>Ma: Symbolic identity is a mathematical relation >Mb: Symbols are acausal >m: Matter is causal >C: Symbolic identity is not defined on matter.
What is defined on matter then? You're saying all symbolism is not defined on matter. Much of our thinking about the world itself is symbolic. How do we 'define on matter' without thinking about it? Definition is another symbolic thinking thing we do. What does it mean to 'define on matter'? If you were to paint symbol/matter like the mind/body problem interpreted on dualism (not to beg the question, but just to say if you're saying they're different substances) then some people would ask, how does one thing interact with the other? You could say that symbols don't exist and inferring symbols is just a way of thinking of the world, but since we think in symbols, thinking becomes something that doesn't exist and is inferred from a way of thinking about the world, which doesn't exist and is inferred from a way of thinking about the world, etc. I don't think you can say that thought-symbolism is a different question from mathematical symbolism because Aristotle inferred "a is a" directly from the way we think about the world. cf: >>>a is a True Perhaps symbols and symbolic identity are defined as algorithms which happen in the real world to come to a conclusion. It raises the question of how causal an algorithm is. But if you call an algorithm 'a way of doing something' then it's much more down-to-Earth. But it raises the question of how we define the boundaries of whether doing something is 'doing that thing' (since an algorithm is strictly formal and mathematically deterministic), given that you never step in the same river twice, since you then have to define the boundaries of determining whether doing something falls within the boundaries or not, ad infinitum. I don't have a conclusion. Suffice it to say it obviously works out somehow. I'm just wondering about what 'defined on matter' means. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
