On 21 Aug 2011, at 19:18, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Aug 21, 12:35 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
On 21 Aug 2011, at 14:43, Craig Weinberg wrote:
That's why the mechanist position is critically flawed as a
cosmological-ontological TOE. It amputates the 1p definition of
life -
which only marginally has to do with reproduction (I don't have
kids,
so I'm disqualified from being 3-p 'alive'.) Life is about feeling
like you want to avoid dying, and that feeling is SIGNIFICANT.
This means only that you put consciousness or 1-p in life.
No, it means that I put 1-p in experience, and life as specific
category of experience. Consciousness is a general term that isn't all
that helpful. I like awareness or feeling. And yes, I put feeling in
life, because it really has no place in an inorganic world. If all of
your actions are pre-programmed, feeling is really superfluous. Our
intuition is that killing an ant is less significant than burning down
a house full of people. I think that intuition has validity. An ant
may or may not be any more 'conscious', but whatever it is less of
than a human being is the same thing that a computer program is less
of, to us at least.
You say so.
I see this like a sort of insult toward the UMs and the LUMs. '---
Sorry guys, you are not made of carbon so you have no souls (or worst,
you have not the right sort of soul).
That is just a matter of definition.
I would not have consecrated my life to the study or consciousness if
it was to amputate the notion of first person, which, on the
contrary,
I extend to number relations and program executions.
So you extend 1-p to numbers but not to life. I used to extend 1-p to
numbers, so I can understand that. I am ok with Platonic primitives,
but of course, I see other kinds of sense as primitive as well;
privacy, detection, participation, etc.
I am OK with that.
The problem is that you deprive the number relations from privacy,
detection participation.
Mechanism is not an eliminative doctrine, except for the primitive
stuffy matter (that nobody has ever see).
On the contrary, arithmetic is full of life, and consciousness, and
consciousness differentiations.
It's
also about flourishing in whatever way you can - to feel like you
are
thriving. I would go so far as to say that all organisms experience
this and that no inorganic materials experience this.
No materials at all experience things. Only persons, in a large sense
(not just humans, but animals, and angels, perhaps the plants, on
some
scale).
That's not to say that inorganic materials experience nothing,
Which makes everything alive/conscious.
I know you do that. It is your panpsychism. I don't buy it.
No, it doesn't. It just gives perception a plausible ancestor in
detection. They don't experience something like we experience
something, all that is necessary is that everything experience just a
little bit more than nothing.
You are not enough clear. That might be a good idea, but it has
nothing to do with its digital emulability or not.
Otherwise, if you exterminate all of the
living beings on the few billion planets that might have them, then
you are left with a vast cosmos of countless astrophysical wonders yet
has no experience. No wonders. An undetectable abyss. How do you get
from that void of utter intangible absence of experience to even a
single flicker of awareness is an insurmountable gap. Sense cannot
come from non-sense. It is not invented, as you might say, it is
discovered.
So your theory would made the extermination of people less grave?
I would
hazard to guess that there is a bit of a blurred line with things
like
crystal growth and virus transmission where the degree of
sensorimotive articulation approaches that of organic life - but my
sense is that it is likely more sterile and mathematical. More of a
monotonous drive in the sense of playing Solitaire or a turn based
computer game or weaving an endless patterned rug.
What you say informs me on Craig's first person, not on what is
matter, and what is consciousness.
Sure, it's pure speculation on my part,
I am glad you agree.
I am not so fond of speculation myself. To be honest.
I am a logician, or a reasoner, I derive beliefs from beliefs.
but I'm not making it up.
OK.
If I
had to guess which was more rowdy and emotional, I would choose the
dog and not the geode. Wouldn't you?
Sure. I might even prefer a jumping spider in place of the dog, to be
honest :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQBAIud6Twg&NR=1
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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