> On 5 Apr 2020, at 15:18, Philip Thrift <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On Sunday, April 5, 2020 at 7:26:02 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: > >> On 4 Apr 2020, at 22:33, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List >> <[email protected] <javascript:>> wrote: >> >> I quite agree with Strawson that physics, and science in general, doesn't >> tell us about the ding und sich of consciousness or anything else. But I >> notice that he completely avoids any similar level description or definition >> of qualia. Over and over he says "You know what I mean." So his denial >> adds nothing. In contrast the idea that consciousness is a particular kind >> of computation does lead somewhere...it leads to AI and analysis and >> possibly even repair of brains. It leads to consciousness engineering. >> >> The student questions are quite good...better than Strawson's answers. > > Same opinion. > > I would say that physics does not study consciousness, per se. It is not in > its subject matter. But science can study consciousness and, actually, can be > done in all domains. It is just the retrieval of metaphysics/theology from > science which makes us believe that there subject out of science. Those > subset are out of science to prevent people understanding the tyran tricks, a > bit like cannabis is out of science, to steal money with inefficacious and > expensive products instead. > > And you are right, the assumption that consciousness is preserved through > digital functional substitution at some level does have many sort of > observable consequences, from the plausibility of AI to quantum-like > principle in Nature. > > Bruno > > > > Except for a few (Penrose, Koch, Hoffman, Matloff, ...) the scientists weigh > in on consciousness do not actually think consciousness exists (in a > Strawsonian, Russellian, ...) way.
Here Penrose is more lucid than many scientists. > > As you may have read already, Sabine Hossenfelder's recent comments > demonstrates this: > > > http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/04/what-is-emergence-what-means-emergent.html > > There is no reason to think that [consciousness is not measurable] is the > case. Indeed, scientists are devising ways of measuring consciousness as we > speak. The problem with assuming a physical reality, in metaphysics, is that we have to abandon Mechanism, and the mathematical logic approach to consciousness and matter-appearances. If we keep Mechanism, then the physical universe has to be endowed with magical attributes whose must be capable of selecting some computations, or sheaves of computations, to make them able to support consciousness, leading to infinitely many zombies in arithmetic, but also to … non mechanism. > > Of course ["feeling"] is observable, provided you can accurately monitor the > brain. This is not even a matter of debate any more. Scientists *do* monitor > people's feelings. They bet on correlations. We all do that when seeing people. We are literally programmed to do that. I have assisted to a cheater presentation which included a very cute expressive tiny robot, and the public was outraged when he was bullied and tortured. Even for those who knew that the program was rather simple, it was hard not get emotions, and it was hard not to attribute some feeling to the robot, even when understanding the program and knowing that this was not quite plausible. Children attribute emotions to their toys. There is no simple 3p criteria to attribute, or not, consciousness to another, or to anything desired in a pure 3p way. That’s part of the problem. The existence of correlation is not an explanation. But the (universal, Löbian) machine is already aware that she will never been able to prove in a definite way that she is conscious. > > [The] brain is made of particles That is an assumption, which eventually has to be abandoned when we work in the Mechanist theory. > and physicists know what these particles do very well. May be. But “doing” is not enough when handling qualia and consciousness. Again, that is part of the problem. I have known a case of someone in a comatose state, and the physicians around debated a very long time if that person was conscious or not. > Hence, they have a theory for the brain; end of story. That’s a Mike Spencer type of argument. "There was a bit crowd at Trump inaugural presentation, period”. End of story? The story has not yet begun, Imo. > If you want to invent something that is not contained in their theory > already, you are claiming that particle physics are wrong. Particle physics might be 100% correct in physics, and 100% false in metaphysics. That should be the case with mechanism, with a general sense of particle, like relative singularity in a quantum field, or a quantum “superstring”. Mechanism seems to lead to a sort of string theory. > It's called the causal exclusion argument, please look it up. When doing metaphysics, we must carefully not add anything in the ontology that is not needed. With Digital Mechanism, we need to explain the physical from the psychology of the numbers, and up to now, it works, and not only that, if we assume a richer ontology, we get an inflation of absurd predictions. My argument shows that we cannot have both primitive matter (having a role in consciousness including material appearance) and Digital Mechanism. If you disagree somewhere in the argument, let us address this. Referring to the Aristotelian literature will just beg the question. If you are OK with mechanism, you need to explain me why a computation realised by the arithmetical truth can be dismissed in the measure on all computations (which are *all* realised in Arithmetic). That does not make sense. That put some magic in matter, but then how can I know if my doctor take that magic into account, and if he did, then it is Turing emulated already in arithmetic, or mechanism is false. 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/b6478c5f-ea81-47c8-8a66-3b76c4a2a52a%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/b6478c5f-ea81-47c8-8a66-3b76c4a2a52a%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/7199514A-0DD8-4326-9C1F-47571EC86E2D%40ulb.ac.be.
