On Tuesday, September 25, 2018 at 7:12:13 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > On 24 Sep 2018, at 07:28, Philip Thrift <[email protected] <javascript:>> > wrote: > > > > 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]> 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), > > > Just ask. I will send you some papers I have published there. > > > > 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.) > > > Are you talking about FOL and its lisp-like tower?. That is an interesting > (albeit a bit naive metaphysically) approach. If you like Smith, you should > like the general (and much older) theory, which is actually the theory of > any universal machine when studying itself. But Smith belongs to the > mechanist family, no doubt. > > > > > 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*. > > > You might read the sane paper (already available on my URL, see above). > Mechanism protects the machine from (basically) all reductionism, > including the 19th century conception of machine and numbers, and it shows > rather directly that (reductive and non reductive) materialism are both > inconsistent with mechanism. > > Bruno > > > > If you have PDFs of
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. I will read those [ email: cloudversed at gmail dot com ]. I have read http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html Two points: 1. Nonreductive materialism holds that physicalism is false. see, for example, https://people.umass.edu/lrb/files/bak06agaM.pdf (Physicalism came from the idea that everything can be reduced to physics, which turns out to be models of purely quantitative information. See Tegmark's Mathematical Universe.) 2. A computation (what I call real computation) that incorporates experiential states (e-states) in addition to informational states (i-states) would be be different from any i-state-only computation (that means any Turing or hyper-Turing or reflective-Turing machine, or anything made of just "numbers"). The latter may emulate consciousness, but will not *be* conscious. (Whether a conscious brain can be be manufactured with totally different elements depends on the e-states different matter can have.) We can only make things out of matter, and we can only make new matter with the matter we have. - 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.
