Re: Interesting paper on consciousness, computation and MWI
On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 07:02:28PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: OK. But note that in this case you are using the notion of 3-OM (or computational state), not Bostrom notion of 1-OM (or my notion of first person state). The 3-OM are countable, but the 1-OMs are not. Could you explain more why you think this? AFAICT, Bostrom makes no mention of the cardinality of his OMs. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: David Eagleman on CHOICE
On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 12:26 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Sep 29, 2011, at 8:12 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 8:55 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: If it takes the brain 100 ms to compute a moment of awareness, then you can know you were not created 1 microsecond ago. Suppose your brain paused for 1 us every 99 ms. To an external observer you would be functioning normally; do you think you would be a philosophical zombie? We can change the thought experiment to make the pauses and the duration of consciousness between the pauses arbitrarily long, effectively cutting up consciousness however we want, even if a conscious moment is smeared out over time. I think you missed what I was attempting to say. I agree that it would function normally with the introduction of pauses. Let's say the brain was uploaded and on a computer. The scheduler would do a context switch to let another process run. This would not affect the brain or create a zombie. We could even pause the brain, send it over the wire to another computer and execute it there, without a problem. What I think would be problematic is starting a brain simulation without any prior computational history. I think it might take some minimum amount of time (computation) before that brain could be aware of anything. It's a strange, almost paradoxical result but I think observer moments can be sub-conscious. If we say the minimum duration of a conscious moment is 100ms then 99ms and the remaining 1ms of this can occur at different times, perhaps billions of years of real time apart, perhaps simultaneously or in the reverse order. You would have the experience provided only that the full 100ms even if broken up into infinitesimal intervals occurs somewhere, sometime. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 10:44 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Sep 30, 10:16 am, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Sep 30, 2011, at 7:22 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Sep 29, 11:14 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Craig, do the neurons violate the conservation of energy and momentum? And if not, then how can they have any unexpected effects? No. If you are wondering whether I think that anything that contradicts established observations of physics, chemistry, or biology is going on, the answer has always been no, and the fact that you are still asking means that you don't understand what I've said. If it seems that I have misunderstood it is because I see a contradiction. If a neuron opens it's ion channels because of a thought, then thought is something we can see all the correlates of in terms of third person observable particle collisions. If the ion channel were to open without the observable and necessary particle collisions then the neuron would be violating the conservation if momentum. It's not the particle collisions that cause an ion channel to open, it's the neuron's sensitivity to specific electrochemical conditions associated with neurotransmitter molecules, and it's ability to respond with a specific physical change. All of those changes are accompanied by qualitative experiences on that microcosmic level. Our thoughts do not cause the ion channels to directly open or close any more than a screen writer causes the pixels of your TV to get brighter or dimmer, you are talking about two entirely different scales of perception. Think of our thoughts and feelings as the 'back end' of the total physical 'front end' activity of the brain. The back end thoughts and feelings cannot be reduced to the front end activities of neurons or ion channels, but they can be reduced to the back end experiences of those neurons or ion channels - almost, except that they synergize in a more significant way than front end phenomena can. Think of it like a fractal vis if you want, where the large design is always emerging from small designs, but imagine that the large design and the small designs are both controlled by separate, but overlapping intelligences so that sometimes the small forms change and propagate to the larger picture and other times the largest picture changes and all of the smaller images are consequently changed. Now imagine that the entire fractal dynamic has an invisible, private backstage to it, which has no fractal shapes developing and shifting every second, but it has instead flavors and sounds that change at completely different intervals of time than the front end fractal, so that the pulsating rhythms of the fractal are represented on the back end as long melodies and fragrant journeys. Both the visual fractal and the olfactory musical follow some of the same cues exactly and both of them diverge from each other completely as well so that you cannot look at the fractal and find some graphic mechanism that produces a song, and the existence of the song does not mean that there is an invisible musicality pushing the pixels of the fractal around, it's just that they are like the two ends of a bowtie; one matter across space and the other experience through time. They influence each other - sometimes intentionally, sometimes arbitrarily, and sometimes in a conflicting or self defeating way. I'm afraid the analogies you use don't help, at least for me. Does an ion channel ever open in the absence of an observable cause? It's a simple yes/no question. Whether consciousness is associated, supervenient, linked, provided by God or whatever is a separate question. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Existence and Properties
On 1 October 2011 04:14, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: I have been attempting to ask a similar question, but my words were failing me. What is the necessity of the 1p? AFAIK, it seems that because it is possible. This is what I mean by existence = []. But does this line of reasoning, arithmetical reductionism, eventually fall into the abyss of infinite regress or loop back to the 1p for a means to define itself? How can we be sure that we are assuming a primitive that is only a artifact of the limits of our imagination? Why are we so sure that there is a primitive in the well founded sense? Well, the question I'm asking has, I think, the same implications regardless of whatsoever you take to be primitive. The reason for this has to do with the process of reduction itself: having followed the path of reducing any and all narratives about the world to those consisting solely of some maximally-reduced entities and their primitive relations, we hoped finally to get to grips with some definitive account of the real. But the following problem then presents itself: what is supposed to be the ontological status of the non-reduced narratives? They appear to have become ontologically redundant (i.e. in a strong sense, they don't exist, just as a house has no ontological status independent of the bricks that constitute it). But, contra this, they manifestly DO still exist, as we would say, epistemologically. Well, one way of dealing with inconvenient truths of this sort is by ignoring them. And so we can try to sustain the view, where it suits our purposes, that non-primitive phenomena of certain kinds (qualia for example) really don't exist, however much they may seem to. The problem is that this is insufficiently radical: reductive analysis is an irresistible ontological acid, and more than the merely illusory must succumb to its dissolving power. Once it has done its work, what lies revealed to our horrified gaze is - not a world of still somewhat familiar primary macroscopic entities and events, merely shorn of their illusory secondary properties - but only the starkest landscape of the most primitive entities in their most fundamental relations. Or rather, this is what CANNOT now be revealed, because any possible subject of such revelation must disappear in the same ontological catastrophe as its possible objects of knowledge. Hence, eliminativism of this sort turns out to be more than simply and egregiously question-begging. In effect it is a most perverse species of attempted metaphysical grand larceny: it tries to grab with both hands everything it has just pilfered from reality. The only route out of this impasse seems to be to accept that the aspects of reality that we label epistemological must be considered as real (i.e. as relevant to any account of what exists) as those we are pleased to call primitively ontological. Bruno indeed has sometimes referred to this aspect as the ontological first-person. For myself, I have remarked on the need to consider equally two counter-poles of the real: the analytic and the integrative, neither of which can intelligibly be dispensed with. In any case, failure to take considerations of this sort into account, leads, I think, to much of the confusion that arises in these discussions about what really exists. David On 9/30/2011 8:18 PM, David Nyman wrote: On 30 September 2011 16:55, Bruno Marchalmarc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: They are ontologically primitive, in the sense that ontologically they are the only things which exist. even computations don't exist in that primitive sense. Computations already exists only relationally. I will keep saying that computations exists, for pedagogical reasons. For professional logicians, I make a nuance, which would look like total jargon in this list. I've been following this discussion, though not commenting (I don't understand all of it). However, your remark above caught my eye, because it reminded me of something that came up a while back, about whether reductive explanations logically entail elimination of non-primitive entities. I argued that this is their whole point; Peter Jones disputed it. Your comment (supporting my view, I think) was that reductionism was necessarily ontologically eliminative, though of course not epistemologically so. Indeed this seemed to me uncontroversial, in that the whole point of a reductionist program is to show how all references to compound entities can be replaced by more primitive ones. Your remark above seems now to be making a similar point about arithmetical reductionism in the sense that, presumably, computations can analogously (if loosely) be considered compounds of arithmetical primitives, a point that had indeed occurred to me at the time. If so, what interests me is the question that inspired the older controversy. If the primitives of a given ontology are postulated to be all that really exist, how are we
