Re: Dualism as a cover-up solution to the mind-body problem
Roger says that mind and body are completely contrary substances Richard replies what is dualism if not that? On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 6:43 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg The dualisms will work as fictions as long as you don't take them too seriously. But keep in mind: IMHO all of those dualist positions are not logically valid. Instead, they are phoney attempts to get around the unresolveable issue that mind and body are completely contrary substances, and calling them a dualism is just a handy cover-up of the problem. Only Leibniz can claim philosophical verity by treating boith body and mind as mind (idealism). Materialist monists hold that mind is physical, which is nonsense, and the dualist coverup doesn't solve that absurdity. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/5/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-02, 08:05:41 Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p On Friday, November 2, 2012 8:18:29 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 2:51 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: But you can't stay awake unless your hardware allows it. So what? I can't shoot a gun unless the trigger works. Does that mean I'm not shooting the gun by pulling the trigger? You are external to the gun, but you are not external to your brain unless substance dualism is true. The problem with substance dualism is that it is redundant and has an infinite regress problem connecting the two substances. With dual aspect monism, you don't have those issues so that I can be internal to my brain in some senses, external to my brain in some senses, both internal and external in some senses, and neither internal and external in some senses. Regardless though, even if we said that the sense in which you are literally internal to the brain of this moment also necessarily means that your brain is identical to you. It has to be a two way street. It is completely arbitrary to privilege the spatial-object description of the phenomenon and marginalize the temporal-subject description. It's like saying that a movie exists entirely because there are pixels changing. It is not true. Movies exist because humans make them to tell stories to each other, and the pixels are there to help tell that storytelling. This is the primordial relation of all nature. It gets complicated, and as human beings we are equal parts personal story sequences and impersonal non-story consequences, but nevertheless, it is ultimately the story which is driving the bus. The coin has two sides, but the heads side is the side of the 'genuine leader'. You can't decide to do anything unless your brain goes into the particular configuration consistent with that decision, and the movement into that configuration is determined by physical factors. The movement of the molecules of your brain *is* your decision. That's what I am telling you but you won't see it. You are only able to see it as a one way street which makes no sense. What you are saying is like 'water is ice but ice is not water'. If I feel something when something happens in my brain, then that means that whatever happens in my brain is also an event in the universe when something is felt. That means molecules feel and see. You could say that groups of molecules feel and see, and that's ok too, but you think it's the 'groupiness' that sees and not the physical reality of the molecules themselves. I am saying that there is no independent groupiness... it is a fantasy. Incorrect. That the movement of the molecules of your brain *is* the decision is eliminative materialism, or perhaps epiphenomenalism. No, your view has it upside down. The mindset which generates that view is so absolutely biased that it cannot conceive of turning this simple picture right side up. If something looks like particles moving on the outside but feels like remembering a fishing trip on the inside, that doesn't mean that the memory is the epiphenomenon. The memory is the whole point of the particles. They have nothing else to do sitting in your skull but to provide the grunt work of organizing your access to your own human experiences. It is not eliminative materialism to say that object and subject are the same thing from different views, it is dual aspect monism. When I say 'there are two sides to this coin', your mind keeps responding 'but coins are tails'. He keeps looking at the universe from an external perspective and then projecting that world of objects-within-objects as some kind of explanation of the subject who he actually is. My view is that it cannot work that way. In any case, the behaviour of the molecules is entirely consistent with chemistry. An ion channel opens because it changes conformation due to neurotransmitters binding
Re: Dualism as a cover-up solution to the mind-body problem
On Monday, November 5, 2012 6:45:50 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg The dualisms will work as fictions as long as you don't take them too seriously. But keep in mind: IMHO all of those dualist positions are not logically valid. Instead, they are phoney attempts to get around the unresolveable issue that mind and body are completely contrary substances, and calling them a dualism is just a handy cover-up of the problem. Only Leibniz can claim philosophical verity by treating boith body and mind as mind (idealism). Materialist monists hold that mind is physical, which is nonsense, and the dualist coverup doesn't solve that absurdity. My model solves that. Leibniz (and his philosophy isn't the only form of idealism) was on the right track, but I take it further to say that what we call mind is descended from lesser forms of sensitivity and greater forms of intuition, and that in fact the symmetry itself between private time and public space is the dual aspect neutral monism (I call sense, or signal) which gives rise to both. This establishes that dualism is a shorthand reduction of what is actually an involuted monism (like a Mobius strip) which extends ever deeper into literal public surfaces and private figurative depths. Dualism doesn't go far enough. It should not only be taken seriously, it should be taken as the supreme absolute. The capacity for discernment is what the cosmos is made of. It is subject and object. It is what feels and thinks as well as what is felt and thought about. Craig Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net javascript: 11/5/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-02, 08:05:41 Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p On Friday, November 2, 2012 8:18:29 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 2:51 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: But you can't stay awake unless your hardware allows it. So what? I can't shoot a gun unless the trigger works. Does that mean I'm not shooting the gun by pulling the trigger? You are external to the gun, but you are not external to your brain unless substance dualism is true. The problem with substance dualism is that it is redundant and has an infinite regress problem connecting the two substances. With dual aspect monism, you don't have those issues so that I can be internal to my brain in some senses, external to my brain in some senses, both internal and external in some senses, and neither internal and external in some senses. Regardless though, even if we said that the sense in which you are literally internal to the brain of this moment also necessarily means that your brain is identical to you. It has to be a two way street. It is completely arbitrary to privilege the spatial-object description of the phenomenon and marginalize the temporal-subject description. It's like saying that a movie exists entirely because there are pixels changing. It is not true. Movies exist because humans make them to tell stories to each other, and the pixels are there to help tell that storytelling. This is the primordial relation of all nature. It gets complicated, and as human beings we are equal parts personal story sequences and impersonal non-story consequences, but nevertheless, it is ultimately the story which is driving the bus. The coin has two sides, but the heads side is the side of the 'genuine leader'. You can't decide to do anything unless your brain goes into the particular configuration consistent with that decision, and the movement into that configuration is determined by physical factors. The movement of the molecules of your brain *is* your decision. That's what I am telling you but you won't see it. You are only able to see it as a one way street which makes no sense. What you are saying is like 'water is ice but ice is not water'. If I feel something when something happens in my brain, then that means that whatever happens in my brain is also an event in the universe when something is felt. That means molecules feel and see. You could say that groups of molecules feel and see, and that's ok too, but you think it's the 'groupiness' that sees and not the physical reality of the molecules themselves. I am saying that there is no independent groupiness... it is a fantasy. Incorrect. That the movement of the molecules of your brain *is* the decision is eliminative materialism, or perhaps epiphenomenalism. No, your view has it upside down. The mindset which generates that view is so absolutely biased that it cannot conceive of turning this simple picture right side up. If something looks like particles moving on the outside but feels like remembering a fishing trip on the inside, that doesn't mean that the memory is
Re: Re: Dualism as a cover-up solution to the mind-body problem
Hi Craig Weinberg What they say about economists is also appropriate to say about philosophers: If all of the philosophers in the world were laid end to end, they'd never come to a conclusion. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/5/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-05, 08:04:04 Subject: Re: Dualism as a cover-up solution to the mind-body problem On Monday, November 5, 2012 6:45:50 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg The dualisms will work as fictions as long as you don't take them too seriously. But keep in mind: IMHO all of those dualist positions are not logically valid. Instead, they are phoney attempts to get around the unresolveable issue that mind and body are completely contrary substances, and calling them a dualism is just a handy cover-up of the problem. Only Leibniz can claim philosophical verity by treating boith body and mind as mind (idealism). Materialist monists hold that mind is physical, which is nonsense, and the dualist coverup doesn't solve that absurdity. My model solves that. Leibniz (and his philosophy isn't the only form of idealism) was on the right track, but I take it further to say that what we call mind is descended from lesser forms of sensitivity and greater forms of intuition, and that in fact the symmetry itself between private time and public space is the dual aspect neutral monism (I call sense, or signal) which gives rise to both. This establishes that dualism is a shorthand reduction of what is actually an involuted monism (like a Mobius strip) which extends ever deeper into literal public surfaces and private figurative depths. Dualism doesn't go far enough. It should not only be taken seriously, it should be taken as the supreme absolute. The capacity for discernment is what the cosmos is made of. It is subject and object. It is what feels and thinks as well as what is felt and thought about. Craig Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net 11/5/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-02, 08:05:41 Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p On Friday, November 2, 2012 8:18:29 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 2:51 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: But you can't stay awake unless your hardware allows it. So what? I can't shoot a gun unless the trigger works. Does that mean I'm not shooting the gun by pulling the trigger? You are external to the gun, but you are not external to your brain unless substance dualism is true. The problem with substance dualism is that it is redundant and has an infinite regress problem connecting the two substances. With dual aspect monism, you don't have those issues so that I can be internal to my brain in some senses, external to my brain in some senses, both internal and external in some senses, and neither internal and external in some senses. Regardless though, even if we said that the sense in which you are literally internal to the brain of this moment also necessarily means that your brain is identical to you. It has to be a two way street. It is completely arbitrary to privilege the spatial-object description of the phenomenon and marginalize the temporal-subject description. It's like saying that a movie exists entirely because there are pixels changing. It is not true. Movies exist because humans make them to tell stories to each other, and the pixels are there to help tell that storytelling. This is the primordial relation of all nature. It gets complicated, and as human beings we are equal parts personal story sequences and impersonal non-story consequences, but nevertheless, it is ultimately the story which is driving the bus. The coin has two sides, but the heads side is the side of the 'genuine leader'. You can't decide to do anything unless your brain goes into the particular configuration consistent with that decision, and the movement into that configuration is determined by physical factors. The movement of the molecules of your brain *is* your decision. That's what I am telling you but you won't see it. You are only able to see it as a one way street which makes no sense. What you are saying is like 'water is ice but ice is not water'. If I feel something when something happens in my brain, then that means that whatever happens in my brain is also an event in the universe when something is felt. That means molecules feel and see. You could say that groups of molecules feel and see, and that's ok too, but you think it's the 'groupiness' that sees and not the physical reality of the molecules themselves. I am saying that there is no independent groupiness... it is a fantasy
Re: Re: Dualism as a cover-up solution to the mind-body problem
I don't know that I'm a philosopher, but it seems to me that I have come to a conclusion. Craig On Monday, November 5, 2012 8:13:38 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg What they say about economists is also appropriate to say about philosophers: If all of the philosophers in the world were laid end to end, they'd never come to a conclusion. Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net javascript: 11/5/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-05, 08:04:04 Subject: Re: Dualism as a cover-up solution to the mind-body problem On Monday, November 5, 2012 6:45:50 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg The dualisms will work as fictions as long as you don't take them too seriously. But keep in mind: IMHO all of those dualist positions are not logically valid. Instead, they are phoney attempts to get around the unresolveable issue that mind and body are completely contrary substances, and calling them a dualism is just a handy cover-up of the problem. Only Leibniz can claim philosophical verity by treating boith body and mind as mind (idealism). Materialist monists hold that mind is physical, which is nonsense, and the dualist coverup doesn't solve that absurdity. My model solves that. Leibniz (and his philosophy isn't the only form of idealism) was on the right track, but I take it further to say that what we call mind is descended from lesser forms of sensitivity and greater forms of intuition, and that in fact the symmetry itself between private time and public space is the dual aspect neutral monism (I call sense, or signal) which gives rise to both. This establishes that dualism is a shorthand reduction of what is actually an involuted monism (like a Mobius strip) which extends ever deeper into literal public surfaces and private figurative depths. Dualism doesn't go far enough. It should not only be taken seriously, it should be taken as the supreme absolute. The capacity for discernment is what the cosmos is made of. It is subject and object. It is what feels and thinks as well as what is felt and thought about. Craig Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net 11/5/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-02, 08:05:41 Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p On Friday, November 2, 2012 8:18:29 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 2:51 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: But you can't stay awake unless your hardware allows it. So what? I can't shoot a gun unless the trigger works. Does that mean I'm not shooting the gun by pulling the trigger? You are external to the gun, but you are not external to your brain unless substance dualism is true. The problem with substance dualism is that it is redundant and has an infinite regress problem connecting the two substances. With dual aspect monism, you don't have those issues so that I can be internal to my brain in some senses, external to my brain in some senses, both internal and external in some senses, and neither internal and external in some senses. Regardless though, even if we said that the sense in which you are literally internal to the brain of this moment also necessarily means that your brain is identical to you. It has to be a two way street. It is completely arbitrary to privilege the spatial-object description of the phenomenon and marginalize the temporal-subject description. It's like saying that a movie exists entirely because there are pixels changing. It is not true. Movies exist because humans make them to tell stories to each other, and the pixels are there to help tell that storytelling. This is the primordial relation of all nature. It gets complicated, and as human beings we are equal parts personal story sequences and impersonal non-story consequences, but nevertheless, it is ultimately the story which is driving the bus. The coin has two sides, but the heads side is the side of the 'genuine leader'. You can't decide to do anything unless your brain goes into the particular configuration consistent with that decision, and the movement into that configuration is determined by physical factors. The movement of the molecules of your brain *is* your decision. That's what I am telling you but you won't see it. You are only able to see it as a one way street which makes no sense. What you are saying is like 'water is ice but ice is not water'. If I feel something when something happens in my brain, then that means that whatever happens in my brain is also an event in the universe when something
Re: Dualism as a cover-up solution to the mind-body problem
On 11/5/2012 9:01 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: I don't know that I'm a philosopher, but it seems to me that I have come to a conclusion. Craig On Monday, November 5, 2012 8:13:38 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg What they say about economists is also appropriate to say about philosophers: If all of the philosophers in the world were laid end to end, they'd never come to a conclusion. Hi, Philosophers are lovers of knowledge... if they are truly philosophers and not sophists http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophism. -- Onward! Stephen -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Re: Dualism as a cover-up solution to the mind-body problem
Hi Craig Weinberg I must be a philosopher then, for everything seems to be a work in progress, if not immediately then afterwards. But I am for the truth and sometimes, temporarily, seem to have found it. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/5/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-05, 09:01:10 Subject: Re: Re: Dualism as a cover-up solution to the mind-body problem I don't know that I'm a philosopher, but it seems to me that I have come to a conclusion. Craig On Monday, November 5, 2012 8:13:38 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg What they say about economists is also appropriate to say about philosophers: If all of the philosophers in the world were laid end to end, they'd never come to a conclusion. Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net 11/5/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-05, 08:04:04 Subject: Re: Dualism as a cover-up solution to the mind-body problem On Monday, November 5, 2012 6:45:50 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg The dualisms will work as fictions as long as you don't take them too seriously. But keep in mind: IMHO all of those dualist positions are not logically valid. Instead, they are phoney attempts to get around the unresolveable issue that mind and body are completely contrary substances, and calling them a dualism is just a handy cover-up of the problem. Only Leibniz can claim philosophical verity by treating boith body and mind as mind (idealism). Materialist monists hold that mind is physical, which is nonsense, and the dualist coverup doesn't solve that absurdity. My model solves that. Leibniz (and his philosophy isn't the only form of idealism) was on the right track, but I take it further to say that what we call mind is descended from lesser forms of sensitivity and greater forms of intuition, and that in fact the symmetry itself between private time and public space is the dual aspect neutral monism (I call sense, or signal) which gives rise to both. This establishes that dualism is a shorthand reduction of what is actually an involuted monism (like a Mobius strip) which extends ever deeper into literal public surfaces and private figurative depths. Dualism doesn't go far enough. It should not only be taken seriously, it should be taken as the supreme absolute. The capacity for discernment is what the cosmos is made of. It is subject and object. It is what feels and thinks as well as what is felt and thought about. Craig Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net 11/5/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-02, 08:05:41 Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p On Friday, November 2, 2012 8:18:29 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 2:51 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: But you can't stay awake unless your hardware allows it. So what? I can't shoot a gun unless the trigger works. Does that mean I'm not shooting the gun by pulling the trigger? You are external to the gun, but you are not external to your brain unless substance dualism is true. The problem with substance dualism is that it is redundant and has an infinite regress problem connecting the two substances. With dual aspect monism, you don't have those issues so that I can be internal to my brain in some senses, external to my brain in some senses, both internal and external in some senses, and neither internal and external in some senses. Regardless though, even if we said that the sense in which you are literally internal to the brain of this moment also necessarily means that your brain is identical to you. It has to be a two way street. It is completely arbitrary to privilege the spatial-object description of the phenomenon and marginalize the temporal-subject description. It's like saying that a movie exists entirely because there are pixels changing. It is not true. Movies exist because humans make them to tell stories to each other, and the pixels are there to help tell that storytelling. This is the primordial relation of all nature. It gets complicated, and as human beings we are equal parts personal story sequences and impersonal non-story consequences, but nevertheless, it is ultimately the story which is driving the bus. The coin has two sides, but the heads side is the side of the 'genuine leader'. You can't decide to do anything unless your brain goes into the particular configuration consistent with that decision, and the movement into that configuration is determined by physical factors
Re: Re: Dualism as a cover-up solution to the mind-body problem
Hi Stephen P. King But the course of true love never did run smooth :-) Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/5/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-05, 09:22:15 Subject: Re: Dualism as a cover-up solution to the mind-body problem On 11/5/2012 9:01 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: I don't know that I'm a philosopher, but it seems to me that I have come to a conclusion. Craig On Monday, November 5, 2012 8:13:38 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg What they say about economists is also appropriate to say about philosophers: If all of the philosophers in the world were laid end to end, they'd never come to a conclusion. Hi, Philosophers are lovers of knowledge... if they are truly philosophers and not sophists. -- Onward! Stephen -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Dualism as a cover-up solution to the mind-body problem
