On 18 Jun 2010, at 17:03, Rabbi Rabbit wrote:
Dear George,
Thank you for your beautiful interpretation of B'reshit (Book of
Genesis).
By your description, I have the feeling that you think about
Sefirotic
Kabbalah. Briefly, Sefirotic Kabbalah believes that God emanated
in 10
Sefirot (the meaning of the word is unclear, the root "Seper" is
related to the words "letter", "number" and "speech"). This 10
Sefirot
are attributes of the divine that need to be in a harmonious
relationship with each other in order to pour the divine influx over
the world. This school of kabbalists believed that they could
influence the Sefirot and in this way exert changes in the divine
and
human realms, basically making sure that the divine influx continued
pouring and sustaining the world. For this reason Sefirotic Kabbalah
is also described as Theurgical Kabbalah.
The kabbalist I have been talking about, Abraham Abulafia, created a
different school. Deeply influenced by Maimonides philosophy (who,
in
turn, adapted Jewish beliefs to harmonize with Aristotelian
philosophy) Abulafia practiced a form of Kabbalah aimed at the union
with the divine intellect. To put it in radical terms, his Kabbalah
was not about influencing God's divine emanations but to become
(part
of) God.
I think your insight into consciousness is very thought-provoking.
From the whole Creation, nothing makes me feel greater wonder than
consciousness. The union with the divine intellect (prophecy)
could be
probably described as a higher state of consciousness. What is
surprising about Abulafia is that he did not reach this state by
suppressing his conscious mind, as most mystics do by repetition
of a
single formula/mantra, but by overstimulating it with letter
combinations accompanied by body motions.
I haven't thought enough how the technique of letter combinations
could be related to consciousness. Any ideas?
Well that is exactly what the digital, or numerical, mechanist
hypothesis provide.
The choice between letter or number is not relevant. You can choose
for the ontology the formal existential quantifier on any term taken
from a first order specification of a universal, in Post,
Church,Turing sense, system.
It happens that any system with terms for numbers, that is 0 and its
successors, together with the addition law and the multiplication
law,
provides a universal system, so I use it to fix the things.
In that system I can enumerate all partial computable functions:
phi_0, phi_1, phi_2, phi_3, ...
A number u can be said universal if phi_u(<x,y>) = phi_x(y).
This u is like the Golem. You write x on its forehead, and it compute
phi_x on some input y. <x,y> is some number describing the
"program",
x, and the data, y.
This defined, or show to exist, sequence of "causal relation" like
sequences, with fixed x and y, of terms:
phi_x(y)_1, phi phi_x(y)_2, phi_x(y)_3, phi_x(y)_4, describing
faithfully computations. Faithfully means that there are implemented
in some genuine intensional sense, relatively to u.
A tiny, yet universal, part of arithmetical truth describes
(faithfully) all possible computational relations.
Such universal machine cannot distinguish the infinitely many
computations going through its computational states, so that its
consciousness is distributed on the projection of infinitely many
computations, and that ... leads to awfully complex mathematical
problems.
Yet, ideally correct machine (number) can reflect (proves, relatively
asserts) that problem relatively to themselves, and extract the logic
obeyed by such projection.
Let us write Bp for the machine proves (asserts and justified if
asked) p.
Obviously Bp -> p. Because we restrict ourself to correct machine.
But the machine cannot always prove Bp -> p. It would prove Bf -> f
(f
= the constant false of propositional logic, or "0 = 1" from
elementary arithmetic). But (elementary classical logic: Bf -> f is
equivalent with ~Bf, (~ = NOT), which asserts self-consistency, and
correct classical machines can't do that (Gödel's second
incompleteness theorem).
Now machine can reflect that: they can prove their own "second
incompleteness theorem" for example. They can prove:
~Bf -> ~B(~Bf) = As far as I will never say bulshit, I will never say
that I will never say bulshit. Roughly speaking, with f = false =
bulshit. Its contrapositive: If I say that I will never say something
false, I am saying something false, or more shortly: if I say that am
sane, I am insane.
So the machine can know (know p = Bp & p) that, as far as she is
correct, she will not confuse Bp and B'p = Bp & p. For the first one
Bf -> f is hopefully true but never provable, and for the second
B'f -
> f is trivially provable ((B'f & f) -> f) is an elementary truth of
propositional logic.
