RE: evidence blindness
Colin Hales writes: the fact that intelligent behaviour is third person observable but consciousness is not. Stathis Papaioannou OK. Let me get this straight. Scientist A stares at something, say X, with consciousness. A sees X. Scientist A posits evidence of X from a third person viewpoint. Scientist A confers with Scientist B. Scientist B then goes and stares at X and agrees. Both of these people use consciousness to come to this conclusion. Explicit Conclusion : Yep, theres an X! Yet there's no evidence of consciousness? that which literally enabled the entire process? There is an assumption at work SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE and CONTENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS Are NOT identities. When you 'stare' at anything at all you have evidence of consciousness. It's what gives you the ability to 'stare' in the first place. It's blaring at you from every facet of your being. Without consciousness you would never have had anything to bring to a discussion in the first place. Yes, when you stare at a brain you don't 'see' conciousness but holy smoke you have evidence blaring by the act of seeing the brain at all! (a) I know I'm conscious (b) I know that you are intelligent, unless my senses are tricking me (c) I assume that you are conscious but I don't know this, even if I can be sure my senses are not tricking me, in the same way as I know (a) and (b). To give another example, we know that many animals are intelligent from observing their behaviour, but there is often speculation as to whether they are conscious and what their conscious experience might be like, even though we might understand and be able to predict their behaviour at least as well as the behaviour of fellow humans. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Rép: ROADMAP (well, not yet really...
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: But even existence can be defined as a bundle of properties. If I am wondering whether the pencil on my desk exists I can look at it, pick it up, tap it and so on. If my hand passes through it when I try to pick it up then maybe it is just an illusion. Maybe it's a holographic projection - in which case the projection (a certain state of photons) does exist, and other people can see it. Even an illusion must exist as some brain process. I understand Peters objection to regarding a mere bundle of properties as existent. But I don't understand why one needs a propertyless substrate. Why not just say that some bundles of properties are instantiated and some aren't. Anyway, current physical theory is that there is a material substrate which has properties, e.g. energy, spin, momentum,... Saying that there is a material substrate which has certain properties is just a working assumption to facilitate thinking about the real world. It may turn out that if we dig into quarks very deeply there is nothing substantial there at all, but solid matter will still be solid matter, because it is defined by its properties, not by some mysterious raw physical substrate. But I don't think we ever have anything but working assumptions; so we might as well call our best ones real; while keeping in mind we may have to change them. If it passes all the tests I put it through then by definition it exists. If I want to claim that some other object exists, like Nessie, what I actually mean is that it exists *in the same way as this pencil exists*. The pencil is the gold standard: there is no other, more profound standard of existence against which it can be measured. I agree. But the gold standard is not just that you see and touch that pencil - you might be hallucinating. And you can't see an electron, or even a microbe. So what exists or not is a matter of adopting a model of the world; and the best models take account of a consistent theory of instruments as well as direct perception. By gold standard I did not mean just direct sensory experience, but every possible empirical test or measurement. A hallucination is a hallucination because other people don't see it, it does not register on a photograph, and so on. A hallucination which passed every possible reality test would not be a hallucination. Stathis Papaioannou True. But if we knew enough about how brains work we might be able to detect the processes within one having an hallucination and identify them as presenting, say an illusion of a pencil. In that case we would say that it was a *real* hallucination - because then we have fitted it within our model of the world. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: evidence blindness
Colin, list, I've looked back over your previous posts. It seems like scientists (I'm not one) talk about consciousness in two different senses, in two different roles -- consciousness for clear and sure apprehension of logic evidence, and consciousness as a phenomenon, an appearance. It's not so surprising that that which is always needed by us, glued to us, for things to appear, is itelf very difficult to make appear as a phenomenon. The most obvious contrast whereby one becomes conscious of one's consciousness is the contrast between consciousness and unconsciousness -- being awake really is different from being dreamlessly asleep. And while we don't remember an experience of dreamless sleep itself, we do remember stages between wakefulness and such sleep, stages and gradations which come arbitrarily near to the dreamless sleep. This gives us some perspective on consciousness. We rely and build on consciousness but that's a different thing from developing theories and hypotheses _about_ consciousness in those of its respects which are not obvious to us -- those of its respects whereof we're not clearly and firmly conscious. If there were no such non-obvious respects, then there'd be no point developing theories and hypotheses about consciousness. There are a lot of things which we surmise and can't resist surmising. In real life, one of those many surmises is that others are conscious as I am. Maybe some sociopaths can manage denying it, but a normal person who actually denies it will find it hitting him or her like a ton of bricks if s/he gets emotionally close to somebody. And of course there's no evidence like the evidence consisting in a ton of bricks hitting the observer! The fact of forceful kinds of evidence reaching out and pushing the observer around, is a reason why phenomenal contents doesn't sound like a faithful rephrasing of scientific evidence even in the first place. Scientific evidence is a commonsense-perceptual kind of thing, not just a spectator-sensory thing. Yet, in a sense, not only anti-solipsism, but also every perceptual judgment, is a surmise. Why should it be difficult to observe consciousness in a scientifically useful way as one observes many everyday objects of perceptual judgments? Well, one _can_ observe one's own consciousness sometimes in scientifically useful ways -- for instance, when consciousness is affected by circumstances, stress, drugs, and lots and lots of other things -- and one can use others' reports on their conciousness under various conditions, etc., and there's plenty of mind/brain science involved in dealing with such reports and with physiological anatomical correlations etc. Consciousness is tricky. I really can't observe another's inwardness as I can observe my own. Maybe some day technology will make it possible. Anyway, normally, when something has an inside and an outside, there are a series of stages whereby one can pass between them, see them as bound together, each as the other side of the other, and establish just what is thing X's outside, and what is some further but non-essential layer, a husk, etc. This is not so easy when thing X is consciousness. The phenomenologist child psychologist Merleau-Ponty was very interested in this question, and discussed attempts of consciousness to bridge that gap, through left hand touching right hand, etc. I remember when I was a kid doing that, trying to catch my own touch somehow, one hand touching the other, trying to complete some sort of circuit. It appears that the thing which is most familiar of all is also the strangest of all. The obvious side of consciousness is firm enough for people to do science based on it as _verificative basis_. The mysterious side is uncertain enough that it's hard for people to know where to begin in terms of _explaining it as a phenomenon_ -- explaining what? -- they disagree even about that, how to objectify it. So far all I'm saying is that consciousness is really weird and we need to recognize that. I agree that it's inconsistent to insist on grounding scientific behavior in conscious experience while insisting that conscious experience is too incoherent in conception to be treated as a phenomenon. But that doesn't stop it from being a very weird and difficult phenomenon to study. I wouldn't say that we see consciousness. We see things. The meanings of words like see and observe are formed on the basis of common-sense notions whereby one sees a horse, rather than, say, an event in one's sensory-neural system or in any other sense sees one's seeing. One doesn't see the channel or the medium or whatever, one sees the thing through it. A perceptual psychologist may habitually say that sensory-neural events are all that you really perceive, but that's just a forcefully unusual way of speaking (and thinking) in order to draw your attention toward subtle phenomena. Well, maybe it's not an unusual way
