On 23 Oct 2010, at 23:37, Colin Hales wrote:
I am pretty sure that there is a profound misinterpretation and/or
unrecognized presupposition deeply embedded in the kinds of
discussion of which Van F and your reply and Bruno's fits. It's so
embedded that there appears to be no way that respondents can type
words from a perspective in which the offered view may be wrong or a
sidebar in a bigger but unrecognised picture. It's very hard to
write anything to combat view X when the only words which ever get
written are those presuming X, and X is assuming a position of
explaining everything, yet doesn't.
It would help if you could be more explicit. Likewize I insist that
people separate as clearly as possible what they assume (the theory),
and what they argue about in that theory. This is even more necessary
in fundamental interdisciplinary studies where usual default
assumption (like the existence of a basic or primitive physical
universe is no more a default assumption).
In the long run I predict that:
1) The 'many worlds' do not exist and are a product of
presuppositions about scientific description not yet understood by
the proponents of MWI.
I guess you mean that people will stop to believe or defend the 'many
world'. I am not sure so many believe in it today, including among
computationalists or even quantum mechanicians. yet I am willing to
say that QM implies the many worlds, and that mechanism implies many-
worlds too, although I leave undefined the term 'worlds'. It might be
states, dreams, histories, etc.
2) QM will be recognized as merely an appearance of the world, not
the world as it is.
Here I agree with what Brent Meeker told you. 'Most' physicists can
agree with that. And then this is already a theorem in the mechanist
theory of mind, where the whole physical reality (independently of any
theory which describes it) is a "surface" of a deeper reality, which
is plausibly 'just' arithtmetic (as I have argued often).
3) The universe that exists now is.the only universe that exists at
the moment.
What do you mean by "universe"?
And what do you mean by "exists".
What is your theory?
In 'science' we just never know the truth per se. We can only offer
'theories' (assumptions, assertion+interrogation marks), and reason in
the theories, find criteria of refutability, etc.
Despite this, the "many worlds" are explorable, physically by
'virtual matter' behaving as if they existed (by an appropriate
entity made of the stuff of our single universe)
So you assume that comp is false, and that QM is false. Like Penrose.
OK?
4) The MWI has arisen as a result of a human need to make certain
mathematics right, not the need to explain the natural world.
The MWI arise with Quantum Mechanics, and the goal was to understand
'natural phenomena' like the black body radiation, the specter of the
hydrogen atom, etc.
But people where "religiously" shocked by those many-worlds, or
superposition of states, and have assume that they (the observer or
the measuring apparatus) was collapsing the many-worlds into a unique
work. But this is abandoned because it introduce a distinction between
observer and observed which has fail all attempt of theorizing, and it
makes quantum cosmology senseless, quantum computing hard to explain,
etc.
This, in the longer term will be recognised as a form of religiosity
which will be seen to imbue the physicists of this era, who are
preselected by the education system for prowess in manupulating
symbols. The difference between this behaviour and explaining the
natural world is not understood by the physicists/mathematicians of
this era.
I am not sure of that. Quantum mechanicians have been used QM a lot,
without entering into the discussion on the foundation or on the
interpretation of QM. They are prone to use the equation and the
symbols in an instrumental way, like if QM was just a prediction tools.
I have a book on QM by a guy who said that he has taught QM for 17
years, without ever taking any debate on QM seriously, not even EPR.
But when Bell proved his theorem (inequality violation) he 'woke up'
and realized that QM was indeed very weird and hard to interpret in
any ways.
But even today, for most, QM is just a tool to build transistors and
atomic bombs ...
(In contrast, I regard myself as a scientist .... an explainer of
things-natural ...which I claim as different to being a physicists/
mathematician in this strange era we inhabit)
Physicists and mathematicians disagree a lot among each others so this
is not saying a lot.
I follow Deutsch on an important point: it is not capital that our
theories are true, usually they are false, but we have to take them
seriously if only to be able to see them refuted when they are in
contradiction with some facts.
5) COMP is false.... a computer instantiation of rules of how a
world appears to be, and a world are not the same thing.
Do you mean that the brain is not emulable by a computer? Are you
saying that someone with an artificial brain will be an inanimate
corpse or a zombie? There are many different ways in which comp can be
false.
6) COMP is false.... a computer instantiation of rules of how a
brain appears to be is not a brain.
At all level of description? This entails that QM is false, or that
the human body hamiltonian is described by a non computable object.
7) Corollary: scientific description of how the world appears and
what the world is made of are not the same description _
This seems obvious at the start, except that a computationalist
believe that, concerning his mental process, a brain can be
substituted by a computer, for some level of description.
