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I feel a lot of times that many modern philosophers simply not qualified enough in natural sciences. I've read Mind & Cosmos but gave up halfway: Nagel simply

by szemet 10y ago

I feel a lot of times that many modern philosophers simply not qualified enough in natural sciences. I've read Mind & Cosmos but gave up halfway: Nagel simply does not get evolution. Contemporary philosophical discussion many times is like typical forum debates on the Internet about basic science - someone says something stupid and the others try to educate him, he don't get it and write his same stupidity again and again until everybody is tired to reply. In the academic world this is called publish or perish: if you are a philosopher you should fear more from being forgotten than from proper and decisive falsification - so you just have to be loud, even if you are wrong. If you defend your wrongness skilfully you will have your followers anyway. But I'm just simply don't interested in whether Nagel will get evolution eventually, or Putnam & Searle get computation sometime in the future* (just to provide another example) * I thinking about their theory that a rock can implement any computation - if we provide proper mapping between the states, without taking into consideration the complexity of the mapping as part of the "computer" here. It is ok if someone doesn't get Kolmogorov but not clear why they should make a living from it, or at least why should I support it by buying and reading their books. ;)

foldr 10y ago
You don't make any specific criticisms of Nagel's work, so I can't say anything on that point, except that I didn't see any misunderstandings of evolution in the book. >Putnam & Searle [don't] get computation Putnam essentially invented the functionalist computationalist theory of mind that you are implicitly defending, so I'd say he probably understood it at least as well as you do. (He later changed his mind about its viability.) More generally I wouldn't doubt Putnam's ability to grasp technical material. This is a guy who contributed the solution to one of Hilbert's problems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert's_tenth_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert's_tenth_problem). >It is ok if someone doesn't get Kolmogorov No-one has provided a solution to the rock problem in terms of Kolmogorov complexity. Scott Aaronson speculates that this notion might be helpful, but he doesn't work out the details. In fact it seems rather unlikely that his proposed solution would work, as the mapping from abstract computational states to the physical states of actually existing computers is also extremely complex, and not obviously any less complex than the mapping from these states to physical states of rocks, waterfalls or whatever. Since we can't actually specify any of the relevant mappings, it's very difficult to say for sure that they differ significantly in terms of Kolmogorov complexity.
- szemet 10y ago
  > I didn't see any misunderstandings of evolution in the book The greatest feature of evolution that it makes teleology unnecessary. It can operate as a mindless/goalless algorithm. Of course evolution may be operated by someone/something with specific goals instead of pure chances, but thats just an unnecessary assumption until it proved - so we may employ Occam razor here until someone proves it. The possibility of design without a designer is one of the main point and contribution of the theory and it should be fully understood - even if if later turns out (which have not happened yet, and no sign for that happening beside metaphysical opinions...) that there was a designer. > of actually existing computers is also extremely complex, and not obviously any less complex than the mapping from these states to physical states of rocks You can't be serious: First map a Computer chess program states to human interpretable visualization to play chess against it And then do this with your rock. First is mainly one-to-one mapping of digital signs to pixels by using a static table, the second is..., I'm not even sure how to inject my move into the states of the rock, but no idea either how to extract its response. You know why? There is simply no one to one mapping there. The states of a rock is a large bundle of everything without interpretation, the states of the chess program is CLEARLY more constrained - the proof is empirical: it CAN be implemented. Like if you say that the set of all positive integers contains the solution of factorizing any large number. Of course it does: you just have to point to those numbers. ;) But how? All states are not the solution - selecting the proper states is the computation, and if those selection mechanism is in the mapping process then the mapping IS the computer.
  - foldr 10y ago
    >The greatest feature of evolution that it makes teleology unnecessary. That's what Nagel is disputing. > Of course evolution may be operated by someone/something with specific goals instead of pure chances, but thats just an unnecessary assumption until it proved Nagel isn't a theist or an ID advocate. The existence of such a designer isn't part the thesis of the book. >First is mainly one-to-one mapping of digital signs to pixels by using a static table I was talking about mapping to a physical state, not an abstract computational state. If you try to specify the relevant "digital signals" in physical rather than computational terms, you'll find that it's an impossibly complex task. Even individual transistors are enormously complex physical systems. We simply don't know whether the mapping to physical states would be significantly more complex in the case of the waterfall. If you're allowed to cheat by using more abstract states (e.g. "on" or "off" for each transistor), then you can equally well cheat in the case of the waterfall by giving names to disjunctions of physically distinct states. >There is simply no one to one mapping there. Not sure what you mean by this. If the rock has a sufficient number of possible physical states, then you certainly can specify a one-to-one mapping from chess states to rock states. It's true that this mapping will be difficult or impossible for humans to exploit. Rather obviously, that's because computers were designed in such a way that it's easy for humans to manipulate their states in certain ways, whereas rocks weren't.

