date:20110711



On 11 Jul 2011, at 02:55, Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:


I'm sorry Bruno, but you are so intractably mired in your own
presuppositions that you'll never get this.


Rhetoric.




Clearly you have never been
roughly and uncompromisingly educated by the natural world, as I  
have as

an engineer.


Rhetoric.




Consider the statement I am machine. This is totally
loaded with presupposition. Like agreeing on the meaning of the word
machine has any bearing on the problem at hand. No amount of playing
about with any words like 'machine' or 'computation' has any relevance
to the problem.


I am machine is not loaded with presupposition. It *is* the  
presupposition that I study the consequences of.
It is also ambiguous, and that is why I make it clearer: by Church  
thesis + the existence of a level such that  yes doctor.








I choose to have nothing to do with any of it. I choose to presuppose
nothing.

This is an empirical matter.


So you presuppose a empirical world. Me too. But you suppose that it  
is basic or primitive. That is Aristotle theology, and I have  
explained this in contradiction with the comp. hyp.
But then you criticize the comp. hyp., and that makes you coherent,  
except that you are using it at some other level.






In the entire history of technology development, the artificial
instantiation of a natural phenomenon, the actual natural phenomenon  
was

retained. FIRE, WHEEL/TERRESTRIAL TRANSPORT, FLIGHT etc etc etc

Except once

...In the artificial instantiation of COGNITION, the 100% chosen
technique is to throw the physics away...replacing it with the physics
(atoms) of a computer, yet the natural phenomenon is still expected.  
No
amount of discussion about abstract meanings of words like machine  
and

the logical conclusions reached in unproven, irrelevant presupposed
domains of abstractions of physics changes that.


Read the papers, and ask question. Here you just witness your  
prejudices, and your absence of study.






Where it once may have been plausible that 'information' manipulation
might be a useful abstraction in AGI, this is now gone.


?




Empirically.
This is because the EM fields are no longer epiphenomenal. They have  
an

active role.


EM are Turing emulable. You just make the level lower. So, unless you  
make precise that you believe in

- a non Turing emulable component in the EM
- different from the what is already make non Turing emulable by comp,
you are just begging the question.





Eliminate/replace them with noise like a computer and you
eliminate cognition like computed flame is not flame.


Right. But irrelevant.





Anastassiou, C. A., Perin, R., Markram, H.,  Koch, C. (2011).  
Ephaptic

coupling of cortical neurons. Nature Neuroscience, 14(2), 217-223.

Frohlich, F.,  McCormick, D. A. (2010). Endogenous Electric Fields  
May

Guide Neocortical Network Activity. NEURON, 67(1), 129-143.

The physics of cognition itself is a little less obvious than the
physics of flames and flight. This does not entail that it is any more
negligible in artificial cognition than flight physics was to  
artificial

flying.

This new reality does not mean that an AGI cannot be computational!  
What

it means is that you will never prove what can be replaced by
computation without artificially building the physics of cognition and
then seeing what can be computed without eliminating/degrading the
cognition.


Your use of the term physics is like the use of God in gap explanation.





A theory of combustion resulted from playing with combustion. Not the
other way around.
A theory of flight resulted from flying. Not the other way around.
A theory of cognition and general intelligence will result from  
building

artificial general intelligence, not the other way around.

We now know what is going on in a brain to the point of being able to
replicate it.


How could we know?




Semiconductor chip feature sizes approach those of the
brain's feature sizes (insofar as they are cognition-relevant). The  
game

has changed because of empirical outcomes. The relative importance of
the contributors to cognition have changed. In the last year.

Such changes happen from time to time. I for one am really enthused.


Nice. But unless you believe in non Turing emulable mind, the comp's  
consequence continue to follow.
The UD reasoning does not depend on the level of substitution, so none  
of the papers you mention change the fact that the physical science/ 
reality is a consequence of arithmetic, once comp is assumed.


Bruno



http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

On 10 Jul 2011, at 17:59, meekerdb wrote:

On 7/9/2011 9:58 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

Sure, it would be great to have improved synthetic bodies, but I have
no reason to believe that depth and quality of consciousness is
independent from substance. If I have an artificial heart, that
artificiality may not affect me as much as having an artificial leg,
however, an artificial brain means an artificial me, and that's a
completely different story. It's like writing a computer program to
replace computer users. You might find out that digital circuits are
unconscious by definition.

But analog ones are? It is generally thought that any analog
circuit can be reproduced at any give level of precision by a
digital circuit.

You can build analog circuit which are not Turing emulable, but it
depends on your theory of computation on the reals, which lacks the
equivalent of Church thesis, so that there is no unanimity of what
this is, and if that exists in nature. I am agnostic.

Bruno's idea depends on this being true.

Which idea? I just show that comp makes physics necessarily a branch
of math, and precisely a branch of universal machine theology. I am
not saying that comp is true or false. That is the job of philosophers.

It is questionable though because it may be the case that spacetime
is truly a continuum: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128204.200-distant-light-hints-at-size-of-spacetime-grains.html
It's hard to believe though that the continuous nature of spacetime
would effect the function of brains. However, it would prevent the
digital simulation of large regions.

Comp explains that physics is not Turing emulable. Indeed, today,
physics seems still too much Turing emulable compared to what we can
extract intuitively from comp. But comp is not refuted by that fact,
because the real extraction of physics must obeys to the self-
referential constraints, which shows the question being highly non
trivial.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.



On 11 Jul 2011, at 04:17, Craig Weinberg wrote:


All right, but then honesty should force you to do the same with
computer ships. Unless you presuppose the molecules not being Turing
emulable.


Computer chips don't behave in the same way though.


That is just a question of choice of level of description. Unless you  
believe in substantial infinite souls.





Your computer
can't become an ammoniaholic or commit suicide.


Why?




The problem with
emulating molecules is that we are only emulating the side of the coin
we can see.


That is true.




The other side is blank and that's the side that
interiority and awareness is made of. We can add chips to our brain
though, or build a computer out of cells.


The other side is well explained in the comp theory.







