On Friday, February 1, 2019 at 9:41:00 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > On 1 Feb 2019, at 14:52, Philip Thrift <[email protected] <javascript:>> > wrote: > > > > On Friday, February 1, 2019 at 7:19:00 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote: >> >> >> On 31 Jan 2019, at 15:40, Philip Thrift <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> >> >> On Thursday, January 31, 2019 at 6:28:14 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote: >>> >>> >>> On 30 Jan 2019, at 23:14, Philip Thrift <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> On Wednesday, January 30, 2019 at 5:45:34 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>>> As I try to solve the mind-body problem in the Mechanist frame, I >>>>> cannot use any ontological commitment other than the term of some >>>>> arbitrary >>>>> but fixed universal system. >>>>> >>>>> You assume some God, but that makes everything more complex, without >>>>> evidences why to do so, except naive physical realism, but that does not >>>>> work with Mechanism. >>>>> >>>>> Bruno >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>> There is no mind|body problem. >>>> Only a language|body problem. >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> With mechanism, we can identify body, words, numbers, and it is a pure >>>> third person notion, but mind has a first person part (indeed called the >>>> soul or the personal consciousness) which is pure 1p. The mind body >>>> problem >>>> consists in linking, without magic or ontological commitment those two >>>> things. The solution suggested by Theaetetus in Plato, has been refuted by >>>> Socrates (in Plato) but incompleteness refutes Socrates argument, and >>>> rehabilitates Theatetus’idea (the soul or the first person knower is the >>>> true-believer). >>>> You can compare this with the semantic problem for language/body. To >>>> associate a semantic to a program or machine is related to the problem of >>>> associating a mind or a meaning to a body or to a code. The problem is >>>> virtually the same: once a theory/body is “rich enough”, its semantics >>>> escapes it and get multiple. Rich theories have many non isomorphic >>>> models/semantics, a bit like any computational state is supported by >>>> infinitely many computational situation, and some indeterminacy has to be >>>> taken into account. >>>> >>>> Bruno >>>> >>> >>> https://codicalist.wordpress.com/2019/01/22/matter-gets-psyched/ >>>> >>>> - pt >>>> >>>> >>> >>> Epicurus was born about the time Plato died. His "atomism" had atoms for >>> consciousness (mind) that were mixed with the bodily atoms. Modern science >>> rejected that concept, until the recent revival of (material) panpsychism >>> has a updated version of it. >>> >>> >>> >>> Unfortunately this does not explain neither what the atoms and where >>> they comes from, nor what is consciousness and where it comes from. >>> Mechanism explains this entirely, up to the testability of all its >>> consequences, which, like every where in fundamental science, needs a >>> perpetual doubt and constant verification and re-verification. >>> >>> If the theory S4Grz1, Z1*, X1* violate nature, then we will have some >>> evidence for no-mechanism, and thus for primitive matter. But assuming >>> primitive matter a priori seems like wanting to not understand the problem, >>> or hiding it under ontological commitment, like materialists do since 1500 >>> years, if not right since Aristotle. >>> >>> Bruno >>> >>> >>> >>> >> On "where do atoms come from" I guess *any physicist* you meet today >> has as good (or bad) an answer as any, in their way of thinking, anyway. >> >> >> They usually assume a primary physical reality. They make the physical >> universe into a (non personal god). But that explains nothing, even if very >> interesting in physics. Physicists are just NOT meta physicists, except >> very bad one the week-end or after retirement. >> >> An explanation of X must not assume X, or, if it does, the recursion >> employed must be entirely justified too. >> >> >> >> >> >> On consciousness: >> >> In a micropsychist* approach, the lowest-level psychical properties could >> appear in the form of their own material subatomic entities, like quarks — >> quirks? :) — in current physical theories. Thus human-level consciousness >> is "constituted" from lower-level material entities possessing lower-level >> psychical features. >> >> >> I don’t see an atom of explanation of consciousness here. That seems just >> like a more sophisticated way to hide the problem under the rug of >> microphysics, without addressing any of the question raised by the >> philosopher of mind or the cognitive scientist. If you dig in that >> direction, both matter and consciousness becomes only more obscure. >> >> >> >> >> >> *According to constitutive micropsychism, the smallest parts of my brain >> have very basic forms of consciousness, and the consciousness of my brain >> as a whole is in some sense made up from the consciousness of its parts. >> This is the form of panpsychism that suffers most acutely from the >> combination problem, which we will explore below. However, if it can be >> made sense of, constitutive micropsychism promises an elegant and >> parsimonious view of nature, with all the richness of nature accounted for >> in terms of facts at the micro-level.