> On 17 Jan 2018, at 23:10, David Nyman <da...@davidnyman.com> wrote:
> 
> On 17 January 2018 at 15:41, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be 
> <mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>> wrote:
> 
>> On 15 Jan 2018, at 16:43, David Nyman <da...@davidnyman.com 
>> <mailto:da...@davidnyman.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> On 15 January 2018 at 13:24, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be 
>> <mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>> wrote:
>> Hi David,
>> 
>> 
>> You raise interesting question, but they are not so easy to answer, and some 
>> of your precision prevent me to answer as they do not fit the precision made 
>> possible by computer science, or at least not yet.
>> 
<snip>
>>> 
>>> G* proves []p <-> ([]p & p)
>>> G does not prove []p <-> ([]p & p).
>>> 
>>> ​One might say that the machine itself (G) is both restricted to 
>>> 'knowledge' of what it is in the first place capable of believing and, by 
>>> the same token, incapable 'in person' of doubting.
>> 
>> Here I am not sure. Knowledge is given by ([]p &p, that is by S4Grz). G is 
>> involved only with the 3p-self, and G* is the the 3p-self seen by “god”. 
>> Only the 1p self is unable to doubt. G is the scientist, doubter, modest 
>> Löbian reasoner. But I can make sense, if this was the reason you put the 
>> “knowldedge” and “in person” in quote? Yes, that makes sense.
>> 
>> ​Yes, that's right. ​I wanted to reiterate the conjunction or intersection 
>> of (3p) belief and (1p) epistemic indubitability as the criterion of 
>> self-knowledge (aka introspection); therefore by extension, of 
>> consciousness. In my remarks to Brent, I described consciousness as the 
>> first-person apprehension of its own states by a computationally-defined 
>> 'mental agent', implying epistemic truths ​*​about itself​*, and more 
>> broadly about the boundaries of its own physical and temporal situation​, 
>> such truths being ​​by the same token not directly communicable.
>> 
>> It's no simple matter to 'scale up' imaginatively, from inferences with 
>> respect to formal propositional logic, to the possible relation between 
>> brains, bodies and their generalised environments. The best I can do (as 
>> I've been suggesting to Brent) is the conception of a mental agent in terms 
>> of computational complexes, such that these complexes carry or track the 
>> relevant dispositions and relations that effectively construct the agent's 
>> 'physical constitution'. In turn such 'dispositional' computations, *at the 
>> relevant substitution level*, emulate propositional or intentional 
>> 'attitudes' (aka beliefs) whose epistemic entailments constitute a 
>> categorically distinct, first-personal knowledge, or conscious apprehension, 
>> of the agent's material, concrete or substantive 'world'.
>> 
>> It might seem puzzling (and indeed it should) why any such conjunction of 
>> physical action,
> 
> (Again, you say something more related to []p & <>t & p, than []p & p, but 
> that is OK (if not, I would not understand the mention of “physical” unless 
> you are already restricting the atomic proposition of the logic to the 
> semi-computable or semi-decidable (sigma_1) one.
> Sorry for such details.
> 
> 
>> which seems to proceed of its own accord and with its own 'causality', with 
>> what might therefore seem to  be merely 'epiphenomenal' or adventitious 
>> first-person knowledge, should be the case. Mere appeal to 'evolutionary' 
>> explanations won't really do, as on closer inspection such accounts rely on 
>> purely third-personal processual logic, not its putative first-personal 
>> counterpart.
> 
> OK. And I have said things going along this line. Yet, this might not be 
> entirely true. I do think that the richness of the human consciousness is 
> related to the fact that we share a very long (sheaf, "diffracted beam") of 
> computations. It is a long computation, and it is deep: it cannot be 
> compressed locally, which gives us the impression that there is some 
> origin/beginning of the human story. That is a 3p feature which add to the 
> first person impression.
> 
> ​I agree. I didn't elaborate in the interests of being short, Nevertheless, 
> the evolutionary 'selection' argument must, necessarily, rest ultimately on 
> extrinsic or 3p behaviour (again at the appropriate 'substitution' level).

