Dear Maxine,
On 30 Apr 2016, at 19:37, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone wrote:
To FIS colleagues,
First, an open-to-all response to Lou Kaufmann:
Thank you for your lengthy tutorial—some time back--but I wonder and
am
genuinely puzzled given the “phenomenology-life sciences theme” why
none
of the articles that I referenced were read and a response generated
at least
in part on the basis of that reading in conjunction with your own
work.
Is there some reason why they were not taken up, especially perhaps
the article
identified as being a critique of Godels’s incompleteness theorem
from a
phenomenological perspective?
What do you mean by "critique of Gödel's incompleteness theorem" from
a phenomenological perspective?
Gödel's theorem and Gödel's proof are not contreversial. The proof is
even constructive and valid in intuitionist mathematics.
Then, as I show in my JPMB contribution, Gödel's theorem implies that
machines which are looking at themselves (in a precise technical
sense) develop a series of distinct phenomenologies (arguably
corresponding to justifiable, knowable, observable, sensible).
Indeed just accepting very traditional analysis of knowledge, like
the one presented by Theaetetus (but used inmplicitly in Tchouang-Ze,
Lie-ze, or by Nagasena in the question to King Milinda, etc.) that is
the idea of defining knowledge by true belief, makes all machine
discovering by introspection an unnameable knower, as Gödel's theorem
shows that provable and provable-an-true, although justifying exactly
the same propositions, impose a very different logic on them.
Matter itself is recovered as a phenomenology (observable), reducing
physics to universal machine's phenomenologies, by using provable-and-
consistent (and/or true), restricted to the computable proposition
(the so called Sigma_1 propositions).
So I agree that there is a relation between Gödel's theorem and
(machine's or machine+oracle's) phenomenology.
And I might agree with your phenomenological critics, in the sense
that even the machine-knower, by its unameability, is immune to
Gödel's theorem, and disbelieve correctly in Mechanist Philosophy. The
soul of the machine is not a machine from its own point of view: that
is a theorem in theoretical computer science, once accept to define
the first person soul as the knower associated to the machine. So the
universal machine already refute the thesis that her soul is a
machine, and indeed, the mathematics shows it to be PI_1 complete in
the oracle of arithematical truth (this means very highy non-
computable). Like in Wonderland, something (arithmetic truth) seen
from inside is bigger than that something (arithmetic truth).
I would think that you and perhaps FIS persons
generally would feel particularly inquisitive about that article.
I lost the mail with the reference. I would be please if you could
link it to me again. Thanks.
It should, or not corroborate the fact that the machine's soul is
immune to Gödel's theorem (with the big price of losing somehow its
Turing Universality, and it is complete only on its won mental state/
reality. (This does not, of course contradict Gödel's theorem, if
only because that fact is a consequence of Gödel's theorem).
I would think
too that people in FIS would be particularly inquisitive about the
reference to
Biological Cybernetics. Viewpoints that differ from one’s own are by
some thought
a waste of time, but for my part, I think they rightly broaden a
discussion, which
is not to say that entrenched or deeply held views are not solidly
based, much less
wrong, but that they have the possibility of being amplified through
a consideration
of the same topic from a different perspective.
For example: Language did not arise deus ex machina, and it
certainly did not arise
in the form of graphs or writing, but in the form of sounding.
Awareness of oneself
as a sound-maker is basic to what we identify as a ‘verbal language’.
Abstract thought needs rhythm, and blind mathematician have no
problem, although deaf one have. So I sort of agree with you. But
rhythm, also, can be independent of sound. I am of the opinion that
thought preceded for long "verbal language", more like sign and
symbolic signs association and reassociation, with varied degrees of
symbolicalness, at different levels. A similar diversity of levels
already occurs at the molecular genetical levels. There are cross
relations, it can be knotty.
Moreover this
awareness and the verbal language itself are both foundationally a
matter of both
movment and hearing. A recognition of this fact of life would seem
to me to be of
interest, even primordial interest, to anyone concerned with ‘SELF-
REFERENCE', its
essential nature and substantive origins.
Number can refer to themselves relative to universal numbers. Self-
reference is a standard topic in mathematical logic. See Smorynski
book "Self-reference and Modal logic", or Boolos "logic and
provability".
