Well, a paper computer executes instructions just as a microprocessor computer does. So what is true of the one ought to be true of the other.

To be clear, Marchesk is not talking about a set of instructions once committed to paper and just sitting there. He is talking about a person or lots of people performing those instructions with pencil and paper instead of silicone and electric potentials.

P.S. The OP question is, of course, a variant of the Chinese Room problem.

Yes imagining something would be the best example for this situation I feel. — Rawrren

Well, if you stipulate from the start that you are merely imagining a thing, you are, ipso facto, stipulating that the thought is not about, does not not refer to any concrete object in the world, as far as you are concerned. That is already given by your formulation, no matter what approach you then take - physicalist or otherwise. So I still don't understand, what difficulty do you see specifically for physicalism in this scenario?

Do you know of any reasoning as to why some reject intentionality? And if so, how do they then explain what we call 'intentional states & concepts'. — Rawrren

One way of viewing intentionality is linguistically, by giving interpretations of our intentional language while eschewing intentional idioms. But I confess that I am not prepared to discuss this issue in much detail. However, here are a couple of SEP articles that you may find as a good starting point for exploring different views of intentionality and surrounding issues: Intentionality, Consciousness and Intentionality.

So you think there is a problem specifically in the case where we are contemplating something imaginary?

I should note that physicalists do not all share the same concept of the mind, and not all of them, I imagine, will even accept intentional states as a valid or useful concept. So you would also have to argue that intentional states are absolutely indispensable in any theory of mind.

Can you explain in more detail what it is that you see as a problem for physicalism wrt intentional content?

That quote was fabricated by yours truly ;)

if the phenomenon of politically-driven fact-indifference is a perennial one

&

if a new term has been coined, to refer to this same perennial phenomenon as though it's unprecedented

&

if one is interested in what is new about this situation

then: the phenomenon in question is not 'post-truth' but 'a collection of groups claiming that there is an unprecedented event/era/atmosphere called post-truth' — csalisbury

It is not unprecedented, but it feels like it is becoming more common and accepted. As for "a collection of groups" - tu quoque again in lieu of addressing the issue. Instead of reflexively pointing a finger at the opposition you could argue that there's really nothing special here, no sea-change in the culture, no "new era" - and I might agree with you. I am not too certain about my characterization of the phenomenon, perhaps I am just picking out what irks me rather than identifying an objective trend.

But it does feel like a new development. In the past authoritarians sought to tightly control and restrict information. They were very much concerned with preventing the truth from getting out. Remember what event started Winston on his fateful path? He was charged with destroying a photograph that would have exposed a lie that was currently being promulgated by the Ministry of Truth. Orwell was uncannily prescient: such expurgation of incriminating records in newspapers and books was indeed practiced in Stalin's Soviet Union. But you see much less of that today, not because the propaganda lies less, but because it seems less concerned about hiding the truth.

When Russian troops invaded Crimea, the obvious fact was denied by Russian officials and the media. The soldiers, whose only cover was the lack of national insignia, were ironically nicknamed vezhliviye liudy (polite men) by the locals who were not deceived by the ruse. (The troops were mostly just strolling around in their spiffy new uniforms and top-of-the-line gear, and although armed to the teeth, their behavior was markedly reserved - hence the nickname. The task of brutalizing opponents of the occupation and closing down pro-Ukrainian media was mostly outsourced to civilian volunteers and off-duty security officers bused in from the mainland.) By and by, after the annexation Putin, followed by others, acknowledged the invasion. Putin even boasted of his role in directing the operation in a later interview. But as a rule, the earlier lie was never acknowledged or apologized for, although no attempt was made to erase it from the public record. What's more, the vezhliviye liudy - once a symbol of duplicity and underhanded hybrid warfare - quickly became a popular meme, emblazoned on tee-shirts and even memorialized in a goofy public sculpture. People who just months earlier dismissed them as an insidious fabrication of the west never seemed to take an issue with being lied to - they took the about-face in stride.