Yes, the evolution theory is entirely based on (digital) mechanism, which is, 
like all scientific theories, a 3p theory. But there is a slight difficulty due 
to the fact that the “physical” will appear to be a 1p plural mode. Yet, it is 
locally (in each duplicated population of individuals) conceived as a 3p 
notion. In fact “3p-physicalness” is local 1p plural, even the quantum waves. 



> And on physical-reductionist assumptions, all such behaviour must necessarily 
> be a proxy for 'fundamental physical law'. Hence my movie/TV analogy was 
> intended to suggest that the existence of a consistent 'mental agency' 
> implies the 'epistemic selection' of an (at least) equally consistent and 
> tightly-constrained 'physical' constitution, depending in turn on the 
> (undoubtedly long and deep) evolution of a more generalised environment, 
> based on that foundational 'physical lawfulness’.

OK.


> 
> This would be the highly non-compressible story both of how the TV and its 
> viewer came to exist 'physically' and how the viewer came to be experiencing 
> a movie by means of the complex epistemic relation between its brain and the 
> TV. For brevity, one can condense this into a purely 3p story of an 
> evolutionary process that comes about in precisely this way,

Yes. I express myself often like that, because the 1p plural could be 
pedagogically confusing if introduced too much early.




> but as Tallis crucially points out, we must not take our *experiencing* of 
> 'precisely this way' for granted, as experience, or appearance, is not a 3p 
> category. Hence in a (logical) sense, the epistemic 'selection' of its own 
> physical *appearance* would have been a necessary supplementary (1p) 
> assumption even in the case that (assuming comp, counterfactually) mental 
> agency could have been be shown to supervene uniquely on some 'pre-ordained', 
> non-quantised 3p physics.

Yes, and that can be approximated by lowering the level, but there are no 
evidence that this is the case, and it changes nothing for the conceptual 
reversal. I think we agree.

Bruno




> 
> David
> 
>  
> It is also what we evade from when we do a “mystical experience”, I suspect 
> (with the amazing feeling that this leads to more consciousness, where we 
> would expect having less consciousness. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> Well again, it can be conceived as a reversal of sorts. As a simple analogy, 
>> when watching a movie on a TV, it would seem rather empty to think of the 
>> point of 'physical evolution' up to that juncture as being merely to ensure 
>> the geographical localisation of this particular 'hardware device', tout 
>> court. Rather it is one's indubitable experience of the movie that might 
>> more judiciously be seen as in a sense 'selecting' the apparent history of 
>> physical evolution that ultimately led to the movie's *being able to be 
>> experienced* in this way.
> 
> Right. 
> 
> 
> 
>> Always admitting of course that the 'materials' available for such selection 
>> (aka the relevant theoretical entities and relations) are adequate to the 
>> explanatory task. It is significant that this jibes more and more with 
>> explanatory trends in both cosmology and micro-physical theory, as must 
>> indeed be the case if comp is to be anywhere near correct.
> 
> Yes.
> 
> 
>> 
>> What's distinctive about the comp theoretical approach is that (in 
>> consequence of assuming CTM) it is forced to proceed from the elements of 
>> what might be described as a language, or calculus, of *thought*. Hence 
>> information and computation are natural derivatives of such a calculus, 
>> leading to the epistemic *appearance* of matter as definitional of the 
>> 'world' of mental agents.
> 
> 
> Yes. All universal numbers have a physics, and it is the same for all 
> machine/number, unless they get trapped in a fake simulated world, itself 
> needing the “real” physical stuff (which here is the one emerging from all 
> computation). That is why we can test “comp OR fake simulation”. But “fake” 
> computation are terribly costly (in the core machine physics) which is why 
> “fake simulation” is not much plausible for long period (in the UD number of 
> steps sense).
> 
> 
> 
>> Thus it escapes Tallis's criticism of the merely opportunistic projection of 
>> the notion of information onto a primitively material description.
> 
> OK.
