On Wednesday, April 24, 2013 8:49:00 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > On 23 Apr 2013, at 22:07, Craig Weinberg wrote: > > > > On Tuesday, April 23, 2013 5:11:06 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: >> >> >> On 22 Apr 2013, at 19:14, Craig Weinberg wrote: >> >> A quote from someone on Facebook. Any comments? >> >> "Computers can only do computations for rational numbers, not for real >>> numbers. Every number in a computer is represented as rational. No computer >>> can represent pi or any other real number... So even when consciousness can >>> be explained by computations, no computer can actually simulate it." >> >> >> >> You can represent many real numbers by the program computing their >> approximation. You can fan constructively on all real numbers (like the UD >> does notably). >> >> Only if a brain uses some non computable real number as an oracle, with >> all decimals given in one "strike", then we cannot simulate it with Turing >> machine, but this needs to make the mind actually infinite. >> > > If the mind is what is real, then there are no decimals. > > > But there are decimal, and so if you are correct, the mind is not real. > But the mind is real, so you are not correct. >
How do you know that the mind uses decimals? It seems that our natural understanding is primarily in ratios and real number type concepts. Decimals could be a notion derived from stepping down experience through the body, but the native experiential fabric of all has no decimal content. > > > > The brain is the public representation of the history, and as such, it can > only be observed from the reduced 3p set of qualia. The 3p reduction may > rationalize the appearance. From an absolute perspective, all phenomena are > temporary partitions within the one "strike" of eternity. > > > OK. > > > > > >> So the statement above is just a statement of non-comp, not an argument >> for non comp, as it fails to give us what is that non computable real >> playing a role in cognition. >> > > What does the machine say when we ask it why it can't understand pi > without approximating it? > > > One machine can answer "It seems that I can understand PI without > approximating it. PI is the ratio of the length of a circle divided by its > perimeter, and a circle is the locus of the point in a plane which share > the same distance with respect to some point." Then the machine drew a > circle on the ground and said, look, it seems PI is about a tiny bigger > than 3. > Are there any machines that do as we do, and say 'pi is the unchanging ratio between the distance across the circle compared to the distance around it, and a circle is self evident pattern which manifests literally as [circle shape] and figuratively as any pattern of returning to the starting point repeatedly. > > > > > >> >> But there is something correct. A computer, nor a brain, can simulate >> consciousness. Nor can a computer simlulate the number one, or the number >> two. It has to borrow them from arithmetical truth. >> > > Then why would your son in law's computer brain provide him with > consciousness? > > > It is not the computer brain which provides him consciousness. The > computer brain provides him a way to manifest his consciousness in your > restaurant, and to get pleasant qualia of some good food (I hope). What > provides the consciousness is God, or (arithmetical) truth. Nobody can > program that, in the same sense than nobody can program the number one. But > we can write program making possible to manifest the number one, or to make > some consciousness manifest relatively to you. > Ok, but why assume that it is arithmetical truth which is God rather than feeling? Feeling and being are an Art. Doing and knowing are a science. Science makes sense as a derivative of art, but art makes no sense as a function of science. It isn't necessary, and arithmetic truth is about the necessary. Even if we say that arithmetic truth is art, it is certainly only one kind of art among many. If I'm right, and I think I have every reason to guess that I am, then arithmetic is a feeling about doing which is one step removed from both feeling and moving - a step which can provides a clarity and universality that is unavailable in any other form of understanding, but it is precisely that precision, that clarity and universality which comes at the cost of intimacy with all that feels and does. Arithmetic is detachment from physics and psyche, not the source. Multisense realism is the idea that your view, the Platonic view, which places arithmetic at the top, or the Idealist view which places psyche at the top, or the Materialist view are all three valid almost entirely, and that through each of them, a self-consistent truthful view of the universe can be validated. Any of these three views can be used to explain the other two, but only the view which explains all three in terms of sensory-motor participation, aka being-doing or sense can explain all three at once without over-signifying one and under-signifying the other. God cannot be a number system that has feeling, it can only be a feeling that has number systems. The reason why this is a problem for machines is that it begins from the outside and tries to work inward, hoping that 'the rain follows the plow'. Our every experience with machines however, be they mere baby machines in the scheme of mechanical evolution, are that they are not loving bundles of joy and wretched upset. They are not sometimes loving and other times aloof. They are not once in a while loving. They are *never* ever emotional in any way. Their functions are 100% anesthetic and can be ported to any physical medium or aesthetic output. This makes perfect sense to me, since living creatures are build themselves from the inside out. The entire lifetime of an organism can and should be understood as a single "strike" as you say, with each "moment" an episode of relative duration...at the moment I am middle aged. At the moment I am 45. At the moment I am living in the United States. A machine has no such relativistic 'real number' kinds of moments. It has discrete instants - clock ticks, program steps...recursive enumerations. Computation comes out of counting rather than being or feeling, so that using very detailed counting, we can count all of the little aesthetic cues which we interpret through our bodies of other people's bodies behaviors and infer a skeletal description of the mind. An impressive and useful trick, but it is only a description of a generic mind's behaviors in the outside world, not an actual reproduction of the feelings which give rise to a particular person's mind. It is like those averaged faces (http://couscousqueen.tumblr.com/post/48604405522/awkwardsituationist-world-of-averages) - nobody lives behind those faces, but it is not difficult to think that someone could. Craig > Bruno > > > > > > Craig > >> >> Bruno >> >> >> >> >> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >> >> >> >> >> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ >> >> >> >> > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected] <javascript:>. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]<javascript:> > . > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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