And this cynicism and indifference to the truth characterized not just poorly educated provincials who only ever watch government-controlled TV channels, but even well-educated, well-traveled, English-speaking Moscow professionals who had all the information at their fingertips (I knew some of them). No burning of pictures was necessary - the pictures were all over the Internet, and nobody minded.

— MindForged

It's misleading because, as you say, it seems like a truth-apt sentence, being that it looks like most other truth-apt sentences, but it isn't. — Michael

Again, I'm wondering what the evidence for this is.

The evidence is the straightforward proof by contradiction. That the Liar sentence is not truth-apt is a readily established fact. Now, you may wonder what makes it so, but that's a different question.

I more or less agree with @jamalrob & @The Great Whatever

"Post-truth" had been seized upon by 'experts' (in the sense jamalrob used the word) at the exact moment their theories and narratives have been shown to be false (the 'surprise' of Brexit & the 2016 US presidential election etc.)

In many cases, then, "post-truth" is literally used to mean 'an atmosphere in which people no longer believe in our narratives and theories after those narratives and theories have been demonstrated to be false" — csalisbury

No, that's just a transparent attempt at a tu quoque and ad hominem: people who talk about "post-truth" are themselves poopy-heads, and that being the case, anything they say is humbug. And that is, unfortunately, the way most political discussions go.


While I agree that there's nothing new about "post-truth," it does seem to be one of the more prominent features of the contemporary zeitgeist. I am seeing it being aggressively promoted by the Russian propaganda machine. The idea that they are trying to inculcate is:

There is no truth, or if there is, no one can know it, which is just the same. There are always two sides to every story, everything can be doubted, every narrator is most likely corrupt and self-serving. Therefore, the choice of what to believe is not so much rational and empirical as moral. To wit, if you are a patriot, you should assume the attitude of "my country, right or wrong" and believe the self-serving narrative offered by the official news media and patriotic (i.e. loyal) pundits.

And from what I can see, this idea is being effectively internalized. I remember when the accusations of wide-spread, institutionalized, government-supported doping in Russian sports broke out, a radio station conducted informal interviews of people on the street. One response stuck out to me: a woman, in answer to the question whether she thought the accusations were true, said something to the effect that "I am a patriot of my country, so I am going to believe that we are innocent." At the time I thought this to be a remarkably candid expression of the "post-truth" attitude. But since then I have heard similar sentiments reiterated again and again in interviews with the "common people." One, when pressed on the point, went on to say that, yes, the government-controlled media may not be telling the truth. But then no one can ever know the truth. He was still going to believe the official narrative.

A strategic move that often goes along with the "post-truth" idea is to implicitly concede that, yes, we are shit, but so is everyone else. And if you are a patriot, then your own shit doesn't stink. This move is probably felt to be necessary in the environment in which the iron curtain is no longer seen as effective in stemming the flow of information and communication with the world outside the government control. Besides, people's moral reactions cannot be completely extinguished through propaganda. A more effective strategy is to sour them to the entire world, turn them into cynics. Our elections are not fair? Well, neither is anyone else's. Our official media serves up lies and propaganda? So does the supposedly free western media. Our government is corrupt and inefficient? So is every government. There is no such thing as democracy and freedom. Everyone is doing it. We are no worse than anyone else.

Nick Bostrom has done some fairly involved investigations in epistemic probability, starting with his PhD thesis. That's not to say that he is right, necessarily, just that he won't throw around such terms lightly.

A computer program is an abstraction, just as an idea, a formula, a narrative. The world cannot literally be a computer program: if it is a computer anything, it has to be hardware, by definition.

I read the novel as an adult, and to be honest, the "big ideas" interested me much less than the literature. And it is great literature, no doubt about it. I don't think much of Dostoyevsky as a philosopher - not because I think that he was wrong about this or that; he just doesn't have the cool-headed, analytic temperament that I look for in a thinker.

