[Wittrs] Re: Bogus Claim 3: Validity Issues: Conjunction or Equivocation
- From: Justintruth <truth.justin@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2010 18:14:21 -0700 (PDT)
>RUNNING PROGRAMS are still abstract unless they are spelled out in 1st order
>brute causal terms. Programs are not so spelled out and it is in virtue of
>this that they have the power to simulate as well as they do.
I think that RUNNING PROGRAMS need not be abstract unless there is
some meaning we associate with the states of the machine as it
executes. I think that some programs can have no such interpretable
states. Even the interpretation of states as "ones and zeros" is not
native to executing programs. I think once the program is executing it
can be described in the 1st order brute causal terms of physics and
perhaps sometimes that is the only way it can be described.
I think that some RUNNING PROGRAMS can be abstract provided we attach
a semantics to their states and thus form from them a syntax.
We cannot do this arbitrarily. If I have a simulation of a hydrogen
bomb I must have some aspect of the computer correspond to some aspect
of the explosion or I can't make it work.
I may also use the computer to process symbols in another syntax in
which case the interpretation of the syntax of the states in the
machine are symbols in another syntax which can in turn be further
interpreted. Such a machine is the original CRA which processed
"squiggles" which could be interpreted as Chinese symbols and which
then in turn could be read to understand the meaning of the statements
they represent.
If a program can directly observe and record some aspect of an actual
hydrogen bomb explosion then the recording in its data can be regarded
(I think... not sure) as a syntax whose semantics is... again not
sure... the hydrogen bomb? Or is it the meaning of that hydrogen bomb?
In any case I can interpret the syntax so recorded with the semantics
of a hydrogen bomb. (This means that it may be possible to read a
brain that is not my own once I knows the interpretation of its
states.)
If a first person semantics were created by such a syntax. I could
erroneously call the first person semantics so created an "illusion"
or "trick" played by the states.
If we provided another syntax for the same semantics, say some valves
and pipes with water flowing, then again I can identify the syntax so
recorded with the semantics of a hydrogen bomb (or its meaning).
Again a first person semantics of a hydrogen bomb could also be caused
by such a syntax.
However, whether either syntax causes a first person semantics and not
just a third person semantics is a question of fact and it might be
true that neither, one or the other, or both does. It cannot be either
established or disallowed by the fact that the states do in fact
constitute a syntax. If a zombie and a person saw a bomb go off I
could read either brain provided I knew how to correlate their state
with information about the bomb. Just because I could do that does not
mean that there is a first person present, but it also does not mean
one is absent.
In any case, if I were called on to be part of a machine to execute
the program by writing some numbers on paper etc perhaps, and there
was a first person semantics produced then that first person semantics
would not be experienced by me. That does not mean therefore that it
does not exist.
While I cannot deny that a first person semantics could be produced by
such a situation it seems that Ocham's razor would prevent me from
assuming it did without some other facts. In the case of us humans I
think the other facts are produced by looking in the mirror and at
others. That conclusion remains tentative unless a way was created to
do something like the Vulcan mind meld. However, with my body being so
typical, and the expressions of the people I know being so
understandable, the simplest explanation is that you are not all
Zombies.
As the similarity between my physiology and some other physiology
degrades on a continuum I would be less and less justified in saying
that a first person exists.
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