On Monday, February 4, 2019 at 10:06:45 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > On 1 Feb 2019, at 19:16, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com <javascript:>> > wrote: > > > > On Friday, February 1, 2019 at 9:41:00 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote: >> >> >> On 1 Feb 2019, at 14:52, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> 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 <cloud...@gmail.com> 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 <cloud...@gmail.com> 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. > > > > There is no non-scientific term. There is a possible misusage of some > terms, and that is poorly scientific. > > But it makes sense to say that the theory of heat has been reduced to the > theory of kinetics energy of particles, or that chemistry has been reduced > to quantum mechanics. A reduction can be made precise in term of > representation of a theory in another, and there are many example, > including the Mechanist reduction of physics to machine’s theology (itself > reducible to computer science, itself reducible to elementary arithmetic). > > For “emergence”, in my own work, you can use “definable” instead. Prime > numbers and computations emerges from the number relations in the sense > that you can defined such notion from the axioms and logic given, without > adding any new axioms. > > Now, when you put the experience into a particle, I do no more know what > is a particle, nor what you mean by experience. It seems to me only > confusing, and to build on the mystery instead of trying to solve it. > > Bruno > > As I have said, I am language-oriented. What this means is that I say that science (from that perspective) is a collection of domain-specific languages - general relativity, particle physics, chemistry, microbiology, cellular biology, neurobiology, psychology, sociology, ,... - however one wants to carve them up (they are all human inventions anyway). The terms 'reduction', 'emergence' are really about how expressions (aka theories) in one domain language relate to (can compile to, translate to, can be defined in terms of) another domain language, rather than some teleological, causal relation.
But languages have semantics, including the "what" they are about. In the case of an experience processing language, there would be some fundamental "atoms" or "units" of experientiality, like ψbits. - 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 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.
