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Från: everything-list.domain.name.hidden
[mailto:everything-list.domain.name.hidden] För Brent Meeker
Skickat: den 11 oktober 2006 06:12
Till: everything-list.domain.name.hidden
Ämne: Re: The difference between a 'chair' concept and a 'mathematical
concept' ;)
David Nyman wrote:
>
>
> On Oct 10, 9:12 pm, Brent Meeker <meeke....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
>
>>Then
>>a calculation of pi is picked out among all instantiations of all
computations - but
>>it is still possible to calculate pi many different ways on many different
physical
>>systems. And it is possible by inspection of these systems to determine
whether they
>>calculate pi.
>
>
> But it isn't possible to determine by inspection that they are
> conscious.
Are you claiming it's impossible in principle, or just that we don't know
how?
>'Calculating pi' in the final analysis can be satisfied by
> the system in question externalising its results (e.g. printing out the
> value of pi). But it isn't so simple to test a system that is claimed
> to be conscious. Be that as it may, would you be content with the
> conclusion that the 'properties' of materialism claimed to be jointly
> relevant to both computationalism and consciousness are purely
> relational? In this case, we needn't argue further. But this conclusion
> is, I think, why Bruno thinks that 'matter' has no real explanatory
> role in the account of conscious experience. This isn't quite
> equivalent to claiming that it can't be the primary reality, but rather
> to claim that it adds nothing to the accounts of computationalism or
> consciousness to do so, beyond the role of 'relational placeholder'.
I would think that identifying the relata would be relevant to explaining a
relation.
But I agree that computation is mostly a matter of relations. What matter
adds is
that it allows the computation to be instantied. To dismiss it from the
explanation
seems like dismissing hydrogen and oxygen from an explanation of water.
Brent Meeker
A passage in Gary L. Drescher's book "GOOD AND REAL. Demystifying pradoxes
from physics to ethics." comes to mind. On page 324 he compares what he
calls
"the spark of existence" with the dualist' "spark of awareness". And he
continues:
"Both putative sparks face the same problem: even if they were real, we
could not know of them, could not percieve them - because any such
perception would constitute a miraclulous violation of the definitive
physics equations that already specify all our thoughts and perceptions;
percieving the extra spark would be responding to something beyond the
equations themselves. Whatever it is that we percieve when we think we
percieve the extraphysical or metaphysical spark, it cannot be something
extraphysical or metaphysical".
I think similar thinking goes behind the thinking of Deutsch and others as
to why "our" universe is not distinguished from other possible ones.
LN
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Received on Wed Oct 11 2006 - 01:55:07 PDT