Re: Existence and Properties
On 01 Oct 2011, at 02:18, David Nyman wrote: On 30 September 2011 16:55, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: They are ontologically primitive, in the sense that ontologically they are the only things which exist. even computations don't exist in that primitive sense. Computations already exists only relationally. I will keep saying that computations exists, for pedagogical reasons. For professional logicians, I make a nuance, which would look like total jargon in this list. I've been following this discussion, though not commenting (I don't understand all of it). However, your remark above caught my eye, because it reminded me of something that came up a while back, about whether reductive explanations logically entail elimination of non-primitive entities. I argued that this is their whole point; Peter Jones disputed it. Your comment (supporting my view, I think) was that reductionism was necessarily ontologically eliminative, though of course not epistemologically so. Yes. This makes sense. Certainly a wise attitude, given that UDA shows that if Mechanism is correct then both consciousness and matter are reduced to number relations. If reduction was elimination, we should conclude that consciousness does not exist (that would be nonsensical for any conscious creature) and that the physical reality does not exist, which does not make much sense either. A physicalist would also be obliged to say that molecules, living organism, etc. don't exist. Note that James Watson seemed to have defended such a strong reductive eliminativism. But I don't see any problem with reduction, once we agree that some form of existence can be reduced to other, without implying elimination. Mechanism makes it clear that machine are *correct* when they believe in material form. Indeed all LUMs can see by themselves the rise of matter, or the correct laws of matter by introspection, and they will all see the same laws. Indeed this seemed to me uncontroversial, in that the whole point of a reductionist program is to show how all references to compound entities can be replaced by more primitive ones. Your remark above seems now to be making a similar point about arithmetical reductionism in the sense that, presumably, computations can analogously (if loosely) be considered compounds of arithmetical primitives, a point that had indeed occurred to me at the time. If so, what interests me is the question that inspired the older controversy. If the primitives of a given ontology are postulated to be all that really exist, how are we supposed to account for the apparent existence of compound entities? We need two things. The primitive objects, and the basic laws to which the primitive objects obeys, and which will be responsible of making possible the higher level of organization of those primitive objects, or some higher level appearances of structures. In the case of mechanism, we can take as primitive objects the natural numbers: 0, s(0), s(s(0), etc. And, we need only the basic laws of addition and multiplication, together with succession laws: 0 ≠ s(x) s(x) = s(y) - x = y x+0 = x x+s(y) = s(x+y) x*0=0 x*s(y)=(x*y)+x There is some amount of latitude here. We could consider that there is only one primitive object, 0. Given that we can define 1, 2, 3, by Ex(x= s(0)), Ex(x= s(s(0))), etc. [Or we could take the combinators (K, S, SK, KS, KKK, K(KK), etc.) as primitive, and the combinators laws: Kxy = x Sxyz = xz(yz) ] It might seems amazing but those axioms are enough to prove the existence of UMs and LUMs, and the whole Indra Matrix from which consciousness and physical laws appears at some (different) epistemological levels. It is the same as the brick in the house example. You need the primitive elements (brick) and some laws which makes them holding together (ciment, gravitation, for example). The same occur with physicalism. You need elementary particles, and elementary forces which makes them interact. What I show is that IF mechanism is correct, elementary particles and elementary forces are not primitive but arise as the border of some universal mind (to be short), which lives, at some epistemological level, in arithmetic. If the supposedly fundamental underlying mechanism is describable (in principle) entirely at the level of primitives, there would appear to be no need of any such further entities, and indeed Occam would imply that they should not be hypothesised. Yes. And that is indeed why we can say that we explain them. We can explain the DNA structure entirely from the atoms quantum physical laws. So DNA does not need to be taken as a new elementary particle. With digital mechanism, atoms and particles are themselves reducible to the non trivial intrinsic unavoidable consequences of addition and multiplication laws. Yet the bald fact remains that this is not how things appear to us. Why?
Re: Bruno List continued
On 01 Oct 2011, at 03:39, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sep 30, 4:56 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 30 Sep 2011, at 01:38, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sep 29, 10:29 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I don't feel this very compelling. You have to assume some primitive matter, and notion of localization. Why? I think you only have to assume the appearance of matter and localization, which we do already. That would make my point, except it is not clear, especially with what you said before. Appearance to who, and to what kind of object? You loss me completely. The matter that seems like substance to us from our naive perception seems substantial because of what it is that we actually are. Matter on different scales and densities might be invisible and intangible, or like the planet as a whole, just out of range. What we experience externally is only the liminal surfaces which face the gaps between matter. The interior of matter is nothing like a substance, it's the opposite of a substance, it's a sensorimotive experience over time. The singularity is all the matter that there is, was, and will be, but it has no exterior - no cracks made of space or time, it's all interiority. It's feelings, images, experiences, expectations, dreams, etc, and whatever countless other forms might exist in the cosmos. You can use arithmetic to render an impersonation of feeling, as you can write a song that feels arithmetic - but not all songs feel arithmetic. You can write a poem about a color or you can write an equation about visible electromagnetism, but neither completely describe either color or electromagnetism. I have no clue what you are taking about. That your conclusion makes some arithmetical being looking like impersonal zombie is just racism for me. So I see a sort of racism against machine or numbers, justified by unintelligible sentences. This is the kind of strong metaphysical and aristotleian assumption which I am not sure to see the need for, beyond extrapolating from our direct experience. Is it better to extrapolate only from indirect experience? It is better to derive from clear assumptions. Clear assumptions can be the most misleading kind. But that is the goal. Celar assumption leads to clear misleading, which can then be corrected with respect to facts, or repeatable experiments. Unclear assumptions lead to arbitrariness, racism, etc. You have to assume mind, and a form of panpsychism, which seems to me as much problematic than what it is supposed to explain or at least describe. It wouldn't be panpsychism exactly, any more than neurochemistry is panbrainism. The idea is that whatever sensorimotive experience taking place at these microcosmic levels But now you have to define this, and explain where the microcosmos illusion comes from, or your theory is circular. I don't think there is a microcosmos illusion, unless you are talking about the current assumptions of the Standard Model as particles. That's not an illusion though, just a specialized interpretation that doesn't scale up to the macrocosm. As far as where sensorimotive phenomena comes from, it precedes causality. 'Comes from' is a sensorimotive proposition and not the other way around. The singularity functions inherently as supremacy of orientation, and sense and motive are energetic functions of the difference between it and it's existential annihilation through time and space. That does not help. is nothing like what we, as a conscious collaboration of trillions of these things, can relate to. It's more like protopsychism. ... and where that protopsychism come from, and what is it. Could you clearly separate your assumptions, and your reasoning (if there is any). I just try to understand. Specifically, like if you have any two atoms, something must have a sense of what is supposed to happen when they get close to each other. Iron atoms have a particular way of relating that's different from carbon atoms, and that relation can be quantified. That doesn't mean that the relation is nothing but a quantitative skeleton. There is an actual experience going on - an attraction, a repulsion, momentum, acceleration...various states of holding, releasing, or binding a 'charge'. What looks like a charge to us under a microscope is in fact a proto-feeling with an associated range of proto-motivations. Why? The link between both remains as unexplainable as before. Mind would be a sensorimotive structure. A physical structure? A mathematical structure? A theological structure? No, a sensorimotive structure - which could encompass mathematical, theological, or physical styles. It's an experience that plays out over time and has participatory aspects. Some parts of the structure are quite literal and map to muscle movements and discrete neural pathways, and other ranges are lower frequency, broader, deeper, more continuous and poetic
Re: Bruno List continued
