On 23 Jan 2013, at 11:42, Roger Clough wrote:
Hi Bruno Marchal
Just trying to clarify things.
1) OK, I partly understand if we allow words as output.
... and inputs. OK.
But words are descriptions (3p, or Thirdness),
OK.
not experience (1p, or Firstness).
Yes. Experiences are not words.
2) Let us admit for the moment that it is possible
for a computer to be conscious. What would it be
conscious of ? The code it is running, which would be
like a stream of consciousness, ie an experience ?
In fact, a computer is never conscious.
Similarly, my brain is not conscious. No more than my liver.
It is the (immaterial) person which is conscious. The brain, or the
computer, is only a local tool to make that conscious person able to
manifest itself relatively to its most probable computational histories.
The person is defined mainly by its first person experience, which is
not something that we can identify with anything third person
describable. But we can define it, at least in a first approximation,
by the knower (notably the one who know the content of its memories).
It has been shown, by Montague and Kaplan precisely, that like
"truth", knowledge by a machine cannot be defined in the language of
the machine. But as scientists, by studying much simpler machine than
ourselves, we can use a local and little "theory of truth" (like
Traski's one) to (meta) define the knowledge of the machine (notably
by linking the machine's belief (which are definable and representable
in 3p) and truth. This works well, and explains already why the
introspecting machine cannot know who she is. The identity card, or
even the complete description of her body, will not do the trick (that
leads only to a 3p copy, not her). That explains also that the knowing
machine can only *bet* on a substitution level, without ever being
sure it is correct, making comp asking for an act of faith (similar to
some faith in some possible reincarnation).
It is counter-intuitive, and it does leads to the reversal: eventually
the brain and bodies are construct of the mind, even if they are also
related to deep and complex 3p number relations. Consciousness is not
due to the running of a computer. It only appears locally to be like
that. In the global big picture, it is the running of a computer which
appear as an event "in consciousness".
I hope this can help a bit. It is hard to explain something counter-
intuitive in intuitive terms, and that is why I use the deductive
method, starting from the hypothesis that there is a level where we
are 3p duplicable.
Bruno
----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Bruno Marchal
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2013-01-22, 12:00:41
Subject: Re: Escaping from the world of 3p Flatland
On 22 Jan 2013, at 12:36, Roger Clough wrote:
Hi Bruno Marchal
You said:
"God, matter, consciousness are never computable"
Is that because the above are nonphysical ?
Matter is physical, by definition, yet non computable. This follows
from the UD Argument.
If consciousness is not computable, can ideas be computable ?
Yes. Most of them are (the programs, the monads).
I'm totally lost. I don't even understand how ANYTHING other
than numbers can be computable.
Strings of letter are not number, but the operation of concatenation
is computable ( a + baba = ababa).
Look at your computer, you see mails, letters, etc. Not number, yet
all what you do with your computer (like sending a mail) are
computable operation.
Suppose you do a computation. You get a number or a bunch of numbers.
How can you say what they mean ?
By remembering the definitions, the axioms I am assuming, etc. I
don't see the problem. If you refer to the qualia, this is explain
by the peculiarity of the logic of machines self-reference: when
machine introspect they can understand things, without completely
understanding the understanding process itself. It is normal, but it
needs a bot of computer science and mathematical logic to get the
complete picture.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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