On 25 Aug 2017, at 22:51, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 8/25/2017 9:44 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 24 Aug 2017, at 20:57, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 8/24/2017 1:20 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 23 Aug 2017, at 20:43, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 8/23/2017 2:06 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I am not someone proposing any new theory. I am someone showing
that the current materialist metaphysics just can't work with
the Mechanist hypothesis.
Refresh my understanding. What it the mechanist hyposthesis? Is
it the same as computationalism?
Yes.
Computationalism = Digital Mechanism = Mechanism = (Yes-Doctor +
Church's Thesis)
Or is it the same as yes-doctor plus reifying arithmetic?
No, it is (yes-doctor + Church's Thesis).
I do not add since long "Arithmetical Realism" because many
people tend to put to much into it, and is actually redundant
with Church's thesis. To just understand Church's thesis
automatically assume we believe in some "essentially undecidable
theory", and this is equiavalent with believing in the right
amount of arithmetic.
I will write a post on the detailed starting point of the
mathematics needed to derive physics from "machine's theology".
From your use, these all seem slightly different to me. It
would be helpful to some firm definitions - not just usage.
I use them as completely equivalent, although in the literature
they are usually stronger. Putnam's functionalism is a version of
Digital Mechanism which assumes a substitition level rather high,
where my version just ask for the existence of a substitution
level. My version is the weaker form possible, and Maudlin, in
his Olympia paper, suggests that if we define mechanism in this
way, it becomes trivial, a bit like Diderot defined "rationalism"
by Descartes' Mechanism.
So a firm definition of Mechanism (in my weak sense) is
1) Church's Thesis (a function from N to N is computable iff it
exists a combinator which computes it)
(There are many variants of this. You can replace also
"combinator" by "game of life pattern", or "fortran program" or "c
++ program", or "quantum computer" etc.). Note that this asks for
"Arithmetical realism" which is only the believe that the RA
axioms makes "absolute sense", which means basically that not
only 17 is prime, but that this is true independently of me, you,
or anyone, or anything physical. All mathematicians are
arithmetical realist. The fight on realism is in Analysis or set
theory, not arithmetic, especially without induction axiom like
with RA. Even a quasi ultra-finitist like Nelson agrees with RA.
2) Yes-Doctor (= my consciousness is invariant for a digital
physical brain transplant made at some level of description of my
(generalized) brain.
It asserts the existence of that substitution level, and is
equivalent with accepting that we can use classical teleportation
as a mean of travel (UDA step 1).
Important Remark: that definition does not ask for surviving
without a physical brain/machine. That is indeed the object of
the UDA reasoning: showing that we cannot invoke God, or Primary-
Matter to block the immaterialist consequence of Digital Mechanism.
That's where I think some imprecision sneaks in. Yes-doctor was
originally presented as substituting some digitally simulated
nuerons in the brain. But then it was generalized to the whole
brain. But we think with more than our brain. Our body
contributes hormones and afferent and efferent nerve impluses. And
the environment provides stimulation to those nerves and an arena
within which we act. All that is taken for granted in answering
"yes doctor" or teletransporting. So it appears to me that you
implicitly suppose all of this is also digitally replaced.
The reasoning does not depend on the substitution level.
My version of mechanism is much weaker than all the others. I
assume only the existence of a substitution level (such that your
conscious experience would remain invariant for a digital
substitution made at that level).
If you want, you can take the Heinsenberg matrix of the whole
observable physical reality, at the level of the (super)-strings,
with 10^(10^(10^1000)) decimals exact for the complex numbers and
real numbers involved. The thought experience become harder to
imagine, but eventually, it is "the real experience" of the step 7
which we have to take into account, that is "us" confronted to all
computations in the arithmetical reality. The arithmetical reality
emulates all computations, and this includes the matrix above, and
infinitely any variants. It remains simpler to understand the
problem with thought experiements involving "high" level, like the
biochemistry of the body, and understand at step 7 that the
reasoning does not depend on the level chosen.
To kill the consequences of computationalism is not easy. Even
lowering down the level to "infinitely low" level, like using all
decimals of the reals involved would not guaranty the
singularization used in the mind-brain identity used by physicist
when they invoke the physical reality: you will need special
infinities not recovered by the first person indeterminacies. It
will look like Ptolemeaus epycicles. Primary Matter is a sort of
ether. It can only make the theories more difficult. Maybe Primary
Matter exists, but there has never been any evidences, and I would
say that even without Digital mechanism, I am not sure why to
postulate it. Knocking on the table, or smashing Super-speedy
proton cannot serve as evidence for primary matter, only for group
theory and its application in the art of prediction.
With mechanism, the laws of physics have a mathematical origin, and
somehow, they "evolved" from the numbers exchanging piece of
computations, but seen from the 1p views. It works up to now.
I knew that would be your answer, but I think it defeats your
argument. If you have to go to a very low level (e.g. atoms) and a
very broad scope (e.g. the solar system) then you are essentially
digitizing and emulating everything. This includes the physics-of-
everything and the the physics-of-the-mind. Then there is implicit
in this a physical explanation of mind.
It is eventually made explicit. It is constructively derived from the
universal machine introspection. So it is empirically testable. And
that approach gives a key role to the notion of person, indeed, it
attaches a universal person to all universal numbers. We obtain the
testable quanta, and the non testable personal qualia (and much more
(a full theology))
If it's a viable explanation within this everything-is-digitized
model then it is a viable explanation in the physicalists model.
It is a phenomenological reduction of the physical science to the
theology of the universal number, which is a branch of theoretical
computer science, itself branch of number theory, or combinator theory.
And I realize this doesn't preclude a mind explanation of physics -
hence my idea of a virtuous circle of explanations.
I think it is more pleasing when you can build the virtuous circle of
explanations out of simple ideas that we hardly doubt at the start,
like 2 * 12 = 24. And then, the point is that we have to do that, when
we take Mechanism seriously enough. We are back to Pythagoras, but
with the discovery of the universal machine and its quantum echo, and
a mathematically precise theology, containing physics, making it
testable.
Physics is not a problem. Physicalist metaphysics is a problem, when
we assume Mechanism. But apparently, Mechanism explains it by showing
that if true, the physical reality is in the head of all universal
machine or number, and that can be tested.
I will write a post on that "starting point" soon, as I just said to
John. Soon, well, ... ASAP!
Bruno
Brent
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