On 25 Aug 2012, at 18:50, John Clark wrote:
On Sat, Aug 25, 2012 Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> A popular subproblem consists in explaining how a grey brain can
generate the subjective color perception.
I don't ask that you give a explanation but I do want to know what
the general shape a successful explanation would be. If I said X
causes Y and Y causes Z and Z causes consciousness I have the
feeling you would just say "but Z is not consciousness"; and you'd
be right because otherwise you'd just be saying consciousness causes
consciousness which is no help at all. So if you don't like that
tell me what the general outline of what a solution to the mind body
problem would look like, assuming there really is a problem that
needs a solution.
Well the "mind-body problem" is a constellation of problems. Just
above I gave the simple formulation of the qualia problem.
An outline would be given by
1) a theory of qualia. This just means some semi-axiomatic definition
of qualia, some agreement of what characterize them, etc. (For
example: qualia are subjective sensation, which are non communicable,
yet lived, etc.
2) a theory of mind. this can be computationalism, or even just
computer science, or even just arithmetic + a supervenience thesis.
3) an embedding of the theory of qualia in the theory of mind,
respecting some faithfulness conditions.
This is more or less done, and the theory of qualia is given by some
formal system, which answer question asked in philosophy of mind/
theology, and can prove them as such formal system admit univocal
interpretation in arithmetic/computer science.
A bit like QM answer some afterlife, or death existence questions.
Note that the main part of the mind-body problem IN the comp theory,
is the problem of justifying our beliefs in matter, nature, physics,
etc. But for this you need to pursue the UD argument, as this is not
obvious.
> Most religious belief, like the belief in the existence of primary
matter, or of mind, or God, etc, can be seen as attempt to clarify,
or hide, the mind-body problem.
If consciousness is truly fundamental, as I strongly suspect it is,
then after saying consciousness is what happens when physical
systems starts behaving intelligently then there is simply nothing
more to be said on the subject of consciousness. However if I'm
wrong and it's not fundamental then there really is a mind-body
problem that needs solving, but the God theory does not even come
close to solving it; saying "God did it" without saying how He did
it is no more help than saying "the dog did it".
I agree with you. Comp explains where God comes from and why and how
he made matter and consciousness. Comp does not answer all question,
but can explain why some question does not admit answer (like where
the natural numbers and addition and multiplication come from, and why
we have to postulate them).
Comp answer to 99,9% of the questions, and "meta-answer" the remaining
1%. Somehow, and put it roughly.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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