Re: I am not meant for your religion

From: Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2003 10:10:42 +0100

"Stephen Paul King" <stephenk1.domain.name.hidden> wrote:

>Dear Bruno,
>
> In lieu of a long response let me point out what I believe is the crux
>of our "disagreement":
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Bruno Marchal" <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
>To: "Stephen Paul King" <stephenk1.domain.name.hidden>
>Cc: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>; "Tim May" <tcmay.domain.name.hidden.net>; "David Woolsey"
><dwoolsey.domain.name.hidden>
>Sent: Friday, January 17, 2003 9:51 AM
>Subject: Re: I am not meant for your religion
>
>
>snip
>
>> SPK:
>> >We can dismiss the Heisenberg cut without to many problems but we cannot
>> >hand wave the categorical distinction between subject and object
>(Cartesian
>> >cut?)!
>>
>>
>> BM:
>> Yes we can! There are a lot of so-called materialist monist. I just show
>> that comp leads to immaterialist monism. A good thing given that nobody
>has
>> ever been able to just define what could be a material thing. Physicists
>does
>> not even try.
>
>snip
>
> These "nobodies" and "physicists" that do not attempt to define what is
>a "material thing" are typically material monist; they assume without
>question material things and weave endless clever arguments about how qualia
>and subjective experience are mere epiphenomenona or "intentional stances".



OK. At least we agree that material monism is a dead end.



>Your "showing" that comp leads to immaterial monism has the same problem but
>instead of mind being an "intentional stance" it is physicality or
>materiality that is epiphenomenalism. This is what I have been trying to
>explain and yet you keep dodging my pointed thrusts like a skilled fencer.



It is true that you can still postulate materiality together with the comp
hyp. But I have shown that such materiality has zero explanation power
for both the physical laws and the physical sensations. So indeed such
a materiality would be purely epiphenomal (epinoumenal we should say).
So why postulate materialism?



> We are back to were we started a long time ago. Could you consider, even
>for the sake of discussion, a dualism what in the limit of "Everything"
>becomes a "neutral monism", similar to Russell's? You read Pratt's paper;
>did you not see the explanation of the solution to Descartes' dilemma? The
>epiphenomenalism problem simply goes away!



Putting comp in parentheis, I can postulate dualism for the sake of the
discussion, but for showing what?
My concern is to explain mind and body from logic and numbers, as the comp
hyp forces us to do (by UDA, ...).
What do you want to prove from the dualist assumption?
It is easy to prove NOT-COMP from the dualist assumption.

Kindest regards,

Bruno
Received on Tue Jan 21 2003 - 04:12:23 PST