Barr - Intellect Flashcards
How do materialists argue that machines (locks and thermostats) have beliefs? Weakness?
Thermostat perceives temp, reacts ~= sensation and cognition. But a thermostat doesn’t understand thermodynamics
Particular/ universal ideas? Why is it unplayable that material objects have universal ideas?
Particular/universal= a woman/womanliness = a truth/Truth
A particular can instantiate a universal, but it cannot contain the meaning of the universal. Likewise, our material brains shouldn’t be able to separate abstraction from experience
Bart’s argument with pi and seventeenth root of 93?
A tree is material but pi is not. Pi isn’t an aspect of material world like counting numbers, and 17th root of 93 is definitely abstract. For a materialist pi comes from neurons, so is pi nothing more than a pattern of neurons? Our minds create abstract statements? But pi is beautiful, and has meaning outside the brain.
The problem materialists have with the need for us to be open to truth?
Humans can discern truth.
Haldane: if materialism is true, we can’t know it if brain equals Chem without logic.
Hawking: a theory of everything would also have to show why some did/didn’t believe it, and therefore have no logical/mathematical merit in and of itself
B refutes that evolution programmed brain
Human mind is above and beyond in capability what is required for survival. Also, the mind can attain certainty about truth and recognize necessary truth, (Certainty = one’s name, necessary = 2^2=4) which isn’t compatible with natural selection
Why must the mind be reducible to matter/must we eventually explain it? B refutes:
“Where is intellect? How does it work, granted it exists?”
Well, even though we explain gas laws in terms of molecules, we can’t misapply our paradigm to what it shouldn’t explain. Ex: Ē != aether, but when Ē was first discovered it was explained in aether.
Intellect may be qualitatively discrete. As to “how”, we don’t know if that question makes sense (like we don’t know “how” gravity). Patience.
Algorithm
A rote procedure (ex: long division)
Rule of inference
Logical or mathematical rule for deduction
Axiom
Assumed true but yet unproven; must be expressed as symbols
Theorem
Proven assumption; must be expressed in symbols
Formal system
“Form”al system is without specific content, like a computer
Consistent/inconsistent formal systems
Consistent= no contradictions are possible within rules Inconsistent= if two contradictory statements are both probable within rules. If a single inconsistency, entire formal system is flawed.
Barr says….
Even if a plus b plus c equals c plus b plus a is derived from a computer, it still operates in a formal system and doesn’t know meaning if abc are people.
Gödel’s theorem
If one proposition can be stated in a formal system that can’t be proven within system, it is consistent.
Gödel found that formal systems have statements that aren’t provable OR disprovable, but are still true (formally undecidable propositions)
Lucas/Penrose argument
Given program P, if I know it is consistent, I can find true statement G(P) such that P can’t prove or disprove. Even if P’ proves G(P), I can find G(P’). If I am program H, I can find G(H) once I know all my rules…but I can’t find MY G(H)…so I’m not a program.