Neither Dostoyevsky's ideas nor his characters are very life-like - nor should they be, as long as he is writing a novel and not a report. With this novel, as well as with most of his other "great" novels, I was most taken by the atmosphere of a phantasmagorical fever-dream. When I read a book of his for an extended period of time (and I am a slow reader), I feel like I am literally running a fever myself. In that immersive, unreal, poetic quality he reminds me of Faulkner (or rather Faulkner reminded me of him, since I read Faulkner later).

Dostoyevsky wasn't a great stylist, but he was such a forceful, original artist that neither this lack of literary refinement nor his philosophical pretensions prevented him from creating great literature when he was at his best, as he was in this novel.

No, if something is computable (doesn't encounter the Halting problem), then it is real in some sense. — Question

What sense is that? Does it have anything to do with what I asked? ("How can you possibly prove physical laws with a calculation?")

If something can't be computed then that is indicative of a gap in understanding or that there are some things that are unintelligible. — Question

How do you figure that? Do you even know what it means for something to be computable?

Now look I am not an a close-minded arsehole — intrapersona

Right, of course, you even have transgender friends :-}

Look, if you want to be "truthful," why these disingenuous excuses? If you think that there's something wrong with bigotry, well, that's the answer to your question, isn't it? And if you don't think there's anything wrong with bigotry, then grow yourself a pair and own it.

Or am I running in circles in trying to state that all physical laws can be proven to be true — Question

How can you possibly prove physical laws with a calculation? Being computable or otherwise neither proves nor disproves anything. Nor does this have anything to do with Incompleteness theorems, as far as I know.

Yeah, I wasn't as clear I ought to have been (and I lost sight myself of my initial strategy.) It's not that the fear of impending torture is a 'problem' itself - the idea is to elicit an explanation of why we should be afraid of such a thing that wouldn't apply equally to a fear of life after death. — csalisbury

OK, but what kind of an explanation are we looking for? If we are looking for a motivation (why ought we be afraid), that's one thing. If we are looking for a "third-person" explanation of the phenomenon - that's another thing, or rather a number of things, depending on the chosen framework for the explanation - psychology, evolutionary biology, neurophysiology, non-naturalist metaphysics.

And it looks like you have an answer (your intent to naturalize has indeed been obvious, I note neutrally) - self-identity is supervenient on bodily identity (& extrapolating: since the body loses its identity after death, there's nothing left to supervene on.) It will be my body that is tortured; there will be no body after I die.

Is that fair? — csalisbury

Not quite. I proposed earlier that self-identity is a mental construct, partly innate, partly a product of culture, personal development and even preference. As such, it doesn't have to strictly supervene on the body, the way, say, cognition presumably supervenes on the neurophysiology of the nervous system. However, the body does provide a natural preexisting "boundary" (as you put it) that most ordinary conceptions of self-identity respect at least in part. Certainly, the raw feeling of the continuity of self that we experience moment-to-waking moment goes along with the normal functioning of the body with its given boundaries. But the more abstract intellectual concept of self-identity can and often does extend beyond that boundary - in the hypothesized afterlife, for instance, or a reincarnation. Or sometimes in other directions as well: the ancestors, the tribe or the country, or even the world.

A relevant guest post on Sean Carroll's blog by philosopher David Wallace: On the Physicality of the Quantum State

I do not mean some kind of self-body identity (a la mind-brain identity). I do mean to naturalize selfhood though, which intention I thought would be obvious. Therefore, I do not start from a blank slate in Descartes's fashion, because I don't think that is possible or sensible - as illustrated by Descartes's own failure. Likewise, the silliness of the OP to which this thread was a followup was to pretend that we know nothing about the world except for the fact that something referred to as "I" came into existence at some point and persisted for some time. If we truly knew nothing else, then it wouldn't be unreasonable to suppose that such events could have occurred multiple times instead of just once. But speculating in near-total ignorance is fruitless: all we are warranted in doing is acknowledging such bare logical possibilities. We can't go any further from there. We can't even say whether one possibility is more or less plausible than another.

