On 22 Dec 2017, at 20:57, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 12/22/2017 2:25 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 8:11 PM, Brent Meeker
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 12/21/2017 3:34 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
So we are told. But what if someone could look at a recorded
MRI of you
brain and tell you what you were thinking?
Why do you need the MRI? You can look at the text that I write and
know what I'm thinking. We've been doing that all along.
The text I write comes from my fingers hitting the keyboard, and
the
fingers move in a certain pattern because the muscles are
activated by
nerves that are connected to my brain and completely correlated
to my
neural activity. What does the MRI add beyond precision? How does
this
help solve the mystery that I am conscious, instead of a zombie?
Well, you can't lie to the MRI. But otherwise I agree. Except
that I then
ask, "What mystery?" If having thoughts, however expressed or
detected, is
consciousness then problem solved...or more accurately pushed back
to why do
we believe a philosophical zombie is impossible.
Alright, I think we can agree on some important things. I would say
that we are both inclined to believe that:
"Certain configuration of matter are correlated with certain states
of
consciousness, and it must be so."
Yes?
The mystery here is: why must it be so? It is a perfectly legitimate
scientific question, I would say.
Any question is legitimate if you can think of a what an answer
might be or how to test it. But haven't you ever been engage with
someone who has a naive but enthusiastic view of science and so asks
lots of questions like "Why is the speed of light constant?" or "Why
are there only two electric charges?" or "Why did the universe
expand?" At the fundamental level science doesn't answer "why"
questions, because an answer would have to invoke a more basic level
(hence my virtuous circle model of explanation). Of course you can
never know that you're at the fundamental level. The point I'm
gently trying to make is that the "hard problem of consciousness" is
a why question, as you've posed it above, and scientific progress is
made by answering "how" questions.
It depends on the your theory of mind.
If you assume Digital Mechanism(DM) and Weak-Materialism (WM), that
is the existence of primitive, irreducible, matter: you get an
inconsistent theory.
If you assume WM, it is up to you to propose a non DM theory of mind,
and explain the role of the primitive matter in it (and what it could
be).
DM is testable. If Nature disobey to the Arithmetical quantum logic,
that would be the first confirmation on WM (and of ~DM).
The hard problem is solvable, and I would say solved. Indeed
incompleteness explains most of what people agree on consciousness
(true for universal machine/number, not definable, not rationally
justifiable; not doubtable, etc.).
It seems to me that people who want an answer to the "the hard
problem" are asking why can't we explain consciousness the way we
explain gravity and metabolism and atoms.
But DM explains exactly that. It explains why consciousness and first
person notion obeys different logic that the observable. And the
explanation does not add anything to elementary arithmetic (PA).
I'm saying we can - it's just that all those explanations are how
explanations and so let's get some "how" explanations of
consciousness - the engineering approach.
That is intrumentalism. It is like let us try to NOT do science, and
eventually it leads to materialism reductionism, minimizing when not
obliterating the first person notion, and violating in that way the
main data of the problem, and into making the quite speculative
physicalism into a pseudo-religion.
I realize many people confuse evidence for some physical law, with
evidence for the metaphysical assumption that there is a physical
universe. But I think I am the first to propose a genuine empirical
set of experiments capable of testing that idea, and up to now, thanks
to the quantum, the test available today confirms DM, and disconfirms
if not refute (with Aspect experience + assuming determinacy and
locality) Mechanism.
Let us come back to reason, especially in metaphysics/theology where
the human remains so emotional about this.
If you really believe in a non reducible physical universe, you *have
to* explain what is that primitive matter and you have to explain its
role in consciousness selection, because only invoking matter per se
to avoid the arithmetical measure problem, and its arithmetical and
empirically testable solution, is like to invoke a God to avoid the
theory of evolution. It is not valid.
Bruno
Brent
The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to
interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a
mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal
interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of
such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is
expected to work.
--—John von Neumann
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