On 20 Nov 2012, at 03:52, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 11/19/2012 9:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 19 Nov 2012, at 05:03, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 11/18/2012 8:12 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
On Sun, Nov 18, 2012 at 07:48:57PM -0500, Stephen P. King wrote:
Hi Russell,
I agree with this view, especially the part about the
compatibility of bases leading to a 'sharing of realities' that
then
gives rise to an illusion of a single classical reality; I just
phrase the concepts differently. My question to you is how
'simple'
can an observer be, as a system? It seems to me that even
particles
could be considered as observers. I buy Chalmers' argument for
panpsychism.
I doubt that very much, as if true, then we should expect to find
ourselves as particles, which is the Occam's catastrophe redux I
point
out in my book.
Hi Russell,
And how could we know that we are not particles dreaming that
we are humans? Particles are, after all, just an artifact of a
particular basis that some set of "observers with compatible bases
can sharing their realities". Is a reality something that is 1p in
your thinking? It isn't in my thinking but I'll put that aside for
now.
That is a very interesting point and I have long wondered
about the distribution arguments (ala Bostrum) and Occam's
catastrophe. It seems to me that there is something that is being
assumed about consciousness in those reasonings, something that is
being taken for granted. (For one thing, the Solomonoff-Levin
distribution assumes a universal ensemble that is very much like
Leibniz' pre-established harmony and thus problematic as it is not
computable. Bruno's rejection of infinities seems to disallow for
such priors to work for comp, IMHO.)
Partially OK. It is more complex as the probabilities, although
"objective", concerned the 1p, which might contains actual
infinities (at least in some sense).
Dear Bruno,
OK, I need to understand where actual infinities are permitted
within comp's theoretical structure.
You can see them as useful epistemological fictions to ease the
reasoning of the Löbian machines (like PA) when emulated by the non
Löbian reality (RA or the UD).
I think that we can think of this cryptic idea that there is
somehow a difference of the 'we' or, more correctly, the 'I' that
is, as I claim, instantiated in a electron or an ant or a human or
a giant Black Cloud and that this difference can somehow be
remembered and passed along in continuations. It is the one
complaint that I have with reincarnation theories, the idea that
some memories that can only be defined with reference to physical
bodies can be continued. I think that the 'I' is not much
different from the center of mass of physics. The C.o.M. does not
really exist at all as a substance or physical object and yet it
has causal efficacy in some way...
Could be that consciousness is being assumed to be some kind
of substance that has persistent existence, like material
substances in Parmenidean and Aristotelian science? What if this
assumption is 'not even wrong'? What happens to the center of mass
of an aggregate when the members of that aggregate are altered?
What if consciousness is not a 'thing', but is a 'process' -
something more like a 'stream'. Computer science has no problem
with streams that I know of... I am trying to get Bruno to
consider streams, as he does seem to be OK with Quine atoms (which
are the canonical case of a stream!)
Could explain the realtion between Quine atoms and streams?
I do not know how to explain this relation is words at this
time. Please allow me to refer to some definitions and ask for some
thought on your part.
From:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nonwellfounded-set-theory/#sectionstreams
"A stream of numbers is an ordered pair whose first coordinate is a
number and whose second coordinate is again a stream of numbers. The
first coordinate is called the head, and the second the tail. The
tail of a given stream might be different from it, but again, it
might be the very same stream. For example, consider the stream s
whose head is 0 and whose tail is s again. Thus the tail of the tail
of s is s itself. We have s = ⟨ 0, s⟩ , s = ⟨ 0, ⟨ 0,
s⟩ ⟩ , etc. This stream s exhibits object circularity. It is
natural to “unravel” its definition as:
(0,0,…,0,…)
It is natural to understand the unraveled form is as an infinite
sequence; standardly, infinite sequences are taken to be functions
whose domain is the set N of natural numbers. So we can take the
unraveled form to be the constant function with value 0. Whether we
want to take the stream s described above to be this function is an
issue we want to explore in a general way in this entry. Notice that
since we defined s to be an ordered pair, it follows from the way
pairs are constructed in ordinary mathematics that s will not itself
be the constant sequence 0."
A Quine atom is a set that only has itself as a member or "Quine
Atom is a set Q that satisfies Q={Q}".
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_atom and
http://math.eretrandre.org/mybb/showthread.php?tid=28
It might be helpful to think of a Quine atom as a labeled
transition system to understand my point about the relation between
Quine atoms and streams.
