On 07 Jun 2011, at 16:32, Jason Resch wrote:
On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 5:22 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
wrote:
On 07 Jun 2011, at 04:00, Jason Resch wrote:
I guess you mean some sort of "spiritualism" for immaterialism,
which is a consequence of comp (+ some Occam). Especially that you
already defend the idea that the computations are in (arithmetical)
platonia.
Note that AR is part of comp. And the UD is the Universal
dovetailer. (UDA is the argument that comp makes elementary
arithmetic, or any sigma_1 complete theory, the theory of
everything. Quanta and qualia are justified from inside, including
their incommunicability.
By immaterialism I mean the type espoused by George Berkeley, which
is more accurately described as subjective
idealism:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaterialism
I think it is accurate to call it is a form of spiritualism.
Well I am not even sure. Frankly, this is wikipedia's worst article.
It represents well the current Aristotelian reconsideration or non-
consideration of immaterialism. Among the Platonists were the
Mathematicians, the ideal platonic worlds for them was either
mathematics, or what is just beyond mathematics (like neoplatonist
will distinguish the intelligible (the nous) from the ONE behind (and
like all self-referentially correct machine will eventually
approximate by the notion of theories and the (possible) truth
behind).
The "enemy" of "immaterialism" try to mock it by reducing it to
solipsism (which is typically "childish), or to the naive believe in
angels and fairy tales.
But immaterialism is not a believe in an immaterial realm, it is
before all a skepticism with respect to the physical realm, or to the
primacy of the physical realm. It is the idea that there is something
behind our observations.
The early academical debate was more to decide if mathematics or
physics was the fundamental science.
Aristotelian's successors take primitive materiality as a fact, where
the honest scientist should accept that scientists have not yet
decide
that fundamental question. Today physics relates observable to
measurable numbers, and avoid cautiously any notion of matter, which
is an already undefined vague term. The nature of matter and of
reality makes only a re-apparition in discussion through the quantum
weirdness.
I argue that if we assume that there is a level of description of
ourselves which is Turing emulable, then, to be short and clear
(albeit not diplomatical) Plato is right, and physics becomes a
modality: it emerges from self-observation by relative universal
numbers. The quantum weirdness becomes quasi- trivial, the existence
of Hamiltonians also, the precise form and simplicity of those
Hamiltonians becomes the hard question. Comp does not yet explain the
notion of space, although it paves the way in sequence of precise
(mathematical) questions.
Unfortunately, the computationalist philosophers of mind, as
reflected
at least in wiki, seems to ignore everything of theoretical computer
science, including the key fact that it is a branch of math, even of
number theory (or combinator theory, of creative sets, Sigma_1
complete finite systems, ...). Now I see they have a simplistic (and
aristotelian) view on immaterialism.
Okay, this makes sense given your solipism/immaterialism.
I would like to insist that comp leads to immaterialism, but that
this is very different from solipsism. Both are idealism, but
solipsism is "I am dreaming", where comp immaterialism is "all
numbers are dreaming", and a real sharable physical reality emerges
from gluing properties of those dreams/computations.
You are right, I should find a less general term. It is the missing
of the glue I think that differentiates the immaterialism of comp
from the immaterialism of Berkeley.
Don't worry too much on the terms once you get the idea. We can
always
decide on vocabulary issue later.
You sum very well the problem. The glue is really provably missing
only in solipsism. There is just no reason to believe that numbers
could miss the glue, that is more than quarks and waves. At least
before we solve the (measure) problem. Math is there to see what
happens. People seems to have the same reluctance to let math enter
the subject than the old naturalists.
Now, the only way for the numbers to win the measure problem is by
self-multiplication, and coherent multiplication of populations, that
is sharing stories/computations. The only reason why I can dialog
with
you must be that we share a 'big number' of similar histories, and
those have to be observable below our substitution levels. If those
did not exist, keeping comp could lead to solipsism. But then QM, or
the MW understanding of QM, shows that we do share indeed big sets,
if
not a continuum of similar histories, saving comp, empirically, of
solipsism. Gödel-Church-Tarski saves mechanism from diagonalization,
and QM saves comp from solipsism. Formally, incompleteness will give
many possibilities for the glue to form, with the risky one based on
lies (shit happens in Platonia too, that is the bad news, but it is
there at the start: G* prove DBf (it is consistent to prove the
false).