Any mechanical arrangement defining a self-referentially correct
machine automatically leads the mechanical arrangement to distinguish
third person point of view and first person points of view. The
machine already have a theory of qualia, with an explanation of why
qualia and quanta seems different.


If you are saying that the machine may already have it's own qualia,
then sure, I agree, I just don't think it will be our qualia. I think
that our experience of yellow, for example, probably comes through
cellular experiences with photosynthesis and probably has not evolved
much since the Pre-Cambrian. Of course that's a guess. It could be a
mammalian thing or a hominid thing that arises out of the experience
of elaborations throughout the cortex. In order for a silicon chip to
generate that experience of yellow, I think it would have to learn to
speak chlorophyll and hemoglobin.


No problem. That would mean that the substitution level is low. It  
does no change the conclusion: the physical world is a projection of  
the mind, and the mind is an inside view of arithmetic (or comp is  
false, that is, at all level and you need substantial souls). But we  
don't even find a substance for explaining matter, so that seems a  
regression to me. Anyway, it is inconsistent with the comp assumption.








I agree. But this is a consequence of comp, and it leads to a
derivation of physics from computer science/machine's theology. No
need to introduce any physics (old or new).


It could be that, but the transparency of comp to physical realities
and semantic consistencies are pretty convincing to me.


It is not.




I would rather
think that I am feeling what my fingers are feeling then imagining
that feeling is just a mathematical illusion. Mathematics seem
abstract and yellow seems concrete.


But computer science explains why and how such feelings occur.






That's certainly *looks* like the arithmetical plotinian physics.
Again, you can extract it (or have to extract it for getting the
correct quanta/qualia) from computer science (actually from just
addition and multiplication and a small amount of logic).



I don't really do that. I don't think that consciousness can be
created or be synthetic. It is not the product of any machine,  
natural

or artificial. Such machines only filter consciousness and select
relative partial realities. My main point is that this is testable.  
It

already explains non locality, indeterminacy, non-cloning of matter,
and some formal aspect of quantum mechanics.


Sorry, not sure what you mean. Probably over my head. What is it that
explains non-cloning of matter? comp? Give me some details and I'll
try to understand.


Read http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html

If you get the six or seven first steps, it is an easy exercise to  
show that matter cannot be cloned. Ask if you have any difficulty.






That is too vague. It can make sense in the computationalist theory.
yet the brain itself is a construct of the mind. Not the human mind
but the relative experience of the many universal numbers/
computational histories. This follows from the digital mechanist
hypothesis.


Again, I'm not familiar enough with the theories. It sounds like
you're saying that the brain is made of numbers. Maybe? Not sure it
makes a difference?


The brain is not made of numbers.

The belief in brains (and atoms) entirely results from infinities of  
number relations.


Or comp is false.

My point is just that computer science makes this enough precise so  
that comp can be tested.


Bruno





On Jul 10, 11:32 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

On 10 Jul 2011, at 15:20, Craig Weinberg wrote:


You might find out that molecules in brain are unconscious too.



The fact that consciousness changes predictably when different
molecules are introduced to the brain, and that we are able to  
produce

different molecules by changing the content of our consciousness
subjectively suggests to me that it makes sense to give molecules  
the

benefit of the doubt.


All right, but then honesty should force you to do the same with
computer ships. Unless you presuppose the molecules not being

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

 That's not true.  It's dead precisely because it doesn't have the same
 organization.

No, it's dead because the organization means something specific to the
molecular participants below and the biological community above. If it
were just a matter of organization, then there should be no particular
problem with reviving dead organisms, and we would make no more
distinction between our own life and death and the cold and warm
temperature of an inanimate object. Organization does not explain
subjective entanglement. Desire, terror, rage, hysterical laughter,
etc. Organization, by itself, has no significance.


On Jul 10, 3:05 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
 On 7/9/2011 5:42 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

  A living cell is more than the sum of it's parts. A dead cell is made
  of the same materials with the same organization as a living cell,

 That's not true.  It's dead precisely because it doesn't have the same
 organization.

 Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

2011-07-11 Thread Evgenii Rudnyi


On 10.07.2011 17:32 Bruno Marchal said the following:


On 10 Jul 2011, at 15:20, Craig Weinberg wrote:


...



Let's take the color yellow for example. If you build a brain out
of ideal ping pong balls, or digital molecular emulations, does it
perceive yellow from 580nm oscillations of electromagnetism
automatically, or does it see yellow when it's own emulated units
are vibrating on the functionally proportionate scale to itself?
Does the ping pong ball brain see it's own patterns of collisions
as yellow or does yellow = electromagnetic ~580nm and nothing else.
At what point does the yellow come in? Where did it come from? Were
there other options? Can there ever be new colors? From where? What
is the minimum mechanical arrangement required to experience
yellow?


Any mechanical arrangement defining a self-referentially correct
machine automatically leads the mechanical arrangement to distinguish
third person point of view and first person points of view. The
machine already have a theory of qualia, with an explanation of why
qualia and quanta seems different.



Bruno,

Could you please make a reference to a good text for dummies about that 
statement? (But please not in French)


Best wishes,

Evgenii
http://blog.rudnyi.ru

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.



On 11 Jul 2011, at 14:33, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:


On 10.07.2011 17:32 Bruno Marchal said the following:


On 10 Jul 2011, at 15:20, Craig Weinberg wrote:


...



Let's take the color yellow for example. If you build a brain out
of ideal ping pong balls, or digital molecular emulations, does it
perceive yellow from 580nm oscillations of electromagnetism
automatically, or does it see yellow when it's own emulated units
are vibrating on the functionally proportionate scale to itself?
Does the ping pong ball brain see it's own patterns of collisions
as yellow or does yellow = electromagnetic ~580nm and nothing else.
At what point does the yellow come in? Where did it come from? Were
there other options? Can there ever be new colors? From where? What
is the minimum mechanical arrangement required to experience
yellow?


Any mechanical arrangement defining a self-referentially correct
machine automatically leads the mechanical arrangement to distinguish
third person point of view and first person points of view. The
machine already have a theory of qualia, with an explanation of why
qualia and quanta seems different.



