[ExI] Talk to GPT-3 via Philosopher AI website

[Dan TheBookMan]

On May 1, 2021, at 3:07 PM, BillK via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Apr 2021 at 13:43, Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Didn’t work that well for me:
>> https://philosopherai.xyz/2c1b0c9c-d448-411e-a05c-532ed501f613
>> 
> 
> It seems to be a personal website, sometimes too busy, please try later.   :)

It answered my question, though with an answer I found wrong. So this wasn’t so much it being busy as it being incorrect.

>> What is substantivalism?
>> 
>> Substantivalism is a position in the philosophy of mathematics.
>> It states that numbers and mathematical objects have real existence.
>> ________________________________________
> 
> I now get different results for substantivalism.  Wonder why it changes???

It might be ‘learning’… I didn’t look over the site, so I missed any explanations offered. 

> ----------------
> What is substantivalism?
> 
> The term substantivalism describes a broad category of metaphysics
> where an object's properties and nature determine its identity. In
> this school of thought, objects are distinct and separate from the
> outside world.
> 
> It is contrasted by Relationalism which argues that objects have
> relational identities. Modern physics supports Relationalism, with
> Quantum Mechanics arguing that particles have a wave-particle duality
> and strings having a shape and direction but only when observed.

It really depends. If you’re in a room full of people familiar with philosophy of physics, I think they’d disagree with your last two sentences — at least as the terms tend to be used inside philosophy of physics. The relational-substantival debate usually centers on space and time and spacetime, and in that vein the debate is about whether they exist or if they’re only relations between physical objects (like stars, people, or subatomic particles).

Field theory of any sort might be seen, at first blush, weighing in favor of substantivalism. How so? The field can be taken to exist rather than being merely a relation between other things (like charged particles or gravitational bodies). Thus, Maxwell’s electromagnetic field theory, GTR, and QFT can be interpreted as supporting substantivalism.

Of course, the debate rages on. If you’re interested, check out Jill North’s ‘The Structure of Spacetime: A New Approach to the Spacetime Ontology Debate’:

http://jillnorth.org/2018_ST_Structure_Oxford.pdf 

> ________________________
> This response seems to relate to <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationalism>
> "According to Newton’s substantivalism, space and time are entities in
> their own right, existing independently of things. Leibniz’s
> relationism, on the other hand, describes space and time as systems of
> relations that exist between objects".
> 
> BillK

Yeah, almost. It’s confusing another form of relationalism though. Leibniz was taking the view that the objects exist, but that space and time don’t really or only have a secondary existence. I kind of agree with Lawrence Sklar (in his 1974 book _Space, Time and Spacetime_) here: Newton’s scholium kind of showed in classical physics that there’s something there. Maybe, though, not exactly what Newton thought. But the debate rages on… maybe rages isn’t an accurate way to put it. ;)

I merely wanted to test out the site with what I thought would be an easy if obscure subject.

Regards,

Dan
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