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Sewing-Machine comments on Syntacticism - Less Wrong Discussion
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You're talking about reality. Why have you started with the idea that formal systems are real, and only parenthetically mentioned that this is consistent with the reality of the physical universe? You should be going in the other direction. The physical universe is real, and the remaining question is what role do formal systems play in it.
The minimalist answer is that they are tools created by humans that sometimes enable them to make descriptions and predictions about the physical universe. You seem to be so far from this minimalist answer that we can hardly call you a non-Platonist!
I guess I expected a short inferential distance. I really did think it was obvious why the apparent reality of a physical universe was consistent with physical nonrealism and formal realism. I'll make another post about this soon.
EDIT: The Apparent Reality of Physics
From neither of your posts can I glean what could be meant by apparent reality.
To a conscious agent within a mathematical system which models rocks and trees and people and the Moon, it looks very much as though rocks and trees and people and the Moon exist; physics appears to be real. But that appearance is in no way contingent upon anything we could reasonably define as the 'existence' of rocks and trees and people and the Moon.
Is that gleanable, or am I still talking gibberish? (I never rule out the latter, particularly on the subject of philosophy.)
I think that was lack of charity on my part, beg your pardon.