Bruno,

Could you please make a reference to a good text for dummies about  
that statement? (But please not in French)


I am afraid the only text which explains this in simple way is my  
sane04 paper(*). It is in the second part (the interview of the  
machine), and it uses Smullyan popular explanation of the logic of  
self-reference (G) from his Forever Undecided popular book.


Popular attempts to explain Gödel's theorem are often incorrect, and  
the whole matter is very delicate. Philosophers, like Lucas, or  
physicists, like Penrose, illustrate that it is hard to explain  
Gödel's result to non logicians. I'm afraid the time has not yet come  
for popular explanation of machine's theology.


Let me try a short attempt. By Gödel's theorem we know that for any  
machine, the set of true propositions about the machine is bigger than  
the set of the propositions provable by the machine. Now, Gödel  
already knew that a machine can prove that very fact about herself,  
and so can be aware of its own limitations. Such a machine is forced  
to discover a vast range of true proposition about her that she cannot  
prove, and such a machine can study the logic to which such  
propositions are obeying.


Then, it is a technical fact that such logics (of the non provable,  
yet discoverable propositions) obeys some theories of qualia which  
have been proposed in the literature (by J.L. Bell, for example).


So the machine which introspects itself (the mystical machine) is  
bounded to discover the gap between the provable and truth (the G-G*  
gap), but also the difference between all the points of view (third  
person = provable, first person = provable-and-true, observable with  
probability 1 = provable-and-consistent, feelable =  provable-and- 
consistent-and-true, etc.).


When the machine studies the logic of those propositions, she  
rediscovers more or less a picture of reality akin to the mystical  
rationalists (like Plato, Plotinus, but also Nagasena, and many others).


If you are familiar with the logic G, I might be able to explain more.  
If not, read Smullyan's book, perhaps.
All this is new material, and, premature popular version can be  
misleading. Elementary logic is just not yet well enough known.


In fact, the UDA *is* the human-popular version of all this. The AUDA  
is the proper machine's technical version.


If you read the sane04(*) paper, feel free to ask for any precisions.

Best,

Bruno

(*) http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

Maybe I should try to condense this a bit. The primary disagreement we
have is rooted in how we view the relation between feeling, awareness,
qualia, and meaning, calculation, and complexity. I know from having
gone through dozens of these conversations that you are likely to
adhere to your position, which I would characterize as one which
treats subjective qualities as trivial, automatic consequences which
arise unbidden from from relations that are defined by
computations.

My view is that your position adheres to a very useful and widely held
model the universe, and which is critically important for specialized
tasks of an engineering nature, but that it wildly undervalues the
chasm separating ordinary human experience from neurology. Further I
think that this philosophy is rooted in Enlightenment Era assumptions
which, although spectacularly successful during the 17th-20th
centuries, are no longer fully adequate to explain the realities of
the relation between psyche and cosmos.

What I'm giving you is a model which picks up where your model leaves
off. I'm very familiar with all of the examples you are working with -
color perception, etc. I have thought about all of these issues for
many years, so unless you are presenting something which is from a
source that is truly obscure, you can assume that I already have
considered it.

I disagree with this.  Do you have an argument to help convince me to change
my opinion?

You have to give me reasons why you disagree with it.

There is no change in the wiring (hardware) of the computer, only a software
change has occurred.

Right, that's what I'm saying. From the perspective of the wiring/
hardware/brain, there is no difference between consciousness and
unconsciousness. What you aren't seeing is that the unassailable fact
of our own consciousness is all the evidence that is required to
qualify it as a legitimate, causally efficacious phenomenology in the
cosmos rather than an epiphenomenology which magically appears
whenever it is convenient for physical mechanics. This is what I am
saying must be present as a potential within or through matter from
the beginning or not at all.

The next think you would need to realize is that software is in the
eye of the beholder. Wires don't read books. They don't see colors. A
quintillion wires tangled in knots and electrified don't see colors or
feel pain. They're just wires. I can make a YouTube of myself sitting
still and smiling, and I can do a live video Skype and sit there and
so the same thing and it doesn't mean that the YouTube is conscious
just because someone won't be able to tell the difference.

It's not the computer that creates meaning, it's the person who is
using the computer. Not a cat, not a plant, not another computer, but
a person. If a cat could make a computer, we probably could not use it
either, although we might have a better shot at figuring it out.

would it concern you if you learned you had been reconstructed by the medical
device's own internal store of matter, rather than use your original atoms?

No, no, you don't understand who you're talking to. I'm not some bio-
sentimentalist. If I thought that I could be uploaded into a billion
tongued omnipotent robot I would be more than happy to shed this
crappy monkey body. I'm all over that. I want that. I'm just saying
that we're not going to get there by imitating the logic of out higher
cortical functions in silicon. It doesn't work that way. Thought is an
elaboration of emotion, emotion of feeling, feeling of sense, and
sense of detection. Electronically stimulated silicon never gets
beyond detection, so ontologically it's like one big molecule in the
sense that it can make. It can act as a vessel for us to push human
sense patterns through serially as long as you've got a conscious
human receiver, but the conduit itself has no taste for human sense
patterns, it just knows thermodynamic electromotive sense. Human
experience is not that. A YouTube of a person is not a person.

Color is how nerve impulses from the optive nerve feel to us.
Why doesn't it just feel like a nerve impulse? Why invent a
phenomenology of color out of whole cloth to intervene upon one group
of nerve cells and another? Color doesn't have to exist. It provides
no functional advantage over detection of light wavelengths through a
linear continuum. Your eyes could work just like your gall bladder,
detecting conditions and responding to them without invoking any
holographic layer of gorgeous 3D technicolor perception. One computer
doesn't need to use a keyboard and screen to talk to another, so it
would make absolutely no sense for such a thing to need to exist for
the brain to understand something that way, unless such qualities were
already part of what the brain is made of. It's not nerve impulses we
are feeling, we are nerves and we are the impulses of the nerves.
Impulses are nerve cells feeling, seeing, tasting, choosing. They just
look like nerve cells from the

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 9:54 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote:

 Maybe I should try to condense this a bit. The primary disagreement we
 have is rooted in how we view the relation between feeling, awareness,
 qualia, and meaning, calculation, and complexity. I know from having
 gone through dozens of these conversations that you are likely to
 adhere to your position, which I would characterize as one which
 treats subjective qualities as trivial,


They are not trivial.  If they were, our brains would not require billions
of neurons and quadrillions of connections.


 automatic consequences which
 arise unbidden from from relations that are defined by
 computations.


