[Wittrs] Re: Nominalism / Neil
- From: "iro3isdx" <xznwrjnk-evca@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:54:30 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "jrstern" <jrstern@...> wrote:
> I want a physicalist foundation, but that includes such non-physical
> things as time and sequence and causality.
If you can accept that time and sequence are non-physical, why is it a
problem if mathematics and computation are non-physical?
In any case, what's the importance of a physicalist foundation, when
physics itself has no foundation?
> Really, I just want to capture what it is, that this workstation on
> my desk is, and is doing. And some large part of that is certainly
> physical.
There is no difficulty at all in explaining that workstation as an
electro-mechanical device. Sure, as an electro-mechanical device, it
has a mind-numbing complexity. However, its physical activity is
completely explained by considering it an electro-mechanical device.
It is only when you want to give a computational account, that you run
into a difficulty with providing a purely physical account. But that's
because computation is not itself physical, but is rather an
intentional idealized interpretion of what is happening.
> Just as nominalism's "rejection of universals" does not actually
> reject properties like "red", but insists they are actually a certain
> type of expression, a physicalist/nominalist/computationalist theory
> does not reject mathematics, but seeks to explain how there can be
> such a thing, which then gets to prove its correctness in its own
> terms. It is a matter of priorities and explanation.
The mistake is to look for a physicalist explanation of mathematics.
There is none. Mathematics is sui generis.
> In computation, I think we do not have a reductionist process like
> that, but a different, more compositional process, and no doubt it
> needs to be complex and subtle, too.
It is surely a mistake to think that we need such a reductionist
process.
> Adopting an atomic, physiclist theory of chemical elements did not
> involve people throwing out the notion of cows, not even cows as
> a class or natural kind. It is a bit of a reach, but atoms provide
> an explanatory story about cows.
A rather inadequate account. That's why many biologists are critical
of reductionism.
Regards,
Neil
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