> On 26 Apr 2019, at 02:50, Jason Resch <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On Tue, Apr 23, 2019 at 9:57 AM Bruno Marchal <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > >> On 23 Apr 2019, at 03:32, Jason Resch <[email protected] >> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> >> >> >> On Mon, Apr 22, 2019 at 7:51 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List >> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> >> wrote: >> >> >> On 4/22/2019 4:24 PM, Jason Resch wrote: >>> >>> >>> On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 3:16 AM Bruno Marchal <[email protected] >>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >>> >>>> On 5 Nov 2018, at 02:56, Martin Abramson <[email protected] >>>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >>>> >>>> Consciousness is a program. >>> >>> Consciousness might be related to a program, but is not a program, that >>> would identify a first person notion with a third person notion, like a >>> glass of bear and its price. >>> >>> >>> >>>> It explores whatever entity it finds itself within and becomes that >>>> creature's awareness of the world. For humans it becomes the identity or >>>> soul which responds to anything that affects the organism. It can be >>>> uploaded into a data bank but otherwise it dissipates with death. >>> >>> >>> How? We can attach a soul to a machine, but a machine cannot attach its >>> soul to any particular computations, only to the infinity of (relative) >>> computations, and there is at least aleph_zero one, of not a continuum. >>> >>> Bruno >>> >>> >>> >>> The above reminded me of this quote from Alan Turing: >>> >>> Personally I think that spirit is really eternally connected with matter >>> but certainly not always by the same kind of body. I did believe it >>> possible for a spirit at death to go to a universe entirely separate from >>> our own, but now I consider that matter and spirit are so connected that >>> this would be a contradiction in terms. It is possible however but unlikely >>> that such universes may exist. >>> Then as regards the actual connection between spirit and body I >>> consider that the body by reason of being a living body can ``attract´´ and >>> hold on to a ``spirit,´´ whilst the body is alive and awake the two are >>> firmly connected. When the body is asleep I cannot guess what happens but >>> when the body dies the ``mechanism´´ of the body, holding the spirit is >>> gone and the spirit finds a new body sooner or later perhaps immediately. >> >> It seems otiose to postulate a separate spirit. A pitiful attempt to grasp >> immortality. Isn't it plain that what is "immaterial" and distinguishes a >> brain of a rock is that the brain instantiates processes which incorporate >> memory, purpose, perception, and action. >> >> >> Is it otiose to make a distinction between a "story" and a "book”, > > ? > > You might be too quick here. A book can instantiate a description of a story, > but a story is a sequence of events (be them relative computation in > arithmetic, or in some “universe”). > > > You might be misinterpreting my point. I was attempting to show that there is > an important distinction between "mind" and "brain", (as there is between > "story" and "book", and "program" and "computer”).
I was a bit splitting the air, with respect to what you were trying to convey. Sorry. BTW, I forget to mention that Post Anticipation has really anticipated the whole things, from Gödel up to immaterialism. In fact Post is the real first person to discover both the Church-Turing thesis, the incompleteness implied by it (something almost forgot since Gödel!, but clearly re-explained by Kleene and Webb later). Emil Post was very sick all its life, and has been a math teacher in High school almost all his life, but eventually, thanks to his paper of 1944 (which led to Recursion theory) he will be recognised, and get a position in a university, for a short time before death. I think that Emil Post was the deepest thinker here. > > In all cases, the brain, book, computer, are physical, and can have specific > physical incarnations. However, despite differing physically, they can be > used to implement the same (potentially identical) abstract patterns (minds, > stories, programs). > > Because the latter category refers to abstract, informational, duplicable, > patterns, they are in a sense immaterial. Many attributes you might attribute > to a "soul" you could apply to these abstract informational patterns, such as: > > No physical location > No mass or energy > Indestructible (at least always recoverable, in theory - ability to resurrect) > Ability to cross between different physical embodiments (ability to > reincarnate) > Ability to exist in different physical universes/realms/planes (ability to > transmigrate) OK. It is just that this is verified by “mind”, but “mind” and informational pattern, or number are immaterial, but still admit third person description. The soul, or consciousness , or first person, is not only immaterial, but is not identifiable to anything having a third person description. The soul like god has no “name” (that is no third person description at all). Yet, with mechanism, it admits meta-description, quasi-axiomatic definition, and then it can be proved it has no third person description, a bit like the notion of truth in Tarski theory of truth (which I am using all the time, explicitly or implicitly). > > >> or a "program" and a "computer", or might there be value in that nuance? > > I guess you mean a universal program and a computer. But then you use > “computer” in the sense of “universal digital machine/number”. In this list, > I use more often “computer” for the physical implementation of a computer, > > (Here I meant a physical computer, I was trying to contrast the > software/hardware distinction) OK. > > which is typically not a computer, nor even anything emubable on a computer, > given that to emulate even a piece of the physical vacuum, we already needs > the complete universal dovetailing (the full sigma_1 arithmetical truth). A > physical computer is only an appearance in the number’s mind, and it is not > emulable, if only because we cannot algorithmically decide which > computations, in arithmetic, run through our state of mind, and which does > not. > > The difference between software and hardware is only locally dispensable. > Eventually, the apparent primitive matter is a sum on infinitely many > computations, belonging to a non recursively enumerable domain. > A part of the mystery is why physics, or the observable realm, looks so much > computational, but it is not, and QM confirms this. > > > >> >> Clearly a program stops executing locally when a computer executing that >> program is destroyed, but of course this says nothing about the destruction, >> existence, non-existence, continuation, quantity, or locations of other >> instances of that program. I think here Turing was making a similar point, >> in the nuanced distinction between a mind and a brain. > > I see it that way, except that Turing refers to bodies, which in his mind, > meant material bodies, if not, he would have invoked the universal > dovetailing (whose existence in arithmetic is obvious). But many texts by > Turing seem to confirm that Turing was a naturalist (metaphysically). > > > Interesting. Thanks for your comments. You are welcome, Bruno > > Jason > > -- > 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]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