by szemet 10y ago

foldr 10y ago

You don't make any specific criticisms of Nagel's work, so I can't say anything on that point, except that I didn't see any misunderstandings of evolution in the book. >Putnam & Searle [don't] get computation Putnam essentially invented the functionalist computationalist theory of mind that you are implicitly defending, so I'd say he probably understood it at least as well as you do. (He later changed his mind about its viability.) More generally I wouldn't doubt Putnam's ability to grasp technical material. This is a guy who contributed the solution to one of Hilbert's problems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert's_tenth_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert's_tenth_problem). >It is ok if someone doesn't get Kolmogorov No-one has provided a solution to the rock problem in terms of Kolmogorov complexity. Scott Aaronson speculates that this notion might be helpful, but he doesn't work out the details. In fact it seems rather unlikely that his proposed solution would work, as the mapping from abstract computational states to the physical states of actually existing computers is also extremely complex, and not obviously any less complex than the mapping from these states to physical states of rocks, waterfalls or whatever. Since we can't actually specify any of the relevant mappings, it's very difficult to say for sure that they differ significantly in terms of Kolmogorov complexity.

szemet 10y ago
> I didn't see any misunderstandings of evolution in the book The greatest feature of evolution that it makes teleology unnecessary. It can operate as a mindless/goalless algorithm. Of course evolution may be operated by someone/something with specific goals instead of pure chances, but thats just an unnecessary assumption until it proved - so we may employ Occam razor here until someone proves it. The possibility of design without a designer is one of the main point and contribution of the theory and it should be fully understood - even if if later turns out (which have not happened yet, and no sign for that happening beside metaphysical opinions...) that there was a designer. > of actually existing computers is also extremely complex, and not obviously any less complex than the mapping from these states to physical states of rocks You can't be serious: First map a Computer chess program states to human interpretable visualization to play chess against it And then do this with your rock. First is mainly one-to-one mapping of digital signs to pixels by using a static table, the second is..., I'm not even sure how to inject my move into the states of the rock, but no idea either how to extract its response. You know why? There is simply no one to one mapping there. The states of a rock is a large bundle of everything without interpretation, the states of the chess program is CLEARLY more constrained - the proof is empirical: it CAN be implemented. Like if you say that the set of all positive integers contains the solution of factorizing any large number. Of course it does: you just have to point to those numbers. ;) But how? All states are not the solution - selecting the proper states is the computation, and if those selection mechanism is in the mapping process then the mapping IS the computer.
- foldr 10y ago
  >The greatest feature of evolution that it makes teleology unnecessary. That's what Nagel is disputing. > Of course evolution may be operated by someone/something with specific goals instead of pure chances, but thats just an unnecessary assumption until it proved Nagel isn't a theist or an ID advocate. The existence of such a designer isn't part the thesis of the book. >First is mainly one-to-one mapping of digital signs to pixels by using a static table I was talking about mapping to a physical state, not an abstract computational state. If you try to specify the relevant "digital signals" in physical rather than computational terms, you'll find that it's an impossibly complex task. Even individual transistors are enormously complex physical systems. We simply don't know whether the mapping to physical states would be significantly more complex in the case of the waterfall. If you're allowed to cheat by using more abstract states (e.g. "on" or "off" for each transistor), then you can equally well cheat in the case of the waterfall by giving names to disjunctions of physically distinct states. >There is simply no one to one mapping there. Not sure what you mean by this. If the rock has a sufficient number of possible physical states, then you certainly can specify a one-to-one mapping from chess states to rock states. It's true that this mapping will be difficult or impossible for humans to exploit. Rather obviously, that's because computers were designed in such a way that it's easy for humans to manipulate their states in certain ways, whereas rocks weren't.