On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 7:44 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: On Sep 30, 10:16 am, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Sep 30, 2011, at 7:22 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Sep 29, 11:14 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Craig, do the neurons violate the conservation of energy and momentum? And if not, then how can they have any unexpected effects? No. If you are wondering whether I think that anything that contradicts established observations of physics, chemistry, or biology is going on, the answer has always been no, and the fact that you are still asking means that you don't understand what I've said. If it seems that I have misunderstood it is because I see a contradiction. If a neuron opens it's ion channels because of a thought, then thought is something we can see all the correlates of in terms of third person observable particle collisions. If the ion channel were to open without the observable and necessary particle collisions then the neuron would be violating the conservation if momentum. It's not the particle collisions that cause an ion channel to open, it's the neuron's sensitivity to specific electrochemical conditions associated with neurotransmitter molecules, The neurons sensitivities can be ignored if one looks at the neuron as a collection of particals, and you see interactions between particles rather than between neurons. If you think this is not possible, then you are assuming neurons can do things that would violate the conservation of momentum. and it's ability to respond with a specific physical change. All of those changes are accompanied by qualitative experiences on that microcosmic level. Our thoughts do not cause the ion channels to directly open or close any more than a screen writer causes the pixels of your TV to get brighter or dimmer, you are talking about two entirely different scales of perception. Think of our thoughts and feelings as the 'back end' of the total physical 'front end' activity of the brain. I would be more inclined to say they are the top end rather than the back end, as thoughts are built on top of awareness of information, which is built on top of brain behaviors and states, which is built on top of neuron behaviors, which is built on top of chemistry, which is built on top of the particle interactions of physics. When you describe it as a back end it casts a mystical, unprobable and thus unscientific light on the idea, since that explanation ends with there is no explanation. Worse, either this invisible back end is tinkering with the trajectories of particles (as in interactionist dualism) or it is just there, having no effect (as an epiphenomenon) and leads to zombies and questions of its purpose. Alternately, you could adopt Liebniz's approach and say the front end and back end are independent realities which are, using your term, synergized. But Liebniz's harmony leads to pure idealism, for the existence of minds is enough to explain all observations; there would be no need for a physical word to force our observations to agree with physical law. The back end thoughts and feelings cannot be reduced to the front end activities of neurons or ion channels, but they can be reduced to the back end experiences of those neurons or ion channels - almost, except that they synergize in a more significant way than front end phenomena can. Think of it like a fractal vis if you want, where the large design is always emerging from small designs, but imagine that the large design and the small designs are both controlled by separate, but overlapping intelligences so that sometimes the small forms change and propagate to the larger picture and other times the largest picture changes and all of the smaller images are consequently changed. Now imagine that the entire fractal dynamic has an invisible, private backstage to it, Either this invisible and irreducible backstage can alter the direction or energy of particles (thus leading to observable physical differences and effects) or it cannot, making it an unnecessary epiphenomenon. Which would you say it is? which has no fractal shapes developing and shifting every second, but it has instead flavors and sounds that change at completely different intervals of time than the front end fractal, so that the pulsating rhythms of the fractal are represented on the back end as long melodies and fragrant journeys. Both the visual fractal and the olfactory musical follow some of the same cues exactly and both of them diverge from each other completely as well so that you cannot look at the fractal and find some graphic mechanism that produces a song, and the existence of the song does not mean that there is an invisible musicality pushing the pixels of the fractal around, it's just that they are like the two ends of a bowtie; one matter across space and the other
Re: Interesting paper on consciousness, computation and MWI
On 01 Oct 2011, at 09:31, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 07:02:28PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: OK. But note that in this case you are using the notion of 3-OM (or computational state), not Bostrom notion of 1-OM (or my notion of first person state). The 3-OM are countable, but the 1-OMs are not. Could you explain more why you think this? AFAICT, Bostrom makes no mention of the cardinality of his OMs. I don't think that Bostrom mentions the cardinality of his OMs, indeed. I don't think that he clearly distinguish the 1-OMs and the 3- OMs either. By 3-OM I refer to the computational state per se, as defined relatively to the UD deployment (UD*). Those are clearly infinite and countable, even recursively countable. The 1-OMs, for any person, are not recursively countable, indeed by an application of a theorem of Rice, they are not even 3-recognizable. Or more simply because you cannot know your substitution level. In front of some portion of UD*, you cannot recognize your 1-OMs in general. You cannot say I am here, and there, etc. But they are (non constructively) well defined. God can know that you are here, and there, ... And the measure on the 1-OMs should be defined on those unrecognizable 1-OMs. Are the 1-OMs countable? In the quote above, I say that they are not countable. What I meant by this is related to the measure problem, which cannot be made on the states themselves, but, I think, on the computational histories going through them, and, actually, on *all* computational histories going through them. This includes the dummy histories which duplicate you iteratively through some processes similar to the infinite iteration of the WM self-duplication. Even if you don't interact with the output (here: W or M) or the iteration, such computations multiplies in the non-countable infinity. (I am using implictly the fist person indeterminacy, of course). Those computation will have the shape: you M you M you W you M You W You W You W You M ad infinitum This gives a white noise, which is not necessarily available to you, but it still multiplies (in the most possible dumb way) your computational histories. Such infinite computations, which are somehow dovetailing on the reals (infinite sequence of W and M) have a higher measure than any finite computations and so are good candidates for the winning computations. Note that such an infinite background noise, although not directly accessible through your 1-OMs, should be experimentally detectable when you look at yourselves+neighborhood below the substitution level, and indeed QM confirms this by the many (up + down) superposition states of the particles states in the (assumed to be infinite) multi-universes. This might be also confirmed by some possible semantics for the logic of the first person points of view (the quantified logic qS4Grz1, qX1* have, I think, non countable important models). 3-OMs are relatively simple objects, but 1-OMs are more sophisticated, and are defined together with the set of all computations going through their correspondent states. To be sure, I am not entirely persuaded that Bostrom's 1-OMs makes sense with digital mechanism, and usually I prefer to use the label of first person experiences/histories. With the rule Y = II, that is: a bifurcation of a computations entails a doubling of the measure even on its past (in the UD steps sense), this makes clear that we have a continuum of infinite histories. Again, this is made more complex when we take amnesia and fusion of histories) into consideration. I hope this helps a bit. In my opinion, only further progress on the hypostases modal logics will make it possible to isolate a reasonable definition of 1-OMs, which obviously is a quite intricate notion. Bruno -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at
Re: Existence and Properties
On 1 October 2011 14:50, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: But UDA shows (I think) that matter and consciousness are first person collective constructs of all the numbers. Yes, I agree. But my general point was that even in terms of physicalism, the way matter ordinarily appears to the (unexplained) first person is very obviously not in terms of its supposed material primitives. When we seek an explanation for such non-primitive experiential constructs, we look for appropriate compound concepts that in turn are expected to cash out, ultimately, in terms of these selfsame primitives. But, because of this very process of explanation, such constructs, considered at the level of the primitives that exhaustively comprise them, are exposed as unnecessary supplementary hypotheses. They are needed to justify appearances, not to provide unlooked-for additional influence over what, ex hypothesi, are already primitive, self-sufficient mechanisms. Their demand for attention stems exclusively from the manifest fact that such things *appear to us*. Consequently, unless one (unintelligibly) attempts to deny such appearances, despite relying on them for the very explanations in question, such conceptual realities must be accepted as having some distinct existence (even if only for us) over and above the primitives of which they are composed. So matter seems this (strong) sense to be a first person collective construct even under the primitive assumptions of physicalism. One may call this construct epistemological reality, or consciousness, or the first-person. But whatever one calls it, subtracting it leaves nothing but a barren primitive arena; one which, notwithstanding this, continues, at its own level, to do exactly what it always did. This is the zombie argument writ large, except that here the zombie stands revealed as merely an undifferentiated and uninterpreted primitive background. Consequently, in my view, denial of a distinct first person ontology ought to be seen as having the consequence of radical reduction of the remainder to some such arena of primitives and their relations, independent of any