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The Hard Problem of Gravity

rocketdodger

Philosopher
rocketdodger
Joined
Jun 22, 2005
Messages
6,946
I do not believe we currently can explain the behavior of objects being affected by gravity. There are a number of qualities exhibited by such objects, such as "falling," that defy a full mathematical description.

Thus I advocate the notion of a "Hard Problem of Gravity,", or "HPG," that must be solved if we are to eventually grasp the full nature of gravity.

Among the notions supported by the HPG is the philosophical "gombie" or "gravitational zombie," an object that behaves exactly as if it is being acted upon by gravity yet is not being acted upon by gravity.

The HPG is particularly startling because it implies that everything we drop might actually be a p-gombie instead of a non-p-gombie. In fact, if you have gone skydiving, or jumped from a diving board, or even walked upright, you might be a p-gombie!

P.S. If the local university in your area is hiring post-docs in philosophy, please let me know, I am currently unemployed.
 
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Yea man, seriously. I was like, playing this video game the other day and -- like -- the objects on the screen fell just like they were under the effects of gravity. But how can I tell whether it was real gravity or not? I can only logically assume that since it looked like gravity it must be gravity.
 
rocketdodger said:
I do not believe we currently can explain the behavior of objects being affected by gravity. There are a number of qualities exhibited by such objects, such as "falling," that defy a full mathematical description.

Thus I advocate the notion of a "Hard Problem of Gravity,", or "HPG," that must be solved if we are to eventually grasp the full nature of gravity.

Among the notions supported by the HPG is the philosophical "gombie" or "gravitational zombie," an object that behaves exactly as if it is being acted upon by gravity yet is not being acted upon by gravity.

The HPG is particularly startling because it implies that everything we drop might actually be a p-gombie instead of a non-p-gombie. In fact, if you have gone skydiving, or jumped from a diving board, or even walked upright, you might be a p-gombie!

P.S. If the local university in your area is hiring post-docs in philosophy, please let me know, I am currently unemployed.
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I'd hesitate to fall for such an ungrounded theory.
Plant your ideas in something more down to earth.
Although many may be drawn to such inclinations,
the weight of evidence shows that alternative suppositions won't fly.

Obviously, there's a mass of evidence against these g-zombies, and you don't stand a chance
anchoring them in science.
 
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I'm sure this is a parody thread (though Poe's Law almost applied) but what I don't know is, what is it a parody of?

I'm almost afraid to find out.
 
NobbyNobbs said:
I'm sure this is a parody thread (though Poe's Law almost applied) but what I don't know is, what is it a parody of?

I'm almost afraid to find out.
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Hard problem of consciousness.

In a nutshell, p-zombies are imaginary creatures who behave exactly as if they possessed consciousness, except they actually do not. I (and obviously all intelligent people) think this is a contradiction in terms, as consciousness is defined though process rather than property, and so if the p-zombie has the ability to behave as if conscious, it therefore is undergoing some process that IS consciousness.

It's a dualist concept in that it supposes that there is some something separating that which exhibits all aspects of consciousness and that which possesses consciousness.

eta:

The p-gombie is a close relative. P-gombie theorists believe that attraction to mass does not imply the actions of gravity much as the p-zombie theorists believe that exhibiting signs of conscious does not imply actual consciousness.
 
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"Hard Problem Consciousness", much favoured by philosophers who might otherwise have to work for a living, or worse, teach.
 
rocketdodger said:
I do not believe we currently can explain the behavior of objects being affected by gravity. There are a number of qualities exhibited by such objects, such as "falling," that defy a full mathematical description.

Thus I advocate the notion of a "Hard Problem of Gravity,", or "HPG," that must be solved if we are to eventually grasp the full nature of gravity.

Among the notions supported by the HPG is the philosophical "gombie" or "gravitational zombie," an object that behaves exactly as if it is being acted upon by gravity yet is not being acted upon by gravity.

The HPG is particularly startling because it implies that everything we drop might actually be a p-gombie instead of a non-p-gombie. In fact, if you have gone skydiving, or jumped from a diving board, or even walked upright, you might be a p-gombie!

P.S. If the local university in your area is hiring post-docs in philosophy, please let me know, I am currently unemployed.
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I can conceive of a universe in which all the physical characteristics are the same as in our world and there is no gravity
If I can conceive of this then it is metaphysically possible.
If it is metaphysically possible then gravity is non-physical.

Oh and Materialism is false.

It reminds me of my nosebies thread, nosebies are physically identical to normal people and do not have noses.

It proves that noses are not physical.

And that Materialism is false. Everything proves that Materialism is false.

What about Mary in the anti-grav room?
 
quixotecoyote said:
Hard problem of consciousness.

In a nutshell, p-zombies are imaginary creatures who behave exactly as if they possessed consciousness, except they actually do not. I (and obviously all intelligent people) think this is a contradiction in terms, as consciousness is defined though process rather than property, and so if the p-zombie has the ability to behave as if conscious, it therefore is undergoing some process that IS consciousness.

It's a dualist concept in that it supposes that there is some something separating that which exhibits all aspects of consciousness and that which possesses consciousness.

eta:

The p-gombie is a close relative. P-gombie theorists believe that attraction to mass does not imply the actions of gravity much as the p-zombie theorists believe that exhibiting signs of conscious does not imply actual consciousness.
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The zombie argument is well named, because however many times you kill it, it gets up again and starts shambling forward.
 
quixotecoyote said:
Hard problem of consciousness.

