Re: Which Singularity Don't You Want?

Wayne Throop wrote:
> ::: Well, that's a bit disingenuous. The materialist claims to know
> ::: that it's physical, algorithmic, evolved, biochemical, contingent,
> ::: etc. etc. That's a fair bit, with lots of implications.
>
> :: More along the lines of, claims to know that it *could* be; that
> :: additional hypotheses aren't, yet, justified.
>
> : "Dr. Dave" <dtate@xxxxxxx>
> : In theory, that's true. In practice, there are no physicalists (at
> : least in my limited experience) who question any of those things; it's
> : a package deal. I suppose you could have a physicalist
> : (Presbyterian?) version of Intelligent Design, but I've never run
> : across it.
>
> I'm not sure how intelligent design fits into this;

As a hypothetical alternative to 'evolved' and 'contingent' on that
list up there. Physical, algorithmic, and biochemical are (so far as I
can tell) universal concomitants of physicalism. Especially the first
one :-).

> whether minds must
> have been designed is a bit different than whether they need ectoplasm
> (or whatever it is they need). But true enough, some physicalists are
> a bit too evangelical for my taste. And so perhaps I'm not really a
> born-again physicalist.

Well, it's part of the historical baggage. Physicalism is a reaction
against (for want of a better word) mysticism, and thus physicalists
tend to reject *all* mystical elements at once. So, no Designers, no
ghosts in the machine, no Grand Universal Purpose to it all.

> :: Why do I need a "privileged" scope?
>
> : To avoid the description at the physical level, apparently.
>
> No, the question is, why does it need to be *privileged*,

I don't know -- you're the one who argues that your scope is a 'good'
description of what's going on, and mine is 'bad'. Part of that is (I
believe) a confusion on your part about what I'm actually saying, but
part of it is a real fundamental disagreement between us about who is
entitled to make semantic distinctions in a debate of this sort.

> not why do there need to be scopes.
>
> : No. Forget dualism; let's assume for the moment that physicalism is
> : true. I point to The Mechanism (the one and only that is the universe
> : running), and say "that's where our beliefs come from".
>
> But then, that's where *everything* comes from.

So says the physicalist, yes. Precisely.

> So you haven't said anything yet.

Huh? On the contrary, I've reminded you that, under the theory we're
discussing, that's where everything comes from (and how it gets there,
which is also important).

> If I ask you where babies come from, and you say
> "the big bang"... well, maybe that's a bad example, but the point is,
> "where beliefs come from" is really asking how, specifically, they get
> their structure.

Says who? Or rather, why is that view "more correct" than the original
question? Doesn't it depend on why you're asking?

I'm the one who introduced the notion here, and I'm interested in how
the big bang and its aftermath have produced beliefs, if physicalism is
true, and what we might be able to infer about the reliability of those
beliefs given the mechanism (or rather The Mechanism) AND the observed
results of that mechanism in the form of beliefs and psychological
belief-schemata. You always seem to leave off that last part, and
accuse me of saying that "because it's just physics" is the end of the
argument.

And of course, insert here how the notion that this isn't the 'proper'
way to talk about where babies come from is based on our notions of
'understanding', and semantic categorization in general. As you know
(Bob), to me you're cheating as soon as you invoke such things in your
argument, because I think the assumption that a physicalist model can
produce entities that understand semantics is tantamount to assuming
your conclusion.

> So you can't just say "quarks and stuff", any more
> than you can say "quarks and stuff" if you are asked how things come to
> be liquid. Or rather, you *can* say it, but in so doing, you haven't
> really said anything, you've just repeated the axiom

Well, no -- the detailed processes (solar system formation, biogenesis,
carbon sequestration, evolution, large-brain strategies, interactions
with sense data, cerebral cortex development, yadda yadda yadda) are
rather more than just "restating the axiom".

On the other hand, every time you say "I distinguish A from B in these
contexts", you're invoking a semantic distinction that I don't think
exists in a physicalist world -- in essence, just restating the axiom
"everything we think we can do, we can do in a physicalist universe".

> rather than showing
> the derivation of liquidity *from* the axioms.

