Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 09 Jun 2015, at 09:11, Bruce Kellett wrote:
Why not? If it can emulate a specific purpose Turning machine, it can
emulate a universal Turing machine. I think Putnam's argument for
unlimited pancomputationalism implies this.
I am not convince by that argument. Show me a rock program computing the
prime numbers.
Show me a Turing machine that can compute the prime numbers and I can
emulate that with a rock. For that matter, show me an arithmetical
computer in Platonia computing the prime numbers.....
......
much less give any useful results for physics.
No new one should be expected soon, but that was not the purpose at all.
You can't blame a coffee machine for not doing tea.
Well, if I drink only tea then I would consider a coffee machine totally
useless and discard it without further thought! So for comp!
You can do things with all the rigour you want, but if you can't
extract any useful results, you are wasting your time. Perhaps this is
the irreconcilable difference between the physicist and the
mathematician.
Yes, I am interested in a theory of "everything", which means to me
mainly a theory which does not eliminate consciousness. I saw that
physicists avoid the question, but a bridge is born between math and
cognitive science, thanks to theoretical computer science (a branch of
math).
I am not sure I see your point. Comp is not useless, comp is the actual
theory of the materialists, and I show that contrary to a widespread
belief: materialism and computationalism are incompatible (without
adding non-comp magic).
Comp is not presented as a solution, but as a problem. In the second
part, I show the propositional solution, but you need to understand the
problem before. Actually, I think that you have seen the problem, but
want to conclude to much quickly that comp is false. The math part shows
that this is premature, especially that QM confirms both the comp
many-worlds/dreams, but also the quantum tautologies (until now).
Comp does not confirm the many-worlds interpretation of QM. You appear
to want to draw this conclusion from FPI. But in a discussion with Liz a
while back, I challenged this interpretation of your teleportation
thought experiments leading to FPI. It was readily shown that such
thought experiments were completely orthogonal to quantum mechanics and
the MWI. Similarly for your attempt to bring quantum logic to your
cause. Quantum logic was devised by von Neumann in the context of the
collapse interpretation of QM, together with the use of projection
operators. In Everettian many-worlds interpretations, there are no
projection operators, and quantum logic does not have a footing. In
fact, it has been pointed out that there is no such thing as a
specifically "quantum" logic -- there is just ordinary predicate logic
and a theory in which some operators do not commute. When you can derive
the non-commutation of the position and momentum operators from comp, I
might be a little more impressed.
My feeling is that you are not interested in the mind-body problem, but
for some reason want to keep physics as *the* fundamental science. If
that is the case, you have to produce a non-comp theory of mind.
That is less difficult that you might think. Consciousness supervenes on
the physical brain, and was produced by evolution over the course of
time by completely natural processes. The details of the operation of
the brain, and its effect on consciousness, are the realm of study of
the neurosciences. Computer scientists only ever confuse themselves over
these quite simple matters.
Bruce
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