On 11 May 2014, at 21:13, meekerdb wrote:
On 5/11/2014 12:54 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Yes, the rest follows, but the negation of the rest follows too,
unless, like Peter Jones, you add a criterion of primitive physical
existence to what is needed for consciousness. But then the movie
graph can show that they attribute a magical role to that primitive
matter. The idea, for them, is that there is a primitive matter,
and that "the primitive character" is not Turing emulable.
But if the entangled and holistic character of the world requires
that the Turing emulation extend to essentially all of it then
"primitive matter" just means "exists in the emulation".
Not really. "primitive matter" (the quantum, plausibly) emerges from
the fact that below the substitution level we are confronted with
infinitely many machines. From inside it is not "exists in the
emulation", it is "exists in the relatively more numerous" way.
Turing *emulation* is only meaningful in the context of emulating
one part relative to another part that is not emulated, i.e. is
"real".
If you say so. We can still listen to the machine, and compare with
nature.
That's why I think the MGA doesn't prove what you think it does. It
is still the case that something playing the role of "primitive
matter - per Peter Jones" is necessary in every world, and that role
is to pick out what exists from what doesn't.
That looks like a fairy tale to me. The only role of such conception
of matter seems to be the prevention of digging deeper ... and there
is the risk of the elimination of the person. In a sense you give a
name to God, you say it that one u, it wins the competition by
definition, because we see it.
As a rationalist I am not satisfied by such an explanation, if you
keep in mind that my interests are on the mind-body problem.
The MGA shows that such magical matter has "magical properties" non
Turing emulable, to be able to do what they do, without necessitating
the lowering of the level.
But the point is that it is testable, and it can fail where another
notion of computationalism might succeed, like computability-in-a-ring
(Blum, Shub, Smale), or with diverse sorts of Oracle.
To define "exists" by "exists physically" seems to beg the question to
me, and also is not very clear, given that the logic of QM is not
boolean, and many want to describe it as a "knowledge" type of logic
(notably by those wanting to avoid the Everett "explosion of
realities").
Bruno
Brent
Still, they say "yes" to the doctor, but only because their
artificial brain will be made of primitive matter. Unlike Craig,
they don't ask for special matter like carbon, but they do ask for
some primitive matter. They might ask for some God instead, of
course. It is almost a use of "matter" as a god for creating a gap
in the explanation, and if primitive matter existed, they can make
that logical point. We cannot prove them logically wrong, but with
the MGA we can shows them to be close to non-sense, especially if
you can distinguish the evidence of the reality of matter with
(impossible) evidence for primitive matter.
--
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/d/optout.
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/d/optout.
