On 18 Jan 2015, at 00:39, meekerdb wrote:
On 1/17/2015 2:36 PM, David Nyman wrote:
I'm assuming it because he states it explicitly. He specifically
distinguishes what can be "observed from the outside" from
"additional internal properties". He specifically brackets qualia
with the "extreme case " of the latter as paradigmatic examples of
the unobservable. I suggest you read the whole piece if you're in
any doubt as to his meaning but it seems perfectly clear to me.
Your point about the historical antecedents of this notion is
interesting, but what about my question? How are external and
internal properties supposed to be able to mutually refer? If a
sensation (quale) of red is ultimately rooted in some unobservable
internal property of matter, how can that property simultaneously
contrive to be the referent of any presumably relational (external,
observable) claim to that sensation? In other words, when Smolin
says that he sees red he must suppose this to be, on his own avowed
naturalism, an (observable) consequence of physical causality
alone. How could further 'internal' properties be supposed to
intervene in this account?
I agree, with such a constraining definition of "internal" it would
seem that no interaction with the world or other people is
possible. It would only be consistent with a "brain in a vat,
dreaming the world". But that's pretty close to Bruno's idea of a
UD world. The UD computes (or simulates) the dreaming and the
dreamer infers the physical world (including the existence of
others) and there need only be one computed "dreamer" to dream all
the different dreams having different points of view.
Nice. Of course this leads to reducing physics to the material
hypostases, making classical computationalism testable. Without QM,
such classical computationalism would be already refuted, or judged
non plausible and highly speculative. But both Gödel's theorem, and
the quantum weirdness rescues computationalism.
I think Smolin just ignores the mind-body problem (even more so the
computationalist mind-body problem). Obviously, as David says, it
stays in the metaphysical naturalist paradigm. Normally we know
already that this needs some magic incompatible with digital mechanism
in the cognitive science.
Bruno
Brent
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