On 20 Dec 2017, at 21:49, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 12/20/2017 3:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
You need to read the papers or ask question. The starting point
(which is not obvious and requires the reading of the Universal
Doevtailer Argument) is that you cannot have both a mechanist
explanation of the mind, and physicalism.
This is false. The argument doesn't show that. In fact I think it
implies that the physical is necessary.
That is the point. We assume only arithmetic, and derive that the
physical is necessary, from the relative machine's pov, and without
adding any ontologial commitment. So physics is shown, in that frame,
to be derivable from machine's theology.
Bruno is found of saying that it makes computation basic. But
computation apparently explains too much. So it is only by saying
that somehow what we experience as mental and physical is picked out
does computationalism "explain" the world.
That is right, but the "picking up" avoid magic invocation to
metaphysical principle. It is only the first person indeterminacy, and
both intuition (by the many-worlds or many histories) and math
confirms this. So why add an ontologcal commitment ton just prevent a
simple explanation. That is "bad religion".
I don't know why he insists on calling computationalism "mechanist"
since it has nothing to do with "mechanisms" or "mechanical".
?
Computationalism, that is the weak version I study, is Church-Turing
thesis, or the equivalent one by Post and Kleene in terms of set
instead of functions, and this should made clear the relation between
digital machines, programs, computers, and ... computations,
emulations, simulations, ... And with the mechanist hypothesis, this
automatically concerns dreams, subjective experiences, first person
phenomena, consciousness, etc.
I do not need Mechanism to doubt materialism. there are just not one
evidence for materialism, except the natural extrapolation enforced by
nature wanting us taking seriously predators and preys. Nobody has
seen either primary matter, or any indirect evidence for it. What I
see are human persons doing measurements, obtaining numbers, and
inferring mathematical (usually computable) relations between those
numbers.
Feynman formulation is close to the Mechanist explanation; all Turing
emulable histories happens (that is a theorem *about* RA, provable
*in*, or *by* PA), but we have to add a "phase" to each step of the
universal machines so that we can make the white rabbit (the long
stupid explanations) disappearing by phase randomization. The problem
is that he derives this from observation, so he missed (like all
physicists) the qualia/consciousness aspect of the phenomenology.
To get it, it is enough to take into consideration that the observer
are locally Turing emulable, and that all predictions are relative
fromal 3p indexicals, and so are concerned by the the logic of self-
reference. The thought experiences, or the antic greek philosophy,
justifies the standard classical definitions of belief, knowledge,
observation (intelligible matter and sensible matter), and it works
(until now).
Physicalism does not work. It can push people into believing that
consciousness does not really exist, or is an illusion (!). We, the
universal numbers, are innumerable in arithmetic to have some doubts
about that.
Kind grin,
Bruno
Brent
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