On 16 Nov 2008, at 11:20, Kory Heath wrote:
> On Nov 15, 2008, at 5:22 PM, m.a. wrote:
>> Isn't some sort of substrate necessary for any mathematical event,
>> whether it be a brain or a screen or a universe? And isn't that
>> substrate sufficiently different from the math to be called
>> physical existence?
>
> That's certainly the prevailing intuition. My position is that that
> intuition is incorrect, and that it bears a deep similarity to the
> (once prevailing) vitalist's intuition that some kind of "life
> force", sufficiently different than inanimate matter, is necessary
> for life.
>
> I'm arguing that mathematical facts-of-the-matter all by themselves
> fulfill the requirements that the materialist's substrate is
> supposed to fulfill. The materialists disagree, but then the burden
> is on them to explain exactly what qualities this substrate needs to
> have, and why mathematical facts-of-the-matter don't fit the bill.
> I've never heard a non-question-begging response. What I've heard a
> lot of is, "Mathematical facts-of-the-matter just aren't the kinds
> of things that can count as a physical substrate." But that's just a
> restatement of the position that needs to be defended.
>
> When the materialists try to describe what kind of thing *would* fit
> the bill, I find the descriptions as confusing as the vitalist's
> descriptions of the life-force.
I agree 99% with you, and I have myself in my papers and in this list
compared very often "materialism" with "vitalism". In generally I do
that after the seventh step of the UDA. At that step people should
understand that, in case a concrete UD is executed integrally
(infinite task) in our material universe, then, to predict what a pen
will do if we drop it, we have to look at the entire set of possible
computations going through our current state (when in from of that
pen) OK?
Now, are you aware that the MGA is just an argument to logically show
that the material invocation, cannot indeed be used to contradict of
weaken the consequence of those 7 steps?
No need (for you!) of MGA, if you have already the (correct) intuition
that using materialism just cannot work. The use of matter is indeed
akin to the (fraudulous) use of God for explaining the existence of
the universe. That explain nothing. But we do have a very strong
intuition that matter does exist, and it is not so simple (and indeed
quite subtle) to precisely show that primitive or fundamental matter
is a red herring both for the mind and the body part of the mind-body
problem. OK?
I will begin by a step 0, for the MGA, where I sum up what should be
completely clear before beginning the MGA itself. I have also to
explain what the MGA does not. For example the MGA does not prove the
inexistence of matter, it proves only to irrelevance of the notion of
matter concerning again both mind and body, consciousness and physics.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Mon Nov 17 2008 - 10:33:01 PST