On Sunday, February 16, 2014 9:07:06 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: > > On 17 February 2014 00:29, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com<javascript:> > > wrote: > > You don't suggest that I can't understand comp, but you suggest that I am >> impervious to reasoned argument about it...why would that be the case if I >> understood comp as you seem to think it deserves to be understood? > > > You said that I understood that you could not possibly understand comp. I > have never said that nor do I believe it. I do however expect that you will > persist in attacking a parody of comp of your own devising as long as you > fail to engage with the genuine argument in its own terms and this is not > necessarily so easy. >
Then that means you are accusing me of understanding comp but pretending not to so that I can attack a straw man. If you are convinced of that there's nothing that I can say, but from my perspective, if you think that I'm attacking a straw man, all that you have to do is explain the difference between what I am attacking and the full strength position of comp. I do use examples which are hyperbole to make my point obvious, but that doesn't mean my points are invalid just because the context becomes more sophisticated. The problem with the disconnection of mathematics from either consciousness (if we use a physical primitive) or physics (if we use a phenomenal primitive) remains no matter what. If computation can create consciousness, then consciousness has to be superfluous to consciousness, and if computation can create superfluous phenomena which are not computational then there is no basis to consider computation any different than any other brute-emergence religious faith. > But not only is genuine understanding not equivalent to acceptance, it is > the only generally accepted route to refuting any argument on reasonable > grounds. When I previously suggested this, you deflected my proposal with > some slightly disturbing remarks about seduction and Kool-Aid (which I > presume to be some delightful US beverage unfortunately unavailable in my > neighbourhood). Oh, and some tendentious psycho-babble about too-clever > people losing touch with common sense, as I recall. > References to Kool-Aid generally have to do with its availability in Guyana, rather than the US. I'm not sure what it is that you think I don't understand. I get accused of not understanding something very important about comp, but when pressed for more details, all that I have ever gotten is that it can only be understood by studying the very principles which I am saying supervene on more primitive sense for their very existence. > > I don't know whether you regard me as a die-hard defender of comp, but I > certainly don't see myself in that light. My own original predilections > tended towards sensory-motive ideas and the so-called computational theory > of mind seemed to me to be obviously wrong-headed, based on arguments not > dissimilar to Searles' classic Chinese Room. The idea of the reversal of > comp-physics simply hadn't occurred to me before I encountered Bruno's > theory and I have spent the last six or seven years, off and on, trying to > follow the ramifications of his argument, which goes well beyond the > mind-body problem in isolation. In fact, the comp-physics reversal places > observation at the axis of the world-problem as a whole, something that is > now curiously reflected in recent developments in cosmological theory. But, > like any theory, it is permanently open to refutation. > I don't understand what is special about the comp-physics reversal. It seems like old news to me. I have no problem with physics falling out of computation, but sensory experience doesn't fall out of either one - not unless you smuggle the possibility of it in before the fact. With the sense primitive, physics and comp reflect each other and overlap each other, and the overlap can be inverted to triangulate sense. Physics gives form, comp gives function, but you need something else to allow forms to be appreciated and functions to be participated in. If forms and functions could exist without that, they certainly would, and the possibility awareness developing would not arise under any plausible circumstance. Turn it around, and the primitive sensory-motive interactions could easily be presented qualitatively as forms and functions. There's no need to complicate it, it is a matter of comparing the most basic possibilities and seeing which one makes the most sense. > I suspect that much of your own opposition to comp (or what you imagine it > entails) is, in effect, political and indeed you yourself have sometimes > suggested as much. > Not at all. Like you, I was not always a supporter of the position that I have now. For most of my life I had reasoned that of course our phenomenal experience was merely the computational product of a brain, and I looked forward to a future in which people will be uploaded, live in simulated worlds, etc. I didn't ask for my mind to be changed, and I have never had any sentimental attachment to being a human or for the specialness of the human species. I don't know what political agenda that you imagine I could have, but to me, that accusation is an excuse to dismiss my position without having to understand it. > This prior commitment is reflected in your manner of deflecting arguments > and questions somewhat in the manner of a lawyer defending his brief, even > when they concern the details of your own theory. But frankly, I still > don't understand why you wouldn't risk a sip of the Kool-Aid just out of > native curiosity. What have you to lose? > If I sound like a lawyer, it's not to evade questions, but to show why they are irrelevant. Most people here are focusing on the details of where I claim the comp argument goes wrong, but that is a total waste of time. It is like looking at an Escher drawing and demanding to know why waterfalls cant flow upside down since they appear to be accurately rendered as doing so in the picture. Over and over it is the same sleight of hand - looking at the Liar's paradox from inside its broken logic instead of seeing the whole statement as for the neither true-nor-false non sequitur that it is. Comp is the identical non sequitur - a hall of mirrors which has no entrance and no exit that invites us to imagine that the absence of ourselves within it means that it is we who are not what we think, rather than the empty hall. Craig > 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
