Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> Words like "real", "physical" "material" needs to be (re)defined or at
> least clarify in front of the UDA.
They don't need apriori, rationalist clarity, since
they can be defended by the empiricist-Johnsoinian approach.
> > Proponents of the argument need to show that the causality
> > and dynamism are inessential (that there is no relevant difference
> > between process and programme) before you can have consciousness
> > implemented Platonically.
>
>
> I would say there is no relevant difference, from the first person
> point of view, between a process in a "real universe" and a relative
> computation in Platonia.
If Platonia is not real in any sense, it cannot
contain observers, persons, appearances, etc.
> > To exist Platonically is to exist eternally and necessarily. There is
> > no time or changein Plato's heave.
>
>
> All partial recursive solutions of Schroedinger or Dirac equation
> exists in Platonia, and define through that "block description" notion
> of internal time quite analogous to Everett subjective probabilities.
The A-series cannot be reduced to the B-series.
> > Therefore, to "gain entry", a
> > computational mind will have to be translated from a running process
> > into something static and acausal.
> >
> > One route is to replace the process with a programme. After all, the
> > programme does specify all the possible counterfactual behaviour, and
> > it is basically a string of 1's and 0's, and therefore a suitabale
> > occupant of Plato's heaven. But a specification of counterfactual
> > behaviour is not actual counterfactual behaviour. The information is
> > the same, but they are not the same thing.
>
>
> A program is basically the same as a number.
No it isn't. You don't know which programme is specified
by a number without knowing how the number is to
be interpreted, ie what hardware it is running on.
> A process or a computation
> is a finite or infinite sequence of numbers (possibly branching, and
> defined relatively to a universal numbers).
It is not just a sequence, because a sequence
does not specify counterfactuals.
> The UD build all such (branching) sequences.
If it exists.
> > Physical many-world theories have resources to keep counterfactuals
> > unobserved that immaterial MW-theories lack (including the simple
> > of one that many mathematical possibilities do not
> > exist physically).
What does not exist cannot be observed. That is the
Somethingist solution to White Rabbits.
> > Consciousness is a problem for all forms of materialism and physicalism
> > to some extent, but it is possible to discern where the problem is
> > particularly acute. There is no great problem with the idea that matter
> > considered as a bare substrate can have mental properities.
>
>
> Panpsychism ?
That's "*can* have mental properties".
Implying also "can *not* have mental properties".
Property dualism, not contra panpsychism.
> An electron would be conscious? Why do you think there
> are neurons in brains?
> Why do you think there are genes in cells? Do you think they are only
> amplifiers of particle's mind.
> Note that this would not a priori contradict comp per se, it would only
> make the substitution level very low. (Unlikely imo, but that is not
> relevant for our discussion).
> > Any
> > inability to have mental properties would itself be a property and
> > therefore be inconsistent with the bareness of a bare substrate. The
> > "subjectivity" of conscious states, often treated as "inherent" boils
> > down to a problem of communicating one's qualia -- how one feels, how
> > things seem. Thus it is not truly inherent but depends on the means of
> > communication being used. Feelings and seemings can be more readily
> > communicated in artistic, poetic language, and least readily in
> > scientific, technical language. Since the harder, more technical a
> > science is, the more mathematical it is, the communication problem is
> > at its most acute in a purely mathematical langauge. Thus the problem
> > with physicalism is not its posit of matter (as a bare substrate) but
> > its other posit, that all properties are physical. Since physics is
> > mathematical, that amounts to the claim that all properties are
> > mathematical (or at least mathematically describable). In making the
> > transition from a physicalist world-view to a mathematical one, the
> > concept of a material substrate is abandoned (although it was never a
> > problem for consciousness) and the posit of mathematical properties
> > becomes, which is a problem for consciousness becomes extreme.
>
>
> Why?
Because in a mathematics-only universe, qualia have to be identified
with, or reduced to, mathematical structures.
http://www.geocities.com/peterdjones/diagrams/matter_substrate.jpg
>
>
> >
> > The interesting thing is that these two problems can be used to solve
> > each other to some extent. if we allow extra-mathemtical properties
> > into our universe, we can use them to solve the White Rabbit problem.
> > There are two ways of doing this: We can claim either:-
> >
> > White Rabbit universes don't exist at all
> > White Rabbit universes are causally separated from us (or remote in
> > space)
> > The first is basically a reversion to a single-universe theory (1).
> > Mathematical monists sometimes complain that they can't see what role
> > matter plays. One way of seeing its role is as a solution to the WR
> > problem. For the non-Platonist, most mathematical entitites have a
> > "merely abstract" existence. Only a subset truly, conceretely, exist.
> > There is an extra factor that the priveleged few have. What is it ?
> > Materiality. For the physicalist, matter is the token of existence.
> > Maerial things, exist, immaterial ones don't.
