On 14 Sep 2012, at 18:36, Jason Resch wrote:
On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 8:32 AM, Stephen P. King <stephe...@charter.net
> wrote:
I contend that universality is the independence of computations to
any particular machine but there must be at least one physical
system that can implement a given computation for that computation
to be knowable. This is just a accessibility question, in the Kripke
sense of accessible worlds.
Stephen,
Could you provide a definition of what you mean by 'physical system'?
Do you think it is possible, even in theory, for entities to
distinguish whether they are in a physical system or a mathematical
one? If so, what difference would they test to make that distinction?
I am "philosophically" pretty well convinced by this argument.
But there is still a logical problem, pointed by Peter Jones (1Z) on
this list.
Peter believes that comp makes sense only for primitively material
machine, period.
So he would answer to you that the mathematical machine is just not
conscious, and that the distinction you ask is the difference between
being conscious (and material) and being non conscious at all (and
immaterial).
I don't see any way to reply to this which does not bring the movie
graph, the 323 principles, and that kind of stuff into account.
But of course I can understand that the idea that arithmetic is full
of immaterial philosophical zombies is rather weird, notably because
they have also endless discussion on zombie, and that arithmetic
contains P. Jones counterpart defending in exactly his way, that *he*
is material, but Peter does not care as they are zombie and are not
conscious, in his theory.
I would be happy if there was a simple way to avoid such quasi ad hoc
zombies, without going through MGA, which is quite subtle for some
people, and perhaps weak as it is not clear if comp really logically
imply the 323 principle.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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