Hi Richard Ruquist Indeed, dualism is -- has to be-- science fiction. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/5/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Richard Ruquist Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-05, 06:53:07 Subject: Re: Dualism as a cover-up solution to the mind-body problem Roger says that mind and body are completely contrary substances Richard replies what is dualism if not that? On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 6:43 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg The dualisms will work as fictions as long as you don't take them too seriously. But keep in mind: IMHO all of those dualist positions are not logically valid. Instead, they are phoney attempts to get around the unresolveable issue that mind and body are completely contrary substances, and calling them a dualism is just a handy cover-up of the problem. Only Leibniz can claim philosophical verity by treating boith body and mind as mind (idealism). Materialist monists hold that mind is physical, which is nonsense, and the dualist coverup doesn't solve that absurdity. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 11/5/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-02, 08:05:41 Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p On Friday, November 2, 2012 8:18:29 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 2:51 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: But you can't stay awake unless your hardware allows it. So what? I can't shoot a gun unless the trigger works. Does that mean I'm not shooting the gun by pulling the trigger? You are external to the gun, but you are not external to your brain unless substance dualism is true. The problem with substance dualism is that it is redundant and has an infinite regress problem connecting the two substances. With dual aspect monism, you don't have those issues so that I can be internal to my brain in some senses, external to my brain in some senses, both internal and external in some senses, and neither internal and external in some senses. Regardless though, even if we said that the sense in which you are literally internal to the brain of this moment also necessarily means that your brain is identical to you. It has to be a two way street. It is completely arbitrary to privilege the spatial-object description of the phenomenon and marginalize the temporal-subject description. It's like saying that a movie exists entirely because there are pixels changing. It is not true. Movies exist because humans make them to tell stories to each other, and the pixels are there to help tell that storytelling. This is the primordial relation of all nature. It gets complicated, and as human beings we are equal parts personal story sequences and impersonal non-story consequences, but nevertheless, it is ultimately the story which is driving the bus. The coin has two sides, but the heads side is the side of the 'genuine leader'. You can't decide to do anything unless your brain goes into the particular configuration consistent with that decision, and the movement into that configuration is determined by physical factors. The movement of the molecules of your brain *is* your decision. That's what I am telling you but you won't see it. You are only able to see it as a one way street which makes no sense. What you are saying is like 'water is ice but ice is not water'. If I feel something when something happens in my brain, then that means that whatever happens in my brain is also an event in the universe when something is felt. That means molecules feel and see. You could say that groups of molecules feel and see, and that's ok too, but you think it's the 'groupiness' that sees and not the physical reality of the molecules themselves. I am saying that there is no independent groupiness... it is a fantasy. Incorrect. That the movement of the molecules of your brain *is* the decision is eliminative materialism, or perhaps epiphenomenalism. No, your view has it upside down. The mindset which generates that view is so absolutely biased that it cannot conceive of turning this simple picture right side up. If something looks like particles moving on the outside but feels like remembering a fishing trip on the inside, that doesn't mean that the memory is the epiphenomenon. The memory is the whole point of the particles. They have nothing else to do sitting in your skull but to provide the grunt work of organizing your access to your own human experiences. It is not eliminative materialism to say that object and subject are the same thing from different views, it is dual aspect monism. When I say 'there are two sides to this coin', your mind keeps
Re: Re: Re: Dualism as a cover-up solution to the mind-body problem
Can the work really be said to be progressing if no conclusions are ever found? I agree that there seems to always be newer and greater understandings to be discovered, but in between those moments of discovery there can be thousands of years of relatively fixed ideas. On Monday, November 5, 2012 9:29:12 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg I must be a philosopher then, for everything seems to be a work in progress, if not immediately then afterwards. But I am for the truth and sometimes, temporarily, seem to have found it. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net javascript: 11/5/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - *From:* Craig Weinberg javascript: *Receiver:* everything-list javascript: *Time:* 2012-11-05, 09:01:10 *Subject:* Re: Re: Dualism as a cover-up solution to the mind-body problem I don't know that I'm a philosopher, but it seems to me that I have come to a conclusion. Craig On Monday, November 5, 2012 8:13:38 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg What they say about economists is also appropriate to say about philosophers: If all of the philosophers in the world were laid end to end, they'd never come to a conclusion. Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net 11/5/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-05, 08:04:04 Subject: Re: Dualism as a cover-up solution to the mind-body problem On Monday, November 5, 2012 6:45:50 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg The dualisms will work as fictions as long as you don't take them too seriously. But keep in mind: IMHO all of those dualist positions are not logically valid. Instead, they are phoney attempts to get around the unresolveable issue that mind and body are completely contrary substances, and calling them a dualism is just a handy cover-up of the problem. Only Leibniz can claim philosophical verity by treating boith body and mind as mind (idealism). Materialist monists hold that mind is physical, which is nonsense, and the dualist coverup doesn't solve that absurdity. My model solves that. Leibniz (and his philosophy isn't the only form of idealism) was on the right track, but I take it further to say that what we call mind is descended from lesser forms of sensitivity and greater forms of intuition, and that in fact the symmetry itself between private time and public space is the dual aspect neutral monism (I call sense, or signal) which gives rise to both. This establishes that dualism is a shorthand reduction of what is actually an involuted monism (like a Mobius strip) which extends ever deeper into literal public surfaces and private figurative depths. Dualism doesn't go far enough. It should not only be taken seriously, it should be taken as the supreme absolute. The capacity for discernment is what the cosmos is made of. It is subject and object. It is what feels and thinks as well as what is felt and thought about. Craig Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net 11/5/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-02, 08:05:41 Subject: Re: Solipsism = 1p On Friday, November 2, 2012 8:18:29 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 2:51 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: But you can't stay awake unless your hardware allows it. So what? I can't shoot a gun unless the trigger works. Does that mean I'm not shooting the gun by pulling the trigger? You are external to the gun, but you are not external to your brain unless substance dualism is true. The problem with substance dualism is that it is redundant and has an infinite regress problem connecting the two substances. With dual aspect monism, you don't have those issues so that I can be internal to my brain in some senses, external to my brain in some senses, both internal and external in some senses, and neither internal and external in some senses. Regardless though, even if we said that the sense in which you are literally internal to the brain of this moment also necessarily means that your brain is identical to you. It has to be a two way street. It is completely arbitrary to privilege the spatial-object description of the phenomenon and marginalize the temporal-subject description. It's like saying that a movie exists entirely because there are pixels changing. It is not true. Movies exist because humans make them to tell stories to each other, and the pixels are there to help tell that storytelling. This is the primordial relation of all nature
Re: Dualism via Quantum Mechanics
On May 12, 8:00 pm, Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 5:48 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: On 5/12/2012 10:19 AM, Richard Ruquist wrote: On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 9:20 AM, scerir sce...@libero.it wrote: A few quotes below to dualism from Max Velmans. Evgenii H. Kragh (Dirac: a Scientific Biography, Cambridge U.P., 1990) reports a 1927 discussion between Dirac, Heisenberg and Born, about what actually gives rise to the so called collapse (reduction of waves packet). Dirac said that it is 'Nature' that makes the choice (of measurement outcome). Born agreed. Heisenberg however maintained that, behind the collapse, and the choice of which 'branch' the wavefunction would be followed, there was the free-will of the human observer. Leibniz, IMO, would also claim that Nature makes the choice, but that his collection of monads perceive (based on their consciousness) what is the best possible wave function choice to obtain the best possible universe. What Leibniz apparently leaves out of his philosophy is that human free-will consciousness can make the world imperfect, perhaps even suicidal. String theory seems consistent with Leibniz in that the discrete balls of compactified dimensions have some monad properties, which is these days what I preach. And I wonder if this could be consistent with COMP, since it's all theological. Richard Hi Richard, We can strip out all the religiosity from Leibniz' ideas. Leibniz' monads where perseptions themselves, not entities that where conscious and perceived things. What we have previously discussed as Observer Moments are a better analogy to what Leibniz had in mind. He did postulate that God arranged them such that their content was always synchronized; this is the pre-established harmony (PEH) concept. I think that Leibniz' mistake was to assume that there exists an absolute observer with a view from nowhere that defined an objective 3-p. There are strong mathematical inconsistencies with this idea. For one thing, a PEH requires the discovery and application of a solution to an infinite SAT complexity problem, not the mere existence of one.- Onward! Hi Stephan, If what you say is true about monads, that each does not see the entire universe, then they cannot be the balls of compactified dimensions of string theory because Brian Greene's 2d solution indicates that each maps the entire outside plane to its inside. Now that may not be consciousness and Leibniz did say that his monads were not exactly conscious. But to me mapping the universe to the interior, a kind of inverse holography, sounds exactly like what Leibniz says of his monads in his tract Monadology. I have no idea what you mean by your last sentence above. Inward, Richard Hi Richard, It is not correct to think of the monads as compactified dimensions in the usual way as this would define an inside-outside relation on them that does is incompatible with the duality. The relation is similar to what Brian Greene describes, but the relation is not the usual mapping between geometric manifolds. Leibniz used a very simple notion of consciousness. Craig's notion of Sense is the closest analogy that I have found so far. The pre-established harmony (PEH) concept is equivalent to an infinite theory or model that defines all of the states of the universe in a way that does not allow any contradictions. Onward! Stephen P. King -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Dualism via Quantum Mechanics
Hi Stephen, On 14 May 2012, at 19:16, Stephen P. King wrote: On 5/14/2012 4:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 May 2012, at 23:19, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 13.05.2012 15:09 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 12 May 2012, at 14:59, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 12.05.2012 13:33 Bruno Marchal said the following: Evgenii, All this is well known. Copenhagen theory, or unique-universe theory are non computationalist dualist theories. But as Shimony has shown, the idea that consciousness collapse the wave leads to many difficulties, like non local hidden variables in physics, or solipsism in philosophy of mind. Or even just the problem to say what exactly is the collapse, on which all believers in collapse differ. Computationalism and Everett (QM without collapse) have no problems in that respect, and line up well with the everything-like use of Occam. I listen currently to Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. Yet, I am not convinced that Multiverse is a good explanation. The multiverse is a logical consequence of 1+1= 2, and mechanism. You don't need quantum mechanics. Then quantum mechanics, the first theory in physics succeeding to survive more that 5 years (indeed about a century now), is very solid, and based on very simple math, and it confirms the mechanism multiverse/multidream. So, to avoid the multiverse, you have to postulate very special physical laws, yet unobserved, and a very special theory of person, yet unobserved. Why not, but it is very speculative, and seems to be driven by wishful thinking only. I am glad that you believe in multiverse and find it logical. I am just saying that a multiverse or a multidream is a logical consequence of comp. Not that I believe in multiverse. But yes, it is plausible, and simpler conceptually than the speculation about one universe, or one computation. Yet, I guess that even not all physicists believe in multiverse. When you convince all physicists that multivers exists, I will start thinking about it. On reality, usually all humans are wrong. Also, if people start reasoning when the majority is convinced, this means that no one reason really. You should avoid that kind of authoritative argument. Science is not a question of majority vote. For example, I do not remember that multiverse has been even mentioned in The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. He discusses an eleven-dimensional space needed for the superstring theory but not the multiverse. Martin Gardner said that the many worlds concept was the best hidden secret of the 20th centunary (and he talked of the QM multiverse, not the more obvious comp one). You could as well defend the theory that the earth is flat, and build ad hoc rules to explain why it seems to be a sphere. I personally consider quantum mechanics just as a model. Yes. It is a theory. An hypothesis, very weird, but strongly supported by the facts, and whose main weird consequences are also a consequence of elementary arithmetic, and mechanism (even without any facts). David Deutsch does not like it, he says that instrumentalism is a bad philosophy and that we must take physical theories literally. I agree with Deutsch on this. That is science. Taking ideas seriously, so that we can change the theories more quickly when refuted. But then Deutsch uses comp, and very typically, like many, ignore its logical consequence. So Deutsch does not follow his own philosophy. In general, I am disappointed by his book. His style, I know the truth as this is a good explanation is far away from skeptical inquiry. After all, we know that quantum mechanics and general relativity contradict to each other. Why then to invest too much time into interpretations like Multiverse? Why it is useful? To learn and to try to figure out what happens here and now. Let us take chemists. They use molecular modeling for a long time and I would say they have been already successful without a multiverse. No, this is false. They use multiverse all the time. They prefer to talk with the superposition state labeling, and they can invent for themselves the idea that QM does not apply to them, to avoid the contagion of he superposition state, but that's word play to avoid looking at what happens. It is just avoiding facts to sustain personal conviction. Humans does that all the time. QM = multiverse. The collapse of the wave is already an invention to hide the multiverse, and it has never work. Do you mean that when all chemists accept the multiverse interpretation, they will start working more productively? They accept it. I have a book, by Baggot, who explains that he taught chemistry for 17 years, absolutely convinced that QM was true only on little distance, so he predicts that nature did not violate Bell's inequality, but when the experience of Aspect was done, he revised his opinion, and accept
Re: Dualism via Quantum Mechanics
On 14 May 2012, at 22:41, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 14.05.2012 10:29 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 13 May 2012, at 23:19, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... Yet, I guess that even not all physicists believe in multiverse. When you convince all physicists that multivers exists, I will start thinking about it. On reality, usually all humans are wrong. Also, if people start reasoning when the majority is convinced, this means that no one reason really. You should avoid that kind of authoritative argument. Science is not a question of majority vote. My empirical observations just shows that the easiness and obviousness that you stress to accept multiverse seems to be overestimated. The life seems to be more complex. But that is true for any conception. 0 universes, 1 universes, etc. ... Let us take chemists. They use molecular modeling for a long time and I would say they have been already successful without a multiverse. No, this is false. They use multiverse all the time. They prefer to talk In my view, your position that chemists have used multiverse all the time contradicts to historical facts. They have use it without knowing. They use the collapse methodologically, and they are not interested in reality, but in practical applications. But they do use state superposition, and they do know the equation is linear. A cosmologists asked me a long time ago if it makes logical sense to apply QM to the cosmos. I said yes if we abandon the collapse of the wave and refer him to Everett. In his paper he just added a tiny footnote referring to Everett. Some ideas are shocking, for cultural reason, and are accepted in some silencious way. If you study the UD Argument, you can understand that elementary arithmetic leads already to many worlds, with very weak version of comp. This shocks some of us, like the idea that the Earth is round, and turns around the sun can be shocking. But it is just much simpler for the big picture sense. with the superposition state labeling, and they can invent for themselves the idea that QM does not apply to them, to avoid the contagion of he superposition state, but that's word play to avoid looking at what happens. It is just avoiding facts to sustain personal conviction. Humans does that all the time. QM = multiverse. The collapse of the wave is already an invention to hide the multiverse, and it has never work. You should look what molecular simulation is. It has nothing to do with the collapse of wave function. Whether wave function collapses or not, for chemists it does not matter. Sure. This is because they focuses on the accessible reality, and for them, an electronic orbital is like a map where to find an electron. They use both the wave, which gives the shape of the orbital, and the collapse, to describe the result. They don't focus of what is real in case QM applies to 'them + the electron', for they focus only on the electron. Now, if one say that there is a collapse, then one just use an inconsistent fuzzy theory which has never really work. here we discuss everything, not just electron. They use quantum mechanics according to instrumentalism and, as I have written, they have been successful. For their result, yes. With respect to the big picture, they don't ask. It is their right. We are just not tackling the same question. Do you mean that when all chemists accept the multiverse interpretation, they will start working more productively? They accept it. I have a book, by Baggot, who explains that he taught chemistry for 17 years, absolutely convinced that QM was true only on little distance, so he predicts that nature did not violate Bell's inequality, but when the experience of Aspect was done, he revised his opinion, and accept the idea that QM might be true macroscopically, and that it makes the weirdness a real fact of life. De Broglie behaves like ghat too. This illustrates that people can use a theory, without taking it seriously, because they follow their wishful conviction. It is typical for humans to do that. Again, you need to look at what molecular simulation is. What you write has nothing to do with molecular simulation, nor with the way how chemists develop new molecules and materials. But this is a different job. I am not interested in electron, but in question like what is an electron, is it real, where its appearance comes from, etc. That was my point, try to apply multiverse ideas to develop a new drug more productively. Using QM, and being aware the collapse is non sensical (or could be) means that you use the multiverse idea, because that is QM (without collapse). People can easily use theories, without trying to get the deep and annoying (for them) consequences. It change also the picture of possible after-life, in which case we are all using it all the time. I would say that it will not
Re: Dualism via Quantum Mechanics
