrible child which raises all the questions and put a lot of mess in Plato Heaven.
But sometimes, it can wake up and recognize itself in some others, and can recall where it comes from, in a lasting, or not, moment.

"This should mean as a very sobering attitude
In the face of human finitude."

I don't know. I suspect something sobering, certainly, but perhaps accompanied by something transcendentally funny also, which gives some price to our local body-mechanical-finiteness.

Mortality is an illusion.
Immortality is an infinite illusion. 

Technological immortality (or approximations), like the goal of the transhumanists is Nirvana procrastination, or Samsara Complacency.

Hmm... Now I have to look at the equations to see if I am not rambling too much :)

All the best,

Bruno
May 30, 2017
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May 29, 2017

Pythagoras, Plato, Moderatus of Gades, Plotinus, Augustine, Descartes, and Leibniz

Nice poem.

"Investigating consciousness via science
And mathematics can never be satisfying
Because of the subjective nature
Of the object of observation."

It depends on the assumption of your fundamental theory. 

With the mechanist assumption, you are not only right, but what you say becomes a theorem in the fundamental theory. With mechanism, even arithmetic entails the existence of the many subjective views, and of many possible observations, and their parts partially irreducible to anything 3p describable.

Mechanism saves the soul (of the machine) from all reduction to anything purely 3p describable. It provides a powerful vaccine against reductionisme (indeed against already the reductionist conception of what are capable the digital-machines/numbers).

Bruno
May 28, 2017

Thanks Bruno for appreciation and positive assessment. You have raised enough anticipation in this forum about your theory which, let's hope, will be unveiled by you someday so that it can be understood by non-specialists like me without being tortured by mathematical symbols or equations.

I have, however, added the final four lines to the above poem as follows:

It's agreed that we are far away
From any semblance of a solution
This should mean as a very sobering attitude
In the face of human finitude.

All the best,

Tusar

...

"Roger Penrose argues compellingly that the brain is not a classical computer."

Hameroff does that. penrose argues, non compellingly (I think), that the brain is not a computer at all, not even, unlike Hameroff, a quantum computer.

"Anyway, physics is not the good science to tackle the mind body problem, unless, like Penrose, you assume that mechanism is false. But that seems speculative to me."

Consciousness is no mystery. It is a non-algorithmic locally retrocausal post-quantum emergent phenomenon from direct action-reaction between quantum mind waves and the matter they move.

Do you agree that consciousness is "true", and non justifiable, yet undoubtable? can you explain why qualia verifies this in your theory?

Bruno
May 9, 2017
...

"Roger Penrose argues compellingly that the brain is not a classical computer."

His explanation using Gödel is invalid, as many logicians have shown. Judson Webb wrote a book on a similar error made by Lucas. In the long version of my work, I show how some machine can already defeat the Gödelian argument.  I can explain more, or give references. 

Consciousness is not algorithmic, OK. That is provable using mechanism. The conscious machine knows that their consciousness is not algorithmic. Not only Gödel's theorem does not refute Mechanism, but it implies that the machine have a very rich intricate theology, close to the negative theology of the neoplatonists.

Bruno Marchal
May 28, 2017
...

Priyedarshi,

"On 24 May 2017, at 19:41, priyedarshi jetli wrote: Srinavasa,
What you say seems plausible. Knowing one's limitations is the key. In the history of philosophy we see this emphasized by Socrates, Plato and Kant among others. However, most of the discussion in this forum is about going beyond the limit of human knowledge and big claims are made about the existence of God and consciousness and their causal role. This is what Kant would call dielectic illusion, that is claims to knowledge of something that is beyond the abilities of humans to know. To justify such knowledge the only recourse is to appeal to some sort of divine interference."

Important remark. 

"And it always amuses me how we know that God made humans superior so that only they can know this, yet every life form is necessary for the survival of the planet."

Or maybe God has not made the humans superior. Maybe all machine already "knows" that in some sense. May be God has only made the "universal machine" somehow superior ...

It is here that Gödel's theorem provides a formidable clue. For each machine there is an arithmetical proposition (Dt, no need to even know what it means just now) which is true, but beyond the machine's ability to prove. Penrose and Lucas used it to claim that we are superior to machine. 

But Penrose and Lucas did not see that the machine can prove its own incompleteness theorem. Peano Arithmetic can prove that If Dt is true, then Peano Arithmetic cannot prove Dt, and the machine can even postulate Dt to explain its inability to prove Dt.

