Hi John, My computer told me that this post has not be sent. Apology if it was already sent. It is an old posts, but I think it is somehow important.
Lawrence, if you read those lines, it looks like one message keep not going through (on Gleason). I will try again. It looks like there is s server problem, or a Goggle account problem. Sorry. > On 10 Dec 2018, at 23:30, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Sun, Dec 9, 2018 at 8:36 AM Bruno Marchal <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > > Since 529.Metaphysics has been done with the scientific attitude before. It > > is not easy to come back to this because in this filed, since 529 we have > > been brainswahedq by fairy tales, > > And the scientific knowledge that existed in 529 AD was about the same as the > the scientific knowledge that existed in 529 BC, so apparently doing > metaphysics with any sort of attitude is a waste of time. I think the contrary. Without the progress in theology during that period, none of the modern mathematics, physics, computer science, would exist. You seem to believe that science is born at your birth. It is born in -500, and has evolved a lot up to 529. Then with the enlightenment period, itself due to progress in Islamic theology up to 1248, it has made the natural science coming back to reason, but spiritual and human sciences are still in the hand of the institutionalised charlatans. > > > When we do it with the scientific method, we get experimental means to > > verify it. > > You can't experiment with invisible factors and an experiment that produces > invisible results verifies nothing. Visibility is Aristotle’s religion. You beg the question by using systematically the Aristotelian materialist dogma. > This is even true for thought experiments, a good thought experiment could in > theory actually be performed and only monetary or technological limitations > prevent you from doing so, but the thing you call a thought experiment could > never be performed regardless of how much money you had or your level of > technology because as described it is full of logical self contradictions. ? You asserts often negative statement like that. Yet, when we dig on this you find nothing, or you change the vocabulary, or use different sort of rhetorical distracting tricks. Obviously, the UDA step can be done in principle. You can even replace the human subject by robots, the conclusion follows. > And as a result it is a recipe for self delusion, and the easiest person to > fool is yourself. And all the scientists who studied my work, even in my country, and many other people. But your own point has convinced nobody. > > > conception of reality before Aristotle [...] > > Why should I give a tinker's damn about the conception of reality before > Aristotle? Because you seem to believe in mechanism which is incompatible with physicalism or primary matter, that you invoke all the times. Aristotle metaphysics has been refuted. Plato was right, after all. > > > You talk like if the consciousness problem was solved. > > I talk like there is no point in worrying about consciousness until you've > first solved the problem of intelligence, You said yourself that consciousness is easy, and intelligence is more difficult. In science we usually solve first the easy problem, before the more complex one. > and that is something you never talk about. Why? Because coming up with a > intelligence theory, even a mediocre one, is incredibly hard. But coming up > with a consciousness theory is incredibly easy, No. It is easier than intelligence, but it is not that easy, especially for people who can’t understand the most easy consequence of computationalism, like the first person indeterminacy. For the theory of intelligence, I use case & Smith, as I explained in detail in my long test “conscience et mécanisme” (in my URL). > any theory will work just fine because there are no facts the theory must fit. Of course this again shows that you don’t read the posts and the papers. > > > I am OK that consciousness is easier than intelligence to solve, > > I know you are. A good theory must fit the facts. There are no known facts > about consciousness. This is so false. > Your theory fits all known facts about consciousness. Therefore your theory > is a good theory about consciousness, just like every other theory about > consciousness. “My” theory of consciousness is the the theory of consciousness made by the machine, and that is 100% verifiable. Then it is also 100% testable, as that theory determines completely physics. It is hard to imagine anything more testable. You just don’t read the papers, invoking an error at step 3, and thus without even understanding that we don’t need that step 3 to get the physics. UDA is just the non mathematical, yet rigorous, but qualitative explanation why physics has to be retrieved from arithmetic, and how to do it, which is done in the more technical part, which can be read independently. > > > to come back to the pre-aristotelian conception of reality [...] > > No, let's not come back to that. OK. At least you agree that you follow Aristotle materialism in metaphysics. But there has never been one experimental evidence for that. > Is it physically possible for you to stop yammering for 2 seconds about a > group of people who knew less science than a bright fourth grader and less > mathematics than a bright eighth grader? All you can do is negative statements on people, and this clearly without reading them. > > > you invoke the Aristotelian religion that [...] > > Apparently the answer is no. > > > we don’t discuss mathematics here. > > We don't discuss mathematics on the EVERYTHING list? Neither math, nor physics. We discuss the possibility of a theory of everything. Math and physics have some important role here, but are not the subject of discussion. > > > Of course Archimedes was a great guy, no doubt, but he was not an expert in > > metaphysics and theology. > > And one of the reasons Archimedes was a great guy, the greatest of all the > ancient Greeks and the one that has best survived the test of time, is > because he didn't waste his time with metaphysics or theology. The pope and the