On 15 January 2012 16:36, Stephen P. King <stephe...@charter.net> wrote:
> My questions here go back to this idea of "realities independent of the > 1p context in which they manifest". This "independence" seems to be the same > kind of "independence" that I am wrestling with in my debate with Bruno. Is > it truly independence in the sense of separability, in the sense that a > coherent notion of Reality can exist completely isolated from the 1p's? I > don't see how! But this takes me back to the tar pit of solipsism... Why not > use solipsism constructively? This is what Andrew Soltau is attempting to > do... Yes, I appreciate Andrew's thinking and gave have corresponded with him. I think the view I have outlined - albeit (as befits my limited technical abilities) in very general terms - does correspond to a species of "universal solipsism" (which I think is more or less equivalent FAPP to Andrew's multi-solipsism) in terms of which one can see that the "selection" of other, mutually-exclusive moments with entirely orthogonal personal entanglements is inevitable, whilst at the same time being able to intuit (just about!) that their content is, by that very token, constitutively inaccessible from "here" (like the old Irish joke). What I called the escape from solipsism is then the justified belief in the equivalence of other points of view, or to put it another way, the selective attention of a universal mind. Please forgive me for not commenting in any detail on the more technical parts of your response - which I nonetheless deeply appreciate - simply because at this point I am unable to critique them in any very sensible way. However, in general terms I’m intrigued, as well as frustrated, by the difficulties we all seem to encounter in sharing our intuitions about consciousness and its relation to whatever may be “external” to it. There is a venerable theory that as infants we do not make the distinction between self and other. This is usually interpreted as meaning that the infant lives in a solipsistic world of self, unable as yet to conceptualise “another”; the transition out of infancy correspondingly occurring when that distinction eventually dawns. But perhaps this is to get it backwards: the belief in externality is so critical to survival that it surely must be very deeply embedded. Hence it seems at least as likely that the infant lives in terms of pure “externality”, unable as yet to conceptualise an “internalised” self. At some point (quite early), the developing infant starts to correlate parts of externality with its own sensations, which, being primary and direct, do not in themselves require further elaboration. By this means, it progressively associates its sensations with a growing sense of embodiment, and the absence of them with “not-me”. The lack of such direct, personal correlation with otherwise similar embodiments implies the existence of “others who are not me”, and these various distinctions progressively become reinforced by a web of consistent mutual reference. It should be noted that at no point in this discussion is any “internalised” conception of self necessarily implied. Rather, there seems in the first place to be a direct, primary correlation of immediately intuited sensation with externally-projected forms; these forms secondarily developing stable associations with a rich variety of self/non-self distinctions. Does this imply that there could be natural variation in the extent to which, if at all, particular individuals will eventually conceptualise their own “selves” as some internal milleu independent of the unreflective correlation of sensation-externality? Julian Jaynes of course discussed a similar question in “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” (which, as a biographical aside, I once, in desperation, resorted to in a game of charades!). His own view was that there is substantial evidence to imply that human adults in earlier times may have lacked such an internal “self conception”, but that this earlier form of organisation had subsequently become disadvantageous, leaving perhaps only feeble traces in modern schizoid states. But perhaps the truth is more nuanced. Perhaps there is a more-or-less hard-wired spectrum of “first-person awareness”, whose variation is correlated with marked differences in susceptibility to the MB problem, even after prolonged, unprotected exposure to philosophical intercourse. David > Hi David, > > > On 1/15/2012 9:47 AM, David Nyman wrote: > > On 14 January 2012 18:56, Stephen P. King <stephe...