Friday, May 1, 2015

The dualism of physicalism





languages↭substrate


The dualism of physicalism is not mind↭body, but languages↭substrate.

Languages and substrate are like the yang↭yin dualism of Taoism, which are "not independent from one another, but rather a variation of the same unifying force throughout all of nature."

In current technical terminology, languages = the software, substrate = the hardware. In future technology, this distinction is becoming mushier with the emergence of programmable-reconfigurable hardware and hardware (both conventional and unconventional) compilers.

In physics, it is common to refer to a single physical substrate. In natural/unconventional computing, reference is made to multiple substrates: silicon, slime mold, DNA, biomolecular, photonic, etc.

In computing, there are many general-purpose and domain-specific languages.

The substrate (discrete, continuous) provides the physical semantics of a language.

The lowest level of substrate of the physical world may be ineffable: What are quarks made of? What are strings made of? These questions may have no answers. If they did, they would be expressed in a language. We can't talk about what the substrate is without talking (writing, typing, drawing, speaking).While we are talking, we are bound by a language.

A constructive approach to platonic math: Define a platonic-domain language — e.g., a domain-specific language (DSL) where the domain is infinitary. But is there a platform (computing substrate) to run its programs?

But the platonic realism (PR) promoted by some physicists is wrong because
• simulation ≠ assembly
• language ≠ substrate
• blueprint ≠ building
PR confuses between the two sides in these pairs.

A physicalism in which the distinctions in the above pairs are recognized I call codicalism.


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