On 4/30/2017 5:05 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 1/05/2017 1:57 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 29 Apr 2017, at 03:33, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 29/04/2017 1:18 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 27 Apr 2017, at 23:22, Brent Meeker wrote:
The absurdity, if I've understood this, is that idea of physical
substitution leads to a conclusion that nothing physical is needed.
The absurdity is that the first person experience in physics has to
be a sum on all computations (to be short).
This might cause some problems for the SAN04 argument.
The point of the argument in SANE04 is to show that there is a
problem. The argument transforms a problem (the mind-body problem, or
a part of it) into another problem: to find measure on the first
person view(s). The solution of the problem is begun with the
interview of the GödeLöbian Universal Machine, and its divine
psychanalist G*, say, which can justify many silence of the machine,
and its inability to define a variety of notion, which have still a
relation with their experience.
The "Yes, doctor" assumption says that if my brain is replaced by a
functionally correct digital device (at the appropriate substitution
level), then I would not be aware of any experiential change. But if
my first person experience is the sum on all computations that pass
through my conscious state, then no digital computer could ever be a
"sum on an infinity of computations",
Why? If that was the case, computationalism would be reftuted. But the
sum is not on the computation, but on the first person experiences,
Which is not what you said in the quote above. The quote is "first
person experience in physics has to be a sum on all computations".
Perhaps it is all just a typo -- what you meant was "that the first
person experience *of* physics has to be the sum on all computations.
But even putting aside what "the sum on all computations" might
possibly mean, this is still not what you say in SANE04: to quote
again, "Physics is, in principle reduced to a measure on the
collection of computational histories, as seen from some first person
point of view." A measure on some collection is not a sum over anything.
There seems to be a confusion here between what is consciousness and
what is the origin of physics.
As I understood it, Bruno's idea was like Julian Barbour's idea of
Everettian physics: below the classical level there are many quantum
threads which as an equivalence class constitute the (quasi) classical
world or our experience. These are a kind of non-local, hidden
variables - non-local in the sense that they are in different worlds =
threads of the UD computation. But of course the UD is executing all
possible programs, so in order that this have any explanatory power you
need to show that the equivalence class we think of as being our world
at least has greater than zero measure in some sense (this is like
solving the Boltzmann brain paradox).
In Barbour's image the threads are motions of the state vector in
Hilbert space and it is physics that it is modeled; consciousness
supervenes on the physics. In Bruno's idea the thread are...what?
subjective states of consciousness? But consciousness has to be
consciousness OF something. So the measure has to pick out not only
coherent threads of consciousness but also complementary coherent
threads of physics in which the consciousness can exist. Otherwise the
consciousness can only be conscious OF stuff independent of physics;
which Bruno thinks includes all of mathematics and I think is empty.
It's supposed to be an empirical question. That means there is some
consequence of the theory which shows up in the physics. An obvious
one, is that one's ability to do mathematics should not be affected by
the consumption of tequila.
Brent
which add a modal structure on the 3p reality of the computations (in
arithmetic, or in any "universal base" we fix to start with).
so my conscious state could not be reproduced in this way.
Mechanism entails a non-cloning theorem for whatever is below our
substitution level, but "bet" on a level such that finite
approximation/truncation of our physical body, which make that
physical body a sum on all histories, in fact a local map of our
histories the most accessible. The physical reality becomes somehow
the border of the (universal) mind.
You are again referring to a "sum on all histories". I don't know what
that could possibly mean unless you are talking about some quantum
superposition, and that would not work for you in this context. At
least the idea of finding some measure over "the collection of
computational histories" makes some sort of sense, even if I disagree
that this could ever give you physics.
In fact, as has been said, the sum on all computations is not Turing
emulable.
Indeed. But the sum on all computations can still be able to emulate
universal Turing machine. A machine cannot emulate a god, but a god
can still emulate a Turing machine.
What has "a god" got to do with it? Do you mean that although physics
is not Turing emulable, physics can emulate a Turing machine? We
certainly know that we can build a physical Turing machine. Although
why physics might not be Turing emulable is a little more difficult to
understand. There might be a difficulty with real numbers in a digital
machine, but it is by no means clear that the physical universe as we
current understand it could not be a simulation run on some super
digital computer -- this is a very real worry for some people. As you
say, we cannot know what machine we are running on.
Thus my conscious state is not Turing emulable,
Indeed. It is not even Turing or Peano, or ZF definable.
That is the heart of the contradiction. If my conscious state is not
Turing emulable, then I must say "No" to the doctor. In fact, this
statement of yours directly contradicts the claim in SANE04: "[It
follows from the] comp assumption that a correct substitution level
exists, and that we are Turing emulable."
and the "Yes, doctor" scenario fails -- we would have to say "No" to
the doctor.
That does not follow. You are using an equivalence, but above what you
say works in only one direction. We bet on a level, entails that below
that level, things are blurred,
No it doesn't. There is no entailment here, you have just asserted
that without proof. You bet on the existence of a substitution level
at which your consciousness is unaffected by the digital substitution,
but that is just betting on the idea that your consciousness is Turing
emulable-- it says nothing about what happens below that level. But
then you go on to deny that your consciousness is Turing emulable --
the argument becomes incoherent.
but obviously we have good empirical reason that they are not blurred
so much of making the physical reality unable to emulate a Turing
machine. of course that's the part which needs to be explained.
You have not done a very good job of this explanation so far......
That was the goal or the reasoning: to get that problem. Then we can
interview the machine themselves on that measure problem, and thanks
to the fact that Gödel-Löbian machine knows their universality, and
can prove their own incompleteness, the least we get is that it would
be prematured to claim computationalism is refuted: the shadow of a
phase randomizer lurks in domain of numbers-when-seen-by-numbers.
The second problem with the idea that the first person experience has
to be the sum on all computations,
It is the observable "world" which is that sum.
OK, that much becomes clear -- you simply had a typo in the quote with
which I began. But this still does not define what such a "sum" could
be. Or even how you will find the magic "measure" in which the
observed physical world has high probability.
the first person is more like Brouwer-Post creative germ, the
intuitionist subject isloated through the S4Grz1 logic. That one keep
intact its 'ombilic chord with truth.
It is the observable which needs a reality by default, wich is
translated in arithmetic through <>t (~beweisbar('~beweisbar f')). []p
& <>t (& p).
We go from the 3p representational (in a larger sense than say, Fodor)
to the 1p non-representational-at-all, by linking the believer with
truth.
We go from 1p mind to 1p plural matter (by adding "<>t), a way to
ensure our dice will not disappear when we throw them: the
probabilities avoids the cul-de-sac worlds (in term of the Kripke
semantic of the logic of self-reference). You need study the domain a
little bit.
is that this renders duplication of persons impossible. If you
duplicate the computation(s) that make up a first person experience,
you have simply added some more computations to that experience and
the sum over *all* computations is unchanged. Thus there is still
only one first person experience, and the attempted duplication fails.
That does not follow, for the reason explained above.
It does follow if you continue to use the word "sum".
Or you just say materialism is true, so computationalism is false,
which was exactly the objet of the reasoning.
So, if the "Yes, doctor" assumption, and the subsequent duplication
scenarios, lead to the conclusion that the first person experience is
a sum on all computations, the argument is self-contradictory: the
conclusion contradicts the input assumptions and the argument is
incoherent.
Well tried :)
Don't patronize me.
Bruce
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