[Wittrs] Re: Nominalism / Neil
- From: "jrstern" <jrstern@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:17:19 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "iro3isdx" <xznwrjnk-evca@...> wrote:
>
>
> > Ideal machines let us factor out breakdowns.
>
> Yes, indeed.
>
> Josh seems to want everything to be physical.
Not, quite.
I want a physicalist foundation, but that includes such non-physical things as
time and sequence and causality.
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.
> That's okay if you
> recognize that you will be tossing out all of mathematics, logic,
> etc.
No, no, no.
I will repeat, again.
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.
Does a belief in atoms and quantum physics mean you toss out all "special
sciences", from chemistry to psychology? No. But in those areas, the nature
of reductionism remains complex and subtle.
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.
A large part of that complexity is the balance between reduction
(or composition) and eliminativism. I see this
physicalist/nominalist approach as absolutely the opposite of
eliminativism, is it explanatory.
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. Perhaps we can get to the
same point in telling a story about math. But the cows, and math,
are going to remain in any case.
Josh
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