metaphysical postulate of their fundamental nature. Hence, such denial is unintelligible. David On 01 Oct 2011, at 02:18, David Nyman wrote: On 30 September 2011 16:55, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: They are ontologically primitive, in the sense that ontologically they are the only things which exist. even computations don't exist in that primitive sense. Computations already exists only relationally. I will keep saying that computations exists, for pedagogical reasons. For professional logicians, I make a nuance, which would look like total jargon in this list. I've been following this discussion, though not commenting (I don't understand all of it). However, your remark above caught my eye, because it reminded me of something that came up a while back, about whether reductive explanations logically entail elimination of non-primitive entities. I argued that this is their whole point; Peter Jones disputed it. Your comment (supporting my view, I think) was that reductionism was necessarily ontologically eliminative, though of course not epistemologically so. Yes. This makes sense. Certainly a wise attitude, given that UDA shows that if Mechanism is correct then both consciousness and matter are reduced to number relations. If reduction was elimination, we should conclude that consciousness does not exist (that would be nonsensical for any conscious creature) and that the physical reality does not exist, which does not make much sense either. A physicalist would also be obliged to say that molecules, living organism, etc. don't exist. Note that James Watson seemed to have defended such a strong reductive eliminativism. But I don't see any problem with reduction, once we agree that some form of existence can be reduced to other, without implying elimination. Mechanism makes it clear that machine are *correct* when they believe in material form. Indeed all LUMs can see by themselves the rise of matter, or the correct laws of matter by introspection, and they will all see the same laws. Indeed this seemed to me uncontroversial, in that the whole point of a reductionist program is to show how all references to compound entities can be replaced by more primitive ones. Your remark above seems now to be making a similar point about arithmetical reductionism in the sense that, presumably, computations can analogously (if loosely) be considered compounds of arithmetical primitives, a point that had indeed occurred to me at the time. If so, what interests me is the question that inspired the older controversy. If the primitives of a given ontology are postulated to be all that really exist, how are we supposed to account for the apparent existence of compound entities? We need two things. The primitive objects, and the basic laws to
Re: David Eagleman on CHOICE
On 10/1/2011 2:36 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 12:26 AM, Jason Reschjasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Sep 29, 2011, at 8:12 AM, Stathis Papaioannoustath...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 8:55 AM, Jason Reschjasonre...@gmail.com wrote: If it takes the brain 100 ms to compute a moment of awareness, then you can know you were not created 1 microsecond ago. Suppose your brain paused for 1 us every 99 ms. To an external observer you would be functioning normally; do you think you would be a philosophical zombie? We can change the thought experiment to make the pauses and the duration of consciousness between the pauses arbitrarily long, effectively cutting up consciousness however we want, even if a conscious moment is smeared out over time. I think you missed what I was attempting to say. I agree that it would function normally with the introduction of pauses. Let's say the brain was uploaded and on a computer. The scheduler would do a context switch to let another process run. This would not affect the brain or create a zombie. We could even pause the brain, send it over the wire to another computer and execute it there, without a problem. What I think would be problematic is starting a brain simulation without any prior computational history. I think it might take some minimum amount of time (computation) before that brain could be aware of anything. It's a strange, almost paradoxical result but I think observer moments can be sub-conscious. If we say the minimum duration of a conscious moment is 100ms then 99ms and the remaining 1ms of this can occur at different times, perhaps billions of years of real time apart, perhaps simultaneously or in the reverse order. You would have the experience provided only that the full 100ms even if broken up into infinitesimal intervals occurs somewhere, sometime. That sounds like a temporal homunculus. :-) Note that on a nanosecond scale there is no state of the brain. Relativity applies to brains too and so the time order of events on opposite sides of your head only defined to within about a nanosecond. Brent -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Existence and Properties
On 01 Oct 2011, at 17:42, David Nyman wrote: On 1 October 2011 14:50, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: But UDA shows (I think) that matter and consciousness are first person collective constructs of all the numbers. Yes, I agree. But my general point was that even in terms of physicalism, the way matter ordinarily appears to the (unexplained) first person is very obviously not in terms of its supposed material primitives. I agree. That can be related to the weakness of the physicalist approach. I will try to answer in my other comment why this does not apply to digital mechanism (DM). In a sense, you remark does apply to DM, and I refer to it sometimes by the 0,0001% of consciousness that DM cannot explain. Then point will be that we (and machines) can explain why IF mechanism is true, there must remain something which just cannot be explained, and this without postulating any new first person primitive experience. You put your finger on the crux of the difficulty of the mind-body problem. When we seek an explanation for such non-primitive experiential constructs, we look for appropriate compound concepts that in turn are expected to cash out, ultimately, in terms of these selfsame primitives. Not necessarily. Consciousness does not need to be a compound things. It is here that consciousness, as a notion, differ from the nameable constructs; like prime numbers, universal numbers, etc. With mechanism, we can relate consciousness with modal qualitative, and non compounded notion, like arithmetical truth, which can already be said not compounded for any machine approaching it closely. Machines just lacks the vocabulary here: there are none. But, because of this very process of explanation, such constructs, considered at the level of the primitives that exhaustively comprise them, are exposed as unnecessary supplementary hypotheses. I see what you mean. But they are implicit in the belief that our axioms makes sense. This is the implicit (and often unconscious) religious belief of any scientist. We still have to bet that our theories make sense, despite we know that no public theories can provide by itself such a sense. We are using implicitly, at the very moment we suggest (any) theory, an assumption of self-consistency, or an assumption that there is something real. That reality is not compounded, and cannot be reduced into its components, *by us*. Some alien might be able to do this for us, like we can do it for simpler machine than us, but those aliens will not been able to do this for themselves. Colin McGuin is right: consciousness need some amount of mysterianism. They are needed to justify appearances, not to provide unlooked-for additional influence over what, ex hypothesi, are already primitive, self-sufficient mechanisms. Their demand for attention stems exclusively from the manifest fact that such things *appear to us*. That is the heart of the qualia problem. You single out the 0,0001% of consciousness that mechanism cannot explain by the conscious entities themselves, *for themselves*. But machine can understand why it has to be like that, once they bet that they are machines. And this implies that we cannot explain completely how mechanism work, and why mechanism does need some act of faith in the case we use it (in practice, or in theory). That's the key reason why mechanism *is* a theology. Consequently, unless one (unintelligibly) attempts to deny such appearances, despite relying on them for the very explanations in question, such conceptual realities must be accepted as having some distinct existence (even if only for us) over and above the primitives of which they are composed. They will be distinct in the sense that they need, from the part of the machine, an (instinctive) bet in a reality. With mechanism, the bet in arithmetical truth (or more weakly self-consistency) is enough, despite or thanks to the fact that this cannot be an entirely intelligible act. But the machine can describe it at some metalevel, and that is what is done with the internal modal logics. So matter seems this (strong) sense to be a first person collective construct even under the primitive assumptions of physicalism. Yes. But this shows physicalism being contradictory or eliminativist. Nice point. One may call this construct epistemological reality, or consciousness, or the first-person. But whatever one calls it, subtracting it leaves nothing but a barren primitive arena; one which, notwithstanding this, continues, at its own level, to do exactly what it always did. This is the zombie argument writ large, except that here the zombie stands revealed as merely an undifferentiated and uninterpreted primitive background. Consequently, in my view, denial of a distinct first person ontology ought to be seen as having the consequence of radical reduction of the remainder to some such
Re: David Eagleman on CHOICE