ayatollah loves statements like that. > > >> Two can play this game, I have invisible evidence it [ a halting problem > >> solver] does exist. > > > Then explain them. > > There are no results to explain because my universal halting problem solver > is invisible as are all the answers to the problems it's asked, just like > your invisible Turing Machine except mine is better. My invisible machine can > solve the Halting Problem but your invisible machine can’t. That is called an oracle, or a god. That exists in arithmetic, but it is an open problem if that plays a role in consciousness. With mechanism, + the experimental evidence, it would be premature to invoke them, as we explain better physics without adding them in the ontology. > > > Plato was skeptical on [...] > > And little Joey Smith in the fourth grade who just got a B+ on his science > test is skeptical about some stuff too. I can't think of any reason I should > be more interested in Plato's skepticism than the skepticism of little Joey > Smith. > > > The idea that visibility is evidence is exactly the Aristotelian theology, > > There is another name for the idea that evidence must be visible, it's called > "The Scientific Method”. No. That is equating science and Aristotle’s theology. You don’t > And I don't know what the word "theology" means in Brunospeak. It is normal if you have forgotten that before Aristotle, there was Plato. I use theology in the sense of a millenium of serious theology (banished from Occident since the closure of Plato Academy by the christians of that time). > > > in christianity through St-Thomas [...] > > And I care even less about what Christianity through St.Thomas thought about > things than I do for the goddamn ancient Greeks. Like Saint Thomas, you use the visibility criterion for truth. > > > to denote Aristotle’s notion of [...] > > I have a good idea, let's not note or denote Aristotle’s notion of anything. > > >> Godel said: “ [Turing] has for the first time succeeded in giving an > >> absolute definition of an interesting epistemological notion, i.e., one > >> not depending on the formalism chosen.” -Godel, Princeton Bicentennial, > >> [1946, p. 84] > Please note the words "not depending on the formalism chosen", Godel thought > Turing didn't just prove something about symbols but proved something about > the real physical world. > > > Nor did Turing. The independence of the formalism means here that you can > > take arithmetic, or fortran, or lisp, or lambda calculus, etc. > > Look up the word formalism in Google and the first definition is "excessive > adherence to prescribed forms". The second definition is "a description of > something in formal mathematical or logical terms". Please note the use of > the word "description". Mathematics is the best language for describing the > way the physical world operates but there are limits on what even the best > language can do. Any language can write fiction as well as nonfiction, the > story Newton told about gravity was based on reality just as a well written > historical novel is, the story was written in the language of mathematics and > contained no grammatical errors or logical plot holes but when we looked > close enough at real physical gravity we discovered that Newton's gravity > does not exist. Mathematical consistency is necessary but not sufficient to > guarantee existence. No problem with that, but please don’t confuse the mathematical language and the mathematical reality. > > > This has nothing to do with physics, as none of those formalism assumes > > anything in physics. > > True, arithmetic and fortran and lisp and lambda calculus have nothing to do > with physics, and that is exactly why Godel thought Turing's work was > superior because Turing showed that none of those formalisms were needed, you > only need matter energy and the laws of physics to compute anything that can > be computed. All formalism are equivalent with respect to the notion of computation and computability. You will not find any physical, still less physicalist, assumptions in the work of Turing. > > > now we see that some confuse [...] > > But very few are so confused they don't know the referent of the personal > pronouns they use even when the very thing they're trying to illustrate is > the nature of personal identity. No. The only things which is shown is that if mechanism is correct, physics has to be retrieved from arithmetic. For personal identity we have agreed on all points, and we use a small amount of it in the proof. > > > the Turing machine does not assume more physics > > Of course it assumes physics! You can't move a tape or write a 0 or 1 on it > without being physical. Without being primarily physical? The use of a machine instead of a more abstract looking lama expression was for pedagogy. It helps in computability theory for the dummies, but it becomes an handicap in metaphysics for those who missed that Turing formalism is *equiavalent* with all the others. > > > >>"The greatest improvement [in my work] was made possible through the > >>precise definition of the concept of finite procedure, . . . This concept, > >>. . . is equivalent to the concept of a ‘computable function of integers’ . > >>. . The most satisfactory way, in my opinion, is that of reducing the > >>concept of finite procedure to that of a machine with a finite number of > >>parts, as has been done by the British mathematician Turing.” —-Godel > >>[1951, pp. 304–305], Gibbs lecture > > > But Godel knew, as everyone, that the Turing machine is non material. > > What the hell is non material about "a machine with a finite number of parts”? Just read Turing, please. Or Davis. A Turing machine requires only state symbols, tape symbols, and the quadruplets. This is explained in all books and papers, including Turing’s original one, that you can find in Davis “The Undecidable”. > Can you think of anything more material than that? I can’t. Literalism is bad in religion, but here you show that a form of literalism is bad in math too. You are the first one, to my knowledge, who believes that a Turing machine is a physical object. > Godel also said "That this really is the correct definition of