On 23 Jul 2014, at 21:59, David Nyman wrote:
On 23 July 2014 18:25, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote:
You miss, and perhaps David's too (?), the fact that above a
threshold of relative complexity, the lower level is not relevant
for the description of the higher level. It would be like asking
"why Obama has been elected?", and getting back the answer:
everything followed the SWE.
Hmm...Well, I originally suggested that the knower *couldn't* simply
be reduced to computation or numbers, unlike the case of physical
reducibility. In my view, the presence of a 1p knower is what
"retrospectively" justifies realism about higher-level 3p structures
with which the knower is to be associated. To see what I mean, let's
assume that there is some putative ontology that can't in principle
be used to justify the presence of such a knower. Any higher-level
scenario conceived in terms of such an ontology is then vulnerable
to a particularly pernicious species of "zombie reductionism". It
isn't merely that the radical absence of first person-hood leaves in
its wake nothing but zombies with 3p functional bodies but no
"consciousness". It's much more radical than that. The zombie body
is now radically lacking in "existence-for-itself". Consequently,
the distinction between any such putative "body" and its ontological
reduction is a differentiation without a difference. To put it
another way, there is nobody present for whom it could represent a
difference.
It still exist, or the difference 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... will need
itself a knower to make sense. But with comp, we don't need more than
the elementary arithmetic truth, to eventually make a knower by
filtering the truth by a body or a representational set of beliefs.
Rough artificial cops on the road, made in woods are zombies, but
their existence still makes senses in the 3p, for a putative observer
present of not.
We the computational histories existe "logically" before the
consciousness flux differentiate into knower interpreting themselves,
if we want use the computation as defined in the usual 3p theoretical
computer science.
I realise this may be difficult to accept, for example in the case
of Deep Blue that you posed to me. However, imagine re-posing this
case with respect to an ontology with which (let us assume) a knower
could not *in principle* be associated.
That might not be as easy as you think, but let us see.
In that case there could be no effective distinction between "Deep
Blue" and its physical reduction,
Why? That's not true. In UD* Deep blue has the time to play basically
all chess games, perhaps even with all humans, much before the UD get
the simulation of our good "real blue" at the level of the atoms of
its late real "incarnation".
Even in the 3p, Deep blue is already more in its code, goal,
strategies, examples, and high level skills, like his elementary
belief in a the token of the game, the position on the chessboard.
Even that "abstract guy" would "survive", if we implement it in the
Babbage machine. It is not a knower in the comp sense, because it has
no well defined set of beliefs that he can express, but it might
already experience something, hard to say without looking at the code
(I think it is still in large part brut force, and that it does not
represent itself to play, so we have not enough to apply Theaetetus).
since we have ruled out, by assumption, the possibility of persons
to whom this could represent a difference.
Except the difference between being, and not being, relatively to some
universal reality.
The soul has a third person origin, even God has a third person
origin, as the outer God is a "complete" 3p reality (arithmetical
truth, or the sigma_1 part).
What might prevent us from seeing this is that we can't help
imagining the proposed scenario from a God's-eye perspective. God
then takes the role of the knower and "sees" that Deep Blue is still
there. Thus we have unwittingly justified our ascription of "Deep
Blue" to some aspect of the generalised ontology by "divine
retrospection".
That makes sense. The outer God gave rise to the inner God which
contemplate the outer God, and eventually they can join, and separate
again, in the course of many lives, inside and in between people.
With comp the outer god, "the ontological basic reality" is a 3p
structure, just enough infinite. It is an open question if this is
conscious, and "willing". Plotinus also has difficulty there. I guess
it is the abramanic jump, ... open question. I search.
I am rereading the Quran and the Bhagavad Gita, it might help for this.
Bruno
David
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