Remind me why I need to derive liquidity from more fundamental physics
-- I thought it was enough for me to know there's an explanation. But
even so, see above -- lots of cosmological and astronomical and
chemical and biochemical and evolutionary and (eventually)
psychological (as shorthand for more physics) and such processes -- or,
rather, identifiable subprocesses of The Mechanism -- that provide this
account for where beliefs come from. ALL beliefs -- human, canine,
equine, bovine, sane, insane, right, wrong, etc.

> And, of course, that's where scopes come in. You can discuss liquidity
> in terms of atoms and EM forces; you don't need to talk about the quarks
> and the strong nuclear force or strings or 'branes, or any such things.
> And yet, this scope (ranging from atoms to macroscopic properties of
> substances) is in no way *privileged*.

I didn't claim it was. *You* claimed that it was dis-privileged, or
whatever the word is. That your macro-level description *was*
privileged. I merely claimed that it was a complete causal
characterization of where liquidity (or beliefs) come from.

> It's relative to the context.
>
> :: Well, if you are talking about the system as a whole, then you aren't
> :: talking about minds and beliefs and such, unless you think the
> :: universe as a whole has these things. Which I see a scarcity of
> :: evidence for.
>
> : Huh? You think that minds and their contents are not part of the
> : universe?
>
> Sigh. Which part of "as a whole" is giving you problems?

The part where you changed the subject from the beliefs that actually
exist, to some hypothetical beliefs held by the universe as a whole. I
didn't figure you meant *that*, because that's both silly and
irrelevant to the (snipped, again) point I was making.

Beliefs are (per hypothesis) a feature of the physical universe exactly
the same way hurricanes are. You can't reasonably construe me to be
saying that the universe-as-a-whole exhibits hurricane-like behavior,
or that hurricanes exist everywhere in the universe. They are simply a
local feature of some parts of The Mechanism -- just like beliefs.

> My stomach can
> withstand moderately concentrated acid solutions, but as a whole, I cannot.
> And yet, my stomach (with its contents) is a part of me.

So I can say that stomachs exist as a feature of the known universe,
without you interpreting that as a claim that the-universe-as-a-whole
has a stomach?

> Me-as-a-whole is too high a level to discuss how my stomach resists acids.

Depends on what you're trying to do. How your stomach resists acids
may depend on chemical messages generated in your adrenal glands or
thalamus, concerning how to build cells. It's a system, exhibiting
Dirk Gently's favorite trait. And it interacts with its environment,
which may also affect how well your stomach resists acid (when, for
example, you accidentally ingest some H. pylori and develop an ulcer).

Indeed, it's not an exaggeration to say that you can't *really*
understand "how your stomach resists acids" without knowing an awful
lot about things that are not only outside your stomach, but outside
you.

(And, if by "me as a whole" you meant to exclude biochemistry, we can
talk about how stress affects the ability of the stomach lining to
resist acid, without ever getting into the chemical mechanism.)

> And further, there is such a thing as too low a level; no single cell in
> my body is particularly better at resisting acids. So where does this
> magical ability to resist acids come from, if me-as-a-whole doesn't
> have it, and me-considered-a-cell-at-a-time doesn't have it?

I have no idea where you're going with this, or how it's relevant to
anything I've said. I think that's probably because you have
persistently misunderstood me to be saying that there's something
specific about the laws of physics that causes the problem. I haven't
said that.

> You seem to want to skip from quarks and axioms, to everything-that-exists,
> with no stops inbetween. This actually seems... disingenuous of you.

If I'm talking about a computer program, is there something wrong with
skipping between a line-by-line or subroutine-by-subroutine analysis,
and the global behavior of the program? If so, what?

If physicalism is true, then the universe is algorithmic, and the
analogy would seem to hold pretty well.

> It may not *be* disingenuous of you, but it sure seems that way,
> after so many rounds of attempting to explain it. It simply doesn't
> seem that difficult or even controversial a concept, to me.

That's (IMO) because you're lapsing back into semantic analysis, which
(as you note) is neither difficult nor controversial -- until you
assert physicalism. I understanding how to interpret what you're
saying semantically; I just don't accept your rhetorical right to
assume semantic distinctions still make sense in a physicalist world.