Yes, as you say below, it is a result of processing.



 My view is that your position adheres to a very useful and widely held
 model the universe, and which is critically important for specialized
 tasks of an engineering nature, but that it wildly undervalues the
 chasm separating ordinary human experience from neurology. Further I
 think that this philosophy is rooted in Enlightenment Era assumptions
 which, although spectacularly successful during the 17th-20th
 centuries, are no longer fully adequate to explain the realities of
 the relation between psyche and cosmos.

 What I'm giving you is a model which picks up where your model leaves
 off. I'm very familiar with all of the examples you are working with -
 color perception, etc. I have thought about all of these issues for
 many years, so unless you are presenting something which is from a
 source that is truly obscure, you can assume that I already have
 considered it.

 I disagree with this.  Do you have an argument to help convince me to
 change
 my opinion?

 You have to give me reasons why you disagree with it.

 There is no change in the wiring (hardware) of the computer, only a
 software
 change has occurred.

 Right, that's what I'm saying. From the perspective of the wiring/
 hardware/brain, there is no difference between consciousness and
 unconsciousness. What you aren't seeing is that the unassailable fact
 of our own consciousness is all the evidence that is required to
 qualify it as a legitimate, causally efficacious phenomenology in the
 cosmos rather than an epiphenomenology which magically appears
 whenever it is convenient for physical mechanics. This is what I am
 saying must be present as a potential within or through matter from
 the beginning or not at all.


I agree consciousness has effects, and is not an epiphenomenon.



 The next think you would need to realize is that software is in the
 eye of the beholder. Wires don't read books. They don't see colors. A
 quintillion wires tangled in knots and electrified don't see colors or
 feel pain.


I think they can.


 They're just wires. I can make a YouTube of myself sitting
 still and smiling, and I can do a live video Skype and sit there and
 so the same thing and it doesn't mean that the YouTube is conscious
 just because someone won't be able to tell the difference.


There is a difference between a recording of a computation or a description
of a computation, and the computation itself.



 It's not the computer that creates meaning, it's the person who is
 using the computer. Not a cat, not a plant, not another computer, but
 a person. If a cat could make a computer, we probably could not use it
 either, although we might have a better shot at figuring it out.

 would it concern you if you learned you had been reconstructed by the
 medical
 device's own internal store of matter, rather than use your original
 atoms?

 No, no, you don't understand who you're talking to. I'm not some bio-
 sentimentalist. If I thought that I could be uploaded into a billion
 tongued omnipotent robot I would be more than happy to shed this
 crappy monkey body. I'm all over that. I want that. I'm just saying
 that we're not going to get there by imitating the logic of out higher
 cortical functions in silicon. It doesn't work that way. Thought is an
 elaboration of emotion, emotion of feeling, feeling of sense, and
 sense of detection. Electronically stimulated silicon never gets
 beyond detection, so ontologically it's like one big molecule in the
 sense that it can make. It can act as a vessel for us to push human
 sense patterns through serially as long as you've got a conscious
 human receiver, but the conduit itself has no taste for human sense
 patterns, it just knows thermodynamic electromotive sense. Human
 experience is not that. A YouTube of a person is not a person.


Right, a youtube video is not a person, but I think silicon, or any
appropriate processing system can perceive.



 Color is how nerve impulses from the optive nerve feel to us.
 Why doesn't it just feel like a nerve impulse? Why invent a
 phenomenology of color out of whole cloth to intervene upon one group
 of nerve cells and another? Color doesn't have to exist. It provides
 no functional advantage over detection of light

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.


On 7/10/2011 6:20 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

What in the brain would be not Turing emulable
 

Let's take the color yellow for example. If you build a brain out of
ideal ping pong balls, or digital molecular emulations, does it
perceive yellow from 580nm oscillations of electromagnetism
automatically, or does it see yellow when it's own emulated units are
vibrating on the functionally proportionate scale to itself? Does the
ping pong ball brain see it's own patterns of collisions as yellow or
does yellow = electromagnetic ~580nm and nothing else. At what point
does the yellow come in? Where did it come from? Were there other
options? Can there ever be new colors? From where? What is the minimum
mechanical arrangement required to experience yellow?

   


When the aforesaid ping pong ball brain can cause the word yellow to 
be enunciated and/or written on all and only occasions that normal 
English speakers do.  When it anticipates traffic signal lights turning 
red.  When it identifies sour fruit.


Brent

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Re: COMP refutation GAME OVER


On 7/10/2011 8:16 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
You confuse perhaps with Schmidhuber's position, or some digital 
physicist (DP). But as I have explained many times here that this 
position does not work. Computationalism or digital mechanism (DM) is 
the idea that I am a machine, and by the first person indeterminacy, 
and the way the laws of physics have to emerge from computations, the 
physical universe (nor the fundamental reality) cannot be described 
entirely by a computation. On the contrary it is a sum on an infinity 
of computations.


If the universe is a computation, then I am computable, but then it 
cannot be a computation (by what I say above, it is not obvious). So 
with comp, or without comp, the physical universe is not a 
computation. With comp, the laws of nature are not computable, or have 
strong non computable components.


DM - ~DP
DP - DM,

So DP - ~DP, so ~DP.



Bruno 


This confuses me.  When you say the universe is not computable, you mean 
it is not the process of computing a function.  But you think it is 
generated by a UD.  Right?  In other words, you are saying what a UD 
does is *not* a computation.


