On 4 February 2014 14:52, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > On Tuesday, February 4, 2014 9:19:51 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: > >> On 4 February 2014 13:19, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Because silicon happens to have been disallowed for biological >>> experience. Silicon and carbon are symbols and signs of the footprint of >>> experiences, not the causes of them. I suggest that we stop thinking in >>> terms of forms in space or functions in time and start thinking in terms of >>> that which appreciates form and participates in function. >> >> >> Far be it from me to spoil the fun, but you could save yourself a lot of >> typing if you simply stated at the outset that you don't accept the premise >> that your consciousness would be invariant for a digital substitution of >> your brain. >> > > Why do you assume that I haven't? If you notice, I repeatedly say that it > is not the logic of Comp that I reject, it is it's beginning assumptions. > Fine, but then if you genuinely seek to criticise it in its own terms, as you appear to do constantly, then the usual rules of engagement are that you cannot in all reason subsequently quarrel with the stated assumptions unless they lead to a contradiction *in their own terms*. That is what Bruno asks for in a public discussion and it is a very different enterprise than substituting a completely different set of assumptions somewhere in the middle of the argument. > > >> That is, in effect, the practical encapsulation of the rest of Bruno's >> argument, as he himself frequently reiterates. Silicon or carbon then have >> nothing to do with the matter (no play on words intended) as computation is >> a purely relational concept that is by definition invariant for any >> physical instantiation. What is remarkable about Bruno's argument is that >> he succeeds (in my view at least) in showing that for "physical >> instantiation" to make any sense it too must be derived from computation. >> > > I agree with Bruno's position on physics (although computation could be > derived from physics in the same way) > Well, it's a key goal of the UDA to show, on the starting assumptions, that this leads to a contradiction and hence is false. At what point to you disagree? but I suggest for "computation" to make any sense it must be derived from > aesthetic acquaintance, aka, sensory-motive participation. > Not if you would be willing to accept a digital substitute for your brain. If not, none of Bruno's arguments follow anyway. > > >> >> Bruno frequently refers to your ideas as non-comp precisely because it >> seems clear that your would say no to the doctor. Be that as it may, I take >> it that this doesn't mean that you reject any lawful connection between >> whatever the brain might be said to do (at some level of analysis) and the >> conscious phenomena that appear to be correlated with it. >> > > Sure, I would not deny a sensible correlation, but there is no reason to > suppose a direct translation. > "I would not deny" is a far cry from an explanation, or even the form of one. It would argue more strongly in favour of your theory if you could at least indicate the shape of such an explanation, which is what Bruno sets out to do for comp. I can reduce red to a signal of invisible data, but that doesn't mean >> that invisible data can become acquainted with red on its own. >> > Appealing to the incontrovertible acquaintance of sense does not produce a contradiction if such incontrovertibility and such acquaintance can be credibly justified from the starting assumptions. It's a major (I might say astounding) virtue of comp that it is indeed able plausibly to explain both of these features of sense and even to justify why, from the point-of-view of the machine, there must nonetheless always be a remainder that must defy any justification. > >> It's just this kind of lawful connection that I've been asking you to >> elucidate in your theory. Even if we assume that sense is primitive, the >> appearances are still there to be saved and these appearances are not all >> of the same nature. One is hardly barred thereby from seeking ways of >> explicating how, for example, the apparent behaviour of our brains and >> bodies when we perceive could be lawfully correlated with direct >> perception. I'm sure that you've never intended to suggested that your >> theory merely entails that all such attempts are nugatory? >> > > No, my theory only serves to expand the quantity and quality of > correlations between not only brains and perception, but perception and > language, language and ideas, ideas and subjects, etc. > Very nice, but how precisely (as opposed to poetically) are we to elucidate such correlations? Look, you may think I'm being unduly hard on your theory, because I appreciate that you accept that you have only sketched out the "corners" of the framework of something that is a much larger enterprise, as indeed does Bruno. In fact he sometimes says that he hasn't so much solved a problem as changed it into a different one (i.e. the "body problem"). But in the case of comp, the potential reward for doing so is large, because we would then have a basis for systematically deriving both physics and psychology from something which is itself, arguably, non-derivable from anything more fundamental This sort of irreducible "primitiveness" is not in fact as obvious as it may first appear in the case of sense, as non-controvertibility is not necessarily equivalent to non-derivability, which is one of the major insights that Bruno has uncovered in the comp theory. There are, moreover, arguably quite strong independent reasons to believe that the correlation between brain behaviour and consciousness must be relational in nature, rather than intrinsic. Be that as it may, there would be a stronger motivation to believe in the superior explanatory value of a sensory-motive theory if you could suggest, on that assumption, even an outline of an approach to deriving lawful relations between physics and psychology. 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