[...]

> : It's not a question of infallibility, but of testability.
>
> And what makes you think perfect tests are possible, or likely?

If they're not[1], I can't trust anything I think, so it's a useful
working hypothesis -- like assuming that I'm not a brain in a vat, or
that other people are really people.

> : Not nearly as unuseful as the hypothesis that the human mind has only
> : enough connection to reality to keep us from dying out. Or so it
> : seems to me.
>
> It seems obviously wrong, to me. Bacteria have enough connection to
> reality to keep from dying out. Yet they don't have minds, and we do.

Different evolutionary strategy; for this purpose, it makes more sense
to compare us to other big-brain-strategy types, like dogs and dolphins
and sheep and heffalumps. Cockroaches aren't much more like us than
lichens, in terms of 'beliefs', I would guess.

But given that, we're just one of the big-brain surviving lines,
exceptionally closely related to the apes, closely related to the
mammals, etc.

> (And don't go all philosophical-technical-term on me; add quasi if you must).

Why would I? It was a perfectly straightforward statement. These are
the places where I really wonder what you think I believe, to have
worried about that.

> : If you can trust your eyes, or whatever other mechanism is telling you
> : it came up even and keeping the count.
>
> Trust is not binary.

It is when it comes to the most basic of reasoning. We've been round
and round over that one before, though, and I don't expect to convince
you. There is a level of reasoning that you must have absolute faith
in, or you can't (reasonably) believe anything.

> : You're using the machine to calibrate itself. Why do you think you
> : can do that effectively?
>
> What effects are you interested in? Apparently, perfection,
> or something like it.

At the most basic levels, yes -- if I cannot follow the most basic
inferences, see their correctness, and recognize when someone points
out an error that they are correct and I was wrong, then I can't
'think' the way we all believe humans can think.

[...]

> : How? No, really, it's a serious question.

Honestly, Wayne, why do you quote things like this entirely out of
context? What was I responding to? Who knows? If it doesn't matter
to what you're about to say, cut my question too. If it matters, leave
in what I was responding to.

> Think about the wasp that
> : kills a spider, sets it down outside its burrow, goes in to check that
> : the coast is clear, comes out, moves the spider inside, and lays eggs
> : in it. If you move the spider while the wasp is inside the burrow
> : checking, it will come back, put the spider back where it was, and go
> : in to check again. If you move the spider every time, it will keep
> : checking again every time, until it starves to death.
>
> Your point escapes me.

Clearly.

> We act less sphexishly than the wasp,

We do? How do you know that? *That* was the point -- that the
sphexish entity does not recognize itself as such. Dogs probably think
they're brilliant.

Yes, yes, "We are not wasps" you say. So? We're close relatives of
wasps, with many other features in common. Why not something like this
one? It needn't be quite so blatant -- but then again, it might be.

> : If we have programmed illogical behaviors like this, we can't know it,
> : for the same reason the wasp can't.
>
> So what?

Words fail me. How irrational are you willing to believe yourself to
be, before it actually affects your view of whether 'reasoning' is
anything to do with reality?

If you learned that 90% of your memories were false, but that evolution
had provided you with a nice secure illusion of continuity as part of
your survival package, would that do it? Part of the kicker of
physicalism is that the mapping between the subjective experience and
the external reality is not necessarily important -- all that matters
is that you *behave* in a pro-survival fashion, not that you
subjectively experience (or remember) what actually happened.

> (Actually, we could know it or find some cases of it,
> because we could build a logic engine that's beyond the capacity of the
> human mind in terms of correlating behaviors over spans of time,

What makes you think that you can design a logic engine that isn't
flawed in the same ways that you are at your most careful?

I can't tell the difference between your argument here and the claim
that hopelessly insane people can nevertheless function fine by
analysing the nature of their insanity and correcting for it. Insanity
doesn't (usually[2]) work that way.

David Tate

[1] Or rather, if they never are, even in the most restricted careful
formal reasoning.

[2] Yes, I know the story about John Nash. I'm somewhat skeptical, and
even if it's true there are lots of other forms of crazy that aren't
amenable to that approach.

.