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lessdazed comments on A Rationalist's Tale - Less Wrong
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Yes, lots of it. E.g. Leibniz's monadology is monist (obviously); it's equivalent to computationalism in fact. But note that it's not like dualism is well-understood 'round these parts either. It's really hard to find a way in which you can say that a property dualist is wrong. It tends to be like, yeah, we get it, minds reside in brains, neuroscience is cool and shit, but repeatedly bringing it up as if nobody had ever heard that before is a facepalm-inducing red herring.
It seems that monadology relies on something like Plato's theory of forms. That fills the role usually played by dualism in theism. Is there theism without that?
Theism without computationalism? It's not popular, but most Less Wrong folk are computationalists AFAIK. Hence the "timeless decision theory" and "Tegmark" and "simulation argument" memes floating around. I don't see how a computationalist can ignore theism on the grounds that it claims that abstract things exist.
I do not think Plato's forms are equivalent to computationalism.
Modern platonism is just the view that abstract objects exist.
Do they causally do anything?
Of course not.
What? Of course abstract objects have causal influence... why do you think people don't think they do?
Because I've studied metaphysics? It's not even a quirky feature of abstract objects it's often how they are defined. Now that distinction may be merely an indexical one-- the physical universe could be an abstraction in some other physical universe and we just call ours 'concrete' because we're in it. But the distinction is still true.
If you can give an instance of an abstract object exerting causal influence that would be big news in metaphysics.
(Note that an abstract object exerting causal influence is not the same as tokens of that abstraction exerting causal influence due features that the token possesses in virtue of being a token of that abstract object. That is "Bayes Theorem caused me to realize a lot of my beliefs were wrong" is referring to the copy of Bayes Theorem in your brain, not the Platonic entity. There are also type-causal statements like "Smoking causes cancer" but these are not claims of abstract objects having causal influence just abstractions on individual, token instances of causality. None of this, or my assent to lessdazed question, reflects a disparaging attitude toward abstract objects. You can't talk about the world without them. They're just not what causes are made of.)
Okay, thanks; right after commenting I realized I'd almost certainly mixed up my quotation and referent. (Such things often happen to a computationalist.)
ETA: A few days ago I got the definition of moral cognitivism completely wrong too... maybe some of my neurons are dying. :/
Metaphysics of abstract processes: Pythagoras -> Leibniz -> Turing. Platonism -> monadology -> algorithmic information theory.
Math and logics: Archimedes et al -> Leibniz -> Turing. Logic -> symbolic logic -> theory of computation.
Philosophy of cognition: (haven't researched yet) -> Leibniz -> Turing. ? -> alphabet of thought -> Church-Turing thesis.
Computer engineering: Archimedes -> Pascal-Leibniz -> Turing. Antikythera mechanism -> symbolic calculator -> computer.
I think you're vastly over emphasizing the historic importance of Leibniz.
True, but I think only in the same sense that everyone vastly overemphasizes the importance of Babbage. They both made cool theoretical advances that didn't have much of an effect on later thinking. This gives a sort of distorted view of cause and effect but the counterfactual worlds are actually worth figuring in to your tale in this case. Wow that would take too long to write out clearly, but maybe it kinda makes sense. (Chaitin actually discovered Leibniz after he developed his brand of algorithmic information theory; but he was like 'ah, this guy knew where it was at' when he found out about him.)
OTOH, Wiener already in 1948 explicitly saw the digital computer as the fulfilment of Leibniz's calculus ratiocinator. (Quoted on Wiki here, full text (maybe paywalled) here.)
Interesting! You have a cite?
This is the original essay I read, I think: http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/chaitin.htm
It'll take a few minutes, Googling Leibniz+Chaitin gives a lot of plausible hits.
(The history of how the idea of computation got formulated is really pertinent for FAI researchers. Justification is a lot like computation. I think we're nearing the "Leibniz stage" of technical moral philosophy. Luckily we already have the language of computation (and decision theory) to build off of in order to talk about justification. Hopefully that will reduce R&D time from centuries to decades. I'm kind of hopeful.)
Leibniz doesn't believe in material substance, so in no sense is he a dualist. If you are asking if there are materialists theists- eh, maybe but as far as I know it has never been a well developed view. That said, the entire platonism-materialism question can probably be reduced to an issue of levels of simulation... in which case it is easy to envision a plausible theism that is essentially dualist but not repugnant to our computationalist sensibilities.
It would be repugnant to their sensibilities if you described in detail the sorts of scenarios that comply with our sensibilities.
For most, probably. But you might be surprised how much unorthodoxy is out there.
If you first tell them, or give them enough information to realize, or strongly suspect, that without this concession by them they fail, then you can get them to agree to very nearly anything.
But those people are slightly different than the versions uninformed of this, people who would reject it.
The unorthodoxy is motivated and not serious in terms of relative degrees of belief based on what is most likely true.
"Fall"? I don't understand the second sentence either.
Often, though on occasion their reasons are isomorphic to stories we'd find plausible. If someone thought it was worthwhile to reinterpret some of the older theistic philosophers in light of modern information theory and computer science... some interesting ideas might fall out.
But yes- I doubt there are more than a handful of educated theists not working with the bottom line already filled in.
Edited "fall" to "fail".
the second sentence means I am trying to distinguish between who someone is and who they might have been. Another intuition pump: put identical theists in identical rooms, on one play a television program explaining how they have to admit that all good evidence makes it unlikely there exists (insert theological thing here, an Adam and eve, a soul, whatever) and on the other play something unrelated to the issue. Then ask the previously identical people if they believe in whatever poorly backed theological thing they previously believed. the unorthodox will flee the false position, but only if they see it as obviously false.
Something like this.
That doesn't mean the reasons we find it implausible aren't good or can't be taught., just as teaching how carbon dating relates to the age of the Earth militates against believing it is ~6,000 years old, one can show why what ancestors tell you in dreams isn't good evidence.
So my conclusion, my supposition, is that if you muster up the most theistic-compatible metaphysics you find plausible, and show it to those theists who don't know why anything more supernatural is implausible, inconsistent or incoherent, they will reject it.
That they accept it after learning that you have good objections to anything more theistic is not impressive at all.
Got it. Don't disagree. But it doesn't follow that a) we should disregard all theistic philosophy or b) not use theistic language. Given that there are live possibilities that resemble theism the circle of concepts and arguments surrounding traditional, religious theism are likely to be fruitful.
Immortals with infinite mind space definitely should not ignore theistic philosophy.
It's sometimes useful to use theistic language, sometimes not. Usually when I see it when theism isn't a subject, it isn't useful.
Rationalization is an important skill of rationality. (There probably needs to be a post about that.) But anyway, I think my "theistic" intuitions are very similar to those of Thomas Aquinas, a.k.a. the rock that Catholic philosophy is built on. Like, actually similar in that we're thinking about the same decision agent and its properties, not just we're thinking about similar ideas.