On 19 May 2014, at 21:33, meekerdb wrote:
On 5/19/2014 11:31 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 8:09 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 5/19/2014 10:24 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 7:06 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 5/19/2014 2:38 AM, LizR wrote:
His main interest is the mind-body problem; and my interest in
that problem is more from an engineering viewpoint. What does it
take to make a conscious machine and what are the advantages or
disadvantages of doing so. Bruno says a machine that can learn
and do induction is conscious, which might be testable - but I
think it would fail. I think that might be necessary for
consciousness, but for a machine to appear conscious it must be
intelligent and it must be able to act so as to convince us that
it's intelligent.
That is fair enough, but it (of course) assumes primary
materialism -
No it doesn't. Why do you think that? I think "assuming primary
materialism" is a largely imaginary fault Bruno accuses his
critics of. Sure physicists study physics and it's a reasonable
working hypothesis; but nobody tries to even define "primary
matter" they just look to see if another layer will be a better
layer of physics or not.
But I think Bruno's criticism is that physics->psychology is
assumed,
Assumed by whom though? Physicists working on physics? Probably.
Philosophers working on consciousness? Some do, some don't.
By scientists in general, I would say. Physicists are the easiest
to forgive, their work seems valid either way. Neuroscientists,
psychologists and social scientists are not so easy to forgive. I
personally have no problem with assuming primary materialism,
provided that you are aware that it is an assumption.
For thousands of years humans looked for consciousness and agency in
everything. Then one day someone said let's just forget about
ulimate truth and God and what's primary and let's just see what we
can say about the shadows...and that's when modern science took off.
Not at all. That would have been "scientific" if they were saying, let
us do a simplifying assumption. It is a brilliant idea to look at the
"shadows", and that is why Plato did not bannish Aristotle (against
Xeusippes opinion, which was the first explicit mathematicalist
(beyond Pythagorus).
But forgetting that the shadow are shadows, and telling us that they
are the real thing, is confusing a simplification with a metaphysical
principles, and this is just wrong in rigorous metaphysics.
Which leads us to philosophers, which are largely irrelevant at the
moment -- because of their own sort-comings and because there is a
strong bias against deep questions in current culture. I think.
For me, the relevance of this sort of issue is personal (another
preoccupation that goes a bit against the zeitgeist, which is
increasingly self-centred but in a superficial fashion). For
example, ISTM that it has strong implications in terms of deriving
a rational code of ethics and in making life choices.
Really? I don't see the implications. Bruno proposes to derive
physics, specifically QM from his theory; not change it. So there
are no new implications there. Deepak Chopra will no doubt take
advantage of it to get rich on some more "thinking will make it so"
woo-woo...when he hears about it. What implications do you refer to?
The implications might be the abandon of materialism, which is good,
as it is a person eliminativist position.
Then the machine's theology provides a vaccine against the
reductionist conception of numbers, machines and a fortiori humans.
The main general implications is a tool for coming back to seriousness
in theology, including the origin of the physical realities.
This announces a super-big paradigm shift where the person notion
plays a key role. It might take time for obvious "cultural" reasons.
Bruno
and that the reversal hypothesis is rejected a priori. So it's not
just a matter of "another layer".
"Rejected" implies they're writing papers refuting something.
That would be great. It would mean that people are aware of the
assumption.
First, there are essentially zero physicists writing papers about
consciousness. Second, there are lots of psychologists writing
papers; do you expect them to be assuming psychology->physics?
What would they do with that assumption?
I agree. I was not attacking physicists. In fact, I mostly admire
them. To give an example in other fields, Manuel Damásio annoys me
a bit.
Antonio Damasio?
Brent
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