The idea that reality is something beyond the appearances is the main
tenet of Platonism. This is how the greeks discovered pure mathematics.
and_ computer instantiations of either set is not a world.
Again, that seems obvious to me. Even with comp, 'worlds' are
different from their mathematical description. Most physical-type of
'worlds' does not even exist primitively but are first person plural
contructs by infinite set of Löbian numbers (assuming my brain is
Turing emulable).
Typically, the comp 'worlds' are not computable objects, like the W, M
sequences you can typically live, in the self-duplication experiment,
is not a computable sequence.
8) The issue that causes scientific descriptions (like QM) to be
confused with actual reality is a cultural problem in science, not a
technical problem with what science has/has not discovered.
But QM in particular is not so easily interpreted. Discrepancies
exists even among those who understand that MW is the literal
interpretation of QM. Few have understood or even take the time to see
that QM cannot be the final theory, given that if we do Everett
embedding of the physicist in the physical world/universal-wave, we
have to prolonged that embedding to the mathematician into arithmetic.
9) That most of the readers of this list will stare at this list of
statements and be as mystified about how I can possibly think they
are right as I am about those readers' view that they can't be right.
BTW I have a paper coming out in Jan 2011 in 'Journal of Machine
Consciousness' in which I think I may have proved COMP false as a
'law of nature' ... here in this universe, (or any _actual_
universe, really). At the least I think the argument is very
close....and I have provided the toolkit for its final demise, which
someone else might use to clinch the deal.
This leads to my final observation:
10) I think the realization of the difference between 'wild-type'
computation (actual natural entities interacting) and 'artificial
computation' (a computer made of the actual entities interacting,
waving its components around in accordance with rules /symbols
defined by a third party) will become mainstream in the long run.
What are you assuming? How do you define 'natural' and 'artificial',
and how do you distinguish them?
---------------------
It's quite possible that the COMP of the Bruno kind is actually
right , but presented into the wrong epistemic domain and not
understood as such.
All what I say is that if Digital Mechanism (the idea that brain works
like computer at some level of description) is assumed, then it
follows that physics is a very special and precise branch of
arithmetical self-reference. Advantage: we get a testable theory of
quanta *and* an indirectly testable theory of qualia.
Time will tell. The way the Bruno-style' COMP can be right is for it
to make testable predictions of the outward appearance of the
mechanism for delivery of phenomenal consciousness in brain material
NC (natural computation) and AC (artificial computation) is the
crucial distinction.
OK, but what is that distinction?
I don't think the QM/MWI proponent can conceive of that distinction.
That is bizarre because quantum computation *can* be used to put
forward the idea that "nature" does not compute like a human being.
That is akin to Landauer-Deutsch type of idea of "revising" Church
thesis, making computation a physical process.
But COMP implies that nature will, from our perspective looks like
making infinities of computations below our substitution level. We
already know that comp itself implies a crucial distinction between
how our brains works (at the substitution level) and how matter
(appearence of matter) can appear below. I recall the slogan: IF I am
describable as a machine, then everything else is NOT describable as a
machine.
Perhaps it might be helpful if those readers try and conceive of
such a situation, just as an exercise..
You might explain us what you mean by artificial and natural, and what
is the difference. And what is your theory/assumption?
Best,
Bruno
Bruno Marchal wrote:
HI Stephen,
Just a short reply to your post to Colin, and indirectly to your
last posts.
On 22 Oct 2010, at 10:53, Stephen Paul King wrote:
Dear Colin,
Let me put you are ease, van Fraassen has sympathies with the
frustrations that you have mentioned here and I share them as
well, but let's look closely at the point that you make here as I
think that it does to the heart of several problems related to the
notion of an observer. OTOH, it seems to me that you are
suggesting that the objective view is just a form of consensus
between all of those subjective view, no? Also, the notion of a
measurement is discussed in detail in the paper. I wonder if you
read far enough to see it...If we buy the computationalist
interpretation of the mind then there is nothing necessarily
special about a human brain; the discussions about computational
universality give us a good argument for that.
OK. So we agree on the basic. But if you take the comp hypothesis
seriously enough, then you might understand that assuming set
theory or quantum mechanics is either contradictory (worst case) or
redundant.
Thanks for the van Fraassen paper. I have already argue that the
"modal interpretation" of QM is a form of MWI, and that paper
confirms my feeling. Not sure it is really new if you read with
some attention the entire thesis by Everett.
First of all we need to admit that if we are to be consistent
with the mathematical prescriptions of quantum mechanics, each and
every one of those scientists and table lamps, as physical
objects, have a wave function of sorts associated with them and,
assuming that they could interact, are entangled with each other.
