Dear Bruno,
Thank you for this response. Let me interleave some comments and a
challenge to you and our members of the Everything List.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bruno Marchal" <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
To: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2003 4:10 AM
Subject: Re: I am not meant for your religion
> "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]
> > 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".
>
> [BM]
>
> OK. At least we agree that material monism is a dead end.
[SPK]
Good.
>[SPK]
> >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.
>[BM]
> 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?
[SPK]
I am not asking that we "postulate materialism", I am trying to reason
through an idea that seems to require the existence of "physicality" at
least in the sense of allowing for the notions of durations and the related
notion of "persistence in time". I am using as a foundation the work of
Peter Wegner ( the notion of "interactive computation") and Vaughan Pratt
(Chu space).
>[SPK]
> > 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!
> [BM]
> 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?
[SPK]
Stated crudely, that we can recover the appearence of a world that
evolves in time and that we can have this communication and mutual influence
on each other's mind.
[BM]
> It is easy to prove NOT-COMP from the dualist assumption.
[SPK]
To start this discussion could you sketch this "easy" proof that Dualist
assumption -> NOT-COMP? We need to carefully define what COMP and NOT-COMP
are and the nature of the "dualist assuption". I request that you re-read
Pratt's paper titled: "Rational Mechanics and Natural Mathematics "
(
http://chu.stanford.edu/guide.html#ratmech) which encapsulates my ideas
about the dualist assumption and Peter Wegner's "Mathematical Models of
Interactive Computing" (
http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/pw/papers/math1.ps)
which discusses the essential ideas that I see in COMP and NOT-COMP.
Kindest regards,
Stephen
Received on Tue Jan 21 2003 - 11:39:08 PST