Re: A requirement of intelligence and consciousness which only humans have
On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 11:20 PM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Intelligence and consciousness require an agent outside of spacetime (mental) to make choices about or manipulate physical objects within spacetime. Computers have no agent or self outside of spacetime. So they have no intelligence and cannot be conscious. Period. Roger, How do you come up with this stuff? -- 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: Thought Doesn’t Think That It Feels
On 23 Sep 2012, at 18:32, John Clark wrote: On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 9:10 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: We have very often dismissed emotion Nothing mysterious about emotion, its just a condition that predisposes a computer or a human to behave in one way rather than another. That is conditional instruction, and it is third person describable. Emotion refers to a first person quale. I think you continue to dismiss the difference, despite some posts which witness you do see the difference. It means that you believe in a supervenience thesis which has been debunked in the computationalist frame. feelings and consciousness in human. Unfortunately that is not true for philosophers, they don't dismiss consciousness in humans, in fact that's just about the only thing they want to talk about despite the fact that such talk has never once produced anything of value. However philosophers are reluctant to talk about intelligence in humans, even though the subject has proven to be much more fruitful, because its also much harder, and unlike a bullshit consciousness theory a bullshit intelligence theory is easy to shoot down because you can see with your own eyes that it just doesn't work, and that takes all the fun out of theorizing. Another advantage is that to become a consciousness theorist you really don't need to know anything, a grade school education is more than enough, but it takes years of study before you can even begin to figure out how intelligence works, with consciousness you can start producing hot air immediately and to some that's more fun. So philosophers continue to blather on and on about consciousness and, having abandoned the subject, the study of intelligence has been left to computer scientists, programers, mathematicians and neurologists. So let us tackle the subject of consciousness with the scientific method. What about UDA step 4? Your argument for refusing step 3 has been shown, by a number of one people on this list, to be a confusion between 1-view and 3-view, despite their 3p definitions. So what? 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: questions on machines, belief, awareness, and knowledge
On 23 Sep 2012, at 18:33, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 23.09.2012 16:51 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 23 Sep 2012, at 09:31, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 22.09.2012 22:49 meekerdb said the following: ... In the past, Bruno has said that a machine that understands transfinite induction will be conscious. But being conscious and intelligent are not the same thing. Brent In my view this is the same as epiphenomenalism. Engineers develop a robot to achieve a prescribed function. They do not care about consciousness in this respect. Then consciousness will appear automatically but the function developed by engineers does not depend on it. Hence epiphenomenalism seems to apply. Not at all. Study UDA to see why exactly, but if comp is correct, consciousness is somehow what defines the physical realities, making possible for engineers to build the machines, and then consciousness, despite not being programmable per se, does have a role, like relatively speeding up the computations. Like non free will, the epiphenomenalism is only apparent because you take the outer god's eyes view, but with comp, there is no matter, nor consciousness, at that level, and we have no access at all at that level (without assuming comp, and accessing it intellectually, that is only arithmetic). This is hard to explain if you fail to see the physics/machine's psychology/theology reversal. You are still (consciously or not) maintaining the physical supervenience thesis, or an aristotelian ontology, but comp prevents this to be possible. Bruno, I have considered a concrete case, when engineers develop a robot, not a general one. For such a concrete case, I do not understand your answer. I have understood Brent in such a way that when engineers develop a robot they must just care about functionality to achieve and they can ignore consciousness at all. Whether it appears in the robot or not, it is not a business of engineers. Do you agree with such a statement or not? The robot might disagree. You might disagree, if you get a digital brain, and that people torture you on the pretext that you are a zombie. And you are right, we can dismiss consciousness. We have already dismissed emotion and feelings with human slaves for a very long time. That does not mean those slaves were not conscious, and that consciousness has no role. If you want a robot or slave with flexible high cognitive capacities, I doubt that it can harbor a mind without consciousness, which is just when the robot infers (interrogates) its own sanity/consistency, and get aware of its non communicable but known features. Then with comp, you cannot understand where matter comes from without using the concept of consciousness or at least its approximation through most first person notions, like personal memories access, belief, knowledge, sensations, etc. You don't need to understand nor even believe in the Higgs boson to do a pizza, but if the standard model is correct, then there would be no pizza at all without it. If you adopt an instrumental policy, you can evacuate *all* questionings, but when generalized, this attitude leads people to depression and sense crisis, and lack of meaning crisis, and disgust of science. To separate science from spirituality can only lead to technological idolatry in the hands of barbarians. Individuals becomes functional objects. That means suffering and death of humanity. 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: Physics, Metaphysics, and Realism
On 23 Sep 2012, at 20:11, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, September 23, 2012 11:28:49 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 23 Sep 2012, at 15:05, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Evgenii Rudnyi Phenomena are the how physical processes appear to our senses. So they are appearances, not the processes themselves. But scientific experiments and measurements are not made on the appearances, they are made on the processes. Thus the appearences areor [phenomena are said to be well-grounded in the processes themselves. Kant spelled this out in great detail, calling noumena the actual physical process which we cannot reach by our senses, And which does not exist, at least not in the sense that they cause our senses. This is the most counter-intuitive aspect of comp, as the physical process are projection on the conditions making the dream coherent. Why does comp want coherent dreams? Coherent dreams are reasonable data. Comp has to justify their existence (easy, with comp), and their relative measure (hard). 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.
Potential definitions--Re: Re: What is 'Existence'?
Hi Bruno Marchal Potential definitions : To Exist = to have objective being, to physically be, to be within spacetime, having spacial location and extension at time t - a thing such as a brain or object To Inhere = to have subjective being, to mentally or nonphysically be, that is, to be outside of spacetime, inextended (without spacial location at time t), such as thoughts, numbers, quanta, qualia, etc. Thus brain exists, mind inheres. An agent = An inherent control and observation center. A self = an agent Actual = to exist Real = either to exist or to inhere even without a self or agent to observe or control it. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-23, 11:16:38 Subject: Re: What is 'Existence'? == On 23 Sep 2012, at 12:18, Alberto G. Corona wrote: This is my schema. Can you complete/ammend it? Things in themselves (noumena) - - Have a computational nature (Bruno) : few components: numbers, + * OK, for the chosen basic ontology. Numbers, and theor additive and multiplicative laws. That is enough, as is any Turing complete ontology. I would not described the numbers has components, though, because this could lead to the misleading idea that that what exists might be made of numbers, and that is a physicalist non correct view of how what exist epistemologically emerges (through complex number relations and their epistemological content which can be shown to exists once we assume computationalism). Also, if the things in themselves have a computational nature (addition and multiplication are computable, the whole thing is not, as arithmetical truth is not computable at all, and will play an important role in the emergence of the epistemological reality. In particular, the internal epistemological realities will have many non computable features, like machines and programs have too). - Is just a mathematical manyfold(Me), few components: equations - Are Monadic (Roger). many components - Are phisical: includes the phisical world with: space, time persons, cars. (physicalists) Things perceived (phenomena) - - Relies on the architecture of the mind, the activity of the brain (a local arangement that keep entropy constant along a direction in space-time, the product of natural selection Therefore, existence is selected (Me) Is not a brain something perceived? Is that not circular? I can understand relies on the architecture of the mind (the dreams of the universal number), but what is a brain? what is time, space, nature? - The mind is a robust computation -and therefore implies a certain selection- (Bruno) The 1-mind is not a computation, but a selection of a infinity of computation among an infinity of computations. - Are created by the activity of the supreme monad (Roger) - Does not matter (physicalists) Hmm... Many physicalists, notably when computationalist, believe that the mind is real, and can matter. Only, when they use comp to justify this, or to pretend the mind-body problem is solved by comp, they are inconsistent (as shown normally by the UD Argument). I am not sure if your theory take or not the first person indeterminacy into account. Do you agree(*) with UDA 1-4 ? Bruno (*) http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html 2012/9/23 Bruno Marchal On 22 Sep 2012, at 20:05, Stephen P. King wrote: With comp, all the exists comes from the ExP(x) use in arithmetic, and their arithmetical epistemological version, like []Ex[]P(x), or []Ex[]P(x), etc. Can not you see, Bruno, that this stipulation makes existence contingent upon the ability to be defined by a symbol and thus on human whim? It is the tool-maker and user that is talking through you here. Confusion of level. The stipulation used to described such existence does not makes such existence contingent at all. Only the stipulation is contingent, not its content, which can be considered as absolute, as we work in the standard model (by the very definition of comp: we work with standard comp (we would not say yes to a doctor if he propose a non standard cording of our brain). That gives a testable toy theology (testable as such a theology contains the
Re: Re: Does Platonia exist ?
Hi Bruno Marchal But R^3 is not extended in spacetime, is not at location r at time t and isn't a physical but a mental object I would say rather that R^3 inheres. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-22, 15:49:55 Subject: Re: Does Platonia exist ? On 22 Sep 2012, at 11:25, Roger Clough wrote: ROGER: Hi Bruno Marchal I think we should only use the word exists only when we are referring to physical existence. BRUNO: Hmm That might aggravate the naturalist or materialist human penchant. ROGER: Why ? Naturalist and materialist entities are extended and so physically exist. R^3 is extended, but is not physical. The Mandelbrot set is extended, but is not physical. What I say here is how I think Leibniz would respond. Thus I can truthfully say, for example, that God does not exist. Wikipedia says, In common usage, it [existence] is the world we are aware of through our senses, and that persists independently without them. BRUNO: But that points on the whole problem. With comp and QM, even when you observe the moon, it is not really there. ROGER: Yes it is. Although I observe the moon phenomenologically, it still has physical existence in spacetime because it is extended. I don't what is spacetime. I work on where spacetime oir space time hallucinations come from. At least that's Leibniz' position, namely that phenomena, although illusions, still have physical presence. I don't understand. the physical is what need an explanation, notably when you assume comp. Leibniz refers to these as well-founded phenomena. You can still stub your toe on phenomenological rocks. Yes. But this is more an argument that phenomenological rocks can make you stub the toe, even when non extended, like when being virtual or arithmetical. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence On the other hand, Platonia, Plotinus, Plato, Kant and Leibniz, take the opposite view or what is real and what exists. To them ideas and other nonphysical items such as numbers or anything not extended in space, anything outside of spacetime are what exist, the physical world out there is merely an appearance, a phenomenon. Following Leibniz, I would say of such things that they live, since life has such attributes. BRUNO: Hmm... Then numbers lives, but with comp, only universal or Lobian numbers can be said reasonably enough to be living. You might go to far. Even in Plato, the No? content (all the ideas) is richer that its living part. I doubt Plato would have said that a circle is living. Life will need the soul to enact life in the intelligible. Plato's One is a special case, saince it is a monad of monads, OK, it makes sense with m?nad of monads = universal machine/number, and monad = machine/number. And more esoteric thinking treats numbers more as beings: http://supertarot.co.uk/westcott/monad.htm BRUNO: The person and its body. OK. For the term exist I think we should allow all reading, and just ask people to remind us of the sense before the use. With comp, all the exists comes from the ExP(x) use in arithmetic, and their arithmetical epistemological version, like []Ex[]P(x), or []Ex[]P(x), etc. That gives a testable toy theology (testable as such a theology contains the physics as a subpart). Bruno ROGER: You lost me, except I believe that a main part of confusion and disagreement on this list comes because of multiple meanings of the word exists, which brings me back to where I started: I think we should only use the word exists only when we are referring to physical (extended) existence. Which brings me back to my statement: this will not help. You can use this in the mundane life, or even when doing physics (although with QM, even this is no more clear). But if you serach a TOE, it is clearer to clearly distinguish what you assume to exist at the start, and what exists by derivation, and what exists in the mind of the self-aware creatures appearing by derivation. Keep in mind that the UD arrgument is supposed, at the least, to show that the TOE is just arithmetic (or anything Turing equivalent), and that the physical reality has to be recovered mathematically by the statistical interference of number's dream. That is an exercise in theoretical computer science. We can recover more, as we can get a large non communicable, but hopable or fearable, part. Bruno - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-21, 04:10:52 Subject: Re: Numbers in Space On 21 Sep 2012, at 03:28, Stephen P.
Re: Re: Prime Numbers
Hi Bruno Marchal Numbers are not in spacetime, that is, are not at location r at time t. So they are ideas, they are not physical. To be physical you have to have a specific location at a specific time. This is not my view, it is that of Descartes. The same with arithmetic. Numbers and arithmetic statements are not at (r,t). Which is not to say that they are not real, if by real I mean true or as is without an observer. Like in a textbook. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-23, 03:42:03 Subject: Re: Prime Numbers On 22 Sep 2012, at 22:10, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/22/2012 7:32 AM, Roger Clough wrote: How could mathematics be fiction ? If so, then we could simply say that 2+2=5 because it's saturday. How could we have a world we many minds can, on rare occasions, come to complete agreement if that where the case? Perhaps it is true that 2+2=4 because we all agree, at some level, that it is true. (I am not just considering humans here with the word we!) How will you define we without accepting 2+2=4, given that IF we assume comp, we are defined by (L?ian) universal number and their relations with other universal numbers? Why do you keep an idealist conception of numbers, which contradicts your references to papers which use, as most texts in science, the independence and primitivity of elementary arithmetic? Or you remark was ironic? 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. -- 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: Re: Prime Numbers
Hi Bruno Marchal I believe that there are at least three attributes of numbers: 1) Are they true or false as in a numerical equation ? Does 2+ 2 = 4 ? True. 2) Do they physically exist or do they mentally inhere ? They inhere. You can't touch them. 3) Are they real or not ? Numbers are always real (in the philosophical sense). Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-23, 03:42:03 Subject: Re: Prime Numbers On 22 Sep 2012, at 22:10, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/22/2012 7:32 AM, Roger Clough wrote: How could mathematics be fiction ? If so, then we could simply say that 2+2=5 because it's saturday. How could we have a world we many minds can, on rare occasions, come to complete agreement if that where the case? Perhaps it is true that 2+2=4 because we all agree, at some level, that it is true. (I am not just considering humans here with the word we!) How will you define we without accepting 2+2=4, given that IF we assume comp, we are defined by (L?ian) universal number and their relations with other universal numbers? Why do you keep an idealist conception of numbers, which contradicts your references to papers which use, as most texts in science, the independence and primitivity of elementary arithmetic? Or you remark was ironic? 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. -- 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: What is 'Existence'?