On 01 Oct 2011, at 11:36, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 12:26 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Sep 29, 2011, at 8:12 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 8:55 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: If it takes the brain 100 ms to compute a moment of awareness, then you can know you were not created 1 microsecond ago. Suppose your brain paused for 1 us every 99 ms. To an external observer you would be functioning normally; do you think you would be a philosophical zombie? We can change the thought experiment to make the pauses and the duration of consciousness between the pauses arbitrarily long, effectively cutting up consciousness however we want, even if a conscious moment is smeared out over time. I think you missed what I was attempting to say. I agree that it would function normally with the introduction of pauses. Let's say the brain was uploaded and on a computer. The scheduler would do a context switch to let another process run. This would not affect the brain or create a zombie. We could even pause the brain, send it over the wire to another computer and execute it there, without a problem. What I think would be problematic is starting a brain simulation without any prior computational history. I think it might take some minimum amount of time (computation) before that brain could be aware of anything. It's a strange, almost paradoxical result but I think observer moments can be sub-conscious. If we say the minimum duration of a conscious moment is 100ms then 99ms and the remaining 1ms of this can occur at different times, perhaps billions of years of real time apart, perhaps simultaneously or in the reverse order. You would have the experience provided only that the full 100ms even if broken up into infinitesimal intervals occurs somewhere, sometime. I think that you are crossing the limit of your pedagogical use of the physical supervenience thesis. You might be led to a direct contradiction, which might lead to a new proof of its inconsistency. Consciousness cannot be associated with any particular implementation (physical or not) of a computation. It is related to an infinity of computations, structured by the self (or possible self-reference). 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Existence and Properties
On 1 October 2011 18:07, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: To be short, only intelligible ideas exist [only numbers and definable relations exist]. God and matter does NOT exist, but they do exist epistemologically. And they are quite distinct for what really exist. This does not work for a physicalist, because he want to avoid that GOD, and make the global picture a compound of the elementary things: he want a universe composed of material stuff, but that cannot work if we want maintain the existence (even if epistemological) of first person, and that is why honest and rational materialist are bounded to eliminate the very existence of the persons. Yes, this can make sense for me (fortunately we have been round some of these houses before, so I've had some time to bash my brains into shape on these points!). I don't wish to fight over vocabulary here, so when you say God and matter does NOT exist, but they do exist epistemologically I will resist any temptation to accuse you of contradicting yourself, but rather accept that this statement is a way of recognising both the reality and the distinctiveness of God, matter, consciousness and the intelligible ideas. After all, given that it's theology we're talking about, I don't find this more confusing than the doctrine of the Trinity! We agree that honest and rational materialist are bounded to eliminate the very existence of the persons, although (and this is the nub of my argument) to be consistent they ought at the same time to give up using any vocabulary predicated on (and entirely derived from) such existence. The problem is that if they did, they wouldn't have much left to say for themselves. Perhaps that's why they don't. Consequently, in my view, denial of a distinct first person ontology ought to be seen as having the consequence of radical reduction of the remainder to some such arena of primitives and their relations, independent of any metaphysical postulate of their fundamental nature. Hence, such denial is unintelligible. Not really, even for a physicalist. Because my point above explain why for machine, their consciousness will appear to be both ontologically real yet quite distinct from anything postulated as primitive in the theory. I'm still not sure why you would say not for a physicalist. In terms of your theory, there is a principled account of why their consciousness will appear to be both ontologically real yet quite distinct from anything postulated as primitive in the theory, but in the physicalist theory (say, the identity version) there can be no such account, given the premise that only the physical primitives are really real. Of course, if their theory is physicalism + CTM (which we both believe to be incorrect), they are equating consciousness = computation, but the problem with this is that, in the physicalist theory, computation just isn't anything of the sort you describe above; it's just certain kinds of relations that happen to exist between entities defined solely in terms of the real reality. To make this theory coherent, the physicalist would have to accept that computation additionally has just the kind of ontological reality and distinctness you describe. But then, in the face of physicalism, this would be, as you remark, frankly dualistic (and also, in this case, wrong, unless UDA is false). David David On 01 Oct 2011, at 17:42, David Nyman wrote: On 1 October 2011 14:50, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: But UDA shows (I think) that matter and consciousness are first person collective constructs of all the numbers. Yes, I agree. But my general point was that even in terms of physicalism, the way matter ordinarily appears to the (unexplained) first person is very obviously not in terms of its supposed material primitives. I agree. That can be related to the weakness of the physicalist approach. I will try to answer in my other comment why this does not apply to digital mechanism (DM). In a sense, you remark does apply to DM, and I refer to it sometimes by the 0,0001% of consciousness that DM cannot explain. Then point will be that we (and machines) can explain why IF mechanism is true, there must remain something which just cannot be explained, and this without postulating any new first person primitive experience. You put your finger on the crux of the difficulty of the mind-body problem. When we seek an explanation for such non-primitive experiential constructs, we look for appropriate compound concepts that in turn are expected to cash out, ultimately, in terms of these selfsame primitives. Not necessarily. Consciousness does not need to be a compound things. It is here that consciousness, as a notion, differ from the nameable constructs; like prime numbers, universal numbers, etc. With mechanism, we can relate consciousness with modal qualitative, and non compounded notion, like arithmetical truth, which can already be said not
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 1, 6:14 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 10:44 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Sep 30, 10:16 am, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Sep 30, 2011, at 7:22 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Sep 29, 11:14 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Craig, do the neurons violate the conservation of energy and momentum? And if not, then how can they have any unexpected effects? No. If you are wondering whether I think that anything that contradicts established observations of physics, chemistry, or biology is going on, the answer has always been no, and the fact that you are still asking means that you don't understand what I've said. If it seems that I have misunderstood it is because I see a contradiction. If a neuron opens it's ion channels because of a thought, then thought is something we can see all the correlates of in terms of third person observable particle collisions. If the ion channel were to open without the observable and necessary particle collisions then the neuron would be violating the conservation if momentum. It's not the particle collisions that cause an ion channel to open, it's the neuron's sensitivity to specific electrochemical conditions associated with neurotransmitter molecules, and it's ability to respond with a specific physical change. All of those changes are accompanied by qualitative experiences on that microcosmic level. Our thoughts do not cause the ion channels to directly open or close any more than a screen writer causes the pixels of your TV to get brighter or dimmer, you are talking about two entirely different scales of perception. Think of our thoughts and feelings as the 'back end' of the total physical 'front end' activity of the brain. The back end thoughts and feelings cannot be reduced to the front end activities of neurons or ion channels, but they can be reduced to the back end experiences of those neurons or ion channels - almost, except that they synergize in a more significant way than front end phenomena can. Think of it like a fractal vis if you want, where the large design is always emerging from small designs, but imagine that the large design and the small designs are both controlled by separate, but overlapping intelligences so that sometimes the small forms change and propagate to the larger picture and other times the largest picture changes and all of the smaller images are consequently changed. Now imagine that the entire fractal dynamic has an invisible, private backstage to it, which has no fractal shapes developing and shifting every second, but it has instead flavors and sounds that change at completely different intervals of time than the front end fractal, so that the pulsating rhythms of the fractal are represented on the back end as long melodies and fragrant journeys. Both the visual fractal and the olfactory musical follow some of the same cues exactly and both of them diverge from each other completely as well so that you cannot look at the fractal and find some graphic mechanism that produces a song, and the existence of the song does not mean that there is an invisible musicality pushing the pixels of the fractal around, it's just that they are like the two ends of a bowtie; one matter across space and the other experience through time. They influence each other - sometimes intentionally, sometimes arbitrarily, and sometimes in a conflicting or self defeating way. I'm afraid the analogies you use don't help, at least for me. Does an ion channel ever open in the absence of an observable cause? It's a simple yes/no question. Whether consciousness is associated, supervenient, linked, provided by God or whatever is a separate question. Observable by who? It seems like a simple yes or no question to you because you aren't willing or able to see the whole phenomena. If I choose to think about something that makes me mad, I observe that I feel angry, and I observe that neurons fire, ion channels open, etc at the same time. The thoughts and anger they arouse are the observable cause, but they cannot be observed with a microscope or fMRI. They are observed by the person whose brain it is. This is the literal reality of what is going on. If I put my hand on a hot stove, neurons fire, ion channels open, and I feel burning pain through my skin. The cause there is the heat of the stove. Craig -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Existence and Properties
