marc.geddes.domain.name.hidden wrote:
>
>
> On Aug 28, 12:53 am, "Stathis Papaioannou" <stath....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>> On 27/08/07, marc.ged....domain.name.hidden <marc.ged....domain.name.hidden.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>> I accept that there is more than one way to describe reality, and I
>>>> accept the concept of supervenience, but where I differ with you
>>>> (stubbornly, perhaps) is over use of the word "fundamental". The base
>>>> property seems to me more deserving of being called "fundamental" than
>>>> the supervenient property. If you were to give concise instructions to
>>>> a god who wanted to build a copy of our world you could skip all the
>>>> information about values etc. confident in the knowledge that all this
>>>> extra stuff would emerge as long as the correct physical information
>>>> was conveyed; whereas the converse is not the case.
>>>> [If the mental does not supervene on the physical this changes the
>>>> particular example, but not the general point.]
>>> Refer the brief definition of property dualism referenced by the link
>>> Bruno gave:
>>> http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/courses/mind/notes/supervenience.html
>>> Be careful to draw a distinction between 'substances' and
>>> 'properties'. I accept that the underlying *substance* is likely
>>> physical, but *properties* are what are super-imposed on the top of
>>> the underlying substance. The physical *substance* may be the base
>>> level, but the physical *properties* aren't. From the mere fact that
>>> aesthetic properties are *composed of* physical substances, it does
>>> not follow that aesthetic properties themselves are physical. Nor
>>> does it follow from the fact that physical substances are *neccessery*
>>> for aesthetic properties, that they are *sufficient* to fully specify
>>> aesthetic properties.
>>> Here's why: Complete knowledge of the physical properties of your
>>> brain cannot in fact enable you to deduce your aesthetic preferences
>>> without additional *non-physical* assumptions. That is because,as I
>>> agreed with Bruno (see my previous post), all the explanatory power of
>>> reason is *mathematical* in nature. In short, in order for you to
>>> know how a complete specification of your brain state was correlated
>>> with your aesthetic preferences, you would have to use your own
>>> *subjective experiences* as a calibrator in order to make the
>>> correlation (ie When brain state X, I feel/experience Y). And these
>>> subjective experiences are not themsleves physical, but, as I have
>>> explained again and again, *Mathematical* properties.
>> There is this special quality of subjective experience: that which is
>> left over after all the objective (third person knowable) information
>> is accounted for. Nevertheless, the subjective experience can be
>> perfectly reproduced by anyone who has at hand all the relevant third
>> person information, even if it can't be reproduced in his own mind.
>> You can build a bat which will to itself feel like a bat if you know
>> every scientific detail about bats and have appropriately capable
>> molecular assemblers at your disposal.
>
> Yes of course. But your ability to do this would not enable you to
> determine what the bat was actually feeling solely from the physical
> facts alone.
So you say. I'm not so sure.
>(If you put matter together the right way, I agree you
> will be able to create consciousness, but you won't be explain what
> type of consciousness is created solely from physical data). So the
> fact that subjective experience is entirely dependent on physical
> substances does not provide a sufficient explanation of subjective
> experience.
>
>> physical necessity unless you are a substance dualist, since the usual
>> definition of supervenience says that same brain state implies same
>> mind state. (It isn't a matter of logical necessity because property
>> dualism is logically possible.) In this sense, the mental properties'
>> dependence on the physical properties is asymmetrical, which is why I
>> say the physical properties are more fundamental. You might agree with
>> this analysis but simply have a different definition of "fundamental".
>
> I agree that mental properties are depedent on the physical
> substance. The physical substance might be what is fundmanetal. But
> physical *properties* are what emerge from the movements of the
> underlying substance.
Huh? How does gravitational mass emerge from movement? And what does "emerge" mean?
>Futher there are other non-physical properties
> which appear as well - mathematical for example.
Is being countable a physical or a mathematical property? As I see it, mathematical and logical "properties" are properties of our descriptions of the things. They are desirable properties for any predictive description because they avoid self-contradiction; something that would render a prediction meaningless, but would be fine for a poem.
>
>> What if someone simply claimed that they couldn't see how circulation
>> was the same as cardiovascular activity: they could understand that
>> the heart was a pump, the blood a fluid, the blood vessels conduits,
>> but the circulatory system as a whole was something emergent and not
>> at all obvious, in the same way that mind was emergent. Alternatively,
>> a superintelligent being could claim that the mind was as obviously
>> the result of brain activity as circulation was the result of
>> cardiovascular activity.
>>
>> --
>> Stathis Papaioannou
>
> Alternatively a superintelligent being might be quick to castigate you
> for your stupidly and claim that I am right *sarcastic*. We have to
> look at the facts based on the information at hand, not 'what if'.
> You haven't answered the essential point, endorsed by one of the most
> respected scientists in the world, Ray Kurzweil.
Ray Kurzweil is a smart guy, but he's not a scientist and I doubt he even claims to be one.
>This point is that
> there's an essential difference between specific physical properties
> (which can be objectively measured - as in the the exmaple of
> circulation), and subjective experiences, which are not reducible to
> specific physical properties
You keep asserting that, but exactly the same thing was said about life.
>(subjective experiences are a
> *mathematical pattern* , and the same pattern could be enacted on
> anything- you could have intelligent silicon, rocks, clouds or
> anything. Further thesse patterns cannot be directly objectively
> measured.
Why can't such patterns be measured? If I create an intelligent computer, why can't I follow it's operation?
>
> If I would only make one essential argument here it is:
>
> It's known for a fact that there exist mathematical concepts (infinite
> sets) which are indispensible to our explanations of reality but which
> can't be explained in terms of any finite physical processes.
I don't think so. Infinities in physical theories are just convenient approximations for something very big.
Brent Meeker
>This is
> as clear-cut proof of the existence of non-material properties as
> you're ever likely to see! Mathematical concepts simply are not
> replaceable with physical descriptions. And subjective experiences
> are precisely *mathemetical patterns*.
>
>
> >
>
>
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Received on Tue Aug 28 2007 - 12:19:25 PDT