> On 2 Mar 2020, at 17:42, PGC <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On Monday, March 2, 2020 at 1:23:49 PM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote: > >> On 1 Mar 2020, at 15:24, PGC <[email protected] <javascript:>> wrote: >> >> >> >> On Sunday, March 1, 2020 at 3:09:31 PM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote: >> >>> On 28 Feb 2020, at 18:38, PGC <[email protected] <>> wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> What could be a "wrong" thesis about Watson and/or Holmes? >>> >>> Good question. It would be like making a summary of a novel, which would be >>> wrong. If you say “Tintin never got to the moon” you are wrong, with >>> respect to the novel, and false, with respect to the mundane reality. But >>> if you say that the number 18 is prime, you are false, even among the >>> aliens. >>> >>> If your literature professor didn't fail you, he or she should have. I say >>> this without irony or humor intended. >>> >>> Nobody in the world, other than servitor humblebrag here, claims to know or >>> have an authoritative grasp on where "mundane reality" ends and where the >>> land of fiction and wishful thinking begins. Sure, we may know that some >>> abstraction may or may not be locally more effective given some more or >>> less defined domain... but that's far from claiming absolute reality/truth. >> >> I certainly do not claim the truth of Mechanism. I derive consequences of >> it, and insist that Mong the consequence, nobody can know if Mechanism its >> true, at least in some public way. Of course, someone having got an >> artificial brain; can, privately be happy with it, but still cannot claim it >> to be known as true. >> >> Somewhere you talked about Mechanism as a metaphor. Here mechanism explains >> why this always fail. Mechanism is just the assumption of the existence of a >> level where we are Turning emulable, but then that level cannot be known, >> and that is why it requires, for the practitioners, some act of faith. The >> ethic of mechanism is that mechanism could be wrong, and should never been >> enforced. It asks for an explicit consent, or refusal. To say yes to the >> doctor implies the right to say no. >> >> You can't post without bringing up mechanism, thereby assuming very >> ambitiously that everybody you meet consents > > I do not. Nobody can even guess if I believe in Mechanism myself or not. > > > I think everybody here has reasonable confidence/evidence that you do: most > posts you write are defenses of mechanism and attacks on what you call > "materialism". And this is an understatement. > > > >> (where are your "ethics of mechanism"?) to your use of what is still a >> metaphor, > > It is not a metaphor. > > This certainty is absolute,
It is not a certainty. On the contrary, it is part of the faith needed to say “yes” to the doctor. > while not providing the math/experiment/result of emulating the states of > even one complex organism, such as our famous worm, to a degree that might > convince any scientist of plausible tractability of the problem in > computational terms. I use tractability in the sense of determining whether > or not something appears practical given the current state of the art in > computing. Nobody cares about folks whining about their neglected hypothesis, > if those folks don't work on showing others that the hypothesis may be > fruitful. You ask for a considerable leap of faith, requiring others to > assume that an entire human can be cloned. Show them that you can emulate a > worm's neurology, full accounting of complete state with neurons firing etc., > using any assumption, mechanism if you want, and that would be evidence > towards a more credible appreciation of mind/organism/brain as machine. To > have blind faith in our future ability to do so, is hardly scientific. > Science relies on evidence somewhere, not infinite explanations. > > If you accept a digital artificial brain in the skull, > > Then show me a worm's brain working in arithmetic. The felicity of doing so > wouldn't ever mean, we've truly achieved what we set out to do, but the model > and simulation would shed light on how far or close we are to realizing the > core component of the thought experiment, and therefore it's plausibility at > some point in time. Then people could make up their own minds on whether the > problem is valid, or as Wittgenstein suggests, apparently a time waster of > the usual kind, which ontological reasoning and identity questions have 2000 > years track record of being. A German conservative parliamentarian intent on > blocking parliament from some action he was opposed to, recently stated in a > newspaper: "we should have a fundamental discussion on the subject."; knowing > full well that all one has to do to block action is to loose people in > defending their fundamental convictions. > > the fact that you survive or die is not a metaphor. > > Well, show us! Saying for an artificial brain, and surviving with it, like we assume when we bet on mechanism, is not metaphorical. The artificial brain is no more a metaphor than an artificial heart. You talk like if I was trying to prove Mechanism to be true, but that is simply not the case. Bruno > > The artificial brain is not a metaphor. See my other post (we cannot know > which machine we are, except by being lucky, and taking “know” in the weak > Theaetetus sense of true belief, assuming mechanism true). > > I'm immune to the interior reasoning because I'm not convinced of the > door/premise of the reasoning in the first place: assume we clone an > individual is the premise... then show me the clone, the simulation, informed > by your ethics, metaphysics, engineering etc. > > It might be cul-de-sac with zero value for humans interested in sustaining > survival and life. Metaphysically, it devalues life and paints a rather > depressing picture of existence. Everybody's immortal, so why care about > anything and/or anybody? > > > >> in absence of convincing evidence that even a tiny part of reality, one >> complex organism, can indeed be emulated effectively enough, > > The contrary is true: we don’t have find any evidence of anything non > mechanical in Nature. > > Show us the goods. Emulate just one complex organism from nature. > > > The problem of Mechanism is not that people disbelieve it, but that people > take it for granted. The inconsistency happens when people believed in both > Mechanism and Materialism. > > Wow, some people are inconsistent. This is the kind of psychological insight > that is rather obvious and easy to obtain. Nobody needs fancy ontologies for > trivialities. > > It would be more amazing to see anybody be perfectly consistent in regard to > anything. Another reason the ontology becomes less credible. > > > > > > >> that we'd have sufficient context to even approach the question. Show us >> successful emulations of just one complex organism, say your favorite >> "worm", instead of bringing up conways gol in conways gol. The latter is >> easy, while the former... just show us and we'll see. PGC > > > You might look at my “Amoeba, Planaria and Dreaming machine”. Usually, the > extraordinary claim is “non-mechanism” (usually done by “believer” in > something supernatural). > Anyway, I don’t defend mechanism, nor do I attack it. It is not my job. I > show it to be testable (and tested) I study how far it is from Neoplatonism, > also. > > Not only did I believe and read that at a point in my life, I defended > computationalism on this list. For years. How you can forget this is > concerning. > > My position now is closer to: stop explaining; the pleasantness of Platonism > or correspondences of its inner reasoning with personal observations and > mysticisms of yours... sorry, but none of this sheds light regarding its > plausibility. Evidence is required for this: we are quite a long way from > emulating a single complex organism, therefore the road is long on > determining whether mind as machine metaphor, that presupposes cloning of > entire individuals and uploading consciousness to some other substrate, would > reach a threshold of plausibility beyond pure hypothetical possibility, > making arguments of this type more concrete. Step 0 might already be too > ambitious for many, without more context/evidence on the plausibility and > practicability of mind as a machine. > > You want to engage the linguists/philosophers that allege platonism is > pleasant but empty, inconsistent language game? Those folks won't be swayed > by internal consistencies inside arguments with established premisses they > don't accept. Show them how the math does worm neurology better than > neuroscience by some measure, and the problematic platonic truth claims would > appear less relevant. PGC > > > -- > 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/7290c4fe-a9a3-499f-8a74-0a5a9af28490%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/7290c4fe-a9a3-499f-8a74-0a5a9af28490%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/C728FA2D-5F63-4B2E-93A7-44534180E1CD%40ulb.ac.be.