> 
> 
>> In other words, as Tallis and many others have pointed out in their critique 
>> of a dogmatic materialism, in the final analysis it is *experience itself* 
>> that begs for explanation, as it is the fons et origo of all our further 
>> speculations about the possible nature of 'reality'. That the convenience of 
>> omitting this foundational truth in the physical analysis of appearance 
>> leads some actually to deny its existence is curious indeed, but not beyond 
>> comprehension, given the extraordinary capacity of the human mind for 
>> cognitive dissonance, perhaps especially in the face of an apparently 
>> overwhelming, though ultimately inadequate, explanatory success. Incoherent 
>> as it may be, such denial nonetheless must and can be met and challenged.
> 
> 
> Yes. Unfortunately, deniers rarely try to doubt what they deny. And the more 
> the lie is big, the more people like it. Hitler said that, and the 
> scientologists have exploit this quasi-implicitly. Truth seems what interest 
> people the less (in metaphysics).
> 
> Now, we must show some indulgence, because the brain has been selected to 
> survive, and not to search the truth, which might even be not good with 
> respect to the goal of surviving, like often with metaphysics and theology. 
> Mechanism, at some point, seems to rebels against nature’s authoritative 
> arguments. But that was the insight of Plato and the beginning of science: 
> doubting up to being skeptical of our sensical record. That is what the dream 
> argument is all about. All brains works through some form of censorship, and 
> when decision must be made, filtering information is a good thing. There is a 
> logical conflict between biology and theology, at some point, and it reflects 
> the general conflicts between the points of view. I often describe the three 
> main hypostases in the Plotinus order
> 
> p
> []p
> []p & p
> 
> But in “real life”, everything begin with p, then []p & p, which is the 
> terrible child who confuses in fact []p and  p, and is somehow solipsistic. 
> Then, civilisation/adulthood leads to separate []p & p, and get the 
> reasonable scientist []p, but then the separation can lead to the elimination 
> of “p” and of “[]p, leading to scientism ...
> 
>> 
>>> So, *if I am a machine*, that is my situation. The machine's so-called 
>>> guardian angel (G*) inspects G's self-referential structure: 'as if I am 
>>> *that* machine', in effect. This permits G* effectively to prove that the 
>>> indubitability of p, given []p, establishes a categorical (or 
>>> point-of-view) distinction between G's explicit recapitulation of belief 
>>> (3p) and its implicit knowledge (1p).
>> 
>> OK.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> Hence knowledge makes its implicit appearance as what cannot personally be 
>>> coherently doubted, or true, justified belief.
>> 
>> Perfect :)
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> Of course one must add the caveat that such truth or indubitability does 
>>> not automatically lend credence to any subsequent inference made on that 
>>> basis, which is in accord also with an evolutionary account of the 
>>> 'effectiveness' of consciousness as the sentient agent's 'working model' of 
>>> its more generalised environment. At any rate, it would tend to lend weight 
>>> to the notion that 'believing is seeing’.
>> 
>> Yes, and that is a typical “lie” by nature, to make us survive. If you see a 
>> predator, you better believe in it, even in dreams.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> A purely material analysis, lacking the 1p logic of self-reference, is of 
>>> course forced to ignore or deny any such point-of-view or categorical 
>>> distinction, although it is all too frequently (though tacitly) smuggled in 
>>> with brazen metaphysical larceny.
>>> ​
>> 
>> That is better done … after dinner, when we have the luxury of taking some 
>> time in metaphysics. Or when you are in the mouth of the predator ...
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> That is eventually a result of the illusion of personal identity. An 
>>>> understanding of this leads to the idea that the soul is unique set 
>>>> universal, and that a brain is a machine hiding that fact, for the purpose 
>>>> of making particular life sense full. Here we see how theology, when done 
>>>> on Earth, needs some secrecy, to avoid the clash between life and 
>>>> afterlife. The math (the difference between G and G*, Z1 and Z1*, etc.) 
>>>> delineate this, and shows the “danger” of that clash, and the importance 
>>>> of being modest in metaphysics.
