On Sunday, September 23, 2018 at 10:55:52 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > On 23 Sep 2018, at 13:37, Philip Thrift <[email protected] <javascript:>> > wrote: > > > > On Sunday, September 23, 2018 at 4:41:56 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: >> >> >> On 23 Sep 2018, at 09:00, Philip Thrift <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> >> >> On Sunday, September 23, 2018 at 1:28:02 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: >>> >>> >>> On 22 Sep 2018, at 11:40, Philip Thrift <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> On Saturday, September 22, 2018 at 2:48:15 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> On 21 Sep 2018, at 19:55, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Wed, Sep 19, 2018 at 7:20 PM Philip Thrift <[email protected]> >>>> wrote: >>>> >>>> >> Mind is what a brain does >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>> >*And walking and running is what the legs do. * >>>>> *There is no "walking" like some Platonic immaterial universal except >>>>> for some pair of legs to be doing it.* >>>>> >>>> >>>> Right, there is no thinking without a brain (biological or electronic) >>>> to do it. >>>> >>>> >>>> Assuming your ontological commitment, but that is pseudo-religion. >>>> >>>> Or equivalently: you confuse matter and primitive matter. Nobody doubt >>>> that to have human or biological consciousness, we need a human brain or >>>> some electronic device, but that is irrelevant. >>>> >>>> What has been proved, (see Kleene’s 1952 book) is that the arithmetical >>>> reality emulates all computations. No need of any more assumption than >>>> Church thesis and the very elementary arithmetic. >>>> >>>> But an ontological physical reality is only metaphysical speculation or >>>> hypothesis, and in our setting it is invalid to use it as a >>>> counter-argument. The most you can do, if you really want to take your >>>> ontology for granted, is to reject Digital Mechanism or to find a mistake >>>> in my argument, without using your ontological commitment (which would beg >>>> the question). >>>> >>>> Up to now, you have failed to that. >>>> >>>> Bruno >>>> >>>> >>>> >>> It still seems to me that consciousness itself could be an argument >>> against a purely information-based ontology. ("Information" meaning based >>> purely on numbers, combinators, etc.) >>> >>> Philip Goff and Michael Shermer discussed basically this: >>> >>> >>> https://scottbarrykaufman.com/podcast/solving-the-mysteries-of-consciousness-free-will-and-god-with-michael-shermer-and-philip-goff/ >>> >>> >>> via https://twitter.com/Philip_Goff/status/1043053992916467714 >>> >>> (In there there is an about 1 hour podcast.) >>> >>> >>> >>> My summary (fits in a tweet) of Goff: >>> >>> "Physicalism, based on pure informationality (quantitative states and >>> language} is not sufficient to explain consciousness, but a materialism >>> (one greater than physicalism) that is based on experientiality >>> (qualitative states and language) in addition to informationality, may be.” >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> That is short. You might elaborate. I can refer you to my papers which >>> shows that you cannot have both materialism/physicalism and Mechanism. Many >>> believe that materialism and mechanism go well together, but they are >>> logically incompatible. With mechanism, physics is reduced to arithmetic >>> “seen from inside”. >>> >>> I would say that mechanism explains rather well consciousness, through >>> computer science and the logic of self-reference ((which basically predict >>> consciousness (indubitable, non provable and non definable sort of >>> knowledge), but with the price of forcing to drive the physical appearance >>> from that theory of consciousness. >>> >>> Bruno >>> >>> >> That was my reply in a tweet to Goff's [ >> https://twitter.com/Philip_Goff/status/1043053992916467714 ] to >> summarize in my own words the Goff view. >> >> I elaborate further in my previous post here on *Realistic >> Computationalism*: >> >> >> >> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/ZDKbxJuQYt4/Z7C1ePCzAwAJ >> >> >> By Pure Computationalism [ >> https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computation-physicalsystems ] I mean >> that everything >> >> >> Which everything? What are your basic metaphysical assumption? >> >> >> >> >> can be seen as computation with quantitative information (numbers, >> basically) alone. >> >> Given Goff's definition of physicalism, physicalism is consistent with >> (pure) computationalism. But it's not sufficient for consciousness (Goff, >> Strawson) , even if computation is extended to hypercomputation. >> >> But then materialism > physicalism (i-states + e-states > i-states). >> >> >> >> At this stage materialism and physicalism can be identified, and we can >> add nuances later. >> >> But with computationalism, neither materialism (even weak, the belief in >> some matter not reducible to something else) nor physicalism are consistent >> with Mechanism. A short argument can be find here: >> >> B. Marchal. The Origin of Physical Laws and Sensations. In 4th >> International System Administration and Network Engineering Conference, >> SANE 2004, Amsterdam, 2004. >> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html >> (sane04) >> >> >> More details are given here: >> >> Marchal B. The computationalist reformulation of the mind-body problem. >> Prog Biophys Mol Biol; 2013 Sep;113(1):127-40 >> >> Marchal B. The Universal Numbers. From Biology to Physics, Progress in >> Biophysics and Molecular Biology, 2015, Vol. 119, Issue 3, 368-381. >> >> >> >> Bruno >> >> > As far as I can tell from the summaries: > > https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S007961071300028X > https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079610715000887 > > Realistic Computationalism (*RealComp*) is still greater than Pure > Computationalism (PureComp, or just Comp, which includes all in the above > two references) > > and it is basically Philip Goff's view: > > PureComp emulates how things behave, but not how they are in themselves. > > > Good. In arithmetic computable entails arithmetic, but most attribute of > the computable thing are not computable, that is why the machine will be > identify with her beliefs, and this makes each machine very different, that > is how consciousness differentiate in arithmetic to begin with. > > Bruno > > > In your *Progress in Biophysics & Molecular Biology* papers (which I'd like to see), it would be interesting to see how this relates to *reflection* (the subject beginning with Brian Cantwell Smith's fundamental thesis) in programming language theory. (This is the study of code that is "self-aware", can reason about and modify itself, etc.)
In the case of consciousness, if it is something beyond pure informational processing - which a lot of physicists think physics just is (Tegmark, Carroll, ...) - it could be that chemistry and/or biology is not reducible to physics = not reducible to pure informational processing. This is called *nonreductive materialism*. - pt -- 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.
