I thought I have commented this, but my computer claims I did not.
Anyway, i make precisions.
On 13 Jun 2014, at 17:07, David Nyman wrote:
On 13 June 2014 01:27, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
But although we may speculate that consciousness and physical
events both
depend on computation (perhaps only in the sense of being
consistently
described) it doesn't follow that a UD exists or the conscious/
physical
world is an "illusion". People throw around "it's an illusion" so
freely
that it ceases to distinguish rhinoceri from unicorns.
You're right, oftentimes they do. But I wouldn't include Bruno in
"people" here (if you see what I mean). Once one assumes the existence
of the UD (or rather its infinite trace) the hard problem then becomes
one of justifying in detail every aspect of the *appearance* of matter
through its interaction with mind.
So here I would just like to insist that we don't need to assume the
existence of the UD, nor of its traces. Both exist in the (sigma_1)
true arithmetical sentences.
Then, as Bruno is wont to say, the
problem turns out to be (at least) twice as hard as we might have
feared.
Yes. We did have a consciousness problem, and now we have a matter
problem.
As to the admissibility of the UD, for me, in the end, it's
just another theoretical posit. As it happens, it strikes me as
sufficiently motivated, because once computation is fixed as the base,
I don't see how one would justify restricting its scope to certain
computations in particular.
Well, we could have taken only the total computable functions (despite
this is not a computable, nor even semi-computable). That set has no
proper universal dovetailing, but the UD dovetails completely through
it, with the price of dovetailing on the non total computable
functions too, generating the infinite histories.
It also suits my Everything-ist predilection (when I'm wearing that
hat) to see the world-problem formulated in terms of a
self-interpreting Programmatic Library of Babel. But my preferences
are neither here or there, of course. What counts, as always, is how
fruitful a theory turns out to be. So the proof of the comp pudding,
in the end, will lie in its ultimate utility.
If it helps people to conceive one can be rational and non
aristotelian, then it can help us to regain with a non authoritarian
theology, respectful of the person from the universal numbers to the
many gods and who know the one.
But "utility" is a quite relative and indexical notion. Truth is I
think the most intrinsic useful notion, and the search for truth seems
to me useful per se. (I agree that is debatable though, and this did
not mean than all truth we can find can be communicated or justified,
certainly not as such).
By that point, should it
come, I guess most people will have stopped quibbling about the
"existence", or otherwise, of the number 2.
It should be clear then, under such assumptions, that neither a
conscious state, nor any local physical mechanism through which it
is
manifested, can any longer be considered basic;
Aren't conscious thoughts epistemologically basic. They are things
of which
we have unmediated knowledge.
Yes, they are. But on the comp assumption, they're still in a specific
sense derivative. Admittedly this is a subtle distinction that must be
handled with care. For example, I don't think that it wouldn't be
accurate to say that conscious thoughts are "caused" by arithmetic or
computation. It's more that the epistemological consequences turn out
to be a logical entailment of the original ontological assumptions.
And part of that entailment is that there is indeed a "we" that can
have unmediated knowledge of certain truths.
With Theaetetus, knowledge becomes mediated beliefs/representation +
unmediated truth.
Consciousness of the "mediated beliefs" is "mediated" by the
unmediated truth, I think.
Bruno
rather, *both* must
(somehow) be complex artefacts (albeit with distinctive derivations)
of a more "primitive" (in this case, by assumption, computational)
ontology. The relevant distinction, then, is between this set of
relations and the alternative, in which both consciousness and
computation are assumed to be derivative on a more basic (hence
"primitive") formulation of matter.
I can agree with that. It is consistent with my point that
"primitive
matter" is undefined and could be anything if we just called it "ur-
stuff"
instead of "matter".
Good. Perhaps that's all a little clearer, then.
David
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