On 8/27/2017 10:50 AM, David Nyman wrote:
On 25 August 2017 at 21:51, Brent Meeker <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> 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.
But computationalism necessarily embraces a physical explanation of
mind and quite explicitly at that - it would be false if it did not,
since brains and minds are so obviously entangled.
Right.
The difference is that the physical explanation of brains is here the
'dual' of a machine-psychological one (i.e. a theory of mental states
as emulated in computation). For the theory to be viable, both
explanatory modalities must be the product of observational filtering
from a computational plenitude. The consequence of such filtering, or
self-selection, is that the physical explanation becomes the
extensional infrastructure, if you like, for the beliefs and actions
of the machine-psychological one.
But what if, as seems likely, the "filter" is the consistency and
quasi-classical nature of the physical, and the mental can only exist
within that physics? Then the virtuous circle could start with physics
as easily as with thoughts.
Brent
David
If it's a viable explanation within this everything-is-digitized
model then it is a viable explanation in the physicalists model.
And I realize this doesn't preclude a mind explanation of physics
- hence my idea of a virtuous circle of explanations.
Brent
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