On 6/11/2014 5:53 PM, LizR wrote:
On 12 June 2014 12:42, meekerdb <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:On 6/11/2014 5:31 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:On Thu, Jun 12, 2014 at 1:27 AM, meekerdb <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: On 6/11/2014 2:48 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:It's just a modal function. I don't see that it "knows" anything. ISTM you are leaping the 3p/1p gap here in a way you consider illegitimate for physical theories. If beings for argument's sake made of some matter in physical theories can know via exploring relations and patterns scientifically in 3p: why would the appropriate universal machines/numbers in comp ontology not be able to do the same?No reason. But the same question goes both ways. Indeed, but there might be a slight advantage for "just a function" to relate, because that's what it does via agreed upon terms. Whereas with an entity arising out of matter subject to quantum logic, it's weird that it would relate at all. Even weirder still that such entity will intuitively tend to reason classically. PGCIf the quantum system can emulate a Turing machine, then it's no weirder for it to be conscious than an UD. Which is comp, isn't it? So what's wrong with Bruno's argument?
I wouldn't go so far as to way it's "wrong", but I don't find it as conclusive as he does. First, I think it's a category confusion to say that "Ex(x+1 = 3)" proves that 2 exists. The truth of mathematical existence statements just implies that the axioms lead to the proof that a certain predicate can be satisfied. That's not the same "exist" as "Liz exists". So there is no proof that the UD exists or even that arbitrarily large numbers exist in the sense that you exist.
Second, he implies that step 8 proves that the physical is dispensable; but when challenged on the point he grants that is likely that human-like consciousness can only exist within a physical environment. So he hasn't proven that the physical is dispensable. He qualifies this by saying the physical may not be dispensable, but it isn't "the primitive physical". I think "the primitive physical" is a strawman. It's ill defined and I don't know of anyone who asserts it except as a working heuristic. Even the physicists he accuses of believing in primitive matter, think that matter may be just mathematical relations (c.f. Max Tegmark, John Wheeler) and others think it is just a certain way to organize qualia or knowledge (c.f. Bertrand Russell, Chris Fuchs). Of course most physicists think the mind/body problem is too ill defined a problem to tackle right now.
Instead he tries to identify consciousness as just a relation between operators in modal logic or numbers in arithmetic. The similarity of relations is suggestive, but I don't see that it proves anything; or more accurately that it proves too much. It proves that consciousness is realized by very stupid, even trivial, programs. Which to me seems like changing the meaning of "consciousness". But as I say this isn't necessarily /wrong/ - it might be right is the sense that it can be filled out and made into a theory with some predictive power and consilience.
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