= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Perplexed comments on The Dilemma: Science or Bayes? - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (185)
Let me be more precise.
The many-world interpretation is based on a wonderful mathematical description of all possible past and futures, an infinite set of all possibilities.
I am fine with that as long as one consider this as a description of the many possibilities of the world, useful for predictions. But this interpretation is more than that : it's claiming that this mathematical description is reality and that all these possibilities actually exist. This is not a scientific claim but a metaphysical claim.
In a sense, it claims that everything exists : the future, the past, other futures, other pasts, and so on. My question here is : at this point, what does "exist" exactly mean ?
That's why I talked about consciousness in my first comment - not to confuse everyone, but because in my opinion, the definition of existence is empirical and must involve consciousness at some point.
I feel that this model lacks a kind of "instantiation" to describe not every possibilities but what actually exists... And thus it should not be considered as a reality, but rather as a potentiality of which existence is the instantiation.
One often sees talk here of something called the "Mind Projection Fallacy". In essence, it is the error of taking something subjective and treating it as objective. A canonical example would be saying "X is mysterious", rather than "I don't understand X". That is, what ought to be handled as a two-place predicate IsMysteriousTo(X,N) (topic X is mysterious to person N) is erroneously handled as a one-place predicate IsMysterious(X) (topic X is mysterious, full stop).
One criticism that might be made of the position you are taking here is that you are falling into a form of the Mind Projection Fallacy. Try imagining Exists(X) as a fallacious one-place predicate and replace it with ExistsFor(X,N), i.e. X has existence from the viewpoint of observer N.
Similarly, you should say "X was instantiated at a point in time in my past, hence X currently exists from my viewpoint, and I expect X to cease to exist at some point in my future. Any other supposed X, existing on some other branch of reality, is not the X to which I refer."
This, as I understand it, is the way Kripke says that issues of identity and existence must be handled in modal logics.
If you can accept this viewpoint, then it is just a small step to realizing that the people you are disagreeing with, those who consider past, future, and all branches of reality as equally "real" are actually talking about the model theory for your modal logic.
My point is that this model theory is incomplete, because it does not fully explain my experience. The model lacks a kind of instantiation.
As a "model theory of my modal logic", it may have an heuristic interest, not an ontological one. In other words, it's fine as long as you consider it only as a descriptive/predictive model. It's not if you think it is reality.
But what is it that makes you think that your experience has privileged ontological significance? Is it that you think that instantiation from your viewpoint is isomorphic to instantiation from everyone else's viewpoint? Why would you believe that with any confidence?
my experience is the only thing I can assume as real. Everything else is derived from my experience. It is thus the only thing that needs to be explained.
Indeed I find it reasonable to assume that everyone else can claim the same for him/herself.
Ah! "Reasonable to assume". One of my favorite phrases. There are many things which it might be reasonable to assume. Unfortunately for you, the particular thing you have chosen to assume is not one of them. Because you will probably agree that I am a member of the set of people you mean by "everyone else". But I assert that I do not and can not claim that my experience has a subjectively privileged ontological status.
I did not claim that my experience has a subjectively priviledged ontological status. This is your interpretation. I meant it has a subjectively priviledged epistemological status.
In the great grandparent, you wrote
Perhaps you use the word "real" differently than I do, but it sounded to me as though an ontological assumption was being made. And that you were then extending that private ontology-of-experience to everyone else by a further assumption.
I'm happy to let you be an empiricist who is epistemologically cautious about what you can know beyond personal experience. I'm less happy to allow you to limit what can exist to that which you can know. As Eliezer argues out in the posting, Occam's razor, properly understood, does not provide you a justification for this.
I do not believe your assertion contradicts quen_tin's specific claim either as intended or as worded..
This is a preaching to the choir kind of argument. I am very very impressed with it, but you should not be surprised that quen_tin is unimpressed.