King's Indian

Hello, Mykell.
Two quick points:
1) Uncertainty principle.
I agree, particularly that it is a function of observation. To re-iterate, I thought "observation" was valid only because we fire (i.e. make them interact) particles at the object under discussion. In other words, it wasn't our faulty measurement, but at that level a particle in isolation really doesn't have both qualities at the same time, and in interacting with other particles the waveform collapses enough to make more precise measurements. If wrong, I'll stand corrected, but I'll just check all the same.
2) BIV's
I just happened on an article in "New Scientist" that made me think of a way to resolve some differences. The article itself is on a silicon-chip prosthesis that will mimic the hippocampus (the most structured part of the brain). All very interesting, but what got me thinking is that they're testing this on a slice of rat's brain in a jar. This is my revision of my point: now, one can allow this without thinking of any consciousness on the part of this sliver, and one can still accept that the brain is in some sense alive. There is no reason therefore that a whole brain couldn't be kept biologically active in such a way, either without conceding consciousness either. But to think of our everyday consciousnesses (that come from nowhere ultimately other than matter, in the form of our brain), and what it takes to keep them active, using a BIV analogy:
1) a source of nourishment
2) Real-world input analogous to the senses (so we can perceive how we are doing in our vats, with more or less accuracy, and react by (3) below.)
3) Real-world output analogous to our activities (including consciousness, and thought in general, but also in reacting to events). This will help us to actively participate in (1), and react if we think anything needs doing: in the world we know, we take food into our bodies when hungry; in the true case of a BIV, we could direct prostheses by mental stimulation to assist in changing our dirty water, stock up on nutrients etc. (or shout for help to lab techs)
(I’m considering BIV’s as a general possibility, rather than considering the matrix hypothesis as such. But even so; how, to paraphrase Chalmers, can we approximate the “same sort of inputs and outputs”? Even if those needs are fed by a computer, how is it going to generate those needs, unless from the real world? Even the master computer in the matrix didn’t make it up out of its head. That’s why the question of a real-world fit is justified. To answer any objections along the line, “perhaps the master computer did make it up”; so far as the film goes, it’s accurate.)
So, I allow the possibility of BIV, given that the best vat we know, or are likely to come across, is our own body. In other words, a BIV is feasible given its self-awareness as its state
But consider the "Matrix example" (Again, I’m talking of the film, rather than Chalmers’ use of it): Although (1) applies, (2) and (3) do not. In the matrix, we could be in the pink of health, but if the master programme decides that's it; well...that's it. In this case, (2) and (3) show a poor match with reality. And this is how we may distinguish: even in our vats, we can not be unplugged into the next reality up: the possibility always exists in the matrix.
Now, in arguing that you or I may never know this possibility if we were in the matrix, and blithely lead our lives until our batteries run dry, so to speak, is true, but only an argument from specific example that cannot be applied universally. A compelling counter-argument to universal application would be a Neo. This is why a matrix-BIV cannot have the same privileged access to reality as you or I, or even from a BIV that fulfills (1-3) above.
My refinement of where I stand on BIV’s is a bit blurted out, perhaps, but I wanted to get this out while still fresh in my mind. Perhaps there’s something here for you to hammer into shape. Once more, this isn’t the continuation promised previously about Chalmer’s argument. That’s much more considered, and concentrates more on his four “hypotheses” and their coherence.
Take care,
(yawn)
KI

John Page

Dear Monarch's Native:

Upon your prognostication

One possibility is that inputs and outputs can be generated "Through a Glass, Darkly". This aspect of a BIV boils down (metaphorically, of course, not literally) to the "Well, who made god" kind of infinite regression argument needed to "avoid" the need for a material reality of some kind.

But the question for the BIV is not "Is there a real world" its "Has what we perceive as the real world been deliberately and artifically created by some other being, as opposed to raw reality (whatever that is!)"

That's why I suggested earlier that we are BIVs, the issue is whether the vats are naturally occuring or designed, so the scenario reduces to an ID argument. The ID argument cannot be refuted except on lack of evidence, you can't prove what isn't there isn't there because it isn't, well, there.