>>>> 
>>>> ​Yes indeed. As an aside, ​I have been thinking recently about the 
>>>> ​'​reversal​'​. In particular, about the role of physical appearance in 
>>>> ​manifesting what is ultimately to be interpreted in terms of information 
>>>> /​ ​computation​.  And it really is a reversal, because in 'material 
>>>> reality', physical appearance manifests always in behaviour,
>>> 
>>> Absolutely. So you understand that there is just no evidence at all for a 
>>> physical universe being ontologically primary. 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> the mathematics of which we can only infer, not observe (and which for 
>>>> many is indeed merely just that - an inference or invention). Hence, what 
>>>> we loosely refer to as 'physical' information or computation is, in the 
>>>> forms directly available to us, always 'cashed out' in behavior that 
>>>> ultimately reduces to bottom-up physical machine processes relying 
>>>> exclusively on physical 'law'. 
>>>> 
>>>> The evolution of physical states, in this way of thinking, does not 
>>>> ultimately depend, in any fundamental causal sense, upon supernumerary 
>>>> computational or informational concepts, above and beyond the constraints 
>>>> of the putatively primitive laws of physics. But after the reversal, the 
>>>> 'machines' of physical appearance are now to be understood in terms of the 
>>>> systematic, epistemic or phenomenal manifestations of fundamental elements 
>>>> of information / computation, themselves now formally reducible to an 
>>>> ontology of basic arithmetical relations.
>>> 
>>> OK.
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> I recently read an interesting analysis of related ideas by Raymond 
>>>> Tallis, himself a neuroscientist who can be quite incisive in these 
>>>> matters, despite his lack of insight into the possible consequences of 
>>>> CTM. Below is a relevant excerpt - the article as a whole is also worth 
>>>> reading. Here, he is talking about the problem of "appearance" and the 
>>>> notion of emergence, under the assumption of materialism:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> "This lack of appearance to mass-energy may still seem counterintuitive, 
>>>> but it will become clearer when we examine a well-known defense, again 
>>>> made by John Searle, of the theory that mind and brain are identical — or 
>>>> specifically, that experiences can be found in neural impulses because 
>>>> they are the same thing. In his 1983 book Intentionality 
>>>> <https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521273021?tag=the-new-atlantis-20>, Searle — 
>>>> who, as already noted, is committed to a neural account of consciousness — 
>>>> addresses the most obvious problem associated with the claim that 
>>>> experiences are identical with neural activity: experiences are nothing 
>>>> like neural activity, and the least one might expect of something is that 
>>>> it should be like itself.
>>>> 
>>>> Searle denies that this is a problem by arguing that neural activity and 
>>>> experiences are different aspects of the same stuff; more precisely, that 
>>>> they are the same stuff seen at “different levels.” The immediate problem 
>>>> with this claim is in knowing what it means. Clearly, neural activity and 
>>>> experiences are not two aspects of the same thing in the way that the 
>>>> front and back of a house are two aspects of the same house. Searle tries 
>>>> to clarify what he means using an analogy: experience is related to neural 
>>>> activity, he says, as “liquid properties of water” are related to “the 
>>>> behavior of the individual molecules” of H2O. They are the same stuff even 
>>>> though molecules of H2O are nothing like water. Water is wet, he argues, 
>>>> while individual molecules are not.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Of course, this can only lead to a confusion between 3p sharable belief, 
>>> and private knowledge. That works, like I said, for the usual physical 
>>> explanation of heat, but does not work for the 1p/3p relationship. 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> Wetness is the one specific “liquid” property of water he cites at the 
>>>> outset, and the only others he mentions are that “it pours, you can drink 
>>>> it, you can wash in it, etc.” Because of this, it may seem at first that 
>>>> all Searle has accomplished is isolating the experiential qualities of 
>>>> water from the non-experiential. That is, one interpretation of Searle’s 
>>>> supposed explanation is that neural activity is related to experience in 
>>>> the same way water is related to experiences of water. This explanation, 
>>>> of course, is completely inadequate, because it simply sets us at a 
>>>> further regress from the answer.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Yes. And if we stop the regression, we will have to identify a 1p thing 
>>> with a 3p thing, which we can’t, unless we throw out the CTM, which 
>>> actually is what Searle is doing explicitly. So he is coherent with the 
>>> consequence of comp, but he opts for materialism.
