On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 7:42 PM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On 08 Mar 2015, at 17:23, Telmo Menezes wrote: > > > > On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 3:42 PM, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 7:36 AM, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >> >> I have generally been inclined to agree with JKC that natural >>>> selection can't act on consciousness, only on intelligence; so >>>> consciousness is either a necessary byproduct of intelligence or it's a >>>> spandrel. >>>> >>> >>> > If you assume materialism. >>> >> >> In science if you don't assume materialism then one theory works as well >> (and as poorly) as any other theory. >> > > It seems you are confusing materialism with falsifiability. A theory can > be falsifiable without assuming materialism. In fact, most scientific > theories do not have to assume materialism at all. They just make > successful predictions about future observations. > > >> That's why all non-materialistic theories of consciousness are such a >> colossal waste of time, they're so bad they're not even wrong. >> > > Just like the materialistic ones. > > > Well, the materialist theories just fail. > I wouldn't say they fail, I would say they don't exist in the Popperian sense. I have never seen a materialist theory of mind that is falsifiable in 3p. I have seen a materialist theory of mind that is trivially falsifiable in the 1p: the theory that consciousness doesn't exist. The fact that people seriously propose this latter theory makes me take the possibility of philosophical zombies more seriously.... > That *is* the mind-body problem. That is the hard problem of > consciousness. The first hard thing to do to solve it, when assuming > mechanism, is to abandon the concept of matter, which is really only a > "god-of-the-gap" in both the explanation of mind and of matter (or to > abandon the notion of consciousness, of course) > I agree that -- unless someone finds a flaw in your argument -- assuming mechanism makes any materialist theory of mind fail. > > The problem of the current institutionalized religions is that they take > for granted Aristotle's primary matter. But even for Aristotle himself, > this was a ... focus of attention on what happens nearby, the greeks > already got the "reversal". Some like Xeusippes and the (neo)pythagoreans > were open to a (simple?) mathematical reality. > > Materialism fails, because there is no evidence for primitive matter, not > does the notion of primary explains anything. Matter, like God (when used > in argument) are concept equivalent with "now shut up and obey the rules". > Matter can be seen as a simplifying assumption, formally equivalent to a > strong physical induction, which in particular is violated a priori with > comp. They introduce a simplifying identity link between 1p and 3p, which > is not verify in arithmetic, nor in the SWE actually. > > And I use "materialism" in its weaker sense of metaphysical or theologic > doctrine assuming a primitive material reality. By "primitive" I always > mean something which is estimated as having to be assumed. > > Quite the contrary with elementary arithmetic or Turing equivalent. It is > a Turing universal structure, and in a simple sense, it can be shown that > it has indeed to be postulated. You cannot reduce it at anything which is > not already Turing equivalent with it, and with Church thesis, this is of a > considerable generality, yet a highly non trivial obeying precise > theoretical laws. > > The second recursion theorem of Kleene provides an abstract biology, an > abstract psychology/theology, and an abstract physics, on a plateau. > I have a strong feeling there is a relation between recursion and the arrow of time, I think we discussed this before. Could you elaborate on the abstract biology? > > The machine already explains all this, the problem comes more from the > humans who don't listen. > This refusal to listen must eventually be part of the machine's explanation, correct? > Judson Web already saw that machines can refute the Gödelian argument by > Lucas, "against mechanism". Penrose argument is a variant of Lucas, and > again the machine can refute it. > Going on a slight tangent: when I read Penrose many years ago, I wondered about randomness. What happens when you augment a Turing machine with input from something like http://random.org ? Even a bigger tangent, motivated by a bit of Internet history that I came across recently: http://www.patrickcraig.co.uk/other/compression.htm There is something weird about the fact that true randomness cannot be generically compressed by any conceivable algorithm, nor can it be reliable produced by a turing machine. Then there is the fact that what neural networks do has a lot in common with data compression. What gives? Telmo. > Logicians knows that when they care about the question. > > Bruno > > > > > Telmo. > > >> >> John K Clark >> >> -- >> 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. > > > 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 [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. 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