On 04 Oct 2011, at 02:51, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Oct 3, 11:16 am, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote:
I don't think that there are any arithmetical beings.
In which theory?
In reality.
That type of assertion is equivalent with "because God say so".
Reality is what we try to figure out.
If you know for sure what reality is, then I can do nothing, except
perhaps invite you to cultivate more the modest doubting attitude.
Ok, let's say that I'm mathgnostic. I doubt the existence of
arithmetic beings independent of matter.
I doubt the existence of matter being independent of arithmetic.
I am sympathetic to
numerological archetypes as coherent themes (or themes of coherence)
which run through perception but to say that arithmetic spirits haunt
empty space
Empty spaces haunt numbers dreams.
doesn't orient me to anything true or real, it seems like
pure fiction.
You reify spaces, so that arithmetical beings looks magic. But
arithmetical truth is out of any physical category.
A number is just not the type of entity having a location, although it
can manifest itself through locally physical realities.
If it were the case then I would expect five milk
bottles in a group to have the same basic function as five protons in
a nucleus,
I don't see the logic here.
five boron atoms in a molecule, five cells in a dish, etc.
I just don't see any examples of causally efficacious arithmetic as an
independent agent.
?
It's a fantasy,
or really more of a presumption mistaking an narrow category of
understanding with a cosmic primitive.
You miss the incompleteness discoveries. To believe that arithmetic
is
narrow just tell me something about you, not about arithmetic. It
means that you have a pregodelian conception of arithmetic. We know
today that arithmetic is beyond any conceivable effective
axiomatizations.
I don't disagree with arithmetic being exactly what you say it is,
only that it cannot be realized except through sensorimotive
experience. Without that actualization - to be computed
neurologically
or digitally in semiconductors, analogously in beer bottles, etc,
then
there is only the idea of the existence of arithmetic, which also
is a
sensorimotive experience or nothing at all. There is no arithmetic
'out there', it's only inside of matter.
This makes sense with the non-comp theory (which you have not yet
presented to us).
In the comp theory, arithmetic is independent of anything, and matter
is only a perception inside arithmetic.
I understand, I just have no reason to consider than anything can be
inside arithmetic,
"Inside arithmetic" was a shorthand for "as determined through
arithmetical relation, or as observable by persons determined by
arithmetical relations (in a theoretical computer science sense).
whereas I know for a fact that I am inside my body.
You are not. You are an immaterial being, and you have no more
location than a number, or a space. But I can explain in details why
the illusion of having a location can be very strong when person get
entangled to deep histories.
What form of a non-comp theory are you asking for? I will try to
comply.
Just tell us what you are assuming as primitive, and what you derive
from that.
The best form would be a first order logical axiomatization, because
those are provably independent of any "metaphysical baggage", to coin
an expression by Brian Tenneson, which sum well the importance of such
type of theory. But I know you try to avoid technical literature.
So yes, arithmetic extends to the inconceivable and nonaxiomatizable
but the sensorimotive gestalts underlying arithmetic are much more
inconceivable and nonaxiomatizable. A greater infinity.
Inside arithmetic *is* a bigger infinity than arithmetic. It is not
even nameable.
If it's inside of arithmetic, how can it be bigger than itself?
Good question. It is not easy to answer it without being much more
technical. Let me just say that this is a question of internal
perspective. It is related to a phenomenon discovered by Skolem, and
which relativize the notion of cardinalities (used to measure the size
of mathematical object, and which often measure the size of the
intrinsic ignorance of the entities living in those objects).
I should stick on "from inside, arithmetic will be perceived as bigger
than from outside".
So I see a sort of racism against machine or numbers, justified
by
unintelligible sentences.
I know that's what you see. I think that it is the shadow of your
own
overconfidence in the theoretical-mechanistic perspective that you
project onto me.
You are the one developing a philosophy making human with
prosthetic
brain less human, if not zombie.
I'm not against a prosthetic brain, I just think that it's going to
have to be made of some kind of cells that live and die, which may
mean that it has to be organic, which may mean that it has to be
based
on nucleic acids.
Replace in the quote just above "prothetic brain" by " silicon
prosthetic brain".
I think that if we understand that the brain itself is what is feeling
and thinking,
You contradict what you told me in another post. You said you agree
that it is not the brain which feels or thinks, but a person.
A brain feels nothing, indeed, for obvious reason, it is even the only
organ without sensorial nerves.
