On 9/17/2011 7:59 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 16 Sep 2011, at 21:16, meekerdb wrote:
On 9/16/2011 11:22 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 15 Sep 2011, at 22:22, meekerdb wrote:
On 9/15/2011 11:51 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 14 Sep 2011, at 07:27, meekerdb wrote:
On 9/13/2011 10:01 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Sep 13, 9:38 pm, meekerdb<meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
On 9/13/2011 4:07 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
The rules are at bottom the laws of physics.
That doesn't mean anything. The laws of physics are the rules. That's
why I say it's circular reasoning. I ask you what is a rule, and you
say it's at the bottom of laws, but laws are just another word for
rule. There is no bottom, because there's nothing there. It's an
intellectual construct.
Of course it's an intellectual construct, but it has predictive power.
I agree. Deferent and epicycle have predictive power too. It doesn't
mean they can't be understood in a greater context with more
explanatory if not predictive power.
And that's what Bruno is trying to do - provide explanations in terms of
arithmetic; which he takes as basic. But explanation is cheaper than prediction.
But comp predicts, given that it predicts the predictable observable. To get more
quantitative results asks for a lot of work and time. But comp predicts all what is
predictible, at different levels or modalities, and it predict in principle much
more given that it gives a glimpse on the complexity of death and all first person
possible experiences. It shows also the abyssal complexity of numbers'
epistemologies, and it frees the universal machine from all normative theories (the
usual velleity of "other" local universal machines).
It is not for practical quantitative prediction, at least not before we get the
physical laws from numbers' theology, but we are interested in fundamental question,
aren't we?
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Of course I don't expect you to be able explain why there are three generations of
leptons or tell me what dark matter is. But we need some definite predictions to
test a theory. To just 'predict' linearity or complexity is not very impressive.
Physics is a very well developed field, so it's going to be hard to get from
arithmetic to a new result.
Hard? Without doubt. But it is necessary (that *is* the point). I don't know what is
dark matter, or if it exists. But I know that IF I am a machine, then dark matter does
not exist, nor any matter. And I know that addition and multiplication decides all
questions on the *observation* on matter and dark matter in the long run. Necessarily
(that is what has been proved).
But theories of cogitation and consciousness are not well developed; so it is there I
would hope for some real predictions. Here's some interesting observations from a
friend. I wonder if your ideas might explain them.
I insist that I have no ideas. I just show the consequences of mechanism, which is
assumed by almost everyone, with different degrees of explicitness. Did the theory of
evolution predict anything?
It predicted a great deal. It predicted that Lord Kelvin was wrong in his estimate of
the age of the solar system (based on the assumption that the Sun was powered by
gravity), a prediction that Darwin was not bold enough to publish. It could be said to
have predicted genetics. Darwin didn't know about genes, but his theory required some
such digital information transmission. It predicted the unity of biochemistry on Earth.
You must look at the mechanist assumption in a similar way: it shows that the laws of
physics are not a given (like some people believed for biology and species before
Darwin), but that the laws of physics emerge, in a precise way, from the way the
universal numbers relate to each other.
To ask for using mechanism to say something concrete about dark matter, today, would
be like asking if the theory of evolution can explain the action of some plant in the
brain, or the working of my personal computer.
I'll just quickly caveat how far we can extend existing findings, of which there are
a few in the last 4-5 years (see:
www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dsweb/pdfs/06_01_EFC_DLS_ERG_RAS.pdf -- this was done in Dan
Schacter's lab at Harvard; Schacter is a renowned memory researcher; and
www.jneurosci.org/content/27/45/12190.full.pdf -- this was featured in Nature Reviews
in 2007). In terms of memory and confidence, or how memory changes, Elizabeth Phelps
at NYU has done some ground breaking work.
These findings focused on what is happening in the brain during an explicit statement
of confidence in one's answer about some or other semantic statement. The caveat is
I am not sure how far we can extend this to issues or questions for which an answer
is unclear and unavailable, or very difficult to ascertain because veracity may
depend on some type of understanding of conceptual material for which the respondent
has limited knowledge. It is one thing to have confidence that the solution to the
integral of cos x is sin x + C, but another to have confidence that there is a god,
or that capitalism will fail. It seems in the latter two instances the reward system
is more important in neural processing. But in all cases we are looking at the
confidence in the belief that the memory being retrieved is accurate.
During feelings of confidence in which the respondent is correct (high-confidence and
correct), medial and lateral parietal regions are active indicating a role for these
areas in post-retrieval memory monitoring, but, note that limbic regions are also
active for confidence in a recognition decision. In other words, confidence arises
as a result of processing in regions associated with familiarity, on the one hand
(and this is where errors occur), and/or regions that are more closely or directly
linked with the problem at hand - information that is used to solve the problem
without so much digging into our vast data stores.
The second paper goes further and shows the difference between older and younger
adults with respect to high confidence errors, among other things. The interesting
findings, in my opinion, include the fact that the same brain regions (notably though
is the DLPFC which is becoming ever more important as a region of interest in
cognitive neuroscience- in this case it is thought to monitor or modulating decision
processes across cognitive functions) are active during low confidence irrespective
of whether or not a condition of true or false recognition was the case. But during
high confidence different brain regions are active (posterior cingulate in this case)
across true recognition and false recognition.
