On 22 Feb 2015, at 23:52, LizR wrote:
On 23 February 2015 at 10:17, meekerdb <[email protected]>
Computationalism is an extraordinary claim.
The claim that what goes on inside brains is at some level Turing-
emulable seems not necessarily extraordinary - or do you think it
is? It seems like a fairly standard assumption by many scientists
and philosophers,
Yes. There are traces of that assumption in old chinese and Indian
text. Diderot define rationalism by the search of mechanical
relationship, and oppose it to the use of miracle, magic. And some
author defends the idea that digital mechanism is just mechanism made
more precise.
Usually, when mechanism or digital mechanism are criticized, it is by
people who like the french Jacques Arsac, invokes explicitly his
religious conviction. Arsac begun his book by "I am catholic, so I
can't believe that machine can think" ...
All atheist believe in mechanism (and weak materialism), for a good
reason: there are no evidence against mechanism.
Of course, there are still not a lot of people aware that mechanism
and materialism (even the weak version: that is the doctrine that
matter exists at the ontological level) are epistemologically
incompatible.
but I can believe it's wrong -
Yes, comp, as I define it, is the conjunction of two non provable
statements: Church Thesis, and what I sum up by "yes doctor". being
non provable, means that we don't get a contradiction when assuming
they falsity (cf also []~p <=> <> ~p)
but some reason to do so would be nice rather, than just a
"statement from authority". as given here.
(If the conclusions Bruno has drawn from that assumption appear
extraordinary those aren't "claims", just deductions which can
presumably be shown to be wrong through the application of logic,
assuming they are ub fact wrong. He's provided a detailed
description of his assumptions and deductions, so go to it.)
That some things may happen at random isn't.
Now that is an extraordinary claim, in my opinion.
I agree with you. I think that some people believe that genuine
physical randomness can exist, because it looks like that in a single
universe described by QM + some miracle, like with Copenhagen. It is
just brainwashing. People believe in collapse because they take for
granted what the earlier thinkers said, but after Everett, this
appears as it is: belief in miracle. It is the same abandon of
thinking than with the use of God in explanation (forbid in machine's
theology).
What would be a suitable underlying means by which the universe
might operate, that it makes things happen at random? I can imagine
things that might appear random to us, but are actually the result
of deterministic forces operating on scales we can't probe - e.g.
string vibrations. But genuinely random - that seems to me to
require extraordinary evidence.
If not an extraordinary definition. I am not sure that such randomness
can make sense.
So far we only have evidence for "apparently random" as far as I know.
Some backup for the above two extraordinary claims would be welcome.
(1) that brains aren't Turing emulable at any level
(2) that there is a mechanism by which the universe might generate
truly, rather than apparently random events.
OK.
Bruno
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