Of course it is third person self-reference, the body talks on the
body, to get the first person one, as I said, incompleteness makes
Theatetus definition working.
With respect to ‘substantive origins’, does it not behoove us to
inquire as to the genesis
of a particular capacity rather than take for granted that ‘this is
the way things are and
have always been’?.
Certainly. But if we are willing to assume that consciousness is
invariant for some finitely describable functional and digital
substitution (as Molecular Biology suggests nature already betted on)
then we need to assume no more than one Turing complete universal
system. Very elementary arithmetic is (amazingly enough, that is not
obvious at all) Turing universal (Sigma_1 complete). We can, and must
(if we do the assumption above) justify the appearances of matter (a s
stable statistical universal sharable "dreams"). Physics is reduced to
a statistics on some phenomenology.
It is easier to explain the illusion of matter to something conscious
than to explain the illusion of consciousness to something material.
For example, and as pointed out elsewhere, the traditional conception
of language being composed of arbitrary elements—-hence “symbols”--
cannot be assumed with
either epistemological or scientific impunity. Until the origin of
verbal language is accounted
for by reconstructing a particular lifeworld, there is no way of
understanding how arbitrary
sounds could come to be made . . . let alone serve as carriers of
assigned meaning.
What is essential is first that arbitrary sounds be distinguished
from non-arbitrary sounds,
and second, that a paradigm of signification exist. Further, no
creature can speak a language
for which its body is unprepared. In other words, a certain sensory-
kinetic body is essential
to the advent of verbal language. In short, in the beginning,
thinking moved along analogical
lines rather than symbolic ones, hence along the lines of iconicity
rather than along arbitrary
lines. See the extensive writings of linguistic anthropologist Mary
LeCron Foster and
Sheets-Johnstone’s The Roots of Thinking, Chapter 6, "On the Origin
of Language." Foster's
finely documented analyses show that the meaning of the original
sound elements of language
was the analogue of their articulatory gestures. Similarly, in my
own analysis, I start not with
symbols or symbolic thought but at the beginning, namely, with a
sensory-kinetic analysis of the
arbitrary and the non-arbitrary.
Husserl wrote that "each free act [i.e., an act involving reason]
has its comet’s tail of Nature.”
In effect, living meanings are, from a phenomenological perspective,
historically complex phenomena.
They have a natural history that, in its fullest sense, is bound not
both ontogenetically
and phylogenetically. Like living forms, living meanings hold—-and
have held—-possibilities
of further development, which is to say that they have evolved over
time and that investigations
of their origin and historical development tell us something
fundamental about life in general and
human life, including individual human lives, in particular. WITH
RESPECT TO ORIGINS AND HISTORICALLY
COMPLEX PHENOMENA, consider the following examples:
Information is commonly language-dependent whereas meaning is not.
We come into the world moving; we are precisely not stillborn.
We humans all learn our bodies and learn to move ourselves.
Movement forms the I that moves before the I that moves forms
movement.
Infants are not pre-linguistic; language is post-kinetic.
Nonlinguistic corporeal concepts ground fundamental verbal concepts.
Interesting. A mechanist further analysis would lead to many subject
problem to be recasted in the "theology" or "metaphysics" inherited
from the Digital Mechanist assumption + metamathematics (that is
mathematical logic).
To all FIS colleagues re Alex Hankey's presentation:
I thought at first that we might be talking past each other because
it was my understanding
that this 4-part discussion was about phenomenology and the life
sciences. What this means to
me is that we conjoin real-life, real-time first-person experience,
thus methodologically
anchored phenomenological analyses, with real-life-real-time third-
person experience,
The main error. With digital mechanism, no third person describable
world can anchor a first person experience. That one is anchored in
the infinitely many thrid person worlds anchored in the additive-
multiplicative (Turing universal) number (true sigma_1) relations.
You can associate a mind to one brain, but you can only associate an
infinity of brains (in arithmetic) to one mind.
thus
methodologically anchored empirical analyses. With this last
conversation between Rafael and
Alex, the terrain seems to be shifting precisely toward this ground.