Re: evidence blindness
Colin Hales wrote: Most of the time I'm observing something else. When I try to observe consciouness, I find I am instead thinking of this or that particular thing, and not consciousness itself. Consciousness can only be consciousness *of* something. Got that? Brent Meeker Absolutely. Intrinsic intentionality is what phenomenal fields do. Brilliantly. but. That's not what my post was about. I'm talking about the evidence provided by the very existence of phenomenal fields _at all_. Blindsighted people have cognition WITHOUT the phenomenal scene. The cognition and the phenomenal aspects are 2 separate sets of physics intermixed. You can have one without the other. Consider your current perception of the neutrinos and cosmic rays showering you. I not only have no perception of them: I can't guess where they are either. That's what a blindsighted scientist would have in relation to visible light = No phenomenal field. They can guess where things are and sometimes get it right because of pre-occipital hardwiring. The phenomenal scene itself, regardless of its contents (aboutness, intentionality whatever) is evidence of the universe's capacity for generation of phenomenal fields!. phenomenal fields that...say... have missiles in them?...that allow you to see email forums on your PC?.that create problematic evidentiary regimes tending to make those using phenomenal fields for evidence incapable of seeing it, like the hand in front of your face? :-) If we open up a cranium, if the universe was literally made of the appearances provided by phenomenal fields...we would see them! We do not. This is conclusive empirical proof the universe is not made of the contents of the appearance-generating system (and, for that matter, anything derived by using it). That doesn't follow. It only shows that appearances are not things: but they may be processes or information which can be instantiated in different forms (e.g. jpeg, photo, gif,...) And anything derived by using it is so vague I don't know what it means. Brent Meeker It is made of something that can generate appearances in the right circumstances (and not in the vision system of the blindsighted). Those circumstances exist in brain material (and not in your left kneecap!). Consciousness is not invisible. It is the single, only visible thing there is. To say consciousness is invisible whilst using it is to accept X as true from someone screaming X is true!, yet at the same time denying that anyone said anything! That this is donewhen the truth of the existence of an utterance is more certain than that which was uttered. How weird is that?! I'd like everyone on this list to consider the next time anyone says consciousness is invisible to realise that that is completely utterly wrong and that as a result of thinking like that, valuable evidence as to the nature of the universe is being discarded for no reason other than habit and culture and discipline blindness. Is seeing visible? What does it look like? Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: evidence blindness
(a) I know I'm conscious (b) I know that you are intelligent, unless my senses are tricking me (c) I assume that you are conscious but I don't know this, even if I can be sure my senses are not tricking me, in the same way as I know (a) and (b). To give another example, we know that many animals are intelligent from observing their behaviour, but there is often speculation as to whether they are conscious and what their conscious experience might be like, even though we might understand and be able to predict their behaviour at least as well as the behaviour of fellow humans. Stathis Papaioannou As Bertrand Russel said... something like... everyone quotes the solipsism argument, but nobody actually believes it. None of a), b), c) matters. It's a completely specious misdirection premised on the existence of an objective view which does not actually exist. Discipline blindness at work again. That objective view is a mutually calibrated fictional device that enables multiple consciousnesses to cooperate to construct depictions of regularity that _any_ consciousness of the same type will be able to use to predict the contents of consciousness (how something appears). There are 2 sorts of truth here: a) The belief in a fictional 'objective view'. This is a view that is never had by anyone. b) The reality of a subjective view. This is a view I know I have. The invisibility of it to any other person is simply a situational invisibility. I get it because I am me. This reality (b) is far more cogent than the objective view (a). At lease ONE person really gets (b). NOBODY gets to see (a) scientists simply all get to act as if they did. Works great! But that's it. The solipsism argument contributes a sytemic delusion about the nature of evidence and we don't need it. I assume that you are conscious but I don't know this This assumes that knowing another person is conscious purely involves the use of phenomenal contents! The existence of any phenomenal contents at all proves that something generates them. Process X makes them in your head. Then you look (phenomenal contents) at the same process X in another headthen is it more or less reasonable to (a) posit the lack of existence of phenomenal contents in the other head is logically impossible or at least extremely unlikely given that every other indication is in support of the hypothesis that the other person has phenomenal content. or (b) posit that I can never 'know' because I can't 'see' what the other guy sees and then use that as an excuse to deny all scientific considerations of underlying causal mechanism?...which in effect declares the study of consciousness as 'unscientific' because you can't 'see it', when in fact all scientific 'objects' are never actually 'seen' (within an objective view) at all. We scientists are not being consistent. The existence of phenomenality at all in your own head is the start, middle and end of the story of knowing _anything_. A belief in an non-existent objective view changes nothing of this circumstance and should never be used to assert a belief about the nature and scope of scientific evidence Believe in OBJECTIVITY... that is a real behaviour. Do you see how this mess works? We're using a non-existent view to define what a view is! Everyone blurts out the same set of tired old delusions. When you analyse them they're a specious cultural mirage. Colin Hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: evidence blindness
culture and discipline blindness. Is seeing visible? What does it look like? Brent Meeker Seeing. Keep trying...you'll 'see it' It'll sink in eventually! It took a long time for me and I'm nowhere near as bright as all you folks. Colin Hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: evidence blindness
