[FRIAM] WAS; WAS: P Zombie Couches

Sun Nov 21 14:19:08 EST 2021

I apologize for repeatedly bending this thread, but it keeps making me think of stuff which to me is central but to the rest of you will probably be tangential.  Take, for instance, 

no matter how much physicalism can explain there will always be more.

Now physicalism is a flavor of materialism and materialism is a monism.  To my way of thinking, every monism is the same or it is corrupt (i.e., a covert dualism).  So, if you believe that the world is composed of only one stuff, it makes no difference what that stuff is.  Anytime you declare it to be a kind of stuff you invite the inference that there are other kinds of stuff, and so become at least a dualist and at worst a pluralist.  Agreed?  But imagination does not afford a conversation with out nouns, so every monism is corrupt in sofar as it trades on the intuitions generated by its name.  My solution to that problem is to call my monism an “experience” monism and immediately follow with the frantic assertion that no experience is of anything other than another experience.  Anytime we talk of experiences “of the world” we are talking nonsense.  

So, for the quote above to make sense, it has to be spoken by a dualist, right?  In a monist metaphysics it’s analytically false.  

Ok, but I am not done here.  If monism is “correct” (and I am not sure what that means),  then we have the E uno pluris problem.  If all experiences are of other experiences, how on earth (you’ll pardon the expression) do we ever achieve the diversity of experience that we … um … experience.  

Well, it turns out that we have solved the the E uno pluris problem in another domain: embryology.  The problem for human embryology is how do we get from one cell type, the whaddyoucall it, the blastula?, for the 2-300 cell types that an adult human being possesses (not counting cancers, I would suppose).  The solution seems to be position in the fertilized egg, giving the egg a polarity from the start.  As the cells duplicate, we have the up cell and the down cell, the left cell and right cell, and the front cell and the back cell, and after a few divisions, the inside cells and the outside cells.  Each cell thus receives a diferent dosage of substances emitted by the others and these different dosages call upon different elements of the genome common to all of and so begins the differentiation into cell types.  

I imagine that a similar solution will be found to the E uno pluris problem in experience.  I assume – a bit more metaphysics, I am afraid – in for a dime, in for a dollar – that no two experienes can occur at the same time, or be precisely the same, (randomness and all) and so there must always be a first followed by a second that is different, and from that a third which is of the relation between the first and the second.  And since each second can be a first or third, and each third a first or second it it’s own right, we rapidly have a network of experiences each with a position relative to the first … um … first.  

This leads, I think, to the unstated question lurking here.  How is it that we can have a new experience … Is there, Horatio, anything new under the sun?  The answer is. Sort of.  Ever experienced a grey elephant?  Sure.  Ever experienced a pink flamingo? Yep.  If they are taken as being differentiated by color, then one can instantly experience a grey flamingo and a pink elephant.  These experiences come with an “imagined” disclaimer, but they are, after all, experiences.  Because of this disclaimer we would both recognise a pink elephant if we ever saw one and be shocked by it. 

Gotta stop. 

Nick Thompson

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Sunday, November 21, 2021 9:16 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] WAS: P Zombie Couches

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 <mailto: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".
"""

.-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn UTC-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam <http://bit.ly/virtualfriam> 
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives:
 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
 1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20211121/4bccb022/attachment.html>