On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 7:59 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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. Then it'd be no problem for you guys to clearly spell out what that environment is. > > > 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? > So you are sniping away at step 0 in the context of discussing step 8. That is weird because this is a philosophy discussion at a bar concerning ultimate questions rather than the thread's focus of discussion it would seem. My bad, my mistake, Liz. It seems you were right. PGC -- 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.
