On Aug 20, 9:45 pm, "Stathis Papaioannou" <stath....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> On 20/08/07, marc.ged....domain.name.hidden <marc.ged....domain.name.hidden.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > Now consider sentient agent motivations (and remember the analogy with
> > the physics argument I gave above).
>
> > *Consider an agent with a set of motivations A
> > *Consider the transition of that agent to a different set of
> > motivations B (ie the agent changes its mind about something)
>
> > Question: Why did agent A transition from motivation set A to
> > motivation set B?
>
> > Assumption: The transition must be explicable
>
> > Conclusion: There must exist objective 'laws of value' which explain
> > why there was a transition from state A to state B.
>
> > And that argument (greatly fleshed out of course) basically proves
> > that that such objective principles exist, given only the assumption
> > that reality is explicable.
>
> But surely the transition from A to B must be fully explained by the
> laws of physics underlying physical transitions in the agent's brain,
> or state transitions in an abstract machine.
>
> --
> Stathis Papaioannou
*sigh*. Only if Teleological explanations (discussions about agent
motivations) can be completely reduced to (replaced by) physical
explanations (discussions about physics). I don't think they can,
since I advocate 'property dualism'. I'm saying that you have three
different kinds of properties (Physical, Teleological, Mathematical)
which are correlated with each other (as science requires) but that
you cannot fully reduce mathematical and teleological explanations to
physical explanations.
IF you accept that teleological properties are not identical to
physical properties ('Property Dualism'), THEN my sketch of the
argument for the existence of objective laws of value holds. But
that's a very big 'if' of course.
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
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 Tue Aug 21 2007 - 01:43:08 PDT