Dear Stephen,
On 28 Jan 2011, at 01:13, Stephen Paul King wrote:
Dear Bruno,
Interleaving.
From: Bruno Marchal
Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2011 1:23 PM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: A comment on Mauldin's paper “Computation and
Consciousness”
On 25 Jan 2011, at 15:47, Stephen Paul King wrote:
SPK: The supervenience thesis is separate from the Turing
thesis and Mauldin does a good job in distinguishing them.
[BM]
Just to be clear, what Maudlin call "supervenience thesis" is what I
called "physical supervenience thesis", to distinguish it from the
computationalist supervenience thesis.
The computationalist supervenience thesis is basically what remains
when we keep comp, and understand that the Phys. Sup. thesis has to
go away in the comp frame.
[SPK]
My claim is that we can push physical supervenience far into the
background but in the cases where interaction between entities
occurs it cannot be eliminated entirely. My proposal is that for
interactions we must have both MEC and MAT, as MEC or MAT taken
alone provide insufficient support for supervenience. This is what I
see Maudlin’s argument proving.
***
SPK: The problem that I see is in the properties of physicality
that are assumed in Mauldin’s argument. It is one thing to not be
dependent on what particular physical structure a computation can
be run on (assuming a realistic supervenience), it is another thing
entirely to say that a Turing machine can be “run” without the
existence of any physical hardware at all.
[BM]
Well, in the branch ~MEC v ~MAT, Maudlin seems to prefer MAT, so he
seems with you on this, I think.
[SPK]
No, I am claiming that for interactions between entities (and
the models thereof) we must have MEC and MAT. In situations, like in
most of your theory, interactions are not a factor thus your thesis
follows smoothly in that frame. This is why I constantly ding you
for being solipsistic. I would hope that you would do the same for
me if I where equivalently in error. One must be able to defend
one’s beliefs. Judge and prepare to be judged.
***
The work has been done. It is up to you to tell me where is the error,
which has to exist if you want have, like many, both MEC and MAT.
I insist that I have no theory. I just show that MEC implies a
reduction of the mind body problem to a body problem. You cannot use
the fact that the body problem is not yet solved as a critic of the
argument.
And then the arithmetization of the argument provides enough evidence
that a good arithmetical tensor product can exist, so solipsism is
also not proved from MEC. But ~MAT is proved from MEC. I cannot sum up
a long argument in each paragraph, so I refer you to the explanation
that I have already given.
Either you take the argument into account, or you refute it or at
least explain why you are not convinced, in the course of the
argument. Each time someone explain me why h/she is not convinced, if
patient enough, come to understand he/she can no more say yes to a
doctor without adding some magic in either consciousness or matter.
SPK: I am trying to make this distinction and trying to fix this
problem that I found in the supervenience thesis within Mauldin’s
argument. He does point out that there are contrafactuals that must
have some physical instantiation. We see this on page 411 where he
wrote:
“The only physical requirement that a system must met in order to
instantiate a certain machine table are that (1) there must be at
least as many physically distinguishable states of the system as
there are machine states in the table, (2) the system must be
capable of reacting to and changing the state of the tape, and (3)
there must be enough physical structure to support the subjunctive
connections specified in the table.”
It is in the subjunctive connections that we see the
contrafactuals expressed. If one’s model of physical reality does
not allow for the necessary subjunctive connections to be
implemented then the supervenience thesis would fail independent of
the Turing thesis.
[BM]
OK.
[SPK]
So if you agree with this then you must also agree that models
that do not allow the necessary structure to support the subjunctive
connections will fail to allow for consciousness to supervene. I am
arguing that COMP +AR is insufficient for supervenience of
consciousness other than in a crypto-solipsistic mode that is
indistinguishable from a conscious state whose content has no
information, i.e. is at best randomness. Such modes of consciousness
would be of course included in the class of states of consciousness
but we cannot identify our states of consciousness solely with them.
Without the existence of multiple incarnations of mind to mutually
restrain each other, the mind will have no means to limit what it is
not and thus would be, by definition, at least insane. (This is one
situation that results from Travis Garrett’s idea of Observers. I am
still researching my comment on his paper http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.2198.)
If there is no separable means to implement a mind, or at least
the computable contents thereof, then there is no way to define a
local converging measure of information. MAT gives us that means and
thus I claim that some form of physical supervenience is necessary
(but not sufficient). Hitoshi Kitada has written extensively of this
possibility: http://www.kitada.com/
***
SPK: My point is that we need to be careful about what exactly do
we mean by “causally inactive piece of matter”. If there is
material present within a physical system that does not affect the
3 requirements above then surely we can agree with Mauldin’s claim,
but if there is a problem with the faithfulness of the model of
what physicality involves, then this must be fixed if possible.
This is why I say that there is a bit of a straw man in his argument.
