Le 19-août-07, à 08:07, marc.geddes.domain.name.hidden a écrit :
>
>
>
> On Aug 19, 12:26 am, "Stathis Papaioannou" <stath....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
>>
>> This all makes sense if you are referring to the values of a
>> particular entity. Objectively, the entity has certain values and we
>> can use empirical means to determine what these values are. However,
>> if I like red and you like blue, how do we decide which colour is
>> objectively better?
>
> No, that's not what I'm referring to. I'm referring to 'Abstract
> Universals' - Platonic Ideals that all observers with complete
> information would agree with.
Even in the restricted arithmetical Platonia, no "observer" can have
complete information. But they good agree on many subsets of
propositions.
>
> "What they have to be are inert EXPLANATORY PRINCIPLES, taking the
> form: 'Beauty has abstract properties A B C D E F G'. 'Liberty has
> abstract properties A B C D E F G' etc etc. None the less, as
> explained, these abstract specifications would still be amenable to
> indirect empirical testing to the extent that they could be used to
> predict agent emotional reactions to social events."
>
>
>
>>
>> You could make a similar claim for the abstract quality "redness",
>> which is associated with light of a certain wavelength but is not the
>> same thing as it. But it doesn't seem right to me to consider
>> "redness" as having a separate objective existence of its own; it's
>> just a name we apply to a physical phenomenon.
>
> I don't agree that 'redness is just a name we apply to a physical
> phenomenon' (although I agree with you its not an objectively existing
> primative). I thought about these issues hard out for a long long
> long long long long LONG time before finally nailing 'em.
> Unfortunately the answers are not something I easily explain in short
> sentences on Internet messageboards ;)
>
> 'redness' is not a *thing* it's a *process* - as a phenomenal
> (subjective) quality it's a *mathematical* property associated with
> the running of an algorithm (or computation) . But this is NOT a
> *physical* property. The mathematical property (redness) is *attached
> to* (resides in, is dependent upon) the physical substrate
> implementing the algorithm giving rise to the subjective experience ,
> but the mathematical property *per se* is not physical. It's
> abstract. It's really quite obvious in retrospect - physical
> properties involve energy, mathematical properties involve knowledge
> (meaningful patterns). Old David Chalmers was right about this one
> (see his 'property dualism'). The two properties just ain't the same
> and no amount of semantic trickery is going to reduce one to the
> other.
Math is not physics. But a lot of people argues (incorrectly imo) that
you can reduce math to physics. And I do agree that the concept of
quantum information can be used to defend that idea (again, not
convincingly imo).
Actually I made a point (UDA) that if the brain (or whatever is
necessary for consciousness to manifest itself) is a digitalizable
entity, then it is just impossible that physics is not
derivable---ontically and epistemologically---from number/computer
science.
Of course by admitting dualism, you already abandon comp. (I do
nevertheless agree with some point you make here and there).
Actually intersubjective agreement is similar to the first person
plural notion of comp, and should comprise experimental physics, world
sharing, etc. But it is just a form of objectivity, at some level.
When saying:
> Any way, after absorbing all this knowledge my thoughts are clear,
> crisp and fully sane.
We could infer (if you were serious saying that, which I doubt) that
either you are not a machine (or not even a self-referentially correct
entity) or that you are insane.
> .... I'm very very very very very very very very
> very very very very very confident I was right about it all
A sentence like this one will rise doubt about your confidence .... 'm
afraid.
But apparently, like Chalmers, you seem to dismiss even the possibility
of comp. OK?
I share nevertheless your platonism on some value (truth, justice,
freedom, even beauty on which Plato, Plotinus and the greeks, and
indians, have succeeded in changing my mind.
I'm not sure I understand your notion of explanation, from previews
posts. Physics, does not really explain, it does some genuine and quite
wonderful compression of the data, but it presupposes somehow the
mystery (existence, consistence, consciousness) by abstracting from the
observer. Such an abstraction has been a brilliant and quite useful
methodological simplifying idea, but it is just an error to abandon the
search of a global picture of the "world" in which qualitative
apprehension, by humans or machines, are taken seriously.
Also, you take as axiom that reality is explainable, but taking into
account we belongs to that reality, rises the fact that some feature of
reality are not explainable by us. Despite we can bet on some negative
(limitative) meta-explanation.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Mon Aug 20 2007 - 06:01:38 PDT