> On 27 Jun 2018, at 20:43, Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On 6/27/2018 1:42 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: >> On 27 June 2018 at 03:24, Brent Meeker <[email protected]> >> <mailto:[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> On 6/26/2018 2:32 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: >>>> On 25 June 2018 at 19:54, Brent Meeker <[email protected]> >>>> <mailto:[email protected]> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> On 6/25/2018 8:06 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: >>>>> >>>>> I don't think that's the case. C seems to me to be capable to explaining >>>>> anything (e.g. we're living in the Matrix). The theories of M are >>>>> certainly >>>>> incomplete, but if there is empirical data inconsistent with those >>>>> theories >>>>> it just shows they have limited domain. If there is empirical data that >>>>> is >>>>> impossible to include in M how would we know; how could we be sure that >>>>> it >>>>> could not be included? >>>>> >>>>> I don't see how that fact that I am conscious and have a first person >>>>> experience of reality could be explained by M. >>>>> >>>>> I suggest you should think about what you accept as good explanations of >>>>> other phenomenon. >>>> I gave several examples before, regarding emergentist explanations. >>>> >>>> Suppose that Darwinian theory has not been discovered, and we have the >>>> following conversation: >>>> >>>> T: Where does life come from? >>>> B: Ah, well, it emerges from chemistry. >>>> T: Fine, how does that work? >>>> B: I told you, it emerges from chemistry. What kind of explanation >>>> were you expecting? >>> >>> I don't think Darwin had anything to do with discovering the chemical basis >>> of life, which I suppose is what you meant put in the future of the >>> exchange. >> Well, he discovered the principle of selection with variability, and >> how this leads to biological complexification. That is no small part >> of the puzzle. I meant Darwinism in the neo-Darwinism sense, including >> Mendel's postulation of genes, Crick and Watson's discovery of DNA >> structure and many other things. >> >> Notice the difference. We have all of these mechanisms to back the >> "life emerges from chemistry" theory. Each one explains a piece of the >> puzzle. For consciousness we have nada. > > But we don't have nada. We have some understanding of how neurons work and > we've even made some AI based on neural nets that is surprisingly intelligent > in a narrow domain. We know a lot about how a brain produces consciousness > from the way that injury or external stimulus affects consciousness.
OK. But that leads to Mechanism. Then computer science explains “consciousness” by showing that when a machine introspect itself, it discover consciousness, i.e. immediate non-doubtable subjective belief in some truth, yet a non provable (transcendent) one, not even definable (like truth itself).And we get a mathematically very precise theory of qualia. But the quanta have to be part of those qualia, and this make the theory testable. It explain the why and how of consciousness, but also the matter appearances, and this with all details, so that we can test the mechanist theory of consciousness. > > I know you're thinking, "But that doesn't explain why the brain processes > produce consciousness". My point is that you don't ask why planets produce > gravity. ? I though that this what Einstein asked for, and solved: mass produce gravity by curving space-time. > Once you have an equation that precisely predicts "what" you stop asking > "why”. Hmm… Not if you are interested in metaphysics/theology. I stop only on 2+2=4. > When we can predict, manipulate, and create intelligent human-like behavior That will never happen, or it already happened with the discovery of the universal machine. The question is when that machine will be as stupid as human. But I guess this is vocabulary. I guess you mean “competent machine”. The universal machine might be the most intelligent entities ever, but also very fragile: it can become dumb to the point of believing in its own intelligence, which is the mark of stupidity. > questions about why that behavior is conscious will seem quaint, like > questions about why chemical reproduction constitutes life. Here I disagree. Chemical are 3p (locally) notion, like life. So, there is no conceptual difficulties in relating them through 3p equations. But for consciousness, there is a conceptual gap. Now, computer science solves that problem, mainly by showing why machine are unavoidably confronted to a huge conceptual gap, necessarily. The gap has a highly sophisticated mathematics (G* minus G and the modal variants imposed by that very gap). > >> >>>> If you take Thomas Kuhn's ideas seriously, then consciousness seems to >>>> be the current sticking point that is likely to trigger the next >>>> paradigm shift. The exercise we've been through is one where you >>>> insist that what Kuhn refers to as "normal science" can eventually >>>> crack the problem, while I insist that it cannot. This sort of thing >>>> happened before, it's not new. >>> >>> Did Newton explain gravity? Did Einstein? >> They did, in the sense that they refer to above: they described the >> mechanism. We even have nice equations that make correct predictions >> all the time. You know more about that than me. >> >>> Are you satisfied with the >>> chemical explanation of life? >> Yes. There are some mysteries remaining, my favorite one is how the >> first self-replicators originated. But even there are several >> plausible ideas. It might be that this has to be a rare event, and thus a "quantum miracle”. I have reason to think that we might be alone in the universe, to get consciousness as deep as our, with a long and deep history. We might be rare in each branch of the multiverse, but be very numerous in the universal wave/arithmetic to get the measure right. I am not sure of this. It would be the comp solution of Fermi paradox. >> >>> I don't think there's anything "normal" or "extra-normal" in science. There >>> is good science and better science; and they are measured by how >>> comprehensive, accurate, and predictive they are. >> Kuhn proposed the term "normal science" to mean the exploitation mode >> of scientific discovery, while "paradigm shift" refers to the >> explorative mode. Kuhn's idea is that normal science takes place most >> of the time, incrementally improving understanding within the current >> paradigm. When the limits of the pardigm are reached, improvement >> stalls around certain issues and eventually a reexamination of the >> base assumptions is necessary. This leads to a crisis and parts of the >> edifice comes tumbling down. The quintessential example is classical >> physics and Einstein. > > And the stall comes from asking the wrong question: like where does the elan > vitale reside or how does the force of gravity reach out from a planet? Newton was deeply trouble by this, and Einstein’s too. It is Einstein’s feeling that this could be explained which led him to the Relativity theory. Then, physicalist are still using primary matter (stuffy or mathematical) which does not work better than élan vitale to explain the observable. Primary matter is the élan vitale of physicalism. Nobody have detect it until now, and its use is inconstant with mechanism (used by Darwin, and deducible from QM-without-collapse-nor-ad-hoc non computable hamiltonian). > or how can a physical process produce consciousness? That question is clear, and with mechanism, we can say: it can’t. Bruno > > 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] > <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. 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