On 05 Jul 2014, at 14:08, David Nyman wrote:
On 5 July 2014 06:27, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:Ok, maybe it's mostly a matter of semantics. I don't exclude things as notexisting just because they are not part of the primitive ontology.But of course I haven't been saying these things don't exist. On the contrary, I've been labouring to differentiate, for the sake of this discussion, two distinct senses of "existence". The first sense picks out the basic ontology of a theory and the second refers to whatever can (putatively) be derived from that ontology on the basis of further epistemological considerations. And I've been pointing out that nothing whose "existence" is picked out only in the the latter sense can be claimed as having any independent relevance (ex hypothesi reductionism) in the evolution of states defined in terms of the former.In physics the stuff that is most "primitive" in a model is also stuff who'sexistence is least certain, e.g. strings, super-symmetric particles,space-time quanta,... While the stuff you would say doesn't really exist is the most certain - including the instruments used to infer the primitivestuff and records of the data taken.That's simply not relevant to the point under discussion. Of course what's most certain is whatever is directly epistemologically available, but we're discussing what our theories may actually imply if we take them *seriously*. The hypothesised ontology may be far less certain, but we are persuaded to entertain it in the first place precisely because we conjecture that the things of which we *are* certain are ultimately its complex epistemological derivatives.But this ceases to be the case when we propose a second-order relation like computation as the "physical correlate" of consciousness, precisely because it vitiates the idea that such relations can be anything other than amanner of speaking, in terms of the *ontology* of a reductive physicaltheory. Hence, to attribute the ability to evoke conscious states to such imaginary or virtual relations would seem to invoke a sort of ontological magic.I don't see it as any more magic than making mountains out of rocks. You seem to be invoking an argument from incredulity: Consciousness just can'tbe made out of physical stuff or processes.It doesn't take magic to make mountains out of rocks; it requires only that we respect the distinction in a theory between an ontology and its epistemological derivatives. What I was saying is that, under physical reductionism, we can't coherently claim the "ontology of consciousness" to be computation, because the relata picked out by computation simply can't be justified as being independently effective. The relata of computation are, ex hypothesi, epistemologically derivative, abstractions of a *uniquely effective micro-physical ontology*: "strings, super-symmetric particles, space-time quanta". This ineluctable degeneracy to the basement entails that, if you want consciousness to be "made out of physical stuff or processes", that's where you'll find your parts kit. But in any case it is surely rather obvious that we have no business looking for consciousness to be "made out of stuff", unless we are willing to take the stuff alone (i.e. the 3p part) to be consciousness tout court. That would be to eliminate the 1p part and if we stick closely to our theoretical analysis such elimination is obviously incoherent on its face, as the very claim invokes the epistemological derivatives it purports to exclude. Of course I know this isn't what you mean: you accept the 1p part. But the point of my analysis has been to argue that unless we are prepared to consign the latter to mystery (i.e. inaccessibility to further explanation) we should perhaps question whether we aren't being misled by very idea of consciousness being "made out of something".Arithmetic, in the first instance, is simplyposited as the minimal ontological assumption for the construction of an explicit epistemology (i.e. a theory of knowledge and knowers); IOWwhat physics explicitly eschews at the outset. From that point theexplanatory thrust hinges on epistemological considerations and hencecan no longer be straightforwardly reduced to the first-order ontology.Yes, that's an interesting aspect of Bruno's theory. He identifies"provable" with "believes". But the the same kind of thing can be done in a physical theory: "believes" = "acts as if it were true". There's even a whole theory of Bayesian inference based on bets. It may not be right, butit's a theory of epistemology.Yes, but it's a theory of epistemology "after the physical fact". It assumes without further justification what it wishes to prove, as when we speak of "acting as if it were true" we have *already abstracted* both ourselves and our actions from the framework of an exhaustive physical reduction that has been hypothesised at the outset as being uniquely effective. That's the whole point and burden of my analysis. So on that basis I disagree that "the same kind of thing can be done in a physical theory". On the comp assumption, by contrast, belief in a truth and "acting as if true", in conjunction with their truth content, are alike derived from the outset as consequences of a fundamentally epistemological theory. One might therefore say that action, belief and truth are hypothesised as being complementary or co-effective, rather than hierarchical-reductive, in relation.I think in