My mind doesn't feel trivialized, Jon. I like being an example--of most things that I am.
Frank On Tue, May 19, 2020 at 5:56 PM Jon Zingale <[email protected]> wrote: > EricS, > > Philosophically, I most closely identify with what I perhaps could call > phenomenological-materialism. For me all ideas we have, we have exactly > because they are *afforded* by the world. There may not be unicorns, but > horses and animals with horns do exist. Unicorns then are *afforded*. The > role of > the trump card in a game of bridge† is nowhere to be found in the atomic > structure of the card, but the role is *afforded* by our world. Straight > lines > and symmetry groups may be nowhere measured, but are exactly accessible > to us because we exist in a world which *affords* them. For me, this is > how I > thinly justify not needing a spiritual or platonic meta-physics. Also on a > personal > level, I *do* believe that mind is public. I am interested in following > this line, in part, > because I wish to understand exactly how wrong I am. > > While Tononi (in the development of his IIT) > <https://www.academia.edu/39597783/Integrated_information_theory_of_consciousness_an_updated_account> > aims to be very clear about > the *reducibility floor* of consciousness, he also puts forth positive > assertions > about what consciousness is/isn't. For example, Tononi claims that > *The internetis not conscious exactly because it isn't fully integrated*. > The technical details of > his concept of *fully integrated* can be summarized as the observation > that when I > go to a wikipedia page there aren't bits of my email and other webpages > mixed in. > He, like I believe we are attempting here, is working to develop a formal > model of > consciousness. It may be that we are committing the sin of naming things > and > abstracting, and that we will ultimately have in our hands nothing but a > silly-horribly- > wrong tool. I feel that doing this kind of work is a wonderful break from > binge > watching another season of 'Eureka'. > > Frank, > > You and Nick have been arguing for and against (respectively) the private > nature > of mind as long as I have known you both. I apologize if placing you in > these > examples was in bad taste. I certainly believe you have a rich and > beautiful > mind, and I will be careful in the future to not trivialize it by using > your > mind in examples. For the record, anything I had said in regards to your > mind, > I meant to say about my mind as well. > > Glen, Steve, > > If I understand Glen's comprehension of strings example, there are many > arbitrary > functions which can act as a *choice of representative* for a given > *extensional* > transformation. To some limited extent, the claim that *the mind is not > opaque* may > be the claim that there are more structured categories than Sets with > arbitrary > functions which are applicable to the mind/behavior problem. If we had > such a > category, I might go so far as to define a fiber over each point on the > holographic > surface and consider liftings to a bundle or sheaf. Now while > simultaneously **ducking** > fistfuls of hay from various strawman arguments posed, I suggest that it > may be > reasonable to define a connection (damn, are we back to covariance) on the > bundle. > Doing so could be one meaningful way to interpret *tracing a thought*. > > With regards to the discussion about our holographic surface, I could use > more > clarification on the lossy/lossless property. I assume we agree that > sorting is > not dual to shuffling. For instance, defining the type of a shuffling > algorithm > does not require Ord > <http://zvon.org/other/haskell/Outputprelude/Ord_c.html> to be a class > constraint, where it *is* required for sorting. > If we are claiming that the information found on our holographic surface is > complete, I would like to think we are claiming it to be lossless‡. At the > end > of the day, it may be the case that we will never know the ontological > status of > information reversibility through a black hole. Am I wrong about this? If > our > holographic surface isn't reversible, is hashing perhaps a better analogy? > > If in the limit of behavioral investigation we find no more semantic > ambiguity than > the semantic ambiguities we experience when attempting to understand an > others > language, I may wish to consider the question closed in favor of the mind > being > public. I do suspect we would run into many many more (perhaps > unresolvable) > problems along the way, but this exercise is exactly an exercise to me. > Learning > the nature of these problems is reward enough. > > Jon > > †) This example coming from Rota's lectures on 'The end of objectivity > <https://www.worldcat.org/title/end-of-objectivity-a-series-of-lectures-delivered-at-mit-in-october-1973/oclc/32972152> > '. > > ‡) Bzip is a great example of a seemingly lossy algorithm that amazingly > enough > is not. The fact that the Burrows-Wheeler > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burrows%E2%80%93Wheeler_transform> > transform is invertible and is statistically useful > more-often-than-it-is-not provides a high bar for what can be accomplished > with data > compression. > -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . > ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ... > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > -- Frank Wimberly 140 Calle Ojo Feliz Santa Fe, NM 87505 505 670-9918
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