Re: Fwd: COUNTERFACTUALS

From: Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sat Jul 3 09:48:14 1999

George Levy wrote:

> How do we make precise what amounts to
>philosophical ramble. And how do we leave the field of Metaphysics and enter
>the field of Physics.


You are not helping me very much, here, George, :-(

You could have said <<How do we make precise what amounts to
philosophical
ramble. And how do we leave the field of Metaphysics and enter
the field of ...Information Science, or Engineering ...>>

I guess it's my fault. I should have read more carefully one of your
post
where you ask for an explanation. Here is your post :

>In a message dated 99-06-30 11:20:07 EDT, marchal.domain.name.hidden writes:
>
><< Precisely: Maudlin and me have proved that:
>
> NOT comp OR NOT sup-phys
>
> i.e. computationalism and physical supervenience thesis are incompatible. >>
>
>Forgive me for I am only a lowly engineer. Does the above mean that
>according
>to Marchal and Maudlin consciousness is either due to "software" or
>"hardware" but not both? Using these terms would make it much easier for me
>to understand.

Put in these termes + simplifying a bit,
what Maudlin and me have showed is that

EITHER the appearance of hardware and consciousness
is explain(able) by the theory of possible softwares (computer science,
...)

OR the computationalist hypothesis is false.

That is why I ask for, ultimately, a serious consideration on Church's
thesis.

I agree with Wheeler that physics cannot explain the origin of the
physical
laws, by itself. Physics inspired without doubt our issues, but physics
per se
doesn't help for in some sense physics IS the issue.
See also my post to Jacques M Mallah.

Bruno
Received on Sat Jul 03 1999 - 09:48:14 PDT