On 12 Mar 2014, at 20:31, Gabriel Bodeen wrote:
On Tuesday, March 11, 2014 10:38:23 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
OK. Me too. But modern physics has a strong mathematical flavor, and
consciousness seems more to be an immaterial belief or knowledge
than something made of particles, so, if interested in the mind body
problem, the platonic perspective has some merit, especially taking
into account the failure of Aristotelian dualism.
That's an interesting topic, to be sure. Does comp actually help at
all to solve the hard problem?
A priori, no. The point of the UDA is not that comp solves any
problem, but that it leads to a new problem: the problem = to justify
the empirical statistics from a statistics of computations as seen by
the machines/numbers.
Comp is not a solution, comp *is a problem*.
The advantage, is that, thanks to the work of Cantor, Gödel,
Kleene, ..., we do have a powerful tool, computer science/mathematical
logic, to formulate the question mathematically, and in this case, it
consists in just listen to what the machines can already say about
themselves.
And in a nutshell, the machine describes a "theology", including a
physics, so we can test comp.
When I think about it qualia, I have five main questions that I'd
want a philosophy of mind to propose answers for.
OK.
1. What are qualia made of?
Qualia are not made of something. if you dream about a statue, *that*
statue that you see in your dream is not made of anything, as there is
only "a computation" occurring in your "brain".
With comp or without comp, we know today that a tiny part of the
arithmetical reality emulates, in the Church-Turing sense, all
computations.
This does not explain qualia, but illustrates why there is no sense to
the idea that qualia are *made of something*. They are only mental, or
Turing universal machines' constructions.
What happens is that if we attribute the qualia to brains activity,
qua computatio, then we have to attribute qualia to infinities of
arithmetical relations.
2. Why do patterns of ions and neurotransmitters crossing bilipid
membranes in certain regions of the brain correlate perfectly to
qualia?
The comp "most classical" qualia theory (which is X1*) can hardly help
for that question, but I guess it is how nature implemented what is
necessary in the X1* maintenance. So to speak.
3. How is a quale related to what it is about, under normal
circumstances?
By analogies, and long histories. Given the unpleasant character of
being wounded, notably in battle field, or aggression by predator, the
color red get connotational meaning, well handled by associative
machineries.
Of course you ask interesting questions, and we can only scratch the
surface. More below.
What about when a quale is caused by artificially stimulated
neurons, dreams, hallucinations, sensory illusions, mistakes in
thought or memory, etc?
In Hobson theory of dreams, dreams are just the re-enacting of the
cortical, and some limbic, of neurons, trigged by the cerebral stem.
Universal machine can imitate themselves too, in different contexts,
and it is useful for planning, compiling, summarizing, classifying,
ranging, and eventually the hard work: forgetting the irrelevant
information which respect to the fundamental goal.
4. How can qualia affect the brain's processes, such that we can act
on their information and talk and write about them?
Unlike "pure consciousness", qualia have perceptible fields. They have
geometries, maps, and help to summarized "gigantic information flux"
into meaningful scenario.
Some insects' qualia are what plants taught them to guide them into
pollination.
5. How could we know that belief in qualia is justified?
Like consciousness, the machines cannot justify a part of the meaning
of "qualia". That part can still be derived, for simple machines, and
shown invariant for their sound extension. Those are the qualia
appearing in the annulus X1* \ X1.
The qualia are observable ([]p & <>t), and true (p): []p & <>t & p,
with p sigma_1 arithmetical, to define the measure on UD*, or the
sigma_1 complete reality.
How could our instinctive belief in qualia be developed by correct
and reliable brain processes?
By breeding them, or if you want, by dialogs open to truth, and
avoiding lies. A large part of "AI" *has to be* experimental. It is
already like that for the most part of arithmetic, when "lived" from
inside.
Chalmers' ideas, for example, involve answers to 1-3 that sound
reasonable, but they stumble badly on 4-5. Comp and other
mathematical Platonist ideas seem to me to give interesting answers
to 2-4 but flub 1 and 5.
The machine can already justify why you ask something impossible. If
you truly believe that 5 can have an answer, you might build on a
assumption incompatible with comp.
No problem with that. Comp is believed by almost all scientists
(including some who pretend the contrary, but here I insist on "my
precision that we don't put bound on the level", so it is a very weak
hypothesis: to refute it you need actual infinities.
Yet, when you do the math, you get that comp is utterly unbelievable,
but that might just be the Aristotelian prejudices.
Bruno
-Gabe
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