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.
