[FRIAM] WAS: P Zombie Couches

[Eric Charles]

Oooooh, I like the potential connection with Cantor. I hadn't thought of it
that way before!

I think the interesting distinction there is that Cantor offered a proof
that there was always at least one more number than could be counted.
Mathematicians went nuts over it (I knew it was bad, but not that bad), but
ultimately there was something to latch onto and figure out if Cantor was
correct. In this case it is simply a blind assertion that no matter how
much physicalism can explain there will always be more. You get people to
agree with that blind confusion through some slick linguistic trickery, but
it's never more than that.

At least, that's my initial reaction to the comparison.


On Sun, Nov 21, 2021 at 4:20 AM Jon Zingale <jonzingale at gmail.com> wrote:

> That water is H20 gets at my confusion. While this is a classic example
> of an a posteriori truth, the stability of truths like these form
> categories that couldn't have been any other way. I feel that your
> follow up questions get at this nicely:
>
> """
> Would we say something like: Sure, but then it wouldn't be "water"
>
> Or would we say something like: Yes, that could definitely be a possible
> world, but their "water" wouldn't be exactly the same as our water.
> """
>
> That Thompson's (and I suspect your) flavor of Peircean logic derives
> from an interest in how we get robust generals from sampling messy
> particulars, I interpret his (and possibly your) program (from within
> the framework of Kripke semantics) as an attempt to understand when a
> posteriori truths "lift" to reveal what are effectively a priori truths.
>
> """
> There might be a conversation something like it that would have a bit of
> depth, but instead it is almost entirely linguistic trickery masquerading
> as deep thoughts.
> """
>
> I understand that your post was intended to ridicule an argument, that
> in all likelihood is faux deep[围棋], but elements of the "linguistic
> trickery" reminds me (and may be modeled upon) of Cantor's famous
> argument[א]. Cantor begins his argument by attempting to put the Real
> numbers in correspondence with the Natural numbers (effectively naming
> each real number with some integer) only to show that there is always
> one more real that could not be named. In the p-zombie argument, one is
> *supposed to conclude* that there must always be one more quality of
> consciousness that is not accounted for by naming with the material
> world, and thus more than physicalism is needed to account for the world.
> Whatever the p-zombie argument's final status be, my post was an attempt
> to assess the risk while responding thoughtfully to your entertaining
> and generous offering.
>
> [围棋] To take the argument seriously is to see it as a kind of hanami ko,
> but it may, in fact, be something more akin to throwing away stones in
> what is clearly another's territory. On the other hand, as the proverb
> goes, "Stones are never truly dead until they're removed from the board".
>
> [א] Cantor, probably the greatest of all metaphysician mathematicians ;)
> His Wikipedia article documents the hostility and ridicule that he and
> his transfinite numbers received:
>
> """
> Cantor's theory of transfinite numbers was originally regarded as so
> counter-intuitive – even shocking – that it encountered resistance from
> mathematical contemporaries (...) Cantor, a devout Lutheran Christian,
> believed the theory had been communicated to him by God. Some Christian
> theologians (particularly neo-Scholastics) saw Cantor's work as a
> challenge to the uniqueness of the absolute infinity in the nature
> of God – on one occasion equating the theory of transfinite numbers
> with pantheism – a proposition that Cantor vigorously rejected.
>
> The objections to Cantor's work were occasionally fierce: Leopold
> Kronecker's public opposition and personal attacks included describing
> Cantor as a "scientific charlatan", a "renegade" and a "corrupter of
> youth". Kronecker objected to Cantor's proofs that the algebraic numbers
> are countable, and that the transcendental numbers are uncountable,
> results now included in a standard mathematics curriculum. Writing
> decades after Cantor's death, Wittgenstein lamented that mathematics is
> "ridden through and through with the pernicious idioms of set theory",
> which he dismissed as "utter nonsense" that is "laughable" and "wrong".
> """
>
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