On Thursday, July 17, 2014 4:25:07 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > On 17 Jul 2014, at 01:20, Craig Weinberg wrote: > > > > On Wednesday, July 16, 2014 2:22:46 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: >> >> >> On 16 Jul 2014, at 15:05, Craig Weinberg wrote: >> >> So much of our attention in logic and math is focused on using processes >> to turn specific inputs into even more specific binary outputs. Very little >> attention is paid to what inputs and outputs are or to the understanding of >> what truth is in theoretical terms. >> >> Come on! >> > > ? > > >> >> >> >> The possibility of inputs is assumed from the start, since no program can >> exist without being ‘input’ into some kind of material substrate which has >> been selected or engineered for that purpose. >> >> In which theory? >> > > What theory details the ontology of inputs? > > > Arithmetic. The subset of true sigma_1 sentences emulate the UD, that is > the activity of all programs on all inputs. >
That only says that activity and inputs exist, but not what they are or what laws define them. > > > > > > > >> >> >> >> >> You can’t program a device to be programmable if it isn’t already. >> Overlooking this is part of the gap between mathematics and reality which >> is overlooked by all forms of simulation theory and emergentism. >> >> You are quick. Correct from the 1p machine's view on their own 1p. You do >> confuse []p and []p & p. >> > > So you are saying that programmability is universal outside of 1p views? > > > At least in the same sense that 23 is prime "outside 1p views". > Then programmability becomes another axiom that computationalism needs not to require an explanation. > > > > > Like infinite computational resources in a dimensionless pool? > > > You can see it that way. > > > > > >> >> >> >> Without some initial connection between sensitive agents which are >> concretely real and non-theoretical, there can be no storage or processing >> of information. Before we can input any definitions of logical functions, >> we have to find something which behaves logically and responds reliably to >> our manipulations of it. >> >> The implications of binary logic, of making distinctions between true/go >> and false/stop are more far reaching than we might assume. I suggest that >> if a machine’s operations can be boiled down to true and false bits, then >> it can have no capacity to exercise intentionality. It has no freedom of >> action because freedom is a creative act, and creativity in turn entails >> questioning what is true and what is not. The creative impulse can drive us >> to attack the truth until it cracks and reveals how it is also false. >> Creativity also entails redeeming what has been seen as false so that it >> reveals a new truth. These capabilities and appreciation of them are well >> beyond the functional description of what a machine would do. Machine logic >> is, by contrast, the death of choice. To compute is to automate and reduce >> sense into an abstract sense-of-motion. Leibniz called his early computer a >> “Stepped Reckoner”, and that it very apt. The word reckon derives from >> etymological roots that are shared with ‘reg’, as in regal, ruler, and >> moving straight ahead. It is a straightener or comb of physically embodied >> rules. A computer functionalizes and conditions reality into rules, step by >> step, in a mindless imitation of mind. A program or a script is a frozen >> record of sense-making in retrospect. It is built of propositions defined >> in isolation rather than sensations which share the common history of all >> sensation. >> >> The computing machine itself does not exist in the natural world, but >> rather is distilled from the world’s most mechanistic tendencies. All that >> does not fit into true or false is discarded. Although Gödel is famous for >> discovering the incompleteness of formal systems, that discovery itself >> exists within a formal context. The ideal machine, for example, which >> cannot prove anything that is false, subscribes to the view that truth and >> falsehood are categories which are true rather than truth and falsehood >> being possible qualities within a continuum of sense making. There is a >> Platonic metaphysics at work here, which conjures a block universe of forms >> which are eternally true and good. In fact, a casual inspection of our own >> experience reveals no such clear-cut categories, and the goodness and truth >> of the situations we encounter are often inseparable from their opposite. >> We seek sensory experiences for the sake of appreciating them directly, >> rather than only for their truth or functional benefits. Truth is only one >> of the qualities of sense which matters. >> >> The way that a computer processes information is fundamentally different >> than the way that conscious thought works. Where a consistent machine >> cannot give a formal proof of its own consistency, a person can be