I am very open to the idea that individual neurons can have a proper
inner life, like amoeba and plants, but those are not related to our
inner life. Consciousness is not a sort of sum of the consciousness of
the part of a body, if only because consciousness is not something
material at all. It has no mass, no energy, no velocity, no space-
location, nor even any time location (and I agree this might seems
counter-intuitive).
That is why it is far simpler to explain consciousness from the
number, and then physicalness from sharable coherent deep dreams, than
the inverse.
rather than some disembodied computational function,
then we have to consider that the material may not be substitutable,
or if it is, the probability of successful substitution would be
directly proportional to the isomorphism of the biology. If we knew
of a particular computation which did cause life and consciousness to
arise in inanimate objects, then that would be convincing, but thus
far, we have not seen any suggestion of a computer program plotting
against it's programmer or express an unwillingness to be halted.
Life is explained by the second recursion theorem of Kleene. See my
paper on amoeba and planaria.
Consciousness is 99% explained by the fact that machine can prove the
second recursion theorem of Kleene, or by Gödel's diagonalization
lemma. Then we can fully meta-explain why 1% of consciousness is not
explainable by any entity (except perhaps one, which in this case must
remain silent).
The theorem of Kleene assures that for any computable transformation
T, you can find a program applying T on its own 3-I (that is, its body
for any chosen level of description). You get the simple self-
reproductive amoeba by using T = identity.
Programs does not plot against us, because they are too young, and we
control them still rather well.
Your theory would conclude that we should see
naturally evolved brains made out of a variety of materials not
based
on living cells if we look long enough. I don't think that is
necessarily the case.
The theory says that it is *possibly* the case, and the advent of
computers show it to be the case right now. The difference between
artificial and natural is ... artificial.
But why, if biology has nothing to do with life, and neurology has
nothing to do with consciousness,
Biology is the study of life. I guess you mean that I meant that the
fundamental principle of biology have nothing to do with carbon, but I
am not sure about this. It might be that the structure of carbon and
its role in the origin of life might be deduced from arithmetic. And
this does no mean, that once life as appeared, with carbon, it might
be abandoned later.
do we find no non-biological entity
having evolved to live or demonstrate human consciousness.
All life forms today depend completely of oxygen, and plants. That was
not true at the beginning. Life tend to proliferate and can easily
adapt the planet conditions preventing too much different life forms
to develop. many different explanations are possible.
Also, you beg the question. Today's machines are evolving more quickly
than any life form. And I have already argue that todays' LUMs are as
conscious as you, me and jumping spider.
Doesn't
that seem unlikely to you. I understand your point that comp promises
to deliver computers which could be considered as conscious as we are,
but I think that's only because science is hopelessly confused about
what consciousness is.
I agree that there is no literal difference between natural and
artificial, but it's still a glaring deficiency of comp in my mind
that in the history of the Earth there just so happens to not be any
non-organic life at all.
The quantum theory of atoms explains well why carbon, hydrogen,
oxygen, nitrogen, have some special role.
Especially if computers, as you seem to
suggest, can adopt consciousness just by functioning in the same
manner as something conscious, then it seems by now there would be
some cave somewhere where the limestone had learned to dance like a
beetle or bloom like a flower.
Chemical life has many feature making it rather rare. Very natural,
but very rare. Now, once it happens, it can take much different forms.
This is the kind of strong metaphysical and aristotleian
assumption
which I am not sure to see the need for, beyond extrapolating
from
our
direct experience.
Is it better to extrapolate only from indirect experience?
It is better to derive from clear assumptions.
Clear assumptions can be the most misleading kind.
But that is the goal. Celar assumption leads to clear misleading,
which can then be corrected with respect to facts, or repeatable
experiments.
Unclear assumptions lead to arbitrariness, racism, etc.
To me the goal is to reveal the truth,
That is a personal goal. I don't think that truth can be revealed,
only questioned.
How can you question it if it is not revealed?
It can be suggested, like in dreams.
So it is better to extrapolate from what our dreams suggest than the
'unclear assumptions' of our ordinary, direct, shared, conscious
experience?
Not at all. But we can deduce facts from the fact that we are dreaming.
And we don't have any *direct* shared conscious experience. That's a
theorem in comp (and an evidence for grow up adult, I thought). There
is always some amount of indirection.
regardless of the nature of the
assumptions which are required to get there. If you a priori
prejudice
the cosmos against figurative, multivalent phenomenology then you
just
confirm your own bias.
I don't hide this, and it is part of the scientific (modest)
method. I
assume comp, and I derive consequences in that frame. Everyone is
free
to use this for or against some world view.
It's a good method for so many things, but not everything, and I'm
only interested in solving everything.
