Re: The Meaning of Life

From: 1Z <peterdjones.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 04 Jan 2007 11:18:41 -0800

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> Peter Jones writes:
>
> > Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> > > Peter Jones writes:
> > >
> > > > Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Although you have clearly stated that the two ideas - consciousness
> > > > > supervening on all physical processes and consciousness supervening on
> > > > > no physical process - are completely different I think they are related in
> > > > > that in both cases matter is irrelevant to consciousness,
> > > >
> > > > In the second case, matter is relevant to consc. since it is
> > > > relevant to physical processes.
> > >
> > > Did you mean "in the first case..."?
> > >
> > > Matter is irrelevant to the extent that any piece of matter will do for a computation
> > > and a change in the matter does not change the computation - unless you are
> > > considering the special subset where the computation interacts with the substrate
> > > of its implementation, which is all the computations we are ever going to encounter,
> > > by definition.
> >
> > It is a mistake to infer that matter does not matter at all, that it is
> > dispensible.
> > The two cases you mention are not the same. In one you do not need any
> > particular kind of matter. In the other, you do not need matter at all.
>
> OK, that is strictly true. Still, it is more elegant to postulate that no physical
> world exists than that there exists (at least) a single quantum state which sustains
> the entire apparent universe.

The idea that a minimal phsyical situation can "sustain" a universe
doesn't
work either.

> I realise this is not a knock-down argument.


> > > From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
> > >
> > > "A set of properties A supervenes upon another set B just in case no two things can differ with respect to A-properties without also differing with respect to their B-properties."
> > >
> > > From this definition, the mental does not supervene on the physical in either
> > > of the cases I mentioned.
> >
> > No, that is mistaken. The mental/computational properties supervene
> > on the physical properties in any particular realisation.
> > Computationalism
> > implies that mental properties can be multiply realised, true, but each
> > realisation
> > obeys supervenience.
>
> The A properties are mental, the B properties physical. Multiple physical processes
> may implement the same computation, i.e. there is a one: many relationship between
> the A properties and the B properties, respectively. This is not controversial, it is really
> just a restatement of functionalism. However, it is the reverse situation which is
> problematic, a many: one relationship between the mental and the physical, which you
> will note is not consistent with the definition of supervenience given above. Maudlin
> showed that just such a relationship would seem to hold between physical process and
> consciousness. Even more simply, it is possible to interpret a single physical process as
> implementing multiple computations, as I have discussed before.

Only if someone is doing the actual interpetation. But then you don't
ha a minimal physical universe, because the interpreters are really
existing beings too.

> So the supervenience
> thesis of computationalism seems flawed. If you are still keen on computationalism and
> are willing to drop the supervenience thesis you end up with Bruno's version of comp.
> If you think computationalism without the physical computers is absurd then maybe you
> need to drop computationalism.

Maudlin's argument is flawed.

> Stathis Papaioannou
> _________________________________________________________________
> Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail.
> http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d


--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list.domain.name.hidden
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list-unsubscribe.domain.name.hidden
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Received on Thu Jan 04 2007 - 15:43:45 PST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Feb 16 2018 - 13:20:13 PST