On 11 May 2011, at 00:29, John Mikes wrote:
Hi, Bruno,
excuse me for getting lost between you and Brent. You are absolutely
right: I did not follow, study and understand those many thousand
pages of discussions over the more than a decade on this list,
together with the many tenthousand pages (not) learned to understand
them. Indeed I am out of the vocabulary.
Those are redundant explanation of the content of the sane04 paper,
which is about 20 pages long.
Here are some little nitpicks I feel I can respond to:
you wrote:
"? (I guess you are trivializing the notion of consciousness).
You might be right, but with comp the light switch is a non well
defined object, like any piece of matter. So what you say is not
false, but senseless."
\
I was trying to trivialize Brent's robot, as you identified: 'any
piece of matter'. And my example was trivial, in such respect.
About my inquiry for consciousness: I questioned "WHAT ARE WE
TALKING ABOUT?"
your reply:
"...Indeed, comp does solve the 'hard problem', up to a reduction of
physics to a modality of universal machine's self-reference (making
the theory testable)."
does not enlighten me: "a modality of universal machine's self
reference" draws my question:
WHAT modality?
The modality of Gödel's provability predicate, and its (8) intensional
variants (which I used also in my arithmetical intepretation of
Platinus/Plato).
HOW does that self reference work?
It is a chapter of theoretical computer science.
Testability is not an argument, it may be a way TO an argument. Did
the "hard problem" change from its original content which was the
topical identification of physical data measurable in our neuronal
system? (Mind-Body?)
Yes. the mind-body problem is reduced into an explanation of the
"illusion of bodies" in the dream by numbers (we *assume* comp, and a
dream is an infinity of computations in the universal dovetailing).
(Plus: as I recall you were not too concrete about our knowledge of
the "universal Machine" either).
Ask precision. But all this is standard theoretical computer science.
LIFE in my views is not biological, biology (and other life
sciences) try to get a handle on CERTAIN aspects we select in the
generality we may call 'life'.
Biology is the science of life. It is not life itself, of course. all
science can only grasp tiny aspect of what they are studying.
I think we agreed that there is no such thing as The TRUTH - there
are tenets you or me may accept as 'true' in some sense.
I think I already sent you my 'draft' about "Science-Religion" about
belief systems.
But I do believe in "The Truth". I don't know it, of course, that is
why I propose assumption and reasoning.
Best,
Bruno
On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 8:39 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
wrote:
Hi John,
On 09 May 2011, at 21:35, John Mikes wrote:
A stimulating discussion, indeed. I side with Brent in most of his
remarks and question SOME of Bruno's in my 'unfounded' agnostic
worldview of 'some' complexity of unrestricted everything - beyond
our capabilities to grasp.
Which IMO does not agree with Bruno's
" I don't think this "hard problem" is soluble."
It is not Bruno's, but Brent's.
Looking at the inductive 'evolution' in our epistemology my
agnosticism seems more optimistic than this.
Indeed, comp does solve the 'hard problem', up to a reduction of
physics to a modality of universal machine's self-reference (making
the theory testable).
Within our present capabilities is missing from the statement, but
our capabilities increased constantly - not only by the
introduction of 'zero' in math or the Solar system (1st grade
cosmology) of Copernicus. I do not restrict the grand kids of the
grand kids of our grand kids. I lived through an epoch from right
after candlelight with horses into MIR, the e-mail and DNA.
I would not guess 'what's next'.
To retort Brent's AI-robot I mention a trivial example: I have a
light-switch on my wall that is conscious about lighting up the
bulbs whenever it gets flipped its button to 'up'.
?
It does not know that 'I am' doing that, but does what it 'knows'.
? (I guess you are trivializing the notion of consciousness). You
might be right, but with comp the light switch is a non well defined
object, like any piece of matter. So what you say is not false, but
senseless.
The rest is similar, at different levels of complexity - the Mars
robot still not coming close to 'my' idea-churning or Bruno's math.
And IMO biology is not 'reduced to chemistry (which is reduced to
physics)' - only the PART we consider has a (partial?) explanation
in those reduced sciences, with neglected other phenomena outside
such explanatory restrictions. Just as 'life' is not within
biology, which may be closer to it than chemistry. or physics, but
genetics is further on and still not 'life'.