mechanical > computability was established beyond any doubt by Turing.” Because of it looks intuitively like a human doing a computation. Gödel was just a bot slow on this. Turing will prove itself the equivalence of “its correct definition” (if that makes sense), with all the others known, and conjecture its thesis, which concerns all definitions possibles. > If the word "mechanical" is to have any meaning it can't be non material. You are just wrong here. You really miss what the Church-Turing thesis is all about. > > > And Turing was the one showing that his (more pedagogical perhaps) > > formalism was equivalent with Lambda calculus, > > Yes, what a Turing Machine is doing can be described in the language of > Lambda calculus but a Turing Machine is not a language, it is not describing > anything, it is doing, it is the thing being described. It's like confusing > cow and "cow" and after writing the following in the language of English "the > cow jumped over the moon" claimed to have proved that a bovine mammal is > capable of achieving escape velocity of 11,200 meters per second. Nice, but it just repeat what I said about your confusion. What you say is true for all Turing complete formalism. You can implement a lambda expression in a Turing machine, but you can implement a Turing machine in Robinson arithmetic, all universal system can emulate all universal systems. > > > People who says that theology makes no sense > > That very statement makes no sense to me because as I said I don't know what > "theology" means in Brunospeak and I'm pretty sure Bruno doesn't either. It means the study of truth with the intuition that we cannot define it, nor know it as such. It is the sense of Plato, according to Hirschberger (and others). > > > are usually people who takes Aristotelian theology for granted. > > It's some sort of weird obsession I guess, all the secrets of universe can be > found in the writings of the scientific illiterate ancient Greeks. Like you can find them in the head of any self-observing Universal Machine. Then it just means that the greeks were good in self-observation. > > > You beg the question by identifying/confusing the concept of [...] > > At least I'm not confused about who the referent is of the personal pronouns > that I use. Up to now, you he shown the contrary, by claiming that “W & M”, which nobody understand (or better, everybody see that you eliminate the 1p distinction, and gives only the 3-1 description. > > > God with Christian theory of God > > Just once I'd like to see a post from you that doesn't mention God, > Christians, theology or goddamn brain dead ancient Greeks! But I don't > suppose I'll ever get my wish. Science is not wishful thinking. > > > If we believe that 2+2 = 4 independently of us [...] > > The English language is not independent of us, without us it wouldn't exist, > and the language of mathematics is not independent of physics, Of course it is, except for the word referring to the physical, but as such they are independent. You confuse the English language with the use by humans of the English language. Of course, it makes sense only in a material world, but it does not require physicalism or aristotelism to make sense. Indeed, I can prove to you the existence of infinitely mean English speaker in arithmetic, without assuming anything in physics. > if there were not at least 2 different physical things in the universe then > 2+2=4 would not make sense to anyone even if there was someone around to try, > and there wouldn't be. > > > We would never been able to implement the arithmetical computation in > > matter, and handle them properly, without having discovered them in > > mathematics. > > That is certainly true, a language is powerful tool that helps brains in > reasoning, and when it comes to physics there is no better language than > mathematics. > > > I ask you perhaps also to leave your personal convictions out of the room. > > So says the man who is personally convinced that invisible evidence is > scientific evidence. I said only that a visible evidence of something is not necessarily a scientific evidence for the existence of something. That is known since the socratic dream arguments. It has been discovered by many others, in other civilisation. Aristotle use implicitly the assumption that we can know that we are awaken, but that makes no sense with mechanist-like assumption. > > > that makes theology and physics independent of the formalism. > > You equate science with theology? Theology is the only "science" that has no > field of study, at least if the word has its standard meaning, but I'm not > fluent in Brunospeak, nobody is not even Bruno. Plato. Not me. > > >> a Turing Machine that does not make use of matter and the laws of physics > >> can't change in time > > > It changes relatively to any numbering “time”, called "steps" in > > computability theory. Those digital steps needs the number successor > > relation, not any physical space or time. > > If time and space are not made use of in your mystical invisible timeless > Turing Machine how do you go from step N to step N+1, what is the > relationship between the 2 steps? The transition table of the Turing machine, or The reduction in the combinators, or A clock in the von Neumann mathematical computer (before implementing it in nature), or etc. > For a physical Turing Machine a change in time enables the machine to change > to the next step and move in space so it can read the next symbol and change > it and then go into the next state, but it all starts with a change in time. You confuse persitentently a computation and a physical implementation of a computation. That is the same confusion than between phi_u(x, y) and phi_x(y) when both are run by some other (than u) universal number/machine. Level confusion. > But without time what gets things going? You've got to have something that > does the equivalent of what time and space does for a physical Turing Machine > but I can't imagine what it could be. What changes to enable your mystical > invisible Turing Machine to go to the next step if it's not time and how does > it get that new information on the tape without moving in space? It