Whence comes logic

How does closing my eyes and shutting my ears isolate my brain, and from what?
Maybe you don't understand what isolated means.

To memorise data, a brain can't be isolated.

What you don't seem to realise is that you are using complete contradictions to prop up your claims.

Well, is it both? How do you know, and can you prove it using . . . logical arguments?

 

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Let's make it a more practical:
1. Design a computer/printer
2. Build a computer/printer
3. Turn the computer on.
4. Place an object in the scanner
5. Have it scan and print an exact 3d pattern of the object.

I believe we are already printing functional artificial body parts. Proof lies in the functionality, no?

If the algorithm is correct, the computer will print out an exact copy of what it has scanned. If not, we'll end up with a messy pile of goo.

The earth answered Newton's question re gravity. Einstein refined it by asking the universe about gravity and found that the universal algorithms provided a more complete answer than the earth's local gravitational algorithms.

Are all equations of universal constants not proofs of science's understanding of the natural algorithms by which the universe functions naturally?

 

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What you are describing with your "parked car" are not "expressed" values and functions, but "potential" values and functions.....difference.

A parked car is a box with 4 wheels and lots of stuff inside it. It could be a rusted out 50 year old hulk. Only when you drive it, does it become functional "transportation"

If I have a car capable of going 80mph, but I drive @ 30mph, then 50mph is in reserve as a still (enfolded) potential. If the car is parked, it has its 80mph as an inherent (enfolded) potential.

 

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A car that isn't moving is still a car, but maybe the engine is off (not moving), well sure it's still a car. Maybe you can't start the engine . . .

However, by analogy is a brain that isn't moving still a brain? What if it doesn't start?
What's a moving brain, anyway? Is a non-moving brain one that can't be restarted? (it's dead Jim).

I'm going for the latter, since your brain is "moving" while it's alive, implying you're alive too. It's a bit of a fallacy to analogise living brains with moving objects, but I guess we all do it.

 

What's the difference of physical assets between a live beetle and a dead beetle?
Absolutely nothing. The only difference is the patterns in which the physical assets are formed. (Tegmark)

 

He doesn't state that. He makes a "Could it be that..." statement ( speculation) that invites students to open their minds to possibility.
You can not go on slandering Tegmark with you claims that he is making a claim. He is far to good a scientist to do as you are suggesting.

 

No, Tegmark states definitely that the components of a dead beetle are exactly as the components of a live beetle and that the difference is in the patterns these components are arranged. Their "state".

Where you come up with idea that my quoting him is slanderous, is really surprising. I find it extremely insightful and thought provoking.


p.s. Tegmark does not believe that it is possible for the universe to consist of values and functions arranged into sets of patterns. He has formally hypothesized that the universe is not just partly mathematical, but that the universe is only mathematical and that includes living organisms. Nothing not mathematical about them.

 

Well, no. Life is a continuous chemical process. Stop that process and the compounds (i.e. the components) change dramatically. Sniff any week-old roadkill to verify this.

 

Key word: hypothesized.

 

That's an evasion. All organisms are subject to entropy. That is not in question.

The point is that a dead beetle has no less molecules when it dies than when it was alive. The only difference is in the patterns that make up the organism.
Does anyone ever look at the links? They speak for themselves in much greater detail, with much greater authority than I can.

 

Please do not accuse me of slandering Tegmark without really thinking about what he is proposing. I am a Tegmark fan, so far.

Well, his "Mathematical universe" is considerable more and better than a "flight of fancy". As I understand it he's been thinking about this for a long time and has the educational chops to speak authoritatively on the subject.
Some very learned minds are wrestling with this question and not a few are considering it very plausible.

What most people, in their haste to condemn, seem to forget is that Tegmark is not altering anything about mainstream science. He merely identifies its fundamental structure of self-forming patterns which are both quantitatively and qualitatively translatable into human symbolic language.

IMO, his hypothesis does not in any way hinder science as it is today. He has identified another perspective, which has been the very tool by which we are able to observe, study, translate and predict the actual values and functions of the universe.
He just saw the forest by counting the trees and the patterns they formed individually and collectively.

To me it sounds eminently reasonable, elegantly simple, and most of all understandable.

There is evidence all around, everywhere we look. Science itself uses symbolic values and functions to describe the values and functions of the universe and, most importantly, allows us to understand how it works, no?

Else, why do we have science? To not understand? Mathematics is a sound perspective from which to view and understand the universe......

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There is no "yes, but" argument against the concept of abstract mathematics being a fundamental aspect of the universe..

 

Living organisms RESIST entropy. That's part of the definition of life.

Ah - but it does have DIFFERENT molecules. For example, as soon as it dies, ATP production stops - and the ratios of ATP to ADP plummet. Oxygen exchange stops, and no free oxygen is present. (The oxygen is taken up by chemical reactions, turning compounds into new ones.) You said "the components of a dead beetle are exactly as the components of a live beetle" and that's not true.