Hi Stephen, Any idea about whatever is outside of the mind (noumena, thing it itself as Kant named it)before it is experienced as phenomena is and will remain speculative forever. By definition. But this does not prohibit our speculations... 2012/9/23 Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net On 9/23/2012 6:18 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: This is my schema. Can you complete/ammend it? Things in themselves (noumena) - - Have a computational nature (Bruno) : few components: numbers, + * - Is just a mathematical manyfold(Me), few components: equations - Are Monadic (Roger). many components - Are phisical: includes the phisical world with: space, time persons, cars. (physicalists) Things perceived (phenomena) - - Relies on the architecture of the mind, the activity of the brain (a local arangement that keep entropy constant along a direction in space-time, the product of natural selection Therefore, existence is selected (Me) - The mind is a robust computation -and therefore implies a certain selection- (Bruno) - Are created by the activity of the supreme monad (Roger) - Does not matter (physicalists) Hi Alberto, As I see it, the idea that the noumena are specific and definite without being given in association with phenomena is false as it implies that the things in themselves have innate properties for no reason whatsoever... 2012/9/23 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 22 Sep 2012, at 20:05, Stephen P. King wrote: With comp, all the exists comes from the ExP(x) use in arithmetic, and their arithmetical epistemological version, like []Ex[]P(x), or []Ex[]P(x), etc. Can not you see, Bruno, that this stipulation makes existence contingent upon the ability to be defined by a symbol and thus on human whim? It is the tool-maker and user that is talking through you here. Confusion of level. The stipulation used to described such existence does not makes such existence contingent at all. Only the stipulation is contingent, not its content, which can be considered as absolute, as we work in the standard model (by the very definition of comp: we work with standard comp (we would not say yes to a doctor if he propose a non standard cording of our brain). That gives a testable toy theology (testable as such a theology contains the physics as a subpart). Testable, sure, but theology should never be contingent. It must flow from pure necessity and our finite models are simply insufficient for this task. First our model is not finite, only our theories and machines are. And the AUDA illustrates clearly that theology's shape (the hypostases) follows pure necessity, even if all machine will define a particular arithmetical content for each theology, but this is natural, as it concerns the private life of individual machine (it is the same for us by default in all religion). Bruno -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. -- Alberto. -- 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: What is 'Existence'?
The unavoidable speculative nature of neumena makes existence uncertain to the most deep level. All we have is the phenomena, that are mental. So certainty of existence has meaning within an space of shared conscience of believers that have, by various mental processes, certainty of existence of somethig. 2012/9/24 Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com Hi Stephen, Any idea about whatever is outside of the mind (noumena, thing it itself as Kant named it)before it is experienced as phenomena is and will remain speculative forever. By definition. But this does not prohibit our speculations... 2012/9/23 Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net On 9/23/2012 6:18 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: This is my schema. Can you complete/ammend it? Things in themselves (noumena) - - Have a computational nature (Bruno) : few components: numbers, + * - Is just a mathematical manyfold(Me), few components: equations - Are Monadic (Roger). many components - Are phisical: includes the phisical world with: space, time persons, cars. (physicalists) Things perceived (phenomena) - - Relies on the architecture of the mind, the activity of the brain (a local arangement that keep entropy constant along a direction in space-time, the product of natural selection Therefore, existence is selected (Me) - The mind is a robust computation -and therefore implies a certain selection- (Bruno) - Are created by the activity of the supreme monad (Roger) - Does not matter (physicalists) Hi Alberto, As I see it, the idea that the noumena are specific and definite without being given in association with phenomena is false as it implies that the things in themselves have innate properties for no reason whatsoever... 2012/9/23 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 22 Sep 2012, at 20:05, Stephen P. King wrote: With comp, all the exists comes from the ExP(x) use in arithmetic, and their arithmetical epistemological version, like []Ex[]P(x), or []Ex[]P(x), etc. Can not you see, Bruno, that this stipulation makes existence contingent upon the ability to be defined by a symbol and thus on human whim? It is the tool-maker and user that is talking through you here. Confusion of level. The stipulation used to described such existence does not makes such existence contingent at all. Only the stipulation is contingent, not its content, which can be considered as absolute, as we work in the standard model (by the very definition of comp: we work with standard comp (we would not say yes to a doctor if he propose a non standard cording of our brain). That gives a testable toy theology (testable as such a theology contains the physics as a subpart). Testable, sure, but theology should never be contingent. It must flow from pure necessity and our finite models are simply insufficient for this task. First our model is not finite, only our theories and machines are. And the AUDA illustrates clearly that theology's shape (the hypostases) follows pure necessity, even if all machine will define a particular arithmetical content for each theology, but this is natural, as it concerns the private life of individual machine (it is the same for us by default in all religion). Bruno -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. -- Alberto. -- Alberto. -- 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: What is 'Existence'?
Hi Bruno, With components I mean a neutral enumeration of entities. perhaps lebnitzian monads would be more appropriate. Besides numbers + and * I think that is necessary machines or any kind of instruction set + an execution unit? . It isn't? 2012/9/23 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 23 Sep 2012, at 12:18, Alberto G. Corona wrote: This is my schema. Can you complete/ammend it? Things in themselves (noumena) - - Have a computational nature (Bruno) : few components: numbers, + * OK, for the chosen basic ontology. Numbers, and theor additive and multiplicative laws. That is enough, as is any Turing complete ontology. I would not described the numbers has components, though, because this could lead to the misleading idea that that what exists might be made of numbers, and that is a physicalist non correct view of how what exist epistemologically emerges (through complex number relations and their epistemological content which can be shown to exists once we assume computationalism). Also, if the things in themselves have a computational nature (addition and multiplication are computable, the whole thing is not, as arithmetical truth is not computable at all, and will play an important role in the emergence of the epistemological reality. In particular, the internal epistemological realities will have many non computable features, like machines and programs have too). - Is just a mathematical manyfold(Me), few components: equations - Are Monadic (Roger). many components - Are phisical: includes the phisical world with: space, time persons, cars. (physicalists) Things perceived (phenomena) - - Relies on the architecture of the mind, the activity of the brain (a local arangement that keep entropy constant along a direction in space-time, the product of natural selection Therefore, existence is selected (Me) Is not a brain something perceived? Is that not circular? I can understand relies on the architecture of the mind (the dreams of the universal number), but what is a brain? what is time, space, nature? - The mind is a robust computation -and therefore implies a certain selection- (Bruno) The 1-mind is not a computation, but a selection of a infinity of computation among an infinity of computations. - Are created by the activity of the supreme monad (Roger) - Does not matter (physicalists) Hmm... Many physicalists, notably when computationalist, believe that the mind is real, and can matter. Only, when they use comp to justify this, or to pretend the mind-body problem is solved by comp, they are inconsistent (as shown normally by the UD Argument). I am not sure if your theory take or not the first person indeterminacy into account. Do you agree(*) with UDA 1-4 ? Bruno (*) http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html 2012/9/23 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 22 Sep 2012, at 20:05, Stephen P. King wrote: With comp, all the exists comes from the ExP(x) use in arithmetic, and their arithmetical epistemological version, like []Ex[]P(x), or []Ex[]P(x), etc. Can not you see, Bruno, that this stipulation makes existence contingent upon the ability to be defined by a symbol and thus on human whim? It is the tool-maker and user that is talking through you here. Confusion of level. The stipulation used to described such existence does not makes such existence contingent at all. Only the stipulation is contingent, not its content, which can be considered as absolute, as we work in the standard model (by the very definition of comp: we work with standard comp (we would not say yes to a doctor if he propose a non standard cording of our brain). That gives a testable toy theology (testable as such a theology contains the physics as a subpart). Testable, sure, but theology should never be contingent. It must flow from pure necessity and our finite models are simply insufficient for this task. First our model is not finite, only our theories and machines are. And the AUDA illustrates clearly that theology's shape (the hypostases) follows pure necessity, even if all machine will define a particular arithmetical content for each theology, but this is natural, as it concerns the private life of individual machine (it is the same for us by default in all religion). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group.
Re: Re: Physics, Metaphysics, and Realism
Hi Evgenii Rudnyi Phenomenal means physical objects as perceived by the senses. Noumenal means the physical processes or objects themselves. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Evgenii Rudnyi Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-23, 11:03:39 Subject: Re: Physics, Metaphysics, and Realism On 23.09.2012 15:05 Roger Clough said the following: Hi Evgenii Rudnyi Phenomena are the how physical processes appear to our senses. So they are appearances, not the processes themselves. But scientific experiments and measurements are not made on the appearances, they are made on the processes. Thus the appearences areor [phenomena are said to be well-grounded in the processes themselves. Kant spelled this out in great detail, calling noumena the actual physical process which we cannot reach by our senses, and the appearances of those noumena to the senses he called phenomena. That's fine. My question then would be as follows. When you talk about physical PHYSICAL (within spacetime): Anything with dimensions, do you mean noumena or phenomena? Evgenii -- 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. -- 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: Re:_Thought_Doesn�t_Think_That_It_Feels
Hi John Clark Emotions are strong feelings that are set off, not by our senses primarily but when our will to do something is blocked. But they are still feelings and can be handled as such, except that they are often more strongly linked to muscular and bodily reactions. Animal studies would bring out what's going on from an instinctual piont of view. In humans, Flight vs Flight episodes are good examples. And in humans, emotions are more often than not triggered by unfortunate thoughts. Emotions are usually linked in particular to facial expressions. Darwin wrote a book about those. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: John Clark Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-23, 12:32:50 Subject: Re:_Thought_Doesn?_Think_That_It_Feels On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 9:10 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: We have very often dismissed emotion Nothing mysterious about emotion, its just a condition that predisposes a computer or a human to behave in one way rather than another.? feelings and consciousness in human.? ? Unfortunately that is not true for philosophers, they don't dismiss consciousness in humans, in fact that's just about the only thing they want to talk about despite the fact that such talk has never once produced anything of value. However philosophers are reluctant to talk about intelligence in humans, even though the subject has proven to be much more fruitful, because its also much harder, and unlike a bullshit consciousness theory a bullshit intelligence theory is easy to shoot down because you can see with your own eyes that it just doesn't work, and that takes all the fun out of theorizing. Another advantage is that to become a consciousness theorist you really don't need to know anything, a grade school education is more than enough, but it takes years of study before you can even begin to figure out how intelligence works, with consciousness you can start producing hot air immediately and to some that's more fun. So philosophers continue to blather on and on about consciousness and, having abandoned the subject, the study of intelligence has been left to computer scientists, programers, mathematicians and neurologists. ? John K Clark? -- 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. -- 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: Re: Re: Re: IMHO conscousness is an activity not a thing
Hi John Clark I believe that the will in a monad is a desire to do something which would show up as an appetite. The desired action is then seen and effected by the supreme monad. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: John Clark Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-23, 12:58:45 Subject: Re: Re: Re: IMHO conscousness is an activity not a thing On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 9:58 AM, Roger Clough wrote: mind can also operate on brain (through the will or an intention). I have no idea at the present of what such a monadic structure might be like. Will or Intention is a high level description as is pressure, but it's not the only valid description. It's true that pressure made the balloon expand but it is also true that air molecules hitting the inside of the balloon made it expand and molecules know nothing about pressure. It's true that I scratched my nose because I wanted too but its also true that it happened because an electrochemical signal was sent from my brain to the nerves in my hand. ?ohn K Clark -- 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. -- 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: Re: What is 'Existence'?
Hi John Mikes At the time I thought to call the nonphysical realm life, but since decided to use a less red flag term, that the nonphysical domain inheres, while the physical realm exists. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: John Mikes Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-22, 15:52:11 Subject: Re: What is 'Existence'? Dear Stephen and Bruno: (BRUNO: Hmm... Then numbers lives, but with comp, only universal or Lobian numbers can be said reasonably enough to be living. You might go to far. Even in Plato, the No? content (all the ideas) is richer that its living part. I doubt Plato would have said that a circle is living. Life will need the soul to enact life in the intelligible. ) I find it hard to believe that 'exist(ence?)' is depending on human thought/measurement/comprehension. If something fails to 'materialize'(?) into physical(?) existence it still can exist - in our thinking, or beyond that: in the part of the unlimited (complexity?) we never heard of. To restrict existence to our knowledge - especially quoting ancient thinkers who experienced so much less to think of- (e.g. Leibnitz, whom I respect no end, but over the more than 3 centuries humanity has learned SOMETHING??)? is counterscientific -there are less polite words - and Bruno's justification depends how we define that 'circle' - OOPS: life-living. And IF we aggrevate naturalists and materialists? so be it. (Spelling var: SOB-it). (Bruno again:? Life will need the soul to enact life in the intelligible. Looks like Bruno's stance on the mind-body bases. I am not with that, I consider Descartes' dualism a defence against the danger to be burnt at the stake. I consider him smarter than dualistic. ? Stephen, I think(?) you waste your time arguing in such length against a differen belief system. It is like a political campaign in the US: everybody talks ONLY to their OWN constituents, the others do not even listen. All those billion $s (there) are wasted just as all those zillion posts here. Look at the double-meaning of your Wiki-quote. ((-? am one of those others-.)) ? Sorry I could not resist to reply. ? John M ? ? ? ? ? ? On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 2:05 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/22/2012 5:25 AM, Roger Clough wrote: ROGER: Hi Bruno Marchal I think we should only use the word exists only when we are referring to physical existence. Dear Roger, ?? I think the exact opposite. We should NEVER use the word exists in reference to what is merely the subject of human perception, aka physical existence. BRUNO: Hmm That might aggravate the naturalist or materialist human penchant. ?? Just a tad... ROGER: Why ? Naturalist and materialist entities are extended and so physically exist. ?? Why might wish to consider that that extension is the result of observation and not independent of it. What I just wrote will be controversial, as it seems to make what exists subject to human whim, but I am trying to make a more subtle point. The physical world has properties that we can observe by performing observations and we have learned, from very careful experiment and logical analysis, that those properties cannot be definite prior to the measurements. This is not to say that measurements cause properties, no. Measurements select properties. Objects prior to measurement have a spectrum of possible properties and not definite properties. This is the lesson of QM that must be understood. To claim otherwise is to claim that nature has a preference for some basis. ?? We to understand that every single act of interaction that occurs in the universe is, at some level, an act of measurement. If we consider that there are a HUGE number of measurements occurring all around us continuously, that this and this alone is responsible for the appearance of a definite physical world that has properties objectively. It does this in the sense that that definiteness does not depend on the actions of any one individual observations or interaction; it depends on the sum over all of the acts of interaction. What I say here is how I think Leibniz would respond. Thus I can truthfully say, for example, that God does not exist. Wikipedia says, In common usage, it [existence] is the world we are aware of through our senses, and that persists independently without them. BRUNO: But that points on the whole problem. With comp and QM, even when you observe the moon, it is not really there. ROGER: Yes it is. Although I observe the moon phenomenologically, it still has physical existence in spacetime because it is extended. ?? You are not the only observer of the moon! There is a subtle passive-aggressive solipsism in this idea that the moon exists without me , as if to imply the possibility of the converse: the moon
what is real ?
