On 17 Feb 2014, at 14:13, David Nyman wrote:
On 16 February 2014 16:17, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote:
The whole schema - "physics" included - would then have to be
considered an epiphenomenon of some inaccessible ur-physics.
Exactly.
I'm not sure that it's exactly a contradiction just because of
that, though, as in practice any putative ontological base -
numbers included - must be inaccessible in this sense, except to
theory.
It illustrates, perhaps better than step 8, the difficulty of
wanting a primitive matter having a primitive ontological reality
capable of singularizing a conscious person capable to refer to it.
I have to think more about this.
I must say that it is this form of argument that most forcefully
persuades me that the reversal of comp-physics is necessary if CTM
is to be salvageable.
Interesting.
ISTM that MGA or Maudlin-style arguments tend to lead to somewhat ad
hoc quibbling over the role of counterfactuals or the like.
Strictly speaking MGA avoids the counterfactuals, but Maudlin does.
And as quantum logic can be seen as a sort of logic of conditionals,
or even counterfactuals, I am not sure if that confrontation with the
counterfactuals is not interesting per se.
There might be some sense in the quibble.
Here, we see that the very notion of "epiphenomenon" is related to a
notion of causality, with his typical one way (matter ->
consciousness) causality.
But this asks for a notion of causality (which usually rise up the
notion of counterfactuals).
With comp (with the consequences) we can derive the main notion of
causality for the indexical type of points of view "[]" (when A -> B
is a law: in all worlds where A is true, B is true: that is [](A -> B).
But the comp account of consciousness - or indeed any non-
eliminativist position - strongly entails that thought can refer
only to epiphenomenal matter (to continue with that way of speaking).
I guess that is the major attraction for idealist theories. It is
easier to explain the illusion of matter to a conscious being than to
explain the illusion of consciousness (a quasi contradiction) to a
piece of matter.
The leap from epiphenomenal to primitive matter then seems
inadequately motivated, to say the least.
OK. It is last God-of-the-gap. But it has a strong natural appeal,
making the "correct" theory necessarily counterintuitive.
The most typical explicit motivation is by appeal to evolutionary
arguments - e.g. that we have evolved more-or-less accurate internal
models to aid in our survival in the "real" external world of
physics. But this appeal conceals a blatant begging of the question:
yes, it must *appear* so, but it is precisely these appearances that
we should seek to explain on independent grounds, not by assuming
what is to be explained.
I agree.
I wonder if you have had any further thoughts?
I have to say that the notion of epiphenomenon plunges me in an abyss
of perplexity. The notion of causalities and responsibilities are
modal "realities", notably due to the nuances between true,
justifiable, observable, knowable, etc.
The natural picture we get assuming computationalism is conceptually
transparent. We start from the arithmetical truth, which most people
can understand the meaning of the sentences (before deciding its truth
if ever). Then it is part of arithmetical truth that "Turing
(universal) machines" exists and are involved in an intricate web of
dreams, in which the self-referential constraints of relative self-
correctness brought a non trivial invariant, sort of universal person.
With comp it can only be a sort of baby, as any piece of life would
particularizes it already.
I often present the three primary hypostases in the order
1) p that is arithmetical truth
2) []p (beweisbar(p)) the intelligible
3) []p & p (the soul, the first person, the knower (Theaetetus))
But the more logical order from inside is that we start from p, and
keep p along with the logical birth of the "man" ([]p).
So "man" is born with "[]p & p", and it is only "civilisation/honest-
communication" that taught him to separate
"[]p" from "[]p & p". Epiphenomenalism might be related to our
necessarily inability to see that, or know when, they are equivalent.
A secret well kept by G* minus G, for the consistent, and a fortiori,
the correct machines.
I can speculate that the left brain is more specialized in []p and the
right brain is more specialized in []p & p. The soul is lives at the
intersection of belief and truth.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
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.
