Unfortunately, the capabilities of an omnipotent being are themselves not very well defined. Suppose we want to determine whether “The Absolute is an uncle” is meaningful. Well, says the deranged Hegelian arguing the affirmative, of course it is: we just ask our omnipotent being to take a look and see whether the Absolute is an uncle or not.
Butbutbutbut, you say, we can’t tell it how to do that, whereas we can tell it how to check whether there’s a spaceship past the cosmological horizon. But can we really? I mean, it’s not like we know how to make that observation, or we’d be able to make it ourselves. What’s the difference between this and checking whether the Absolute is an uncle? “Well, we know what it means to check whether there’s a spaceship past the cosmological horizon, but not what it means for the Absolute to be an uncle.” Circular argument alert!
It does feel like there’s a difference that we can use, but trying to formulate it exactly seems to lead to a circular definition.
(No one is really going to defend “The Absolute is an uncle”, but there certainly are people prepared to claim that the existence of an afterlife is testable because dead people might discover it, or because God could tell you whether it’s there or not; and I don’t think any sort of logical positivist would agree.)
What if we imagine the source code for the universe? Can we say: “the omnipotent being can check any part of the source code of the universe.” Where “source code of the universe” means: a computationally irreducible algorithm which has a perfect isomorphism with the universe. It is part of our assumption as physicalists that the variables of this source code only ever store values that are of a physical nature, i.e., would be studied by physicists.
If you can imagine what state in the source code would correspond to the the truth of your belief, it is meaningful. If there is likely no statement in the TOE (no matter how large and stupid) which corresponds to your claim, then it is meaningless. This seems to be better defined but also capture the benefits of having an omnipotent being be the judge of meaningfulness.
the omnipotent being can check any part of the source code of the universe.
You cannot simply check the source code. No matter how many experiments you run, there will always be room for the possibility that the source code is such that the spaceship disappears.
Yes, the point I was trying to make was that for a sentence to be meaningful, there must be a physical state for which it encodes, even if that physical state is in-accessible to us. “At 8:00 pm last night a tea kettle spontaneously formed around Saturn.” is meaningful, because it encodes a state located in space-time.
Unfortunately, the capabilities of an omnipotent being are themselves not very well defined. Suppose we want to determine whether “The Absolute is an uncle” is meaningful. Well, says the deranged Hegelian arguing the affirmative, of course it is: we just ask our omnipotent being to take a look and see whether the Absolute is an uncle or not.
Butbutbutbut, you say, we can’t tell it how to do that, whereas we can tell it how to check whether there’s a spaceship past the cosmological horizon. But can we really? I mean, it’s not like we know how to make that observation, or we’d be able to make it ourselves. What’s the difference between this and checking whether the Absolute is an uncle? “Well, we know what it means to check whether there’s a spaceship past the cosmological horizon, but not what it means for the Absolute to be an uncle.” Circular argument alert!
It does feel like there’s a difference that we can use, but trying to formulate it exactly seems to lead to a circular definition.
(No one is really going to defend “The Absolute is an uncle”, but there certainly are people prepared to claim that the existence of an afterlife is testable because dead people might discover it, or because God could tell you whether it’s there or not; and I don’t think any sort of logical positivist would agree.)
What if we imagine the source code for the universe? Can we say: “the omnipotent being can check any part of the source code of the universe.” Where “source code of the universe” means: a computationally irreducible algorithm which has a perfect isomorphism with the universe. It is part of our assumption as physicalists that the variables of this source code only ever store values that are of a physical nature, i.e., would be studied by physicists.
If you can imagine what state in the source code would correspond to the the truth of your belief, it is meaningful. If there is likely no statement in the TOE (no matter how large and stupid) which corresponds to your claim, then it is meaningless. This seems to be better defined but also capture the benefits of having an omnipotent being be the judge of meaningfulness.
You cannot simply check the source code. No matter how many experiments you run, there will always be room for the possibility that the source code is such that the spaceship disappears.
Yes, the point I was trying to make was that for a sentence to be meaningful, there must be a physical state for which it encodes, even if that physical state is in-accessible to us. “At 8:00 pm last night a tea kettle spontaneously formed around Saturn.” is meaningful, because it encodes a state located in space-time.