On 27 May 2017, at 02:07, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 26/05/2017 6:53 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 26 May 2017, at 03:26, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 26/05/2017 9:11 am, David Nyman wrote:
On 25 May 2017 23:18, "Brent Meeker" <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
I have told you my theory of virtuous circular explanations.
"Invoke" is a pejorative attribution. The physical universe is
an inference to explain appearances (and a very successful one at
that).
Vocabulary. The point is, assuming mechanism (and please do tell
me if you're reasoning in a different theory), that the inference
is to a particular *selection* of computations from the
computational plenitude. And why is that? Because they 'explain'
the appearances. But do they really? Are those computations - in
and of themselves - really capable of 'explaining' why or how
they, and no others, come to be uniquely selected for our
delectation? Are they really capable of 'explaining' why or how
those selfsame appearances come to be present to us?
I think you and Brent are using different notions of
"explanation". As I understand your (David's) position, it is a
notion of "explanation" originating with Plato: Plato's theory of
Forms offered at the same time both a systematic explanation of
things and also a connected epistemology of explanation.
(Summaries from Jonathan Cohen in the Oxford Companion to
Philosophy.) In other words, the Platonic ideal is that "Ontology
precedes epistemology", to vary Brent's slogan. In the case of
mechanism, the ontology is the natural numbers (plus arithmetic)
and for an explanation to be acceptable, everything has to follow
with the force of logical necessity from this ontology.
As I understand Brent's position (and that is essentially the same
as my position), his concept of "explanation" follows the
tradition of British empirical philosophy, stemming from Bacon,
through Hume, to Russell and others. In this tradition, to explain
an observed characteristic is to show its relationship to a law in
accordance with which the characteristic occurs or can be made to
occur, and there is a hierarchy of such laws -- the more
comprehensive laws are deemed more probable. This leads to the
dominant model for explanation in the natural sciences, which
requires the citation of one or more laws which, when conjoined
with the statement of relevant facts, entail the occurrence of the
phenomenon or uniformity that is to be explained. This does not
rely on any assumed ontology; hence, "Epistemology precedes
ontology".
Wherever we want to derive a technology from scientific knowledge,
we shall need to know what causes a desired effect. So we need to
distinguish between different levels of explanation, in that
while, for example, the disappearance of a patient's infection may
be causally explained by his antibiotic injection, the operation
of that causal process is in its turn to be explained by
correlational laws of biochemistry. Hence, the understanding of
consciousness in any effective way will be linked to the creation
of effective AI.
This is the paradigm of current scientific practice. Sure, as
Bruno says, this stems ultimately from an Aristotelian approach to
science rather than the Platonic approach. But the history of
Western thought has shown the scientific, or Aristotelian,
approach to have been overwhelmingly more successful, both in
developing technology and in reaching understanding of the nature
of reality.
Aristotle's Matter was a good simplifying hypothesis. I agree that
it has led to some success. But that does not make it true,
For the pragmatic instrumentalist, "truth" is not of primary concern.
I agree. Computationalism is an hypothesis in metaphysics. Metaphysics
does not concern a pragmatic person, unless he postulate pragmatism as
a metaphysics, but this is not serious after the failure of positivism
(even Wittgenstein eventually defended this).
What is relevant is explanation in terms of predictive success.
But this is true for scientific metaphysics. That is why I insist that
the point I make is not that comp is true, but that it is testable.
The scientific realist might reject instrumentalism, but suggestions
about the underlying ontology have always been shown inadequate in
the past -- this being the famous 'negative induction' against
scientific realism.
Yes, but that might be, by itself, the sign that we have not yet got
the right metaphysical theory. Now, with comp, we have a large choice
of equivalent simple ontology, and I use arithmetic for it, as people
learned it in high school.
and the price of it has been the burying of many interesting
problem (given away to the clergy). Physicalism simply fail to
explain the apparent existence of the physical reality,
Why should there be an explanation for this?
That is a personal question of taste. Why to try to unify GR and QM?
If they works well in their domain, we could just keep both. But some
people searches for an unification of the available knowledge/belief,
because cluster of incopatoble theories suggest to them that we have
to dig deeper to find the fundamental reason of why we are here, etc..
It might, after all, be just a brute fact that reality is what it is,
But what it is? The point is that if by "it" you mean "physical", then
your point is like saying that it is a brute fact that the physical
universe brought consciousness. OK, but then we have to say "no" to
the doctor. and we get zombie, etc.
so the best we can do is explore and attempt to understand how it
works.
Well, there are more promising metaphysics/theologies.
and why it hurts. Computationalism does, but with the price that a
lot of work remains for all details. We are at the beginning of the
"reversal" only.
I think there is reason to think that the "reversal" cannot succeed.
Then computationalism must be declared false. But you have to give the
reason, as this implies the need for some amount of magic in the
"brute facts".
You have to get a lot more than you currently have for
computationalism to rival conventional science.
Computationalism *is* conventional science.
Non-Computationalism is conventional science + a miracle occurs.
Bruno
Bruce
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