On 18 Jun 2016, at 02:59, Bruce Kellett wrote:
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
<bhkell...@optusnet.com.au> 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.
That expression is misleading.
An axiom is supposed to be true in some structure, not existent. Then
the axiom itself might be existent in some other theories.
Now in the case of "rich" (Gödel-Löbian), in fact in the case of all
essentially undecidable theories, (like RA, PA, ZF, ...) the theory
are rich enough so that their axioms and consequences are reflected in
the relation between the objects they talk about. That is why both "2
+ 2 = 4" and "ZF proves "2 + 2 = 4"" are elementary arithmetical
propositions (even provable by the very weak non Löbian RA). In that
sense the axiom are pré-existent, but only in the mind of the
universal numbers. It is like the distribution of primes is well
defined, even before the first mathematician discovered the prime
number and look at its distribution.
May be you could try to formalize your physicalist theory to see if it
assumes or not the numbers or any universal system at the start. Then
all what UDA shows, is that if you do assume it, adding Matter just
does not work for the mind-body problem.
Physicalism/computationalism is just testable. And then QM (without
the dualist collapse) adds evidence to digital mechanism.
Bruno
Bruce
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