On 01 Oct 2011, at 19:49, David Nyman wrote: On 1 October 2011 18:07, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: To be short, only intelligible ideas exist [only numbers and definable relations exist]. God and matter does NOT exist, but they do exist epistemologically. And they are quite distinct for what really exist. This does not work for a physicalist, because he want to avoid that GOD, and make the global picture a compound of the elementary things: he want a universe composed of material stuff, but that cannot work if we want maintain the existence (even if epistemological) of first person, and that is why honest and rational materialist are bounded to eliminate the very existence of the persons. Yes, this can make sense for me (fortunately we have been round some of these houses before, so I've had some time to bash my brains into shape on these points!). I don't wish to fight over vocabulary here, so when you say God and matter does NOT exist, but they do exist epistemologically I will resist any temptation to accuse you of contradicting yourself, but rather accept that this statement is a way of recognising both the reality and the distinctiveness of God, matter, consciousness and the intelligible ideas. Absolutely. Except for consciousness, those correspond two the epistemological distinction between p (truth, God), Bp (intelligible: it splits into two parts (provable and unprovable) which play a role in the machine acknowledging her ignorance), Bp p (the soul, which is when the intelligible connects with the transcendental: truth), Bp Dt (matter, which is when a reality exist: it is weaker than truth, because it is only the possibility of the (any) truth. Thoses modalities are extensionally equivalent. for all arithmetical p, once the ideally correct machine is chosen, we have, with p sigma_1, that p - Bp - Bp p - Bp Dt. yet, the machine cannot proves those equivalence for all p, and this will introduce, from the machine's views, those insuperable (epistemological, but real!) distinctions. There is a sense to say that from the point of view of God, those distinction does not occur, but machine embedded in computational histories (that is: living) are NOT, usually, God. They cannot *talk* at his place. Sorry for introducing those arithmetical formal precision, but they illustrate what you are saying in the case of ideally correct self- inquiring machines. After all, given that it's theology we're talking about, I don't find this more confusing than the doctrine of the Trinity! St Augustin's explanation of Trinity is inspired from the three Plotinian primary hypostases: God (the One), the Intelligible (The Noùs), and the Soul (the universal or world's soul). but with mechanism, the Intelligible split (in the provable and unprovable) and gives the discursive reasoner (man) as a little part of the noùs. Which gives four hypostases. We get a Quaternity. And then you recover Plotinus' intelligible matter (Bp Dt) and sensible matter (Bp Dt p), which both split (in the provable and unprovable truth). Which makes a total of 8 hypostases: an Octonity, really :) Plotinus does not range the matter notion in the primary hypostases, nor the discursive reasoner. I don't think he would have found problematic that I call the matter notion secondary hypostases, given that he use only primary hypostase. We agree that honest and rational materialist are bounded to eliminate the very existence of the persons, although (and this is the nub of my argument) to be consistent they ought at the same time to give up using any vocabulary predicated on (and entirely derived from) such existence. The problem is that if they did, they wouldn't have much left to say for themselves. OK. Perhaps that's why they don't. Making them somehow into contradiction. It is a sort of aristotelian schizophrenia. Consequently, in my view, denial of a distinct first person ontology ought to be seen as having the consequence of radical reduction of the remainder to some such arena of primitives and their relations, independent of any metaphysical postulate of their fundamental nature. Hence, such denial is unintelligible. Not really, even for a physicalist. Because my point above explain why for machine, their consciousness will appear to be both ontologically real yet quite distinct from anything postulated as primitive in the theory. I'm still not sure why you would say not for a physicalist. In terms of your theory, there is a principled account of why their consciousness will appear to be both ontologically real yet quite distinct from anything postulated as primitive in the theory, but in the physicalist theory (say, the identity version) there can be no such account, given the premise that only the physical primitives are really real. Of course, if their theory is physicalism + CTM (which we both believe to be
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 1, 10:13 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 01 Oct 2011, at 03:39, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sep 30, 4:56 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 30 Sep 2011, at 01:38, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sep 29, 10:29 am, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I don't feel this very compelling. You have to assume some primitive matter, and notion of localization. Why? I think you only have to assume the appearance of matter and localization, which we do already. That would make my point, except it is not clear, especially with what you said before. Appearance to who, and to what kind of object? You loss me completely. The matter that seems like substance to us from our naive perception seems substantial because of what it is that we actually are. Matter on different scales and densities might be invisible and intangible, or like the planet as a whole, just out of range. What we experience externally is only the liminal surfaces which face the gaps between matter. The interior of matter is nothing like a substance, it's the opposite of a substance, it's a sensorimotive experience over time. The singularity is all the matter that there is, was, and will be, but it has no exterior - no cracks made of space or time, it's all interiority. It's feelings, images, experiences, expectations, dreams, etc, and whatever countless other forms might exist in the cosmos. You can use arithmetic to render an impersonation of feeling, as you can write a song that feels arithmetic - but not all songs feel arithmetic. You can write a poem about a color or you can write an equation about visible electromagnetism, but neither completely describe either color or electromagnetism. I have no clue what you are taking about. That your conclusion makes some arithmetical being looking like impersonal zombie is just racism for me. I don't think that there are any arithmetical beings. It's a fantasy, or really more of a presumption mistaking an narrow category of understanding with a cosmic primitive. So I see a sort of racism against machine or numbers, justified by unintelligible sentences. I know that's what you see. I think that it is the shadow of your own overconfidence in the theoretical-mechanistic perspective that you project onto me. This is the kind of strong metaphysical and aristotleian assumption which I am not sure to see the need for, beyond extrapolating from our direct experience. Is it better to extrapolate only from indirect experience? It is better to derive from clear assumptions. Clear assumptions can be the most misleading kind. But that is the goal. Celar assumption leads to clear misleading, which can then be corrected with respect to facts, or repeatable experiments. Unclear assumptions lead to arbitrariness, racism, etc. To me the goal is to reveal the truth, regardless of the nature of the assumptions which are required to get there. If you a priori prejudice the cosmos against figurative, multivalent phenomenology then you just confirm your own bias. You have to assume mind, and a form of panpsychism, which seems to me as much problematic than what it is supposed to explain or at least describe. It wouldn't be panpsychism exactly, any more than neurochemistry is panbrainism. The idea is that whatever sensorimotive experience taking place at these microcosmic levels But now you have to define this, and explain where the microcosmos illusion comes from, or your theory is circular. I don't think there is a microcosmos illusion, unless you are talking about the current assumptions of the Standard Model as particles. That's not an illusion though, just a specialized interpretation that doesn't scale up to the macrocosm. As far as where sensorimotive phenomena comes from, it precedes causality. 'Comes from' is a sensorimotive proposition and not the other way around. The singularity functions inherently as supremacy of orientation, and sense and motive are energetic functions of the difference between it and it's existential annihilation through time and space. That does not help. That doesn't help me either. is nothing like what we, as a conscious collaboration of trillions of these things, can relate to. It's more like protopsychism. ... and where that protopsychism come from, and what is it. Could you clearly separate your assumptions, and your reasoning (if there is any). I just try to understand. Specifically, like if you have any two atoms, something must have a sense of what is supposed to happen when they get close to each other. Iron atoms have a particular way of relating that's different from carbon atoms, and that relation can be quantified. That doesn't mean that the relation is nothing but a quantitative skeleton. There is an actual experience going on - an attraction, a
