On 05 Feb 2015, at 14:35, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 4 February 2015 at 12:49, David Nyman <da...@davidnyman.com> wrote:
On 3 February 2015 at 23:11, Stathis Papaioannou
<stath...@gmail.com> wrote:
An epiphenomenon is a necessary side-effect of the primary
phenomenon.
The epiphenomenon has no separate causal efficacy of its own; if it
did, then we could devise a test for consciousness. This, by the
way,
does not imply that consciousness does not exist or is unimportant.
The parallel examples I would give are emergent phenomena such as
the
economy. You might say this is not the same thing because it is
somehow obvious that the economy is "just" the behaviour of its
component parts while this is not obvious for the brain and mind.
This
may be a valid point, but what is its significance, in the end?
Well, you still haven't addressed the reference issue (you didn't
the last
time I asked you either). On the face of it, your position would
appear to
be that there is no such reference; i.e. that everything is indeed
'just'
the behaviour of its component parts, whatever we suppose those to
be. But
if so, what are we talking about? Indeed, in what sense are we even
talking
at all?
What if it could be shown that consciousness necessarily supervenes on
certain types of functional organisations, realised in any substrate,
in any universe, under any physics? Would you still consider there was
a reference problem?
There are two cases.
1)
You allow the digital "truncation" of the functional orgalisation.
Then you have a reference problem, as you belongs on infinities of
computations.
You have to explained how you can stably refer to quasi token
identified reality around you, when you are really "only" a type, an
abstract type covering infinities of histories.
Computationalism solves the self-reference problem, and its 1p and 3p
aspects, but is verified, apparently for the physical references, up
to now (for classical computationalism). All references are particular
case of self-reference, and they have the 8 modes (p, []p, []p & p,
etc.)
2)
You consider yourself actually infinite, then you can build a physics
containing actual infinite element, and you can hope to solve the
reference problem by a stronger identity mind-brain, or consciousness-
matter than what is permitted with the digital indexical hypothesis.
You will need higher infinities, like in extension of set theories.
Now, this "solution" comes back to the aristotelian mind-body, which
computationalism avoids (albeit a bit radically, but not that much
when you compare to Everett).
(So it is a bit like making things more complex to avoid the
computationalist solution/consequences).
In this regard, your analogy to the economy is indeed inapt,
because it begs
the very question at issue. Notions such as the economy are, after
all,
'emergent' only under some interpretation. Absent such
interpretation (which
is the very point in question) there would be (as you acknowledge)
no need
to invoke such notions in any reductive account.
Perhaps we could say that consciousness "emerges" as such under its
own interpretation, creating as it were its own observer.
OK.
But if it does so in virtue of computer science, then its own self-
observation diffracts so much (by the FPI) that we must understand
how the white rabbits, white noise, infinite aberrant dreams, get
eliminated in some way.
If arithmetic does not justify an internal quantization, allowing
subtraction in the computation of the measure, then computationalism
is false, and we can proclaim having an experimental evidence that
matter is primary, (or, to be complete, ... or that we are in a
simulation (being purposefully failed by our descendants or some
aliens).
But the classical propositional physical logics (S4Grz1, Z1*, X1*)
does provide quantizations, which up to now are not contradicted by
the known quantum logics.
Bruno
--
Stathis Papaioannou
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