On 01 Apr 2015, at 02:35, Bruce Kellett wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 31 Mar 2015, at 07:42, Bruce Kellett wrote:
In a phrase I have used before, It did not spring forth fully
armed, like Athena from Zeus's brow. Numbers were a hard-won
abstraction from everyday physical reality. They do not have any
independent existence.
In which theory? What has independent existence?
The external objective universe, of which we are part.
If it exists. But then you need to abandon computationalism if you
hope to relate that physical universe to your consciousness here and
now.
That is not obvious. It is the point of the UD Argument.
As someone has said, you do not come across a number "5" running
wild in the undergrowth.
I am not sure, when I run I might not count them, but five
incarnate in my feet and hands all the time, and even if I did not
have legs, like a snake, 5 would still be prime, independently of
me thinking about it or not.
You are running into the old problem of universals. You take the
approach of Plato -- the universals are needed to explain the
commonality between all sets of five things (like toes, finger,...),
but even so, you don't see the "universal 5" running in the wild --
you see only five toes, or deer, or ...... It is equally open to
anyone to take Aristotle's line and hold that five exists only in
sets of five things -- the modern nominalist position.
Assuming there are objects. But then ... (see above).
Two thousand five hundred years of philosophical argument have not
settled this issue,
Progress haev been made, until Aristotle metaphysics has been imposed
through violence, for 1500 years, now.
And the discovery of the universal machine solves the last problem
they met. 1500 years of aristotelian physics have just put the
consciousness problem under the rug.
so no-one need accept your enthusiastic embrace of Plato's account.
It is not part of the hypothesis. Platonism is extracted from
arithmetic. The only "platonism" used at the start is the belief that
(A v ~A) is true with A being a statement equivalent with the program
i on input j will stop or will not stop.
Other accounts are just as good (in many ways preferable).
No problem. The point is that IF we assume comp, they are refuted, or
epistemologically non sustainable. It is a technical point.
.......
But I think we need to distinguish two senses in which something
can be said to exist. There is mathematical existence,
Exist_{math}, and physical existence, Exist_{phys}.
I agree. And those are quite different mode of existence.
I am glad we can agree on something.
Exist_{math} is the set of all implications of a set of axioms and
some rules of inference.
Not at all. That would give only a tiny sigma_1 set. Even
arithmetic is larger than that, and non unifiable in any effective
theory.
I think you underestimate the power of an axiomatic theory.
?
No, it is a theorem. Arithmetic is not axiomatizable.
.....
Exist_{phys} is the hardware of the universe.
OK. But then comp is false, there are zombies, etc.
Why do you think that is a problem? They exist only if you create
them.
Well, assuming ~comp, you are back at square zero. I explain how comp
solves the problem (or reduce it to another problem).
I am not defending any truth. I just show that IF computationalism is
TRUE, then we have to extract the physical laws from elementary
arithmetic or from any first order logical specification of any UTM.
....
You point and say "That is a rock, cat, or whatever." In more
sophisticated laboratory settings, you construct models to explain
atomic spectra, tracks in bubble chambers, and so on. The
scientific realist would claim that the theoretical entities
entailed by his most mature and well-tested scientific theories
"exist_{phys}", and form part of the furniture of the external
objective physical world.
>
> No, that's when he get wrong, with respect of the computationalist
> hypothesis.
You equivocate on this point at different times. I said previously
that, by definition, computationalism is inconsistent with
physicalism. You denied this. But what you say here is exactly this.
Because all my work consists in showing than comp (the idea that my
physical brain is Turing emulable, like a computer) is inconsistent
with physicalism. If I were putting the inconsistency with physicalism
in the definition of comp, my proof could be simplified into: "look at
the axiom". Don't confuse the comp thesis, and its highly non trivial
(for most) consequence.
...
>> So there is a very clear difference between the mathematical and
>> physical worlds.
>
> Yes, but science has not yet decided which is the most fundamental.
You agree, then, that computationalism is just a hypothesis
Yes. I insist on that all the time. I am not a believer in comp at
all. Nor am I am a disbeliever. I just don't do philosophy, I mean not
as a job. I am a mathematician and logician: I show that comp is
incompatible with physicalism, and I give a constructive proof which
shows exactly HOW to extract physics from arithmetic, with the
advantage that we get not just the quanta but also the qualia? The
quanta part can be compared with nature, and so, I show that comp is a
scientfic theory in the sense of Popper: we can test it. I got non
trivila results, and they pass the tests until now.
and you reject physicalism, or the independent existence of an
external physical world, simply because that disagrees with
computationalism.
I don't do that.
I don't think that your arguments that consciousness cannot be
understood in terms of physical supervenience are very convincing.
At all the crucial points you simply appeal to the computationalist
hypothesis -- your argument is, at heart, circular.
At which line of the proof? Comp (even just the Church-thesis) assumes
arithmetical realism only, not plato's theology. This means that 2+2=4
is independent of me and you. It does not mean that a material galaxy
does not also exist independently of me. For this I provide a proof or
argument. And it does not proof that material galaxies don't exist,
but that it cannot be related with the conscious event of seeing some
galaxy through a telescope. It shows that assuming matter is useless
to explain the appearance of matter, once we assume comp.
......
>> So prime numbers might exist_{math}, but they do not exist_{phys}.
>
> Sure. I have not verified, but I do think the universal machine
would
> say the same. Physical is a sophisticated internal view of
arithmetic/
> There still might be too much much white rabbits, but prime numbers
> are not of the type "observable" there.
I think this claim needs some backing up. You have to actually
derive at least some basic physical laws from your UD.
That is done, and sum up in the second part of the sane04 paper, but
it assumes some "maturity" in mathematical logic. Have you read it. I
have already deduce the or a quantum logic of the observable.
Pointing to prime numbers is not enough.
Please, read the papers and the publication. It has been 30 years of
work. I have defend this without any problem as a PhD in computer
science. It modest, and radical only for people having faith in
primitive matter (a metaphysical hypothesis NOT sustain by any facts).
I think that the white rabbits will be your undoing.
My goal is to show exactly that, and most scientist predicted that
either my quantum logic would collapse, making physics trivial (only
geographical). But they changed their mind when they saw the results.
(Except some, which usually criticizes things I have never said and
are of the type of not reading the papers they criticize).
I work in a theory, and I only show that the mind-body problem is
reduced, assuming that theory, into the problem of extracting physics
from arithmetic. That is, into the white rabbits problem.
f we got too much white rabbits, we will know that either comp is
false or that we are in a physical simulation made by someone who
intent to fail us. I am not so much in favor of such conspiracy, and
would rather doubt comp instead, but the point is logical/technical,
and does not depend of my personal wishes or beliefs.
If you have a theory how a physical universe can make some machine
dreams more real that their dream emulated by arithmetic, I am all
ears? But if there is no flaw in the UDA, you theory will have to
assume we are not Turing emulable. That is all. I explain that the
mind-body problem is a real scientific problem, and that the common
Aristotelian solution (used by christians and many materialist) just
does not work. My work propose nothing new, but shows that the current
theory fails.
Bruno
Bruce
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