On 29 Jan 2012, at 03:20, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Jan 28, 8:03 am, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
On 28 Jan 2012, at 02:33, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Jan 27, 12:20 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
But many things about numbers are not arithmetical. Arithmetical
truth
is not arithmetical. Machine's knowledge can be proved to be non
arithmetical.
If you want, arithmetic is enough rich for having a bigger reality
than anything we can describe in 3p terms.
But all arithmetic truths, knowledge, beliefs, etc are all still
sensemaking experiences. It doesn't matter whether they are
arithmetic
or not, as long as they can possibly be detected or made sense of in
any way, even by inference, deduction, emergence, etc, they are
still
sense. Not all sense is arithmetic or related to arithmetic in some
way though. Sense can be gestural or intuitive.
That might be possible. But gesture and intuition can occur in
relative computations.
How do you know that they 'occur' in the computations rather than in
the eye of the beholder of the computations?
The beholder of the computations is supported by the computations.
Those exist independently of me, in the same way numbers are prime or
not independently of me.
There is nothing in the universe
The term universe is ambiguous.
Only in theory. I use it in a literal, absolutist way.
This does not help to understand what you mean by "universe".
Universe means 'all that is' in every context.
But "all that is" is what we are searching, testing, studying. The
word "is" is very useful in everyday life, but very ambiguous per.
"is" or "exist" depends on the theory chosen. Something can exist
ontologically, or epistemologically.
You confuse proving p, which can be explained in arithmetic, and
"proving p & p is true", which can happen to be true for a machine,
but escapes necessarily its language.
The same for consciousness. It cannot be explained in *any* third
person terms. But it can be proved that self-observing machine
cannot
avoid the discovery of many things concerning them which are beyond
language.
I think that are confusing p with a reality rather than a logical
idea
about reality.
p refers to reality by definition. "p" alone is for "it is the case
that p".
But it isn't the case, it's the idea of it being the case.
It is the case that 17 is prime, independently of of it is the case
that such or such human has the idea that it is the case that 17 is
prime. You are confusing levels.
You're just
saying 'Let p ='. It doesn't mean proposition that has any causal
efficacy.
The fact that 17 is prime has causal efficacy. It entails many facts.
I have no reason to believe that a machine can observe
itself in anything more than a trivial sense.
It needs a diagonalization. It can't be completely trivial.
Something is aware of something, but it's just electronic components
or bricks on springs or whatever being aware of the low level physical
interactions.
A machine/program/number can be aware of itself (1-person) without
knowing anything about its 3p lower level.
It is not a conscious
experience, I would guess that it is something like an accounting of
unaccounted-for function terminations. Proximal boundaries. A
silhouette of the self offering no interiority but an
extrapolation of
incomplete 3p data. That isn't consciousness.
Consciousness is not just self-reference. It is true self-reference.
It belongs to the intersection of truth and self-reference.
It's more than that too though. Many senses can be derived from
consciousness, true self-reference is neither necessary nor
sufficient. I think that the big deal about consciousness is not that
it has true self-reference but that it is able to care about itself
its world that a non-trivial, open ended, and creative way. We can
watch a movie or have a dream and lose self-awareness without being
unconscious. Deep consciousness is often characterized by
unselfconscious awareness.
This is not excluded by the definition I gave.
"But I’ll venture an axiom
of my own here: no properties can emerge from a complex system
that
are not present in primitive form in the parts of that system.
There
is nothing mystical about emergent properties. When the emergent
property of ‘pumping blood’ arises out of collections of heart
cells,
that property is a logical extension of the properties of the
parts -
physical properties such as elasticity, electrical conductivity,
volume and so on that belong to the individual cells. But nobody
invoking ‘emergent properties’ to explain consciousness in the
brain
has yet explained how consciousness arises as a natural
extension of
the known properties of brain cells - or indeed of matter at
all. "
Pierz, Craig, I disagree. Consciousness can be explained as a non
3p
describable fixed point when machine's observe themselves. This
provides a key role to consciousness, including the ability to
develop
meanings, to speed decisions, to make decision in absence of
information, etc.
I disagree. It provides a key role to the function of agency but it
has nothing to do with consciousness and qualia per se. A sleep
walker
can navigate to the kitchen for a snack without being conscious.
Yes. But everyday life is more complex than looking for a snack.
Not as complex as doing what the immune system does.
I am not sure. I don't see the relevance of that mechanist point.
Consciousness does nothing to speed decisions, it would only cost
processing overhead
That's why high animals have larger cortex.
Their decisions are no faster than simpler animals.
Complex decision are made possible, and are done more faster.
and add nothing to the efficiency of unconscious
adaptation.
So, why do you think we are conscious?
I think that humans have developed a greater sensorimotive capacity
I still don't know what you mean by that. You can replace
"sensorimotive" by "acquainted to the son of God" in all your argument
without them having a different meaning or persuasive force.
as
a virtuous cycle of evolutionary circumstance and subjective
investment. Just as hardware development drives software development
and vice versa. It's not that we are conscious as opposed to
unconscious, it's that our awareness is hypertrophied from particular
animal motives being supported by the environment and we have
transformed our environment to enable our motives. Our seemingly
unique category of consciousness can either be anthropic prejudice or
objective fact, but either way it exists in a context of many other
kinds of awareness. The question is not why we are conscious, it is
why is consciousness possible and/or why are we human.
