On 14 Oct 2015, at 00:24, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 14/10/2015 3:11 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 13 Oct 2015, at 12:40, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 13/10/2015 8:40 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 13 Oct 2015, at 07:37, Bruce Kellett wrote:
Has computationalism predicted spin? Special relativity? Quantum
field theory? General relativity?
Computationalism is used implicitly in the theory of evolution,
in biology, and in physics once we abandon the collapse of the
wave.
Non-computationalism is only a collection of incompatible, often
vague, ideas. There is not yet any working theory.
Then computationalism explains both consciousness and matter
appearance already. Physics do not even try, it assumes them, and
some identity link. It works well to make local prediction, but
it fails on consciousness (when it does not eliminate it).
Physics is not a science addressing those questions.
Theology is the original science addressing those question, and
indeed computationalism explains why neoplatonist theology fit
better the most obvious facts (existence of mind and matter
appearance) than physics, when physics is seen as a theology
(Aristotle idea).
You just seem to be not interested in "philosophy" of mind or
theology, and at the same time you argue that physics is the only
correct theology, but then give us what is your non-
computationalist theory of mind.
Give me your computationalist account of why the world we observe
around us has three spatial dimensions and one dimension of time,
with these dimensions obeying the laws of special relativity (or
general relativity). And not just some wishy-washy claptrap such
as, "if computationalism.... then these things must be so." Derive
the actual facts of existence.
I might first ask you the same task with your apparently non-
computationalist theory. You will perhaps tell me that in physics
we assume such facts of existence, and so are dispensed to explain
them. But then your account of the facts of existence is no better
than "God made it".
Brute facts are like that -- they have no more fundamental
explanation.
When I asked a physicist how the collapse of the wave was possible, he
told me exactly that. This is the boring shut up and calculate. I can
understand if the goal was to build a rocket, but here the goal is to
develop a theory which explains matter *and* mind, and the relation
between.
And there are always going to be some brute facts of experience. But
the great advantage of physics is that we can take some facts about
the world, model them, devise laws describing them, and then use
these models and laws to predict other things.
Yes, physicians are good at that. It is just not the goal when you
search for the big picture, without eliminating key elements.
As this process has developed over several hundred years, we have
come to the point where we have a very good understanding of, and
explanations for, most of the facts of our everyday experience --
based on very few irreducible 'brute facts'.
Most, but missing a very important one: the mind. Materialist use
mechanism for this, but then are unaware that it does not work. It is
nice when you look exactly why, as it provides a sort of Darwinian
explanations of where the physical laws come from, and we don't need
to appeal to "brute facts", which is not satisfying when we search an
explanation of those "brute facts".
I see nothing to be ashamed of in this. And I think it is
disingenuous of you to simply dismiss all physical explanation as
nothing better than "God did it".
It is exactly like that when in metaphysics/theology (our subject)
they invoke primary matter. I am not criticizing physics at all. Only
the metaphysics making that physics into a theology, and claiming it
to be compatible with mechanism.
Don't confuse the physical science and the theological sciences. It is
like confusing chemistry and physics.
Second, it is my job of logician of explaining that there is a
problem with computationalism: we have to explain physics from
numbers. That is the main result, except that when I discovered
Gödel's theorem, I realized that the tools exists to begin the
derivation, or at least to formulate the math problem to solve to
do so.
Now, you do point on an interesting problem that we cannot avoid
with computationalism, which is that we have to derive physics, but
cannot know exactly the difference between physics and geography by
observation.
Yes, you have to derive physics from computationalism. Until you can
do this, you have nothing more than the hope of a theory -- you do
not actually have a viable theory.
?
What about qZ1*, qX1*, qS4Grz1? Themselves derived from Robinson
Arithmetic (and comp + ZF, say, for the metalevel).
It is not a lot, but it is a beginning, and it explains already the
main thing: the difference between matter and mind, and their
relation. Then it get enough close to QL, and add richer axioms to it,
so that it makes sense to hope for a complete physics, and this time
without ontological commitment or brute facts.
As to your second point, that is again disingenuous. Physics is very
good as distinguishing between things that have to be regarded, for
the moment, as "brute facts", from those things that current theory
can successfully explain.
?
But that is interesting and provide some idea to distinguish
physics from geography. Indeed, we might decide to *define* physics
by the universal laws of the Turing machine's observable. Then any
local incarnation or particular instantiation of such laws will
only differ from the geographico-historical points of view.
But then we might fear that perhaps physics will become a
triviality, and that everything is geographico-historical.
But we already know that that is not the case. Not everything is
geographical -- much can be explained and understood on the basis of
very few unexplained inputs. All of our everyday experience can be
explained in this way, even the phenomenon of consciousness.
Proof? (this would be a great news, give a reference, as I have never
found anything like that, but then most people are not even aware of
the First person indeterminacy, which is very shocking, especially for
people unaware of QM without collapse).
