On 19 Aug 2014, at 12:10, David Nyman wrote:
On 19 August 2014 01:53, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
So the idea is that comp necessarily entails epistemological logics
(the "dreams of the machines")
Except that it seems to be an epistemology very different from ones
we usually practice. What's the last time you learned a fact about
the world by proving it from Peano's axioms?
Well, you frequently counsel me against arguing on the basis of
personal incredulity. So I could respond by asking you when was the
last time you learned a fact about the world by deducing it from the
molecular structure of your brain. Given that we are committed to
explaining the complex in terms of something simpler, then some sort
of structure, defined molecularly or otherwise, must surely be
implicated in what it means to learn a fact, even though we can't
yet say precisely what it is.
I guess I take the logics that Bruno investigates in AUDA to be at
something analogous to the "molecular" level vis-a-vis any
explanation of cognition or perception that would strike us as
intuitively familiar. So just as an understanding of the dynamics of
molecular bonding has turned out to be crucial to an appreciation of
the possibilities of large-scale structure, the hope (or project) is
that we can derive something of analogous relevance, to the
structure of human-like cognition and perception, from a rigorous
study of particular classes of more basic logical relations.
Good point. I knew you knew but still answered to Brent before reading
you.
And, yes, the epistemology is not different. All (serious) philosopher
agrees on S4 for describing human knowledgeability, although most
would disagree with the ancients who claims that knoà wledge is not
propositional. With comp we make everyone happy on this, as the
Theaetetus definition applies of machine's rational believability
gives a non propositional knower, obeying S4 (indeed S4Grz).
that are *prior* to physics in the sense that only certain sub-
classes will be characterised by the statistical dominance of
physically-lawlike relations over their range of reference.
It's pretty much like Bertrand Russell's neutral monism. There are
events or states that classified one way constitute experiences or
thoughts of individuals, and classified another way, some of them
constitute objective physical events.
That's not a bad way of putting it as a general position. My point
though was that if we want to start from a very general notion of
computation that doesn't presuppose physics, we must seek to justify
the differentiation of a sub-class of lawlike physical realities
from a much larger totality. According to comp, this differentiation
is rooted in the statistical dominance of certain classes of
internal "belief" or reference that are deducible from a quasi-
ubiquitous form of self-referential "machine psychology". I guess it
is only to be expected that a fundamental concept of this sort would
strike us as being at some remove from any putative elaboration at
the human scale. The devil, as ever, will be found in the detail.
OK.
Bruno
David
On 8/18/2014 4:23 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 18 August 2014 23:27, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]>
wrote:
I'm not entirely clear on Bruno's argument on this last point. The
way
I see it, if a brain is simulated by a computer program, what is
being
simulated is the physics; and if comp is true, that means that
simulating the physics will also reproduce the brain's consciousness.
I'm not sure about computations instantiating consciousness without
instantiating physics, and I'm not sure how instantiating the
appearance of physics is different to instantiating (virtual)
physics.
I've always understood him to be saying, in the first place, that
the dovetailer necessarily generates certain classes of self-
referential computations. Very generally, such computations are
then regarded as emulating self-referred (i.e. first-personal or
indexical) logics that in turn are amenable to treatment as
"beliefs" in realities or appearances. So the idea is that comp
necessarily entails epistemological logics (the "dreams of the
machines")
Except that it seems to be an epistemology very different from ones
we usually practice. What's the last time you learned a fact about
the world by proving it from Peano's axioms?
that are *prior* to physics in the sense that only certain sub-
classes will be characterised by the statistical dominance of
physically-lawlike relations over their range of reference.
It's pretty much like Bertrand Russell's neutral monism. There are
events or states that classified one way constitute experiences or
thoughts of individuals, and classified another way, some of them
constitute objective physical events.
Brent
I've always assumed that it's this logical priority of "machine
psychology" over the subsequent appearance of lawlike physical
relations that constitutes the postulated "reversal".
David
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