No, I start off as an unapologetic naturalist and I do not intend to build all of my background knowledge and assumptions from scratch. Some things I take for granted, such as the existence of an organism, a self-sustaining homeostatic system. This I presume to be the substratum upon which consciousness operates, and where the sense and understanding of "self" emerges. Memory would then be an important factor, a biological and psychological mechanism that is crucial to shaping this sense of sustained "self" collocated with the body.

Would you be willing to sum up the problem presented as you see it? I'd like to measure my intent against the actual effect, in order to revise and tweak. — csalisbury

The "problem" is that there is supposedly a question that cries out for an explanation: why do I care about something that is going to happen to me in the future?

If memory is to serve as a condition for selfhood, then it must circumscribe some region - it must draw a line and say: that which happens within this boundary will be preserved in the memory of entity x. If memory is to be the eminence grise behind selfhood, it must also be a drawer of boundaries. And that makes things difficult. Because that which draws the boundary is also that which is to be bounded. — csalisbury

I'm sure personal identity is a psycho-social construct, but such a construct requires a lower-level continuity in order to even get off the ground - The construction of a self-narrative requires some kind of spatio/temporal/experiential boundary (boundary-process?) which excludes certain experiences/elements as candidates for integration in a self-construct and includes others. — csalisbury

I don't understand your difficulty. Memory doesn't have to draw any boundaries: it's not like it can choose a different scope or perspective than that which is given by the conditions in which its bearer finds itself. To put it simply, you can't have memories of what you (your body, for lack of a better term) haven't experienced.

Of course, that's assuming we are talking about ordinary, common-sense memory. If you want to widen the notion beyond the evident, then, like I said, all bets are off - imagination is your only limit.

And in any case, I don't think the thought experiment I've posed is all that extraordinary. Throughout history, many people have awaited torture. This is a far cry from teleportation. — csalisbury

No, your thought experiment is not extraordinary. It is indeed so ordinary that it does not present a problem that you think it does.

Instrumental interpretations don't care about ontological commitments. It's a matter of simply approaching the explanation or account as something that works for what it is, where it doesn't matter if it's a fiction or not.

Ontological commmitment interpretations are the opposite, obviously. One takes the explanation or account to be literally picking out things in the world, just as they are. — Terrapin Station

I am not sure there is a real distinction here, but anyway, I still don't see how MWI can be taken instrumentally in this sense. "The explanation or account as something that works for what it is" - that is the bare-bones QM. It gives us enough to perform measurements, relate them to other measurements, and make predictions. Interpretations, MWI included, go beyond that and make metaphysical commitments - which is what you seem to be shunning.

I'm an instrumentalist on some things, and not on other things. I particularly tend to be an instrumentalist with respect to explanations/theories that are mathematical-only (or primarily), or that are more abstract in received view interpretations. — Terrapin Station

There are no mathematical-only explanations. Mathematics doesn't explain anything: in order for it to be an explanation, a physical theory, it needs to be related to the physical world. I don't understand the distinction that you are trying to make here.

Can you explain what you mean by "instrumental interpretation"? To me it sounds like an oxymoron.

What does it mean to be a "a shut-up-and-calculate instrumentalist with respect to MWI"? How would you use MWI in calculations or why would you even need to?

If we were to survey physicists, what percetage do you think would say that they buy MWI instrumentally versus buying it as making a realist ontological commitment? — Terrapin Station

How does one "buy MWI instrumentally"? If you are a shut-up-and-calculate instrumentalist, then ostensibly at least you have no use for interpretations, MWI included.

The old argument from consensus. — tom

I am curious, Tom, seeing as you so stridently promote a position held by a small minority of physicists, if not by Deutsch alone - a minority among a minority of MWI proponents, most of whom, I believe, do not hold that MWI is the only interpretation version of QM that can account for all known observations - I am curious, are you a physicist yourself? Do you have a thorough understanding of quantum physics? Is this position your own?

