On 5/4/2017 1:59 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 03 May 2017, at 23:46, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 5/3/2017 1:48 PM, David Nyman wrote:
Depends on what you mean by comp. You seem to engage in
the same equivocation as Bruno. On the one hand it means
saying "yes" to the doctor. On the other hand it means
accepting his whole argument from that purportedly proving
that physics is otiose. So then the argument refers to
itself and says if physics is otiose then the physics we
observe must be that predicted by his theory.
That's not it.. the thing is if *mind* is a computational
object, then physics must be explained through computation,
computations are not physical object... If physicalness is
primary, then there aren't any computation, computations in a
physically primary reality are only a "human view" on what is
really going on.
This an extreme reductionist view, i.e. if X is the fundamental
ontology then only X exists. But that leads to nonsense: "If the
standard model is fundamental ontology then football doesn't
exist." And it has the same affect of Bruno's theory: "If the
basic ontology is computations then neither physics nor football
exist."
It's not nonsense it's just the unvarnished consequence of the
assumptions. If the basic ontology is computation then both physics
and football are shared epistemological constructions supervening on
computation. Otherwise there's just computation and none the worse
for that. But in any case I've been trying to persuade you to accept
that football, for example, must be such a construction even on a
purely physical basis.
Where I balk is at the "must". It's "must if Bruno's theory is
right", but that's the question. If you interpret "exist" to apply
only to the elements of the fundamental ontology, then in
computationalism all that exists are the natural numbers, +, and * --
consciousness is as emergent as football. But semantics aside, a
theory needs to predict things. What does Bruno's theory predict
about consciousness:
Your beliefs are closed under logical inference,
That is the case only for the ideally correct machine that we need to
extract physics. As a theory of human's belief, or any concrete
agent's belief, it is not reasonable. But theology and physics is not
human psychology, nor AI.
The prediction of comp? There is a physical reality, structured
quantum logically by a statistics on many interfering computation and
their internal povs.
It is only "quantum logically" in the sense of modeling uncertainty -
which is a very weak prediction. It doesn't so far as can tell imply
Hilbert space or projectors or complex numbers. If you could get to
Hilbert space you might invoke Gleason's theorem, but I don't think
Gleason's theorem applies to a space over C.
i.e. everything that follows from and subset of your beliefs is also
believed. Is that true?...I doubt it.
Your thinking about arithmetic is unaffected by tequila?...not for me.
My looking at the sky is also affected by tequila, but that does not
mean that the sky is a product of my brain.
Exactly why I used arithmetic as the example. Arithmetic, according to
your theory of consciousness, is independent of perception and physics.
Conscious thoughts, beliefs are entailed by arithmetic and so should be
independent of tequila. You may object that you were only considering
the ideal machine, a perfect reasoner, but in that case you are
equivocating because you imply that the results of interviewing that
ideal machine tell us about consciousness as we experience it.
This strikes me as so obvious as to brook little argument. Physics
doesn't need any notion of football to evolve through the states of
what someone, somehow will interpret as the World Cup. However I
think you fudge it by your excessively loose (in my view) acceptance
of what supposedly "exists". This is what allows you to dodge the
otherwise compelling conclusions of a rigorous argument.
Rigor doesn't make an argument compelling. What I find compelling is
confirmation of a surprising prediction.
I come from molecular biology, and I have used a lot quantum mechanics
without taking seriously the wave. I studied QM in the already old
books in french by Louis de Broglie, including his book on the
measurement problem, where he defended his pilot wave and hidden
variable theory, and i thought for a long time, that the quantum
superposition never lasted more than a nanosecond. It is only later
that a guy I trusted for his seriousness in physics keep insisting
that an electron can exist in a superposition on long distance and
time, and he gave me a copy of the EPR paper, and it is Bohr
deceptively inaccurate answer
What (or should I ask "which") answer by Bohr do you consider
deceptive. Bohr said that classical physics was logically prior to
quantum physics. Every measurement, every datum, every record is a
classical object, which is necessary in order that we can reach
intersubjective agreement on the result of an experiment.
which will introduced me to the problem, and to the awareness it was
serious.
At that time, I thought already that mechanism entails the many
computations, and I knew that the white rabbit could dissolve only by
adding computations/histories, and so I thought that "nature" was
contradicting mechanism, as we did not have any evidence for "parallel
world". yet, the same guy will give me a little article, by DeWitt, on
Everett. I will almost immediately go to London, and buy the
Graham-DeWitt book on the quantum many-worlds, and realized at that
moment that QM confirms the most disturbing aspect of computationalism.
Since then, I am not sure about any theory explaining why a physical
reality is apparent, and obeys a quantum logic of alternate histories.
Like with Gödel's theorem, eventually I realized that QM is the best
possible confirmation of computationalism,
But now you are using "computationalism" to mean the whole UD model. I
wish you would introduce some clear terminology to distinguish that from
the "yes, doctor" assumption.
until now. With Gödel's theorem, we get also the distinction between
quanta and qualia, where physicalist just continue to put the qualia
and consciousness under the rug.
But you don't get quanta and qualia - you get provable and
true-but-not-provable. That seems to me to leave a very long way to go
before you can justifiably call one quanta and the other qualia.
Until digital mechanism is refuted, I would say that it is the only
theory which predict the appearance of matter, its "many-world" and
quantum aspect, and this without eliminating the first person view
(even giving to it a key role).
Except "its appearance of matter" is a prediction of the form "If this
theory didn't predict matter it would be refuted, therefore it must
predict matter. Hence, it predicts matter."
Brent
And this is not a critics of physics, as I used physics to measure the
degree of plausibility of Mechanism. But it is a critics of all
materialist theologies, the monist one and the dualist one alike. It
is certainly a critics on physicalism, that's right.
Bruno
Brent
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
tried it."
--Don Knuth
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