Ah yes - I was confusing my 'isms. Eliminative materialism is an extreme type
of physicalism, but physicalism is broader. What I meant was what you
just stated - COMP is incompatible with physicalism, but not with materialism.
As I understand it, physicalism denies any form of downward causation,
but materialism allows for the possibility. (I'm tending to use
Chalmers' classification here). The Strong Anthropic Principle is strictly
denied with physicalism, as the SAP is effectively a form of downward
causation.
Actually, I suspect that physicalism is incompatible with the MWI -
hmm need to think about that more...
On Tue, Oct 10, 2006 at 02:18:15PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> Le 10-oct.-06, à 03:52, Russell Standish a écrit :
>
> >
> > On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 10:35:05AM -0700, 1Z wrote:
> >>
> >> The idea that materialism is not compatible with computationalism
> >> is a bold and startling claim.
> >
> > Materialism comes in a couple of different flavours. The one that COMP
> > is incompatible with is "eliminative materialism", also sometimes
> > known as physicalism.
>
>
> Comp has indeed be shown to be incompatible with physicalism (the
> doctrine that physics is the fundamental science).
> But physicalism is not necessarily eliminativist. Most physicalist
> believes in consciousness, even if they believe that consciousness
> emerges from the behavior of some putative "matter".
> Eliminative materialist does not believe in consciousness or first
> person at all. Some says this explicitly, others are unclear or just
> incoherent.
>
> Comp is not incompatible with the existence of primary or primitive
> matter, but the UDA shows that comp has to be incompatible with any
> relation between that matter and the *appearance* of matter or of
> physical laws; making matter and material universe(s) as useless as
> invisible horse pulling cars.
>
>
> Bruno
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
--
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Received on Tue Oct 10 2006 - 19:01:44 PDT