Colin, list, huge snip But, past a certain point, going over all these generalities stops advancing the point and makes me sound fuddy-duddy. It sounds like you have some further, and more-specific, ideas, which are the real energy source behind your argument. Best, Ben Udell Wow! Can you type! All good stuff. OK... all my views of science and a practical causal mechanism of a physics of phenomenal consciousness have been posted here in recent times. I couldn't tell you where! It's all there. Some clarity: The two types of consciousness are very well described and quite empirically well contrasted (through studies of brain patholoy..phantom limb, blindsight, synesthesia...strokes, accidents...a whole pile of aphasias etc). Read chalmers, ned block, searle... A) Phenomenal fields/scenes (hard problem): vision aural haptic (hot, cold, pressure, nociception...various including that which is propriocepted olfaction gustation situational emotions (mad bad sad glad) primordial emotions (hunger, thirst, orgasm...) internal mental dialog and imagery of all types (aove) including imagined, dreamed == ADD THEM UP = MIND = CONSCIOUSNESS == B) Non-phenonmenal consciousness(easy problem): Everything else is that demonstrated by behaviour. It could have been learned or innate but they can all be characterised as 'belief'. Reflex behaviours are innate beliefs. These beliefs may launch and be mediated by phenomenal fields, which may then cause the acquisition/alteration of beliefs. The best way to think of these things is as neuron configuration that survives (exists through) a period of UN-consciousness, where there was no phenomenal field. Dreamless sleep or maybe a coma. A zombie scientist has all B and no A A blindsighted scientist has no visual field as per A but some visually related behaviour through B An alzheimers scientist has whole pile of A and a dimishing/debilitated B The two types of consciousness are inside each other. It's pretty simple. If you stare at a brain with consciousness you get answers to (B). You get no answers (causal explanation) to A except correlated hearsay... and what's worse... because of the dodgy belief systems of scientists you get prohibited from scientifically investigating underlying mechanisms of A ( it gets called metaphysics), even though A delivers all evidence! Kuhn said that scientific knowledge is on the cusp of change when inconsistency emerges. If ever there was a case for inconsistency we have onethe tricky thing is that it's inconsistency _within_ science...not inconsistency in a set of laws produced _by_ science... If there was some sort of alarm button to press on this I'd be pressing it right now. :-) cheers, colin hales --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computationalism and supervenience
Russell Standish writes: On Sat, Aug 26, 2006 at 10:01:36PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Are you suggesting that of two very similar programs, one containing a true random number generator and the other a pseudorandom number generator, only the former could possibly be conscious? I suppose it is possible, but I see no reason to believe that it is true. Stathis Papaioannou I think this is what Maudlin's argument tells us. Is it that so preposterous to you? It seems to me that the idea of a deterministic machine being conscious is assumed to be preposterous, for no good reason. I believe that I could have acted differently even with identical environmental inputs, which is what the feeling of free will is. However, it is possible that I might *not* have been able to act differently: simply feeling that I could have done so is not evidence that it is the case. And even if it were the case, due to true quantum randomness or the proliferation of branches in the multiverse leading to the effect of first person indeterminacy, it does not follow that this is necessary for consciousness to occur. I thought I had another argument based on creativity, but it seems pseduo RNG programs can be creative, provided the RNG is cryptic enough. Right, it's the complexity of the program that generates interesting and perhaps intelligent behaviour, not its randomness. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computationalism and supervenience
Brent Meeker writes (quoting Russell Standish): This may be coincidental, but I think not. Your PC is engineered to avoid the effects of chaos to prevent this very thing occurring. Why wouldn't nature do the same thing unless it were deliberately trying to exploit randomness? In nature there's no reason to depend on amplifying quantum randomness - there's plenty of random environmental input to keep our brains from getting stuck in loops. And even without environmental input, unlike digital computers, brains have enough noise to keep from going into loops. Poincare recurrence won't kick in until long after the brain has turned to dust. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Rép: ROADMAP (well, not yet really...
Brent Meeker writes: Saying that there is a material substrate which has certain properties is just a working assumption to facilitate thinking about the real world. It may turn out that if we dig into quarks very deeply there is nothing substantial there at all, but solid matter will still be solid matter, because it is defined by its properties, not by some mysterious raw physical substrate. But I don't think we ever have anything but working assumptions; so we might as well call our best ones real; while keeping in mind we may have to change them. That's just what I meant. If you say, this is *not* just a working assumption, there is some definite, basic substance called reality over and above what we can observe, that is a metaphysical statement which can only be based on something akin to religious faith. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Le 25-août-06, à 02:31, 1Z a écrit :
Of course it can. Anything can be attached to a bare substrate.
It follows from the UDA that you cannot do that, unless you put
explicitly actual infinite in the bare substrate, an then attach your
mind to it (how?).
If it
were impossible to attach a class of properties to a substrate,
that would constitute a property of the substrate, and so it would not
be bare
I am sorry but you lost me here. Especially when elsewhere you say the
bare substrate can have subjective experiences.
Bare substrate is compatible with qualia.
How?
Nothing-but-numbers is not.
Why?
If Platonia is not real in any sense, it cannot
contain observers, persons, appearances, etc.
To exist Platonically is to exist eternally and necessarily. There is
no time or changein Plato's heave.
All partial recursive solutions of Schroedinger or Dirac equation
exists in Platonia, and define through that block description notion
of internal time quite analogous to Everett subjective probabilities.
The A-series cannot be reduced to the B-series.
All the point is that with Church thesis you can do that.
A program is basically the same as a number.
No it isn't. You don't know which programme is specified
by a number without knowing how the number is to
be interpreted, ie what hardware it is running on.
Not necessarily. The numbers can be interpreted by other numbers. The
closure of the Fi for diagonalization makes this possible. No need for
more than numbers and their additive and multiplicative behavior. I
don't pretend this is obvious.
A process or a computation
is a finite or infinite sequence of numbers (possibly branching, and
defined relatively to a universal numbers).
It is not just a sequence, because a sequence
does not specify counterfactuals.
That is why I said possibly branching.
The UD build all such (branching) sequences.
If it exists.
That way, except I say this from the comp assumption, unlike Deutsch
who says this from the quantum assumption. (of course real means
here
generated by the UD)
If it exists.
Even Robinson Arithmetic believes in the UD. The UD exists like the
square root of two, or any recursively enumerable set.
You exist in a sense related to that existence but not necessarily
identical. It depends also if by I you mean such or such n-person
view of I. But I give all the precise definitions elsewhere.
Because in a mathematics-only universe, qualia have to be identified
with, or reduced to, mathematical structures.
Certainly. They are given by the intensional variant of G* \minus G.
See my SANE paper.
If your Platonia is restricted to arithmetic, that would be
a contingent fact.
I just need people believe that what they learn at school in math
remains true even if they forget it.
I use the poetical term platonia mainly when I use freely the
excluded middle, and put no bound on the length of the computations. In
the lobian interview, the belief in platonia is defined by (A v ~A).
You can take it formally or just accept that closed first order
sentences build with the symbols {S, +, *, 0} are either true or false.
You need this just for using the term conjecture in number theory.
Don't put more in platonia than we need it in the reasoning and in
the working with the theory. When I say that a number exists, I say it
in the usual sense of the mathematicians. My ontology is what Brouwer
called the separable part of mathematics: it is the domain where all
mathematicians agree, except the ultra-intuitionist (a microscopic
non-comp minority).