You might end up with a theory of everything that you will not been
able to communicate. You might have fans and disciples (and even
money) but not students and researchers correcting and extending your
work.
I can't do anything about that. If the world is not interested in the
truth, then I can't change it.
Truth or hypothesis?
Do you want to do science (hypothesis), or not?
I don't think there is a microcosmos illusion, unless you are
talking
about the current assumptions of the Standard Model as
particles.
That's not an illusion though, just a specialized interpretation
that
doesn't scale up to the macrocosm. As far as where sensorimotive
phenomena comes from, it precedes causality. 'Comes from' is a
sensorimotive proposition and not the other way around. The
singularity functions inherently as supremacy of orientation,
and
sense and motive are energetic functions of the difference
between
it
and it's existential annihilation through time and space.
That does not help.
That doesn't help me either.
I mean: I don't understand. To much precise terms in a field
where we
question the meaning of even simpler terms.
I have precise terms because I have a precise understanding of
what I
mean.
To be franc, I don't thing you do have them. I don't take for granted
most 'familiar' words of natural language, especially bases on
physicalist conception of reality.
But you take for granted unfamiliar words of unnatural theories,
I take for granted elementary school boy arithmetic, and then I can
take the time to explain how a computer work.
especially based on anti-physicalist conceptions of simulation as the
only reality.
Quite the contrary. That is the result, derived from elementary
arithmetic, and the hypothesis that biology relies on deterministic
laws. I am not pretending it is obvious (other people have pretended
that for years, and it took me time to understand that it is not *so*
simple after all.
I'm saying that causality is an epiphenomena of a feeling of
succession, which is a specific category of the sensorimotive
palette,
like pain or blue.
I can understand this ... by interpreting this in the comp theory,
making your terms precise (indeed they become numbers, or numbers
relation, or higher order numbers relations).
That is why sometimes I can appreciate your intuition: you talk
like a
universal (Löbian) ... machine. But then you are using what you say
as
a critics of mechanism, where the universal machine appears as a
simple counterexample.
I'm not against machines, they are definitely a huge part of what is
going on, it's just I think I see specifically how arithmetic fits in.
Actually if you have a chance see if you get anything out of my post
today: http://s33light.org/post/10979679238. I am placing math on
another axis opposite art or medium, so that arithmetic or logos is
the generic-universal essence which subject and object share, and
techne is the concrete existence that they share. I suspect that this
is more of an ephiphenomenal duality which runs perpendicular to the
main phenomenal Oriental-Occidental continuum.
All of these feelings and experiences are generated
by the underlying dynamic of the singularity chasing it's tail
through
the relatively fictional expansion of timespace.
I have no clue what you mean by time, space, relatively fictional,
dynamic, generated, experiences, feelings ... in your "theory".
Time is the empty container of change (energy). Space is the empty
container of matter. Relatively fictional meaning that time and space
are epiphenomenal gaps created by matter dividing itself. They are not
an independent phenomena, they are just temporary relational gaps as
the singularity creates a fictional subdivision of itself. The
singularity cannot truly divide, since it is outside of timespace
there is nowhere else to put it and no time for such a division to
take place in, so it generates an existential metaphor, which is
dynamic, experiential, and feels.
That is nicely said, but I don't buy it. You assume what my intuition
asks me to explain.
Specifically, like if you have any two atoms, something must
have a
sense of what is supposed to happen when they get close to each
other.
Iron atoms have a particular way of relating that's different
from
carbon atoms, and that relation can be quantified. That doesn't
mean
that the relation is nothing but a quantitative skeleton.
There is
an
actual experience going on - an attraction, a repulsion,
momentum,
acceleration...various states of holding, releasing, or
binding a
'charge'. What looks like a charge to us under a microscope is
in
fact
a proto-feeling with an associated range of proto-motivations.
Why?
Because that's what we are made of.
Why should I take your words for granted.
You don't have to. You should check it out for yourself and see if
it
makes sense, and if not, why not?
My attraction to comp, is that it explains to me why the concept of
primary matter does not make sense. In fact the more general notion
of
"being made of" does not make sense to me (even if it makes sense for
some universal machine).
We are in agreement there though. Even though the singularity is
matter and energy(experience) to us as human beings, that's only
because of the necessary contrast with space and time which defines us
existentially. Essentially matter is as empty of substance as space
and as filled with law and chaos as mind. My only disagreement with
you on this is that I think that arithmetic is too narrow a logos to
presume to account for subjectivity. You need techne or it's like
ungrounded electricity.