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 1, 11:01 am, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 7:44 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: On Sep 30, 10:16 am, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Sep 30, 2011, at 7:22 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Sep 29, 11:14 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Craig, do the neurons violate the conservation of energy and momentum? And if not, then how can they have any unexpected effects? No. If you are wondering whether I think that anything that contradicts established observations of physics, chemistry, or biology is going on, the answer has always been no, and the fact that you are still asking means that you don't understand what I've said. If it seems that I have misunderstood it is because I see a contradiction. If a neuron opens it's ion channels because of a thought, then thought is something we can see all the correlates of in terms of third person observable particle collisions. If the ion channel were to open without the observable and necessary particle collisions then the neuron would be violating the conservation if momentum. It's not the particle collisions that cause an ion channel to open, it's the neuron's sensitivity to specific electrochemical conditions associated with neurotransmitter molecules, The neurons sensitivities can be ignored if one looks at the neuron as a collection of particals, and you see interactions between particles rather than between neurons. If you think this is not possible, then you are assuming neurons can do things that would violate the conservation of momentum. If you rule out the sensitivity of the neuron, then you rule out the neuron. It's like taking a baby and putting in a blender and saying 'see, there's no baby there anymore'. Don't you see that reducing everything to particles is a meaningless exercise that makes everything meaningless? You cannot on the one hand deny all levels of organization above that of the atom (or are atoms too qualitative? is it all just quarks, bosons, and leptons?) and then invoke 'collections' of particles. Collections to whom? and it's ability to respond with a specific physical change. All of those changes are accompanied by qualitative experiences on that microcosmic level. Our thoughts do not cause the ion channels to directly open or close any more than a screen writer causes the pixels of your TV to get brighter or dimmer, you are talking about two entirely different scales of perception. Think of our thoughts and feelings as the 'back end' of the total physical 'front end' activity of the brain. I would be more inclined to say they are the top end rather than the back end, I understand, but I'm saying that isn't correct. I think that thoughts are not the inevitable result of a physical mechanism, that's not possible. Experiences can only arise from more primitive experiences, not from an inanimate object. as thoughts are built on top of awareness of information, Information is a metaphysical concept. It's not real. That's where you are jumping from something which is meaningful but insubstantial (thoughts, awareness) to something substantial but not meaningful. Information is just giving a name to ignorance. It is a phantom having neither meaning not substance, it's like phlogiston or soul - a presumptive objectification of subjective experience. My hypothesis presents an antidote to this error. which is built on top of brain behaviors and states, which is built on top of neuron behaviors, which is built on top of chemistry, which is built on top of the particle interactions of physics. I understand completely. That's what I used to think to. It doesn't make sense though. It's like saying that a song is built on top of a stereo system behaviors and states that is built on top of CD player behaviors, which is built on top of laser technology and polymer chemistry, which is built on top of photon interactions and electronic computation. When you describe it as a back end it casts a mystical, unprobable and thus unscientific light on the idea, since that explanation ends with there is no explanation. Just because it makes you uncomfortable doesn't mean it's not accurate. My point is that front end - back end reflects the parity and parallelism of the system. It is not a cascading bottom up causality, it is a parallel coordination as well as a bi-directional mutual causality. Worse, either this invisible back end is tinkering with the trajectories of particles (as in interactionist dualism) or it is just there, having no effect (as an epiphenomenon) No, you just don't understand it because you are holding on to the fantasy of a voyeuristic universe. I'm talking about the voice in your head right now that you are listening to read this sentence. This voice is reflected as electromagnetic modulation patterns in the brain -
Re: Interesting paper on consciousness, computation and MWI
On 10/1/2011 8:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 01 Oct 2011, at 09:31, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 07:02:28PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: OK. But note that in this case you are using the notion of 3-OM (or computational state), not Bostrom notion of 1-OM (or my notion of first person state). The 3-OM are countable, but the 1-OMs are not. Could you explain more why you think this? AFAICT, Bostrom makes no mention of the cardinality of his OMs. I don't think that Bostrom mentions the cardinality of his OMs, indeed. I don't think that he clearly distinguish the 1-OMs and the 3-OMs either. By 3-OM I refer to the computational state per se, as defined relatively to the UD deployment (UD*). Those are clearly infinite and countable, even recursively countable. The 1-OMs, for any person, are not recursively countable, indeed by an application of a theorem of Rice, they are not even 3-recognizable. Or more simply because you cannot know your substitution level. In front of some portion of UD*, you cannot recognize your 1-OMs in general. You cannot say I am here, and there, etc. But they are (non constructively) well defined. God can know that you are here, and there, ... Wouldn't that require that all the infinite UD calculations be completed before all the you could be indentified? And the measure on the 1-OMs should be defined on those unrecognizable 1-OMs. Are the 1-OMs countable? In the quote above, I say that they are not countable. What I meant by this is related to the measure problem, which cannot be made on the states themselves, but, I think, on the computational histories going through them, and, actually, on *all* computational histories going through them. This includes the dummy histories which duplicate you iteratively through some processes similar to the infinite iteration of the WM self-duplication. Even if you don't interact with the output (here: W or M) or the iteration, such computations multiplies in the non-countable infinity. (I am using implictly the fist person indeterminacy, of course). Those computation will have the shape: you M you M you W you M You W You W You W You M ad infinitum This gives a white noise, which is not necessarily available to you, but it still multiplies (in the most possible dumb way) your computational histories. Such infinite computations, which are somehow dovetailing on the reals (infinite sequence of W and M) have a higher measure than any finite computations and so are good candidates for the winning computations. Note that such an infinite background noise, although not directly accessible through your 1-OMs, should be experimentally detectable when you look at yourselves+neighborhood below the substitution level, and indeed QM confirms this by the many (up + down) superposition states of the particles states in the (assumed to be infinite) multi-universes. But aside from the quantum level, doesn't the measure problem have the same drawback and Boltzman's brains. Shouldn't I find myself in a world where everyone is Brent Meeker? This might be also confirmed by some possible semantics for the logic of the first person points of view (the quantified logic qS4Grz1, qX1* have, I think, non countable important models). 3-OMs are relatively simple objects, but 1-OMs are more sophisticated, and are defined together with the set of all computations going through their correspondent states. To be sure, I am not entirely persuaded that Bostrom's 1-OMs makes sense with digital mechanism, and usually I prefer to use the label of first person experiences/histories. With the rule Y = II, that is: a bifurcation of a computations entails a doubling of the measure even on its past (in the UD steps sense), this makes clear that we have a continuum of infinite histories. Again, this is made more complex when we take amnesia and fusion of histories) into consideration. I hope this helps a bit. In my opinion, only further progress on the hypostases modal logics will make it possible to isolate a reasonable definition of 1-OMs, which obviously is a quite intricate notion. Bruno -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message
Re: Bruno List continued
Dear Craig, I went through most of your (unmarked) remarks and my mouse forced me (against my better judgement) to add some of my own. I wll insert in blue - bold Italics. John Mikes On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 3:58 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: On Oct 1, 11:01 am, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 7:44 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Sep 30, 10:16 am, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: On Sep 30, 2011, at 7:22 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Sep 29, 11:14 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Craig, do the neurons violate the conservation of energy and momentum? And if not, then how can they have any unexpected effects? No. If you are wondering whether I think that anything that contradicts established observations of physics, chemistry, or biology is going on, the answer has always been no, and the fact that you are still asking means that you don't understand what I've said. If it seems that I have misunderstood it is because I see a contradiction. If a neuron opens it's ion channels because of a thought, then thought is something we can see all the correlates of in terms of third person observable particle collisions. If the ion channel were to open without the observable and necessary particle collisions then the neuron would be violating the conservation if momentum. It's not the particle collisions that cause an ion channel to open, it's the neuron's sensitivity to specific electrochemical conditions associated with neurotransmitter molecules, The neurons sensitivities can be ignored if one looks at the neuron as a collection of particals, and you see interactions between particles rather than between neurons. If you think this is not possible, then you are assuming neurons can do things that would violate the conservation of momentum. If you rule out the sensitivity of the neuron, then you rule out the neuron. It's like taking a baby and putting in a blender and saying 