> On 2 Jul 2019, at 00:10, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Sun, Jun 30, 2019 at 1:25 PM Bruno Marchal <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > >> We CAN know that, we know it through direct experience, we just can't > >> derive it from existing axioms which means we need to add it as a new > >> axiom. > > > We can only know that we are conscious right now, > > Obviously, nobody knows what the future will bring. And since we most > certainly do know from direct experience that we are conscious right now > there is no reason not to add it as an axiom.
That is not obvious. If a machine is consistent, the axiom of self-consistency makes it inconsistent. <>t -> ~[]<>t. Like wise, if a machine publicly asserts that she has seen god, you can prove that she has not (!). > > > Just to be clear, all I say is that we cannot tell a patient that science > > guaranties the survive. > > Science can guarantee that the new brain transplant operation you're about to > have today will be no different from the brain transplant operation Science guarantee that we cannot be certain that compuytaionalism is true, nor that a doctor has chosen the right substitution level. The doctor can say that the artificial brain is the same at some level of substitution, but it might be an incorrect one. > you've already had that turned the man you were a year ago into the man you > are today. Assuming a lot of things, OK. > Science can guarantee if you've survived the one then you'll survive the > other. What if I have survive the one because nature “simulates correctly” (by definition my internal quacks and gluons), but the doctor did use a higher substitution level, so that I become a zombie (working “correctly” for some finite period of time, and then less and less correctly up to a moment where everyone realise the guy was just a zombie? I mean, how could we be sure of the substitution level chosen by the doctor? > > >> It isn't almost "trivial" it IS trivial, if I experience consciousness > >> then I have experienced consciousness; however for some odd reason the > >> ultimate simplicity of a tautology seems to confuse some people when > >> something more complex would not. > > > The non trivial “non triviality” comes from the fact that it is not > > entirely easy to prove that [...] > > I don't understand why on earth you keep talking about proof when we have > direct experience. Because I identify a machine with its set of rational accessible beliefs ([]p), and define the other modes of the self through it. For example knowledge (the soul) is defined by []p & p, etc. I used “proof” is an admittedly stricter sense than what is often used in informal discussion. > You don't know for a fact that I'm conscious but do YOU really need a proof > to know that YOU are conscious? Not all all. Nor did I ever claim that we need proof to know a truth. On the contrary I insist that proving something does not make it necessarily true, as I might be inconsistent. > If I had a error free proof that you were not conscious would that really > enough for you to override direct experience and become convince that you > were a zombie?? >> >>> It is really like self-consistency: for all self-consistent machine it >> >>> is true, >> >> >>That is of course true > > OK. And then it is true, but never provable > > And from that we can conclude that proof and truth are not the same thing and > the wisdom of saying yes or no to the doctor or yes or no to being frozen has > nothing to do with proof, it has to do with truth. Absolutely. You make my point. And I call “intuition" and in some context “faith" when we use truth in the place of proof. That is why Mechanism is a religion: it needs some act of faith, as no one can prove it is correct. But we can use it everyday without thinking, of course. > > > Similarly, the Löbian machine knows that if she survive teleportation she > cannot claim that such event proves computationalism to be true > > I don't know about Löbian machines because nobody on Earth except you knows > what that is, Ojh? Why not ask me to recall the definition (I have given a lot of times). A Löbian machine is a universal machine which know, and can prove, that she is universal. Typical example are Peano arithmetic (but not Robinson Arithmetic!), ZF, etc. All boolean topos with a Natural Number object can be proved to be a Löbian machine. > but yes you're right, she can't claim computationalism is true, she can't > claim she survived the teleportation, she can't even claim she survived > BEFORE the teleportation. She can't claim those things because she can't > prove them. Nevertheless she knows the truth, she knows for certain if she > survived or not and she knows for certain if computationalism is true or not. Very good. Yes, all this are theorem in PA, or by any Löbian machine. > > > the substitution level was enough low to say “I have survived”, bt you > > cannot be sure that you did not lose some memory or abilities, > > And the exact same thing is true every time you wake up in the morning. You > have yet to give me a good reason, or even a mediocre reason, for saying No > to the doctor or No to being frozen. I am not arguing for organist Mechanism, I just argue that Mechanism is incompatible with Materialism i.e. Aristotle theology (current paradigm), and that we can test this experimentally, and that indeed QM favours Mechanism, and almost (there are nuances) refute Materialism. > > > Consciousness is a first person experience. To relate it to anything > > require a “belief”, or a “guess”, or an “hypothesis” or “an axiom”. > > Being an axiom is a very exalted position but can you think of ANYTHING more > worthy of becoming an axiom than "Bruno Marchal is conscious"? I'll bet you > can't think of anything more obvious than that, although I can. Nothing is really obvious here. "BrunoMarchal + BrunoMarchal is conscious" is inconsistent, like if X = X + (X is consistent) (something solvable by using Kleene’s second recursion theorem) gives an inconsistent theory (often called a Rogerian sentences or machines). > > > I can conceive that I am not conscious right now, I have certainly never said that. There is a misquote here. Or a typo error. I meant probably “I can’t conceive that I am not conscious right now”. > > Bruno, what you say above is like saying in a loud clear voice "I AM UNABLE > TO SPEAK" because if you can "conceive" of ANYTHING then you are conscious. > > > but I can conceive that mechanism wrong, and