[BM]
Maudlin should have said: "causally inactive piece of matter
*relevant* for the computation. This is what I did, and it makes the
argument independent of the counterfactual re-instantiation. The
movie-graph is simpler with that respect. But this can lead to some
ambiguity too.
[SPK]
Bruno, did you see the implication of quantum entanglement is
that any form of interaction between the entities in our world of
experience will make it very difficult or even impossible to
determine what parts of matter are *relevant* and what parts are
not. See: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0108070 for some related
ideas. Sure, we can avoid this by constructing solipsistic theories,
but these are just as self-stultifying as all other solipsistic ideas.
***
SPK: Mathematical structures do not “do” anything, they merely
exist, if at all! We can use verbs to describe relations between
nouns but that does not change the fact that nouns are nouns and
not verbs. The movie graph is a neat trick in that is abstracts out
the active process of organizing the information content of the
individual frames and the order of their placement in the graph,
but that some process had to be involved to perform the computation
of the content and ordering cannot be removed, it is only pushed
out of the field of view. This is why I argue that we cannot ignore
the computational complexity problem that exist in any situation
where we are considering a optimal configuration that is somehow
selected from some set or ensemble.
[BM]
I don't see how this would change anything in the argument, unless
you presuppose consciousness is not locally Turing emulable, to
start with.
[SPK]
I am satisfied with your argument with regard to the idea of
“consciousness is not locally Turing emulable” but I do believe that
the content of any particular “moment of consciousness” is Turing
emulable modulo sufficient computational resources. This is how
bisimulation between minds is possible but only for finite and
bounded Observer moments. I thus agree with your argument up to the
point that we disagree. <wlEmoticon-smile[1].png> Whether or not
Consciousness is Turing emulable is not the issue, it is whether
Turing emulation is even a sound concept in an ontology where some
local physical reality “does not exist”. This is a subtle
distinction that I am claiming.
We seem to disagree about the nature of Time, but I think that
this disagreement flows from the differences in focus that we have
in our modelizations. I am interested in interactions between
entities, you, it seems, are not. I wish I was wrong in this belief.
In my thinking Time flow vanishes in the limit of the vanishing of
differences but is real locally for entities such as us. I
distinguish “being in eternity” from “Eternal Being” and as I have
stated previously take Becoming as the essence of existence, for
being *necessarily possible* cannot be static. To be static requires
definition and bounds and thus differentiation. Since the
possibility of making distinctions vanishes for Existence itself, it
cannot be defined or named. It has no outside.
***
SPK: Another question that I am asking is what relation does
information have with matter. We had a paper that seems to propose
that information is physical and then goes on to make some strange
claims.
[BM]
OK. And the problem with the word physical is that it means
different things in different settings. The main confusion is
between fundamentally physical, or material, with a conception of
primary matter, or it means "related to this or that physical
theory" based on abstract mathematical relations.
[SPK]
OK, let us focus carefully on this problem! We have no evidence
for and plenty of sound arguments against the idea that existence at
its primitive level (assuming a well founded ontology) is material,
pace Garrett, but that does not equal a proof of any sort that MAT
does not exist.
Sure. That is why I provide a proof, or an argument.
Please recall that existence, per say, is not a “property” that
an entity can *have*. Existence is only supervening upon its
possible forms of expression not on the chance that such are
observed as there will always exist entities that are not yet within
the class of entities that the UD has already dovetailed upon. This
follows from the fact that the UD must run eternally (per UDA) and
all of the proofs of Gödel's incompleteness.)
What I am arguing for is that we need a finite form of MAT for
our models to be sound. We can show that this finite form of MAT is
degenerate and can even vanish in some limit (such as in a
Russellian neutral monism where the differences between mind and
body vanish because the ability to distinguish between them
vanishes), but necessary at our level of expressiveness it is
nonetheless.
***
SPK: We also had a recent paper that discusses how “information is
converted into free energy” by a Maxwell Demon-type feedback
system. It seems to me that there is a lot of confusion about what
relationship there is between information and matter, so my
inquisitiveness could be seen as an attempt to make sense of this
mess.
[BM]
And the word "matter" is similarly ambiguous, and never defined,
except by Aristotle which provides the "& Dp" idea, implicitly used
by the Platonist Plotinus to define matter in the way used by the
self-observing machine.
Matter is what is indeterminate, and oppose to intelligibility (Bp).
It is of the type ~Bp, that is D#. This is coherent with the idea
that a physics is, before all thing, a probability or plausibility
calculus. Cf also Timaeus (Plato) bastard calculus, and the Kripke
semantics of "Dp" in modal logics: Dp = it exists a world satisfying
p.
