Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted

From: Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2006 12:30:43 +0100

Le 31-oct.-06, à 19:01, 1Z a écrit :
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> Le 30-oct.-06, à 14:15, Stathis Papaioannou wrote (in part):
>>
>>
>>> A computationalist would add that a computer analogue
>>> of a person would also have the same mental states, but this is more
>>> controversial.
>>
>>
>> Is it really? With the notable couragous exception of Penrose I don't
>> know people who object to comp.
>
> Hardly anyone thinks it is a good explanation of phenomenality/qualia.
> Computationalists tend to be people who care a lot more about
> thinking than feeeling.
This is because the "feeling" problem is vastly more complex. Indeed I
have shown that to explain feeling it begins to be harder to sustain
both comp and materialism. So we have to backtrack 1500 years ...
>
>> Of course someone like Searle could gives the feeling that he dislike
>> comp, but its own reasoning, if you read it carefully, proves that he
>> accept comp, albeit only for low substitution level unlike most
>> "functionalist".
>
> Another staunch opponent is Edelmann.
>
> http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=178
>
> 'The notion that the brain is a kind of computer is an error of such
> magnitude, Mr. Edelman believes,
> that cognitive science is on the brink of a crisis. "I claim," he
> writes, "that the entire structure on which
> the cognitivist enterprise is based is incoherent and not borne out by
> the facts.'
I agree with Papaioannou answers. Now you could also replace "error" by
"hypothesis" in you text, and then I totally agree. the crisis can be
describe by the fact that "we" want remain materialist and
computationalist. But this leads to difficulties ...
Perhaps Edelman (which I appreciate greatly) would like to throw out
comp, but, just because comp is my working professional hypothesis, in
the frame of my work, accepting the consequence of the theory, I throw
out materialism. And between us that is not a lot. Nobody use it.
Matter is like the wave collapse: nobody understand it, and nobody use
it, except for avoiding conceptual headache the week-end ...
>
>
>> Now as you know comp is my working hypothesis so this is for me just a
>> bit out of my topic. Remember that for postulating "not-comp" you have
>> to introduce high infinities in the third person description of the
>> brain/body.
>
> No you don't. You can posit that phenomenality inheres directly
> in matter,
This is exactly what I call putting a problem under the rug ...
> or that matter otherwise pins downs an absolute
> level of simulation.
This is far more interesting, by comparison. Actually, assuming comp,
this is the basic idea which makes it possible to redefined "matter"
(from the pov of machine M) by a sum on all the indiscernible (by
machine M) sub-level substitutions.
>
>> In particular you have to abandon QM, or any theory ever
>> proposed in physics and cognitive science.
>
> No theory of physics entails that simulations will have
> all the features -- other than functional/structural
> ones -- of the systems simulated.
Yes. That is the traditional problem of post-525 physics. (525: the
Roman Church closed Athen platonic school: after that "mind, person
soul" and similar "stuff" has been reserved to the "nominated"
Christian theology. During centuries you could be burned for
contradicting them. Third person discourse about "first person
discourse" is just taboo, and still appears to be so today, but more
among atheist believer than christian logician and theologian.
In another post IZ wrote:
> (Of course everyone is a contingentists to some extent,
> since no-one can show that the non-existence of matter
> of contingency is itself necessary).
Hmmmm.... At least Godel theorem explains why contingency is necessary
in the number domain from the machine/number pov. Wait perhaps for more
  in the explanation I have promised to David.
>> Peter, I think that David is right. We are in a loop. On the FOR list
>> we would have been moderated out a long time ago :). Tell us your
>> theory please.
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>>
>> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
> Well, I think numbers don't exist AT ALL....
????? Not even in the sense that the proposition "Ex(Prime-number(x))"
is true independently of me, as it seems to me you have agree with in
more than one preceding post. Anyway, to believe that numbers don't
exist AT ALL, what could that mean?
And that is your theory?
> I don't explain *rationalistically* -- that is I do not show how
> properties are entailed by inevitable logic from the posit of
> matter -- because I am not in the business of rationalism.
?
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Wed Nov 01 2006 - 06:31:04 PST

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