On Thu, May 07, 2015 at 03:59:17PM -0400, John Clark wrote: > On Thu, May 7, 2015 Russell Standish <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > >> When a recording of consciousness is played back does the consciousness > >> exist during the playback or just when the computer was actually making > >> calculations? If computationalism is true, and I think it is, then the > >> answer to that question doesn't make any subjective difference whatsoever. > > > > > > > Exactly. That was one of my points. > > > > It was? Well that simplifies things considerably because I was only trying > to make 2 key points and that was one of them, the other was that Bruno's > and your entire argument hinges on the existence of a computer made of > MATTER that operates according to PHYSICAL law. > > > > >> There is nothing new in this, Turing proved 80 years ago that in > >> general the behavior of even very simple programs can not be predicted, if > >> you want to know what it will do all you can do is watch. > > > > > > > This is not the same result as the halting theorem, to which you > > are presumably referring. > > > > Why not, what on earth is the difference? > > > > >> And Og the caveman discovered that people don't always know what they > >> will see next so I see no reason for a new homemade acronym like "FPI". > > > > > > > Because Og the caveman is more likely to be describing the results of a > > chaotic system rather than FPI. > > > > Who cares? In this case Og is the first person and maybe Og doesn't know > what he can see next because his senses haven't given him sufficient > information to make a good prediction, or maybe the calculations of chaos > are too difficult as you said, or maybe because he can't solve the Halting > Problem, or maybe it's because every event simply doesn't have a cause; it > doesn't matter, regardless of the reason the fact remains the first person > doesn't know what will happen next. >
In the case of chaotic systems (or Og for that matter), a hypothetical Laplace daemon could simulate the system using exact initial conditions, and tell you what will be experienced next. With FPI, Laplace's daemon cannot do that. Nobody can, not even an omniscient God (which is as much of a proof against omniscience as anything). The same answer applies to the Halting theorem above, although in that case you'd need a more powerful Laplace daemon, one that is at least equivalent to a Halting Oracle. > > > > Why is what I'll experience next a gibberish question? > > > Asking what Russell Standish will experience next is not a gibberish > question, but in this context, which is about as far from everyday context > as you can get, asking what "I" will experience next most certainly is a > gibberish question. > No - the third person answer will always be probabilistic. What I see in the first person not probabalistic. It is definite, and I only need to wait around to find out. > > > >> So at the very start you've got to assume the existence of a > >> physical universe and a very special type of physical universe. Does this > >> mean physics is more fundamental than mathematics? > > > > > > > Not really. It just makes the arguments easier to make at that point. > > > > Wow, talk about an understatement! Making the existence of a computer made > of matter that operates according to the laws of physics an axiom makes > your and Bruno's points infinitely (not just astronomically ) easier to > make. > The point where physical ontology is questioned is step 7 of the UDA. Prior to that, it makes no difference whether we're talking about material or immaterial computers, so they might as well be material for the sake of the argument. > > > >> it still could not of course predict what "you" will see next because > >> in this context that personal pronoun has no > >> meaning, it would be like asking what klogknee will fluxanate next. > > > > > > > I disagree. What I experience next has a quite specific meaning > > > It's fine for common usage but matter duplication machines are not common > nor are discussions about dovetailer computers that create the multiverse. > > > > > and I'll find out by waiting around long enough. > > > Who is Mr. I'll? In the dovetail scenario everything that could happen to > Russell Standish will happen to Russell Standish, but which one is Mr. I? > > > > >> But there is one physical substrate that is still of critical > >> importance, the substrate out of which your dovetailer machine is built > >> because nobody knows how to make a Turing Machine or a computer or how to > >> make one single calculation without using matter that operates according to > >> the laws of physics. Maybe there is some other way to do it but if there is > >> nobody > >> knows what it is. > > > > > > > IMHO, one can never know what it is made out of. > > > That is equivalent to saying the blunders in Bruno's "proof" can never be > repaired. Hardly - that is the result at step 7, nothing to do with your so-called "blunders". IMHO, one can go there directly in one step, as it is a pretty obvious conclusion from the CT thesis. If I am a computation, I cannot tell whether I'm running on a PC or a Mac, or in a virtual machine running on one of those, or VM stacked on top of a VM etc. This means that the precise properties of the ontological material reality (Bruno primitive reality) are not accessible to us - well actually none of the properties are, other than the fact it is capable of universal computation. It is almost certainly _not_ like the physical universe we see. My view is that the question of what the ontological reality is is actually "gibberish", to wontonly borrow your term. Bruno, on the other hand has TOEs for sale. Pick one, any one, they'll all do your computations for you. But his favourite is the Platonic integer realm, and occasion the KS combinator system gets a mention. > > > > > Our universe could be running on a range of different hardware, and we'd > > be none the wiser. It could be Bruno's Platonic integers for all we could > > tell. > > > > We have much to learn but we are not completely ignorant on this issue, we > know that Bruno's Platonic integers have never been shown to be able to > calculate anything, we have zero evidence they can do anything without > physics, but we have an astronomical amount of evidence that matter > operating according to the laws of physics can make calculations. > I gather arithmetic has been proven capable of universal computation - but I'll leave that up those more knowledgeable of theoretical computer science to follow up. > > > > I have no idea what you're talking about here, if one person effects > >> the class the other class members will effect it too. > > > > > > > That is not what I'm saying. If I experience being Alice within > > the class, then I'm experiencing something different to the case if > > I'm experiencing being Bob in the class at the exact same moment. > > Two different conscious experiences, exact same physical state. > > > > I still don't get it, even today one computer can run 2 separate programs > simultaneously, so what's your point? > But it can't simultaneous experience being two different persons. > > > > It is meant to be some sort of intuition pump, just like Searle's Chinese > > Room. > > > Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment is not just wrong it's STUPID. I Well you're preaching to the converted here... > > > The whole business of the recording is how can that physical > > apparatus replaying the conscious moment actually be conscious, when it is > > not aware of the environment. > > > Who cares? At the very beginning of your post you said you agreed with me > that it's irrelevant if the machine replaying the consciousness is really > producing consciousness or not. The whole point of "MGA Revisited" is a critique. It's about what the MGA does or doesn't show. Its not a question of the argument being fallacious, but rather that its conclusions might be applied more broadly than is valid, or that even previously unseen conclusion might be valid, such as the one I'm suggesting that the only way physical and computational supervenience can simulatneously be true is if we live in a robust reality (such as the MWI). That is why it is important to delve into what supervenience _actually_ means, not just what people think it means. Hence all the tripe about Alice and Bob. Conscious experience "then and there" supervenes on the recording just as much as the original computation, and there is no problem for either physicalism nor computationalism as we both agree. But it is clear that supervenience of conscious experience "here and now" does not supervene on the recording, if counterfactual equivalence is significant. My point is that I'm really not sure that "conscious experience here and now" is all that coherent a concept anyway, but it is the only for which the MGA works. Maybe that didn't come out in the current version of my paper - I'm looking for constructive criticism of it. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- 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.