Comp's message is not "we got the theory of everything". It is more
"Oh, even if physicists unify all laws of nature, the task is NOT yet
finished". Taking comp seriously, we *have to* justify those laws
from
the numbers self-observations.
My work translate the classical mind body problem into a body problem
mathematically expressed in computer science and in arithmetic.
Thanks to computer science (insolubilities and incompleteness),
(accepting the classical theory of knowledge), we get a gift: we are
able to separate (in the self-referentially correct way) the quanta
from the qualia, and to relate the two.
When you said that computation are in math, or in arithmetic, are you
aware that this is explicitly proved in (good) textbook in logic or
computer science? This is not easy to show. It is tedious and long,
and there are always subtle points. But it is akin to define a high
level programming language in a low level language. Matiyasevitch has
gone farer than anyone in showing that diophantine polynomials are
already enough (but that is much more complex to prove). This leads
to
a crazy proposition, which is that all sigma_1 truth can be verified
in less than 100 operations, that is addition and multiplication of
numbers. It means that all stopping computations can be given in the
form of a short sequence of addition and multiplication (on numbers
which might be great of course(*)).
Bruno
(*) I can resist to show a version by Jones of that result. If you
remember the RE set W_i, the set analog of partial computable
functions (which are also the domain of the phi_i) Matiyasevitch'
result can take the shape below. Nu and X are the two parameters, and
the other letters, and the two characters "letters" are variables.
Unknowns range on the non negative integers.
By adding enough variable, you could arrive at a degree four unique
polynomial, but here we allow high degree. Look at that B^(5^60).
X is in W_Nu iff
Nu = ((ZUY)^2 + U)^2 + Y
ELG^2 + Al = (B - XY)Q^2
Qu = B^(5^60)
La + Qu^4 = 1 + LaB^5
Th + 2Z = B^5
L = U + TTh
E = Y + MTh
N = Q^16
R = [G + EQ^3 + LQ^5 + (2(E - ZLa)(1 + XB^5 + G)^4 + LaB^5 + +
LaB^5Q^4)Q^4](N^2 -N)
+ [Q^3 -BL + L + ThLaQ^3 + (B^5 - 2)Q^5] (N^2 - 1)
P = 2W(S^2)(R^2)N^2
(P^2)K^2 - K^2 + 1 = Ta^2
4(c - KSN^2)^2 + Et = K^2
K = R + 1 + HP - H
A = (WN^2 + 1)RSN^2
C = 2R + 1 Ph
D = BW + CA -2C + 4AGa -5Ga
D^2 = (A^2 - 1)C^2 + 1
F^2 = (A^2 - 1)(I^2)C^4 + 1
(D + OF)^2 = ((A + F^2(D^2 - A^2))^2 - 1)(2R + 1 + JC)^2 + 1
If by representation you mean the representation of
consciousness, then this
is the functionalist/computationalist philosophy in a nutshell.
Computationalism says that representation *is* something you are.
I say the opposite. Representation is something you do, which is
so
natural to you and so useful to you that you’ve mistaken it as the
explanation for everything.
You should read
thishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_(philosophy_of_mind)
Functionalism is the idea that it is what the parts do, not what
they are that is important in a mind.
Computatalism is a more specific form of functionalism (it assumes
the functions are Turing emulable)
I disagree with this. Putnam' functionalism is at the start a fuzzy
form of computationalism (the wiki is rather bad on those subjects).
It is fuzzy because it is not aware that IF we are machine, then we
cannot know which machine we are. That is why it is a theology, you
need an act of faith beyond just trusting the 'doctor'. In a sense
functionalism is a specific form of computationalism because
functionalist assumes by default some high level of comp. They are
just fuzzy on the term "function", and seems unaware of the
tremendous progress made on this by logicians and theoretical
computer scientists.
Note also that comp makes *1-you* different from any representation,
from you first person perspective. So, the owner of the soul is the
(immaterial) person, not the body. A body is already a
representation of you, relatively to some universal numbers.
In a sense we can sum up comp's consequence by: If 3-I is a machine,
then 1-I is not. The soul is not a machine *from its point of view".
He has to bet on its own G* to say 'yes' to the doctor. Of course,
once we accept comp, we can retrospectively imagine that "nature"
has already bet on it, given that the genome is digital relatively
to chemistry, and given the
...
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