On Mon, Jun 13, 2016 at 3:22 AM, Bruce Kellett <[email protected]> wrote: > On 13/06/2016 7:12 am, Brent Meeker wrote: > > On 6/12/2016 10:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > William S. Cooper, "The Origin of Reason" makes an argument that mathematics > is a way of brains thinking about things that was found by evolution, just > like mobility, metabolism, reproduction,...and a lot of other functions. > Bruno doesn't like that story though because it means mathematics only > exists as instantiated in brains. > > > It is not a question of liking this or not. It is just that Cooper, and many > contemporaries, assumed some physical universe, and that this assumption put > the mind-body problem under the rug. It is like saying God made it. They > don't push enough their own Darwinian logic. > > > That's begging the question. You assume arithmetic; which sweeps the > mind-body problem under the rug by making the "body" part hard. Everybody > starts by assuming something. Assuming physics and providing an evolution > based account of the development of mind and minds development of arithmetic > is just as legitimate as starting with arithmetic and trying to derive > matter and mind. > > > Assuming arithmetic does not even account for mind, much less account for > matter. Saying that consciousness is a computation is empty until one > specifies precisely what form of computation.
It might be that all computations are conscious -- but with much different contents, of course. I feel some inclination towards this hypothesis. > And why that form of > computation rather than some other? I don't see that computationalism > actually solves anything -- the problems it leaves unanswered are every bit > as difficult as the problems one started with. But computationalism is the default position of modern science. The brain is a neural network, the neural network is equivalent to a Turing Machine and it is running a program, and this is what mind is somehow. Non-computationalism seems to require some form of duality, appeal to a soul and so on. I don't find that computationalism was created to "solve anything". It is just the most obvious interpretation of a variety of empirical observations across fields: neuroscience, biology, chemistry, computer science. > At least with scientific > realism, one has the objective external world to underpin one's experience: > i.e., one knows that it works, even if one is not quite sure how. Again, computationalism is the position of scientific realism. But Bruno's work (unless you mange to refute it) shows that computationalism is not compatible with the sort of objective external world that you like. So you have to choose one or the other. I do agree with you that, as far as I can tell, consciousness remains a mystery in Bruno's model. I can see how the UDA is uncomfortable to some people, but like with all science we can't choose, just check for correctness. Telmo. > > Bruce > > -- > 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 https://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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
