On 10 Apr 2017, at 04:07, John Clark wrote:
Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> Not even Smullyan's "The Tao is Silent"?.
Religion requires dogma about the nature of reality,
Let us avoid the term religion. better to use "theology", given that
religion is a more social thing than filed of study.
Theology, when done scientifically does not require dogma. Only
hypotheses, ways of reasoning and verification means.
and Smullyan didn't have any of that and neither does Taoism and
neither do I.
It depends when. Taoism has undergo the same fate of christianism at
some period of time in china. taoism has been mixed with the state,
and imposed with terrorist technic. But of course, you can argue that
this was a perversion of Taoism. Then I will tell you the same for any
theories when perverted by authoritative argument by people searching
power instead of knowlegde.
Instead Taoism and Smullyan taught that that certain mental
exercises can sometimes make some people happier, and they are
unlikely to make them unhappier. I think that could very well be
true. And Smullyan never said mystical experiences couldn't happen
but he did say talking about them is pointless. Iv'e never had a
mystical experience but if I ever do I intend to keep my mouth shut
about it.
The universal machine says the same.
Perhaps by direct experience I have found something new about the
world but direct experience can not be communicated, although that
hasn't stopped self described mystics from writing millions of words
of turgid prose in a attempt to do just that. And there is another
possibility, perhaps I didn't have a mystical experience at all,
maybe I just had indigestion.
As Ebenezer Scrooge said to the ghost in A Christmas Carol:
“You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb
of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy
than of grave about you"
> and I urge you to read the book by Daniel J. Cohen
Is that the book you recommended before, the book that can perform
calculations?
>> a mind needs a brain.
> It needs an infinity of computations.
There is no evidence a mind needs a infinity of calculations,
Indeed. but a brain, or any piece of matter do.
and we know for a fact computers can only perform a finite number of
calculations and yet they are starting to behave as if they had a
mind.
Yes, but they are material, and matter---more exactly matter
appearance, needs the many computations, and today physics almost make
them palatable through their statistical interferences.
>The brain is only a local map of the locally accessible
computational continuation.
If the brain is only the map and mind is the territory then changing
the map won't change the territory, but changing the brain does
change the mind. So something does not compute.
Right. Matter does not compute.
>> And a brain needs matter that obeys the laws of physics.
> This explanation becomes circular, if invoked in the course of
solving the mind-body problem.
A mind needs calculations, calculations been a brain,
No. calculations exists in arithmetic. You need only assume predicate
calculus, 0≠s(x), etc.
a brain needs matter that obeys the laws of physics, and matter that
obeys the laws of physics does NOT need a mind. What's circular
about that?
It is just incoherent with respect of Mechanism.
> To use observation as a criterion of truth is the "aristotelian
act of faith".
Screw Aristotle, his contempt for observation stopped science from
advancing for 2000 years!
Many will disagree. You have forget that science progress when people
make mistaken, but clear, theory, which is what Aristotle did,
assuming computationalism.
> this simply stop to work (but you need to get quite beyond step 3
to appreciate this,
Step 3 of what?
You dod suffer from amnesia. That explains a lot.
it's certainly not a proof, not only did it fail to prove anything I
don't think you had a clear vision of what you were even trying to
prove.
as hominem.
> The observation is quite important, and can make some theory quite
unplausible, but it is not the criterion of truth, which for a
platonist
Screw Plato.
> I am not sure if your theory (in metaphysics) is testable.
Change the brain and the mind changes. Change the mind and the
brain chances. It's testable and it passes the test. The mind body
problem is no deeper than the difference between "is" and "does".
That is a race car, what that does is go fast. That is a brain, what
it does is mind.
> you assume a physical universe.
I assume that "physical" means stuff that continues to exist even if
nobody believes in it. I am certain the moon exists even if nobody
is looking at it, but I am far less certain pi would exist if there
were no intelligent beings to think about it, and Turing's non-
computable numbers (the vast majority of the Real numbers) I find
even more problematic.
That is the Aristotelian theology, shown incompatible with Mechanism.
The moon might be there when no human look at it, but even in that
case, the moon is an appearance from internal view in arithmetic. It
can exist in some modal sense, but it does not exist in the admitted
starting ontology. It is a first person plural construct, as should be
atoms and any physical "stuff". Pi can be said to exist, as its
defining relations can be proved in elementary arithmetic (and more
importantly: are true). The set of all reals is indeed more
problematic, and I prefer to not rely on it.
Bruno
John K Clark
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
