On 27 July 2014 16:15, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote: This tacit supernumerary assumption is what may make it seem plausible that there is no need of a knower for such a distinction to be relevant (i.e. that realism about Deep Blue is justified in the absence of any possible knower).
I can make sense of this. Yet, in the TOE extracted from comp, we can forget such a knower, as we don't really need to know if P or ~P is true, just that it is true independently of us (little ego). But any epistemic view on such a P requires a knower. It is an open question to me if it makes sense to say that the ultimate truth (arithmetical truth) is really a knower or not. I realise that I'm pushing rather hard on my intuition here, so I don't insist, but I think whenever one talks about "true independently of the little ego" one is tacitly relying on a "default knower" to take up the strain. Consequently we cannot escape the "epistemic view", even if that view is (tacitly) that of God who sees and inteprets everything "on our behalf". Would it still mean anything to say that P is true or not true independent of God's view on the matter? Perhaps it is only in some sense like this that the ultimate or (assuming comp) arithmetical truth is a knower. I think I see it well now. I intuit something similar, and even something stronger (coming from salvia), which I can feel as making comp wrong, ... but I think that is still only in some 1p view. This is going in the direction that the real knower *is* arithmetical 1p-truth, the "p" in []p & p, and that the body or representation, or belief, []p is filtering consciousness. If this is true, there should be account of people saying that they felt being "more conscious" when some part of the brain is destroyed, or made non-functional, and that seems to be the case, both with dissociative drugs, but also with people lacking the hypo-campus: they definitely feel something more in the form of a perpetual presence. Brains do not produce consciousness, it would reduce consciousness, by filtering it through the differentiation of histories. Dying (with amnesia) would become a platonist remembering of our universal consciousness. The two way road between Earth and Heaven would be amnesia, in both direction, like salvia suggests. Interesting. Have you read My Stroke of Insight, by Jill Bolte Taylor? She is a neuro-scientist who suffered a massive stroke due to the bursting of an aneurysm in her left hemisphere (from which she fortunately ultimately recovered). In her memoir she describes the changes in consciousness that occurred in the immediate aftermath of the almost complete shut-down of her left hemisphere. Of course there were major losses to specific functions (especially language) but what was fascinating was that there was also what one could only describe as a concomitant expansion in her degree of consciousness. It was indeed as if her left hemispherical function had been a filter through which her stream of consciousness had been narrowed. Of course it's a very long way from this to any idea that a brain is not required for consciousness and indeed her own view, as a neuroscientist, was that her altered experience was a result of the relative disinhibition of her right hemisphere. After all, her experience tended to re-normalise as her left hemisphere recovered its function, although some aspects of the altered state have subsequently remained with her. Perhaps one could take the view that even if no *particular* brain is required to manifest a person in a reality, such manifestation will always be in terms of *some* brain or other. This would be a bit like Hoyle's universal person, whose multifarious personas and memories are partitioned by the mutually amnesic relation between its different brains. For such a "person", dying is merely a particular case of the general phenomenon of forgetting one reality the better to recollect another. Could one identify such a universal person with the p of arithmetical truth? And why do you think that such an identification might imply that comp was wrong? But you may be right, as God changed his mind, and sent a cop at my home at 3 o'clock in the morning, with my bag, and everything in it (including also some cannabis and salvia!). Quite efficacious the police here, very gentle too. Yes, that's cool :) Wow. David > On 25 Jul 2014, at 17:37, David Nyman wrote: > > On 24 July 2014 22:18, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote: >> >> 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. >> >> Well I think, in a curious way, it may indeed need a knower to make >> sense. I'm trying to explain one of my "early morning" intuitions >> here, which I find hard to do in an everyday state of consciousness. >> > > I can relate. > > > > > And