Re: Dreaming On

From: Flammarion <peterdjones.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2009 01:50:09 -0700 (PDT)

On 28 Aug, 07:27, Quentin Anciaux <allco....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> 2009/8/27 Flammarion <peterdjo....domain.name.hidden>:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On 27 Aug, 08:54, Quentin Anciaux <allco....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> >> 2009/8/26 David Nyman <david.ny....domain.name.hidden>:
>
> >> This is because if consciousness is a computational process then it is
> >> independant of the (physical or ... virtual) implementation. If I
> >> perfom the computation on an abacus or within my head or with stones
> >> on the ground... it is the same (from the computation pov).
>
> >> And that's my problem with physicalism. How can it account for the
> >> independance of implementation if computations are not real ?
>
> > Physcialism doesn't say that computations aren't real. It says
> > real instances of computation are identical to physical processes.
>
> If everything is reduced to physical interaction then computations
> aren't real.

That still doesn't follow. Water=H2O doesn't mean water is unreal.

> Also that doesn't answer how it account for the
> independance of implementation.

A type of computation is an equivalence class of physical
instances. They fall into the class by being susceptible
to the same abstract definition, not by having the same extra phsyical
property.
This is no more mysterious than the fact that you can have quite a
physcally
varied class of cubic things. Shape is multiply realisable too.

> As the computation is not primary, how
> 02 different physical process could generate the same computation
> without abstract computations being the only thing that link the two
> processes having existence.

You do need abstract computations, but you don't
need Platonic computations. Not all abstracta
are Platonic. Check out the difference between Platonic and
Ariostotelean forms.

>How can you make sense of church-turing
> thesis if only "realized computations" make sense ?

Non-Platonic bstracta can make sense. Platonism supplies reference,
not sense.
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Received on Fri Aug 28 2009 - 01:50:09 PDT

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