Cheers, John

King's Indian

Hello, John! (...and I was toying with the idea of addressing you as "Lavatory Knave", but you're really too good an egg for that. It does remind me that although Prince Charles doesn't employ a Master of the Stool, he does have to get someone to hold it while he produces a sample...the specimen bottle, as if that wasn't bad enough)
Anyway,
I would like to hope that the BIV question of infinite regression may be settled as easily as the one for supernatural creation: the world in which we live (as part of our continually expaynding universe, as Mr. Idle has it) is the only yardstick which we need. This reality does include BIV's, in the extended biological sense we both noted. As I enumerated in points (1-3) above, our own vats allow a (in some way limited) self-knowledge about our own "envatment". My contention is that the idea of brains in vats does not, in itself, exclude a corresponding self-knowledge of our situation. This is my problem (amongst a few others) with Mr. Chalmers' position: he thinks that a BIV necessarily cannot know of its immediate surroundings. Any I/O that it participates in must be fed by some stream of information at variance with reality. His is a limited case of BIV-dom, and has no legitimate universal application. If there are BIV's that do continue to be blithely unaware that they are so, then this doesn't answer for the set of "all BIV's whether technologically or biologically supported", of which I count us both as members.
This is re-iteration on my part, I know, so to return to the point about a created reality, that does not reflect our true situation and is eternally consistent (and I hope to have shown that these two points should never have been so lightly dismissed by Chalmers, as the film in which he frames his questions does not support him, to put it mildly):
If we are BIV’s in a matrix, that without fail marries our actions to our perceptions, which never deviates from internal consistency, from which no-one can ever be unplugged, and which can never show a discrepancy with our reality and the level above…why can’t we apply Occam’s razor and just accept this reality? The trouble is that the idea of Chalmers’ matrix, applied rigorously and pursued to its ultimate conclusion may as well be called the Mind of God. The question, in my mind, does not come down to a lack of evidence, but one of an unnecessarily multiplied entity.
However, I am always ready to be convinced otherwise. People at this end who read your points above (particularly the last sentence) have quite happily marked their scorecard: KI (ground into double play).
Take care,
KI

King's Indian

Hello again, John.
Should've added that my points above don't really differ from yours, so it wasn't really meant as a rebuttal, or anything like.
Have you seen the time?
Ner-night!
KI

MyKell

KI,
Fascinitating post. I tend to agree with almost everything you say. Just to add one point, a BIV doesn't necessarily mean a Brain in the physical sense of a brain. That is, the BIV is not made up of bits and thus cannot be comprehended for our representation inside the matrix. The idea that the universe is a large computer has been suggested by other people before. Stephen Wolfram's New Kind of Science suggests that.

John,
Why does this boil down to an ID argument. I thought the ID theorists suggested that God (the programmer) interfered in the actual design of biological organisms and for that matter all complex forms of matter. In a BIV hypothesis, the programmer only wrote the program, i.e. programmed the underlying principles for the universe to emerge and everything else stemmed from there. More like Einstein's version of GOD!

John Page

Hi MyKell

I just can't see a big difference between the BIV proposal and ID. Both of them require someone to have created our vat/environment.

Cheers, John

King's Indian

Hello, John!

Something occured to me today about this point. When one things of what isn't there, one doesn't always think in terms of absence. What sometimes seems to be the case is one of modified presence.
What I mean by that is that, to take a banal example (home advantage), when one notices that the clock doesn't chime the hour, or one's set of videos for series 3 of "Sex in the City" is missing the episode where someone has sex*, one doesn't directly perceive "absence". One compares two states of the same entity and applies the concept of difference.
Note how this doesn't apply to ID arguments: in that case, the (putative) absence for evidence was perpetual, rather than our being able to compare two states and remark on the difference. That is to say, one cannot rigorously state when the Collector of Prepuces was fannying about, His wonders to perform. Perhaps this might be a way to rebut those ID-ers who blurt out, boiler-plate, that "a. of e. does not equal e. of a.". In this case, the only rigorous definition of absence is one that compares two presences.
This needs some work, though. Any thoughts? Is this old-hat?**
Take care,
KI

* The smilie wasn't born that would satisfactorily represent the irony.
** I mean apart from the nod to Derrida.

John Page

Dear Prince of Wales Feathers:

Much ingenue, mon ami.
Example. You've always lived in a black room. Only you don't know its black because you have nothing to compare it with. Only when exposed to light do you realize things can be in a state of visual illumination.

From this thought experiment on might hypothesize that we can only know of things through the existence of differences. Furthermore, detecting a difference implies that in state #1, A & ~B in state #2, ~A & B. The presence of something and its absence are thus somewhat interchangeable - why not think of state #1 as ~A & B and state #2 as A & ~B.

Back to the example. Some people say black is not a real color because it is the absence of color/light. Isn't that like saying white light is not a real anti-color?

In the end I think this drives our definition of existence. Something cannot simultaneously "be" and "not be" according to our senses (that feed the brain). We can also distil that we perceive "being" as an ongoing process that ceases when an absence is present.

Cheers, John

King's Indian

Hi, John.

Ahh, tildes. When I see them nowadays I remember that summer, long ago, when the world was in uproar and to a young man everything seemed possible...
Anyway,
I think I get it. By basing presence and absence on "difference", it makes it difficult to think of them as expressing value; Difference being in a way amoral. Do you mean that when we rigorously define a concept (like "black") we provisionally make everything it's not the positive one...
(grips right arm with left hand in Strangelovian attempt to get a decent night's sleep in)

John Page

I think there's something in our makeup that drives us to seek the opposite, the one defined by a difference of "absence".

Damn - now I'm confused again!

Cheers, Johhn