Hi Somebody on this list asked whether I thought the physical world to be real while the nonphysical isn't, but my email program seems to have eaten his email. The answer is that it all depends on how you look at the world. Idealists believe that only ideas are real, while the material world is phenomenal. Not a delusion. Plato, Leibniz and Kant belonged to this faction. The reason given by Leibniz is that Ideal world is given by an infinite number of persistent although changing point ideas called monads. Monads can change, but cannot either be created or destroyed. But at the root of the physical world you have quantum uncertainty such as Heisenberg showed, which made Leibniz believe that only the monads are real. By real he meant persistent. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen -- 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: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
Hi Stathis Papaioannou You need a self or observer to be conscious, and computers have no self. So they can't be conscious. Consciousness = a subject looking at, or aware of, an object. Computers have no subject. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stathis Papaioannou Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-23, 09:02:12 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 3:53 AM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 3:03 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: If anyone is not familiar with David Chalmers Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia You should have a look at it first. I confess I have not read it because I have little confidence it's any better than the Chinese Room. Well OK I exaggerate, it's probably better than that (what isn't) but there is something about all these anti AI thought experiments that has always confused me. Let's suppose I'm dead wrong and Chambers really has found something new and strange and maybe even paradoxical about consciousness, what I want to know is why am I required to explain it if I want to continue to believe that a intelligent computers would be conscious? Whatever argument Chambers has it could just as easily be turned against the idea that the intelligent behavior of other people indicates consciousness, and yet not one person on this list believes in Solipsism, not even the most vocal AI critics. Why? Why is it that I must find the flaws in all these thought experiments but the anti AI people feel no need to do so? In the extraordinarily unlikely event that Chambers has shown that consciousness is paradoxical (and its probably just as childish as all the others) I would conclude that he just made an error someplace that nobody has found yet. When Zeno showed that motion was paradoxical nobody thought that motion did not exist but that Zeno just made a mistake, and he did, although the error wasn't found till the invention of the Calculus thousands of years later. The paper presents a very strong argument *in favour* of computers having consciousness. I haven't seen anyone who understands it refute it, or even try to refute it. It's worth reading at least part 3, as it constitutes a proof of that which you suspected. -- 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. -- 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: Re: What is 'Existence'?
Hi Stephen P. King What's in a name ? If you have a better word for what I have been calling physical existence, please say it. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen -- - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-22, 14:05:04 Subject: Re: What is 'Existence'? On 9/22/2012 5:25 AM, Roger Clough wrote: ROGER: Hi Bruno Marchal I think we should only use the word exists only when we are referring to physical existence. Dear Roger, I think the exact opposite. We should NEVER use the word exists in reference to what is merely the subject of human perception, aka physical existence. BRUNO: Hmm That might aggravate the naturalist or materialist human penchant. Just a tad... ROGER: Why ? Naturalist and materialist entities are extended and so physically exist. Why might wish to consider that that extension is the result of observation and not independent of it. What I just wrote will be controversial, as it seems to make what exists subject to human whim, but I am trying to make a more subtle point. The physical world has properties that we can observe by performing observations and we have learned, from very careful experiment and logical analysis, that those properties cannot be definite prior to the measurements. This is not to say that measurements cause properties, no. Measurements select properties. Objects prior to measurement have a spectrum of possible properties and not definite properties. This is the lesson of QM that must be understood. To claim otherwise is to claim that nature has a preference for some basis. We to understand that every single act of interaction that occurs in the universe is, at some level, an act of measurement. If we consider that there are a HUGE number of measurements occurring all around us continuously, that this and this alone is responsible for the appearance of a definite physical world that has properties objectively. It does this in the sense that that definiteness does not depend on the actions of any one individual observations or interaction; it depends on the sum over all of the acts of interaction. What I say here is how I think Leibniz would respond. Thus I can truthfully say, for example, that God does not exist. Wikipedia says, In common usage, it [existence] is the world we are aware of through our senses, and that persists independently without them. BRUNO: But that points on the whole problem. With comp and QM, even when you observe the moon, it is not really there. ROGER: Yes it is. Although I observe the moon phenomenologically, it still has physical existence in spacetime because it is extended. You are not the only observer of the moon! There is a subtle passive-aggressive solipsism in this idea that the moon exists without me , as if to imply the possibility of the converse: the moon would not exist without me. No, By Leibniz' Monadology, all extensions are an appearance and not inherent or innate. The definiteness of the Moon follows from the mutual consistency required to occur between the percepts of each and every monad such that an incontrovertible (empty of inconsistency) relation can exist between them. This in the language of computer science is known as Satisfiability. At least that's Leibniz' position, namely that phenomena, although illusions, still have physical presence. Leibniz refers to these as well-founded phenomena. You can still stub your toe on phenomenological rocks. Yes, but Leibniz' position was that phenomenological appearance flowed strictly from the Pre-Established Harmony between monads and had no existence or reality otherwise. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence Existence has been variously defined by sources. In common usage, it is the world we are aware of through our senses, and that persists independently without them. Others define it as everything that is, or simply everything. I am one of those others. We cannot conflate the definiteness of properties that we perceive with the bundling together of those properties in some particular location that results because of the requirement of mutual consistency of our physical universe. Existence, qua innate possibility to be, cannot be constrained by any a prior or contingent upon any a posteriori. It must simply be. So leave it alone. On the other hand, Platonia, Plotinus, Plato, Kant and Leibniz, take the opposite view or what is real and what exists. To them ideas and other nonphysical items such as numbers or anything not extended in space, anything outside of spacetime are what exist, the physical world out there is merely an appearance, a phenomenon. Following Leibniz, I would say
Re: Re: Does Platonia exist ?
Hi Stephen P. King I have since abandoned the term living for the term to inhere to apply to nonphysical existence such as thoughts or ideas or numbers. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-22, 15:40:12 Subject: Re: Does Platonia exist ? On 9/22/2012 5:34 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Alberto G. Corona If we can define what we are talking about, most of our problems will be solved. That is why I believe we ought to use the Descartes-Leibniz definition of physical existence as that which is in spacetime (is extended). Thus the brain exists. Nonphysical existence (mind) is that which is not extended in space and hence is said to be nonextended or inextended. I have been referring to this type of existence as living, but number does not seem tpo be alive since it does not change while living things do. I sucggest that we use the term mental for inextended entities. Then both number and mind are mental. Roger Clough,rclo...@verizon.net 9/22/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen Dear Roger, The only problem that I see is that the term living has an associated schemata of meaningfulness. It would be better, I argue, to cleanser the term existence of its vague and nonsensical associations and use it for the necessary possibility of both the extended and non-extended aspects of the One. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. -- 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: Re: On Causation with Mind and brain as apples and oranges
Hi Stephen P. King I have trouble conceiving an isomorphism (or anything comparative) between something that is there and something that is not. The something that is not there is not the absence of the thing that was, since it has no shape, no location, and cannot be found by a physical search. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-22, 16:03:48 Subject: Re: On Causation with Mind and brain as apples and oranges On 9/22/2012 6:11 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg OK that's the classic example of the pin prick and feeling pain. It works for the worlds of apples and oranges if you accept Hume's and Leibniz's theory of causation, or at least my understanding of it, namely that changes in the mental world are simply synchronized with changes in the physical world and vice versa. Dear Roger, The relation between the extended and non-extended is immediate and thus must be some form of isomorphism. I porpose the Stone Duality to be a valid and faithful representation of this isomorphism, following the suggestion by Pratt. The coordination of events of the body and states of the mind are successive alignments that we can either case into a global explanatory scheme, such as a PEN, or we can assume some Humean classical model. Perhaps both Hume and Leibniz where looking at the problem from opposite sides of a spectrum and each only seeing the pole. If We start with the consistent idea of a monad, as defined, and then consider what it means to have a coordination between the extended and non-extended aspects, we notice that these can be recast into an inside v. outside relation. It was Descartes that failed to see that the problem is not explanation of the interaction between the mental and the physical, it is the problem of explanation of how bodies (minds) interact with other bodies (minds). Bruno has shown that it is possible to almost completely capture the relational scheme needed for minds within a framework of modal logic. He shows that all that is left is the explanation of what is a body. Newton et al, have given us a wonderful account of the schemata of the body but left unresolved the nature and necessity of the mind. What if both of these schemata are just restatements of the Polarity between what Leibniz and Hume considered as a problem of causality? Given that, to see if an action is caused either by mental or physical powers you simply look at the near-future mental or physical situation. Monads allow you to do that. Don't conflate them. Think of the causality of each as contravariant, as going in opposite directions. Monads can solve this if we understand that they have dual aspects. Mental aspects are such that their causation is logical entailment and this looks back onto precedent so as to not allow any state that would contradict any previous state. Physical aspects are causal in the usual understood sense of events causing other events in a temporal progression. In that future state both the mental and physical situations will have changed. No! That would allow contradictions, and thus White Rabbits, to occur. The key is to understand that we cannot assume a global arrangement that imposes a ordering on the Many, ala a Pre-Established Harmony. We have to allow for novelty and choice. We can achieve this in an explanation, but we need to consider that we are, at the end of the day, considering finite worlds that have bounding horizons. And anything changed can be considered as being caused. That's the principle of sufficient reason. We agree. but all of the Principles must be applicable. We cannot cherry pick the applications of the Principles. There is the Identity of Indiscernibles to consider, and others... Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/22/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-21, 13:03:13 Subject: Re: Mind and brain as apples and oranges On Friday, September 21, 2012 11:48:34 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King and all The problems imagined by materialists in invoking dualism are just that - imaginary-- as long as mind is unextended and brain is extended. And the so-called hard problem of consciousness and the cartesian problem of interfacing or superimposing mind and brain simply vanish. They're apples and oranges. They exist in different universes, which can superimpose, the extended or physical floating in a sea of inextended or nonphysical mind, or to use a better word, life. But if I drink coffee (from the apples universe of extended stuff) then I get amped (in the oranges universe if unextended mind). Why does that problem
Re: Re: Prime Numbers
Hi Stephen P. King That's what Peirce gave as a pragmatic definition of truth, something that we would all agree to, given time enough. But fiction can be true (as true fiction, a narrative woven about actual events) or not be true. Arithmetic isn't, it's either always true or always false. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-22, 16:10:38 Subject: Re: Prime Numbers On 9/22/2012 7:32 AM, Roger Clough wrote: How could mathematics be fiction ? If so, then we could simply say that 2+2=5 because it's saturday. How could we have a world we many minds can, on rare occasions, come to complete agreement if that where the case? Perhaps it is true that 2+2=4 because we all agree, at some level, that it is true. (I am not just considering humans here with the word we!) -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. -- 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: What is 'Existence'?
On 9/24/2012 8:05 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King What's in a name ? If you have a better word for what I have been calling physical existence, please say it. Actuality. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 10:02 PM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Hi Stathis Papaioannou You need a self or observer to be conscious, and computers have no self. So they can't be conscious. Consciousness = a subject looking at, or aware of, an object. Computers have no subject. So where do you get the idea that computers have no self, no subject and can't be observers or be conscious? You may as well claim that women aren't conscious but just act as if they are conscious, like an advanced computer pretending to have a self. -- 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: Re: A requirement of intelligence and consciousness which only humanshave
Hi Stathis Papaioannou You'll have to ask Descartes. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stathis Papaioannou Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-24, 02:44:10 Subject: Re: A requirement of intelligence and consciousness which only humanshave On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 11:20 PM, Roger Clough wrote: Intelligence and consciousness require an agent outside of spacetime (mental) to make choices about or manipulate physical objects within spacetime. Computers have no agent or self outside of spacetime. So they have no intelligence and cannot be conscious. Period. Roger, How do you come up with this stuff? -- 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. -- 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: Re: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
Hi Stathis Papaioannou Try to define consciousness. If you can't, how do you know that a computer is conscious ? Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stathis Papaioannou Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-24, 08:38:48 Subject: Re: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 10:02 PM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stathis Papaioannou You need a self or observer to be conscious, and computers have no self. So they can't be conscious. Consciousness = a subject looking at, or aware of, an object. Computers have no subject. So where do you get the idea that computers have no self, no subject and can't be observers or be conscious? You may as well claim that women aren't conscious but just act as if they are conscious, like an advanced computer pretending to have a self. -- 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. -- 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: Re: What is 'Existence'?
Hi Stephen P. King At least as far as the physical world goes, the grand project of science is to find out what the noumena are. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-24, 07:40:08 Subject: Re: What is 'Existence'? On 9/24/2012 6:46 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Hi Stephen, Any idea about whatever is outside of the mind (noumena, thing it itself as Kant named it) before it is experienced as phenomena is and will remain speculative forever. By definition. But this does not prohibit our speculations... I agree. ;-) -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. -- 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: Potential definitions--Re: Re: What is 'Existence'?
