On 09 Dec 2011, at 13:34, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 12/9/2011 4:06 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 09 Dec 2011, at 08:47, meekerdb wrote:
On 12/8/2011 6:35 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 12/8/2011 9:01 PM, meekerdb wrote:
On 12/8/2011 5:48 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 12/8/2011 6:45 PM, meekerdb wrote:
On 12/8/2011 3:04 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Dec 8, 4:44 pm, "Stephen P. King"<stephe...@charter.net>
wrote:
On 12/8/2011 4:22 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
To suppose computation requires a material process would be
materialism, wouldn't it?
Hi Craig,
Not quite, a dualist model would require that some form
of material
process occur for computations and would go even further in
prohibiting
computations from not having a physical component but would
not specify
which it was. This way we preserve computational
universality without
having to drift off into idealism and its own set of problems.
True, it could be dualism (or an involuted monism) too, but I
wouldn't
call a theory of mind which depends on material processes
computationalism.
You might if you thought that's all that was needed to make a
mind, in contrast to some supernatural soul stuff. It
basically boils down to whether you suppose there are some
things that are real (e.g. some things happen and some don't,
or some stuff exists and some doesn't) and some aren't or you
suppose that everything happens and exists. In the latter
case there's really no role for ur stuff whose only function
is to mark some stuff as existing and the rest not.
Brent
Hi Brent,
Interesting role that you have cast the physical world into,
but ironically "stuff whose only function is to mark some stuff
as existing and the rest not" and "everything happens and
exists" do not sleep together very well at all. The "everything
happens and exists" hypothesis has a huge problem in that is
has no way of sorting the "Tom sees this and not that" from the
" from "Dick sees this and not that" and "Jane sees this and
not that", where as the "stuff whose only function is to mark
some stuff as existing and the rest not" can be coherently
defined as the union of what Tom, Dick and Jane see and do not
see.
The idealists would have us believe that along with numbers
their operations there exists some immaterial stratifying
medium that sorts one level of Gedel numbering from another. I
am reminded of a video I watched some time ago where a girl had
three sealed jars. One contained nothing, one contained 4 6-die
and the third contained 1,242,345,235,235 immaterial 6-die. ...
The physical world is very much real, even if it vanishes
when we look at it closely enough. But we might consider that
just as it vanishes so too does the ability to distinguish one
set of numbers from another. If the ability to distinguish this
from that itself vanishes, how are we to claim that
computations exist "independent of physics"? Seriously!?!
Where did I claim that. I was just pointing out the genesis of
"everything theories"; you did notice that this is called the
"everything-list" didn't you?
Brent
HI Brent,
I commented on what you wrote. Care to respond or will you beg
my question? How does immaterial based "everything theories" deal
with this problem that I just outlined?
You should ask a proponent of such theories; like Bruno. But as I
understand it, the ultimate application of Ocaam's razor is to
refuse to make any distinctions, so that we theorize that
everything exists. But the unqualified everything doesn't seem to
be logically coherent. So Bruno backs off to an "everything" that
is well defined and still possibly comprehensive, i.e. everything
that is computable. Within this plenuum there are various states
(numbers in arithmetic) and some principle will pick out what part
we experience. Computation includes an uncountable infinity of
states and relations between states - so whatever we experience
must be in there somewhere.
Good answer. The distinction asked by Stephen King are done, in the
relative way, by the universal numbers themselves.
Hi Bruno and Brent,
Sorry, I do not accept that as a "good answer" since it would be
cut to shreds by the razor itself.
?
Postulating that everything exists without a means to even
demostrate necessity is to postulate an infinite (of unknown
cardinality!) of entities, in direct contradiction to Occam's razor.
Occam razor asks for the minimal number of assumption in a theory. It
does not care about the cardinal of the models of the theory. That is
why the many worlds is a product of occam principle.
Even when we reduce this to a countable infinite of entities,
Which is indeed the case for the comp ontology, but the epistemology
can and will be bigger. It is a sort of Skolem phenomenon, that I have
often described.
the need for necessitation remains unanswered. Why do numbers exist?
Nobody can answer that. We cannot prove the existence of the numbers
in a theory which do not assume them at the start, implicitly or
explicitly.