the case of consciousness, explanation as opposed to engineering has to take foundational questions of knowledge andreference as seriously as those of physical phenomenology. And I also think comp at least provides a possible model of how progress could bemade in this direction.But not a physical, neuroscience based model. You reject that, in spite ofthe fact that it has had considerable success.I don't reject it at all. I'm only going so far as saying that ultimately it may lack the explanatory moxie to take us as far as we could go under more comprehensive assumptions. Your stance, I think, is that wherever a future neuroscience is capable of taking us is as far as any reasonable person could expect explanation to reach. To put it more baldly, whatever can't be known in this way just isn't knowable. All I've really been trying to argue for in this thread is that this limit may in the end turn out to be an artefact of a particular explanatory strategy. As to success, I don't recall Einstein being taken to task for dissing the "considerable success" of Newton's theory. In the end any paradigm, however successful, may suffer the fate of being subsumed into a more comprehensive one if certain puzzles stubbornly resist it for long enough. And I'm suggesting that one early but perhaps worrying symptom that this fate may lie somewhere up the road for physical reductionism is a persistent tendency to trivialise, mystify, or eliminate epistemological puzzles that seem to resist capture within the framework of that theory.So what does an answer look like? Is Turing completeness enough - that's what Bruno says. But apparently it makes you and a jumping spider equallyconscious. I don't think that's a very good answer.Where is it written that I and a jumping spider are equally conscious? That is, on the assumption that I'm not actually a jumping spider, which I guess is not a matter for complete certainty, in the cyberverse. I think that comp implies only that I and a jumping spider may share a particular species of self-referentiality that is representable in any Turing complete system (indeed, that this is the basis of the "I" shared by all such subjects). Beyond that commonality, the spectrum of subjectivity (i.e. its possible "objects") would extend asymptotically towards infinity, I guess, but always according to the specifics of the logic and statistics extractable from comp. At least, that is the hypothesis and the project.
Very well said. I would like to add a comment about reduction.At first sight, it looks like the TOE comp, that is Robinson Arithmetic (to fix the Turing-complete base) seems to havae a similar "reduction", if not elimination problem than physics. It looks like in once case we have primitive notions: O, s(0), s(s(0)); ... and primitive laws (addition, and multiplication), like in string theory we have both primitive notions (strings?) and laws of interactions. Then we have the higher order derivative objects, which you define as epistemological, although by incompleteness we can already be more precise and distinguish the 1) doxastic (belief) ([]p). It concerns bodies/representations, machine's belief (studied on the class of some ideally correct machines). (It obeys the logics G and G*, for a large class of entities, machines (sigma_1 bounded), or "divine entities" (sigma_i or pi_i bounded for i > 0).
2) epistemological (knowledge) ([]p & p). The nice and crucially important thing for this one is that he does not admit any 3p description available to the machine, and that it is why it will need some "courageous act of faith" to say "yes" to some doctor. The soul of the machine already contest that she is a machine!
3) The uncertainty measure(s) (which gives the proximity structure on the consistent extensions: the material or the observable). This one ask for explicit model existence, and that is why it take for granted a reality, or self-consistency (a theory is consistent iff it has a model (that' s a version Gödel's 1930 "completeness" result). This is given by the "[]p & <>t" translation.
4) A first person variant is then given by []p & <>t & p.Here the reduction are not just organization, like a prime number can be said to be a number having some property. machines are numbers verifying some properties (and in control by []p), but the first person is an abstract notion ([]p & p) which is not a number property from its own point of view, and appears to be equivalent to it only in the "eye" of the unprovable truth (the equivalence between []p and ([]p & p) belongs to G* minus G.
The "[]p & p" (Theaetetus) is protected from being a reduction by the meta-theorem which explains why if true, it has to be non justifiably true. It shows also that the machine do have access to the transcendent, they can easily bet that there is something bigger than themselves, despite non provable.
Technically "faith" will be easier to explain than consciousness, and consciousness might be described as a truth related to "unconscious or instinctive or automated faith". I guess that in humans it is already handled in a dialog between the cerebral stem and the limbic system. It is something very old in the "Löbian animals kingdom", and makes the raw consciousness. I think/conjecture. Consciousness is something immaterial related to an abstract (first) person (in a large sense), and requires only that basic 3p loop to channel the experiences in the consistent differentiations.
