> On 30 Apr 2021, at 20:47, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List > <everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote: > > > > On 4/30/2021 4:19 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: >>> If a program can be said to "know" something then can we also say it is >>> conscious of that thing? > > That's not even common parlance. Conscious thoughts are fleeting. Knowledge > is in memory. I know how to ride a bicycle because I do it unconsciously. I > don't think consciousness can be understood except as a surface or boundary > of the subconscious and the unconscious (physics).
If you use physics, you have to explain what it is, and how that select the computations in arithmetic, or you need to abandon mechanism. With mechanism, to claim that a machine consciousness is not attributable to some universal machinery, despite they do execute a computation, in the only mathematical sense discovered by Church and Turing (and some others) seem a bit magical. Note that you don’t quote me, above. You should have quoted my answer. The beauty of Mechanism is that the oldest definition of (rational) knowledge (Theaetetus true (justified) opinion) already explain why no machine can define its own knowledge, why consciousness seems necessarily mysterious, and why we get that persistent feeling that we belong to a physical reality, when in fact we are just infinitely many numbers involved in complex relations. Bruno > > Brent > >> >> 1) That’s *not* the case for []p & p, unless you accept a notion of >> unconscious knowledge, like knowing that Perseverance and Ingenuity are on >> Mars, but not being currently thinking about it, so that you are not right >> now consciously aware of the fact---well you are, but just because I have >> just reminded it :) >> >> 2) But that *is* the case for []p & <>t & p. If the machine knows something >> in that sense, then the machine can be said to be conscious of p. >> Then to be “simply” conscious, becomes []t & <>t (& t). >> >> Note that “p” always refers to a partially computable arithmetical (or >> combinatorical) proposition. That’s the way of translating “Digital >> Mechanism” in the language of the machine. >> >> To sum up, to get a conscious machine, you need a computer (aka universal >> number/machine) with some notion of belief, and knowledge/consciousness rise >> from the actuation of truth, that the machine cannot define (by the theorem >> of Tarski and some variant by Montague, Thomason, and myself...). >> >> That theory can be said a posteriori well tested because it implied the >> quantum reality, at least the one described by the Schroedinger equation or >> Heisenberg matrix (or even better Feynman Integral), WITHOUT any >> collapse postulate. >> >> Bruno >> > > > -- > 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > <mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/a81f3dcd-2120-d2fd-598b-3b80fbd9f8c3%40verizon.net > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/a81f3dcd-2120-d2fd-598b-3b80fbd9f8c3%40verizon.net?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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/29754FD7-7078-4330-B5CC-D252832BF702%40ulb.ac.be.
