Bruno,
things are starting to hang together in my new digital brain (bright
yellow)
you wrote the plan:
-------------------
A) UDA (Universal Dovetailer Argument)
1) I explain that if you are a machine, you are already immaterial.
-------------------
Fine. This thought is merely surprising and somewhat (strangely)
satisfying. It doesn't affect the way I live my life, but it sure as
hell gets me some funny looks from people when I try to explain it to
them! Most people think I am identifying the "self" with the "soul" or
the "spirit" or some other metaphysical conjecture that they have
heard of from religion or from their grandmother. They simply do not
buy it when I tell them that all of reality is like this - that the
assumption of a primitive, primary material reality is probably a
gross "error of perception" albeit quite an understandable one.
People are so hoodwinked by appearances, by their senses. Somehow I
still think we are *meant* to be fooled by appearances - although this
thought may well be self-contradictory. It's a good thing I find most
things quite unconvincing - including appearances and reality
generally! I am always asking myself "What is really going on here?
Why are things THIS way, in particular? Why not some other way? I have
always been like this. Some people find me quite annoying in this
regard...
---------------------
2) Mechanism entails the existence of a subjective or first person
indeterminacy or uncertainty.
---------------------
In the sense that I cannot know who or what I am, BEING who or what I
am. Correct? I would necessarily have to step outside my existence to
do so - manifestly impossible, given the laws of physics (or simply
given MEC/COMP). I would have to reboot from a different system; be a
different entity in fact.
Paradox Alert: Without a first person perspective there could be no
third person perspectives anyway, isn't that correct? Why then doesn't
some part of the first person uncertainty (ie "my" uncertainty about
"me") translate into 3rd person perspectives? Anything I might say or
merely perceive about something or someone else is surely contaminated
by my uncertainties...so, in the quest to "know myself" how can I
trust the veracity of any knowledge that comes to me from outside? All
knowledge comes via brains (wet, messy ones) and all of these brains
are suffering the same uncertainties about their identity as I. Note,
I am not a solipsist.
Also, you cannot experience the experience that I experience and vice
versa. Which is why I think art and music in particular are important
revelations of the first person perspective. Music is an ATTEMPT to
overcome first person indeterminacy by "universalising" certain
qualia. Tchaikowsky expects you to BECOME Tchaikowsky when you listen
to the first movement of his 6th Symphony. You suffer and agonise and
die with him. It's a VR experience. Madonna just doesn't do this for me.
However,
new research has shown that reading the mind is literally possible. We
can now assemble an image seen via an optical system transmitted only
via the electrical impulses read in a brain system (NewScientist last
ed.)
Perhaps it is not too far from here to the thought that you and I
might "swap instantiations" for a short time? Maybe it would be fun to
think, walk, talk and act like Bruno Marchal, if only for 5 minutes.
In fact, I would pay a princely sum to have that experience. In an age
when some people will spend gazillions on a "space tourist" (virtual)
reality experience, I would go for the "Be Bruno for Five Minutes"
option long before I would want to see the globe from orbit....
-------------------------
3) The Universal Machine, the Universal Dovetailer and the reversal
physics/bio-psycho-theo-whatever-logy.
--------------------------
OK - so Abram has been impatient on this point but I guess I am ready
too:
On 23/12/2008, at 8:11 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> Abram,
>
>
> On 23 Dec 2008, at 00:23, Abram Demski wrote:
>
>> I think you are right in calling this view eliminative materialism. I
>> am saying that the "I" is a convenient fiction.
>
>
> All right. It is a normal tendency for scientist. It is like wanting
> to see Platonia from outside.
I always think of the Sydney Opera House as Platonia. You cannot
predict how it looks on the outside if you are teleported into the
foyer!
Also, the Tardis of Doctor Who has a similar asymmetry between outside
and inside view.
Are you saying Platonia has no outside? The true inside of all
outsides - just like the 1st person perspective, in fact.
> It is like deciding to believe only in
> the third person description view, abstracting away our experiences
> and subjectivity. Then the "I", free-will, decisions, and eventually
> "consciousness" are explained ... away.
Yes - and then, to make matters worse, we turn the whole morass of
uncertainty over to the religionists who reify a metaphysical
abstraction which just confounds the whole thing further.
Kim
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Received on Tue Dec 23 2008 - 05:50:44 PST