[Noisebridge-discuss] Philosophy and Computer Language Question

[Will Sargent]

On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 1:08 PM, Caleb Grayson <calebgrayson at gmail.com>wrote:

> Well.. I'm not sure. I'm more of a philosopher than a computer scientist.
>
> In Whitehead's Process Philosophy he said everything in reality is a
> function or process that takes in the entire universe at every moment and
> spits out Actual Occasions that become apart of the Creative Advance, the
> history of functional  results in time and space.
>

...wouldn't Physics be better at answering the question of time and space?


> There is a question as to what time an space are. It is m suspicion that
> functions and their solutions are not in time and space, but time and space
> are  in functions and their solutions. Why would times and spaces for which
> nothing is happening be generated by an efficient system?
> CS, if I understand correctly, time and space have to be predefined by
> establishing their numerical domains first.
> I'm hoping CS in its attempt to simulate reality can give inside into it.
>

CS can only model reality by simulation.  What it's really good at is
concrete math, sets and category theory -- telling you what answers are
possible and which are not, which systems can be built and which cannot,
which operations are possible and which are not.  There's an interesting
paper that shows all computer programs are formal logic proofs, and you can
do fun things by breaking out of a restricted environment to another --
escaping into a wierd machine -- but ultimately it's always the rules of
the machine as defined by the chip.  Whatever world we define in there is
simulated, and isn't going to break out of the instruction pointer of the
CPU running it.

>
> Of course CS being a rational/material system has no place to calculate
> for spirit/soul outside of its system which Whitehead does allow for.
>

Not at all -- rational / material systems can calculate for soul.
 According to the best neurological analysis, the amount of calculated soul
is 0.

http://edge.org/3rd_culture/sapolsky09/sapolsky09_index.html

Will.
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