William,
On 18 Mar 2010, at 18:06, L.W. Sterritt wrote:
Bruno and others,
Perhaps more progress can be made by avoiding self referential
problems and viewing this issue mechanistically.
I don't see what self-referential problems you are alluding too,
especially when viewing the issue mechanistically.
Self-reference is where computer science and mathematical logic excel.
A self-duplicator is just a duplicator applied to itself. If Dx gives
xx, DD gives DD. Note the double diagonalization. That basic idea
transforms mechanically "self-reference problem" into amazing feature
about machines.
The most in topic, imo, is that it leads to two modal theories G and
G* axiomatizing (completely at the propositional level) the provable
and true, respectively, logics of self-reference. Machines can prove
their own limitation theorems, and study the productive geometry of
their ignorance, and indetermination. They can easily infer a large
class of true but unprovable propositions, and used them in different
ways. Useful when an argument (UDA) shows that matter (physical
science) are a product of that indetermination reflexion. It makes
comp testable.
Actually it leads to a general arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus
neoplatonist theory of everything (God-without, God-within, the
universal soul, intelligible Matter, sensible matter (qualia) etc.).
The theory is there. It is also the theory on which converge the self-
referentially correct machines which look inward.
It is computer science. The key of comp.
Where I start: Haim Sompolinsky, "Statistical Mechanics of Neural
Networks," Physics Today (December 1988). He discussed "emergent
computational properties of large highly connected networks of
simple neuron-like processors," HP has recently succeeded in making
titanium dioxide "memristors" which behave very like the synapses in
our brains, i.e. the memristor's resistance at any time depends
upon the last signal passing through it. Work is underway to make
brain-like computers with these devices; see Wei Lu, Nano letters,
DOI:10.1021/nl904092h. It seems that there is a growing consensus
that conscious machines will be built, and perhaps with the new
Turing test proposed by Koch and Tonini, their consciousness may be
verified. Then we can measure properties that are now speculative.
I think the contrary. If a scientist speculates that consciousness can
be tested, he has not understood what consciousness is. We may
evaluate it by bets, and self-identification.
Any way, this is the strong AI thesis, which is implied by comp (*I*
am a machine). With *I* = you, really, hoping you know that you are
conscious. Tononi has interesting ideas, typically he belongs to comp.
He is not aware, or interested, in the body problem to which comp
leads (and he is wrong on Mary).
But the comp body problem is not just a problem. Like evolution
theory, it is the beginning of an explanation of where the appearance
of a material world comes from, and why it is necessary, once you
believe in 0, 1, 2, 3, ..., and addition and multiplication.
I guess I'm in the QM camp that believes that what you can measure
is what you can know.
What I say depends only of saying yes to a doctor at some level. No
problem if you choose the quantum level. In all case physics has to be
derived, in a precise way (based on the logics of self-reference) from
arithmetic (see my url for the papers).
Bruno
William
On Mar 18, 2010, at 1:44 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 17 Mar 2010, at 19:12, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 3/17/2010 10:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 17 Mar 2010, at 13:47, HZ wrote:
I'm quite confused about the state of zombieness. If the
requirement
for zombiehood is that it doesn't understand anything at all but
it
behaves as if it does what makes us not zombies? How do we not
we are
not? But more importantly, are there known cases of zombies?
Perhaps a
silly question because it might be just a thought experiment but
if
so, I wonder on what evidence one is so freely speaking about,
specially when connected to cognition for which we now (should)
know
more. The questions seem related because either we don't know
whether
we are zombies or one can solve the problem of zombie
identification.
I guess I'm new in the zombieness business.
I know I am conscious, and I can doubt all content of my
consciousness, except this one, that I am conscious.
I cannot prove that I am conscious, neither to some others.
Dolls and sculptures are, with respect to what they represent, if
human in appearance sort of zombie.
Tomorrow, we may be able to put in a museum an artificial machine
imitating a humans which is sleeping, in a way that we may be
confused and believe it is a dreaming human being ...
The notion of zombie makes sense (logical sense). Its existence
may depend on the choice of theory.
With the axiom of comp, a counterfactually correct relation
between numbers define the channel through which consciousness
flows (select the consistent extensions). So with comp we could
argue that as far as we are bodies, we are zombies, but from our
first person perspective we never are.
