On 28 May 2017, at 00:28, David Nyman wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Nyman <da...@davidnyman.com>
Date: 27 May 2017 at 22:43
Subject: Re: Answers to David 4
To: meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net>
On 27 May 2017 9:19 p.m., "Brent Meeker" <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
On 5/27/2017 5:36 AM, David Nyman wrote:
It might. But ISTM that the entire project of explanation itself
entails at least a hesitation before assigning anything to the
category of 'brute fact'. Bruno sometimes likes to metaphorise
whatever we accept without explanation as God, or at least as an
aspect of a generalised notion of theology (as indeed did Einstein,
leading to not dissimilar misunderstandings in his case). So on that
basis you are suggesting that we accept a physical universe
(assuming that this is what you mean by reality being what it is)
exclusively in that role. Trouble is, computationalism as a theory
of mind closes that option.
That's not true. It hides a lot of assumptions about the
reification of arithmetic and the UD and modal logic.
I did not got Brent's mail, but I saw he PM you.
Well, I have to say from my perspective this debate over reification
is getting a mite tedious. I really don't understand why you think
that the assumption of arithmetic as an explanatory ontology is any
more a 'reification' than that of any other mathematical schema.
They're all essentially inferences to an explanation of the
observables. I'd hoped my recent posts might possibly take the
conversation in a more interesting direction.
I don't know whay Brent comes back on this. We assume only RA. Then
the UD, and the modal logics are entirely derived from RA, and the
definition of observers (PA) which provably exists in RA.
There is no reification at all. But the MGA shows that in physics,
matter is reifed when invoked to make some computations more "real"
than other.
Bruno
Part of the problem in these discussions is that they started with
a definition of computationalism = "consciousness arises when some
class of computations is implemented"
I think part of your difficulty is encapsulated by the vocabulary
you adopt here. ISTM you have a tendency to talk about consciousness
in implicitly ontological terms, for example as something that
"arises". For me what's interesting is the relinquishing of such
ineffectual notions in exchange for the analysis of the
characteristic modes of a reflexive epistemology. It opens up a
quite novel conceptual space for thinking about perception. Instead
of worrying about what sort of thing or process it might be, we can
think rather in terms of what is perceptible and what isn't, what is
doubtable and what isn't, what is communicable and what isn't and so
forth. Then we may begin to discern how such aspects might represent
effective points of contact with the specifics of what we ordinarily
call consciousness and consequently also what the natural limits of
any such representation might be. By conceiving the thing in this
way we also 'vaccinate' it against any reduction in ontological terms.
but then it starts to be used to encompass Bruno's whole theology as
though we accept not only the premise but also his whole argument.
We're not required to accept it, only to adopt it provisionally. But
seriously. In point of fact though, speculative though it may be, in
the last analysis it's a theory of everything or else a theory of
nothing (pace Dr Standish). Sometimes you have to push a thing to
the limit to see what it's really about.
David
Brent
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