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Re: computationalism and supervenience
Le 25-août-06, à 10:09, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : You would if it were the non-miraculous branches that were selectively pruned, although I guess that it is just this sort of pruning people would be asking of God (you would hardly need to pray that your coffee remain coffee). Nevertheless, even if the content of your conscious experience changed, there is no reason why you should not remain conscious as long as there was one single branch left in which you were conscious. To put it differently, there is no way you can tell that some single world / collapsing wave function interpretation of QM is correct, if you exclude quantum interference effects (and even that does not convince everyone, as we know). OK. Of course we cannot prune the UD*, nor can we make 317 disappearing. What I meant was, if a computer program can be associated with consciousness, then a rigid and deterministic computer program can also be associated with consciousness - leaving aside the question of how exactly the association occurs. I agree with this. (I guess you mean that consciousness is assciated with the computation). After UDA we know also that consciousness is attributed with all the similar computation, and not with any particular instantiation. A brain does not generate consciousness by its working. It is less incorrect to say a brain emerges (not in time, but in an arithmetical way) by making conscious experiences stable relatively to high measure potential, and this makes us capable of interacting stably with respect to our normal (gaussian) histories. For example, suppose I have a conversation with a putatively conscious computer program as part of a Turing test, and the program passes, convincing me and everyone else that it has been conscious during the test. Then, I start up the program again with no memory saved from the first run, but this time I play it a recording of my voice from the first test. The program will go through exactly the same resposes as during the first run, but this time to an external observer who saw the first run the program's responses will be no more surprising that my questions on the recording of my voice. The program itself won't know what's coming and it might even think it is being clever by throwing is some unpredictable answers to prove how free and human-like it really is. I don't think there is any basis for saying it is conscious during the first run but not during the second. I agree with you. All those problems disappear if you attach the consciousness to the abstract type of the computation. This works because that type comes together with the relative possible weighs. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'
John, Interesting, but from the point of view of the interview, this would be cheating. If such sophisticated form of comp is justified, then by the UDA reasoning, it has to be justified by the lobian machine. If it is the case that such move is proposed by the lobian machine, I will let you know. Bruno Le 25-août-06, à 17:07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : Thanks Bruno, for accepting my position about atheists. You just did not add that 'this is why I don't call myself an atheist'. Theology is well thought of in your explanation, however IMO it carries too much historical baggage (garbage?) since ~500AD to renew peoples' thinking about the meaning of the term. * One question to the math-teach(er): you pressed the 'integers' as the basis of your number-world. How about if we consider from the excellent explanation I read recently on this list about 'string theory origins': to consider the inside the circle equivalents of the 'points' (numbers) outside the circle, - which are the integers - AS THE INTEGERS??? (and call the reciprocals 'inside the circle' as our integers?) would that change the status of the world? Encased in the circle? (That would be a definitely human-manipulated image). You could freely apply all your theories on that, too. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Rép: ROADMAP (well, not yet really...
Le 25-août-06, à 23:24, 1Z a écrit : AR as a claim about truth is implied by comoputationalism, and is not enough to support the real (=as real as I am) existence of the UD. It is you who come up with a notion of real existence. You are reifying I don't know which theory. AR as a claim about existence is enough to support the real (=as real as I am) existence of the UD, but is not impied by computationalism. And my WHOLE point is that it does not have to be that way. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Le 26-août-06, à 14:01, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : Peter Jones writes: That doesn't follow. Comutationalists don't have to believe any old programme is conscious. It might be the case that only an indeterministic one will do. A deterministic programme could be exposed as a programme in a Turing Test. Then you're saying something strange and non-physical happens to explain why a program is conscious on the first run when it passes the Turing test but not on the second run when it deterministically repeats all the physical states of the first run in response to a recording of your keystrokes from the first run. It was never conscious, and if anyonw concludede it was on the first run, they were mistaken. The TT is a rule-of-thumb for detecting, it does not magically endow consciousness. Are you suggesting that of two very similar programs, one containing a true random number generator and the other a pseudorandom number generator, only the former could possibly be conscious? I suppose it is possible, but I see no reason to believe that it is true. It *has* been proved (by diagonalization) that there exist some problem in number theory which are soluble by a machine using a random oracle, although no machine with pseudorandom oracle can sole the problem. KURTZ S. A., 1983, On the Random Oracle Hypothesis, Information and Control, 57, pp. 40-47. But it is not relevant given that self-duplication is already a way to emulate true random oracle. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Le 26-août-06, à 16:35, 1Z a écrit : And since the computer may be built and programmed in an arbitrarily complex way, because any physical system can be mapped onto any computation with the appropriate mapping rules, That is not a fact. It would make sense, indeed, only if the map is computable, and in this case I agree it has not been proved. Again UDA makes such question non relevant, given that the physical is secondary with respect to the intelligible. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Rép: ROADMAP (well, not yet really...
Le 26-août-06, à 22:44, Brent Meeker a écrit : I understand Peters objection to regarding a mere bundle of properties as existent. But I don't understand why one needs a propertyless substrate. Why not just say that some bundles of properties are instantiated and some aren't. I guess Peter needs it for having a notion of (absolute) instantiation. If Peter takes the relative notion of instantiation, which is number theoretical in nature, then he would loose any motivation for his bare matter. Anyway, current physical theory is that there is a material substrate which has properties, e.g. energy, spin, momentum,... I doubt this. Yes current *interpretations* of physical theories do suppose a material substrate, but only for having peaceful sleep (like the collapse non-answer in QM). Anyway, the theories does not presuppose it. They presuppose only mathematical structure and quantitative functor between those mathematical structure and numbers that we can measure in some communicable ways. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Le 26-août-06, à 17:39, Russell Standish a écrit : A non-computationalist will believe that the Multiverse contains conscious processes (if they believe in a Multiverse at all). However, they may disagree that the Multiverse is Turing emulable. No. A computaionalist has no reason to believe that the multiverse is Turing emulable, given that it emerges from the sum of a continuum of histories. That is exactly why the computationalist has to justify the (apparent or not) computability of the physical laws. Cf the white rabbits which must be shown rare. Personally, I am open to the statement that the Multiverse is Turing emulable, even if each history within the MV is definitely not. Does the former statement make me a computationalist? Comp is I a machine. I have already explain why this makes doubtful the physical universe is entirely computable. It is an open question if the uncomputability is entirely restricted to the comp indeterminacy or not. Below our level, it could be that the sum is in average computable. To be a computationalist is just saying yes to a doctor proposing a digital brain substitution. It makes the universe computable only in the case where I am the universe (unlikely, imo). Now I have a problem with the assertion the UD emulates the full Multiverse. This is because, a priori, with comp, by the UDA, the comp-physical laws will emerge from the first person (plural) computations and their The comp-physical laws (indeed the physical ones) are 1st person plural things, and in themselves not Turing emulable. But the ensemble as described by Schroedingers equation [SWE] is deterministic and reversible. Why shouldn't this be Turing emulable in your scheme? It could be. I hope it will be. But I cannot postulate the SWE. Open question. So am I