On 14 February 2011 20:46, John Mikes <jami...@gmail.com> wrote: > I asked several times: "what are numbers?" without getting a reasonable > reply. > Sometimes I really like 1Z's twists.
That may be, but I would also like to see if we can get things untwisted. I'm not peddling any theory of my own here, I'm just trying to do some simple accounting. For example according to some theory "X doesn't exist" and then somewhere else in the same theory something supposedly depends on "assuming X". This doesn't add up. Part of the problem - most of it, perhaps - is psychological-linguistic. Being dead wrong about some theory of the mind (fortunately) doesn't stop our minds from functioning. But that very same fact can blind us to circular reasoning. I've tried to argue before that the "causal closure of physics" is a very strong claim that is also very restrictive if applied consistently. Trouble is, in my view, it very rarely is so applied. The Hard Problem, and the corresponding zombie intuition, is a sort of reductio of the strongest version of this claim - i.e. that what "exists" is reducible to a micro-physical substrate that is fully constitutive of all phenomena of whatever type. If this proposition were ever to be taken at face value, then further theorising would perforce just stop right there; indeed there can be no "theories" in such a scenario, just the sub-atomic events that might have been said (but by whom?) to underlie them. Of course this hardly reflects our experience (how could it?). We do not discover ourselves to be in some maximally fragmented state (what could it be "like"?) but rather in some integrated state of an altogether higher order; but such quotidian reality apparently impresses us so little that we are quite capable of theorising it cheerfully out of existence (e.g. eliminative materialism). Well, as Groucho Marx once innocently enquired "who you gonna believe - me or your own eyes?". David > David, > > I was laughing all the way from the computer that '7 does not exist'. And > yes, it does not. > Do qualia exist without the substrate they serve for as qualia? > It goes into our deeper thought to identify 'existing' - > I am willing to go as far as "if our mind handles it, 'it' DOES exist" > so the quale like; 7(?) [i.e. the monitor for the eggs in your fridge] is > existing. Not answering the question 'what it is?" - but principally I am > also against ontology in a worldview of change, where "being" makes only > sense as "transitionally becoming" and transition substitutes for stagnancy. > Panta Rhei also boggles my mind, especially when I cut out conventional > time. > > I asked several times: "what are numbers?" without getting a reasonable > reply. > Sometimes I really like 1Z's twists. > > On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 2:32 PM, 1Z <peterdjo...@yahoo.com> wrote: >> >> >> On Feb 14, 6:21 pm, David Nyman <da...@davidnyman.com> wrote: >> > On 14 February 2011 12:35, 1Z <peterdjo...@yahoo.com> wrote: >> > >> > > Oh come on. How can you say that after I just told >> > > you 7 doesn't exist. >> > >> > Wouldn't this then imply that computation also doesn't exist, in an >> > analogous sense? >> >> I can still have seven eggs in my fridge, and I can still >> have a computation running on a physical computer. >> >> > And that consequently any computational >> > characterisation of the mental is in itself a mere fiction, reducing >> > to whatever physical behaviour is picked out under the rules of a >> > formal "game"? >> >> If computation is multiply realisable, it never reduces to >> any particular physical behaviour, even if it always instantiated a >> such >> >> > I recall that you aren't committed to CTM per se, but >> > if what you say about mathematics is true, and only the physical is >> > real, wouldn't it follow a priori that CTM just eliminates the mind? >> >> No. Every running programme is physical. Only programmes >> with nothing to run on are eliminated >> >> > I know you've said before that reduction isn't elimination, but I'm >> > not clear what is supposed to have any claim to "reality" here, other >> > than the physical tokens instantiating the "computation". >> > >> > David >> >> >> If you have a physical token running a computation, you have >> a computation. 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