To say that arithmetic is too narrow is a symptom that you don't know
what you are talking about.
Analysis, physics, are deluding narrowings of arithmetic.
When I want to be provocative, I say that the physical universe is a
failed attempt made by God to understand the numbers.
?
(I let you know that one of my main motivation consists in
explaining
the physical, that is explaining it without using physical
notions
and
assumptions. The same for consciousness).
But what you are explaining it with is no more explainable than
physical notions or assumptions. Why explain what is real in terms
which are not real?
You are just begging the question. You talk like if you knew what
is
real or not.
I know that consciousness is real,
Good. My oldest opponents were disagreeing on this point (a critics
which does not make much sense).
Heh, yeah, I can maybe see quibbling with the wording of the cogito,
but the spirit of it seems silly to deny.
The cogito is important, and I agree with Slezak, that the Gödelian
sentences illustrates the (machine's) cogito:
SLEZAK P., 1983, Descartes 's Diagonal Deduction, Brit. J. Phil. Sci.
34, pp. 13-36.
and my consciousness through my
body tells me that matter is real.
Matter is real. I do agree with this. But matter, assuming comp, is
not something made of elementary material things. Matter, to be
short,
is the border of the universal mind, as seen by the universal mind.
It
is a real perception of something which is not primarily material,
but
sum up infinities of computations. An instructive image, is the
border
of the Mandelbrot set.
I do understand what you mean, and I almost agree, again, except that
the Mandelbrot set is too literal.
I have conjectured that the rational Mandelbrot set is a creative set
in the sense of Post, itself equivalent with the notion of universal
machine. In that case the Mandelbrot set is a compactification of a
universal dovetailer. It is picture of "home".
In that case the analogy is literal.
It doesn't look like a mind, it
looks like a leaf or a feather.
Some parts looks like a projection of a cut of the four dimensional
tree of life.
Obsessive, repetitive self-
similarity... definitely part of it, but you need the orientation of
naive sensation and motive to make sense of it. It's the elephant in
the Mandelbrot.
We are back on arithmetical realism. The structure of the M set is
independent of us. It occurs naturally in almost all iteration of
functions on complex numbers.
My consciousness also tells me that
some of it's own contents do not matter and it's perceptions do not
faithfully render what is real outside of my awareness. I would say
that arithmetic truths matter but they are not real, and therefore
cannot be manifested in a vacuum - only through some material object
which can accomodate the corresponding sensorimotive experiences.
You
can't write a program that runs on a computer made of only liquid of
vapor - you need solid structures to accomodate fixed arithmetic
truths. You need the right kinds of matter to express arithmetic
truths, but matter does not need arithmetic to experience it's own
being.
Not necessarily. You have to give an argument, and there are many
results which can explain to you how such argument have to be very
sophisticated. Apparently, in arithmetic, numbers does dream
coherently (in a first person sharable way) of a stable quantum
reality, with some symmetries at the bottom, and wavy like
interferences.
I think what you are saying is that matter can arise from arithmetic,
which is possible, but I don't see the difference. Why is arithmetic
easier to explain than matter?
Only the beginning of arithmetic is simpler to explain than matter.
To explain why photon have mass, you need the non trivial arithmetical
facts that the sum of all natural numbers can give -1/12.
Matter is hard to explain, even without addressing the hard problem of
matter.
I think that my hypothesis rooted in
'sense' (as the relation between matter-space-entropy and energy-time-
significance)
I see words here, and no explanation.
is an audaciously Promethean notion which grounds our
perception in a cosmos which is both authentic and participatory, as
well as transcendent and forgiving. From comp I get nothing surprising
beyond the initial appreciation of the depth of possibilities of
arithmetic, which although impressive, strike me as being merely awe
inspiring with no hint at the gravity of the experience of organic
life.
Why not? The beginning of arithmetic is simple, but when you grasp
that arithmetic is full of life, and that the arithmetical platonia is
infinitely messy, you might as well understand that comp might be
possible, and this without abandoning any of your intuition, except
your quite frightening intuition that my sun in law cannot appreciate
a good steak.
Now it is the fact that all scientist agree with simple facts like
1+9=10, etc. Actually they are using such facts already in their
theories. I just show that IF we are machine, THEN those elementary
facts are enough to explain the less elementary one.
But since we aren't only a machine, then it's a dead end.
You should say: "but since in my theory I am assuming that we are
not
machine, it is a dead end in my theory".
Yes. Not trying to be rude, I just assume that everything I say is
automatically within the disclaimer of 'in my view'.