Brent


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Re: COMP refutation GAME OVER

2011-07-11 Thread Quentin Anciaux

2011/7/11 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net

 On 7/10/2011 8:16 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

 You confuse perhaps with Schmidhuber's position, or some digital physicist
 (DP). But as I have explained many times here that this position does not
 work. Computationalism or digital mechanism (DM) is the idea that I am a
 machine, and by the first person indeterminacy, and the way the laws of
 physics have to emerge from computations, the physical universe (nor the
 fundamental reality) cannot be described entirely by a computation. On the
 contrary it is a sum on an infinity of computations.

 If the universe is a computation, then I am computable, but then it
 cannot be a computation (by what I say above, it is not obvious). So with
 comp, or without comp, the physical universe is not a computation. With
 comp, the laws of nature are not computable, or have strong non computable
 components.

 DM - ~DP
 DP - DM,

 So DP - ~DP, so ~DP.



 Bruno


 This confuses me.  When you say the universe is not computable, you mean it
 is not the process of computing a function.  But you think it is generated
 by a UD.  Right?  In other words, you are saying what a UD does is *not* a
 computation.

 Brent


No he is saying that the univese is the result of an infinity of computation
going through its current state... an infinity of computation is *not
computable*, hence digital  physics is false. The UD of course runs all
programs and is computable, but the UD generates and runs *all* programs,
it's not a program that computes the universe.

Quentin



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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

They are not trivial.  If they were, our brains would not require billions
of neurons and quadrillions of connections.

Trivial in the technical sense of not being as real as the objective
mechanics which are associated with them. You are saying that it's
only the high quantity of neurons and connections between them that
makes them real rather than the other way around. To say that
subjective qualities are non-trivial would mean acknowledging that it
is the subjective qualities themselves which are driving cells,
neurons, organisms, and cultures rather than just mechanism. You are
saying that hydrogen is non-trivial but yellow is one of an infinite
number of possible colors. I'm saying that the visible spectrum is as
fundamental and irreducible as the periodic table, even though it may
require a more complex organic arrangement to realize subjectively.

Yes, as you say below, it is a result of processing.
Processing isn't an independent thing, it's what things do. In the
context of inputprocessingoutput, then processing stands for
everything in between input and output: processing by whatever
phenomenon is the processor.

 quintillion wires tangled in knots and electrified don't see colors or
 feel pain.

I think they can

Based upon what? Can cartoons see feel pain? Why not?

it doesn't mean that the YouTube is conscious
 just because someone won't be able to tell the difference.

There is a difference between a recording of a computation or a description
of a computation, and the computation itself.

Yellow is not a computation. Discerning whether something is a
different frequency of luminosity than another is a computation,
correlating that to a sensory experience is a computation, but the
experience itself is not a computation. I can give you coordinates for
a polygon and you can draw it on paper or in your mind but giving you
the wavelength for a shade of X-Ray will not help you see it's color
or create a color. It doesn't matter how complex my formula is. Color
cannot be described quantitatively. It's not a matter of waiting for
technology to get better, it's a matter of understanding the
limitations of the exterior topology of our universe.

Right, a youtube video is not a person, but I think silicon, or any
appropriate processing system can perceive.

I think that anything can perceive, whether it's a processing system
or not. Not human perception, but if it's matter, then it has
electromagnetic properties and corresponding sensorimotor coherence.
All matter makes sense. It's just that the sense the brain makes
recapitulates a specific layer cake of organic molecular, cellular
biochemical, somatic zoological, neuro anthropological, and
psychological semiotic protocols which are not separate from what they
physically are. You can't export the canon of microbiological wisdom
into a stone unless you make the stone live as a creature. It's not
third party translatable. If it were, then every rock and tree would
by now have learned to speak Portuguese and cook up a mean linguine
with clams.

If red did not look very different from green, to you would fail to pick out
the berries in the bush.

That's a fallacy. First you're reducing red or green to a mechanical
function of visual differentiation. Such a definition of color does
not require conscious experience or vision at all. The bush and the
berries could just look like what they taste like. Why create a
separate perceptual ontology? You're also reverse engineering color to
match the contemporary assumptions of evolutionary biology. We have no
reason to suspect that selection pressure would or could conjure a
color palette out of thin air. A longer beak, yes. Prehensile tail,
sure. You've already got the physical structure, it just gets
exaggerated through heredity. Where is the ancestor of red though?

Yes information must be interpreted by a processing system to become
meaningful, but it doesn't have to be a biological organism.

Systems don't interpret information, they just present it in different
ways. It makes no difference to a computer whether a text is stored as
natural language, hexadecimal bytes, or semiconductor states. There is
no signifying coherence on the computer level, it's just an array of
low level phenomena being used to simulate and reflect high level
organic sense. You might be able to build chemo-electronic inorganism
which feels and has meaning, but my sense is that it would end up
being no more controllable than biological entities. What we want out
of a processing system - reliability, obedience, precision, etc, is
precisely what is lost when we want to traffic in meaning beyond
digital certainties.

 Constructed out of what?

Information and the processing thereof.

You cannot construct a color out of information, any more than you can
construct dinner out of information. Color is concrete sensory
experience - ineffable, idiopathic, self-revealing. There is no
information there, no recipe, it's an ontological

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

But it could do those things without ever experiencing yellow. A
traffic signal could look like the smell of burnt toast and achieve
the exact same functionality.Yellow isn't just some variable used as a
placeholder. It has a specific character than must be seen first hand
to have any understanding of. Without that subjective experience of
what yellow looks like, you're just simulating behaviors of yellow-
sightedness.

On Jul 11, 1:49 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
 On 7/10/2011 6:20 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

  What in the brain would be not Turing emulable

  Let's take the color yellow for example. If you build a brain out of
  ideal ping pong balls, or digital molecular emulations, does it
  perceive yellow from 580nm oscillations of electromagnetism
  automatically, or does it see yellow when it's own emulated units are
  vibrating on the functionally proportionate scale to itself? Does the
  ping pong ball brain see it's own patterns of collisions as yellow or
  does yellow = electromagnetic ~580nm and nothing else. At what point
  does the yellow come in? Where did it come from? Were there other
  options? Can there ever be new colors? From where? What is the minimum
  mechanical arrangement required to experience yellow?

