On 12/26/2017 6:22 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
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 <meeke...@verizon.net>
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.
That's false. If it were true you could derive a contradiction by
assuming DM and WM...but you can't. You claim WM is otiose, which is
not the same as contradictory, but I find that dubious since materialism
(i.e. physics) is necessary for consciousness. You may object but it's
not primitive/irreducible matter, but I'd say those are just
honorifics. You haven't shown it's derivative and if it's necessary,
then it's in the virtuous circle of explanation.
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).
It instantiates the DMs. My theory of mind is that it goes with
intelligence and if I build an intelligence it will be conscious.
DM is testable. If Nature disobey to the Arithmetical quantum logic,
that would be the first confirmation on WM (and of ~DM).
That's a typical theologians argument: If I disprove your god then my
god exists.
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.
You're the one doing theology and making a religion of modal logic.
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.
The problem is that your empirical tests are all retrodictions and there
is nothing interesting or surprising in testing them. I have suggested
several times that your theory might be able to says something about the
epistemic vs ontic interpretations of QM or about the question of why QM
isn't based on quateronic or octonic fields.
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
That's a mugs game. If it's "primitive" that means you don't explain
it...unless you believe in my virtuous circle of explanation.
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,
If it's empirically testable, then let's test it. But only failures of
empirical tests are decisive. There are many ways to predict the Sun
will rise tomorrow...that doesn't make them all good theories.
Brent
"A mathematician is like a mad tailor: he is making "all possible
clothes" and hopes to make also something suitable for dressing"
--- Stanislaw Lem, Summa Techologiae
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