On Friday, November 9, 2018 at 6:51:06 PM UTC-6, Bruce wrote: > > From: Brent Meeker <meek...@verizon.net <javascript:>> > > > You're dodging my point. The "issue" of how we have subjective experience > only seems to be an issue because in comparison to the "objective" > experience of matter where we can trace long, mathematically define causal > chains down to...a Lagrangian and coupling constants or something similar, > which is long enough and esoteric enough that almost everyone loses > interest along the way. But some people (like Vic) are going to say, "But > where does the Langrangian and coupling constants come from?" and "Why a > Lagrangian anyway?" My point is that when we can give a similarly deep and > detailed account of why you think of an elephant when reading this, then > nobody will worry about "the hard problem of consciousness"; just like they > don't worry about "the hard problems of matter" like where that Lagrangian > comes from or why a complex Hilbert space. > > > Why can't I worry about those things? Where does the Lagrangian come from? > And why use a complex Hilbert space? I don't think this is the underlying > reason for saying that the "hard problem" of consciousness dissolves on > solving the engineering problems. Solving the engineering problems will > enable us to produce a fully conscious AI -- but will we then know how it > works? We will certainly know where it came from..... > > Bruce >
When it comes to science I have to back what Bruce says here. All knowledge faces the limits of the Münchhausen trilemma, where we have three possible types of arguments. The first is the basic axiomatic approach, which generally is the cornerstone and capstone of mathematics and science. The second is a "turtles all the way down," where an argument is based on premises that have deeper reasons, and this nests endlessly. Vic Stenger found this to be of most interest with his "models all the way down." The third is a circular argument which would mean all truth is just tautology. The second and third turn out to have some relevancy, where these are complement in Godel's theorem. While in general we use the first in science and mathematics we generally can't completely eliminate the other two. However, for most work we have an FAPP limitation to how far we want to go. Because of that if there is ultimately just a quantum vacuum, or some set of vacua, that is eternal, we may then just rest our case there. If one wants to do philosophy or theology that may be fine, but one has to make sure not to confuse these as categories with the category of science. Maybe as Dennett says, philosophy is what we do when we do not understand how to ask the question right. In that setting at best we can only do sort of "pre-science," but not really science as such. Theology is an even looser area of thought, and I generally see no connection with science at all. LC <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchhausen_trilemma> -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