>
>
> "material things exist" is Aristotle's assumption.
That isn't the claim. The claim is that materiality
*is* (contingent, non-Platonic) existence.
> I don't do that assumption, if only because it posits what I want to
> understand.
> The UDA just explains why such an explanation is necessary once we
> assume comp.
The UDA per se does not explain how the appearance of matter
arises, because something has to exist in the first place in order to
be
appeared to. Your argument is really UDA+Platonism.
> >> and
> >> the physical laws must take that into account.
> >
> > All forms of physics handle counterfactuals.
> >
> > Or do you mean it handles them in the sense of making them real -- as
> > Deutsch insists.
>
>
> That way, except I say this from the comp assumption, unlike Deutsch
> who says this from the quantum assumption. (of course "real" means here
> generated by the UD)
If it exists.
> > Multiverse theories claim that all possible worlds exist; but
> > "possible" has more than one meaning, so there is more than one
> > multiverse theory.
>
>
> Sure. I got a different "multiverse" for each hypostases. But only few
> hypostases can correspond to a probability calculus (or a credibility
> calculus) on possible computations as seen from internal views.
> Limiting the range of multiverse corresponding to physical realities.
> > Logical possibility simply means that something is
> > not self-contradictory. Physical possibility means something is not
> > contradictory to the laws of physics. "Five-sided square" is
> > self-contradictory. "Water runnig uphill" is not, but it is physically
> > impossoble.
> >
> > 'And, as I argued in FoR, the reality of universes in which we chose
> > differently makes sense of (some) formally 'counter- factual'
> > statements that don't make sense in single- universe physics, which can
> > only help in making sense of free will.
> > We are forced to conclude that, in spacetime physics [i.e. without a
> > multiverse], conditional statements whose premise is false ("if Faraday
> > had died in 1830 ...") have no meaning. '[Fabric of Reality, D Deutsch,
> > p. 275]
> >
> >
> >
> > Suppose we agree. What is Deutsch himself to make of the
> > counterfactuals we need to discuss the consequences of the laws of
> > physics themselves, such as: "If charge were not conserved, the world
> > would be a very different place"? The multiverse is no help, for by
> > definition, it contains no worlds in which the laws are different.
>
>
> Yes. It is a weak point of the quantum multiverse.
No it isn't, since the actual exisence of counterfactuals
is not needed to answer hypothetical questions.
> Instead, the comp
> multiverse is unique by emerging on all arithmetical relations. I could
> say on all mathematical structures, but comp makes arithmetic enough.
If your Platonia is restricted to arithmetic, that would be
a contingent fact.
> > So are positive statements about things that don't exist in any
> > physical universe, eg "there is a perpetual motion machine"
> >
> > So are negative statements about things that don't exist in any
> > physical universe, "there is no perpetual motion machine". But, of
> > course, we would regard the last as meaningful and true.
> >
> > There is in fact a whole bunch of reasons for thinking that statements
> > don't require real-world referents to be meaningful.
>
> Key remarks. Comp extends this to consciousness experience in all its
> shapes. Like in platonic dreams ultimate referent are not needed.
I wasn't intending to promote solipsism. Most
statememts require referents in order to be true.
The question of meaning and reference is not the
same as the question of truth and reference.
> > We judge the
> > meanings of statements by their semantic and syntactic makeup. we don't
> > judge them by peeping into the universe next door. We can make sense of
> > "there is life on other planets" without knowing whether there is in
> > fact life on other planets. If we couldn't make (linguistic,
> > comceptual) sense of "there is life on other planets", we wouldn't know
> > how to go about verifying its truth.
> >
> > The kind of linguistic/semantic meaning I have been talking about is
> > called "sense", as opposed to reference, the real-world object a
> > statement is about, if it is about one. The distinction originated with
> > the Frege
>
>
> But that makes sense only through an aristotelian account of matter.
Frege's semantic theory has nothing to do with materialism.
> >
> > David's contention seems to be based on the idea that "all meaning is
> > reference". However it is arbitrary at best. It suggests statements
> > like "if MWI is false.." are meaningless unless there is a world where
> > MWI is in fact false. But how can that be if there is in fact, more
> > than one world ?
>
> I think we agree. I think you are just skeptical about the idea that
> standard comp entails pythagorean comp (not by making "matter"
> inconsistent, but by making any link between mind and "primitive
> matter" ad hoc and un-exploitable for solving the mind/body relation).
Matter *is* exploitable in solving the MBP.
Standard comp does not imply anything at all about the ontological
status of numbers (the mind-independent *truth* of arithmetical
propositions
is another matter...)
Without an ontological ssumption, you can be validly
deriving any ontologial conclusions, such as "we are in Platonia"
and "matter doesn't exist".
> Bruno
>
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Thu Aug 24 2006 - 21:23:29 PDT
