On 14 Aug 2014, at 19:59, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/14/2014 1:41 AM, Russell Standish wrote:
On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 10:25:40AM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I agree with you in general, but I can agree a little bit with Liz
too, as I find Brent slightly sneaky on this issue, but all in all
Brent is rather polite and seems sincere. Yet his critics (of step
8) is not that clear. But then that is why we discuss. Anyone seeing
Brent's point can help to make it clearer.
His point is that he doesn't believe input free computations can be
conscious - there must always be some referrent to the environment
(which is noisy, counterfactual, etc).
Right.
If so, it prevents the MGA, and
Maudlin's argument, from working.
I guess for Brent that even dream states still have some referrent to
the environment, even if it be some sort of random synaptic noise.
I think it's pretty obvious that dreams have external referents.
Don't your dreams have people and places and objects in them that
you recognize as such?
I think the sharper question is whether there are referents when you
think of numbers, when you do number theory proofs - essentially
it's the question of Platonism. Does arithmetic and Turing machine
'exist' apart from brains that think about them? Does putting "..."
really justify inferences about infinite processes? Or on a more
philosophical level, if everything exists does "exists" have any
meaning?
But not everything exist. Only K, S, (K K), (K S) (S K) (S S) ((K K)
K), etc.
Or if you prefer, only 0, s(0), s(s(0)), etc.
Plus their respective laws.
Equivalently, we take it that the sigma_1 truth is independent of us.
Basically this means that we believe that a machine does stop, or not
stop. Or that if a natural number has some verifiable property, then
we can search, and find that number. That ability makes you Turing
universal, and for comp, you need only to assume one universal
language, or universal machine, or universal number, universal theory,
etc. (with universal = universal for computability (not provability!).
Not everything exist, nor are every propositions true. Hopefully.
But if you are willing to believe that "for all prime n there is a
bigger prime m" is a result of our brain functioning, then I will no
more understand what you mean by "brain functioning" as "functioning"
needs notion more complex than "prime", and I will suspect you will
make all proposition being able to be true, like "let us accept the
people who for religious reason pretend that there is a bigger prime".
*This* , for once, leads to relativism.
Bruno
Brent
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