On 06 Sep 2011, at 16:47, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Sep 6, 3:13 am, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
On 06 Sep 2011, at 02:26, Craig Weinberg wrote:
When you say that mechanism explains qualia almost completely, are
you
talking about the 1-p (plural) sequestering of it, the non
computability of it, or is there something else? Does this mechanism
rely on the idea that meaning is transferred from something like a
person to a machine purely by a machine 'acting like' a person seems
to act?
No. You need to duplicate the behavior of the components of the
machine at some right level of substitution.
"acting like" might be enough, but is somehow hard to define.
What accounts for substitution level?
It is the level where your local constituants can be replaced by
digital device without changing your private experience. Of course
only God knows it. The account of the experiencer (of the
substitution) does not count, as he may suffer from anosognosia.
Is it a hard threshold whereby
Pinocchio becomes a real boy suddenly, or is it a gradient of
escalating qualia?
By definition, if the reconstituted person witness some new feelings,
like having lost something, or having a headache, or whatever, it
means that the level of substitution was not well chosen. People will
accept such substitution when their friends will account for only
slight secondary phenomena, like short nausea or something.
Either way seems insufficient for the same reason
that vanishing or absent qualia seem unlikely.
Why? Chalmers makes clear that what would be astonishing, is fading
qualia with no change in the behavior. Absent qualia, and vanishing
sensations already occurs in many consciousness pathologies, in
general due to brain troubles, like with Alzheimer. If the copy of the
brain is to gross, the survivor might loss a lot. Now, a "prolife"
surgeon might well give a very gross digital brain to someone, without
its consent, by arguing that the life of his patient is sacred
(instead of the more computationalist *quality* of life notion).
Fading qualia does not apply here.
If Pinocchio
spontaneously opens his eyes one day as a fully realized human being,
that would have odd subjective problems (do they project a simulated
history in their memory or do they know that they came into existence
today but know everything about the world and their own lives?)
UDA illustrates the comp answer to all such questions. The memory of
the past is always a construction of the current brain. What counts
are all the logico-arithmetical relations encoded in the locally
genuine machinery.
or do
they gradually come online with morbid in-between states of tortured
semi-consciousness without means to express or relieve their
discomforts?
That can happen with brain disease too. I guess the pioneer of
immortality will not have an easy beginning in afterlife. This is not
even for after tomorrow.
You would agree though that a ventriloquist does not transfer
the ability to feel, see, and understand to his dummy, I assume, so
doesn't that mean that the difference between a wooden dummy and a
machine capable of human feeling is just a matter of degree of
complexity.
No. The dummy should behave the same in presence and absence of the
ventriloquist. But even more, the "dummy" body should do the right
computations.
To me, the computations are the ventriloquist. They are just a way for
the ventriloquist to save his act on disk, so that they can be
executed at a later time through the dummy.
You confuse a particular program, with a universal one, having the
same self-referential ability than you and me.
If so, I think to claim that explains qualia almost
completely is not only premature, but, to my mind, somewhat
deceptive.
It's a con. (Sorry, not accusing you personally - just the
presumption
of the position).
The theory explains why numbers develop many sort of beliefs. Some of
them being lived as self-referentially true but non communicable, or
non provable. They also follows axioms or theorems in theories of
qualia done independently of comp.
It sounds promising, but without an example it's oblique to me. It's
critical acclaim of an idea that I haven't been able to get out of the
intriguing packaging. Isn't there some natural language example you
can give me of the theory - without variables or big picture
generalizations?
I am specialized in theory and big picture. Examples abounds: look
around you.
Can you tell me a story about one particular number
and why it has developed a belief, or one particular qualia that is
explained by a particular computation theory?
Yes. Take the life of Craig Weinberg as an example. Assuming comp,
this illustrates a point of the theory: machines have necessarily an
hard time to conceive that comp might be true. Comp explains why such
an intuition is correct. In Plotinian term this is because some of our
beliefs are true, or connected to the one-without-name.
I think the hard problem is 99% solved, and 100% metasolved. And
given
that the solution predicts how matter appears and behave, the only
thing to do to get the whole picture is to derive physics from
self-
reference/machine's theology. This might lead to a refutation of
comp,
or to a refutation of the classical theory of knowledge (although I
doubt this can be possible).
I think that the way it approaches the hard problem is itself self-
referential. By equating consciousness with computation to begin
with,
it makes sense that computation can be used to find itself to be the
source of consciousness. To me, the fact that consciousness is
private
and non-computable are the least descriptive possible aspects of
them.
The theory explains the role of consciousness: it speeds up UMs
relatively to other UMs.
That concurs with my ideas too. Cumulative entanglement is a way of
encapsulating or recapitulating computation (sort of literally 'coming
to a head') - but, I don't think it gets to the heart of the matter at
all. It doesn't address the qualitative quality of qualia.
That the whole point of the theory. Modal logic makes it possible to
handle qualitative features, and arithmetical self-reference offers
the (variate) modal logics on a plateau, and this by distinguishing
the communicable parts from the non communicable parts (and even the
first person singular parts from the first person plural parts).
But with all this, it would have been still possible that those qualia
are epiphenomenal. The point here was to explain that the theory gives
a role (and thus a 3-functional-role, of the kind capable of being
selected by evolution) to consciousness (the quality) in the probable
worlds/computations. So consciousness is not epiphenomenal. So comp
explains the quality, the non communicability of the quality, and
provides to consciousness a role in the beyond-cosmic competition
between all the UMs and LUMs. They can also recognize themselves, as
UMs or LUMs, and climb toward [no-name], from reality layers to
reality layers.
To say that
consciousness has a role in a machine universe is putting the cart
before the horse. It is the machine that has a role in supporting
consciousness.
That is what most mechanists say. But they are ultimately wrong. It is
the consciousness of the (L)UMs which select the consistent
continuations, and this is concomitant with the deepening of the
stories, and the "body apparitions".
I recall that physics has become a branch of machine psychology, if
the UDA reasoning is valid.
To say that consciousness has a role in computation is
to say that a screenplay has a role within a movie set, but that the
stage and props are primitives from which movieness arises.
?
Consciousness selects the histories (like in the WM duplication), and
in each history, it speeds-up the computations (like in engineering).
It diminishes the relevance of how significance is achieved through
qualia, minimizes the intensity of biological commitment to survival
and things like the difference between pain and pleasure.
I have no clue why you say so.
Because numbers don't have to care about anything.
Ah?
For 3-numbers, that is obvious? Nor does a brain or anything third-
person describable. So if I say that a machine thinks, or that a
number thinks, I am always talking of the first person associated
locally and relatively with it. In that sense, numbers and machine can
think, trivially (in the comp theory).
So here, you are just saying that comp is false, but without providing
an argument.
I don't see
that a number can be spectacularly painful. Unless you're talking
about a particular arithmetic configuration that explains misery and
ecstasy or blue versus red?
I don't see any problem here, other than mathematical questions. You
can't refute Newton physics by saying that it cannot predict weather.
But you shouldn't you refute the use of Newton physics to predict
weather when people suggest that there is no problem in doing it?
Well, I should refuse (not refute) the use of Newton for weather
broadcasting. Because it would be non affordable. But the behavior of
the weather does not refute Newton's laws, for some level of
description.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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