That differentiation can bring enough "stability", or not, that is what I claim to be testable, and already partially tested at some propositional level.
The fact that we get arithmetical quantizations where UDA asks them to be found, is either miraculous, or a sign that machines might be (quite) less stupid than we might have thought, and that we might be one of them.
BrunoPS for Kim. Kim, as you see I never really leave the blue hat, (needed for the "theo" panoramic view), but machines, which bet they are correct machine, and search for that "theo" thing, already knows that they need ready at hands the black (cautious, modest) hat). OK?
DavidOn 7/4/2014 6:14 PM, David Nyman wrote:On 4 July 2014 22:36, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:Do you wish to say thatmountains have *ontological* significance *in addition* to the rocksthat comprise them?Yes. There could be rocks without there being mountains.If rocks and their relations are primitive in this analogy, what isthe independent *ontological* relevance of a mountain *in addition* tothe rocks that comprise it? What, given ideal knowledge of the disposition of rocks, would I fail to account for in terms of their further evolution?We accept of course that they exist*epistemologically* (i.e. as objects of knowledge from the point ofview of a knower), but we can't adduce that fact, a posteriori, in support of their having any *ontological* purchase independent of their components.Can you define "ontological purchase"?I'm merely reiterating that they lack further ontological significance in addition to that of their ontological primitives. Please understand that this isn't an attempt on my part to impose my ideas on "reality".I'm only speaking in terms of the requirements of a theory; and whatever a reductive theory takes to be its primitive ontology exhausts *by definition* what is ontologically relevant *in terms of that theory*. The alternative, I presume, is some form of strong ontological emergence - i.e. the idea that, at some higher level of organisation, completely novel features, not reducible to the basement-level ontology, must be taken into account.Ok, maybe it's mostly a matter of semantics. I don't exclude things as not existing just because they are not part of the primitive ontology. In physics the stuff that is most "primitive" in a model is also stuff who'sexistence is least certain, e.g. strings, super-symmetric particles,space-time quanta,... While the stuff you would say doesn't really exist is the most certain - including the instruments used to infer the primitivestuff and records of the data taken.What then is "physical computation" in this schema? It can only be a second-order relational concept involving what are already composites of the physical primitives in which such putative relata are grounded.Hence, a fortiori, it can have no claim to independent ontological (i.e. "physical") significance.Why not. I think you're relying on loaded language like "second- order"toimply your conclusion. Why are "second order" relations not real? Whatare "first order" relations?By first-order relations I just mean those defined in the ontology ofthe theory. Ex hypothesi, they are assumed to do all the theoretical work of transitioning from one state to another. Hence, in terms of the ontology, it can be assumed that whenever we speak of "higher levels" of organisation (e.g. mountains rather than rocks) we aremaking use of a "manner of speaking". IOW we have moved from ontologyproper to epistemology, since the "higher level" has no independent ontological relevance. It is assumed to be an aggregation of first-order relations (e.g. a mountain is just rocks in relation). By second-order relations, I mean relations that are not simply hierarchical-reductive (such as mountains and rocks). Secondary relations such as those of computation can be *attributed* to allmanner of physical systems which are transitioning from state to stateat the level of first-order relations. Hence, they too lack independent ontological significance; they too are epistemologicalconstructs, albeit at one level removed from the reductive hierarchy,as it were.Note again that I'm not trying to rule on what is "real". I'm wielding Occam's razor at the theoretical level. It's just *not necessary* (infact it's disallowed) to attribute ontological relevance to anything above the basement in a reductive theory; that's the whole point ofthe reductive strategy. Of course, we don't emphasise this distinctionin ordinary talk, or even in most scientific discourse, because inpurely 3p terms it is largely without consequence. But this ceases tobe the case when we propose a second-order relation like computation as the "physical correlate" of consciousness, precisely because it vitiates the idea that such relations can be anything other than amanner of speaking, in terms of the *ontology* of a reductive physicaltheory. Hence, to attribute the ability to evoke conscious states to such imaginary or virtual relations would seem to invoke a sort of ontological magic.I don't see it as any more magic than making mountains out of rocks. You seem to be invoking an argument from incredulity: Consciousness just can'tbe made out of physical stuff or