> On 21 Jun 2018, at 12:55, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 21 June 2018 at 00:53, Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> >> On 6/20/2018 4:51 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: >>> >>> Hi Bruno, >>> >>>>> I follow your reasoning, from one of your recent articles. This leaves >>>>> me dissatisfied, but if I try to verbalize this dissatisfaction I feel >>>>> stuck in a loop. Perhaps this illustrates your point. >>>> >>>> >>>> We might need to do some detour about what it would mean to explain >>>> consciousness, or matter. >>>> I might ask myself if you are not asking too much, perhaps. Eventually, >>>> something has to remain unexplainable for reason of self-consisteny. I >>>> suspect it will be just where our intuition of numbers or combinators, or >>>> of >>>> the distinction finite/infinite comes from (assuming mechanism), or just >>>> why >>>> we trust the doctor! >>> >>> I thought about it for some time. It seems that at a meta level, we >>> are always stuck in this situation of "give me one miracle for free >>> and everything else becomes explainable". The miracle can be matter, >>> or consciousness, or arithmetic. >> >> >> Do you see that is just another form of my circle of virtuous explanation. >> Start wherever you understand or accept the starting point and then you can >> go around the circle and get to everything else. > > I see your point and even concede that it might be the wise approach > for many things, but I don't think one can "get to everything else" > this way. > > The problem with my analogy with heliocentrism/geocentrism is that > these are, in the end, compatible -- but the same doesn't seem to > apply to materialism/computationalism. I think that Bruno proves > convincingly that the two are incompatible. I'm not sure if you are > convinced by the UDA argument or not. Are you? > > If one takes this incompatibility seriously, things become a bit more > tricky. In this case, and to expand on what I was suggesting: > > - There is a set of beliefs M that are consistent with materialism; > - There is a set of beliefs C that are consistent with computationalism; > - The intersection between M and C, let's call it A, is non-empty but; > - There are justified true beliefs that belong to C if one starts from > comp, but not to A, let's say C* > - There are justified true beliefs that belong to M if one starts from > materialism, but not to A, let's say M* > - Furthermore, there is empirical data that fits C* and not M*, and > vice-versa.
I might miss something. Empirical data fits with C*, and might fit M*, but only by abandoning M (although consistent with M’s appearance). Bruno > > Most people nowadays live only within A. It used to be the case that > people lived with A + R (R is some set of religious beliefs), and that > is more or less what enabled us to build civilization. R might be > wrong, but it is clearly useful (and also has a very dark side, of > course). A-only-living is the domain of mid-life crisis, existential > despair, hating Mondays and scientific utilitarianism. M* is the > domain of the emergentist project of neuroscience, and I would argue > is the proto-religion of many contemporary scientists, and especially > militant atheists. C* is the domain of neoplatonism. Not surprisingly, > it irritates M* people, and vice-versa. > > On a practical level, it makes sense to operate in M* while performing > surgery, but it does not make sense to restrict oneself to M* when > trying to answer fundamental questions. I think that's the point where > it becomes religious dogmatism - R*. > > Telmo. > >> Brent >> >> -- >> 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. > > -- > 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. -- 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.
