On 14 Aug 2011, at 15:14, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
Bruno,
It well may be that you are right. The problem from my side is that
my knowledge of mathematics is not enough to understand you.
Mathematics is not well taught, and the case is worst for logic. It is
a pity.
For example
> What do you mean? Some robot, running some program can be conscious,
> like us (assuming mechanism).
I do not know what conscious means in this context.
It means conscious in the sense that you don't doubt that your are
conscious here and now. It means the usual sense. What I just said is
obvious, if I am a machine, there is at least one machine which is
conscious (indeed me).
It well might be that the meaning of conscious in your statement is
different from that in Jeffrey Gray's book.
I don't think so. He is aware of the hard problem, there is no reason
to attribute a different sense. What precise statement he said or I
said makes you believe we are not talking on the same thing.
Consciousness, like truth and time are easy first person notion, even
if we cannot define them.
It could be it is the same. I do not know, I do not understand what
a Lobian machine is. It is above my current knowledge, hence I
cannot comment on this.
In my view, to spread your knowledge it would be good to write a book.
There are already plenty excellent books. I wrote one of 700 pages
myself, I might publish it, or not. In english there are many
excellent book.
A Löbian machine is just a Universal machine (computer) extended with
the induction axioms (if it has proved P(0), and if it has proved "for
all n P(n) -> P(n+1)" then he can derive "for all n P(n)". It is
common knowledge in computer science/mathematical logic. Such machine
can prove, in some sense, that they are universal. It is the threshold
above which they get full and stable self-referential power (you don't
change their 'theology' by adding new beliefs to them). They are
characterized by a formula due to Löb, a deutch logician, hence their
name.
The UDA which shows that physics is a branch of machine's
"theology" (in a large sense of the term 'course) does not need the
technical part, except for a passive understanding of Church thesis,
and universal machine. UDA1-7 can be understood by 13 years old
person, by taking my words that a universal dovetailer exists (which
is a direct consequence of Church thesis), and it shows already that
the physical universe is little (has no running UD in it) or that
physics is a branch of computer science.
I might write a book one day. I am still trying to figure out what it
is that non scientists have a problem, besides a lack of knowledge in
computer science.
Have you understand the first half os sane04. It is a linear reasoning
so you can ask question for each steps. It is far more easy that you
perhaps imagine, unless you have no clue at all how a computer works
(but there are thousand of book which explains this, and again, ask
*any* question.
The step 8 is more difficult from the "philosophy of mind" points of
view. The subject is of course a bit tricky. But again, it is only a
metter of doing a bit of work, or to ask question.
The second part of sane04 (AUDA) needs much more knowledge of computer
science and mathematical logic. But it is standard mainstreams notion
explained in very good books, like Boolos 79, Boolos and Jeffrey, or
Mendelson. There is nothing controversial in my results despite rumors
due to a bunch of apparently influent atheists (which are sick when
they even just heard the term "consciousness", or "mind"). But I have
*never* met them. They are not of the kind of accepting even to
discuss the issue.
The amount of math you need to make sense of anything in physics is
the same as in "machine's psychology". You have just to do the study
or ask the question. UDA does not needs no more than what you need to
understand the plot in a novel like SIMULACRON III (Galouye), and the
math you need for AUDA is standard results generalizing Gödel's
discovery. I have just put the piece of the puzzle together.
Have you understand the first steps of the UDA? Have grasp the notion
of first person indeterminacy? I am just showing how to formulate the
mind body problem in math, once we assume that we are digitalizable
machine. And yes, the solution of the mind body problem which already
appears is the opposite of the current aristotelian paradigm (the
theology of most atheists and most christians). I hope your math
problem is not a pretext for hiding a dogmatic attitude on the
existence of some primary physical reality.
Bruno
Evgenii
On 14.08.2011 14:55 Bruno Marchal said the following:
On 13 Aug 2011, at 16:47, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
On 13.08.2011 14:08 Stathis Papaioannou said the following:
On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 9:45 PM, Evgenii
Rudnyi<[email protected]> wrote:
If your visual cortex is replaced by an electronic device
that produces the appropriate outputs at its borders, the
rest of your brain will respond normally.
This is just an assumption. I guess that at present one cannot
prove or disprove it. Let me quote an opposite assumption from
Jeffrey Gray (p. 232, section 15.5 Consciousness in a brain
slice?)
How could the rest of your brain possibly respond differently if
it receives exactly the same stimulation? Perhaps you mean that
it would be able to tell that there is an artificial device there
due to electric fields and so on; but in that case the artificial
device is not appropriately reproducing the I/O behaviour of the
original tissue.
The question is what does it mean the same stimulation. I guess
that you mean now only electrical signals. However, it well might
be the qualia plays the role as well.
If I understand you correctly, you presume that conscious
experience could be resolved within 'normal science' (there is no
Hard Problem).
The hard problem can be formulated in 'normal science'. But it is a
taboo subject.
Jeffrey Gray on the other hand acknowledges the Hard Problem and he
believes that a new scientific theory will be needed to solve it.
The theory exists. Computer science and mathematical logic can be
used to formulate precisely the hard problem. And to solve it
including a 'meta-solution' of the hard part of it.
But the result might contradict the prejudices of the Aristotelians
(the believer in substances, aware or not aware that such a belief is
of the type 'theological').
We don't need a new science, we need only to get back to science.
This means to make always explicit the ontological assumption when
applying a theory to an idea of what reality can be. But most
materialists scientist hates the idea of making explicit that they
*assume* a basic ontologically real (existing) physical universe.
From a computationalist perspective, with respect to the mind body
problem, this is a god-of-the-gap type of use of the notion of
physical universe. Comp transforms the "hard" problem of
consciousness into an "easy" problem of matter, easy because it is
soluble in computer science (even in number theory).
I think few people realize the impact of the discovery of the
universal machine (or if you prefer the discovery of the Post Church
Kleene Turing Markov thesis).
"Might it be the case that, if one put a slice of V4 in a dish
in this way, it could continue to sustain colour qualia?
Functionalists have a clear answer to this question: no,
because a slice of V4, disconnected from its normal visual
inputs and motor outputs, cannot discharge the functions
associated with the experience of colour. But, if we had a
theory that started, not from function, but from brain tissue,
maybe it would give a different answer. Alas, no such theory is
to hand. Worse, even one had been proposed, there is no known
way of detecting qualia in a brain slice!".
It's not clear that an isolated piece of brain tissue would have
normal qualia since it may require the whole brain or at least a
large part of the brain to produce qualia. A neuron in the
language centre won't have an understanding of a small part of
the letter "a".
We do not know this now. It was just an idea in the book (among
many other ideas). It seems to me though that such an idea is at
the same level as to suppose that a robot will have conscious
experience automatically.
What do you mean? Some robot, running some program can be conscious,
like us (assuming mechanism). This does not mean that *any* robot
would be able to think.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]
.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