With respect to that
conversation, I would like first to note my accord with their
critique of Heidegger's
metaphysical view that animals are "poor-in-world." In an article
published at the end of
last year, I give a detailed critical analysis of that metaphysical
view in conjunction
with a detailed critical analysis of Heidegger's own metaphysical
shortcoming, namely, his
being, among other things, "poor-in-body." See "The Enigma of Being-
toward-Death," Journal of
Speculative Philosophy,2015 24/4: 547-576.
I think I agree. To me, working in the mechanist frame where Church-
Thesis makes it mathematical, most of this are open problems. It is
not yet clear if having more neurons makes you less conscious or more
conscious. In a large part, a brain might be more a consciousness
filter than a consciousness generator.
I recommend Aristotle (again) to FIS colleagues:
"Every realm of nature is marvellous. . . .[W]e should venture on
the study of every kind
of animal without distaste; for each and all will reveal to us
something natural and
something beautiful."
"If any person thinks the examination of the rest of the animal
kingdom an unworthy task,
he must hold in like disesteem the study of man."
Aristotle wrote four astoundingly perceptive books on animals. The
above quotes are from
his book Parts of Animals. Of Aristotle, Darwin in fact wrote,
"Linnaeus and Cuvier have been
my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere
school-boys to old Aristotle."
That is the Aristotle that I appreciate very much.
With respect to consciousness,may I refer you to a thoroughly
documented article titled
"Consciousness: A Natural History" that first appeared in the
Journal of Consciousness Studies
(1998) and that both critically and constructively addresses the
question of 'how consciousness arises
in matter'. Documentation is based on corporeal matters of fact from
vertebrates to invertebrates
and includes consideration of bacteria. The article was later
included in The Corporeal Turn: An
Interdisciplinary Reader and in The Primacy of Movement.
That is where the (classical(*)) universal machine depart from
Aristotle, unless you correct Aristotle in the Neopytagorean way
(Moderatus of Gades) or Neoplatonist way (Plotinus, Proclus, ...)
Movements and causes are only relative relations between numbers,
universal numbers and oracles.
Note that I could use lambda expressions, combinators, cellular
automata, Lisp programs, as the basic choice of universal system
assumed, but I use the natural numbers, with the addition and
multiplication laws, as people are more familiar with them, and
usually already assumed it after minimal schooling, and it is easier
to conceive that 2+2=4 independently of you than something like
(APPEND (QUOTE (a b c)) (QUOTE (a b))) = (a b c a b))) for most of us.
A machine is classical if on the basic term relation in its language,
she believes that each sentence is true or false. It is not really
needed but make things far more easier to explain.
What I term "phenomenologically-informed" studies of "the bodies we
are not"
OK. very good.
requires acute
observations to begin with, observations untethered to theories and
beliefs about X, and then,
finely detailed descriptions of those observations. Just such
untethered observations and
meticulous descriptions are the cornerstone of any life science. One
is not out there trying to
make others as you want them to be, but attempting to know them as
they are. The task is precisely
a challenge since it is a matter of achieving knowledge about living
bodies that are different from,
yet evolutionarily connected to, your living body. Jane Goodall's
years of dedicated study set
the original gold standard, so to speak, for such research, the
foundations of "good life science."
As I earlier wrote (and documented by way of a publication),
descriptive foundations undergird
phenomenological analyses, studies in evolutionary biology, and
ecological literature.
I can agree, but as a scientist working on the foundational reality/
realities, I am agnostic on the existence of nature, and by working on
the mind-body problem, I explain why a reasonable hypothesis leads to
the conclusion that physicalness has to be explained in term of
universal number's dream statistics, where a number's dream is only a
computation involving "rich enough" relative self-references. Quantum
mechanics without collapse confirms (does not refute) this aspect of
reality both intuitively and formally, up to now.
Gödel's theorem kills the reductionist conception of number and
machine. We thought we knew, and now we know that we know nothing,
(provably so assuming digital mechanism). We can only scratch the
surface of the arithmetical reality. Numbers and machines already
escape all effective theories, and each universal numbers is only an
unknown which invites itself on an infinite table of negotiations in
an infinite dialog between them all. If we look at ourselves below the
substitution level, we find the trace of the result of that infinite
negotiation. The physics of the machine is not computable a priori, as
it is a statistics on infinitely many limiting computations, including
oracles (in Turing sense).
Best,
Bruno
Cheers,
Maxine
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