> On 4 May 2020, at 20:47, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 5/4/2020 6:27 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Le lun. 4 mai 2020 à 14:15, Lawrence Crowell 
>> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> 
>> a écrit :
>> On Sunday, May 3, 2020 at 10:14:10 PM UTC-5, smitra wrote:
>> On 03-05-2020 23:09, Philip Thrift wrote: 
>> > The SSH 
>> > 
>> >       https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/22/2/247 
>> > <https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/22/2/247> 
>> > 
>> > still lies in the "information turn" that plays in physics today.(IT 
>> > FROM QUBIT, etc.) - a rejection pf materialism in favor of idealism. 
>> > 
>> > It is more interesting to me to stick to the vocabulary of 
>> > materialist* physics - particles, fields, interactions, forces - but 
>> > to approach CONSCIOUSNESS AS PURELY MATERIAL - adding a new 
>> > force/interaction/particle/field as needed (like a sixth force/field). 
>> > 
>> > http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Field_theories_of_consciousness 
>> > <http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Field_theories_of_consciousness> 
>> > 
>> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_theories_of_consciousness 
>> > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_theories_of_consciousness> 
>> > 
>> > etc. 
>> > 
>> > * or physicalist 
>> > 
>> > @philipthrift 
>> 
>> Physicalism is a dead end. The hard problem of consciousness and other 
>> philosophical problems can be considered to be no-go theorems against 
>> physicalism. Abandoning physicalism solves all these problems in one 
>> fell swoop. But that also opens the door to wrong theories as people 
>> engaging with non-physicalist theories can too easily advertise their 
>> pet theories because they don't suffer from all the diseases physicalist 
>> theories suffer from. The bar has to be set higher, I would like to see 
>> a derivation of the laws of physics, not some vague argument that it is 
>> consistent with QM and unitary evolution but a lot more detail than just 
>> that. 
>> 
>> Saibal 
>> 
>> I think more likely this mean the hard problem or qualia are illusions. I 
>> have far more confidence in physics than I do in hopeful ideas about qualia, 
>> which are psychological form of elan vital thought in previous centuries to 
>> underlie biology.
>> 
>> Either you have no quale, and then as a zombie... it could mean something 
>> (but not to you), or you have, and if a theory cannot account for that, it 
>> miss the things it purpose to explain.
>> 
>> When you say "psychological form" you're talking about a quale... I don't 
>> see how that could be explained away... 
>> 
> 
> I think the problem here is with the word "explain".   Yes, physics will 
> never explain quale.  But physics doesn't explain matter, or gravity, or 
> entropy either.  Physics is regarded as successful because it makes good 
> predictions, and that allows manipulation of things.  Look at the controversy 
> over the interpretation of quantum mechanics.  We have drastically different 
> "explanations" of what is happening...which have zero effect on the 
> application or usefulness of the theory.  And that's exactly the same 
> situation with regard to consciousness and qualia.  Chemistry and biology 
> have a lot of of good "explanations" of quale in the sense of being able to 
> predict them and manipulate them.  Sure, it's no where near as deep as 
> physics explanations which reach down to sub-atomic level.  But physics aims 
> for depth and bypasses the complex problems of biology as accidents of 
> evolution, mere geography problems.  There's no reason to suppose that 
> chemistry and molecular biology and study of brain structure

OK.



> and AI will not reach the same depth of explanation of consciousness. 

Once you invoke AI or mechanism, the deep explanation will have to reduce 
physics to some mathematics (indeed to G* intensional variant). Or it brings 
magical ontological commitment just to hide ignorance, and that is bad 
religion/philosophy.



> And it still won't "explain" quale,

Where Mechanism does.




> but it will manipulate them and reproduce them in AI and people will forget 
> all about how mysterious they were...just like they have forgotten elan 
> vitale.

Even the AI will not been convinced by this. The élan vitale does not explain 
one thing. The qualia are just unavoidable data, which, when we suppose 
mechanism are easier to explain, and indeed already explains the existence of 
quanta as first person sharable qualia. 

Mechanism explains, in a coherent and testable way, why we feel like if there 
was a material reality, and a mental reality. Adding a magical primitive matter 
makes that explanation no more working, so why to add it?

The goal is not to replaced physics by some better predictive science, except 
for the afterlife problem, where, with some exception like Tipler, is not part 
of the physical inquiry, but of metaphysics, and the point is that with 
mechanism, any Aristotelian theories cannot work. 

Physics and Metaphysics are different science. To make them equal *is* the 
Aristotelian act of faith, and this can work only by invoking non Turing 
elmulable element in the brain. But there is no evidences for this, and thanks 
to quantum mechanics, the startling many histories aspect needed for a 
mechanist theory of the observable is vindicated by the experiments.

Bruno



> 
> Brent
> 
> 
> -- 
> 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/793213e0-89f6-f6fa-bc72-4c3b7608fe34%40verizon.net
>  
> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/793213e0-89f6-f6fa-bc72-4c3b7608fe34%40verizon.net?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/ED07C8B8-5478-46C5-8398-6A5E56E338A9%40ulb.ac.be.

Reply via email to