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> But it turns out that this interpretation of Searle’s argument is the 
>>>> charitable one. We can see why in a section where Searle responds to this 
>>>> famous argument made by Leibniz in The Monadology (1714):
>>>> 
>>>> And supposing that there were a machine so constructed as to think, feel, 
>>>> and have perception, we could conceive of it as enlarged and yet 
>>>> preserving the same proportions, so that we might enter it as into a mill. 
>>>> And this granted, we should only find on visiting it, pieces which push 
>>>> against another, but never anything by which to explain perception. This 
>>>> must be sought for, therefore, in the simple substance and not in the 
>>>> composite or in the machine.
>>>> 
>>>> Searle’s response:
>>>> 
>>>> An exactly parallel argument to Leibniz’s would be that the behavior of 
>>>> H2O molecules can never explain the liquidity of water, because if we 
>>>> entered into the system of molecules “as into a mill we should only find 
>>>> on visiting it pieces which push one against another, but never anything 
>>>> by which to explain” liquidity. But in both cases we would be looking at 
>>>> the system at the wrong level. The liquidity of water is not to be found 
>>>> at the level of the individual molecule, nor [is] the visual perception 
>>>> ... to be found at the level of the individual neuron or synapse.
>>>> 
>>>> The key to understanding Searle’s argument and its fatal flaw is in the 
>>>> words, “But in both cases we would be looking at the system.” It turns out 
>>>> that in this water/H2O analogy, it is not just the water but both levels 
>>>> that are already levels of experience or of observation. Searle in fact 
>>>> requires experience, observation, description — in short, consciousness — 
>>>> to generate the two levels of his water analogy, which are meant to 
>>>> sustain his argument that two stuffs can be the same stuff even if they do 
>>>> not look like one another. This supposed explanation evades the question 
>>>> of experience even more than does the first.
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Yes. At stage, he has become an implicit eliminativist. But by denying 
>>> Mechanism, he avoids the outright contradiction, by a sort of (irrational) 
>>> dualism. It is irrational, but still consistent, by adding infinities in 
>>> both mind and matter, so at to make them unique and identifiable (even if 
>>> mysteriously).
>>> 
>>> ​I'm not sure if he does that. He argues very clearly and explicitly in his 
>>> attempt to ​refute CTM, essentially by reaching the same conclusion as 
>>> Maudlin. But then finally all he offers as a substitute theory is that 'the 
>>> brain produces consciousness as the liver produces bile', which is the 
>>> claim that both 'consciousness' (in the sense he is articulating here) and 
>>> 'bile' are both essentially 3p things. So now by this token, ISTM, he is an 
>>> explicit eliminativist.
>> 
>> I agree.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> For what Searle is in effect arguing, though he does not seem to notice 
>>>> it, is that the relationship between neural activity and experience is 
>>>> like the relationship between two kinds of experience of the same stuff. 
>>>> And this is unsatisfactory because the problem he is supposedly solving is 
>>>> that neural impulses are not like experiences at all. (This rebuttal also 
>>>> applies — even more obviously, in fact — to another, very popular analogy, 
>>>> between dots of newsprint and a picture in the newspaper as neural 
>>>> activity and experiences. The dots/picture analogy also has the benefit of 
>>>> making clear another vulnerability of such analogies: the suggestion that 
>>>> neural activity is “micro” while experiences are “macro,” when it is not 
>>>> at all evident why that should be the case.)
