Brent,
I guess you know my reply to this, but I want to make it clear, for
the benefit of the general discussion. I add a point though.
On 10 Sep 2009, at 21:27, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
> But isn't that because the "computational" in CTM is abstracted away
> from a context in which there is action and purpose. It's the same
> problem that leads to the question, "Does a rock compute every
> function?" When looking at a physical process as a computation one
> has
> to ask, "Computing what?" and the answer is in terms of some
> interaction
> with the rest of the world in which the computation is embedded, e.g.
> the answer will mean something to the programmer who started it and it
> means something to him because he's a human animal that evolved to
> have
> goals and values and can take actions. The level of experience, the
> finess or coarsenss of physical process, is determined by the level at
> which there are actions.
If consciousness supervenes on your brain + a part of the world, and
you accept CTM (although a non conventional externalist form of CTM),
it changes nothing to the reasoning, given that if your (generalized)
brain (that is your biological brain + that part of the world) is
Turing emulable, he will be accessed by the UD and the reversal will
go through. And then the physical world, whatever it is, has to be
explained from the number relations/computer science only.
This is quite different from your different answer you made in a
preceding post, where you make consciousness supervening on some non
turing emulable part of the world. In which case you are no more in
the comp or CTM frame.
Actually, to be really non-computationalist, to invoke a non
computable element is not enough, because comp/CTM attached first
person subjectivity (and thus consciousness) to an infinity of
computations, and predict some "geographical non computability", like
the first person indeterminacy. So a strictly non comp theory has to
attach consciousness to something physical, non computable, and
different from what emerge, form the first person view, from a sum on
an infinity of computations. This should be testable, and QM without
collapse is going in the comp direction.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
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 Fri Sep 11 2009 - 15:33:20 PDT