Then you have to repeat it, and avoid the "truth" label.
It's
circular reasoning because you can say we can't prove we're not
machines,
I say the exact opposite. We can prove that we are not machine (in
case we are not machine). If we are (consistent) machine, then we
cannot prove it.
So how do we prove that we are not machine?
For example by showing that comp entails that the mass of an electron
is, after all renormlization are completed, bigger than one ton, to
give an example.
Why can't we be both
machine and not machine?
Comp gives sense that the 3-I is a machine, and the 1-I is not. But if
you mean literally that we are machine and non machine, then this is
just a contradictory statement.
but the whole idea of 'proving' is mechanical so you are
just magnifying the implicit prejudice and getting further from the
non-mechanistic truths of awareness.
The human activity of proving is not mechanical(*), but a gentle
polite proof should be mechanically checkable. You can't say to the
peer reviewers that for the proposition 13 they have to pray God or
smoke salvia divinorum. (Or you say it only at the pause cafe, and
this is for private concerns, not for the publication, unless it is
paper on salvia or God, but then the goal is no more to prove but to
suggest a possible empirical discovery).
(*) assuming P ≠ NP.
If peer reviewers demand that a theory which explains subjectivity not
examine subjectivity directly, then they have a priori excluded any
possibility of understanding subjectivity. The peer reviewers are the
problem, not the theory.
Sure. But they do not demand that subjectivity is not examined
directly, they demand that *arguments* are not based on non
communicable statements, beyond the axioms.
The link between the
sensorimotive and electromagnetic is the invariance between
the
two.
?
Feelings and action potentials have some phenomenological
overlap.
What is feeling, what is action, what is potential?
To ask what feeling is can only be sophistry.
Not when addressing issues in fundamental cognitive science.
Niether
matter nor consciousness should be taken as simple elementary
notions.
But numbers should be taken as elementary notions?
In the usual mathematical sense. No need of extra metaphysical
assumption. You just need to believe sentences like "prime numbers
exists".
They exist in the context of a particular sensorimotive logos, not in
any independent sense. Something like the visible spectrum is a much
stronger primitive as it appears to us unbidden and unexplained as a
shared experience without having to be learned or understood.
But if this is an argument, then you take what we search to explain as
the direct assumption. you could as well say that we should cultivate
our gardens instead of doing fundamental research.
All the material science use this. Despite the claims of some
philosophers, we just cannot do science without assuming the
independence of the truth of elementary (first order) arithmetical
relations.
They can have truth or refer to truth without themselves being
phenomena which exist independently.
Not assuming comp. That is the whole point of UDA.
They aren't a they even, it's
just an ephemeral collection of human ideas about quantitative
universality. I don't see that they describe quality or techne at all.
They provides the best we can hope for in case we do survive with
digital brain.
That's the problem,
you are trying to explain awareness as an epiphenomenon
Awareness is not an epiphenomenon at all. It is a real non illusional
epistemological phenomenon which is responsible (in some logico-
arithmetical sense) the rise of physical reality.
If it's not an epiphenomenon, then are you saying it is not a
consequence of arithmetic?
Why? I believe free will makes sense in arithmetic. Being
epistemological does not mean being epiphenomenal.
The habit of putting in the trash the higher levels is an aristotelian
habit, founded on an aristotelian dogmatic misconception of mind and
matter. I think.
It is: NUMBERS ==> CONSCIOUSNESS/DREAMS ==> SHARABLE DREAMS (physical
realities).
Isn't that saying consciousness is an epiphenomenon of numbers?
I would say it is a fundamental phenomenological reality.
What
are numbers without consciousness?
They are like numbers without prime numbers. Just nonsense.
of cognitive
science, when of course cognition arises from feeling (otherwise
babies would come out of the womb solving math equations instead of
crying, and civilizations should evolve binary codes before
ideographic alphabets and cave paintings).
I agree that cognition arise from feelings.
Cool
OK. It is a key point. feelings precedes (even in logic and
arithmetic, but also in physical time) thought, and thought precedes
languages, and languages precedes computers, etc. But all that
precedes matter, in the logico-arithmetical reality.
It is a primitive of
human subjectivity, and possibly universal subjectivity. To
experience
directly, qualitatively, significantly. An action potential is an
electromagnetic spike train among neurons. They can be
correlated to
instantiation of feelings.
I agree with all this, but that has to be explained, not as taken
for
granted.
How can any primitive be explained?
It can't, by definition. That is why I don't take matter and
consciousness as primitive, given that we can explain them from
numbers (and their laws). The contrary is false. We cannot explain
numbers by matter or consciousness.