Dt is ~[]f. It is the machine's self-consistency. A machine can prove that if she is self-consistent then she will never been able to prove its self-consistency.

Then, the machine can *bet* that the reason of why she cannot prove its self-consistency is the fact that she is self-consistent. This requires from the machine something akin to a reference to Truth, which plays the role of God (in this context). Note that tarski has proved that the machine cannot really define Truth.

"There is something similar with (human) consciousness. If X is conscious, X can eventually understand that X is unable to prove his consciousness to another."

In any case I see a paradox that even you might have to face. If you are going to claim that there is a God and this God is the final cause of everything or that there is a universal consciousness and it is supervenient over the physical, then how do we acquire knowledge of this since it is beyond the capacity of humans to know this as we hear repeatedly. 

"We can, by reason only, understand that there are truth which extends properly reason. Theology acquires a reasonable base. Something is beyond us. The question becomes if that something is a physical universe (impersonal god), or a personal god behind, or Consciousness, or the chinese Tao, or perhaps no more than the arithmetical truth.  A case for Arithmetical Truth playing the role of "God" can be made when we assume Mechanism. Please note that 99,9% of the Arithmetical Truth is well beyond the computable."

Scientific theology can become the scientific study of what extends properly science, and incompleteness illustrates that this has sense. 
Not all of theology can so reduced, though, but that very fact can also be proved (assuming mechanism), and can still let some places to many different religions, albeit consistent with arithmetic, and mechanism.

Bruno
May 25, 2017
...

Priyedarshi,

"Thanks for a detailed response. I like your turning on the head of Penrose's conclusion from incompleteness."

Thank you.

Emil Post anticipated all this in 1922. He found "Church's thesis", the proof of incompleteness from it (still rather unknown, one day I can give it here, because it is not that difficult, compared to Gödel's proof without it), but he found also the argument against Mechanism (like Lucas and Penrose), and then the main error in that argument, and then he found immateriality (my work) but added that he changes his mind on this after discussing with Turing, who was a Naturalist (and I think was wrong).

"Turing in his famous paper long time ago also encounter the incompleteness problem and simply said that computers in the future will be able to prove incompleteness. Though it will take me to understand you technically, you are essentially saying that."

I am not sure Turing talk about incompleteness in the Gödel sense. I would be astonished that Turing did not see this. The idea that the machines or theories, rich enough, can prove the incompleteness appears already at the end of Gödel 1931 paper, without proof, but that will be accepted quickly, even if not really understood (Gödel will miss Church's thesis, and Mechanism). That will be proved in 1939 by Hilbert and Bernays (and perfectionned by Löb in 1955).

"Now, if this is true, Turing's somewhat sarcastic remark is vindicated."

OK. But by adding the mechanist hypothesis. Turing, unlike Gödel, was rather in favor of mechanism, despite his naturalism. He did not see the incompatibilty between Mechanism and (metaphysical) Naturalism (assuming my own argument is correct).

He said, so what if one smart human (God) is smarter than all machines, but any machine is smarter than the average human. After all it took many millennia for Godel's incompleteness to emerge.  

Someday, I will give a "simple" proof of incompleteness, which is still rather unknown, although Post saw it in 1922 (ten years before Gödel!). Incompleteness can be proved in one diagonalization from Church thesis. Kleene also saw this.

"I also think, as I mentioned to you earlier that the halting problem cannot be realized in humans due to mortality"

Assuming the human mortality.

"whereas it can be realized in machines as they can build other machines to carry on the problem."

Is this not what we do with our kids? Or even with the machines?

Is the distinction between natural and artificial ... artificial?

"I do not know if this is related to what you are saying."

Of course we can go beyond our limitations to know. I was being a bit cryptic about the definitive jump to the conclusion of the existence of a God or cosmic consciousness that is often made here.

I use the word "God" in the general sense of whatever is the reason of our existence. Then the question becomes: is God a physical universe, or a universal person, or the arithmetical reality, or ...

I have a high respect for all sacred texts, but avoid any literal interpretations. I use them for inspirational personal insight only. I have my favorite one, like "the question of King Milinda", but I do think "Alice in Wonderland" is very deep too.

We can't prove the existence of God, but we can't prove the existence of any reality, in the admittedly string sense of "proof" the logician are accustomed with.

"Coming back to machines, it is interesting that Descartes thought of non human animals as machines without a mind."

I think that the idea that animals have a mind is recent, at least in occident. I take as a human mind progress to recognize a mind, paerhaps a soul, to animals. In the east, people have been more open, perhaps thanks to the re-incarnation theory.

