On 4 February 2014 18:04, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Tuesday, February 4, 2014 12:57:45 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: > >> On 4 February 2014 17:32, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> I don't think there's anything wrong with criticizing a theory on >>> something other than "it's own terms". I think Craig might accept Bruno's >>> argument as valid but regard it as a reductio against saying "yes" to the >>> doctor. I have criticized it for it's seeming lack of predictive power - a >>> problem with all theories of everythingism so far, and also string theory. >> >> >> But surely a reductio entails accepting an argument in principle and then >> showing that it leads to a contradiction in its own terms? The MGA, or >> Maudlin's argument, are of such a form (whether or not you agree they >> succeed). Craig has already said that he accepts the form of Bruno's >> argument, but not its premise: i.e. what is entailed by the acceptance of a >> digital brain substitution. This is certainly saying no to the doctor, but >> it's more like the opposite of a reductio. It's just a bald assertion that >> any possible success of the argument isn't worth the cost of accepting the >> premise. >> > > Yes! Because the cost is infinite. Since there is no substitute for > experience, there can never be anything more impossible than the idea of > simulating experience itself. > But that is not what is proposed, indeed it would be a contradiction in terms. Experience is the only indubitable reality; to talk of "simulating" it is equivalent to eliminating that reality (as in "it's all an illusion") and is just incoherent. Experience either is or it isn't and this is determinable only in the first-person. But it is not experience that is substituted, it is the device that allows that experience to manifest locally in terms of a particular actuality. Remember that the proposition is that experience is *invariant* for a digital substitution. The UDA is a step-wise argument for the view that this makes sense only if physics itself is the result of a statistical filtration (the FPI) over the entire computational domain. Hence that local "device" is also a statistical-derived appearance stabilised by this filtration. > > >> That could indeed turn out to be the case, but it isn't in itself an >> argument. >> > > The truth of physics and sense is not an argument, argument is a > comparison within sense. Why does the universe have to fit into an argument > of cognitive human logic? Let the universe be what it is - perception. > Participation. Aesthetic acquaintance on many nested (and sometimes > ambiguously so) levels. > What alternative could we possibly have to "letting the universe be what it is"? But whether the universe (i.e. what we can only guess at) simply "is" perception, or has a more complex relation with it, is not something that either you or I could possibly know a priori, or even a posteriori. We - our experiential selves - are virtual creatures who can only "bet" on an ultimate reality from the perspective of what is, for us, an indubitable, though unshareable, indexical actuality. The reasons for that very indubitability and unshareability, moreover, are predictable in terms of the comp argument. But of course the universe doesn't have to - and never will - "fit into an argument of cognitive human logic". But neither should we expect it to fit with any other human predilection-du-jour, be that aesthetic, orouboran, tessellated, or whatever else. These too are merely speculations, or wagers, and must stand or fall on the same criteria of generality, coherence, and explanatory and predictive power. David > > Craig > > >> >> Your own criticism, by contrast, can only succeed by accepting the >> argument in its own terms and then showing that in this form it fails to >> satisfy certain desirable criteria, such as predictive power. That's not a >> reductio either, although of course it's a perfectly valid objection to >> raise. >> >> 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. > -- 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.