On 5/15/2012 5:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Hi Stephen, On 14 May 2012, at 19:16, Stephen P. King wrote: On 5/14/2012 4:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 May 2012, at 23:19, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: Do you mean that when all chemists accept the multiverse interpretation, they will start working more productively? They accept it. I have a book, by Baggot, who explains that he taught chemistry for 17 years, absolutely convinced that QM was true only on little distance, so he predicts that nature did not violate Bell's inequality, but when the experience of Aspect was done, he revised his opinion, and accept the idea that QM might be true macroscopically, and that it makes the weirdness a real fact of life. De Broglie behaves like ghat too. This illustrates that people can use a theory, without taking it seriously, because they follow their wishful conviction. It is typical for humans to do that. If you decide the destination of your holiday with a quantum choice, QM predicts that all the term of the wave makes sense, and that you will differentiate into going to all the chosen Holiday places. If you believe that only one term really results, it is up to you to say what is wrong in QM. Hi Bruno, Could we agree that this concept of really results is merely the folk language way of talking about what we can communicate unambiguously about? It is the content intended in that folk language, but it is also the literal reading of the wave. Hi Bruno, But you must understand that the wave does not encode position information thus you cannot speak of it as if it does; doing so is mathematically inconsistent. You must understand that the wave picture assumes a particular basis, the momentum basis via the phase and the amplitude quantities of the wave, and it does consider position questions only to the degree that they can be specified by the Fourier transform. In the wave picture there is not such thing as you are in Moscow or you are in Helsinki or you are in Washington. That information is simply not considered by the representations and so questions regarding places are unanswerable. One thing that is the hardest part of QM for people to understand - at least it was for me - is the implications of the freedom and need to choose a basis. Without specifying the basis, it is not possible to define the inner product or orthogonality relation for the state vectors. It is impossible to have a predictive theory at all! I mention all of this because it is what is informing my question. I am asking about how it is that we continue to assume things about our shared reality that we know are false? We have to start off with a set of assumptions as to what is required for us to have a shared Reality in the first place, not just assume that the Reality is out there and we somehow can talk coherently about it. I see this as the same kind of idea as what you describe with Diary entries in your UDA. In that sense it seems to me that this is something that could use more closer exploration. Sure. Everything I say deserves more closer exploration. That's the goal. Now, I present a reasoning, and its validity is independent of further exploration. That is a nice attitude, Bruno Marchal is the designator of what is interesting (/sarcasm). What is true, my dear friend, but only for you. Your identity is tied up in what is interesting to you, but you are not the only mind that exist and your interests and Identity is not the only one that must be accounted for. I have a conjecture that our shared reality is restricted to being representable by a Boolean algebra (not a Heyting algebra!), have you any comment on this? Why not. As long as we try to explain how such classicality emerge from the quantum, itself emerging from the classical relations of numbers. You share that particular belief with many people, even - to my surprise - David Deutsch. I have come to the conclusion that that belief may be false; numbers in general are not necessarily classical objects with classical relations. Only the Integers come close to being classical but that is only because they are specified in advance to have a particular set of properties. Numbers in general cannot be said to have some particular set of properties in an a priori fashion unless one has specified the Arithmetic (algebra of relations between the numbers) structure that defines the basis within which the numbers can be known. This is a symptom of a problem in the Bpp formulation of truth, it assumes an accidental http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidentalism notion of how it is that a particular string has some particular set of properties. I might agree with you that this is a good place to start in one's theology/cosmogony ideas motivating toward an ontological theory, as you discuss in your explanations of the hypostases, but it is not without its own problems. One
Re: Dualism via Quantum Mechanics
On 13 May 2012, at 23:19, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 13.05.2012 15:09 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 12 May 2012, at 14:59, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 12.05.2012 13:33 Bruno Marchal said the following: Evgenii, All this is well known. Copenhagen theory, or unique-universe theory are non computationalist dualist theories. But as Shimony has shown, the idea that consciousness collapse the wave leads to many difficulties, like non local hidden variables in physics, or solipsism in philosophy of mind. Or even just the problem to say what exactly is the collapse, on which all believers in collapse differ. Computationalism and Everett (QM without collapse) have no problems in that respect, and line up well with the everything-like use of Occam. I listen currently to Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. Yet, I am not convinced that Multiverse is a good explanation. The multiverse is a logical consequence of 1+1= 2, and mechanism. You don't need quantum mechanics. Then quantum mechanics, the first theory in physics succeeding to survive more that 5 years (indeed about a century now), is very solid, and based on very simple math, and it confirms the mechanism multiverse/multidream. So, to avoid the multiverse, you have to postulate very special physical laws, yet unobserved, and a very special theory of person, yet unobserved. Why not, but it is very speculative, and seems to be driven by wishful thinking only. I am glad that you believe in multiverse and find it logical. I am just saying that a multiverse or a multidream is a logical consequence of comp. Not that I believe in multiverse. But yes, it is plausible, and simpler conceptually than the speculation about one universe, or one computation. Yet, I guess that even not all physicists believe in multiverse. When you convince all physicists that multivers exists, I will start thinking about it. On reality, usually all humans are wrong. Also, if people start reasoning when the majority is convinced, this means that no one reason really. You should avoid that kind of authoritative argument. Science is not a question of majority vote. For example, I do not remember that multiverse has been even mentioned in The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. He discusses an eleven-dimensional space needed for the superstring theory but not the multiverse. Martin Gardner said that the many worlds concept was the best hidden secret of the 20th centunary (and he talked of the QM multiverse, not the more obvious comp one). You could as well defend the theory that the earth is flat, and build ad hoc rules to explain why it seems to be a sphere. I personally consider quantum mechanics just as a model. Yes. It is a theory. An hypothesis, very weird, but strongly supported by the facts, and whose main weird consequences are also a consequence of elementary arithmetic, and mechanism (even without any facts). David Deutsch does not like it, he says that instrumentalism is a bad philosophy and that we must take physical theories literally. I agree with Deutsch on this. That is science. Taking ideas seriously, so that we can change the theories more quickly when refuted. But then Deutsch uses comp, and very typically, like many, ignore its logical consequence. So Deutsch does not follow his own philosophy. In general, I am disappointed by his book. His style, I know the truth as this is a good explanation is far away from skeptical inquiry. After all, we know that quantum mechanics and general relativity contradict to each other. Why then to invest too much time into interpretations like Multiverse? Why it is useful? To learn and to try to figure out what happens here and now. Let us take chemists. They use molecular modeling for a long time and I would say they have been already successful without a multiverse. No, this is false. They use multiverse all the time. They prefer to talk with the superposition state labeling, and they can invent for themselves the idea that QM does not apply to them, to avoid the contagion of he superposition state, but that's word play to avoid looking at what happens. It is just avoiding facts to sustain personal conviction. Humans does that all the time. QM = multiverse. The collapse of the wave is already an invention to hide the multiverse, and it has never work. Do you mean that when all chemists accept the multiverse interpretation, they will start working more productively? They accept it. I have a book, by Baggot, who explains that he taught chemistry for 17 years, absolutely convinced that QM was true only on little distance, so he predicts that nature did not violate Bell's inequality, but when the experience of Aspect was done, he revised his opinion, and accept the idea that QM might be true macroscopically, and that it makes the weirdness a real fact of life. De Broglie
Re: Dualism via Quantum Mechanics
On 5/14/2012 4:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 13 May 2012, at 23:19, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 13.05.2012 15:09 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 12 May 2012, at 14:59, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 12.05.2012 13:33 Bruno Marchal said the following: Evgenii, All this is well known. Copenhagen theory, or unique-universe theory are non computationalist dualist theories. But as Shimony has shown, the idea that consciousness collapse the wave leads to many difficulties, like non local hidden variables in physics, or solipsism in philosophy of mind. Or even just the problem to say what exactly is the collapse, on which all believers in collapse differ. Computationalism and Everett (QM without collapse) have no problems in that respect, and line up well with the everything-like use of Occam. I listen currently to Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. Yet, I am not convinced that Multiverse is a good explanation. The multiverse is a logical consequence of 1+1= 2, and mechanism. You don't need quantum mechanics. Then quantum mechanics, the first theory in physics succeeding to survive more that 5 years (indeed about a century now), is very solid, and based on very simple math, and it confirms the mechanism multiverse/multidream. So, to avoid the multiverse, you have to postulate very special physical laws, yet unobserved, and a very special theory of person, yet unobserved. Why not, but it is very speculative, and seems to be driven by wishful thinking only. I am glad that you believe in multiverse and find it logical. I am just saying that a multiverse or a multidream is a logical consequence of comp. Not that I believe in multiverse. But yes, it is plausible, and simpler conceptually than the speculation about one universe, or one computation. Yet, I guess that even not all physicists believe in multiverse. When you convince all physicists that multivers exists, I will start thinking about it. On reality, usually all humans are wrong. Also, if people start reasoning when the majority is convinced, this means that no one reason really. You should avoid that kind of authoritative argument. Science is not a question of majority vote. For example, I do not remember that multiverse has been even mentioned in The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. He discusses an eleven-dimensional space needed for the superstring theory but not the multiverse. Martin Gardner said that the many worlds concept was the best hidden secret of the 20th centunary (and he talked of the QM multiverse, not the more obvious comp one). You could as well defend the theory that the earth is flat, and build ad hoc rules to explain why it seems to be a sphere. I personally consider quantum mechanics just as a model. Yes. It is a theory. An hypothesis, very weird, but strongly supported by the facts, and whose main weird consequences are also a consequence of elementary arithmetic, and mechanism (even without any facts). David Deutsch does not like it, he says that instrumentalism is a bad philosophy and that we must take physical theories literally. I agree with Deutsch on this. That is science. Taking ideas seriously, so that we can change the theories more quickly when refuted. But then Deutsch uses comp, and very typically, like many, ignore its logical consequence. So Deutsch does not follow his own philosophy. In general, I am disappointed by his book. His style, I know the truth as this is a good explanation is far away from skeptical inquiry. After all, we know that quantum mechanics and general relativity contradict to each other. Why then to invest too much time into interpretations like Multiverse? Why it is useful? To learn and to try to figure out what happens here and now. Let us take chemists. They use molecular modeling for a long time and I would say they have been already successful without a multiverse. No, this is false. They use multiverse all the time. They prefer to talk with the superposition state labeling, and they can invent for themselves the idea that QM does not apply to them, to avoid the contagion of he superposition state, but that's word play to avoid looking at what happens. It is just avoiding facts to sustain personal conviction. Humans does that all the time. QM = multiverse. The collapse of the wave is already an invention to hide the multiverse, and it has never work. Do you mean that when all chemists accept the multiverse interpretation, they will start working more productively? They accept it. I have a book, by Baggot, who explains that he taught chemistry for 17 years, absolutely convinced that QM was true only on little distance, so he predicts that nature did not violate Bell's inequality, but when the experience of Aspect was done, he revised his opinion, and accept the idea that QM might be true macroscopically, and that it makes the weirdness a real fact of life. De Broglie behaves like ghat
Re: Dualism via Quantum Mechanics
On 14.05.2012 10:29 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 13 May 2012, at 23:19, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... Yet, I guess that even not all physicists believe in multiverse. When you convince all physicists that multivers exists, I will start thinking about it. On reality, usually all humans are wrong. Also, if people start reasoning when the majority is convinced, this means that no one reason really. You should avoid that kind of authoritative argument. Science is not a question of majority vote. My empirical observations just shows that the easiness and obviousness that you stress to accept multiverse seems to be overestimated. The life seems to be more complex. ... Let us take chemists. They use molecular modeling for a long time and I would say they have been already successful without a multiverse. No, this is false. They use multiverse all the time. They prefer to talk In my view, your position that chemists have used multiverse all the time contradicts to historical facts. with the superposition state labeling, and they can invent for themselves the idea that QM does not apply to them, to avoid the contagion of he superposition state, but that's word play to avoid looking at what happens. It is just avoiding facts to sustain personal conviction. Humans does that all the time. QM = multiverse. The collapse of the wave is already an invention to hide the multiverse, and it has never work. You should look what molecular simulation is. It has nothing to do with the collapse of wave function. Whether wave function collapses or not, for chemists it does not matter. They use quantum mechanics according to instrumentalism and, as I have written, they have been successful. Do you mean that when all chemists accept the multiverse interpretation, they will start working more productively? They accept it. I have a book, by Baggot, who explains that he taught chemistry for 17 years, absolutely convinced that QM was true only on little distance, so he predicts that nature did not violate Bell's inequality, but when the experience of Aspect was done, he revised his opinion, and accept the idea that QM might be true macroscopically, and that it makes the weirdness a real fact of life. De Broglie behaves like ghat too. This illustrates that people can use a theory, without taking it seriously, because they follow their wishful conviction. It is typical for humans to do that. Again, you need to look at what molecular simulation is. What you write has nothing to do with molecular simulation, nor with the way how chemists develop new molecules and materials. That was my point, try to apply multiverse ideas to develop a new drug more productively. I would say that it will not work, because the collapse of wave function is irrelevant at this level. Evgenii -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Dualism via Quantum Mechanics
On 13.05.2012 04:38 meekerdb said the following: On 5/12/2012 4:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Evgenii, All this is well known. Copenhagen theory, or unique-universe theory are non computationalist dualist theories. Not all of them, at least not in the sense of dualist you mean. Adrian Kent has proposed a one-universe theory which doesn't suffer the ambiguity of the Copenhagen interpretation. arXiv:0708.3710v3 Real World Interpretation of Quantum Theory It has some problems similar to those of everything theories, namely showing that a quasi-classical universe is stable against a chaos of quantum white rabbits. But as Shimony has shown, the idea that consciousness collapse the wave leads to many difficulties, like non local hidden variables in physics, or solipsism in philosophy of mind. Or even just the problem to say what exactly is the collapse, on which all believers in collapse differ. I think it only leads to these problems if you take the wf to be an objective property of the system. A more instrumentalist interpretation (c.f. Asher Peres Quantum Theory:Concepts and Methods) which takes the wf to be a way of predicting measurement results doesn't suffer these problems: 'collapse' is just a change in our information. Brent Brent, Could you please comment on On the reality of the quantum state Matthew F. Pusey, Jonathan Barrett Terry Rudolph Nature Physics, (2012) http://www.nature.com/news/a-boost-for-quantum-reality-1.10602 What does it imply? Evgenii -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Dualism via Quantum Mechanics
On 12 May 2012, at 14:59, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 12.05.2012 13:33 Bruno Marchal said the following: Evgenii, All this is well known. Copenhagen theory, or unique-universe theory are non computationalist dualist theories. But as Shimony has shown, the idea that consciousness collapse the wave leads to many difficulties, like non local hidden variables in physics, or solipsism in philosophy of mind. Or even just the problem to say what exactly is the collapse, on which all believers in collapse differ. Computationalism and Everett (QM without collapse) have no problems in that respect, and line up well with the everything-like use of Occam. I listen currently to Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. Yet, I am not convinced that Multiverse is a good explanation. The multiverse is a logical consequence of 1+1= 2, and mechanism. You don't need quantum mechanics. Then quantum mechanics, the first theory in physics succeeding to survive more that 5 years (indeed about a century now), is very solid, and based on very simple math, and it confirms the mechanism multiverse/multidream. So, to avoid the multiverse, you have to postulate very special physical laws, yet unobserved, and a very special theory of person, yet unobserved. Why not, but it is very speculative, and seems to be driven by wishful thinking only. You could as well defend the theory that the earth is flat, and build ad hoc rules to explain why it seems to be a sphere. I personally consider quantum mechanics just as a model. Yes. It is a theory. An hypothesis, very weird, but strongly supported by the facts, and whose main weird consequences are also a consequence of elementary arithmetic, and mechanism (even without any facts). David Deutsch does not like it, he says that instrumentalism is a bad philosophy and that we must take physical theories literally. I agree with Deutsch on this. That is science. Taking ideas seriously, so that we can change the theories more quickly when refuted. But then Deutsch uses comp, and very typically, like many, ignore its logical consequence. So Deutsch does not follow his own philosophy. In general, I am disappointed by his book. His style, I know the truth as this is a good explanation is far away from skeptical inquiry. After all, we know that quantum mechanics and general relativity contradict to each other. Why then to invest too much time into interpretations like Multiverse? Why it is useful? To learn and to try to figure out what happens here and now. Bruno 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Dualism via Quantum Mechanics
On 13 May 2012, at 04:38, meekerdb wrote: On 5/12/2012 4:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Evgenii, All this is well known. Copenhagen theory, or unique-universe theory are non computationalist dualist theories. Not all of them, at least not in the sense of dualist you mean. Adrian Kent has proposed a one-universe theory which doesn't suffer the ambiguity of the Copenhagen interpretation. arXiv:0708.3710v3 Real World Interpretation of Quantum Theory It has some problems similar to those of everything theories, namely showing that a quasi-classical universe is stable against a chaos of quantum white rabbits. But as Shimony has shown, the idea that consciousness collapse the wave leads to many difficulties, like non local hidden variables in physics, or solipsism in philosophy of mind. Or even just the problem to say what exactly is the collapse, on which all believers in collapse differ. I think it only leads to these problems if you take the wf to be an objective property of the system. A more instrumentalist interpretation (c.f. Asher Peres Quantum Theory:Concepts and Methods) which takes the wf to be a way of predicting measurement results doesn't suffer these problems: 'collapse' is just a change in our information. OK, but then the superposition remains, and you have many worlds, or many dreams. QM without collapse, and without many worlds just look like word play to me. You can always define a world by a set of physical events close for interaction. QM entails many worlds in that sense, even if subjective, in the subjective interpretation of the wf. So Asher, unlike Kent, is still a form of don't ask, on the nature of the world. Kent at least try to make sense of a realist QM with a single universe. But it never succeeds, and given that I believed in the multiverse even before knowing anything of QM, I have stopped for awhile to read him, to be honest. Bruno Brent Computationalism and Everett (QM without collapse) have no problems in that respect, and line up well with the everything-like use of Occam. Bruno On 12 May 2012, at 13:03, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: A few quotes below to dualism from Max Velmans. Evgenii http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/05/quantum-dualist-interactionism.html In Chapter 2, Conscious Souls, Brains and Quantum Mechanics there is a nice section Quantum Dualist Interactionism (p. 17 – 21) where Max Velmans describes works that present interpretation of dualism in the framework of quantum mechanics. Stapp, H. (2007a) ‘Quantum mechanical theories of consciousness’ in The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, pp. 300-312. Stapp, H. (2007b) ‘Quantum approaches to consciousness’ in The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness, pp. 881-908. Stapp, H. (2007c) Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer. Interestingly enough Stapp refers to the work of von Neumann: Von Neumann, J. (1955/1932) Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics/Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantummechanik. p. 19. “In various interpretations of quantum mechanics there is in any case ambiguity, and associated controversy, about where in the observation process a choice about what to observe and a subsequent observation is made. For example, according to the ‘Gopenhagen Convention’, the original formation of quantum theory developed by Niels Bohr, there is a clear separation between the process taking place in the observer (Process 1) and the process taking place in the system that is being observed (Process 2).” p. 21. “To differentiate the conscious part of Process 1 (the ‘conscious ego’) from the physically embodied part, Stapp (2007c) refers to it as ‘Process 0′. Stapp believes that such quantum dualist interactionism neatly sidesteps the classical problems of mind-body (or consciousness-brain) interaction (see Stapp, 2007a, p. 305). According to the von Neumann/Stapp theory, consciousness (Process 0) chooses what question to ask; through the meditation of Process 1 that interacts with Process 2 (the developing possibilities specified by the quantum mechanics of the physical system under interrogation, including the brain) – and Nature supplies an answer, which in turn reflected in conscious experience (making the entire process a form of dualism- interactionism).” p. 21. “A central claim of the von Neumann/Stapp theory, for example, is that it is the observer’s conscious free will (von Neumann’s ‘abstract ego’ or Stapp’s ‘Process 0′) that chooses how to probe nature.” -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en .
