Hi Bruno Marchal Comp cannot give subjective content, can only provide an objective simulation on the BEHAVIOR of a person (or his physical brain). This behavioral information can be dealt with by the philosophy of mind called "functionalism":
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/functionalism/ "Functionalism in the philosophy of mind is the doctrine that what makes something a mental state of a particular type does not depend on its internal constitution, but rather on the way it functions, or the role it plays, in the system of which it is a part. This doctrine is rooted in Aristotle's conception of the soul, and has antecedents in Hobbes's conception of the mind as a “calculating machine”, but it has become fully articulated (and popularly endorsed) only in the last third of the 20th century. Though the term ‘functionalism’ is used to designate a variety of positions in a variety of other disciplines, including psychology, sociology, economics, and architecture, this entry focuses exclusively on functionalism as a philosophical thesis about the nature of mental states." A criticism of functionalism and hence of comp is that if one only considers his physical behavior (and possibily but not necessarily his brain's behavior), a person can behave in a certain way but have a different mental content. Roger Clough, [email protected] 10/20/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-19, 03:31:54 Subject: Re: I believe that comp's requirement is one of "as if" ratherthan"is" On 17 Oct 2012, at 15:28, Stephen P. King wrote: On 10/17/2012 8:45 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 16 Oct 2012, at 15:00, Stephen P. King wrote: On 10/16/2012 8:23 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 4:02:44 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: There is of course the idea that the universe is actually a simulation but that is more controversial. A tempting idea until we question what it is a simulation of? We can close this by considering when is a simulation of a "real thing" indistinguishable from the "real thing"! What law states that computations exist ab initio, but the capacity to experience and participate in a simulated world does not? Good point! Why not both existing ab initio? But they exists ab initio in the arithmetical truth. So with comp, we can postulate only the numbers, or the computations (they are ontologically equivalent), then consciousness is semantical fixed point, existing for arithmetical reason, yet not describable in direct arithmetical term (like truth, by Tarski, or knowledge by Scott-Montague. The Theaetetical "Bp & p" is very appealing in that setting, as it is not arithmetically definable, yet makes sense in purely arithmetical term for each p in the language of the machine (arithmetic, say). So we don't have to postulate consciousness to explain why machine will correctly believe in, and develop discourse about, some truth that they can know, and that they can also know them to be non justifiable, non sharable, and possibly invariant for digital self-transformation, etc. Bruno Hi Bruno, We seem to have a fundamental disagreement on what constitutes "arithmetic truth". In my thinking, the truth value of a proposition is not separable from the ability to evaluate the proposition I agree for mundane truth, but not for the truth we can accept to built a fundamental theory. If you accept comp, you know that the ability to evaluate a proposition will be explained in term of a functioning machine, and this is build on elementary arithmetical truth. So, with comp, you statement would make comp circular. Bruno (as Jaakko Hintikka considers) and thus is not some Platonic form that has some ontological weight in an eternal "pre-established harmony" way. I do not believe that our reality is merely some pre-defined program since I am claiming that the "pre-definition" is an NP-Hard problem that must be solved prior to its use. The best fit for me is an infinity of 1p, each that is a bundle of infinite computations, that eternally interact with each other (via bisimulation) and not some frozen and pre-existing Being. My philosophy is based on that of Heraclitus and not that of Parmenides. Being is defined in my thinking as the automorphisms within Becoming, thus what is stable and fixed is just those things that relatively do not change within an eternally evolving Universe. -- Onward! Stephen -- 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. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- 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.
