On 17 January 2015 at 23:39, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: I agree, with such a constraining definition of "internal" it would seem > that no interaction with the world or other people is possible. It would > only be consistent with a "brain in a vat, dreaming the world".
I don't see what difference that stipulation would make, frankly. On Smolin's assumptions a brain, whether in a vat or not, must subject to the same causally-closed 'external' physical constraints; clearly then its dreaming must be equivalently constrained. Hence, as before, if we are to assume that the brain additionally has access to qualia because of some internal property of its constituent matter, the problem remains. How is the dreaming (understood entirely externally) supposed to be related to the qualia (understood internally)? > But that's pretty close to Bruno's idea of a UD world. The UD computes > (or simulates) the dreaming and the dreamer infers the physical world > (including the existence of others) and there need only be one computed > "dreamer" to dream all the different dreams having different points of view. But the crucial difference in this instance, as I understand it, is that the *same* underlying computational structures (i.e. a common 'neutral' ontology) are capable of being understood in terms of two distinct logics or epistemologies: 1-personal and 3-personal. Thus qualia can appear at the level of constitutive or analytic truth in the 1-personal view, while the parallel references to such truths appear at the level of 'belief' in the 3-personal view. Thus the reference problem can (at least in principle) be resolved at the intersection of two different logics derivative on the same underlying mechanism. The 'external-internal' dichotomy is resolved because here matter is not a fundamental ontological assumption but rather a complex appearance, epistemologically derivative on a simpler ontology. As such, it is entirely 'externalised'. Hence it cannot possess (nor is there any further need to appeal to) any hidden or intrinsic properties. 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 [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.
