> Legalese my ass. If you claim to have a scientific theory you should be able > to clearly explain it without circularity and do it with AT LEAST as little > ambiguity as a lawyer can argue his case at the Supreme Court. The entire > point of Bruno's paper is to explore the relationship between the > first-person experience and the third-person, and yet on page 1 he already > throws around a word like "you" as if the matter has already been settled, > even when "you" is about to walk into a "you" duplicating machine. Bruno is > starting with the very thing he's trying to prove, from page 1 line 1 Bruno > is assuming the "you" duplicating machine can't really duplicate EVERYTHING > about "you" only some of the things.
My understanding of Bruno's article is that he is proving the following: IF computationalism is true, THEN physicalism is false. Furthermore, if computationalism is true then matter supervenes on mind, and not the other way around. Computationalism: the hypothesis that mind is a computation; Physicalism: the hypothesis that everything (including mind) supervenes on physical matter. We don't know if computationalism is true, so we can't conclude that physicalism is false, but I am convinced that Bruno proves that both cannot be true at the same time. This result seems to annoy certain people to no end, but has you once said, nature doesn't care about what you find weird or not. Ambiguity around personal identity, for the purpose of this proof, is removed with the device of the diaries. What about this device fails to satisfy you -- for the purpose of this proof? It might be hard to answer this question unless you read the entire thing. Bruno never suggests that, at the moment of duplication, there is anything that is not copied. If you claim otherwise, can you cite where he says that? The differences start when the copies are exposed to different environments, just the same as it happens to you and me as we go from observer moment to observer moment. (I am repeating the "unicorn" posts, and know already that this will go nowhere) > Bruno assumes that there is some mysterious thing called "1-p you" that > can't be duplicated, the "1-p you" is of course just a euphemism for "soul". 1-p is the first person perspective of reality. If you don't know what this is, then you're either a zombie or you're truly crazy. Forget Bruno. Have you read Plato's "Allegory of the Cave"? I know that Plato was an ignoramus from the distant past and so on and so forth, but this is a well-defined though experiment. Does it go wrong somewhere? Please provide arguments, not ad hominem stuff. > I do admit if one starts with the assumption that the soul exists then it's > easy to conclude the soul exists, but I can find no reason to doubt a you > duplicating machine can duplicate everything about you including your soul, > sorry I meant to say including your 1-p you. No, one just starts with the assumption that one perceives. The ONLY thing that I know directly to be true. The least dogmatic statement you could possibly imagine. As per above, the article is not about proving that there is a "soul". I think we made some progress though. My suspicion that you are having a knee-jerk reaction to something that sounds to you like a religious idea is more or less confirmed. I don't like religion either, but I guess there's no point on dwelling on this. > For a proof to be worth anything you need to get more out of it than you put > in, even I can prove that the Ryman hypothesis is true if you let me start > with the assumption that the Ryman hypothesis is true, but that is unlikely > to earn me the Fields Medal. Man, I wish you won a Nobel Prize or a Fields Medal. Then maybe you could relax and truly listen to other ideas. Another 10 minutes wasted. Telmo. > John K Clark > > > -- > 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.
