-----Original Message-----
From: Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
To: kurtleegod.domain.name.hidden
Cc: everything-list.domain.name.hidden
Sent: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 15:47:38 +0200
Subject: Re: subjective reality
On 30 Aug 2005, at 18:01, kurtleegod.domain.name.hidden wrote:
[GK]
>Just to show you I am not mean spirited may I make the following
suggestive question: "Could your argument be
> made on the basis of something not as drastic as YD, say a Turing
Test type argument, which would not require
> you to take someone apart but just produce a convincing
simulation?". Just a thought...
[BM]
Perhaps I should give you my original motivation. My deeper goal has
always been to just explain that the "mind-body" problem has not been
solved. In term of the mind body problem, what I have done can be seen
as "just" a reduction of a problem into another. With the comp hyp, I
have reduced the mind-body problem to the problem of explaining the
appearance of the physical laws from arithmetic/computer science. For
this YD is needed, if only to make palpable the relation with cognitive
science.
Then I interview the machine and YD is eliminated, although we should
need to dig a little more in the technics for adding some nuances.
[GK]
That actually makes a bit more sense to me (surely more than your
other response!)
I think most people would grant you that the mind-body problem has not
been solved. They would probably would also agree
that 3 classes of solutions (at least) have been presented over the
centuries, namely, (1) Physicalist solutions (there is no mind
stuff!) (2) Pure Idealist solutions (there is no body-stuff=matter)
and (3) Dualist varieties where both exist and you try to figure
out how the two stuffs interact etc... It seems to me that your
attempted solution is of type (2), Am I right? You do however
invoke a favorite classical physicalist hypothesis in the form of YD
and than you "turn the tables" on it, so to speak, no?
I think that the YD motivation is the weakest link in your chain (a
real Trojan horse because it is physically untenable) to so
if you use just to demolish it later, why use it at all? Why not
proceed to that interview directly? Can that be done and leave your
argument intact? That would make it a lot more interesting in my
opinion...
Godfrey
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Wed Aug 31 2005 - 10:33:07 PDT