Re: Emulation and Stuff

From: Flammarion <peterdjones.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 01:33:31 -0700 (PDT)

On 19 Aug, 08:49, Bruno Marchal <marc....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> On 19 Aug 2009, at 02:31, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> >> This is not the point. The point is that if you develop a correct
> >> argumentation that you are material, and that what we "see" around us
> >> is material, then the arithmetical P. Jone(s) will also find a  
> >> correct
> >> argumentation that *they* are material, and that what they see is
> >> material. The problem is that if you are correct in "our physical
> >> reality" their reasoning will be correct too, and false of course.  
> >> But
> >> then your reasoning has to be false too.
> >> The only way to prevent this consists in saying that you are not
> >> Turing-emulable,
>
> > Why can't I just say I'm not Turing emulated?  It seems that your  
> > argument uses MGA to
> > conclude that no physical instantaion is needed so Turing-
> > emulable=Turing-emulated.  It
> > seems that all you can conclude is one cannot *know* that they have  
> > a correct argument
> > showing they are material.  But this is already well known from  
> > "brain in a vat" thought
> > experiments.
>
> OK. But this seems to me enough to render invalid any reasoning  
> leading to our primitive materiality.
> If a reasoning is valid, it has to be valid independently of being  
> published or not, written with ink or carbon, being in or outside the  
> UD*. I did not use MGA here.

That is false. You are tacitly assuming that PM has to be argued
with the full force of necessity -- although your own argument does
not have that force. In fact, PM only has to be shown to be more
plausible than the alternatives. It is not necessarily true because of
sceptical hypotheses like the BIV and the UD, but since neither of
them has much prima-facie plausibility, the plausibility og PM
is not impacted much

--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
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 Wed Aug 19 2009 - 01:33:31 PDT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Feb 16 2018 - 13:20:16 PST