But leaving the zombie definition and identification apart, I
think
current science would/should see no difference between
consciousness
and cognition, the former is an emergent property of the latter,
I would have said the contrary:
consciousness -> sensibility -> emotion -> cognition -> language -
> recognition -> self-consciousness -> ...
(and: number -> universal number -> consciousness -> ...)
Something like that, follows, I argue, from the assumption that
we are Turing emulable at some (necessarily unknown) level of
description.
and
just as there are levels of cognition there are levels of
consciousness. Between the human being and other animals there
is a
wide gradation of levels, it is not that any other animal lacks of
'qualia'. Perhaps there is an upper level defined by computational
limits and as such once reached that limit one just remains
there, but
consciousness seems to depend on the complexity of the brain
(size,
convolutions or whatever provides the full power) but not
disconnected
to cognition. In this view only damaging the cognitive
capacities of a
person would damage its 'qualia', while its 'qualia' could not get
damaged but by damaging the brain which will likewise damage the
cognitive capabilities. In other words, there seems to be no
cognition/consciousness duality as long as there is no brain/
mind one.
The use of the term 'qualia' here looks like a remake of the
mind/body
problem.
Qualia is the part of the mind consisting in the directly
apprehensible subjective experience. Typical examples are pain,
seeing red, smell, feeling something, ... It is roughly the non
transitive part of cognition.
The question here is not the question of the existence of degrees
of consciousness, but the existence of a link between a possible
variation of consciousness in presence of non causal perturbation
during a particular run of a brain or a machine.
If big blue wins a chess tournament without having used the
register 344, no doubt big blue would have win in case the
register 344 would have been broken.
Not with probability 1.0, because given QM the game might have
(and in other worlds did) gone differently and required register
344.
Correct but irrelevant. We don't assume QM at the start, and if you
use QM, you have to reason on the QM normal words to make the point
relevant. Or you assume QM-comp, and not comp. It is physicalism.
And you beg the point, which is that comp -> QM-comp. (assuming QM
is correct on the "physical world").
Some people seems to believe that if big blue was conscious in
the first case, it could loose consciousness in the second case.
I don't think this is tenable when we assume that we are Turing
emulable.
But the world is only Turing emulable if it is deterministic and
it's only deterministic if "everything" happens as in MWI QM.
Newton mechanics is a counter-example. You lost me. I don't know in
which theory you reason.
Also, arithmetical truth is "deterministic" although only a tiny
part of it is computable. Consciousness, matter are higher order
notion, some nameable (by numbers), some not. Most, by comp, are
not computable. Computable things can have non computable
qualities. By incompleteness, this is a very general phenomenon.
The full first order arithmetical "Noûs", that first order G*, is
Pi_1 complete *in* the oracle of Arithmetical Truth.
It means that even with an oracle capable of answering any sigma_i
or pi_i questions, some intellectual truth about machine our
numbers remain de type Pi_i difficult! The first order G is Pi_2-
complete. Quite above the computable, which is the Sigma_1
complete. The mystery with comp is why does the appearance seems
computable, given the radical first person indeterminacy which
occurs at some level.
The whole many coupling consciousness/realities arises through the
attempt of a swarm of numbers to understand themselves. At least I
show why it has to be like that once we say "yes" to the doctor.
Is it so astonishing? It explains where the laws of physics come
from, and why it hurts. It is just more near Pythagorus, Plato,
Plotinus than Aristotle.
A physicalist who, like *some* radical atheist, makes physicalism a
given of science illustrates a lack of rigor in ontology or theology.
Scientists does not know, and will never (publicly) know. (As
scientist).
But if you believe you are Post-Church-Turing emulable, then you
have to believe that 0, the successor, addition and multiplication
are enough to explain why eventually universal numbers believe in
e, i, pi, 24, and in some relatively winning universal numbers
(like probably modular functors, quantum topologies, non
commutative geometry). And why it hurts. Thanks to the Gödel-
Solovay gap between proof (G) and truth (G*), which is inherited by
the intensional variants of the logics of self-reference, we get a
theory of quanta *and* of the qualia.
It is math, of course.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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