Incompleteness forces in the same way the machine to distinguish the
logic obeying by p, Bp, Bp & p, Bp & ~B~p, Bp & p & ~B~p, and some
other variants. And the machine can know that those five "hypostases/
perspective on arithmetical truth" have their logics split into two
parts: a terrestrial (provable) part, and a divine (true but
unprovable) part, giving mainly ten hypostases.
Well two of them don't split: the knower (Bp & p) does not split for
example (this is not trivial to prove, but "well known" by
mathematical logicians: see Boolos books if and when enough curious).
This gives 8 hypostases.
The diamond "~B~" plays the role of Plotinus "privation" or Aristotle
"indetermination", and it is the conceptual and logical (and
arithmetical) bloc of the material hypostases. Matter is a deep
invariant of all (arithmetical) contingencies.
There is a big price for having consistent continuations:. the (first
person) knower can access to God (truth), but it cannot communicate
it
nor justify it. The intellect can share its knowledge, but it cannot
prove it as such. The observer is necessary, by the impossibility of
the terrestrial intellect (its logic obeys to G) to make union with
the divine intellect (G*). Even one word is too much, there.
So, well he will need faith to believe in any reality. That faith can
develop only from the knower experience. But this leads to a
"catastrophe", the expansion of the knower in richer and richer
differentiating deep computations/history (the origin of
consciousness
differentiation, time and eventually the analytical and physical
realm(s)). That corresponds somehow to the "fall of the soul", or to
"God getting lost in its own creation". I think it begin to explains
why "matter" can "truly" hurt, even if this corresponds to a (true,
yet relative) ignorance.
Bruno
PS I add what I have send to the FOR-LIST (a forum based on David
Deutsch' book on "The fabric of reality". It explains a bit more on
the relation of consciousness with the numbers. Apology for a long
post which will be partially redundant in case you follow both lists.
--------
On 17 Jun 2010, at 18:11, yanniru wrote:
--- In fabric-of-real...@yahoogroups.com, Bruno Marchal
<marc...@...> wrote:
On 16 Jun 2010, at 19:55, Ismail Atalay wrote:
Do we have any reflexive emergent property being implemented on a
computational system?
Not only that. We have discover that elementary arithmetic has
natural
emergent reflexive property. And when the usual induction axioms
are
explicitly added, those reflexive emergent property can be show to
be
maximal. The logic of that reflexive property will be inherited by
all
sound (arithmetically correct) effective theory/machine.
Elementary arithmetic is already conscious, and the content of that
consciousness, which is a first person notion, is already not
computable by being related to a non computable (by elementary
arithmetic) space of its consistent extensions. This consciousness
is
not even definable. Consciousness is a non effective (computable)
property, like (Arithmetical)Truth.
Computable things have a lot of non computable features.
Bruno,
Could you please elaborate on how elementary arithmetic can be
consciousness?
I am assuming that we are digital or just digitalizable machine (DM).
In that case, your consciousness "here and now" can be justified by
the (mathematical) existence of a computational state, and your
consciousness "soon and there" is related to the existence of a
neighborhood of other computational states and to all proofs relating
those computational states. (*All* proofs, even the many identical
one
(fungible one) reappearing as lemma of other proofs).
Now the computational states and the relations between those
computational states don't depend on *which* universal machine you
choose to describe them (this can be explained precisely in computer
science terms). In particular you can choose elementary arithmetic.
The natural numbers, together with addition and multiplication,
give a
full universal programming language.
The block "universe" of computer science is the same as the block
universe of elementary arithmetic. It contains all the machine's or
number's "dreams".
But now, you consciousness cannot be attached to only one number/
state, only to all number/state relative to all universal number
accessing those state. From you own first personal subjective view,
your current state is undetermined below your mechanist substitution
level, so this entails that what we take as appearance of matter and
physical reality is really a probabilistic or credibilistic sum on
the
works of an (enumerable) infinity of universal machines/numbers. And
the entire work is not enumerable. This can already explain
qualitatively many physical features (role of real numbers,
indeterminacy, non locality, presence of invariant and symmetries,
...
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