computationalist? On the most obvious level, no. However, considering the above perhaps I am Bruno's sort of computationalist with a very deep level of replacement (ie switching entire realities). OK, that looks like what I was saying. Confused? That would make two of us. Ah? Why? You seemed quite coherent here ... Confused because I don't think that switching entire realities counts as surviving the Yes Doctor experiment. Mathematician like extreme cases. Switching entire realities can be made to get illustration of very low level forms of comp. It gives comp models of quasi non comp. They are not the only one, because the first person associated to the machine will be quite not-comp too in her ways. I do actually subscribe to the view that it is possible to replace my brain with appropriately configured silicon wires, but because of the Maudlin/movie-graph argument, such an artifical brain must be sensitive to quantum randomness. This is a non-computationalist Yes, Doctor proposition. I don't think so. Well, it all depends what you put in the quantum. Quantum randomness with comp could be just the MWI differentiation, or something else. If you believe the quantum randomness is not generable by a classical computer, not even by self-duplication (as opposed to third person simulation), then indeed, it belongs to non-comp, but then you are not saying yes to a doctor who propose to you a digital brain. Or if you prefer: your saying yes does not amount for a complete brain substitution, your brain here contains some part of the environment, but that is not saying yes to the doctor for a brain substitution, but only for a part of it. On a slightly incidental note, I was wondering your thoughts of a possible paradox in your argument. Since COMP predicts COMP-immortality, the doctor may as well make a recording of your brain and put it in the filing cabinet to gather dust, as you will survive in Plato's heaven anyway. Furthermore, you could just say No doctor, and still survive through COMP-immortality. It would seem that Pascal's wager should have you saying No doctor (if the point was to survive terminal illness, anyway). Come on, I have already insist on this. Understanding what really means surviving through the yes doctor = understanding that, in *that* case, we survive without doctor. It is the comp-immortality issue. In general I add the picture that an artificial brain is just a way to make longer the staying in the Samsara, putting the Nirvana for later. Now people does not want immortality. They want just see their children growing, or the next soccer championship. They search quality of life, not quantity. And the comp immortality issue can make death still more unknown, and that can only motivate some for making that Samsara longer. The clinically immortal people, if ever, will not know what they miss, of course. We are talking at the G* level here, cautious. Many propositions in G* (minus G) seems somehow paradoxical. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: evidence blindness
I have the feeling that we are discussing words. Everybody tries how to 'make sense' of them, in a personal taste. Colin expressed it in his usual sophisticated ways, Ben more comprehensively, in many more words. The fact is: we observe the observer (ourselves) and want to describe it to others. The American 'slang' comes to mind: Consciousness Smonciousness - do we get anywhere with it? whether a device 'looks at' or we see if somebody understands what he sees? During the early 90s I gave up thinking ABOUT consciousness, it seemed a futile task with everybody speaking about something else. Now I see a reasonable topic behind it: ourselves - the object with which I struggle lately to identify (for myself about myself, which is the crux of the problem). I see no point to explain it to others: they will not get the 'real' image (only the interpreted (their) 1st person view of me). We all (excuse me to use 1st pers form) are well educated smart people and can say something upon everything. It is a rarity to read: I was wrong you are right - period. (I cannot keep my mouse shut either). Happy debating! John M - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Saturday, August 26, 2006 10:29 PM Subject: Re: evidence blindness Colin, Stathis, Brent, 1. I think we need to distinguish a cybernetic, self-adjusting system like a sidewinder missile, from an inference-processing, self-_redesigning_ system like an intelligent being (well, not redesigning itself biologically, at least as of now). Somehow we're code-unbound to some sufficient extent that, as a result, we can test our representations, interpretations, our systems, habits, and codes of representation and interpretation, rather than leaving that task entirely to biological evolution which tends to punish bad interpretations by removal of the interpreter from the gene pool. There's something more than represented objects (sources), the representations (encodings), and the interpretations (decodings). This something more is the recipient, to whom falls any task of finding redundancies and inconsistencies between the message (or message set) and the rest of the world, such that the recipient -- I'm unsure how to put this -- is the one, or stands as the one, who deals with the existential consequences and for whom tests by subjection to existential consequences are meaningful; the recipient is in a sense a figuration of existential consequences as bearing upon the system's design. It's from a design-testing viewpoint that one re-designs the communication system itself; the recipient role in that sense is the role which includes the role of the evolutionator (as CA's governor might call it). In other words, the recipient is, in logical terms, the recognizer, the (dis-)verifier, the (dis-)corroborator, etc., and verification (using verification as the forest term for the various trees) is that something more than object, representation, interpretation. Okay, so far I'm just trying to distinguish an intelligence from a possibly quite vegetable-level information processs with a pre-programmed menu of feedback-based responses and behavior adjustments. 2. Verificatory bases are nearest us, while the entities laws by appeal to which we explain things, tend to be farther farther from us. I mean, that Colin has a point. There's an explanatory order (or sequence) of being and a verificatory order (sequence) of knowledge. Among the empirical, special sciences (physical, material, biological, human/social), physics comes first in the order of being, the order in which we explain things by appeal to entities, laws, etc., out there. But the order whereby we know things is the opposite; there human/social studies come first, and physics comes last. That is not the usual way in which we order those sciences, but it is the usual way in which we order a lot of maths when we put logic (deductive theory of logic) and structures of order (and conditions for applicability of mathematical induction) before other fields -- that's the ordering according to the bases on which we know things. The point is, that the ultimate explanatory object tends to be what's furthest from us; the ultimate verificatory basis tends to be what's nearest to us (at least within a given family of research fields -- logic and order structures are studies of reason and reason's crackups; extremization problems in analysis seem to be at an opposite pole). Well, in the end, nearest to us means _us_, in our personal experiences. Now, I'm not talking in general about deductively certain knowledge or verification, but just about those bases on which we gain sufficient assurance to act (not to mention believe reports coming from one area in research while not putting too much stock in reports coming from another). We are our own ultimate points of reference. Quine talks somewhere about dispensing with proper names and using a coordinate system
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Le 25-août-06, à 02:31, 1Z a écrit :
Of course it can. Anything can be attached to a bare substrate.
It follows from the UDA that you cannot do that, unless you put
explicitly actual infinite in the bare substrate,
I don't see why.
an then attach your
mind to it (how?).
Why not ? A bare substrate can carry any property whatsoever.
Just because it isn't a logically necessary truth doens't make
it impossible.
If it
were impossible to attach a class of properties to a substrate,
that would constitute a property of the substrate, and so it would not
be bare
I am sorry but you lost me here. Especially when elsewhere you say the
bare substrate can have subjective experiences.
Think of a bare substrate as a blank sheet of paper.
You can writhe anything on it, but what is written
on it is no part of the paper itself.
A bare substrate can carry any properties, but it is bare
in itself.
Bare substrate is compatible with qualia.
How?
There is nothing to stop it being compatible with qualia.
Nothing-but-numbers is not.
Why?
Becuase you would have to identify qualia with mathematical
structures, which no-one can do.
If Platonia is not real in any sense, it cannot
contain observers, persons, appearances, etc.
To exist Platonically is to exist eternally and necessarily. There is
no time or changein Plato's heave.
All partial recursive solutions of Schroedinger or Dirac equation
exists in Platonia, and define through that block description notion
of internal time quite analogous to Everett subjective probabilities.
The A-series cannot be reduced to the B-series.
All the point is that with Church thesis you can do that.
