On Saturday, August 16, 2014 1:48:03 PM UTC+10, Brent wrote: > > On 8/15/2014 7:07 PM, Pierz wrote: > > Liz, I've been thinking about the best way to illustrate the core of the > MGA and Olympia arguments. Perhaps this will help. > > The Olympia idea is indeed a "baroque" construction as the paper nicely > puts it, but I suspect Maudlin was trying to illustrate what amounts to a > simple intuition, namely that when a specific calculation is carried out > (in any medium), the machine carrying it out is physically like Olympia: > there is a single sequence of steps in which one can ignore the inactive > counterfactuals completely. All the complexity and intelligence is in the > capacity of the computer to handle many possible inputs, yet when any > specific input goes through, we can always think of the computer as an > Olympia that can only do that one task. To realize this we can imagine that > we remove all the circuits and pathways that weren't actually employed. All > the baroque elements of hoses, troughs and rusting gates really just serves > to make this point particularly clear. Another way to think about this in > purely logical/arithmetic terms is to imagine a program to calculate the > sum of any two positive integers x and y. Imagine the program does this by > adding 1 to x sequentially, each time asking itself have I done this 'y' > times yet? If yes, stop and output x, if no, do it again. For the inputs 1 > and 2, we get: > > x=1, y=2 > x=x+1=2, count=1. Is count=y? no, so repeat > x=x+1=3, count=2. Is count=y? yes, so output > output x (3) > > Now I want to remove the capacity to handle counterfactuals, that is to > say, I want to remove all decision making logic from the machine but still > let it output 3 for the inputs 1 an 2. How do I do it and still get the > result of 3 for those inputs. The answer depends on whether the machinery > that performs each step of the calculation is reused or not. If it isn't, > then the size of the calculation I can perform will be limited by the size > of the machinery (I need to repeat the mechanism y times to add the number > y to x), but if I imagine I can manufacture new machinery on the fly or > simply have an infinite machine, then this is not an issue. If I don't > reuse the machinery, then the way to remove the capacity to handle > counterfactuals is to solder shut the logic gates such that the machine > (program) now looks like: > > x=1, y=2 > x=x+1=2 repeat > x=x+1=3 output > output x(3) > > We can see that it becomes a machine for counting to 3. This is Olympia > (on a very small scale). > > However if I *do* reuse the machinery, then I can't solder the logic > gates in any fixed position because I still need to know when to stop and > output the result. In this case I simply hard wire the machine to run the > addition step exactly twice before outputting, which is exactly what the > 'filmed graph' scenario does - it removes the logic gates and remotely > controls the operation of the machine in a fixed, mindless fashion. > Interestingly this is what robots do in manufacturing plants. Because the > routine is the same each time, there's no need for all that human > counterfactual processing capacity - just record the sequence and output it > over and over. > > The reason why the MGA is possibly less convincing (superficially) is > that it's not obviously the same physical process being carried out when > the recorded light beam activates the nodes as when they are activated by > the logic of the connections between them. Maudlin removes that possible > (meretricious) objection by having machinery that can't be reused. That way > he can more easily show the physical equivalence of the process in both > cases. > > Finally though, there is another possible objection even if we accept > this type of argument. That is to say that, sure, consciousness must > supervene on the logic not the physical operation. However we still insist > that physical instantiation of the logic is required to instantiate the > relevant consciousness. i.e., consciousness supervenes on logic + matter, > or the logical organization of matter. This would be Brent's position I > believe. Now Bruno counters this by calling it disgraceful and ad hoc, yet > perhaps we can read from the uncharacteristically emotive adjective that he > senses a weakness here. To be clear, I tend to agree with Bruno's > conclusion, but I fear that the acceptance of this theory will always > stumble over this point, because for materialists there is already some > assumed ontological magic to matter. It's what "puts the fire in the > equations" or whatever. > > > I don't want to pick on your post because I pretty much agree with it. > But physicists like Wheeler who ask, "What puts fire in the equations." are > really mystics like Bruno. My attitude is we found a fire and here's an > equation that describes it. >
Sure, and I think the question is really an artifact of having spent too long in the company of equations! You get so used to describing the mathematics of what is going on that you suddenly feel bewildered one day when you realize that it's not just maths! > > Bruno's theory gets around the magic of material instantiation, the > "brute fact" of something happening to exist physically, by showing how > everything is instantiated in some relative perspective interior to > arithmetic. That is very elegant and nice. But to people deeply inculcated > in the cult of Matter, that elegance will be invisible. They *trust* matter > and the assumption that the ultimate explanation of things will keep some > kind of objective "stuff" at its centre runs very deep. > > Plus I don't believe it can be said that Bruno's theory makes everything > clear with respect to consciousness, as I've argued elsewhere. We might > hope that a theory based purely on a mathematical ontology would not have > to resort to an apparently magical proposition like there *being* an > interior perspective to mathematics. We have no reason to imagine that > there should be one, other perhaps than the fact that *we* are conscious. > So the description of what mathematics is has this dimension of interiority > added it to by the comp assumption - and the only answer as to "why" is > that there is no answer. So some magic brute fact remains, albeit within a > nicely unified ontological framework. I would say only that I have little > reason to go on thinking of this mathematical Platonia as purely > mathematical. Perhaps all is subsumed within consciousness itself, and > mathematics is an emergent phenomenon so long as our consciousness remains > limited within Form, which by its nature demands self-consistency. Sheesh, > getting very mystical here. Enough. > > > As Bruno likes to point out, primitive matter isn't defined, not even by > physicists. He seems to think that is a kind of cheat or defect (logicians > like to define everything). I consider it a feature not a bug. > Physicists would be perfectly happy to have a TOE based on number theory > (in fact a few have tried it). I think the real difference in philosophy > is the physicists wants to explain *this* and an explanation that proposes > to explain *everything conceivable* is not considered a good explanation. > Well if it explained everything conceivable and also made good, novel predictions about the observable, it would be considered a good explanation. As it stands, all that has come out of it a post-diction of Many Worlds, which I'll agree is not going to cut the muster for many physicists. Still, I think of it this way. Let's say you want to a theory in which everything observed falls out by necessity. That's what a TOE hopefully is. If everything has to be there *by necessity*, i.e., no contingencies, no brute facts, then such a theory will have to ground itself ultimately in mathematics, because any lump of "stuff" that's left over, be it ever so faint and abstract like a quantum field, will still have to be regarded as an unexplained starting condition. Now one way you can build the bridge of such a theory is to start on the material side and build towards the mathematical. That enterprise is already advanced by several centuries and a very impressive structure it is. The incomplete dangly bit at the end pointing out into space is string theory (perhaps). But the other way to build the bridge is to start on the other bank and try to build towards the physical. That's what Bruno's theory does. Given that he's just one guy, it's hardly surprising that the bridge on his end doesn't go very far and looks pretty pitiful compared to the edifice of physics. But it's just possible he's got the foundations right. After all I see real parallels between Bruno's idea and the kind of anthropic multiverse ideas that are emerging in which the demands of existing as a complex observer select from a huge or infinite variety of implied, unobserved universes with different laws. The physical ontology may end up being able to be dispensed with altogether. And on that glorious day, the bridge from the mathematics of self-consistency might actually be able to be welded to the bridge coming from the physical side through demonstrating how observers of our kind demand purely on the basis of mathematics a world based on something that looks like M-theory. It's a long way off and may never happen, but there is at least some chance that Bruno has a foundation. > 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 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.