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> OK.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> Some will object to this experiential characterization of the “levels” 
>>>> argument, and will formulate it instead in terms of levels of 
>>>> organizationor complexity: for example, the Earth’s climate and weather 
>>>> system is organized into many different levels of complexity, each 
>>>> exhibiting distinct behavior and distinct sorts of phenomena, from the 
>>>> interplays causing cycles of temperature over the centuries, down to the 
>>>> behavior of storms, down to the interactions of molecules. The implicit 
>>>> idea is that each level of complexity is governed by its own distinct set 
>>>> of laws. But one cannot take the distinction between these sets of laws to 
>>>> be inherent in the climate/weather system without in effect saying that 
>>>> when enough matter gets together in the same vicinity, it becomes another 
>>>> kind of matter which falls under the scope of another kind of law (at the 
>>>> same time that it remains the more basic kind of matter under the scope of 
>>>> the more basic kind of law). That flies in the face of reductive 
>>>> materialism — not to mention raises some very difficult questions about 
>>>> the identicality of these different kinds of matter. What is more, the 
>>>> “getting together” that makes, say, a storm a whole made out of parts, is 
>>>> itself description-dependent and hence perception-dependent. The very term 
>>>> “complexity” refers to a description-dependent property. A pebble may be 
>>>> seen as something very simple — one pebble — or something infinitely 
>>>> complex — a system of a trillion trillion sub-atomic particles interacting 
>>>> in such a way as to sustain a static equilibrium.
>>>> 
>>>> The persistent materialist may launch a final defense of the argument, to 
>>>> the effect that the particular descriptions of water and H2O molecules 
>>>> Searle mentions do not really depend on experience at all. He writes, “In 
>>>> its liquid state water is wet, it pours, you can drink it, you can wash in 
>>>> it, etc.... When we describe the stuff as liquid we are just describing 
>>>> those very molecules at a higher level of description than that of the 
>>>> individual molecule.” One might argue that these enumerated qualities of 
>>>> water are all physical facts, that they are true even when there is no one 
>>>> present to observe them. But to the extent that this reinterpretation of 
>>>> Searle’s argument helps it to hold water (so to speak), it is only due to 
>>>> the original argument’s imprecision. For if we take it to be truly 
>>>> independent of experience that water “is wet, it pours, you can drink it, 
>>>> you can wash in it,” then these facts are equally true of a collection of 
>>>> molecules of H2O, because of course the physical stuff known as water just 
>>>> is a collection of molecules of H2O. Water and H2O molecules, considered 
>>>> solely as physical things, are identical, and have all of the same 
>>>> properties. No appeal to “levels of description” should even be necessary. 
>>>> The reason it is necessary hinges on Searle’s description of one level as 
>>>> that of “the individual molecule.” But an individual molecule is not at 
>>>> all the same thing as water — which is a collection of many individual 
>>>> molecules — and so of course we should not expect the two to have the same 
>>>> properties. If we remove from the analogy the differing appearances to us 
>>>> of water and H2O molecules as sources of their un-likeness, then all 
>>>> Searle has demonstrated is how a thing can be unlike a part of itself, 
>>>> rather than unlike itself. This is trivially true, and does not apply in 
>>>> any event to the question at hand if neural impulses are taken to be 
>>>> identical to experiences.
>>>> 
>>>> Searle makes his position even more vulnerable by arguing that not only 
>>>> are neural activity and the experience of perception the same but that the 
>>>> former causes the latter just as water is “caused” by H2O. This is 
>>>> desperate stuff: one could hardly expect some thing A to cause some thing 
>>>> B with which it is identical, because nothing can cause itself. In any 
>>>> event, the bottom line is that the molecules of H2O and the wet stuff that 
>>>> is water are two appearances of the same thing — two conscious takes on 
>>>> the same stuff. They cannot be analogous to, respectively, that which 
>>>> supposedly causes conscious experiences (neural impulses) and conscious 
>>>> experiences themselves.​"
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> I think I agree.But I like Seattle, as he wrote very clearly, and makes 
>>> people aware of the mind-body problem. I prefer a clear wrongness to a 
>>> fuzzy truth!
>>> 
>>> ​I like Searle too. In fact it was his BBC Reith Lectures in 1984 that 
>>> reignited my interest in the mind-body problem. I found his Chinese Room 
>>> idea very persuasive at the time, but was nevertheless disappointed that 
>>> his alternative 'theory' seemed so unsatisfactory.​ 
>>> .
>>> Note that Dennett and Hofstadter answered rather well to Searle.
