On 03 Aug 2012, at 11:43, Stephen P. King wrote:
Dear Bruno,
On 8/3/2012 3:55 AM in post "Re: Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is
Dead", Bruno Marchal wrote:
There is no recipe for intelligence. Only for domain competence.
Intelligence can "diagonalize" again all recipes.
A very good point! Intelligence is thus forever beyond a horizon
or boundary within which recursively countable is possible. This is
exactly the idea that I see implied by "relativizing" the Tennenbaum
theorem. For any kind of "something" ( I do not know what it is
named at the moment) there is always a recursively countable name
that that something has for itself. Recall what Wittgenstein wrote
about names:
"According to descriptivist theories, proper names either are
synonymous with descriptions, or have their reference determined by
virtue of the name's being associated with a description or cluster
of descriptions that an object uniquely satisfies. Kripke rejects
both these kinds of descriptivism. He gives several examples
purporting to render descriptivism implausible as a theory of how
names get their reference determined (e.g., surely Aristotle could
have died at age two and so not satisfied any of the descriptions we
associate with his name, and yet it would seem wrong to deny that he
was Aristotle). As an alternative, Kripke adumbrated a causal theory
of reference, according to which a name refers to an object
by virtue of a causal connection with the object as mediated through
communities of speakers. He points out that proper names, in
contrast to most descriptions, are rigid designators: A proper name
refers to the named object in every possible world in which the
object exists, while most descriptions designate different objects
in different possible worlds. For example, 'Nixon' refers to the
same person in every possible world in which Nixon exists, while
'the person who won the United States presidential election of 1968'
could refer to Nixon, Humphrey, or others in different possible
worlds. Kripke also raised the prospect of a posteriori necessities
— facts that are necessarily true, though they can be known only
through empirical investigation. Examples include "Hesperus is
Phosphorus", "Cicero is Tully", "Water is H2O" and other identity
claims where two names refer to the same object."
Most machine's possible properties are way beyond the recursively
enumerable. For example the property of being able to compute the
factorial function is itself not computable.
A name is "perfect" if it is a recursively enumerable
representation of an object. This definition is required by the
postulate that "reality is that which is incontrovertible" for all
inter-communicating observers". We could define an observer as any
system capable of implementing in its dynamics a computational
simulation of itself. Most objects that exist cannot do this on
their own, a brick for example. But consider that at a deeper level,
a brick is a lattice of atoms that supports an entire level of
dynamics - the electrostatic interactions of the electrons and
protons for example - and at this level there is sufficient
structure to support an organizational equivalent of a computation
of a brick.
This takes your "substitution level" idea another step!
Here you are too fuzzy for me. Sorry. *In* the comp frame, and we
cannot take for granted notion of physical objects. Locally it is
plausible that brick "exists" and that they are a lattice of atoms,
but this can only be a local relative description of how we conceive a
brick. With comp, a brick is quite different sort of objects, for
which we have no intuition at all. We can only do the math, as
frustrating as that could seem.
Even for competence, effective recipes are not tractable, and by
weakening the test criteria, it is possible to show the existence
of a non constructive hierarchy of more and more competent
machines. It can be proved that such hierarchy are necessarily not
constructive, so that competence really can evolve only through
long stories of trial and errors. Intelligence is basically a non
constructive notion. It is needed for the development of
competence, but competence itself has a negative feedback on
intelligence. Competent people can get easily stuck in their domain
of competence, somehow.
They can get stuck in a recursive loop where they are unable to
"see" outside of their dreams about themselves. Nice example of
solipsism, no? ;-)
That illustrates the "lived solipsism" which we are all living, but
this does not need to make us believe in doctrinal solipsism. We all
feel alone, but we don't have to believe that we are alone.
The trick is to never get stuck in a single point of view of one's
world!
That is a good idea, but it cannot be effective. That would give a
recipe for intelligence, but you agreed there are none.
There are an infinite number of possible observational bases, why
only use one?
If by base, you mean the basic ontology, we can use only one (like
arithmetic) because they are all equivalent, ontologically. Physics
and theology/psychology/biology is independent of the choice of the
base. Epistemologically, we have the complete opposite. Special
systems get special role, and we have to learn to live with the
different points of view inside us and inside others.
If you are interested in theoretical study of competence, you might
read the paper by Case and Smith, or the book by Oherson, Stob,
Weinstein (reference in my URL).
I will look for this. As I was checking down links, I found:
"In philosophical arguments about dualism versus monism, it is noted
that thoughts have intensionality and physical objects do not (S.E.
Palmer, 1999), but rather have extension in space."
Except that with comp, extension in space is only an intensional
notion. of course this is highly non trivial, and is a counter-
intuitive consequence of computationalism. With comp, space and time
are intensional notions.
and further:
"Intensional logic is an approach to predicate logic that extends
first-order logic, which has quantifiers that range over the
individuals of a universe (extensions), by additional quantifiers
that range over terms that may have such individuals as their value
(intensions). The distinction between extensional and intensional
entities is parallel to the distinction between sense and reference."
Is not what you are arguing for here in your post exactly what
Intensional logic was found to do?
Er well, trivially once you get the point that incompleteness makes
the correct machine able to justify the existence of (many) modalities/
points of view. I mean that your statement here is very general. It
concerns the whole modal logic approach, not just the modal approaches
forced by comp and computer science. But OK.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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