On 24 Sep 2012, at 12:26, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal Potential definitions : To Exist = to have objective being, to physically be, to be within spacetime, having spacial location and extension at time t - a thing such as a brain or object But exists has simple meaning, when applied on what you assume to exist primitively. The words objective, physically, being, spacetime spatial, location, time, brain, object have no simple meaning that everyone can take for granted, when working on th TOE search, or when trying to get some light on the mind body problem. I thought you were a Platonist, even if a Leibnizian one, but now it seems you believe in primitive physical notion, like spacetime, so it becomes hard to figure out what are your sharable assumptions. To Inhere = to have subjective being, to mentally or nonphysically be, that is, to be outside of spacetime, inextended (without spacial location at time t), such as thoughts, numbers, quanta, qualia, etc. Thus brain exists, mind inheres. ? I don't see the logic leading to brain exist, from mind inhere. Brain exists, but with comp it can't be a primitive existence, and so brain exists is a pattern that we have to explain from an ontology with not assumed brain. An agent = An inherent control and observation center. A self = an agent Actual = to exist Real = either to exist or to inhere even without a self or agent to observe or control it. That can make sense in some context, but not when you search a theory *explaining* or enlightening the big picture. You need a criterion of existence for what you take as primitive, and then you can defined the many different sorts of existence which can be reduced to the primitive existence. But you betrayed yourself by insisting that we don't mix theology and science, where I think that the separation of theology and science is very big mistake, even if easily explainable by Darwin and human short term interests. I cannot convince you by reason, on something about which you decided to abandon reason. 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: Does Platonia exist ?
On 24 Sep 2012, at 12:32, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal But R^3 is not extended in spacetime, is not at location r at time t and isn't a physical but a mental object What makes you sure that the physical is not a mental object? I would say rather that R^3 inheres. Not sure this helps. 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.
Stephen: Existence is what is actual
Hi Stephen P. King Yes, actual is much better than exist. Good. I suppose I could say I have actual thoughts, but that's I believe a misnaming. There is a similar or even identical idea that goes back Aristotle. en穞el積穋hy (n-tl-k) n. pl. en穞el積穋hies 1. In the philosophy of Aristotle, the condition of a thing whose essence is fully realized; actuality. 2. In some philosophical systems, a vital force that directs an organism toward self-fulfillment. [Late Latin entelecha, from Greek entelekheia : entels, complete (en-, in; see en-2 + telos, completion; see kwel-1 in Indo-European roots) + ekhein, to have; see segh- in Indo-European roots.] entelechy [?n't?l?k?] n pl -chies Metaphysics 1. (Philosophy) (in the philosophy of Aristotle) actuality as opposed to potentiality 2. (Philosophy) (in the system of Leibnitz) the soul or principle of perfection of an object or person; a monad or basic constituent 3. (Philosophy) something that contains or realizes a final cause, esp the vital force thought to direct the life of an organism Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-24, 08:21:51 Subject: Re: What is 'Existence'? On 9/24/2012 8:05 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King What's in a name ? If you have a better word for what I have been calling physical existence, please say it. Actuality. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. -- 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: Stephen: Existence is what is actual
On 9/24/2012 9:06 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King Yes, actual is much better than exist. Good. I suppose I could say I have actual thoughts, but that's I believe a misnaming. There is a similar or even identical idea that goes back Aristotle. entelechy (n-tl-k) n. pl. entelechies 1. In the philosophy of Aristotle, the condition of a thing whose essence is fully realized; actuality. 2. In some philosophical systems, a vital force that directs an organism toward self-fulfillment. [Late Latin entelecha, from Greek entelekheia : entels, complete (en-, in; see en-2 + telos, completion; see kwel-1 in Indo-European roots) + ekhein, to have; see segh- in Indo-European roots.] entelechy [?n't?l?k?] n pl -chies Metaphysics 1. (Philosophy) (in the philosophy of Aristotle) actuality as opposed to potentiality 2. (Philosophy) (in the system of Leibnitz) the soul or principle of perfection of an object or person; a monad or basic constituent 3. (Philosophy) something that contains or realizes a final cause, esp the vital force thought to direct the life of an organism Yep, that was my motivation, the consideration of entelechy. ;-) Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-24, 08:21:51 Subject: Re: What is 'Existence'? On 9/24/2012 8:05 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King What's in a name ? If you have a better word for what I have been calling physical existence, please say it. Actuality. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Prime Numbers
On 24 Sep 2012, at 12:39, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal Numbers are not in spacetime, that is, are not at location r at time t. So they are ideas, God's ideas? Then I am OK. The comp God is arithmetical truth, so this works. they are not physical. OK. To be physical you have to have a specific location at a specific time. I am OK with this, but note that it makes the Universe into a non physical object. The Universe cannot belong to a location r at time t, as it is the gauge making such position and time consistent in the picture. This is not my view, it is that of Descartes. The same with arithmetic. Numbers and arithmetic statements are not at (r,t). OK. Which is not to say that they are not real, if by real I mean true or as is without an observer. Like in a textbook. OK. So you can understand how comp is interesting, as it explains (partially but more than any other theory) how the physical beliefs appears and why they come in two sort of shapes (quanta and qualia), and this without assuming anything more than elementary arithmetic and the invariance of consciousness for some digital transformations. Then the big picture happens to be closer to the neoplatonists one than the aristotelian one, which I think you should appreciate. 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.
what i believe
Hi Bruno Marchal Being a pragmatist (and an engineer), I believe what works or makes the best sense. I am basically trying to understand the relationship between Platonism and modern science. So it's not either/or, its both/and. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-24, 08:58:12 Subject: Re: Potential definitions--Re: Re: What is 'Existence'? On 24 Sep 2012, at 12:26, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal Potential definitions : To Exist = to have objective being, to physically be, to be within spacetime, having spacial location and extension at time t - a thing such as a brain or object But exists has simple meaning, when applied on what you assume to exist primitively. The words objective, physically, being, spacetime spatial, location, time, brain, object have no simple meaning that everyone can take for granted, when working on th TOE search, or when trying to get some light on the mind body problem. I thought you were a Platonist, even if a Leibnizian one, but now it seems you believe in primitive physical notion, like spacetime, so it becomes hard to figure out what are your sharable assumptions. To Inhere = to have subjective being, to mentally or nonphysically be, that is, to be outside of spacetime, inextended (without spacial location at time t), such as thoughts, numbers, quanta, qualia, etc. Thus brain exists, mind inheres. ? I don't see the logic leading to brain exist, from mind inhere. Brain exists, but with comp it can't be a primitive existence, and so brain exists is a pattern that we have to explain from an ontology with not assumed brain. An agent = An inherent control and observation center. A self = an agent Actual = to exist Real = either to exist or to inhere even without a self or agent to observe or control it. That can make sense in some context, but not when you search a theory *explaining* or enlightening the big picture. You need a criterion of existence for what you take as primitive, and then you can defined the many different sorts of existence which can be reduced to the primitive existence. But you betrayed yourself by insisting that we don't mix theology and science, where I think that the separation of theology and science is very big mistake, even if easily explainable by Darwin and human short term interests. I cannot convince you by reason, on something about which you decided to abandon reason. 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. -- 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: What is 'Existence'?
On 24 Sep 2012, at 13:03, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Hi Bruno, With components I mean a neutral enumeration of entities. perhaps lebnitzian monads would be more appropriate. Besides numbers + and * I think that is necessary machines or any kind of instruction set + an execution unit? . It isn't? You don't need this. You can define instruction sets and execution units with numbers and the + and * laws. That was Gödel did in his 1931 paper, and it is the root of theoretical computer science. Arithmetic implicitly defines all computations, and for the first person indeterminacy, those implicit definitions are enough to explain the orogin of the physical sensations and theories. Bruno 2012/9/23 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 23 Sep 2012, at 12:18, Alberto G. Corona wrote: This is my schema. Can you complete/ammend it? Things in themselves (noumena) - - Have a computational nature (Bruno) : few components: numbers, + * OK, for the chosen basic ontology. Numbers, and theor additive and multiplicative laws. That is enough, as is any Turing complete ontology. I would not described the numbers has components, though, because this could lead to the misleading idea that that what exists might be made of numbers, and that is a physicalist non correct view of how what exist epistemologically emerges (through complex number relations and their epistemological content which can be shown to exists once we assume computationalism). Also, if the things in themselves have a computational nature (addition and multiplication are computable, the whole thing is not, as arithmetical truth is not computable at all, and will play an important role in the emergence of the epistemological reality. In particular, the internal epistemological realities will have many non computable features, like machines and programs have too). - Is just a mathematical manyfold(Me), few components: equations - Are Monadic (Roger). many components - Are phisical: includes the phisical world with: space, time persons, cars. (physicalists) Things perceived (phenomena) - - Relies on the architecture of the mind, the activity of the brain (a local arangement that keep entropy constant along a direction in space-time, the product of natural selection Therefore, existence is selected (Me) Is not a brain something perceived? Is that not circular? I can understand relies on the architecture of the mind (the dreams of the universal number), but what is a brain? what is time, space, nature? - The mind is a robust computation -and therefore implies a certain selection- (Bruno) The 1-mind is not a computation, but a selection of a infinity of computation among an infinity of computations. - Are created by the activity of the supreme monad (Roger) - Does not matter (physicalists) Hmm... Many physicalists, notably when computationalist, believe that the mind is real, and can matter. Only, when they use comp to justify this, or to pretend the mind-body problem is solved by comp, they are inconsistent (as shown normally by the UD Argument). I am not sure if your theory take or not the first person indeterminacy into account. Do you agree(*) with UDA 1-4 ? Bruno (*) http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html 2012/9/23 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 22 Sep 2012, at 20:05, Stephen P. King wrote: With comp, all the exists comes from the ExP(x) use in arithmetic, and their arithmetical epistemological version, like []Ex[]P(x), or []Ex[]P(x), etc. Can not you see, Bruno, that this stipulation makes existence contingent upon the ability to be defined by a symbol and thus on human whim? It is the tool-maker and user that is talking through you here. Confusion of level. The stipulation used to described such existence does not makes such existence contingent at all. Only the stipulation is contingent, not its content, which can be considered as absolute, as we work in the standard model (by the very definition of comp: we work with standard comp (we would not say yes to a doctor if he propose a non standard cording of our brain). That gives a testable toy theology (testable as such a theology contains the physics as a subpart). Testable, sure, but theology should never be contingent. It must flow from pure necessity and our finite models are simply insufficient for this task. First our model is not finite, only
Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On 24 Sep 2012, at 14:02, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stathis Papaioannou You need a self or observer to be conscious, and computers have no self. So they can't be conscious. Few lines of instructions gives a self to computer. I told you that self is what computer science explains the best. Consciousness = a subject looking at, or aware of, an object. Computers have no subject. That is a quite strong statement akin to racism. And it is false once you define the subject by the one who knows, as incompleteness can be used to justify a notion of (private, incommunicable) knowledge for computers. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stathis Papaioannou Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-23, 09:02:12 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 3:53 AM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 3:03 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: If anyone is not familiar with David Chalmers Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia You should have a look at it first. I confess I have not read it because I have little confidence it's any better than the Chinese Room. Well OK I exaggerate, it's probably better than that (what isn't) but there is something about all these anti AI thought experiments that has always confused me. Let's suppose I'm dead wrong and Chambers really has found something new and strange and maybe even paradoxical about consciousness, what I want to know is why am I required to explain it if I want to continue to believe that a intelligent computers would be conscious? Whatever argument Chambers has it could just as easily be turned against the idea that the intelligent behavior of other people indicates consciousness, and yet not one person on this list believes in Solipsism, not even the most vocal AI critics. Why? Why is it that I must find the flaws in all these thought experiments but the anti AI people feel no need to do so? In the extraordinarily unlikely event that Chambers has shown that consciousness is paradoxical (and its probably just as childish as all the others) I would conclude that he just made an error someplace that nobody has found yet. When Zeno showed that motion was paradoxical nobody thought that motion did not exist but that Zeno just made a mistake, and he did, although the error wasn't found till the invention of the Calculus thousands of years later. The paper presents a very strong argument *in favour* of computers having consciousness. I haven't seen anyone who understands it refute it, or even try to refute it. It's worth reading at least part 3, as it constitutes a proof of that which you suspected. -- 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 . -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Possible definitions version 2
Hi Bruno Marchal Good point. Some say that matter is ultimately mental. H. But as far as I know, it still seems to have dimensions at least down to the fundamental particle level. And Heisenberg seems to forbid us from having much success at smaller sizes. I guess I should define the physical as that which is, or is thought to be, measureable. So: -- Actual = that which has spacetime dimensions Inherent = that which does not have spacetime dimensions An agent = An inherent and autonomous control and observation center. A self = an agent Real = persistent actuality or inherence independent of a self Consciousness = The realm of any activity by a self Intelligence = Decision making by an agent or self Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-24, 09:03:42 Subject: Re: Does Platonia exist ? On 24 Sep 2012, at 12:32, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal But R^3 is not extended in spacetime, is not at location r at time t and isn't a physical but a mental object What makes you sure that the physical is not a mental object? I would say rather that R^3 inheres. Not sure this helps. 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. -- 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: Re: questions on machines, belief, awareness, and knowledge
Hi meekerdb The computer can mechanically prove something, but it cannot know that it did so. It cannot sit back with a beer and muse over how smart it is. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: meekerdb Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-22, 16:49:06 Subject: Re: questions on machines, belief, awareness, and knowledge On 9/22/2012 6:29 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 22.09.2012 14:58 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 21 Sep 2012, at 21:27, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 19.09.2012 00:57 meekerdb said the following: On 9/17/2012 11:27 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: Do you mean that the meaning in a guided missile system happens as by-product of its development by engineers? To me, it seems that meaning that you have defined in Mars Rovers is yet another theory of epiphenomenalism. And your quote and question are yet another example of nothing buttery and argument by incredulity. Brent I am not sure if I understand you. I am not saying that I am right but I really do not understand you point. You say Consciousness and computation are given their meaning by their effecting actions in the world. and it seems that you imply that this could be applied for a robot as well. My thought were that engineers who have design a robot know everything how it is working. But they don't a robot, even one as simple as a Mars Rover perceives and acts on things the engineers don't know.? A more advanced robot will also learn from experience and become as unpredictable as a person from the engineer's standpoint. Okay, let us take more advanced robots. I guess that Dario Floreano and Claudio Mattiussi, Bio-Inspired Artificial Intelligence: Theories, Methods, and Technologies should be perfect here. You will find in the book about learning in ?ehavioral systems. Yet, the authors do not use the term consciousness at all. They even talk about intelligence just once Conclusion, p. 585 : ? careful reader have noticed that we have not yet defined what intelligence is. This was done on purpose because intelligence has different meanings for different persons and in different situations. For example, some believe that intelligence is the ability to be creative; other think that it is the ability to make predictions; and others believe that intelligence exists only in the eye of the observer. In this book we have shown that biological and artificial intelligence manifests itself though multiple processes and mechanisms that interact at different spatial and temporal scales to produce emergent and functional behavior. The most important implication of the approaches presented here is that understanding and engineering intelligence does not reduce to replicating a mammalian brain in a computer but requires also capturing multiply types and levels of interactions, such as those between brains and bodies, individual and societies, learning and behavior, evolution and development, self-protection and self-repair, to mention a few?. Hence, again let us imagine that a robot with artificial neural networks developed as described in the book can learn something indeed. In the book there are even examples in this respect. Yet, the engineers developing it have not even thought about consciousness. Hence, in my view, if consciousness happens to be in such a robot, then we could talk without a problem about epiphenomenalism. Why not? I have seen a project where engineers at least talk about a module QUALIA http://www.mindconstruct.com/ ?IND|CONSTRUCT is developing a ?trong-AI engine?, a so called AI-mind, that can be used in (human-like) robotics, healthcare, aerospace sciences and every other area where ?onscious? man-machine interaction is of any importance. The MIND|CONSTRUCT organization is the culmination of many years in ?I-research and the so called ?ard-problems?, and the application of elaborate experience in knowledge-management, for the design and ?evelopment of a ?trong-AI engine?.? If consciousness happens here, then we could at least find that it was planned this way. It is part of what a machine is that we cannot know what we are doing in building them, so human might as well build a conscious machine without knowing it; except later, when the machine complains or fight for its right. Comp is rather negative on the idea of programming consciousness. We can only let consciousness manifest itself, or not. Or we can copy intelligent machine, partially or completely. Then, I am afraid, comp is of no help to the AI community as it seems cannot guide engineers on how to develop an intelligent robot. Evgenii In the past, Bruno has said that a machine that understands transfinite induction will be conscious.? But being conscious
Re: Re: Does Platonia exist ?
