Hi Chris,
Le 29-juin-05, à 17:49, chris peck a écrit :
I'ld suggest its a matter of how intuition is used. My intuition can
only guide me in my enquiries, your intuition only you in yours. I
cant persuade you of the truth of a statement by appealing to my
intuitive feelings about it, obviously. Nevertheless, I think it is
the light that guides enquiry. I hope it is for everyone, though
clearly with Leslie and others seem more attracted to the counter
intuitive, I have no idea why.
I agree there is a sense where only intuition is really the root of
"conclusiveness", but intuition is always like believing that the
earth is flat. It is rooted in locality. So globally "the other of
myself" is always, at first counterintuitive: the earth is not flat!
The root of conviction are local but when you try to see the border of
what the light can enlighten it is not so astonishing to be astonished,
surprised, and eventually to develop some intuition on some
counter-intuitive feature of reality (whatever it could be).
Sometime I say that common sense is the unique tool to go beyond common
sense, I could say that for intuition. I am attracted by intuition and
counter-intuition. I am fond of both Cantor and Brouwer. (and I add for
later: I love both S4Grz and G which are two systems of modal logic
which go, arguably with the comp hyp) at the heart of intuition and
conter-intuition.
Take the Doomsday Hypothesis, its wrong. Even if the world ended
tommorow, it would still be the case that the Doomsday Hypothesis did
not predict it to any satisfactory meaning of the word 'predict'.
Intuitively, I'ld just say it was luck that someone considered the DH
on the day before. Intuitively, I think that is obvious. But intuition
doesnt explain WHY the Doomsday Hypothesis is wrong, just that it is.
Intuition is not analytical and really it is this that prevents it
from having much persuasive power. But looking at Bostrum and others,
its clear how they rely on intuition. Unless the DH can be tempered in
some manner, then they tend to agree that its conclusion is reason
enough to dismiss it.
You illustrate a difficult idea (intuition) with a difficult problem
(the Doomsday argument).
Here, my intuition is that I should not follow my intuition :) But
analytically, I tend to believe that the doomsday argument is a
definite quite convincing argument that the doomsday is for soon, once
we accept Newton (on matter) and Aristotle (on mind). I am agnostic
about that, but I do think that the comp hypothesis makes quickly
Newton wrong on matter and Aristotle wrong on mind, so comp is immune
against the doomsday argument (confirming perhaps your intuition if
comp is true).
'The best one, in my opinion are those theories which justifies the
ultimate unnameableness of the first person.'
Do you mean private by 'unnameable'?
But I cannot even be sure it is private. I think I see what you mean,
and the unameability of the first person by the first person will
*appear* most probably private. But I'm open to the ide that we share
the deepest intuition and I am neutral on the question how many persons
exists really. At least with comp it is possible to explain why those
questions are hard, even with (apparant) oversimplifications.
Are you talking about something akin to Nagel's characterisation of
mind? That it is subjective and consequently indescribable by a 3rd
person account?
I think it is related.
'as I show in my PhD thesis (see my url). comp can explain
(meta-justify) why the
ultimate evidence is "conclusive" but ineffable.'
I'll give it a go, sounds interesting.
The game consists in taking the computationalist hypothesis, in some
rather precise form, totally seriously. In the literature those who
does that in general present it as an argument ad absurdo of the
falsity of mechanism. They "prove" comp -> false. But actually if you
look at the details they just prove "comp -> (Newton/Aristotle is
false). Actually comp proves something "near false". We can expect that
comp leads to counterintuitive propositions, but that is relative:
Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus, and some other were open for the kind of
reality which I suspect is made necessary by comp. In actual physics
the closer conception to what comp makes inescapable is Quantum
Mechanics without Collapse, that is Everett, Deutch...
But neither Everett nor Deutsch takes the comp hypothesis
"sufficiently" seriously. Deutsch is forced to a revisionist view on
Church thesis to make it fitting with his physicalist conception of the
multiverse for example.
'I have use the modal logics of self-reference (Solovay's G and G').
Have you heard about them?'
Nope, im new to a lot of this - thus my joining. Is self reference the
same as self perception? you know as well as refering to myself, i can
introspect to a degree too. Mind may well be inscrutable beyond
introspection. I kind of think it is, though self reference is second
nature.
I think so. Actually here I point on Godel's incompleteness theorem;
including its statellite theorems in computer science. If you are open
to logic there is a gallery of surprises.
The best book is, imo, the apparently recreative Forever Undecided by
Smullyan.
'Also, do you know the paper by Hardegree which shows that quantum
logic can be seen as a Lewis-Stalnaker logic of the counterfactuals?'
hmmm. I thought Stalnaker and Lewis were opposed to one another when
it came to counterfactuals.
They disagree like all reseachers who discover that they tackle the
same domain. It is an "expert" disagreement. Relatively to the shape of
the disagreement in this list, to decide between Lewis and Stalnaker at
this stage of the discussion would be falling in the 1004 fallacy. Well
perhaps not because we are making progress I think.
Lewis believes they are in some sense real, sort of like Deutsche's
multiverse, or infinate number of m-branes and so on, in which
anything logically possible has been actualised at least in one
universe or another.
I think you point on a recent paper by Lewis which I keep for july ;)
I think Stalnaker would disagree with that, possible worlds are just
convenient ways of considering possibility, rather than actuality. im
sure this is all obvious to you, I'll read your PHD and see if I agree
with that. I hope there isnt too much math.:)
Perhaps. Stalnaker is physicalist. He told us in "Inquiry".
I am (mind-body)-problem driven. I take the best of Stalnaker and Lewis
(and others). "Best" relatively to my inquiry.
I think comp makes physicalism wrong.
Have you read the posts of this list? I have made a very bad and unfair
(but short and concise) summary recently:
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m6932.html
Thanks for telling me that you will take a look at my papers (hope you
are neither a dogmatic naturalist nor a logical-anxious) ...
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