processes.It merely degenerates to the self-sufficient micro-evolution of some aggregation of physical primitives; whatever is not entirely "micro-physical" is a further attribution *from the perspective of some implicit theory of knowledge*. To put it baldly, computation, in terms of any theorygrounded in physically-primitive relations, isn't a "further physical fact"; it just *looks* as if it is. Consequently it can hardly be a viable candidate for a "physical correlate" of consciousness, sincesuch correlation can be defined only in terms of what is to be explained.But you can say exactly the same about numbers and arithmetical relations, or for that matter souls and spirits.What do you mean, "but"? You seem to be arguing both ends here. You can't consistently reject my argument on the one hand, whilst at the same time use it as a weapon against alternative ontologies. Anyway,since I'm not an apologist for souls and spirits, I won't comment. But I've already said several times why I don't believe the argument holds in the case of numbers and arithmetical relations, at least in the wayBruno deploys them. Arithmetic, in the first instance, is simplyposited as the minimal ontological assumption for the construction of an explicit epistemology (i.e. a theory of knowledge and knowers); IOWwhat physics explicitly eschews at the outset. From that point theexplanatory thrust hinges on epistemological considerations and hencecan no longer be straightforwardly reduced to the first-order ontology.Yes, that's an interesting aspect of Bruno's theory. He identifies"provable" with "believes". But the the same kind of thing can be done in a physical theory: "believes" = "acts as if it were true". There's even a whole theory of Bayesian inference based on bets. It may not be right, butit's a theory of epistemology. BrentIt seems to me you have taken consciousness to be fundamental - except where you choose not to.I have never said anything of the sort. And, by the way, I'm not a"believer" in comp, I'm just trying to understand how it works. So myunderstanding is that consciousness is modelled in comp as coterminous, in some special sense, with truth. I tried to give an example of that in terms of "visual belief" and its correspondingtruth content: what I see. If you like, the incommunicable 1p part ofconsciousness is what makes the 3p part true. That's another reason for disbelieving in zombies: if a system embodies the appropriate"belief" then the corresponding truth has a constitutive relation with it. IOW, truth in this sense isn't an optional extra. I think this isa neat idea; it seems to capture at least something right about the"mystery" of the first-person and I'd like to see where else it mightlead.Either consciousness can be explained in terms of something that is not consciousness or it's fundamental.Sure, and as I've said I think that the relations I've (inadequately)outlined above may lead to more fruitful explanations than consciousness-as-physical-reduction.To a large degree this depends on what you mean by "explain". I think being able to engineer intelligent, conscious-like behavior is a good empirical standard of "explain".Well, I certainly used to believe that the best way of explaining a program was to write it.What would you count as an explanation?I think in the case of consciousness, explanation as opposed to engineering has to take foundational questions of knowledge andreference as seriously as those of physical phenomenology. And I also think comp at least provides a possible model of how progress could bemade in this direction.But not a physical, neuroscience based model. You reject that, in spite ofthe fact that it has had considerable success.On the one hand, it's all very well to say "Look, I just made something that is conscious" (though of course I would hardly sniff at that achievement!). But we might be able to dothat just by using our engineering ingenuity to "copy Nature". I don'tthink it's meaningless or impossible to ask for more.Nor do I. But I think engineering consciousness will lead to theories of different aspects, types, and degrees of "consciousness". Consciousness will be complex, many faceted field with different effective theories which may or may not unify. The theories will explain the effect of alcohol, salvia, and localized trauma in humans. It will explicate the difference between the consciousness of children and adults, between dogs and bats.Whenever I consider a question I ask myself what would an answer looklike?Me too. And I think that comp, even in its present nascent stage of development, can already give the lie to any suggestion that we have no idea what such an answer could look like.So what does an answer look like? Is Turing completeness enough - that's what Bruno says. But apparently it makes you and a jumping spider equallyconscious. I don't think that's a very good answer. Brent --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 anemail to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.To post to this group, send email to everything- l...@googlegroups.com.Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.--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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