 

That's just basic English sentences I put to you. If you don't understand them, there's nothing I can do for you. For all I know, you're not even trying.

Data come when not isolated and then you isolate the brain and it continues to work just fine. Which demonstrates that the brain still works logically even in isolatation from the universe.

Yeah, sure, you must be right if you bother to say something.

Sure, it's implied in your wording. We can either think of the universe as a metaphysical reality beyond our power to perceive but within which we exist as cognitive beings, or as the representation, the model of something, representation we can't but take for the real thing, just as we take for the real tree the percept of a tree even though the percept is not out there and therefore not a tree but in there, inside our mind so to speak, and just a model, a model of something we will never know what it is just because all we know is irremediably whatever is the content of our conscious mind. So, yes, both, depending on the perspective.
EB

 

Maybe time to remind posters of what the topic actually is. So, here is a repeat:

Here is your chance to air your views as to whence comes logic.

As a motivation introduction, I observe that most educated people take logic to be a branch of mathematics, or perhaps whatever mathematicians study that they call "logic" since broadly the beginning of the 20th century. Yet, the first systematic presentation of what humans understand of logical rules was made by Aristotle and that was something like 2,400 years ago, and as far as I know, most intellectuals since have accepted Aristotle's presentation as correct. I'm not aware that anything in mathematical logic shows Aristotle was wrong.

Whatever the case, is it possible to study anything if there isn't something to study? This suggests logic exists somehow somewhere. But where exactly?

Traditionally, philosophers see rules of logic as necessary and a priori, rather than contingent and empirical. Putnam argued they could be empirical, taking the example of Quantum Physics to support this suggestion. Yet, even a priori rules have to come from somewhere unless you think God the merciful help us sort out the necessary from the contingent.

If we all have our own personal sense of logic, why is it most intellectuals agreed with Aristotle's logic (and I would assume most people here)? But if we all have the same logic, how come?

And where are we supposed to look when we want to produce a method of logic that, somehow, would be correct?
EB

 

I already stipulated to that in a previous post. Didn't think I needed to repeat it.

It is at the moment of death. You keep moving the goal posts.

Even so, I have no problem with what you are describing. In a dead beetle nothing is added or subtracted, only changing. Tegmark calls that the change in molecular (atomic) patterns of the organism. He posits that all chemicals and everything else physical are (molecular and atomic) patterns. It's not complicated.

 

No, it's not. Organisms do not die for no reason. At the moment of death, the makeup of the organism has changed so that it is no longer compatible with life, for any of a thousand reasons.

Agreed there. But that's like saying that a beach is just like a computer - all the same elements, just in a different pattern. Which is true in a way, just not very insightful.

 

Correct, it's dynamic living pattern has changed to a static lifeless pattern (except for entropy).

It becomes rather profound when this is applied to all of reality.

You are mistaking the "elegant simplicity" of mathematics with shallowness, but that is underestimating the power of mathematics, IMO. The table of elements is illustrative of fundamental patterns in nature. All fields are patterns, from the very subtle to gross expression in reality. Nothing mundane about those configurations.

I believe that Tegmark proposes that certain fields (patterns) in dynamic neural networks afford an emergent sentient experience, which sounds eminently reasonable (and logical) to me.

 

Because it's a good example of a logical system, the three wise men problem is one whose "basis" is geometric (the three places each wise man sits), and algebraic (the colors of hats), it becomes a problem in graph theory--a coloring problem.

I'll go over my version of finding a solution. But to the problem, it's about one of three wise men reasoning what color the hat he's wearing is, given some rules.

1. The three can only see what color the other two hats are, and not their own.
2. The hats are colored either red or white, and not both.

So the first rule is like a frame, say three points on a circle with one wise man at each point, facing inward. (Aha, algebra!)

One of the wise men eventually declares they know the color of their own hat, but what reasoning leads to the conclusion? Where does the logic "come from", or is the presentation of a puzzle like this, already bound to a logic (at least once?).

 

But you haven't, or won't, define what you mean by "isolated". In physics, it means there is no input, and no output from the system.

A normal, not-isolated brain which then gets isolated and keeps working, isn't the same thing. Besides, such a brain wouldn't have long to keep working, no input means no energy, no output means no way to cool down. Oops.

 

Yes, they do. They may be a result of the spacetime configuration itself. The potential for orderly and logical processing of information. There always seems to be a tendency to look outside the universe for answers, why? Is the universe not diverse enough to be able to form certain laws (regularities) in its own behavior ?

And there seems to be a discipline studying the phenomon of Universal Logic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_logic

I believe Chaos theory may well address this fundamental question on a universal scale. I base this on a news item:

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/405940/logic-from-chaos/

Logic also seems to be an emergent property of information processing within a chaotic condition or system. Hence the formation of logical patterns within a chaotic system.

If a function requires a form of logic, chaos may provide a fertile ground (field) in the spontaneous formation of logical algorithms.

I'm out on a limb here, but..........

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