"Surely they have brains and they seem to operate on principles such as induction which humans also operate on."

Indeed.

"A lot of work is done today on their cognitive abilities. In the end, if I understand you correctly, it is not a matter of 'superiority' but of completeness. Perhaps human have more completeness than other non human animals because they can build formal systems and prove completeness."

I am not sure. Animal might be more complete than us. Completeness is a sort of defect. A complete theory cannot be Turing complete. OK, I see the problem.

A complete-with-respect-proving-or-knowing theory cannot be complete-with-respect-to-computability. Turing (computability) completeness entails Gödel (provability) incompleteness. 

So provability incompleteness is a sort of quality, as it makes possible Turing (computability) completeness. It is a pedagogical problem: completeness is udes in different sense by logicians, which are sometimes opposite. We will have opportunities to come back on this.

"Yet, it is not easy for humans to prove incompleteness, which is a further stage of completeness."

In some sense; yes.

"But machines can prove incompleteness and the human proof given by Godel is also really a machine proof. So, it is the machine in us, like the machine in non human animals that is the computational mind that can prove incompleteness. What you are saying, if I am not wrong, is that without mechanism, incompleteness would not emerge and without being able to formalize the Godel sentence and then prove it we would really have an incomplete view  of the universe."

OK.

"In any case there can be a turning on the head of Descartes as well because he thoughts machines to be inferior to humans and thereby non human animals who were machines to be inferior to humans. Whereas as it turns out that humans are superior to non human animals because they are superior machines than non human animals and the machines built by humans is even more superior to the machine in humans and the machine of the universe of course is the most superior."

You can see it that way.

"I like that because as a student of philosophy I have always felt that Descartes is overrated as the founder of Modern philosophy. In terms of methodology Galileo was more of a founder of Modern philosophy and he was also closer to mechanism."

I like Galileo, but I have a deep respect for Descartes. We need to read him by taking into account he was harassed by the religious authorities, and so said things just to appease him. I don't really believe he took seriously his dualism. It is debatable of course. 

"That the universe is a machine and that our brains/minds are also machines is a match, as Leibniz would perhaps say, that is not surprising at all. It is not at all a matter of which came first or a final cause but of a simultaneity in which the perfection  (completeness including incompleteness) emerges."

Maybe, except I don't think that the physical universe, nor God, can be a machine. I will explain later.

"Sorry, I went into a stream of consciousness but it was spurned by your insights."

Thank you for your comment. I would like to add many precisions, but unfortunately I have to go, and the next days are overscheduled. Let us go slowly, at ease. I reassured you that I got the mails normally now. Don't worry if I don't answer quickly, because I will be superbusy those last days of May, and then I will have the June exams, etc. 

Kindest regards,

Bruno
May 26, 2017
...

Bruno,

I also have great respect for Descartes, especially as a mathematician. I am more worried about the press he gets as the founder of Modern philosophy that I am precarious about. In one way he was a continuation of medieval philosophy and his method of doubt can also be traced back as far as Augustine. Leibniz was a greater philosopher and a more comprehensive mind. 

I guess I tend to be a naturalist as well, but I am beginning to see your perspective of on what criterion do we distinguish the natural from the artificial. I believe Turing was interested in biology and chemistry, perhaps this is why he was a naturalist.

Priyedarshi
May 26, 2017
...

Bruno,

You may be right about Plato in terms of the perfection of the Forms. However, methodologically, Plato would welcome incompleteness as he practiced that throughout his dialogues with his second best hypothesis. Now, applying this to Plato's Forms, we could say that the hypothesis that Forms are perfect is the second best hypothesis. Hence, we can save Plato by Plato's methodology.

Priyedarshi
May 26, 2017
...

Priyedarshi,

I agree. I am pretty sure he would have love it. I think it would also have deepened his influence from Pythagoras.

Now, applying this to Plato's Forms, we could say that the hypothesis that Forms are perfect is the second best hypothesis. Hence, we can save Plato by Plato's methodology.

For me Plato's methodology is science in its purest form.

***

Let me answer the two mails in one,

"I also have great respect for Descartes, especially as a mathematician. I am more worried about the press he gets as the founder of Modern philosophy that I am precarious about."

I think he deserves this, because during his life he has not well been treated. Then, the honors, the name, ... it is not so important. 

I appreciate very much Descartes' methodology, also. 

Too bad, he missed the importance of logic, though. He was probably deter by the (already) common misuse of logic.

