Bruno Marchal wrote:
> Le 18-mars-06, à 16:00, peterdjones.domain.name.hidden a écrit :
>
> > If every mathematical structure exists , then mathematical structures
> > consisting
> > of a counterpart of me plus a "Harry Potter" universe exist. Yet this
> > is not
> > observed. Of course that might be coincidence.
>
>
> No it can't. This what the computationalist (or weaker) must explain.
> This is mainly what the list is all about.
>
> Hal Finney, like my oldest attempts, try to explain the lack of Harry
> Potter or white flying bunnies, by the abonormal huge rate of
> computations needed to sustain such "illusions" in a coherent way.
> My critics in a nutshell is that such an explanation cannot work once
> we make explicit the first and third person description. The first
> person, being unable to know the UD's delays of computations, cannot
> distinguish a high variety of little and less little programs, so that
> Hal Finney sort of explanation is incomplete (at best). My way of
> tackling the problem consists in translating the UDA in the language of
> a universal machine. Thanks to incompleteness this makes sense, and we
> eventually are lead to an arithmetical interpretation of the Platonist
> theories of everything, which observable consequences, like quantum
> logic, many-worlds interfering in a wavy fashion, etc.
>
> Peter, what are your postulates? I think you are postulating an
> aristotelian stuffy universe.
Yes. If we use matter to answer the question "what is it about
mathematical structure
A that explains it's existence, rather than mathematical stucture B",
we immediately
arrive at a *definition* of matter which is non-solipsistic.
>Are you postulating comp?
I am fairly lukewarm about comp. I certainly wouldn't use it to
expalin anythig else. What we can be sure of is that
1) we exist
2) we are conscious
3) there is some sort of external world
4) there is some phenomenon of time.
These are all quite problematical for Mathematical Monism;
assuming another problematical hypothesis, COMP, and using
it to deny some or all of (1) to (4) is cart-bfore-the-horse. Arguments
should start with what you can be sure of.
>If yes, you are
> in difficulties (cf UDA), if not, what is your theory of mind?
A materialist cannot possible be worse off in explaining mind that
a Mathematical Monist, sice he has at least one extra ingredient to
play with.
He is not obliged to deny that mind has anythign to do with
computation, but
when he hits problems he can appeal to matter itself -- for instance
hypothesising
that something about the specific physics/chemistry of the brain
explains qualia.
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Received on Fri Mar 24 2006 - 11:20:38 PST