certain >> of their own certainty without proof. That doesn’t always mean that the >> person’s feeling turns out to match what they or others will understand to >> be true later on, but unlike a computer, we have available to us an >> experience of a sense of certainty (especially a ‘common sense’) that is an >> informal feeling rather than a formal logical proof. A computer has neither >> certainty nor uncertainty, so it makes no difference to it whether a proof >> exists or not. The calculation procedure is run and the output is >> generated. It can be compared against the results of other calculators or >> to employ more calculations itself to assess a probability, but it has no >> sense of whether the results are certain or not. Our common sense is a >> feeling which can be proved wrong, but can also be proved right informally >> by other people. We can come to a consensus beyond rationality with trust >> and intuition, which is grounded the possibility of the real rather than >> the realization of the hypothetical. When we use computation and logic, we >> are extending our sense of certainty by consulting a neutral third party, >> but what Gödel shows is that there is a problem with measurement itself. It >> is not just the ruler that is incomplete, or the book of rules, but the >> expectation of regularity which is intrinsically unexpected. >> >> One of the trickiest problems with the gap between the theoretical and >> the concrete us that the gap itself is real rather than theoretical. There >> can be no theory of why reality is not just information, since theory >> itself cannot access reality directly. Reality is not only formal. >> Formality is not real. There is a bias within formal logic which favors >> certainty. This is at the heart of the utility of logic. In mathematician >> Bruno Marshall’s >> >> Marchal, actually. >> > > Gack! Sorry about that. :( I changed in the blog post. My wife babysits > a by called Marshall so he might have gotten in there. > > > Thanks, no real problem. > > > > > >> >> >> book “The Amoeba’s Secret”, his view on dreams hints at what is beneath >> the surface of the psychology of mathematics. He writes >> >> “What struck me was the asymmetry existing between the states of dreaming >> and of being awake: when you are awake, you can never be truly sure that >> you are. By contrast, when dreaming, you can sometimes perceive it as such.” >> >> Surely most of us have no meaningful doubt that we are awake when we are >> awake. >> >> That ambiguous. I agree we felt like that. but we felt like that in >> contra-lucid dreams. In those dreams, we dream that we have no no >> meaningful doubt that we are awake. >> > > But in all cases any doubt or doubt of doubt could be right or wrong in > the same way. The awakeness we feel in our doubt of a lucid dream is no > more than the awakeness if waking life, so if we can trust the lucidity of > a dream we can surely trust the lucidity of actually being awake. > > > Not really. It is the same for correctness. You can know that you have > been wrong, because you can see the error, > No, you can be wrong about the error also. You might think that you were wrong, but then find out that you weren't. There could always be some time in the far future where every error you think you made would be vindicated. > but you cannot know that you are correct, because "not seeing an error" is > not a valid argument that there are none. > That correctness of that statement would be subject to the same logic - so not seeing an error in it is not a valid argument that there is none. In fact, I see an error in it, since knowledge of correctness is not necessarily an ontological fact. There may be no such thing as knowledge or correctness in absolute terms. Not seeing an error may be the extent of the reality of correctness. > It is not symmetrical. > It is when you use the same standards. > Of course there are intermediate. In dream I was flying, so I conclude > first that I was dreaming. But then I was not flying so well and I > eventually concluded that I was awake, as in dreams, I fly much better than > that! > But we can be wrong about thinking that we are dreaming. We could be dead instead and living in an afterlife. We could have false memories implanted which convince us that there is another world in which dreams exist, but that in reality that world was the dream. > > > > > > > >> >> >> >> The addition of the qualification of being “truly sure” that we are awake >> seems to assume that there is a deeper epistemology which is possible – as >> if being awake required a true certainty on top of the mere fact of being >> awake. To set the feeling of certainty above the content of experience >> itself is an inversion; a mistake of privileging the expectations of the >> intellect over the very ground of being from which those expectations arise. >> >> p was before []p, and even p & []p happens before (in machine's self >> development) []p. >> > > There