 When the aforesaid ping pong ball brain can cause the word yellow to
 be enunciated and/or written on all and only occasions that normal
 English speakers do.  When it anticipates traffic signal lights turning
 red.  When it identifies sour fruit.

 Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.


On 7/10/2011 6:52 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

I do think that we can say, with the same certainty that we cannot
create a square circle, that it would not be possible at any level of
complexity. It's not that they can't create novelty or surprise, it's
that they can't feel or care about their own survival. I'm saying that
the potential for awareness must be built in to matter at the lowest
level or not at all.


At the lowest level ping pong balls and brains are mde of the same stuff 
(quarks, electrons, photons,).  So the potential for awareness is 
built in to quarks, electrons, photons, etc.  Your position seems 
incoherent.  You're saying brains are made of special stuff that can be 
conscious.  But on the other hand you say that if any stuff is special 
all stuff must be special (which kind of robs special of its usual 
meaning).  But then you say that even if all stuff is special you can't 
make a conscious brain out of just any stuff, you have to make it out of 
special stuff.  ???


Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.


On 7/10/2011 6:52 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

Yeah I like that demo. It's not a new primary color though, that's
just contradictory mixing of familiar colors.


Primary colors aren't even a mental construct.  They're a language 
choice.  Orange is new primary color (according to you), as is cyan and 
magenta and brown and white and black.  Some languages have dozens of 
colors some have only a few.  Which are called primary is purely a 
language convention.


Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.


On 7/10/2011 8:48 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
Qualia aren't directly connected to sensory measurements from the 
environment though.  If I swapped all the red-preferring cones in your 
eyes with the blue-preferring cones, then shone blue-colored light at 
your eyes, you would report it as red.


For about a week.  And then he'd report it as blue.  At least that's 
what I'd predict based on people wearing glasses that invert everything 
or swap right and left.


Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.


On 7/10/2011 8:48 PM, Jason Resch wrote:


Why can't we mentally construct new colors
ourselves?


We have little control over the number of cone cells we are born 
with.  (But this may change soon, using gene therapy).  If we had full 
control to rewire our brain in any way we wanted, we could perceive 
entirely novel, never before seen colors.


Supposedly people who receive artificial lenses in their eyes can see a 
little into the ultra-violet part of the spectrum.  I don't suppose this 
gives them the sensation of a previously unseen color though since the 
eye doesn't have any cones with specific pigment for UV (at least my 
mother says she doesn't notice any new colors).


Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

I'm having trouble understanding what you're saying.

 Computer chips don't behave in the same way though.

That is just a question of choice of level of description. Unless you
believe in substantial infinite souls.

Not sure what you mean in either sentence. A plastic flower behaves
differently than a biological plant. A computer chip behaves
differently than a neuron. Why assume that a computer chip can feel
what a living cell can feel?

 Your computer
 can't become an ammoniaholic or commit suicide.

Why?

I'm talking about your actual computer that you are reading this on.
Are you asking me why it can't commit suicide or spontaneously develop
a hankering for ammonia?

The other side is well explained in the comp theory.

I'm giving it a good try reading your SANE2004 pdf but I think I'm
hovering at around 4% comprehension. If you want me to be able to
consider your hypothesis I think that you will have to radically
simplify it's insights to concrete examples which are not dependent
upon references to anyone else's work, logical/mathematical/or
philosophical notation, teleportation, or Turing anything.

As near as I can tell, it seems like you are looking at the hows and
whys of sensation - how physics and sensation are both logical
relations rather than noumenal existential artifacts and why it might
be necessary. I can't really tell what your answer is though. My focus
is on describing what and who we are in the simplest way. To my mind,
what and who we are cannot be described in purely arithmetic
relations, unless arithmetic relations automatically obscure their
origin and present themselves in all possible universes as color,
sound, taste, feeling, etc.

No problem. That would mean that the substitution level is low. It
does no change the conclusion: the physical world is a projection of
the mind, and the mind is an inside view of arithmetic (or comp is
false, that is, at all level and you need substantial souls). But we
don't even find a substance for explaining matter, so that seems a
regression to me. Anyway, it is inconsistent with the comp assumption.

When you say that the physical world is a projection of the mind, do
you mean that in the sense that it might be possible to stop bullets
directly with our thoughts or in the sense of physicality only seeming
physical because our mind is programmed to read it as such? I would
agree that physicality arises only from the body's own physical
composition and our mind's apprehension of the body's awareness of
itself in relation to it's world, but I wouldn't say that physical
matter is a mental phenomenon. By definition, mental phenomena are
exempt from physical constraints, such as gravity, thermodynamics,
etc.

I don't know about the mind being an inside view of arithmetic. I
would say that arithmetic is only one category of sense and see no
reason to privilege it above aesthetic sense or anthropomorphic sense.
Sense is the elemental level to me. Pattern and pattern detection.
Counting is just another pattern. Not all patterns can be reduced to
something that can be counted. Some things have to be named. Still
others cannot be named or numbered.

But computer science explains why and how such feelings occur.

Computer science explains why pain exists?

If you get the six or seven first steps, it is an easy exercise to
show that matter cannot be cloned. Ask if you have any difficulty.

Unfortunately I can't really get any of the steps.


On Jul 11, 4:26 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
 On 11 Jul 2011, at 04:17, Craig Weinberg wrote:

  All right, but then honesty should force you to do the same with
  computer ships. Unless you presuppose the molecules not being Turing
  emulable.

  Computer chips don't behave in the same way though.

 That is just a question of choice of level of description. Unless you  
 believe in substantial infinite souls.

  Your computer
  can't become an ammoniaholic or commit suicide.

 Why?

  The problem with
  emulating molecules is that we are only emulating the side of the coin
  we can see.

 That is true.

  The other side is blank and that's the side that
  interiority and awareness is made of. We can add chips to our brain
  though, or build a computer out of cells.

 The other side is well explained in the comp theory.



