On 4/25/2017 6:26 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Sun, 23 Apr 2017 at 5:58 am, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com
<mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com>> wrote:
On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com
<mailto:stath...@gmail.com>>wrote:
>>
Suppose just for
the sake of argument that non-physical computations did
not exist, how would our physical world be different?
There would be no difference. Therefore either
non-physical computations
do not exist or they do but are utterly unimportant,
rather like the l
uminiferous aether
.
>
This is equivalent to supposing that mathematical Platonism is
false.
Not exactly. Einstein didn't prove the
luminiferous aether
didn't exist in the Platonic sense, he just proved it was
unimportant. I suppose you could say in the vague way that Greek
philosophers love that correct mathematical calculations exist
independently of matter, but the trouble is incorrect mathematical
calculations exist too, and the only way to differentiate the
correct from the incorrect is by using matter that obeys the laws
of physics. And separating the stuff we want from the stuff we
don't is important, that's why we say Michelangelo's huge statue
of David is 500 years old and not far older even though in the
platonic sense David was inside a gigantic block of Carrara marble
for 100 million years and all
Michelangelo
did was unpack it, he just removed the parts of the block that
weren't David.
But if the statue were conscious and it's consciousness not dependent
on interaction with the outside world, it would still be conscious
inside the marble block.
Any physical object could be viewed as implementing a computation as
anything could be mapped onto of a Turing machine, but the "work" of
the computation would then be not in the physical object but in the
mapping, a Platonic object. The problem with this is that such an
implementation cannot interact with its environment, so you cannot, as
you say to Bruno, use it to make money hiring out your Platonic
computer. But what if we consider conscious computation that does not
interact with the environment of its implementation? Like the statue
in the block of marble, it would still be conscious even if no-one
outside could appreciate it or make money out of it.
I think this is specious. Even humans who, as in sensory deprivation
tanks, have no interaction with their environment tend to "lose
consciousness" in the sense of going into though loops. If a brain were
truly, completely isolated from it's environment I think it very
doubtful that it could remain conscious. And if, like David in the
block, had never experienced an environment it would be hard to say what
he could be conscious OF. The computation in our brains takes it's
"meaning" from our interactions with the world.
The idea that computationalism implies that consciousness would occur
independently of physical activity has been used as an argument
against computationalism, on the grounds that it is self-evidently
absurd. Hilary Putnam, originator of functionalism (of which
computationalism is a subset), later realised this implication and
changed his mind. John Searle and Tim Maudlin came to a similar
conclusion.
But an alternative is, as Bruno suggests, to keep computationalism and
accept that the apparent physical world is secondary, not primary. The
physical computers sold by Dell or IBM, along with everything else,
are made in a virtual reality running on a Platonic computer. While
this may at first glance seem absurd, there is no reason I can think
of why it cannot be true. And it has advantages in addition to
preserving computationalism, such as eliminating the need to explain
why there should be a physical universe at all.
But it doesn't eliminate the need to explain why there should be a
physical universe - rather it speculates that the UD will necessarily
produce not only thread of consciouness but also a physics for
consciousness to relate to. But that's why I thing the "reversal" is a
cheat. The physics is necessary to the consciousness - whatever is
"primary".
Brent
Bruno likes to talk about Robinson Arithmetic but as far as I can
tell even Raphael
Robinson
never claimed he had proven the existence of non-physical
calculations, instead he showed that if you do certain activities
in a certain sequence then you can produce correct mathematical
calculations without producing any incorrect mathematical
calculations. But without matter that obeys the laws of physics
you can't "do" anything, that's why a book by itself can't perform
a calculation or "do" anything else either, not even a book
on Robinson Arithmetic.
John K Clark
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