I think that we can explain numbers from consciousness. They are
sensorimotive teleological gestures refined and polished into an
instrumental literalism which closely approximates a particular band
of literal sense that we share with many physical, chemical, and
primitive biological phenomena. They do not extend beyond a
superficial treatment of experiences like pain, pleasure, sensation,
humor, poetry, music, etc.
You are confusing the numbers studied by arithmeticians, and the human
numbers, which can be studied by psychologists, sociologists, etc.
It can be proved that numbers
cannot be explained at all. In that sense, they are provably
necessarily primitive.
No more so than colors or words, thoughts, feelings, being, etc.
Why? Comp does provide an explanation of many feelings attributes,
except for a (tiny) part, but then comp meta-explained completely why
we cannot explained them completely.
If explanation is to reduce to
simpler known phenomena, and primitive is to be the simplest
knowable
phenomena, then it's a contradiction to explain it any further. We
can
only place it into a meaningful context, which I think my hypothesis
does.
That's the link. They both map to the same changes at the same
place
and time, they just face opposite directions. Electromagnetism
is
public front end, sensorimotive is private back end, which for
us
can
focus it's attention toward the front, back, or the link in
between.
?
Electromagnetic and sensorimotive phenomena are opposite sides of
the
same thing. I don't know how I could make it more clear.
That is your main problem.
Ok, but what isn't clear? Opposite? 'same thing'? Electromagentism?
Sensorimotive?
Yes, all that.
If you observe a living brain under an MRI, you can detect certain
changes in the equipment which can be correlated meaningfully with the
experiences of the subject being examined. So these physical changes
in the brain which are contagious to the MRI's antennae are part of
the 'same thing' as the experiences of the subject -
Why? Nothing third person describable can be "the same thing" as a
lived experience.
they have the
same rhythmic patterns, instantiation, and duration. The content,
however is precisely the opposite: The MRI patterns are topological
regions of activity in a 3D space, without any particular meaning or
significance, but with great specificity in terms of precise location
and public verifiability. The subjective experience is literally the
opposite. Not topological in space but perceptual in time.
OK. (actually honesty forces me to say that although I was pretty sure
that subjectivity always involves time, I am less sure since I have
done some experiences with Salvia divinorum. The plant has raised some
doubt on this consciousness/time relation).
If you
shorten the interval too much, you lose the sense of the perception
entirely, but the electromagnetic pattern does not vanish. The
subjective experience has significance and meaning. Without the
experience side of it, the neural correlate would be no more
interesting than examining sand dunes. Without taking significance
into account, there is no purpose to examine the MRI in the first
place.
OK.
Electromagnetism is the name we give to the various phenomena of
matter across space - waving, attracting, repulsing, moving,
intensifying, discharging, radiating, accumulating density,
surfaces,
depth, consistency, etc. Sensorimotivation is the name I'm giving to
the various phenomena of experience (energy) through time -
detecting,
sensing, feeling, being, doing, intention, image, emotion, thought,
meaning, symbol, archetype, metaphor, semiotics, communication,
arithmetic, etc.
That's what the numbers can explain, and that what cannot explain the
numbers (without assuming them implicitly).
I think that numbers can't explain any of that without the a priori
expectation of those experiences. Numbers by themselves do not suggest
anything but more numbers.
Not at all. You have to learn to listen to them. They look a bit
alien, and we can take time to infer the life within, but this is our
*human* current lack of imagination, to talk like John Mikes.
They have no capacity to recognize their
own patterns,
Of course they can. Well, of course if you study a bit of computer
science. It is really due to the fact that numbers can recognize their
own patterns, and change them accordingly, that they brought an non
computable amount of mess in Platonia.
only to be recognized by the computational shadows cast
by concretely embodied agents of sense and motive.
I don't really believe in concretely embodied agent. (even without
comp). I have never seen that. It is an Aristotelian myth.
I agree that it might look like that exists, but that is an
extrapolation brought by billions years of life struggle, in a very
deep ocean of computations, seen from inside.
Electromagnetism is public, generic, a-signifying, and
sensorimotive
experience is private, proprietary and signifying.
That is like saying, in the machine language that electromagnestism
if
of type Bp, and sensori-motive is of type Bp & p, but I think that
electromagnetism is of type Bp & Dt, and sensorimotive is of type
of
Bp & Dt & p.
A part of your intuition might be accessible to computer, making
your
dismissing the possibility of comp even more premature.
What's Dt?