moves in a mathematical space, like when running a Turing machine by a universal lambda expression. > And while you're at it explain how a non-material Turing machine that has > nothing to do with time or space can be so important when time and space are > so critical to our intelligence and consciousness. Yes, but no primary matter needs to be invoke for this. You point makes sense, but is not valid to refute the immaterialist consequence of mechanism. > >> Scientists have better things to do with their time than to continue > >> reading a proof after they already know it can't be correct. > > > False. If a scientist believe that a proof cannot be correct, he will do > > the work and show where the proof is incorrect, or change its mind. > > I can know your proof is incorrect by just asking a few very simple questions > about the thought experiment it is based on; such as " after the experiment > has been concluded what did the correct answer turn out to be, Moscow or > Washington?” As the answer must be confirmed by both copies, the correct prediction was “W v M”, so that both the HM and the Hguy can say that their were correct. Obviously all the other answer are false. > or " as neither the Washington Man nor the Moscow man existed yesterday back > in Helsinki Then the H-guy died. For both the HM and the WM guy will say that “yesterday I was in helsinki”. You refute the notion of identity on which we have agreed. > who exactly was supposed to make the prediction yesterday back in Helsinki > and just as important who exactly was the prediction supposed to be about?” Simple enough, and you know the answer. > It is not my responsibility to fix this ridiculous mess and is certainly not > my responsibility to read more of it. Once more you evade the problem that was raised only by you. Fine, it was not a problem after all. > > > >> You discuss consciousness constantly, and there is no property more > >> important to consciousness than time. > > > The mundane type of consciousness requires time. OK. > > Mundane? Time is mundane?? Yes. > > >> OF COURSE WE DIDN'T AGREE! > > > You did agree that HM and HW are the H_guy. > > Yes, we agreed HM guy is the H guy but also the H guy is not the HM guy Then the H-guy dies in the experience. > because H is a proper subset of HM (and HW too); and we also agreed the HM > guy is not the HW guy. But the H-guy is both of them and both of them is the H-guy. Only the HM-guy and the HW feel different, which explains the first person indeterminacy. > So you can't just throw around personal pronouns and ask what "he" should > predict about what "he" will see. Only bu using the idea that the H-guy dies in the process, as you made explicit in some of your “refutation”, but now you contradict it. > Do both those "he" personal pronouns refer to the same person? Who do they > refer to? You can't answer any of these questions and that's why you > continue to use personal pronouns to try to cover up that inability. The problem comes only when you dismiss the 1p-you with the 3p-you. When taking that distinction into account, it appears to be very simple. > > >> The iron clad proof that you are utterly confused is that even after your > >> thought exparament is long over you STILL don't know what the correct > >> prediction Mr. He should have made yesterday back in Helsinki > > > It “W v M” but I cannot be sure of which one. > > If AFTER the experiment you STILL don't know what the correct answer should > have been then it was not a experiment and only a fool would keep reading > more about it. That is ridiculous. If I look at a chroedinger cat, and see it alive, that does not imply he was alive before I look at it. Your statement here would contradict QM-without-collapse, if not any use of probability in science. > > >>you have no idea who the hell Mr.He is. > > > It is the Huy in Helsinki. > > You're free to make any definition you like but that one is too restrictive > to be useful because tomorrow there will be no guy in Helsinki. Then again, you talk like the H-guy dies in the experience, contradicting mechanism (and what you said in the previous post). > If that is your definition of the H guy then tomorrow the H guy will see no > city at all, but I think a far more useful definition is the H guy today is > anyone who remembers being the H guy yesterday. > > >> You quite literally don't know what you're talking about, but that doesn't > >> inhibit you in the slightest from talking about Mr.He . > > > What is your prediction? > > If I'm one of your timeless invisible Turing Machines then that question is > meaningless as is the word "prediction", but I'm not a invisible Turing > Machine timeless so I know what the word means, however before I give you my > prediction give me yours. Bob is duplicated. Bob is sent to Washington and > Moscow. What one and only one city will Bob see? Predict it or call it for > what it is, a very stupid question. > > > THE experience is duplicated from the view of a third person guy, but is > > not from the first person of both copies. They see only one city, and can > > only infer the presence of a doppelgänger in the other city. > > That's nice, but today you claim a correct prediction was not made yesterday, > in light of the new knowledge you received today that enabled you to conclude > that yesterday's prediction was wrong what should the Helsinki Man (if that's > the person you think should be making the prediction) have said yesterday > that would enable you to conclude that yesterday's prediction was correct? I > would bet money you can generate bafflegab but you can't answer that question. > > > The whole point is that there is no specific answer here. > > And that's because there was no specific question asked there. > > John K Clark > > > > -- > 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] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list > <https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list>. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout > <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>. -- 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]. 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