I see a long conversation. I will put my grain of salt here and there,
but I think people does not take computationalism and its consequence
seriously enough.
On 03 Feb 2015, at 23:55, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 4 February 2015 at 09:26, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 2:36 PM, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com
>
wrote:
On Wednesday, February 4, 2015, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com>
wrote:
I agree with John. If consciousness had no third-person observable
effects, it would be an epiphenomenon. And then there is no way
to explain
why we're even having this discussion about consciousness.
On the contrary, if consciousness were an epiphenomenon that would
explain
why it evolved: it is a necessary side effect of intelligent
behaviour, and
was not developed as a separate, useless add-on.
If consciousness is a side-effect that has no other effects, then
where is
the information coming from when a person articulates something
about their
conscious experience? If consciousness itself has no effects at
all, then
how did the theory of epiphenomenalism come to be shared beyond the
conscious mind that first conceived of it? Wouldn't such a theory
necessarily be private and unsharable if consciousness has no
effects?
My position is that if physics is causally closed, then ipso facto
consciousness is epiphenomenal.
So if consciousness is not epiphenomenal, physics is not causally
closed. OK.
And indeed physics is not causally closed, as physics confuse a
possible special universal machine (n bodies + F = ma, or Hphi=Ephi,
etc.) to abstract away the real hero in the story, the universal being
or the universal consciousness, or the universal person defined by all
relative states in arithmetic.
Physics, the appearance of a winning number, is a phenomenon explained
in the the more "causally closed", or more "explanatively closed"
arithmetic. (Yet justified from the interior why there is no ultimate
or absolute "justifiably" closed theory.
This is a consequence of the arithmetization of meta-arithmetic, begun
by Gödel.
Otherwise, you would be able to devise
a test to determine if a given system is conscious.
Which indeed cannot exist.
So we agree.
With computationalism, physics is not causally closed, a bit like
arithmetic is not arithmetically closed either, the universal machine
put a mess in Platonia which is beyond the possible control by the
universal machines.
The mess already begins with one degree four diophantine polynomial.
IIt could begin at degree three (open problem).
Can we test consciousness?
Maybe we can test conscience, on the alien civilizations, by the
number of atomic bombs they have and don't use.
We cannot test consciousness, but we can somehow appreciate it when it
is there, at some relatively sharable wave-length.
Consciousness does not require intelligent behavior, like some cases
of comatose people illustrate.
Bruno
--
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 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.