"In one way he was a continuation of medieval philosophy and his method of doubt can also be traced back as far as Augustine."

Even back to Plotinus, and perhaps Moderatus of Gades. In fact, all honest/correct machine's doubt. Some catholic pope said that the doubt is the devil. But in fact I have reason, and intuition, that it is certainty which is the devil, at least when made public.

"Leibniz was a greater philosopher and a more comprehensive mind."

I have tried to read it, but he is complex. Eventually, there are two or three Leibniz, somehow. Like there are two Wittgenstein (the young (Tractatus) and the old one who wrote a text on uncertainty which is quite interesting. Like Descartes, Wittgenstein get disciples or followers which exaggerates his ideas, and did not listen to his self-critic. His public success has not help him. 

"I guess I tend to be a naturalist as well, but I am beginning to see your perspective of on what criterion do we distinguish the natural from the artificial. I believe Turing was interested in biology and chemistry, perhaps this is why he was a naturalist."

I'm afraid I constitute a counter-example :)

I really started from biology. I looked at amoebas for years. The problem for me was the following: given that an amoeba divides itself every day, does she lives one day, or is she immortal?

The mechanist solution: I really took it from the book of Watson:  "Molecular Biology of the Gene", which has been my bible for a long time, as well as the paper of Jacob and Monod on Gene Regulations. But then, I found a little book on Gödel's proof, and realized that it provides a much larger frame for the "mechanist explanation of the self-duplication" than the chemistry of carbon. I will take time to understand that elementary arithmetic was enough, though. It is that little book which will decide me to study mathematics, instead of biology. But of course, only a theologian can be interested in the question of the immortality, or not, of the amoebas. The problem was that theology (non confessional) was not available at the university. But the greek are right, I think, mathematics is a not to bad approximation.

Bruno
Show quoted text

...

Bruno,

I agree with enthusiasm on your assessment of Plato. I think Aristotle would also have welcomed the mechanism you are talking about. As for the comparison of Leibniz to Wittgenstein I don't quite agree. Wittgenstein has become a cult figure. This is not the case with Leibniz. Later Wittgenstein is often difficult to understand because he is obscure as Russell also admitted. Leibniz however is difficult because he is complex but read carefully he is clear. Further, he was ahead of his times. He was almost always responding to someone or the other. More like journal articles. He had to be provoked to write. I think there not one or two or three Leibnizes. He is often topical, taking on various issues, but always one by one. He was not a system builder nor was he after a world view. But the history of modern philosophy is often looking for a world view as in Hegel. 

I don't know if you have read Kneale and Kneale's Development of Logic. They actually criticize Leibniz for being too fragmented and not completing anything. I think they are being really unfair. His incompleteness is his virtue. Further, expecting him to complete the algebraisation of logic, which he began, is like expecting the Nineteenth Century to arrive at the end of the 17th century or beginning of 18th century. What lies in between Leibniz and Boole is the emergence of symbolical algebra without which Boole could not have arrived at his destination. Couterat, in his book on Leibniz, claims that Leibniz had everything and even more than Boole had, but he did not have the development of algebra that was to come later of course. It is claimed that Boole was not aware of Leibniz's work. I don't think that is possible. After algebraising logic in 1847, in his later  work Laws of Thoiught Boole opens with a quotation in Greek from Aristotle. Is it possible that he read Aristotle in Greek but not Leibniz in Latin?

Priyedarshi
May 27, 2017
...

Incompleteness in knowledge and existence
http://loveofallwisdom.com/#article/3983
Cross-posted at Love of All Wisdom. A friend read the previous post on ibn Sīnā and Śāntideva and asked (on Google+) what exactly I meant by “incompleteness”. It was a great question and made me realize there was a bit Continue reading 

Telangana Today-27-May-2017
Since 1977, my favourite book has been Sri Aurobindo's Savitri. I first read it as a student of M.A. English since it was a prescribed textbook. When I visited the Sri ...

https://philevents.org › event › show
23 hours ago - The venue of the program will be Sri Aurobindo Center for Advanced Research (SACAR) (www.sacar.in), a research institute in Pondicherry, dedicated to the study of Sri Aurobindo's thought and philosophy.
The principal resource person for the course will be Dr V.C. Thomas (formerly Professor of Philosophy, Pondicherry University). However, he will be assisted by Dr James Kurian (Madras Christian College, Chennai) and Dr E. P. Mathew (Loyola College, Chennai). In case you need any further clarifications, please feel free to mail us.   V. C. Thomas
Centre for Phenomenological Studies, Pondicherry