On 5/3/2017 12:54 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2017-05-03 21:46 GMT+02:00 Brent Meeker <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>>:
On 5/3/2017 9:47 AM, David Nyman wrote:
On 2 May 2017 11:18 p.m., "Brent Meeker" <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 5/2/2017 2:29 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 2 May 2017 9:57 p.m., "Brent Meeker"
<meeke...@verizon.net <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 5/2/2017 1:09 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 2 May 2017 7:21 p.m., "Brent Meeker"
<meeke...@verizon.net <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 5/2/2017 1:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Your answer seems to be that physics can be an
illusion of digital thought, therefore primary
physics is otiose. But thought can't be a
consequence of physics because....well you just
don't see how it could be.
Not at all. It cannot be because you need to give
a role to the primary matter which is not emulable
by the UD, nor FPI-recoverable.
The obvious "role" is that some things exist and
some don't. I don't know anyone who calls this
"primary matter", but it's what is not UD emulable.
But what are your grounds for discriminating which
things exist and which don't?
Empiricism.
That's a slogan not an explanation.
That's right - you asked for grounds.
I think you could be more helpful than this.
If anything, it strikes me that the history of human
enquiry is rather conducive to the view that whatever
limits we try to impose on "what exists" are in all
likelihood destined soon to be surpassed.
Actually it has been the reverse. Relativity places a
limit on speed, quantum mechanics places a limit on
measurements, Goedel found a limit on proofs. Laplace
was the last physicist who thought we could predict
everything. We haven't been the center of the universe
for a long time.
Very selective. What about the string landscape, eternal
inflation or for that matter the CUH? Maybe you'll say that
these are as yet unproven hypotheses, but are you willing to
say in principle​ they're barking up the wrong tree?
Except for eternal inflation, they aren't even developed
enough to be hypotheses. I'm willing to bet that they will
imply limits on what exists. Even CUH does that, it implies
real numbers and theories that assume them don't exist.
Sure, but my point is that all these ideas lead to a broader
ontology than you seemed to be suggesting: i.e the theoretical
recipe for what exists and what doesn't extends beyond the
physics we observe locally. But even comp doesn't claim that
*everything* exists. In fact its ontology is extremely restrictive.
In any case, I still don't see that you've made a
convincing argument for your "groundless" circular
explanations.
It's not an argument - it's an observation that that's
the way explanations work.
Not all explanations. And in particular not ontological ones.
You mean the fundamental elements of a theory - whose
existence doesn't have an explanation. My idea of an
explanation is one that brings understanding - not just stops
explaining.
So is mine. So is Bruno's. What's your point?
An explanation that reaches understanding must end with an
ontology that is already understood. Bruno accepts this. He
thinks we understand Peano arithmetic. I think we only understand
it because we refer it to experience with objects. But the
broader point is that you can't just pick some theory with an
ontology and say this theory explains things. The explanation is
no good unless you already understand the theory's ontology. So
explanations of different things bottom out on different
ontologies for different people. This is why supernatural agents
were popular explanations up until a few hundred years ago; agents
are intuitively understood by people because, as social animals,
evolution provided us with intuitions about other people. So it
was satisfying to explain a storm as the cloud-god was angry.
Now, some physicists would say it is explained by the
Navier-Stokes equation - but that wouldn't really be right
either. In fact NOAA explains it with some simplified N-S plus
some heuristics.
For example, based on your remarks above, you
implicitly exclude "non physical" computations from
your ontology (not forgetting what you said about
ontology being theory dependent).
Not at all. I've never tried to make my "virtuous
circle of explanation" exhaustive. I generally include
"mathematics" in it, but just as indicator for all kinds
of abstract, symbolic based systems.
A theory explicitly based on a computational ontology
includes both physical and non physical. Of course you
could go on to say that a physical computer could
compute anything computable; but in that case we find
ourselves at step 7 of the UDA and the putative
physical machine then takes on the aspect of Bruno's
invisible horses. Unless you want to say that the comp
derivation of physics is thereby merely contingently
impossible.
My reservation about that argument is Bruno argues as if
all the UD has to do is reach some state and it will
have instantiated his (or someone's) consciousness. But
then I ask myself, "Consciousness of what?" He thinks
the external world is a kind of shared illusion of an
equivalence class of "consciousness" states. This is
like the Boltzmann brain paradox without the solipism.
The reasonable way I can see such an equivalence class
having a non-zero measure is if the physics is computed
- not just the conscious perceptions of physics. Then
the physics and consciousness are not different
ontologically, they are just different ways of
organizing the states (like Bertrand Russell's neutral
monism).
Is this really different from what comp implies? Surely the
computation of the physics and its appearance are indeed two
different views of the same thing - 3p and 1p plural? As we
appeared to have agreed​ earlier, at the point where
physical computation and the substantive perception (aka
reality) with which it is entangled emerge in tandem,
virtuous explanatory equilibrium has been attained. But the
difference in views is the key. The former (aka 3p or in my
parlance the view from nowhere) is the ontology and the
latter the epistemology it implies.
But so far there is nothing in Bruno's theory that makes them
"the same thing" every 1p thread of experience could be
unrelated to every other - there would be no intersubjective
agreement (or it would be of measure zero). I think this is
what he calls "the white rabbit" problem.
But this doesn't answer my empirical tequila test.
Bruno replied that the (physical) tequila just
interfered with the (physical) perception. But in that
case the tequila would have no affect on mathematical
reasoning - but it does.
You lost me.
Have a few shots and then find the square root of 69696 in
your head. According to Bruno our physical being is only a
way of interacting with other physical things (like tequila),
but for knowledge and beliefs about numbers the physical is
otiose.
Nonsense. You appear not to grasp the point that if comp is
correct then the computational mechanisms dominating our
experience (including our experience of mathematics) must those
of the physics we typically observe.
Depends on what you mean by comp. You seem to engage in the same
equivocation as Bruno. On the one hand it means saying "yes" to
the doctor. On the other hand it means accepting his whole
argument from that purportedly proving that physics is otiose. So
then the argument refers to itself and says if physics is otiose
then the physics we observe must be that predicted by his theory.
That's not it.. the thing is if *mind* is a computational object, then
physics must be explained through computation, computations are not
physical object... If physicalness is primary, then there aren't any
computation, computations in a physically primary reality are only a
"human view" on what is really going on.
This an extreme reductionist view, i.e. if X is the fundamental ontology
then only X exists. But that leads to nonsense: "If the standard model
is fundamental ontology then football doesn't exist." And it has the
same affect of Bruno's theory: "If the basic ontology is computations
then neither physics nor football exist."
.. Again if in this setting and you believe that mind is a sort of
computation, imagine we capture your mind with a (though correct)
program... then we run it on a different hardware... will it be
conscious ? we run it 3x slower than real time ? still conscious ? 10x
slower ? ... 10x faster ? (assuming each time we fed it an "external"
virtual world inputs at the correct rate)
I have imagined that. It's part of Bruno's step 7 and 8. First, I
don't think it sufficient to "capture ones mind". I think to be
conscious also means to be able to act - but that's a quibble. The
basic point is that I think you would have to simulate a virtual world
in which Brent2.0 would be conscious. And that case you've not
eliminated physics, you've simulated it.
I think the questions I posed to David about Mars Rover design are the
interesting and important ones. A theory that can't discuss the
differences of consciousness between a jumping spider and Watson is not
in my view very interesting.
Brent
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