2009/9/2 Flammarion <peterdjones.domain.name.hidden>:
> i suspect you are mixing types and tokens. But I await an answer to
> the question
Well, a computation is a type, and is thus not any particular physical
object. A specific physical implementation is a token of that
computational type, and is indeed a physical object, albeit one whose
physical details can be of any variety so long as they continue to
instantiate the relevant computational invariance. Hence it is hard
to see how a specific (invariant) example of an experiential state
could be justified as being token-identical with all the different
physical implementations of a computation. It might appear that a
defence against the foregoing is to say that only the appropriate
functionally-distinguished subsets of the entire implementing
substrate need be deemed tokens of the relevant computational type,
and that actual occasions of experience can be considered to be
token-identical with these subsets.
But even on this basis it still doesn't seem possible to establish any
consistent identity between the physical variety of the tokens thus
distinguished and a putatively unique experiential state. On the
contrary, any unbiased a priori prediction would be of experiential
variance on the basis of physical variance. Hence continuing to
insist on physically-based token-identity seems entirely ad hoc.
The unique challenge facing us, on the assumption of primitive
materiality, is the personally manifest existence of an experiential
state associated with a physical system. The first person gives us a
unique insight in this instance which is unavailable for other
type-token analyses. Ordinarily, picking out functional invariance in
physical systems is unproblematic, because the invariance is one of
type, not of token. The token may vary but the type-token association
is unharmed. But, uniquely, this doesn't hold for a theory of mind
based on primitive materiality, because now we have a unique
"token-identity" - mind-body - and thus it is inconsistent to expect
to substitute an entirely different type of body and expect no
substantive change on the other side of the identical doublet. The
resort of desperation is of course to disregard this unique
distinction, or worse to relegate experience to mere typehood; but in
that case we eliminate it from concrete existence.
David
>> No, I was querying whether Brent was implying this by his reference to
>> mental states realised in Platonia but nonetheless deemed to supervene
>> on physical process. But without such dual supervention, where does
>> that leave CTM+PM? Either we're appealing to
>> experience=computation=invariant, or we're appealing to
>> experience=physical process=variant.
>
> Well, I've asked before, but what does (in) variant mean here?
David
>
>
>
> On 2 Sep, 17:56, David Nyman <david.ny....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>> 2009/9/2 Flammarion <peterdjo....domain.name.hidden>:
>>
>> >> I wonder what you mean by "either physically realized or in Platonia"?
>> >> ISTM that there is not one assumption here, but two. If computation
>> >> is restricted to the sense of physical realisation, then there is
>> >> indeed nothing problematic in saying that "two physically different
>> >> computers perform the same computation". We can understand what is
>> >> meant without ambiguity; 'different' is indeed different, and any
>> >> identity is thus non-physical (i.e. relational). But 'realisation' of
>> >> such relational identity in Platonia in the form of an invariant
>> >> experiential state is surely something else entirely: i.e. if it is a
>> >> supplementary hypothesis to PM it is dualism.
>>
>> > Why would a believer in CTM need to make that additional step?
>> > (You seem to be talkign about the abstract computaitonal state
>> > having exitence independent from its concrete physcial
>> > isntantiations).
>>
>> No, I was querying whether Brent was implying this by his reference to
>> mental states realised in Platonia but nonetheless deemed to supervene
>> on physical process. But without such dual supervention, where does
>> that leave CTM+PM? Either we're appealing to
>> experience=computation=invariant, or we're appealing to
>> experience=physical process=variant.
>
> Well, I've asked before, but what does (in) variant mean here?
>
>> If we seek refuge in both, then
>> in what sense can we maintain an identity? Does invariant=variant?
>> But if what is meant by this is that physical process is only relevant
>> to experience *inasmuch as it functionally instantiates a computation*
>> - i.e. only the non-physical aspects make any difference - then
>> precisely what remains of experience that is physical? The term Bruno
>> sometimes uses for any such sense of 'physical' is 'spurious', and I
>> think that about sums it up.
>>
>> David
>
> i suspect you are mixing types and tokens. But I await an answer to
> the question
> >
>
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Received on Wed Sep 02 2009 - 21:20:21 PDT