> On 26 Aug 2019, at 23:08, Philip Thrift <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On Monday, August 26, 2019 at 11:21:28 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: > >> On 26 Aug 2019, at 10:28, Philip Thrift <[email protected] <javascript:>> >> wrote: >> >> >> The Mary-Go-Round >> Galen Strawson >> https://www.academia.edu/31517753/Strawson_The_Mary_Go_Round >> <https://www.academia.edu/31517753/Strawson_The_Mary_Go_Round> >> >> "The mistake [in the debate about Mary in the Black and White Room] to think >> that physics can give an exhaustive characterization of the nature of the >> physical*." >> >> that is, material, but Stawson I guess wants to be one of the cool kids > > > I am quite amazed he cites Al Ghazali! I think Al Gazhali is partially > responsible for the current widespread obscurantism in Islam. He “won” his > debate against Averroès, in 1248 (or 1148). > > Al Ghazli defended the idea that Reason must be submitted to the Text, where > Averroès defended the idea that the Text must be submitted to Reason. That > has transformed the Golden Age of Islam into fight in between different > radical versions of some literal reading of the Quran and some haddiths. The > christian did the same error around 529. That transforms theology into “the > opium of people”. It makes religion into authoritative arguments, and > violence. > > Strawson argument is not valid, it identifies []p with []p & p, or []p & <>t > with []p & <>t & p. Like Lucas and Penrose, in a different context. But I > will not develop this right now. This asks to understand well how > incompleteness imposes those nuances to the subject. Mary needs the “p” which > is not a formalisable notion. Neither in arithmetic, nor in any complete 3p > account of the physical reality. > > Bruno > > > > > I don't know much about al-Ghazālī or much of anything about Islamic > philosophers (I did read something of Mulla Sadra once, who is noted as an > existentialist in the Islamic context), but al-Ghazālī apparently was a > Sufi, which supposedly is a liberal (in the modern sense) type of Islam, > relatively speaking.
I don’t think he was a Sufi, but he has been influenced by them at some period of time. He is mainly the one defending and criticising also Aristotle’s philosophy. The Stanford entry is not too bad, but you need to take account our own cultural prejudice in favour of Aristotle and “matter”. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/al-ghazali/ (To be sure, like with Aristotle, it is unclear if they or their disciples are responsible for the simplifications and the misunderstandings. I use dates and philosophers as symbolic markers in the development of metaphysics. > > > But to the core of the paper ... > > Below, wherever Strawson writes "physical" I would write "material". He is > attempting to be faithful to "current" physicists definition of "matter", but > current physicists - philosophically confused - are wrong on that matter in > the first place. He refers to "materialism/physicalism" (he says consistently > one word is a substitute for the other), so why not "material/physical". > Aside from that inconsequential word substitution argument - which is a bit > too pedantic, here is the significant core argument: I agree. I would say that materialism is a form of naive physicalism. Both are incompatible with Mechanism. Tegmark did have defended some form of mathematicalist physicalism at some time. It is the idea that the physical universe is a mathematical structure, with an implicit idea that we have still to assume it, where with Mechanism, even if the universe is a mathematical structure, it has to be derived from the universal machine phenomenology. > > > Philosophers constantly question things that aren’t seriously in question. > > The claim that something is controversial has zero dialectical force in > philosophy, although it’s often made by referees rejecting papers submitted > to learned journals. This is because there is as Louise Antony says ‘no > banality so banal that no philosopher will deny it’. > > [1] everything that concretely exists is wholly physical. > > The Mary-carousel rotates round a mistake shared on both sides. The mistake > consists in the endorsement of a highly substantive thesis about physics, the > thesis that > > [2] physics can (in principle) give a full or exhaustive characterization of > the nature of the physical. > > [1] and [2] entail the view I call physics-alism: ‘the view—the faith—that > > [3] the nature or essence of all concrete reality can in principle be fully > captured in the terms of physics. > > One can re-express [3] in a way that matches the wording of [2]: > > [3] physics can in principle give a full or exhaustive characterization of > the nature of everything that concretely exists. > > The mistake, on both sides of the Mary-go-round, is to turn > materialism/physicalism into physics-alism by adding [2] to [1] to produce > [3]. > > Endorsement of [2] leads to the false identification of [1] physicalism with > [3] physics-alism. > > On one side of the roundabout we confront the adamantine truth, already > recorded, that on leaving the black and white room > > [4] Mary learns something new about the nature of concrete reality > > in having a red-experience (an indubitably real concrete phenomenon) that has > the experiential-qualitative character (an indubitably real concrete > phenomenon) it does have. (If you doubt this, ask her.) This couples with the > widely agreed fact that > > [5] physics cannot characterize the nature of red-experience (colour > experience in general) to produce the mistaken conclusion that [6] Mary > raises a difficult and seemingly insoluble problem for physicalism by showing > that there is an undeniably real part of concrete reality that physics can’t > characterize. > > On the other side of the roundabout, [2] couples with the endorsement of the > truth of [1],physicalism, to produce the mistaken conclusion that (in some > sense or another) [4] is false—that Mary does not learn something new about > concrete reality when she leaves theblack and white room. > > Two mistakes. The solution is simple. Give up [2]. Nothing in [1], > physicalism, requires any attachment to [2], a thesis about the descriptive > reach of physics. It’s vital for physicalists to give up [2] because it is > certainly false if physicalism is true. It’s equally vital for those who > reject physicalism to give up [2], because their rejection of physicalism can > have no real force if it relies on [2]. If it relies on [2] it begs the > question: it defines physicalism/materialism in such a way that it can’t be > true. What if we replace ‘physics’ by ‘the physical sciences’ in [2], to get > > [2] the physical sciences can (in principle) give a full or exhaustive > characterization of the nature of the physical? > > ... > > > We have, as remarked, ten propositions (they overlap in various ways, and [7] > is a version of [2]): This is a bit hard to understand for me, but I will try below to clarify the position of the universal machine (after she understand the UDA argument, to be sure). > > > [1] materialism or physicalism: everything that concretely exists is wholly > physical Here I have a very general problem, which is that a “physical thing” is always an abstraction made from the most concrete thing I can know (may own consciousness, and then the natural numbers). A “material” concrete things needed billions of neurons chatting together to look concrete. The experience of a chair is quite concrete, but typically not material, as it is an experience (and with Mechanism this is related to both a computation and to some relation with Truth, both immaterial things). In [1], I am not sure an implicit ontological commitment is not already implicit. A table in a dream seems “concrete” and “hard and solid”, but we know that it is an illusion brought by the brain (accepting some form mechanism of course). Invoking concreteness seems a bit close to the knowing table argument. It is not relevant for “Mary” a priori. > [2] physics can give an exhaustive characterization of the nature of the > physical Physics is the science of sharable first person plural relative prediction. It does not address ontology, a priori. With QM, “simple" boolean interpretation of matter is no more possible, and physics begun to touch philosophy/theology, at least for those interested in the relation between physics and “reality” (the thing the fundamentalist researcher search, but never claim to have found). > [3] physics can give an exhaustive characterization of the nature of > everything that concretely exists Of course, the machine cannot agree here. Numbers concretely exists (and are the only things which concretely exists), and are used to explain what will become a sophisticated explanation of the origin of measurements and stable results (if it works). > [4] Mary learns something new about concrete reality when she leaves the > black and white room OK. > [5] physics cannot characterize the nature of colour experience OK. > [6] Mary raises a difficult and perhaps insoluble problem for physicalism I don’t think so (but with mechanism, physicalism is in trouble for a deeper reason, around the UDA). > [7] ‘x is physical’ entails ‘x’s nature is in principle fully characterizable > in the terms of physics’ OK, but physics itself can become (and do become with digital mechanism) fully characterizable in the arithmetical reality. Note that the full arithmetical reality is not fully or completely characterisable in *any* theory. > [8] colour experience is real, a concretely existing phenomenon Colour experience is real. OK. Now, if the experience is lived as a concrete thing, that is an illusion (with Mechanism). Seeing red requires many chatty neurons, + some transcendent truth. > [9] colour experience is wholly physical I would say that it is wholly psychological, but with mechanism, the entirety of physics is wholly psychological. The theory of matters is given by the theory showing what almost *all* universal machine can predict about observation. The physical becomes sharable illusions, a bit like in a video games, except that the core of the video game is not programmable a priori (it