On 8/14/2014 1:41 AM, Russell Standish wrote:
On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 10:25:40AM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I agree with you in general, but I can agree a little bit with Liz
too, as I find Brent slightly sneaky on this issue, but all in all
Brent is rather polite and seems sincere. Yet his critics (of step
8) is not that clear. But then that is why we discuss. Anyone seeing
Brent's point can help to make it clearer.
His point is that he doesn't believe input free computations can be
conscious - there must always be some referrent to the environment
(which is noisy, counterfactual, etc).
Right.
If so, it prevents the MGA, and
Maudlin's argument, from working.
I guess for Brent that even dream states still have some referrent to
the environment, even if it be some sort of random synaptic noise.
I think it's pretty obvious that dreams have external referents. Don't your dreams have
people and places and objects in them that you recognize as such?
I think the sharper question is whether there are referents when you think of numbers,
when you do number theory proofs - essentially it's the question of Platonism. Does
arithmetic and Turing machine 'exist' apart from brains that think about them? Does
putting "..." really justify inferences about infinite processes? Or on a more
philosophical level, if everything exists does "exists" have any meaning?
Brent
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