“Being in the universe” implies to me that that there is a sharing
of context and maybe even a common basis of sorts. But is that all
there is to it? Hardly! being a table lamp, when considered from
the quantum perspective is not so simple. We cannot assume that
there is any definiteness of properties in a sharp sense. When we
consider a Table Lamp or any other physical object in isolation at
best we have a superposition of possible properties, and what is
the outcome of measurement is given in terms of restrictions upon
those possibilities by the possible properties and modes of
possible interaction of all of the tables, chairs, beds, etc. that
are in the room with that table lamp and beyond. We cannot assume
that what something ‘is’ is somehow invariant with respect to
changes in the interactions that it has with all of the other
objects. This is a very subtle point that need to be carefully
considered.
The notion of a Table lamp in isolation literally dissolves
into nothing when we remove all those other objects upon which its
definiteness of state persists. The conflation that has persistent
for more than 2000 years is the idea that object in themselves are
what they are. I am reminded of Einstein’s quit to Bohr that the
moon would still exists if he was not looking at it. My response
to Einstein is that he is not the only one interacting with the
moon. We need to take the whole web of interactions into account
when we consider the definiteness of properties otherwise we are
only considering bare existence and that tell us nothing at all
about properties.
It should be obvious, if you get the UDA, that physical reality
does not have a "view of nowhere" or an ultimate third person
describable reality. Mechanism makes the physical reality a first
person plural reality, with the person played by the Löbian machine
or Löbian number. There is still a boolean ultimate third person
view available: arithmetic (or combinators, lamda calculus, etc.).
And this contradicts nothing written by Pratt, who is indeed a
little less naïve than those defending the identity thesis. But
Pratt scratches only the surface of the mind-body problem: he
identifies the physical with the set-theoretical (which is not so
much senseless actually, but far from leading to extracting QM from
numbers), nor does he tackle any problem in the cognitive science
(qualia, undefinability, rôle of consciousness, etc.). But his SET/
SET^op duality is rather natural for a category theory minded
attempt to go toward a formulation of the mind-body problem. His
duality is also 100% mathematical a priori, which makes him
mathematicalist like Tegmark, and like comp (with some nuances).
In november I will have a bit more time, and I could add something
on both van Fraassen-Rovelli and Pratt.
Best,
Bruno
From: Colin Hales
Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2010 10:35 PM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: A paper by Bas C. van Fraassen
Hi,
Looks like and interesting read.... but the initial gloss-over I
had revealed all the usual things that continue to frustrate and
exasperate me....
Why won't people that attend to these issues do some
neuroscience...where the only example of a real "observer" exists.?
Why does characterising the actual reality get continually
conflated with characterisation of the reality as it appears to
the observer (with a brain/scientist observer I mean)?
Why does scientific measurement continue to get conflated with
scientific observation which continues to get conflated with
scientific evidence which then gets confusedly applied to systems
of description which are conflated with actual reality?
There _is_ a view from nowhere!
It is acquired with objectivity, which originates in a totally
subjective capacity delivered by the observer's brain material.
In a room of 100 scientists in an auditorium there are 100
subjective views and ZERO objective views. There is ONE 'as-if' '/
virtual objective view which is defined by agreement between
multiple observers. But no "measurement" is going on. There's 100
entities 'BEING' in the universe.
The Van Frassen discussion seems to conflate 'being' somewhere and
'observing'. A table lamp gets to BE. It is intimately part of its
surrounds and has a unique perspective on everything that is 'not
table lamp', but the lamp NOT observing in the sense scientists
observe (with a brain). A brain is in the universe in the same way
a table lamp is in the universe - yet the organisation of the
brain (same kind of atoms/molecules) results in a capacity to
scientifically observe. This 'observe' and the 'observe' that is
literally BEING a table lamp, are not the same thing! Grrrrrrrrrrrr!
This conflation has been going on for 100 years.
I vote we make neuroscience mandatory for all physicists. Then
maybe one day they'll really understand what 'OBSERVATION' is and
the difference between it and 'BEING', 'MEASUREMENT and 'EVIDENCE'
and _then_ what you can do with evidence.
There. Vent is complete. That's better. Phew!
:-)
Colin Hales.
Stephen Paul King wrote:
Hi Friends,
Please check out the following paper by Bas C. van Fraassen
for many ideas that have gone into my posts so far, in particular
the argument against the idea of a “view from nowhere”.
www.princeton.edu/~fraassen/abstract/Rovelli_sWorld-FIN.pdf
Onward!
Stephen
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