On 10 Feb 2014, at 06:42, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 9 February 2014 21:22, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
On 09 Feb 2014, at 02:47, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 7 February 2014 07:47, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
Well, I *could* be a zombie and still say that, unless you
consider
the idea of zombies contradictory (which maybe it is).
I bet you are not a zombie. But you seem to illustrate my point, if
epiphenomenalism is true, despite you are not a zombie, you could
be one,
and that is a step toward the elimination of the person.
I know I'm not a zombie, but you don't know that.
OK.
I don't know how you
would bet on it either, since you could not prove it in order to get
your payout!
I meant "I hope".The hope-payout is very big: as it means that I am
not
losing my time discussing with a zombie.
The most you can know is that if a certain substitution
is made in by brain then *if* I am conscious I will continue to be
conscious.
I can't know that either. If you are conscious, you might well
become a
zombie after the substitution, if comp is false for example. I
cannot know
for sure that comp is true. I can know it in the Theatetus' way,
but this
means only that I believe in comp, and that God knows that it is
true.
But you can know that a particular type of substitution that preserves
the 3p functional organisation of my brain will also preserve its
consciousness (if it had it to begin with), otherwise we could make
partial zombies, which are absurd. This is an important result. It is
a proof of comp.
I might still die in the process. The other can be an "impostor"
instead of a zombie.
Partial zombie does not make sense, but partial impostor might make
sense. (I must think more about that).
We cannot prove comp, in the same sense that we cannot prove that we
survive any instant in life. It is "trivial", but that plays some role.
The argument of partial zombie makes non-comp non-plausible, but it
cannot be said to prove that comp is true. It is easy to build
artificial (ad hoc) non comp theories to refute the "provability" of
comp. Some people agree that they will survive if you replace their
brain neuron by neuron, but that they would die if you copy them and
destroy them, and with non comp, this might be possible. This does not
make sense, IF we assume comp at the start.
not because it is exercising a particular strategy
except in a manner of speaking. But the substantive point I
want to
make is that there is no downward causation,
I don't think there is any causation at all. Causation is a modal
notion,
and as to be treated indexically to, and with comp, in a way
related to
the
many computations in arithmetic.
for if there were we
would observe magical events. If you accept that then I agree with
you, any apparent disagreement is really just semantics.
We must still discuss if this is very semantics. Some higher
level laws
can
be quite autonomous relatively to lower level laws, and some
downard
causation, even if reductible in theory to particles or numbers,
remains
meaningful at his own level.
Downward causation would involve, for example, a neuron
spontaneously
firing when all the biochemical parameters show that it should not.
That would be something miraculous. It has never been observed, or
we
would know there is something very wrong with science.
Imagine that I am a coffee addict, so that when, in Helsinki, they
propose
to copy me, and reconstitute me in a number of cities (an hundred
one, say),
I ask "please don't reconstitute me in the cities which they have no
coffee".
Let us assume that my wish will be exacted, and that I can know
that in
advance. In that case P(coffee) = 1.
I do see this as a sort of downward causation, despite no
deterministic laws
are involved.
Or imagine that I have to present a show, where I will prove to the
audience
that I can distort a metallic bar without touching it. To do my
trick I put
an absolute quantum bomb in the room, and as long as the metallic
bar does
not distort itself, I trigger the atomic bomb. "Absolute" means
that the
probability of surviving the explosion is null, both for me and the
audience. The, like with the coffee situation, I select the
reality, by
quantum suicide, in which the metal bar distort itself (well
actually I will
select only those where I believe this, but let us abstract from
this here).
That would also be a sort of action of my mind (with the goal to
distort the
metallic bar), on matter, without contradicting arithmetic or
physics.
That is a far stretched example, but it suggests that choosing is a
sort of
suicide, where you "kill" the continuations you want to avoid, and
we cannot
decide in advance if such self-selection have not already be done,
making
consciousness selecting certain type of realities, from our points
of view.
In particular, if I decide to do a cup of coffee, from my
perspective, there
will be a downward causation. Even if in truth it does not exist,
at the
level where I am living, saying that it does not exist would be
identifying
a proof and a truth, and makes me inconsistent.
In arithmetic, there is no causation at all, and physics is a first
person
plural constructs of the average universal machines, so that the
whole
causation notion is "epiphenomenal" on truth. It does not make it
illusory
at the provability or effective level where I live (G, Z, X). Like
I just
said to Brent, I begin to think that the argument against free-
will, or
again a role for consciousness, confuse G and G* (provability and
truth, or
Z and Z*).
Uses of Gödel's theorem against mechanism (Lucas, Penrose) make
often a
confusion between G and S4Grz, or between body and soul (or 3p and
1p). It
is interesting (imo) that argument against free will might be a
confusion of
some points of view too, notably of confusing provability and
truth, or a
logic x and its true extension x* (which I often called "blasphem",
as it
consists in taking God's view, and applying on Earth: that makes a
machine
inconsistent).
I am not yet sure if this really works.
It's interesting that you think quantum suicide effects are an example
of downward causation. It would, in fact, look like magic to a
scientist who observed it. The problem is, there aren't any scientists
who have observed it and reported it.
Some believe that the origin of life is so improbable, that it comes
from some "quantum suicide", or analog post-selection effect.
So it remains true that there is
no downward causation in science.
You mean "in reality"? Which reality? Even arithmetic is full of
downward causation, like "Deep blue lost the game because it never
studied Nimzovitch entries".
At some level, there is no downward causation (it is just addition and
multiplication, or just particles and force), but it is false that we
live at such level. At the level where we live there are downward
causation. The physical laws only support my wanting to send you this
post. I don't send this post due to physical or arithmetical laws, in
any genuine sense. When a machine is as complex as a Löbian one, their
laws of behavior have nothing to do with the laws used for their
implementation, that would be, I think, a confusion of level. With
comp, if we reiterate a similar confusion of level, you can say that
there is no physical causation at all. The reason why an apple falls
is no more that it obeys gravitation laws, but only that addition and
multiplication makes some number in some relative state to believe
(correctly) that some computation is more frequent than others.
Emerging things, even 1p, can be as real, and partially autonomous
with proper higher level laws, as what they emerge from. In:
"Why did Lola cries this night?" ---"because she made a nightmare"
"Why did Lola cries this night?" ---"because she obeys QM".
The first explanation can make genuine sense. The second is true (say)
but is true also for "Why did Lola not cry?", and is spurious at the
level where the crying make sense.
The use of the second explanation to make the first one illusory is
the main error of the reductionist.
Let me try to put this in an another way. All universal machine can
imitate all universal machine. A root or bottom universal machine
cannot have a downward causation on herself. But she can imitate
another universal system having downward causation, even complete in
the sense that the second machine can be allowed to modify itself
completely.
Brain are like that: it cannot modify itself by its own will, but the
mind can do that to some extent (nature put obvious barriers, but then
we do modify the brain in some downward way, by taking an aspirin, for
example).
To say that consciousness is epiphenomenal is like to say that someone
took an aspirin because of QM, but this explains nothing (even if
true): the genuine reason is that the guy has an unpleasant conscious
experience that he want to ease.
The laws of physics or arithmetic makes it possible for you to express
your point, but the content of your post is explained by your
awareness of the questions, your taste for the field, your pleasure to
argue rationally, your personality, etc. It is not explained by QM, as
this explains all posts on all lists in all forums in an empty way.
Your answer can be supported by the laws, but the laws does not
explain your answer at the level where your answer can make sense to me.
Bruno
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Stathis Papaioannou
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