On 19 January 2015 at 07:10, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > On Monday, January 19, 2015, David Nyman <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On 18 January 2015 at 23:28, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >>> >>> >>> On Monday, January 19, 2015, David Nyman <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>>> On 18 January 2015 at 14:42, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> >>>> wrote: >>>> >>>> What's wrong with "merely adventitious parallelism, on the lines of >>>>> epiphenomenalism"? If it seems to leave the mystery untouched, that is >>>>> because there is no logically possible solution to the hard problem of >>>>> consciousness. >>>>> >>>> >>>> Before we get into that, do you agree that formulations such as >>>> Smolin's are just missing the reference problem? I'm not at all sure that >>>> he means to say that the 'internal' properties amount to an epiphenomenon >>>> (although I find it a little difficult to be sure exactly what he means to >>>> say). That is, I don't understand him to mean that all *references* to >>>> sensations are the consequence of externally-observable properties of >>>> matter, but additional, 'internal' properties fortuitously happen to >>>> correspond to those references, despite there being no lawful interaction >>>> involving both sets of properties. >>>> >>> >>> If the internal properties supervene on the observable properties, isn't >>> this a kind of lawful interaction? >>> >> >> Well, it would hardly be *inter* action because, given external causal >> closure, internal properties could have no possible role in the observable >> causal account. That makes the hypothesis of such properties both ad hoc >> (i.e. merely tacked-on in the face of troublesome a posteriori facts) and >> gratuitously lacking in parsimony (since the hypothesised properties can >> have no other explanatory role). >> > > I agree that the term "internal properties" is somewhat confusing. If > these properties are the qualia, then it's unnecessary to introduce a new > term, and if they give rise to the qualia, then they are ad hoc. Better to > just say the qualia supervene on the observable properties. I'm not sure > what Smolin meant exactly. > > After all, he wants to say that more complex aspects of mind (i.e. than >>>> 'pure' qualia) may be due to a 'combination' of the two types of property >>>> (perhaps something about the problem of reference has struck him here). But >>>> how can there plausibly be any such combining if the two sets of properties >>>> never interact? And how can we suppose them to interact when the external >>>> relations on their own give every evidence, both in theory and in practice, >>>> of being causally closed? >>>> >>> >>> I guess he means that when we do things there is both the observable >>> behaviour and the experience. The experience can still be unobservable >>> (except to the experiencer) but intimately associated with the observable >>> in a supervenient relationship. >>> >>> What if zombies could be shown to be logically impossible? That would >>> then mean that experiences were necessarily associated with certain >>> processes. One could complain that this was unsatisfactory, but that would >>> be like complaining that it was unsatisfactory that sqrt(2) was not >>> rational. >>> >> >> That's a poor example, given that it is obviously and analytically true >> as soon as you comprehend the meaning of "sqrt(2)" and "not rational". In >> other words, in such cases the right understanding of the terms warrants >> the conclusion as self-evident. The association of particular physical >> processes with conscious experiences isn't analytically obvious or >> necessary in any equivalent sense. Rather, if true, it would merely be a >> contingent a posteriori fact. >> > > But if zombies were *logically* impossible, as I believe Dennett for > example claims, then it would be analytically true, not a contingent fact. > Sure, and if wishes were horses, beggars would ride :-) > > >> In point of contrast, a key virtue of the comp hypothesis is that it >> associates mechanism (albeit digital mechanism) with consciousness >> (modelled as truth) in just this analytic or constitutive way. Further, the >> mode of association of digital mechanism with both consciousness and >> matter, far from being ad hoc, is given a priori in the base assumptions. I >> cite this not as a warrant for the specific correctness of the hypothesis, >> but rather as an example of a mode of explanation that might tend towards a >> *resolution* of the problem I posed, as opposed to a dismissal or >> trivialisation of it. >> > > I agree to an extent, but someone could still invoke a version of the Hard > Problem by asking why there should be any consciousness at all rather than > just dumb arithmetic. > There's an effective riposte to this, I believe, but it might be a bit subtle, so I ask you to bear with me. I think, in the first place, that it's beside the point to get hung up on the 'concreteness' or otherwise of arithmetic. Bruno's intent is rather to enquire into the possibility that every relation necessary to explain both observers and what is observed can be reduced to those of basic arithmetic or its equivalent. Such an admittedly remarkable possibility is itself suggested in the first place by the computational theory of mind and the universality of the digital machine. Further axioms relating to the emulation (or embedding) of computation in arithmetic and that of various modal logics in computation are also included at the outset, but remain to be justified by their effectiveness. This has important consequences, as we shall see. The question then is whether these assumptions lead in the right direction. According to Bruno (and I don't claim to follow him on all the detail of this) they lead in the direction of self-referential computations that simultaneously emulate or embody two distinct logical modalities (1-person and 3-person). The intersection of these distinct but mutually entangled logics presents novel possibilities of resolving previously intractable mutual reference issues since mind and body need no longer be seen as categorically orthogonal. That said, as you point out, it might still seem open to a doubter to say so what. So we have computations whose complexities purportedly embody 3-personal entities, complete with the detailed appearance of their physical environments. So these computations may simultaneously entail the putatively 1-personal points of view of such entities. These two logics may even be related in an analytic or logically necessary way. All this may be remarkably suggestive but are we forced to accept that actual conscious experience arises as a necessary consequence of all this merely arithmetical *construction*? This is where the subtlety comes into play. Remember that consciousness is here modelled as *truth*. When you really come to think about it, truth is *the* defining characteristic of consciousness. As Descartes realised (though his insight is often misconstrued) it can make no sense to doubt the truth of doubt itself. When we apply this to the mutual reference problem something truly remarkable occurs. Take the question of Smolin's claiming to 'see red'. This claim is now seen as occurring at the intersection of two logics: one 'observable', the other 'private'. However, although this entanglement may explain their co-variance and mutual reference, neither of these logics fully captures the *truth* of the claim, or if you prefer, what it would actually be *like* if the expressed belief were true. Each of them is still, as it were, a mere epistemological possibility, abstractly lurking somewhere in the infinitely extended ontology of arithmetic. But if these logics can't definitively *capture* the truth of the claims they emulate, they do point to where it might be found. It comes down to this: Is Smolin, the putative experiencer of the truth of the claim to 'see red', being *truthful*? Given the hypothesised mutual consistency of the entangled logics, this is analytically certain. Smolin is incapable of being other than truthful in this regard; ergo he does in fact 'see red'. We can, of course, deny that there is any such analytic compulsion to truth. But this is self-defeating, in exactly Descartes' sense. If there is no truth of the matter, then there is equally no red, no Smolin, no belief, no logic. The 'epistemological' assumptions have been ineffective and must be discarded. The only remainder is arithmetic itself, since that is the ontology we assumed at the outset. In other words, it is ultimately only the level of truth that validates, or redeems, the epistemological assumptions; otherwise they remain mere 'free-floating' abstractions, conceptually disconnected from a base ontology that has no knowledge or need of them. If we can accept consciousness as the model (in the mathematicians sense) of such a truth level, we can justify our attempt to abstract, epistemologically, a multiverse of dreaming machines complete with their hallucinated physical environments. If we insist on denying this, however, the entire epistemological enterprise just collapses back into the heap of its base ontological components. David > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > > -- > 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. > -- 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.
