On 22 Dec 2017, at 15:31, David Nyman wrote:
On 22 Dec 2017 11:22, "Telmo Menezes" <te...@telmomenezes.com> wrote:
On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 2:01 PM, David Nyman <da...@davidnyman.com>
wrote:
> On 21 December 2017 at 11:34, Telmo Menezes
<te...@telmomenezes.com> 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 put.
>
> However if we follow Bruno in taking the antique Dream Argument as
our point
> of departure (which to a certain extent can be made distinct from an
> explicitly computationalist hypothesis) then the question becomes:
>
> Starting from the position that these present thoughts and
sensations (i.e.
> the 'waking' dream) are beyond doubt, and that they appear also to
refer to
> events in an externalised field of action, how does it come to be
the case
> that all this appears to play out in the very particular way it
does?
>
> When the question is asked in some such way, it should perhaps not
then be
> unexpected that brains, nervous systems and bodies, as intrinsic
components
> of the field of action in question, appear precisely to be
mechanisms (in
> the generalised sense for now) for translating transactions, between
> themselves and the remainder of that field, into action. And also
> unsurprising that this continues to generalise whatever detailed
level of
> analysis is applied to the field in question, whether 'narrower'
or 'wider'
> in focus (i.e. the consistency requirement). And further that this
is just
> the sort of tightly-constrained and consistent set of mechanisms
that we
> might expect to be picked out from an even more generalised
'mechanistic'
> environment, owing to the very particular requirements of the
> 'self-observation' with which we began.
>
> So far, perhaps so un-Hard. But the question then still remains of
the
> precise relation between the phenomena of the dream itself and the
> transactional mechanisms that make their appearance within it,
including and
> especially the aforementioned brains. If we turn for a moment to
an analogy,
> it doesn't surprise us, when watching a movie play out on an LCD
screen,
> that the mechanism that implements this playing out fails to
resemble point
> for point, although is obviously systematically correlated with, the
> ultimate phenomena it stimulates the viewer into realising. But
the reason
> of course for our lack of surprise is that we consider the bulk of
the
> burden of such realisation to be shouldered by the viewer's brain,
not by
> the LCD device alone. So for that reason, no such loophole seems
possible
> for the final relation between the phenomena of the dream and the
mechanisms
> of the brain itself. It must somehow shoulder the final burden of
> 'self-observation' and 'self-interpretation'; the matter can no
longer be
> 'externalised'.
>
> Hence to explicate the matter further, what is needed is a
conceptual
> apparatus - i.e. in the Western tradition, a mathematical theory -
adequate
> to the explication of an entirely 'internal' relation between the
dream
> phenomena and their transactional mechanisms. At this point,
enter the
> Computationalist Hypothesis, or of course any other theory that
cares to
> test its mettle for the purpose. ISTM that formulating the matter
in this
> way genuinely makes any putatively remaining 'Hard' problems seem
less
> intractable, at the cost of putting the 'Aristotelian' position on
matter
> into question (but arguably this is already a lost cause even
within physics
> itself). However in a sense it's also a different form of WYSIWYG,
in that
> the dream always and forever is both what you see and what you
get. But if
> you want to study its detailed mechanisms of action you need to
delve into
> the realms of unobservable abstraction. The slogan might then be:
The
> concrete is the subjective reflection of the abstract.
David, excellent text.
Taking the cue of your slogan (which I love), see if you agree:
A possible model of what is happening is that there is an objective
reality that is independent from any of us, and that is made of
matter.
OK, but even saying that is already assuming more than is actually
warranted by the evidence, as your remarks about the epistemological
circularity of emergentism point out. The more physics is successful
in penetrating the mathematical structure of matter, the less like
any naive version of an external 'world' it appears to be. The
culmination of this is the realisation that the entirety of what we
ordinarily take to be 'concrete' reality must inevitably be an
epistemological construct, not an independent ontological fact,
superadded to its mathematico-physical 'components'.
We inhabit this reality, and the matter somehow generates the
minds that dream the dream. The hard problem becomes hard because the
dream takes a secondary role, and the hypothesized model is taken as
the "hard truth". This model is very useful: it is a good way of
thinking when one is trying to build rockets or computers. However, it
should be treated as a tool and not more than that, until further
notice.
OK.
To tackle the "hard problem", a different tool is more
appropriate. This different tool puts the dream at the center of the
stage. This should not sound crazy, because the dream is more real, in
a sense. We experience the dream directly, while we only hypothesize
the objective external world.
Actually, the dream *is*, or more formally corresponds to, the
epistemological reality which the mathematical theory implies or,
more strongly, entails.
Different questions can be asked of this
model, for example: how does the presentation of an objective external
world made of matter arise at the intersection of our dreams?
Does this go in the direction of what you are saying?
Yes. Bruno has sometimes characterised this as objective idealism.
Yes, it is arguable to put the numbers in the domain of the ideas,
although the primitive ideas can only be sort of God's idea, or the
One, ...
But we can be quite atheistic on this too. In that case, all we say is
that we agree-on/assume the main RA axioms (0 is different from the
successors, etc.), then derive the ideas from the talk and the silence
of the universal machine.
That last idea (!) has grown those last year, because, contrary to
what I said years ago, I begin to suspect that if we add an infinity
axiom, or ven just the induction axioms, in the basic "ontological
theory", we do get genuine uneliminable "white rabbits". So infinity
is "only" a mind tool, its crucial importance (even in, or better: on,
pure arithmetic) in all the epistemologies which rely to it by its
relation with truth (the mode with "& p").
It takes the basic idealistic intuition and connects it with reason
via an objective notion of mechanism. And in so doing, it holds out
the hope of doing adequate service to both the epistemological and
ontological components of the theory, without distorting,
trivialising, or dismissing either.
OK. Except that I should perhaps insist that I start from reason, and
amoebas (my initial objective notion of mechanism comes from amoebas
and Watson's Molecular Biology of the Gene. My main inspiration has
been biology for a long time. I would not have found the Gödel's
technic in time, I would have become a (molecular) biologist: DNA and
gene regulation (Jacob and Monod) was my first example of universal
programming language, and the cells my first computers ...). The
problem was OK, but what about consciousness and meaning, which was
easier with the simple Löbian arithmetical machine, for which
logicians have built theories of truth and meaning/semantics/models
than the more complex corresponding notions in biology, phenotype,
brains, etc.
Gödel's completeness and incompleteness theorem are the first result
in "exact machine theology". But chut... some academics believe that
theology cannot be treated exactly, which is actually partially
correct, but partially only.
Perhaps the most elusive insight in the philosophy of mind is that
neither of these components is truly separable or coherently
eliminable from a viable theory of ultimate origins (aka TOE).
Consequently a successful theory of mind cannot be a last-ditch
addendum, a sort of cherry on the cake, to an otherwise completed
'TOE'. The 'fire' of which Hawking has memorably spoken is, in a
subtle but crucial sense, already present at the origin.
The fire is consciousness, which is the "little dust" which eventually
will defeat the last phlogiston concept of the humans: "observable
primitive matter". That, very plausibly, and certainly with DM, does
not exist. But DM is testable, so we can test indirectly weak
materialism. QM suggest that DM is correct, but who knows? may be in
ten thousand year we will discover that the arithmetical material
hypostases (Z1*, X1*, S4Grz1) are violated by nature. That would be
astonishing of course, and would made us either into p-zombies knowing
that they are p- zombies or that we are in a malevolent normal
simulation(purposefully failed in a normal history (which cost a lot
of works for the failer) or that computationalism is false.
Bruno
David
Telmo.
> David
>
>>
>> Telmo.
>>
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