BM: '
OK, except I don't see what you mean by on a "number" basis. We know
that number have a lot of quantitative interesting relationships, but
after Godel, Solovay etc.. we do know that numbers have astonishing
qualitative relationship to (like the hypostases to mention it). '
MP: No no no, sorry, this is just me being colloquial. Nothing deep or
important was intended! :-) I was responding to a *possible
implication* in Stathis's statement about religious fanatics. I thought
it was worth emphasising that, along with the deluded majority who
think they are 'doing what is right', there are also those whose
motivation is strictly instrumental and manipulative and who find
willing collaborators amongst the naive fanatics. This situation is not
confined to 'religious' organisations of course but to any sub-culture
in which the description of the world has fallen into a closed loop.
BM: 'Except that Dawking and Dennet fall in their own trap, and
perpetuates the myth of a "physical universe" as an explanation. They
continue to bury the mind/body problem under the rug.'
MP: Well I think that we will rapidly reach our 'agree to differ' line
with this one. I think physical just means both extended and able to be
measured. As such it is fairly close to self-evidently true, in my book.
OK, so that is an 'anthropic' outlook but I exist and seem to be some
sort of anthropos or whatever [sorry I never studied Greek and only ever
achieved 35% in my one year of formal Latin studies :-]. It seems to me
that physical is as physical does; as I wrote responding to Stathis,
number is theory is just that - theory. It is incredibly useful in all
manner of practical applications as well as effective in keeping lots of
people off the streets doing amazing logical/arithmetical things for
interest and entertainment's sake. I watch with awe and admiration, but
I remain careful to acknowledge that a description is a description not
the thing it is describing. Existence per se is ultimately mysterious
and our experience of being here now is essentially paradoxical: the
experience is what it is like to be the updating of a model of self in
the world [always 'my' model] but we conflate the experience with
actually BEING here now, when the experience is much more limited than
that. It would be much truer to say, I think, that this consciousness I
take so much for granted is ABOUT my being here now. As much as anything
I like to characterise it as: the registration of difference between
what my brain predicted for perceiving and doing as opposed to what
actually happened.
Regards
Mark Peaty CDES
mpeaty.domain.name.hidden
http://www.arach.net.au/~mpeaty/
Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> Le 02-janv.-07, à 08:14, Mark Peaty a écrit :
>
> SP: ' In the end, what is "right" is an irreducible personal
> belief, which you can try to change by appeal to emotions or by
> example, but not by appeal to logic or empirical facts. And in
> fact I feel much safer that way: if someone honestly believed that
> he knew what was "right" as surely as he knew 2+2=4, he would be a
> very dangerous person. Religious fanatics are not dangerous
> because they want to do evil, but because they want to do good. '
>
>
>
> Just to be clear, I do agree with Stathis here. Completely. I have
> already argue this is even a provable consequence of comp (or the
> arithmetical comp).
>
>
>
> MP: I agree with this, saving only that, on a 'numbers' basis,
> there are those whose personal evolution takes them beyond the
> dynamic of 'good' or 'evil' into the domain of power for its own
> sake. This entails complete loss of empathic ability and I think
> it could be argued that such a person is 'legislating' himself out
> of the human species.
>
>
>
> OK, except I don't see what you mean by on a "number" basis. We know
> that number have a lot of quantitative interesting relationships, but
> after Godel, Solovay etc. we do know that numbers have astonishing
> qualitative relationship to (like the hypostases to mention it).
>
>
>
>
>
> MP: I think a key point with 'irreducible personal belief' is that
> the persons in question need to acknowledge the beliefs as such
> and take responsibility for them. I believe we have to point this
> out, whenever we get the opportunity, because generally most
> people are reluctant to engage in analysis of their own beliefs,
> in public anyway. I think part of the reason for this is the
> cultural climate [meme-scape?] in which Belief in a G/god/s or
> uncritical Faith are still held to be perfectly respectable. This
> cultural climate is what Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennet have
> been criticising in recent books and articles.
>
>
>
> Except that Dawking and Dennet fall in their own trap, and perpetuates
> the myth of a "physical universe" as an explanation. They continue to
> burry the mind/body problem under the rug.
>
>
>
> SP: 'I am not entirely convinced that comp is true'
>
> MP: At the moment I am satisfied that 'comp' is NOT true,
> certainly in any format that asserts that 'integers' are all that
> is needed. 'Quantum' is one thing, but 'digital' is quite another :-)
>
>
> OK, but comp is *digital* mechanism. Then it is a theorem that a
> digital machine cannot distinguish a "physically real computational
> history" with a purely mathematical or even arithmetical computational
> history. You can "add" Matter in the immaterial brain: it will change
> nothing unless you give a non turing emulable role to that Matter. Why
> not add magic directly?
> Then the quantum has to be justified from the digital (that is not
> trivial, see my url for more, or ask questions).
>
>
>
> The main problem [fact I would prefer to say] is that existence is
> irreducible whereas numbers or Number be dependent upon
> something/s existing.
>
> MP: Why are we not zombies? The answer is in the fact of
> self-referencing.
>
>
>
> Right!
>
>
>
> In our case [as hominids] there are peculiarities of construction
> and function arisen from our evolutionary history, ...
>
>
>
> Sure,
>
>
>
> ... but there is nothing in principle to deny self-awareness from
> a silicon-electronic entity that embodied sufficient details
> within a model of self in the world.
>
>
>
> This is *comp* (unless you think about putative non turing emulable
> silicon electronic).
>
>
>
>
> The existence of such a model would constitute its mind, broadly
> speaking, and the updating of the model of self in the world would
> be the experience of self awareness. What it would be like TO BE
> the updating of such a model of self in the world is something we
> will probably have to wait awhile to be told :-)
>
>
>
>
> How could we ever know? Of course, *assuming* the comp hyp, we already
> know: it is like being us here and now.
>
>
>
> Bruno
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
> >
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Received on Wed Jan 03 2007 - 00:39:24 PST