The conclusion which can be drawn after reading the second paper is that the MTL
(medial temporal lobe, but includes the hippocampus and parahippocampus among other
structures) is involved in high confidence feelings when the respondent is actually
correct (and in the low confidence and incorrect condition), and that frontoparietal
activity is dominant in cases where the respondent is highly confident but incorrect
(but also active in cases of low confidence but correct recognition). There are
other differences which can distinguish the results in parens, but the details are
probably not interesting most here. It is interesting to note however that the
activation of the MTL and frontoparietal regions are virtual mirror images across the
high vs low confidence conditions for true and false recognition - almost like a see
saw. We are dealing with on the one hand direct recollection in correct cases and
familiarity in incorrect cases.
What is amazing here is that the brain processes high-confidence true and false
recognition very differently, yet the feeling of confidence appears
indistinguishable. It might be interesting to probe this.
The reward system was not a main region of interest in these studies, however,
feelings of confidence are correlated with dopamine release, which necessarily
involves the reward pathways and hence the basal ganglia. The more often one feels
correct about something, especially in the absence of challenge, the more it becomes
part of a belief system - and the more likely a statement fits into a belief system
the more likely one is to be confident in that statement. The confirmation of one's
belief system creates a rewarding feeling associated with these pathways.
It is very interesting, but I don't see why "my idea" should explain those
facts.
Because they are about self-reference and true or false beliefs and as such might be
independent of the physical constitution of the brain.
It is *their* approach which are based on "my idea" (mechanism) at the start. They
discuss the aspects of the actual human mind implementation in the brain. It
illustrates my basic postulates. You can't mention a paper based on "my" assumption
and discard the conceptual consequences of that same assumption.
Unless, of course, you have seen a reason to doubt the validity of the UDA argument,
in which case it would be nice if you could elaborate. I did answer your remarks on
both step 6, 7, and 8, but I am willing to explain if it remains something unclear,
and I am willing, at least for awhile to add the 323 principle(*) in the definition of
comp, if that is the problem, although I didn't see any reason to say "yes" to a
digitalist doctor, if the 323 principle was not a consequence of mechanism.
But here too, in our last conversation on the subject, you seem to agree that comp
implies the 323 principle.
No. I didn't. That's what I saw as a tension in the argument. To say the 323
register is not used is to deny the multiverse interpretation of QM.
I don't think so. That would be the case if the machine was a quantum machine. But a
quantum machine can be emulated by a classical machine (not in real time, but the first
person is not aware of the delays, so it changes nothing in the argument).
But only by providing in the emulation that the 323 register is used (in some fraction of
the multiverses of the emulation).
But I understood that you regarded the Everettian interpretation of QM as evidence for
your theory. If consciousness is only realized by physical systems, i.e. quantum
mechanical ones, then removing a register may affect that consciousness even though it
doesn't affect the computation (except with very low probability).
But then you can no more say yes to a digitalist surgeon.
Sure you can. You just can't count on your consciousness being exactly the
same.
One might still say yes to replacement of one's brain with one equivalent as a
classical computer because it would also instantiate those counterfactual
possibilities. But an equivalent Platonic function would not.
On the contrary, only the platonic function can be said to instantiate the
counterfactuals, as a global mathematical object.
OK, I think I understand that. Good point.
A quantum computer can also instantiate some counterfactual, but in a way which can be
emulated by a classical machine, and for that classical machine, if the 323-principle
goes wrong, then you can no more be said to be digitally emulable. So if you insist that
the computer must be "physical", you are introducing something which is non turing
emulable in matter, and which play a genuine role in the consciousness associated to the
computation: this means that comp is false.
Yes, and that's the tension I see. QM implies the 323 principle is untrue and yet you
rely on QM and in particular it's multiverse interpretation as evidence for the Platonic
view. Looked at another way, the 323 principle can be upheld, but only at the expense of
pushing the substitution level all the way down and extending the emulation to be the
whole universe.
You are no more saying yes to the digitalist doctor in virtue of being correctly
emulated, but in virtue of some non Turing emulable magic played by piece of matter
having no physical activity at all.
It's the same 'magic' as implied by taking one's consciousness to instantiated by an
infinite number of computations going through the same state.
I kno this is a bit subtle. If the 323 register plays a quantum role in computation for
consciousness, it means that we have chosen a too much high level, but at the lower
level, we can emulate the quantum by a classical machine, and there, to continue to
insist of having the presence of inactive machinery for consciousness means that comp is
false. The physical role of the inactive piece of matter in the consciousness becomes
magical, and necessarily not Turing emulable (if it where, again, it would mean we have
chosen a too much high level), and we start again ...
Right. See above.
Brent
Bruno
(*) The 323 principle asserts that if consciousness can be attributed to a computer
running some computation in which the register n° 323 is not used, then the same
consciousness can be similarly attributed to a computer running that same computation,
but where the register n° 323 has been removed from the computer.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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