On 20/06/2016 4:09 am, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 6/19/2016 10:10 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
To ask for that explanation to also somehow encompass the experience
itself is both incoherent, and an illegitimate use of the word
'explanation'."
Of course. Everybody agree here, but that is not what is done by the
philosopher of mind. We still want an explanation for the experience,
and computer science/mathematical logic provides it (at least a solid
embryo). The point is that it should be precise enough to get
physics, which it does, at the propositional level at least.
If you think about explanations deeply, you realize that they bottom
out, if at all, in engineering - in prescriptions for how to control,
create, and manipulate. This is like ostensive understanding.
Right.
The alternative, which Bruno actually suggested once but disowns, is
for explanations to form a "virtuous circle" in which everything is
explained in terms of other things ultimately forming loops: NUMBERS
-> "MACHINE DREAMS" -> PHYSICAL -> HUMANS -> PHYSICS -> NUMBERS I
call this "virtuously circular" if it is comprehensive so that
everything is somewhere in the circle.
The thing about such a loop is that you can start at any point -- for
instance, PHYSICAL, HUMANS, PHYSICS, or anywhere else. The question then
is whether this actually achieves you anything?
Bruce
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