Why we are human is easily explained, or not-explainable, as an
indexical geographical fact, by comp. It is like "why am I the one in
W and not in M?". Comp explains why consciousness is necessary. It is
the way we feel when integrating quickly huge amount of information in
a personal scenario.
To the former,
the possibility is primordial, and the latter is a matter of
probability and intentional efforts.
Consciousness is not explainable in term of any parts of something,
but as an invariant in universal self-transformation.
If you accept the classical theory of knowledge, then Peano
Arithmetic
is already conscious.
Why and how does universal self-transformation equate to
consciousness?
I did not say that. I said that consciousness is a fixed point for a
very peculiar form of self-transformation.
what makes it peculiar?
The computer science details of its implementation (not of
consciousness, but of the self-transformation, based on some
application of Kleene's theorem).
Anything that is conscious can also be unconscious. Can
Peano Arithmetic be unconscious too?
Yes. That's possible if you accept that consciousness is a logical
descendent of consistency.
Aren't the moons of Saturn consistent?
The material moons are not programs, nor theories. "consistent" cannot
apply to it without stretching the words a lot.
Will consciousness logically
descend from their consistency?
If ever the moon have to become conscious. Yes. No if this has not to
happen. There is few chance moons becomes conscious, for they are not
self-moving and have very few degrees of freedom.
It follows then from the fact that
consistency entails the consistency of inconsistency (Gödel II). Of
course, the reality is more complex, for consciousness is only
approximated by the instinctive unconscious) inductive inference of
self-consistency.
You need some kind of awareness to begin with to tell the difference
between consistency and inconsistency.
Not necessarily. Checking inconsistency does not require a lot of
cognitive ability.
My solution is that both views are correct on their own terms in
their
own sense and that we should not arbitrarily privilege one view
over
the other. Our vision is human vision. It is based on retina
vision,
which is based on cellular and molecular visual sense. It is not
just
a mechanism which pushes information around from one place to
another,
each place is a living organism which actively contributes to
the
top
level experience - it isn't a passive system.
Living organisms - replicators,
Life replicates, but replication does not define life. Living
organisms feel alive and avoid death. Replication does not
necessitate
feeling alive.
I am OK with this. Yet, replication + while-loop might be enough.
Should we mourn the untying of our shoelaces each time?
?
If we tie and untie our shoes many times, we replicate the knot
pattern and have a loop while it is tied within which subroutines of
changes to the laces occur with walking.
I was just alluding to the fact that replication, although not
providing Turing universality, do that in company of the while loop.
are fine things, but I don't see why
must one confuse replicators with perception. Perception can
exist by
itself merely on the virtue of passing information around and
processing
it. Replicators can also exist due similar reasons, but on a
different
level.
Perception has never existed 'by itself'. Perception only occurs
in
living organisms who are informed by their experience.
The whole point is to explain terms like "living", "conscious",
etc.
You take them as primitive, so are escaping the issue.
They aren't primitive, the symmetry is primitive.
?
Conscious and unconscious are aspects of the inherent subject-object
symmetry of the universe.
Which you assume.
There is no
independent disembodied 'information' out there. There detection
and
response, sense and motive of physical wholes.
Same for "physical" (and that's not obvious!).
Do you doubt that if all life were exterminated that planets would
still exist? Where would information be though?
In the arithmetical relation, which truth are independent of me.
(I indulge in answering by staying in the frame of my working
hypothesis without repeating this).
Why isn't arithmetic truth physical?
Because it does not rely on any physical notion. You can do number
theory without ever doing physics.
Sorry, but I think it's never going to happen. Consciousness is
not
digital.
If you survive with a digital brain, then consciousness is
necessarily
not digital.
A brain is not a maker of consciousness. It is only a stable
pattern
making it possible (or more probable) that a person can manifest
itself relatively to some universal number(s).
Why not just use adipose tissue instead? That's a more stable
pattern.
Why have a vulnerable concentration of this pattern in the head? Our
skeleton would make a much safer place four a person to manifest
itself relatively to some universal number.
Write a letter to nature for geographical reclamation.
Funny but avoiding a serious problem of comp. Why not have some
creatures with smart skulls or shells and stupid soft parts inside? It
seems to be a strong indicator of material properties consistently
determining mechanism and not the other way around.
Seeming is deceptive.
Keep in mind that comp makes materialism wrong.
That's not why it's wrong. I have no problem with materialism being
wrong, I have a problem with experience being reduced to non
experience or non sense.
This does not happen in comp. On the contrary machines can already
explain why that does not happen. Of course you need to believe that
arithmetical truth makes sense. But your posts illustrate that you
do.
Arithmetical truth does make sense, definitely, but so do other kinds
of experiences make sense and are not arithmetic truths.
If they are conceptually rich enough, you can take them instead of
arithmetic, without changing anything in the explanation of
consciousness and matter. I use numbers because people are more
familiar with them.