@charter.net> wrote: > > But the Turing Test is a bit of an oxymoron because it > is impossible to prove the existence of something that is solely 1p. There > is no 3p of consciousness. > > I agree, and in a sense this implies the futility of all attempts to > argue from 3p to 1p. But there may be other ways to get there. For > example, I've always tended towards the view that Bruno often calls a > "universal mind" (cf. Schopenhauer, Schrödinger, Hoyle, Dyson, > et.al.). Think of this as a universal 1p. The argument from this > point of departure begins in such uniquely present conscious > instances, whose internal logic implies the possibility of other, > mutually exclusive, such instances. As a first approximation, this > internal logic might imply that the present instance is a selection > from a uniquely "personal" serialisation of such instances (i.e. the > RSSA). However the same logic is consistent with all possible such > instances, the implied personal serialisation now playing a secondary > role to some transcendental, "impersonal" selection (i.e. the ASSA). > This insight offers an escape route from solipsism. > > > I like your thinking here but need to point out a few things. It seems > to me, and this is purely a conjecture of mine, that the 1p's are limited to > being representable by Boolean algebras (or equivalently (?) lists of > questions with yes or no answers). I think of this in terms of all facts > that can be determined by measurements from a point of view tied to a place > in space-time (using the idea that space-time is a "container"), a center of > the universe if you will. (This idea comes from the work of Prof. Hitoshi > Kitada.) How can a large number of these be woven together into a consistent > narrative? My first attempt was to think of 3p as the intersection of many > 1p but this does not work out so well as there are concurrency issues to be > dealt with... > I have found that they might be able to be uniquely woven together if > the strict determinism of classical physics where to hold for all 1p at all > places and epochs (as it sets up separable and unique systems of > trajectories - worldtubes - for objects), but this is not the case as we see > from the evidence of QM. The structure of the logic of QM systems > (orthocomplete lattices) does not allow for unique decomposition into an > ordered set of Boolean algebras therefore one cannot use QM to construct a > universal mind that is isomorphic to ours. The escape from this would be to > consider finite collections of Boolean algebras representing a plurality of > 1p's having a "common world", a "consensus" reality of sorts, and consider > how to map such back into the Orthocomplete lattice of the QM system that > encompasses all of our common world. Our "gods that view all of Reality from > on high" can and should be relegated to the category of useful but > ultimately incorrect explanations. > If my conjecture is correct then it does not allow for an escape from > solipsism, but I do not think that that is such a bad deal as I see > solipsism as the natural implication that flows from the "privacy" of the > 1p. OTOH, our ability to reason coherently (given enough effort as it is not > a passive activity) allows us to jump past the isolation and even alienation > of the 1p to justifiably believe in the reality of other minds. I like the > way that Bruno addresses this with the Bp&p and "betting that p is true" > ideas. > > > > Can one apply a view like this to the problem in hand? 3p is the > label applied to our theoretical proxies for the regularities of 1p > phenomena. These regularities are so compelling that for most purposes > we treat them perfectly naturally as realities independent of the 1p > context in which they manifest. > > > Yes, this is why, IMHO, people like Stephen Hawking think of physics as > "the mind of god". I do see the attractiveness of this idea but have > discovered that there are many reasons why it is incoherent. For one thing > there are theorems in network theory that show that arbitrarily large > networks cannot have a single global synchronization (unless the speed of > light is infinite and exact bisimulation between the nodes is possible). > What we actually seem to have in our physical world is a speed of light that > is finite but behaves locally as if it where infinite as it defines the > maximal lengths between events.. but I digress. > My questions here go back to this idea of "realities independent of the > 1p context in which they manifest". This "independence" seems to be the same > kind of "independence" that I am wrestling with in my debate with Bruno. Is > it truly independence in the sense of separability, in the sense that a > coherent notion of Reality can exist completely isolated from the 1p's? I > don't see how! But this takes me back to the tar pit of solipsism... Why not > use solipsism constructively? This is what Andrew Soltau is attempting to > do... > > > We situate them in an ever more > general explanatory framework, in terms of which we hope to trap even > the 1p localisation to which all such explanation is ultimately > referred. But frustratingly, attempts to achieve this by the direct > 3p route seem always to rely in the end on some sort of unsatisfactory > bait-and-switch. > > > I agree! > > > Nonetheless we cannot deny that there are subsets of > the 3p schema which correlate strongly with the implied serialisation > of 1p moments: those subsets we accept as our local physical > embodiments. Consequently, it seems reasonable to postulate the > tightest of inter-relations, short of identity, between these two > domains, at least locally. > > > Yes, this is consistent with my conjecture. We can recover a "local" > notion of Reality that we can "bet" (per Bruno) is "Real" and be amazingly > successful in our predictions of behaviors, but at the price of havig to > give up "certainty" and having to use