Re: Is X a Y?

Prof. Jose Gomes Filho (gomes@dpx.cnen.gov.br)
Mon, 28 Jul 1997 18:26:56 +0000

>
> Hal Finney <hal@rain.org> wrote
>
> > Nicholas Bostrom, <bostrom@mail.ndirect.co.uk>, writes:
> > > No, that is not the question. Not many would say that
> > > consistency guarantees existence (apart from David Lewis). The
> > > snowman is a logically consistent notion but that does not mean that
> > > the snowman exists.
> > >
> > > Now, obviously, if something is asserted to exist by a logically true
> > > proposition, then it exists. So the questions are (1) Is the
> > > proposition that the Mandelbrot exists logically true? (which boils
> > > down to whether the notion of "logical truth" in the traditional
> > > way really makes sense), and (2) Is this kind of existence somehow
> > > fundamentally different from the existence of objects which cannot be
> > > claimed to exist by any logically true proposition.
> >
> > Or as another example, with a definition of "reality" which classes the
> > Mandelbrot set and the Virgo cluster as the same, can we reject any
> > logically consistent but "actually" non-existent phenomena as "real"? Must
> > we say that alien spaceships "really" are visiting the earth today,
> > simply because there is no logical contradiction in doing so?
>
> The obvious answer to this rethorical question is No. The existence
> of the Mandelbrot set is provable in standard (ZF) set theory, but I
> don't know of any plausible axioms from which one can derive the
> existence of visiting alian spaceships.
>

An interesting way of thinking is that, even if the associated
phenomenum does not exist in the reallity, there exists the
associated neural conformation, like a mathematical transformation,
when linear associated to a matrix, as we know. And this
transformation is real and passible to be studied...

Talking about real and not real, I'd like to include the
mental images. If certain image comes in someone's mind could we
classify it as real or virtual, like we do with mirrors and lens ? If
a person creates (or simply projects...) an image in its
mind, there exists the associated brain (neurological) conformation,
which is real (as said above). But, are there mental images that
really correspond to real objects, even if they are not near? If
there are, could we consider them as real time, time delayed or even
antecipated? Why that? Because, in positive case, on
artificializing a human (not necessarily...) brain, we can, in the
future, possibly, create televiewers not necessarily just
present-time, but to the past and possibly the to future (as an
extrapolator of the present real conditions). If it is possible,
could we use such machine to scan the individual's barin conformation
in the past and reinstall it in a new artificial body
(preferenceably miniaturized), in the future?
What do you think about this?

Peace,

Gomes.

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Prof. Gomes
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emails: gomes@cnen.gov.br
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