The big picture is
completely different. I think that you confuse comp, with its
Aristotelian version where computations seems to be incarnated by
physical primitive materials. Comp + materialism leads to person-
nihilism, so it is important to understand that comp should not be
assumed together with materialism (even weak).
I don't think that I am confusing it. Comp is perfectly
illustrated as
modern investment banking. There is no material, in fact it
strangles
the life out of all materials, eviscerating culture and
architecture,
all in the name of consolidating digitally abstracted control of
control. This is machine intelligence. The idea of unexperienced
ownership as an end unto itself, forever concentrating data and
exporting debt.
Only in your reductionist appraisal of comp. That is widespread and
dangerous indeed, but you add to the grains of it, imo.
Investment banking is just an example, I'm not trying to reduce comp
to that, but the example is defensible. Investment banking is almost
pure comp, is it not?
If you deposit your Gödel number code at the bank, or something like
that. You stretch the meaning of comp, which is just the bet that our
body is Turing emulable and that we can survive through any of its
Turing emulation.
All of those Wall Street quants... where is the
theology and creativity?
It is buried by the materialists since 1500 years.
We are able to extend and augment our neurological capacities (we
already are) with neuromorphic devices, but ultimately we need our
own
brain tissue to live in.
Why? What does that mean?
It means that without our brain, there is no we.
That's not correct.
What makes you think that?
There is no ontological brain, yet we are.
We cannot be
simulated anymore than water or fire can be simulated.
Why? That's a strong affirmation. We have not yet find a phenomenon
in
nature that cannot be simulated (except the collapse of the wave,
which can still be Turing 1-person recoverable).
You can't water a real plant with simulated water or survive the
arctic burning virtual coal for heat.
What is a real plant? A plant is epistemologically real relatively to
you and your most probable computations. It is not an absolute notion.
If you look at substitution
level in reverse, you will see that it's not a matter of making a
plastic plant that acts so real we can't tell the difference, it's a
description level which digitizes a description of a plant rather than
an actual plant. Nothing has been simulated, only imitated. The
difference is that an imitation only reminds us of what is being
imitated but a simulation carries the presumption of replacement.
This makes things more complex than they might be.
Human
consciousness exists nowhere but through a human brain.
Not at all. Brain is a construct of human consciousness, which has
some local role.
You are so much Aristotelian.
If you say that human consciousness exists independently of a human
brain, you have to give me an example of such a case.
UDA shows that you are an example of this.
We, unfortunately cannot be digitized,
You don't know that. But you don't derive it either from what you
assume (which to be franc remains unclear)
I do derive it, because the brain and the self are two parts of a
whole. You cannot export the selfness into another form, because the
self has no form, it's only experiential content through the
interior
of a living brain.
That's the 1-self, but it is just an interface between truth and
relative bodies.
Truth is just an interface between all 1-self and all relative bodies.
In which theory? This does not make sense.
.
I think that you have a reductionist conception of machine, which
was
perhaps defensible before Gödel 1931 and Turing discovery of the
universal machine, but is no more defensible after.
I know that you think that, but you don't take into account that I
started with with that. I read Gödel, Escher, Bach around 1980 I
think. Even though I couldn't get too much into the math, I was
quite
happy with the implications of it. For the next 25 years I believed
that the universe was made of 'patterns' - pretty close to what your
view is.
Not really. The physical universe is not made of any patterns. Nor is
it made of anything. It is a highly complex structure which appears
in
first person plural shared dreams.
That's what I'm saying. 'Structure' = pattern.
You might, like many, confuse
digital physics (which does not work) and comp.
"I am a machine" makes it impossible for both my consciousness, and
my
material body to be Turing emulable.
But your material body is Turing emulable (or rather, Turing
imitatable).
At the comp subst level: imitable is emulable. You seem to lower that
level in the infinite.
I agree that this is counter-
intuitive, and that's why I propose a reasoning, and I prefer that
people grasp the reasoning than pondering at infinitum on the results
without doing the needed (finite) work.
It's only been in the last 7 years that I have found a better
idea. My hypothesis is post-Gödelian symmetry.
You have to elaborate a lot. You should study first order logical
language to be sure no trace of metaphysical implicit baggage is put
in your theory; in case you want scientists trying to understand what
you say.
My whole point is revealing a universe description in which logic and
direct experience coexist in many ways. Limiting it to logical
language defeats the purpose,
That's what the machine can already explain. You consider it as a
zombie.
although I would love to collaborate
with someone who was interested in formalizing the ideas.
Convince people that there is an idea. But by insisting that your
ideas contradict comp, you shoot in your theory, because you add a
magic where the comp theories explains the appearance of the magic
without introducing it at the start.
Logic is a
3p language - a mechanistic, involuntary form of reasoning which
denies the 1p subject any option but to accept it.
This is false. The right side of the hypostases with "& p& are
provably beyond language, at the level the machine can live.
The 1p experience
is exactly the opposite of that. It is a 'seems like' affair which
invites or discourages voluntary participation of the subject. Half of
the universe is made of this.
With comp, it is the main part of the "universe".
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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