[SPK]
A very good point, Bruno. But I think that you would agree that
Dp is trivial if by itself given, as I explained above, that
existence is necessary possibility. We need more than Dp in our
semantics! We need a local1-p necessary definiteness of properties
even if that definiteness vanishes in 3-p. I take quantum mechanics
as screaming this message over and over but like the cries of
Cassandra it falls upon dead ears.
Most people, including most philosophers, do not explicitly talk
about questions of the the reality or non-reality of the immediate
content of “being in the world”. Descartes did in his Meditations
and came to the conclusion that a dualism was needed. Regretfully
his proposal had a fatal flaw because (for one thing) he used the
Humean notion of causality (including the principle of locality – as
did Maudlin!), but this failure by Descartes does not necessitate
the unsoundness of all forms of dualism. Pratt has sketched out a
form of dualism that works! I am just trying to expand on his idea.
But my hardest challenge is getting my fellow philosophers to stop
being crypto-solipsists! Our modelizations must include some form of
interactions between many minds. Interactions between minds and
bodies is easy, interactions between minds is hard!
***
People interact when they are multiplied collectively. There are
plenty such interactive computations in arithmetic. The problem which
remains consist to show that such collective computations win the
"measure battle".
To postulate physics or quantum computation at the start is a
conceptual treachery once we assume comp, and it prevents the
simultaneous derivation of quanta and qualia. The 8 hypostases gives a
phenomenology of many forms of dualism.
SPK: One idea that could be proposed is that information is a
relationship in a triple such that a difference exists between two
that makes a difference for the third. I am sure that this can be
put into more formal terms. Turing Machines aside, we are not
really getting to the problem until we have a good set of tools
with which to examine the question of how to determine the
substitution level of a given system and even if substitution is
possible.
[BM]
Here I disagree 100%.
It is proved that if we are machine, then we cannot define and prove
what is our substitution level. No machine can ever know which
machine she is. This is what I have called the Benacerraf principle
in older post (and my theses).
For any machine defined as such in a 3-way, the substitution level
is built in the plan of the machine, by definition.
[SPK]
Your disagreement is with a straw man, Bruno, not with my
argument here, although I did use poor wording there. I was
considering the physical aspect of substitution, as in the for
example case of replacing biological neurons with silicon chips.
Please remember that you are a monist and I am not, so our
definitions differ in subtle ways. Your idea of Machine is purely
ideal. For me machine has dual aspects, physical and informational.
In my thoughts, a machine can have physical substitutability with
another machine under bisimilarity, where the substitution maintains
the invariance of the informational structure (a Complete Atomic
Boolean Algebra for the classical case of Chu2). We can copy
physical states up to the quantum limit, but we cannot copy the
information that is relevant to determining the quantum states of
those machines because of the non-commutativity of canonical
conjugates.
There is a difference between information and knowledge, between
what is computable by UTM and what is not. I do not see how my claim
is not inconsistent with the Benacerraf principle: (http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg08199.html
“if I am a machine I will never KNOWN which one.”; by my reasoning
this follows from the “no outside observers” idea of van Fraassen.
If there does not exist a third such that the state of that third is
capable of being altered by a difference between a pair of states of
knowledge, then there is no information difference in content (this
is, by the way, the definition of bisimilarity!). Knowledge is like
second order information.This is exactly the situation where my
proposed duality vanishes! In the zero information state, there is
no differences that could make a difference (per definition!).
I assume that I am a machine that requires some form of physical
instantiation to preserve my sense of identity, my awareness of
being in the world, but I cannot know or gain information of which
ideal machine I am. Questions like “which physical implementation is
“me”?” is similarly unknowable from 3-p because there does not exist
a non-trivial 3-p that is a unique bijection of some 1-p. There are
*many* possible 3-p that can be extended from a single 1-p. Your
teleportation argument in UDA show this very well. This claim seems
to imply that we cannot gain knowledge of “what it is like be be a
bat” without actually being some kind of bat and is falsifiable in
that sense. My wording may be ill-formed here, but I am betting that
I am correct. <wlEmoticon-smile[1].png>
So where is our disagreement?
***
That you seem not to see that MEC => ~MAT without singling out what is
wrong in the argument.
Of course you can add a notion of primitive matter as epiphenomenon,
but that contradicts the weakest form of OCCAM, if only because we
have no means at all to *interact* with such matter. So why to
reintroduce it.
SPK: We can play with theoretical concepts and toy models all of
our lives, but if and until they have concrete physical
realizations they are mere figments of our imaginations.
[BM]
I disagree again. We can use them as theoretical tools. Most of
theoretical computer science is not constructive, and most of the
times necessarily and provably so. That is another reason why it is
closer to theology than to engineering.
[SPK]
I do not disagree that this is theology. I am very happy that
you would wrestle theology away from the monopoly that irrational
belief systems have claimed of it. It is about time!
Well, I am happy you are saying that. That wrestling will still take a
long time I'm afraid.
Best,
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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