I'd like to cut this rational justification/ emotional response knot and simply say : Nearly all of us would be scared if condemned to torture & we'd be scared because it's going to be us who is tortured. — csalisbury

Well, that's a plausible answer to the question "Why should you be worried about something that's only going to happen to you." The answer you give is that it's going to happen to you. But I would object that that's not why we are worried; we don't actually reason this way. There is no why, it's just something we do instinctively. You might speculate though that it's the same instinct that makes us believe in the invariance, or at any rate, continuity of the self over time. Maybe.

So, well & good. but personal continuity is an explanandum, not an explanans. We might posit some sort of soul (which, having been posited, drastically lowers any assurance one might have about the impossibility of one's existing after death.) But if, on the other hand, one rejects the idea of a soul, then another explanation must be put forth.

That second explanation is what I was hoping to draw out. — csalisbury

My explanation is deflationary (but not eliminativist). I do not think that personal identity constitutes a sharp metaphysical unit. I think that it is a psycho-social construct, rather than some independently existing entity, like a soul. (Which is not to say that it is not real: psycho-social constructs are as real as anything else.)

This is a broader, less specific answer than John's idea of an integrated memory stream. That is one possible psychological mechanism, but it at most addresses the sense of one's own identity; there is also a recognition of personal identity in others, which would have to have some other explanation. I suspect that, our evolved psychology being a terrific mess that has accumulated many ad hoc patches, crutches and shortcuts over the ages, there is no one simple and elegant mechanism to account for all aspects of our self-identification.

If personal identity is a psycho-social construct, it is to some extent a product of our biological makeup, and to some extent a matter of cultural tradition and even personal preference. Therefore, to come to the title question, there is no objectively right or wrong answer to the question of whether your self can continue or to reemerge after your death. Our common intuitions with regard to personal identity are based on our common experiences. But of course, we none of us have afterlife experiences - at least none that could be shared with our mortal selves. Nor do we have experiences that could shape our intuitions with regard to any number of other fantastical thought experiments that are often trotted out in order to explore issues related to personal identity: teleporters, matter duplicators, etc. Such thought experiments, rather than providing an insight, defeat their purpose by being too extraordinary.

Fortunately, nothing important is at stake when considering such questions - unlike the realities of our existence that have shaped our intuitions with regard to personal identity: contemplating our own "selves" and the "selves" of people around us. So if you must answer the question, then knock yourself out, believe whatever strikes your fancy. There are no consequences to having such an opinion, nor is there any way to put it to the test.

But you weren't experiencing pain or death (beyond the pain of anxious apprehension) waiting. in the hallway, to be caned. So why be frightened? What did the suffering of a boy, not in the hallway, have to do with you? — csalisbury

I understand (I think) that your line of questioning has to do with the question of personal identity and its continuity through time (or lack thereof). But like others here I find the questions you choose to ask to be confusing, and perhaps confused. What sort of answer to you expect here? Are we supposed to rationally justify our feelings? Do you mean to imply that feelings of fear, anxiety or empathy need to have a rational justification? Rooted in what?

The old argument from personal incredulity! — tom

Yeah, that's the worst possible reason for rejecting some physics or even an interpretation: that it is strange, incredible, etc. - especially for a wannabe philosopher. I mean, if nothing else, the last 400 or so years of discovery should have taught us that the world is stranger than we can even imagine.

Motion does not have to be constantly sustained by a mover? What have you been smoking, Galileo? :-}

Again, definitions are synonyms, or they're not definitions. — Terrapin Station

I am not sure why you are dwelling on this. If I accept a definition, then I henceforth take the definiendum to be synonymous with that definition. But I cannot accept your definition because it is defective, for the obvious reason that I have pointed out. I don't know what else to say.

