Re: The role of logic, & planning ...

From: Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu May 3 03:07:05 2001

Russell Standish wrote:

>> I still believe my general remarks apply to your "why Occam's razor".
>> (I reprint it and I will reread it once I have more time).
>> You put to much for me in the hypothesis. Like all physicists you seem
>> not to be aware of the mind body problem.
>
>You are right! What is the mind-body problem?

I appreciate your frankness!

Note that I consider sometimes the UDA as a mean to explain that the
mind-body problem is NOT solved automaticaly by COMP (as most materialist
believes).

The formulation of the mind body problem is dependent of the philosophy
you believe in.

Well, if you believe in a "causal material world", and if you believe
in mental sensations and volitions, then the mind-body problem is just
the search for an explanation of the link between that causal material
world and these mental (subjective, first person) sensations and
volitions.

A neurophysiologist poetical version is "how can grey matter produces
feeling of color". Another one is "how can just firing of neurons produces
feeling of joy or of pain". Etc.

An idealist (immaterialist) philosopher must explain the belief in matter.
A materialist must explain the belief in beliefs.
A cartesian dualist must explain the link between matter and belief (or
feeling of belief).

Some scientist dismiss it as a non scientific problem. It is easy to
show that this dismiss is itself not scientific.
Our culture is used to put the mind-body problem in religious matter.

You can consider the UDA as a reduction of the mind body problem into
the problem of the origin of (the belief in) physical laws.

And you can see my UTM interview as a solution of the mind body problem
(!).
The qualia (internal immediate feelings) appears naturaly thanks to
incompleteness, or, more precisely, thanks to the difference between
Z1 and Z1* (which itself is inherited from the gap between G and G*).
More on this latter.

Bruno
Received on Thu May 03 2001 - 03:07:05 PDT