of course it may just be misleading, which is why I'm trying to be >> explicit about it. My point is this: comp is explicitly a theory of >> consciousness. >> > > OK. > > > > > So let's assume that comp is indeed the *correct* >> theory of consciousness, and that number relations accurately >> represent its "true" ontology. If so, that ontology (as a consequence >> of its computational and logical elaborations) *explicitly entails* a >> knower, in both the 3p and 1p senses. Indeed, the explicit entailment >> of such a knower is ultimately what justifies, or redeems, the >> original assumption of the correctness of both the theory (comp) and >> its ontological assumptions *as a theory of consciousness*. >> > > > Yes, and it implies also the core (non geographical) physics. That is the > physical *laws*. Making the CTM testable. > > > > > >> ISTM then that, if comp is correct, it follows that there is a mutual >> entailment: arithmetic<=>consciousness. >> > > > yes. let me do a joke. The axioms of arithmetic (RA, or PA, whatever) > entails both > > Ex( x = s(0)) > > and > > Ex (x = s(s(s(s(s(s(s(s(s(s(s(s(s(s(s(s(s(s(s(s(s(0)))))))))))) > > But it takes more time to prove the second proposition. But that time is > of course non relevant, like with the FPI, the "time" taken for the UD to > get your consistent comp states is irrelevant by the delay invariance of > the FPI. > > So, in the "view from nowhere" (cf nagel), or in the 3p ontology, it makes > sense to say that arithmetic is coexistent with consciousness. > > > > > > > > > > > > We should perhaps take pause >> at this point and contemplate what would be, if true, a >> world-shattering discovery. Now let us consider the (by assumption, >> counterfactual) case that comp were to have been proved false and >> hence that there was NO such mutual entailment. Would it not be, at >> the least, inconsistent to take exactly the same view of arithmetic in >> that case? Could arithmetic continue to represent, so to speak, >> exactly the "same thing" for us? If not, then (assuming comp), there >> may indeed be an unavoidable sense in which it might indeed require a >> knower to "make sense" even of basic number relations. >> > > If comp is false, then arithmetic will represent an ocean of zombies, as > even if comp is wrong, arithmetic will continue to emulate the behavior of > all machines, including our current conversation. > > > > > >> By the same line of argument, if comp is correct, it would follow that >> bare physicalism (i.e. without supernumerary computational >> assumptions) fails as a correct theory of consciousness precisely >> because, properly understood, its ontology doesn't entail or require >> the existence of a knower. >> > > A computationalist (unaware of UDA-MGA) can argue (like Brent) that the > physical reality can emulate the abstract person behavior, and argue that > it is not a zombie, by invoking the reality of the computation based on its > primitive materiality. But MGA shows that this is invoking something > magical, non Turing emulable, nor FPI-recoverable, just to block a > consequence of CTM, logic and arithmetic. > > > > > > > > IOW, such a theory can't help but "sweep >> the first-person under the rug". >> > > Which honest people like Dennett eventually do, which is astonishing for > someone interested in consciousness. > > > > > In this case the absence of a knower >> nullifies, rather than justifying or redeeming, the postulated >> ontology. And this limitation may be a direct consequence of any >> theory that is explicitly about what is observable (tacitly assuming a >> God's-eye knower/interpreter) as distinct from a theory of observation >> (explicitly embracing a theory of what is observable). >> > > I agree. Physicists only measure numbers, and infer relations between > measurable numbers, and that's OK. But when they refer those number > relation to real quanta and real qualia, they just use a link which is no > more working when we take CTM seriously into account, making both quanta > and qualia completely obscure. > > > > > > >> 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 agree, but if my preceding argument has any merit, the logical >> existence of the computational histories and the differentiation of >> the consciousness flux into self-interpreting knowers are not >> logically independent, but rather *mutually dependent*. >> > > OK. But as Brent say, that might be the case with the physical reality, > except for the difficulties this bring in the mind-body relationships. > > > > > > > >> 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". >>> >> >> Well, I trust you may have begun to get my drift by now. My claim is >> that (assuming comp) Deep Blue, considered as an entity distinct from >> its many reductions within UD*, is ultimately