  Any mechanical arrangement defining a self-referentially correct
  machine automatically leads the mechanical arrangement to distinguish
  third person point of view and first person points of view. The
  machine already have a theory of qualia, with an explanation of why
  qualia and quanta seems different.

  If you are saying that the machine may already have it's own qualia,
  then sure, I agree, I just don't think it will be our qualia. I think
  that our experience of yellow, for example, probably comes through
  cellular experiences with photosynthesis and probably has not evolved
  much since the Pre-Cambrian. Of course that's a guess. It could be a
  mammalian thing or a

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

On Jul 11, 2011, at 4:47 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 7/10/2011 8:48 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

Why can't we mentally construct new colors
ourselves?

We have little control over the number of cone cells we are born
with. (But this may change soon, using gene therapy). If we had
full control to rewire our brain in any way we wanted, we could
perceive entirely novel, never before seen colors.

Supposedly people who receive artificial lenses in their eyes can
see a little into the ultra-violet part of the spectrum. I don't
suppose this gives them the sensation of a previously unseen color
though since the eye doesn't have any cones with specific pigment
for UV (at least my mother says she doesn't notice any new colors).

Brent

What I've heard is that those people report uv light as purpleish
white. It is because uv light stimulates all three types of cones,
but affects the short wavelength preferring cone somehat more strongly.

Jason

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

I'm not talking about acutal ping pong balls, I'm talking about ideal
ping pong balls which are not made of any subordinate units. Just
white spheres which serve as placeholders for atoms, digital vectors,
whatever. Just the principle of basic things having only physical
qualities to demonstrate how it doesn't follow that arrangement in and
of itself can cause anything live or feel.

Instead, I propose that real atoms have real properties which we
cannot observe unless they are in a complex arrangement which is
similar enough to our own that we can relate to it as a whole. All
stuff is special, but the quality that makes it special is the ability
to feel more and more special through combining in groups, meta
groups, meta meta groups, etc. Externally, it's expressed over space
as increasingly elaborate nested groupings or inertial frames of
objects and movements governed by electomagnetic relativity, but
internally it's expressed as a coherence of sensorimotive perceptual
frames. Instead of more equaling literally more cells or synapses,
more equals better, greater, richer. Not merely larger, faster,
denser, closer, but more important, more powerful, more satisfying.

To say that something is conscious just means that it 'acts like us'.
The less we can relate to any particular thing, the more we fail to
perceive it as employing awareness. Instead we see it as automatic
'nature', probability, etc. That's just what it looks like from the
outside, out of focus as it were, on different scales and in non-human
contexts. The universe is all one thing but it's a zillion different
private interior universes also depending on what you are, how you
participate in it.

Primary colors aren't even a mental construct.  They're a language
choice.  Orange is new primary color (according to you), as is cyan and
magenta and brown and white and black.  Some languages have dozens of
colors some have only a few.  Which are called primary is purely a
language convention.

I'm not talking about the idea of a primary color as linguistic
distinction, I'm talking about the inability of a color to be reduced
to combinations of other colors. Red, Green, and Blue are the primary
hues of projected light, Red, Yellow, and Blue are the primary hues of
reflected light. Cultures may not distinguish green from blue as far
as referring to it by name, but they can see that green and green plus
cannot be made by combining any other colors if it were demonstrated
to them.



On Jul 11, 5:33 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
 On 7/10/2011 6:52 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

  I do think that we can say, with the same certainty that we cannot
  create a square circle, that it would not be possible at any level of
  complexity. It's not that they can't create novelty or surprise, it's
  that they can't feel or care about their own survival. I'm saying that
  the potential for awareness must be built in to matter at the lowest
  level or not at all.

 At the lowest level ping pong balls and brains are mde of the same stuff
 (quarks, electrons, photons,).  So the potential for awareness is
 built in to quarks, electrons, photons, etc.  Your position seems
 incoherent.  You're saying brains are made of special stuff that can be
 conscious.  But on the other hand you say that if any stuff is special
 all stuff must be special (which kind of robs special of its usual
 meaning).  But then you say that even if all stuff is special you can't
 make a conscious brain out of just any stuff, you have to make it out of
 special stuff.  ???

 Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.


On 7/11/2011 3:29 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

I'm not talking about the idea of a primary color as linguistic
distinction, I'm talking about the inability of a color to be reduced
to combinations of other colors. Red, Green, and Blue are the primary
hues of projected light, Red, Yellow, and Blue are the primary hues of
reflected light.


It's not the case that all colors can be reproduced by combinations of a 
fixed choice of red, green, and blue.  I refer you to pg 818 of Sears 
and Zemansky - my freshman physics text.  In any case, the fact that one 
can approximately match a color with an RGB mixture is a consequence of 
the human eye having three pigments in the color receptors.  If it had 
four, then you'd need another primary color.


Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 5:29 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote:

 I'm not talking about the idea of a primary color as linguistic
 distinction, I'm talking about the inability of a color to be reduced
 to combinations of other colors. Red, Green, and Blue are the primary
 hues of projected light, Red, Yellow, and Blue are the primary hues of
 reflected light. Cultures may not distinguish green from blue as far
 as referring to it by name, but they can see that green and green plus
 cannot be made by combining any other colors if it were demonstrated
 to them.


Craig,

Do you believe there is something physically special about red green and
blue compared to other wavelengths of light?  Do you think other animals
that see colors can only see combinations of red, green and blue, regardless
of the number of types of color receptive cells are in their retina?

Jason

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

There are humans who have four pigments in their color receptors but
they do not perceive a fourth primary color.
http://www.klab.caltech.edu/cns186/papers/Jameson01.pdf

They just have increased distinction between the primary colors we
perceive. I take that to mean that they cannot point to anything in
nature as having a bright color that ordinary trichromats have never
seen.