* >> >> >> I am skeptical this can work, and of course, it is incompatible with >> Digital mechanism. This one explains consciousness in the most standard >> theological way (Theaetetus), and it explains matter in an entire new way, >> as number hallucination, which provable exist in arithmetic (once we bet >> the brain is Turing emulable). >> >> Bruno >> >> >> > In any case, one of the "micropsychists" has a new paper just out: > > > "According to the *fusion* view ... when micro- or protoconscious > entities come together in the right way, they fuse or 'blend' together to > form a single unified consciousness. ..." > > *Is Consciousness Intrinsic? A Problem for the Integrated Information > Theory* > Hedda Hassel Mørch > Journal of Consciousness Studies 26 (1-2):133-162(30) (2019) > > https://philpapers.org/rec/MRCICI > https://philpapers.org/archive/MRCICI.pdf > > *Abstract* > The Integrated Information Theory of consciousness (IIT) claims that > consciousness is identical to maximal integrated information, or maximal Φ. > One objection to IIT is based on what may be called the intrinsicality > problem: consciousness is an intrinsic property, but maximal Φ is an > extrinsic property; therefore, they cannot be identical. In this paper, I > show that this problem is not unique to IIT, but rather derives from a > trilemma that confronts almost any theory of consciousness. Given most > theories of consciousness, the following three claims are inconsistent. > INTRINSICALITY: Consciousness is intrinsic. NON-OVERLAP: Conscious systems > do not overlap with other conscious systems (a la Unger’s problem of the > many). REDUCTIONISM: Consciousness is constituted by more fundamental > properties (as per standard versions of physicalism and Russellian monism). > In view of this, I will consider whether rejecting INTRINSICALITY is > necessarily less plausible than rejecting NON-OVERLAP or REDUCTIONISM. I > will also consider whether IIT is necessarily committed to rejecting > INTRINSICALITY or whether it could also accept solutions that reject > NON-OVERLAP or REDUCTIONISM instead. I will suggest that the best option > for IIT may be a solution that rejects REDUCTIONISM rather than > INTRINSICALITY or NON-OVERLAP. > > > > This is weird. All programs are maximally integrated information, I would > say. But I doubt they are all conscious. At least, from the abstract, the > author is aware of the error consisting in identifying a first person > notion with a third person notion (he used intrinsic and extrinsic for > this). > > I agree with instrinsicality, but “non-overlap” seems to use the identity > thesis inconsistent with mechanism; a,d reductionism is simply false with > Mechanism. The price to pay, which is also the wonderful gift, is that > physics becomes reducible to digital machine theology, which is a subbranch > of arithmetic. > > Physicalism is simply refuted when we postulate that the brain/body is > Turing emulable. Consciousness is not attached to any particular > computational history, but on some set of relative histories having some > measure implied by the logic of the observable mode of the universal > machine. > > The people here are blinded by their belief in some primary physical > universe, but until there is some evidence for this, it is only a useless > complication. > > Bruno > > > > > The difference between the *informationists* (IIT - integrated information theory - that consciousness is a property of sufficiently [large] complex networks of [purely] information processing units) and the *micropsychists* (that both psychical and physical properties reside to some degrees in all levels of matter) is vast. This paper by Mørch points to a path to "fuse" the two approaches. That makes it interesting to the readership of *Journal of Consciousness Studies**.*
What I do find useless in (philosophy of) science is the language of *reduction* and *emergence. *They are really "unscientific" terms. - 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.
