<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Dear Malcolm,<div><br></div><div><br><div><div>On 21 Feb 2016, at 22:51, Malcolm Dean wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><p dir="ltr">All worldviews begin in a miracle. No exceptions.</p></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I agree. Nevertheless, we should, and can, minimize the miracle. </div><div><br></div><div>With the digital mechanist assumption, the miracle can be limited to the axioms of elementary arithmetic (or combinatory algebra or any Turing Universal System) + at the meta-level, the assumption that consciousness is an invariant for some digital functional substitution.</div><div><br></div><div>So the "origin" can be taken as being elementary arithmetic (or Turing-equivalent). </div><div><br></div><div>God created "only" the natural numbers together with the laws of addition and multiplication. This, then, can be explained as being something that we cannot derive from anything else (except some Turing-equivalent theory), which confirms somehow your idea that at least one miracle is needed, but this illustrates that it can be kept quite minimal. </div><div><br></div><div>Eventually, this makes Mechanism testable, as it gives no choice for the physical laws(*), and until now, thanks to quantum-mechanics-without-collapse, it looks like nature confirms quite well the digital mechanist hypothesis. This fits very well with the information based approaches, notably your own work, even if the starting motivation and the intended applications can be different.</div><div><br></div><div>Best,</div><div><br></div><div>Bruno</div><div><br></div><div>(*) I am not pretending this is obvious, but that is explained in my papers, notably the recent one in the issues of the Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology under discussion.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><br><blockquote type="cite"><p dir="ltr">Malcolm<br></p><p dir="ltr">On Feb 21, 2016 3:00 AM, <<a href="mailto:fis-request@listas.unizar.es">fis-request@listas.unizar.es</a>> wrote:<br> >-------------------------------------------------------------<br> ><br> > Message: 1<br> > Date: Sun, 21 Feb 2016 07:37:09 +0100<br> > From: "Loet Leydesdorff" <<a href="mailto:loet@leydesdorff.net">loet@leydesdorff.net</a>><br> > To: "'Pedro C. Marijuan'" <<a href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es">pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es</a>>, "'fis'"<br> > <<a href="mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es">fis@listas.unizar.es</a>><br> > Subject: Re: [Fis] _ Re: Maxine?s presentation<br> > Message-ID: <001801d16c72$4a89c730$df9d5590$@<a href="http://leydesdorff.net">leydesdorff.net</a>><br> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"<br> ><br> > Dear Maxine and colleagues,<br> ><br> > It seems to me that the assumption of an origin takes a heavy load on this theory. We know that order can emerge from chaos. Any order will also disappear in the longer run.<br> ><br> > Why would one wish to make such assumptions? Meta-physical?<br> ><br> > Best,<br> > Loet<br><br></p><p dir="ltr">Malcolm</p> _______________________________________________<br>Fis mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Fis@listas.unizar.es">Fis@listas.unizar.es</a><br>http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis<br></blockquote></div><br><div apple-content-edited="true"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><a href="http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/">http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/</a></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br></div></body></html>