On 23 Jan 2014, at 15:05, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Wednesday, January 22, 2014 5:46:26 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote:
On 23 January 2014 03:13, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote:
Consciousness uses computation to offload that which is too
monotonous to find meaningful any longer. That is the function of
computation, automation, and mechanism in all cases: To remove or
displace the necessity for consciousness. What is the opposite of
automatic? Manual. What is manual? By hand - intentional, personal,
aware.
See what I mean?
Yes, and it's an interesting viewpoint (and more "far out" than I
expected!)
I agree with Liz, and Craig, here. It is an interesting idea. Not new,
though. But I don't find the reference. I just remember that some
people at IRIDIA works on this (in the frame of research in AI).
The typical example was based on "driving". The young driver is
hyperconscious on all his decisions all the time, and the more older
driver, drive unconsciously, may be solving puzzle in his head, until
the motor breaks, and suddenly his consciousness was back.
As such example implies, consciousness did never disappear, and most
people, including me, consider that the idea defended by Craig here go
more around a theory of attention and focus, than of consciousness per
se, but this is of course debatable.
When Craig says that consciousness offload that which is too
mechanical to be meaningful reminds well the hardness of the
consciousness problem; if everything is mechanical in the brain what
is the need of consciousness. It reminds also to me the reflexion/
comprehension principles in set theory, and often alluded for a
definition of the numbers or even all Cantor ordinals.
You are supposed to comprehend what you see (comprehension), and to
add to the universe what you have just understood (reflexion). I love
to do that with the kids.
At the start there is nothing. You comprehend (= you put a potatoes
around it, or just "{" and "}", as we cannot draw here:
So comprehend nothing, and reflecting it in the universe (which was
empty at the start) gives
{ }
OK?
But now you see that, and that is not nothing. So you comprehend it---
it gives {{ }}, and you add it to the universe, getting
{ } {{ }}
And now you see that, comprehend it, ---that gives {{ } {{ }}), and
you add it in the universe, getting
{} {{ }} {{ } {{ }})
At some points the kids says that they are bored, and got the point,
which means that they know how to continue, and have a good idea of
the universe. It looks like the sequel is *mechanical*.
But then "creativity" (in in sense close to Post, of jumping out of
the picture) is brought by the next "comprehension". Indeed you can,
and have to say, once the kids get the "mechanic" of the progression,
and believe that the universe is given by
{} {{ }} {{ } {{ }}) ...
You have to say that you see now {} {{ }} {{ } {{ }}) ..., and
comprehension means that you have to encircle it, that is the universe
is { {} {{ }} {{ } {{ }}) ... }, but then reflexion strikes
again, getting
{} {{ }} {{ } {{ }}) ... { {} {{ }} {{ } {{ }}) ... }
And then the next steps:
{} {{ }} {{ } {{ }}) ... { {} {{ }} {{ } {{ }}) ... } {{}
{{ }} {{ } {{ }}) ... { {} {{ }} {{ } {{ }}) ... } }
Etc.
Etc?
That "etc" cannot be mechanical, as it it is, by comprehension and
reflexion it miss the next ordinal. This is a nice way to "generate"
the ordinal, and with Church thesis, using Kleene recursion theorem,
there is a sense to say that we, and the machine, can give unambiguous
computable names to those ordinal up to the first non computably
definable ordinal omega_1^CK (CK for Church and Kleene).
Note that omega_1^CK is still enumerable (but not Recursively
enumerable), and actually much smaller that aleph_1, the first non
enumerable ordinal.
Where Craig might be wrong or not enough precise (to invalidate comp),
is in believing that a machine can only name a computable ordinal.
But machine, like us can climb such sequences, get bored, and do the
limit, which here recurs and recurs, in less and less mechanical way,
so to speak. And, we, like machines, can only provide non ambiguous
name to the computable ordinal, which explains in fact the difficulty
we can met with notion like all ordinals, or all cardinals.
But this highlights some non computable aspect in the phenomenon of
attention and focus, which was to be expected with a "non computable-
by itself" first person associated to the machine (by Theaetetus).
I usually try to start from 'outside of the box's box'.
Good idea. And Stephen mention the laws of form, which Kauffman
exploits to make nice drawing of the reflection comprehension. In fact
Kauffman depict a braid picture of the sequence above, below omega. I
might try to draw it, but you can get it by putting a filament bended
in one place, and then adding a same filament, with the same bending,
just on the top, slightly shifted, and repeat. then you can interpret
some over crossing by {, and undercrossing by }, and it gives you the
sequence from above.
Bruno
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