On 21 Feb 2010, at 17:31, David Nyman wrote:
On 17 February 2010 18:08, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
You may already understand (by uda) that the first person notions are
related to infinite sum of computations (and this is not obviously
computable, not even partially).
Yes, I do understand that. What I'm particularly interested in, with
respect to comp is what is the relation between the 1-p notions and
the 3-p ones, from the point of view of causality (which you can put
in scare quotes if you prefer). IOW, any 1-p notion, such as pain, is
not only non-computable (as opposed to inferrable by analogy) from any
3-p perspective, but is seemingly irrelevant to the unfolding of the
3-p account with which it is (somehow) associated. What scope is
there, in the unfolding of the infinity of computations by the UD, for
1-p experience to be viewed as having any consequences beyond those
already implicit in the 3-p describable nature of the computations
themselves? Does this question make any sense from a comp
perspective?
What do you mean by "implicit" here? What is implicit is that the
subjectivity (1-p), to make sense, has to be referentially correct
relatively to the most probable histories/consistent extensions.
This make possible to associate a "knower" (Bp & p) to a
"believer" (Bp), and a "feeler" (Bp & Dp & p) to an observer (Bp &
Dp). This makes it not just possible, but necessary, to attach a first
person (who will have a logic of first person associate to him/she in
a third person describable way) to a 3-person "body" (except that the
price to pay is that such a body is an immaterial collection of number
relations).
Then the incommunicable and private aspect of those knowledge and
qualia is provided by the theory of knowledge and the quale logic,
provided by the respective intensional variant of G and G*. The
difference between G and G* (provable and true) is reflected in those
intensional variant.
I guess you mean that we cannot "prove" the existence of the 1-p
from the
3-p grounds. That's correct (both intuitively with UDA, and it is a
theorem
of machine's theology (AUDA).
Not only can't we prove it, but we couldn't, from a 3-p pov, even
predict or in any way characterise such 1-p notions, if we didn't know
from a 1-p perspective that they exist (or seem to know that they seem
to exist).
This is not true I think. Already with the uda duplication experience,
you can see predict the difference, for example, the apparition of
first person indeterminacy despite the determinacy in the 3d
description. This is captured by the difference between (Bp and p) and
Bp, and that difference is a consequence of incompleteness, when self-
observing occurs.
But doesn't this lead to paradox? For example, how are we able to
refer to these phenomena if they are causally disconnected from our
behaviour - i.e. they are uncomputable (i.e. inaccessible) from
the 3-
p perspective?
Good point. But you are lead to this because you still believe that
matter
is a primitive 3-p notion.
No, I don't "believe" it, but I'm able to entertain it (as an
alternative to comp) to see where this hypothesis leads.
It leads to non comp. Notably. And to the current insolubility of the
mind-body problem.
One of the
places it leads (which ISTM some are anxious not to acknowledge)) is
the kind of brute paradox I've referred to. So what I'm asking you is
how is this different from a comp perspective? Can our 3-p references
to 1-p phenomena escape paradox in the comp analysis?
Yes, because we do accept the truth of elementary arithmetic. We can
study the theology of simple (and thus *intuitively* correct) Löbian
machine. We *know* in that setting that the machine will be aware of
an explanation gap, etc.
Again, the price is that we have to recover physics without
introducing a 3-p physical world.
But the physical 3-p notions are just NOT closed for explanation. It
collapses all the points of view. It explains consciousness away!
I understand that you take this view from a comp perspective, but what
about from a primitive-materialist pov in its own terms?
You will have to introduce infinities in the 3-p description of
whatever the consciousness supervene on. And then it is an open
problem to see if this provide any help to solve the mind body
problem. Infinity and ad hoc imposed indeterminacy looks like red
herring. It blocks the comp hyp, but does not seem to give new clue in
the mind-body problem, other than the one extract from lobianity
(infinite machine are mostly lobian too, when self-referentially
correct).
Do you
believe that such a "closed" explanation is fundamentally unable to
account seriously for consciousness for the reasons I've cited? Is
there any way to "re-open" it outside of comp?
Not in a way which is not already provided by comp. But unless you
weaken comp so much as becoming "God", weakening comp does not provide
different clue for solving the consciousness/reality problem.
You may try, but 1500 years of materialism seems to lead only to
person eliminativism. Where comp and its weakening reintroduce
automatically a knower, a feeler, a better, etc.
(In reply to Stathis):
Consciousness could be computable in the sense that if you are the
computation, you have the experience.
I think you have the correct intuition, but the phrasing is really
misleading. I am not a computation, I am a person.
If this is the correct intuition, then the computations already
contain every possibility from the 3-p perspective, and the additional
existence, nature and possible consequences of 1-p notions are as
inaccessible as they are from a primitive-materialist pov, AFAICS.
In a sense, this is correct. Materialist seems to be able to use the
same self-reference logic than the one used by the computationalist.
But then, the point is that we are confronted to the measure problem,
and the problem of the relation between 1-p and 3-p is transformed
into a reduction of the physical 3-p from and only from the self-
reference logic and the restriction of 3-p possibilities to the
accessible state by the UD. And this works indeed. In that sense, at
the propositional level, it makes sense to say that the mind-body
problem is solved by comp. It remains to see how far this works. Is
the comp first order logic of the hypostases compatible with the
empirically observable facts.
Keep in mind that, by the self-reference logic (or even just self-
multiplication), we *already* know why a machine comes to
differentiate quanta and qualia, and the math describes this
precisely. (By the G*\G-equivalence of Bp with Bp & p, etc). If those
comp quanta are the "real" quanta remains to be assessed, and if it is
case, as it seems at the propositional level (already mathematically
studied) this would support this theory of qualia.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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