Re: Dualism via Quantum Mechanics
On 13.05.2012 15:09 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 12 May 2012, at 14:59, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 12.05.2012 13:33 Bruno Marchal said the following: Evgenii, All this is well known. Copenhagen theory, or unique-universe theory are non computationalist dualist theories. But as Shimony has shown, the idea that consciousness collapse the wave leads to many difficulties, like non local hidden variables in physics, or solipsism in philosophy of mind. Or even just the problem to say what exactly is the collapse, on which all believers in collapse differ. Computationalism and Everett (QM without collapse) have no problems in that respect, and line up well with the everything-like use of Occam. I listen currently to Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. Yet, I am not convinced that Multiverse is a good explanation. The multiverse is a logical consequence of 1+1= 2, and mechanism. You don't need quantum mechanics. Then quantum mechanics, the first theory in physics succeeding to survive more that 5 years (indeed about a century now), is very solid, and based on very simple math, and it confirms the mechanism multiverse/multidream. So, to avoid the multiverse, you have to postulate very special physical laws, yet unobserved, and a very special theory of person, yet unobserved. Why not, but it is very speculative, and seems to be driven by wishful thinking only. I am glad that you believe in multiverse and find it logical. Yet, I guess that even not all physicists believe in multiverse. When you convince all physicists that multivers exists, I will start thinking about it. For example, I do not remember that multiverse has been even mentioned in The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. He discusses an eleven-dimensional space needed for the superstring theory but not the multiverse. You could as well defend the theory that the earth is flat, and build ad hoc rules to explain why it seems to be a sphere. I personally consider quantum mechanics just as a model. Yes. It is a theory. An hypothesis, very weird, but strongly supported by the facts, and whose main weird consequences are also a consequence of elementary arithmetic, and mechanism (even without any facts). David Deutsch does not like it, he says that instrumentalism is a bad philosophy and that we must take physical theories literally. I agree with Deutsch on this. That is science. Taking ideas seriously, so that we can change the theories more quickly when refuted. But then Deutsch uses comp, and very typically, like many, ignore its logical consequence. So Deutsch does not follow his own philosophy. In general, I am disappointed by his book. His style, I know the truth as this is a good explanation is far away from skeptical inquiry. After all, we know that quantum mechanics and general relativity contradict to each other. Why then to invest too much time into interpretations like Multiverse? Why it is useful? To learn and to try to figure out what happens here and now. Let us take chemists. They use molecular modeling for a long time and I would say they have been already successful without a multiverse. Do you mean that when all chemists accept the multiverse interpretation, they will start working more productively? Evgenii -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Dualism via Quantum Mechanics
On 12.05.2012 13:33 Bruno Marchal said the following: Evgenii, All this is well known. Copenhagen theory, or unique-universe theory are non computationalist dualist theories. But as Shimony has shown, the idea that consciousness collapse the wave leads to many difficulties, like non local hidden variables in physics, or solipsism in philosophy of mind. Or even just the problem to say what exactly is the collapse, on which all believers in collapse differ. Computationalism and Everett (QM without collapse) have no problems in that respect, and line up well with the everything-like use of Occam. I listen currently to Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. Yet, I am not convinced that Multiverse is a good explanation. I personally consider quantum mechanics just as a model. David Deutsch does not like it, he says that instrumentalism is a bad philosophy and that we must take physical theories literally. In general, I am disappointed by his book. His style, I know the truth as this is a good explanation is far away from skeptical inquiry. After all, we know that quantum mechanics and general relativity contradict to each other. Why then to invest too much time into interpretations like Multiverse? Why it is useful? Evgenii -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Dualism via Quantum Mechanics
On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 9:20 AM, scerir sce...@libero.it wrote: A few quotes below to dualism from Max Velmans. Evgenii H. Kragh (Dirac: a Scientific Biography, Cambridge U.P., 1990) reports a 1927 discussion between Dirac, Heisenberg and Born, about what actually gives rise to the so called collapse (reduction of waves packet). Dirac said that it is 'Nature' that makes the choice (of measurement outcome). Born agreed. Heisenberg however maintained that, behind the collapse, and the choice of which 'branch' the wavefunction would be followed, there was the free-will of the human observer. Leibniz, IMO, would also claim that Nature makes the choice, but that his collection of monads perceive (based on their consciousness) what is the best possible wave function choice to obtain the best possible universe. What Leibniz apparently leaves out of his philosophy is that human free-will consciousness can make the world imperfect, perhaps even suicidal. String theory seems consistent with Leibniz in that the discrete balls of compactified dimensions have some monad properties, which is these days what I preach. And I wonder if this could be consistent with COMP, since it's all theological. Richard -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Dualism via Quantum Mechanics
On 5/12/2012 10:19 AM, Richard Ruquist wrote: On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 9:20 AM, scerir sce...@libero.it mailto:sce...@libero.it wrote: A few quotes below to dualism from Max Velmans. Evgenii H. Kragh (Dirac: a Scientific Biography, Cambridge U.P., 1990) reports a 1927 discussion between Dirac, Heisenberg and Born, about what actually gives rise to the so called collapse (reduction of waves packet). Dirac said that it is 'Nature' that makes the choice (of measurement outcome). Born agreed. Heisenberg however maintained that, behind the collapse, and the choice of which 'branch' the wavefunction would be followed, there was the free-will of the human observer. Leibniz, IMO, would also claim that Nature makes the choice, but that his collection of monads perceive (based on their consciousness) what is the best possible wave function choice to obtain the best possible universe. What Leibniz apparently leaves out of his philosophy is that human free-will consciousness can make the world imperfect, perhaps even suicidal. String theory seems consistent with Leibniz in that the discrete balls of compactified dimensions have some monad properties, which is these days what I preach. And I wonder if this could be consistent with COMP, since it's all theological. Richard Hi Richard, We can strip out all the religiosity from Leibniz' ideas. Leibniz' monads where perseptions themselves, not entities that where conscious and perceived things. What we have previously discussed as Observer Moments are a better analogy to what Leibniz had in mind. He did postulate that God arranged them such that their content was always synchronized; this is the pre-established harmony (PEH) concept. I think that Leibniz' mistake was to assume that there exists an absolute observer with a view from nowhere that defined an objective 3-p. There are strong mathematical inconsistencies with this idea. For one thing, a PEH requires the discovery and application of a solution to an infinite SAT complexity problem, not the mere existence of one. -- Onward! Stephen Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. ~ Francis Bacon -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Dualism via Quantum Mechanics
On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 5:48 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: On 5/12/2012 10:19 AM, Richard Ruquist wrote: On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 9:20 AM, scerir sce...@libero.it wrote: A few quotes below to dualism from Max Velmans. Evgenii H. Kragh (Dirac: a Scientific Biography, Cambridge U.P., 1990) reports a 1927 discussion between Dirac, Heisenberg and Born, about what actually gives rise to the so called collapse (reduction of waves packet). Dirac said that it is 'Nature' that makes the choice (of measurement outcome). Born agreed. Heisenberg however maintained that, behind the collapse, and the choice of which 'branch' the wavefunction would be followed, there was the free-will of the human observer. Leibniz, IMO, would also claim that Nature makes the choice, but that his collection of monads perceive (based on their consciousness) what is the best possible wave function choice to obtain the best possible universe. What Leibniz apparently leaves out of his philosophy is that human free-will consciousness can make the world imperfect, perhaps even suicidal. String theory seems consistent with Leibniz in that the discrete balls of compactified dimensions have some monad properties, which is these days what I preach. And I wonder if this could be consistent with COMP, since it's all theological. Richard Hi Richard, We can strip out all the religiosity from Leibniz' ideas. Leibniz' monads where perseptions themselves, not entities that where conscious and perceived things. What we have previously discussed as Observer Moments are a better analogy to what Leibniz had in mind. He did postulate that God arranged them such that their content was always synchronized; this is the pre-established harmony (PEH) concept. I think that Leibniz' mistake was to assume that there exists an absolute observer with a view from nowhere that defined an objective 3-p. There are strong mathematical inconsistencies with this idea. For one thing, a PEH requires the discovery and application of a solution to an infinite SAT complexity problem, not the mere existence of one.- Onward! Hi Stephan, If what you say is true about monads, that each does not see the entire universe, then they cannot be the balls of compactified dimensions of string theory because Brian Greene's 2d solution indicates that each maps the entire outside plane to its inside. Now that may not be consciousness and Leibniz did say that his monads were not exactly conscious. But to me mapping the universe to the interior, a kind of inverse holography, sounds exactly like what Leibniz says of his monads in his tract Monadology. I have no idea what you mean by your last sentence above. Inward, Richard Stephen Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. ~ Francis Bacon -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Dualism via Quantum Mechanics
On 5/12/2012 4:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Evgenii, All this is well known. Copenhagen theory, or unique-universe theory are non computationalist dualist theories. Not all of them, at least not in the sense of dualist you mean. Adrian Kent has proposed a one-universe theory which doesn't suffer the ambiguity of the Copenhagen interpretation. arXiv:0708.3710v3 Real World Interpretation of Quantum Theory It has some problems similar to those of everything theories, namely showing that a quasi-classical universe is stable against a chaos of quantum white rabbits. But as Shimony has shown, the idea that consciousness collapse the wave leads to many difficulties, like non local hidden variables in physics, or solipsism in philosophy of mind. Or even just the problem to say what exactly is the collapse, on which all believers in collapse differ. I think it only leads to these problems if you take the wf to be an objective property of the system. A more instrumentalist interpretation (c.f. Asher Peres Quantum Theory:Concepts and Methods) which takes the wf to be a way of predicting measurement results doesn't suffer these problems: 'collapse' is just a change in our information. Brent Computationalism and Everett (QM without collapse) have no problems in that respect, and line up well with the everything-like use of Occam. Bruno On 12 May 2012, at 13:03, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: A few quotes below to dualism from Max Velmans. Evgenii http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/05/quantum-dualist-interactionism.html In Chapter 2, Conscious Souls, Brains and Quantum Mechanics there is a nice section Quantum Dualist Interactionism (p. 17 – 21) where Max Velmans describes works that present interpretation of dualism in the framework of quantum mechanics. Stapp, H. (2007a) ‘Quantum mechanical theories of consciousness’ in The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, pp. 300-312. Stapp, H. (2007b) ‘Quantum approaches to consciousness’ in The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness, pp. 881-908. Stapp, H. (2007c) Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer. Interestingly enough Stapp refers to the work of von Neumann: Von Neumann, J. (1955/1932) Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics/Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantummechanik. p. 19. “In various interpretations of quantum mechanics there is in any case ambiguity, and associated controversy, about where in the observation process a choice about what to observe and a subsequent observation is made. For example, according to the ‘Gopenhagen Convention’, the original formation of quantum theory developed by Niels Bohr, there is a clear separation between the process taking place in the observer (Process 1) and the process taking place in the system that is being observed (Process 2).” p. 21. “To differentiate the conscious part of Process 1 (the ‘conscious ego’) from the physically embodied part, Stapp (2007c) refers to it as ‘Process 0′. Stapp believes that such quantum dualist interactionism neatly sidesteps the classical problems of mind-body (or consciousness-brain) interaction (see Stapp, 2007a, p. 305). According to the von Neumann/Stapp theory, consciousness (Process 0) chooses what question to ask; through the meditation of Process 1 that interacts with Process 2 (the developing possibilities specified by the quantum mechanics of the physical system under interrogation, including the brain) – and Nature supplies an answer, which in turn reflected in conscious experience (making the entire process a form of dualism-interactionism).” p. 21. “A central claim of the von Neumann/Stapp theory, for example, is that it is the observer’s conscious free will (von Neumann’s ‘abstract ego’ or Stapp’s ‘Process 0′) that chooses how to probe nature.” -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Dualism?
Stephen: 2 corrections and a remark to my own text: #1: I wrote: *are those laws' really so true, or only a (statistical) deduction of data we so far happened to observe?* I would add: ...and explained according to THAT level of knowldge... #2: I really believ that Descartes 'invented' and 'advertised' his * dualism* to keep the soul figment of the faithful in his theory - in order to escape the Inquisition. Spinozza was in a better position: he risked only a 'shunning' from the Jewish community, what he got indeed. About 'life'? biologists like to *know it(?)* within their conventional 'model' and the faithful withn their faith. Rosen's *MR* *(metabolism and repair)* describes the main (biologic) functions of whatever life may be, leaving out the many times mentioned *reproduction*, (a term I deny in most cases: nothing 'reproduces' exactly in a constantly chnging world, only in the restricted views we observe) but the biologic heterosexuals are definitely not reproducing: the offsprings are a melee of daddy an mommy (mixed in DNA etc.) - repro of none. The prokaryotes reproduce in mitosis. Even there the environmental changes may interfere: those ancient species did not stay put either. So I 'generalize' *l i f e* into changes including retrospective occurrences of parts in the continuing complexity line, called reproduction. (*Consciousness*, as I tried to describe many times, is in its present formulation of mine: *Response to* *relations*.) *((Relations*, however, is hard to identify, it may be much mopre than we think about now. It is the 'cement' of the infinite complexity from which our (and other) universe(s) broke off for a timeless re-dissipation.)) Respectfully John On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 10:45 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: On 8/29/2011 6:05 PM, John Mikes wrote: Stephen and Jason, interesting discours, but you use concepts that beg for my questioning. Dualism may be an observation based on phenomena we misunderstand and explain to the level of present theories. A violation of the laws of physics asks: are those laws' really so true, or only a (statistical) deduction of data we so far happened to observe? and that substance monism (whatever it includes) is bound to the questionable term of life. Substance ( I go with Stephen) may be an illusion, depending how we define an illusion. Don't bother, I speak only my agnostic worldview, but it may be a different point of view to add. John M Hi John, Exactly. Onward! Stephen On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 1:00 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: On 8/28/2011 11:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote: Capillary action is not a violation of the laws of physics. What about substance monism precludes any life form from existing? Also are you saying you are a substance dualist? Hi, Is 'substance dualism' the only form of dualism? Maybe you might consider that the idea of substance is simply not even wrong. Matter and Mind are both process, substance is just the relative invariant aspects of such. Substance is illusion. Onward! Stephen -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Dualism? Yes!
Hi Jason, Interleaving... On 8/29/2011 8:27 AM, Jason Resch wrote: On Aug 29, 2011, at 12:00 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 8/28/2011 11:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote: Capillary action is not a violation of the laws of physics. What about substance monism precludes any life form from existing? Also are you saying you are a substance dualist? Hi, Is 'substance dualism' the only form of dualism? I suppose there is idealism (only mind) which would be a theory of no substances. Also nothing precludes someone from postulating 3 types of substances, but this is uncommon because usually the second substance invoked is used to explain all the mysteries. I was asking if substance dualism is the only type of dualism. The answer is no. Much has been written on the subject. For example see: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/ My argument is against the assumption of substance in all of its forms. The fact that Descartes' version of dualism failed is not the fault of duality, it is due to the basic flaws built into the assumption or postulate of substance. To quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy article that I just referenced: A substance is characterized by its properties, but, according to those who believe in substances, it is more than the collection of the properties it possesses, it is /the thing which/ possesses them. The problem lies in this notion of a 'bearer of properties' that somehow has an existence independent of the properties that adorn it. Having it has no properties itself, what is our motivation to even consider that it is a necessary or even useful entity? (Existence is not a property!) This argument can be seen as a demonstration that postulating multiple substances only compounds the problems that we have with the assumption of one substance! It seem to me that it is unparsimonious to even bother with the notion of substances except as a rhetorical devices to convey the idea of agency or whatever. Maybe you might consider that the idea of substance is simply not even wrong. Matter and Mind are both process, substance is just the relative invariant aspects of such. Perhaps but substance dualism is a useful shorthand for the idea that patterns alone (be they physical, informational, or mathematical) are insufficient for explaining mind. Sure, but if that shorthand injects a logically fallacious idea we might as well allow for other contradictory notions as postulates. If we are attempting to understand consciousness does it not make logical sense that we are careful not to propose concepts that are straw men, even inadvertently? Why are 'patterns' the only other option? Not that there is anything wrong per say with the idea that patterns are involved in coherent explanations of mind, but it is obvious that there is more to mind than patterns. Again, beware of straw men arguments! Craig's idea seems to be that consciousness is so different that all our conventional scientific knowledge is useless and doomed to fail in explaining it. Are you sure? What if his critique is a bit more subtle. What if it is an attack on material monism and the substance assumption that seems to be endemic in 'conventional scientific thinking (not knowledge). There is some sense in which substance dualism can be true. That is when actors in a simulation are controlled by something outside the simulation. For example, human conyrolled charcters in a computer game. There would be no way to explain the motions of the character from within the simulation, every motion would require some intervention. Substance dualism in our universe would require something similar: interventions (which would constitute violations of the laws of physics) by some entity outside this universe and consequently is somewhat immune to invenstigation by us. The problem that needs to be explained by any theory of mind is 'psycho-physical parallelism' (For example see; http://www.philosophyonline.co.uk/pom/pom_psychophysical_parallelism.htm). The intervention or interaction problem is just the most visible symptom of the substance postulate. Once we accept the postulate of substance we are doomed to need to postulate more and more forms of substance to act as intermediaries between distinct objects, the zoo of particles that we see in the Standard Model illustrates this well! It is not necessary to bring up the point about violations of the laws of physics, David Bohm's Guide Wave interpretation, for example, violated no laws of physics and yet had the same kind of duality between particles and wave functions that simplistic versions of dualism entertain. Substance is illusion. Perhaps, but the illusion of substance seems to follow rules which are never seen to be broken. The question is: are regular violations of these rules part of this illusion of substance?
Re: Dualism?
On 8/29/2011 6:05 PM, John Mikes wrote: Stephen and Jason, interesting discours, but you use concepts that beg for my questioning. Dualism may be an observation based on phenomena we misunderstand and explain to the level of present theories. A violation of the laws of physics asks: are those laws' really so true, or only a (statistical) deduction of data we so far happened to observe? and that substance monism (whatever it includes) is bound to the questionable term of life. Substance ( I go with Stephen) may be an illusion, depending how we define an illusion. Don't bother, I speak only my agnostic worldview, but it may be a different point of view to add. John M Hi John, Exactly. Onward! Stephen On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 1:00 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net mailto:stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 8/28/2011 11:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote: Capillary action is not a violation of the laws of physics. What about substance monism precludes any life form from existing? Also are you saying you are a substance dualist? Hi, Is 'substance dualism' the only form of dualism? Maybe you might consider that the idea of substance is simply not even wrong. Matter and Mind are both process, substance is just the relative invariant aspects of such. Substance is illusion. Onward! Stephen -- 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 mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Dualism?
Stephen and Jason, interesting discours, but you use concepts that beg for my questioning. Dualism may be an observation based on phenomena we misunderstand and explain to the level of present theories. A violation of the laws of physics asks: are those laws' really so true, or only a (statistical) deduction of data we so far happened to observe? and that substance monism (whatever it includes) is bound to the questionable term of life. Substance ( I go with Stephen) may be an illusion, depending how we define an illusion. Don't bother, I speak only my agnostic worldview, but it may be a different point of view to add. John M On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 1:00 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: On 8/28/2011 11:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote: Capillary action is not a violation of the laws of physics. What about substance monism precludes any life form from existing? Also are you saying you are a substance dualist? Hi, Is 'substance dualism' the only form of dualism? Maybe you might consider that the idea of substance is simply not even wrong. Matter and Mind are both process, substance is just the relative invariant aspects of such. Substance is illusion. Onward! Stephen -- 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.**comeverything-list@googlegroups.com . To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscribe@ **googlegroups.com everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/** group/everything-list?hl=enhttp://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Dualism?