I think I know what Bp and p are but maybe define them longhand so I
can be sure.
I fix some machine M.
p is for an (arbitrary) arithmetical proposition.
Bp is for "M proves p", written in the language used by the machine
(it can be Peano arithmetic, in which case Bp is the beweisbar ('p')
of Gödel, and 'p' is Gödel's number of p (that is a coding of a
description of p in the language of the machine).
The modality "B" obeys the modal logics G (for what the machine can
proof about its provability) and G* (for what is true about that
provability, but that the machine cannot necessarily prove. G is a
sublogic of G*.
Dp is for ~B~p (= it is not provable by M that not p), (~ = not).
If Dp is true, the machine cannot prove ~p, and this means that p is
consistent for the machine. For example (with t = the constant truth,
or = "1+1=2", and f = 1+1= 3, or the constant false):
Dt = ~B~t = ~Bf = "M is consistent" (written in the language of the
machine).
Gödel's second incompleteness theorem is
Dt -> ~BDt (If M is consistent then M cannot prove that M is
consistent). Note that M can prove this.
Note that ~Bp is equivalent with D~p
Note that ~Dp is equivalent with B~p
~D~p is equivalent with Bp.
B and D are dual. In modal logic B is called the Box, and D is called
the diamond. People use also [] and <> for them.
There are infinitely many different modal logics
I'm going to have to think about that for a while, but it helps I
think. So you are saying that the difference between electromagnetic
and sensorimotive is that sensorimotive includes p
Yes. Consciousness is part of arithmetical truth, and it is non
communicable as such by any arithmetical entity.
or the arithmetic
itself, the content, while electromagnetism contains only the
computational consequences of the arithmetic. Yeah, if that's what you
are saying I like it. It gives me something new.
Cool.
I don't think it
captures the significance of what the presence of p does as far as
making sensorimotive analog through time and electromagnetic being
discrete across space.
Er... this points on open problem. Comp does not yet decide between a
continuous space-time or a discrete one. But comp predict that some
physical things have to be continuous, but it might still be only the
probabilities. I dunno.
Hmm... The difference between subjective and sensorimotive would be
captured by the difference between Bp & p, and Bp & Dt & p. That
confirms my feeling described above.
I'll get back to you if you can explain the variables better. I
tried
Googling them but nothing clear comes up for me.
I hope that what I wrote above helps a bit. There are good book on
the
subject, but you need to follow some course in mathematical logic, to
get familiar with it.
I think that there is a cost associated with relying exclusively on
mathematical logic in a TOE though. My hypothesis shows how modal
agreements magnify the in-language and attenuate the outward
sensitivity. Like a gaggle of teenagers hanging around in a pack,
talking to each other incessantly and oblivious to the world.
Hmm...
I was curious about Hava Siegelmann's theories about analog
computation.
That's material phenomenon, and they can be used to perform some
computations, but with digital mechanism, they can be recovered
in
the
physical reality. They can't be primitive.
What if material is primitive?
Then comp is false. And you have to make this clear by assuming the
relevant infinities.
What has to be infinite in order for comp to be false, and isn't
comp
already assuming that arithmetic is non-axiomatizable and therefore
infinite?
The fact that arithmetic (in the sense of arithmetical truth, or the
set of all arithmetical true sentences) is not axiomatizable is a
theorem in pure mathematics. It is independent of comp. But that fact
can be used to explain why comp is not a reductionism.
For comp to be false you need an argument for saying "NO" to the
digital doctor. He can propose you different artificial brains:
The cheaper one: the neuron are artificial device counting spikes and
triggering in response to being trigged according to some theory of
neurons and brains.
More expensive: it simulates by artificial devices each molecule of
your brain.
Much more expensive: it simulates by artificial devices the quantum
sates of each elementary particle;waves playing a role in your brain.
Even more expensive: it simulates by artificial devices the quantum
states of each elementary particles:waves in your brain by keeping
the
entanglement of those particles/waves with your neighborhood.
etc.
To say no to ALL doctor's propositions, you are implicitly telling
him
that none of those finite description will work, nor even the quantum
state of the whole multiverse.
You are asking him for either something magical (non Turing
emulable),
or something infinite.
Not necessarily. It just may be that consciousness is a spatio-
temporal event calibrated to a specific circumstance within the
firmament of the singularity which cannot be simulated. It's a fixed
MAC address not only of a precise location and time relative to the
absolute which cannot be spoofed, but a precise circumstantial pattern
of energy and matter,
This does not make much sense to me ...
so that the exact circumstance of someone's
birth - the thoughts and feelings of the doctor and nurse, the sound
of the cars outside, the proximity to the vineyards and the
ocean...all of that may need to be reproduced to instantiate a
particular identity.
