2009/8/14 Brent Meeker <meeke...@dslextreme.com>: > A good summary, David. However, there are some other possibilities. > Physics as now conceived is based on real and complex numbers. It can > only be approximated digitally. QM supposes true randomness, which > Turing machines can't produce. Again it may just be a matter of > "sufficient approximation", but the idea of a multiverse and > "everything-happens" assumes real numbers.
But the possibility of 'mathematical ontology' would remain a possibility for physics, even if it turned out that we needed an alternative to the digital TM as the 'computational substrate'? > A sufficiently detailed, accurate and > predictive numerical model is as good as the stuff it models And in terms of stuffy ontology, it would be a successful model - but you wouldn't expect to be able to build a house out of emulated bricks. By contrast, in terms of numerical ontology, a sufficiently complete 'model' would actually *constitute* the stuff it emulated (i.e. indicating the quite different force of 'emulation' in this case). Yes? > But also a sufficiently accurate, detailed and predictive stuffy model is as > good > as the consciousness it models. If we take 'sufficiently' to the limit I suppose I must agree. But as before, in terms of stuffy ontology, any digital emulation - if that's what we're still discussing - is a model, not the stuff modelled, and hence wouldn't meet any such criterion of sufficiency. If we accept for the sake of argument a stuffy TM as equivalent to a stuffy brain, then what we're asked to accept here is that - although emulated bricks are no good for stuffy house building - stuffy neurons are just great for stuffy brain building. But why isn't a stuffy TM running a computation just a stuffy TM running a computation: WYSIWYG isn't it? And if that is so, then a stuffy brain running a computation is likewise just a stuffy brain running a computation: equally WYSIWYG. The only way you invoke consciousness in either case is by the straight a priori assumption: stuffy computation => consciousness. But according to lazy Olympia, going about computation in such a stuffy way reduces this assumption to an absurdity. Of course, in terms of numerical ontology, the assumption that computation => consciousness is equally a priori, but at least it's not absurd. In this case, brains, TMs - and bricks - share a computational ontology, so we can get building. Reconsidering my recent statements in the light of this, I suspect I'm trying to eat my cake and have it (an old tendency) - but this might be OK. It still seems to me that the a priori ontological assumption of choice is some fundamental conjunction of self-access + self-relativisation: i.e.the One, I guess. Stuff and consciousness - which I suspect to be a spurious dichotomy - get collapsed into this. But given self-relativisation in the context of self-access, you can follow the math in either 'stuffy' or 'computational' directions till you get where you need to be, and like others I suspect this will play out according as we discover the relative derivation of persons <=> things. As before, perhaps this is a no-more-neutral-than-necessary monism, and I guess it leaves the question of emulation as model or reality to be settled empirically. David > Brent >> Now of course this stricture wouldn't necessarily apply to model 3). >> But the 'comp' that Colin claims to refute is, I suspect, not this but >> stuffy-comp - i.e. the comp based on stuff rather than numbers, that >> Olympia, in her lazy but decisive way, dismisses as ephemeral. This >> is also the comp that I have argued against, but I don't intend this >> merely to be a re-statement of my prejudices. I know that Colin isn't >> precisely a proponent of model 3) nor model 4), arguing strenuously >> for a distinctive alternative; so it would be interesting (certainly >> for me) if he'd care to characterise precisely how it diverges from or >> extends the foregoing stuffy-numerical dichotomy. >> >> Be that as it may, the punchline is: do we find this analysis of the >> distinction between numerical 3) and stuffy 4) to be cogent with >> *specific* respect to the significance and possible application of the >> concept of 'emulation' in each case? >> >> David >> >> > >> >> > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