OK. All this is really a matter of implementation or representation.
The second recursion theorem handles this well enough for computer
science, but it is OK to choose any other system, if you prefer. But
then you have to redo a big part of the work already done.
Note that the UD dovetails on all programs, with all inputs
including all streams.
Yes. This is why I think that your UD idea is very important!
And the UD, and all the finite section of its work exist in
arithmetic. The gluing of those dreams is not, and belongs to the
first person experience of the machines, which is independent of the
UD-time-steps, so that it looks, and is mathematically described by
the union of those finite pieces, and that lead to complex analytical
structure of their stable realities.
Are you assuming that consciousness is somehow independent of
bodies, ala Bruno's immaterialism of numbers? Isn't this just an
obscure form of Cartesian dualism that just argues away the
existence of the 'res extensa' as being, as per Bruno's argument,
something that Occam's razor cuts out of ontology and thus are
left with a 'arithmetic body problem' where the 'res extensa' used
to be?
But you need to postulate a small physical universe, and to
speculate on a flaw in step 8, to get this.
Why? I am only taking comp seriously and considering that a
finite but very large plurality of Löbian entities can form a
defacto 'physical world' by their mutual agreements or truths.
How will you select that finite set from the set of all Löbian
machines, or Löbian machines experiences?
This 'physical world' is not to be considered as ontological
primitive!
I still have no clue of what is your theory, by which I mean your
primitive element.
And I am at loss when you argue that the primitive elements have no
properties, as I can't see how anything might emerge from that.
I thought for a long time on this list that the step 8 was not
needed here, as the postulation of a small primitive physical
universe cut the benefits of everything-like philosophy, which was
the starting of this very list.
Yes, so why is my idea so difficult for you to grok?
Well, because, now, you seem to invoke a finite set, when the
everything idea suggests an infinite one.
I grok just when you say that something is not correct in my work or
post, and fail to say something understandable about that. For most of
your posts I thought that you are coherent with comp, but then you
still invoke the physical reality to oppose comp immaterialism, and
this despite you do agree that the physical reality is not primitive.
This does not make a lot of sense.
Also, to be "left with the body problem" is what is intersting in
comp, as it gives the realm, and the ways, matter can appear and be
explained. All the other theories assumed matter at the start.
I know and this is what I wish to overcome, but I which for a
model of interactions between Löbian entities.
I wish for many things, I wish for deriving the whole of physics from
arithmetic. My work shows only that the unique way to solve the mind-
body problem, once assuming comp, and keeping qualia and quanta
distinct, consists in defining knowledge and observation from the self-
reference logics, and that the whole physics has to emerge from that,
as I did completely illustrate already at the physical propositional
level.
I know that such a work might seems frustrating for a philosopher, as
it shows how with comp, the questions are translated into arithmetic,
and that the solutions might take time to be found, despite somehow
the main definitions and theorems already exist (cf Gödel, Löb,
Solovay, Visser, G and G*).
I thought mathematicians and philosophers would be very pleased by
such a bridge, but I have learned to be more realist about this,
since. Many people in universities fight for defending the curriculum
statu quo, instead of ideas and theories.
This makes me think that the continental philosophy curriculum, and
perhaps a part of the anglo-saxon one, might someday fall like Berlin
wall, but it will take some time, to say the least.
The fuzziness of the human science is too much an advantage for the
politics and the manipulations. This strikes the eyes when you study
the detail of the cannabis scandal, but is obviously clear in most
religious or atheist institutions.
Bruno
Bruno
I suspect that as human beings, we rank amongst the simplest of all
possible observers.
Is this because of your argument that self-awareness is
necessary for consciousness? Maybe you are right but thinking of
it backwards; could you consider that there is a difference
between being able to 'know' that one is conscious and simply
being conscious? I think that Craig is making the case that
'sense' or raw 'something that is like being in the world' is not
separable from the 'being in the world'. What we have is the case
where the 'simulation of the entity' is the entity itself; yet
this wording does violence to the concept that I have been trying
to explain.
The best explanation that I have to point to is Kaufman and
Zuckerman & Miranker's Russell operator idea and the Quine atom as
a formal mathematical concept and its identification of the object
with itself. It cannot be understood so long as one is embedded in
the vision of the universe as being well founded and 'regular' -
that there are a single set of 'irreducible' parts that make it
up. It amazes me that the ideas of those Greek guys from 2000
years ago still carry so much influence over our thinking!
--
Onward!
Stephen
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