On 31 July 2014 00:36, David Nyman <[email protected]> wrote: > On 30 July 2014 09:03, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote: > > I think (maybe pace David) that materialism explains well consciousness, >> by using comp. The problem is that such explanation makes *matter* >> incomprehensible. > > > Well I must confess I'm not entirely pacified yet. Surely the whole point > is that if the second sentence is true it contradicts the first! If the > assumption that materialism can use comp to explain consciousness in fact > leads to the absurd conclusion you describe, then materialism *cannot* use > comp to explain consciousness, well or otherwise. >
Ah, yes, although I tend to get confused about this I think (when I think) that the bottom lines are ... Comp assumes that consciousness can be explained at some level as a digital computation. This would at least seem to accord with quantum mechanics, which hints that things go awry when we try to construct the world from continua and uncountable infinities, as relativity suggests. Based on that assumption, it then purports to show that materialism is incapable of providing the relevant substrate to support those computations, and that the only available source for these is in arithmetic, assumed to exist independently of us, at least in a simple form (since QM indicates there are no continua etc in the real world, I guess "arithmetical realism" isn't obliged to include real numbers). Is that right so far? PS One problem I have with uncountable infinity not being a feature of the world is that it appears to scupper eternal inflation, and even universes expanding exponentially. Does anyone have any comments on that? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