In my model causality is defined between two sets of states, not between two states. It wouldn't make sense to say that the state A causes the future state B. — Babbeus

On second thought, I am less clear about what you are trying to say. I guess you are trying for what's called type-causation (typical, lawful, repeatable effects result in like causes), but I am not sure. If you are interested, I suggest you read about some already existing attempts to make sense of (or even to dismiss) causality, e.g. here. Perhaps you'll find something similar to your idea.

So they believe in a real, physical infinity, as opposed to a mathematical infinity? I thought infinities in physics meant there was a problem with the theory requiring revision. — Marchesk

Infinite space? Of course. Whether it's "real" and "physical" is down to semantics, I guess*. But the idea that space is infinite is old and, I would think, much less controversial than its opposite. We only got a good grip on the latter concept (of finite space) recently, with the development of topology and modern cosmology. Otherwise it is rather hard to imagine, intuitively.

I forgot which ancient Greek philosopher it was that argued that space must be infinite, because suppose that it rather had a boundary; then on reaching that boundary you could just poke a stick through it.

* But if you think that space is somehow not physical or not real or doesn't count for some other reason, well, once you suppose that space is infinite, it is only natural to suppose that there's an infinite amount of stuff in it - stars, galaxies, etc. - and that's as real and physical as it gets, right? The alternative would violate the Copernican principle, making our finite pocket of the infinite universe very special for no good reason.

The consensus from my fairly recent read of Max Tegmark's Multiverse book among physicists is that the MWI is the correct approach — Question

Not only not the consensus, but apparently not even the majority view.

I find it hard to concieve the MWI due to the rather infinite amount of realities there may be; but, so do many mathematicians have qualms with dealing with real infinities. — Question

Well, the idea that the universe is spatially infinite was commonplace throughout the history of thought, and among today's cosmologists this is probably much closer to a consensus. And that doesn't even require the acceptance of any particular interpretation of quantum mechanics. So I don't think the infinitude of the world - or worlds - is all that controversial.

A quasi deterministic universe always seems more appealing; but, why can't we have determinism within a many worlds interpretation. — Question

MWI is a deterministic theory (in a way).

"Produces" is indeed a synonym for "causes" in this context. Thus we can plug in "causes" in place of "produces" and the problem should then become obvious:

x causes y just in case A, B, C, ..., x causes y, D, E, ...

x exerts forces that produce y — Terrapin Station

"x produces y" is a paraphrase of "x causes y". Your definition is even worse than circular: it appeals to a narrower notion of causation (one that specifically relies on forces) to explain causation simipliciter.

we call every situation where a dynamics inside the set A is always followed (wrt time) by a dynamics in the set B as "A causing B" — Babbeus

In your model universe and by your definition, everything causes everything that follows. That is, any given set of events cause any given events that follow (assuming that your universe is also non-relativistic, so that "follow" is objectively given). A butterfly flapping its wings in China causes a hurricane in the Caribbean, as long as one precedes the other.

Update for the Ignore extension (5/19/2018):

Chrome:

Chrome now allows installing extensions only from its web store, and since I am not a registered and payed-up developer, I cannot publish there. If you really want it and know what you are doing, you can install an unpacked extension as described here: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-install-chrome-extensions-manually/

Zipped Chrome extension

Firefox 45 or later (this update is functionally identical to the old version):

Download the XPI file, double-click and allow the browser to install the extension.

So I guess this is my first post here. I am just an occasional lurker at this point. But I come bearing gifts :)

For myself and those few of you who use Firefox I made add-on that implements an ignore list feature.


https://postimg.org/image/ej2g76sp9/


https://postimg.org/image/8jjah9xal/

Limitations:

• Firefox only (I might try and make a Chrome version at some point, if I have the time).
• The list is stored locally with your bookmarks and other browser data. This means that if you log in at another computer or device, you'll have to install the add-on there and maintain a separate list.
• You can't view, edit or export the list.

Installation:

See message below with an updated version.