Re: Turing Machines and Physical Computation

From: Stephen Harris (cyberguard1048-usenet_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 11/28/04 

Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 08:14:01 GMT

"JXStern" <JXSternChangeX2R@gte.net> wrote in message
news:5uniq0trsetjjkql36v7vv8m4bhalsurd6@4ax.com...
> On Sun, 28 Nov 2004 03:38:29 +0000 (UTC), Neil W Rickert
> <rickert+nn@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
>>>>I have trouble making sense of that. Why does an entity need a
>>>>subject? If the number three is an abstract entity, what is its
>>>>subject?
>>
>>>The marks that constitute the word "cow" are an entity, but if there
>>>is no relationship between the marks and some distal
>>>subject/object/whatever, then we're nowhere.
>>
>>That's a pessimistic view. Sorry to bring the bad news, but there is
>>no relationship.
>
> I don't see how you can say there is no relationship, but don't even
> bother trying to explain.
>
> OK, I passed on the hard question, what is the "subject" of the number
> three? Well, lots of smart people have expended a lot of hot air on
> that topic. Is there a three-ness, abstract or concrete, which is the
> subject of the symbol 3 as it is commonly used? I don't know. Is
> there a cow-ness, abstract or concrete? Can't really say. Something
> that I know I've not emphasized, is that there is no necessity for
> individual symbols to have fixed meanings such that their combination
> is directly generative. Individual bits tend to lack such meanings,
> as do individual letters, although both in aggregate tend to acquire
> meaning in larger granularities. Is the 3 in the number 32 the same
> as when it stands alone? I'm not sure such questions are valid. But,
> before a mark constitutes anything interesting, it must have a
> subject, I stand by that.
>

Is the future something that you can grasp either with your mind or
with your hand? With your mind you can't do better than make
predictions which sometimes come true. In mathematics, perhaps
the successor function, n +1, n +2, n + 3 and so implies a future.

A succession of causes and effects, manifested as events, unfold
to our perception which take time. What is the physical thing
that 'time' serves as an abstraction of? As you describe nominalism
there is a fundamental physical thing which the future and time are
abstract or ideal representations. Or do you prefer to say that the
future is an abstraction and that time is its fundamental physically
basic, concrete counterpart? The philosophy that there is no time
but the past, present and future exist in an eternal now certainly
seems as abstract a notion as time.

It is conventional to divide our appreciation of reality into the
abstract and concrete, ideas and things. If all ideas have a
physical basis, what is the physical basis of the idea that all
ideas are things? What is the physical origin of the abstract idea of
abstraction, if the physical is primary? What is the concrete form from
which abstraction gained its commonly held reputation for existence?
If you answer universe, then you assert the universe originates the abstract
conception of its non-existence as an unessential non-manifestation of its
own essential concrete manifested reality which does not have the idea
of origination.

One egg grasped in the hand is better than two eggs yet to be found
in the bush, is an old saying. There seems to be a tension between the
possibilities, not the first option acting in a way to entail the second
bird.

What was the first cause,
Stephen

I think the future

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