On 23 February 2014 19:55, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Sunday, February 23, 2014 10:35:33 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: > >> On 23 February 2014 14:55, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> This might be a more concise way of making my argument: >>> >>> It is my claim that CTM has overlooked the necessity to describe the >>> method, mechanism, or arithmetic principle by which computations are >>> encountered. >>> >>> My hypothesis, drawn from both direct human experience as well as >>> experience with technological devices, is that "everything which is counted >>> must first be encountered". Extending this dictum, I propose that >>> >>> 1. There is nothing at all which cannot be reduced to an encounter, and >>> 2. That the nature of encounters can be described as aesthetic >>> re-acquaintance, nested sensory-motive participation, or simply sense. >>> 3. In consideration of 1, sense is understood in all cases to be >>> pre-mechanical, pre-arithmetic, and inescapably fundamental. >>> >>> My challenge then, is for CTM to provide a functional account of how >>> numbers encounter each other, and how they came to be separated from the >>> whole of arithmetic truth in the first place. We know that an actual >>> machine must encounter data through physical input to a hardware substrate, >>> but how does an ideal machine encounter data? How does it insulate itself >>> from data which is not relevant to the machine? >>> >>> Failing a satisfactory explanation of the fundamental mechanism behind >>> computation, I conclude that: >>> >>> 4. The logic which compels us to seek a computational or mechanical >>> theory of mind is rooted in an expectation of functional necessity. >>> 5. This logic is directly contradicted by the absence of critical >>> inquiry to the mechanisms which provide arithmetic function. >>> 6. CTM should be understood to be compromised by petito principii >>> fallacy, as it begs its own question by feigning to explain macro level >>> mental phenomena through brute inflation of its own micro level mental >>> phenomena which is overlooked entirely within CTM. >>> 7. In consideration of 1-6, it must be seen that CTM is invalid, and >>> should possibly be replaced by an approach which addresses the fallacy >>> directly. >>> 8. PIP (Primordial Identity Pansensitivity) offers a trans-theoretical >>> explanation in which the capacity for sense encounters is the sole axiom. >>> 9. CTM can be rehabilitated, and all of its mathematical science can be >>> redeemed by translating into PIP terms, which amounts to reversing the >>> foundations of number theory so that they are sense-subordinate. >>> 10. This effectively renders CTM a theory of mind-like simulation, >>> rather than macro level minds, however, mind-simulation proceeds from PIP >>> as a perfectly viable cosmological inquiry, albeit from an impersonal, >>> theoretical platform of sense. >>> >> >> I'm beginning to get the impression in points 9 and 10 that you are >> wavering a little in your blanket rejection of CTM. >> > > No, I've always held that the contents of CTM are still redeemable if we > turn them inside out. > > >> My contention is that CTM already "rehabilitates" and "redeems" its >> mathematical science in the sense you suggest as a consequence of its >> explicit reliance on the invariance of consciousness to some assumed level >> of functional substitutability. >> > > That's not the sense that I suggest. I'm claiming that CTM can only be > rehabilitated by recognizing that function can never be a substitute for > consciousness, and that in fact all functions supervene on more primitive > levels of sensitivity. > > >> This already entails that CTM - as must be true of any theory that >> doesn't effectively junk the whole notion as supernumerary - incorporates >> consciousness into its schema as a transcendentally original assumption *at >> the outset*. Hence it eludes the jaws of petito principii by seeking not to >> *explain* but to *exploit* this assumption, at the appropriately justified >> level of explanation. >> > > Then it is not a theory of mind, it is a theory of mental elaboration - > which I am not opposed to, as long as mental elaboration is not conflated > with additional capacities of sensation. We can, for instance, look through > a camera which will transduce infra-red radiation to a visible color > (usually phosphor green or black-body-like spectrum). CTM could be used, > IMO, to develop this kind of transduced extension of sense, but it cannot > be used to provide additional visual sense (like being able to actually see > infra-red as a color). Regardless of how intelligent the behavior of the > program seems, the actual depth of consciousness will never increase beyond > the specifications of the technology used to implement it. > Since you yourself brought the example of Galileo to mind, I think it fair to point out that your examples above are faintly reminiscent of the position of the Catholic hierarchy that as a natural philosopher he was of course free to speculate on heliocentrism as a merely hypothetical phenomenon but not a physically real one. IOW they were willing to concede that it could be useful instrumentally in making predictions etc. but that it would never be acceptable as a substitute for canonical (in this case, literally) "reality". But what if that mental elaboration were developed into such an effective instrumental and explanatory tool that its account of the relation between brain and mind, or between observer and observed, became indispensable to our understanding of ourselves? Suppose, for example, that a prosthesis for perceiving infra-red directly as a colour were capable of being interfaced with our visual cortex on the general principles of the wiki link I recently posted. Suppose, even, that non-human entities elaborated along the lines you suggest above eventually became capable of informing us directly what it was like to be them. What then? 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