'see, there's no baby there anymore'. Don't you see that reducing everything to particles is a meaningless exercise that makes everything meaningless? You cannot on the one hand deny all levels of organization above that of the atom (or are atoms too qualitative? is it all just quarks, bosons, and leptons?) and then invoke 'collections' of particles. Collections to whom? * *We have a notion (human) to explain some aspects of phenomena received by epistemic enrichment over the millennia, I call it conventional sciences and it formulates PARTICLES (by aid of mathematics). We devise a 'model' of topics for our thinking populated by such figments and built upon it a technology that is 'almost' good (some mishaps...). So I agree with your outcry. * *** and it's ability to respond with a specific physical change. All of those changes are accompanied by qualitative experiences on that microcosmic level. Our thoughts do not cause the ion channels to directly open or close any more than a screen writer causes the pixels of your TV to get brighter or dimmer, you are talking about two entirely different scales of perception. Think of our thoughts and feelings as the 'back end' of the total physical 'front end' activity of the brain. I would be more inclined to say they are the top end rather than the back end, I understand, but I'm saying that isn't correct. I think that thoughts are not the inevitable result of a physical mechanism, that's not possible. Experiences can only arise from more primitive experiences, not from an inanimate object. * *Amen*. *We know so little about our mentality*... *(if it is YOUR word: * *what would you identify with 'awareness' and 'information'? the latter* *comes pretty well later on).* *** as thoughts are built on top of awareness of information, Information is a metaphysical concept. It's not real. That's where you are jumping from something which is meaningful but insubstantial (thoughts, awareness) to something substantial but not meaningful. Information is just giving a name to ignorance. It is a phantom having neither meaning not substance, it's like phlogiston or soul - a presumptive objectification of subjective experience. My hypothesis presents an antidote to this error. which is built on top of brain behaviors and states, which is built on top of neuron behaviors, which is built on top of chemistry, which is built on top of the particle interactions of physics. I understand completely. That's what I used to think to. It doesn't make sense though. It's like saying that a song is built on top of a stereo system behaviors and states that is built on top of CD player behaviors, which is built on top of laser technology and polymer chemistry, which is built on top of photon interactions and electronic computation. * *Amen. * *** When you
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 1, 4:44 pm, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: Dear Craig, I went through most of your (unmarked) remarks and my mouse forced me (against my better judgement) to add some of my own. I wll insert in blue - bold Italics. John Mikes Thanks John. I appreciate your comments, although I will have to take your word for their blueness and italicized format. I'm just read reading this through the webpage because it seems like gmail messes up the the formatting when I do replies. Do you have a good way of reading/writing to this list in rich text? Just because it makes you uncomfortable doesn't mean it's not accurate. My point is that front end - back end reflects the parity and parallelism of the system. It is not a cascading bottom up causality, it is a parallel coordination as well as a bi-directional mutual causality. * *Add to it: the rest of the so far unknown everything that may also* *initiate the observed little we know of. Causality as we speak about * *it is a selection from the already known - rejecting the rest of the * *world and the rest of the aspects - those we did not yet perceived.* *** Yes, it amazes me, given the history of science being built of revolutionary ideas on the ruins of shattered paradigms that we are still so quick to assume that 'this time, we must have it right'. It is just too unthinkable that anything so fundamental as the relation between subjectivity and material could be questioned. Even knowing as we do about the hundreds of identifiable forms of cognitive bias which our reasoning is subject to, we are still blind to their influence in our own epistemological framework. I got into trouble here for calling our reverse engineering approach to understanding consciousness, life, and the cosmos 'forensic', but I think that it's an appropriate term. By handling our inquiry into sentience like a criminal investigation, we limit our evidence to what is no longer alive. Worse, either this invisible back end is tinkering with the trajectories of particles (as in interactionist dualism) or it is just there, having no effect (as an epiphenomenon) No, you just don't understand it because you are holding on to the fantasy of a voyeuristic universe. I'm talking about the voice in your head right now that you are listening to read this sentence. This voice is reflected as electromagnetic modulation patterns in the brain - changing voltages, action potentials, ion channels opening and closing.. but those things are all utterly meaningless were it not for their top level coherence as a voice in someone's mind. The voice is indeed invisible, and it does indeed orchestrate brain activity from within, but the trajectories of particles are determined by their own causes and conditions - they do what they need to do, and they do what the brain as a whole needs them to do. They are all part of the same system. * *Nice description, IMO missing the essence: the 'mentality' of which* *this entire system (neuronl brainfunctions) is a TOOL for. The one* *that thinks, remembers, is aware and erxperiences. 'Us' (self?)* *** Yes, that seems to be an inconvenient state of affairs to explain. What is the purpose of the brain if not to be of use to the person who inhabits the body? Why would the brain need to invent 'us' to do what it's already doing for it's own neurological and biological evolutionary purposes? The back end thoughts and feelings cannot be reduced to the front end activities of neurons or ion channels, but they can be reduced to the back end experiences of those neurons or ion channels - almost, except that they synergize in a more significant way than front end phenomena can. Think of it like a fractal vis if you want, where the large design is always emerging from small designs, but imagine that the large design and the small designs are both controlled by separate, but overlapping intelligences so that sometimes the small forms change and propagate to the larger picture and other times the largest picture changes and all of the smaller images are consequently changed. Now imagine that the entire fractal dynamic has an invisible, private backstage to it, Either this invisible and irreducible backstage can alter the direction or energy of particles (thus leading to observable physical differences and effects) or it cannot, making it an unnecessary epiphenomenon. Which would you say it is? The direction and energy of particles *is* the invisible and irreducible backstage, just seen from the public front. All events and energies are experiences of material substances. It's only confusing because we are such an enormous compilation of energies and materials and we are overwhelmed with the front end appearances of them as molecules, cells, tissues, etc. We can't see the private, experiential side of all of those microcosmic structures so we are confounded by the necessity of
Re: Interesting paper on consciousness, computation and MWI
On Sat, Oct 01, 2011 at 05:15:34PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 01 Oct 2011, at 09:31, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 07:02:28PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: OK. But note that in this case you are using the notion of 3-OM (or computational state), not Bostrom notion of 1-OM (or my notion of first person state). The 3-OM are countable, but the 1-OMs are not. Could you explain more why you think this? AFAICT, Bostrom makes no mention of the cardinality of his OMs. I don't think that Bostrom mentions the cardinality of his OMs, indeed. I don't think that he clearly distinguish the 1-OMs and the 3-OMs either. By 3-OM I refer to the computational state per se, as defined relatively to the UD deployment (UD*). Those are clearly infinite and countable, even recursively countable. The 1-OMs, for any person, are not recursively countable, indeed by an application of a theorem of Rice, they are not even 3-recognizable. Or more simply because you cannot know your substitution level. In front of some portion of UD*, you cannot recognize your 1-OMs in general. You cannot say I am here, and there, etc. But they are (non constructively) well defined. God can know that you are here, and there, ... And the measure on the 1-OMs should be defined on those unrecognizable 1-OMs. I'm still struggling to understand what you mean by 1-OM here. Are you talking about the infinite histories making up UD*? There are an uncountable number of these, it is true. But then, I wouldn't call these OMs. An OM must surely be related to the set of all such histories passing through your current here and now. Such things, I am convinced, must be countable, implying that each such sets histories is a continuum. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 5:35 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: I'm afraid the analogies you use don't help, at least for me. Does an ion channel ever open in the absence of an observable cause? It's a simple yes/no question. Whether consciousness is associated, supervenient, linked, provided by God or whatever is a separate question. Observable by who? Observable by a third party. It seems like a simple yes or no question to you because you aren't willing or able to see the whole phenomena. If I choose to think about something that makes me mad, I observe that I feel angry, and I observe that neurons fire, ion channels open, etc at the same time. The thoughts and anger they arouse are the observable cause, but they cannot be observed with a microscope or fMRI. They are observed by the person whose brain it is. This is the literal reality of what is going on. If I put my hand on a hot stove, neurons fire, ion channels open, and I feel burning pain through my skin. The cause there is the heat of the stove. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
