On 1 February 2014 15:44, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote
Neither comp nor any other TOE can consistently make reference to input or
>> output extrinsic to itself,
>>
>
> Unless, like mine, your TOE makes I/O (unified as a sensory-motive dipole
> 'sense') the foundation of Everything.
>
So are you saying, as it would appear above, that your "TOE" refers to
explanatory entities outside of its own domain? If so it would be
incoherent in its own terms.
I'm sorry Craig, but I can't really make head or tail of your arguments or
even most of your vocabulary. I responded to you in this case because you
appeared to be making a criticism of comp based on its lack of input and
output. I attempted to make the point that no TOE, in general, can do this
and remain consistent. In your reply to me you indicate agreement ("right")
at various junctures but without apparently grasping the significance to
your argument of the actual points I'm making. The same comment applies to
the discussion I've been attempting to have with you about the POPJ, which
you have not, as yet, replied to. If you do decide to reply, I would
appreciate it if you would do so in a manner that directly addresses the
points I'm making, rather than changing the subject or talking as though
your theory somehow automatically trumps any logical objection without
actually addressing it.
I don't mean to sound patronising (although I suspect it's unavoidable that
I will) but your ideas strike me as very similar to many others in Theory
of Mind, of the general flavour of panpsychism or panexperientialism, going
back to Berkeley and indeed much farther than that. For a number of years I
entertained similar ideas as the only way to reconcile the indubitability
of consciousness with an apparently physical world. In fact, I developed a
whole vocabulary for this not dissimilar to your own, with which I
proceeded to confuse anyone who would listen to me, including some of those
on this list a few years ago.
However, eventually I came to see that this approach isn't in fact capable
of solving the problems it sets out to tackle, though I appreciate this
isn't necessarily widely recognised. The problem with panpsychist
approaches isn't that it's "obvious" that everything isn't "conscious"
(because we shouldn't expect that to be obvious) but rather that everything
we perceive as "extrinsic" (and most particularly including our own
apparently physical selves) specifically *behaves* according to a rigorous
set of rules that vitiate and make redundant any notion of consciousness
and block any access to it. This is, in effect, the POPJ. It bites
panpsychism as it bites physicalsim and - forgive me - I think it would
behove you to give the matter some more serious thought.
As to comp, my reading of your criticisms lead me to the conclusion that
you have never yet properly understood it (independent of whether it turns
out to be true of our reality). Like you, I have spent much time with
computers and had independently reached the conclusion that thinking and
experiencing could not in any way be the same as what computers do. Indeed
this was my frame of mind when in 1984 I encountered John Searle's Chinese
Room argument which he presented very convincingly in his BBC Reith
Lectures of that year. So when I came across Bruno's ideas on this list
about seven years ago I had plenty of arguments, as I thought, to demolish
them. However, I gradually came to realise, through Bruno's patience and
expertise, that computer science is no more the study of computers (the
study of which is a branch of engineering) than astronomy is the study of
telescopes. Hence your criticisms of comp on the basis of your observations
of the current state of computer engineering are simply beside the point.
You need to up your game here if you really seek to defeat Bruno's
arguments rather than simply misunderstand them.
Anyway, back to the POPJ, if you have the stomach for it!
Cordially
David
>
>
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
