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    Blockhead is not a nomic or physical possibility, even if... — Carmelics
    Home/Modality & Possibility
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Blockhead is not a nomic or physical possibility, even if Blockhead is a logical possibility.

    Consciousness & MindModality & Possibility
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.A look-up tree for a human being requires a combinatorial explosion of entries.
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    • 2.The laws and boundary conditions governing the physical world rule out the combinatorial explosion required for a Blockhead look-up tree.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.The argument conflates computational complexity with physical impossibility: what is computationally intractable need not violate any law of nature.
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    • 2.Physical laws constrain energy, matter, and causation, but no known law of physics sets an upper bound on the number of distinct physical states a system may occupy.
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    • 3.Therefore, the combinatorial explosion argument establishes only that Blockhead is practically unrealizable, not that it is nomically impossible.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Block's original 1981 presentation explicitly concedes Blockhead's practical infeasibility while insisting this is irrelevant to the conceptual point about behaviorism and mentality.
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    • 2.The supporting argument's move from 'physically unrealizable' to 'not a nomic possibility' equivocates between resource constraints and genuine law-governed impossibility, a distinction Ned Block, Daniel Dennett, and others treat as philosophically decisive.
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    • 3.If nomic possibility requires only consistency with physical law rather than realizability within actual resource constraints, Blockhead remains nomically possible because no fundamental law forbids arbitrarily large finite lookup structures.
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    Topics

    Modality & PossibilityConsciousness & Mind

    Connections

    1 linked claim

    Blockhead is not a nomic or physical possibility.

    Related

    A look-up tree for a human being requires a combinatorial explosion of entries.Block's original 1981 presentation explicitly concedes Blockhead's practical inf...Blockhead is not a nomic or physical possibility.If nomic possibility requires only consistency with physical law rather than rea...
    +5 moreShow less
    Physical laws constrain energy, matter, and causation, but no known law of physi...The argument conflates computational complexity with physical impossibility: wha...The laws and boundary conditions governing the physical world rule out the combi...The supporting argument's move from 'physically unrealizable' to 'not a nomic po...Therefore, the combinatorial explosion argument establishes only that Blockhead ...

    Similar

    Blockhead is not a nomic or physical possibility.96%Blockhead is a logical possibility88%Therefore, conceptual possibility does not entail metaphysical possibi...87%Zombies may be conceptually possible (no obvious contradiction in the ...86%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: turing-test
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    While there might be ways in which the details of Tipler’s argument could be improved, the general point seems clearly right: the kind of combinatorial explosion that is required for a look-up tree for a human being is ruled out by the laws and boundary conditions that govern the operations of the physical world. But, if this is right, then, while it may be true that Blockhead is a logical possibility, it follows that Blockhead is not a nomic or physical possibility. And then it seems natural to
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit