On 29 Oct 2015, at 04:12, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 10/28/2015 2:14 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 28 Oct 2015, at 9:28 AM, Brent Meeker <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 10/27/2015 3:04 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 28 Oct 2015, at 1:30 AM, John Clark <[email protected]>
wrote:
On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 5:16 PM, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]
> wrote:
>> From examples in the physical world. You can give
as many botanical definitions of the word "tree" as you want
but it will just be a word defined by other words that are
themselves defined by yet more words that are.... If you tried
to dig for meaning all you'd find is a endless loop, it would
just be a game where words are manipulated according to the
rules of botany until somebody forgot about definitions and
pointed to the ASCII string "t-r-e-e" and then pointed to a
large photosynthesizing organism made largely of cellulose that
exists in the physical world. Then even a martian would notice a
correspondence between this game of manipulating symbols called
"botany" that humans had invented and the way these large
photosynthesizing organism made largely of cellulose live.
> What about a virtual world with trees and observers,
and no I/O devices connecting it to outside trees?
There would still be I/O devices connected to the virtual
trees made by a computer that operated according to the laws of
physics, if not the trees wouldn't even be virtual. And the
books on both virtual botany and real botany would still be more
than a just a symbol manipulation game, they would have
semantic content because there would be a correspondence
between the way the symbols are manipulated and the way
the virtual (or real) large photosynthesizing organism
live. Regardless of if they are virtual
or real if you want to know how trees live studying those
botany symbols in virtual (or real) books will help, so they
must have semantic content .
The requirement that a computation be able to interact with the
real world puts a restriction on what qualifies as a computation.
You've challenged Bruno many times to perform a difficult
computation using his Platonic computer. Well, that computation
is occurring in front of you now in the thermal motion of the
atoms in your desk, which under an appropriate interpretation are
implementing a Turing machine. But you and Bruno don't have that
appropriate interpretation, and if you did, you would have the
result of the calculation already. In other words, the thermal
motion computation is not understandable as such in, and cannot
interact with, the world at the level of the substrate of its
implementation; so it would usually be said that either there is
no computation being implemented, or it is being implemented only
in a trivial and useless sense. But remove the requirement for
interaction in the real world, and this objection falls down. The
computation is being implemented, your difficult calculation has
been completed, and it is being appreciated by the virtual
observers who are clapping and cheering - even though you can't
hear them.
That's essentially Bruno's MGA, except it stops one step short.
Bruno takes the last step and says even if the atoms of your desk
were doing absolutely nothing there is an interpretation in which
that is a computation; hence the atoms are superfluous. But
clearly then it is the interpretation which is providing the
computation.
I agree; if anything at all can be seen as a computation, it is not
the thing that matters, but the interpretation.
There are two ways to avoid this conclusion. One is to say that
consciousness is not computable. The other is to say that a
computation can only be implemented relative to the real world.
I take the latter. But it doesn't have to be relative the real
(i.e. our) world. There can be a virtual consciousness relative to
a virtual world...but I don't think "virtual" and "real" add
anything to this. So when Bruno answers my criticism that the MG
relys on its relation to the world for its consciousness by saying
he can just expand the program to simulate the world too this
doesn't answer my point. The consciousness is still only relative
to a world; whether it's this world or a virtual world.
Then we do agree, but the only "word" I need, in virtue of betting on
computationalism, is the structure (N, +, *). I cannot define it in
RA, nor in PA, but I can define it in ZF (as in "usual mathematics").
It is not forbidden to the entities emulated by RA to add axioms, and
be believers in richer things than RA, as it is the case from inside.
The point is that "this world" emerges from the arithmetic virtual
world. (in a testable way).
Bruno
Brent
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