From stapp@thsrv.lbl.gov Tue Nov 9 21:23:43 1999 Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1999 20:57:12 -0800 (PST) From: stapp@thsrv.lbl.gov Reply-To: hpstapp@lbl.gov To: pat hayes Cc: hpstapp@lbl.gov, A.sloman@bham.ac.uk, bdj10@cam.ac.uk, brucero@cats.ucsc.edu, chalmers@paradox.ucsc.edu, ghrosenb@ai.uga.edu, hameroff@u.arizona.edu, Jeffrey M. Schwartz , keith@imprint.co.uk, klein@adage.berkeley.edu, patrickw@monash.edu.au Subject: Re: Reply to Sloman and Hayes On Mon, 8 Nov 1999, pat hayes wrote: > > > >The sense in which certain microphysical facts can entail certain > >macro- geometric facts is this: Suppose Y is a statement that specifies > >certain conditions on some macro-geometric properties that characterize > >observable features of some macro system. Suppose X be a statement that > >asserts that the physical world, as described in CPT, satisfies a certain > >set of microconditions. Then X entails Y if and only if no possible CPT > >world can satisfy X and not satisfy Y. > > I presume that a "CPT world" is a world satisfying the laws of CPT? > If so, then this amounts to: Y is logically entailed by the > conjunction of X and those laws. (If not, what does it does mean?) > Following Chalmers, I interpret a ``physical world as described in CPT'' to be a complete description of the trajectories of all particles for all time, and the description of the values of all the fields at all space-time points. These trajectories and field-histories must obey the classical laws. whatever they are, but these laws are not specifically mentioned. The statements Y are supposed to be conditions on macroscopic observables of the kind that I had been illustrating (e.g., height of the tide being higher today at noon than yesterday at noon; barometric pressures, and wind velocities.) X is a set of conditions that are true for some possible worlds as described in CPT, and false in the rest. > >CPT includes not only the basic micro-physical descriptions: it includes, as > >any physical theory must, also the rules for how these descriptions are linked > >to our observations. Otherwise the theory would be devoid of physical content. > > Now, what are the CPT laws? I do not mention or deal with the laws. > Now, however, we are told that the CPT laws must also > link this ongoing state of the universe to "our observations". Not the laws. The complete CPT description of the history of the universe should fix whether the tide was higher today than yesterday. > It > seems to me that this means that the CPT laws themselves must talk of > human experiences. I do not talk about laws. But the complete description of the history of the universe, as it is represented in CPT, will determine the locations and shapes of visible aggregations of the microelements, and how they evolve in time. > For example, is it a CPT law that water at 120 > degrees fahrenheit will feel warm? My whole point is that a complete history of a possible universe will fix macro-geometric properties specified by evolving shapes of visible aggregations of the microelements of CPT, but not nongeometric aspects of our experiences, such as "warmth". > But now (the point should be obvious) Henry > has lost the case, for if the very classical laws themselves can > mention experiences, then of course experiences can be entailed by > the classical microfacts, using his definition of entailment. > The laws do not mention experience, and are not part of my argument. > >The rules of interpretation of CPT are based in the fact that > >the micro-concepts of the theory are idealizations of macro-geometric > >aspects of our human experiences, and the principle that large aggregations > >of microscopic elements can define observable macroscopic shapes. > > > >The painfulness of a pain-experience is not characterized by a shape. Nor is > >the redness of a conscious red-experience. Human experience has dimensions > >or aspects that are not shape-like. > > Several responses to this. > 1. So what? Nothing follows from this until you somehow also > establish that the non-shape-like aspects cannot be inferred from > shape-like-aspects. (I have no idea what these terms mean, by the > way, and suspect that they are meaningless, but thats irrelevant to > my point.) What can be entail by a complete description of the history of the universe, as it is represented in CPT, are locations of particles at various times, and hence the evolving shapes of aggregates of particles. The evolving strengths of the EM and gravitational fields are also fixed. This conception of trajectories of particles in spacetime is an idealization principally of the visual aspect of human experience, and such things as Kepler's astronomical observations, and Galileo's observations of motions of terrestrial objects. So there is a intuitive basis for linking observations pertaining to locations and shapes to the notion of locations and shapes of aggregations of microphysical entities that are just idealized limits of observations of locations and shapes. This is the basis of the linkage between CPT and our human observations. > 2. How do you know that the painfulness of an experience is not > characterized by a shape? What is your basis for this claim (which > you have repeated many times but never supported)? To be sure, much > of the world does not present itself to us, as it were, in the same > way that aspects of the world that we call geometric present > themselves; we do not see temperature as having a shape, or colors as > having a geometry. However this is all about how things seem, not how > they are. Observations concern appearances, not how things are. According to CPT, the way things are, physically, is completely specified by the history of the physical world: principally the trajectories of the particles. Then there are also ``seemings'': our experiencings. Nothing else enters into CPT. The warmth of a warm feeling is not experienced as an evolving shape, which places this very shape conditions on the (aggregations of the) trajectories of the particles that constitute the objective realities. That is not how CPT is set up. [Of course, the warm feeling may be a feeling of warth in one's hand, and that hand may have a shape. But the attribute of its being warm is not EXPERIENCED as a shape: it is experienced as ``warmth''. > It does not establish that the experiences may not > themselves have a geometric structure, or are somehow essentially > nongeometric. > We do not directly experience the structure of our own > experiences, only their content. Observations are what seems to be. We do experience warmth, and the shape of Orion. > In fact, we have very poor access to > the structure of our own experiences, which is why phenomenology is > such a tricky business. This of course is not surprising, since there > seems to be little evolutionary advantage to be obtained from > accurate self-observation; its much more important to be able to > perceive what the rest of the world is up to. Yes! Is the tide rising or falling? > 3. Large aggregations of microscopic elements determine a lot more > than macroscopic shape; they also determine macroscopic temperature, > color, taste, texture, plastic qualities of solids and viscosity of > fluids, strength, Young's modulus, etc.. If all these are > 'geometric', I cannot really see what the point of introducing the > term is, since it means the same as 'physical'. The issue is the nature of the basic link between theory and observation. The trajectories determine rate of oscillation, which may determine perceived color. But that is empirical. This same oscillation logically could have produced a different experienced color. But the connection between an aggregation of `ink' particle that has the shape of the letter B, and an experiencing of it as a printed letter with the shape of the letter B is ``direct'': we imagine that the shape we observe, under good conditions, is a good direct indicator of what the shape of some aggregation of microelements is. CPT theory is constructed of microscopic idealizations of our observations of shapes, and the natural correspondence between experienced or perceived shapes and theoretical constructs consisting of theoretical aggregations of idealized micro-elements is the basic link between theory and observation in CPT. Henry