On 19 October 2014 17:48, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote: > > On 19 Oct 2014, at 15:26, David Nyman wrote: > > On 19 October 2014 02:10, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Whether I find it satisfactory or not is a different question. The point I >> was making is that people who find it satisfactory express this belief >> idea by claiming that consciousness does not exist. >> > > Assuming that you don't, in fact, find it satisfactory, I'd be interested > in your reasons. Given the assumption of the exhaustive adequacy of > physical reduction, Graziano would appear to be quite correct in his > assessment that the idea of any "left over" phenomenon, after correlation > of conscious states with the relevant physical processes, is "physically > incoherent". On the same assumptions, we clearly cannot cite any > *judgement* to the contrary as evidence of any such supernumerary > phenomenon, as any such judgement must likewise be nomologically entailed > by physical law. If so, what reason can you cite for believing that there > is any such thing? > > Very good question, of course: the hard question. > > Note that up to some point, we can "eliminate consciousness" to, in > appearance. >
Yes, because what is empirically available is restricted (by definition) to the physics of appearance. The default assumption, as Graziano succinctly notes, is that the details of this apparent physical mechanism (at least in some ideal form) exhaust both the ontological and the epistemological catalogues. Consequently, in this sense, appeals to the putative existence of anything over and above such an exhaustive account must be "physically incoherent". If one takes a sufficiently hard line (and I do!) it becomes apparent that this mode of explanation gobbles up competitors like some inexorable flesh-eating microbe. Anything "meta-physical" (such as "computation", under these assumptions) merely degenerates, under observation, into one or another physical approximation. > Take the UDA: the first person, there (unlike AUDA) admit a pure third > person description: the content of the diary that the person takes with her > in the multiplication (in arithmetic or in the QM universal matrix, > whatever). > > The magic is described in the diaries, the person get information (in > shannon sense) from apparently nowhere (they don't feel the split). > > To share that information with other, we need the first person plural, and > the hope that the computations which makes us interact are among the > winning one. That might already suggest universal group like the unitary > group. > > But up to now, this picture does not yet address the hard question, > despite it explains the content of the personal diaries. > > What will specifically address that question is the Theatetus idea. By > definition, the owner of the diary has the content of the diary as > experience, making them true at that self-observation level: > So there is, as it were, a primary "level of truth" - that of self-observation itself - that is given *by definition*? I mean a level that is, in itself, distinct from whatever relative truths may be implied by the content, or what-is-observed. > it guatantie the link between provability and truth, > Guarantee in what sense? > but by incompleteness, you have to make explicit in the definition of the > "knowability" even for the correct prover/believer (which is an amazing > consequence of Gödel Löb theorems). This entails the splitting between the > truth accessible to the machine from its perspective, and its ability to > see that too, > Do you mean: to see that the accessible truth is restricted to its (the machine's) particular perspective? > which is the case for machines believing in some induction axioms. > What axioms in particular? > That splitting entails also the very existence of all the nuances between > the (8) points of view. The ideally correct universal machine is born in > arithmetic with already psychological and theological internal conflicts. > Can you make a distinction here between what you consider psychological, and what theological? > But the more it introspects, the more it get the picture of the > abyssalness of its ignorance, making it naturally humble in front of the > possible truth, and humble in front of the bridges between truth, belief, > observation, sensations, and knowledge. > Its ignorance can hardly be more abysmal than my own! > UDA pers se address only the hard matter appearance problem, I think from > some of your post you understood that AUDA does address the hard question, > and gives perhaps the most we can hope for when assuming computation: the > theory of consciousness and person is similar as the theory of god: it is a > negative theory: you are not this, nor that, etc. > Yes, I have some sense of how the "something over and above" can be intelligibly situated in terms of AUDA, although I am painfully aware of the limitations in my grasp of the detail. Paradoxically (or perhaps not so much) what has helped me is sticking to a hard line on physicalist, or (which is the same) physical-computationalist, modes of explanation, because eventually it becomes so apparent that "something over and above" is made incoherent by the limiting assumptions of these schemas. For this reason, I find honest physicalists like Graziano, or Churchland more helpful than those who fudge the issues and hence make the contradictions harder to expose. David > Bruno > > Bruno > > > > > David > > -- > 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > > > -- > 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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