(urth) barrington interview
Jeffery Wilson clueland.com
jwilson at clueland.com
Fri Oct 10 19:59:48 PDT 2014
On 10/10/2014 1:13 PM, António Marques wrote:
> On 10 October 2014 18:05, Jeffery Wilson clueland.com
> <http://clueland.com> <jwilson at clueland.com
> <mailto:jwilson at clueland.com>> wrote:
>
> On 10/10/2014 8:09 AM, Lee wrote:
>
> Gerry Quinn: All mathematics can be encoded entirely inside
> the standard arithmetic
>
>
> of the natural numbers, or simple geometry on a plane.
>
>
>
> A nice summation of my point. Math requires numbers. Numbers
> describe the
>
> universe in terms of discrete, countable units. I find it quite
> possible that there
>
> are places/times in geography and history of the universe in
> which the concept of
>
> numbers was meaningless.
>
>
> Er, no, because the concept does not depend on the actuality. The
> numbers necessary for math can be entirely notional, and in fact the
> numbers are *always* notional and abstract. There is no place you
> can touch the number two, for instance.
>
>
> It's not a matter of the concept not depending on the actuality. It's a
> matter of what you call 'concept' being how the human mind responds to
> actuality. Other minds might respond to the same actuality with
> different concepts. We've been saying this for days and folks still come
> back with misdirected replies.
But your justifications for what you are saying are crap. We know other
minds might respond to the same actuality with different concepts
because *human* minds already respond to the same actuality with
different concepts right here on the list, but that doesn't mean the
difference is known to be utterly intractible, else why are we still
trying to get traction?
As for Lee, up above he postulates that the actuality is different in
places and that will give rise to different concepts to which ours will
not relate. However, he still calls these circumstances history and
geography, which implicitly means they are relateable to us.
Suppose some conscious mind arises in some place where there are no
discrete phenomena: would it have no conception of discrete math, nor
use? How would it possess mind-like qualities without being able to make
distinct, binary decisions? Would it only decide on a sliding scale,
giving analog responses? Could it change its mind, going from one value
to another? If it does, this mind-changing behavior is then rising or
falling which are distinct, binary phenomena.
--
Jeff Wilson - < jwilson at clueland.com >
A&M Texarkana Computational Intelligence Lab
< http://www.tamut.edu/cil >
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