Would you and Jessicata mind clarifying what you mean by “physicalism”? Is it the same or different than Yudkowski’s definition of “reductionism”, for which he said:
Reductionism is not a positive belief, but rather, a disbelief that the higher levels of simplified multilevel models are out there in the territory.
For example, I’d like to separate:
Physics-y (i.e., low level) maps are always better than high-level maps.
from:
Physics-y (i.e., low level) maps always make predictions that are at least as accurate as high-level maps, given sufficient information and computation.
I’m suspicious that Jessicata may be attacking a straw version of physicalism while you’re defending a steel version, but it’s hard to tell. (And even if not, it’s nice to know exactly what’s under discussion.)
Would you and Jessicata mind clarifying what you mean by “physicalism”? Is it the same or different than Yudkowski’s definition of “reductionism”, for which he said:
For example, I’d like to separate:
from:
I’m suspicious that Jessicata may be attacking a straw version of physicalism while you’re defending a steel version, but it’s hard to tell. (And even if not, it’s nice to know exactly what’s under discussion.)
I’d define it as the argument that nothing non-material exists (except possibility logic)