On 28 Nov 2008, at 23:20, Abram Demski wrote:
>
> Hi Bruno,
>
>>> So, basically, you are saying that I'm offering an alternative
>>> argument against materialism, correct?
>>
>> It seems to me you were going in that direction, yes.
>>
>
> Well, *I* was suggesting that we run up against the problem of time in
> *either* direction (physical reality / mathematical reality); so the
> real problem would be a naive view of time, rather than COMP + MAT.
> But, you are probably right: the problem really only applies to MAT.
> On the other hand, I might try to take up the argument again after
> reading UDA. :)
>
>> With the MEC hypothesis, a "believer" in comp "go to hell". (Where a
>> "believer"in , is someone who takes p for granted).
>> Comp, is like self-consistency, a self-observing machine can guess
>> it,
>> hope it, (or fear it), but can never take it for granted. It *is*
>> theological. No machine can prove its theology, but Löbian machine
>> can
>> study the complete theology of more simple Löbian machines, find the
>> invariant for the consistent extensions, and lift it to themselves,
>> keeping consistency by "consciously" being aware that this is has to
>> be taken as an interrogation, it is not for granted, so that saying
>> "yes" to the doctor needs an act of faith, and never can be imposed.
>> (Of course we can argue biology has already "bet" on it).
>
> Yes, this is fundamentally interesting :).
>
>> Maudlin shows that for a special computation, which supports in time
>> some consciousness (by using the (physical) supervenience thesis),
>> you
>> can build a device doing the same computation with much less physical
>> activity, actually with almost no physical activity at all. The
>> natural reply is that such a machine has no more the right
>> counterfactual behavior. Then Maudlin shows that you can render the
>> counterfactual correctness to such machine by adding, what will be
>> for
>> the special computation, just inert material.
>> But this give to inert material something which plays no role, or
>> would give prescience to elementary material in computations; from
>> which you can conclude that MEC and MAT does not works well together.
>
> I am not sure this convinces me. If the "inert" material is useful to
> the computation in the counterfactual situations, then it is useful,
> cannot be removed.
Yes but with MAT, the inert material has no use in the particular
instantiation we have chosen. If it play a role, it cannot be in
virtue of the MEC hypothesis *together* with the MAT hypothesis. If
not, it means you already make consciousness supervening on the
abstract computation the pieces of materials instantiate
"accidentally" here and now, not really on the physical process
implementing that computation.
Feel free to criticize ....
>
>
>
>> Abram, are you aware that Godel's incompleteness follows "easily" (=
>> in few lines) from Church thesis? Not the second theorem, but the
>> first, even a stronger form of the first.
>
> No, I do not know that one.
I will have the occasion to explain if I decide to make the UDA
beginning by step seven.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Sat Nov 29 2008 - 03:59:41 PST