On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 4:07 AM, Pierz <pier...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
Who can satisfy this suspiciously high bar? It seems to assume a posture
where people should serve you their work on a silver platter only if they
can satisfy such ambitious dream, lol. Where is the address of your throne?
Merely, if comp with the constraints referenced in the papers, then it
becomes clear why universal machine cannot assert this. Much weaker and
more modest than what you seem to interpret here.
> 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.
>
Theatetus, specific definition of knowledge in conjunction with universal
machine properties, the use of modal logic to study their "internal"
provability capacities and the properties of their beliefs, self-reference
and universality constraints, realization of the modal box to use of
beweisbar in PA... this is already quite a considerable chunk of history of
maths and these related fields to chew on, and I leave out finer, more
exhaustive grained list of some of UDA's and AUDA's resources in this brute
sketch...
But to go much further, as you seem to, and claim the entirety of maths to
apply to your statement...This seems to trivialize how extensive study of
mathematics and history is. If this is so clear to you, it would not be a
problem to round up the usual suspects for internal machine views,
illustrate Bruno's use of them, and share with the list why they are
"magical" to you and clarify where you disagree... Indeed, if you have such
graceful command over all of math, as your broad statement presupposes,
then I'd guess you should find much more than the usual suspects. I'm all
eyes and ears.
> So the description of what mathematics is has this dimension of
> interiority added it to by the comp assumption
>
This could be misread to mean "exclusively claims from Bruno's work", when
it seems more like plausible continuation of history of domains in- and
neighboring computer science, logic etc. see above.
> - and the only answer as to "why" is that there is no answer.
>
Cue Sci-Fi drama music from 70s Star Trek and say that in Kirk's voice!
> 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.
>
It isn't, and your assumption that this represents some "entire, complete
solution/status" in admirable college dorm room style is dubious at best.
If anything, we see that we have twice the explaining to do, with open
problems popping up where we thought we made advances.
> 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.
>
If anything, not mystical enough, perhaps... Especially in the joke that
"mystical" is no go. I joked two weeks ago the old thing that in some
informal sense, everybody's beliefs end in some unjustifiable space bunny
like propositions facing ultimate questions. Nobody seems to have caught
that... that there is no "not-space bunny" believer. The ones that do
practice "not space bunny" in militant certainty, they just seem even
nuttier. PGC
On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 3:26 PM, Jesse Mazer <laserma...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 12:48 AM, Pierz <pier...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Saturday, August 16, 2014 2:28:32 PM UTC+10, jessem wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 11:09 PM, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 8/15/2014 5:30 PM, Jesse Mazer wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 1:27 AM, Russell Standish <
>>>> li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 09:41:00PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
>>>>> > On 8/14/2014 8:32 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
>>>>> > >On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 08:12:30PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
>>>>> > >>That does seem strange, but I don't know that it strikes me as
>>>>> > >>*absurd*. Isn't it clearer that a recording is not a computation?
>>>>> > >>And so if consciousness supervened on a recording it would prove
>>>>> > >>that consciousness did not require computation?
>>>>> > >>
>>>>> > >To be precise "supervening on the playback of a recording". Playback
>>>>> > >of a recording _is_ a computation too, just a rather simple one.
>>>>> > >
>>>>> > >In other words:
>>>>> > >
>>>>> > >#include <stdio.h>
>>>>> > >int main()
>>>>> > >{
>>>>> > > printf("hello world!\n");
>>>>> > > return 1;
>>>>> > >}
>>>>> > >
>>>>> > >is very much a computer program (and a playback of recording of the
>>>>> > >words "hello world" when run). I could change "hello world" to the
>>>>> contents of
>>>>> > >Wikipedia, to illustrate the point more forcibly.
>>>>> > OK. So do you think consciousness supervenes on such a simple
>>>>> > computation - one that's functionally identical with a recording? Or
>>>>> > does instantiating consciousness require some degree of complexity
>>>>> > such that CC comes into play?
>>>>> >
>>>>>
>>>>> My opinion on whether the recording is conscious or not aint worth a
>>>>> penny.
>>>>>
>>>>> Nevertheless, the definition of computational supervenience requires
>>>>> countefactual correctness in the class of programs being supervened
>>>>> on.
>>>>>
>>>>> AFAICT, the main motivation for that is to prevent recordings being
>>>>> conscious.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I think it is possible to have a different definition of when a
>>>> computation is "instantiated" in the physical world that prevents
>>>> recordings from being conscious, a solution which doesn't actually depend
>>>> on counterfactuals at all. I described it in the post at
>>>> http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.
>>>> com/msg16244.html (or https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/
>>>> GC6bwqCqsfQ/rFvg1dnKoWMJ on google groups). Basically the idea is that
>>>> in any system following mathematical rules, including both abstract Turing
>>>> machines and the physical universe, everything about its mathematical
>>>> structure can be encoded as a (possibly infinite) set of logical
>>>> propositions. So if you have a Turing machine running whose computations
>>>> over some finite period are supposed to correspond to a particular
>>>> "observer moment", you can take all the propositions dealing with the
>>>> Turing machine's behavior during that period (propositions like "on
>>>> time-increment 107234320 the read/write head moved to square 2398311 and
>>>> changed the digit there from 0 to 1, and changed its internal state from M
>>>> to Q"), and look at the structure of logical relations between them (like
>>>> "proposition A and B together imply proposition C, proposition B and C
>>>> together do not imply A", etc.). Then for any other computation or even any
>>>> physical process, you can see if it's possible to find a set of
>>>> propositions with a completely *isomorphic* logical structure.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> But physical processes don't have *logical* structure. Theories of
>>>> physical processes do, but I don't think that serves your purpose.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Propositions about physical processes have a logical structure, don't
>>> they? And wouldn't such propositions--if properly defined using variables
>>> that appear in whatever the correct fundamental theory turns out to
>>> be--have objective truth-values?
