Hi meekerdb What exists physically has extension. That would be the phenomenol world. What exist as non-extensive (nonphysical) mental representations of the real world components are abstractions or idea entities in what is called Platonia
Usually when we say that something "exists" we mean that it physically exists. The abstract entities in Platonia are made to seem like the physical objects they represent, and to seem to interact as they do, by the All. Roger Clough, [email protected] 9/17/2012 Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function." ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: meekerdb Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-15, 22:46:04 Subject: Re: science only works with half a brain On 9/15/2012 7:36 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 2:50 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: On 9/15/2012 8:18 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 14 Sep 2012, at 18:36, Jason Resch wrote: On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 8:32 AM, Stephen P. King <[email protected]> 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. In Peter's ontology, with which I have considerable empathy, they simply don't exist. "Exist" is what distinguishes material things from Platonia's abstractions - of course that doesn't play so well on something called the *EVERYTHING-LIST*. :-) Brent, Under what theory do you (or Peter) operate under to decide whether or not an abstraction in platonia "exists"? It's not arbitrary. None of them exist. That's what 'abstract' means. Brent It seems arbitrary and rather biased to confer this property only to those abstractions that happen to be nearest to us. Why should this additional property, namely "existence", make any difference regarding which structures in platonia can have the property of conscious? It seems like this would lead to abstract objects that are only "abstractly conscious" and concrete objects which have the full-fledged "concrete consciousness". After all, we say that 2 is even, not that it is "abstractly even". If some program in platonia is conscious, is it abstractly conscious or just conscious? I think our existence in this universe makes the conclusion clear. In other branch of the wave function, or in other physical universes predicted by string theory, our universe exists only as an abstraction, yet our relative abstraction (to some entities) does not makes us into zombies. Why should there be no symmetry in this regard? How can our abstractions be zombies, while their abstractions are conscious? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