What is life? I think that here it is just a question of vocabulary,
unless you think about a precise biological phenomenon which would
escape the actual theories? In science we bever pretend to know the
truth, but we have to take the theories seriously enough if only to
find the discrepancy with the facts.
Of course, since theology has been taking out of science, many
scientist (more than I thought when young) have a theological
interpretation of science (and some without knowing it). They are
doubly wrong of course.
Yes, consciousness - the historic word applied by many who did not
know what they are talking about and applied it in the sense needed
to 'apply' to THEIR OWN theoretical needs - is an artifact not
identifiable, unless we reach an agreement "WHAT IT IS" (if it IS
indeed).
Here I totally disagree. We cannot define in 3p terms what is
consciousness, but we know pretty well what it is. We dispose of
many, many, many, personal examples, and that is enough for knowing
what it is, even if we cannot define it. The comp theory explains
entirely what it is, and why we cannot define it. It explains also
why it has to be, and what role it has in the origin of the physical
realm.
In my wording the complexity that defines many of the applicable
tenets form some PROCESS(es), not a mathematically identifiable
expression - nor 'awareness' as in another domain. The 'hard
problem' is still open.
I don't think so. I am not sure you have study the posts, or the
paper, where the solution is explained. If you do, I will ask you to
tell us what is missing.
We need a new insight.
We are hindered by too much mental blockage due to accepted
(believed? calculated?) hearsay assumptions and their consequences.
We 'guess' what we do not know.
We always guess what we do not know. Always. The rest is
authoritative argument, or argument by authority.
Bruno
You see, I should keep my mouse shut...
John
On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 2:30 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net>
wrote:
On 5/9/2011 11:00 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 09 May 2011, at 18:57, meekerdb wrote:
On 5/9/2011 1:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 07 May 2011, at 19:36, meekerdb wrote:
On 5/7/2011 8:19 AM, John Mikes wrote:
Thanks, Russell,
I am gladly standing corrected about our fellow smart animals.
HOWEVER:
We speak about a "self-awareness" as we, humans identify it in our
human terms and views.
Maybe other animals have different mental capabilities we cannot
pursue or understand, as adjusted to their level of complexity
usable in their 'menatality'. It may - or may not - be only
according to their number of neurons as our conventional sciences
teach. Or some may use senses we are deficient in, maybe totally
ignorant about. (We have a deficient smelling sense as compared to
a dog and missing orientation's senses of some birds, fish, turtle)
In our anthropocentric boasting we believe that only our human
observations are 'real'.
Thanks for setting me straight
John.
Not only do other species have different perceptual modalities;
even within the "self-awareness" there are different kinds.
Referring to my favorite example of the AI Mars rover, such a rover
has awareness of it's position on the planet. It has awareness of
it's battery charge and the functionality of various subsystems.
It has awareness of its immediate goal (climb over that hill) and
of some longer mission (proceed to the gully and take a soil
sample). It's not aware of where these goals arise (as humans are
not aware of why they fall in love). It's not aware of it's
origins or construction. It's not a social creature, so it's not
aware of it's position in a society or of what others may think of
it.
I expect that when we have understood consciousness we will see
that it is a complex of many things, just as when we came to
understand life we found that it is a complex of many different
processes.
Life and consciousness are different notion with respect to the
notion of explanation we can find from them. In case of life, we
can reduce a third person describable phenomenon to another one
(for example we can argue that biology is in principle reduced to
chemistry, which is reduced to physics). For consciousness there is
an hard problem, which is the mind-body problem, and most people
working on the subject agree that it needs another sort of
explanation. Then comp shows that indeed, part of that problem, is
that if we use the "traditional" mechanistic rationale, we inherit
the need of reducing physics to number theory and intensional
number theory, with a need to explicitly distinguish first person
and third person distinction. In a sense, the "hard problem" of
consciousness leads to an "hard problem of matter" (the first
person measure problem). Of course, I do think that mathematical
logic put much light on all of this, especially the self-reference
logics. Indeed, it makes the problem a purely mathematical problem,
and it shows quanta to be a particular case of qualia. So we can
say that comp has already solved the conceptual problem of the
origin of the coupling consciousness/matter, unless someone can
shows that too much white rabbits remains predictible and that
normalization of them is impossible, in which case comp is refuted.