>>>
>>> Also, would you say physical processes don't have a mathematical
>>> structure? If you would say that, what sort of "structure" would you say
>>> they *do* have, given that we have no way of empirically measuring any
>>> properties other than ones with mathematical values? Any talk of physical
>>> properties beyond mathematical ones gets into the territory of some kind of
>>> "thing-in-itself" beyond all human comprehension.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> And even restricting the domain to Turing machines, I don't see what
>>>> proposition A and proposition B are?
>>>>
>>>
>>> They could be propositions about basic "events" in the course of the
>>> computation--state changes of the Turing machine and string on each
>>> time-step, like the example I gave "on time-increment 107234320 the
>>> read/write head moved to square 2398311 and changed the digit there from 0
>>> to 1, and changed its internal state from M to Q". There would also have to
>>> be propositions for the general rules followed by the Turing machine, like
>>> "if the read/write head arrives at a square with a 1 and the machine's
>>> internal state is P, change the 1 to a 0, change the internal state to S,
>>> and advance along the tape by 3 squares".
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Aren't they just they transition diagram of the Turing machine? So
>>>> if the Turing machine goes thru the same set of states that set defines an
>>>> equivalence class of computations. But what about a different Turing
>>>> machine that computes the same function? It may not go thru the same
>>>> states even for the same input and output. In fact there is one such
>>>> Turing machine that just executes the recording. Right?
>>>>
>>>
>>> What I'm imagining here is that if there is a true mathematical theory
>>> of consciousness of the kind David Chalmers imagines, it would define
>>> distinct observer-moments in terms of distinct logical networks, not merely
>>> in terms of "functions" defined solely in terms of input-output relations.
>>> Obviously I can't prove this, but the advantage is that it would preserve
>>> most of the features that make computational theories of mind
>>> appealing--see the discussion by Chalmers at http://consc.net/papers/
>>> qualia.html of problems that arise when you reject computationalism and
>>> imagine that the particular type of matter doing the computation is
>>> important for conscious experience (as John Searle supposes), for
>>> instance--while at the same time avoiding the types of pitfalls about
>>> 'instantiation' pointed out by the movie-graph argument and Maudlin's
>>> Olympia.
>>>
>>> If correct input-output relations were sufficient for consciousness,
>>> then lookup tables--which can just be giant libraries of previously
>>> recorded computations, showing responses of the computed being (a mind
>>> upload, say) to all possible series of inputs, starting from a given
>>> initial state--would have to be conscious too. But my hunch is that
>>> replaying a recording from a lookup table doesn't count as an
>>> "instantiation" of the observer-moment which is being replayed, and doesn't
>>> increase its measure.
>>>
>>
>> Lookup tables are just computations performed in the past and stored for
>> reasons of convenience.
>>
>
> Yes, that was my point, that I think it's a mistake to define
> observer-moments solely in terms of computations defined as *functions*
> which relate certain inputs to certain outputs--I think the actual
> computational process used in going from input to output would matter in
> terms of what is experienced. My alternate definition in terms of the
> logical structure of a computation would take care of that.
>
>
>
>> If a device employed lookup tables correctly for all possible inputs,
>> then it would be conscious (according to comp) because the time at which
>> the computation was carried out is irrelevant. And there is a further point
>> to be made. The device must choose which lookup table to consult. Therefore
>> it must be intelligent (make if-then decisions). And the kicker is that if
>> it it's to be truly as responsive in its use of those tables as a device
>> not using them, then it will end up having to do just as much computation
>> finding the right table as it would just to perform the calculation! There
>> is no free lunch here. I assert this confidently on the basis of my
>> intuitions as a programmer, without being able to rigorously prove it, but
>> a short thought experiment should get halfway to proving it. Imagine a
>> lookup table of all possible additions of two numbers up to some number n.
>> First I calculate all the possible results and put them into a large n by n
>> table. Now I'm asked what is the sum of say 10 and 70. So I go across to
>> row 10 and column 70 and read out the number 80. But in doing so, I've had
>> to count to 10 and to 70! So I've added the two numbers together finding
>> the correct value to look up! I'm sure the same equivalence could be proven
>> to apply in all analogous situations.
>>
>
> I think you're being misled by the particular example you chose involving
> addition, in general there is no principle that says finding the
> appropriate entry in a lookup table involves a computation just as
> complicated as the original computation without a lookup table. Suppose
> instead of addition, the lookup table is based on a Turing test type
> situation where an intelligent AI is asked to respond to textual input, and
> the lookup table is created by doing a vast number of runs, all starting
> from the same initial state but feeding the AI *all* possible strings of
> characters under a certain length (the vast majority will just be nonsense
> of course). Then all the possible input strings can be stored
> alphabetically, and if I interact with the lookup table by typing a series
> of comment to the AI, it just has to search through the recordings
> alphabetically to find one where the AI responded to that particular
> comment (after responding to my previous comments which constitute the
> earlier parts of the input string), it doesn't need to re-compute the AI's
> brain processes or anything like that. And ultimately regardless of the
> type of program, the "input" will be encoded as some string of 1's and 0's,
> so for *all* lookup tables the possible input strings can be stored in
> numerical order, analogous to alphabetical order for verbal statements.
>
> Jesse
>
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