Bruno Marchal wrote:
> Le 23-oct.-06, à 15:58, David Nyman a écrit :
>
> >
> > Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >
> >> Here I disagree, or if you want make that distinction (introduced by
> >> Peter), you can sum up the conclusion of the UD Argument by:
> >>
> >> Computationalism entails COMP.
> >
> > Bruno, could you distinguish between your remarks vis-a-vis comp, that
> > on the one hand: a belief in 'primary' matter can be retained provided
> > it is not invoked in the explanation of consciousness,
>
>
> Imagine someone who has been educated during his entire childhood with
> the idea that anything moving on the road with wheels is pulled by
> invisible horses. Imagine then that becoming an adult he decides to
> study physics and thermodynamics, and got the understanding that there
> is no need to postulate invisible horses for explaining how car moves
> around.
> Would this "proves" the non existence of invisible horses? Of course
> no. From a logical point of view you can always add irrefutable
> hypotheses making some theories as redundant as you wish. The
> thermodynamician can only say that he does not need the invisible
> horses hypothesis for explaining the movement of the cars , like
> Laplace said to Napoleon that he does not need the "God hypothesis" in
> his mechanics. And then he is coherent as far as he does not use the
> God concept in is explanation.
The analogy isn't analogous. It is actually the
Platonic numbers that are the invisible horses.
No-one has ever seen a Platonic object. The "vehicle"
of mathematics is driven by the "engine" of mathematicians,
chalk, blackboards, computers etc -- all material.
> The comp hypothesis, which I insist is the same as standard
> computationalism (but put in a more precise way if only because of the
> startling consequences) entails that "primary matter", even existing,
> cannot be used to justify anything related to the subjective
> experience, and this includes any *reading* of pointer needle result of
> a physical device. So we don't need the postulate it.
> And that is a good thing because the only definition of primary matter
> I know (the one by Aristotle in his metaphysics) is already refuted by
> both
> experiments and theory (QM or just comp as well).
Of course QM does not refute materialism.
> > and on the
> > other: that under comp 'matter' emerges from (what I've termed) a
> > recursively prior 1-person level. Why are these two conclusions not
> > contradictory?
>
>
> 'Matter', or the stable appearance of matter has to emerge from the
> "mathematical coherence of the computations".
Which emerge from...?
> This is what the UDA is
> supposed to prove. Scientifically it means that you can test comp by
> comparing some self-observing discourses of digital machines (those
> corresponding to the arithmetical translation of the UDA (AUDA)) with
> empirical physics. Again this cannot disprove the ("religious") belief
> in Matter, or in any Gods, for sure.
The material world is visible, Platonia is not.
> >> You will have to attach
> >> consciousness to actual material infinite.
> >
> > Why is this the case?
>
>
>
> Because it is a way to prevent the UDA reasoning (at least as currently
> exibited) to proceed. It makes sense to say that some actual material
> infinity is not duplicable, for example. To be sure, the AUDA would
> still work (but could be less well motivated).
It makes sense to say that consciousness depends on levels
of emulation -- providing there is a 0-level pinned down by matter.
> Bruno
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Tue Oct 24 2006 - 11:42:02 PDT