On 8/28/2011 11:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote: Capillary action is not a violation of the laws of physics. What about substance monism precludes any life form from existing? Also are you saying you are a substance dualist? Hi, Is 'substance dualism' the only form of dualism? Maybe you might consider that the idea of substance is simply not even wrong. Matter and Mind are both process, substance is just the relative invariant aspects of such. Substance is illusion. Onward! Stephen -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
RE: briefly wading back into the fray - re: dualism
So far the responses here have not been as hostile as I feared :) --- On Sat, 2/7/09, Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com wrote: are you open to the idea that there might be truths about subjectivity (such as truths about what philosophers call 'qualia') which cannot be reduced to purely physical statements? Are you familiar with the ideas of philosopher David Chalmers, who takes the latter position? He doesn't advocate interactive dualism, where there's some kind of soul-stuff that can influence matter--he assumes that the physical world is causally closed, so all physical events have purely physical causes, including all I am very familiar with David Chalmers' position. My view is that he's wrong: If I have qualia, I don't find it plausible that they can have no influence over my spelled-out thoughts and words or actions, which is what epiphenomenalism would imply. If true qualia must be in addition to whatever is making me think and say I have qualia, then I have no reason to think I have the true ones. I am a reductive computationalist. If one buys into the possibility of objective truths about mental states/qualia and psychophysical laws, it wouldn't be such a stretch to imagine that there may be objective truths about the first-person probabilities of experiencing different branches in either the MWI or duplication experiments in a single universe (so that you don't have to rely on decision theory, which depends on non-objective choices about which future possibilities you 'care' about, to discuss quantum immortality), and that these probabilities could be determined by some combination of an objective physical measure on different brainstates and some set of psychophysical laws. If so, the question of quantum immortality would boil down to whether a given mind always has a 100% chance of experiencing a next observer-moment as long as a next brainstate exists somewhere, or whether there is some nonzero chance of one's flow of experience just ending.Jesse In the QI paper, in some of the arguments I explicitly appeal to functionalism. Most MWIers are functionalists, so those arguments should apply for them. If dualism is assumed, there are few limits on what can happen, but if Occam's razor is applied to it you can assume things won't end up much different than without it. Chalmers himself is a computationalist (just not a reductive one). The concept of measure, and the empirical arguments such as the Boltzmann Brains one and the general argument against immortality, should apply regardless of the physicalism/platonism/dualism debate. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Dualism and the DA
Le 24-juin-05, à 22:43, Pete Carlton a écrit : (Sorry for the delay; I like to spend several hours writing here but I have had meetings to attend etc..) On Jun 22, 2005, at 4:19 AM, Brent Meeker wrote: Bruno wrote There are two *physical* issues here. 1) The simplest one is that if you agree with the comp indeterminacy (or similar) you get an explanation of the quantum indeterminacy without the collapse of the wave packet. This is mainly Everett contribution. I do see how comp / first-person indeterminacy can account for, or can be equivalent to, quantum indeterminacy. In other words, asking Why am I the one in Washington instead of Moscow is like asking Why am I the one who sees the cat is still alive, etc. But my point is that we don't need to postulate primitive first-person phenomena like observer moments to account for the larger 3rd person fact, which is just that there will exist people who are going to ask these questions. I agree with you if the larger 3rd person facts are taken from computer science or arithmetic. I am far less sure that we must postulated matter space time etc. At the same time I think we must postulate 1 person existence and right (It is even in the constitution of most democratic country). And I don't think people take their own personal experience as a postulate, but more as a given. You never postulate you *feel* a headache. I'd rather postulate classes of third-person phenomena (such as those that fall into Dennett's 'intentional stance') Yes but Dennet is very naive on those points. he believes physics as something having no more problem of interpretation, like if we knew what matter really is! that are able to explain the *apparent* first-person phenomena such as the absence of white rabbits. Numbers explain better than anything relying on the matter postulate. Dennett associates the number to matter in a way incompatible with comp. I like Dennett, if you read him carefully he acknowledge not having make progress in the mind-body problem (despite deep ideas). That way Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason remains intact: it isn't the case that There's no sufficient reason why I find myself in Moscow; rather, there *is* a reason why there's one person in Moscow, and one in Washington, and they're both asking certain questions that contain the word I. Right. But this makes them ignorant of their future in case they (re)do the experiment, keeping betting on comp. There is a first person indeterminacy. You get the point. But it is just a step in a much longer reasoning. 2) The less trivial one, perhaps, is that if you agree with the comp indeterminacy you get an a priori explosion of the number of appearances of first person white rabbits I don't see that either. The SWE doesn't predict that *everything* (which is what I presume you to mean by white rabbits) will happen. If it did it would be useless. -or (if I understand correctly) it doesn't predict that everything will happen to the same extent. But, anyway, I agree that the white rabbit problem is real, although I see it as a third person problem rather than an (intrinsically) first person problem. Well, for a Tegmarkian there are varieties of 3-person Rabbit problems and 1-person rabbit problems. With comp there is a 1-person rabbit problems, and it is just open if some 2-rabbit problem will appear ... and the only way to solve this, assuming the SWE is correct, must consist in justifying the SWE from the comp indeterminacy bearing But the indeterminancy of comp arises from equivocation about I as Pete noted. It assumes first that there is an I dependent on physical structure and then sees a problem in determining where the I goes when the structure is duplicated. Right - I think that the physical structure (which I'm happy to equate with mathematical structure, or a program, etc.) You cannot do that. I mean you can, but it is a very strong assumption. With comp physical striucture is eventually identifiable with covering relation of computational histories ... is all there is - But OK. You are near comp, or Tegmark, Schmidhuber, ... and once you've explained that, you've explained everything. Schmidhuber error. I humbly think. What really happens is that when you do identify me with a program, you can use computer science to begin to formulate the 1-3 person problem. The I that comes out of it is a very useful pattern to us but it isn't something further, something primitive. It is not primitive. But the relation between 1-person and 3-person everybody takes for granted since 2300 years (Aristotle) just does not work. The best example I can think of where the first person as primitive reasoning takes us into weird territory, is the talk of observer moments. I think that taking these as primitive leads us into error; I agree with it. Except the concept has not
Re: Dualism and the DA
Le 22-juin-05, à 13:19, Brent Meeker a écrit : -Original Message- From: Bruno Marchal [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2005 8:16 AM To: Pete Carlton Cc: EverythingList Subject: Re: Dualism and the DA Le 21-juin-05, à 21:21, Pete Carlton a écrit : snip Now, if you introduce copies to this scenario, it does not seem to me that anything changes fundamentally. Your choice on what kind of scenario to accept will still hinge on your desires for the future of any persons involved. The desires themselves may be very complicated, and in fact will depend on lots of hitherto unspecified details such as the legal status, ownership rights, etc., of copies. Of course one copy will say I pushed the button and then I got tortured, and the other copy will say I pushed the button and woke up on the beach - which is exactly what we would expect these two people to say. And they're both right, insofar as they're giving an accurate report of their memories. What is the metaphysical issue here? There are two *physical* issues here. 1) The simplest one is that if you agree with the comp indeterminacy (or similar) you get an explanation of the quantum indeterminacy without the collapse of the wave packet. This is mainly Everett contribution. I think Pete has a good point; I don't see how this bears on his analysis of I. Could you elaborate a little bit? I don't see how it could possibly not bear on Pete's analysis of I. I mean if Pete is right about his I, he should agree with Everett's notion that the probabilities are subjective in QM. 2) The less trivial one, perhaps, is that if you agree with the comp indeterminacy you get an a priori explosion of the number of appearances of first person white rabbits I don't see that either. The SWE doesn't predict that *everything* (which is what I presume you to mean by white rabbits) will happen. If it did it would be useless. Once you accept comp, the explosion of rabbits follows from the UD Argument (UDA). Invoking the SWE here is irrelevent, unless to say that the SWE is the only way to solve the rabbits problem. Showing this from comp only would be derivation of the SWE from comp. and the only way to solve this, assuming the SWE is correct, must consist in justifying the SWE from the comp indeterminacy bearing But the indeterminancy of comp arises from equivocation about I as Pete noted. I can agree with the use of such vocabulary. It assumes first that there is an I dependent on physical structure The physical structure is what makes an I to be able to manifest eself relatively to some probable computation. and then sees a problem in determining where the I goes when the structure is duplicated. Yes. on all computational states/histories. The fact that all these metaphysical problems and bizarre results are predicted by assuming *everything happens* implies to me that *everything happens* is likely false. 1) Weirdness is not falsity, but ok I am open we will get a falsity from comp, and then comp will be refuted and that would be a giant result. 2) everything happens in the comp frame, just means that the set of all possible computations is as well defined as the set of natural numbers. You cannot make disappear a computation for the same reason you cannot dismiss the number 13 or the least prime bigger than 100^(100^(100^(100^(100^(100^(100^(100))). I'm not sure what the best alternative is, but I like Roland Omnes view point that QM is a probabilistic theory and hence it must predict probabilities for things that don't happen. OK, but that is an ad hoc wishful thinking move to preserve unicity of history. Even Roland Omnes agrees that such a move is non cartesian. And then, in the french edition (but not in the english edition if I remember correctly-I will verify again!) he opposes Heidegger against Descartes in the most irrational way. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: Dualism and the DA
Le 22-juin-05, à 21:26, [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : x-tad-biggerActually, it occurred to me lately that saying everything happens may be the same as the paradox of the set of all sets. /x-tad-bigger That is indeed close to may critics of Tegmark. But as you know logician have made progress in set theories, and today there exist reasonnable set theories which can make you comfortable with notions of universal sets. Now comp gives the most simple of them all, and that's why, I don't insist on all those non-comp variants. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: Dualism and the DA
(Sorry for the delay; I like to spend several hours writing here but I have had meetings to attend etc..)On Jun 22, 2005, at 4:19 AM, Brent Meeker wrote:There are two *physical* issues here.1) The simplest one is that if you agree with the comp indeterminacy(or similar) you get an explanation of the quantum indeterminacywithout the collapse of the wave packet. This is mainly Everettcontribution. I do see how comp / "first-person" indeterminacy can account for, or can be equivalent to, quantum indeterminacy. In other words, asking "Why am I the one in Washington instead of Moscow" is like asking "Why am I the one who sees the cat is still alive", etc. But my point is that we don't need to postulate "primitive" first-person phenomena like observer moments to account for the larger 3rd person fact, which is just that there will exist people who are going to ask these questions. I'd rather postulate classes of third-person phenomena (such as those that fall into Dennett's 'intentional stance') that are able to explain the *apparent* first-person phenomena such as the absence of white rabbits. That way Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason remains intact: it isn't the case that "There's no sufficient reason why I find myself in Moscow"; rather, there *is* a reason why there's one person in Moscow, and one in Washington, and they're both asking certain questions that contain the word "I".2) The less trivial one, perhaps, is that if you agree with the compindeterminacy you get an a priori explosion of the number ofappearances of first person white rabbitsI don't see that either. The SWE doesn't predict that *everything* (which iswhat I presume you to mean by "white rabbits") will happen. If it did it wouldbe useless.-or (if I understand correctly) it doesn't predict that everything will happen to the same extent. But, anyway, I agree that the white rabbit problem is real, although I see it as a third person problem rather than an (intrinsically) first person problem. and the only way to solvethis, assuming the SWE is correct, must consist in justifying the SWEfrom the comp indeterminacy bearing But the "indeterminancy" of comp arises from equivocation about "I" as Petenoted. It assumes first that there is an "I" dependent on physical structureand then sees a problem in determining where the "I" goes when the structure isduplicated.Right - I think that the "physical structure" (which I'm happy to equate with mathematical structure, or a program, etc.) is all there is - and once you've explained that, you've explained everything. The "I" that comes out of it is a very useful pattern to us but it isn't something further, something primitive. The best example I can think of where the "first person as primitive" reasoning takes us into weird territory, is the talk of "observer moments". I think that taking these as primitive leads us into error; in particular the idea that there's a definite answer to the question "what observer moment am I now experiencing?".Best regards Pete Carlton
Re: Dualism and the DA
Le 21-juin-05, à 21:21, Pete Carlton a écrit : I think the practical differences are large, as you say, but I disagree that it points to a fundamental metaphysical difference. I think what appears to be a metaphysical difference is just the breakdown of our folk concept of I. Imagine a primitive person who didn't understand the physics of fire, seeing two candles lit from a single one, then the first one extinguished - they may be tempted to conclude that the first flame has now become two flames. Well, this is no problem because flames never say things like I would like to keep burning or I wonder what my next experience would be. We, however, do say these things. But does this bit of behavior (including the neural activity that causes it) make us different in a relevant way? And if so, how? This breakdown of I is very interesting. Since there's lots of talk about torture here, let's take this extremely simple example: Smith is going to torture someone, one hour from now. You may try to take steps to prevent it. How much effort you are willing to put in depends, among other things, on the identity of the person Smith is going to torture. In particular, you will be very highly motivated if that person is you; or rather, the person you will be one hour from now. The reason for the high motivation is that you have strong desires for that person to continue their life unabated, and those desires hinge on the outcome of the torture. But my point is that your strong desires for your own survival are just a special case of desires for a given person's survival - in other words, you are already taking a third-person point of view to your (future) self. You know that if the person is killed during torture, they will not continue their life; if they survive it, their life will still be negatively impacted, and your desires for the person's future are thwarted. Now, if you introduce copies to this scenario, it does not seem to me that anything changes fundamentally. Your choice on what kind of scenario to accept will still hinge on your desires for the future of any persons involved. The desires themselves may be very complicated, and in fact will depend on lots of hitherto unspecified details such as the legal status, ownership rights, etc., of copies. Of course one copy will say I pushed the button and then I got tortured, and the other copy will say I pushed the button and woke up on the beach - which is exactly what we would expect these two people to say. And they're both right, insofar as they're giving an accurate report of their memories. What is the metaphysical issue here? There are two *physical* issues here. 1) The simplest one is that if you agree with the comp indeterminacy (or similar) you get an explanation of the quantum indeterminacy without the collapse of the wave packet. This is mainly Everett contribution. 2) The less trivial one, perhaps, is that if you agree with the comp indeterminacy you get an a priori explosion of the number of appearances of first person white rabbits and the only way to solve this, assuming the SWE is correct, must consist in justifying the SWE from the comp indeterminacy bearing on all computational states/histories. The issue 1) is that an indeterministic physical theory is reduced to a deterministic physical theory. The issue 2) is that physics is reduced (at least in principle) to math/computer science. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
RE: Dualism and the DA
-Original Message- From: Bruno Marchal [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2005 8:16 AM To: Pete Carlton Cc: EverythingList Subject: Re: Dualism and the DA Le 21-juin-05, à 21:21, Pete Carlton a écrit : I think the practical differences are large, as you say, but I disagree that it points to a fundamental metaphysical difference. I think what appears to be a metaphysical difference is just the breakdown of our folk concept of I. Imagine a primitive person who didn't understand the physics of fire, seeing two candles lit from a single one, then the first one extinguished - they may be tempted to conclude that the first flame has now become two flames. Well, this is no problem because flames never say things like I would like to keep burning or I wonder what my next experience would be. We, however, do say these things. But does this bit of behavior (including the neural activity that causes it) make us different in a relevant way? And if so, how? This breakdown of I is very interesting. Since there's lots of talk about torture here, let's take this extremely simple example: Smith is going to torture someone, one hour from now. You may try to take steps to prevent it. How much effort you are willing to put in depends, among other things, on the identity of the person Smith is going to torture. In particular, you will be very highly motivated if that person is you; or rather, the person you will be one hour from now. The reason for the high motivation is that you have strong desires for that person to continue their life unabated, and those desires hinge on the outcome of the torture. But my point is that your strong desires for your own survival are just a special case of desires for a given person's survival - in other words, you are already taking a third-person point of view to your (future) self. You know that if the person is killed during torture, they will not continue their life; if they survive it, their life will still be negatively impacted, and your desires for the person's future are thwarted. Now, if you introduce copies to this scenario, it does not seem to me that anything changes fundamentally. Your choice on what kind of scenario to accept will still hinge on your desires for the future of any persons involved. The desires themselves may be very complicated, and in fact will depend on lots of hitherto unspecified details such as the legal status, ownership rights, etc., of copies. Of course one copy will say I pushed the button and then I got tortured, and the other copy will say I pushed the button and woke up on the beach - which is exactly what we would expect these two people to say. And they're both right, insofar as they're giving an accurate report of their memories. What is the metaphysical issue here? There are two *physical* issues here. 1) The simplest one is that if you agree with the comp indeterminacy (or similar) you get an explanation of the quantum indeterminacy without the collapse of the wave packet. This is mainly Everett contribution. I think Pete has a good point; I don't see how this bears on his analysis of I. 2) The less trivial one, perhaps, is that if you agree with the comp indeterminacy you get an a priori explosion of the number of appearances of first person white rabbits I don't see that either. The SWE doesn't predict that *everything* (which is what I presume you to mean by white rabbits) will happen. If it did it would be useless. and the only way to solve this, assuming the SWE is correct, must consist in justifying the SWE from the comp indeterminacy bearing But the indeterminancy of comp arises from equivocation about I as Pete noted. It assumes first that there is an I dependent on physical structure and then sees a problem in determining where the I goes when the structure is duplicated. on all computational states/histories. The fact that all these metaphysical problems and bizarre results are predicted by assuming *everything happens* implies to me that *everything happens* is likely false. I'm not sure what the best alternative is, but I like Roland Omnes view point that QM is a probabilistic theory and hence it must predict probabilities for things that don't happen. Brent Meeker
Re: Dualism and the DA
Brent Meeker: The fact that all these metaphysical problems and bizarre results are predictedby assuming *everything happens* implies to me that *everything happens* islikely false. I'm not sure what the best alternative is, but I like RolandOmnes view point that QM is a probabilistic theory and hence it must predictprobabilities for things that don't happen. end quote Actually, it occurred to me lately that saying "everything happens" may be the same as the paradox of the "set of all sets". Tom Caylor
Re: Dualism and the DA
On Jun 20, 2005, at 10:44 AM, Hal Finney wrote:Pete Carlton writes: snip-- we don't need to posit any kind of dualism to paper over it, we just have to revise our concept of "I". Hal Finney wrote:Copies seem a little more problematic. We're pretty cavalier aboutcreating and destroying them in our thought experiments, but the socialimplications of copies are enormous and I suspect that people's viewsabout the nature of copying would not be as simple as we sometimes assume.I doubt that many people would be indifferent between the choice ofhaving a 50-50 chance of being teleported to Moscow or Washington, vshaving copies made which wake up in both cities. The practical effectswould be enormously different. And as I wrote before, I suspect thatthese practical differences are not to be swept under the rug, but pointto fundamental metaphysical differences between the two situations.I think the practical differences are large, as you say, but I disagree that it points to a fundamental metaphysical difference. I think what appears to be a metaphysical difference is just the breakdown of our folk concept of "I". Imagine a primitive person who didn't understand the physics of fire, seeing two candles lit from a single one, then the first one extinguished - they may be tempted to conclude that the first flame has now become two flames. Well, this is no problem because flames never say things like "I would like to keep burning" or "I wonder what my next experience would be". We, however, do say these things. But does this bit of behavior (including the neural activity that causes it) make us different in a relevant way? And if so, how?This breakdown of "I" is very interesting. Since there's lots of talk about torture here, let's take this extremely simple example: Smith is going to torture someone, one hour from now. You may try to take steps to prevent it. How much effort you are willing to put in depends, among other things, on the identity of the person Smith is going to torture. In particular, you will be very highly motivated if that person is you; or rather, the person you will be one hour from now. The reason for the high motivation is that you have strong desires for that person to continue their life unabated, and those desires hinge on the outcome of the torture. But my point is that your strong desires for your own survival are just a special case of desires for a given person's survival - in other words, you are already taking a third-person point of view to your (future) self. You know that if the person is killed during torture, they will not continue their life; if they survive it, their life will still be negatively impacted, and your desires for the person's future are thwarted.Now, if you introduce copies to this scenario, it does not seem to me that anything changes fundamentally. Your choice on what kind of scenario to accept will still hinge on your desires for the future of any persons involved. The desires themselves may be very complicated, and in fact will depend on lots of hitherto unspecified details such as the legal status, ownership rights, etc., of copies. Of course one copy will say "I pushed the button and then I got tortured", and the other copy will say "I pushed the button and woke up on the beach" - which is exactly what we would expect these two people to say. And they're both right, insofar as they're giving an accurate report of their memories. What is the metaphysical issue here?
Re: Dualism and the DA
On Mon, Jun 20, 2005 at 12:01:48AM -0700, Jonathan Colvin wrote: Russell Standish wrote: (JC) If you want to insist that What would it be like to be a bat is equivalent to the question What would the universe be like if I had been a bat rather than me?, it is very hard to see what the answer could be. Suppose you *had* been a bat rather than you (Russell Standish). How would the universe be any different than it is now? If you can answer that question, (which is the key question, to my mind), then I'll grant that the question is meaningful. No different in the 3rd person, very obviously different in the 1st person I don't really know what that means. The only way I can make sense of the question is something like, If I was a bat instead of me (Jonathan Colvin), then the universe would consist of a bat asking the question I'm asking now. That's a counterfactual, a way in which the universe would be objectively different. It wouldn't be counterfactual, because by assumption bats ask this question of themselves anyway. Hence there is no difference in the 3rd person. The 1st person experience is very different though. There are only 1st person counterfactuals. I definitely acknowledge the distinction between 1st and 3rd person. This is not the same as duality, which posits a 3rd person entity (the immaterial soul). This is, I think, the crux of the reference class issue with the DA. My (and your) reference class can not be merely conscious observers or all humans, but must be something much closer to someone (or thing) discussing or aware of the DA). I don't think this is a meaningful reference class. I can still ask the question why am I me, and not someone else without being aware of the DA. All it takes is self-awareness IMHO. I note that this reference class is certainly appropriate for you and me, and likely for anyone else reading this. This reference class certainly also invalidates the DA (although immaterial souls would rescue it). But at this point, I am, like Nick Bostrom, tempted to throw my hands up and declare the reference class issue pretty much intractable. Jonathan Colvin Incidently, I think I may have an answer to my Why am I not Chinese criticism, and the corresponding correction to Why am I not an ant seems to give the same answer as I originally proposed. I might put this in a separate posting, once I've polished my current manuscript... Cheers -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgprma9lg70i5.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Dualism and the DA (and torture once more)
Le 19-juin-05, à 02:39, Jonathan Colvin a écrit : I'm sure the one in Moscow will also answer that he feels really to be the one in Moscow. OK. But what you haven't answered is in what way the universe is any different under circumstance (A) than (B). This is because there is surely *no* difference at all. There is no 3-difference at all, but only a God can know that. There is a first person difference: it is the difference between writing in my personal diary oh I'm in Moscow and oh I'm in Washington. Note that here we can understand why the question why I am the one in W or why I am the one in M are 100% meaningless. This does not entail that the question where will I be in the next duplication is meaningless. This is the reason why it makes no sense (to me) to take the position that if I copy myself, there is a 50% chance of (A) me being observer A, and a 50% chance of (B) me being observer B. There is no difference between (A) and (B). This is because you look at the experiment only from the third person point of view. Suppose we iterate the self-duplication 64 times. Among the 2^64 copies most will acknowledge that they are living a random experiment (it can be shown that most of the 2^64 sequence of W and M (or 1 and 0) are kolmogorov-chaitin-solovay incompressible. For them, that is from their first person point of view, they are in a state of maximal indeterminacy and their best theories will be that they are confronted to a Bernouilli random experience. Of course, taking your God-like point of view you can tell them that they are under an illusion, giving that there is no 3-person difference (as God knows). Let us call that illusion the first person experience and let us try to explain it. The illusion exists, unless comp is false and the reconstituted people are zombies. This is also the reason why I choose (A) a 50% chance of torture over (B) being copied ten times, and one copy getting tortured (where it is suggested there is only a 10% chance of me getting tortured). Remember that for me this sort of reasoning always suppose no future merging or duplication and also that the copies have sufficiently diverge (and then the exact computation is most probably intractable, like in real physics). There are clearly two different possible universes under (A) (one where I get tortured, one where I don't). Under (B), there is no way I can make sense of what the 10% probability applies to. The universe is identical under situation (a) I'm person 1 who gets tortured and (b) I'm person 2-10 who doesn't. I am with you here. and if you agree with the 50% I made my point. The 10% was introduced only for treating a case where the copies did not diverge (or the comp histories going through the states of those copies. To insist that there *is* a difference surely requires some new kind of dualism. Perhaps it is a valid dualism; Not this one. Only the duality between 1 and 3 person is valid. but I think it should be accepted that theories reifying the 1st person are fundamentally dualistic. The word dualism is a little too vague. Once you agree with the 50% for a WM duplication, you accept the only sort of dualism I defend, but it is more an epistemological dualism than an ontological one. It is about *knowledge* not *being* (still less substance). This means you accept the step 3 of the Universal Dovetailing Argument (UDA): http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004Slide.pdf Explanations in english: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.htm But I know what your response will be..the dualism comes from reifying the 3rd person independent universe, and if we accept only the 1st person as real, there is no dualism. It is quite a metaphysical leap, though, to discard the 3rd person universe. I'd like to know how to justify such a shift. Careful, you are the one making a big leap, here. You go from the 3th step to the 8th step in the Universal Dovetailing Argument. I don't pretend it is easy or obvious. But it is not a metaphysical leap, it is a logical conclusion, once we take the comp hyp seriously enough, and this without hiding the 1-3 distinction under the rug. It does not seem simpler by Occam, because instead of 1 universe containing many observers, we have a multiplicity of universes, each with 1 observer. We have a multiplicity of well defined computations, all statically existing in the arithmetical Platonia. It is simpler by occam (QM also presupposed those computations). Some computations can be seen as histories by internal self-referential inference inductive machine. How does this differ from solipsism? Please believe me, if comp leads to solipism, I will take it as a powerful argument against comp. But that would be currently highly premature. The logical possibility that comp makes solipsim false is due to the nuance between first person point of view (as I describe it through the duplication experiment) and
RE: Dualism and the DA
Jonathan Colvin writes: This is, I think, the crux of the reference class issue with the DA. My (and your) reference class can not be merely conscious observers or all humans, but must be something much closer to someone (or thing) discussing or aware of the DA). I note that this reference class is certainly appropriate for you and me, and likely for anyone else reading this. This reference class certainly also invalidates the DA (although immaterial souls would rescue it). But we don't use such a specific reference class in other areas of reasoning. We don't say, why do things fall to the ground, and answer it, because we are in a reference class of people who have observed things fall to the ground. If we explain an observed phenomenon merely by saying that we are in the reference class of people who have observed it, we haven't explained anything. We need to be a little more ambitious. Hal Finney
Re: Dualism and the DA
On Jun 17, 2005, at 10:17 PM, Russell Standish wrote:snipI still find it hard to understand this argument. The question "Whatis it like to be a bat?" still has meaning, but is probablyunanswerable (although Dennett, I notice considers it answerable,contra Nagel!)Dennett considers it answerable, but he thinks the answer is probably "Nothing at all".That is, it isn't "like" anything at all to be a bat, because bats can do all the tasks they need to do to get by without it being "like" anything at all for them.I still think the confusion over personal identity is due to the misplaced importance we're putting on the concept of "I". Here's what Bruno said later:"Note that here we can understand why the question "why I am the one in W" or "why I am the one in M" are 100% meaningless. This does not entail that the question where will I be in the next duplication is meaningless."I think the second question, "where will I be in the next duplication", is also meaningless. I think that if you know all the 3rd-person facts before you step into the duplicator - that there will be two doubles made of you in two different places, and both doubles wil be psychologically identical at the time of their creation such that each will say they are you - then you know everything there is to know. There is no further question of "which one will I be"? This is simply a situation which pushes the folk concept of "I" past its breaking point; we don't need to posit any kind of dualism to paper over it, we just have to revise our concept of "I".
