On 13 Sep 2017, at 15:05, David Nyman wrote:
On 13 Sep 2017 12:34 p.m., "Bruno Marchal" <[email protected]> wrote:
On 13 Sep 2017, at 13:06, David Nyman wrote:
On 11 Sep 2017 6:21 p.m., "Brent Meeker" <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 9/11/2017 1:22 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 10 Sep 2017, at 22:25, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 9/10/2017 10:24 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
So I assume elementary arithmetic; I prove the existence of the
universal number(s), then I define a notion of rational belief
"scientific belief", (Plotinus discursive reasoner) by Gödel's
(sigma_1 arithmetical) beweisbar Bp. That makes sense, due to
incompleteness which prevent provability to be a notion of knowledge.
This seems problematic to me. I understand why you do it; because
you want knowledge to be true belief (not just true provable
belief). But this does violence to the usual meaning of knowledge
(c.f. Getteir for example).
Yes. Incompleteness makes provability into belief instead of
knowledge. Gödel mention this already in 1933.
It means that given some undecidable proposition one of us can
assert it and the other deny it, and then one of us will know it. ??
Ih he proves it (correctly or not).
But that is inconsistent with your definition of "know" = "true
belief". You are really using "know" = "true and proven". Which
is closer to Gettier's "caused true belief".
I think you're missing the point I've been attempting to develop in
my last couple of posts. Truth, or 'correspondence with a reality',
can only be relative to a point of view. It's perfectly possibly
that any such idiosyncratic, though unavoidable, commitment may
deviate from some more pervasive and general underlying consistency
and that this may put its possessor at hazard. That's the
ineluctable logic of evolution. Nevertheless if something is true
for me, in this primary or undoubtable sense, it will correspond
with my (relative) reality, in both its formal or effective aspect
(Bp) and its truthful or phenomenal one (and p). Any subsequent
interpretation based on such primary givens is of course a separate
question.
OK, but in the general context, explicitly assuming Mechanism (and
thus Church's thesis, arithmetic, ...), "p" refer to the "absolute"
arithmetical truth (or better at some point, the sigma_1 truth).
Yes, I was trying to be (too) short, I guess.
I think so, but I can't resist. It is for the possible others, and I
react like an old school teacher because I'm wired like that ;)
I hope you agree that elementary arithmetic is "absolutely true".
Just slightly more doubtable than consciousness!
Yes indeed, for our purposes here.
Hmm... That is slightly ambiguous. But as someone said to me "when
someone begins to doubt that 2+2=4, to avoid the consequence of
computationalism, it means the reductio ad absurdum is completed!".
Of course, we have to doubt even 2+2=4, as part of being scientist,
but when we assume computationalism, we can no more, because 2+2=4 is
used to define it. Simply. Then, a case can be made that we can't
doubt the simple arithmetical relation with small numbers. 1+1=2 is
close to consciousness, in matter of doubtability. But 6789 + 6789 =
13578 is already more doubtful!
It's interesting to compare this, by the way, with Dennett's claim
about the illusory nature of consciousness. He says, in effect,
that there is no reality - i.e. one that corresponds with (what he
calls) our judgements about the existence of conscious phenomena -
that transcends the mere judgements themselves. So his claim is
that such judgments are lacking in *truth*.
Which is close to nonsense to me, because he use the word
"transcend" like if observation could lead correctly to such
judgment. he is very coherent in his materialism, and he is force to
eliminate consciousness in that process. But that is close to the
mechanist reduction ad absurdum, because consciousness existence,
although not out there, is still existing in here.
Yes I agree, but then although he is, as you say, forced by prior
commitment to deny any distinct reality to consciousness, he
persists (deliberately and with polemical purpose, I'm convinced) in
using ambiguous terms like 'illusory'. This terminology easily
misleads because we all think we know what is meant by an illusion.
Trouble is, every other illusion we can bring to mind is in fact a
veridical perception, misinterpreted, and this bleeds into his
idiosyncratic use of the same term to characterise consciousness. I
think he takes advantage of this ambiguity in bullying his less wary
readers into a sort of confused acquiescence.
So typical. yes, the world "illusion" is misleading. That is why I
prefer dream, but this is also easy to mock or dismiss as poetry. The
term "hallucination" has some charm, and I like Feynman's answer to
the question if there is a physical wave collapse. He answered that it
is only a collective hallucination (if I remember well, and was not
hallucinating!).
With comp, the collapse is indeed first person plural, but with the
high price that the wave is itself a "persistent
hallucination" (quoting Einstein on "reality" when old).
It's a bit like the distinction that's often missed (e.g. in some of
my discussions with Brent) between the primary undoubtability of
perceptual phenomena and their subsequent interpretation. It's the
latter, not the former, that is basically the origin of the notion
of the illusory. I've even seen this misattribution quoted as a
rebuttal of Descartes' cogito, as though he had been claiming that
he couldn't be mistaken in *what* he was experiencing as distinct
from *that* he was experiencing. But that very distinction was
always his precise point.
Good point. I tend to agree, although I have a vague feeling that
Descartes himself was not always entirely clear on that, in some
passage, but that might be my anti-wishful thinking at play!
Actually, if we really put the "p" (alone) in consciousness, we get
the unnameable cosmic consciousness of the zeroth person view (but
here we are in G* minus G, and so I am blaspheming again).
Blasphemy apart, I accept that we will ultimately require the Dt
nuance to split the cosmic consciousness into the multiple first
person views of the generic or digital knower (this is beginning to
sound like a mechanistic credo!). So those views will then turn out
to rely for their consistency on a phenomenal physics whose
computational dual will ultimately correspond with (i.e. emulate)
their effective beliefs in or, in my words, commitments to, that
selfsame phenomenal reality.
Yes, and in a testable way. And it works up to now, and it is hard to
measure the significance of this.
Bruno
David
Bruno
David
Brent
Knowledge is Bp & p, which is impossible if p is not provable
(~Bp). We just cannot know an undecidable (by us) proposition, by
definition, although we can bet on it, but then it is different
kind of knowledge (closer to Bp & Dt).
That we can know for bad reason is the ultimate lesson of the dream
argument. People like Malcom who dislike Mechanism are forced into
disbelieving the existence of consciousness in dreams, as he did.
Bruno
Brent
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