Inertia and mass are the same thing. You probably meant “the same proportionality constant between mass and gravitational force”, that is, imagine that the value of Newton’s constant G was different.
But this (like CCC’s grandparent post introducing the gravity analogy) actually goes in Chalmers’ favor. Insofar as we can coherently imagine a different value of G with all non-gravitational facts kept fixed, the actual value of G is a new “brute fact” about the universe that we cannot reduce to non-gravitational facts. The same goes for consciousness with respect to all physical facts, according to Chalmers. He explicitly compares consciousness to fundamental physical quantities like mass and electric charge.
The problem is that one aspect of the universe being conceptually irreducible at the moment (which is all that such thought experiments prove) does not imply it might forever remain so when fundamental theory changes, as Peterdjones says. Newton could imagine inertia without gravity at all, but after Einstein we can’t. Now we are able to imagine a different value of G, but maybe later we won’t (and I can actually sketch a plausible story of how this might come to happen if anyone is interested).
No, I meant a form of matter which coexisted with current forms of matter but which was accelerated by a force disproportionately to the amount of force exerted through the gravity force. One such possibility would be something that is ‘massless’ in that it isn’t accelerated by gravity but that has electric charge.
And by definition, the value of G is equal to 1, just like every other proportionality constant. I wasn’t postulating that MG/NS^2 have a different value.
Not really. Just postulate something which does not have the same proportionality constant relating inertia to mass.
Inertia and mass are the same thing. You probably meant “the same proportionality constant between mass and gravitational force”, that is, imagine that the value of Newton’s constant G was different.
But this (like CCC’s grandparent post introducing the gravity analogy) actually goes in Chalmers’ favor. Insofar as we can coherently imagine a different value of G with all non-gravitational facts kept fixed, the actual value of G is a new “brute fact” about the universe that we cannot reduce to non-gravitational facts. The same goes for consciousness with respect to all physical facts, according to Chalmers. He explicitly compares consciousness to fundamental physical quantities like mass and electric charge.
The problem is that one aspect of the universe being conceptually irreducible at the moment (which is all that such thought experiments prove) does not imply it might forever remain so when fundamental theory changes, as Peterdjones says. Newton could imagine inertia without gravity at all, but after Einstein we can’t. Now we are able to imagine a different value of G, but maybe later we won’t (and I can actually sketch a plausible story of how this might come to happen if anyone is interested).
No, I meant a form of matter which coexisted with current forms of matter but which was accelerated by a force disproportionately to the amount of force exerted through the gravity force. One such possibility would be something that is ‘massless’ in that it isn’t accelerated by gravity but that has electric charge.
And by definition, the value of G is equal to 1, just like every other proportionality constant. I wasn’t postulating that MG/NS^2 have a different value.