In a nutshell, p-zombies are imaginary creatures who behave exactly as if they possessed consciousness, except they actually do not. I (and obviously all intelligent people) think this is a contradiction in terms, as consciousness is defined though process rather than property, and so if the p-zombie has the ability to behave as if conscious, it therefore is undergoing some process that IS consciousness.

It's a dualist concept in that it supposes that there is some something separating that which exhibits all aspects of consciousness and that which possesses consciousness.

eta:

The p-gombie is a close relative. P-gombie theorists believe that attraction to mass does not imply the actions of gravity much as the p-zombie theorists believe that exhibiting signs of conscious does not imply actual consciousness.
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By the way, could someone point me to something a conscious person can do that an unconscious zombie couldn't do in theory?

I think it was just a cheap shortcut evolution took because it was there and faster than developing a more complicated method to do what consciousness seems to do, which is to drive behavior from within a mental virtual world mapped loosely to reality.
 
Beerina said:
By the way, could someone point me to something a conscious person can do that an unconscious zombie couldn't do in theory?
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Understand or write a work of fiction, formulate a formal theory, philosophize, or post sarcastic threads on the internet ;)
 
I have sky dived hundreds of times and without fail, felt like a zombie after each jump. Lasted for days.
 
Darat said:
Nope, because if they couldn't do all those things we could distinguish them from conscious non-zombies.
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Which is why p-zombies aren't as confounding as people make them out to be. One major feature that separates conscious entities from unconscious is the ability to grasp meaning [i.e. understanding].

An AI like Deep Blue could fit the bill as a kind of p-zombie. If, for example, if Kasparov were to play against deep blue over the internet and was not told he was playing against an AI he might have been fooled into thinking that DB was an actual person. It is able to defeat human chess masters but it cannot be said to understand chess an more than a calculator can be said to understand numbers. It only exists because entities which do have the capacity to understand exist and used that understanding to create it. It is, essentially, just an extension of the minds that made it.

They are algorithmic machines that manipulate syntax but semantics -- meaning -- is beyond their scope. Any construct that is only capable of syntax manipulation could count as some degree of p-zombie. Therefore, p-zombies are entities that can successfully simulate certain classes of cognitive function to give the appearance of intelligence, but can be identified by an inability to grasp meaning, which is inherently non-algorithmic.

Technically, a robotic toy could count as a p-zombie if it could fool a child, animal or anyone else into believing its conscious. It would be theoretically possible to construct a p-zombie sophisticated enough to possibly fool an adult expert but the difference between it and the child's toy would be a difference of degree only. I would posit that there can be no such thing as an indiscernible p-zombie.

All p-zombie constructs can, in principle, be tricked by a discerning conscious agent into revealing their illusory nature.

The only real issue left is that of qualia -- or 'seemingness'. It appears to be an intractable problem of determining the qualitative nature of one's subjective pallet. Qualitative experience is the basis for all meaning , understanding, and the creative capacity to imagine beyond a formal set of rules to generate new ones. At present, we cannot objectively determine what the 'seemingnes' of another entity is from the 'inside' perspective. This is what the core of the "hard problem" really is and what the OP (either intentionally or unintentionally) misses.
 
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AkuManiMani said:
Which is why p-zombies aren't as confounding as people make them out to be. One major feature that separates conscious entities from unconscious is the ability to grasp meaning [i.e. understanding].

An AI like Deep Blue could fit the bill as a kind of p-zombie. If, for example, if Kasparov were to play against deep blue over the internet and was not told he was playing against an AI he might have been fooled into thinking that DB was an actual person. It is able to defeat human chess masters but it cannot be said to understand chess an more than a calculator can be said to understand numbers. It only exists because entities which do have the capacity to understand exist and used that understanding to create it. It is, essentially, just an extension of the minds that made it.

They are algorithmic machines that manipulate syntax but semantics -- meaning -- is beyond their scope. Any construct that is only capable of syntax manipulation could count as some degree of p-zombie. Therefore, p-zombies are entities that can successfully simulate certain classes of cognitive function to give the appearance of intelligence, but can be identified by an inability to grasp meaning which is inherently non-algorithmic.

Technically, a robotic toy could count as a p-zombie if it could fool a child, animal or anyone else into believing its conscious. It would be theoretically possible to construct a p-zombie sophisticated enough to possibly fool an adult expert but the difference between it and the child's tow would be a difference of degree only. I would posit that there can be no such thing as an indiscernible p-zombie.

All p-zombie constructs can, in principle, be tricked by a discerning conscious agent into revealing their illusory nature.

The only real issue left is that of qualia -- or 'seemingness'. It seems to be an intractable problem of determining the qualitative nature of one's subjective pallet. Qualitative experience is the basis for all meaning , understanding, and the creative capacity to imagine beyond a formal set of rules to generate new ones. At present, we cannot objectively determine what the 'seemingnes' of another entity is from the 'inside' perspective. This is what the core of the "hard problem" really is and what the OP (either intentionally or unintentionally) misses.
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I figured that Deep Blue was conscious on some sort of "chess savant" level of operation. Right?
 
Gate2501 said:
I figured that Deep Blue was conscious on some sort of "chess savant" level of operation. Right?
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So you're saying you suspect Deep Blue understands chess? I would say that its just good at doing chess merely because it's creators understood it ;)
 
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