Bruno
Bruce
That was actually a prevision made by some opponents a long time
ago. They predicted that all the modalities would collapse into G
or even into propositional classical logic. This would have
entailed that the physical laws are not laws at all, but special
local geographical truth.
But then why not do the math? The UDA motivates for three possible
type of physical laws, or three possible way to make exact
prediction, by the Universal machine. All we need to make
prediction, in particular to have a "certain" prediction (a measure
one on the consistent computational continuations) is that we have
the modal principle []p -> <>p. This is a common modal axiom for
all measure of uncertainty, like probability, credibility, etc. I
recall that []p means here Gödel's beweisbar('p'), with 'p'
denoting the Gödel number of some arithmetical proposition.
[]p means, by Gödel's completeness (NOT INcompleteness) result:
"true in all (accessible) models", and this can work for "all
consistent computational extensions" when we limit p to the UD or
sigma_1 true propositions.
Unfortunately, that does not work, because []p is "trivially"
verified in the cul-de-sac world, and so []p cannot work for a
"certainty" notion. You can't say that you will win the lottery
with probability 1 just because you will die before the game is over.
To get the []p -> <>p (that is that if p is certain then p is
consistent, or by Gödel's completeness, p is verified by at least
one model) needed for probability or credibility, we have thus
three solution:
[1]p = []p & p (this will entail [1]p -> <1>p. Ask if you have a
problem with this)
[2]p = []p & <>t (this will entail [2]p -> <2>p, even more simply)
[3]p = []p & <>t & p (this will entail [3]p -> <3>p, as simply
than for [2]).
"[]p -> p" was an axiom of almost all modal logics, and the first
edition of some notable textbook in modal logic made it part of all
modal systems, but by incompleteness, we know that if []f -> f,
then that fact is not provable by the machine itself. And this does
not just prevent the collapse of [1] into G, but it prevents the
collapse of [2] and [3] as well.
In fact all modalities does collapse, but only in the mind of (the
second) God (G*). It is true (in Plato heaven), or put in another
way G* proves that
[]p <-> [1]p <-> [2]p
but the machine itself cannot prove that, nor know that, nor
observe that, nor feels that. The following are true in G* too:
~[] ([]p <-> [1]p <-> [2]p)
~[1] ([]p <-> [1]p <-> [2]p)
~[2] ([]p <-> [1]p <-> [2]p)
~[3] ([]p <-> [1]p <-> [2]p)
And the miracle occurs: such logics does provide a quantization
when p is restricted to the universal dovetailing, emulated through
the truth of the sigma_1 sentences. It is given by [i]<i>p with i
in {1, 2, 3} and p sigma_1.
This makes the "quantum" into a physical law, a common fact on the
possible observable of any arithmetically sound machine.
But my modest goal was to show that we have to extract physics from
arithmetic (assuming comp).
The fact that we detect already the logic of alternating histories,
having a quantization is just a promise that we might get a Gleason
theorem justifying the unicity of the computationalist measure.
Then to get the number of dimensions, we can hope that the quantum
leads to it by itself. I know that some people are working on such
tasks. My feeling about this might need the graded variants of [2]p
and [3]p, perhaps [1]p:
[2']p = []p & <><>t, more generally [i]^n p @ <i>^m t with m
smaller than n (they get quantization too)
Those might obey sort of Reidemeister formal relations, associating
a Temperly Lieb algebra to the structure, and it makes a relation
between quantum group theory and the invariant of knots, the von
Neuman projectors, from which the dimension might be explainable.
In fact due to the special role of the number 24 in gravity and
geometry, it is not unreasonable to hope to get gravitation and
perhaps some string theory, and to explain all breaking of
symmetries and birth of forces through Temperley-Lieb recoupling
theory (à-la Kaufmann, in his book: "Temperely-Lieb recoupling
Theory and Invariants of 3-manifolds.
The problem is that my poor concrete implementations of G* is
unable to verify the Reidemeister moves. I think it might be
necessarily non tractable classically, but not quantum
computationally. Z1* and X1* might be tractable by a quantum
algorithm, given that what they describes are basically statistical
interfering informations.
So you ask an interesting question, which, if computationalism is
true, admits solutions,. That is my point.
But we are not yet there to see the details of the solutions. That
asks for a lot of work.
The nice points is that the view from G and from G* differs on [2]p
and [3]p, and this does provides a way to dismantle the quanta from
the qualia, i.e. the sharable unconscious measurable thing from the
non sharable personal experience the machine can live when
contemplating the quanta.
The goal is not to compete with physics, but only to get a rational
understanding of what we are living, that is a theory which
explains the prediction and does not eliminate consciousness and
the person.
Then this approach happens to provide an arithmetical clean
interpretation of Plotinus and the Neoplatonist understanding of
the "one". Actually, I have just discovered a much earlier (-1
century) Neopythagorean theologian, Moderatus, who might even be
closer to the discourse of the universal machine (except that we
have lost his texts, and this comes from remarks made by
Simplicius, also lost (I think) commented by Porphyry in his Life
of Plotinus).
Bruno
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