On 26 May 2017, at 03:26, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 26/05/2017 9:11 am, David Nyman wrote:
On 25 May 2017 23:18, "Brent Meeker" <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
I have told you my theory of virtuous circular explanations.
"Invoke" is a pejorative attribution. The physical universe is an
inference to explain appearances (and a very successful one at that).
Vocabulary. The point is, assuming mechanism (and please do tell me
if you're reasoning in a different theory), that the inference is
to a particular *selection* of computations from the computational
plenitude. And why is that? Because they 'explain' the appearances.
But do they really? Are those computations - in and of themselves -
really capable of 'explaining' why or how they, and no others, come
to be uniquely selected for our delectation? Are they really
capable of 'explaining' why or how those selfsame appearances come
to be present to us?
I think you and Brent are using different notions of "explanation".
As I understand your (David's) position, it is a notion of
"explanation" originating with Plato: Plato's theory of Forms
offered at the same time both a systematic explanation of things and
also a connected epistemology of explanation. (Summaries from
Jonathan Cohen in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy.) In other
words, the Platonic ideal is that "Ontology precedes epistemology",
to vary Brent's slogan. In the case of mechanism, the ontology is
the natural numbers (plus arithmetic) and for an explanation to be
acceptable, everything has to follow with the force of logical
necessity from this ontology.
As I understand Brent's position (and that is essentially the same
as my position), his concept of "explanation" follows the tradition
of British empirical philosophy, stemming from Bacon, through Hume,
to Russell and others. In this tradition, to explain an observed
characteristic is to show its relationship to a law in accordance
with which the characteristic occurs or can be made to occur, and
there is a hierarchy of such laws -- the more comprehensive laws are
deemed more probable. This leads to the dominant model for
explanation in the natural sciences, which requires the citation of
one or more laws which, when conjoined with the statement of
relevant facts, entail the occurrence of the phenomenon or
uniformity that is to be explained. This does not rely on any
assumed ontology; hence, "Epistemology precedes ontology".
Wherever we want to derive a technology from scientific knowledge,
we shall need to know what causes a desired effect. So we need to
distinguish between different levels of explanation, in that while,
for example, the disappearance of a patient's infection may be
causally explained by his antibiotic injection, the operation of
that causal process is in its turn to be explained by correlational
laws of biochemistry. Hence, the understanding of consciousness in
any effective way will be linked to the creation of effective AI.
This is the paradigm of current scientific practice. Sure, as Bruno
says, this stems ultimately from an Aristotelian approach to science
rather than the Platonic approach. But the history of Western
thought has shown the scientific, or Aristotelian, approach to have
been overwhelmingly more successful, both in developing technology
and in reaching understanding of the nature of reality.
Aristotle's Matter was a good simplifying hypothesis. I agree that it
has led to some success. But that does not make it true, and the price
of it has been the burying of many interesting problem (given away to
the clergy). Physicalism simply fail to explain the apparent existence
of the physical reality, and why it hurts. Computationalism does, but
with the price that a lot of work remains for all details. We are at
the beginning of the "reversal" only.
Bruno
Bruce
Or is this really just the latest case of "If I can't see it, it
doesn't exist?" Perhaps you will be content to say that whatever
those computations are capable of explaining sets the absolute
limit of what we can ask in explanation. But if that's the way it
is, I can't help being put in mind of that old huntsman John Peel,
who would assert, with a remarkable satisfaction in the virtue of
invincible ignorance, "What I don't know ain't knowledge."
David
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