On 2/19/2013 12:05 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Tuesday, February 19, 2013 10:39:14 AM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:
On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 Craig Weinberg <[email protected]
<javascript:>> wrote:
> I would assume that geometric truths don't contradict
arithmetic truths.
And arithmetical truths don't contradict geometrical truths, and a
3D geometrical machine can provide answers to arithmetical
questions, and a 1D arithmetical machine can provide answers to 3D
geometrical questions; so what's the problem?
>>"under some arithmetical conditions" numbers behave
exactly precisely in the way that Euclid said geometric
objects should behave.
> That doesn't say anything about arithmetic becoming
geometry. A program can predict exactly how an apple will fall
from a tree, but that doesn't mean that if apples didn't
exist, the program would create them.
You talk a lot about qualia but you haven't thought it through.
You know nothing about apples themselves you only know about the
sensation of experiencing the apple qualia.
The color red is not a apple, the taste of a apple is not a apple,
and the feel of a apple is not a apple either. The only thing you
know about apples is the way your brain, using the laws of
arithmetic, interprets a one dimensional signal that comes over a
wire into your brain when one of your sense organs encounters an
apple.
The only thing you know about the brain is the way that people have
used instruments, using a one dimensional signal that comes into a
wire from some probe or meter. In the case of the apple, the signal is
multi-dimensional, a result of evolved relations on many levels, from
biological to molecular to zoological, from acoustic sensitivity to
optical, thermal, kinetic, olfactory, vestibular, etc, as well as
cultural, social, psychological, and cognitive understandings.
Looking at an apple, smelling, and tasting the apple, I experience
everything that matters about apples in human history. We would not
know or care about apples if not for the qualia. When we talk about
apples, we are talking about qualia. We can talk about sugar content
or cellular structure, but there is nothing apple-like about that.
Those are generic metrics that are meaningless on their own.
Hi Craig,
To add to your point. How are all of those independent sense data
points integrated into a unified 'whole' that is the content of the
sense of an entity? So many people, like Minsky and Dennett tend to
hand-wave through answers to that question....
>> Numbers have also told us something we could not have
found out in any other way, that Euclid's way is not the
only way that geometric objects can behave that is
logically consistent. And then Einstein, also using
numbers, showed that not only is this non-Euclidean way
possible it is the only way to figure out how things
change in very powerful gravitational fields.
> Yes, because have geometry (because of our sensory
experience = no thanks to arithmetic),
No thanks to arithmetic?? You take it for granted but the fact is
every bit of your vaulted 3D "sensory experience" comes to you
through signals sent down a ONE dimensional wire to your brain
which then interprets it as a 3D space.
There is no 'one dimensional wire to your brain'. The optic nerve is a
community of living organisms, just like the rest of our body. Nothing
is one dimensional except abstract models in our minds. Your
assumptions about perception and 'signals' aren't realistic, and they
have nothing to do with the existence of geometry. Why should any
signals be interpreted as 3D space? Where do the dimensions come from?
Certainly not arithmetic - it needs no visual shapes and volumes to
calculate how to respond to a given set of conditions.
As apologists for vitalism and other such medieval views never
tire in pointing out, electromagnetic waves 7700 angstroms long
are NOT the qualia red, and in exactly the same way you have ZERO
direct experience with 3D space, you only have experience with the
qualia of 3D space, a experience orchestrated by your brain, a
organ which operates entirely according to the laws of arithmetic.
You have no support for your supersitition that there is a such thing
as 3D space independent of that experience orchestrated by a brain and
you have no way of knowing what laws the brain runs on because your
view of the brain has no possibility for consciousness to exist
through it. Likewise there is no evidence that the brain orchestrates
any experiences at all. We know that it changes our experiences, or
changes our access to them, but we have never seen an experience created.
Superstition indeed! A habit at best is what we can say about what
we experience of the *out there*.
> neither geometry or arithmetic imply each other without our
sense of relation between visually experienced shapes
Visual relationships generated by your brain using arithmetical
processes.
If that were true. then they would not need to be visual. No
arithmetic process has ever generated anything except other arithmetic
processes. Please give me an example of any arithmetic process which
generates physical or experiential consequences.
Asking too much is not a good foil for that thrust...
> Without shapes, angles, lines, volumes, there are only
invisible quantitative relationships.
I don't know about "invisible" but complex numbers can be both
qualitative as well as quantitative, they can have both a
magnitude and a direction.
No. All of the qualities of numbers are figurative. The direction and
magnitude are poetic and abstract, not spatial.
> Eyes can see, but not like humans see. There are plankton
with eyes. No brain is required to see.
Plankton "eyes" can't form a image, not even a 2D one, about all
they can do is tell the difference between light and dark and then
the animal either swims toward or away from the light depending on
the species. Photoreceptor cells converts light into a electrical
signal
No. Light is not 'converted' into anything. No more than paying for
lunch converts paper rectangles onto a hamburger. I don't know what
plankton's visual experience consists of, but I know that the
principle by which it has that experience is the same principle as the
one which gives us images, and that it does not require a brain to
experience optical conditions.
and transmits it through a nerve to cells endowed with thin hairs
called cilia that undulate to displace water and move the animal.
There are toys that do much the same thing, and they only need a
small handful of transistors and a very simple first generation
Charge Coupled Device to do it. In fact forget the CCD, just use a
bit of selenium as found in a 1940's era light meter.
That's what I'm saying, sensitivity is primitive.
> Cameras do not allow computers to see, they only generate
data which is interpreted invisibly and meaninglessly.
I have no idea what you mean by "invisibly" but if the way
computers process data is meaningless why is computer data
processing a multi-trillion dollar industry?
Because it is valuable to us to be informed. It isn't because
computers value their own data.
OK, but let us try to figure out how we come to value our own data.
We might get somewhere... :-)
> I don't demand that AI prove it is conscious, I understand
why it is not conscious.
Your "understanding" of consciousness is supported by 2 pillars,
the second is more important than the first:
1) I am made of carbon and conscious, but computers are made of
silicon, therefore computers can never be conscious.
I'm not made of carbon, I am made of personal experiences. My body is
made of tissue, which is made of cells, which are made of sugars,
proteins, lipids, and lots of water. Carbon plays an important role in
the molecules, but it is *absurd* to say that I am made of carbon.
It's like saying that the Earth is just a ball of iron and nickel. It
is not because computers are made of silicon, but because anything
that does not become a living being by itself can't generate a history
of personal experiences of human>animal>cellular quality.
2) I would prefer it if computers were not conscious, therefore
computers are not conscious, thus the laws of physics must somehow
forbid conscious computers.
Wrong again. I don't care whether computers are conscious or not. Why
would I? What I say is that I observe that they are not conscious, and
so do many other. The laws of physics as you understand them forbid
any form of consciousness, but you can't tolerate that, so the laws of
physics must somehow allow it through a shroud of 'complexity'.
I honestly don't think your reasoning on this matter is one
smidgen more sophisticated than that.
Then that shows that your prejudice has blinded you to all except your
own prejudice.
>>what aspect of geometry have numbers failed to capture?
> The geometric aspect.
Well I'm glad you cleared that up.
The geometric aspect = all that uniquely comprises geometry - angles,
lines, planes, shapes, points. What else is there?
Craig
--
Onward!
Stephen
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