> On 19 Mar 2018, at 17:54, Lawrence Crowell <[email protected]> > wrote: > > I am not particularly in the Platonist camp. I see Platonism and other > philosophical ideas as just grist for the mill.
Platonism is basically the understanding that seeing or observing cannot prove that anything is existing in some ontological sense. It is pushing the doubt up to be skeptical about what we see. Then in mathematics, it has acquired the meaning of a belief in the ideas, including mathematical ideas. To avoid confusion, as I use both senses in some context, I use realism for the second sense. With digital mechanism, such realism is limited to arithmetic. “God created the Natural Numbers, all the rest (analysis, physics) belongs to the imagination of the Natural Numbers (which makes sense given that very elementary arithmetic (Peano-Arithmetic minus the induction axioms) is already Turing-complete (but not Löbian). The Mechanist theory of consciousness leads to a testable theory of … matter, and indeed up to now we retrieved quantum mechanics. > > Dennett's approach has some merit as at least opening a door for some > possible testable approaches to consciousness. I have no idea whether this > entire construction is realistic or not. Dennett believes in both Mechanism *and* materialism, and is thus shown inconsistent. It simply cannot work (see my papers on this). Bruno > > LC > > On Monday, March 19, 2018 at 7:01:04 AM UTC-5, telmo_menezes wrote: > On Sun, Mar 18, 2018 at 9:29 PM, Lawrence Crowell > > > > > > > In a part what you say is spot on. The problem with consciousness is there > > is a lot more ignorance about it than much in the way of certain knowledge. > > It may be a sort of epiphenomenon that emerges from some class of complex > > systems, which at this time we do know understand. Roger Penrose thinks it > > is something is a triality of physics, mathematics and mind, which is a > > sort > > of Platonic look. Dennett on the other hand thinks consciousness is a sort > > of illusion, which is a sort of epiphenomenon. Dennett calls it a > > hetererophenomenon as it involves a sort of game of multiple drafts. We > > really do not know for sure what consciousness is. > > I am on the Platonist camp, but fully realize that this is a personal > bet / intuition. I agree with Bruno that if computationalism is true, > then consciousness cannot be an epiphenomenon. But we don't know if > computationalism is true. > > Dennett I just find just silly. I think he plays with words, and > accepting his arguments would force me to deny something (the only > thing) that I absolutely know to be true. > > > I can think of things that strike me as obstructions to the idea of > > uploading brain states to a computer. The issue of NP-completeness seems > > plausible, and classic NP-complete problems are combinatorial systems which > > the brain is an example of. Other questions seem to make this problematic. > > It does seem to me the barrier of ignorance is far higher than our ability > > to vault over it. > > Agreed. I'm not sure we will ever be able to understand consciousness > -- there is really no reason to assume that this is possible. If it > is, I bet that it will require a quantitative jump in our > understanding of reality. I most definitely do not believe that it can > be solved by incrementalist research in neuroscience. > > Telmo. > > > LC > > > > -- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > > "Everything List" group. > > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > > email to [email protected] <javascript:>. > > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > > <javascript:>. > > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list > > <https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list>. > > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout > > <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list > <https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list>. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout > <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
