On 31 Jul 2014, at 00:08, LizR wrote:
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.
In some context, I would pass this, but at some point, we have to be
very cautious. Comp does not explain per se anything. Comp is just the
statement that if we are emulated at a low level enough, we would not
see the difference, and in particular, would saty conscious. Then we
shows that this leads to making matter completely miraculous and not
intelligible, except in term of a measure on computations problem.
Then it happens that by incompleteness we learn a bit of the subtle
relation between machine and truth, we get a partial solytion of the
hard problem of consciousness, and some clues why matter does not
disappear, from inside, even if not "really" existing in the outer big
pictiure.
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).
QM qubits uses some continua, like in a I 0 > + b I 1 >, with a and b
complex numbers, and comp confront the machine with a continua, if
only through the UD implementation of WM type of self-duplication. The
FPI confronts the soul with many infinities too. If "I" am a machine,
neither my soul, nor god, are machines.
Is that right so far?
If you grasp that comp leads to interesting probable and questions,
you grasp the main thing.
To grasp that the machine already grasp a part of this, and provide
answers, needs a bit more involvement in computer science.
A bit of combinators? Smullyan wrote a very nice recreative book on
them: "How to mock a mocking bird?"
Bruno
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?
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