Episode 2: Consciousness explained (?) part 1: Computational Pythagoreanism

Episode Audio

Download: MP3 Audio (47.5MB)

Episode Notes and Links

Episode Notes

This is the first of a two part discussion between Richard and Pete concerning whether and how consciousness can be explained and whether it should be regarded as a fundamental feature of reality. In this episode, the discussion focuses on the view that everything that exists is ultimately computational/mathematical. In the first half of this episode, we discuss applications of computationalism in explaining brains, consciousness, and even reality itself. After a musical break, we turn in the second half of this episode to wrestle with the general merits of Pythagoreanism, the view that everything is ultimately mathematical. Are physical objects reducible to sets, which are in turn reducible to numbers, which are themselves reducible to the empty set and sets thereof?

(The music in the episode is by Quiet Karate Reflex. The song in the intro and outro is "Aristotelian Eye Jelly" and the song in the mid-episode break is "Skinner Box." More of Quiet Karate Reflex's music can be heard here: http://quietkaratereflex.bandcamp.com/.)

(The video chat between Richard and Pete that this episode's audio is drawn from is viewable on YouTube.)

Links

Links for the first half of this episode

• Hakwan Lau http://www.columbia.edu/cu/psychology/fac-bios/LauH/faculty.html
• Marcus Arvan http://www.marcusarvan.net/
• Arvan's Philosophers’ Cocoon blog http://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/
• April Fool’s Private Language Post http://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2014/03/area-philosopher-constructs-definitive-refutation-of-the-private-language-argument-unable-to-explain.html
• Arvan's "New Theory of Free Will" http://philpapers.org/rec/ARVANT-2
• Mind Uploading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading
• Future Philosophy: Pete’s Alternate Minds Blog http://cogsciphi.blogspot.com/
• Richard’s blog post about the singularity http://onemorebrown.com/2010/04/21/the-singularity-again/
• Chalmers’ paper http://consc.net/papers/singularity.pdf and Richard’s commentary http://faculty.lagcc.cuny.edu/rbrown/zombies%20and%20simulation%20JCS.pdf
• Church-Turing Thesis http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/church-turing/
• Turing, A. (1950). Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind, 59, 433–460. http://www.csee.umbc.edu/courses/471/papers/turing.pdf
• Godel’s completeness theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel's_completeness_theorem

Links for the second half of this episode

• Frege-Hilbert letters http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/frege-hilbert/
• Re: Quine’s flirtations with Set-Theoretic Pythagoreanism See Quine (1981) “Things and Their Place in Theories” in Theories and Things.  http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1191662.files/WVQThingsandTheirPlaceinTheories.pdf
• Power Set definition http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PowerSet.html
• Re: Ned Block on non-explained identities "Harder Problem of Consciousness" http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/harder.htm