On 22 Sep 2014, at 02:24, LizR wrote:
On 22 September 2014 12:07, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com>
wrote:
On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 1:34 AM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote:
Good point Brent and one on which I am also equivocal, which is why
I have been keen to tease out whether people are talking about
consciousness or the contents of consciousness, and to try to work
out whether there is, in fact, any difference. If there isn't,
consciousness becomes something like elan vital, a supposed magic
extra that isn't in fact necessary in explanatory terms - all that
exists are "bundles of sensations" (or however Hume phrased it).
But in materialism we still have a magic extra: matter itself. In
the MUH math is the magic extra. I don't know of any theory that
gets rid of all "magic" assumptions.
My point was that on this theory, which is basically eliminativism,
consciousness doesn't actually exist, in the same way as there was
no "special ingredient" needed to animate living matter, to
distinguish it from dead matter, it turned out to be "merely" a
question of how the constituents were organised. Similarly there may
be no special ingredient needed to turn bundles of sensations into
consciousness.
I agree that materialism has magic matter, however that isn't in
itself an argument against an eliminativist explanation of
consciousness. Otherwise it could be used as an argument for elan
vital, or souls, or anything else. It just means the chain of
explanation doesn't appear to end with matter.
However, I don't agree that the MUH necessarily has magic maths,
it's at least possible that maths is a logical necessity.
Alas, that is not the case. It is the failure of logicism. Hilbert
programs has been implemented by Russell and Whitehead, without
success as it should be by Gödel's theorem which, together with model
theory explains why mathematics can't be derived from logic alone.
Nor can you derive the axiom of infinity and analysis from arithmetic.
But you can derive in arithmetic that numbers needs analytical tools
to understand themselves, and that the axiom of infinity will be very
handy for them. (Even with computationalism).
Russell and Whitehead thought we can derive all mathematics from logic.
Now, we know that even for arithmetic, we need a non effective
infinity of effective theories to circumscribe it.
We know today that, unless we got divine and usable ability, we can
only scratch the arithmetical reality. It has become an unknown,
perhaps richer than the observable reality.
Since it's the only thing we know of that couldn't be otherwise
(except in very abstruse ways, at least) it is at least a candidate
for being fundamental, i.e. the last link in the chain of explanation.
OK, for logic + arithmetic, but not for logic alone, or you are using
a non standard logic, which I guess will be a mathematics in disguise.
That is why we have those theories, like RA, PA, ZF. We can't derive
their axioms from simpler.
Bruno
In reply to John's comment, we don't know that sure that certain
types of brain activity cause consciousness, that's a (very
reasonable) hypothesis based on the fact the two appear to be always
correlated.
We don't even know if they are strongly correlated, because we don't
know what else is conscious. Is an insect swarm conscious? Is your
computer? Are galaxies? The problem is that we might be confusing
empathy for consciousness. It is clear that the more an organism is
similar to us the more empathy we feel (human > monkey > cat >
insect > bacteria, ...).
Right. Hence my use of "appear to be" above. It's very reasonable to
assume that consciousness requires a fairly complex central nervous
system, which somehow generates it - this theory isn't contradicted
by any evidence I know of, except perhaps for NDEs, and has quite a
lot of (apparent) explanatory power. That doesn't make it true, of
course.
Even during the NDE there is some physical activity in the brain,
according to some researcher, but the activity is quite low and quite
different than the usual/ If I find the video showing the EEG I will
send a link. I am not sure the NDE would contradict computationalism,
but some reports (where people seems to be aware of the environment)
would suggest lower substitution than the common neuronal one.
Bruno
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