Re: Dualism and the DA
Pete Carlton writes: I think the second question, where will I be in the next duplication, is also meaningless. I think that if you know all the 3rd-person facts before you step into the duplicator - that there will be two doubles made of you in two different places, and both doubles wil be psychologically identical at the time of their creation such that each will say they are you - then you know everything there is to know. There is no further question of which one will I be? This is simply a situation which pushes the folk concept of I past its breaking point; we don't need to posit any kind of dualism to paper over it, we just have to revise our concept of I. I agree that this view makes sense. We come up with all these mind bending and paradoxical thought experiments, and even though everyone agrees about every fact of the third-person experience, no one can agree on what it means from the first person perspective. Maybe, then, there is no fact of the matter to agree on, with regard to the first person. On the other hand, in a world where Star Trek transporters were common, it seems likely that most people would carry over their conventional views about continuity of identity to the use of this technology. Once they have gone through it a few times, and have memories of having done so, it won't seem much different from other forms of transportation. Copies seem a little more problematic. We're pretty cavalier about creating and destroying them in our thought experiments, but the social implications of copies are enormous and I suspect that people's views about the nature of copying would not be as simple as we sometimes assume. I doubt that many people would be indifferent between the choice of having a 50-50 chance of being teleported to Moscow or Washington, vs having copies made which wake up in both cities. The practical effects would be enormously different. And as I wrote before, I suspect that these practical differences are not to be swept under the rug, but point to fundamental metaphysical differences between the two situations. Hal Finney
Re: Dualism and the DA
I have just waved my magic wand, and lo! Jonathan Colvin has been changed body and mind into Russell Standish and placed in Sydney, while Russell Standish has been changed into Jonathan Colvin and placed somewhere on the coastal US. If anyone else covets a particular person's wealth or position, please email me privately, and for a very reasonable fee I can arrange a similar swap! --Stathis Papaioannou Le Jeudi 16 Juin 2005 10:02, Jonathan Colvin a crit: Switch the question. Why aren't you me (Jonathan Colvin)? I'm conscious (feels like I am, anyway). Hi Jonathan, I think you do not see the real question, which can be formulated (using your analogy) by : Why (me as) Russell Standish is Russell Standish rather Jonathan Colvin ? I (as RS) could have been you (JC)... but it's a fact that I'm not, but the question is why I'm not, why am I me rather than you ? What force decide for me to be me ? :) Quentin _ Low rate ANZ MasterCard. Apply now! http://clk.atdmt.com/MAU/go/msnnkanz003006mau/direct/01/ Must be over 18 years.
Re: Dualism and the DA
Dear List, I cannot keep to myself remarks on TWO kinds of unreasonabilities surfaced and are still being discussed to saturation (euphemism). #1: the use of the conditional form. This, as usually applied, pertains to a select aspect of the model without (of course) taking the rest of the world into consideration which effacts/affects all changes. One cannot think of changing one aspect and disregard the result of ALL influences onto it. Maybe Job's bluecollar parents provided a firm and steady grip on his growing up giving him the discipline to become a successful person, while the affluent couple's possibilities would have led him into drugs and/or crime. Si nisi non esset, perfectus quodlibet esset. It's a mind-game. Sci (or not so sci?) - fi??? One closing idea: the world is deterministic: All that happens has its origin in intereffectiveness, we have access only to a limited cognitive circle. So those 'facts' we want to hypothetically change are determined by the OM circumstances. It is nonsense: just like the 10^100 pensimilar copies in 10^100 pensimilar universes - all according to our (human and present) understanding, design and conditions. Our own mind-limited artifact. #2: Over the millennia faith-strategists invented dualism to imply something that 'survives' us and can be praised or punished just to secure the grip of 'faith' (organizations?) on the 'faithful, aoup carrying such memes over millennia. It was not an esoteric thought: the basic reductionist thinking humanity developed with its limited models gave rise to thinking in things ie cut models, without understanding of the total interconnectedness. If we step a bit further, we find that the world is change, process, substance is reduceable into such and it is our reductionist logic that looks for material substance on traditional basis. The process, change, ie. the 'function' usually assigned to such 'substance' as being considered a separable entity (like spirit, soul, consciousness, power, whatever) and voila: we have dualism. I do not imply that the soul is the function of the body: the unit we realize as our model of a human being (or anything else) is considered as having a substrate AND a function separately. So the personalized function can(??) 'survive' the substrate's demise. Bovine excrement: there is an intrinsic unity of 'functional units' - no mind separable from the (so called) material tool: the neuronal brain (and its functions). I don't blame Descartes: in his time dualistic basis kept him from the inquisition. And we cannot judge by our present epistemic level of ongoing information at our cognitive inventory, the outcome of another (lower?) level conclusion. Ptolemy was right in his rite. Pass. I like this list, because it 'thinks' for the future. Of course sometimes it is hard to shake off the firm handcuffs in thinking by traditional terms. We all have been brainwashed into them. Please, excuse my unorthodoxy John Mikes - Original Message - From: Jonathan Colvin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Hal Finney' [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, June 17, 2005 4:34 PM Subject: RE: Dualism and the DA Hal Finney wrote: It's an interesting question as to how far we can comfortably or meaningfully take counterfactuals. At some level it is completely mundane to say things like, if I had taken a different route to work today, I wouldn't have gotten caught in that traffic jam. SNIP Computer head Steve Jobs gave a pretty good graduation speech at Stanford last week, ... SNIP Does it make sense for Jobs to say, who would I have been if that had happened? The point is that we can imagine a range of counterfactuals ... ... Those are counterfactuals regarding personal circumstance, and do not seem particularly controversial, even admitting that it is not straightforward to define a single theory of personal identity that covers all the bases. SNIP as Who would I be if my mother and father hadn't had sex?, or who would I be if they'd had sex a day later and a different egg and sperm had met?. I have to disagree with you here, and state that this sort of counterfactual seems to indeed embody a difference of kind, not just degree. We're not talking about imagining_whats_it_likeness. We are talking about me *being* someone different. Jonathan Colvin - And may I quote: Russell St. to JC Thursday, June 16, 2005 2:00 AM: (attachment): On Wed, Jun 15, 2005 at 10:30:11PM - Jonathan Colvin wrote: Nope, I'm thinking of dualism as the mind (or consciousness) is separate from the body. Ie. The mind is not identical to the body. - RS: These two statements are not equivalent. You cannot say that the fist is separate from the hand. Yet the fist is not identical to the hand. Another example. You cannot say that a smile is separate from someone's mouth. Yet a smile is not identical to the mouth. ... JC: As a little boy once asked, Why are lions, lions? Why
Re: Dualism and the DA
Le 17-juin-05, 19:44, Jonathan Colvin a crit : Bruno wrote: Note that the question why am I me and not my brother is strictly equivalent with why am I the one in Washington and not the one in Moscow after a WM duplication. It is strictly unanswerable. Even a God could not give an adequate explanation (assuming c.). Ok, does that not imply that it is a meaningless question? Not at all. If you want to insist that this question is meaningful, I don't see how this is possible without assuming a dualism of some sort (exactly which sort I'm trying to figure out). If the material universe is identical under situation (A) (I am copy #1 in washington) and (B) (I am copy#2 in washington), then in what way does it make sense to say that situation A OR situation B might have obtained? Just ask the one in Washington. He will tell you that he feels really be the one in washington. The experience from his personal point of view *has* given a bit of information he feels himself to be the one in washington, and not in Moscow. At this stage he can have only an intellectual (3-person) knowledge that its doppelganger has been reconstituted in Moscow. And he remember correctly by comp his past history in Brussels. It is even simpler to reason by assuming, well not comp, but the fact that the reasoner believes in comp, not as a philosopher, but as someone practicing comp everyday. He believes that, as far as he is consistent he will remain consistent (or alive with its correct memories) after a teletransportation from Brussels to Mars. An independant unknown reconstitution elsewhere will not change the fact that he survives. So he believes he will survive a duplication, in the same mundane sense that he would survive a medical operation. Only, he can by introspection realize that the reconstitution will break the 3-symmetry of the duplication. By numerical identity and 3-symmetry he knows he will no convey one bit of information to an external observer (by saying I am the one in W), but he *knows* he is the one in w, like the other konws he is the one in m. (unless he is transformed into a zombie after the duplication, but by definition of comp that should not happen). The or situation makes sense from the first person point of views. Then, by introspective anticipation the one in brussels will infer he is just maximally ignorant about where, in W or M he feel to be after the experiment will be done. This seems to be the crux of the objection to any theory which reifies 1st person phenomena. You are right, but only from the naturalist/physicalist/materialist theoretical point of view. With comp I suspect (let us say) that it is the crux of the objection to any theory which reifies the 3 person phenomena (except a part of arithmetic). The fact is that when I have a headache, or just when someone I care off has a headache, I am not sure I find even just polite the accusation of reification. If I am the one with the headache, I would consider as a lie to myself to believe I am reifying the headache. Contrarily if you tell me there are moon, galaxies, big bangs and gluons, and when I ask you the evidences, you can give me only numbers which represent relative but apparently stable relation with other numbers. This I don't take as an evidence for moons and gluons, but only as evidence that we probably share a long and non trivial comp history. But with comp, the stability of that history is in need to be explained, without reifying anything substancial, material or physical: it *is* the 1-dragon problem. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
RE: Dualism and the DA
Russell Standish wrote: On What would it be like to have been born someone else, how does this differ from What is it like to be a bat? Presumably Jonathon Colvin would argue that this latter question is meaningless, unless immaterial souls existed. I still find it hard to understand this argument. The question What is it like to be a bat? still has meaning, but is probably unanswerable (although Dennett, I notice considers it answerable, contra Nagel!) No... What is it like to be (or have been born) a bat? is a *very* different question than Why am I me rather than a bat?. Certainly, assuming immaterial souls or a similar identity dualism, (and that I am my soul, not my body), and that bats have souls like people, it is a meaningful question to ask why am I me rather than a bat, or to state that I could have been a bat, because my soul could have been placed in a bat rather than a human body. The universe would be objectively different under the circumstances I am Jonathan Colvin and I am a bat. If you want to insist that What would it be like to be a bat is equivalent to the question What would the universe be like if I had been a bat rather than me?, it is very hard to see what the answer could be. Suppose you *had* been a bat rather than you (Russell Standish). How would the universe be any different than it is now? If you can answer that question, (which is the key question, to my mind), then I'll grant that the question is meaningful. Jonathan Colvin
RE: Dualism and the DA (and torture once more)
Bruno wrote: Note that the question why am I me and not my brother is strictly equivalent with why am I the one in Washington and not the one in Moscow after a WM duplication. It is strictly unanswerable. Even a God could not give an adequate explanation (assuming c.). (JC) Ok, does that not imply that it is a meaningless question? Not at all. If you want to insist that this question is meaningful, I don't see how this is possible without assuming a dualism of some sort (exactly which sort I'm trying to figure out). If the material universe is identical under situation (A) (I am copy #1 in washington) and (B) (I am copy#2 in washington), then in what way does it make sense to say that situation A OR situation B might have obtained? Just ask the one in Washington. He will tell you that he feels really be the one in washington. The experience from his personal point of view *has* given a bit of information he feels himself to be the one in washington, and not in Moscow. At this stage he can have only an intellectual (3-person) knowledge that its doppelganger has been reconstituted in Moscow. And he remember correctly by comp his past history in Brussels. snip I'm sure the one in Moscow will also answer that he feels really to be the one in Moscow. But what you haven't answered is in what way the universe is any different under circumstance (A) than (B). This is because there is surely *no* difference at all. This is the reason why it makes no sense (to me) to take the position that if I copy myself, there is a 50% chance of (A) me being observer A, and a 50% chance of (B) me being observer B. There is no difference between (A) and (B). This is also the reason why I choose (A) a 50% chance of torture over (B) being copied ten times, and one copy getting tortured (where it is suggested there is only a 10% chance of me getting tortured). There are clearly two different possible universes under (A) (one where I get tortured, one where I don't). Under (B), there is no way I can make sense of what the 10% probability applies to. The universe is identical under situation (a) I'm person 1 who gets tortured and (b) I'm person 2-10 who doesn't. To insist that there *is* a difference surely requires some new kind of dualism. Perhaps it is a valid dualism; but I think it should be accepted that theories reifying the 1st person are fundamentally dualistic. But I know what your response will be..the dualism comes from reifying the 3rd person independent universe, and if we accept only the 1st person as real, there is no dualism. It is quite a metaphysical leap, though, to discard the 3rd person universe. I'd like to know how to justify such a shift. It does not seem simpler by Occam, because instead of 1 universe containing many observers, we have a multiplicity of universes, each with 1 observer. How does this differ from solipsism? How do we make sense of other observers within *our* universe? If there questions have been addressed before on the list, feel free to point me to the relevant archive section. Jonathan Colvin
Re: Dualism and the DA (and torture once more)
Le Dimanche 19 Juin 2005 02:39, Jonathan Colvin a crit: the dualism comes from reifying the 3rd person independent universe, and if we accept only the 1st person as real, there is no dualism. It is quite a metaphysical leap, though, to discard the 3rd person universe. I'd like to know how to justify such a shift. Yes, exactly... this is what is called a monism and not dualism... if you accept only 1st person experience as real, and 3rd person phenomena as emergent of 1st person experience, it is not dualism. It is called phenomenalism. phenomenalism - The monistic view that all empirical statements (such as the laws of physics) can be placed in a one to one correspondence with statements about only the phenomenal (i.e. mental appearances). Quentin
RE: Dualism and the DA
Russell Standish wrote: Well, actually I'd say the fist *is* identical to the hand. At least, my fist seems to be identical to my hand. Even when the hand is open Define fist. You don't seem to be talking about a thing, but some sort of Platonic form. That's an expressly dualist position. According to the Oxford Concise dictionary: fist: a clenched hand, esp. as used in boxing Another example. You cannot say that a smile is separate from someone's mouth. Yet a smile is not identical to the mouth. Depends whether you are a Platonist (dualist) about smiles. I'd say a smiling mouth *is* identical to a mouth. Even when the mouth is turned down??? As above. Is it your position that you are the same sort of thing as a smile? That's a dualist position. I'd say I'm the same sort of thing as a mouth. ??? You're being incoherent. How can you be the same sort of thing as a smile or a mouth? What do you mean? A mouth is a thing. A smile is not. If I define myself as the body that calls itself Jonathan Colvin, that is the same sort of thing as a mouth (a material object). A smile is a different category entirely. But we are getting side-tracked here. But your response above is ambiguous. I'm not sure if you are agreeing that our appropriate reference class is *not* all humans, but disagreeing as to whether email is important, or disagreeing with the entire statement above (in which case presumably you think our appropriate refererence class for the purposes of the DA is all humans). Can you be more specific about what you disagree with? The reference class is all conscious beings. Since we know of no other conscious beings, then this is often taken to be all humans. The case of extra terrestrial intelligences certainly complicates the DA, however DA-like arguments would also imply that humans dominate to class of conscious beings. This conclusion is not empirically contradicted, but if it ever were, the DA would be refuted. Absent a good definition for conscious, this reference class seems unjustifiable. Could I have been a chimpanzee? If not, why not? Could I have been an infant who died at the age of 5? And why pick on conscious as the reference class. Why couldn't I have been a tree? Constraining the reference to class to subsets of conscious beings immediately leads to contradictions - eg why am I not a Chinese, instead of Australian - Chinese outnumber Australians by a factor of 50 (mind you a factor of 50 is not really enough to base anthropic arguments, but one could easily finesse this). Indeed. This is a further indication that there are problems with the DA. The only way to rescue the DA is to assume that I *could have had* a different birth rank; in other words, that I could have been someone other than me (me as in my body). If the body I'm occupying is contingent (ie. I could have been in any human body, and am in this one by pure chance), then the DA is rescued. Yes. Ok, at least we agree on that. Let's go from there. This seems to require a dualistic account of identity. Why? Explain this particular jump of logic please? I'm not being stubborn here, I seriously do not understand how you draw this conclusion. Read the above again (to which I assume you agree, since you replied yes.) Note particularly the phrase If the body I'm occupying is contingent. How can I occupy a body without a dualistic account of identity? How could I have been in a different body, unless I am somehow separate from my body (ie. Dualism)? I have just finished Daniel Dennett's book Consciousness Explained, and gives rather good account of how this is possible. As our minds develop, first prelingually, and then as language gains hold, our self, the I you refer to, develops out of a web of thoughts, words, introspection constrained by the phylogeny of the body, and also by the environment in which my self awakened (or bootstrapped as it were). Since this must happen in all bodies with the requisite structure (ie humans, and possibly som non-humans), it can easily be otherwise. It can easily be contingent. Yet Daniel Dennett is expressly non-dualist. I'm sure he'd be most interested if you were to label him as a dualist. This is simply an account of how we gain a sense of self. I don't see the relevance to this discussion. I sincerely doubt that Dennett would find the question Why I am I me and not someone else? meaningful in any way. How could *your* self have awakened or been bootstrapped in someone else's body? Dennett expressly *denies* that we occupy our minds. ... You are dodging the question. Assuming for a second that lions and trees are both conscious, you still haven't answered the question as to how a tree could be a lion, without dualism of some sort. I think I have given several examples of such answers. And above I gave yet another answer, this time
RE: Dualism and the DA
Jonathan Colvin writes: In the process of writing this email, I did some googling, and it seems my objection has been independantly discovered (some time ago). See http://hanson.gmu.edu/nodoom.html In particular, I note the following section, which seems to mirror my argument rather precisely: It seems hard to rationalize this state space and prior outside a religious image where souls wait for God to choose their bodies. This last objection may sound trite, but I think it may be the key. The universe doesn't know or care whether we are intelligent or conscious, and I think we risk a hopeless conceptual muddle if we try to describe the state of the universe directly in terms of abstract features humans now care about. If we are going to extend our state desciptions to say where we sit in the universe (and it's not clear to me that we should) it seems best to construct a state space based on the relevant physical states involved, to use priors based on natural physical distributions over such states, and only then to notice features of interest to humans. I've looked for rebuttals of Hanson, and haven't found any. Nick references him, but comments only that Hanson also seems to be comitted to the SIA (not sure why he thinks this). There was an extensive debate between Robin Hanson and Nick Bostrom on the Extropians list in mid 1988. You can pick it up from the point where Robin came up with the rock/monkey/human/posthuman model which he describes in the web page you cite above, at this link: http://forum.javien.com/conv.php?new=trueconvdata=id::vae825qL-Gceu-2ueS-wFbo-Kwj0fIHLv6dh You can also try looking this earlier thread, http://forum.javien.com/conv.php?new=trueconvdata=id::U9mLfRBF-z8ET-BDyq-8Sz1-5UotvKx2iIS2 and focus on the postings by Nick and Robin, which led Robin to produce his formal model. I think if you look at the details however you will find it is Robin Hanson who advocates the you could have been a rock position and Nick Bostrom who insists that you could only have been other people. This seemed to be one of the foundations of their disagreement. As far as the Self Indication Axiom, it might be due to such lines as this, from Robin's essay you linked to: And even if everyone had the same random chance of developing amnesia, the mere fact that you exist suggests a larger population. After all, if doom had happend before you were born, you wouldn't be around to consider these questions. I think this is similar to the reasoning in the SIA. Hal Finney