How ?
A program is basically the same as a number.
No it isn't. You don't know which programme is specified
by a number without knowing how the number is to
be interpreted, ie what hardware it is running on.
Not necessarily. The numbers can be interpreted by other numbers. The
closure of the Fi for diagonalization makes this possible. No need for
more than numbers and their additive and multiplicative behavior. I
don't pretend this is obvious.
A process or a computation
is a finite or infinite sequence of numbers (possibly branching, and
defined relatively to a universal numbers).
It is not just a sequence, because a sequence
does not specify counterfactuals.
That is why I said possibly branching.
Branching is not COUNTERfactual either -- the other branches
are as real as this one.
The UD build all such (branching) sequences.
If it exists.
That way, except I say this from the comp assumption, unlike Deutsch
who says this from the quantum assumption. (of course real means
here
generated by the UD)
If it exists.
Even Robinson Arithmetic believes in the UD.
No purely mathematical theory makes an onotological commitment.
Formalists can do Robinson Arithemetic too.
The UD exists like the
square root of two, or any recursively enumerable set.
ie not at all , as far as formalists are concerned.
You do not get ontology for free with maths. It has to be
argued separately.
You exist in a sense related to that existence but not necessarily
identical.
If the square root of two does not exist at all,
I do not exist in relation to it.
It depends also if by I you mean such or such n-person
view of I. But I give all the precise definitions elsewhere.
Because in a mathematics-only universe, qualia have to be identified
with, or reduced to, mathematical structures.
Certainly. They are given by the intensional variant of G* \minus G.
See my SANE paper.
So what is the formula for the taste of lemon ?
If your Platonia is restricted to arithmetic, that would be
a contingent fact.
I just need people believe that what they learn at school in math
remains true even if they forget it.
Truth is not existence.
I use the poetical term platonia mainly when I use freely the
excluded middle, and put no bound on the length of the computations. In
the lobian interview, the belief in platonia is defined by (A v ~A).
That formula is about truth, not existence.
You can take it formally or just accept that closed first order
sentences build with the symbols {S, +, *, 0} are either true or false.
You need this just for using the term conjecture in number theory.
Don't put more in platonia than we need it in the reasoning and in
the working with the theory. When I say that a number exists, I say it
in the usual sense of the mathematicians. My ontology is what Brouwer
called the separable part of mathematics: it is the domain where all
mathematicians agree, except the ultra-intuitionist (a microscopic
non-comp minority).
There is no domain about which all mathematicians agree ontologically.
Platonists think it all exists, intuitionists think some of it exists,
formalists think none of it exists.
There is a large are over which they agree
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Russell Standish writes: On Sat, Aug 26, 2006 at 10:01:36PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Are you suggesting that of two very similar programs, one containing a true random number generator and the other a pseudorandom number generator, only the former could possibly be conscious? I suppose it is possible, but I see no reason to believe that it is true. Stathis Papaioannou I think this is what Maudlin's argument tells us. Is it that so preposterous to you? It seems to me that the idea of a deterministic machine being conscious is assumed to be preposterous, for no good reason. An *obviously* determinstic machine would not pass a Turing test. I believe that I could have acted differently even with identical environmental inputs, which is what the feeling of free will is. However, it is possible that I might *not* have been able to act differently: simply feeling that I could have done so is not evidence that it is the case. Pointing that out is not evidence against. And even if it were the case, due to true quantum randomness or the proliferation of branches in the multiverse leading to the effect of first person indeterminacy, it does not follow that this is necessary for consciousness to occur. I thought I had another argument based on creativity, but it seems pseduo RNG programs can be creative, provided the RNG is cryptic enough. Right, it's the complexity of the program that generates interesting and perhaps intelligent behaviour, not its randomness. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: evidence blindness
Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: a) The belief in a fictional 'objective view'. This is a view that is never had by anyone. I don't think the view metaphior is very helpful. There are more or less objective beliefs. What is subjective about 2+2=4 ? --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Rép: ROADMAP (well, not yet really...
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent meeker writes: But even existence can be defined as a bundle of properties. If I am wondering whether the pencil on my desk exists I can look at it, pick it up, tap it and so on. If my hand passes through it when I try to pick it up then maybe it is just an illusion. Maybe it's a holographic projection - in which case the projection (a certain state of photons) does exist, and other people can see it. Even an illusion must exist as some brain process. I understand Peters objection to regarding a mere bundle of properties as existent. But I don't understand why one needs a propertyless substrate. Why not just say that some bundles of properties are instantiated and some aren't. Anyway, current physical theory is that there is a material substrate which has properties, e.g. energy, spin, momentum,... Saying that there is a material substrate which has certain properties is just a working assumption to facilitate thinking about the real world. It may turn out that if we dig into quarks very deeply there is nothing substantial there at all, but solid matter will still be solid matter, because it is defined by its properties, not by some mysterious raw physical substrate. I am not using the Bare Substrate to explian solidity, which is as you say a matter of properties/behaviour. I am using it to explain contingent existence, and (A series) time. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Rép: ROADMAP (well, not yet really...
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: Saying that there is a material substrate which has certain properties is just a working assumption to facilitate thinking about the real world. It may turn out that if we dig into quarks very deeply there is nothing substantial there at all, but solid matter will still be solid matter, because it is defined by its properties, not by some mysterious raw physical substrate. But I don't think we ever have anything but working assumptions; so we might as well call our best ones real; while keeping in mind we may have to change them. That's just what I meant. If you say, this is *not* just a working assumption, there is some definite, basic substance called reality over and above what we can observe, that is a metaphysical statement which can only be based on something akin to religious faith. By youur definitions, it's a straight choice between metaphysics and solipsism. I choose metaphsyics. We can posit the unobservable to expalint he observable. (BTW: it it is wrong to posit an unobserved substrate, why is it OK to posit unobserved worlds/branches ?) --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Rép: ROADMAP (well, not yet really...