that indeed, the copy is > > always unconscious, > > Then you are always unconscious because YOU ARE A COPY of the man you were > last year, the atoms that made up that fellow have been replaced. I am a copy at the right level, I guess, from studying molecular biology, and assuming some physical reality. No problem in practice, but for the understanding of the consequence, we have to be clear that this will ever be provable. It will be a theologic truth, that is something belonging to G* minus G. > > > I defined the theology [...] > > I'm not interested in theology. Typically, you break the quote where I defined theology. It seems you have a problem with the word theology, a bit like the fanatic atheists Einstein talked about: << … there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics and comes from the same source. They are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chain which they have thrown off after hard struggle. >> > I'm more interested in the mythology of Harry Potter than the mythology of > God; it's more fun, it's more profound, and it has killed far fewer people. > > >> there has never been a definition of consciousness that is worth a damn > > > What about something which is, for the entity concerned > true, > immediately knowable, > indubitable (even knowingly so when the cognitive ability are enough high) > Non definable without invoking truth [...] > > So the definition of consciousness is stuff that doesn't have a definition? A 3p definition or a definition not invoking the (arithmetical) truth, but which is also indubitable, etc. > As I said there has never been a definition of consciousness that is worth a > damn. But that's OK, examples are better than definitions. > >> >>> we cannot derive Mechanism > >> >>And there would be no point in doing so even if we could when we have >> >>something much better, direct experience, > > Only after the first experience. > > No idea what you mean by that. I understand that the guy who has survived a first experience of teleportation or artificial brain transplant, or feel that way, will be convinced that Mechanism is true. The point is that even for him, it is not a proof. That is not a problem in practice, but it is a key point for understanding that physics has to be reduced to a statistics on first person machine experience in arithmetic). > > > You cannot use molecular biology to prove mechanism, > > To hell with molecular biology and to hell with proof, I don't need either to > know mechanism is true. You don’t know that in the theoretical sense of knowing ([]p & p), nor in any 3p sense. The doctor who says that science has proven computationalism is a con aristist, and you should better find a different doctor if you want to say “yes”. > > > I am neutral on the truth or falsity of mechanism. > > Then you're neutral about you being conscious right now, and I don't believe > that for one nanosecond. No I know that I am conscious, but I cannot prove it. That is the point. Proving has subtle relation with truth, and that is made clear to the machine theology (the Solovay logic G* and its intensional variant). > > > My point is only that it give a neoplatonic theology [...] > > Plato was a bore. -Friedrich Nietzsche > Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal. -Leo Tolstoy > Tolstoy's book are loose baggy monsters. -Henry James > Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty. -Oscar Wilde Yes, philosophers use insult. That is a symptom of obscurantism, and an invitation to do science instead. > > > as the platonic theology contains [...] > > There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it. - Cicero > > >>Tautologies are ALWAYS true and that is the only "assumption" needed to > >>figure out that Mechanism as defined by you not me is true, not provable, > >>but true. > > > Mechanism requires arithmetic. > > Mechanism requires arithmetic in the same way a brick requires the English > word "brick”. A brick does not resonate the word “brick”. But the definition of a digital machine requires the truth of the laws of addition and multiplication, and whet comes with them. I suspect that you confuse the arithmetical reality, and the theories which tackle them. Since Godel we know that the first is not recursively enumerable, the second are recursively enumerable. Those are two things very different. > > >> It is entirely rational to believe in Mechanism > > Nobody doubt that. The point is to make it precise enough to derive > > testable consequence. > > There is no point in testing mechanism because direct experience even out > ranks the scientific method. A direct experience can tell you that you are conscious, but not that a theory (any theory) is true. Nor can a proof. > > > It provides a non Aristotelian view of reality, > > Non Aristotelian? How odd to divide things up between stuff Aristotle knew > and stuff he didn't, one pile is infinitely larger than the other. That the case for all of us. I mention Aristotle’s view, because it is the current paradigm. It is the belief in a primitively material reality. It is the belief that we cannot explain the physical reality without assuming some material stuff. Of course it is contra Pythegoreans and Platonic thinking, which are open to the idea that the physical reality might be an illusion by numbers. > > >>because I have an absolutely superb reason for doing so, direct experience. > > > You cannot experience a philosophical assumption > > Absolutely positively 100% correct. I can therefore logically conclude that > direct experience is NOT a philosophical assumption. Totally right! And consciousness is accessible by direct experience, but the mechanist hypothesis is not. > > > in rigorous metaphysics [...] > > There is a word for rigorous metaphysics, it's called "physics", you should > try it someday. That is what I call the Aristotelian postulate. God is Matter. Physics is metaphysics. Interesting but inconsistent with mechanism. How could a God, or a notion of Matter, influence the relative computational states (determined by the arithmetical truth)? That's pure magical thought. Bruno > > 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 view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3Pk8moFgsWOhT1L0JR3_bk4k1ZrRpWaAaLryPnuQ1_ww%40mail.gmail.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3Pk8moFgsWOhT1L0JR3_bk4k1ZrRpWaAaLryPnuQ1_ww%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2AC52D38-1528-454B-BE4D-0CD612B4DD92%40ulb.ac.be.
