Tom>> Instead of "conscious brain" I should have said "consciousness".
The yes-doctor hypothesis in comp tells me that you are assuming the
existence of consciousness.
Bruno> Yes. Under the form of a minimal amount of what is called (in
philosophy of mind/cognitive science) "grandmother or folk
psychology". Now (to cut the air a little bit) "assuming" does not seem
right to me. I just hope people can understand in a mundane way
question like "will I survive the operation in the hospital" etc. Also
I don't like expression like "a conscious brain" or a "conscious
program". It is "Searles' error". Only a person can be conscious. No
doubt the brain plays some role but a brain is not conscious, nor a
program, nor a string.
Tom: OK
Tom>> Also, is not the "psychology" that you are reducing physics to
"consciousness" (or an equivalent approximation)?
Bruno> I don't understand the sentence.
Tom: My sentence was poorly worded. I'll try again: The UDA argues
that "fundamental physics is necessarily reducible to fundamental
psychology." I've read a statement by you somewhere (I think on this
list) that this fundamental psychology basically talking about
consciousness. Here it is one such quote:
"The reversal will be epistemological: the branch "physics" will be a
branch of machine's psychology, and ontological: matter
will emerge from consciousness, in some sense, hopefully clearer after
reading the proof."
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m1726.html
Actually this particular quote seems to present consciousness as the
ontological counterpart to the epistemological "fundamental
psychology", just as matter is considered the ontological counterpart
to epistemological "fundamental physics". So "psychology" is our way
of thinking about consciousness, just as "physics" is our way of
thinking about matter. So the statement "...physics is...reducible to
psychology" is basically saying "our way of thinking about matter is
reducible to our way of thinking about consciousness", or "physics is
reducible to our way of thinking about consciousness".
Tom>> Is not your use of the word "discourse", even though it is a >
"correct-by-definition discourse", and also your use of the words >
"observable" and "verifiable", meant to portray something that can be >
observed by, imagined by, and encoded into our consciousness? So is >
not your assumption that we can fit this "fundamental/perfect physics"
> into our consciousness?
Bruno>> Yes if by "our" you refer to the lobian machines. But if you
mean by it "human" then it is a big anthropomorphism. Also I avoid the
term "consciousness". Eventually consciousness will be linked to
automatic (unconscious!) inference of self-consistency from some 1
person point of view.
Tom: I guess I'll have to ponder this more. In general I am
uncomfortable with having terms like "physics" and
"psychology/consciousness" defined (redefined?) later on in an argument
rather than at the beginning. In such a setting, I find it very
difficult (impossible?) to get a grasp of what your hypotheses are.
In parallel, I guess I have another question: It seems that in the UDA
you artificially limit all of physics to be the solution to one
particular thought experiment. This seems narrow to me.
Tom
Received on Mon Jul 11 2005 - 13:40:01 PDT