On 9 February 2014 21:22, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 09 Feb 2014, at 02:47, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > >> On 7 February 2014 07:47, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>>> Well, I *could* be a zombie and still say that, unless you consider >>>> the idea of zombies contradictory (which maybe it is). >>> >>> >>> >>> I bet you are not a zombie. But you seem to illustrate my point, if >>> epiphenomenalism is true, despite you are not a zombie, you could be one, >>> and that is a step toward the elimination of the person. >> >> >> I know I'm not a zombie, but you don't know that. > > > OK. > > > >> I don't know how you >> would bet on it either, since you could not prove it in order to get >> your payout! > > > I meant "I hope".The hope-payout is very big: as it means that I am not > losing my time discussing with a zombie. > > > > >> The most you can know is that if a certain substitution >> is made in by brain then *if* I am conscious I will continue to be >> conscious. > > > I can't know that either. If you are conscious, you might well become a > zombie after the substitution, if comp is false for example. I cannot know > for sure that comp is true. I can know it in the Theatetus' way, but this > means only that I believe in comp, and that God knows that it is true.
But you can know that a particular type of substitution that preserves the 3p functional organisation of my brain will also preserve its consciousness (if it had it to begin with), otherwise we could make partial zombies, which are absurd. This is an important result. It is a proof of comp. >>>> not because it is exercising a particular strategy >>>> except in a manner of speaking. But the substantive point I want to >>>> make is that there is no downward causation, >>> >>> >>> >>> I don't think there is any causation at all. Causation is a modal notion, >>> and as to be treated indexically to, and with comp, in a way related to >>> the >>> many computations in arithmetic. >>> >>> >>> >>>> for if there were we >>>> would observe magical events. If you accept that then I agree with >>>> you, any apparent disagreement is really just semantics. >>> >>> >>> >>> We must still discuss if this is very semantics. Some higher level laws >>> can >>> be quite autonomous relatively to lower level laws, and some downard >>> causation, even if reductible in theory to particles or numbers, remains >>> meaningful at his own level. >> >> >> Downward causation would involve, for example, a neuron spontaneously >> firing when all the biochemical parameters show that it should not. >> That would be something miraculous. It has never been observed, or we >> would know there is something very wrong with science. > > > Imagine that I am a coffee addict, so that when, in Helsinki, they propose > to copy me, and reconstitute me in a number of cities (an hundred one, say), > I ask "please don't reconstitute me in the cities which they have no > coffee". > > Let us assume that my wish will be exacted, and that I can know that in > advance. In that case P(coffee) = 1. > > I do see this as a sort of downward causation, despite no deterministic laws > are involved. > > Or imagine that I have to present a show, where I will prove to the audience > that I can distort a metallic bar without touching it. To do my trick I put > an absolute quantum bomb in the room, and as long as the metallic bar does > not distort itself, I trigger the atomic bomb. "Absolute" means that the > probability of surviving the explosion is null, both for me and the > audience. The, like with the coffee situation, I select the reality, by > quantum suicide, in which the metal bar distort itself (well actually I will > select only those where I believe this, but let us abstract from this here). > That would also be a sort of action of my mind (with the goal to distort the > metallic bar), on matter, without contradicting arithmetic or physics. > > That is a far stretched example, but it suggests that choosing is a sort of > suicide, where you "kill" the continuations you want to avoid, and we cannot > decide in advance if such self-selection have not already be done, making > consciousness selecting certain type of realities, from our points of view. > > In particular, if I decide to do a cup of coffee, from my perspective, there > will be a downward causation. Even if in truth it does not exist, at the > level where I am living, saying that it does not exist would be identifying > a proof and a truth, and makes me inconsistent. > > In arithmetic, there is no causation at all, and physics is a first person > plural constructs of the average universal machines, so that the whole > causation notion is "epiphenomenal" on truth. It does not make it illusory > at the provability or effective level where I live (G, Z, X). Like I just > said to Brent, I begin to think that the argument against free-will, or > again a role for consciousness, confuse G and G* (provability and truth, or > Z and Z*). > > Uses of Gödel's theorem against mechanism (Lucas, Penrose) make often a > confusion between G and S4Grz, or between body and soul (or 3p and 1p). It > is interesting (imo) that argument against free will might be a confusion of > some points of view too, notably of confusing provability and truth, or a > logic x and its true extension x* (which I often called "blasphem", as it > consists in taking God's view, and applying on Earth: that makes a machine > inconsistent). > > I am not yet sure if this really works. It's interesting that you think quantum suicide effects are an example of downward causation. It would, in fact, look like magic to a scientist who observed it. The problem is, there aren't any scientists who have observed it and reported it. So it remains true that there is no downward causation in science. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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.