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 25-août-06, à 23:24, 1Z a écrit : AR as a claim about truth is implied by comoputationalism, and is not enough to support the real (=as real as I am) existence of the UD. It is you who come up with a notion of real existence. I am starting with the reality my own existence. That is an *empirical* fact. You are reifying I don't know which theory. That's because it is empirical! Whatever theory explains or doesn't explain my existence, I exist. AR as a claim about existence is enough to support the real (=as real as I am) existence of the UD, but is not impied by computationalism. And my WHOLE point is that it does not have to be that way. But you don't really address the existence question. You just loosely assume it is the same thing as truth. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Russell Standish wrote: On Fri, Aug 25, 2006 at 04:48:01PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: The UD is quite possibly enough to emulate the full Multiverse (this is sort of where Bruno's partail results are pointing), which we know contain conscious processes. Of course a non-computationalist will say that it contains only zombie. A non-computationalist will believe that the Multiverse contains conscious processes (if they believe in a Multiverse at all). Only if they believe they are *in* the multiverse. If they are Platonists, they might believe that Plato's heaven exists and contains abstract counterparts of everything existing concretely on Earth, and much more besides. But as non-computationalists, they need not believe that an abstract algorithm -- even their own abstract counterpart in Heaven -- is conscious. As standard Platonists, they believe *they* are in Earth. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Bruno Marchal wrote: Come on, I have already insist on this. Understanding what really means surviving through the yes doctor = understanding that, in *that* case, we survive without doctor. Without the doctor is computationalism+Platonism, not computationalism. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computationalism and supervenience
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes (quoting Russell Standish): This may be coincidental, but I think not. Your PC is engineered to avoid the effects of chaos to prevent this very thing occurring. Why wouldn't nature do the same thing unless it were deliberately trying to exploit randomness? In nature there's no reason to depend on amplifying quantum randomness - there's plenty of random environmental input to keep our brains from getting stuck in loops. And even without environmental input, unlike digital computers, brains have enough noise to keep from going into loops. Poincare recurrence won't kick in until long after the brain has turned to dust. I'm not sure that's true. As I recall during the sensory-deprivation fad in the late 60's it was reported than people in a sensory-deprivation tank for an extended period (hour+) had their thoughts go into loops. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Rép: ROADMAP (well, not yet really...
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: Saying that there is a material substrate which has certain properties is just a working assumption to facilitate thinking about the real world. It may turn out that if we dig into quarks very deeply there is nothing substantial there at all, but solid matter will still be solid matter, because it is defined by its properties, not by some mysterious raw physical substrate. But I don't think we ever have anything but working assumptions; so we might as well call our best ones real; while keeping in mind we may have to change them. That's just what I meant. If you say, this is *not* just a working assumption, there is some definite, basic substance called reality over and above what we can observe, that is a metaphysical statement which can only be based on something akin to religious faith. Stathis Papaioannou I put working assumption in scare quotes because I think the fact that we can create models of the world that are successful over a wide domain of phenomena is evidence for an underlying reality. It's not conclusive evidence, but reality is more than just an assumption. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: evidence blindness
- Original Message - From: 1Z [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 12:14 PM Subject: Re: evidence blindness Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: a) The belief in a fictional 'objective view'. This is a view that is never had by anyone. Peter replied: I don't think the view metaphior is very helpful. There are more or less objective beliefs. What is subjective about 2+2=4 ? JM: everything. First you had to learn and subjectively accept the meaning of the sign '+' and then the sign '=' without which subjective input you would consider 2 plus 2 as 22 - unless you are also missing the personally and subjectively absorbed meaning of a twoness , in which case you can frame the expression as an abstract picture. We are born naked and with a blank (almost) mind, not with a PhD in math. John M (I agree that the vie metaphor is not very informative.) --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Rép: ROADMAP (well, not yet really...
- Original Message - From: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Brent Meeker everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 7:52 AM Subject: RE: Rép: ROADMAP (well, not yet really... Brent Meeker writes: Saying that there is a material substrate which has certain properties is just a working assumption to facilitate thinking about the real world. It may turn out that if we dig into quarks very deeply there is nothing substantial there at all, but solid matter will still be solid matter, because it is defined by its properties, not by some mysterious raw physical substrate. But I don't think we ever have anything but working assumptions; so we might as well call our best ones real; while keeping in mind we may have to change them. SP reply: That's just what I meant. If you say, this is *not* just a working assumption, there is some definite, basic substance called reality over and above what we can observe, that is a metaphysical statement which can only be based on something akin to religious faith. Stathis Papaioannou JM: Brent can call it anything he likes, as long as he does not consider it a reality and Stathis can call it anything he likes, as long as he does not considers it a faith. I work with narratives - consider them working assumptions (hypotheses) with an open mind for getting contradictions and so changing their conditions. This prevents me from calling it reality and developing a faith in it, which (both) assign absolute truth to the idea(s) involved. John M --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Rép: ROADMAP (well, not yet really...
1Z wrote: AR as a claim about truth is implied by comoputationalism, and is not enough to support the real (=as real as I am) existence of the UD. It is you who come up with a notion of real existence. I am starting with the reality my own existence. That is an *empirical* fact. You are reifying I don't know which theory. That's because it is empirical! Whatever theory explains or doesn't explain my existence, I exist. AR as a claim about existence is enough to support the real (=as real as I am) existence of the UD, but is not impied by computationalism. And my WHOLE point is that it does not have to be that way. But you don't really address the existence question. You just loosely assume it is the same thing as truth. Could I appeal to Bruno at this juncture to address this point directly?! At several places in our own dialogues, Bruno, you've implied that your 'number theology' was an 'as if' postulate, because (if I've understood) you are concerned to see how much can be explained by starting from this particular set of assumptions. I don't believe that you are claiming they are 'true' in an exclusive sense, rather that they are enlightening. Is this a correct interpretation of your position, or is there further nuance? David Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 25-août-06, à 23:24, 1Z a écrit : AR as a claim about truth is implied by comoputationalism, and is not enough to support the real (=as real as I am) existence of the UD. It is you who come up with a notion of real existence. I am starting with the reality my own existence. That is an *empirical* fact. You are reifying I don't know which theory. That's because it is empirical! Whatever theory explains or doesn't explain my existence, I exist. AR as a claim about existence is enough to support the real (=as real as I am) existence of the UD, but is not impied by computationalism. And my WHOLE point is that it does not have to be that way. But you don't really address the existence question. You just loosely assume it is the same thing as truth. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: evidence blindness
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Original Message - From: 1Z [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Everything List everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 12:14 PM Subject: Re: evidence blindness Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: a) The belief in a fictional 'objective view'. This is a view that is never had by anyone. Peter replied: I don't think the view metaphior is very helpful. There are more or less objective beliefs. What is subjective about 2+2=4 ? JM: everything. First you had to learn and subjectively accept the meaning of the sign '+' and then the sign '=' without which subjective input you would consider 2 plus 2 as 22 - unless you are also missing the personally and subjectively absorbed meaning of a twoness , in which case you can frame the expression as an abstract picture. Learning hwat 2+2=4 means , means learnig what everyone *else* means by it. Subjectivity doens't stop me thinking 2+2=22. It might even make me. Subjective does *not* mean performed by a subject --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: evidence blindness