is no p at all. p is formatting of an input. > > > p is put for some true arithmetical statement. > I am saying that does not exist fundamentally. There are no statements, no truths, no arithmetic, only experiences about which we can make arithmetic insights. > > > > > > >> >> >> >> Likewise, to say that we can sometimes perceive our dreaming in a lucid >> dream is to hold the dream state to a different epistemological standard >> than we do of being awake. If we could be awake and not really be sure that >> we are, then certainly we could think that we are having a lucid dream, >> >> >> No. In the lucid dream, you know that you are dreaming. >> > > You know that you are in a dream, but the part that knows that is not > completely dreaming and is more awake than usual during dreams. > > > OK. Some would say that for all dreams. It is an awaken hallucinated and > paralysed state. Just that in a lucid dream we know that we are dreaming, > that we know that we are "awaken", but in the hallucinated state. But some > use "awake" as contrary to be be "asleep". > Using awake as contrary to be asleep is fine for informal use, but to really get into consciousness and human psychology, I don't see any grounds for asserting that the epistemology of dreaming is more reliable than the epistemology of being awake. I don't see that they are asymmetric unless we inject a double standard which is biased toward confirmation of the negative rather than confirmation of the positive. In order to doubt the dream, we must affirm the non-dream. We cannot doubt the dream unless there is an assumption that the non-dream is first undoubtedly confirm-able by us. > > > > > >> >> When you are awake, well ypou might discover later that you were not, but >> the fact that you don't know does not entail that you know you are dreaming >> a priori. >> > > If you really are awake, you will not discover later that you were not. > Knowing isn't relevant, because knowledge is not applicable to states of > awareness. Our dreaming state of awareness can think that it is not > dreaming, but that does not mean that the fully awake state can be fooled - > even if it can be fooled under rare circumstances. > > > One is enough. > I don't think that it is. If your consciousness is compromised - by grief, drugs, lack of sleep, stroke, etc, the fact that levels of awareness can be confused is a special case against the majority of consciousness which is not confused about its own status. > > > > >> >> >> >> but could be similarly misinformed. We could be dead and living in an >> afterlife from which we will never return or some such goofy possibility. >> Mathematical views of reality seem to welcome a kind of escapist sophism >> which gives too much credence to rabbit holes and not enough to the whole >> rabbit. >> >> That we sometimes tell when we are dreaming means only that we are more >> awake within our dream than usual – not that our usual awareness is any >> more true or sure than it ever is. If we are uncertain in waking life and >> certain in dreams, it is because our capacity to tell the difference is >> real and not a dream or theory. There is no way to prove that we are awake, >> but neither is there any need to prove it since it is self-evident. >> >> So here the brain teaches to the soul that sometimes self-evidence can be >> false. A lesson in (Löbian) modesty. >> > > I think that the brain has nothing to do with it. It shows that > consciousness is primary, > > > Because you assume this at the start. > > It has to be assumed in order to be considered fairly. > > > > > and proof is an comparative function within consciousness which does not > itself have any proof of its own validity. > > > I am OK with this, though. > ok > > > > > >> >> >> Any proof that we could have could theoretically be duplicated in a dream >> also, but that does not mean that there is no difference between dream and >> reality. >> >> Absolutely. Indeed there is a special level with stable observable. We >> cant know it for sure, but we can be correct in some bets or act of faith >> (like in front of the doctor). >> > > What can know for sure? > > > Consciousness. > Is it really any more than tautology to say that though? What does knowing consciousness for sure give us which simply being conscious would not? It's redundant, like LET X = instead of just X =. If you have consciousness, knowing it for sure is irrelevant. > > > > >> >> >> >> >> The difference is more than can be learned by ‘proof’ alone. >> >> >> Indeed, from the 1p view. Only God knows the matches. >> > > Why God? Why not just extra-cognitive sense modalities? > > > That's what I meant. > cool > > 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. >> 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 [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. > 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. 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