Hi Bruno Marchal R^3 has no dimensions, and does not exist in spacetime. So instead of calling it actual, I say that it inheres (when read or thought). Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-24, 09:03:42 Subject: Re: Does Platonia exist ? On 24 Sep 2012, at 12:32, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal But R^3 is not extended in spacetime, is not at location r at time t and isn't a physical but a mental object What makes you sure that the physical is not a mental object? I would say rather that R^3 inheres. Not sure this helps. 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. -- 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: Re: Prime Numbers
Hi Bruno Marchal God's ideas is fine. The numbers and arithmetic etc. can inhere in some mind. The numbers are (idealistically) real, as I think all arithmetic must be. For it is true whether known or not. At least as you stay with common numbers and arithmetic. Pretty sure. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-24, 09:12:29 Subject: Re: Prime Numbers On 24 Sep 2012, at 12:39, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal Numbers are not in spacetime, that is, are not at location r at time t. So they are ideas, God's ideas? Then I am OK. The comp God is arithmetical truth, so this works. they are not physical. OK. To be physical you have to have a specific location at a specific time. I am OK with this, but note that it makes the Universe into a non physical object. The Universe cannot belong to a location r at time t, as it is the gauge making such position and time consistent in the picture. This is not my view, it is that of Descartes. The same with arithmetic. Numbers and arithmetic statements are not at (r,t). OK. Which is not to say that they are not real, if by real I mean true or as is without an observer. Like in a textbook. OK. So you can understand how comp is interesting, as it explains (partially but more than any other theory) how the physical beliefs appears and why they come in two sort of shapes (quanta and qualia), and this without assuming anything more than elementary arithmetic and the invariance of consciousness for some digital transformations. Then the big picture happens to be closer to the neoplatonists one than the aristotelian one, which I think you should appreciate. 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. -- 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: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On 24 Sep 2012, at 14:51, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stathis Papaioannou Try to define consciousness. If you can't, how do you know that a computer is conscious ? Try to define consciousness. If you can't how do you know that a computer is not conscious? Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stathis Papaioannou Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-24, 08:38:48 Subject: Re: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 10:02 PM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stathis Papaioannou You need a self or observer to be conscious, and computers have no self. So they can't be conscious. Consciousness = a subject looking at, or aware of, an object. Computers have no subject. So where do you get the idea that computers have no self, no subject and can't be observers or be conscious? You may as well claim that women aren't conscious but just act as if they are conscious, like an advanced computer pretending to have a self. -- 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 . -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
Hi Bruno Marchal By self I mean conscious self. Computers are not conscious because codes can describe, but they can't perceive. Perception requires a live viewer or self. I had no racial intentions in mind when I spoke of not having a subject, and I find it difficult to see how you could imagine that. And not having a subject would mean you are dead. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-24, 09:29:50 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On 24 Sep 2012, at 14:02, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stathis Papaioannou You need a self or observer to be conscious, and computers have no self. So they can't be conscious. Few lines of instructions gives a self to computer. I told you that self is what computer science explains the best. Consciousness = a subject looking at, or aware of, an object. Computers have no subject. That is a quite strong statement akin to racism. And it is false once you define the subject by the one who knows, as incompleteness can be used to justify a notion of (private, incommunicable) knowledge for computers. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stathis Papaioannou Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-23, 09:02:12 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 3:53 AM, John Clark wrote: On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 3:03 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: If anyone is not familiar with David Chalmers Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia You should have a look at it first. I confess I have not read it because I have little confidence it's any better than the Chinese Room. Well OK I exaggerate, it's probably better than that (what isn't) but there is something about all these anti AI thought experiments that has always confused me. Let's suppose I'm dead wrong and Chambers really has found something new and strange and maybe even paradoxical about consciousness, what I want to know is why am I required to explain it if I want to continue to believe that a intelligent computers would be conscious? Whatever argument Chambers has it could just as easily be turned against the idea that the intelligent behavior of other people indicates consciousness, and yet not one person on this list believes in Solipsism, not even the most vocal AI critics. Why? Why is it that I must find the flaws in all these thought experiments but the anti AI people feel no need to do so? In the extraordinarily unlikely event that Chambers has shown that consciousness is paradoxical (and its probably just as childish as all the others) I would conclude that he just made an error someplace that nobody has found yet. When Zeno showed that motion was paradoxical nobody thought that motion did not exist but that Zeno just made a mistake, and he did, although the error wasn't found till the invention of the Calculus thousands of years later. The paper presents a very strong argument *in favour* of computers having consciousness. I haven't seen anyone who understands it refute it, or even try to refute it. It's worth reading at least part 3, as it constitutes a proof of that which you suspected. -- 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. -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
Hi Bruno Marchal A computer being not conscious ? All computer operations (to my mind,probably not yours) are actual (in spacetime). But consciousness is an inherent (mental, not in spacetime) activity. Cs = subject + object A computer has no inherent realms, no conscious self or observer. Instead, a computer is all object (completely in the objective realm), no subject. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-24, 09:52:34 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On 24 Sep 2012, at 14:51, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stathis Papaioannou Try to define consciousness. If you can't, how do you know that a computer is conscious ? Try to define consciousness. If you can't how do you know that a computer is not conscious? Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stathis Papaioannou Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-24, 08:38:48 Subject: Re: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 10:02 PM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stathis Papaioannou You need a self or observer to be conscious, and computers have no self. So they can't be conscious. Consciousness = a subject looking at, or aware of, an object. Computers have no subject. So where do you get the idea that computers have no self, no subject and can't be observers or be conscious? You may as well claim that women aren't conscious but just act as if they are conscious, like an advanced computer pretending to have a self. -- 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 . -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- 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: Re: On Causation with Mind and brain as apples and oranges
Hi Stephen P. King OK, I can understand that at least in princiople. I recall a statement by the famous Maharishi Yogi from way back: Knowledge is structured in consciousness. I had forgotten the structured part. To my mind at least, that explains why nature shows structure as well. A plausibility argument for the existence of God. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-24, 09:08:03 Subject: Re: On Causation with Mind and brain as apples and oranges On 9/24/2012 8:12 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stephen P. King I have trouble conceiving an isomorphism (or anything comparative) between something that is there and something that is not. The something that is not there is not the absence of the thing that was, since it has no shape, no location, and cannot be found by a physical search. Hi Roger, I sympathize with you but must point out that one must be sure that one's idea and assumptions are correct. What I am proposing is that that Minds are, at the lowest level, a relational structure that can be well represented by Boolean Algebras. There is a duality between BAs and a type of topological space: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone%27s_representation_theorem_for_Boolean_algebras Each Boolean algebra B has an associated topological space, denoted here S(B), called its Stone space. The points in S(B) are theultrafilters on B, or equivalently the homomorphisms from B to the two-element Boolean algebra. The topology on S(B) is generated by a basis consisting of all sets of the form where b is an element of B. For any Boolean algebra B, S(B) is a compact totally disconnected Hausdorff space; such spaces are called Stone spaces (also profinite spaces). Conversely, given any topological space X, the collection of subsets of X that are clopen (both closed and open) is a Boolean algebra. This made complete sense to me once I realized what the Stone spaces look like: a collection of particles in an emptiness (frozen in time). (A Cantor dust is a Stone space.) A nice illustration of the physical universe once we strip away of the detail. When we take change into account we get a succession of Stone spaces and BAs. The direction of the arrows of evolution of these are in opposite directions. BAs evolve by looking backwards to be sure no new proposition contradicts a previously accepted proposition. This property alone makes this hypothesis very appealing as it leads naturally to a reason why there are no White Rabbits (spontaneous events that present contradictory information, like a White Rabbit popping out of nowhere). -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: what i believe
On 24 Sep 2012, at 15:11, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal Being a pragmatist (and an engineer), I believe what works or makes the best sense. I am basically trying to understand the relationship between Platonism and modern science. So it's not either/or, its both/and. As an extreme conservative, I could argue that platonism = modern (human and exact) science. This makes me say, provocatively, that science has ceased to be modern 1500 years ago, as it is based since on a methodological fertile idea, but a dead end as a dogma, that there is a *primitive* physical reality. That is why very plausibly, we have stopped to make progress in the human sciences, and notably on the mind-body problem, since that time. That might perhaps explain the general inhumanity of humans (shoah, rwanda, communism, prohibition, etc.). Democracy has been a progress, but a tiny one, very fragile, and in peril today. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-24, 08:58:12 Subject: Re: Potential definitions--Re: Re: What is 'Existence'? On 24 Sep 2012, at 12:26, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal Potential definitions : To Exist = to have objective being, to physically be, to be within spacetime, having spacial location and extension at time t - a thing such as a brain or object But exists has simple meaning, when applied on what you assume to exist primitively. The words objective, physically, being, spacetime spatial, location, time, brain, object have no simple meaning that everyone can take for granted, when working on th TOE search, or when trying to get some light on the mind body problem. I thought you were a Platonist, even if a Leibnizian one, but now it seems you believe in primitive physical notion, like spacetime, so it becomes hard to figure out what are your sharable assumptions. To Inhere = to have subjective being, to mentally or nonphysically be, that is, to be outside of spacetime, inextended (without spacial location at time t), such as thoughts, numbers, quanta, qualia, etc. Thus brain exists, mind inheres. ? I don't see the logic leading to brain exist, from mind inhere. Brain exists, but with comp it can't be a primitive existence, and so brain exists is a pattern that we have to explain from an ontology with not assumed brain. An agent = An inherent control and observation center. A self = an agent Actual = to exist Real = either to exist or to inhere even without a self or agent to observe or control it. That can make sense in some context, but not when you search a theory *explaining* or enlightening the big picture. You need a criterion of existence for what you take as primitive, and then you can defined the many different sorts of existence which can be reduced to the primitive existence. But you betrayed yourself by insisting that we don't mix theology and science, where I think that the separation of theology and science is very big mistake, even if easily explainable by Darwin and human short term interests. I cannot convince you by reason, on something about which you decided to abandon reason. 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 . -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: questions on machines, belief, awareness, and knowledge
On 9/24/2012 9:34 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi meekerdb The computer can mechanically prove something, but it cannot know that it did so. It cannot sit back with a beer and muse over how smart it is. Hi Roger, What you are considering that a computer does not have is the ability to model itself within its environment and compute optimizations of such a model to guide its future choices. This can be well represented within a computational framework and it is something that Bruno has worked out in his comp model. (My only beef with Bruno is that his model is so abstract that it is completely disconnected from the physical world and thus has a body problem.) -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Prime Numbers
On 9/24/2012 9:46 AM, Roger Clough wrote: God's ideas is fine. The numbers and arithmetic etc. can inhere in some mind. The numbers are (idealistically) real, as I think all arithmetic must be. For it is true whether known or not. At least as you stay with common numbers and arithmetic. Pretty sure. Hi Roger, One question I have to pose: How do the properties of entities become discriminated from each other and collected together? Are the properties on a object inherent or is there some other active system of property attribution in Nature? Does God play a role in this? -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: questions on machines, belief, awareness, and knowledge