Bruno
I don't see that reducing consciousness to mathematics is any
different than reducing it to physics.
It is more easy to explain the illusion of matter to an immaterial
consciousness, than to explain the non-illusion of consciousness to
something material.
Consciousness can be explained by fixed point property of number
transformation, in relation to truth, and this explains 99% of
consciousness (belief in a reality) and 100% of the illusion of
matter, which is really the illusion that some particular universal
number plays a particular role.
Each time I demand a physicist to explain what is matter, he can
only give to me an equation relating numbers. With math, it is
different, we have all relation between numbers, and we can
understand, by listening to them, why some relation will take the
form of particular universal number, having very long and deep
computations, and why they will be taken statistically as
describing a universe or a multiverses.
Aren't you are still left with "the hard problem" which now becomes
"Why do these number relations produce consciousness?".
Not true. The math explains why some number relatively to other
numbers develop a belief in a reality, and it explains why such a
belief separates into a communicable part and a non communicable
part. This is entirely explained by the G/G* splitting and their
modal variant (based on the classical theory of knowledge).
I don't think this "hard problem" is soluble.
An explanation gap remains, but then those number can understand
why an explanation gap has to remain,
What does it mean for numbers to understand? I take it you mean
for something like a Godel numbering, the numbers represent a
theorem about what can be expressed and what can be proven. But
this is a model of thought and understanding. There may be a gap
between it and reality just as there may be a gap between the
models of physics and reality. One cannot be sure a hitherto
successful model is not reality itself - but such a belief must be
provisional at best.
for purely logical reason. This explain why we do feel that there
is something non explainable. But it is 99% explainable, and this
includes a complete explanation why there is, necessarily, a
remaining 1% which cannot be explained, but which can be reduced to
our belief in the natural numbers.
In any case, comp forces us to reduce physics to number
"psychology", and this explain conceptually the existence of the
physical realm. And we get a simple and elegant theory of
everything: addition and multiplication.
Rather what can be solved is how to make devices, like intelligent
Mars Rovers and parts of brains the doctor can insert, which act
conscious. And further to understand which computations correspond
to different kinds of thoughts, such as "awareness of self as a
part of society" or "feeling of guilt" or "I'm in Moscow". When
we have that kind of engineering mastery of AI, the "hard problem"
will be seen as a simplistic, archaic wrong question.
Not at all. If your device is conscious by virtue of doing some
right computation, from the point of view of the device itself, his
reality must be described by a sum on all computations going
through its states, implying that physics must be non local,
indeterminist, etc.
But what is a "sum of computations"; and it is an assumption that
computation instantiates consciousness (your theology) which seems
parallel to the physicists assumption that the 3p world can be
modelled by physical things. I see your theory as a model too. It
may make some confirmable predictions (not just retrodictions) in
which case it will be a great theory. But I don't think it will do
very much for achieving the kind of engineering mastery I mentioned.
This *explains* the quantum without postulating it. And the logic
of such self-referential programs explains also the qualia, and the
gap of explanation for the qualia/consciousness. In fact physics
explains nothing, it just take for granted some special universal
number (the physical law), and reduce everything to it. The math,
even just arithmetic, explains where universal numbers comes from,
and how and why they dream, and why some dreams become sharable and
define physical realities, with their sharable and non sharable
parts.
The hard problem is the real fundamental issue. Its comp solution
really explains why they are quanta and qualia, and the laws such
things obey. Physicalism/materialism eventually neglect the person
and its consciousness, or build an unintelligible dualism. Physics
does not even try to understand its own origin, or the origin of
the object it talk about. Physics only build descriptions and
scenarios, by taking a theology for granted (the Aristotelian one).
Physics aims for an invariant, i.e. 3p, model of the world. I
don't know any philosophical minded physicists who think
otherwise. That there is some reality the models refer to - that's
metaphysics, not physics.
Brent
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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