On 18 February 2014 17:14, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote:
Moreover, that very failure must be strikingly apparent to the functional >> actors themselves. >> > > Why do you think that isn't the pathetic fallacy though? > Quite simply because the whole argument is based on the premise that the computational theory of mind is true and hence if the tendency to attribute sense to the functional actors is pathetic, we must apply it to ourselves ex hypothesi. It's interesting that Bruno says he originally formulated the UDA as a reductio: i.e. in the full expectation that the logic of CTM would break down. And indeed, it turns out that it can only be salvaged by a reversal that establishes computational self-reference as the arbitrator of observational consistencies that would otherwise be swamped by an infinity computational noise. The clear alternative is to abandon CTM, but if it is to be salvaged (and there are robust independent motivations to do so) the entailment is that the entire domain of action and meaning is a self-referential Platonic landscape of dreams. The rigour of the UDA was the first thing that I appreciated because more typically the real difficulties associated with the premise (such as the inherent ambiguity of the relation between physics and computation/information) are obfuscated. Of course we have already agreed that if you reject the premise of CTM in the first place none of the conclusions can follow. But I'm still not sure why you reject it. It can't just be because it is implausible that a human brain (or even part of it) could be replaced by anything based on, or even suggested by, the present state of technology, surely? The premise is agnostic as to the level of substitution, which might be arbitrarily low as long as all the functional relations of the appropriate level are retained. The UD (or rather its completed trace) mandates ex hypothesi both the presence of a computational infinity and the differential selection of consistency of observation (modulo an unresolved measure issue to bias the filtration towards of normal versus pathological outcomes). In sum, it's like a Programmatic Library of Babel. ISTM that what recommends such a theory over some form of identity theory is the implausibility on its face that the lines of fracture of the domain of appearance could ever be made to coincide with those of physical structure (as, for, example, biology does with physics). And panpsychist theories are essentially identity theories with the addition of some kind of interior/exterior (or in Gregg Rosenberg's case effective/receptive) distinction. Computational / informational theories seem to offer an exponentially more powerful model for recursively generating, combining and recombining hierarchies of levels, parts and wholes and Bruno's arithmetical development of the UDA suggests at the least some potentially fruitful lines for further investigation. But what I really don't see is how this idea is at war with the basic thrust of your intuition that sense is an ineliminable part of all this from the beginning. There's no suggestion that sense is created ex nihilo by computation, only that it might be the key to understanding the fracture lines of interiority/exteriority (a sort of computational lensing, as I suggested). That said, to be honest I strongly disagree that the subject/object distinction is either simple or basic, or that a collection of micro-distinctions of this kind could combine to form a more comprehensive one. I agree that it must seem basic at the outset to any subject, for roughly analogous reasons to why we typically never question why we can't see the back of our heads, but probably only before considerable further reflection on the matter. I think it takes a lot of functional work to make a subject, or an object for that matter, even though the eventual domain of "objective" appearance that manifests to such a subject is inherent (though uninformed) from the beginning. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