Why numbers and not Nothing?
Because with Nothing in the ontology, you can't prove the existence of
anything, not even illusion which needs some illusionned subject. That
is why all fundamental theories assumes the numbers, (or equivalent)
and with comp this can be shown to be enough.
At least with the Stone-type dualism we have a way to show the
necessity of numbers via bisimulations between different instances
of Boolean algebras and, dually, via causality between Stone spaces
and thus do not violate Occam blindly.
Assuming different instances of boolean algebra is assuming more than
the natural numbers (like assuming finite and infinite sets).
Comprehensability requires the co-existence of that which is
comprehended with that which is doing the comprehension, that
numbers can comprehend themselves without additional structure seem
to me to be ruled out even by your result.
Not all. The relevant part of computer science is embedded in
arithmetic. The one doing the comprehension are the universal numbers,
and they need only addition and multiplication for doing that. That
can be derived easily from Godel's 1931 paper.
My point is that we cannot tacitly assume the existence of entities
that can make the distinctions (for example, between difference
Goedelian numberings)
Arithmetical (sigma_1) truth dovetails on all Gödel numbering. The
inability for a universal number to really know its coding is part of
the reason why their is a first person indeterminacy in arithmetic,
and that is part of the explanation of why physical laws will be
apparent from the universal numbers points of view.
and thus the insistence that the physical not exist at the same
level as numbers seems to be an error.
The numbers (or other finite entities belonging to universal systems)
have to be primitive (they are not derivable by less than themselves).
This is *necessary* not the case for physics, *by the UDA*.
I'm intrigued by David Deutsche's assertion that different physics
implies that different things are computable, but I'm doubtful
that it's true.
I agree, it is total non sense. Not only it would contradict Church
thesis and the immunity of computability for diagonalization, but
thanks to David Deutsch quantum computer, it does not even make
sense with what we know currently believed in physics, and such a
position is a sort of revisionist definition of what is a
computation. That's is why I prefer to call Deutsch's "Church
Turing principle" the "Deutsch's thesis". And it is an open problem
if such a thesis is compatible with Church's thesis.
You are not even showing a valid proof here. Refuting Deutsch's
assertion would effectively make Yes Doctor vanish,
Why? The contrary is more plausible. "Yes doctor" should a priori
refute Deustch thesis.
leaving your result vacuous. Removing all traces of the physical
world removes all possibility of distinguishing a false proof from a
true proof.
Trivially so. But comp does not remove any *trace* of the physical
worlds. Only the pretension that the physical has a primary ontology.
To contradict this one must show how a "theory of abstract theorem
proving" is self-consistent in the absence of a means to distinguish
one proposed proof from another. Only the physical world with its
chalkboards, computer screens sound waves, etc. offers a medium on
and in which we can communicate abstract ideas and concepts such as
your result.
To believe otherwise is to similar to the belief in perpetual
motion machines as it would allow us to do work in contradiction to
thermodynamics. The acquisition of Knowledge, via computation or
other, requires the generation of entropy.
Not really. QM makes physical implementation of computations not
needing generation of entropy, nor any energy. Only erasing
information would need that, but you can have Turing universality
without erasing information. Quantum computer are based on that idea.
Universal computation can be made completely reversible. But all this
is not relevant, given that we do assume the existence of numbers with
+ and *.
Information is not gained for free. If numbers have a unique and a
priori existence and the physical world emerges from it then even
thermodynamics itself is emergent but this still does not allow us
to get 0 to equal 1.
OK.
I am sorry to seem so harsh in my critique but this problem that
I am pointing out is far to obvious to be so lackadaisically
dismissed. I believe in your result, but it does not prove the
physical world to not exist as it requires the existence of the
physical world to be communicated. That fact alone should be clear.
I have no problem with the existence of the physical worlds, given
that I reduce the mind body problem to the problem of justifying the
existence of the physical worlds from numbers. This mean I do not
doubt about the existence of the physical worlds (who would do that?
really). But I do provide a proof or deductive argument that the
physical worlds has no ontological primacy, once we assume brain (even
material) brain functions like machine at some level of description.
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 everything-list@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
