On 18/06/2016 10:50 am, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 6/17/2016 5:25 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 18/06/2016 3:20 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 16 Jun 2016, at 12:34, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 16/06/2016 5:26 pm, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 1:33 AM, Bruce Kellett
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 15/06/2016 12:19 am, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Mon, Jun 13, 2016 at 3:22 AM, Bruce Kellett
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.
But then you explain nothing. You have just made an identification
"computation = consciousness", which tells us nothing useful
Yes, my point here is that, in the worst case, you are no worse than
you would be with physicalism in terms of explaining consciousness,
but at least you are taking modern science seriously (the brain looks
like a computer).
I don't see any reason why physicalism might be thought to be in
conflict with a computational model of consciousness.
Physicalism assumes a reality to select the computations. With
computationalism, this is not just not necessary, it cannot work
without appeal to magic. A proof that there is no magic there would
only be a proof that such physical reality equal the one derived
from (intensional) arithmetic + computationalism.
The physical derived from arithmetic would have to be identical to
the one observed or else you theory would be false.
The evidence that consciousness supervenes on the physical brain is
overwhelming,
I agree. That is the basic motivation for Mechanism. My personal
first discovery of the (universal) number is in the bacterium
Escherchia Coli (in a paper by Jacob and Monod, also Watson).
The appearance of physical computers does not add to physicalism
though, unless of course the facts refute digital mechanism, but as
I have explained, if it looks it is the case (the measure problem)
when we look in the details, the explosion of possibilities appears
to be immense and well structured in a quite similar way in the
physical appearances and in arithmetic (or any sigma_1 complete set).
All these problem dissolve if you reject the notion of a platonic
realm for arithmetic and accept physicalism.
so no model of consciousness can deny that the physical has an
important role.
Nobody doubt that the physical has an important role. It is, with
consciousness what I want to get some explanation for.
As discusses in another post, I do think that Bruno's ideas (with the
help of Gödel) provide an explanation to why consciousness looks like
a mystery to us.
Maybe most of the mystery is in the eye of the beholder!
Well, a part of that mystery has been translated into a mathematical
measure problem.
That is why computationalism is very interesting, it makes a bridge
between theology/philosophy-o-mind/cognitive science and
mathematics, notably with a key role played by arithmetic theories
and others sigma_1 complete sets.
Evolution provides a perfectly comprehensible route to consciousness,
To the easy consciousness problem. You don't seem aware of the hard
problem, like Chalmers called it.
There is no hard problem ..... there is only confusion on the part of
Chalmers and those who follow him. I think Massimo Pigliucci gets it
right when he asks "What hard problem?",
(http://philosophynow.org/issues/99/What_Hard_Problem).
"I think that the idea of a hard problem of consciousness arises from
a category mistake. I think that in fact there is no real distinction
between hard and easy problems of consciousness, and the illusion
that there is one is caused by the pseudo-profundity that often
accompanies category mistakes."
A category mistake arise when, for example, you ask about the colour
of triangles. This mistake led Chalmers to endorse a form of dualism.
(And I think that ultimately you, Bruno, are also endorsing a subtle
dualism in your approach.)
Pigliucci then goes on the endorse the evolutionary account: "...Once
you have answered the how and why of consciousness, what else is
there to say? "Ah!" exclaim Chalmers, Nagel and others, "You still
have not told us what it is like to be a bat (or a human being, or a
zombie), so there!" ... Of course an explanation isn't the same as an
experience, but that's because the two are completely independent
categories. It is obvious that I cannot experience what it is like to
be you, but I can potentially have a complete explanation of how and
why it is possible to be you. To ask for that explanation to also
somehow encompass the experience itself is both incoherent, and an
illegitimate use of the word 'explanation'."
Right. That's what I think of as "the engineering solution" of the
hard problem. Once engineers can build intelligent robots and design
them to emotive, or humorous, or creative, or sly, or reflective on
demand; When we will talk about the program module for empathy, the
memory access vs reconstruction algorithm, the module for self-regard
(know as the organ of Trump)...we will stop caring about the "hard
problem" because it will be like asking where is elan vital and an
automobile engine.
Yes. I was going to mention the parallels with your "engineering
solution" when I was writing this, but I forget -- sorry for that.....
He goes on to explain that this does not involve the elimination of
the very concept of consciousness or of the self. The problem with
this conclusion by people like Churchland and Dennett is that they
are taking reductionism too far -- although everything is ultimately
made of quarks, and the like, obeying the laws of physics, that does
not mean that higher orders of explanation are illegitimate or
eliminable (the old mistake of positivism!). Concepts such as
evolution, consciousness, qualia and so on, have a definite role, but
they are not somehow magical -- to attempt to 'explain' these things
in reductionist terms is ultimately, as Massimo says, a category
mistake. ("Where consciousness is concerned, the existence of the
appearance is the reality".)
Have you read Sean Carroll's new book "The Big Picture". He says
pretty much the same thing. He calls his philosophy "poetic
naturalism": It's all QFT but there are a lot of more useful ways of
talking about it.
I haven't read Carroll's new book (and probably won't because I don't
like his attempt to redefine science as a non-empirical endeavour.
Actually, Smolin's book with someone-or-other is possibly more useful:
he rejects platonism and says that a better way is to seem mathematics
as "evoked" -- i.e., it has properties independent of us, but we 'evoke'
it by specifying some axioms. These axioms (and their consequences) are
not pre-existent in any sense.
Bruce
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