On 24 Sep 2012, at 16:39, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/24/2012 9:34 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi meekerdb The computer can mechanically prove something, but it cannot know that it did so. It cannot sit back with a beer and muse over how smart it is. Hi Roger, What you are considering that a computer does not have is the ability to model itself within its environment and compute optimizations of such a model to guide its future choices. This can be well represented within a computational framework and it is something that Bruno has worked out in his comp model. (My only beef with Bruno is that his model is so abstract that it is completely disconnected from the physical world and thus has a body problem.) But that is the scientific success of the comp theory (not model) : it reduces the mind body problem to a body problem, in a precise realm, with a technic to extract the laws of bodies, making comp an utterly scientific, in Popper sense, theory. You still miss the point. The body problem is not a defect, it is the main success of comp. 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: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On 9/24/2012 9:59 AM, Roger Clough wrote: By self I mean conscious self. Computers are not conscious because codes can describe, but they can't perceive. Perception requires a live viewer or self. I had no racial intentions in mind when I spoke of not having a subject, and I find it difficult to see how you could imagine that. And not having a subject would mean you are dead. HI Roger, We can faithfully capture the idea of perception by considering a process of actively generating and updating an internal model of the entity and its interactions with its environment. The subject or self is, in this reasoning, identified with the internal model. We can limit the infinite regress problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_argument) that might be considered as an argument against this idea by the following means: 1) Each model and any sub-model are (up to some limit) isomorphic (see Kleene's theorems), so one only needs resources to code the initial model and any bits that represent the differences between it and its sub-models. The self is the model plus the updating mechanism. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On 24 Sep 2012, at 16:13, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal A computer being not conscious ? All computer operations (to my mind,probably not yours) are actual (in spacetime). But consciousness is an inherent (mental, not in spacetime) activity. All right, in that sense a computer cannot think. I agree, but a brain cannot think too, nor any body. They can only manifest consciousness, which, we agree on this, is in Platonia. Computer can support a knowing self, like a brain, unless you decide not, but then it looks like arbitrary racism. You just decide that some entities cannot think, because *you* fail to recognize yourself in them. You could at least say that you don't know, or give argument, but you just repeat that brain can support consciousness and that silicon cannot, without giving an atom of justification. This can't be serious. Cs = subject + object A computer has no inherent realms, no conscious self or observer. Instead, a computer is all object (completely in the objective realm), no subject. You can implement a self-transformative software on computers. You should be more careful and study a bit of computer science before judging computers, especially if you assert strong negative statements about them. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-24, 09:52:34 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On 24 Sep 2012, at 14:51, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stathis Papaioannou Try to define consciousness. If you can't, how do you know that a computer is conscious ? Try to define consciousness. If you can't how do you know that a computer is not conscious? Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stathis Papaioannou Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-24, 08:38:48 Subject: Re: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 10:02 PM, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Stathis Papaioannou You need a self or observer to be conscious, and computers have no self. So they can't be conscious. Consciousness = a subject looking at, or aware of, an object. Computers have no subject. So where do you get the idea that computers have no self, no subject and can't be observers or be conscious? You may as well claim that women aren't conscious but just act as if they are conscious, like an advanced computer pretending to have a self. -- 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- l...@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 . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything- l...@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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On 9/24/2012 10:13 AM, Roger Clough wrote: A computer being not conscious ? All computer operations (to my mind,probably not yours) are actual (in spacetime). But consciousness is an inherent (mental, not in spacetime) activity. Cs = subject + object A computer has no inherent realms, no conscious self or observer. Instead, a computer is all object (completely in the objective realm), no subject. Hi Roger, I disagree. You are merely stipulating that there is no self possible and thus conclude the obvious implication. If we permit consideration of an internal modeling system then the possibility of a conscious self becomes just a matter of discovering whether or not the technical means of implementing an internal modeling and updating process are actual. There strong reasons to consider that a physical object and its evolution in time are, effectively, the best possible simulation of that physical system, thus a physical system is, FAPP, its own best possible model. If there is a feedback between the physical states of the system and its simulation that has come causal efficacy then I would propose that we must consider that physical system to be, in fact, conscious. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: was the Email message that you sent to the Everything list on Sunday Sep 23, 2012 at 9:13 AM on the east coast of the USA with the title Re:Zombieopolis Thought Experiment unique? My experience of sending it was unique. The experiences of people reading what I wrote were unique. That's all very nice but it doesn't answer my question, was the Email message that you sent to the Everything list on Sunday September 23, 2012 at 9:13 AM on the east coast of the USA with the title Re:Zombieopolis Thought Experiment unique? The existence of an email message is only inferred through our experiences Obviously. there is no email message outside of human interpretation. Thus the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it. Without sense to be informed, organization is just a hypothetical morphology containing no possibilities of interest. Translation from the original bafflegab: without information information would contain nothing informative. I could not agree more. With sense, you don't need information, you just need to be able to make sense of forms locally in some way. You made enough sense out of my message to respond to it and you only received that sense impression because it was sent over a wire, and if it can be sent over a wire then its information. Yes, scientific method can find no evidence of consciousness of any kind. The thing I don't understand is why this is supposed to be a problem only for those who think a intelligent computer is conscious and is supposed to be no problem for those who think that other intelligent humans are conscious. If you think that means that consciousness has to be impossible, then again, that is your projection. You and I have both believed that consciousness exists since we were both infants and we both have been implicitly using the exact same theory to determine when something is conscious and when something is not, and that is that intelligent behavior indicates consciousness. In fact you don't even believe that you yourself are conscious when you don't behave in a complex intelligent manner, such as when you are in a dreamless sleep or under anesthesia, and that's why you and I fear death, when we eventually get in that state we won't be acting any smarter than a rock and as a result we fear that we will be no more conscious than a rock. What I object to is that when we run across a intelligent computer the rules of the game are supposed to suddenly change, and that just doesn't seem very smart. you define science as the objective study of the behavior of objects, No, I define science as the use of the scientific method, and that means looking at the evidence and developing a theory to explain it, NOT finding a theory that makes you feel good and then looking for evidence that supports it and ignoring evidence that refutes it. As illustrated in our debate on the free will noise you were even willing to embrace flat out logical contradictions if that's what it took for you to continue to believe what you found pleasant to believe, like X is not Y and X is also not not Y. Using such procedures may be successful in inducing a pleasing stupor but you'll have to abandon any hope of finding things that are true. then you cannot be surprised when science cannot locate what it is explicitly defined to disqualify. I'm not surprised and all I ask is that whatever method you use for determining the existence of consciousness, scientific or otherwise, you don't suddenly change the rules in the middle of the race just because you saw a intelligent computer. Use whatever test you want to infer consciousness, all I'm asking for is consistency. I don't understand how this isn't blindingly obvious, but I must accept that it is like gender orientation or political bias - not something that can be addressed by reason. At one time it was blindingly obvious that human beings with a black skin didn't have the same sort of feelings as people with white skin do, even though they acted as if they did, that's how they convinced themselves that there was nothing wrong with slavery. If you try to live off of electronics then you will not survive. I have now shown that at a fundamental level, biology, in the form of food, respiration, hydration, etc, has something that electronics lack. So the key to consciousness is that humans eat breathe drink and shit but computer's don't. Hmm, I don't quite see the connection, however I do know that both biology and electronics are involved with quantum tunneling, the Schrodinger Equation, and the Pauli Exclusion Principle but electronics also has things that biology lacks, things like Bloch lattice functions, semiconductor valence bands, and the Hall effect; I don't understand why those functions have nothing to do with consciousness but defecation is intimately related with consciousness. I also don't understand why the
Re: what is real ?
Real is sense modalities comparing each other. There is no real, only 'more real than'. One brief moment of significance can be more real than an entire lifetime of sleepwalking through life. On Monday, September 24, 2012 7:59:51 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote: Hi Somebody on this list asked whether I thought the physical world to be real while the nonphysical isn't, but my email program seems to have eaten his email. The answer is that it all depends on how you look at the world. Idealists believe that only ideas are real, while the material world is phenomenal. Not a delusion. Plato, Leibniz and Kant belonged to this faction. The reason given by Leibniz is that Ideal world is given by an infinite number of persistent although changing point ideas called monads. Monads can change, but cannot either be created or destroyed. But at the root of the physical world you have quantum uncertainty such as Heisenberg showed, which made Leibniz believe that only the monads are real. By real he meant persistent. Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net javascript: 9/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/A4UUYHSO9FgJ. 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: Physics, Metaphysics, and Realism
On Monday, September 24, 2012 5:13:11 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 23 Sep 2012, at 20:11, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Sunday, September 23, 2012 11:28:49 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 23 Sep 2012, at 15:05, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Evgenii Rudnyi Phenomena are the how physical processes appear to our senses. So they are appearances, not the processes themselves. But scientific experiments and measurements are not made on the appearances, they are made on the processes. Thus the appearences areor [phenomena are said to be well-grounded in the processes themselves. Kant spelled this out in great detail, calling noumena the actual physical process which we cannot reach by our senses, And which does not exist, at least not in the sense that they cause our senses. This is the most counter-intuitive aspect of comp, as the physical process are projection on the conditions making the dream coherent. Why does comp want coherent dreams? Coherent dreams are reasonable data. Why does comp want reasonable data? Comp has to justify their existence (easy, with comp), and their relative measure (hard). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/N8X4rKc0vyYJ. 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: questions on machines, belief, awareness, and knowledge
On 9/24/2012 2:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 23 Sep 2012, at 18:33, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 23.09.2012 16:51 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 23 Sep 2012, at 09:31, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 22.09.2012 22:49 meekerdb said the following: ... In the past, Bruno has said that a machine that understands transfinite induction will be conscious. But being conscious and intelligent are not the same thing. Brent In my view this is the same as epiphenomenalism. Engineers develop a robot to achieve a prescribed function. They do not care about consciousness in this respect. Then consciousness will appear automatically but the function developed by engineers does not depend on it. Hence epiphenomenalism seems to apply. Not at all. Study UDA to see why exactly, but if comp is correct, consciousness is somehow what defines the physical realities, making possible for engineers to build the machines, and then consciousness, despite not being programmable per se, does have a role, like relatively speeding up the computations. Like non free will, the epiphenomenalism is only apparent because you take the outer god's eyes view, but with comp, there is no matter, nor consciousness, at that level, and we have no access at all at that level (without assuming comp, and accessing it intellectually, that is only arithmetic). This is hard to explain if you fail to see the physics/machine's psychology/theology reversal. You are still (consciously or not) maintaining the physical supervenience thesis, or an aristotelian ontology, but comp prevents this to be possible. Bruno, I have considered a concrete case, when engineers develop a robot, not a general one. For such a concrete case, I do not understand your answer. I have understood Brent in such a way that when engineers develop a robot they must just care about functionality to achieve and they can ignore consciousness at all. Whether it appears in the robot or not, it is not a business of engineers. Do you agree with such a statement or not? In my defense, I only said that the engineers could develop artificial intelligences without considering consciousnees. I didn't say they *must* do so, and in fact I think they are ethically bound to consider it. John McCarthy has already written on this years ago. And it has nothing to do with whether supervenience or comp is true. In either case an intelligent robot is likely to be a conscious being and ethical considerations arise. Brent The robot might disagree. You might disagree, if you get a digital brain, and that people torture you on the pretext that you are a zombie. And you are right, we can dismiss consciousness. We have already dismissed emotion and feelings with human slaves for a very long time. That does not mean those slaves were not conscious, and that consciousness has no role. If you want a robot or slave with flexible high cognitive capacities, I doubt that it can harbor a mind without consciousness, which is just when the robot infers (interrogates) its own sanity/consistency, and get aware of its non communicable but known features. Then with comp, you cannot understand where matter comes from without using the concept of consciousness or at least its approximation through most first person notions, like personal memories access, belief, knowledge, sensations, etc. You don't need to understand nor even believe in the Higgs boson to do a pizza, but if the standard model is correct, then there would be no pizza at all without it. If you adopt an instrumental policy, you can evacuate *all* questionings, but when generalized, this attitude leads people to depression and sense crisis, and lack of meaning crisis, and disgust of science. To separate science from spirituality can only lead to technological idolatry in the hands of barbarians. Individuals becomes functional objects. That means suffering and death of humanity. 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: Nonsense!
On 9/24/2012 12:02 PM, John Clark wrote: Thus the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it. Hi John, I expected better from you! This quip is based on the premise that you are the only observer involved. Such nonsense! Considering that there are a HUGE number of observers of the moon, the effects of the observations of any one is negligible. If none of them measure the presence of the moon or its effects, then the existence of the moon becomes pure the object of speculation. Note that being affected by the moon in terms of tidal effects is a measurement! -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Nonsense!
On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 12:28 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: Thus the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it. I expected better from you! This quip is based on the premise that you are the only observer involved. Such nonsense! Considering that there are a HUGE number of observers of the moon What about the crater Daedalus on the far side of the moon, nobody is observing it at this moment so does it exist right now? At any rate my point was that if it's true that there is no email message outside of human interpretation as Craig Weinberg asserted then it must also be true that the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it. John K Clark -- 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: Nonsense!
On 9/24/2012 12:59 PM, John Clark wrote: On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 12:28 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net mailto:stephe...@charter.net wrote: Thus the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it. I expected better from you! This quip is based on the premise that you are the only observer involved. Such nonsense! Considering that there are a HUGE number of observers of the moon What about the crater Daedalus on the far side of the moon, nobody is observing it at this moment so does it exist right now? At any rate my point was that if it's true that there is no email message outside of human interpretation as Craig Weinberg asserted then it must also be true that the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it. John K Clark Hi John, Does the presence of the crater make a difference that makes a difference, or equivalently, have a causal effect on other entities in its environment? If yes then yes, it is being observed. But its existence, qua necessary possibility is strictly a priori. Why do you insist on conflating the possibility of a measurement outcome with the measurement outcome? I think that Craig is discussing ideas that are flying right over your head. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Nonsense!
