On 7/10/2014 1:21 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2014-07-10 21:56 GMT+02:00 meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>>: On 7/10/2014 12:19 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:2014-07-10 20:39 GMT+02:00 meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>>: On 7/10/2014 4:08 AM, David Nyman wrote:In short, under physicalism, a 'computation' *just is* a particular sequence of physical states. Indeed what else could it be? The states, so to speak, come first and hence the notion that those states 'implement a computation' is always an a posteriori attribution that neither need, nor can, bring anything further to the party.I agree with all you wrote. But as Bruno says it's a reductio. Given that it's absurd, the question is what makes it absurd. I think it's the assumption that the sequence of physical states constitutes a computation *independent* of any reference to a world. When you talk about your PC and accidental compensation for a physical fault, the concept of 'compensation' already assumes a correct operation - but what makes an operation correct?...it's relation to you and the rest of the world. A computation, a sequence of states simpliciter, could be a computation of anything or of nothing. So the intuition that the computation still exists without the physical instantiation But that's how we know a given physical instantiation is said to compute this or that, it's because it has a one/one mapping to the abstract computation... the computation is what relates the input to the output... if we cannot relate a physical instantiation to the abstract algorithm, in what way could we say it computes anything ?That's my point, we need the physical (a world) to impute meaning to the computational processNo we need computation to relate a physical instantiation to it (that's how we can say two != computers compute the same thing, it's because they relate to the same computation),
But that's not true. I have a differential equation integrator in my computer and it could be going through exactly the same states in two different instances; one computing heat transfer in a disc brake and other computing diffusion of pollutant in a pond. So there is not a one-one mapping either way.
that couldn't work the other way around... meaning is related to us, there is no meaning without consciousness, it seems to me nonsense to argue otherwise, but please add arguments to that instead of asserting it. Meaning is a consciousness construct.
That's just an assertion. Can you define consciousness without assuming "meaning", consciousness that it not consciousness *of* something?
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