This is a post I wrote yesterday, but apparently did not go through. ------------------
Le 23-oct.-06, à 15:58, David Nyman a écrit : > > Bruno Marchal wrote: > >> Here I disagree, or if you want make that distinction (introduced by >> Peter), you can sum up the conclusion of the UD Argument by: >> >> Computationalism entails COMP. > > Bruno, could you distinguish between your remarks vis-a-vis comp, that > on the one hand: a belief in 'primary' matter can be retained provided > it is not invoked in the explanation of consciousness, Imagine someone who has been educated during his entire childhood with the idea that anything moving on the road with wheels is pulled by invisible horses. Imagine then that becoming an adult he decides to study physics and thermodynamics, and got the understanding that there is no need to postulate invisible horses for explaining how car moves around. Would this "proves" the non existence of invisible horses? Of course no. From a logical point of view you can always add irrefutable hypotheses making some theories as redundant as you wish. The thermodynamician can only say that he does not need the invisible horses hypothesis for explaining the movement of the cars , like Laplace said to Napoleon that he does not need the "God hypothesis" in his mechanics. And then he is coherent as far as he does not use the God concept in is explanation. The comp hypothesis, which I insist is the same as standard computationalism (but put in a more precise way if only because of the startling consequences) entails that "primary matter", even existing, cannot be used to justify anything related to the subjective experience, and this includes any *reading* of pointer needle result of a physical device. So we don't need the postulate it. And that is a good thing because the only definition of primary matter I know (the one by Aristotle in his metaphysics) is already refuted by both experiments and theory (QM or just comp as well). > and on the > other: that under comp 'matter' emerges from (what I've termed) a > recursively prior 1-person level. Why are these two conclusions not > contradictory? 'Matter', or the stable appearance of matter has to emerge from the "mathematical coherence of the computations". This is what the UDA is supposed to prove. Scientifically it means that you can test comp by comparing some self-observing discourses of digital machines (those corresponding to the arithmetical translation of the UDA (AUDA)) with empirical physics. Again this cannot disprove the ("religious") belief in Matter, or in any Gods, for sure. > >> You will have to attach >> consciousness to actual material infinite. > > Why is this the case? Because it is a way to prevent the UDA reasoning (at least as currently exibited) to proceed. It makes sense to say that some actual material infinity is not duplicable, for example. To be sure, the AUDA would still work (but could be less well motivated). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---