Yeah I don't know the technical descriptions of what constitutes
primacy in hues, but it's not important to what I'm trying to get at.
The important thing is that the range and variety of colors we can see
or imagine is not explainable in purely quantitative or physical
terms, neither is it metaphysical, random, made up, or arbitrary. It
constitutes a visual semantic firmament, similar to the periodic
table. The differences between the color wheel and the periodic table
is that since experiences and feelings are phenomena that are
ontologically perpendicular to their external mechanics, they are not
strictly definable through literal observation and measurement, but
through first hand encounters which address the subject directly in a
more uncertain, figurative way. Colors look different depending on
what colors they are adjacent to, what mood we are in, our gender,
etc. unlike iron and magnesium which remain the same if placed next to
each other.


On Jul 11, 7:12 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
 On 7/11/2011 3:29 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

  I'm not talking about the idea of a primary color as linguistic
  distinction, I'm talking about the inability of a color to be reduced
  to combinations of other colors. Red, Green, and Blue are the primary
  hues of projected light, Red, Yellow, and Blue are the primary hues of
  reflected light.

 It's not the case that all colors can be reproduced by combinations of a
 fixed choice of red, green, and blue.  I refer you to pg 818 of Sears
 and Zemansky - my freshman physics text.  In any case, the fact that one
 can approximately match a color with an RGB mixture is a consequence of
 the human eye having three pigments in the color receptors.  If it had
 four, then you'd need another primary color.

 Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 1:29 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote:

 They are not trivial.  If they were, our brains would not require billions
 of neurons and quadrillions of connections.

 Trivial in the technical sense of not being as real as the objective
 mechanics which are associated with them. You are saying that it's
 only the high quantity of neurons and connections between them that
 makes them real rather than the other way around.


Not just their quantity, but the relationships of their connections to each
other.


 To say that
 subjective qualities are non-trivial would mean acknowledging that it
 is the subjective qualities themselves which are driving cells,
 neurons, organisms, and cultures rather than just mechanism. You are
 saying that hydrogen is non-trivial but yellow is one of an infinite
 number of possible colors. I'm saying that the visible spectrum is as
 fundamental and irreducible as the periodic table, even though it may
 require a more complex organic arrangement to realize subjectively.

 Yes, as you say below, it is a result of processing.
 Processing isn't an independent thing, it's what things do.


This is functionalism, it is what things do that matters, not what they are
made of.


 In the
 context of inputprocessingoutput, then processing stands for
 everything in between input and output: processing by whatever
 phenomenon is the processor.



You are defining the process as everything that happens in the middle, but
how much of that everything is relevant to the outcome?  If a neuron
releases 278,231,782,956 ions instead of 278,231,782,957 is that going to
be relevant to how the mind evolves over time, or what qualia are
experienced?  What about neutrinos passing through the head of the person,
are those important to the model of the brain?  I think you would find that
a lot of the processes going on within a person's head is irrelevant to the
production of consciousness.  In an earlier post you mentioned hemoglobin
playing a role, but if we could substitute a persons blood with some other
oxygen rich solution which was just as capable of supporting the normal
metabolism of cells, then why should the brain behave any differently, and
if it does not behave differently how could the perception of yellow be said
to be different?  The mind experiencing the sensation of yellow isn't going
to say or do anything different if its outputs are the same.  The two minds
would contain the same information, and thus there is nothing to inform the
mind of any difference in perception.



  quintillion wires tangled in knots and electrified don't see colors or
  feel pain.

 I think they can

 Based upon what?


My belief that dualism, and mind-brain identity theory are false, and the
success of multiple realizability, functionalism, and computationalism in
resolving various paradoxes in the philosophy of mind.


 Can cartoons see feel pain? Why not?


Cartoons aren't systems that receive and update their state and disposition
based upon the reception and processing of that information.


 it doesn't mean that the YouTube is conscious
  just because someone won't be able to tell the difference.

 There is a difference between a recording of a computation or a
 description
 of a computation, and the computation itself.

 Yellow is not a computation. Discerning whether something is a
 different frequency of luminosity than another is a computation,
 correlating that to a sensory experience is a computation, but the
 experience itself is not a computation. I can give you coordinates for
 a polygon and you can draw it on paper or in your mind but giving you
 the wavelength for a shade of X-Ray will not help you see it's color
 or create a color. It doesn't matter how complex my formula is. Color
 cannot be described quantitatively.


It is more than a one dimensional quantity, I agree.  It is a value of
rather high complexity and dimensionality existing in the context of your
neural network.  Since your neural network is highly complex, the effects
the perception has (what it takes to define it) is likewise highly complex.
 I think the primary reason you have come to your conclusions, while I have
come to mine, is that you think qualia such as yellow are simple, while I
think the opposite is true.  If visual sensations were so simple, why would
30% of your cortex be devoted to its processing?  This is a huge number of
neurons, for handling at most maybe a million or so pixels.  How many
neurons do you think are needed to sense each pixel of yellow?


 It's not a matter of waiting for
 technology to get better, it's a matter of understanding the
 limitations of the exterior topology of our universe.

 Right, a youtube video is not a person, but I think silicon, or any
 appropriate processing system can perceive.

 I think that anything can perceive, whether it's a processing system
 or not. Not human perception, but if it's matter, then it has
 electromagnetic properties and

Re: Bruno's blasphemy.


On Jul 11, 7:13 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:

 Craig,

 Do you believe there is something physically special about red green and
 blue compared to other wavelengths of light?  Do you think other animals
 that see colors can only see combinations of red, green and blue, regardless
 of the number of types of color receptive cells are in their retina?

 Jason

No, electromagnetic wavelengths do not define colors. Wavelengths just
correspond to cellular sensitivities of cells in the retina, but not
necessarily the brain. The visual cortex is not displaying an
illuminated image inside of the brain's tissue.

I don't know what other animals see. What about insects or plants?
Chlorophyll responds to visible light...perhaps color reception is the
subjective purpose of chloroplasts.

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.


On 7/11/2011 11:35 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

But it could do those things without ever experiencing yellow.


So you say.  But it's just an unsupported assertion on your part.  If 
the ping-pong intelligence could do those things without experiencing 
yellow then maybe you could too.  I would I know?


Brent

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Re: Bruno's blasphemy.