Re: Reality, the bogus nature of the Turing test

From: 1Z <peterdjones.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2006 10:19:18 -0700

Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:
> >
> > Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> >> Brent meeker writes:
> >> > Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> >> > > John,
> >> > >
> >> > > Even a real solipsist might eat, sleep, talk to people etc., all
> >> under the impression that everything is a
> >> > > construction of his own mind. People willingly suspend disbelief in
> >> order to indulge in fiction or computer
> >> > > games, and a solipsist may believe that he is participating in the
> >> greatest and most perfect of games. I
> >> > > think that most real solipsists would eventually go mad and start
> to
> >> believe that the game is reality.
> >> >
> >> > And that would make a difference how?
> >> >
> >> > Brent Meeker
> >> It wouldn't make any difference: if solipsism were true, people would
> behave exactly as they do behave,
> >> most of them not giving the idea that there is no external world any
> consideration at all, the rest deciding
> >> that although it is a theoretical possibility, there is no practical
> purpose served by worrying about it.
> >
> > Their explanation, if they have any, as to why they behave
> > as they do would be peppered with "as ifs". Solipisism is
> > for people who prefer certainty to understanding.
> >
>
> COLIN HALES:
> Yay!.... someone 'got' my little dialogue!
>
> The point is that scientists are actually ALL tacit solipsists.

My point was that scientists *do* prefer understanding
to certainty, and therefore are *not* solipsists. I can't think of
anything I have said, or that you have said, that leads
to the conclusion that scientists ingenreal are solpsitsts.
(I'm still wiating for an example of an instrumetalist
ornithologist...)


> The only
> way a solipsist can exist is to outwardly agree with the massive
> confabulation they appear to inhabit whilst inwardly maintaining the only
> 'real truth'.

It isn't a real truth. if it were, it wouldn't matter
how they behave.

> There's no external reality...It's not real!...so being
> duplicitous is OK.
>
> But to go on being a tacit solipsist affirmed by inaction: not admitting
> consciouness itself of actually caused by something...is equivalent to an
> inward belief of Bishop Berkeley-esque magical intervention on a massive
> scale without actually realising it. The whole delusion is maintained by a
> belief in an 'objective-view' that makes it seem like we're directly
> accessing an external world when we are not - it's all mediated by MIND,

What are "we", if we are neither mind nor world ?

> which we deny by not admitting it to be evidence of anything.... and
> around we go.... the whole picture is self consistent and inherently
> deluded and ultimately not honest. This is the state of science.... the
> last 2 paragraphs of the latest version of my little monologue are as
> follows:
>
> where:
> CASE (a) world: Virtual solipsist world. In this world I accept my mind as
> conclusive proof supporting continued fervent adherence to the belief in a
> magical fabricator.
>
> CASE (b) world: In this world I let a real external world be responsible
> for all phenomenal mirrors. Concsiousness is held as proof of a separately
> described underlying natural world, totally compatible with normally
> traditional empirical science of appearances _within_ consciousness.

Or we are just conscious OF things ,and they are NOT "within"
consciousness.

> ============================
> "If I am right to be a solipsist scientist I live in the universe of the
> magical fabricator, forced to play a pretend life 'as-if' there is a real
> external world with fictitious scientific colleagues, all doing the same
> thing. What is the reality of my life as a scientist telling me? I look
> around myself and what do I see universal evidence of? The world I
> actually live in is world (a). This evidence acts in support of my
> solipsism. No scientist anywhere has, for any reason other than
> accidentally, ever looked at systems producing worlds with scientists in
> them complete with minds inside it, built of it. The world I actually live
> in is the world of the 'as-if' ficticious objective view where scientist
> believe without justification that they are literally describing the
> natural world, and not how it appears to them. Indeed when someone tries
> to describe an underlying world they the scientific world snaps back,
> declares the attempt irrelevant, empirically unsupportable and therefore
> unscientific metaphysics....consistent with an implicit outward
> methodological denial of mind.
>
> But if I am wrong to be a solipsist, then the evidence paints a very odd
> picture of science. In this bizarre world, 'objective' scientists
> outwardly all act 'as-if' an external world exists yet scientists are
> actually virtual solipsists outwardly acting 'as-if' there is no such
> thing as mind whilst being totally reliant on their mind to do science and
> also unaware that is the case. And, like me, being in methodological
> denial of their own mind, are tacitly affirming belief in a magical
> fabricator through a cultural omission of paying due attention to
> reviewing their own scientific evidence system. Scientists in this world
> will go on forever correlating appearances within their denied phenomenal
> mirrors and never get to do science on phenomenal mirrors. Which one to
> choose? Perhaps I'll stay where the fictitious money is... in the land of
> the virtual magical fabricator...and keep quiet."
> ======================
>
> I'm done with yet another paper. This ..place... I have reached in
> depicting science I have reached from so many different perspectives now
> it's almost mundane... So many I don't know where to submit them any more!
> .....each different approach results in the same basic conclusion....
> science is structurally flawed and never questions itself - there's never
> any science done on science - since when did we earn the right to be one
> corner of the natural world immune from scientific method? Is this a club
> or a professional discipline? The current state of science - complete
> failure to solve the physics of phenomenal consciousness

Why should it have a phsyics ? Is there a physics of stock markets
?
Surely consicousness is a high-level phenomenon.

> - is a scientific
> prediction of the state of science with the current virtual-solipsistic
> belief stystem. - that is what science done on science tells you. We
> scientists are the evidence....(except me, of course... I dissent!!! Long
> and hard!!!)
>
> cheers
> colin hales


--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
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.domain.name.hidden
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list-unsubscribe.domain.name.hidden
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Received on Sun Sep 24 2006 - 13:20:16 PDT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Feb 16 2018 - 13:20:12 PST