Hi John This crater has been observed, so there are a current observed phenomenon about this crater: our memory of it. I observe that others had observed it, and I trust these people. This indirect account is also an observation . I believe because I trust these people and trust science. But the original observer also believed in something: that their observations, their instruments gave an adequate image of reality (that is, those things that other also may perceive). In contrast this crated did not exist in the XIX century, no more than for us exist the crater R2D2 that will be discovered in a planet near Alpha Centaury in the year 2050. Percical Lowel convinced the world on the existence of Mars channels . At that time, these channels had an status of existence. But they do not exist today. Upto this point existence is a matter of belief, trust in ourselves and in others and trust in a set of principles. it is what Voegelin called shared consciousness. 2012/9/24 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 12:28 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: Thus the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it. I expected better from you! This quip is based on the premise that you are the only observer involved. Such nonsense! Considering that there are a HUGE number of observers of the moon What about the crater Daedalus on the far side of the moon, nobody is observing it at this moment so does it exist right now? At any rate my point was that if it's true that there is no email message outside of human interpretation as Craig Weinberg asserted then it must also be true that the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it. John K Clark -- 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. -- Alberto. -- 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: questions on machines, belief, awareness, and knowledge
Hi Bruno On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 1:20 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Hi Brian, On 13 Sep 2012, at 22:04, Brian Tenneson wrote: Bruno, You use B as a predicate symbol for belief I think. I use for the modal unspecified box, in some context (in place of the more common []). Then I use it mainly for the box corresponding to Gödel's beweisbar (provability) arithmetical predicate (definable with the symbols E, A, , -, ~, s, 0 and parentheses. Thanks to the fact that Bp - p is not a theorem, it can plays the role of believability for the ideally correct machines. How come Bp-p is not a theorem? What are some properties of B and is there a predicate for knowing/being aware of that might lead to a definition for self-awareness? Yes, B and its variants: B_1 p == Bp p B_2 p = Bp Dt B_3 p = Bp Dt t, and others. D? B_1? B_2? B_3? btw, what is a machine and what types of machines are there? With comp we bet that we are, at some level, digital machine. The theory is one studied by logicians (Post, Church, Turing, etc.). I am also curious as to the definition of a digital machine. Is there a generic description for a structure (in the math logic sense) to have a belief or to be aware; something like A |= I am the structure A ? Yes, by using the Dx = xx method, you can define a machine having its integral 3p plan available. But the 1p-self, given by Bp p, does not admit any name. It is the difference between I have two legs and I have a pain in a leg, even if a phantom one. G* proves them equivalent (for correct machines), but G cannot identify them, and they obeys different logic (G and S4Grz). DX = xx? Finally, on a different note, if there is a structure for which all structures can be 1-1 injected into it, does that in itself imply a sort of ultimate structure perhaps what Max Tegmark views as the level IV multiverse? A 1-1 map is too cheap for that, and the set structure is a too much structural flattening. Comp used the simulation, notion, at a non specifiable level substitution. This structure I have in mind having the property that all structures can be injected into it has more structure than a set structure. See, I have revised my thoughts and put them into a fairly short document. You helped me a year or two ago to show me some flaws with my thoughts in a document. I could send it to you. -- 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: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment
On Monday, September 24, 2012 12:02:16 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: was the Email message that you sent to the Everything list on Sunday Sep 23, 2012 at 9:13 AM on the east coast of the USA with the title Re:Zombieopolis Thought Experiment unique? My experience of sending it was unique. The experiences of people reading what I wrote were unique. That's all very nice but it doesn't answer my question, was the Email message that you sent to the Everything list on Sunday September 23, 2012 at 9:13 AM on the east coast of the USA with the title Re:Zombieopolis Thought Experiment unique? There was no email message from the perspective of 'objective reality' that you assume exists independently of all experience. I had an experience of sending a message, you and others have an experience of receiving a message, computers have an experience of voltage changes, and that's it. All of those experiences were unique. We are now having unique experiences of talking about it. The existence of an email message is only inferred through our experiences Obviously. there is no email message outside of human interpretation. Thus the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it. I agree with Stephen's comment. The moon is a lot of experiences to a lot of things. Hypnotize someone and you can get them to think that an onion is an apple. That doesn't mean that every cell in your entire body now believes that it is metabolizing an apple. Without sense to be informed, organization is just a hypothetical morphology containing no possibilities of interest. Translation from the original bafflegab: without information information would contain nothing informative. I could not agree more. No. You are conflating sense with information. It isn't. These letters do not speak English. Books do not read the stories that they tell. It's hard for me to see what is so mystifying about this...but then again, it's hard for me to imagine what people see in knitting too. With sense, you don't need information, you just need to be able to make sense of forms locally in some way. You made enough sense out of my message to respond to it and you only received that sense impression because it was sent over a wire, and if it can be sent over a wire then its information. There is no information literally in the wire. The wire is a chain of molecular forms which change their relation to each other when stimulated properly at one end. It's like cracking a whip. I can wiggle a string on one end and the string wiggles on the other end because the medium has physical properties which propagate stimulation in that particular way. If the string was made of something that glows when you shake it, then you would see different patterns depending on the curves of the shapes in the string, etc. There is no information there unless this formation is 'in'-terpreted in such a way as to 'in'-form something. Without a computer to translate the wiggling molecules in the wire to pixels of wiggling LCD molecules and a person to translate the wiggles of their brain and retina into an email, there isn't any email there. In fact, there is information there, but only because the molecules that are acting like strings and wires and brains feel informed on their own layer of perception and participation. There is no human layer of information that is 'in' the wire. There is no independently persisting 'information' at all. It's all nested experiences happening at different quantitative rates and qualitative depths. Experiences are not made of information, information is made of experiences. Yes, scientific method can find no evidence of consciousness of any kind. The thing I don't understand is why this is supposed to be a problem only for those who think a intelligent computer is conscious and is supposed to be no problem for those who think that other intelligent humans are conscious. Because we have no reason to doubt that other people are fundamentally different from ourselves and we have no reason to suspect that the behavior of machines indicates any capacity to feel anything. If you think that means that consciousness has to be impossible, then again, that is your projection. You and I have both believed that consciousness exists since we were both infants and we both have been implicitly using the exact same theory to determine when something is conscious and when something is not, and that is that intelligent behavior indicates consciousness. In reality, the fact of consciousness comes long before anything like 'belief' can be generated. Infants don't believe they are conscious, they have to already be conscious to believe anything. Intelligent behavior is not the indicator of consciousness. It's almost the opposite indicator. Consciousness is indicated by
Re: Nonsense!
On 9/24/2012 9:28 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/24/2012 12:02 PM, John Clark wrote: Thus the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it. Hi John, I expected better from you! This quip is based on the premise that you are the only observer involved. Such nonsense! Considering that there are a HUGE number of observers of the moon, the effects of the observations of any one is negligible. If none of them measure the presence of the moon or its effects, then the existence of the moon becomes pure the object of speculation. Note that being affected by the moon in terms of tidal effects is a measurement! So who or what counts as an observer. Young's slit experiments on fullerenes seem to indicate that a few IR photons or gas molecules qualify. http://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.1614v1.pdf 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: Nonsense!
Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 9/24/2012 9:28 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/24/2012 12:02 PM, John Clark wrote: Thus the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it. Hi John, I expected better from you! This quip is based on the premise that you are the only observer involved. Such nonsense! Considering that there are a HUGE number of observers of the moon, the effects of the observations of any one is negligible. If none of them measure the presence of the moon or its effects, then the existence of the moon becomes pure the object of speculation. Note that being affected by the moon in terms of tidal effects is a measurement! So who or what counts as an observer. Young's slit experiments on fullerenes seem to indicate that a few IR photons or gas molecules qualify. http://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.1614v1.pdf Brent If I don't observe it, then it doesn't matter who/what else observes something, the rest of the universe is still a superposition. It doesn't matter whether or not an interference pattern can be detected. Saibal -- 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: Nonsense!
Citeren Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net: On 9/24/2012 12:02 PM, John Clark wrote: Thus the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it. Hi John, I expected better from you! This quip is based on the premise that you are the only observer involved. Such nonsense! Considering that there are a HUGE number of observers of the moon, the effects of the observations of any one is negligible. If none of them measure the presence of the moon or its effects, then the existence of the moon becomes pure the object of speculation. Note that being affected by the moon in terms of tidal effects is a measurement! -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html Thing is, the Moon doesn't exist, even if you do look at it. Saibal -- 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: Nonsense!
On 9/24/2012 8:02 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 9/24/2012 9:28 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/24/2012 12:02 PM, John Clark wrote: Thus the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it. Hi John, I expected better from you! This quip is based on the premise that you are the only observer involved. Such nonsense! Considering that there are a HUGE number of observers of the moon, the effects of the observations of any one is negligible. If none of them measure the presence of the moon or its effects, then the existence of the moon becomes pure the object of speculation. Note that being affected by the moon in terms of tidal effects is a measurement! So who or what counts as an observer. Young's slit experiments on fullerenes seem to indicate that a few IR photons or gas molecules qualify. http://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.1614v1.pdf Brent If I don't observe it, then it doesn't matter who/what else observes something, the rest of the universe is still a superposition. It doesn't matter whether or not an interference pattern can be detected. ?? I could matter. Suppose I bet you $100 there's no interference pattern when the buckyballs are hot? Then it would matter. But apparently it wouldn't matter whether anyone observed the IR photons or not. 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.
Epiphenomenalism (was: Re: Bruno's Restaurant)
On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 12:00 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Pain is anything but epiphenomenal. The fact that someone is able to talk about it rules out it being an epiphenomenon. The behaviour - talking about the pain - could be explained entirely as a sequence of physical events, without any hint of underlying qualia. By analogy, we can explain the behaviour of a billiard ball entirely in physical terms, without any idea if the ball has qualia or some other ineffable non-quale property. In the ball's case this property, like the experience of pain, would be epiphenomenal, without causal efficacy of its own. -- 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: Nonsense!
On 9/24/2012 11:02 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 9/24/2012 9:28 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/24/2012 12:02 PM, John Clark wrote: Thus the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it. Hi John, I expected better from you! This quip is based on the premise that you are the only observer involved. Such nonsense! Considering that there are a HUGE number of observers of the moon, the effects of the observations of any one is negligible. If none of them measure the presence of the moon or its effects, then the existence of the moon becomes pure the object of speculation. Note that being affected by the moon in terms of tidal effects is a measurement! So who or what counts as an observer. Young's slit experiments on fullerenes seem to indicate that a few IR photons or gas molecules qualify. http://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.1614v1.pdf Brent If I don't observe it, then it doesn't matter who/what else observes something, the rest of the universe is still a superposition. It doesn't matter whether or not an interference pattern can be detected. Saibal Dear Saibal, If you are operating under the stipulation that each observer is uniquely isolated from all others, then I agree with you. But I hope you understand the long range implications if this as it opens wide the need for an explanation for the appearance of interactions/mutual consistencies between observers. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Nonsense!
On 9/24/2012 11:04 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net: On 9/24/2012 12:02 PM, John Clark wrote: Thus the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it. Hi John, I expected better from you! This quip is based on the premise that you are the only observer involved. Such nonsense! Considering that there are a HUGE number of observers of the moon, the effects of the observations of any one is negligible. If none of them measure the presence of the moon or its effects, then the existence of the moon becomes pure the object of speculation. Note that being affected by the moon in terms of tidal effects is a measurement! -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html Thing is, the Moon doesn't exist, even if you do look at it. Saibal Hi Saibal, I would have to disagree with you only because I wish to be consistent with my definition of existence. The moon, as everything else, is merely phenomenal appearance, but as an a prior necessary possibility to even be an illusion, it must exist. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Nonsense!
On 9/24/2012 8:51 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: If I don't observe it, then it doesn't matter who/what else observes something, the rest of the universe is still a superposition. It doesn't matter whether or not an interference pattern can be detected. Saibal Dear Saibal, If you are operating under the stipulation that each observer is uniquely isolated from all others, then I agree with you. Or it's Chris Fuch's instrumental Bayesianism which regards QM as just a way of representing one's knowledge of systems. Brent But I hope you understand the long range implications if this as it opens wide the need for an explanation for the appearance of interactions/mutual consistencies between observers. -- 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: Nonsense!
On 9/24/2012 11:17 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 9/24/2012 8:02 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 9/24/2012 9:28 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/24/2012 12:02 PM, John Clark wrote: Thus the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it. Hi John, I expected better from you! This quip is based on the premise that you are the only observer involved. Such nonsense! Considering that there are a HUGE number of observers of the moon, the effects of the observations of any one is negligible. If none of them measure the presence of the moon or its effects, then the existence of the moon becomes pure the object of speculation. Note that being affected by the moon in terms of tidal effects is a measurement! So who or what counts as an observer. Young's slit experiments on fullerenes seem to indicate that a few IR photons or gas molecules qualify. http://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.1614v1.pdf Brent If I don't observe it, then it doesn't matter who/what else observes something, the rest of the universe is still a superposition. It doesn't matter whether or not an interference pattern can be detected. ?? I could matter. Suppose I bet you $100 there's no interference pattern when the buckyballs are hot? Then it would matter. But apparently it wouldn't matter whether anyone observed the IR photons or not. Brent Hi Brent, If we are consistent with the rules of QM, the mere possibility of detection of position basis information is sufficient to prevent the interference pattern. Thus my prediction is that the temperature of the buckyballs is irrelevant for the two slit experiment, so long as a position basis measurement is not possible. Very hard to do... -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Nonsense!
On 9/24/2012 8:57 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/24/2012 11:17 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 9/24/2012 8:02 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 9/24/2012 9:28 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/24/2012 12:02 PM, John Clark wrote: Thus the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it. Hi John, I expected better from you! This quip is based on the premise that you are the only observer involved. Such nonsense! Considering that there are a HUGE number of observers of the moon, the effects of the observations of any one is negligible. If none of them measure the presence of the moon or its effects, then the existence of the moon becomes pure the object of speculation. Note that being affected by the moon in terms of tidal effects is a measurement! So who or what counts as an observer. Young's slit experiments on fullerenes seem to indicate that a few IR photons or gas molecules qualify. http://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.1614v1.pdf Brent If I don't observe it, then it doesn't matter who/what else observes something, the rest of the universe is still a superposition. It doesn't matter whether or not an interference pattern can be detected. ?? I could matter. Suppose I bet you $100 there's no interference pattern when the buckyballs are hot? Then it would matter. But apparently it wouldn't matter whether anyone observed the IR photons or not. Brent Hi Brent, If we are consistent with the rules of QM, the mere possibility of detection of position basis information is sufficient to prevent the interference pattern. Thus my prediction is that the temperature of the buckyballs is irrelevant for the two slit experiment, so long as a position basis measurement is not possible. Very hard to do... No, the temperature is crucial and proves your point. When the buckyballs are cold they form an interference pattern. When they are hot, they don't - because they are hot enough to emit enough IR photons on their way through the apparatus to localize themselves, even though nobody and no instruments are recording the IR photons. It might be interesting to do this experiment out in space where there are no walls or anything else to absorb the IR photons, but I think the outcome would be the same. Just the photons and their eventual interactions with the vacuum would be enough to produce decoherence. 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: Nonsense!
Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 9/24/2012 8:02 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 9/24/2012 9:28 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/24/2012 12:02 PM, John Clark wrote: Thus the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it. Hi John, I expected better from you! This quip is based on the premise that you are the only observer involved. Such nonsense! Considering that there are a HUGE number of observers of the moon, the effects of the observations of any one is negligible. If none of them measure the presence of the moon or its effects, then the existence of the moon becomes pure the object of speculation. Note that being affected by the moon in terms of tidal effects is a measurement! So who or what counts as an observer. Young's slit experiments on fullerenes seem to indicate that a few IR photons or gas molecules qualify. http://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.1614v1.pdf Brent If I don't observe it, then it doesn't matter who/what else observes something, the rest of the universe is still a superposition. It doesn't matter whether or not an interference pattern can be detected. ?? I could matter. Suppose I bet you $100 there's no interference pattern when the buckyballs are hot? Then it would matter. But apparently it wouldn't matter whether anyone observed the IR photons or not. Brent Yes, but I would still think of me in the universe as a state of the form: |me|rest of the universe If you measure the z-component of a spin that is initially polarized in the x-direction, then I would describe the spin, you and the rest of the universe as a superposition, even if you tell me that you have measured without telling me the result of the measurement. Even though my body will be entangled with the measurement result, I don't have any access to information about the result, so |me (which I take to be everything that I am aware of) is exactly the same in both parts of the superposition and can thus be factored out of it. If this were not exactly true, you could not rule out me being able to guess the correct answer in more than 50% of the time. Then the superposition of you having measured one result and you having measured another result can be interpreted as you being in the state before you performed the measurement. I can say that time doesn't really exist, the so-called time evolved state |psi(t) = exp(-i H t/hbar) |psi(0) can be re-interpreted as just the same initial state |psi(0) in a different basis. As long as the state has evolved in unitary way, you can still in priciple have access to the initial state. In practice, you can't because the observables you would have to apply are extremely non-local. Only when the |me does not factor out of the entire state, does this become impossible, even in principle. Saibal -- 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: Nonsense!
Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 9/24/2012 8:57 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/24/2012 11:17 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 9/24/2012 8:02 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 9/24/2012 9:28 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/24/2012 12:02 PM, John Clark wrote: Thus the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it. Hi John, I expected better from you! This quip is based on the premise that you are the only observer involved. Such nonsense! Considering that there are a HUGE number of observers of the moon, the effects of the observations of any one is negligible. If none of them measure the presence of the moon or its effects, then the existence of the moon becomes pure the object of speculation. Note that being affected by the moon in terms of tidal effects is a measurement! So who or what counts as an observer. Young's slit experiments on fullerenes seem to indicate that a few IR photons or gas molecules qualify. http://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.1614v1.pdf Brent If I don't observe it, then it doesn't matter who/what else observes something, the rest of the universe is still a superposition. It doesn't matter whether or not an interference pattern can be detected. ?? I could matter. Suppose I bet you $100 there's no interference pattern when the buckyballs are hot? Then it would matter. But apparently it wouldn't matter whether anyone observed the IR photons or not. Brent Hi Brent, If we are consistent with the rules of QM, the mere possibility of detection of position basis information is sufficient to prevent the interference pattern. Thus my prediction is that the temperature of the buckyballs is irrelevant for the two slit experiment, so long as a position basis measurement is not possible. Very hard to do... No, the temperature is crucial and proves your point. When the buckyballs are cold they form an interference pattern. When they are hot, they don't - because they are hot enough to emit enough IR photons on their way through the apparatus to localize themselves, even though nobody and no instruments are recording the IR photons. It might be interesting to do this experiment out in space where there are no walls or anything else to absorb the IR photons, but I think the outcome would be the same. Just the photons and their eventual interactions with the vacuum would be enough to produce decoherence. Brent Note that in such experiments, you can restore the interference pattern by measuring the photons. The photons are entangled with the buckyballs, the reason why you don't get a itnerference pattern is simply because the state of the phtons conain the information about the which way path of the buckballs. Then to restore the interference pattern, all you need to do is look at those buckballs hitting the sceen for which the photon is detected in some fixed state X. Then as a function X, the interference pattern changes, if you average over the range of states X can be in, the interference patten will be completely washed out. This shows that there is still an interference pattern to be detected (at least in princicple), decoherence is nothing more than the state getting entangled with more and more degrees of freedom. Saibal -- 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: Nonsense!
On 9/24/2012 11:55 PM, meekerdb wrote: Or it's Chris Fuch's instrumental Bayesianism which regards QM as just a way of representing one's knowledge of systems. If Chris can extract Bell's theorem from the Bayesian statistics, that would be amazing! I consider QM to be a theory of observers, I agree in spirit with this idea. I need to look at the details of his proposal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Bayesianism Nice! -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Nonsense!
On 9/25/2012 12:05 AM, meekerdb wrote: On 9/24/2012 8:57 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/24/2012 11:17 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 9/24/2012 8:02 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 9/24/2012 9:28 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/24/2012 12:02 PM, John Clark wrote: Thus the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it. Hi John, I expected better from you! This quip is based on the premise that you are the only observer involved. Such nonsense! Considering that there are a HUGE number of observers of the moon, the effects of the observations of any one is negligible. If none of them measure the presence of the moon or its effects, then the existence of the moon becomes pure the object of speculation. Note that being affected by the moon in terms of tidal effects is a measurement! So who or what counts as an observer. Young's slit experiments on fullerenes seem to indicate that a few IR photons or gas molecules qualify. http://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.1614v1.pdf Brent If I don't observe it, then it doesn't matter who/what else observes something, the rest of the universe is still a superposition. It doesn't matter whether or not an interference pattern can be detected. ?? I could matter. Suppose I bet you $100 there's no interference pattern when the buckyballs are hot? Then it would matter. But apparently it wouldn't matter whether anyone observed the IR photons or not. Brent Hi Brent, If we are consistent with the rules of QM, the mere possibility of detection of position basis information is sufficient to prevent the interference pattern. Thus my prediction is that the temperature of the buckyballs is irrelevant for the two slit experiment, so long as a position basis measurement is not possible. Very hard to do... No, the temperature is crucial and proves your point. When the buckyballs are cold they form an interference pattern. When they are hot, they don't - because they are hot enough to emit enough IR photons on their way through the apparatus to localize themselves, even though nobody and no instruments are recording the IR photons. It might be interesting to do this experiment out in space where there are no walls or anything else to absorb the IR photons, but I think the outcome would be the same. Just the photons and their eventual interactions with the vacuum would be enough to produce decoherence. Brent -- Yep, the mere possibility of an interaction matters! This implies that our considerations of the concept of an observer has to account for this mere possibility aspect. ;-) -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Nonsense!
On 9/25/2012 12:25 AM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 9/24/2012 8:57 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/24/2012 11:17 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 9/24/2012 8:02 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 9/24/2012 9:28 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/24/2012 12:02 PM, John Clark wrote: Thus the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it. Hi John, I expected better from you! This quip is based on the premise that you are the only observer involved. Such nonsense! Considering that there are a HUGE number of observers of the moon, the effects of the observations of any one is negligible. If none of them measure the presence of the moon or its effects, then the existence of the moon becomes pure the object of speculation. Note that being affected by the moon in terms of tidal effects is a measurement! So who or what counts as an observer. Young's slit experiments on fullerenes seem to indicate that a few IR photons or gas molecules qualify. http://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.1614v1.pdf Brent If I don't observe it, then it doesn't matter who/what else observes something, the rest of the universe is still a superposition. It doesn't matter whether or not an interference pattern can be detected. ?? I could matter. Suppose I bet you $100 there's no interference pattern when the buckyballs are hot? Then it would matter. But apparently it wouldn't matter whether anyone observed the IR photons or not. Brent Hi Brent, If we are consistent with the rules of QM, the mere possibility of detection of position basis information is sufficient to prevent the interference pattern. Thus my prediction is that the temperature of the buckyballs is irrelevant for the two slit experiment, so long as a position basis measurement is not possible. Very hard to do... No, the temperature is crucial and proves your point. When the buckyballs are cold they form an interference pattern. When they are hot, they don't - because they are hot enough to emit enough IR photons on their way through the apparatus to localize themselves, even though nobody and no instruments are recording the IR photons. It might be interesting to do this experiment out in space where there are no walls or anything else to absorb the IR photons, but I think the outcome would be the same. Just the photons and their eventual interactions with the vacuum would be enough to produce decoherence. Brent Note that in such experiments, you can restore the interference pattern by measuring the photons. The photons are entangled with the buckyballs, the reason why you don't get a itnerference pattern is simply because the state of the phtons conain the information about the which way path of the buckballs. Then to restore the interference pattern, all you need to do is look at those buckballs hitting the sceen for which the photon is detected in some fixed state X. Then as a function X, the interference pattern changes, if you average over the range of states X can be in, the interference patten will be completely washed out. This shows that there is still an interference pattern to be detected (at least in princicple), decoherence is nothing more than the state getting entangled with more and more degrees of freedom. Saibal Hi Saibal, You remark implies that decoherence is just a measure of the difficulty of recovering information required to reconstruct the initial state, no? It never actually vanishes. This seems to imply a possible lowest upper bound on the number of degrees of freedom involved such that below it interference effects can still be recovered. This seems somehow wrong... -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- 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: Nonsense!
On 9/24/2012 9:25 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 9/24/2012 8:57 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/24/2012 11:17 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 9/24/2012 8:02 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 9/24/2012 9:28 AM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/24/2012 12:02 PM, John Clark wrote: Thus the moon does not exist when you are not looking at it. Hi John, I expected better from you! This quip is based on the premise that you are the only observer involved. Such nonsense! Considering that there are a HUGE number of observers of the moon, the effects of the observations of any one is negligible. If none of them measure the presence of the moon or its effects, then the existence of the moon becomes pure the object of speculation. Note that being affected by the moon in terms of tidal effects is a measurement! So who or what counts as an observer. Young's slit experiments on fullerenes seem to indicate that a few IR photons or gas molecules qualify. http://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.1614v1.pdf Brent If I don't observe it, then it doesn't matter who/what else observes something, the rest of the universe is still a superposition. It doesn't matter whether or not an interference pattern can be detected. ?? I could matter. Suppose I bet you $100 there's no interference pattern when the buckyballs are hot? Then it would matter. But apparently it wouldn't matter whether anyone observed the IR photons or not. Brent Hi Brent, If we are consistent with the rules of QM, the mere possibility of detection of position basis information is sufficient to prevent the interference pattern. Thus my prediction is that the temperature of the buckyballs is irrelevant for the two slit experiment, so long as a position basis measurement is not possible. Very hard to do... No, the temperature is crucial and proves your point. When the buckyballs are cold they form an interference pattern. When they are hot, they don't - because they are hot enough to emit enough IR photons on their way through the apparatus to localize themselves, even though nobody and no instruments are recording the IR photons. It might be interesting to do this experiment out in space where there are no walls or anything else to absorb the IR photons, but I think the outcome would be the same. Just the photons and their eventual interactions with the vacuum would be enough to produce decoherence. Brent Note that in such experiments, you can restore the interference pattern by measuring the photons. The photons are entangled with the buckyballs, the reason why you don't get a itnerference pattern is simply because the state of the phtons conain the information about the which way path of the buckballs. Then to restore the interference pattern, all you need to do is look at those buckballs hitting the sceen for which the photon is detected in some fixed state X. Then as a function X, the interference pattern changes, if you average over the range of states X can be in, the interference patten will be completely washed out. But with no control over the direction or timing of the emissions it's essentially impossible. It's not enough to just detect one photon and condition on that, you'd need to detect all the photons and then quantum erase the information. Brent This shows that there is still an interference pattern to be detected (at least in princicple), decoherence is nothing more than the state getting entangled with more and more degrees of freedom. Saibal -- 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: Epiphenomenalism (was: Re: Bruno's Restaurant)
On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 10:45 PM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.comwrote: On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 12:00 AM, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Pain is anything but epiphenomenal. The fact that someone is able to talk about it rules out it being an epiphenomenon. The behaviour - talking about the pain - could be explained entirely as a sequence of physical events, without any hint of underlying qualia. By analogy, we can explain the behaviour of a billiard ball entirely in physical terms, without any idea if the ball has qualia or some other ineffable non-quale property. In the ball's case this property, like the experience of pain, would be epiphenomenal, without causal efficacy of its own. If it has no causal efficacy, what causes someone to talk about the pain they are experiencing? Is it all coincidental? I find the entire concept of epiphenominalism to be self-defeating: if it were true, there is no reason to expect anyone to ever have proposed it. If consciousness were truly an epiphenomenon then the experience of it and the resulting wonder about it would necessarily be private and non-shareable. In other words, whoever is experiencing the consciousness with all its intrigue can in no way effect changes in the physical world. So then who is it that proposes the theory of epiphenominalism to explain the mystery of conscious experience? It can't be the causally inefficacious experiencer. The only consistent answer epiphenominalism can offer is that the theory of epiphenominalism comes from a causally efficacious entity which in no way is effected by experiences. It might as well be a considered a non-experiencer, for it would behave the same regardless of whether it experienced something or if it were a zombie. Epiphenominalism is forced to defend the absurd notion that epiphenominalism (and all other theories of consciousness) are proposed by things that have never experienced consciousness. Perhaps instead, its core assumption is wrong. The reason for all these books and discussion threads about consciousness is that experiences and consciousness are causally efficacious. If they weren't then why is anyone talking about them? Jason -- 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.