... but I agree with this, although the subjective memory of all this
might be quite enough, most probably. But even if the ocean is needed,
it would only make the comp subst level lower.
We would also be led to the peculiar situation
where machine could correctly prove that they are not machine,
I don't see how matter as a primitive makes machines able to prove
that they are not machines.
I was unclear. What I say is that if a machine convince herself,
with
your help perhaps, that some pirimitive matter exists and has a role
for the instantiation of her consciousness, then such a machine will
eventually conclude (by a way similar to UDA) that she is not a
machine. If such machine is ideally correct, she would conclude
correctly that she is not a machine. This comes from the fact that
the
UDA reasonning can be done by machines (as AUDA illustrated in some
admittedly abstract way). You might intuit this if you take the time
to follow the UD argument.
Hmm. Not sure I get it. I sort of get that the mathematical
proposition of a matter-like topology would give rise to some novelty
through computational non-accessibility but I don't know that the
novelty would necessarily seem non-mechanical.
If it is mechanical, it is Turing emulable.
If it is Turing emulable, it is "already" emulated infinitely often in
arithmetical truth (even in a tiny part of arithmetical truth).
I think a machine machine (or something we
presume is a machine) proves whether of not it is a machine by how
it
responds to errors or hardware failures.
A machine can never prove, still less know, that she is a machine.
Even machine have to make a leap of faith to admit mechanism. Most
machines will be 'naturally' against comp, before introspecting
deeper, and reasoning deeper, so that they can infer the possibility
(but nothing more).
I'm not against the reasoning of that, I just don't think it's a
compelling basis for rich perception. Sure, everyone's reality tunnel
looks like reality and not a tunnel, but that doesn't explain why the
contents of the tunnel are so interesting and so real.
Because arithmetical truth has this basic property: the more you know
about it, the less you know about it. Imagine a very dark infinite
place (machine ignorance): at first you see about nothing, so you can
still believe the place is not so big. but the more you put light on
it, the more you grasp how big the place is.
You could maybe say that what
we are made of is an accumulation of the universe's favorite errors,
failures, and aberrations.
Partially, yes. Even partial lies. Perhaps. I'm not sure.
Sure, yes. Partial lies are probably the only way to be certain of
keeping truth alive. Indra's Net of Bullshit, haha. Seriously though,
you need the alchemical base alloys to hide the precious metal within,
otherwise it wouldn't be precious.
Cool image.
making
all possible discourses of machine being of the type Bf. You might
eventually change my mind on the non provability of comp (as
opposed
to the non recognizability of the our level of comp). For this you
should convince the machine that material is necessarily
primitive. I
begin to doubt that non-comp can make any sense. Hmm...
If I pull the plug on the machine, then the machine halts. Why
should
that be the case were machine independent of material substrate?
Because machines can have long and complex computational histories.
If you pull the plug on the machine, you act on her 3-body that she
share the existence with you, and so in the normal histories she will
disfunction with a probability very near 1. From the points of view
of
the machine she will survive in the computation which are the closer
with those normal computations (that's explains the comp-immortality,
which can already be explained in the inferred QM of nature).
So a computer keeps computing even when you turn it off? That would be
hard to swallow if you are saying that.
If your computer run a complex computation, making it possible for a
consciousness to manifest itself relatively to you, and if you pull
the plug on your computer, then relatively to you, that consciousness
will no more be able to manifest itself. But from the view of that
consciousness itself, it will continue to be manifested on
sufficiently similar computations, run by sufficiently similar
computer, somewhere in UD*.
If you want to stay in relation with that consciousness, you will have
to pull the plug on yourself simultaneously.
But this is true *only* in principle. To do this in practice, you have
to assure that you unplug your self at the right level. If not, you
might just end up in a universe, where there is no plug, or something.
We cannot know our level, so to "unplug oneself" cannot really be
defined at all.
But yes, comp implies immortality. Actually it implies many form of
immortality.
It is the big difference between Aristotle an Plato. With the first we
are mortal souls, imprisoned in a primary material universe. With
Plato/Plotinus, we are immortal soul imprisoned in the consciousness
prison (Rossler's image).
On the point of immortality, note that the christians depart from the
atheists, in keeping up Plato's immortality. Comp is a little more
christian than atheistic. Of course, comp departs from both christians
and atheists on the aristotelian *primary* matter idea.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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