Re: Dualism and the DA
Note that the question why am I me and not my brother is strictly equivalent with why am I the one in Washington and not the one in Moscow after a WM duplication. It is strictly unanswerable. Even a God could not give an adequate explanation (assuming c.). Bruno Le 16-juin-05, 23:02, Quentin Anciaux a crit : Le Jeudi 16 Juin 2005 10:02, Jonathan Colvin a crit: Switch the question. Why aren't you me (Jonathan Colvin)? I'm conscious (feels like I am, anyway). Hi Jonathan, I think you do not see the real question, which can be formulated (using your analogy) by : Why (me as) Russell Standish is Russell Standish rather Jonathan Colvin ? I (as RS) could have been you (JC)... but it's a fact that I'm not, but the question is why I'm not, why am I me rather than you ? What force decide for me to be me ? :) Quentin http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
RE: Dualism and the DA
Ok, does that not imply that it is a meaningless question? If you want to insist that this question is meaningful, I don't see how this is possible without assuming a dualism of some sort (exactly which sort I'm trying to figure out). If the material universe is identical under situation (A) (I am copy #1 in washington) and (B) (I am copy#2 in washington), then in what way does it make sense to say that situation A OR situation B might have obtained? This seems to be the crux of the objection to any theory which reifies 1st person phenomena. Jonathan Colvin Note that the question why am I me and not my brother is strictly equivalent with why am I the one in Washington and not the one in Moscow after a WM duplication. It is strictly unanswerable. Even a God could not give an adequate explanation (assuming c.). Bruno Le 16-juin-05, 23:02, Quentin Anciaux a crit : Le Jeudi 16 Juin 2005 10:02, Jonathan Colvin a crit: Switch the question. Why aren't you me (Jonathan Colvin)? I'm conscious (feels like I am, anyway). Hi Jonathan, I think you do not see the real question, which can be formulated (using your analogy) by : Why (me as) Russell Standish is Russell Standish rather Jonathan Colvin ? I (as RS) could have been you (JC)... but it's a fact that I'm not, but the question is why I'm not, why am I me rather than you ? What force decide for me to be me ? :) Quentin http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
RE: Dualism and the DA
Hal Finney wrote: It's an interesting question as to how far we can comfortably or meaningfully take counterfactuals. At some level it is completely mundane to say things like, if I had taken a different route to work today, I wouldn't have gotten caught in that traffic jam. We aren't thrown into a maelstrom of existential confusion as we struggle to understand what it could mean to have different memories than those we do. How could I have not gotten into that traffic jam? What would happen to those memories? Would I still be the same person? We deal with these kinds of counterfactuals all the time. They are one of our main tools for understanding the world and learning which strategies work and which don't. Then there are much more extreme counterfactuals. Apple Computer head Steve Jobs gave a pretty good graduation speech at Stanford last week, http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html. He explains that he was adopted, and his life was changed in a major way by the circumstances. His biological mother, an unwed grad student, wanted him raised by college graduates, so he was set to be adopted by a lawyer and his wife. At the last minute the lawyer decided he wanted a girl, so Jobs ended up being given to a blue collar couple, neither of whom had gone to college. They were good parents and treated him well, sacrificing so he could go to college, but after six months Jobs dropped out, seeing little value to consuming his family's entire savings. He continued to attend classes on the sly, got into computers and the rest is history. But imagine how different his life would have been if the original plan had gone through and he had been adopted by a successful lawyer, perhaps raised in an upper class household with his every wish met. He would have gone to an Ivy League college and probably done well. But it would have been a totally different life path. Does it make sense for Jobs to say, who would I have been if that had happened? Or would he have been such a totally different person that this stretches the idea of a counterfactual beyond reason? I think his telling the story demonstrates that he does think this way sometimes. Yet none of the memories or experiences that he has would have been present in this other version. At most the two versions might have shared some personality traits, but even those are often strongly influenced by upbringing - his tenacity in the face of adversity, for example, might never have become so strong in a life where everything came easily. Probably there are many people in the world who are at least as similar to Steve Jobs in personality as the person he would have been if his early life had gone that other way. The point is that we can imagine a range of counterfactuals where the difference is a matter of degree, not kind, from trivial matters all the way up to situations where we would have to consider ourselves a different person. There is no bright line to draw that I can see. So yes, if you can imagine what it would have been like to eat something else for breakfast, then you should be able to imagine what it would have been like to be born as someone else. It's the same basic technique, just applied to a greater degree. Those are counterfactuals regarding personal circumstance, and do not seem particularly controversial, even admitting that it is not straightforward to define a single theory of personal identity that covers all the bases. There's a continuous, definable identity that follows a physical/causal/genetic/mental chain all the way from when egg and sperm met up to Jobs' graduation. It does not seem problematic to alter contingent aspects of this identity-chain and yet insist that we retain the same Jobs. It is a great deal harder to see how to make sense of a counterfactual such as Who would I be if my mother and father hadn't had sex?, or who would I be if they'd had sex a day later and a different egg and sperm had met?. I have to disagree with you here, and state that this sort of counterfactual seems to indeed embody a difference of kind, not just degree. We're not talking about imagining_whats_it_likeness. We are talking about me *being* someone different. Jonathan Colvin
RE: Dualism and the DA
Hal Finney wrote: Jonathan Colvin writes: In the process of writing this email, I did some googling, and it seems my objection has been independantly discovered (some time ago). See http://hanson.gmu.edu/nodoom.html In particular, I note the following section, which seems to mirror my argument rather precisely: It seems hard to rationalize this state space and prior outside a religious image where souls wait for God to choose their bodies. This last objection may sound trite, but I think it may be the key. The universe doesn't know or care whether we are intelligent or conscious, and I think we risk a hopeless conceptual muddle if we try to describe the state of the universe directly in terms of abstract features humans now care about. If we are going to extend our state desciptions to say where we sit in the universe (and it's not clear to me that we should) it seems best to construct a state space based on the relevant physical states involved, to use priors based on natural physical distributions over such states, and only then to notice features of interest to humans. I've looked for rebuttals of Hanson, and haven't found any. Nick references him, but comments only that Hanson also seems to be comitted to the SIA (not sure why he thinks this). There was an extensive debate between Robin Hanson and Nick Bostrom on the Extropians list in mid 1988. You can pick it up from the point where Robin came up with the rock/monkey/human/posthuman model which he describes in the web page you cite above, at this link: http://forum.javien.com/conv.php?new=trueconvdata=id::vae825qL -Gceu-2ueS-wFbo-Kwj0fIHLv6dh You can also try looking this earlier thread, http://forum.javien.com/conv.php?new=trueconvdata=id::U9mLfRBF -z8ET-BDyq-8Sz1-5UotvKx2iIS2 and focus on the postings by Nick and Robin, which led Robin to produce his formal model. I think if you look at the details however you will find it is Robin Hanson who advocates the you could have been a rock position and Nick Bostrom who insists that you could only have been other people. This seemed to be one of the foundations of their disagreement. I think Robin is assuming (as I do) that the only way counterfactuals such as I could have been someone/something else make sense, absent dualism, is if we adopt a strictly physical identity theory (ie. The atoms in my body could have been a rock rather than a person). Nick then points out that if you were a rock, you wouldn't be you (it looks like he's assuming a pattern identity theory such as Morovacs'). I agree with Nick that if you were a rock, you wouldn't be you. But under pattern identity theory, if you were someone else, you wouldn't be you either. Absent some sort of identity dualism, this is not any improvement on physical identity. The last time I discussed the issue of personal identity with Nick, he agreed with me that the answer to the question why am I me and not someone else? was *not* I am a random observer, and so I'm me by chance, but it's a meaningless question; I could not have been anyone else. But that discussion was not in the context of the DA. Jonathan Colvin
Re: Dualism and the DA
On Jun 17, 2005, at 10:24 AM, Hal Finney wrote: Does it make sense for Jobs to say, who would I have been if that had happened? Yes, it makes sense, but only because we know that the phrase Who would I have been, uttered by Steve Jobs, is just a convenient way for expressing a third-person proposition, What would have happened to Steve Jobs if Which in turn is also a short way of asking about the whole world, i.e., What would the world have been like if Steve Jobs had been adopted by someone else. The part of the world that's the main target of this question is the part that wears turtlenecks, makes Apple computers and calls itself Steve - so here it just gets replaced by I. But logically, by asking who would I have been, Steve's not inquiring into anything that a third-person observer could not also inquire into. The apparent problems can be solved by translating these questions into third-person terms. for example, So yes, if you can imagine what it would have been like to eat something else for breakfast, then you should be able to imagine what it would have been like to be born as someone else. For breakfast: what would have happened to the world (especially the Steve Jobs part of the world) if Steve Jobs had had something else for breakfast? For birth: what would the world be like if Steve Jobs hadn't been born, but his biological parents had had some other child? There's no sense in asking what if I was born as someone else, no more than there is asking what would Steve Jobs be like if Steve Jobs had never been born? But there is sense in asking what would be different about the world. The problems here all come from overzealous emphasis on the first person perspective. In other words, I think the mistake is made by asking the question what would it have been like, instead of the question what would the world have been like. The thing that the it refers to (a first- person perspective, presumably) is not a thing that exists in the world framed by the question.
Re: Dualism and the DA
On What would it be like to have been born someone else, how does this differ from What is it like to be a bat? Presumably Jonathon Colvin would argue that this latter question is meaningless, unless immaterial souls existed. I still find it hard to understand this argument. The question What is it like to be a bat? still has meaning, but is probably unanswerable (although Dennett, I notice considers it answerable, contra Nagel!) Cheers -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgpOOE6roLB1b.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Dualism and the DA
On Wed, Jun 15, 2005 at 10:30:11PM -0700, Jonathan Colvin wrote: Nope, I'm thinking of dualism as the mind (or consciousness) is separate from the body. Ie. The mind is not identical to the body. These two statements are not equivalent. You cannot say that the fist is separate from the hand. Yet the fist is not identical to the hand. Another example. You cannot say that a smile is separate from someone's mouth. Yet a smile is not identical to the mouth. But unless I am an immaterial soul or other sort of cartesian entity, this is not possible. I disagree completely. You will need to argue your case hard and fast on this one. See below. Yah - I'm still waiting... If I am simply my body, then the statement I could have been someone else is as ludicrous as pointing to a tree and saying Why is that tree, that tree? Why couldn't it have been a different tree? Why couldn't it have been a lion? Jonathan Colvin The tree, if conscious, could ask the question of why it isn't a lion. The only thing absurd about that question is that we know trees aren't conscious. That seems an absurd question to me. How could a tree be a lion? Unless the tree's consciousness is not identical with its body (trunk, I guess), this is a meaningless question. To ask that question *assumes* a dualism. It's a subtle dualism, to be sure. Of course a mind is not _identical_ to a body. What an absurd thing to say. If your definition of dualism is that mind and body are not identical, then this is a poor definition indeed. It is tautologically true. My definition would be something along the lines of minds and bodies have independent existence - ie positing the existence of disembodied minds is dualism. Such an assumption is not required to apply the Doomsday argument. I may make such assumptions in other areas though - such as wondering why the Anthropic Principle is valid. Not dualism implies the Anthropic Principle. As a little boy once asked, Why are lions, lions? Why aren't lions ants? Jonathan Colvin I have asked this question of myself Why I am not an ant?. The answer (by the Doomsday Argument) is that ants are not conscious. The question, and answer is quite profound. -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgpPja83xbdPO.pgp Description: PGP signature
RE: Dualism and the DA
Russell Standish wrote: Nope, I'm thinking of dualism as the mind (or consciousness) is separate from the body. Ie. The mind is not identical to the body. These two statements are not equivalent. You cannot say that the fist is separate from the hand. Yet the fist is not identical to the hand. Well, actually I'd say the fist *is* identical to the hand. At least, my fist seems to be identical to my hand. Another example. You cannot say that a smile is separate from someone's mouth. Yet a smile is not identical to the mouth. Depends whether you are a Platonist (dualist) about smiles. I'd say a smiling mouth *is* identical to a mouth. But unless I am an immaterial soul or other sort of cartesian entity, this is not possible. I disagree completely. You will need to argue your case hard and fast on this one. See below. Yah - I'm still waiting... Well, to explicate, the DA suffers from the issue of defining an appropriate reference set. Now, we are clearly not both random observers on the class of all observers(what are the chances of two random observers from the class of all observers meeting at this time on the same mailing list? Googleplexianly small). Neither are we both random observers from the class of humans (same argument..what are the chances that both our birth ranks are approximately the same?). For instance, an appropriate reference set for me (or anyone reading this exchange) might be people with access to email debating the DA. But this reference set nullifies the DA, since my birth rank is no longer random; it is constrained by the requirement, for example, that email exists (a pre-literate caveman could not debate the DA). The only way to rescue the DA is to assume that I *could have had* a different birth rank; in other words, that I could have been someone other than me (me as in my body). If the body I'm occupying is contingent (ie. I could have been in any human body, and am in this one by pure chance), then the DA is rescued. This seems to require a dualistic account of identity. All theories that reify the observer are essentially dualistic, IMHO. If I am simply my body, then the statement I could have been someone else is as ludicrous as pointing to a tree and saying Why is that tree, that tree? Why couldn't it have been a different tree? Why couldn't it have been a lion? Jonathan Colvin The tree, if conscious, could ask the question of why it isn't a lion. The only thing absurd about that question is that we know trees aren't conscious. That seems an absurd question to me. How could a tree be a lion? Unless the tree's consciousness is not identical with its body (trunk, I guess), this is a meaningless question. To ask that question *assumes* a dualism. It's a subtle dualism, to be sure. Of course a mind is not _identical_ to a body. What an absurd thing to say. If your definition of dualism is that mind and body are not identical, then this is a poor definition indeed. It is tautologically true. Why do you say of course? I believe that I (my mind) am exactly identical to my body (its brain, to be specific). My definition would be something along the lines of minds and bodies have independent existence - ie positing the existence of disembodied minds is dualism. Such an assumption is not required to apply the Doomsday argument. I may make such assumptions in other areas though - such as wondering why the Anthropic Principle is valid. Not dualism implies the Anthropic Principle. Then how can a tree be a lion without assuming that minds and bodies can have independent existance? Assuming dualism, its easy; simply switch the lion's mind with the tree's. As a little boy once asked, Why are lions, lions? Why aren't lions ants? I have asked this question of myself Why I am not an ant?. The answer (by the Doomsday Argument) is that ants are not conscious. The question, and answer is quite profound. That doesn't seem profound; it seems obvious. Even more obvious is the answer If you were an ant, you wouldn't be Russell Standish. So it is a meaningless question. Switch the question. Why aren't you me (Jonathan Colvin)? I'm conscious (feels like I am, anyway). Jonathan Colvin
Re: Dualism and the DA
On Thu, Jun 16, 2005 at 01:02:11AM -0700, Jonathan Colvin wrote: Russell Standish wrote: Nope, I'm thinking of dualism as the mind (or consciousness) is separate from the body. Ie. The mind is not identical to the body. These two statements are not equivalent. You cannot say that the fist is separate from the hand. Yet the fist is not identical to the hand. Well, actually I'd say the fist *is* identical to the hand. At least, my fist seems to be identical to my hand. Even when the hand is open Another example. You cannot say that a smile is separate from someone's mouth. Yet a smile is not identical to the mouth. Depends whether you are a Platonist (dualist) about smiles. I'd say a smiling mouth *is* identical to a mouth. Even when the mouth is turned down??? Well, to explicate, the DA suffers from the issue of defining an appropriate reference set. Now, we are clearly not both random observers on the class of all observers(what are the chances of two random observers from the class of all observers meeting at this time on the same mailing list? Googleplexianly small). Neither are we both random observers from the class of humans (same argument..what are the chances that both our birth ranks are approximately the same?). For instance, an appropriate reference set for me (or anyone reading this exchange) might be people with access to email debating the DA. But this reference set nullifies the DA, since my birth rank is no longer random; it is constrained by the requirement, for example, that email exists (a pre-literate caveman could not debate the DA). This would be true if we are arguing about something that depended on us communicating via email. The DA makes no such argument, so therefore the existence of email, and of our communication is irrelevant. The only way to rescue the DA is to assume that I *could have had* a different birth rank; in other words, that I could have been someone other than me (me as in my body). If the body I'm occupying is contingent (ie. I could have been in any human body, and am in this one by pure chance), then the DA is rescued. Yes. This seems to require a dualistic account of identity. Why? Explain this particular jump of logic please? I'm not being stubborn here, I seriously do not understand how you draw this conclusion. Of course a mind is not _identical_ to a body. What an absurd thing to say. If your definition of dualism is that mind and body are not identical, then this is a poor definition indeed. It is tautologically true. Why do you say of course? I believe that I (my mind) am exactly identical to my body (its brain, to be specific). Really? Even when you're not conscious? What about after you've died? What about after brain surgery? After being copied by Bruno Marchal's teletransporter? My definition would be something along the lines of minds and bodies have independent existence - ie positing the existence of disembodied minds is dualism. Such an assumption is not required to apply the Doomsday argument. I may make such assumptions in other areas though - such as wondering why the Anthropic Principle is valid. Not dualism implies the Anthropic Principle. Then how can a tree be a lion without assuming that minds and bodies can have independent existance? Assuming dualism, its easy; simply switch the lion's mind with the tree's. The question Why am I not a lion? is syntactically similar to Why I am not an ant, or Why I am not Jonathon Colvin?. The treeness (or otherwise) of the questioner is rather irrelevant. In any case, the answers to both the latter questions do not assume minds can be swapped. As a little boy once asked, Why are lions, lions? Why aren't lions ants? I have asked this question of myself Why I am not an ant?. The answer (by the Doomsday Argument) is that ants are not conscious. The question, and answer is quite profound. That doesn't seem profound; it seems obvious. Even more obvious is the answer If you were an ant, you wouldn't be Russell Standish. So it is a meaningless question. I _didn't_ ask the question Assuming I am Russell Standish, why am I not an ant? I asked the question of Why wasn't I an ant?. Its a different question completely. Switch the question. Why aren't you me (Jonathan Colvin)? I'm conscious (feels like I am, anyway). Jonathan Colvin This one is also easy to answer also. I'm just as likely to have been born you as born me. But I have to have been born someone. I just so happened to have been born me. This is called symmetry breaking. In the ant case it is different. It is around a million times more likely that I would have been born an ant rather than a human being. Consequently the answer is different. -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic
Re: Dualism
