On 8/15/2014 7:07 PM, Pierz wrote:
Liz, I've been thinking about the best way to illustrate the core of the MGA and Olympia
arguments. Perhaps this will help.
The Olympia idea is indeed a "baroque" construction as the paper nicely puts it, but I
suspect Maudlin was trying to illustrate what amounts to a simple intuition, namely that
when a specific calculation is carried out (in any medium), the machine carrying it out
is physically like Olympia: there is a single sequence of steps in which one can ignore
the inactive counterfactuals completely. All the complexity and intelligence is in the
capacity of the computer to handle many possible inputs, yet when any specific input
goes through, we can always think of the computer as an Olympia that can only do that
one task. To realize this we can imagine that we remove all the circuits and pathways
that weren't actually employed. All the baroque elements of hoses, troughs and rusting
gates really just serves to make this point particularly clear. Another way to think
about this in purely logical/arithmetic terms is to imagine a program to calculate the
sum of any two positive integers x and y. Imagine the program does this by adding 1 to x
sequentially, each time asking itself have I done this 'y' times yet? If yes, stop and
output x, if no, do it again. For the inputs 1 and 2, we get:
x=1, y=2
x=x+1=2, count=1. Is count=y? no, so repeat
x=x+1=3, count=2. Is count=y? yes, so output
output x (3)
Now I want to remove the capacity to handle counterfactuals, that is to say, I want to
remove all decision making logic from the machine but still let it output 3 for the
inputs 1 an 2. How do I do it and still get the result of 3 for those inputs. The answer
depends on whether the machinery that performs each step of the calculation is reused or
not. If it isn't, then the size of the calculation I can perform will be limited by the
size of the machinery (I need to repeat the mechanism y times to add the number y to x),
but if I imagine I can manufacture new machinery on the fly or simply have an infinite
machine, then this is not an issue. If I don't reuse the machinery, then the way to
remove the capacity to handle counterfactuals is to solder shut the logic gates such
that the machine (program) now looks like:
x=1, y=2
x=x+1=2 repeat
x=x+1=3 output
output x(3)
We can see that it becomes a machine for counting to 3. This is Olympia (on a very small
scale).
However if I *do* reuse the machinery, then I can't solder the logic gates in any fixed
position because I still need to know when to stop and output the result. In this case I
simply hard wire the machine to run the addition step exactly twice before outputting,
which is exactly what the 'filmed graph' scenario does - it removes the logic gates and
remotely controls the operation of the machine in a fixed, mindless fashion.
Interestingly this is what robots do in manufacturing plants. Because the routine is the
same each time, there's no need for all that human counterfactual processing capacity -
just record the sequence and output it over and over.
The reason why the MGA is possibly less convincing (superficially) is that it's not
obviously the same physical process being carried out when the recorded light beam
activates the nodes as when they are activated by the logic of the connections between
them. Maudlin removes that possible (meretricious) objection by having machinery that
can't be reused. That way he can more easily show the physical equivalence of the
process in both cases.
Finally though, there is another possible objection even if we accept this type of
argument. That is to say that, sure, consciousness must supervene on the logic not the
physical operation. However we still insist that physical instantiation of the logic is
required to instantiate the relevant consciousness. i.e., consciousness supervenes on
logic + matter, or the logical organization of matter. This would be Brent's position I
believe. Now Bruno counters this by calling it disgraceful and ad hoc, yet perhaps we
can read from the uncharacteristically emotive adjective that he senses a weakness here.
To be clear, I tend to agree with Bruno's conclusion, but I fear that the acceptance of
this theory will always stumble over this point, because for materialists there is
already some assumed ontological magic to matter. It's what "puts the fire in the
equations" or whatever.
I don't want to pick on your post because I pretty much agree with it. But physicists
like Wheeler who ask, "What puts fire in the equations." are really mystics like Bruno.
My attitude is we found a fire and here's an equation that describes it.
Bruno's theory gets around the magic of material instantiation, the "brute fact" of
something happening to exist physically, by showing how everything is instantiated in
some relative perspective interior to arithmetic. That is very elegant and nice. But to
people deeply inculcated in the cult of Matter, that elegance will be invisible. They
*trust* matter and the assumption that the ultimate explanation of things will keep some
kind of objective "stuff" at its centre runs very deep.
Plus I don't believe it can be said that Bruno's theory makes everything clear with
respect to consciousness, as I've argued elsewhere. We might hope that a theory based
purely on a mathematical ontology would not have to resort to an apparently magical
proposition like there *being* an interior perspective to mathematics. We have no
reason to imagine that there should be one, other perhaps than the fact that *we* are
conscious. So the description of what mathematics is has this dimension of interiority
added it to by the comp assumption - and the only answer as to "why" is that there is no
answer. So some magic brute fact remains, albeit within a nicely unified ontological
framework. I would say only that I have little reason to go on thinking of this
mathematical Platonia as purely mathematical. Perhaps all is subsumed within
consciousness itself, and mathematics is an emergent phenomenon so long as our
consciousness remains limited within Form, which by its nature demands self-consistency.
Sheesh, getting very mystical here. Enough.
As Bruno likes to point out, primitive matter isn't defined, not even by physicists. He
seems to think that is a kind of cheat or defect (logicians like to define everything). I
consider it a feature not a bug. Physicists would be perfectly happy to have a TOE based
on number theory (in fact a few have tried it). I think the real difference in philosophy
is the physicists wants to explain *this* and an explanation that proposes to explain
*everything conceivable* is not considered a good explanation.
Brent
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