>>> 
>>> ​Yes, when I encountered Dennett and Hofstadter​ I started to revise​​ my 
>>> view of computationalism​. But it seemed to me ​nevertheless ​that their 
>>> account of computation ​seemed ​ultimately to eliminate both 'computation' 
>>> and 'consciousness' as being ultimately indistinguishable from the 
>>> ​primitively ​material processes that supposedly instantiated them​. And 
>>> then, following you, I got the intuition that the modal logics of 
>>> self-reference (or point-of-view) might allow us to formalise the notion of 
>>> a categorical first-person modality of incommunicable truth or 
>>> 'undoubtability' that could stand in the place of (1p) knowledge, as 
>>> distinct from (3p) information or action.​ Of course the consequence is to 
>>> stand materialism on its head, but - no matter ;-)
>> 
>> 
>> OK. The main problem of both Dennett and Hofstadter (belong the common lack 
>> of knowledge in mathematical logic) is that they keep up their faith in some 
>> form of physicalism (Dennett more explicitly so).
>> 
>> 
>>>  
>>> But Dennett eventually was forced to eliminate consciousness, or explain it 
>>> away, despite he would like to think the contrary. 
>>> 
>>> ​Well, he described himself once as a 'third-person absolutist’.
>> 
>> As should all scientist do, but not up to the point of doubting private 
>> consciousness, or forbidding the 3p theories *about* the 1p. We cannot 
>> identify a 1p thing with a 3p thing, but we *can* develop 3p-theories *on* 
>> the 1p things, and with some luck even get 3p testable consequences.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> But as Aristotle remarked in another context "No one would consider happy a 
>>> person living in that way – unless he were defending a thesis at all costs”.
>> 
>> Good point. Alas, Dennett seems more Aristotelian here than Aristotle! But 
>> Dennett is coherent. He want both materialism and mechanism, so he is 
>> logically obliged to eliminate the person.
>> 
>> ​Well, I think I'd prefer to say that he's logically obliged to reach an 
>> incoherent conclusion!
> 
> Which would be then interpretable as a reduction ad absurdum. But Dennett 
> want us to believe his incoherent inclusion, and that it explains 
> consciousness! That looks like restricting its audience to the zombies!
> 
> Bruno
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>> David​
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Bruno
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> David
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Here's a link to the original piece:
>>>> 
>>>> https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/what-neuroscience-cannot-tell-us-about-ourselves
>>>>  
>>>> <https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/what-neuroscience-cannot-tell-us-about-ourselves>
>>> I will take a look. 
>>> 
>>> Bruno
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> ​David​
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> ​
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Bruno
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> David
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Bruno
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> David 
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> -- 
>>>>> 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 
>>>>> <mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>.
>>>>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com 
>>>>> <mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>.
>>>>> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list 
>>>>> <https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list>.
>>>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout 
>>>>> <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> -- 
>>>>> 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 
>>>>> <mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>.
>>>>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com 
>>>>> <mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>.
>>>>> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list 
>>>>> <https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list>.
>>>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout 
>>>>> <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> -- 
>>>> 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 
>>>> <mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>.
>>>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com 
>>>> <mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>.
>>>> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list 
>>>> <https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list>.
>>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout 
>>>> <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> -- 
>>>> 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 
>>>> <mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>.
>>>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com 
>>>> <mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>.
>>>> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list 
>>>> <https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list>.
>>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout 
>>>> <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> 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 
>>> <mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>.
>>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com 
>>> <mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>.
>>> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list 
>>> <https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list>.
>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout 
>>> <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> 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 
>>> <mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>.
>>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com 
>>> <mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>.
>>> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list 
>>> <https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list>.
>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout 
>>> <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>.
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> 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 
>> <mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>.
>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com 
>> <mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>.
>> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list 
>> <https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list>.
>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout 
>> <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>.
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> 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 
>> <mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>.
>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com 
>> <mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>.
>> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list 
>> <https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list>.
>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout 
>> <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>.
> 
> 
> -- 
> 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 
> <mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com 
> <mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list 
> <https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list>.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout 
> <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>.
> 
> 
> -- 
> 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 
> <mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>.
> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com 
> <mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list 
> <https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list>.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout 
> <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>.

-- 
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.

Reply via email to