I used the term *omniscience* in a rather general way, as a substitute for the term *universal*
though it should be said that the purpose was to serve as adjective to the term *computational* rather than the other way around, as might be expected when the phrase is given in the form of *computational omniscience*. I like to play with language, and English has a rather free form. Omniscience has a sense of universality to it, and it is not solely connected to deity; there is also notion of realm, and mathematics is such. Hence, omniscience over computation (computational omniscience) represents not so much all knowing as all computable, and remember, all that is computable is so computable upon Turing machine as it might be anywhere else. The Turing machine, simply by its construction, computes in this universal fashion, and no other means of computing provides answers beyond those provided by Turing machine. Hence, the Turing machine is not only universally competent as a computer, it also is computationally omniscient. wrb From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Roger Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2012 8:12 AM To: everything-list Subject: Re: Re: Why AI is impossible Hi Bruno Marchal The Bible teaches that God spends much of his time looking into men's hearts to see if love or evil rests there. Would this be part of your definition of omniscience ? Roger , <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] 8/16/2012 Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so everything could function." ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Bruno Marchal <mailto:[email protected]> Receiver: everything-list <mailto:[email protected]> Time: 2012-08-15, 03:38:37 Subject: Re: Why AI is impossible William, On 14 Aug 2012, at 17:02, William R. Buckley wrote: Bruno: You抳e turned things around. The implication is context to information, not information to context. And, I suggest you think very long and carefully about my statement regarding the computational omniscience of the Turing machine. Yes, you may call it universality but that word is in fact too strong; omniscience is more accurate. Omniscience concerns beliefs or knowledge, mainly propositions. This can be proved to be always incomplete for machine (and plausibly humans), never "omni". Universality concerns functions, or computations. By a sort of miracle (Church's thesis) this can be universal. Put differently: procedural 'knowledge' can be universal. Assertive knowledge is always incomplete. Bruno Also, read Jesper Hoffmeyer抯 book Biosemiotics. wrb From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 2:39 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Why AI is impossible Hi William, On 14 Aug 2012, at 02:09, William R. Buckley wrote: Bruno: >From the perspective of semiotic theory, a subjective universe seems rather obvious. I don't think anything is obvious here. What do you mean by a subjective universe? Do you mean that we are dreaming? What is your theory of dream? What is your theory of mind? Consider that the Turing machine is computational omniscient I guess you mean universal. But universality is incompatible with omniscience, even restricted to number relations. Computational universality entails the impossibility of omniscience. solely as a consequence of its construction, and yet, it can hardly be said that the engineer who designed the Turing machine (why, Turing, himself!) intentioned to put into that machine as computable computations. ? Somehow, where information is concerned, context is king. I agree with this. I would say that information is really context selection. 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 [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. 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 [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. 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 [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. 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 [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
