On 23/04/2017 9:03 am, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
The contradiction is in requiring computation which is a mathematical
notion, if physicalism is true, so everything reduce to matter,
computationalism is false by definition, as computation as such is not
a physical notion.
That is just word salad. A description of a physical process is not, in
itself, physical (unless it is written down or stored physically).
Similarly, computation is not physical in so far as it is an abstract
description of what a computer does. But the computer is physical, and
the computation does not exist absent the computer.
It seems that you have merely defined computationalism as the thesis
that physicalism is false, and then claimed that the assumption of
computationalism contradicts physicalism. But that is logic chopping of
the basest kind.
Bruno, at least, starts from the "Yes, doctor" idea, which is not, of
itself, inconsistent with physicalism, and then attempts to argue that
the notion of abstract computations (platonia) renders the physical
otiose. There is still no contradiction. The best that Bruno can achieve
is something that seems absurd to him. But that is merely a
contradiction with his instinctive notions of what is reasonable -- it
is not a demonstrated logical contradiction.
Bruce
Regards,
Quentin
Le 23 avr. 2017 00:42, "Bruce Kellett" <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> a écrit :
On 23/04/2017 12:52 am, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 at 6:12 AM, Brent Meeker
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 4/21/2017 3:42 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
John is accusing you of naive dualism. He says that
you claim that
there is some mysterious substance (he finally called
it a "soul")
that is not copied in your thought experiment. What I
claim is this:
under physicalist assumptions, everything was copied.
The problem is
that physicalism leads to a contradiction,
I don't agree that it leads to a contradiction. Can spell
out what that
contradiction is?
Shortly (sorry for any lack of rigour):
If you assume computationalism, the computation that is currently
supporting your mind state can be repeated in time and space.
Maybe
your current computation happens in the original planet Earth
but also
in a Universal Dovetailer running on a Jupiter-sized computer in a
far-away galaxy. Given a multiverse, it seems reasonable to assume
that these repetitions are bound to happen (also with the
simulation
argument, etc.). And yet our mind states are experienced as
unique. It
follows that, given computationalism, mind cannot be spatially or
temporally situated, thus cannot be physical.
This does not demonstrate any contradiction with physicalism. In
fact, you examples are all completely consistent with the
requirement that any computation requires a physical substrate --
"a Universal Dovetailer running on a Jupiter-sized computer in a
far-away galaxy" is a completely physical concept.
Even given computationalism -- the idea that you consciousness is
a computation -- there is no contradiction with physicalism. You
have to add something else -- namely, hard mathematical platonism,
the idea that all computations exist in the abstract, in platonia,
and do not require physical implementation. But that is merely the
assumption that physicalism is false. So it may be the case that
mathematical platonism does not require a physical universe, but
it does not contradict physicalism: it is perfectly possible that
your consciousness is a computation, and that mathematical
platonism is true, but that there is still a primitive physical
universe and that any actual computations require a physical
substrate -- as JC keeps insisting.
No contradiction has been demonstrated.
Bruce
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