statistics in our physics. I suspect > that this is how Bruno comes to the conclusion that we can derive QM in the > model within his result. > > Returning to the original point of departure with the inference of a > tight local correlation between some appropriate 3p physical > embodiment and the presently selected 1p instance, it might seem a > reasonable experiment to reverse the logic. > > > Yes, but there is not a bijective map between 3p and 1p unless we assume > that infinite information is available to do the reconstruction. :-( > > > If we could but identify > the relevant species of 3p embodiment - given the anti-solipsism > argument derivable from a strictly 1p point of departure - we could > reasonably infer its correlation with an instance of consciousness > mutually exclusive of the present one, entangled with its own coherent > personal serialisation (or more baldly, another person). > > > I like your thinking here, I like it a lot! But it doesn't work since > the identification of the "relevant species of 3p embodiment" is > computationally intractable. An analogous situation involves trying to > compute the smooth diffeomorphism between an arbitrary pair of 3-manifolds. > Penrose mentioned this in one of his books as being proven by Markov to be > NP-Complete. > > > But how to identify the "relevant species"? Ordinarily, we do not > hesitate to ascribe this status to other human embodiments, because it > seems reasonable to suppose that if our own 3p constitution is of the > relevant species, so is theirs. > > > Yes, as this would be a form of universality... > > > But as we have no widely-accepted > definitive account of what this entails specifically, we must rely > essentially on the behavioural manifestations of intelligence. > > > I agree and so we must accept that we are condemned to isolation within > our 1p's, but this is not a reason to slide into nihilism (ala Nietzsche and > Sartre), we can see the computational intractability as an answer. Instead > of trying to formulate models of some kind of "pre-ordained harmony" (ala > Leibniz), we could think of the computations as ongoing and eternal process > (ala Bergson). > > > Accordingly, we have little option but to ascribe the "definitively > conscious" 1p-3p correlation to any embodiment that displays > sufficiently intelligent behaviour, by some agreed criterion such as > the TT. > > > Yes, this is where Bruno's ideas work wonderfully together with others. > We bet that Bp&p is true and go from there. We make conjectures, test them, > improve them, etc. > > > The critical exception to the foregoing is that we would clearly wish > to withdraw this ascription where there is demonstrable evidence of > fraud or pretence. > > > Absolutely agreed! Fraud detection seems to be hardwired into our > brains, co-existing with our ability to lie; the result of an arms race of > sorts between homo habilis. > > > Hence the vanishing point for controversy may well > be FAPP when the pretence of intelligence has become practically > indistinguishable, by any available criterion, from its actuality. > > > I agree. If we cannot detect a difference between X and Y we might as > well pretend that X = Y for most cases. One strategy that seems useful is > Fallibilism... > > Onward! > > Stephen > > > > David > > On 1/14/2012 1:15 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: > > On 14.01.2012 18:12 John Clark said the following: > > On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 meekerdb<meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > > There is no way consciousness can have a direct Darwinian > advantage > > so it must be a byproduct of something that does have that virtue, > and the obvious candidate is intelligence.\ > > > > That's not so clear since we don't know exactly what is the > relation of consciousness to intelligence. For a social animal > having an internal model of ones self and being able to model the > thought processes of others has obvious reproductive advantage. > > > To do any one of the things you suggest would require intelligence, > and indeed there is some evidence that in general social animals tend > to have a larger brain than similar species that are not social. But > at any rate we both seem to agree that Evolution can only see > behavior, so consciousness must be a byproduct of some sort of > complex behavior. Thus the Turing Test must be valid not only for > intelligence but for consciousness too. > > > How would you generalize the Turing Test for consciousness? > > Evgenii > > John K Clark > > > Hi, > > Perhaps we can generalize the Turing test by insisting on questions that > would require for their answer computational resources in excess of that > would be available to a computer + power suply in a small room. Think of the > Berkenstein bound.... But the Turing Test is a bit of an oxymoron because it > is impossible to prove the existence of something that is solely 1p. There > is no 3p of consciousness. I recall Leibniz' discussion of this... > > Onward! > > Stephen > > -- > 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. > > > -- > 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. -- 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.