Dear Joanthan, - Original Message - From: Jonathan Colvin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Stephen Paul King' [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2005 1:14 AM Subject: RE: Dualism and the DA Stephen Paul King wrote: Pardon the intrusion, but in your opinion does every form of dualism require that one side of the duality has properties and behaviors that are not constrained by the other side of the duality, as examplified by the idea of randomly emplaced souls? The idea that all dualities, of say mind and body, allow that minds and bodies can have properties and behaviours that are not mutually constrained is, at best, an incoherent straw dog. I don't really uderstand the question the way you've phrased it (I'm not sure what you mean by mutually constrained); I *think* you are asking whether I believe that it is necessary that any duality must have mutually exclusive properties (if not, please elaborate). [SPK] The same kind of mutual constraint that exist between a given physical object, say a IBM z990 or a 1972 Jaguar XKE or the human Stephen Paul King, and the possible complete descriptions of such. It is upon this distiction betwen physical object and its representations, or equivalently, between a complete description and its possible implementations, that the duality that I argue for is based. This is very different from the Cartesian duality of substances (res extensa and res cognitas) that are seperate and independent and yet mysteriously linked. I think this is implied by the very concept of dualism; if the properties of the dual entities (say mind and body, or particle and wave) are NOT mutually exclusive, then there is no dualism to talk about. If the mind and the body are identical, there is no dualism. [SPK] Mutual exclusivity does not make a dualism, and it should be obvious that identity is not the negation of mutual exclusivity! Stephen
RE: Dualism and the DA
Russell Standish wrote: Nope, I'm thinking of dualism as the mind (or consciousness) is separate from the body. Ie. The mind is not identical to the body. These two statements are not equivalent. You cannot say that the fist is separate from the hand. Yet the fist is not identical to the hand. Well, actually I'd say the fist *is* identical to the hand. At least, my fist seems to be identical to my hand. Even when the hand is open Define fist. You don't seem to be talking about a thing, but some sort of Platonic form. That's an expressly dualist position. Another example. You cannot say that a smile is separate from someone's mouth. Yet a smile is not identical to the mouth. Depends whether you are a Platonist (dualist) about smiles. I'd say a smiling mouth *is* identical to a mouth. Even when the mouth is turned down??? As above. Is it your position that you are the same sort of thing as a smile? That's a dualist position. I'd say I'm the same sort of thing as a mouth. Well, to explicate, the DA suffers from the issue of defining an appropriate reference set. Now, we are clearly not both random observers on the class of all observers(what are the chances of two random observers from the class of all observers meeting at this time on the same mailing list? Googleplexianly small). Neither are we both random observers from the class of humans (same argument..what are the chances that both our birth ranks are approximately the same?). For instance, an appropriate reference set for me (or anyone reading this exchange) might be people with access to email debating the DA. But this reference set nullifies the DA, since my birth rank is no longer random; it is constrained by the requirement, for example, that email exists (a pre-literate caveman could not debate the DA). This would be true if we are arguing about something that depended on us communicating via email. The DA makes no such argument, so therefore the existence of email, and of our communication is irrelevant. It depends on us communicating per se. Thus, we could not be a pre-literate caveman. In fact, the reference class of all people before the 19th century is likely excluded, since the intellectual foundations for formulating the DA were not yet present. Presumably in a thousand years the DA will no longer be controversial, so it is likely that our reference class should exclude such people as well. All these considerations (and I can think of many others as well) nullify the nave DA (that assumes our appropriate reference class is simply all humans.) But your response above is ambiguous. I'm not sure if you are agreeing that our appropriate reference class is *not* all humans, but disagreeing as to whether email is important, or disagreeing with the entire statement above (in which case presumably you think our appropriate refererence class for the purposes of the DA is all humans). Can you be more specific about what you disagree with? The only way to rescue the DA is to assume that I *could have had* a different birth rank; in other words, that I could have been someone other than me (me as in my body). If the body I'm occupying is contingent (ie. I could have been in any human body, and am in this one by pure chance), then the DA is rescued. Yes. Ok, at least we agree on that. Let's go from there. This seems to require a dualistic account of identity. Why? Explain this particular jump of logic please? I'm not being stubborn here, I seriously do not understand how you draw this conclusion. Read the above again (to which I assume you agree, since you replied yes.) Note particularly the phrase If the body I'm occupying is contingent. How can I occupy a body without a dualistic account of identity? How could I have been in a different body, unless I am somehow separate from my body (ie. Dualism)? Of course a mind is not _identical_ to a body. What an absurd thing to say. If your definition of dualism is that mind and body are not identical, then this is a poor definition indeed. It is tautologically true. Why do you say of course? I believe that I (my mind) am exactly identical to my body (its brain, to be specific). Really? Even when you're not conscious? What about after you've died? What about after brain surgery? For the purposes of this discussion, yes to all. After being copied by Bruno Marchal's teletransporter? Let's not get into that one right now. That's a whole other debate. My definition would be something along the lines of minds and bodies have independent existence - ie positing the existence of disembodied minds is dualism. Such an assumption is not required to apply the Doomsday argument. I may make such assumptions in other areas though - such as wondering why the Anthropic Principle is valid. Not dualism implies the Anthropic Principle. Then how can a tree be a lion without assuming that
Re: Dualism and the DA
Le Jeudi 16 Juin 2005 10:02, Jonathan Colvin a crit: Switch the question. Why aren't you me (Jonathan Colvin)? I'm conscious (feels like I am, anyway). Hi Jonathan, I think you do not see the real question, which can be formulated (using your analogy) by : Why (me as) Russell Standish is Russell Standish rather Jonathan Colvin ? I (as RS) could have been you (JC)... but it's a fact that I'm not, but the question is why I'm not, why am I me rather than you ? What force decide for me to be me ? :) Quentin
RE: Dualism and the DA
Quentin wrote: Switch the question. Why aren't you me (Jonathan Colvin)? I'm conscious (feels like I am, anyway). I think you do not see the real question, which can be formulated (using your analogy) by : Why (me as) Russell Standish is Russell Standish rather Jonathan Colvin ? I (as RS) could have been you (JC)... but it's a fact that I'm not, but the question is why I'm not, why am I me rather than you ? What force decide for me to be me ? :) My argument is that this is a meaningless question. In what way could you (as RS) have been me (as JC)? Suppose you were. How would the universe be any different than it is right now? This question is analogous to asking Why is 2 not 3?. Why is this tree not that telescope?. Why is my aunt not a wagon?. The only way I can make sense of a question like this is to adopt a dualistic position. In this case, the question makes good sense: me (my soul, consciousness, whatever), might not have been in my body; it might have been in someone else's. It is easy to forget, I think, that the SSA is a *reasoning principle*, not an ontological statement. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we should reason *as if* we are a random sample from the set of all observers in our reference class. This is NOT the same as an ontological statement to the effect that we *are* random observers, which seems hard to justify unless we assume a species of dualism. Jonathan Colvin
Re: Dualism
Dear Jonathan, - Original Message - From: Jonathan Colvin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Stephen Paul King' [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2005 9:15 PM Subject: RE: Dualism snip [SPK] The same kind of mutual constraint that exist between a given physical object, say a IBM z990 or a 1972 Jaguar XKE or the human Stephen Paul King, and the possible complete descriptions of such. It is upon this distiction betwen physical object and its representations, or equivalently, between a complete description and its possible implementations, that the duality that I argue for is based. This is very different from the Cartesian duality of substances (res extensa and res cognitas) that are seperate and independent and yet mysteriously linked. I'm not sure what a complete description is. Are we talking about a dualism between, say, a perfect blueprint of a skyscraper and a skyscraper? I'm not sure I'd call that equation a dualism at all. I'd call it a category error. A description of a falling skyscraper can not hurt you (unless you are also a description ... I agree with Bruno here), whereas a falling skyscraper can. But please elaborate. Jonathan Colvin [SPK] Let me turn the question around a little. Are Information and the material substrate one and the same? If not, this is a dualism. Stephen
Re: Dualism and the DA
Dear Jonathan, Pardon the intrusion, but in your opinion does every form of dualism require that one side of the duality has properties and behaviors that are not constrained by the other side of the duality, as examplified by the idea of randomly emplaced souls? The idea that all dualities, of say mind and body, allow that minds and bodies can have properties and behaviours that are not mutually constrained is, at best, an incoherent straw dog. Kindest regards, Stephen - Original Message - From: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Jonathan Colvin [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: 'Hal Finney' [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2005 9:28 PM Subject: Dualism and the DA On Wed, Jun 15, 2005 at 06:05:16PM -0700, Jonathan Colvin wrote: Since it is coming from Nick B., over-exhaustive :) I don't think anybody, Nick included, has yet come up with a convincing way to define appropriate reference classes. Absent this, the only way to rescue the DA seems to be a sort of dualism (randomly emplaced souls etc). Nooo! - the DA does not imply dualism. The souls do not need to exist anywhere else before being randomly emplaced. Cheers
RE: Dualism and the DA
Russel Standish wrote: Since it is coming from Nick B., over-exhaustive :) I don't think anybody, Nick included, has yet come up with a convincing way to define appropriate reference classes. Absent this, the only way to rescue the DA seems to be a sort of dualism (randomly emplaced souls etc). Nooo! - the DA does not imply dualism. The souls do not need to exist anywhere else before being randomly emplaced. Ambiguous response. Are you saying that the DA requires that souls must be randomly emplaced, but that this does not require dualism, or that the DA does not require souls? It seems to me that to believe we are randomly emplaced souls, whether or not they existed elsewhere beforehand, is to perforce embrace a species of dualism. To rescue the DA (given the problem of defining a reference class), one must assume a particular stance regarding counterfactuals of personal identity; that I could have been someone else (anyone else in the reference class of observers, for example). But unless I am an immaterial soul or other sort of cartesian entity, this is not possible. If I am simply my body, then the statement I could have been someone else is as ludicrous as pointing to a tree and saying Why is that tree, that tree? Why couldn't it have been a different tree? Why couldn't it have been a lion? Jonathan Colvin
RE: Dualism and the DA
Stephen Paul King wrote: Pardon the intrusion, but in your opinion does every form of dualism require that one side of the duality has properties and behaviors that are not constrained by the other side of the duality, as examplified by the idea of randomly emplaced souls? The idea that all dualities, of say mind and body, allow that minds and bodies can have properties and behaviours that are not mutually constrained is, at best, an incoherent straw dog. I don't really uderstand the question the way you've phrased it (I'm not sure what you mean by mutually constrained); I *think* you are asking whether I believe that it is necessary that any duality must have mutually exclusive properties (if not, please elaborate). I think this is implied by the very concept of dualism; if the properties of the dual entities (say mind and body, or particle and wave) are NOT mutually exclusive, then there is no dualism to talk about. If the mind and the body are identical, there is no dualism. Jonathan Colvin
RE: Dualism and the DA
Russel Standish wrote: It seems to me that to believe we are randomly emplaced souls, whether or not they existed elsewhere beforehand, is to perforce embrace a species of dualism. Exactly what species of dualism? Dualism usually means that minds and brains are distinct orthogonal things, interacting at a point - eg pineal gland. What I think of as mind is an emergent property of the interaction of large numbers of neurons coupled together. I do not think of emergent properties as dualism - but if you insist then we simply have a language game. Nope, I'm thinking of dualism as the mind (or consciousness) is separate from the body. Ie. The mind is not identical to the body. To rescue the DA (given the problem of defining a reference class), one must assume a particular stance regarding counterfactuals of personal identity; that I could have been someone else (anyone else in the reference class of observers, for example). True. But unless I am an immaterial soul or other sort of cartesian entity, this is not possible. I disagree completely. You will need to argue your case hard and fast on this one. See below. If I am simply my body, then the statement I could have been someone else is as ludicrous as pointing to a tree and saying Why is that tree, that tree? Why couldn't it have been a different tree? Why couldn't it have been a lion? Jonathan Colvin The tree, if conscious, could ask the question of why it isn't a lion. The only thing absurd about that question is that we know trees aren't conscious. That seems an absurd question to me. How could a tree be a lion? Unless the tree's consciousness is not identical with its body (trunk, I guess), this is a meaningless question. To ask that question *assumes* a dualism. It's a subtle dualism, to be sure. As a little boy once asked, Why are lions, lions? Why aren't lions ants? Jonathan Colvin
Re: Dualism
At 15:38 16/01/04 -0500, Jesse Mazer wrote: Is Chalmers really a dualist? Although he does label his views this way at times, from his writings he does not seem to believe in matter per se, rather he thinks the fundamental stuff of reality is likely to be something like information which has both an objective description (a particular bit string, computation, whatever) and a subjective what-it-is-like to *be* that bit-string/computation/whatever. It seems to me that any formal mathematical theory of consciousness or of observer-moments must work the same way. If you want to have a mathematical theory that assigns measure to different observer-moments, for example, you need to have a mathematical framework for listing all possible observer-moments, perhaps something like treating each distinct computation (or any finite sequence of steps in a distinct computation) as a distinct observer-moment. And yet, even if I understand this mathematical framework, from the inside I will not be sure which of these formally-described observer-moments corresponds to my own current experience, the qualia that I am percieving at this moment. So just as in Chalmers' system, there is a difference between the objective mathematical description of an observer-moment and the subjective what-it-is-like-to-be of the observer-moment corresponding to that description. There's a case for calling this dualism, but also a case for labelling it as a monist theory, an eliminative spiritualism as you described it (although I'd prefer the label 'eliminative idealism', since 'spiritualism' has mystical connotations). So we agree completely (from a personal conversation with Chalmers I am not sure he would agree, but that is beside the point). What you say corresponds to the 1-3 distinction. You know I tend to make precise that distinction by the use of modal logic. (I mean the arithmetical modal logic, i.e; those who are defined from the Godelian self-reference). But I don't think a lot in this list adhere to dualist positions, but please correct me if I'm wrong). I think there are people on this list who *implicitly* hold dualist positions. There are a number of people who would use the following sort of procedure to find the first-person likelihood of experiencing a universe with a given set of properties: 1. First, find a measure on all universes, regardless of whether a given universe is capable of supporting complex observers 2. Then use the anthropic principle to take into account the idea that you're more likely to experience a universe with lots of observers than one with few or none, assuming each universe's measure is equal (see, for example, Hal Finney's post at http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m5006.html on how to find the likelihood we will find ourself in a universe with no other intelligent life within communicating distance) If this is just taken as a heuristic procedure, in lieu some more fundamental procedure that does not involve two separate steps, then perhaps it need not be labeled dualist. But if this is really seen as the way the ultimate theory of everything would work, with no more fundamental theory to be found, then I think such a view is committed to a fundamentally dualist metaphysical view. Since I find dualism inelegant but I do think the anthropic principle has to be taken into account somehow, I prefer a TOE which only involves a measure on observer-moments rather than universes, with this measure determined by a theory that already takes into account the anthropic principle somehow (see my posts on the 'Request for a glossary of acronyms' thread at http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/index.html?by=OneThreadt=Request%20for%20a%20glossary%20of%20acronyms for some speculations on what such a theory would look like). I agree with you completely. Just replace anthropic by turing-tropic, and just accept that observer-moment are dual to the sheaves of comp histories going through those (first person) moment. In my thesis it is shown than at this stage the measure, ... well actually only the particular case of measure 1, will be extracted from the modal logics of those first person moments. It is there that I get a quasi-quantum logic (the one I called Z1*). I am not yet sure how *you are intending* to make precise the distinction between inside-view/outside-view, though. Perhaps I did not understood some of your point? By itself I am not convinced the anthropic way is enough. You can remind me other of your post perhaps? Bruno
RE: dualism
On 17 January 2004 Doug Porpora wrote: *quote* Norman and Bruno: I myself am not defending a dualist position (body + soul, mind, whatever). I am prepared to say the body is the only substance that exists. That does not mean its behavior is explainable in terms of physics alone. Yes, I would say that whenever we think anything, our brains are doing something. It may just be though -- and i think it is -- that our brains give us the capacity to engage in linguistic behavior that is itself non-physical. Whether an idea is logical or illogical, whether it is relevant or off the point, whether or not an essay is disorganized -- these are not physical properties. I cannot even fathom what it would mean to say there is a physical state that is the irrelevance of a point. *end quote* I don't see how anyone could seriously suggest that a physical description of the brain is the same thing as the subjective experience arising from that brain state, and I don't think that denying this alone makes one a dualist. My idea of a dualist is someone who claims that there is a mystical, non-physical something-or-other, distinct from the brain although perhaps residing in it, which is responsible for some or all our (more noble, usually) thoughts and feelings. This (implicit) belief appears to be surprisingly widespread among laypeople, as I have occasion to discover in my work talking to patients with severe psychotic illnesses, such as schizophrenia. They refuse to take medication because, they argue, how can chemical changes in the brain possibly have any bearing on their thoughts and feelings? I now know it was silly to believe that my family had been replaced by aliens, doctor, because I have thought about it rationally - not because of the medication they gave me in hospital. If the chemical imbalance in my brain comes back, as you say, it won't make me believe those things again because I know they aren't true. And anyway, if I did believe something weird, I wouldn't stop believing it just because of some medication. So they stop treatment, and are soon back in hospital with exactly the same symptoms. I have sometimes wondered whether pre-existing familiarity with the mind/body debate would make any difference to a patient's prognosis: there's a novel use for philosophy! Stathis Papaioannou Melbourne, Australia _ Hot chart ringtones and polyphonics. Go to http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilemania/default.asp
Re: dualism
Dear Stathis, For an alternative approach to dualism see: http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/pratt95rational.html Kindest regards, Stephen - Original Message - From: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2004 12:40 AM Subject: RE: dualism On 17 January 2004 Doug Porpora wrote: *quote* Norman and Bruno: I myself am not defending a dualist position (body + soul, mind, whatever). I am prepared to say the body is the only substance that exists. That does not mean its behavior is explainable in terms of physics alone. Yes, I would say that whenever we think anything, our brains are doing something. It may just be though -- and i think it is -- that our brains give us the capacity to engage in linguistic behavior that is itself non-physical. Whether an idea is logical or illogical, whether it is relevant or off the point, whether or not an essay is disorganized -- these are not physical properties. I cannot even fathom what it would mean to say there is a physical state that is the irrelevance of a point. *end quote* I don't see how anyone could seriously suggest that a physical description of the brain is the same thing as the subjective experience arising from that brain state, and I don't think that denying this alone makes one a dualist. My idea of a dualist is someone who claims that there is a mystical, non-physical something-or-other, distinct from the brain although perhaps residing in it, which is responsible for some or all our (more noble, usually) thoughts and feelings. This (implicit) belief appears to be surprisingly widespread among laypeople, as I have occasion to discover in my work talking to patients with severe psychotic illnesses, such as schizophrenia. They refuse to take medication because, they argue, how can chemical changes in the brain possibly have any bearing on their thoughts and feelings? I now know it was silly to believe that my family had been replaced by aliens, doctor, because I have thought about it rationally - not because of the medication they gave me in hospital. If the chemical imbalance in my brain comes back, as you say, it won't make me believe those things again because I know they aren't true. And anyway, if I did believe something weird, I wouldn't stop believing it just because of some medication. So they stop treatment, and are soon back in hospital with exactly the same symptoms. I have sometimes wondered whether pre-existing familiarity with the mind/body debate would make any difference to a patient's prognosis: there's a novel use for philosophy! Stathis Papaioannou Melbourne, Australia _ Hot chart ringtones and polyphonics. Go to http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilemania/default.asp