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We all (excuse me to use 1st pers form) are well educated smart people and can say something upon everything. It is a rarity to read: I was wrong you are right - period. John You're right! Every time I post on these topics I *know* I'm wrong: I just don't know how specifically, but I keep doing it in the hope that someone will show me. Trouble is, there's something about this area that resists us - we seem doomed to come at it all wrong (particularly in those moments when we think we've got it right!) It's the struggle that fascinates us, I suppose. David I have the feeling that we are discussing words. Everybody tries how to 'make sense' of them, in a personal taste. Colin expressed it in his usual sophisticated ways, Ben more comprehensively, in many more words. The fact is: we observe the observer (ourselves) and want to describe it to others. The American 'slang' comes to mind: Consciousness Smonciousness - do we get anywhere with it? whether a device 'looks at' or we see if somebody understands what he sees? During the early 90s I gave up thinking ABOUT consciousness, it seemed a futile task with everybody speaking about something else. Now I see a reasonable topic behind it: ourselves - the object with which I struggle lately to identify (for myself about myself, which is the crux of the problem). I see no point to explain it to others: they will not get the 'real' image (only the interpreted (their) 1st person view of me). We all (excuse me to use 1st pers form) are well educated smart people and can say something upon everything. It is a rarity to read: I was wrong you are right - period. (I cannot keep my mouse shut either). Happy debating! John M - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Saturday, August 26, 2006 10:29 PM Subject: Re: evidence blindness Colin, Stathis, Brent, 1. I think we need to distinguish a cybernetic, self-adjusting system like a sidewinder missile, from an inference-processing, self-_redesigning_ system like an intelligent being (well, not redesigning itself biologically, at least as of now). Somehow we're code-unbound to some sufficient extent that, as a result, we can test our representations, interpretations, our systems, habits, and codes of representation and interpretation, rather than leaving that task entirely to biological evolution which tends to punish bad interpretations by removal of the interpreter from the gene pool. There's something more than represented objects (sources), the representations (encodings), and the interpretations (decodings). This something more is the recipient, to whom falls any task of finding redundancies and inconsistencies between the message (or message set) and the rest of the world, such that the recipient -- I'm unsure how to put this -- is the one, or stands as the one, who deals with the existential consequences and for whom tests by subjection to existential consequences are meaningful; the recipient is in a sense a figuration of existential consequences as bearing upon the system's design. It's from a design-testing viewpoint that one re-designs the communication system itself; the recipient role in that sense is the role which includes the role of the evolutionator (as CA's governor might call it). In other words, the recipient is, in logical terms, the recognizer, the (dis-)verifier, the (dis-)corroborator, etc., and verification (using verification as the forest term for the various trees) is that something more than object, representation, interpretation. Okay, so far I'm just trying to distinguish an intelligence from a possibly quite vegetable-level information processs with a pre-programmed menu of feedback-based responses and behavior adjustments. 2. Verificatory bases are nearest us, while the entities laws by appeal to which we explain things, tend to be farther farther from us. I mean, that Colin has a point. There's an explanatory order (or sequence) of being and a verificatory order (sequence) of knowledge. Among the empirical, special sciences (physical, material, biological, human/social), physics comes first in the order of being, the order in which we explain things by appeal to entities, laws, etc., out there. But the order whereby we know things is the opposite; there human/social studies come first, and physics comes last. That is not the usual way in which we order those sciences, but it is the usual way in which we order a lot of maths when we put logic (deductive theory of logic) and structures of order (and conditions for applicability of mathematical induction) before other fields -- that's the ordering according to the bases on which we know things. The point is, that the ultimate explanatory object tends to be what's furthest from us; the ultimate verificatory basis tends to be what's nearest to us (at least within a
Re: computationalism and supervenience
On Sun, Aug 27, 2006 at 09:31:15PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: It seems to me that the idea of a deterministic machine being conscious is assumed to be preposterous, for no good reason. I believe that I could have acted differently even with identical environmental inputs, which is what the feeling of free will is. However, it is possible that I might *not* have been able to act differently: simply feeling that I could have done so is not evidence that it is the case. And even if it were the case, due to true quantum randomness or the proliferation of branches in the multiverse leading to the effect of first person indeterminacy, it does not follow that this is necessary for consciousness to occur. It is true that Maudlin's argument depends on the absurdity of a recording being conscious. If you can accept a recording as being conscious, then you would have trouble in accepting the conclusion that counterfactuals are relevant. As regards to free will, in the multiverse we do have genuine free will, not just the illusion of it. As to what this has to do with consciousness, I'm not sure, except that free will and self awareness are complementary concepts (this argument is developed more in my book), and self-awareness appears to be necessary for consciousness to ensure the anthropic principle works. A house of cards argument. I would not be relying upon free will as being necessary for consciousness. I thought I had another argument based on creativity, but it seems pseduo RNG programs can be creative, provided the RNG is cryptic enough. Right, it's the complexity of the program that generates interesting and perhaps intelligent behaviour, not its randomness. And complexity is defined with respect to an observer of bounded computational power. For any observer, a sufficiently crytpic algorithmic number stream will be indistinguishable from random. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
A question about the Uncertainty Measure
Hi Folks, I have been reading Bruno's wonderful Elsavier paper and have been wondering about this notion of a Uncertainty measure. Does not the existence of such a measure demand the existence of a breaking of the perfect symmetry that is obvious in a situation when all possible outcomes are equally likely? Consider an infinite Hilbert space and a normed state vector on it. What is the analogue of a sense of direction? Onward! Stephen --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computationalism and supervenience
Bruno Marchal writes: Are you suggesting that of two very similar programs, one containing a true random number generator and the other a pseudorandom number generator, only the former could possibly be conscious? I suppose it is possible, but I see no reason to believe that it is true. It *has* been proved (by diagonalization) that there exist some problem in number theory which are soluble by a machine using a random oracle, although no machine with pseudorandom oracle can sole the problem. That's interesting: does this imply it is possible to test a number sequence to see if it is random? KURTZ S. A., 1983, On the Random Oracle Hypothesis, Information and Control, 57, pp. 40-47. But it is not relevant given that self-duplication is already a way to emulate true random oracle. Do you mean by this an algorithm that explores every possible branch, by analogy with the MWI of QM? Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computationalism and supervenience
Bruno marchal writes: Le 26-août-06, à 16:35, 1Z a écrit : And since the computer may be built and programmed in an arbitrarily complex way, because any physical system can be mapped onto any computation with the appropriate mapping rules, That is not a fact. It would make sense, indeed, only if the map is computable, and in this case I agree it has not been proved. Again UDA makes such question non relevant, given that the physical is secondary with respect to the intelligible. Any computation that can be implemented on a physical system A can be mapped onto another physical system B, even if B has fewer distinct states than A, since states can be reused for parallel processing. If B is some boring sysstem such as the ticking of a clock then the work (not sure what the best word to use here is) of implementing the computation lies in the mapping rules, not in the physical activity. The mapping rules are not actually implemented: they can exist written on a piece of paper so that an external observer can refer to them and see what the computer is up to, or potentially interact with it. And if the computer is conscious because someone can potentially talk to it using the piece of paper, ther is no reason why it should not also be conscious when the piece of paper is destroyed, or everyone who understands the code on the piece of paper dies. In the limiting case, the platonic existence of the mapping rule contains all of the computation and the physical activity is irrelevant - arriving at the same position you do. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