is the infinite sum of relative histories). > [10] physicalism doesn’t entail physics-alism. I don’t understand what you mean here (and above). You might elaborate a bit, perhaps. > > I accept [1], [4], [5], and [8]–[10]. I have a problem with the meaning of “concrete” in [1] and [8]. I (or the machine) makes sense of [4] and [5]. Your definition of “concrete experience” seems to fit with the machine’s notion of “dreamable experience”, which with digital mechanism is related (but not identified) with an infinity of computations, and in the explicit company, or not, of truth. Incompleteness assures the consistency and necessity of all those nuances. > I know that accepting [1]—being a physicalist—doesn’t require me to be in any > way irrealist about conscious experience because I know that being > a physicalist doesn’t require to me accept [3] that physics can give an > exhaustive characterization of the nature of concrete reality. Is it not in that case that those who want an exhaustive characterisation of the “concerte reality” will need some other theory than physics? Some materialist says so, and invoke Mechanism, but that is the point that the UDA is supposed to debunk. > I accept [8] unconditionally, because its > truth is certain, as Descartes observed in his Second Meditation. OK, for the certain part of this, but not OK that the experience is concrete. The experience of concreteness is abstract, quite abstract! > [1] and [8] entail [9], I take [5] to be beyond serious question, and [1] and > [5] entail [10]. One way to put the problem, plainly, is as a disagreement > about the meaning of the word ‘physical’. > > I’ve always taken ‘physical’ to be a natural-kind term. That is where we differ the most, I guess. And as you seem to endow some form of mechanism (codicalism), you will introduce insuperable difficulties with that naturalisation intent. > It’s a term that denotes a fundamental kind of stuff whose nature we may not > fully know, and plainly do not fully know (ask the physicists). Or asks a mechanist. He knows that the apparent primary stuff is a result of a string indeterminacy on a transcendent reality (arithmetical truth). Here, it is important to understand that after Gödel, we understand that we don’t understand what is the arithmetical truth, even if it remains the easiest thing to get some conception of (but that too is an illusion easily explained). > > This puts me in conflict with Jackson when he says > that Mary in the black and white room can acquire ‘all the physical > information there is to > obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes’ (1982: 130, my > emphasis). The trouble is that Jackson equates ‘all the physical information’ > with ‘all the information expressible in the terms of physics, or more > generally the physical sciences’, and this equation makes it impossible for > someone who is a real realist about conscious experience to count as a > physicalist. This is a startling result for a great host of physicalists like > myself who are real realists about conscious experience, whether or not they > follow Russell when he says (correctly if physicalism is true—see §9) that > ‘we know nothing about the intrinsic quality of physical events’—nothing > about the intrinsic non-structural nature of physical events—‘except when > these are mental events that we directly experience’ (1956: 153, my > emphasis). In other terms: it directly begs the question. With Mechanism, it is close to the place we abandon the idea of primary stuff. > > The flagship materialist or physicalist thesis, in sum, is precisely that > consciousness— real consciousness—is wholly physical. > > ---------- > > The flagship materialist (or physicalist) thesis, in sum, is precisely that > consciousness—real consciousness—is wholly material. But that contradicts the experience I have, and certainly the experience all digital machines have in arithmetic. If consciousness is physical, then it cannot be brought by digital computation, and your codicalism will have to negate the idea that the brain is a functioning, mechanical, entity. You will need to say “no” to the doctor, or “no” to the Church-Turing thesis (which I think you already did). > > I realize there is a trend towards immaterialism (by physicists today as > well). Immaterialism has got bad press, because materialist have seen it as adding some magical stuff above the usual physical stuff, like in the image of a soul leaving the body. With mechanism, immaterialism retrieve *all* sorts of stuff, and keep non material entity with which we are familiar, like the idea that 2+2=4, or that for all n bigger than 2, there is no x, y, z such that x^n + y^n = z^n (very simple conceptually, despite very difficult to prove). Bruno > > @philipthrift > > > > > > > -- > 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] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2e1ab9fa-3b84-43f7-80be-03459958b9ac%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2e1ab9fa-3b84-43f7-80be-03459958b9ac%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/F47B2BD4-9618-431A-8786-697E8562854B%40ulb.ac.be.