dependent (as is each >> and every aspect of the comp schema) on the mutual entailment of >> arithmetic and the conscious knower. >> > > OK. > > > > > As I said, this dependency is >> sometimes difficult to appreciate because we tacitly smuggle God in as >> the "default knower" that continues to observe and "interpret" Deep >> Blue even in the (counterfactual) case that there is no other possible >> observer/interpreter. This tacit supernumerary assumption is what may >> make it seem plausible that there is no need of a knower for such a >> distinction to be relevant (i.e. that realism about Deep Blue is >> justified in the absence of any possible knower). >> > > I can make sense of this. Yet, in the TOE extracted from comp, we can > forget such a knower, as we don't really need to know if P or ~P is true, > just that it is true independently of us (little ego). But any epistemic > view on such a P requires a knower. It is an open question to me if it > makes sense to say that the ultimate truth (arithmetical truth) is really a > knower or not. > > > > > > >> 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). >> >> Again, I agree. Indeed ISTM that this is an absolutely essential >> aspect of any theory that has any hope of being a correct "theory of >> everything", as I keep trying to point out to Craig. But my argument >> is that we must surely treat every part of the theory - formal or >> informal, 3p or 1p - with equal seriousness. >> > > Yes. > > > > > > > Thus it is essential that >> there be a "complete" 3p reality that is coterminous with a specific >> aspect of arithmetical truth. But it is equally essential that this 3p >> reality is complemented, one might even say "redeemed", as a TOE, by >> the further entailment of the explicitly 1p logical modalities of the >> conscious knower. >> > > I think so. > > > > > So it is only with comp's 1p apotheosis, in the form >> of those modalities and that knower, that we can see the sense in >> which fire can finally be breathed into the equations. >> > > Exactly. And incompleteness protects exactly this, already for the simple > *à-la-Theaetetus type of knowledge*. > > As crazy as it might seem at first, the modal formal logics S4Grz(1), and > the X1* logics, meta-formalize notions which are provably not definable in > the language of the machine. Incompleteness saves the ancient's intuition > that knowledge is not a propositional attitude with what Gerson called the > "standard treatment of knowledge". > > > > > >> 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. >> >> Exactly. I think that seeing this may help to clarify my meaning. I hope. >> > > I think I see it well now. I intuit something similar, and even something > stronger (coming from salvia), which I can feel as making comp wrong, ... > but I think that is still only in some 1p view. This is going in the > direction that the real knower *is* arithmetical 1p-truth, the "p" in []p & > p, and that the body or representation, or belief, []p is filtering > consciousness. > If this is true, there should be account of people saying that they felt > being "more conscious" when some part of the brain is destroyed, or made > non-functional, and that seems to be the case, both with dissociative > drugs, but also with people lacking the hypo-campus: they definitely feel > something more in the form of a perpetual presence. Brains do not produce > consciousness, it would reduce consciousness, by filtering it through the > differentiation of histories. Dying (with amnesia) would become a platonist > remembering of our universal consciousness. The two way road between Earth > and Heaven would be amnesia, in both direction, like salvia suggests. > > > > > > >> I am rereading the Quran and the Bhagavad Gita, it might help for this. >>> >> >> Cool :-) >> > > Not sure. God punishes me by making me abandon my bag with my Quran and > the Bhagavad-Gita in some tram (with also my keys, money, the Gerson book, > and the very rare "Deux esquisses de logique" by Rosser (and my diary n° 15 > of my salvia experiences). > > But you may be right, as God changed his mind, and sent a cop at my home > at 3 o'clock in the morning, with my bag, and everything in it (including > also some cannabis and salvia!). Quite efficacious the police here, very > gentle too. > > Yes, that's cool :) > > Bruno > > > > >> David >> >> >>> >>> On 23 Jul 2014, at 21:59, David Nyman wrote: >>> >>> On 23 July 2014 18:25, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> 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 >>> >>> -- >>> 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. >>> >> >> -- >> 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. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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