On 19 Jun 2016, at 20:09, 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.
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.
But it is circular. Then, we need to assume natural numbers in both
physics and computer science, so we add nothing new. But we can
eliminate the assumption of mind, and of matter, as numbers explain
them in a testable way.
It is all what I say: computationalism is a testable theory.
Then, thanks to Gödel and QM, it is already rather well confirmed, but
who knows if tomorrow, we will not find that nature departs from comp.
It would mean that comp is false, or that we are in a normal virtual
reality made by people willingly failing us on reality.
Bruno
Brent
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