On 24 Jun 2014, at 07:04, meekerdb wrote:
On 6/22/2014 11:44 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 20 Jun 2014, at 01:20, Russell Standish wrote:
On Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 07:53:55PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
And why do you say that anybody (whether zombie or not) can
*prove*
the existence of primitive matter? We don't know that for a fact.
I played the devil advocate. I put my foot in Peter Jones' food,
and
imagine he could convince us of the existence of primitive matter,
and from that I get a contradiction.
In the case such a "valid" proof exist, it is just trivial to
make a
mechanical procedure to find it, that's why I said any zombie can
find it. Validity is a recursive/decidable/total-computable/sigma_0
notion, unlike provability, which is sigma_1 (partial-computable,
semi-decidable), and consistency, which is pi_1 (like Riemann
Hypothesis).
Ah, yes I see that now. I guess I was implicitly assuming that
such a
proof didn't necessarily exist. Non-existence of the proof does not
entail that primitive matter doesn't exist.
But I understand you've now shown that such a proof cannot exist. I
wasn't party to your conversations with Peter Jones (I probably
skipped
over them at the time when they got interminably long), so cannot
comment how that result fits in with that discussion. But I don't
see
how you parlay this into a proof of step 8.
It's nice that the misunderstanding is cleared up.
I have to think more.
If primitive matter existed, and if it has a role for
consciousness, or for consciousness instantiation, step 8, and the
argument above, makes that role very mysterious, so much that it is
not clear why we could still say yes to the doctor in virtue of
correct digital rendering.
You can still say yes to the doctor because he is going to use
matter to make your brain prosthesis.
Sure, but the step 8 shows that in such a case consciousness cannot
rely on comp, but on some magical, non Turing emulable, and non FPI
recoverable properties of matter. But that amount to say that comp is
false, so why not test this, as such a test is offered by the
reasoning. So, asking for primitive matter to refute the reasoning is
making such notion of matter equivalent with "don't ask". That is the
point. You could use holly matter instead of primitive matter with the
same effect. Materialist are doing the same error than the creationist
here.
Keep in mind that "primitive matter" is a metaphysical notion, and
nobody has ever try to define it, and of course nobody has ever seen
it, or even define it. Actually UDA is the first to do that: provide a
way to test it (assuming we are not dreaming).
Bruno
Brent
Then that primitive matter should be detectible by the comp
argument, so the argument for reifying "primitive matter" is made
into an argument of not searching to test its existence, which is
unscientific.
But I have to clarify the relation between both arguments. No doubt.
Best,
Bruno
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